A lot has happened since my last blog. Im not sure how many of you know but the farm in Dalbeg, Ayr unfortunately didn't work out. The boss was extremely strict and hardly gave anyone a chance. I tried my hardest packing squash and picking chillis. She yelled at me a few times and then sent me packing. I was given a couple of days to gather my stuff and leave the farm. She didn't even sign off the week I had worked on my visa which meant getting my farm work was going to prove even more difficult as time was running out. I got the first lift I could get out of the farm and into Ayr to catch the bus. I decided to go back to Cairns; the first place I went when I got to Australia. I loved it there and needed a good place to go whilst I figured out what to do next.

Cairns was awesome this time round. I met some really cool people and some great friends, also bumped into people I'd met along the way travelling so it was really nice to see them again. I ended up spending 4 weeks in Cairns, enjoying life, partying and not working BUT unfortunately holiday mode can't last forever so me and my friend, Shannon from Canada decided it was time to go and find some farm work.

On the 27th August, we took a bus to a small town one hour south of Cairns, called Innisfail. This is known for the banana farms. We were recommended a hostel in town called Walkabout. We got off the bus and were told it was a few minutes around the corner. After 2 hours of trekking with all our bags in the scorching heat and asking every passer-byer, we eventually found the hostel. According to 'google' the hostel had changed locations so what was on the website was incorrect. So we arrived unannounced at the hostel and were desperately hoping they had space for us! Luckily, we were greeted and offered a bed each. They explained there is a week's waiting list for the work but we were happy to wait and have accommodation set up. It's good to be out of Cairns and in the country, sort of. This way we'll save money, give our livers a bit of a rest and start earning some money.

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Needless to say, I was wrong about saving money (although I have managed to save a little bit) and giving our livers a break; this hostel is full of alcoholic backpackers, I guess after working hard with the bananas all week, a long weekend of drinking is definitely in need. I have now been here 5 weeks and I am half way through my time here. You are supposed to do 13 weeks of farm work to qualify for your 2nd year visa; however, I will only be doing 10 weeks and hoping to get my extra 3 weeks signed off as well. The past 5 weeks I've been working on Poppi's banana farm. My jobs have consisted of deflowering bananas; which is picking off the dead flowers at the banana ends on all the bunches and keeping up with the production. I've also been dipping; there are organic bananas in the supermarkets here which have a red tip so I have been dipping several thousand bananas a day in red wax. As well as this I have been hanging bananas, everything is pretty difficult to explain if you have never seen a banana farm so I will try and get some pictures of everything so you can see for yourself. Hanging basically means hooking the bananas on strong metal chains to the production line from the trailer. The worst job is sorting purely because you get triple the amount of spiders and cockroaches than in any other part of the working shed. I have had several massive spiders on me and I physically freak out, the boss knows I am terrified so he tries not to put me on sorting as much as possible. There are times he has to though because he needs to give everyone a fair chance at doing everything. Just another 5 weeks of spiders and bananas, it's a good job I was never a massive fan of bananas before this job as I totally don't want to go near them again.

During the weekends I've taken several trips to Cairns as its very close and it's a nice refreshing change from staying in Innisfail and the hostel the whole time. The most recent weekend just gone we went to Cairns with about 30 people from the hostel as well. Me and a couple of friends hitch hiked there and back to save money. On the way back our hostel owners saw us and picked us up so we had a ride straight to our door, it was pretty sweet. Hitch hiking is a pretty normal thing to do in Australia so no one needs to worry.

There's not much else to tell as Innisfail is a pretty boring place; there's a few shops, one club, one pub and that's about it. There is also an outdoors swimming pool which we've been making the most of trying to get fit whilst tanning at the same time. Not much else to report.