Well my little blog it has been a while, I'm very so for neglecting you for so long, how are you? If you've been watching my youtube channel then you'll have some kind of idea of what I've been up to but I thought it was a good idea to put pen to paper (so to speak) and let you know where I am and what I've been up to...
We decided to leave Melbourne around a month ago. It's one of the greatest cities I've ever visited and I loved my time there but we were getting a little too comfortable. You can only work for 6 months in one job while on a working holiday visa and as our 6 months were nearly up we decided to have a look into doing our regional work so we could apply for our second year visa (all sounds a bit complicated...and it is) We had some friends who had already moved to a town called Innisfail in Queensland where they were staying at a working hostel who found regional work for you, we made arrangements to do the same but couldn't get in straight away...this led us to Cairns.
We stayed in Cairns for around five days. We stayed just outside the city and I had my first Air bnb experience. We had a room in a really cool house where three guys lived, they were all really nice and they had two lovely dogs, Sally and Rocky, so I had a lovely time. Another couple were staying there as well, they were really friendly and it's always nice to meet fellow travellers.
If I'm honest I didn't love Cairns. I think staying in Melbourne for so long had spoilt me. It was sort of just a big sea side town. There's nothing wrong with that and parts of it were very pretty but I think I may have been bored if I'd stayed much longer. One place that was very special, however, was Palm Cove, this beautiful seaside town was around 30 minutes away from where we were staying and was a very pretty place. We had beautiful weather on this day too and I had a lovely time walking around in the sun!
After our time was up in Cairns we made the move to Innisfail. I'm not gonna lie, I was very nervous about what life on a banana farm might be like but I was trying to keep positive. My positivity faded when we hopped off the grey hound and where greeted with a girl called Sam from one of the hostels who was a straight up bitch! She dropped us off at one hostel called Walkabout and told us to wait while she picked everyone up from work. It has such a horrible atmosphere (very lads on tour) and I felt so over whelmed that I had a little cry. We ended up staying in a 'hotel' called Queens. It was definitely still a hostel, we had a shared room with another couple and a guy. It could have been much worse as they were all really nice and seemed to enjoy the work they'd found. We had friends staying at the third hostel (Retreat) that was owned by the same people so we hung out there on the evenings, we were hoping to get moved into Retreat because it seemed like such a close group there. It cost $200 each a week to stay at the hostels, this was for accommodation as well as finding work and transport to and from work. It turned out that most girls were waiting 2-3 weeks and were only getting a couple of days work and the boys could only get humping jobs (yes if you picked bananas you were a banana humper, unfortunate I know). Steven did a couple of days humping and found it very hard, I've never seen a muddier person come through the door at the end of the day! After a stressful few days we decided against farming. Financially it wasn't going to work out for us and as we had only ever intended to use a few months of our second year visa we didn't feel like it was going to be worth it for us. I hope this doesn't make it sound like we gave up. If we had both been able to find full time jobs straight away and were able to save money like we'd planned then I'm sure we'd still be there. As it turned out it was probably going to cost us money for a pretty miserable time that wasn't as essential to us as we first thought. I definitely take my hat off to any one that manages to stick it out and I'm sure I'll be jealous when you're all still loving life in Australia while I've moved on.
This brings us to now. We are currently in Brisbane and this is where we are planning to be for the rest of our visa. We really landed on our feet coming here. After a couple of days in a hostel we managed to find ourselves a room in a house with some really lovely people. I managed to get a job at another franchise of the spa I'd worked at in Melbourne and Steven also started work straight away. Not gonna lie it was a good feeling and immediately felt happy with my decision to move here.
As for future plans, turns out you can get a three month tourist visa for Australia for absolutely free so anything we don't have time to do on our current visa we can do then. We also have plans to spend some time working and exploring New Zealand and I plan on having an amazing time in Asia before heading home. All in all a very exciting year ahead and I can't wait. I always knew we'd make some mistakes whilst travelling and I'm lucky that they've been small so far. It's all about bouncing back and making the most of this experience.
Bring it on!
