The Jo Guest Posse – Brisbane again & Bundaberg

It turns out that Adam had left the UK in a bit of an impulse trip for reasons that we don’t really need to go into and hadn’t really had time to arrange to bring that much money with him so it looked like we were going fruit picking again.  As we’d had such a problem with just turning up in Bundaberg previously we thought it would be better to check availability so we booked ourselves into a hostel that would send us out to the farms in the same way that Bilyana had done many months before.  There were 3 of us, Adam and I were joined by Kiwi Steph.  She was also in need of a bit of extra cash.  After we’d let Adam get used to the heat we went off on our latest adventure.

During our week in Bundaberg we mainly discovered it was Tomato season.  I’d have thought that this would have been one of the easiest experiences but I have come to realise that what ever you pick it is back breaking work.  Adam seemed to make a friend at one of the biggest farms, an old man took it on himself to check and double check every row that Adam was working on and loved it when he found he had missed any of the fruits.  This really wound him up but even he had to see the funny side when he found the old geezer going down the row on his hands and knees checking for ripe tomatoes hidden among the leaves.

As the season was finishing we found that we were having a few short days and this gave us the chance to get to know the social side of Bundaberg, as well as the local bars we found that some of the backpackers would gather in the parks for picnics or just to sit and watch the world go by or have a few beers.  It was still legal to drink in the streets of certain towns in those days.

What we did find during this time is that Steph can be a real pain.  I think she got bored easily and took it upon herself to wind us up.  For example, the room we were staying in had 6 people to a room, this meant that the bunks were 3 high instead of the normal 2. I had the top bunk, Adam on the bottom bunk and Steph took the middle bunk.  Sometimes when I was trying to sleep she’d wind me up by pushing the bottom of my bunk with her feet and dropping it again.  I would tell her to stop and all would go quiet until I was falling asleep and then it would happen again.  Eventually she stopped but this was not something that was to go unpunished.   As I was always the first up I thought of the perfect way to get my own back.  Steph was not easy to get up in the mornings so my plan would kill 2 birds with one stone, I would wake her up and I could get my own back.

The following morning I got out of bed as usual and made my way to the kitchen to get everything ready for the day, our water bottles had been in the freezer all night so I took them out and let them thaw slightly and went back to give Steph her wake up call.  I crept into the room, opened the bottle and tipped a little water into the lid of the bottle.  I then crept over to the edge of the bed and delivered the ice cold water into her ear…and ran like hell.  She was up like a shot and angry.  I could not stop laughing and the commotion woke Adam who had no idea what was going on.  Steph went back to Brisbane leaving Adam and I to finish the week on our own.

Bucket night in Brisbane.

While I had been away lots of things had changed in Brisbane, they had opened up a few new bars in the City and the Beer Bash had changed locations.  I wasn’t as much of a fan of the new location as it was smaller and a little more chaotic than the Story Bridge hotel but we still went a couple of times.  What I did like though was “Bucket Night” in the Barracks Hotel underneath the backpackers.  The concept of “The Bucket” was simple but brilliant.  For about $5 you could buy a plastic “Bucket”.  

Yeah...another Bucket...!

The bucket contained shots of a spirit of your choice from behind the bar.  This was topped up with your mixer of choice and ice and you were then given a straw to help make this drinkable.  I never managed to work out how many shots were in a bucket and I never saw anyone drinking any other way than through the straw, everyone embraced it as a nice gimmick. After a while you do start to feel the effects and there is quite a big difference between the buckets.  No 1 and 2 are fairly easy, number 3 starts to get interesting and there is a huge difference if you manage to get to bucket number 4.  A 4 bucket night is a rarity and I don’t recall ever hearing of a 5 bucketer.