What actually happened?!

Where to begin?

Picture a large clock. As you’re watching the face the minute hand is racing around, with the hour hand not far behind creating a circular blur as they spin.

As more of the surroundings come into view people are moving in fast forward. They’re journeys are a blur, they’re movements unnaturally quick: walking, eating, drinking and laughing.  

You are now as aware of my last two months in Melbourne as I am.

My head feels so full of stuff that’s happened, but if you were to ask me what I’d seen or done I don’t think I could tell you very much.

My memories all feel like a distorted Tim Burton film. I know things happened but my memory of them doesn’t feel quite real.

As with everything I do, I’ve thrown myself into life in Melbourne 110 per cent.

I’m working two jobs, which amount to roughly 50 hours a week- one in a café and another in a bistro.

The café is busy and can be enjoyable although the staff aren’t really my kind and people and there’s not enough positivity for my liking, whereas the bistro has brilliant people and a great positive working environment and is by far my favourite of the two, which is why when offered full time hours I gladly accepted and I am leaving the café in two weeks.

Every free morsel of time I’m doing something.  I’ve become a big fan of the power nap just so I can fit more things into the day.

When I first moved to the city I had this lovely idea that I would have tons of free time and I’d take yoga classes and pick up some new hobbies. Those hobbies have turned out to be eating and drinking out, or as I like to say ’mealing.’

Melbournites love to go mealing. They catch up over coffee, they have reunions over dinner, they chat in the street stood at a pancake stand and review the latest football matches in crowds at bars.

 They are just plain sociable.

People call Melbourne the ‘most liveable city in the world.’ And they’re not wrong.

They’re always some kind of festival on. For instance last week the International Film Festival took over the city, with venues all other showing great films from all over the world and I managed to catch one called Sightseers. A fantastic British dark comedy, funny from start to finish and well worth the watch. Next week the Fringe Festival starts, followed by the beginning of the Melbourne Festival and then Fashion week.

If you’re a ‘doer,’ then get yourself to Melbourne, and if you’re not then you will be when you get here.

So I might not have any idea what I’m doing most of the time and my head might be a blur of activity but I’m enjoying life so much right now that it doesn’t even matter.

I think a good measure of how well your life is going is this: Look in your fridge. Mine’s bare- there’s some grapes and strawberries, an almost full bottle of milk that is close to the use by date and that’s it. I don’t have anything because I am never at home. I am too busy having fun. 

Make it or Break it in Melbourne

Coming back to Melbourne, I had no idea where to start. I had decided to come back but with less than a week to go I had no idea where I was going, barely a cent to my name and not a single plan in my head.

All I knew was that I had about $40 in my bank and an offer of a floor to stay on for a while.

It really was make or break.

I either got my act together or I was on the first plane back to Britain with my credit card taking the brunt of the cost and I would be back to square one minus a job, a home and an income. 

I decided to leave Annie on July 14th and head back to the city; although I'd loved every minute helping here out with her fury family, it was time to get back to the city and to the real life.

That weekend was awesome to catch up with Patrick again and his housemates Dave and Ben and when monday morning came around the job hunt was on.

By the end the of the week I'd had a trial at an Indian restaurant and offered a job, an interview at a cafe and offered a job there and a job offer at an bistro/bar.

Job sorted, the next thing was to find somewhere to live and with another week I'd found a room in a shared house to move into.

The fews days I was going to stay with the guys turned into a few weeks but it was definitley much appreciated and without their help I would have been back in the UK before I could even say, "Home to England for the Olympics!"

I've certainly taken a fair few chances in my travels but luckily for me I seem to have seven lives as I always land on my feet, however I do have a lot of people to thank for that and boy am I grateful to them all.

Somehow I'd done it again- my life was on track once again...  I had a job and a place to live and best of all I was now in Melbourne, living my Australian dream.

The Women with a Heart of Gold

From Sally's, I went straight to my next host Annie, an animal carer in Darraweit Guim, about an hour north of Melbourne. 

Only ten minute after getting in the door, I'm standing in the kitchen and I turn round to see a baby kangaroo hop towards me and I think: I love it here ALREADY.

It took me eight months to see a kangaroo in oz and now her I was sharing a kitchen with one! 

Not so long after Annie announces it time for feeding the babies and she passes me what looks like a koala wrapped up in a blanket to hold. It turns out to be a little wombat named yogi, but regardless what creature it was, my heart melted and I couldn't help but adore this tiny bundle of fur wrapped up in my arms.

Annie herself has got to be one of the most warm hearted people I ever met. She's opened up her home and spends her pension selflessly caring for orphaned and injured native wildlife. 

She has baby possums climbing up the bookcase and a make shift kangaroo pouch hanging of the arm of the couch housing a five month old baby kangaroo still naked as the day it was born. She nurses the orphaned young day and night bottle feeding them milk. 

Her home is set in the middle of her plot of land surrounded by enclosures for all those she rescued. Bird, possums, wombats, kangaroos and also her own pig and chooks. 

She lives almost completely self-sufficient on the food she grows her self in her vegetables patches. 

In my eyes, Annie is the epitome of what makes a good wwoof host. She genuinely cares about meeting new people of learning about their lives as well as sharing her own. She also leads a life that completely different to most others and offers a real experience for someone who is volunteering with her.

Her passion is infectious, just as her love of Doctor Who and Harry Potter is.  You find your self just as addicted as her with no idea when you started watching the clock waiting for Doctor Who to start or how you managed to watch all eight Harry Potter films in one week.

Without a doubt, the month i spent with Annie has got to be one of the most amazing things i've done while in Australia and just as i told her when I left...I will definitely be back. 

The Lavender Ladies

Going the hard physical nature of caring for horses to the relaxed life of the lavender ladies was a refreshing change for a couple of weeks.

The lavender ladies are a mother and daughter who own a lavender farm in a place called Nar Nar Goon south east of Melbourne and made their own lavender products which they sell nationwide.

By the time I went there to help them out, the lavender was no longer in season so I spent a large portion of my time helping the daughter prepare the products for sale although a few days a week I spent down at the farm with the mother (a 78 year old women with the strength of a 25 year old man!) cutting down trees and preparing bonfires, however we also chased the 25+ Jersey cows, which is had in one of her paddocks, when they mischievously got out from time to time!

Sally, the daughter, was a nice enough person although she bordered on the side of boring even though she did rock and roll dancing for her hobby. She was meticulous on everything, especially on time and I never felt that I could fully relax around her for this reason. She was also one of those people that always felt that they had top fill a silence to make it comfortable, which in turn makes it feel uncomfortable. Some times its just best to shut the hell up.

Her mother, Jane, was also very similar but I enjoyed my time with her a lot more. It was also great to get outside and do some more physical work out in the sunshine, plus she lived in a five star b & b at the farm and made some amazing food for a man who would stay during the week which was a bonus.

We chatted about books,TV and experiences and while I was there I finally read Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that I absolutely loved and couldn't believe it took me that long to read!

It was a peaceful couple of weeks but after the exhausting month I'd spent at the stables I tghink it was just what I needed!

Horses at Hoddles Creek

 As amazing as Melbourne was to me I really just wanted get my specified work finished (which I needed to do to be able to apply for a second year visa,) so I didn't have to think about it any longer and it was out of the way. So just after a few days staying with Patrick I left and headed for a place called Hoddles Creek, about an hour and a half east outside of the city.

While I was staying with Ineka and John (in Beauty Point, Tassie) I'd got in touch with a host that I'd found in my wwoof book, (a list of people who were looking for volunteers  to come and stay and help them out,) and arranged to stay for the remaining nine weeks of my specified work time.

Trish and Brian Wettenhall had their own stables and trained and bred horses, an animal I'd never worked with and was obsessed with as most little girls are when growing up, so it seemed like a great opportunity to be able to work with them.

I caught a train to Lilydale and from there a overcrowded bus to a place called Lustia Park Road where I was to be met by Brian.

 It doesn't matter how many times you have to travel on an overcrowded bus with a rucksack, I swear it doesn't get any easier and people certainly don't seem to get any nicer. The forty minutes or so of the journey I had to block the isle as someone snotty nosed teenager sat in the luggage rack and everyone else tripped over my bag countless times and I had to continually apologise to people who gave me a look of disgust as to why I'd be on their bus with such a large bag. I obviously had planned for the bus to be busy and wanted to get in everybody’s way.

I met Brian at the next bus stop along as the driver had forgotten my request to point out when I needed to get off and to be honest Brian didn't seem any friendlier once I met him either. The whole journey to their home was broken up with some somewhat awkward conversation- me trying to ask questions and be friendly and Brian seemingly ignoring that I was there and barely answering me.

When we arrived he didn't really seem to even make the fake 'oh i'll get your bag for you' movements and he showed me into a room where he said I could stay in. I was hoping that it was just me and that once I got to know these people things would change.

The house itself was nice enough. Quite big, bungalow style set in the middle of a large area of land to the side of a large stable.

The was already a girl there wwoofing, a German girl, in her late twenties although see looked more as though she was in her late teens who was just about as talkative as Brian. She was leaving the next day anyways so I didn't try too hard to talk to her as I guess it didn't really matter much.

You meet so many people when travelling that you can sense what people are like on first impressions, whether or not they are the kind of people you want to stick around and get to know or whether they’re just not your kind of person. The German girl was nice, but the kind of nice which is boring and un-talkative, so I didn’t really feel it necessary to make the effort to make conversation. 

That evening over dinner Trish had asked me a few questions about myself and my family although to be honest she didn't really seem that interested in the answers.

Looking back on it, it all seems rather pretty terrible and I wonder why I stayed for so long but it didn't seem that way at the time, well at least in the beginning.

The work was hard but I enjoyed it. It was fantastic to work around and see the horses and there was so many of them. Each day I would muck out the stables, feed and gave water to the horses, took the horses into the paddocks at the start of the day and back in at night. The best parts were when I got the chance to wash and brush them and put their reigns on. I really enjoyed that and soon had favorites. These horses were great competition winners and it was a real honour being able to work with them.

The night after I'd got there Trish had received a phone call to say that her dad had had a heart attack and she'd rushed off to the hospital.

During the week there was a girl that stayed called Lizzy. She had several of her horses in the stables and stayed and helped Trish train and take care of them. She was there only the first week and a half however and headed off to a big competition that was happening in Sydney the second week, which Trish would have gone to also if it wasn't for her dad. In some ways I'm thankful she didn’t leave that week as she was going to leave me behind on my own to look after the stables- something I wasn't too happy about. 

A girl from Tassie had come to stay to, who was meant to go to the show with Trish on the Monday (of my second week there) but because of Trish not going to the show helped me out around the stables instead. As the week went on though I started to like being there less and less. I just seemed to get stuck with all the rubbish jobs and forever seemed to be mucking out stables and not doing any of the stuff with the horses that I'd enjoyed so much. Carly seemed to be asked to do all these things instead. I was starting to really feel like Cinderella getting left to do all the cleaning while the ugly sisters didn't have to do anything!

(While speaking to my dad on  Skype he asked me what the countryside looked like where I was and i couldn't even tell him as I'd barely been out the stables or looked beyond the paddocks!)

I didn’t really think about leaving though until the Saturday evening. Trish had decided as she was going to the national show now until the Monday morning that she'd go with her friend to a local day show not so far away on the Sunday. The three of us were sat in the living room and Trish was telling Carly when she needed to get up the next day and told me that I didn't have to get up till lunchtime to do the afternoon jobs. If I didn't feel annoyed about being left behind to do all the stable work on my own for the week I felt annoyed now that it hadn't even occurred to her that I might have wanted to go to the show the next day with them. Now I definitely felt like Cinderella not being allowed to go to the ball!

I was fuming, not that I let on to Trish, but told Carly later on when we were in the bedroom. She was really suprised too that Trish hadn't offered me to go to the show, seen as though they were going away to Sydney on the Monday and I wouldn't be going with them.

After talking to Carly I had decided that I was going to tell Trish that I wanted to go to the show, but when I went to talk to her she'd gone to bed so I decided to get up at 5 with them and tell her then.

She agreed that I could go in the morning, but she definitely wasn't happy about it and she wasn't shy in letting me know complaining all day about how much work had to be done when we got back. At the end of the day I was only there to help out , learn new things and meet interesting people who's lives differed from my own and was only expected to work for five days a week- working seven days and being expected to look after 30+ horses on my own for two weeks isn't part of the deal- especially when I have no previous experience of working with horses.

Turns the show wasn't even worth it... dressage is boring, but at least I got the chance to experience something new.

I decided that even though I'd agreed to stay for there nine weeks, I was going to leave after a month. It was my decision what I did with my time here in Oz and I'd come to the conclusion I didn't want to do that any more.

It was great having the chance to work with the horses and I learnt a lot, but something I’ve learnt in my travels is that it doesn't matter where you are or what your doing it the people that really make it, and these people were not making it for me.