I have finally decided that a career in fruit picking isnt for me! So now im back to brisbane - back to civilisation and less of the early morning starts!!! The past 4 weeks has been the quickest ever, some of the worst times but also some of the best times of my trip so far! Ill try my best to remember it all as im writing and cant remember what i wrote on my last blog so you might have already heard some things.

Arriving at the farm was a shock in itself, about 8 or 9 of us and our baggage had to sit on the back of a yute while the farm hand, dom, drove as fast as he could, from the start im sure they were testing us to weed out the quitters!! The farmer and owner, Tony then drove us to the hostel which was 40 mins away from Thulimbah, in Wallangarra - our hostel was an ex abbatoire and the smells used to drift past occasionally! The hostel seemed a dump on first impressions but throughout the weeks it soon became home and i actually really miss it!! From the start we were lucky and had great people in our room and have made some friends for life. Was so glad they were there to laugh about our horrendous days at work!!

We got picked up by Tony either at 4am or 5am which meant getting up very early! If you were on the first bus it was a nightmare as you had to wait around in the freezing cold for an hour until the sun came up. Stupidly on my first day i put my hand up when they asked who could drive which meant i was the tractor drive for our group! fun at the start but soon turned into a nightmare, one of the farm hands wasnt very pleasant and seemed to give all the tractor drivers a hard time, i hated being shouted and sworn at and made to feel really stupid but fortunatly everyone seemed to be in the same boat so we got a good laugh at it, i always told myself that i would like to see him do my job! I didnt mind picking the apples so much - it was the ladders i hated, the big ones were 11ft and so hard to carry around. a few times my ladder tipped to the side if it wasnt stuck in the ground properly - i think that was the tip of the iceberg, ended up being to scared to get the high one!! the only plus side was all the apples you could eat!! they tasted great straight from the tree and im sure im a small expert at apples!!! Throughout the day all you could hear was the farm hands shouting - DONT BRUISE THE F***** APPLES, WATCH YOUR F***** LEAVES AND BRANCHES......you get the picture!!

When we werent picking apples i had an absolute ball with all the girls! We soon became regulars at the local pub...where all the locals were slightly strange and we had to stay in large groups when walking home as they liked the idea of following lots of young girls! we never stayed out that late as we were in bed about 6pm!! i still woke up at 4.30 this morning expecting to go out and pick apples, i hope i get out that routine!! The last weekend was the best weekend as we were off and it was the hostels one year anniversary so Tony the owner put on a free bbq with lots of nice food and free drink, was a good day and managed to get rid of my hideous tan lines from working - vest top marks and shorts marks!! At night we all went to the pub dressed in bin liners, designed in different ways - i went as a bee,most of the girls made a dress out of it and nicola went as a cat!! originally she just put the bag over her head and jen poked holes in it. It was pretty funny and no one knew who she was...even had to drink her pint with a straw!! The next day we all went to the pub for sunday lunch since it was my last meal!! Was quite sad to be sayin goodbye to everyone but hopefully we're all gonna do some travelling together in the next free weeks up the coast to cairns.

So now basically im in Brisbane waiting for something to do, most of the girls are still apple picking but im hopefully going to melbourne with 2 girls i met whilst there so ill get you all updated!!