10-15th Feb

Busselton: Sea, sand and thousands upon thousands of leaves

It was quite an early start and though I did my best to remain quiet I can't help but think I woke up everyone in my dorm prior to crashing out the front door. In a lovely ironic moment I couldn't find my room key, it was probably someplace really obvious but having a bus to catch I had precious little time to find it and so left the hostel 20 dollars lighter. It's not a great deal of money by any measure but annoying none the less. Just to take the p**s I arrived at the bus terminal 45 minutes before boarding. Wonderful.

The bus jounrey took around four hours, it would have been quicker if we hadn't have stopped in a rustic service station for 45 minutes when we were less than half an hour from my stop but shouldn't really hold it against the driver, I guess he does have to eat after all. My map has accomodation marked with red coloured numbers and Eating with black coloured ones. I found this out after I walked right into the centre of town and found myself standing outside a fish and chip shop thinkin 'this sure doesn't look like a hostel.' Turns out it was about a minute away from where the bus dropped me off, I wouldn't have expected it any other way.

The hostel, Phat Sams Busselton Backpackers, turned out to be really decent. Nothing much beyond the basics but with a really chilled out atmosphere and people who, shock horror, actually talked to each other. Much wine was drunk the first night (and in fact most nights) and it was really good to be actually talking to people, I'd not overly noticed but realised I hadn't had a proper conversation (as in one that lasted beyond the minute mark) in over a week. The hostel was small, around twenty people at any one time, and had a wide spread of people from all over. I've still not spoken to anybody actually from Australia but one person was from New Zealand so I'm gradually getting closer.

Busselton itself initially appears like a sleep English seaside town, that's not quite the case as I gradually discovered it's much bigger than I thought but the fact remains it's much more relaxed than the big cities I've been to so far. There's a lot of families and old people at the weekends and all the shops close at 4PM with the idea of opening on a Sunday a crazy concept. What there is is beach, sand plus sea. I've not really run into this a great deal over the last five years so it holds much facination, just chilling out in the picture perfect sunny near-deserted beach in the week feels like days well spent even if I'm not really doing much in reality. It's cheap too!

My first full day I planned to have a proper look around for some work but actually spent much of the morning sorting out a mobile phone (which was much more long winded than I expected) and my effort quickly pettered out in the afternoon. It was far too warm, my pathetic excuse. Such effort would prove unnecissary as around 10PM that evening Sam wandered past and asked if anybody wanted some farm work for 3, perhaps 4, days. And as such I needed to be up and ready for 7 in the morning. Time for bed then. Oh OK maybe one more mug (it's the classy way to drink) of wine first.

Sam drove us out to the farm we were working on the first day (the other two he rented one of us a car and we split the costs.) It was about a twenty minute drive away and if you asked I couldn't even point to the general region on a map. It was a relatively small operation and perhaps because of this out employers were really nice and friendly. Even more friendly was their puppy, Jacks, who occasionally hampered out work by jumping on us and demanding attention.

They were growing grapes and as such had lots of rows of these (having them being the best way to grow them.) Leaves had grown above them, to protect them from sunlight, and as such we were working in the shade and I didn't need my hat. The leaves had grown thick and out job was to move down each row pulling off leaves so that the grapes had room to breathe but were still protected from the sun. It took a while to get fully orientated to the technique, basically ignoring the leaves themselves and moving along the stems/branchs popin 'em off, but towards the end of the first day out speed was picking up.

It was pretty hard going at times, the job itself wasn't particularly taxing, more the repetitivness. Stamina and an ability to detach yourself were essential. Plus being on the short side I was spending eight hours each day looking up and as such by the end my neck was killing me. It was one of those jobs that occasionally felt hellish at the time but then seemed OK 5 minutes after the day had ended. I'd happily do it again if the opportunity arose but think that doing it for a lenghtly ammount of time would prove difficult in the end.

We worked there Fri, Sat and Mon, meaning Saturday night presented me witht he opportunity to check out what passes for nightlife in Busselton. We'd ended the workday sharing a beer and tales of overpopulated kangaroos with our employers so it was no great surprise my head felt less than a hundred percent Sunday morning. The place we went was vaguely like a bad school disco circa 2000...though there was a bar so it had it's good points. We were only there for a couple of hours so the novelty factor more or less pulled me through, it was a good night but I can't say I'd want to repeat it anytime soon!