We spent two weeks working on a nursery/farm at Mission Beach, now we could make ourselves sound amazing by saying we were volunteering to help out a family who's home & business were ruined by Cyclone Yassi in February, this is all true, but in reality we were there being backpacker slaves! It's crazy the things you have to do to tick of some of those 88 days of work you have to do to extend your visa, although I'm pretty sure cleaning someone's house from top to bottom, folding the laundry, doing the dishes every morning & looking after someone else's devil children isn't in the criteria. Nothing like getting yourself a maid for free! We were working for nothing and being given board and meals, although we decided to pitch our tent in the garden so we weren't sharing with the stinky boys in the room the other backpackers shared. We felt a little bit dodgy rocking up to someone's house and pitching our tent in their garden, especially when Jim the guy we were working for said we could go way up the back of the grounds if we didn't want to socialise, but we assured him that we were very sociable people and I just didn't want to share with any stinky dudes! After we'd got our tent pitched we weren't really sure what to do with ourselves. We were sitting in a stranger's garden, away to be working in a stranger's house…..weird! It wasn't long before Chris & Neil, two English teachers who we'd be working with, came and introduced themselves and made us stop feeling like weirdos. We then met Robbie, a 19 year old from Perth, a really nice guy. Our first night at dinner just felt wrong! Walking into someone else's kitchen and helping ourselves to the food that had been made for everyone. Saying that we were made pretty welcome and soon got used to floating around someone else's home like it was our own. What even felt more wrong for me was that beef stew was on the menu. I haven't eaten beef since I was about 11 & never eaten a stew in my whole entire life! I didn't have a choice whilst we were there so had to endure the pain of eating stew, cottage pie & lasagne. I am now officially a meat eater, sorry cows!

So what did our duties include? Well there was planting, weeding, pruning, all the stuff that it said on the add we had replied to. But then there was the other stuff that I hadn't agreed to, doing someone else's cleaning isn't what I signed up for! Saying that I did sometimes secretly enjoy being in the house when the guys were slaving away outside in the sun all day! Jim has his own building company so Dean got sent out on a few jobs for him & got $50 each time so at least we were making a tiny bit of money, although he should have been getting at least $200 a day, especially after he came to the rescue of a screaming Sheila and stormed into her house and beheaded a snake!

Our two weeks totally flew in. We worked 7am until 3pm, then generally everyone sat and had a few drinkies together, threw coconuts for the dogs Boss, Yassi & Buster (we're in far North Queensland now, that's what they use to place catch!), ate dinner then had more drinks or watched a dvd in the backpacker quarters. We had weekends off so as you can imagine both of them were pretty boozy affairs. As usual when the Scottish and English get together the English think they're the best but us Scots kick them into touch! After us all having a very respectable meal at a restaurant called Scotty's, where Dean tried kangaroo for the first time, 19 year old Robbie got a little bit wild on the Jack Daniels and started abusing Neil and telling him 'he had a better body than him!', oh yeah and 'a bigger you know what!'. If it wasn't for us stepping in it could have definitely ended up in a Scots v Poms brawl Robbie felt a little bit sheepish the next day, but did apologise, although don't think Neil was too impressed!

So our two weeks flew in then, we got 14 days visa days signed off and left our gorgeous view of the rainforest and beach behind. We headed up off further up the Coast, stopping at beautiful Josephine Falls and then camping up at a free spot at the Babinda Boulders. We love it when you we find free place to pitch up for the night! It was a beautiful spot in the area that has the most rainfall in Oz so as you can imagine the rainforest looks stunning. I was glad when another camper showed up, I thought we were going to be the only ones in the middle of nowhere and everyone knows that's when the backpacker murderers come and get you! They turned out to be a lovely South African couple who spoke to us in the morning, mainly complaining about the March Flies that drive everyone bloomin crazy, but we can't hold that against them, these flies literally land on you and bite you through your clothes! As usual we saw plenty of wild life. Another possum that we mistook for a big fat rat, sorry possum! My first wild snake that was pretty close to us when we were checking out the swimming holes at the Babinda Boulders. Dean never got a glimpse but I'm glad. He might have got his spade out and chopped this one's head off too! And finally our first cassowary!! There are only about 1000 of them left in Oz so we were pretty lucky when it came casually strolling up to our tent whilst having our breakie. They are known to be aggressive if they have young so I jumped in the car and looked through the window whilst Dean snapped away. The pictures do not do it justice, these birds are huge, and they thud they make whilst walking is pretty loud!

After the excitement of the cassowary we packed up our home once again and headed for Cairns.

Lots of Love

Chelle & Dean xxx