Well, after five weeks of picking zucchini's out in the middle of nowhere, we are finally back on the road again and making our way down to Sydney.

On the day of our arrival, we left Brisbane after getting all the last minute bits that we might need, and set off around lunchtime on what we were told would be a four hour trip. After driving for what seemed like an eternity we finally arrived at the farm late in the evening in the middle of a huge electrical storm that seemed to be coming from all around us! We were invited in for a drink by our new employers and then taken over to the "cottage" by Ray, where we prepared for our first day on the farm.

We were told by the National Harvest representative that we would need our own cooking facilities, which wasn't a problem as we already had a couple of gas hobs. What we weren't told was that the cottage was a rundown building with asbestos walls and mozzie nets that had holes in them so big that a small child could get through!! Ray had told us that they had beds over there too, but we might want to put our sleeping bags on top, as they had no sheets. Again, what we found was far from what we had imagined, as the beds had wires poking out all over them and the mattresses looked like a savage animal had attacked them. (We later found out that one of the mattresses had actually been home to a large snake in the past!!)

The first thing that we did was to set up the tent inside one of the 'bedrooms' so that we could sleep without getting eaten alive by the blood sucking parasites that clearly infested the area. Once we had somewhere to sleep we set up our hobs to cook some dinner, which we then took into the tent to eat as well!! The biggest shock was yet to come though as we ventured outside to find the shower and the toilet. The shower was next to the house and was home to all manner of spiders and wasps etc, but at least there was a light in there unlike the toilet. Well, we say toilet but what we really mean is a hole in the ground with a toilet placed over the top to try to disguise what it really was!!

After a night's sleep that was anything but perfect we got up at 5:30am to start work, and meet the rest of the crew that we would be spending the next five weeks with. There was Neville who was like Ray's right-hand man and who had been there for around seven years, and his son Chris, who was 17 and had been working at the farm since he left school at the ripe old age of 12!! Then there was Grace, who seemed to know everyone and everything that had ever happened in the area over the last hundred or so years.

After a couple of days we were joined by another couple of backpackers, Wayne and Jenny, who were from Lurgan just outside of where Jen lives, and we decided to move out of the free accommodation and head down the road to the nearest caravan park. This turned out to be 55km away in Texas, and it was owned by yet more Irish people - William from Dublin and Kathy from Belfast. We got a good deal on a couple of adjoining caravans with a sheltered area in between with a big fridge and a TV, and with the sharing of the journey's to and from work, it worked out quite nicely. The only drawback was that it meant getting up at 4:30am every morning to make it to work on time, and trying to dodge all the kangaroos on the road along the way. During the whole five-week period we only had one collision with a suicide Roo, and the dent came out of Wayne and Jenny's car fairly easily. The only other activity for us to partake in was the weekly drive to Warwick, some 150km away, to do a weekly shop.

The work itself actually wasn't all that bad as we would pick in the mornings and then go to the packing shed in the afternoons to get out of the midday heat, and Ray and Kathy were really nice people to work for as well. We have spoken to them about returning to the farm after Christmas so that we can complete our three months of harvesting work and therefore apply for a second working visa and stay in this fine country for up to a year longer. Although the prospect of even seeing another zucchini, yet alone picking one, fills us with dread we have to remember to think long term!!

For now though we are heading down to Nambucca Heads to visit some friends that we met on the boat trip to Halong Bay in Vietnam.