Sydney Living

I am currently temping at an office that is so close to Luna Park, we can hear people screaming. It's a lil disturbing. But the view is stunning across the harbour. It's sunny and I am going to take the ferry home to Balmain. I love the ferry. 

This Luna Park face? Scares the crap out of me.. *shudders*

Ok, so I haven't blogged in ages. In the blink of an eye I it is already 6 months later and my little blog has been silent. Well, I've been a little busy.

Farming for my 2nd Year Visa: Finished

I am pleased to announce I am Wang free: I finished my farming! It was hard. A lot of people speak to me about it and go, 'ah sure it was a great experience. I can't imagine anything better than going off into the wilderness for a few months and not having to think about anything'. 

Well, it isn't quite like that. If it was a month away of learning about organic food, planting, yoga, sewing, riding horses, singing to animals in the style of Snow White and exploring the rural areas of Australia with other people, then yes. It would have been a marvellous experience. In my brain when I imagined doing my 3 months of rural work I was wearing a wide brimmed straw hat, a farm like checked dress, holding a wicker basket, picking apples out of a tree and skipping through fields of long grass, like something from The Waltons. I would be staying a cosy farmstead, meeting lots of people similar to myself and getting paid. I would then return home to Melbourne where some amazing person had read my CV and said, 'hey, we need YOU!'. 

However, while I did learn a lot and got to see parts of Australia I hadn't even thought of going to, it wasn't the cosy farm yard dream. There were elements of great things and I did discover things I didn't know I could do, but it was hard.

I was on my own for most of the three months, with no idea where to go to get farm work, with no guarantee that the next farm wasn't going to contain a bunch of crazies and no stable job to return to once I returned to the big smoke. I know that sounds like I'm looking at the negatives but I felt like I was in 2nd Year visa rural captivity. 

It took five farms to fulfil my 88 days of farm work. 

Things it has taught me:

• What vine grafting is
• I love swimming
• I am more resilient than I think I am: I have met so many people who gave up on the farming after a few weeks because they encountered hard situations. In some ways I was lucky because not EVERY boss I had in the rural areas were nutters, but there were a few. However no matter how shit I was feeling, I stuck with it. It is an experience, and not one I regret but until you do it yourself, do not assume you know the peaks and troughs of working for your 2nd Year Visa. 

For anyone who want advice about farming, I can offer the following tips:

- Give yourself enough time – I only had 115 days to do 88 days of farm work and that was risking it, hence the willingness to do unpaid work. You will not always get 88 days of consecutive farm work, so give yourself 5-6 months to get it completed. 

- Save up money before you go. While there are hostels that can offer you work, it can be sporadic and you could be waiting a while so make sure you are no reliant on money that you haven't earned yet.

- If you have no idea where to get paid farm work from, research what is in season and where. Use it as an opportunity to see parts of Australia you haven't even thought of going to yet. If you really just need to start as soon as possible, do what I did and join the Willing Workers On Organic Farms (WWOOF). You can get work almost immediately. Plus, generally you don't need any experience to do it, so if you need to get experience in farm work, wwoofing is the way. It isn't paid work but they provide your accommodation and food, and might be able to advise you where to get paid work from. Just make sure you are in the correct postcode and that they can sign off your 1263 form to prove the work you are doing is legitimate. 

- When you submit your 2nd Year Application, put everything in there. I mean, ANY SCRAP OF EVIDENCE. I made sure with each farm I took photos to prove I was there, wrote letters that stated the days I was there and the type of work I did and go the farmers to sign them, got them to sign the 1263 form, receipts and bank statements to prove I was in the areas I worked in and my application form with the fee. I put all of this evidence in a coherent folder. It sounds thorough and pernickety but it meant there was no question of them sending me back anything and asking for proof if I'd done my farm work. 

I don't have any contacts I can send you as most of what I did was through wwoofing and the paid work is no longer running

The farm months were a roller coaster of many things, but I just want to say thank you to those who kept in touch. The phone calls, emails and visits were a valuable source of sanity for me!

Moving to Sydney

So then it was suddenly a few weeks before Christmas, and I was trundling on a train back to Melbourne. I packed up my stuff, donated my crappy teenager bike to charity, said goodbye to the Big4 Wangarratta caravan park and headed off to the city. 

The 4 days that followed my return were not the isolated quiet nights I had predicted, but 4 days of going a little mad after being released back into the wild. Tequila and old fashioned cocktails were unintentionally involved. Thanks goes to Helena, Luisa and Dave!

The lovely Cat went to Brazil for Christmas and very kindly leant me her apartment in Sydney CBD for the weeks she was away. Hello HELLO! Bit of change..

Now, with the farming and all that space to think, I made the decision to move to Sydney. I'd done Melbourne for the most part of my first year in Aus and figured I wouldn't be around for much longer than two so it was time to try a new place. 

Plus, loads of good friends had recently rocked up to Sydney. 

And Sydney has been amazing. I still love Melbourne and all it offers, but my first 6 months here have been really good. 

Having neglected my blog for the past few months I can't possibly put everything into one entry, but I'll summarise. 

Myself, Tor, Al and his parents had our first Christmas in Australia. We wanted to celebrate the lack of winter, have a BBQ on the rooftop and snorkel on the beach, but unfortunately Mother Nature gave us the finger and we had torrential rain all day, so we had to stay in. We had a delightful Christmas lunch and saw the humour in it. Typical!

Mojitos and The Inbetweeners on Christmas Day

New Years Eve in Sydney, watching the fireworks from Cremourne Park with a group of friends and a picnic shall go down in my memory as one of the most amazing experiences. It is truly phenomenal. We set up early in the park to make sure we'd get a good view and then relaxed in the sun. The atmosphere was like a festival, everyone in view of the harbour bridge waiting in excited anticipation for the first firework to explode and welcome in 2013. 

It was bloody amazing. As people who have worked in the pyrotechnics industry, myself and Tor got very technical about the type of shells, candles and mines they were using in the display. Well, we like to think we did.. 

And then in the blink of an eye, I turned 30. Like a bandaid, ripped it offend it was fine. It was a classy affair, sipping bubbles in Walsh Bay at The Bar At The End Of The Wharf, over looking the Harbour Bridge across from Luna Park. My beautiful friend contacted my friends and put together a book of 30th Birthday messages. It was one of the most touching and invaluable presents I have ever received. Eternally grateful to Tor and all who wrote in it. 

My 30th Birthday gathering, Bar At The End Of The Wharf, Walsh Bay

All in all, a good start to the year.

RockCorps

Somehow I got to a place in my life where I was stood in the middle of a roller skating rink next to a DJ with 100 volunteers painting a community centre in Sefton. Now, while many know Sefton as the place with the 24 hour strip club across the road from the gun shop (seriously..) it is also the home of an amazing Community Centre (with a roller skating rink) run by a very passionate hard working woman called Luna.  

I was working for RockCorps. RockCorps is a project which has run all over the world which aims to encourage people to get involved in volunteering in their local community. RockCorps organised a concert with Guy Sebastian, The Pot Bellez, Tinnie Tempah and The Script – the only way to get a ticket was by volunteering 4 hours of your time on a community project. 

A team of Coordinators and Project leaders after our first volunteer event at Project 107, Redfern

I worked as a project leader, managing an amazing creative team of people. We worked all over Sydney – Palm Beach, Liverpool, Blacktown, Cronulla, Glenfield – and over the course of 3 months we worked with over 1000 volunteers, transforming emergency housing, youth training centres, national parks and everything in-between.

This is the first year RockCorps has come to Australia and to introduce it to other cities, myself and my colleague (uber lovely friend) Kez took the project on the road with our van, BJ. In the 3 weeks we drove approx 5143km: From Sydney to my beloved Melbourne, Melbourne to Adelaide, Adelaide back to Sydney and then Sydney to Brisbane and back. I saw a lot of Australia in that time, and at the same time a lot of nothing in Australia. The closer you get to the centre, the more barren it gets. Some of the motels you book look innocent on the ads, but then you rock up and they are super sleazy. And kangaroos want to jump at your van and injure you as you drive. 

Kez with some bikies by The Big Merino, Goulburn on the way to Melbs

Team Collective, Melbourne

Jerome, Kez and me at Ponyfish Island, Melbourne

Kez loving the lighthouse from Round The Twist

Coast on The Great Ocean Road

View from the van, Hay plains. Whole lot of nothing, driving from Adelaide to Hay to Sydney

Byron Bay

Rewarding ourselves with wine in our hotel room after a long day, Brisbane

The whole RockCorps experience was amazing. I will look back on it as such a unique and humbling experience: the community groups, the traveling, my amazing team,  the concert, travelling, working with French people, laughing at so much stuff.. 

Mornington Peninsula

I also got the opportunity to spend the Easter Bank Holiday weekend at a gorgeous wedding near Dromana on The Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Helena (who was my boss in Melbourne) got married to the lovely Ian at a winery. Gorgeous wedding, beautiful area. Would definitely recommend it!

My Top Sydney Things So Far

• Ruth and Barry coming to visit, hanging out in Manly at a wedding celebratory BBQ while an inappropriate old man teases Barry and Meghans Dad shoots possums. It's a long story..
  
  
  
• Lying in the sun on Curl Curl beach on my day off, with a take away coffee and a green beach umbrella called Neddy. It's now one of my favourite beaches and whenever I am feeling frazzled, I think of that day.

  

  Curl Curl, or 'Curly', as the local Tugboat Man calls it..

• The Laneway Festival with Dave and Kez in Rozelle. Alt-J, Bat for Lashes, MsMr, Politcia, Jesse Ware, turbo shandies and cocktails.
  
  
  
• An open top bus tour, drinking expensive wine from the Green Room in the Opera House with Cat Dillon wearing a chicken hat. 
• The Vivid Festival: for past few years Sydney have put on a festival of projection and light. All along the harbour there are up to 60 installations which use light in unique spaces. The most memorable piece is the projections on the Opera House to music. The whole thing is brilliant: there is so much to explore, with cute markets  and hidden lights. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Manly Mondays: While both in the position of job hunting/ having Mondays off, myself and Tor would meet and inevitably end up on the ferry to Manly, as we love the Manly Ferry. Not in a weird trains spotter kind of way where we tick off the names of the ferries we've been on, but it's being out on the water and watching the gorgeous sights of the harbour go by. When we get to Manly, we eat lunch on the beach and head back. When you don't have a mode of transport in your home town that is a ferry, the Manly Ferry can be pretty exciting..
• The huge floating duck in Darling Harbour for The Sydney Festival. 

  

  View as a steward for the Sydney Festival Opening Ceremony with  Florentijn Hofmans Rubber Duck in Darling Harbour

• St Paddies Day with Sean, Daphne, Cat, RockCorps and Tugboat man

  

  St Paddys Day with my RockCorps gals, Hyde Park

• Canberra with Cat and Priya
• Living in Balmain

  

  View from Balmain East Ferry Wharf
  
  
  

  Once again I am trying to find another job. I am doing a lot of temping and getting to work in some great places. Some people are lovely, some people are horrible, but that's just life. I want to get something more permanent so that I can stay here, but also so that I can book a flight home (via South East Asia). I miss home - a million and one of my friends are all pregnant (no exaggeration..) and I want to see you all. 

In the mean time, go exploring and see stuff. It makes you appreciate where you are living- especially in a small countries like UK/Ireland. Just an hours drive and you can be in a totally different dialect and area. Do it!