Farm life

Getting a working holiday visa for Australia is easy. It took me 10 minutes to fill in an online questionnaire and pay the £150 and I had the confirmation email within an hour. Bravo. But, getting a second year visa is hard. Really hard.

Tom and I count ourselves very blessed to have gotten the jobs we are both doing - we work in a plant nursery where Tom sprays all the plants with fertiliser and I weed, prune and graft plants. 

I say we count ourselves blessed because when we first arrived in Mildura, Victoria to start our 88 days of 'rural work'  we both had to head out into the orange fields and pick bins and bins of oranges for nearly no money (we were staying in a ridiculously expensive hostel and had to pay for transport so we barely made enough to cover that) so we know first hand that we could be a far worse job. 

Tom, the boy who has always lived in a city, has grasped onto country life like a bee onto honey. He loves it. Couldn't be happier. I, on the other hand, have struggled. There are many things I like - I like working outside, I quite like being able to listen to 7 or 8 music albums everyday and having an abundance of thinking time. I like driving tractors but I can't quite cope with the backache of bending over weeding for 8 hours a day, working in 37 degrees heat (I swear I'm going to faint in the next week or two) nor the insects. For those who know me, know I am petrified of spiders. I despise them and yet everyday I see at least 3 'transula' sized huntsmen, numerous redbacks, jumping spiders (don't get me started on those) and white tails - of which can kill you. 

So to say that I am happy we have nearly finished our farming sentence would be an understatement. I know I'll be thankful of this time when we're walking through arrivals for the beginning of our second year in Oz but frankly, these last 11 days can not end soon enough.