So before I begin, I must mention another disgruntled friend (this is becoming a habit, I’m going to call this section “friend profile” from now on!). Mark is the
friend this week. Mark lives in Dubai and I mentioned that I visited him in there, but what I forgot to mention was that he was one of the aforementioned friends that visited me in Korea, thanks Mark. Before you go thinking “Ah Dubai, I know his type”, just wait. Mark is not a high flyer, he is not the kind of person who cares about affluence and worries about what labels he wears, he is not the person who only travels business class because economy is so common. Oh no, wait he is all of those things, my mistake! His biggest regret in life is that he wasn’t born in Dublin 4! He’s great feicin craic though 🙂
From Christchurch we flew to Melbourne, where we first laid our feet on Australian soil ( and where we first felt that wave of unbelievable heat hitting us). We went out that night to meet up with some friends from Ireland, and it ended the same way as it always does when a group of Irish people go drinking jager bombs!!!
So now that we were in Melbourne, all our thoughts of lounging about doing sight-seeing were fast fading ad so was our money! We needed jobs ASAP, moneybagskeogh had done a right number on us in New Zealand! We stayed in a hostel for the first week and then we moved into a lovely apartment. We eventually found jobs working for a charity, going door to door trying to get sponsorship for kids in third world countries and it was AWFUL! You would think you would feel good about yourself, trying to help these kids, doing a good thing, but NO that job sucked the life from the 2 of us. We stuck it out a week, got our pay and walked.
We continued to look for jobs but in the meantime we were finding Melbourne
very very expensive, especially eating and drinking out. So we didn’t do those for long we stuck with cooking at home and drinking the cheapest bottles of beer at home!!! Phil picked up some work with an office removals company and I was getting some work temping but it wasn’t enough to survive on and continue paying rent so we made the decision after 5 weeks to leave Melbourne.
Although we were on the bread line while there, we still really enjoyed Melbourne. It’s a great vibrant city, and while it’s not as architecturally beautiful as other cities in Australia, it’s a great place to be. We will definitely go there again while we’re in Australia.
So from Melbourne we travelled to Rainbow; a tiny town 5 hours north-west of Melbourne. I’m not sure how to even begin describing Rainbow! The population is about 300, it’s a small and sleepy town and the majority of the people who live here are farmers. In Rainbow, tumbleweeds can regularly be
seen rolling down the street and if you are here on a Sunday you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a ghost town that’s no longer inhabited. In some ways it reminds me of the setting of a country and western movie.
I won’t lie, there isn’t much to do in the town itself and because we don’t have a car we can’t even visit the surrounding areas! The big news around Rainbow lately is that one of the nearby lakes has water in it this year (it has been dry for a long time!)! Living in such a small place, you get to know the locals; and my god have we met some characters!! Such characters range from young lads using pick up lines about tractors, to an older man asking me “Is there many brown-haired people in Co. Clare”! This particular man was talking about his Irish ancestors and he believes that and brown-haired people in Clare must be related to him!
As I said, most people are farmers, and they like to talk about their work, so I
have received a lot of information about harvesting crops, headers and other things that I know nothing about. During these conversations I try to listen and understand but because I don’t have any sort of farming background, it usually goes over my head!
When we asked a local young guy what people do in Rainbow for fun, he replied “we shoot shit, run over shit and then shoot more shit” and that pretty much sums up Rainbow! They shoot anything that moves around here, Phil went out with some of them one night and shot some poor defenseless rabbits!
Although many of you reading this are probably thinking “wow, that place sounds awful” (and believe me my thoughts were exactly that when we first got off the bus) but it’s really not bad, it’s a nice little town. It’s very easy when travelling Australia to hop from city to city, but at the end of the day, a city is a city no matter where you go. Unfortunately more cities around the world are becoming very similar. Once you move away from the big cities you meet the people of that country and you see how they really live. So in that sense Rainbow has been a great experience, we’ve met a lot of really nice people, made new friends and learned about a whole new way of life. We’ll always remember Rainbow; it’s the
place where we saw our first kangaroos, our first snake and our first huntsman spiders; it’s where we spent Christmas in a pub literally for the whole day; it’s the place where people tip their glass on its side in the pub and that means their finished drinking!
We leave Rainbow in 2 weeks, and we will head up further north to Mildura for a few days and then it’s off to Adelaide where we will hopefully find work. I will blog again when we’re in Adelaide.
Until next time 🙂
