Working Girl

And so my first week in Cairns came to an end. I'd racked up 31 hours in Tribal Travel and despite losing $150, things were looking grand. On the Friday Evening, in honour of Swedish Midsummer, we decided to throw a Swedish-themed party. Initial suggestions of dying our hair blonde and listening to Abba were ousted in favour of eating Swedish meatballs (lovingly prepared by our Swedish chef Victor, in the microwave...), putting flowers in our hair (resembling Hawaiian hula girls), dancing around some tables singing Swedish songs (although the only one I can remember is 'beera beera beera, besch besch besch' (beer, beer, beer)) and bizarerely drinking sangria (red goon with lemonade and oranges, surprisingly tasty). We attempted Swedish drinking games, but our grasp of the language was really quite poor. Instead we headed to the bar at Gilligans hostel and danced for three hours solidly, before falling in a heap into bed, disgustingly sweaty. An awesome night.

Two days later we decided to host an English evening and true to tradition, it was rather disappointing. Despite talk of baking scones and, drinking tea and munching on cucumber sandwiches, we instead settled for fish and chips from a Chinese in the Cairns food court, surprisingly like home! After a skype with Becksy to discuss America plans, we headed toGilligans for the ultimate world cup match between two old enemies, England vs Germany. Now watching at home is tense, but imagine being surrounded by your opponents fans, it just makes the humiliation even worse! Team Sweden and Team Denmark somewhat unwisely also got on England's side and we screamed until we were hoarse. Helena even entered into the English spirit by hurling a (plastic) cup at some Germans when they scored, asking a snogging couple to stop kissing (not v. English, but it was amusing) and telling an Aussie to 'f*** off' because he was supporting Germany.

At half-time, despite that notorious 'disallowed goal', we were high in spirits, sure of a comeback. Two German goals later, we snuck out at the 89th minute (abandon ship) and at 2am I went to sleep. Work was plodding along, although I was now pretty convinced my boss hated me. She spent 75% of the tdays criticising everything I did, talking me through things like I was a retard and even suggesting she wasn't going to keep me on. I honestly hadn't done anything wrong, although of course I made mistakes, theres so much to remember! She had just taken a dislike to me (a bit like manager Sarah did when I worked at C'est La Vie) and it was hard to ever please her. To make matters worse she referred to me as 'Sarah' and 'Vicky' in front of the customers... but then she called Boel 'Boas' and 'Marloes' so maybe she just is pretty crap with names.

Anna, Grit, Helena and I decided we were well overdue a girly night in, so we bought chocolate, trashy magazines and avocados to make a face mask and spent the whole evening doing silly quizzes and chatting girly gossip. It was so much fun :). I decided to embrace the yes-man spirit so I would experience new things and before I knew it I was signed up to go cable-skiing with Boel. Considering the fact I had never skiied, snowboarded, waterskiied or wakeboarded, I wasn't actually that bad. I stuck to kneeboarding as its the easiest and I made it to the first corner third time round before missing the markers and smaking fantastically into the lake. I lost my enthusiasm a little when Boel spotted a huge eel and when my muscles began to feel like my arms were being ripped off.

Pretty knackered we headed back to the hostel for a quick shower before playing card games and drinking lots of goon. After Andy nearly had a punchup with the hostel night manager and Victor nearly got kicked out for peeing in the alley next to the kitchen, we decided it was probably time to head out. We danced until 2am in Gilligans and then headed on to the Woolshed for more dancing. After an hour, Jimmy and I rescued a very drunk Helena from a French guy and took her home. On the way she decided to push a randome and yell 'fat fatty fat' at a pretty rotund man because 'he needed to be told'. Ahh Helena.

After the success of Swedish and English nights, it was the turn of the Danes. Grit and Helena rummaged up dinner for nine surprisingly easily and it was a fabulous meal called something unpronouncable. The goon was out again and was drunk whilst playing a drinking board game, which we found in the boys flat. Helena, Anna and I headed to Gilligans and partied the night away

Unfortunately, the time had come for the group to disband as we said goodbye to Helena as she headed for Darwin, to Anna as she got farm work in nearby Mareeba and to Grit as she headed home to Denmark. I'd had a good few weeks with everyone and was very sad to see them go. I was also anxious at remaining in the hostel on my own. I need not have worried though as I quickly made new friends within the hostel. I hung out with them by the pool on my day off and headed out with them to the Woolshed in the evening. My new friendship group was cemented. The rest of the week continued on pretty uneventfully, besides the discovery of vast quantities of bedbugs in our room, which once again required us to wash all of our clothes and empty our bags to be sprayed (this was pretty handy for me, as my bag was looking a big on the filthy side).

On my next day off I was summoned out of my hangover by my new roommate Charlotte and invited on a road trip of the Atherton Tablelands in her hire car along with our other roommate Simon. We stopped off at Coles for supplies and then headed onto the highway. Within minutes we were surrounded by thick rainforest and naturally it began to rain. Still we didn't let it put us off as we drove to the Babinda Boulders (massive boulders in a river) and some waterfalls. The Lonely Planet recommended a dairy, which sold sinfully good cheesecake and we needed little encouragement to stop for a spot of tea and a slice of mixed berry cheesecake. Several kilos heavier, we headed to the highlight of the trip, that which I had been talking about constantly as I progressed up the East Coast, the Peter Andre waterfall. To be more precise, the waterfall as featured in the 'Mysterious Girl' video, Millaa Millaa Falls. The water had never looked so uninviting, but I didn't come all the way to Australia to chicken out of swimming in cold water. Us Brits are made of sterner stuff! So ignoring my previous experience of waterfall swimming (remember the leech in India), I stripped off and took the plunge singing 'woohohohooh mysterious girl...'. God it was cold. We dried off and headed back to the warmth of the car.

Workwise things were still going pretty well. I was helping my boss Kathy start over completely as she was breaking away from the Tribal Travel franchise to start her own business, confusingly enough called 'Tribal Cairns'. This involved me basically being Kathy's personal assistant and scapegoat for everything that went wrong. She'd shout out about 500 things for me to do and it was down to me to decide what was the most important, whilst she complained about how I hadn't done this yet. I was enjoying being challenged and it certainly kept me busy and gave me great experience. I was making complicated spreadsheets on Excel (which actually impressed her for once!), designing posters and cross-referencing trips on the old system with ones on the new. By now I had wracked up $1000 in monopoly money (vouchers), which were of b***** all use to me. I tried to broach the subject with Kathy several times, in which she implied I could like it or lump it. I decided to lump it. She said I could sell my vouchers to my friends, so I began to search for someone to take them off my hands.

I finally managed to sell a bungy jump to Mark and a reef trip and rafting trip to Simon, as well as unlimited bungy jumps to a German guy named Sebastian, who looks like a mad professor. It was great to have cash to my name again.

I settled into an easy routine of waking up late, eating a free brekkie, going to work for 12, working until 6.30, out for a free dinner at the Woolshed, drinking goon at the hostel and then out for the night spending nothing in the Woolshed. I'd convinced Kathy to give me a red VIP card for the Woolshed, which gave me free entry, 30% of drinks , free soft drinks and best of all my pick of any of the meals on the menu (which retail at between $10-15), SCORE! I was very happy with my routine and filled with apprehension that I was entering into my last two weeks in Australia...