After Israel I arrived back in Melbourne for 2 days to catch up on sleep and try and get over the jetlag. Unfortunately, I caught a horrible cold from the long flights and lack of sleep so I haven't been feeling that great. I slept for 14 hours when I first arrived back in Melbourne; Debbie and Andre (house I was staying at) could not believe a person could sleep so long!

On the Sunday I packed up again and got my flight to Brisbane to be reunited with my friends from Sydney, Holly and Ros. The flight blocked my ears so the past few days I've been suffering with the cold plus slight hearing defects. Brisbane is a really pretty city at night; I say at night because we spent all day for the 3 days we were there, in the hostel calling around for farm jobs. There wasn't much else to do in Brisbane and we were getting bored of rejection that we decided to head to Noosa for a couple of days, to be by the sea and able to look for jobs whilst being there as well. Noosa is beautiful, day and night. The sunset by the sea is incredible and it's a really pretty holiday resort town. We enjoyed our stay there but we had a priority and that was to get our farm work.

We made a decision to take an apple picking job we'd seen a while back which was pay the bin only (which isn't so good in terms of wages, you tend to get ripped off a lot). It was only me and Holly who decided to go. Our other friends went for other options, not farm related.

So we left warm and sunny Noosa and headed back to Brisbane to catch our bus to a town called Stanthorpe. As we got on the bus, Holly pointed out all the weird people that were also going to the same place as us; we soon started to wonder what we had got ourselves into! After travelling the whole day we eventually arrived in Stanthorpe at about 7pm outside our hostel. We were literally in the middle of nowhere. It was also cold and raining and we couldn't be more miserable. We checked in; had to pay a week's rent upfront and were shown to our room. The room is alright, standard 6 bed dorm in a little cabin, quite nice. Our roommates are also nice but the one thing we were dreading was the apple picking, especially after hearing all the stories from our roommates. I soon began to think the worst and just wanted to get out of there asap. We were supposed to start work on the Saturday morning at 5.30am; we got up, got ready and then we were told that we wouldn't be working due to the rain! We were so annoyed; up early and nothing to do for the whole day! We went back to sleep for a couple of hours and then got up and headed to the only place in town that had wifi, a café that charged $4 an hour for the use of it!

We searched for other jobs, ways out of the ****hole, anything!! It was the most miserable day we'd ever had. After a long awful day we eventually decided to go out to the local bar in the evening with some people from our hostel; socialising was definitely a good way to forget about our situation and where we were, obviously only one drink each of course as were saving money, not spending!

Our day off on Sunday we slept in as long as we could which was until about 9.30am, then we got up and went out to the one and only wifi café. I applied for so many jobs and got a couple of calls back for some potential job opportunities, not in farm work, but better paid jobs with sponsorship opportunities as well. All I had to do was figure out a way out of the town; as I was given the opportunity for an interview in Brisbane for a job in Cairns.

We decided to stick it out for one more day as we wanted to try the actual farm job before giving up. Luckily on Monday it wasn't raining so we were able to go to work. Well, we say luckily, but a 5am start in the freezing cold wouldn't usually come into the same category as 'lucky'. Anyway we arrived at the farm, still pitch black outside and were put into groups. Myself and Holly we were with two irish girls who also were starting that day as well. We were each given a picking bucket and a tractor, 4 ladders and 3 bins between the 4 of us. We all got a go at driving the tractor; it's much harder than it looks!! We were told what to do and then got on with the work. Within an hour of the work our hands were cut and bleeding from the trees and the work was very strenuous. As we reached the 3rd bin, the two irish girls had had enough and wanted to leave. They told the farmer and they left. Me and Holly also wanted to leave but wanted to get through the whole day as we were unsure of the situation back at the hostel, with refunds for the nights we'd pay for in advance. We worked until the end of the day and filled in total 4 and a half bins, with a bit of help from 2 of the farmers as we were down to 2 in our team. When we arrived back at the hostel we had a word with the hostel owner and said we weren't happy and wanted to leave. He was very understanding and gave us back the money for the nights we hadn't used, so we then booked our bus for the morning and off we went at 7am on 1st May, back to Brisbane.