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Been a long time

It's surprising that how soon a year can pass. This is probably going to be my only post in this year since my last post in 2009.
Things had changed a lot in this passing year. I almost succeeded in turning my life over in a better way, but I chickened out and got stuck.
At the moment, the future still doesn't seem promising. And the worst thing is I'm getting so old. It makes me afraid that it might be already too late for me to make a change.
I should have stayed to study at the University of Queensland. But it does nothing meaningful to regret.
I really need some good luck or the wisdom and courage to make my life right.

Overexposed

I feel like I'm naked, unprotected and overexposed. And I feel dreadful at the moment, just like someone that has been on my mind for a little while.

I hope things will get better as soon as possible. I need confidence, robust and solid confidence.

Weary of the Repetitive Life

I've been doing the same work for almost 9 months. It seems to be stable. Sometimes I enjoy doing this job, because I feel the joy from the students that I teach when I get along with them and see them making progress. Some of my colleagues are nice and warm, and I enjoy talking with them and doing things with them. The schedules I have to follow are fixed. I do the same things week after week.

But I grow weary of the presence and concerned about the future. How much longer will I stay the same? What will things be like some time later? When I'm lying on the bed in the night, I get much worried and anxious.

I think I am in lack of something dependable and also something consuming. I need hope.

空白

回台一個月了
心情也逐漸回到當時出國前一般的低落
過去的一年多感覺好遙遠
遠到好像不存在
像是一片空白

台灣的天都是灰白色的
不論晴雨
蔚藍的天空除了存在照片中
也就只有在心裡了

這片土地有太多令人不悅的人事物
但是我終究得留在這裡一輩子
再也離不開了吧

我仍舊在日復一日的空白裡
過著無趣的生活
偶爾想起異國的朋友
也只能遙祝你們平安快樂

我們
還有再見面的一天嗎?

The Last Few Days in Australia

I've left Horn Island for 2 days already. I was picked up by a friend, Gill, whom I met on Horn, at the Cairns airport, and stayed with her for 2 days at her home in Innisfail. Innisfail is a town about 85KMs in the south of Cairns. It's a beautiful place with green, lush mountains and rivers.

I also met her neighbors, Emily, who's an elder lady at the age of 83 and she's a very nice person, and Sue, who's devoted to animal conservation, and she's showed me 3 wallabies. Gill is really a very nice person. I'm so blessed to know all of them. Gill even drove me back to Cairns this morning. Thank you very much, Gill.

I found that I feel alone in Cairns. It's been more than 3 and a half month since the last time I travel alone. But because I had to proceed tax return and change some Japanese yen, I have to spend at least 1 or 2 days in Cairns. I found that there's no tax office in Cairns, so I have to spend money to let an agency help me proceed the process. Today I also bought a pair of shorts.

Now I do feel that time lapses swiftly. I have spend about 362 days in Australia. I can still clearly remember the morning I arrived in Darwin, and the days I met friends from different countries. It will be a year that I will always remember.

How Time Crawls Slowly

Due to that I do not have a lot of opportunity to use the internet, and also there's nothing much happening here, I rarely have a new post recently. The work is boring, repetitive and one of the cooks I have to work with all day is quite rude. All of those make the stay here a kind of endurance, but in a good way my patience is improved anyway.

These days the boredom of my life here drastically increases. The Korean girl worked with us had had left for many weeks, and the friendly Sydney girl had also gone back to Sydney to work at the Royal Easter Show and she'll not be back until next Thursday. I don't have many people to talk to. Most of the time I'm either working in the kitchen or stay in my room reading a novel. Sometimes I rent DVDs, but not often. Working days are long and tedious, but off days are boring nonetheless.

Now I count the days every day. Until today I have to stay in Horn Island for another 14 days, and I have to work for another 11 days. I really hope these days fly.

After here I will fly to Cairns on 13th of April, and immediately be picked up by an English woman whom I met at our hotel in January, and befriended. She lives in Innisfail which is about one hour of drive south to Cairns. I got her postcard earlier this week, and I called her then. She agreed to pick me up from Cairns airport. I'll stay with her until that Tuesday, and go back to Cairns for another 2 days to apply tax refund and deal with some other matters. I'll fly to Osaka, Japan, on 17th of April.

All in all I'll have stayed in Australia for 364 days, and I'll be away from home for more than 1 year. The past more than 11 months seemed to be long gone, they passed so quickly. I can still recall the scenes of the morning when I arrived in Darwin from Singapore on 19th April 2007. However, the current days of my working here still crawl slowly, very.

8 Weeks to Go

There's really nothing special happening here, and that's why I havn't posted much lately.

The Chinese New Year was past, and it was the first time I wasn't at home during that time. To be honest, I felt lonely. The only people on this island knowing that holiday were just my Korean girl co-worker and me. There was nothing we could do to make that holiday special. All we got was working as usual. The only thing made me happy was that I called my family and several friends in Taiwan.

I will leave this island on the 13th of April, and that's 8 weeks from now. I can't wait the coming of the day. I'll be very happy to leave here.

In my original plan I was to stay in Australia for another 2 weeks since my working holiday visa expires on 19th of April, but things had changed. I found that it seemed to be difficult to extend my visa to a visitor/tourist's visa, and so I will leave Australia before my current visa expires. And my sister is going to get married on 2nd of May, I have decided to go back on time to participate her wedding ceremony.

Because now I'll have to go back to Taiwan before my sister's wedding, so that I will not go to Singapore to take a train to Malaysia and Thailand this time. Besides, as a Taiwanese passport holder, I have to apply for a tourist's visa to Malaysia and Thailand in Singapore in order to take the train ride, truely I think that's a pity. Maybe I'll do that in the future and get the visas ready in Taiwan.

This time I'll fly to Osaka, Japan, from Cairns. I'll stay a few days in Osaka, and then take a train to Kyoto. I want to spend more than one week in Kyoto before I return to Taiwan on 30th of April.

How do I hope the next 8 weeks pass in a blink, but I know that it is actually not a too long period of time. I can't wait to leave.

Life on a Remote Island

I have been working and living on this remote and small island for 3 weeks, and to be honest so far I think the life I lead here is not too bad.

My work here is as a kitchenhand, I have to wash loads of dishes, prepare food materials, and clean the kitchen, restaurant and toilets. Recently I have also learned to make lunch meals, so during lunch time I also have to make sandwiches and burgers. I start working in the morning at 11 o'clock, have a break from 2 or 3 PM, go back to work at 5 and finish at around 10. I work 5 or 6 days a week. The hotel provides us full-time workers accommodation and food. Everyweek I get paid about 500 dollars.

After work i simply go back to the house we live to watch TV or sleep. I don't go out usually because there are many mosquitoes and sandflies everywhere, and normally the weather is hot and it rains a lot. I don't spend much money either, on this island there are only two shops, and everything the sell is at least twice the price when compared to mainland Australia, that is truely terrible. So life is very simple here.

The best thing here is that people are mostly very friendly. The aboriginal, Torres Strait islanders, are exceptionally friendly. I have an aboriginal worker, Tina. She's a very nice person. She has a big family here in Torres Strait, and she has family members all around here. She had introduced me to some of her family members. Lase week when I had a day off, I went to ride dingy, small boat, with her, her brother Issac and 2 of my co-workers. The dingy belongs to ther brother, and her brother drove the dingy for us. When we started the weather was okay, we sailed to Thursday Island, made a circle around it, and then sailed to the sea among other islands. Then we planned to do some fishing, but after her brother dived into the sea twice, he then said it's not suitable for fishing that day. We then sailed to the back of Horn Island. We went to a shallow water there, I went into the water, it was warn and comfy, and there were lots of oysters growing on hte rocks under the water. Later the weather changed, it's now wet season and it generally rains everyday. We thought we had to go back, but the weather was so bad, it rained very heavy, and the wind was strong. Our little dingy seemed like nothing in the wild sea. The waves were high, and that made our ride very tough. We had to cling to the dingy very tightly, if not we surely would fall off it into the sea. The rain hit hard on our faces, and every time we fell off the tip of a wave our bottoms and backs hurt. It was lucky for us to return safely, I thought. The next day my whole body ached.

That's the simple life I'm living here. I think I can really stay until the 2nd week of April, and then start the next episode of my journey.

My contact method while on Horn Island

I arrived on Horn Island on this Monday, and I start working at Wongai Hotel in Horn Island today.

This island is very remote, I do not have GSM mobile connection here. Right now I'm sharing a flat with 3 of my co-workers, and in the house we have a land-line phone. The number is 07-40903459. If you call, please just ask for Sen.

I don't have much time now, so I'll finish here.

Wish everyone a very wonderful new year. See you.

Destination - Horn Island

I'll leave Cairns for Horn Island for a work at a hotel there on next Monday. Horn Island is next to Thursday Island in Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea. There are many indeginous people living there.

You can find relevant information on the webpages through the hyperlinks above. It will be a special experience I hope. I think there have not been many Taiwanese people there.

It is now the beginning of the rain season there, but they say at this time of the year the place looks most lush and green.

The place I'm going to work at will be Wongai Hotel. Their address is 2 Wees Street, Horn Island, QLD. Their toll-free phone number is 1800804422. Hopefully I will work there until mid-April of next year, and then return to Cairns and take a tour to Whitsunday Islands before I leave Australia.

It is so remote, I'm afraid that I won't have mibile phone connection there. So maybe I can only keep in touch with my friends by email if there is internet there.

A tropical, remote island, that is my next destination.

Cairns, continued

I have been in Cairns for 5 days. Actually I like this place. The weather is not as hot as I thought before I came here. It could be hot around noon, but in the nighttime it's very comfortable. Although it should be rain season here, but so far it has rained only once last night.

This is a tourist's city, especially Japanese tourists. There on the streets are a lot of Japanese tourists. You can see Japanese signs everywhere, even in the Woolworths supermarket. When I went to find a job at a hotel, they asked me if I can speak Japanese; when I handed in my resume at the Grunt job agency, they asked if I can speak Japanese as well. There are 3 cities in Japan namely Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya with direct flights to Cairns, no wonder there are so many of them here.

This is also the first place in Australia I find there is a night market like that kind I found in Singapore. The scale is smaller that that of Singapore of course, but you can find souvenir shops, clothes and decoration shops as well as more than 10 food shops in the night market. There is a good thing about having dinner in the night market, everynight evening after 8:30 the 4 cafeterias offer meals originally priced at around AUD$12 at a great AUD$5. They will give you a plastic plate and you can put on as much food as you can. That is really a bargain. I tried twice with different cafeterias, and they were both not too bad.

Cairns city place is not very big, but it has a big shopping mall with more than 100 shops, a main street from the shopping mall to the esplanade where you can find a man-made lagoon to swim in, a lot of tour shops you can book tours to the Great Barrier Reef and rainforests, a lot of pubs, backpacker hostels, restaurants, souvenir shops, boutiques, and 2 Global Gossip internet places where you can use the internet for AUD$1 for the first hour, etc. Generally you won't soon get bored with this place.

I met 3 Taiwanese friends here. One of them I have known since in Darwin, she has left for Osaka yesterday, and will return to Taiwan next week. The other twon are a girl coming here just for holidays and has left for Brisbane; the other is a boy who's been in Australia for 2 months only but has been to many cities already, he has left for Mareeba, a twon about 60KM out of Cairns, for work. I think there are not many Taiwanese people here, I'm also leaving soon, but I'll return months later.

Cairns

I left Carnarvon yesterday, took a ride of the uncomfortable greyhound for 13 hours back to Perth, then take the flight at 11:15PM from Perth to Cairns, and after about 5 hours I arrived in this tropical tourist city.

Cairns is so popular that in the high summer now there are still a lot of tourists and backpackers here, and I was kind of surprised when I was looking for a hostel to stay here I found that there are almost 30 backpacker hostels in such a city with only 100,000 of population. This place is HOT and rowdy. The streets here look even more crowded than Perth.

Later I'm going to get more familiar with this place for I'll say here until mid-April, and later on will write more abouth this place. I'm now too tired and can not think of what I could write...

Carnarvon

We are now staying at Port Hotel in Carnarvon. We will begin grape picking from next Monday. I need to commit 3 months of seasonal work to apply for a second WHV.

There are several works to do in this agricultural center in north WA, but it's easier to get one through the hostels here. There are two backpacker hostels here. People say that Port Hotel is better because it has more job offers.
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I left Carnarvon on 16 December. Totally I stayed about 6 weeks there. In the first week I had no work to do. My first work there was picking table grapes, it lasted for only one day, and on the next day I changed to work at a vegs and fruits packing shed. The pay was only 15.30 before tax, and my tax rate was over 20%. After working there for 5 weeks I could save up less than $1000 after spending the hostel rents and living costs. My work in the packing shed was mainly stacking the packed rockmelons, each of the carton could weigh around 20KG, and sometimes I had to stack more than 600 cartons in one day. The work was tough, but not lucrative, and that's why I decided to leave.

Other than working, the only things you can do in Carnarvon is sometimes you can rent a car to go to Coral Bay, Exmouth or Monkey Mia. Unfortunately I didn't have enough money to do that, but I don't think that's a loss because now I think everywhere in Australia looks similar, and I'll not apply for the second visa for the reason that now I reckon one year is enough.

Geraldton

After our 2-night stay in Perth at the extremely rowdy and uncomfortable Globe Backpackers, we, me and the German girl Claudia, went to Geraldton and stayed for one week at Foreshore Backpackers.

At first we went to Geraldton because of that after calling the crayfish factory, they told us to go there and hand in application forms directly to the factory. But we felt that we were cheated by them, when we went to the factory, they instead told us they needed no new workers, and maybe we could go back there everyday, after one or two weeks, to ask if they need some, and maybe some day they will. The foreman of the factory seemed very arrogant and ignorant indeed, and we hated him. Unfortunately there is only one crayfish company left in Geraldton, because it had bought all the other ones. Hence, we had no any other chance to get a seasonal work there.

We spent the rest of the week doing nothing, but stayed at the hostel eating, watching TV and sleeping. The weather in Geraldton in that period of time was not too bad, it's been very hot at 39C for only one day during our stay. Normally it's very sunny but cool with comfy breezes day and night. I don't really like the hostel we stayed, but it's better than the other one beside the information center.

In the room I stayed there were some disgusting bedbugs, I got bit many times, and hell the bites itched a lot, and also swelled a lot. I spent almost 30 dollars bought some medicine to use externally and internally as well. Most of the medicine did not work well, the only thing useful is 100% tea tree oil. The oil is expensive, 10ml for about 5 dollars, but it reduces the itch well, and soothe the swells.

Geraldton has severay beaches. The hostel I stayed is just next to a beach, you can walk through the back door to get to the beach behind. The most beautiful one I think is Tarcoolar beach out of the town center, it's long and there are not many people there, and it's a good place to view the sunset during summer, in winter the sunset can be seen on the beach behind our backpackers.

There was also one day, I rent a car with Claudia to go to Kalbarri National Park which is more than 200KM in the north. We spent around 200 dollars in total for the rental and fuel. It's a big and beautiful park, the seashre is amazing. The most famous spot in the park is the Nature's Window which is a hole between layers of rock, and you can look through it to see the scenery behind. The bad part about the park is that there are a hugh amount of flys everywhere, and the roads lead to Nature's Window and some other lookouts are like rubbish. Nevertheless it is good that we went there.

Leaving Farm

After 2 weeks of stay, I'm leaving this farm with a German girl tomorrow. Will be going back to Perth, stay there for 2 nights, and then go to Geraldton on next Tuesday.

The reason we're leaving is that strawberry picking is too tough, and the cherry season is still about 3 weeks away. When picking the berries, we have to keep kneeing or bending down, and then our knees and back hurt a lot after the work. Also the weather is another cause of our leaving, this is really a beautiful place, but the weather is terrible, it almost rains everyday, the sky is always gray and cloudy, and most of the time it's also cold, sometimes even freezing. We're long for warm and shiny days, and therefore we decide to travel north.

After looking for on the Internet, we found that there might be some work at crayfish factories in Geraldton. We contacted them several times by email, but got no reply. We then called them, and they told us to go to Geraldton and hand in the application forms directly to the factory. We're not sure if we can really get a work there, but anyway we're trying, and we really have enough of working on the farm.

We have learned that packing is always better than picking, and pay by hour is far more superior than by contract. We know there are certain harvest works with pay higher by contract, but anyway we hate picking.

the Farm

I'm on the farm for more than one week already.

The working conditions currently are not very good due to the bad rainy and cold weather. The owners of the farm are a very nice couple, you will find them friendly and easy to get along with, but they do ask you to perform well on the fields.

At the moment, we normally work only around 5 hours a day and 4 days a week. In the morning we pick strawberries for about 3 hours, and in the afternoon we spend about 1.5 hours packing them. They say that there will be a lot more produce when the weather gets hot, and that would be after mid November. So in fact we earn only a little right now, and chances are that we might earn more later, but I'm not that sure because when it's due the pay is made by contract for picking and by hour for packing, just opposite to now.

Picking strawberries can be very tiring, even exhausting, because that you have to keep bending down and after a while your back as well as your legs might will hurt a lot.

Currently they do not need any more worker, but they will after mid Nov. If any of you would like to pick strawberries, you could contact them on the email and fixed line number listed on their website, or simply leave a message through their website.

They also say that the cherry season will begin on month later, and then you can work both on cherries and berries.

The accommodation the farm provides is a bit shabby, it can be very cold all day at this moment. I'm not sure how long the cold weather would last, but I think that it will be better if you could bring a good sleeping bag along.

Besides, in this area there are several beautiful national parks, if you've a car, you might be able to go visit them, but still the farm owners say that if could be very busy during the high season, so I'm not sure if you could get much free time then though.

a Strawberry Farmer's Life

I came to Amuri Creek Fruits farm in Mount Barker on 17th of October after a 5-hour ride of TransWA bus from Perth. On the day I arrived it was cold and raining hard. Actually it's the typical weather here in this season, and it will be the same until November.

Mount Barker region is beautiful with hills full of lush trees, orchards, vineyards, and grasslands for raising sheeps. The scene here is rather different than the other rural places I've been to in Australia. The rain is abundant here, so there is not a single sign of the severe drought other parts of Australia are suffering from.

The Amuri Creek farm locates 30mins of drive out of the little Mount Barker town. The farm has strawberry fields and cherry orchards, and they also keep more than 3000 wool sheeps. On the farm currently there are 9 backpackers including me staying at the farm's simple accommodation, of which are 4 Taiwanese, 4 Korean and a German girl, the lovely and very friendly Claudia, but soon will be there a lot more coming due to the large amount of produces in summer. The owners of the farm are a friendly couple. They told us that in last year there were more than 50 workers working on the farm.

The weather here is still not very good most of the time. In the past week, there are more than 5 rainy days. Like today, it rains quite hard and is very cold. The strawberries grow better when the weather is hot. Therefore we do not work a lot right now. Normally we work 2 days and then take one or two days off, and on our working days we work only like 5~6 hours. We start picking strawberries at 8AM, then take a 30-minute rest at around 10AM, and then work until around noon, then we have lunch, and then start packing after lunch for about 1 or 2 hours. The pay currently is 16 dollars per hour for picking, and 1.30 dollars per tray for packing, but it will be the opposite when there are a lot of produce. Picking strawberries is a very demanding and exhausting job, because you have to keep bending down and that will make your back hurts alot, and you have to pay attention to the berries, you don't want to miss any single one, if not the farm owner will keep telling you that you have to be careful when picking, and you have to pick in the way they teach you.

The cherries are still flowering, and although there are already some fruits, but they're still green. They say the cherry season will begin about a month later. I do hope that I can switch to cherry team, I hate picking strawberries.

Perth

I flew to Perth from Sydney on 16/Oct/2007. The plane was delayed due to the late arrival of certain large cargoes, so we took off one hour later at around 7:00 Sydney time. After a 5-hours flight, we arrived in Perth at about 10:00 Perth time.

Me and my friend took a shuttle bus from the airport to the city. At the first sight of the area around the airport, I felt that the place is quite similar to Darwin. That felt familiar, and that was good. The shuttle bus drove to many stops, and after more than one hour we were finally dropped off last on Hay Street.

We booked on night at a hostel named 12:01 East Backpackers. The hostel is not far from where we were dropped. The daytime female staff were very friendly. The hostel seems to be not rather new, but anyway it has all we need and is not too dirty, and we just would stay for one night only. After checking in, we went out to have lunch and buy the ticket for the next day's bus to our really destination, Mount Barker.

Perth City is not very big. The CBD seems to be just 3 times bigger then Darwin. But there were a lot of people on the streets. We spent some time walking around the bustling area, had some food, and went shopping at a Woolworths there. And then, we took the free city buses to several places.

Perth has 3 lines of free bus working in its city area. They are named Red Cat, Blue Cat, and Yellow Cat. They are especially good to us budget travellers. We went to buy TransWA bus ticket, and then went to see Swan River, took some pictures, and then went back to the hostel.

We met a lot Taiwanese friends at the hostel. Most of them are female backpackers like us. But we also met two young men who are Ph.D. students at NSYSU, and were in Perth for conferences at Western Australia University, and would then travel to Melbourne; they were both very friendly, they cooked dinner for us. I also talked to one of the female Taiwanese backpackers, and she's also very friendly.

On the next day, we left Perth very early at 9 o'clock.

I don't think I like Perth much. After a few months, I'll have to return there, but I won't stay too long.

the 24 Hours Later

再過10幾個小時我就將到西澳了
今天是我在Sydney的最後一晚

這半年來在澳洲四處旅行
雪梨市我覺得跟台灣感覺最接近的地方
這裡有很多很多的亞洲人
街上到處都看得到中文招牌
很多地方都可以講中文
平常熙來攘往的街道
除了建築風格不同
走在路上就像在台灣的城市裡逛街

上次離開Sydney到Moree
好幾個晚上我想念著Sydney
或許我真正想念的是Sydney那絲跟台灣的環境近似的家的感覺

兩週前我回到Sydney
這兩週遇到了幾位以前在Darwin認識的台灣女生
與在台灣就認識也來打工度假的同學相聚
還新認識了幾位台灣朋友

除了陪新朋友舊地重遊
去了Manly
還去了Blue Mountains

兩週很快地過了
明天我又將展開新的旅程

西澳是個怎麼樣的地方呢?
明天我就能知道了

不過現在的心情跟感覺還是又有點孤單
人要離開熟悉的朋友跟環境時
應該都有這樣的感覺吧