Hotel Paradiso!

Dan the Man
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Well well well. I will soon put some pics on here so you can fully appreciate what I am talking about when I describe this place but for now, I will do my best with words...

We got to Bundaberg, apparently we were pretty much guaranteed fruit picking work here. We arrived at a hostel resembling a prison and I had heard that this company also had a hostel near the beach so I asked if we could go there instead. After much huffing and puffing from Melissa, the anti-christ, backpacker-exploiting, miserable cow, we were sent to this other hostel and told to just find ourselves a bed. Strange I though, but off we went.

rats, mice, possums, bed-bugs, and a kitchen full of maggots

Nice err... view
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It was dark when we got there. The hostel was directly opposite the beach so that was good. We drove into the drive and sitting around a table were about 10 backpackers, 2 of which came to greet us and I thought... hmm this could be interesting ;o) For some reason they had a key to a room which was spare so we got settled. On taking a proper look around I felt most un-settled.

The place was a stinking shit-hole. The people who were staying there had cleaned the place up a lot but it was still a joke. There was no staff who worked there. Melissa (who I mentioned before) was supposed to be in charge of the place but she didnt do ANYTHING! There was no cleaner and the place was abolutely filthy. There were rats, mice, possums, bed-bugs, and one morning a kitchen full of maggots. gross. the were curious looking stains on the carpets, especially in our bedroom and there wa possum shit on our floor. It resembles an abandoned, delapidated old motel turned drug-den. When I eventually recieve my money for the work I did I will be reporting them to every place I can possibly think of and the photos I have will be going to all the backpacker magazines and newspapers.

our bedroom at the hostel - these people should be jailed
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But - we ended up staying there for over a week because having no staff there was also a good thing. It was like our own little community. We could all do whatever we wanted. We ran the place. All the people staying there were really top people as well and we had loads of fun. I loved my time here, apart from the work. We got work picking tomatos and it was the most tedious thing I have ever had to endure. We had to get up at 4am, stand in the heat for hours and hours picking bloody tomatos. We got paid $2 per bucket and there were hardly any tomatos on the vines that we could pick so it tool about 15 minutes to fill a bucket. Thats about $8 an hour - about 3 pounds! Sod that for a game of soldiers! I did two days of that then i think I got fired but im not really sure because i was on strike at the side of the field. i think me and a few others kind of caused a mass revolt and it turned out to be chaos - it was really quite fun! it was the farmers fault though - you cant expect people to work for such crap money. I did one other day on a tomato machine for a diferent company which wasnt too bad but still just not for me. Its just too boring.

the "kitchen"
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When i got back from this day, some of our friends told us they were leaving the hostel and we thought, what the hell are we doing here??? So we left the next day and seriously pissed the people off who we were working for. I was asleep in my bed in the evening and 3 guys marched in to my room, woke me up and tried to make me work the next day! I was like - get out of my bloody room!! How many employers do that?! They were laying on the guilt-trip saying if I dont go to work they will lose the contract with the farmer and will lose LOADS of money - as if i give a crap! get out of my room! i couldnt believe it.

the extension of the "kitchen" containing 1 fridge, a bucket full of unidentified objects that smelt of shit and about 10 rats
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So the next day we said goodbye to our friends and hit the road back down south to Hervey Bay. Phew.