Australia - Sydney

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog entry for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

We arrived in Australia with mixed feelings. Gutted that we were leaving Africa but excited about catching up with friends and having home comforts, although we couldn’t actually remember what the latter were. What we definitely weren’t excited about was the prospect of work. Hopefully it would take us some time to find any and we would be forced to spend some time on the beach.

Alas, within four days Chris had found work at the University of Sydney and was packed off freshly de-bearded, suited and looking like a small child being sent off to his first day of school. Meanwhile, I was looking for any cash in hand work I could get, having used up my working visa here on a previous jaunt around the world. Becs the illegal immigrant.

I have always thought of myself as a bit of a Jack of all trades, master of none. The last three months have certainly proved that as I have taken up the various challenges of dog walking, painting and decorating, typing, prostitution, and selling a kidney.

Every afternoon for three months I have been cleaning at a yoga studio. I’m not talking about some namby-pamby yoga for exercise place. No! You can only enter this place if you are an ethical vegetarian (still trying to work that one out. Do you have to kill carrots in a certain way?), drink soya milk and can eat your dinner of raw mung beans with your feet (which are wrapped round your head). It wouldn’t have surprised me at first if they had said I could only have the job if I could levitate my way in and hoover in the crab position.

As part of my work I get free yoga, useful for all the dusting and bending over toilets I do. During my first week I turned up to the session before my shift started only to discover that I was attending the advanced class. Help. I like to give everything a go so I’m standing there on one leg, trying to get the other one up in the air, knee touching earlobe like the other participants are doing but all I can manage to do is sway precariously from side to side and eventually fall over, like some poorly constructed Jenga tower. Then everyone’s down on their haunches, gracefully swinging their thighs over their forearms and rocking back and forwards on their hands, feet off the ground. This looks a bit easier so I give it a go, manage it for perhaps a second then roll ungracefully onto my back, arms pinned. This happens repeatedly.

Then the most incredible thing happens when we get to the meditation section. Before the class had started I overheard the manager telling someone about an amazing session she’d gone to where she had literally seen the light in the room changing due to the sheer collective power. So I’m in this class and we’re all told to exhale in short sharp breaths until there is no more air left in our lung. This goes on for a few minutes and then it starts. The light fades in and out. The light is literally changing and I can even see little stars twinkling around the room. This is amazing.

Then I start to feel nauseous and I realise that this is not some spiritual experience; instead I am in danger of passing out. The light is clearly changing as I am slowly asphyxiating, the little stars about to converge into one and become that special white light at the end of the tunnel! I must put the manager straight.

At the end of the session I need a serious lie down and some food. A man arrives in the staff room and starts talking to one of the team about a Yogathon he is arranging. Only drinks will be on offer. Apparently yoga and food don’t mix I hear him say as I wipe the remains of the four spring rolls I’ve just devoured from my face.

12 weeks into the job and I haven’t actually made it to another class. It’s not just the thought of all those bruises that puts me off. I’m also rather reticent about being so close to the floor that I see the studio dog pooing on every now and then, and which I of course have to clean up.

Other work adventures. . . painting a friend’s room in gloss instead of matt paint. Only realised when they said ‘ooh, it’s a bit shiny Becs’. And nearly getting arrested when the dog I was walking started sniffing around the crotch of a policeman, causing me (never very good when nervous, which I am around policemen as I think I must have done something really terrible in a former life) to exclaim “ooh, what do you smell up there then doggy?”

As for my rehabilitation into office life well that lasted 13 weeks before it was thankfully time to move on. Within a few days I realised that titles were dished out like celebrities on the New Year's Honours List. Much like many of my colleagues I had influence but little to zero power so I opted for the title of "Manager of extension 67803" which I guarded like a hawk and every half an hour would be put onto voicemail to create an aura of importance. 

Obviously we have managed to have a few adventures in Australia too. We still haven’t made it to the Blue Mountains. First time we tried we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces for rain and mist and then this time there were terrible bushfires. Obviously destined not to go! Highlights of things we have managed to do include the wonderful Spit Bridge to Manly walk, going down the coasts to a friend’s beach house in Berrara, Kylie in concert (she’s very small), AFL game (we are definitely best in the world at being supporters, no other country matches our chants and songs!), Chris completing his PADI (that's open water diver not a tantrum), a digeridoo lesson and Palm Beach to renact breaking up scences as often played out in Home and Away.

After 3 months we are bidding goodbye to Sydney, who knows we may return but if not a fond farewell and many thanks to; Paul, Julie, Ceri, Chris & Little Louie, Melissa, Brett & Little Annika, Amanda & Leo, Dary, Kerin and Shano.