Possum, Pastries, Visa

A big thanks to everyone who told us about the crazy possum in Canberra that immobilized itself with pastries last week. I guess pastries were the answer. Next time we're fiending for Vanilla Slices at the Tat Bakery we'll have to grab an extra and see if our little friend enjoys them as much as we do.For those of you who haven't seen the picture yet, here it is.

 

( Thanks Ann S. for sending this over!)

This week has been full tilt work to try and make up for last week's torrential rains. Not fun. Everything is muddy and smells like stale manure water. Worse, the fruit has all begun to rot. See when ripe fruit is still on the tree and you can't pick it off because of rain it starts to spoil. This week has been picking peaches and the brown rot has gotten to them. Its rather sad actually the fruit is otherwise beautiful, nice big orange peaches.

Even one spot of the rot and we have to chuck it out of the bin. One little spot will, within a day, consume and infect the whole fruit. Within three days its turned into a shriveled corpse of a peach, and if you don't take it out of the bin, it will take the rest down with it.

We've been picking  steady 6 bins a day which has won us back the right to pick apples ( wages again yay!) but I can only dream of how many bins we would be making if it wasn't for the rain.

Tatura usually gets 40mm of rain this time of year, so far this season they've had 220mm. Climate change is a bitch. It amazes me that it even continues to generate political discussion at home. It's clearly an international phenomena, beyond politics.

All you've got to do is ask people and all around the world they will say the same thing, " The weather isn't usually like this…"

In other news we have some bad news.

When we first arrived in Australia the idea was to make some money stay for a few months and then go elsewhere to spend said money. We would do our 88 days of farm work to get our second visa and then come back next January for the season again.

This as proven to be a failed experiment. For one earning money out here is easy but so is spending it. Its slips through your fingers so that even though you're earning over 1,000 dollars a week, you somehow are still living paycheck to paycheck. Downer, 'cause this is no easy work.

Second, we had heard a rumor back when we were still innocent and hopeful, in Melbourne before we had even found our car. That rumor said " Americans can't get second year visas." We laughed at the poor fool, how under- informed. "Of course American's can get second year visas…."

He was right.

He also just left the country totally broke…. he had to fly home using his frequent flier miles…

We don't have any frequent flier miles.

So, now the question looms, "what are we going to do?". With the money that we spent getting here, getting set up and living here, we could have stayed on in Asia for another 5 months. Not that I regret having come here, seeing another piece of this beautiful Earth but damn.

If we want to leave we still have to work, but with how long it takes to save, that seriously limits not only our travel around the country here, but our prospects of going anywhere else. Damn.