Party at the Forest Hill Hotel

This is a sentence that came up every night the last three nights in Forest Hill: “Okay, we’ll go to the bar for a drink, but we’re not going to stay for long”.  And this is how it ended: “Shit… why the hell did we spend so much money… again…?”
But… you only live once and we’re in Australia… so our last night would be something to remember.
Kerry, Allan’s wife, was visiting the kids in Newcastle (NSW) so if the cat was out of the house, we where the mice… drinking…
It was really a great goodbye and we really have to thank Allan for being such a good sport, because drunk as we were, we were acting like two four year olds… we even tried to steal his phone and his dog!

So if you EVER go to Forest Hill, if you’re passing through to go to Toowoomba… go and see Allan and Kerry in the Forest Hill Hotel, with the compliments of Johan and Tom from Belgium…
And check if we made it onto the wall of shame.

Fun facts about Forest Hill Hotel:
- We went to the pub EVERY night we slept in Woodstock Manor, not missing a heartbeat.
- We played about 132 games of pool
- Black Betty from Spiderbait… find it… download it…
- Johan lost a game of pool to Allan, Johan didn’t sink any of his balls and in Australia that means you run around the table, naked…  It’s the (official) NAKED RULE of pool in Australia

Last nights in Forest Hill

Horse racing in Chinchilla

Our last weekend in Woodstock Manor, guardian angel Kelly took it upon her to introduce us guys to the horseraces and while we’re ‘in the neighbourhood’ take a look at her farm in Condamine. 
We got to Chinchilla the real aussie-way, a bus loaded with half drunk aussies and about a gazillion beercans (and some food, not too much).  After an hour we got at the races, all the girls dressed up with the funny hats and stuff.
At the end of the day, we won 40 dollars and lost 170.  We drank too much beer.  We still thought the hats were funny.
On the way back, another hour, everybody liquored up, things were getting a bit quiet, just untill some kangaroo with a death wish hopped in front of the bus.  Everybody wide awake and apparantly, hitting a kangaroo is a valid reason to make a lot of noise and start drinking again.  Can I hear someone saying ‘national sport’?  Shame for the ‘roo, but if you’re that stupid to ’step into the ligth’ than we’re going Darwin on your ass (survival of the fittest, or extinction of the dumbest for that matter).
So back to Condamine, to the pub to… surprise, surprise… drink.

The story about the army tank

Condamine is a small town.  There’s just one pub and that’s it.  It’s been a dry season so most farmers don’t have a lot of work and are spending some quality time at the one pub.  I’m telling this because IF there’s only one pub and there’s nothing else to do in Condamine, you can expect some weird shit.  If you want to avoid that, you avoid the pub. 
I’m telling this because there was one passing truckdriver stupid enough to park his truck, with an ARMY tank, in front of the pub.  He wanted to sleep.  But drunk, stupid because we lost at the races in Chinchilla,… some locals took it upon themselves to have some fun with the tank.  Opened the lid, got inside, played soldier but with actual lifesize toys and not the plastic shit we grow up with.
Lid didn’t close, we made more noise, shouting, drinking,…
Driver got up (about 1m70, weighing 65kg), was pissed, tried to hit Kiwi (about 1m75, weighing maybe 90kg), driver got his senses back, shouted and got back in his truck.  What the hell did he think would happen if he parked his truck outside the only pub in a 50km radius?  Survival of the fittest…

No more Woodstock

After three weeks, a few days before Christmas, we had enough of it.  The last few days we had to start at 7AM but Donna dropped us at the site at 5.45AM because another guy had to start at 6AM.  Pissed as hell, tired,… we had it.  Slicing lettuce isn’t as glamourous as it sounds so we decided to use the last three days to get our shit together and say goodbye to Allan at the pub.  Needless to say, we almost spend everything we earned at Woodstock.  We also took the opportunity to take some pictures of Woodstock so you can see where we stayed.
For Christmas we’re invited to the Gold Coast to celebrate the 25th with guardian angel Kelly and her parents.  So just a few nights in Woodstock and we’re of.

Woodstock Manor, where the party never starts

Getting to Forest Hill

Frankly, we desperately needed a job. Singapore and Thailand had depleted our funds (we have a problem… we know… we’re looking into the twelve steps program) that within the first two weeks in Brisbane we thought of finding a job for four weeks so we could go party in Sydney for New Year’s Eve, totally forgetting the twelve steps…
So we hooked up to the Harvest Hotline and the lovely Kate told us we could get a guaranteed job in Forest Hill and we could get a place to sleep at Woodstock Manor. It was only a 2 hour trip from Brisbane, we didn’t had a place to sleep that night, so we went on our way.
We left Brisbane (population 2 million) and got on a train to Rosewood (population about 3,000). In Rosewood we took a bus to Forest Hill (population 500). We went for a two hour drive and we hardly encountered something that could even be called a town, just some places with houses thrown together and a pub in the middle of it.

Welcome in Forest Hill

So here we are, with our 18 kilograms weighing backpack and thirsty (twelve what?). Even though their was only one street we didn’t know which way to go (probably to much oestrogen), but up the road was a bar, the Forest Hill Hotel. It isn’t really a hotel, but due to some liquor regulations in the past, almost every outback bar is also a hotel. We met Allan and his lovely wife Kerry. A older couple from Newcastle, New South Wales, that came to Forest Hill two years ago because they wanted some piece and quite.
This is the right place alright, we haven’t seen a car go by for at least fifteen minutes. In the bar we looked at each other. Two pubs, one butcher, two shops, a postal office and one giftshop (for those thousands of tourists that come by)… this is going to suck. Thank god for Allan and his pub. This would be our home, our haven, our place for the next few weeks.

Welcome to Woodstock Manor

After a few beers, XXXX Bitter because they don’t have Belgian ones, we got the directions to Woodstock from Allan. In Woodstock nobody seemed to locate anyone that could tell us where our rooms were. Finally Les, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, showed us our rooms, and it were single rooms. No more snoring, no more loudmouth Brazilian guys calling in the middle of the night and finally an opportunity to do some snakehandling. We unloaded our backpacks and… did absolutely nothing… there is just a lounge with one malfunctioning tv and a kitchen that we all have to share together with a large population of cockroaches and a huge colony of ants, same with the bathroom with two toilets and two questionable showers. Good thing there weren’t any people, heaven forbid if we had someone to talk to and not get bored.

Our first days at the job

So this is how Woodstock Manor works. You go there, pay about 120 dollar (about 80 euro) up front for one week stay and wait for them to wake you up for work. In the middle of the night, they knock on your door and then you have about a half an hour to get ready for work. You don’t know what work, you don’t know where, you don’t know what to take. So our first day we were like a couple of dimwits that didn’t know shit. They woke us at 3:30 in the morning, last night we stayed in the pub until midnight so we were hungover, that was a nice experience. Tom had to start work picking rockmelons in the field, Johan had to clean lettuce. Luckily for Johan, he only had to start at 7am, he could sleep a little longer. We were unprepared as hell. Apparently you need to pack three lunches, get a pair of gloves, get some extra clean shoes next to your working shoes, get a hat and enough to drink for a whole day. So there we were, with one bottle of water and some sunscreen… That was hard…
But we learned from our mistakes…
Only problem… after work, back to the manor and it still is boring here. Everybody works somewhere else, everybody has to start at different hours, you never know when they’re going to knock on your door, you never know with whom you’ll have to work,… Another problem is work, we only had to work three days this week, so four days of absolute boredom and drinking and only earning about 250 dollars each (about 150 euro) Hopefully we can work some more days the next week, because otherwise we won’t be able to make breakeven…

We’ve been here for a week and we’ll be glad that we can move along in a few weeks… Shame about the single room though, that’s a real luxury out here, one that we probably won’t have for a long time.

Raiders Down Under

Queensland, the smart state

Going hiking
Mount Coot-tha in Brisbane isn’t big, it couldn’t even be called a mountain, it’s more like a hill.  BUT, it was so bloody hot that we wanted an end to all this pain and suffering.  Not that we want to portrait our pain like the hunger in Somalia or the war in Iraq, but it comes pretty close!  And professional loud mouths as we are, we took the long and steep road uphill.  Man enough to suck in the pain, we got on top.    And we must admit that the sight over Brisbane (just huge) was worth the effort.  We celebrated our physical effort with a low cost beer, Stella Artois for 7,80 aussie dollars (about 5 euro).  We got drunk in Australia, we also got broke in Australia.  Alcohol is so expensive that we almost quit drinking.  Luckily for InBev, every Belgian person still has some blood in his beer.  So on top, we enjoyed the view (really), drank our overpriced Stella and went back to the hostel.

Brisbane City Backpackers
Our hostel for our first ten days in Australia would be the Brisbane City Backpackers.  Their site looks good, inhouse bar, no hours, lockers in room, swimming pool,…
It looked great, unfortunately, it wasn’t.  We missed the Prince of Wales so much that every night we shed a tear before going to sleep, well, not actually, but you get the point.  The Brisbane City Backpackers hostel is an excellent place if you:

are English and love cricket

just love sleeping with 7 loud-snoring English guys

love the fact that Aussies, when drunk, just start peeing in the room (no shit)

have no self-esteem whatsoever

like tattoos

like people who you don’t want to meet in the dark and tell them they look ‘funny’So thanks to low funds, we started to look for work.

Last days in Brisbane and finding work in Australia
As we had no place to stay and we hadn’t found a job yet, good friend Kelly, hooked us up to stay in one of Brisbane’s many suburbs, Hawthorne.  To stay with Cecil and Robbie, two gay friends from Kelly.  And with gay we don’t mean funny, we mean ‘lock the doors at night’-gay.  (we’re not homophobe, we’re homo-challenged)  Seriously, they were one of the nicest people we encountered and we’re so gratefull we could spend two nights at their house, even if that meant that Johan had to ‘take one for the team’.  But we where there to get our shit together and find a job.
It’s commonly known that backpackers can find work everywhere in Australia, BUT, the first time is never easy.  You have to know what harvest season it is (melons, onions, cherries, apples,…), you have to know where the harvest takes place (north, east, south or west) and you have to know who you could call.  With the Christmas season coming up, finding work wasn’t that easy.  So we hooked up to some harvest-thingie and got sent on our way to Forest Hill, about 2 hours west of Brisbane.  It looked like we found a job… picking stuff from the ground and cleaning it.  Obviously getting overpaid to do the job, 16 dollars (about 11-12 euro) an hour before taxes (don’t know how much taxes we are going to pay, guess that’s going to be another surprise).  So up to Forest Hill.

Forrie Hill, Queensland
Let us introduce you to Forest Hill, or Forrie Hill as the locals call it.
Forest Hill, population, about 500 people including the farmers who live about 10km from the ‘centre’ of the town.  You got one butcher, two pubs, one newspaper agency, one postal office, one hairdresser and one gift shop (what the fuck?).
We got introduced into the town by Allen, bartender of Forest Hill Hotel, and our best friend in the world (for the time being).  A seriously great bartender that gave us our first meal in this forgotten place.  As of Monday, we start to work.  We stay at Woodstock Manor, a working hostel that is run by Donna, someone who must’ve been smoking since before she was born.  But she arranges all the work, the transport and the payment.  Still have a lot of work to do, getting up at 3h30 in the morning, we can’t wait to get started. (if you don’t sence the sarcasm here, please stick to Teletubbies)  Tonight back to the pub, get pissed…  always a good idea.

All the love,
Your Raiders