18. Feb 2009

Well it’s been 10 days since I last wrote something. All that time we have been in Melbourne, where actually nothing interesting happened. But I can still talk about it a bit.

First thing when we arrived to Melbourne was of course finding place to stay. Didn’t know any places there, so we just went to the city centre and tried to find something there. First place we went to were full, but they recommended one other place, so that was where we headed and that’s where we stayed till leaving from Melbourne. That place was huge, expensive and not so nice.

In the backpackers we met 3 Estonians all together, so quite a lot compared to previous encounters, only 3 in 3 months. What was even more surprising was that we went in the same high school with one girl, Annika. She went in the class higher than me. So the world is real small. Also one thing I noticed when talking to the Estonians was that it was really weird talking in Estonian again. And Annika had 2 more Estonian friends who we also met. So 5 Estonians in Melbourne. Too many Estonians already.

So what good did we do in Melbourne? We watched 2 new movies: “Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans” and “The curious case of Benjamin Button”. Underworld wasn’t anything special actually, but defiantly better than second one, but first is the best. The Benjamin Buttons story was pretty good, I recommend watching it. They put something that is really hard to picture into a movie and not so bad actually. We watched it in the Moonlight Cinema in Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens, not in the real cinema, so I’m guessing in the real cinema it would have more affect.

What else? Hmm, we listened to Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, we didn’t see it, but we heard it when we were sitting in the park drinking beer :P. Spent quite a lot time in internet, doing nothing or looking for a job, well Kaupo did mostly last one :P. We ate lot of different food in there, because we didn’t make any food ourselves we ate out all the time, so we tried to eat different things. There is lot of Greek and Chinese food. Saw pretty much all Melbourne from one high building. And we drowned in smoke from all the fires. Because the wind turned it blew all the smoke on Melbourne.

Because it started to get quite depressing in Melbourne, too many people, all the smoke, expensive, no work and nothing, well not much, to do. We found a place called Sheperton from the internet and got information, that there should be some work around there we came here. But it wasn’t really easy to find a place to stay for night, because there are quite a lot of people, which isn’t good thing for us. Also we registered in local government job agency, but they didn’t promise us much. That is where we sit and wait at the moment. Because there is so many people and too little work we have to wait here, when any farmer calls they pick people who are waiting here. Things with farms aren’t good at the moment, because of the heat and other stuff, so it will be long wait probably. There are 7 other Estonians waiting for a job here.

Anyways yesterday when we arrived here, something really interesting happened, that is rare to see, especially in Estonia. While we started walking from train station to information centre one guy stopped his car next to us and asked if we wanted a lift. We were really surprised didn’t know what to say, but in the end we accepted and he dropped us off to information centre, so we could ask about accommodation in here. And they guy said that after we find something and start walking towards the city he could pick us up and give us a lift where ever we need. And he actually did. I actually haven’t seen anything like this ever before and I think this is something awesome, something I want to do someday; I want to be like that one day.

Now we keep waiting in here and hoping that we will get some work soon.

I hope next time I write here I can talk about our fruit picking stories.

All the best!

PS! I am thinking everyone who are back home and not so far away from there and hope to see you all soon.

26. February 2009

Ok, here I am again. Still alive after 1 week of picking pears :P. Not much has happened otherwise tho.

We got the farm job by the noon after waiting in the government agency office. They just came in and said names who were picked for fruit picking, we had to come back in few hours and they explained all. In the evening we already headed there. We were chosen together with one English couple, James and Annie, who also gave us a ride there.

In the evening we were already setting up our tent in the place we were going to stay. It wasn’t nothing special, we had some shitty toilet, showers and kitchen. Nothing luxurious, in kitchen we didn’t even have a stove so we had to use our own gas one.

Next day we already headed off to work, woke up at 6 am and were ready by 6:30, when we got our bags, jumped on our tractor and headed on the field. By the noon it got quite hot, so had to drink quite a lot of water. Worked till like 2 or 3 pm and by that time we had 2 bins each. Btw we got paid around 35 dollars a bin, anyways that was told to us, but still gotta check if we got that money. I didn’t like this job much so I am not gonna talk about it much, I think farm jobs are more kind of for ripping off foreigners, who want to get second year visa. But Kaupo liked it so you might read more about it from his blog. The only cool thing was our tractor I think :P and got to do physical work a bit.

Now we are back in Sheparton in the same hotel and in the same room too, weird, at least we can leave blanket and pillow what we “loaned” back here.

Don’t know exactly what next. Maybe we are going to visit Kaupo’s relatives or already head off to New Zealand, we will see about that. I’ll keep you updated.

So long, take care and live your dream.

03. Feb 2009

Alright here I am again. I’m trying to write here more often, so that I wouldn’t forget important stuff and so that people who are reading this wouldn’t die in boredom when reading.

So what have we done so long? We spend some time in Hobart and tried to figure out what are we going to do. Spent some time in visitor information centre and walked out with bookings to Bruny Island tour for next day, bus tickets to Launceston for day after that and also backpackers booking for that. We bought the tickets for Tasmanian Spirit, the boat from Devonport to Melbourne, so we are leaving Tasmania on 8th of February.

The tour was quite awesome, but it was also quite expensive, like 160 per person, tho positive thing in that was that breakfast (tea and a muffin) and lunch (soup, sandwich and piece of chocolate) was in that price, at least for me :D. We heard that tour to Port Arthur cost almost same much, but without any food. But I’m quite happy that we did that, tho yeah it was actually quite a lot of money.

But about the tour, we started early in the morning like 8 am heading to Kettering, where the ferry headed on the island. But on our way we also grabbed some stuff for our lunch, because all the food we were eating was got/ made in Bruny Island or in its surroundings. The bus trip itself was boring, but sometimes our tour guide talked something about places we drove by. He talked real interesting stuff and made a lot of jokes, so it was real fun too, sometimes maybe too fast, but otherwise it was good.

On Bruny Island we drove to Adventure Bay, where we got our tea and muffin. On our way there we passed cherry farm, cheese factory, oyster farms, lamb farm and other stuff. Like the tour guide said that island has quite lot natural resources, especially the sea, which is the reason why aborigines were driven out/ killed there. After that we were all put on boats, which took us around the island, showing its coast, which was awesome, big cliffs, which were suppose to be Tasmania’s (maybe Australia’s, don’t remember :P) second highest, 260 m high. Also saw different kind of birds, but the thing that I will remember most are the dolphins and there were heaps of them. Just seeing them swimming next to the boat, time to time jumping out, gives so big positive feeling, that can’t be described. We also saw lots of Australian fur seals, which were quite cool too, scared of boats a bit, not like dolphins, but otherwise quite playful creatures. And they stink too, like the tour guide said like anchovies.

After the boat tour we had our lunch, which was quite good, maybe should have had more food, but I am with quite big appetite too :P and headed back to Hobart. We chilled there for a while and today some more. Today I wanted to go get tattoo, but the tattoo shop was busy till 1.30 pm and our bus left 3 pm, which might not be enough time for that. So we went to post office, Kaupo posted some things to send to Estonia and I posted Danielle’s book that I had finished and needed to get rid of to get some more room in my bag. After that we got some games, foot bag, cards and one cool ball that bounces on the water. I also bought myself hiking boots, because the boots that I had used so far are giving me blisters.

So now we are in Lanceston in the backpackers here and tomorrow we are trying to head to Bay of Fires. Lanceston is quite small city and Kaupo seems to like it a lot, I don’t care much, for me it is still a city :P. But for a city it is nice, I don’t argue with that.

When we get back I guess I can tell how the Bay of Fires was, so till next time. Btw we now understand we don’t have enough time. We would like to spend some time in Launceston and go to the Cradle Mountain tour, but I guess we won’t make it now, because we are leaving already on this Sunday to Melbourne.

Lately I have been waking up real early, like around 8 or even earlier without any alarm, so I am surprised, that’s really early for me. I am waking up before Kaupo which is even stranger, but then again I am usually going to bed earlier too I think :P. The reason for this might be that there is quite a lot to do and I wake up with no feeling that I don’t want to do that, rather with joy. Also there is no reason for me to be up real late, because usually I am really tired after everything we have done that day and anyways I’m not feeling like partying.

Cya, catch ya later.

06. Feb 2009

Right now I am sitting in the bus which is heading to Devonport not many hours of sleep last night. The reason for that isn’t that we were partying or something, but today we had to wake up quite early to catch a bus from St. Helens to Launceston. And all this after quite busy day before that.

So what has happened? The day we headed to Bay of Fires we had to get up quite early again, because check-out form the backpackers were 10 am and we had to pack all our stuff again, so that things that we would leave there and things we take with us separately. Once again I was up way before Kaupo, don’t know what’s going on with me. So when I woke up, I had a shower and then waited for Kaupo to wake up by reading and chilling in the computer. Our bus didn’t leave before 3 pm, so after packing we were looking around the city and trying to figure out what are we going to do after we are back from Bay of Fires. Also I wanted to get a tattoo, but turned out that the guy in Launceston doesn’t do white ink tattoos, so next time.

Because we got quite bored we went back to backpackers, grabbed our stuff and were hanging in the park, playing with foot bag. Before park had lunch too, first time we had sushi, which wasn’t actually that good, so next time we will try to find real Japanese or something restaurant to eat that.

The trip to St Helens took 2 hours, so I tried to sleep in the bus, but didn’t have much luck, slept maybe only 1 hour :P. When we got there we didn’t actually know which way we had to go, but after a bit we found the road. Because there isn’t public transportation all the way to the Bay of Fires we had to walk there, around 10 km there, to the centre of the bay even more, like 20 km. But we wanted to go so we started walking. We had already walked heaps when one car stopped and asked where are we going, so we told Bay of Fires and they said that they can drop us off to one of the campsites near there. Turned out that we actually didn’t have much to walk anymore, but it was quite a lot of help still and it was really nice of them.

We also talked a bit with them, turned out that they are travellers also, girl was from England and guy from France. They said that they had been in Australia already since April. They came to Tasmania to do some cherry picking, but turned out that there wasn’t much cherry’s this year, so actually they didn’t do much work. The English girl said that she did some fruit picking up in the north Australia too, well, not exactly fruit picking, her work was more like packing and stuff like that. They both said that north Australia was real great, but the French guy said that East Coast was overrated, I kind of understand and bit thought so too, like he said, not his cup of tea.

Anyways after we got to the campsite, we set up our tent, ate and went to bed. Next day we headed to the Bay of Fires. After we had walked a bit, we passed couple of houses and one guy who was out there stopped us and recommended us to go there by the beach. And I think it was very nice of him, because on our way we saw beautiful red rocks, nice beaches and cool waves.

In there I had quite interesting situation. I almost lost my hat, well, wind blew my hat off and it headed to the sea. When I followed it we found real awesome place, where there was a kind of like a pool of seawater between rocks. It wasn’t big, but it was actually quite deep and we could jump in there from rocks. There should be more this kind of places. But at that moment I lost my hat there were some chicks sunbathing, so we had to come back later, I mean to swim there, of course I got my hat while I was there.

Anyways we walked all the way to the big beach there, had our lunch, swam a bit and started coming back. In the end we actually walked quite a lot, it was pretty good workout climbing on those rocks. And our way back we swam in that pool.

This evening we went to bed real early, because we had to wake up 4.30 in the morning. Which was quite interesting, but we made it. It took like 1 hr to pack all the stuff and have breakfast, but when we started walking it was still dark, so bit scary. But everything went alright, on the road we saw few dead animals and one not so dead kangaroo, but it was injured badly and bleeding, quite terrible sight. After walking quite some time, one car stopped again and asked where we were going. He dropped us off to the St. Helens.

From there we got on the bus to Launceston, tho we couldn’t get much sleep there, because soon lot of chicks came on the bus and were screaming and laughing, so not much luck. When we got in Launceston, we wanted to book a backpacker in Devonport, but they said that they don’t do bookings, so they only gave us their numbers. Kaupos phone was almost dead too, so we were thinking what to do. So first thing was that we went and had some lunch. We went to the first place we had seen that sold pancakes, which was awesome, tho bit expensive, but quite good too :P.

After that we thought that we will try to get on the earlier bus to Devonport, so we could go to information centre there and see if there’s any tours going to Cradle Mountain. Got our stuff from backpackers and headed to bus station. We actually made it and here we are heading to Devonport.

More to come…

08. Feb 2009

Made it to Devonport and we are still alive. Not much to tell about because only few days passed since the last time.

When we got to Devonport we went to the visitor centre, which has helped us a lot since we started using their services. Anyways, we booked ourselves a tour to Cradle Mountain next day and asked about accommodation in Devonport. There was only one tour that’s going to Cradle Mountain and again the tour cost quite a lot, but as we wanted to see it we accepted. If we would have had more time to go there by ourselves, then we defiantly would have done that, but since we were already leaving on Sunday we didn’t have much choice.

The place where we stayed at was so far defiantly the best and for that price cheapest we have been so far. We only paid 25 dollars a night and we were staying in the room where only 2 of us were staying. Laundry was totally free and anyways really nice place. So when going to Devonport Alexander Hotel is the place to stay in.

Once again we had to wake up early next day, because the tour left 8 am. Our tour guide was real interesting guy, who was doing 100 different things. Besides doing tours on school holidays he was a teacher, did sailing, kayaking and all different stuff in town and elsewhere. Tho he was a bit weird too, don’t know how to explain it but, you gotta trust me on that :P.

The Cradle Mountains were really beautiful. The day we went there it was raining at it was cloudy, so we missed some of it and couldn’t do the lookouts, but it was still amazing. There was on town we passed by that was quite interesting, it was known for it’s murels. Also we learned about one guy that saved the nature in Cradle Mountains, an Austrian, Gustav or something like that. He used to live in the mountains, with only animals as company, got his food and everything from the nature. So if I have time I’ll try to learn more about him and see maybe he wrote a book or something too.

After driving around, the tour guide showed us his home town and let us use his kayak a bit. Nothing really special, just a bit on regular river, no rapids.

When we got back to Devonport we tried to get some information about Melbourne accommodation from visitor centre, but they only had stuff about Tasmania. So we didn’t know what to do because we are going to arrive to Melbourne quite late, so don’t know if any places are open. But I remembered there’s some written down in Lonely Planet, but later we still didn’t book one, because Kaupo dialled the number wrong :P, gotta dial 0 in front of numbers here and today morning we didn’t call either. So we will see what is gonna happen.

Later on we went to the Cinema to watch a movie “Gran Torino”, which turned out to be a lot better movie than I thought it would be. And in the evening had few beers and chatted with some people in the hotel.

Morning we had to be on the boat 9 am, but had to be there earlier, 45 min- 1,5 hr. What I like about the system here with a boat is that you don’t have to carry all your luggage with you, instead you leave it behind when you show your ticket, kind of like in the airport and you get it when you leave the boat.

Boat itself is quite cool, but still not much to do and pretty much have to pay everything. Only good thing is the cinema room, where they show quite new movies, on pretty good screen. So we have been watching movies all day.

Anyways we are arriving to Melbourne at the moment, so I’ll write more after more things have happened.

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