So back to the matter of those snakes! To say I had the shock of my life finding an 8ft long Taipan in my row is an understatement! Yes to be fair it had died the night before, but it didn't stop me jumping 6ft in the air and screaming like a girl. Of course as soon as I realised it was dead, I picked it up to prove my manhood, showing it off to all the girls in the other teams. All bar one were impressed, the latter dropping to her knees in floods of tears suffering a panic attack! Not a fan of snakes then?
At least that one was dead, thinking that finding this snake was a one off, you can imagine my shock when I stepped onto a Brown snake 2 weeks later, realising very quickly that this time it was alive!
Luckily the snake shot off, but it made me think, if you get bitten by either of these snakes, they give you 15 minutes to get an anti venom injection or you snuff it! Worryingly we work 30 minutes from the nearest hospital and to top it off I stepped on the snake a day after my travel insurance ran out!
Because of the obvious danger picking, and the fact that I'm a lazy bastard, I finally persuaded Danny, the foreman, to promote me to driver. The obvious advantages are I get to sit on my arse all day, only getting up to empty everyone's buckets, I get an hourly pay rate, but best of all, I get to drive Tractors! Of course I blatantly lied when he asked if I could drive them and also if I could reverse a trailer... but how hard could it be?!
I managed to blag it though, and so far haven't run anyone over or knocked out any rows so I must be good at something!
So life in Bowen got a little bit more bearable, work got easier, although I Iost the luxury of days off, and I also got myself a lady friend! Laura, a fellow brit from Bournemouth, moved into our hostel a month into our stay, and has made the time spent in Bowen a lot more enjoyable!
Being a small town means there isn't much of a nightlife here, so when we found out there was a toga party happening convinently on Dan's birthday, we just had to dress up! Thinking we would be the only 2 dressing up we were glad to see another 50 people had made the effort and had donned their bed sheets! We of course had to be different so tied on our sulu's we bought in Fiji. As you can see from the photographs a lot of alcohol was consumed, and I think it will be a birthday Dan won't forget for a while!
So in a nut shell that was Bowen compressed into 2 months, the time actually flew by, as to has our first year. It's hard to believe a year ago we were leaving sunny Southend on our maiden voyage. It's even harder to believe that our initial plan of 18 months of travel has now changed to 36+.
Oh well got to catch a bus, were meeting up with very good friend from home for a bit of sailing...!
Oh... there's more...!
So actually wrote this a few weeks back, since then did a couple more things i thought i would tell you about!
1. Discovered Bowen had a secret nudist beach, so, on a day off, went to find it with Laura. Although the naked men walking around were a little off putting, we bared all!
2. Went out on a racing sailing boat one evening for a sailing race. Laura met a skipper one day that was more than happy to let us join him on one of his races. I was more than happy when the skipper told me to take the helm. We even won the race that night, i'm hooked!
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