At this point in the trip I decided I needed money. My only other source of income was working in Melbourne at the Grand Prix and that was a few months ago. A travel/backpacker agency called "Peterpans Adventure...somethings" seemed to be a popular place and offered tons of different work opportunities. I turned down banana picking in light of pruning mango trees. How hard could that be? I packed my bags and joined about eight other guys that would be cutting down branches with me. We were picked up by a guy named Roy who chain smoked, had a potbelly, but was otherwise pretty cool. We lived in his house in Mareeba, a town with two big streets, one store, and an ice cream parlor that sold internet at $5 an hour.
The house was pretty nice, with myself having my own room next to the balcony. Unfortunately, there was nothing to look at and no girls to bring back to a single room. There was absolutely nothing to do except eat, sleep, watch Glee and Aussie COPs on TV, and spend $5 on internet.
5:05 Wake up.
5:25 Really wake up.
5:30 Hop in the loud, vibrating van that smelled like cigarette smoke with eight other guys. Then drive along some country roads to the middle of no where.
6:00 Eat a PB&J at the mango fields while the work crew talked about their "Mrs" back at home and paying child support.
6:30 Get hauled out into the fields and with a handsaw, start ripping out the middle branches of mango trees.
6:32 Be covered in water (dew), spider webs, spiders, little bugs, and complain about being cold.
11:00 Be covered in sweat, spider webs, spiders, little bugs, and complain about being hot. Eat some PB&J for lunch.
11:30 Back to the fields. They are shaped like corn rows. There are 66,000 mango trees. There are 8 of us guys doing this. Each tree takes 10sec - 1min of cutting time. This could take awhile.
1:34 Avoid massive yellow/red stripped hornets that live in mango trees.
1:35 I fail to avoid the hornets and get stabbed in the left shoulder. They are the size of my thumb. Stabbed is the correct verb.
3:00 Get back in the van that is falling apart and drive back to Mareeba.
4:00 Spend $5 on internet, eat Tuna and noodles, flirt with high school girls at ice cream shop, and watch Glee.
9:00 Go to sleep.
We managed to deforest that entire mango field in two weeks. We were paid $17.90 per hour, which was pretty cool, because I made $800 dollars after taxes. With this money, it was time to head to BrisVegas and meet a guy named Tempt.
BrisVegas (correctly spoken Bris'Bin)
Long story short, I started talking to a guy on the internet who lived in Brisbane and was known for having crazy nights out. He was like an Aussie Tucker Max. He walked up to guys he didn't like and laughed in their face. He walked up to women he saw in the street and suggest they get married on the spot...which they role-played out. He drank. He danced. He took up space. He made out with girls while their boyfriends back was turned. He was nicknamed Tempt. And I was here to meet him.
Coming back from a very long two weeks in Mareeba, I felt it was time to relax before heading back to the States. I booked a flight from Cairns to Brisbane, hitch hiked to the airport, and ended up at this hostel overlooking downtown BrisVegas!
I had forgotten how much I loved the bigger Australian cities and wish I would have spent more time here, but I was on a timeline and starting to burn out of living out of a suitcase. I spent a week in Brisbane, which seemed to have much more exciting gardens, walkways, downtown areas. There was much more detail and interesting things to see, as oppossed to Melbourne. It was more like how Sydney was around the harbor.
I didn't meet Tempt until the day after I arrived. My plane landed at 9p.m. and I had just hitch hiked my entire way to the previous airport. I had enough excitement for one day and ended up swimming on the rooftop pool then passing out.
My story with Tempt will be short. You can only say "I went out, drank some alcohol, met this one girl, danced my face off, saw a fight, asked women to marry me in the street, won some money, and deflected alpha males like Jackie Chan deflects punches, so many times before the story gets old. Which is what Tempt and I did.
This is Tempt. Enough said.
As I said, I enjoyed Brisbane much more than the other cities. It was fairly easy to walk around, had tons of artwork incorporated into the city in order to show it off. Glowing lights were everywhere, buildings gothic stonework done to them, new buildings use a variety of glowing neon tubework to make them look nice, and shopping malls, unlike in America, were not just a big buildings. They were massive outdoor/indoor networks of sidewalks that went underground and above ground with no doors. Massive copper? statues decorated seemingly random areas...just to make the city look good.
Similar to the concept in Lincoln where bicycle statues are placed around the city; and in Omaha where the "O" statue is randomly placed around the city. Except in Brisbane, these objects were actually worth looking at.
The Return Trip
Reality was kicking in. I had $800 AUD, and a plane ticket cost about $700. I had college loans at home, had been living out of a suitcase for 1/2 a year, and did not really want to work on a farm again to create money (the quickest, easiest job to find on a regular basis). I was sitting in the Peterpans Adventure...something place, uploading pictures when I made that decision. I had tons of things I wanted to get started on back in the States, such as a career, new hobbies, and catching up with people.
The return trip is rather boring. I took pictures of things I might have missed otherwise...such as the cost of petrol per liter over there, some random objects I found in a park, and some of the wildlife.
My return trip was basically a two hour flight to Melbourne, 1 hour layover, 15.5 hour flight to L.A., 6 hour layover, 2 hour flight to Denver, 1 hour layover, then a final 1 hour flight to Omaha, where I was picked up by my awesome parents. This was all done back to back. It took about two weeks before my inner clock got back on schedule.
This was just a brief summary of 1/2 the things that happened. But it still stands: Goal #1 is now done. Onto the easy stuff!
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