Good Old Bundy

After 4 weeks in Bundaberg, I was sad to leave. I’ve made loads of friends here. Working on a farm was hard, but we were all working together, and in the afternoons and evenings when we got home we would watch TV together, go to the beach, the local swamp or the patch of grass across the road to relax in the sun. The weather has been beautiful whist I’ve been here so it’s been so nice to sit outside when we weren’t working.

I started off working on a zucchini farm (Gunda Blue) which was awful. We went around with a knife and had to cut as many “right-sized” zucchinis as we could and we were paid by the bucket. I got sacked after 2 weeks because according to the farmer I wasn’t picking enough! I was glad to be out of there though. The hostel would drop us to the farm at 5.45am and the farmer wouldn’t arrive until 6.30am so for 45 minutes we sat around on top of the buckets,  in the dark (before the sunrise) and basically spent the whole time complaining about how cold and tired we were.  The girls I was with were a good laugh though, but still, it was awful. The worst job I’ve ever had in my life.

The following week I was put onto a capsicum farm (Ali’s Buckets) which was much better than Gunda Blue because the supervisors were really nice and it was much easier to pick capsicums than zucchinis. Plus, after we filled a bucket, we just had to leave it there and one of the many bucket boys (also from my hostel) would come and collect it and leave you with an empty one.  When the work at Ali’s ran out, I got moved to Kaos Capsicums. Quite a few of my friends were already working on the farm so it was a laugh. It was harder than Ali’s though, because instead of calling out for the bucket boys to give you a new bucket, after we filled a bucket we had to lift it up over our heads onto the truck which was driving through the field. When the supervisor wasn’t looking, the boys decided to have a capsicum throwing match with any rotten ones we found on the floor. It made the day go really quick as we had a couple of breaks, but it was really hot, and there’s only so many capsicums you can pick before you start to lose your mind.

My last week in Bundy was my best. The weather was gorgeous, I hung out with my friends all day every day and we all went out most nights. We went to the beach again where we buried my friend Konrad in the sand and we had a pub quiz in the hostel.  It was the first time the quiz had been done and it was a good night, naturally my team won and we got a trophy and $10 each!  On Sun 10^th July I checked out of the hostel and everyone came to say goodbye to me at the bench in front of the hostel. It was really nice, and at 12.45pm, I got picked up by Carolyn, my WWOOF host, Carolyn to take me to her farm in Childers, which is about half an hour away from Bundaberg.