I’m aware how mental the title sounds but that it exactly what happened last week. For anyone who has been keeping up with my blog over the past few months will know our plan although a loose one was to head to Melbourne to find work and settle there for a few months. Desperate to start looking for a job due to the dwindling funds we flew to Melbourne hours after the total eclipse in Cairns and the next day had resumes printed out and had begun the job hunt.
Having only arrived in the city with no clue what to expect it was all a bit crazy. We didn’t know the areas well and had issues on how we were meant to pay for the tram. We spend hours pounding the pavements only to find there were little place in those areas to hand out our resumes. We were convinced we were covering ground and wouldn’t have known there was nothing there otherwise but it was still very frustrating. We spent hours applying for jobs on Gumtree and such sites but in all the job hunting we were overlooking the small things.
The more we job hunted the worse my effort became we were applying for ‘shitty’ jobs neither of us wanted to do and the more the time passed the more I wasn’t warming to Melbourne. I had read about a vibrant café scene, an easy living city and beautiful pink St Kilda sunsets. Beautiful St Kilda turned out to be what I can only describe as ‘Crack Whores’ standing on street corners, drunken men shouting and swearing at me and it being the sort of place I wouldn’t walk around alone in the dark. Hell I didn’t even feel safe walking around with other people. The vibrant café culture turned out to be confined to one suburb (from what I could see). My dream was that’s how the whole city would be instead reality was this tucked away suburb north of the city. Easy living was back to city life, staying in a hostel which turned in to living nightmare and having to take public transport during rush hour and we all know how much I don’t like public transport.
The opportunity we imagined wasn’t coming easy and we found ourselves being offered jobs we really didn’t want to do, the sort of thing we could do in any city, the sort of thing we would only take whilst still looking for another job. The pay wasn’t great with many being based purely on commission of sales – something you could never guarantee. I had seen an advert for working and living on boat in South Australia but not really given it much thought until half way through the week when our spirits were dropping and dropping. We spent the whole day discussing the idea, missing job interviews and really feeling like we had gone mad. By the end of the day we had our answer, an answer we had come to days ago without even realising it. Fruit picking on the Murray River in a beautiful place was much better than doing a job we didn’t want to do with not great pay, in a city where we hadn’t found what we were looking for and the temptation to spend everything we earn. After phoning and finding out all the details in full and really understanding what we were throwing ourselves in to we booked a bus that night to leave for the following day.
We know at some point we will return – we have the f1 Grand Prix, the Great Ocean Road and much more to see, but for not it just wasn’t right for us. We weren’t ready for city life just yet after London. We didn’t see the point in silly jobs when we could do something even crazier, something to push ourselves and build our character as well as count towards our regional work for our 2nd year visa – if we decide we want to stay that long.
So far most of our planning has gone out of the window, this being the most unplanned change of all but taking the overnight bus out of Melbourne felt like the most right thing we have done since landing in this city. This next part is exciting and I cannot wait to find out what crazy plan we follow next.
