Back to Melbourne then! I had toyed with giving Adelaide a go for a few months but decided that I loved Melbourne so much that it had to be my first choice. I had had so much fun there the previous two times I had been there in January and May and now I was on my second year visa it was time to try and ‘settle’ somewhere for a while. Perhaps until Christmas. Of-course this was reliant on getting work in Melbourne and I was hoping the situation had improved si...

It didn’t take long for me to get a job in Renmark. We sent off an application form to the local packing shed and got a call the following week. After a day of training we started work the following week. The training mainly consisted of scare stories of how we would hurt our backs and never work again if we didn’t use the correct procedures. The work consisted mainly of sorting and packing oranges. The women sorted the fruit and packed it and the blokes shif...

I left Mooroopna backpackers on Friday afternoon and was lucky enough to catch a lift from one of the guys working at the cannery. As soon as I got back into Melbourne I felt an immediate buzz that I hadn't felt for a while. Being stuck in a small town for over two months is a bit different to the hustle and bustle of a big city and it was nice to be back into civilisation again, albeit if it was only going to be for a week or so before heading off to complete my...

My adventure in Mooroopna has now come to an end as the tomato season at the cannery has finished. I have now worked 70 days and require another 18 days to apply for my second year visa. The job at the cannery has gone really well. I have been working every day Monday to Sunday for the last six weeks or so with just two days off for Easter but it has been worth it as I have managed to earn a bit of money to help go towards my future travels this year. As I mentio...

In my last blog I mentioned that as long as it didn't go pear-shaped then I would be staying at the orchard for as long as there was work or to get my second visa, whichever was the earliest. Well, 12 days is a long time in pear picking! The work was drying up, lots of people were leaving and the pears were getting smaller meaning less bins for me to pick and therefore less money. It got to the point where the motivation to work just wasn't there. In the last 11...