Monsters & Vegans Oh My!!

It’s 2014 and about time I started telling a few tales from my roller coaster year of 2013. 2013 started off with a bang and only got better as it matured with age. I was blessed to be able to travel, experience things you couldn't even fathom unless you leave the suburbs and learn so much from everything I did. I was given the opportunity to come to Australia for a visit 9 months ago but I just haven’t gotten around to leaving yet. Even since Australia, I’ve been seeing this beautiful country with my wonderful boyfriend who puts up with me through my fits of “funger” and “hangriness”. We slept in the back of the car travelling to the 12 apostles and snacked courtesy of 711 and any cheap roadside café. I got my first job in Sydney which lead me to working with a morbidly obese, ecstasy loving, cocaine raging Greek boss and his petite, gay business partner that was potentially more bitchy than Regina George of “Mean Girls” (Fetch is NOT going to happen!). After a turbulent 5 months of working for the bosses likely summoned from hell, I decided it was time to leave and go do some work on a farm so I could legally stay in Australia for a little bit longer. Now here’s the perplexing part – the government tells you to complete 88 days of farm work but there are no terms or conditions set out for the farmers or industries that take you to complete your time. So basically, it’s at the farmer’s discretion to work you as much as they want for a little to no wage, they don’t have to provide you accommodation and they can even charge you for a shower after they’ve made you work a 16 hour day in the sweltering sun. There’s no agency you can call to make sure this doesn’t happen to you and you can’t call the police because you’re there on your own free will. Unless you come across a Buffalo Bill farmer, then you can call the police. I went to the only place I knew of to find work – Gumtree or as we say in Canada, kijiji. There were hundreds of ads looking for backpackers to come pick fruit, muster cattle, working in shearing sheds, child care that could be signed off as agricultural work, jarring honey, picking beans and killing cattle for Big Macs. It was a tad overwhelming because you have to go out into a rural area and you really have no idea where you’re going to end up or with who. There’s never a mention of a police check on either end and your accommodation isn’t mentioned or shown so you can only hope for the best. I selected an ad that was looking for a girl to work in a pub and do some casual renovation work and painting. It seemed like a nice enough place and I received a response within an hour. Unfortunately they had already found another girl for the spot but there was another family willing to take me for my 88 days. Even better, I could catch a train only an hour away from Sydney and then they would be able to drive me to their farm the next day! The mum was 6 ½ months pregnant with two kids aged 7 and 5. Seemed nice enough – a real liberal, hippie sort from what she had told me over the phone and in our emails. We went back to a rental property they owned and were fixing up. I was told we were only staying the night and heading back to the farm the next morning. I could not believe the state of the house when I first walked in. I’m sometimes criticized for being a bit of a ‘snob’ and doing a mental ‘white glove test’ of people’s homes when I first arrive. Just stepping on the floor was enough for me – there was over a week’s worth of dirt on the floor, jam sandwiches smeared on the walls, a few days’ worth of dishes piled up in the sink and on the floor, a filthy bathroom and just shit everywhere in the house. (sorry about the language mom) I took a deep breath, reminded myself I wasn’t in the city anymore and just needed to accept I had moved in the Beverly Hill Billies. The mum got me started on dishes and cleaning straight away but with no spray cleaners or soap and just a gross old rag. The mountain of housework eventually diminished into a molehill and then it came to lunch. If you know me well enough – there’s no doubt I love my food. It’s a passion that was instilled in me while my mom was pregnant with me. I’ve been well fed my entire life and appreciate a good meal or the effort when someone else cooks for me. But this mum, needed to go back to high school home economics and learn how to boil water properly. I remember being  so hungry and looking forward to a good afternoon fill. Well, instead I got lamb chops that were semi cooked but with no seasoning on them at all (because “salt and pepper are bad for you”). The poor lamb chops were accompanied with a side of spaghetti except she had forgotten to stir the pasta while it was cooking so it was more like a glutinous lump of unidentifiable food that was topped with a tin of tomatoes. Yes, she literally put the pasta on the plate and then just opened a tin of tomatoes and put them right on top of the pasta. My taste buds were crying outrage as I took the first bite and couldn’t believe I was even eating this. I’d never been turned off the idea of eating as quickly as my first day with the hill billies. This was lunch number one, there were 87 to go. My day only got better when it came to sleeping arrangements. The mum had told me not to bother bringing a sleeping bag or a camping mattress because she had an abundant supply for me at her place. After dinner that night, she told me she had actually forgotten to bring me a mattress. No dramas, I had brought a yoga mat and could sleep on that. And then it came, there was no sleeping bag or quilt for me either. Just a picnic blanket that was 1 metre by 1 metre, a tarp on one side and just a thin layer of polyester on the other. It was so cold that night too that I had layered on all my clothes and was still freezing cold. The icing on the cake was realizing that the carpet in the room had been previously occupied by dogs who I’m pretty sure defecated on every square inch of the place. I had the most miserable sleep that night and then woke up in the morning to the smell of urine coming out of the kitchen…

I remember waking up that morning not totally remembering where I was and being confused by the sounds of children screaming and crying and a rather nauseous odor coming from the kitchen. I quickly snapped back that I wasn’t in the city but rather voluntarily in some hell hole. I went outside my room to see the kids biting each other while the mum was taking breakfast out of the oven. When asked if I was hungry, I almost instinctually replied with a “does a bear shit in the woods” but remembered there were young tender minds in my presence and it was responsibility to positively influence them. I replied with a bleary eyed “yes” and eagerly sat at the table waiting some breakfast. What was served to me I wouldn’t even feed to my own dumpster diving Jack Russell. The “quiche” staring back at me was made with cheese, carrot, onion, wilted lettuce, tomatoes which had the rotten bits cut off and beef kidneys. I couldn’t even look or smell this without wanting to throw up everywhere. I pushed my plate away and said I was more of a “coffee first thing in the morning girl”. To my horror, there was no coffee of tea anywhere in the house because they believed caffeine seriously stunted your growth and was terrible for you. Luckily I found a chocolate bar in my bag and that filled me up til dinner that night. We were supposed to be leaving that afternoon to go back to their farm but that was continually pushed to “tomorrow” which really turned into three weeks at their rental unit in the suburbs. Just when I thought things could not get any worse, we arrived at the family farm.

Any low budget horror movie seems to start and finish in some sort of a Tarantino-style abandoned house. In our subconscious, we’re disgusted and can’t imagine such a place exists. We think that some sick bastard has a vivid imagination that no real human being would ever physically be capable of building something like it real life. Well, when we arrived at the family farm at 2:30 in the morning after an eight hour trek, I could not believe what I was seeing. We had arrived to a shack in the middle of a 25 acre field surrounded by olive trees and five angry, territorial goats. Speechless is an understatement for when I entered the house – the stench and the mess were comparable to something you would find in the A&E series “Hoarders”. As part of the reoccurring trend, there was just shit everywhere in the house. Any sense of pride had obviously seeped out through the gaps in the windows and walls into the country night. Sleeping arrangements were once again a treat. This time, I had the luxury of sleeping in between two church pews amongst moving boxes and odd pieces of furniture. The mum was even proud to brag about how she had stolen the pews from a church that had left them outside whilst renovating. I couldn’t think of a worse way to gain bad karma in life!! I woke up the next morning to the two monsters trying to shove their fingers up my nose and had to remind myself this was indeed reality and not some “Chucky” style nightmare!! With the sunlight illuminating the features of the house – I was left speechless. The mess and filth of the house was even worse than what I had seen before. The stench of the house seemed more vivid and there were even more toys and boxes of junk everywhere. So basically I was designated as the house nanny/cook/maid/mediator for the Beverly Hill Billies. My day started off with cleaning a fridge which had been full of food and been turned off for three weeks while we were fixing the rental property. And then all the dirty dishes that had been left for three weeks too. But don’t worry, this was the beginning of domestic bliss and I don’t want to bore you! My time with the Clampetts made me want to pull my hair out but more importantly it made me realize exactly the type of individual I don’t want to be when I grow up. It made me realize I will feed my children three nutritious meals a day and send them to school 5 days a week. This mum thought the teacher was stupid so her kids only went to school 2 days a week and she homeschooled them 3 days a week with bible stories and outdoor adventure time. Yeah, that’ll look fantastic on their university application in 13 years. Oh yeah, did I mention that this mum didn’t believe in cooking any food because she thought cooking food ‘killed’ any nutrition in it and was toxic for your body. So these poor kids would have raw sausages for breakfast along with an apple and celery sticks. Thanks for all of the kick ass breakfasts, mom. Seeing what these kids ate made me wish I could have teleported home for a plate of blueberry pancakes and given you a massive hug.

Don’t worry, there’s a very very happy second part to this story. It involves a country pub, 2 of the nicest people I have the pleasure of knowing, a lot of farm work and the  most quirky but lovely little village the pub is in. And not a single child or crazy pregnant vegan mother is in sight!! Stay tuned for part two coming this week. 

Home Sweet Home. An Engineering Nightmare