Back on the Sunshine Coast and heading into the Outback

In essence, the Sunshine Coast hadn't changed since we left. But with Corona, there were no movie nights with people from before, no sunbathing in parks or on the beach, people seemed stressed and uncertain. Therefore, we were very eager to have something to do. Delivering for Uber Eats by bike, as we had done in Perth and Sydney, proved to be difficult when we couldn't stand or sit around in our free time. 2 weeks after our return to the Sunshine Coast, work in tomato packaging started again. Georgia was still the supervisor, Dakota was at the machine, ensuring everything ran smoothly. Mariko, the only Asian backpacker from the old team, had returned from Japan and was visibly happy to see us again. It was good to have a task, daily social contacts, and of course, a paycheck. However, there wasn't much work available as the plants were still young and not very 'productive'. The bosses next to Tom, who we had occasionally seen last year but had never talked to us, were often at the sorting line and seemed tense. As the old hands, we did our best to teach the newbies, but it wasn't easy with new sorting guidelines coming from different sources. Georgia and 'our' boss Tom were bypassed, and eventually, Tom was fired. The other managers gave a rather intimidating speech, telling us that we were not paid to chat while sorting and that we should be grateful to have a job in these times... After this tirade, I had the strong feeling that someone would be fired, as they had already given a 'warning shot'. There weren't as many orders from supermarkets as one would expect for the season. If everyone had been as efficient as the experienced workers, we could have easily done with 2-3 fewer people. I had 2 suspicions, both of them about people who didn't really put in the effort, but I only shared my suspicions with Matze and Camilla, an Argentinian backpacker. Lynette came to visit us in Brisbane over the weekend end of May. Unfortunately, we chose a very cold day (14 degrees outside and drizzling rain), but we made the best of it. We celebrated the reunion with delicious pancakes for breakfast and then played in the living room next to the portable heater that I had recently bought second-hand. Later, we met up with Edmond in Coolum for table tennis and sat by the campfire with some of the people from the movie nights last year. It was the first time in a while that we were in a group, and it was nice to chat with different people. The next morning, I went for a walk in the national park in Noosa with Lynette. Despite the cool wind, we enjoyed the warmth of the sun and the shimmering blue tones of the sea. For lunch, we cooked Pad Thai under Matze's guidance and played team games afterwards.

The car problems, such as 2 broken door handles, a broken window motor, and a broken taillight, had been slowly repaired by Matze over the past few weeks. To avoid having to search for each individual part from scrap dealers (who didn't have them in stock anyway), we decided to buy another Pajero with a blown engine. In a way, we dismantled the car, and it was a bit sad because it was actually a nice car.

On Wednesday, the 6th week of our work, which was a day off due to the low workload, Matze called me around noon. I was confused, as he had driven to the Terella brewery because they kindly allowed him to use a small brewing setup to make a Märzen beer according to his own recipe. It wasn't time for him to finish yet, and from the tone of his voice, I immediately sensed that something serious had happened. 'Did you receive the email?'... no word about the content, and no, I hadn't checked my emails yet that day. I held my breath, and when Matze said, 'We have been fired,' I initially thought it was a very bad joke from him. I found the email in question, read it, read it again. The air escaped me. I felt empty, and it took a long time for anger to replace that emptiness, the feeling of being betrayed and treated unfairly. What now? Finding farm work nearby would not be easy at all; we knew enough people who had been searching for weeks. So first, back to delivering food for Uber Eats and keep an eye out for something better. By chance, I came across a job in Boulia, in the Outback of Western Queensland. With the confirmation over the phone that we could start there in early July, we gave notice for our room. In 2 weeks (due to the notice period), we could start... the joyful anticipation helped me get through the sometimes quite exhausting days of waiting for food deliveries..... In our last week, we visited Brisbane again, where I had booked a nice but cheap AirBnB for us. It was the only 2-story house surrounded by skyscrapers, and our balcony overlooked the river and the sunset. Our landlord was there, and he was a really nice and relaxed guy, and we felt comfortable right away. Since the weather wasn't that great, and there was a very limited range of activities due to Corona, we had a relaxed time and went out for burgers. The next morning, I met up with Lynette for table tennis and breakfast, giving Matze the opportunity to watch Netflix and chill. Later, we went to Mount Coot-Tha and went for a short hike to the lookout point. After a small game session in our AirBnB (our landlord had no problem with it, on the contrary, he enthusiastically played a round of Uno), we said goodbye to Lynette with a heavy heart. The next morning, we had a relaxed time; we could take as much time as we wanted to check out. We enjoyed a sunny breakfast on the balcony and played a game of table tennis. In the afternoon, my 'shift' with Menulog started, another delivery service. On June 27th, the day of the restart had come, we said goodbye to Edmond with self-made Russian cheesecake and started packing our 1000 things into the car. We sold the bike and our portable heater (I would miss the latter a lot in the coming nights), I cleaned the carpet with a rental machine from Bunnings. I had never done something like this before, but it was a condition in the rental agreement, and I wasn't willing to pay almost $100 for a cleaning service. When we left around 10 PM, we were both pretty exhausted and happy that we had finally finished everything, there was no time for nostalgia.

Our poor old car was struggling under the weight it had to carry again. We drove north on the highway towards Gympie, with the Kinbombi Falls near Goomeri as our destination for the day. We had stayed there once before, a beautiful spot next to a waterfall in the middle of nature. Just on the highway, we drove over a dead animal lying there. A little too late to avoid it, but not big enough to cause any damage - or so we thought. The rest of the drive was uneventful and relaxed, and we reached our sleeping spot around half past 10 at night. We were very surprised at how crowded it was, but it was the weekend and the start of the holiday season, so no wonder. It was the coldest night for us since we left Sydney. Wrapped up in everything we had, we went to bed and woke up a few times from the cold. In the morning, we made ourselves a nice cup of coffee, packed everything up again, and hit the road. And we started counting. Dead animals on the side of the road, because the further you get away from civilization, the more you see. Mainly kangaroos, but we also saw two koalas, birds, emus, and rabbits. We drove through Chinchilla, where we looked at a big watermelon and the historic town center, and Miles to Yuleba, where we stopped for lunch and a coffee. While walking around the car, I suddenly noticed some strange spikes sticking out of our left front and back tires. No idea where they came from or what they were, so I started pulling them out. One of the bigger ones suddenly went 'zzzssschhh', so I stuck it back in. After consulting with some locals, we found out that the spikes were from an echidna (a kind of Australian porcupine). Great. The tires were only 5000 km old and already ruined. Luckily, they didn't lose air, and so we made it to our nightly resting place. There, we made a nice campfire by a small river. Clara found a frog from Verrierdale, which she had packed with our camping chairs, and nursed it back to health before releasing it in its new home nearly 600 km east of its old home. In the morning, after a not-so-cold night anymore and with the tires still intact, we drove to Roma, the heart of the Queensland Outback. Clara looked at the biggest bottle tree in the area, and I took care of the tire. The rear one was fortunately not punctured, but the front one couldn't be saved. What can you do... 250 dollars poorer and a quarter of an hour later, everything was fine again, and I drove to Clara, who was checking out an old gas drilling station in town. And then we had to move on, as we still wanted to go to Charleville, where a famous observatory stands and you can stargaze. Unfortunately, it was fully booked, but there was a campground just outside of town that also offered this. So, we only looked at the exhibition in the observatory and then drove to the campground. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, and we only caught a few glimpses of the moon. But we got our money back, and despite everything, it was very interesting. The best things were my homemade beer, of which we treated ourselves to a few bottles, and the first shower since we left.

In the morning, we drove back to Charleville, looked at the town, filled up the car, and then continued towards Longreach via Augathella and Blackall. We stopped in Augathella for breakfast, looked around the town, drove to Blackall, walked around a bit, quickly bought something, and then stopped just before Barcaldine for the night at the Lara Wetlands Bushcamp, a beautiful campground in the middle of nowhere next to a small lake with a thermal pool. The whole area in southwestern Queensland is located on the Great Artesian Basin, a basin that has huge underground water reserves, which have been made accessible through drilling. The water comes to the surface with high pressure and temperature and keeps the whole dry area here alive. The pool was fed by such a spring and averaged 38 degrees. Around 9 o'clock in the evening, we treated ourselves to a nice bath, all alone in the pool, and then went to bed feeling warm. We slept like babies, and refreshed, we set off again in the morning. We briefly stopped in Barcaldine, had breakfast again, and then continued to Longreach, the largest town in the area, where we visited two op shops, learned a bit about the history of the area, and thanks to reception in the area, could see where we would spend the night. The place was quickly found, about 30 km north of the town, a little off the road next to a river. A beautiful place with trees and a campfire pit, just a bit dusty and a few bones in the vicinity. Clara made herself comfortable in her chair and read a bit while I looked for firewood for the evening. We cooked ourselves a delicious dinner, sat by the fire, and enjoyed a cold homemade beer. Thanks to the warmth, we were finally able to sleep without all our warm clothes. In the morning, we took our time, made coffee, packed everything up, and finally started the second-to-last leg of our journey. There wasn't much left on the way, we were already too far west. Only Winton was on the way, a small Outback town with the cheapest gas station within a 500 km radius, which we took advantage of to fill up as much as possible. The next stop was Middleton, the smallest town I had ever been to. There was an abandoned barn, a telephone booth, and the village's hotel/pub, run by the only residents, an old couple. We slept at the campground, the 'Hotel Hilton,' together with 3 other camping groups. An older gentleman who has been traveling through Australia for 23 years with his dog and a converted bus gave us some tips for our further journey and gave us 2 tire levers in case we have to change a tire during our trip, which is not uncommon on the roads in the Outback. Many roads are simple dirt tracks, and it often happens that you drive into a hole. The last almost 200 km were quickly done. We stopped a few times at historical points along the way, walked around a bit, read some information signs, and finally reached Boulia, the destination of our journey, around noon. We went to the local supermarket, bought some breakfast items, visited the Min Min (a nocturnal light phenomenon in this area) exhibition, and then, after about 20 minutes' drive, reached the cattle farm that will be our home for the next 3 months.

The summary of our trip:

Australia is not always pleasantly warm

Never drive over an echidna

Avoid driving at night or dusk if possible

And have a bull bar because:

Many animals don't handle traffic well!

Statistics of our trip:

6 days

Approximately 1200 km of driving

Approximately 180L of fuel

1 new tire

1L of oil

20L of drinking water

Animals:

Alive:

Kangaroos: 13

Eagles: 3

Rabbits: 2

Wild boars: 1

Emus: 1

Northern Spiny Tailed Gecko: 1

Total: 21

Dead:

Kangaroos: 713

Rabbits: 8

Emus: 12

Birds: 12

Cows: 3

Koalas: 2

Echidnas: 2

Sheep: 1

Unidentifiable: 250

(loose bone piles not counted)

Total: 1003