#what did the good people of echuca ever do to you.

[obviouschild2014]

Prestige australian drama

[oztrailblog-blog]

Forbes

Forbes. This was the town we were headed to and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with Forbes list. I had heard quite a bit about this place and that there had been a lot of floods here due to the extreme wet weather This was my maiden voyage with this car. I had bought two thirds of it and had to get it signed in my name within 21 days. I thought I’d worry about this later. We hit the camping site I had called at around midnight and we weren’t sure if we were aloud to just pitch our tent, so I called and asked if that would be okay. The woman really didn’t care.. 😂 righto. By the time the tent was pitched for the first time and everything was set up it was about 2am. Friday morning we woke up at around 8am to get to the orchard where we started thinning some peaches. I Thought we would be working on weekends as well but that was the last day of the weekend, so had a really hard earned weekend coming up. 🌴🌞 I really wanted to go on some cool road trips and spend the time on the weekends wisely instead of just “hanging around” but little did I know, there was a maccas there so free WiFi! Had a lot of stuff to do anyway. Peter had told us about this big interesting winery called “Casella” and that you can earn a lot of money there. So we prepared applications and called there etc. on that weekend I still suggested we do something cool so we drove to “Utes on the paddock”. It was a display of Utes which had been artistically modified. Found me Bundy and Vegemite there! 😎 The weekdays were basically made up of working hours, shopping, eating and having a chill. At the orchard I had to take moderate amounts of fruit (peaches, plums and nectarines) off of the trees to let the ones left in the branches to grow big and succulent. The people working there were mainly Aussies which was cool. I like my Aussies! 🇦🇺❤️ How ever there were these two Brits or pommies as they call them here, their names were Joe and Joe the said they like to “keep things simple”. Funny chaps, one of them had even heard of SLF, my dads favourite band which wasn’t really the most famous.. Guess the world really is itsy bitsy, not like the spiders here, hahahaha! The flies are a proper pest here, there were a lot at the Randalls too but they never got in the way there. I swallowed around five on one day once, it saved me taking lunch down with me, every penny counts, guys. (Lunch was always great: sandwiches, chips, fruit and a coke!) Don’t get me started on the Aussie Mozzies, blood had been spilt in Forbes. There were some ants biting my hands as well which made some fruit a bit harder to get at. On the weekend I recommended to my travel mate we just go for a blind drive to check out the area like up north of NSW. I really am into landscapes and I’ve been dying to do so for months and months, but she had some strop and started shouting at me.. Where the hell did that come from.. Oh well, not my problem. I was going to something on the weekend though like go for a drive around Forbes to see what was going on. I ended up driving to a national park because everything else “wasn’t good enough” …. 🤔 what an unappreciative thing to say. The landscapes were gorgeous around there.. However the park nice even though I mainly went to this hill adjacent to it and almost got bogged there myself. On the way back I had discovered this big creek and I couldn’t not check it out! It was huge, there were lots of tree roots on the sides and amazing water flows. What a place to watch the sun set. 🌄 Another Week flew by. Over the time at the camping spot I had met some really nice people! The owners were really friendly and open to conversation. She was telling me about some cool places I should check out like Mildura, Broken Hill and Echuca. She was just worries that we as backpackers would end up dying in the Out Back, very thoughtful of her though. She also gave us some Aloe Vera to sooth our Mosquito wounds, lovely lady 🙏🏼🙏🏼 There was this one other guy called Mickey. One day he just suddenly started talking to me. Once you start talking to him the conversation will last a fair bit which is good because he was a very funny man and rather typical Aussie! He would always joke around and throw words like “cunt”, “bastard” and bugger around 😂😂 Micky.. I would always go to him if my mate was grinding on my nerves. This one time he called us over because he had bought a piece of pork which was “too big”. So he invited us to eat a ginormous Roast dinner at his caravan. Some people out there really are amazingly generous. He was tying to support me and my dreams like recommending how I could get a sponsorship and what I should do if I wanted work on a building site or if I reeeaally really did want to study marine biology here. He along with Peter and Jamie were like a dad to me. So awesome, I am very very greatful. I even cried of joy this one time. These guys from Queensland, (“banana benders” as Mickey would call them 😂😂😂) just came up to us and gave us heeeaaps of food like soup and milk etc.. I was in awe and didn’t know what was going on. So friendly. Turned out Mickey was talking to them about us, and they all reckoned we would need support due to our “backpackers budget” 😭 Here is an empty paragraph because I cannot explain how amazed I am by this:

At this point of my journey I really started considering staying here in Australia for a long time. I have never in my life enjoyed my self more, dispite “you know who”’s behaviour sometimes. The music on triple J this month (November) was just to perfect as well, it would be, it’s Aus-music-month. Songs like “hanging by a thread” just brightened up my days This one weekend my travel companion and myself decided to go to a pub and meet up with the joes, that was a bit tricky as they were already gone by the time I had finished drinking my goon bag, lol. I met some funny Blokes and girls at this wedding there, was quite full capacity. If got weird afterwards though, I got into this dodgy conversation with some Mexican drug smugglers 😂😂 fuck that was scary. I don’t know why but I asked them if I could see their coke (I would never touch the shit) and why they were doing this. They answered “biiiiig money money” and gave me big luminous eyes. Afterwards they got suspicious and thought I was a cop so they ran away and then so did I because I didn’t want drug lord daddy to kill me. This farmer and I got into a convo though, about his tan line around his arm from his watch, he told me that that white line is like a scar and would never be like Te rest of his “cooked” arm. That again confirmed the power of the sun for me as I had previously been burned on my belly. On the sprint back to the camping site I saw this drunk guy lying in the middle of the road with his mate standing next to him laughing his pants off. I love Australia, we all got a cab together. Turned out that that man was the nephew of my boss at the orchard.. I have non-stop giggles here…. On the next day I had a goon flavoured hangover, it was terrible. During my suffering this car pulled up near ours, I went to talk with these people and ask if everything was alright. They just wanted to hose something off of their engine. They seemed very friendly they were in fact. We started talking for a while and we really got along with eachother. Their names were Jordan and Ally and they were staying there because of a birthday party the night before. After talking for like an hour they invited me and my mate to go to the cinema with them. I was delighted to do so, so we said we would meet up later! They even invited me to go fishing with them too, but I had something to do unfortunately. I told my Mummy about these guys and she freaked out and told me to be cafeful. That was spooky, I was terrified of going out with these guys as well, I was so happy 5 minutes before hand 🙈 but then my Mum calmed down.. I bet she’s watched too many backpacker slashers. 😂 Nah, these guys were genuinely awesome. My mate didn’t want to come though as sehr wanted to be able to wake up the next day. Jordan came up to me late at night my pulse was over 120 because of what my mum said, buro got over it. It turned out he messed something up. The cinema he was on about was in California in the US 😂 so we had a laugh and just watched a DVD (bad granddad) at the owners of the camping spot. We had so much fun. We exchanged numbers, would be cool too meet up with them again sometime 😊.. Great weekend!

After we were told there wasn’t much left to do at the orchard on the next Friday we started gathering our stuff together to head towards the Randalls for a quick revisit (told you it wouldn’t be the last time 😏) I bought a PNAU and Flume CD for the car as there is no AUX. Screw my straya playlist I guess. This one other elderly man that once gave us some burger patties said he wanted to say good bye to us properly, we gave him some chocolates as a token of respect. Saying good bye to everybody was emotional once again. These were some of the best people I have ever met. We got the owners some chocolates too and I gave Mickey a bottle of red wine. He told me he likes to drink a nice glass of cold red wine, bet he liked that, great man. After saying C ya l8er m8 we drove off. But everyone looked at me with a weird look. I got a call from Mickey saying I still had my boots on the roof and that the boot was still open… What’s wrong with me? 🙈

Off to Murrami! 🚗💨🌌