surfer girl goes global

Just when working at the strawberry farm was getting bearable if not almost fun at times - Our supervisor kept us after work yesterday to talk to us. At first I thought he was gonna tell us we need to work faster or confirm working times for today but he starts off with ‘ well I’ve never done this before…’ and proceeds to tell us how the farm went under and the company was bought by a big million dollar american company and how we are all out of jobs and not to worry because he will get us our money for the work we did.

It was a huge shock to say the least. Everyone was pretty upset and so we had a big piss up at the hostel to drown our sorrows. There was this Kiwi guy who was telling some of us girls about this place you can go and dig through rubble to find opals and we made this plan to go out into the desert and search for them, it was pretty funny. Most of us where just kinda taking it as a laugh but this one girl was so super serious about it and really wants to go. We also decided that today we should go to Noosa to look for rich men BUT now it’s raining so we can’t.

It sucks but all in all I’m not to worried. I really want to leave here anyway. I’m so over it. I need a new crowd and a new scene and money and work of course but they’ll come. Either that or I’ll be back in Canada which I guess isn’t the worst thing in the world. I’m not stressing though. I think I’ve been taking things to seriously I just have to let go and relax and have fun and not let everything that goes wrong (because it always does) get to me. Yeah. I got The Haybird, my credit card, and my tax refund so I think I’ll be alright.

Oh and I got to watch Ellen last night when I couldn’t sleep at 2 in the morning because everyone was really loud so that was pretty awesome. And I made caramel popcorn when I was drunk, that may not have been such a good idea but it still turned out ok.

Hopefully today I’ll get my surfboard back.

So Sunday started off as a pretty good day at the hostel, woke up early (like always), took Nelson on a walk down to the beach to check out the waves but it was minging and crappy. So..  went back to the hostel and hung out. Pip came down and decided to make scones for everyone so we went on a shopping trip to get the ingredients. Then we had a tea party with scones and jam and whipped cream and pineapple and it was really really good!

Then I went to buy a new bathing suit because my old one really sucks and is falling apart and pretty much the bottoms get washed off when I’m surfing which isn’t so good. Turns out there weren’t many bathing suits around I guess it’s almost winter or something, but I did end up with some new hot pink bottoms which are awesome! And there was so much cool winter clothes at the store I started wishing for winter and bought myself a beanie. It’s really cool.

When I got back to the hostel there were a bunch of new people who were all sitting on the floor and being alternative and everyone else was on the picnic table and I wasn’t really feeling it and I really really wanted to surf. So I decided to grab one of the shitty hostel boards and go to Noosa and hopefully the water wouldn’t be so gross there.

Unfortunately I never made it that far because my car stopped working, I was going around a round about and it stopped accelerating and after pushing down on the gas a bit it went again but I decided to pull off the motorway to see if I could figure it out. And it just kept happening and then the engine got all weird and then it stalled and smoke came out of the left side of the engine…  oops.

So I called RACQ -  thank god for them. Otherwise I don’t know where I’d be. Probably still trying to hitchhike into Tiaro or where ever the heck it is I broke down last time. So they came and I got my car towed and yeah, it was kind of a rough night I was pretty down about everything. Luckily I remembered that Rove was on, I love Rove, but they changed it this season so it’s not quite as good but it still made me laugh which was awesome and really needed.

And Monday I started pulling out strawberry plants which is really hard work but you get to sit on this little cart and push yourself down the rows and you use this little piece of pipe to stick in and pull them out. It really hurts the hand and gives blisters and hurts your back. But I think I’m getting used to it now and getting kinda fast, sometimes. Like yesterday I finished a row in 40minutes which I thought was awesome. And was awesome. Tomorrow we start planting and getting paid by the hour which is good, it sounds pretty cruisy.

Monday night Luke made pasta for everyone at the hostel, well all the cool people so we had a pasta feast and then went to the Key Bar to see Alex (the son of Valerie the hostel owner) play. I was only going to stay for a little while but then he didn’t play and didn’t play and then I kept getting beers bought for me so I had to stay and finally went home at like 10:30 and crashed straight off. And then had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.

Last night was this girls birthday at the hostel and she made pizza for everyone and bought drinks and made cake, I had pizza but was so exhausted after the hard day’s work I was passed out by 9:00pm. Which was really good.

And now I guess I should be getting back to the rollercoaster that is currently my life at the hostel.

Needless to say it was rather awkward going back. Luke gave me a hug and a coconut when I returned and then proceeded to pretty much not talk to me or get drunk and act really weird but still not really talk to me, and ask Lei to a movie right in front of my face. Why tell me to come back and that you miss me – or ‘we miss you’ – if you’re gonna be a dick, really?

Whatever. Because I have been having some kick ass surfing sessions at Coolum since I’ve been back. I so love it there. A lot of times lately I just get bored because I’m stuck surfing in the whitewash or just get thrown around a lot, but Coolum has been going off lately. I was paddling into greenies and then well.. I always chickened out. I must be too slow to pop up or not angled enough because I always find myself perched at the top of the wave with the nose of the board sticking precariously out over this huge drop and freaking out and not going for it.

Usually I end up dropping in on my stomach and riding the wave out like that or a couple of times when the nose dug in and I went flying. After a while I sat on the beach and just watched the other surfers to see how they were doing it and that’s when I met Lucy and she was talking to me about finding your sweet spot for taking off and how I should just get out there and do it. She was pretty awesome.

The next day I went back with Lei and I think I started getting it a bit better, popping up a little bit sooner and getting so close to actually riding a proper wave. It’s so exciting that I’m doing so much better now! It was such an awesome day until I got back to the hostel and then I was feeling like I needed to get away so I ended up driving into Brisbane to get my new rego sticker from Glen and hang out while he had band practice. I got to play the drums too! Except I suck.

It was a pretty good night though and the next morning I was up bright and early and on the road back to Maroochy and spent the day surfing and hanging out watching movies as you do. And I got Zoolander because so many people at the hostel haven’t seen it and it’s pretty much an awesome movie and it was only $9. Awesome!

Emily left Sunday morning. It was very sad. I was on my own again and I didn’t really know what to do or where to go. I was in limbo, waiting for work, waiting for my registration sticker, I had no idea where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. I kinda wanted to go back to Maroochy but had sworn I wouldn’t. So I ended up in Noosa because it’s where everyone always wants to go to surf. So I booked a hostel and headed up north. The only thing is that I hate Noosa. I went for a bit of a surf that day but it kinda sucked so I went back to the hostel and hung around for a bit, it was a bit of a weird hostel with nobody really around. Until these obnoxious Canadian girls showed up and I avoided them. It was a sad day and I just needed some alone time.

So I decided to go see Confessions of a Shopaholic which was a pretty cute movie. And then afterwards drove to the beach and just sat there and listened to the waves and looked at the stars and thought about things, and cried and just had some time to ..  grieve I guess and just let everything sink in and deal with everything that I needed to deal with. It was really good. And I listened to ‘She’s Only Happy in the Sun’ about a million times because it’s an amazing song.

The next morning I had to decide what to do yet again but I had no idea, so I went for a surf, or wanted to go for a surf. So I woke up early and got all my stuff together and there was this guy wandering the hostel and asked me if I worked there but no and apparantly he’d gone out the night before and woke up outside a shop on Hastings Street and had walked to the hostel – which is quite a ways if you’ve ever been to Noosa. He worked at Peter Pans and had to get a key to some guy or something, I offered to give him a ride to the shop but he didn’t need to be there till 9 so I drove him home. He seemed pretty cool and he asked me to go for coffee later that day and gave me his number and got me some free internet time at Peter Pans which was awesome.

Then I went to the beach but it was some surf festival so there were lots of people and I didn’t go and instead went back to the hostel, packed up and went to the internet to try and figure out where to go next. By the time I was done I still didn’t really know but was thinking hard about heading back to Cotton Tree, at this point it seemed like I was staying away out of stubborness because really it’s the best place to waste a bit of time. I decided to go down to Coolum Beach to surf that afternoon and had such an awesome session. I actually felt like I was improving and learning things and it was so good. I got my surf stoke back! Lately I’ve been so over it and just going out out of stubborness and determination to get it but surfing there was so good, like it was back in the beginning. I actually want to go out surfing and I don’t want to get out of the water. It’s always, oh I should go but just one more wave, just one more. I love it. I’m so happy! Coolum is the best. I’m going there again today I think. I want to actually catch the green wave and I’m so close to finding my sweet spot.

Also at Coolum I met this girl Lucy who was from the UK and she had just broken her nose that day and her and her boyfriend were sleeping in their station wagon which I was seriously considering doing. And we sat on the beach and talked for a while, she seemed really cool.

After my awesome surf I decided it would be okay to go back to Cotton Tree, I’d be close to Coolum so I could come back and surf every day.  So I went back.

Well the night in Chinchilla ended up being pretty fun, Emily and I chugged what was left of our goon and then headed down to the bar and the old bogan guys in the bar start talking to us and buying us drinks and the owner gave us the phone numbers of a bunch of melon farmers in the area. My bogun was this old guy who was missing all his front teeth well it was actually only one and all I really remember from the conversation was that he was looking to get a wife from Papua New Guinea. Yikes!

The next morning we woke up pretty early and loaded up the car and took off for Charleville which sounded cool as they had a Cosmo Centre and something about Bilby’s which turned out not to be the time of year for. It was another long day of driving and at one point I was changing the CD and while I had my eyes off the road veered off it a little bit and suddenly Emily goes ‘Colleen!!!’ and there’s these two poles on the left rapidly approaching the car so I veer away but not before the mirror smashes into one and the mirror part fly’s out and into Emily’s lap. Oops.

Charleville ended up being a real dive, the Cosmo Centre was really expensive (and it was cloudy anyways that night) the people in the pub/hotel where really creepy, the nature hike was a really lame walk and the famous bomb shelter was a tiny concrete shack with a door falling off it’s hinges pretty lame - we even went out at night looking for Kangaroos but saw nothing. After that we locked ourselves in our room and watched TV for the rest of the night.

The next morning we were both so over the outback so we decided we’d drive as far as we could and hopefully make it to Byron Bay. We didn’t make it quite that far. For a while we got stuck behind these two wide load trucks and they were seriously wide loads, the oncoming traffic had to pull over off the road to make way for them to pass. We were stuck going about 80ks an hour behind them for ever, well we made it past the first one in pretty good time we’d made it to a wider spot in the road and the ‘wide load’ car behind the wide load motioned for us to pass it so we did. But the other truck was way scarier it had this huge metal thing that hung out over the road and we were driving behind that for the better part of an hour before the ‘wide load’ car finally motioned for us to pass him except it was really scary because it seriously took up most of the road and the thing that it was carrying was hanging out over the road I tried to hug the edge as much as I could but we still had to drive under the metal thing and Emily was scared it was going to take the roof of the car off but I thought we were low enough and thank god we were.  I was so relieved to have gotten away from the trucks. It really sucked.

We stopped in this cute little tiny town for lunch at Deb’s Cafe where Ellen was on TV (Which was awesome!!!) and I had really good wedges. Then drove, and drove, and drove and it’s weird because most of the roads we were on were very narrow and some of them didn’t even have lines in the middle and usually you didn’t meet many other people.

When it got dark we thought maybe it was time to stop for the night and ended up in Tenterfield a happening little town in the mountains in NSW. We stayed in this cute motel called ‘Tally Ho’ where there was free brekkie and a cute couple who owned it. And for dinner we went to this cute little family run pizza joint where we both got pasta and the girl working there made us the best strawberry sundaes.

It was really cold that night and the next morning I woke up and looked outside and the ground in the parking lot was all white. Oh my god it had snowed! How awesome was that! I went outside and then realized that it was only white gravel, it was so disappointing, but breakfast was good. That day we drove to Byron Bay but couldn’t get a hostel so ended up staying in Murwillabuh which is near Mt Warning, our original plan was to wake up early and climb the mountain to watch the sunrise BUT then we went out that night and I guess I drank too much (even though I didn’t have very much) and was too hungover to do it the next day. We got lost on the way to Murwillabuh (totally my fault) and ended up in this tiny little town where some tradies were drinking on the side of the road so we pulled over and asked for directions. They were really cool and one of them was young and pretty hot and Emily and I debated on going to Uki to party with him and his hot tradie friends but ended up not and picking up old guys in the pub in Murwillabah who bought drinks.. again. It seems to be our new favourite pasttime. Or was.

We had an amazing breakfast the next day though at this vegetarian cafe, it was corn fritters with avocado salsa, eggs, toast, spinach, mushrooms, tomato.. so yummy! And then we went to Brisbane, ended up staying at the Brisbane Backpackers Resort in the West End which was a pretty cool area of town and one I hadn’t really been to before. There were some neat shops and I was going barefoot in the thrift store and this guy who was also going barefoot starts talking to me. Turns out he’s originally from Canada but has been living here for ages, he was pretty cool we chatted a bit and then Emily and I continued on but then I ran into him again down the block and he had one of those metal head massager things and he gave me a head massage in the street. Random! But it felt SO good.

It seems like so much happens here in the blink of an eye. The past week has been pretty rough and tomorrow Emily and I are leaving the hostel and heading off to the Outback. We don’t really know where we are going yet but Emily is leaving Australia for good on Sunday and she really wants to see something different than here. So we are gonna head west, through the mountains and hope to see  something different.

It’s weird to think that I will be leaving the hostel tomorrow (maybe for good, or at least for a while) but it will be the best thing for me I reckon. I was so much happier in Surfers, it’s just hard to be here at the moment. I think I’m a little jaded with everything that’s happened, but I knew what I was doing and you can’t change the past so just gotta get over it and get on with life. Which I have mostly but it’s still sad to be here.