18 - 31st March : Busselton - I'm leaving on a TransWA coach...eventually...

OK, last entry I said I might actually do the unthinkable and actually leave Busselton and, you know, maybe see at least some of the rest of the state before flying north at the end of April. Well, madly enough, I finally did manage to break the near indestructable barrier between Busselton and the wider world...the only thing is it took me longer than expected...about two weeks longer in fact. As not this entry concerns not the wider world but instead my final fortnight Busselton anchored, fear not though as I can reveal that this will all end with me on a coach heading south so rest assured my next entry will not be in Busselton. Unless I decide the outside world is scary and go back. Place your bets...

Working. It's half of my visa name and there not been a week since my first that I've not at least scraped a little work here and there. In this period I did 4 days work, 3 of them at the same place. I'll start with the odd one. On Sunday 21st the hostel owner stuck his head through the lounge door at 10PM and asked if I wanted some work in the morning. 'Yes' I said. Then 'Doing what?' fully expecting the standard grape picking based answer. It was somewhat shocking that the next thing he said was 'digging holes.' Sounds intellectual doesn't it? When I asked for more details he simply shrugged, muttered 'farm work' and made a swift exit. Fair enough, guess I'll find out in the morning then.

It's raining in the morning. Rain to farmwork in WA is what snow is to absolutly everything in the UK - cause for complete and total meltdown. As we ambled out to the car we heard the phone ringing in the hostel office and joked that was probably the farm telling us not to bother coming. Would have been good to wait 30 seconds because it was just that, though discovering face to face 15 minutes later did have a more personal touch. We hung around the hostel the rest of the morning doing not much, waiting for the phonecall summoning us back once the rain has eased off. It finally happened and we found ourselves finally ready to start work around 1 in the afternoon. 'Digging holes' proved to be somewhat off the mark, though it was most definatly 'farm work.' We were pulling a random vegetable out of the earth. My ignorance to the vegetable is not just me being ignorant, the farmer himself said it wasn't common before telling us its name...which I of course forgot 5 seconds later. It was tough work, especially on the back and very dirty, by the end my hands and jeans were totally caked in mud. Still, it only took us two and a half hours and that went fast apart from the very end. For our trouble the farmer placed 3 20 dollar bills in each of our hands plus gave us all a beer a-piece which we drank whilst he delivered a near monologue about his travels around America. It was a decent bit of work, even if it did take a while to get started,

An interlude between work stories - Nik gets a private room (kinda.) As work dried up as the grape picking season draws to a close numbers in the hostel had taken a drastic downturn. The welsh couple in my dorm had upgraded to a double room a week and a half before I left and had yet to be replaced by my departure. This left just one other person and myself, pretty nice and private you may imagine. However now consider that he works nightshift in a winder 6PM till 6AM 6 days a week. This works out very well for me, a practically private room for 130 dollars a week. I feel this should be introduced everywhere I go!

The final triplet of grape picking days I worked were at the same place, Happs-Dunsborough. They went down on Friday 19th, Friday 26th and Tuesday 30th, the final being my last full day in Busselton. It felt fitting, somehow. The first 2 were really easy, 4 hours each and almost crazyily simple picking, red grapes with little/no leaves at arm height in almost too perfect straight lines. The pay wasn't the best we've had at 14.5 dollars an hour after tax but at least it was hourl. The final day was more of a challenge, with a lot more vines to work and 3 people not showing up on the day. The vines were extreemly overgrown in places, it was not uncommon to find yourself liturally surrounded by them at times, but we pushed on and finished after six and a half hours. A long day, though of course only by the standards of grape picking. As always it was much harder once the sun was in the sky.

I left with a good impression of Happs and that goes much beyond simple gratitude for 3 days work. It's largely down to the 2 hours immediatly after our 2nd day there. The slightly presumptious question 'have you got any wine we could taste' from one of us lead to us unexpectadly at the cellar door drinking a fair ammount of wine. Now the woman serving could easily have quickly given us one or two and bid us good-day but to her credit she was very friendly and guided us through a dozen types over nearly two hours. Now, this is not something I've ever done before and I'll happily hold my hands up to knowing less than nothing about wine but I must say I really enjoyed myself. I was sampling the sweet white wines and, although I doubt I could pick them out of a lineup, there were some really decent tastey ones on offer. The cheese and biscuits were most welcome too, especially the cheese.

And then I was asked to undertake a task of truely mythical proportions...I was to carry a box of empty bottle all the way to the backdoor, place them in the bin outside and then bring the box back. It was touch and go at times but I managed it somehow, it ranks up there as the most stressful 60 seconds of my life. It's only fitting that my efforts were rewarded with 2 free bottles of wine then. I like Happs. And then after my 3rd day there they gave everybody a free bottle as thanks for the long days work, bringing my total of free bottles up to 3. Now I know that the value of such bottles to them is pretty neglible but never-the-less it's very decent of them and saved me wearing my legs out walking to the bottleshop.

It was St Patricks day somewhere in there. We went to the pub, which is a reasonably big deal in Busselton. Apparently not to anybody else though as there was maybe 5 people in there not from the hostel. Seeing as there was over a dozen of us from the hostel it did oddly feel like the hostel had simply undergone a massive transformation. We spent most of the time playing pool. That and listening to the Australian idea of typically Irish music...most of which was actually Scotish and made heavy use of bagpipes. Between such slander Flogging Molly and The Dropkick Murphies (both, it should be said, American) got a good look in which left me with a wry smile. I had my yearly pint of Guiness, which was worringly not as bad as usual (maybe a year of ale has dissolved my taste buds) but thankfully still rancid enough to put me off having another till next March. And then the pub closed its doors at half 9 and we went back to the hostel. This was a special late night, it usually closes at 8.30, the bar at 8. This does shield us from the extortionate alcohol prices so I firmly believe they've got out best interests at heart.

Scandal in Busselton - They're going to be adding chlorine to the water! Mass protext! Petitions! Public meetings! Save our water, it's the best in WA, if not Australia, if not the world! One woman writes to the local paper - 'when I see people buying bottled water in supermarkets I go right up to them and inform them they don't have to bother because the tap water here is so beautiful. They don't half look surprised!' I bet they do! Do they also nervously edge away as if you might pounce of their necks at a moments notice, teeth beared and foam causing a 'cleanr to isle 9' announcment? Periods of no work make me (yes, make me!) read the local paper...it's probably not too good for my health. It would all makde at least some sense if the water actually tasted good, OK so its not coming out of the tap with a perminent grey head like Hatfield water but honestly I've had better. Often. Obviously I've been keeping such an opinion to myself for fear of some sort of lynch mob situation complete with pitchforks and burning sticks but now I've left I feel free to let it all out - you wrote about almost nothing else for nearly a month! What on earth is wrong with you! Have yo

...OK...calm down maybe...

(swift change of subject)

On Sunday 28th several of us made the pilgramige 20 minutes up the road to CapelFest. What do you mean you've never heard of it? OK, neither had I but I did know Capel was a place. More importantly it was a place not called Busselton. I was sold and got in the car. After being treated to 'the best powerballads ever' (one massive drawback of the digital music revolution being that nobody carries CDs around anymore and your always stuck with the single random, terrible CD the car comes with) we arrived in Capel to find the streets full to the brim with cars. We eventually found a place and got out. In the air we could make out the unmistakeable sound of bagpipes. On the horizon we could just make out the top of a ferris wheel. Something tells me CapelFest is going to be brutal.

It turns out to be a large village fete in all but name. They've cordoned off a couple of roads, have a large green area and are making use of several community centre type buildings. The bagpipes we could hear were those of the WA police band. They also wear kilts. This isn't immediatly apparent however because as we arrive they're not actually on stage but hard at practise in their minivan. Of 'thins I don't expect to see through a minivan window' two dozen crammed in policman playing bagpipes in kilts had got to run away with the prize.

Of at least comparable oddity were the mimes. Liz told me (via text, she has yet to learn how to make her voice carry from NZ) to freak them out by mirroring theri actions back at them but I condemn this as beyond the bar cruelty, mimes lead such stressful, ridicule-filled lives that I feel I should not add further to their woes. They were not what you would call classic mimes (yes, you, that's what you'd call them) more like a cross between mimes and those street performers who remain frozen untill somebody moves close, at which point they grab them or make a sudden, jerky movement in their direction and then freeze again. Oh, and to top it all off they were hald dressed as scarecrows...so in a way not really mimes at all. I hope I've made that nice and clear for you.

There was wine tasting but that only made me think of grapes so I gave it a miss. There was also cider tasteing which I was more up for but ultimately was disappointed when the solitary stall gave me a glass of what tasted like warm strongbow froff. Not impressed! However an hour later we discovered another cider stall that gave me some stunning cider...and to make matters all the more impressive due to license issues the only stuff they were able to hand out was alcohol free...so basically apple juice. I was so impressed I even parted with three bucks for a bottle. A couple of weeks later I clocked some of the more intoxicating variations in a bottelshop and can happily report that products from The Cidery in Bridgetown, WA are well worth a go if your ever in the area. I'm not being paid to say that and it will be deleted from the album.

There was also cheese tasteing. I like cheese, even the kind that burns all the way down your throat and you can still feel the passage of 15 minutes later.

Apart from drink and eat I also consumed an ice-cream. It felt called for, somehow. It came in a weird white plastuc holder that I can only presume is for children. Does the beard not give some clue as to my age? I mean, I know it's only a young one but come on! Maybe it was to disguise the odd orange colour of the cone. It tasted OK and O'm still here a month later. Win.

As I sat pondering my ice-cream a horse-drawn carriage meandered past. Sure, Capel is a bit rural and all but surely this is taking it to the extreem...

There were tonnes of local organic food stalls, a lot of men (and one very young child) cutting wood, a climbing wall, bike ramps, kids go-karts and a man on stage going totally mental with a digeredoo. And I think that about sums up Capelfest, from a certain angle it could be seen as fairly lame but I honestly really enjoyed it, there was a really good relaxed atmosphere and, well, free cider and cheese. Plus it wasn't in Busselton! We were all getting a bit anxious to see if the jetty was still closed so headed back after a few hours.

...And then the foretold day of March 31st dawned...my last morning in Busselton. As mentioned the previous day we'd worked in the morning, this was followed by some time on the beach, a swift pint in a pub, a cheap pizza and a respectable whack of wine. It was a quiet last night, nothing special, but never the less cool in its own way. It was a little weird driving awat from a place I'd come to know really well over the last 7 weeks knowing that likely I'd never see it again. Two days later another coach I was on drove straight through it. Such if life.