Emerald - Trees and More Trees

Well it’s been a while since I've updated this blog; this is mainly due to been stuck in Emerald for 4 weeks (slightly lacking facilities).

Emerald is a lovely rural town which was originally formed when gold was found then later it became a farming community, the farmers are mainly of Italian & Dutch descent growing potatoes/flowers & Trees (according to a farmer I worked with anyway).

I decided to go to Emerald as when I moved on from Sydney to Melbourne I felt a little fed up with living in the city and fancied a change (Country bumpkin at heart!). So after my harrowing journey to get there (see previous blog) it was nice to settle down in the middle of nowhere! The hostel Emerald Backpackers is a small hostel with about 40 beds, it’s basically a couple of cabins set just beside Emerald Lake Park. http://www.visitvictoria.com/ describes it as "The park is 50 hectares of undulating parkland with an interesting mix of native and European trees surrounding two picturesque lakes Lake Treganowan and Lake Tribulation."

The nearest source of life is Emerald Town centre which comprises of a supermarket, a bar that's only 1 bar folks!), bakery, post office and a few other shops, unfortunately for me Emerald town center was about a mile away (about 20 mins walk). The hostel therefore put a bus on every evening at 6 to go to the supermarket (the highlight of the day).

Another reason to go to Emerald was that I could try some farm work out and earn some cash; I arrived on Sunday night and was picking Gladiolas on Monday morning! This was an job which required walking along rows of flowers looking out for ones which were just about to flower, then cutting them at the base and stacking them at the end of the field. As you can probably guess this required much intellect and skills and after about an hour I was wishing I'd remembered my iPod.

I only picked Gladiolas for one day then had a couple of days off, after this I started work at a tree farm which I planned to work at until the end of February when I am meeting my friend Sam in Sydney.

This latest job was basically taping trees, the farmers worked in front of you and cut a slit in to the tree and placed a bud from another tree branch in to it, I then followed behind taping the bud in place. The job involved basically bending over all day and on day two I could hardly walk as my back and leg muscles were in dire pain, day 3 was no better and I nearly quit then but following that the work got a lot easier because the muscles were use to it.

As the hostel was in the middle of nowhere the options at nighttime were definitely limited, a few of us from the hostel went swimming in the lake early evening (after checking with the locals that their wasn't any croc's). Apart from that their was TV and books, so having read about 5 books in total for 2005 I read The Divinci Code, The Beach & Hitchhikers Guide in my first week or two at Emerald. I am now also well up to date with Lost series 2 and a great number of American dramas (Australian TV appears to show nothing else).

The people in the hostel were really good bunch, there was a lot of Dutch/Koreans & Japanese there, so I managed to test out Korean and Japanese food which was fun. On one night quite a few Koreans were leaving so they organized a party (photos at www.timgarbutt.com/photos), which seemed to involve drinking lots of Goon (Wine).

Australia Day turned out to be a bit of a flop as we were all set to go to Melbourne, but were informed that the buses in emerald weren't running, as it was a public holiday - so we couldn't get to the station. Undeterred myself and Ed (from Lincolnshire) walked up to Emerald feeling sure with only one bar it had to be busy on Australia day, we sat drinking our beers with only one other person present (an old man eating what looked like pickled eggs).

Anyway after 4 weeks in total (and too many trees to count) I decided to quit and return to the city, so I'm now back in Melbourne and staying at St. Kilda which is a little beach resort.