Friday 25th December

well its no longer christmas. made a great christmas dinner but forgot to take a picture of it before we had it! silly! finding it very hard to type right now! been a bit of drama in the hostel today with 2 separate fights nearly starting between people and visitors! put everyone on edge! anja left this morning so been pretty gutted. got a job fruit picking up north on the 3rd of january so happy ill get some money and should go towards my 2nd year visa! peace out everyone have a good holiday! x

Sunday 20th December

gahhhhhhh! ok sooo been working most days this week, not nice in the heat but its money, money i havnt got because the office or the bank is fucking around so ive spent the last 3 days trying to survive with $20, which has now run out! So i currently have 60 cents in my pocket and thats all my money. soo im moving out with anja to her mates house tomorrow until christmas eve so thatl save me rent.. told the boss im not working tomorrow cause im pissed off, hungry and need to go into the bank, will be interesting to see his response!

ummmm was funny in work on friday anyway, my alarm went off at 5.30am but i fell back to sleep.. so i missed the pick up for work, but then the boss got offered more jobs so he came back and got me, so we went to a bigggg apartment block in the middle of perth to repair some potholes on the bottom floor of the underground carpark. So im there with the blower blowing all the dust out of the holes and the carpark just filled up so badly i couldnt see my feet anymore, then a guy was like ayyy u need to stop while we turn the extractor fans on cause the dust might set the fire alarms off. then just like magic.. 'WEEEEEOWMN WEEEEEEOWMN DANGER!!! EVACUATE NOW!!!' i was laughing soooo hard but the hotel people werent happy seein as 100's of residents evacuated onto the streets at 9am and the firemen arrived :P that has to be the worst alarm tho, everyone says not to panic in an emergancy but with that thing shouting DANGER! EVACUATE NOW! constantly i dont think you could stay calm!

Friday 11th December

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, pretty tired. Fell asleep at 2am last night.. got up at 4am for work and started at 5am. didnt finish until 7.30pm! and unfortunately i dont get paid by the hour.. so that sucked majorly. Sooo yeah i tarmaced a driveway like a gypsy, did a repair on mcdonalds carpark but they gave us free food so that was safe! and then 2 pot holes in streets which didnt take long but everywhere was pretty far apart, and there was a lot of changing tools at different hire shops which took more time. Got really badly sunburnt which is notttt gooood! going to really hurt in the morning! oo and 1 of the guys managed to rip a hole out of the roof of a house with his truck, so thats goin to cost them!

anyyywayy its 2am now so time for sleepies! tattybyes

OH OH WAIT! someone got really drunk and threw up in the shower and also pooped on the floor! haaahahaha hilarity! and it was a girl! (we know who but im not going to say any names O_O)

Thursday 10th December

Ok! Did some work on saturday and sunday for a lady who sells antiques. Was just loading it in a van on saturday and then offloading it at a festival thing on the sunday! easy peasy but she payed $25 an hour! That works out as £14 an hour.. crazy australians.. but im still low on money! Not got enough for next weeks rent which is due on tuesday.. but luckily today ive just got a job for tomorrow and should continue until christmas. Ill be working for a tarmacing company just laying tarmac! sooo not the most exciting or pleasant work but it pays ok and should be quite constant for awhile. So even if its just 3 weeks work i can probably save close to $1000 out of it!

Sunday 29th November

Had a bit of a better sleep! got up about 9am and we packed up and went to Hamlin Bay which is a beach about 30mins south of margaret river. Was absolutely stunnnnning! pure white sand and clear blue water and noooobody around! We spent a few hours there and then drove up to the caves, i didnt fancy paying $20 for a tour round a cave so i had a nice sleep in the car instead! Headed back up towards perth after that and stopped in at a little town because miranda wanted to see the really long pier they have there, so we all went for a quick dip in the sea! Then we got lost a little bit but found our way home!

sooooooo thats pretty much the weekend summed up! shorter than i expected but all we were doing was laying on the beach and drinking most of the time.. i want to go travelling now!

Saturday 28th November MY BIRTHDAY!

Got up at 7am and drove down to the beach and spent the whole day there. The waves were maaaaaaaaassive which was fun! Somehow i managed not to burn even though i was in the sun for about 8 hours, some of the others werent so lucky! Left the beach at about 3pm and found a campsite, set up there for $7 each. Pretty decent considering there was a kitchen, toilet, wood supply and camp fire bins with benches all around. No showers though! and no alcohol allowed! Didnt stop us though! We cooked up a load of sausages and burgers and then lit the fire and started drinking! Had a good laugh round the fire and found a wallabee hanging around the campsite! Went to bed about 10pm cause i was knackered from the night before and getting up so early!

Friday 27th November

Ok so its about time i updated this! Could be quite a long one!

Right soooo the plan was, everyone goes down to Margaret river for the weekend to camp and sit on the beaches and drink a lot! 10 of us went, me, anja, johanna, jos, tony, emma, miranda, yon, rudy and john. Jay didnt come cause he had to work. Left the hostel about 7pm on friday night, i was in the car with John, Yon and Rudy so we just drank the whole way, (cept Rudy who was driving!) We had no idea where we were staying, the plan was to just crash on the beach somewhere. We got to margaret river at about 10.30pm and got pulled over by the police straight away! They breathalised Rudy and then we set off again and literally about 30 seconds later we got pulled over again by different police, then we set off again, drove round for about 10 minutes looking for somewhere to stay and neenar we got pulled over again! but this time Rudy had apparently run a stop sign and got a $150 fine.. ouch. We checked out a few beaches but couldnt find anywhere hidden, and all the campsites were closed for the night so we just stopped in a carpark and set up the tents on the grass at the side. unfortunately the floor was rock solid so i had a very rough nights sleep!

Tuesday 24th November

Did absolutely nothinggggggggg today. Woke up about 1pm.. hung about til 4pm and went to the supermarket, made some egg butties for me and jay.. fell asleep and woke up about 8pm... made kangaroo bolagnese... went the cash machine... and now im here! what an eventful day!

Monday 23rd November

Went for a litte shop round town today, didnt actually buy anything but had a look at a tent i could get for weekend if i need to. Thennn me and Anja went down to Fremantle which is a little coast town, had a little wander round, didnt know where we were going! Ended up sat out at a lighthouse watchin some guys fish while the boats sailed past, tis a pretty nice place. Then we had some pizza and some drinks andd some icecream! And then back to hostel and its bed time now! YAY SLEEEEEEP!

Sunday 22nd November

Went the beach today with Anja, Johanna and two people i didnt know, a german girl and a french lad. Then Jay, Jos (dutch), Miranda (dutch), Emma (english), Mary (english) and Natalie (Scottish) all came down, but they didnt see us and set up somewhere else so i didnt spend much time with them. The wind picked up and me and Anja went into the water but it was soooo rough! i couldnt touch the floor about 10 meters out from the shore and usually u can walk quite far out, then theres a big sand bank that i can kneel down on which is strange cause your fairly far away from the beach. But the waves were sooo huge and they were just one after another like i was in the middle of a storm. Like Anja would disappear behind a wave then be a few meters away. Soo anyway we decided to get out and realised we'd been dragged about 200m down the beach so had to walk back!

Errrm drank a lot that night, jay was looking like a lobster after not putting suncream on his face, so that was amusing!

Friday 20th November

Again only had 4 hours sleep which was silly! Was up at 6.30 for the removals job, got picked up and went to an apartment with a guy called Tim! He was a bit crazy.. was like 31, lots of tattoos, bit overweight with a big goatee beard and a shaved head but was pretty sound anyway. Was moving a load of boxes from the garages round the back of the apartments up to the 4th floor, so was just a case of loading them on my trolley, wheeling them to the apartments, up the lift and then putting them in the right room. Then a load of moving maids unpacked all the stuff while we kept bringing them up. The apartment was amaaaazing. Like out the master bedroom it looked across the national park and river, then out the main room it looked out over the river and the perth skyline, both sides with big balconies. The lady we were moving for was really nice too, bought us coffees in the morning and a load of food for lunch. Shee wasss the ex attourney general for western australia and is now the environmental minister and off to the G8 sumit tomorrow, but for a politician she was pretty cool :P! gave me a $20 tip aswel which on top of my wages was a nice amount! will pay for over a weeks rent anyway!

went out later on in the night to black bettys again! about 30 people from the hostel came out so was a really good laugh, especially cause a lot of them dont tend to come out.

Having a lazy day today.. not like i have anything else to do anyway!

Thursday 19th November

ahhh even more tired today! only got 3 hours sleep n was up for work at 7. Spent all day chainsawing and jackhammering, with a bit of digging on the side! Tomorrowww im working for the furniture removal guy, hopefully thatl lead somewhere! and the guy i worked for yesterday and today has told me to call him on thursday to organise working next weekend =] yay money! Hopefully ill get an early night tonight but it never works out that way!

Wednesday 18th November

neeeeeeeowm! tired! Worked 7.30am-4pm today, just demolishing stuff at someones house. Spent most of the day with a sledgehammer knocking down a big brick shed. The guy got 2 asians to help aswel, a jap (womalalalalaicantpronouncehisname) and a lad from hong kong (Samuel), theyre useless! Samuel has never touched a sledgehammer in his life, hes a sales executive, so he could only knock 1 brick out at a time after about 5 hits! anywaaay it rained mid way through so we went inside and took all the tiles off the bathroom wall, removed the sink and then fought with the bath for about an hour!

Got same job tomorrow, going up a tree an choppin it down with a chainsaw apparently! Still got a lot of bricks to move aswel, oh noes! The guy i worked with last week, doing the jackhammering in his garden, phoned the hostel today looking for me, so im working with him on friday, but i think its for his removal company this time! he payed well so hopefully its the same and ill get more calls off him!

Tuesday 17th November

Had a pretty lazy today, only thing ive really done is made a roast dinner which was laaaaaaavly! Got some work tomorrow, just demolishing some walls for 2 or 3 days.. fun! Isnt paying much but its highly needed cause ive just spent the last of my money on this weeks rent! So i need more work next week or im reeeally screwed!

Monday November 16th

Went out for jays birthday last night, got pretty wasted. Woke up today at about 11am and drank half a bottle of vodka for joeyc. Been pretty upset on and off during the day. Went out for a bit but i just wasnt in the mood to be in a club so we just drank in the hostel instead. Miss you lad x

Thursday 12th November

Not written anything in awhile! Not really been much going on since i worked on the persons garden last weekend! Didnt end up doing the Pearl Jam stage which is lame! The stage was delayed until wednesday and i missed the guys call on tuesday night n it was too late to call him back, so called on wednesday n he didnt need me anymore :( buttt today i was woken up by the manager with a job for me so i rolled out of bed and went to some guys house to help with work on his garden. Was just using a jackhammer all day taking up the concrete floor and shifting it. Weathers been weird today, lots of rain but it just gets really hot and humid which isnt nice! Thought i was going crazy at one point from the heat, as i was jackhammering and sweating away, i bent down to move some rubble and there was a huge white rabbit sat right next to me, shit myself and then had a long stare at it trying to figure out if it was real. It was. Got and interview tomorrow with Till (german lad i worked on farm with). Its for workers at a garden nursery about an hour away from perth, full time but i dont really want to leave the hostel, especially with my birthday coming up, were all going to Margret River which is a town about 3-4 hours away with amazing beachs and winery apparently! So i dont want to miss that! Hopefully i can commute to the nursery every day.. LONG POST! ill stop now! =D

Saturday 7th November

eeeeeeee im so tired. Was kept awake til 4am last night, partly my fault though! Had to get up at 8.45 for work and spent the whole day shovelling, not good! Going back again tomorrow but all the shovelling is done i think! Its not actually a farm im on now.. its just someones house with a bit of land and theyre doing it up for theyre daughters wedding. need to sleep but i feel like im missing out then considering its saturday night! Should hear from the Pearl Jam guy tomorrow about the job!

Friday 6th November

Went out last night, got far too drunk! But the work putting up the stage had been delayed to 1pm so it was fine! and then this morning i got a call saying its delayed until sunday or monday now, something about the trucks not arriving. Butttt i have another job tomorrow, just up on a 10 acre piece of land in the hills doing odd jobs, jays worked there before n reckons its pretty good! soooo money money yaaaaaay!

Thursday 5th November

Boring day today! cant see a lot happening. Last night was pretty funny, jay poured water on a girls head, so she poured beer on his, so he poured orange juice all over her, and everyone else during the struggle.. then i pushed her in the shower fully clothed, but then Jos the dutch lad pushed me in aswel =( andddd me and jay have number 0 skin heads and managed to convince 2 others to do it, so it ended up as 5 skin heads sat outside drinking and then the racism started! Ha, and the clippers ran out half way through one guys so it took us about 2 hours of stopping and starting to get it finished! oo actually i took pictures.. ill whack them on now!

OH! and i got a job this morning! Friday, sat, sun and mon putting the stage up for pearl jam!

Wednesday 4th November

weeeeeeee. Not been doing much since i got back to the hostel. Got offered a job this morning at 7.30 to start at 8.. so had to say no seein as i hadnt had much sleep! Buttt ive uploaded all the videos and pictures! videos are on youtube, and pictures on facebook, will try and link all the youtube vids onto here now..

YABIS!

Searching for kangaroos

Chasing a kangaroo

GRAPHIC! Injured kangaroo!

Pottering around in the yute :)

Unfortunately the video of me racing the tractor didnt film for some reason :( gutted it was funny!

HALLOWEEN!

Well i left the farm! We finished all the hard physical work so there was on a bit of driving left so the farmers said they could do it themselves. Got back to the hostel about 7pm and started drinking! had no costume because i only found out i was coming back a few hours before. Somebody ended up drawing a goatee on me with marker pen, and a monobrow! n then 2 other people drew on me with facepaints. Then i ended up with a skirt and girls top on, and going out to Black Bettys, which is a club round the corner. Unfortunately there are pictures.. lots of them.. and no doubt theyl find their way onto the internet!

Sunday afternoon now, only went to bed at 6am so im feeling very tired and hungover! Now im back at hostel i should be able to get all the videos and pictures up!

Friday 30th October

mmmmmmmmmk! Did some stacking and some carting today, was pretty tiring because of the heat and lack of wind! finished at 4pm because stephen and julie were going out, so its just me, Amo and Cody ( farmers son). Sooooooo we were going to go shooting.. but Cody couldnt find the keys to the gun cabinet! So instead we just went to look for some kangaroos because Amo hadnt seen any. Wellll he got a pretty big surprise! We chased one down the road and it tried to jump over a fence but slammed into it instead, probably going 50-60kmph. But it was ok! Heh.. but.. it happened again, but this time the roo bounced off the fence and went under the wheel of the yute, but only broke its leg. Cody felt pretty bad so we chased after it as it tried to hop through the fields with one leg, still had a bit of pace on it! But with no gun, or knife, he ended up clubbing it to death with a tyre iron. and yes, i got the entire ordeal on camera, so you sicko's can look forward to watching that soon!! Think were going to go scrape a load of sparklers into a jar and watch it go boom now. Oh the life of a farmer

Thursday 29th October

Carted stacks all day today! It takes about an hour to get the stacks from the fields to the barn, its not far away but theres only one forklift and we can take 17 stacks between us. So the forklift has to load each vehicle up, and mine tends to be first because its the biggest taking 6 stacks at a time, so i just drive to the barn and have to wait 20mins for him to load everyone else and come back. And then its the same unloading, and its a pain if the stack of stacks becomes unstable and starts to falls cause it means taking it all down and taking the stacks apart to make them more stable!

Amo has had it easy today just driving all day, said it was fun, wait until tomorrow when he has to make stacks all day in the sun :P wont be fun then! Pretty sure we'll be finished in the next few days. Probably sunday so i miss the halloween party at the hostel on saturday :(!! Got a few videos of me driving using my mini cam strapped to my head! Cant put them up until i get back to the hostel though cause the farmers get charged for how much internet they use, and videos will use a lot! Would be nice to hyperlink things into these blogs!

Wednesday 28th October

TIRED! Got up at 6am today to ring phil, and luckily he was at moes so i got to chat to a few people which was nice! Spent all day stacking the left over bails and then carting them into the barn, and then did a bit of work on the walk in fridges at the end so did a bit of everything! The new guy arrived to replace Till, hes a belgian fella called Amaury but he just gets called Amo. Only got here at 8pm though so not done any work yet! hes only little so will be interesting to see how he manages stacking the bails!

AUUUUSSSSTRAAALLLIIIAAAA!

Well i guess i should have done this a long time ago, but i hadnt been doing much, so i wouldnt have had anything to write about! Ok.. i'll briefly go over what ive been upto over the first few weeks.

I arrived at 5.30am and it wasss raining! Good start. Paige picked me up and took me on a lovely (accidental) tour around melbourne. Didnt really get upto much, Paige was in uni quite abit so i just hung around the flat most of the day, then lots of drinking at night! We did a few trips down to Geelong and stayed in paiges parents house which was nice, also watched the australian football grand final (Geelong VS St Kilda) in Geelong, and they won, so the night out was pretty crazy! Morgan, Paiges sister, took us for a drive down the great ocean road, pretty amazing views around there. Pictures from all that are on facebook, cant attach any to this because im not on my laptop! Anyway, October 3rd i flew from Melbourne to Perth and met Jayyyy!

Sooo Perth! Again i didnt really get upto much for the first week or so, Jay was busy working so i just hung around the hostel and met lots of lovlely people! Theres a hell of a lot of Irish people over here, somebody should go check if anyones still left in Ireland 'cause there cant be many! Lots of drinking in the hostel! Most nights you can usually guarantee somebody will be outside drinking, and its very hard to get past without being dragged into drinking games! Jay took me for a tour around King Park which is a biggg national park thats up on the cliffs and looks over Perth. Not sure if i managed to get those pictures up yet but ive got loads that ill do when i get back to the hostel!

Ok, so i got a job working as a labourer on a renovation of 36 apartments, and Jeremy, a french guy from the hostel got the same. Was a pretty rough job, started easy just sweeping out all the apartments, but then we had to lift all the paving slabs from the front garden, and werent given any gloves so my hands got pretty battered pretty quick! Then we went onto cleaning the walls so the painters could come in and respray.. so easy.. but boring! Jeremy then left to go back to frenchie land, and i was stuck stripping the plaster off bathroom ceilings with a scraper, which resulted in my knucles being scraped off by the ceiling! That only lasted 4 days, the company didnt need anymore work doing until the professionals had done their work, so should be some more coming up soon, although i cant imagine how slow aussie builders must be! Errrrm.. we alsoooo went to Joondalup to meet someone jays mum knew.. kind of.. anyway he was the old Everton captain, but now manages.. or coaches.. the Perth soccer team? i think.. i duno! all i know is he used to play for everton! Met him at a chinese restaurant along with about 4 of his scouse mates and they all bought us dinner! Went for dinner with some of jays mates he met while travelling.. a load of Irish doctors.. very odd! but they had a bbq, my first in australia and it was cooked by the Irish!!

Nowwwwww! that was the first.. month nearly! But then an add came in the hostel for 2 Haystackers.. so i rang up, and rang a german lad called Till who had been staying in the hostel, and we were picked up at 8am the next day by a lady called Julie. We were taken to a farm about 1 and half hours east of perth, met her husband Stephen, and started work around 1pm. Now basically, the tractor chuggs along pulling a sled, and we walk along stacking the hay bails on top of it, until theres 3 layers of 4 bails, and we slide them off by stabbing a big metal pole into the floor! Sounds eeeeeeasy! But the hay bails weigh 20kg, the temperature has ranged from 25-32'C and you have to wear jeans, long sleeve shirt, 2 pairs of gloves, boots and a hat, or the hay will tear you to pieces and the sun will fry you. So at times i thought i was actually going to die, but you cant stop or you'l miss a hay bail and then you have to run back for it and try and catch the sled back up! We did that for the end of the first day, and then all day the second and third and in that time we stacked over 2500 bails of hay. By now my hands were covered in blisters and ached a lotttt, but me and Till would go for a swim at lunch and after work and have a few beers, so it was worth it!

Storms were predicted for monday, (its Saturday at this point) so all effort went on moving the stacks of hay into the barn to protect from the rain, which involved people driving trucks with trailers down to the fields, the big fork lift loading them on, driving back up to the barn and the forklift loading them into bigger stacks, but luckily (it was 32'C outside) me and Till just stayed in the barn and basically just secured the stacks down so the forklift could pull out without bringing it all down with it. Sunday was the same thing, but we got to drive! Most of you will know that i cant drive, and havnt really driven in the past, but i picked it up pretty fast and drive all the time now. Ooo and, as one of the stacks came in high on the forklift, there was a spider hanging down from it which landed on another stack, and i saw the horrible red stripe of a redback spider, for anyone that doesnt know, theyre from the same family as black widows and are pretty lethal! So i pointed it out to Till and he managed to squash it with the securing pole, problem solved! Monday, the storm hit at about 8am so we'd only managed to do one run of stacks into barn before we had to stop. Once the hays wet it cant be moved, cause if its put on a wet surface the bottom will just rot instead of drying so it has to stay in the field until its dry, which could take days and theres still threats of more rain. So the farmer said we could go back to perth if we wanted, and come back when its dry, but i decided to stick around and help the farmer build walk in fridges, which is his little side business, where as Till went back to Perth, and has now found a full time job so wont be coming back!

Ahh also, during the storm we got a call on the two way radio from the farmers brothers wife, saying she'd crashed into a tree in her yute, so we went down there, Julie took her home while me, stephen and his brother pulled the yute from the trees. It wasnt too badly damaged, easily drivable ( and she was fine), so stephen took his brothers yute, his brother took the crashed one and i took stephens, which i was used to, but it meant i was driving on the roads even though id only started driving 2 days before, AND it was in the middle of a storm! butttt i was pretty confident, i just followed the other 2 down a few roads until we got to stephens brothers house, no problem! ( by the way, a yute is used by most out here, its their name for a flatbed truck, but its actually a 4.2 litre Toyota LandCruiser )

So tuesday! that was today! It was too wet to do anything with the hay so i spent the day helping the the fridges again, but at about 5pm i went round and rolled all the single hay bails over to let them dry which was took awhile and the heat was pretty killer!

Well thats about all, missed a few things but i need to go sleep! Hopefully ill be able to keep this updated now! PEACE!