27

It took nine hours on a bus from Melbounre to Mildura. It was s*** to leave coffee palace backpackers as I had met a lot of good people there. As I arrived in Mildura at 7am I was expecting to be picked up as AJ had told me they pick you up from where you get dropped off. After thirty minutes I realised nobody was coming. I walked to a petrol station in the pitch black and asked for directions, which pointed me in the wrong direction (how the f*** can somebody in the petrol station not no where it is) After about an hour of walking round I finally managed to find it. As I turned up the manger of the hostel said she was expecting me at 3pm. So she was only eight hours out!!

Where I was staying was just out of Mildura and was like a ghost town. There was absolutely nothing to do except stay in the hostel and drink which aint a bad thing. The hostel was an old hospital and was massive. There was five different tv rooms, with one as a games room with a little gym.
I was talking to people about fruit picking and I did not realise how bad money people were on. It ranged between $15 - $50 a day. I was booked in to work then I got a call of Ned who I travelled abit of asia with and he said he was in Mildura and can get me some work for $17.50 an hour which was perfect.
It was quality to meet up with him again and we had a good catch up. Had a proper laugh and we were throwing oranges at each other when we were not looking which f***ing hurt!! Its a million times worse over here for flies. There is literally about ten flies on you at once, there so annoying. In the morning Ned would pick me up drop people off at a garlic farm then we would drive to our farm, and park next to the farm patch we were working on.
We drove the farm office to talk to the main farmer. As I was getting water out of the kitchen tap without asking, he said that I should not be drinking from there as its river water!! thought it tasted a little wierd. He said he was knocking off soon and he will see us in the morning. As we drove back to our patch we parked up and got our stuff together to get an early dart. As we got in the tyre seemed to be stuck so I got out and give it a little push. Ned was pressing the accelerator well too hard, and we got really stuck. Ned ran back the office which was about a fifteen minute walk, but running about five minutes. He was gone for about forty five minutes and all of a sudden i saw a tractor coming towards us so I pressumed he had just caught the farmer. As I looked closer I realised it was not the farmer but was Ned ha. He said nobody was there so he looked around and found a tractor so he jumped in it ha hes f***ing mad. To be fair it done the job.
The next day Ned picked me up and looked like s***. He said he was smoking weed and went white!! On the way to the farm you see the odd dead kangaroo or wallaby. As we come around the corner by our patch, we seen three kangaroos so we started chasing them in the car. There fast f***ers. As we got close to them, they were running towards the fence and we were catching them up now. The fence must have been about seven foot high and each one of them jumped over haha could not believe it. We went to go the shop and we forgot we had left the tools on the roof of the car and we had been driving for about 5 minutes. I looked on the roof and they had come off. We drove back and luckily somebody had put the to the side of the road for us ha.
The next night we decided to make a punch at the hostel. We put in goon, passion pop, cheap champagne, a tin of fruit salad, and some pineapple juice. Everybody was pissed but a lad Chris was absolutely slaughtered. We were sitting outside playing drinking games and I could tell his eyes had gone and he started swaying abit. He stood up and walked to the door like he was in a comer without saying a word. He started walking down the corridor the wrong way for about twenty metres and we were all watching him through the window thinking what the f*** is he doing. Eventually somebody ran inside and turned him around haha. Rule number one, never leave your bedroom door open. A few of us walked in and shaved his head chest and legs haha. I was in work the next day, but apparently when he woke up, he looked in the mirror and went ape s*** haha he was ok later on.
The next day I was waiting to get picked up from Ned at the usual place. I was f***ing freezing. Eventually the van turned up and it was an Estonian guy driving it. I asked what had happened to Ned. He said he went the pub with everybody from his hostel and got smashed. He fell asleep in the hostel on the sofa and ended up pissing himself (this is the lad who pissed on Ali's bag in Koh Phangan) He then took off his pants and fell asleep in a chair naked so he was in no state to come in to work haha

As our hostel also has international students you have got to stop drinking at 10.30-11pm. After that, if you walk to the bottom of the road there is a bench on the left side of the road and its legal to drink there, but if you drink on the other side of the road its illegal and you can get fined $250...f***ing crazy. We went down one night and there was a middle aged man drinking. He seemed pretty normal, maybe a little wierd, and as we were going back the hostel we invited him back to watch some tv. Everybody had gone to bed and it was just me and him talking and watching tv. Next thing he pulled out a gun on me..only joking!! I was going to sleep so I gave him the remote. The manager walked past in the morning,seen him asleep and called the police as Mildura is a really bad place for escaped convicts as its a quiet place and you can lay low. Armed police turned up and woke him up and tried to arrest him. They had to let him go though as we had let him in so he had done nothing wrong haha mad.

That night we decided to do sixty shots in sixty minutes. It was never going to be a happy ending. We got to sixty shots and everybody had stopped. We ran out of punch but still had goon, so me and AJ cleverly decided to carry on to one hundred but drinking goon straight. The borat mankini ended up coming out and I cant remember being put to bed haha.

Ned told me that a couple of lads that I met in Vietnam were also in Mildura. So I messaged Baz on facebook and he said he would pick me up from my hostel on saturday morning. Was quality seeing Baz and Al again as there bad piss heads. We got on it about 11am along with about fifteen people. Loads of people held a lad to a chair and tied him up with a full role of salotape and then put him in the toilet. He could not break free so when people went the toilet they were in for a shock haha eventually he managed to smash a bottle on the floor and cut the salotape off. The same thing happened to another lad and he got put in the fridge for about twenty minutes haha you should of saw the colour of his face!! he would have probably been in there longer if it wasnt for a girl letting him out.

I felt really drunk so I went to sleep in Baz's bed. They were still awake at 5am and woke me up. I was gasping for a drink and for some reason felt like a beer, so we all got up at 5am and started drinking. People were getting up for work at 7am and we were still drinking giving them s*** haha ended up staying all day.

Once work had stopped with Ned I had a go of the grape picking (slave labour) Me and another lad Chris turned up absolutely pissed. In the first two hours we were being a nightmare and throwing grapes at everyone and cutting the bottoms of peoples grape boxes open. In two hours we had earnt $2 each so 1 pound!! We also had to pay $5 for the bus so we were -$3 so we eventually had a go, so we would at least make profit rather than lose out. By the end of the day I had made $15. If that is not slave labour I dont no what f***ing is. Never done it again.

I ended up getting on another job putting 250m lenght plastic covers over the grape bushes to stop them burning in the blistering heat. It was better money but boring as f***. We role the plastic on to a steal pole using a machine and then put in on the tractor (about six or seven pick it up as its s*** heavy) then the tractor raises it over the bushes and as the tractor moves forward we nail the plastic to a wire and follow the tractor. As we put the second to last plastic cover for the day onto the arm of the tractor it was catching a on a couple of tyres but it was fixed in properly. As the tractor started moving, we got about 20 metres and the role bounced off and hit joe the driver in the head. As he stumbled of the tractor his head was badly sliced open and you could see a bone or his scull sticking out like a horn, and his head was literally pouring with blood. It was disgusting. He was lucky to be alive. He got taken the hospital, and he got nine stiches in his head haha he looked like frankenstein, and was a tit aswel.

Every now and then in the hostels things get stolen out of peoples baskets. A geman lad Sebastion kept getting beers stolen at his last hostel every night. So he emptied half a beer and pissed in it and put the bottle top back on. The next day he went the toilet and found the beer half drank on top of the toilet seat so whoever drank it must have been sick haha serves them right!!

You need to do three months working to get your second year visa. I had only done about about three weeks but the women at the hostel said she can get somebody to sign me off for three months which is really good of her. I Was sad to leave the hostel, as I met a really good group of people from loads of different countries, and you are really close. Then all of a sudden you leave and you no you will never see any of them again. O well. Back to melbourne to do my medical trial...hopefully il live??