Adventure from America to Australia

The first part of the adventure is getting to Australia. It’s a minimum of 24 hour flight time no matter which way you go. I went from Billings, MT to Seattle, WA to Vancouver, Canada to Hong Kong, China to Perth, Western Australia (WA).

Once you get past the traveling there, then it’s the time change that really gets you. Australia is 14 to 15 hours ahead of Montana, depending on daylight savings time. I found that the best way to adapt is to stay awake when it's daytime and then go to sleep when it's night. I know, sounds simple enough, right? But it’s a completely different thing when it’s daytime and then you go to sleep when it’s night. I know, sounds simple enough right, but it’s a completely different thing when you try to stay awake when your body is thinking it’s actually night time.

One of the first things that I realized about Australia is that it’s a learn-fast or go-home kind of mentality. The very first thing I learned was to drive on the left side of the road while on the right side of the car, talk about different! You wouldn’t believe how many times I washed the windows when trying to use the turning signal...

The next thing was to understand all the different accents. Not only are there Australians, nut also there are people from New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and South America that I worked with. It would all be in English, but with the different sayings and slang it took a good amount of time to fully understand what was being said.

There was also learning about Australia itself. Australia used to be underwater. And now that it’s out of the water, the water table is very shallow. Now you might think that this is a good thing, and it would be except the water under the ground is too salty to use for anything. The way you get water for your livestock is from the rain. There are massive rocks that have concrete walls around them. When it rains the water goes down the rocks and into a tank, which then goes to above ground pipes, and other smaller tanks.

As far as drinkable water goes I believe it works close to the same way. I’ve never actually seen the system, this is just what I’ve been told. One of the really interesting facts is that the water for Merredin, WA, where I was working, comes from Perth, WA in above ground steel pipes. Now Merredin is a good 3.5 hour drive from Perth. But this system actually provides water to an area of roughly 600 kilometers long. To give you an idea of the distance; 1.6 kilometers is 1 mile. Can you imagine the size of the rock it would take to provide water for that big of an area?!? And the average amount of rainfall is roughly 4.5 inches per year.

Another interesting tidbit about Australia is it used to be completely covered with trees and bush. When people first started farming they had to remove all the bush and trees to be able to plant. Now to be able to remove the plants they took two bulldozers and strung a chain between the two. Then the bulldozers lowered their blade and started moving across the country at the same speed in one direction and then turned around and did it the other direction. With how shallow the root systems are the trees and bush were all pushed over. It was then pushed into a pile and burned. You can still find some old chains in the paddocks, “fields”.

Western Australia is mainly crop country and there are hectares of crop; 1 hectare is 2.47 acres. Some farmers have sheep as well and they put their sheep on the harvested paddocks. The person I worked for is part of a group of companies that own and lease the land. To give you an idea of the size of the group; one of the many farms that make up the whole company, and the one I worked on, is about 16,000 hectares.

Now to do that many hectares you’ve got to have a lot of equipment. To start off with we were working with seven headers (combines), three chaser bins, two field bins and 7 road trains. Now two of the chaser bins could hold 36 tones and the other 39 tones. The field bins can hold 125 tones. And a road train is a semi truck with three different trailers behind it, hauling about 70 tones per load. Once more of the crop started being ready for harvest at different parts of the farm our equipment started dispensing. We ended up harvesting with five headers, two chaser bins, two field bins, and three road trains to do most of the one farm.

For a normal workday everyone is up around 5 a.m. We all make our own breakfast and after we eat head to the paddock. We are usually there around 6 a.m. From there we all grease our machines and blow all the red dust and fine grass pieces off. Usually we are able to start harvesting by 6:30 or 7 a.m. As long as the weather is good and there are no breakdowns then we harvest until 7:30 or 8 p.m. We do this Monday through Saturday. On Sunday we might get off around 4 p.m., but only occasionally. This was my schedule from October 15 to December 18, 2015. I had one day completely off and then about 6 days where I didn’t harvest, but got to help out with livestock. It was a wonderful experience; I definitely learned a ton about myself.

Now, that was my outback/farming adventure. The next part of my adventure happened in a coastal town called Albany, WA. I ended up getting a job at a hostel. For those of you that might not know what a hostel is, it’s sorta like a hotel and a college dorm at the same time. Now this might sound kind of strange, but it’s really a lot of fun. The hostel that I work at is a very clean place with a family orientated atmosphere. There are rooms with 4 to 8 single dorm beds all in one room or a private double room or a luxury queen room. There’s also a large commercial size kitchen where a lot of amazingly good food is made. Also there’s a lounge room and veranda area.

So, the best part of the hostel is that there are people from all over the world. There was a French pastry chef that would cook for a group of us quite often and it was the best. I got to eat foie gras, which is goose; surprisingly delicious, real crepes, homemade pizza, homemade cream puffs, caramel and so much more. And then all the different hidden talents that you would find in people as you got to know them. There are artists, crafters, sailors, linguistic people, para-gliders, and just interesting people in general.

Besides eating there was always great visits and hiking and going to beaches. Oh yeah, and working. As a “backpacker” there is a wide variety of jobs you can work in. I work as a dishwasher in a French restaurant and then at a farm that makes jams, sauces, gourmet olives, and so much more. The other types of jobs are waitress or waiter, bartender, painter, and carpenter. Usually if you are trying to make money you go from one job directly to another. And of course you have to sneak in the social part of traveling as well.

Throughout all the time I’ve been traveling I think it comes down to learning and realizing one important thing; there are nice and generous people all over the world. It doesn’t matter, you will realize how amazing each person is and the different qualities they have. Everyone is unique and special in his or her own way. Maybe there are no strangers in the world, just camouflage friends that you have to take some time to really see them.