...and that's how we get hamburgers.

My first month in Australia was reasonably fast paced considering that in those four weeks I managed to visit four states – pretty good going! After my arrival in Sydney, New South Wales I headed to Canberra, Australian Capital Territory then did a fun ACT – NSW – ACT – NSW hopscotch that eventually landed my back in Sydney for a few days. Then on January 6th it was up to Surfers Paradise (yes this is the actual name of the town), Queensland to visit Lewis, a Hanoi Backpackers alumnus.

Surfers had been described to me as the Blackpool of Australia which as it turns out, is largely all you need to know about it. Very touristy beach town with a strip of bars and restaurants, general ‘amusements’ such as a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum and…that is about it. I spent the vast majority of my time there lounging in the shade with cider but I met a lot of great people and it was really good fun. One of the best parts of this week was a day trip to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (note: not in Surfers) where I saw my first kangaroos and koalas. We also got to watch crocodiles jumping out of the water for food with a massive snap of their jaws which was freaking awesome. It was a completely glorious day, even despite my sudden wariness of kangaroos once I was walking amongst them and given the opportunity to feed them. But really, it was all about the koalas.

One day short of my one month Aussiversary I arrived in Melbourne, Victoria (on which there will be more in a later post considering it is my current home). Mapping these journeys is not (only) a way of once again flaunting how well travelled I am, but also illustrates the sheer randomness of my eventual decision to settle down on a farm. All those wonderful places I had visited and somehow I decided that rural Victoria was the place for me. Well, OK, that is not exactly how the decision process evolved. It was more like being in Surfers, realising I had spent ridiculous amounts of money considering all I was doing was sitting in the shade, drinking cider (hmm…) and getting a well timed call from Jenny (yep, you guessed it, yet another Hanoi Backpackers alum) saying the farm she was on could do with another worker and wouldn’t it be fun if that worker was me? It was not going to be a paid gig, just accommodation and food, but a whole month of spending next to no money sounded great and it had been over a year since I had seen Jenny so after five days in Melbourne I jumped on a bus to Taggerty. 

The bus journey itself managed to be quite eventful, partly because I was hideously hungover and tragically sleep deprived. The previous night, a civilised evening of dinner and drinks with Jono (who yes, I also know from Hanoi Backpackers, let’s not dwell on it) turned into a beer pitcher fuelled karaoke night that went onto 5am with people from my hostel who I had ran into while attempting to go to bed. Ain’t it always the way? So as I crawled onto the bus with my 20kg of belongings, cringing at the memory of storming the stage when Drippy Girl sang her 5^th Drippy Song of the night (Especially For You – she had to be stopped) I just about remembered to tell the bus driver I was going to Taggerty and would it be OK if he dropped me at Yellow Creek Road? Sure, not a problem. Excellent.  

About 100 kilometres outside of Melbourne (that’s right, I use kilometres now and yes, this is probably the furthest I have ever been from a city at any point in my entire life when I have not been on a plane) the winding bus journey takes two and a half hours so around this time I am getting ready to disembark, eyes peeled looking for things that say 'Taggerty'. Naturally, I end up in Eildon which is about 40km of bus route past Taggerty and the terminus. Whoops. I asked the bus driver if there is a bus going back to Taggerty. "Why did you fall asleep?" he asked me, clearly amused. 'Um, did YOU?' I internally rage. (External rage proved to be far too exhausting for my current state). My rage subsided after he informed me that there was no bus going back but since he happens to live in Taggerty, he will drive me back, which is awfully nice of him. It would however have helped if he had not chuckled while telling me, "I forgot you asked me to let you know when we were in Taggerty...I actually did not even stop the bus there!" Cheers mate. 


Approaching Taggerty (supposedly for the second time) it becomes clear that there is no way, even on my most alert, sober day, I could have spotted it myself as it is in fact a bus stop without a proper sign on it, beside a bridge called 'Little River.' As I would later realise, Taggerty is off the main road and seems to consist of a general store (a post office/convenience store/ cafe/coffee shop/off-license - in your face City Picnic!) and a primary school. I am sure there are some houses around somewhere but I still reckon you could walk from one end of Taggy (affectionate nickname)  to the other in two minutes which uncharacteristically, is not an exaggeration. According to Wikipedia aka Source of All Knowledge, about 600 people live in the Taggerty area and while I'm not sure what the land mass of this is, the nearest towns were at least 20 kilometres away.

The cabin - my first rural home

Our host, a gun toting farmer dentist ( try fitting that on your business cards) owns a vast amount of land, mainly occupied by cattle but also containing a cherry orchard where most of my work was to take place. The picking season was over but I was there to help Jenny do odd jobs which started with 'wipper snippering' which involves snipping wippers/cutting suckers. Yes, that's as technical as I got. We also moved logs, weeded and other tasks that amounted to glorified gardening. At the end of my first day (about 2.5 hours of actual work) my arms were aching, my back was sore and the skin on my hands had started to peel. Oh, rural life! I was also dirty as sin, which was great considering showering was limited to three minutes, preferably not every day since we were not connected to a water supply, instead relying on rain to fill up the water tanks. Obviously in the middle of summer, this is great. 

Yes, you may think I am setting the scene for a heart-warming but ultimately predictable movie about a city girl who moves to a ridiculously small town and while appalled at first, eventually rises to the occasion. I am not. Anyone who knows me knows I am a city girl to the core, if I ever discover or devise the word for being discriminatory against tiny towns I will emblazon it on a t-shirt and wear it with pride. Even Romy’s coast house often proved too rural for me. She would giggle watching me cautiously prowl through a small patch of overgrown grass leaving me to spit “I’m not Nature Girl, OK?!” So when I hit the farm I could have given Paris and Nicole a run for their considerable wealth. I never got used to the early starts, the endless dirt under my finger nails or even the basic concepts of manual labour. I showed obvious disgust when pulling the slimy yabby (crayfish type crustacean) nets out of the dam, moaned when my feet got muddy and never fully trusted the cows not to do something to me (although I was unsure what since they are slow and incredibly stupid creatures). 

It did not help that we were told to be on the lookout for snakes. Jenny had been on the farm for two months before I arrived and never had seen one but this just made me more convinced that the snakes were waiting especially for me. This wariness reached a head one night when we had to go up to the orchard to turn off the irrigation (a word I had not used since A-level Geography that was suddenly back in my life with a practical vengeance).  Having decided that snakes were nocturnal creatures, every time I hopped out of the ute (Aussie truck) to open and close a gate I was frantically scanning the long grass with a torch and taking quick, giant leaps like a madwoman.

I have two points to make about this incident, the first being somewhat of a tangent. I no longer understand the phrase ‘were you born in a field?’ being directed towards people who fail to close doors. Fields may not have doors but closing gates is very important. If someone was born and presumably raised in a field I can only believe that they would have an almost obsessive need to close every door they subsequently encountered due to their gate like function. You do not want cows roaming into your living room. 

The second is on the fear of the unfamiliar – the orchard at night completely terrified me, I was constantly afraid of a snake attack or even a particularly rambunctious wombat charging at me. And yet, on many occasions I have been in big cities at night and not even thought about the possibility of encountering a mugger or any other sort of street criminal. In Hanoi, I would preach to tourists about the importance of taking approved motorbike taxis home and not bringing out all your belongings but often walked home by myself with my phone, purse and camera and felt perfectly safe. I am sure far more city people are mugged than rural folks are bitten by snakes but to me there and then spotting a snake seemed imminent. In fairness, if I had spotted a snake and (as was much more likely) it just went on its merry way without coming near me I still would have reacted. You cannot react to muggers who do not mug you, they just look like regular people. 

Of course the benefits of the farm considerably outweighed my largely irrational fears and dislike of being grimy. The biggest advantage was getting to spend time with Jenny again, who although I had only known for six weeks in Hanoi, I considered a dear friend. A close second was having a double bed in a room all to myself. Our wooden cabin was cute and homely with a deck to sunbathe the afternoons away on. The main house was a minute’s walk away; a large, modern building where the farmer cooked us dinner every evening. For a month, I had ridiculously good food from chicken livers to venison to the yabbies we had caught in one of the farm’s dams. Of course we had regular pasta dishes and stir fries as well but it is important to point how spoiled we were. We also were treated to some fine wines and in our last week, some truly exceptional port – I could get used to this aspect of ‘farm life’ very easily. 

Safe in the wildlife park - not on the farm

In addition to being a farmer and a dentist, our host was also a hunter. One evening, while doing the dishes I spotted a rabbit bouncing around the back garden and happened to comment on this out loud. In under three minutes the rabbit had been shot, skinned, gutted and was in the fridge. We had it as a starter the next evening. This took some getting used to (and some of you may find it highly controversial, for which I apologise) but it was also quite fascinating. Early one morning we got up and headed to the farm in time to see the kangaroos, one of which bit the bullet. It was one of those surreal moments at 6.30am when you are standing on a farm, watching Jenny fillet her first kangaroo. I am sure you can all relate. We kept some of the organs to use as bait for the yabby traps while the meat was to be marinated and enjoyed at a later time. The animals were shot to be eaten, not for sport. We were just cutting out the middle man. And it was not all blood and guts – civilised fishing also took place. (That’s right, I have been fishing). Once reeled in and admired the fish were dehooked and returned to the dam.

When people ask me about my month on the farm I always say, ‘well...it was an experience.’ But really, it was an amazing experience. As much as I moaned and grimaced, I had a brilliant time, it was something completely new and different for me and really, isn’t that what I am supposed to be searching for on my travels? (Other than a good party of course). It was a simple, enjoyable time and let’s not kid anybody, I was not engaging in any actual farm work. Jen and I coined our tasks as ‘landscape tidying.’ I would not take back my time in Taggerty for anything but getting back to Melbourne and returning to the hospitality industry has been a massive relief. City girl to the core.

Oh and no, I never did see a snake.