Volunteering in Batchelor

I have hesitated for a long time before writing this part, because it is the most difficult of my whole trip. I found this banana farm on a website called HELPX (help exchange) and I thought it would be a good idea to help out on the farm for a couple of weeks before moving on to the east coast of Australia. It is quite tiring to move from place to place all the time and with New Year’s Eve coming up, I hoped to find some nice people to celebrate with. You can all imagine my surprise when I arrived to the so-called farm to find out that the banana trees were all dead and the job was cleaning a petrol station, and all other things I could find too: cars, dogs… Not that I don’t like cleaning, actually I do. I feel a strange satisfaction when a place goes from dirty to clean thanks to my action, but it was not at all what I had expected. But, I thought it would be an interesting experience for my job (dear colleagues of Belcco, if you read this and I hope you will, this part is for you). How many square meters can I clean in one hour? If I have to clean a surface of approximately 100 square meters, how long will it take? What if the floor is full of everything you can imagine from rusty screws, broken-down electrical machines, old tires, to a movie screen and a film projector that doesn’t work? Anyways, I’m a stubborn person, and I said I would do this, so I did. Who said this trip would always be easy?

In Northern Australia, there are two main seasons, the dry season, nice and dry, and the wet season, with tons of rain splashing down on the vegetation giving it new life, but also wets our heads! The sky suddenly turns almost black and the best thing to do when you’re out in the open: run for cover! We experienced this almost every day during my stay. All the cleaning works from before the rain had to be done again… kind of depressing, isn’t it?

There were some good moments though, like when we went to Litchfield and Kathy (the 17 year old daughter of the couple I was working for) showed us a secret place to swim behind Tolmer Falls, or when Kathy and I spend New Year’s Eve making drawings with firecrackers, or when Joe (one of the most fascinating persons I have ever met) took me to swim in a lake where an Uranium mine used to be and a huge reptile watched us from the shore, or when Joe let me drive his car, a white pickup truck, and I flew on the highway on the “wrong” side of the road, or when Joe showed me his camp where he lived four years cut off from civilization. Actually, without Joe there, I think I would have left. Ok, it could have been worse, but it could also have been much better. I am happy when the two weeks are over and go to the airport to catch my plane to Cairns.

photos Batchelor