this too shall pass

(i quit the farm)

“The days drag, but the weeks fly.” These were the wise words imparted to me by the backpackers in the final weeks of their 88 days when I first arrived in Innisfail. 88 days being, of course, the number of days of specified work in regional Australia required in order to apply for a second working holiday visa. And Innisfail, the town I found myself in late this March with the intent of completing my own 88 days. Three months seems like an impossibly long time when you’ve just arrived in a working hostel, absent of all the luxuries backpackers typically shell out the medium bucks for when Interrailing around Europe or road tripping down Australia’s East Coast.

In time, like all things, we adapt. The weeks tick by quickly as promised, and the days of perpetual summer do feel impossibly long. Now, I’m days away from leaving, never to return (hopefully). Looking back, I’m still not sure how to feel about this experience. There’s plenty to complain about in a situation like this, from grim living conditions to anger-prone farmers and a job that left my hands raw and swollen while simultaneously never giving me enough hours to save any money. Complaining is useless, however, in a place where everyone is in the same situation. We’re all living on top of each other, bored out of our minds, exhausted from 5 AM alarms.

My farmer and his wife, mean as they were, really liked me as a worker. I’ll credit the girl who trained me, Lana. She was a tiny Irish girl who looked like she was trying to emulate Lindsay Lohan circa 2005, both in appearance and attitude. By the time I started she was about a week out from finishing, and I’ve never seen anyone who wanted out of somewhere more. Unlike the other backpackers, who were either naturally slow or slowed down on purpose in a bid to get more hours, Lana was ready for the week to end by Monday morning.

She worked fast, faster even when we were finishing up the last trailer of bananas for the week. She never wore gloves to protect her hands from the sap, and never wore an apron to protect her clothes from the water of the sorting baths. They’d only slow her down. We were down a sorter my first week, working with three where we usually had four. She pulled double duty, cutting and putting bananas on the wheel to be packed, all while constantly pushing me to work faster. At lunch she sat in the sun with her wired headphones in, the sleeves of her men’s XS high-vis shirt that fit her like a minidress rolled to her shoulders to avoid a farmer’s tan. The pace she set that week stuck with me, I never learned to slow down after she left.

This put me in the good books of my farmer, Ned, and his wife, Nicole. Though I still got scolded for putting bad bananas up to be packed, or tossing allegedly good ones, I wasn’t one of the unlucky workers who got berated daily with a remarkably inventive barrage of profanity. In the past I might have pushed my luck too far with managers whose demands made no sense to me, but this job broke me of that habit. I knew I was good at my job. There was nothing to say when he pointed out a mistake I had made, I’d just listen and nod until he was done. Again though, I was lucky. I couldn’t do anything about the workers he decided he hated, other than be grateful it wasn’t me. I kept my head down, literally, for thirteen weeks and made it out alive.

Honestly, the hardest part about this whole journey wasn’t the farm work anyways. Once you get used to standing for nine hours and your hands callous over, you’re grand. It’s like any other job, you clock in, you clock out, you go home. Home, in this scenario, was the part that looked a bit different.

I’ve been a big fan of hostels since I first started solo traveling years ago. They’re cheap, they’ve got everything you need, and they’re a great way to meet people when you’re traveling alone. Before coming to Australia, the longest I’d spent staying in hostels was around six weeks, and the longest stay I’d had in any one hostel was about a week. A working hostel is a completely different vibe, and Innisfail Budget Backpackers was an altogether brand new experience for me.

Checking reviews before I arrived, the general consensus was that the accommodation was nothing luxurious, but the magic of the experience was in the people. In my time here, I have met some of the best people and made some seriously unique memories. I attended my first rodeo, played heated mid-week games of Uno twenty people strong, competed in the beerlympics, and so much more. But thirteen weeks is a long time to be nonstop socializing. Like in the real world, the good days are amid bad ones and mundane ones. A good day living with all your best friends is great, a bad day where you can’t even hide out in the privacy of your own room to sulk and watch TV is pretty rough.

Living with only a single bunk to call your own takes a toll on everyone, in its own way. It makes people more selfish, I think. With so little to your name you cling to whatever you can, whether that’s extra time in the good shower, playing a loud drinking game when you know people are sleeping in the next room over, or a speaker cranked loudly with your favorite songs. I’m guilty of all of these things, and I’m guilty of being annoyed by all of these things. We’re all just people in glass houses living on top of each other, you can’t hate on anyone except the ones who decide to throw stones. (And the ones who steal, GIULIA!)

I really wish I was ending on more of a high note, but being here so long has me feeling really burnt out. I feel exposed, just by the sheer fact of spending every day with so many people. It accelerates the bonding period of friendships by a lot, but you also notice people’s flaws way faster. I noticed this in other people, and now I’m fearful they’re seeing it in me too. I’ve been having an uncharacteristic streak of social anxiety, made worse by the lack of a private space for myself. Every conversation feels like a major case of foot-in-mouth, failed jokes, an overall flop. As I’m still reeling from the last embarrassing moment, I’m pushed into another by making the fatal mistake of going into the kitchen on new-arrival day. As a beautiful and charming girl, it truly makes no sense at all. It’s entirely in my head and also entirely real and it’s causing major damage to my beloved ego. I need to get out of here before I risk gaining any further humility.

So as I inch closer to boarding that beautiful Greyhound bus to civilization, I’m making an effort to end on a note of gratitude. First and foremost, I am grateful that I even have the opportunity to do strange and ridiculous things like this, and grateful for the fact that I’m able to be in Australia in the first place. This was a physically and mentally demanding endeavor, and I’m grateful that I can see my own strength in having completed it. I’m grateful for the power of human connection, which has provided me with support within Innisfail and virtually from friends and family. Other people’s human connections were also an important source of entertainment for me, an olympic-level gossiper.

This chapter of my life has come to an end, a reminder that nothing lasts forever, good and bad. I’ll never forget the people I met, the memories I made, and the feeling of a wet tree frog jumping onto my face. All this for one more year in Australia, it better be a good one.