Retro HB

Did you know that Barry and I went to Australia in 2005 for nearly 5 months? Well, we did. We also lived out of our car while driving up the coast  and worked picking fruit for a few days. Here’s a blog post I wrote during that time. Sorry it is so long.

After a difficult week of working on various farms in the Childers area Barry and I are pleased to announce our retirement from farm labor. Barry’s decided to go back to his telemarketing career, as it was less demanding. (Kidding!)

We are on the road again now after leaving Childers and deciding that we had made enough money to have a bit of fun when our friends Rayna, Danielle and Teresa get here without too much worry. Staying at the Sugar Bowl Caravan Park actually turned out to be an incredible experience as we met so many people from around the world. After our first day of work we had already become friends with three Irish men, a couple from Scotland, a bloke from Holland and a few Germans. A few nights into our stay at the Sugar Bowl our group of friends included some one from Vancouver B.C., and from Israel. Since we were all staying at the Sugar Bowl, also called the Money Bowl, and there is nothing to do in Childers (and I mean NOTHING) we became fast friends.

There were three levels to the Sugar Bowl and we were down at the very bottom because we were camping out of our car. This means that we parked in a big field that happened to have a ‘camp kitchen’ in it. Imagine camping at the Gorge for a concert and the ‘kitchen’ is pretty much a lean-to with a camp stove in it.

The next level of the Sugar Bowl, and where most people we came to be friends with were staying in dorm rooms. These dorms are more similar to army barracks with enough of a mowed piece of lawn for the nightly footy match between seperate work crews. Barry and I would sneak over to the barracks to use the kitchens because there were five of them. We spent a lot of time with James, Eoin (Owen), & Connor, our Irish friends discussing the finer points of fruit picking.

The highest level of the Sugar Bowl Caravan Park is the camper van sites or the larger trailers for rent. We met a few travellers that could afford to pay to stay in this upper level suites that happened to be on a hill that looked down over our lowly non-powered tent site.

Thankfully, rank did not matter at the Sugar Bowl because we were all there to do the same thing: work and earn money to suplement our backpacking experience. Some nights we would make our dinner, enjoy our yummy Tim Tam/Mint Slice dessert and make our way to bed knowing that we had to be on the bus for work by six o’clock the next morning.

The nights that we didn’t have to work the next day we spent slowly eating our dinner, sharing some wine, talking into the nights. It was surprising talking with people from around the world how disappointed they had been in the past when meeting Americans. A guy on our crew from Holland, we called him Dutchie, told us that a number of times when Americans find out that he’s from Holland they respond with a questioning “That’s down south, right?” As Dutchie’s story came out many people around the table had similar stories about meeting Americans that were either rude, close-minded or just uneducated in the ways of the world. Barry and I hope that we were able to make a positive impression on our fellow backpackers.

Since we’ve been retired Barry has again picked up kiteboarding and I’ve been able to work on my tan. (Yes, we put sun screen on everyday. . . ) We’re planning on taking our time going down the coast and enjoying our retirement before we have to come home and get real jobs.