Letter from Thailand

Some strange things go down in my local park. You get your normal lunch-breaking office workers, truant teenagers and drunken homeless people swatting imaginary demons, but Belmore’s location directly across the road from Sydney’s Central Station and the pathways which dissect it mean it’s also a busy pedestrian thoroughfare.

My manual labouring career has been replaced by a desk job which means some form of recreational exercise is in order. Being a long-standing Muay Thai fan I decided to check around to see if there are any gyms in my area and a web search turned up an add for Saturday and Sunday morning classes in trusty Belmore Park. Saturday rolled around and I wandered over to the appointed place at the appointed time but there was nothing resembling a Muay Thai class on the go. There were however, over 1,000 Thai people all dressed in white assembled in the middle of the park.

I say they were all dressed in white but that’s a bit of an exaggeration. A group of children and teenagers were actually dressed in outlandish elfin-like costumes. These cheerful sons and daughters of Siam skipped around the perimeter of the assembled crowd carrying a giant plastic flower each. One guy in particular was wearing what could only be described as a gold cat suit and a matching bonnet. Was I witnessing the biggest Muay Thai class ever assembled outside its ancestral home? Surely not, I decided. You couldn’t train wearing that thing.

A stage lined with a row of seats had been erected and the purpose of this entertaining yet slightly alarming spectacle began dawn when a dozen monks sat down. The white-robbed Thais kneeled in neat lines facing the stage and some chanting got underway.

The Thais all carried plastic bags with various foodstuffs inside and the monks had brought large brown bowls with them. These facts, coupled with the bits and pieces of Thai I could understand, led me to conclude that I had stumbled upon an alms giving ceremony – when Buddhists earn karma points by giving food to the monks and doing various other associated good deeds.

Although most of the people passing through the park largely ignored the goings on, a group of interested parties gathered to try and work out what was happening. I was standing among them, wondering if the Muay Thai class I got out of bed for would kick off after the event, when I felt a tap on my arm. I turned around to see that one of the white-robed Thais – a cheerful, mid-thirties woman – had broken ranks in favour of a chat with a random spectator.

“Hi! I see you standing here long time,” she said with a mega-watt Thai smile. “Would you like to help me give alms to the monks?”

I’m not sure why she picked me from the gathered crowd of confused onlookers but she was delighted when I told her in Thai that I would love to; that it sounded fun. So I was escorted to a spot right in the middle and there I sat, delighted to have again found myself the only white lad in a sea of smiling brown faces. In a park in the middle of Sydney city centre.

The monks began to file up and down the rows and I couldn’t help but get slightly nervous as they approached. It reminded me of queuing up to get the bread from the Priest at mass when I was a kid. I strained around trying to see exactly what the drill was for handing over the food while my new buddy piled packets of instant noodles and Morro bars up in front of me. Everyone was doing the same thing: pick up food item as monks approach. Hold in both hands as if praying. Raise to your forehead when first monk gets to you. Carefully place in bowl with both hands. Bow to monk with hands in prayer position. Repeat for each monk. My alms giving passed without incident although I wasn’t convinced that you still get karma points for handing over food that wasn’t yours.

My self and my new-found karmic colleague got chatting and she mentioned that the temple, which had organised the event, held free Thai language lesions every Saturday afternoon to which I was welcome to come along.
“Sound!” I said, forgetting that she probably didn’t speak Dublinese.
“Excuse me?” she answered, wondering whether her English wasn’t as good as she previously thought.

“Sorry, I mean I would love to go,” I said.

I got the details of where the class would take place (in a centre right beside the park), and what I would have to bring (nothing because everything would be provided), before saying my goodbyes. I headed home tingling with positive karmic energy and what have you, while marveling at how friendly, generous and just basically bang on Thai people are.

This is an article I was commissioned to write for a Sydney-based newspaper called The Irish Echo. It's a pretty well thought of publication with a very healthy following among Australia's hefty Irish community.

Irish seasonal farm workers fall victim to exploitation

Seasonal farm work has long been a staple source of income for Irish backpackers and with second year working holiday visas available to those who complete 88 days in the agriculture industry, demand for 'fruit-picking' jobs is higher than ever. Robert Carry, who worked for four WA vineyard companies during the course of his investigation, reveals how this increase in demand has led to some employers implementing exploitative work practices.

“They had us living like animals,” recalls Sean Morgan, a qualified plumber from Dublin. The 22-year-old came to Australia in search of work when the Irish construction industry went into free fall. Unable to secure employment in plumbing and with funds beginning to dwindle, he turned his attention to seasonal farm work. He was among hundreds of backpackers who responded to an online classified add offering vineyard pruning work in Dandaragon, three hours north of Perth. The add promised free accommodation and piece rate payment in excess of $1,000 per week.

He and nine other successful applicants arrived to find that the free accommodation consisted of a filthy, semi-derelict farm house (pictured) and when work began it quickly became apparent that none of the staff would be earning the wages promised. In a number of cases, renumeration would equate to less than the minimum wage. The company gave guarantees of three months pruning work in the Margaret River area; enough to qualify for a second year working holiday visa. However, when Sean and the rest of the group made the seven-hour journey to the south-west town just 10 days in, the company's supervisors suddenly became impossible to contact. “They turned off their phones so we couldn't get in touch with them,” recalls Sean. “We left dozens of messages and sent a ton of emails but they basically ignored us.”

According to Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC), record numbers of working holiday makers are searching for harvest work in order to gain a second year visa. Yearly figures to June 2009 show the number of successful applicants has hit a record 21,727 – an increase of 84 per cent on the same period last year. The largest uptake was among South Koreans while the Irish, at 4,426, came in second. As a result, accounts like Sean's are becoming increasingly common.

The surge in numbers is good news for Australian farmers. Stories of fruit and vegetables rotting on vines due to shortages of pickers have been replaced by reports of farmers being inundated with requests for work. The National Harvest Labour Information Service, which assists job seekers searching for farm-related employment, normally gets between 2000 to 3000 calls per week at seasonal heights. The organisation is now reporting weekly calls in excess of 4,500. Migrant labourers have quickly gone from a scarce resource to being easily replaceable. The comparative scarcity of positions mean workers are now forced to tolerate employment practices which would previously prompted them to look elsewhere.

The Irish Echo uncovered a host of exploitative work practices in a number of wineries during the course of its investigation into working conditions on WA vineyards. Staff reported late payment of wages, incorrect payslips and mass dismissals with little or no prior notice. One Irish vineyard worker told how he was dismissed with one day's notice when the owner of the vineyard he was employed by decided to give his job to his teenage son.

However, the most commonly cited issue was that of pay rates falling below the national minimum wage. The low rates of pay meant staff were reluctant to take breaks and frequently worked through eight-hour shifts without stopping in order to make above minimum wage. Unfortunately, employers paying piece rate are exempt from minimum payment regulations under current employment legislation, so staff have little legal protection.

Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman's (FWO) office received a rash of complaints from vineyard workers in WA since the start of the year and eventually launched an investigation. Inspectors checked the books of 27 wineries and vineyards in the south-west region and according to its report released last month, a third were in breach of pay laws. A spokesperson for the FWO told The Irish Echo, “A recent WA wine industry campaign was conducted in response to worker complaints and information from industry associations... Employers in the Great Southern and South West wine regions did not properly understand their obligations.”

However, the organisation revealed that the The Great Southern Wine Producing Association and The Margaret River Wine Association – industry bodies of which a number of the investigated vineyards are members – were informed by the FWO of their plans to examine the issue before the investigation was launched. As a result, problems may be far more extensive than FWO figures suggest.

The FWO told The Irish Echo that it is opposed to employers using the piece rate exemption as a means of paying staff below minimum wage. A spokesperson said, “Employees must receive at least the correct minimum entitlements regardless of whether they are paid piece rates, by the hour or a salary.”
ENDS

A popular Australian TV comedy show called 'Hey Hey, it's Saturday' made headlines recently when it aired a segment featuring a group of people from various ethnic backgrounds tarted up in Minstrel-esque black face paint impersonating the Jackson Five. It prompted columnists, TV and radio show hosts to posture up and begin a finger-wagging national self-analysis: 'Is Australia a racist country?'. It was as ridiculous as it was embarrassing. A individual, a legal stipulation or on occasion an organisation can be racist but a county – a sovereign territory with a nation and government – obviously can't collectively be racist any more than a field or a car park can be an open-minded liberal. Nonetheless, the national conversation went back and forth for a few days generating plenty of heat but very little by way of light.

On one side were the poor damaged souls who out of that nasty, post-colonial inferiority complex we so often see in Ireland, felt the need to write their country and nation off as collection of pillowcase-wearing, cross-burning Nazis. For this crowd, the worst of it wasn't even that the whole country was racist – the really crucial point was that the rest of the world supposedly thought Australia was racist. Copies of English newspapers which mentioned the row in a tiny article on page eight were brandished around studios as if they were proof of the country's failure in the eyes of the world – and in the eyes of the English, in particular.

Standing against the moral outrage were those who thought the segment was sort of funny. They reckoned it should be written off as something done in an attempt to make people laugh rather than to cause offence. It was comedy and cultural sensitivities be damned. Both went into the argument with their views deeply entrenched and, as tends to be the case in debates, came away without having budged an inch; bar maybe radicalising slightly.

It seemed very much like a storm in a tea cup to me. The segment wasn't funny, but then the programme itself is dire so I wouldn't have expected anything else. Of course, the act of dressing up and doing a ham-fisted impersonation of a Jackson Five member isn't racist in-and-of-itself – UK show 'Bo Selecta' regularly featured comedian Leigh Francis ripping off Michael Jackson but to my knowledge he remained free of accusations of racism. This reveals the crux of the issue; the act of putting dark paint on your face to appear black.

So is this racist? When the Minstrels did it it was of course racist because they set out to ridicule black people in general. But was this the intention of our rubbish Australian comedians? I don't think it was. Demonstrating cultural insensitivity out of a lack of knowledge and understanding of how the things you do will come across to others isn't racism – that's just being a bit of an idiot. It's ignorance – a different kettle of fish to the deliberate malice which denotes real racism.

I've heard the argument that someone can inadvertently do something bigoted or racist without there being any intent behind it, but I'm not sure I agree with this. For example, every now and again a word that was common, acceptable parlance is suddenly stricken from the record when somebody somewhere decides that from now on it's going to carry negative connotations. 'Person living with a disability' is the the acceptable, politically correct term at the moment and 'disabled person' is for cavemen. If you're not aware of this change and you use the later, then there are people out there who will take this to mean that you are a bigot. And give it 10 years – it will change again and those who use 'person living with a disability' on the Tuesday after the Monday it gets proscribed will too be branded.

To me, a word is a collection of inanimate sounds we use to portray to our audience a particular meaning. It's the intent – the message the bigot is seeking to project that is the issue, not the words themselves. Without the meaning the speaker chooses to attach they are just noises – the sound of a car going past or light switch being flicked.

I think the same goes for peoples' actions. We all do stupid things from time-to-time and occasionally put our foot in it but if there was no intention to hurt or offend, we shouldn't be condemned for it.

Australia's labour-intensive agricultural sector periodically requires massive numbers of workers to arrive in various parts of the country, to coincide with a harvest or some other annual work-a-thon, and the world duly obliges. Margaret River, a town to the south of Western Australia which has been home for some time now, is nestled in the heart of wine producing country. Every year from March to September it gets flooded with would-be farm workers all set to individually prune every shoot on every vine in every vineyard in the region.

The Irish are up in the top five most well-represented nationalities with many of the other leading contributers hailing from Asia. The rag-tag group, a very large proportion of which will have never set foot on a farm before, join Australia's experienced farmhands who themselves are virtually all internal migrants who follow the harvest trail from one end of the country to the other every year.

Pruning is tough, monotonous work and the knowledge that you're slaving away helping to create something that only priests and wasteful toffs could have use for in these difficult times is all the job satisfaction you're going to get. The fact that Margaret River is hundreds of kilometers south of where I first started pruning means that it is far, far colder and pruning season kicks off in the dead of the Australian winter. Now, I'm trying to add some drama here, to make you all understand how cold, wet and miserable a vineyard is in pruning season but I understand that it is impossible to strike any fear into a person living in Ireland with a term like 'the dead of the Australian winter'. I'm sure most people think Australia gets year-round sunshine – I know I certainly did. That's why I didn't pack any warm clothes. Sadly, Australian winter in Margaret River is genuinely cold. As in, Ireland cold.

Temperatures drop to single digits at night and barely get into double digits during the day. Margaret River is on the coast at a point where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean which means it is unbelievably windy. Add to that the fact that during winter it will be raining at least every second day and that thunderstorms and hailstones come regularly and you'll get the picture. The rain is so frequent and consistent that it is just not feasible to allow people to run for cover when a down-pour starts so everyone is under orders to keep working – pruning away with the rain gushing through every gap in your rain jacket and filling up your wellingtons.

It gets to some people. I've looked up on a number of occasions, often when the rain is coming down in sheets, to see some poor unfortunate standing motionless over a vine with their head bowed and their hands by their sides. Because everyone works at a different pace it isn't long before workers are spread across the vineyard out of ear-shot of one another. So you're pretty much on your own for the day. My supervisor told me that the isolation, the monotony of the work and the shocking weather conditions are often enough to send people over the edge. He said he has come across guys standing in a vine row crying their eyes out over a years-old family death or a failed marriage. Vineyards are a petri dish for depression.

Happily, the Australian winter has ended and we're now in Spring. Myself and the rest of the foreign hoard that invaded this picturesque, isolated part of Western Australia have worked up the requisite 88 days of agricultural work required for a second year working holiday visa and a return migration is underway. You would want to be an agoraphobic, anti-social outcast to stay in a hostel for months on end and not make a few buddies and it was sad to see various likable characters heading of in various directions never to be seen again.

I worked as a cleaner during my years in college and I think the nastiness of the experience made me determined not to end up in a situation where I had to something like that for a living. That fear-driven hunger was a great motivator career wise but as the sharpness disappeared from the memories of what it is like to scrub a public jacks so too did some of that determination not to go backwards. Then all of a sudden I was doing a ridiculous, poorly-paid menial job in a muddy field in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The plus side was that my hatred for doing crap jobs returned, I started frantically looking around for an alternative and got an interview for a job with a magazine in Sydney.

Mentioning you're a journalist often prompts people to suggest a topic they reckon you should write about. They will generally play a starring role in the tale which in most cases, will be a complete non-event. Occasionally though, you meet someone who really has a story to tell. This was the case with
Scottish Iain.

I met the 25-year-old not long after his arrival in Australia. The Dundee native flew from Scotland to Australia via Dubai where his flight was delayed. He missed his onward connection and his bags were searched by customs. Officers found 0.09 grams of cannabis resin inside the pocket of a pair of his jeans which he had no idea was in his possession.

It was an amount roughly equivalent in size to about one-eight of a pea, smaller than the head of a match, and he expected to make his re-booked onward flight. The seriousness of the situation became apparent however, when he was detained over night and then moved to a prison close to the airport. The poor lad was then forced to undergo a full body search before being put through rounds of questioning. Many of the other inmates he came across were westerners detained on similar charges – casual cannabis smokers found in possession of tiny amounts they didn't know they had.

Iain was swept through Dubai's legal system and ended up spending over a month in prison on possession and smuggling charges. The guy had the presence of mind to keep a diary during his imprisonment and he gave me a copy. It was a cracking account of a genuinely grueling, terrifying experience. It detailed his bemusement as the legal process went on around him entirely in Arabic and his embassy's complete failure to assist him.

One passage in the diary read: “They haven't even given me a bed so I have to sleep in the corridor with a bunch of other guys. There is a room which has mostly western prisoners staying in it so I'm hoping to get in there soon.” Iain spent four days sleeping in the corridor before eventually being given a bed by the prison authorities. He continued, “The toilets are a hole in the ground and absolutely stink. There is no toilet paper and all the prisoners are expected to use their hand.”

Inmates organised soccer matches when permitted to use the prison yard and Iain regularly joined in. On one occasion he found himself playing with a member of the Taliban caught attempting to smuggle 14 kilos of heroin through Dubai by strapping it to his body and concealing it under his clothes. Things went well for that particular smuggler until his contact failed to collect him at the airport and authorities became wary of his suspicious, aimless wanderings. Once he caught their attention the bulkiness of his clothing lead them to conclude that he was a suicide bomber of some sort and a massive security alert was sparked. He narrowly escaped being shot before the nature of his payload became apparent.

Although Iain was not physically harmed by the prison guards, other inmates did suffer abuse. He recalled, “They sent one Arab guy to solitary where they handcuffed him with his hands above his head for hours because he sat down during the counting in the yard.” He continued, “There were one or two nice guards but the rest looked on us as dirt and didn't want to be close to us.”

The diary also gave an account of Iain and his family's frantic attempts to secure help from the British authorities. He told me, “They couldn't do anything. The embassy came to visit me on the second day and told me I had to just sit and wait it out for whatever the Dubai authorities wanted to do. They told me I would probably either be deported or else given a four-year mandatory penalty.”

Iain was finally released after serving 36 days in prison. He somehow managed to avoid deportation back to the UK and was permitted to continue on his trip to Australia. This lad had a real story to tell but because he and his family were reluctant to have his full name or photo published in a newspaper it's one that won't be read about by anyone. With the exception of you lucky people of course.

Just over a week into my new career as a vineyard pruner, things were looking grim. We had been promised several months of continuous work on a number of vineyards but we were close to finishing our first plot and details beyond that were sketchy. We were told we would have to head south to a place called Margaret River and wait a few days before work was again available. To make matters worse, accommodation facilities were medieval and wages were looking like they would be far short of what was promised. With no real alternative available, I headed to Margaret River and waited for the call to say work was beginning again. It didn't come.

I worked on quite a few articles about the exploitation of foreign labour during my time with Metro Eireann but never thought I would experience it myself. I wasn't a happy camper and just couldn't take it on the chin. I decided to fill a few people in on the way the company I was working for had treated me and my colleagues, all of whom were foreigners. In the interest of fairness, I emailed XXXX, the co-owner of the company and the person who had given me the job, to let her know about why I was angry and what I intended to do about it. The following is an excerpt from my correspondence with her:

“Dear XXXX,

It's been a number of weeks since anyone from XXXXXXX XXXXXX has been in contact and I can only assume that my employment has been terminated. However, I do not feel I can let things rest until I outline some grievances I have and more importantly from your point of view, detail what I intend to do about them.

Your company placed an add on Gumtree promising $1,000-plus per week for experienced pruners and up to $1,000 for inexperienced workers. Emails I have received from you said that I would be working for two weeks in Dandaragon before transferring immediately to Margaret River. Despite the best efforts of the team it became immediately clear that nobody would be making the sort of money promised. In fact, practically everyone made less than the minimum wage.

Although we were promised two week's work in Dandaragon, this was reduced at short notice to just nine days. We were given guarantees of steady employment with free accommodation but instead were cut adrift with no wages just over a week in. Sadly, this apparently unforeseen break in our work schedule stretched on and the lines of communication broke down – mainly because your company completely ignored my numerous phone calls and emails. Eventually, I called your phone on one occasion only to be told by an operator that my number had been blocked.

It was around this time that our pay day arrived. Unfortunately, it went without any sign of payment. When my wages finally did arrive over a week late it was a paltry $580.

Another relevant point is the accommodation you provided; it was semi-derelict. I have travelled to some of the poorest countries in the world and I can safely say that I have never had to contend with such squalor. Like some of your other staff I opted to stay in a tent rather than the 'house' but I was forced to use the filthy, antiquated toilets and shower facilities. The place actually defies description but luckily, I had the presence of mind to take some photos.

I didn't expect to make my fortune when I signed up to work as a pruner. What I did expect was to be treated fairly and to receive a decent day's pay for a decent day's work. Instead, I was paid below the national minimum wage, endured a litany of broken promises and was treated like I was disposable, ignorable and not worth the time it takes to reply to an email or return a phone call.

Anyway, as you know, I am a Masters in Journalism graduate and spent much of the past three years working in the media industry for a variety of publications. At present, I am working on an article about the exploitation of foreign workers on Australia's farms and in particular, on vineyards. I will be pitching this article to a number of local, regional and national papers. My pitch will include the details of my time with your company and quotes from other persons who have had the misfortune to have dealings with XXXXXXXX XXXXXX. To add some colour, I'll also include some photos of the house you put us up in.

I have also taken it upon myself to inform as many vineyards as I can of the treatment your company metes out to its immigrant labourers. I will be drawing up a detailed account and circulating it by email and by post directly to vineyards with a suggestion that they think carefully before rewarding any contracts to companies with dubious track-records with regard to the treatment of workers. I will also send copies to other contractors – your competitors – of which I already have an exhaustive list.

Best Regards,

Robert Carry.”

I contacted newspapers and vineyards as promised and afterwards felt much better about the situation. One local paper even put a story on the subject on its front page. I also quickly found work with another vineyard contractor once in Margaret River and they proved to have fair employment practices. Exploitation is rampant in the sector but at least I wasn't a victim for too long.

Pitching a tent in the dark wasn't quite the gargantuan challenge I expected it to be so I was soon nodding off ahead of my first day's work on an Australian vineyard. I had been bouncing from one city to another for months and the somewhat alien, deadeningly quiet countryside made for a peaceful night's sleep. It was brought to a shuddering end at 6am when the sun breached the horizon by – no messing – a blood-curdling scream.

I had just about scrambled out of my sleeping bag in the semi-darkness when a second almost monkey-like screech split the silence. Suddenly, a full blown cacophony of simian, yelping cries broke out all around me. Now, I am fully aware of the fact that there are no monkeys in Australia but it sounded exactly like the trees around my tent were filled with dozens of highly agitated, bawling chimps.

I clambered out of my tent around the same time as my equally bemused soon-to-be colleagues with the screeching still in full swing. “What the f**k is that?” said a female English voice from still inside one of the tents.

“Sounds like blumin' monkeys!” answered a Welsh guy in his early 20s.

As it turned out, it was Kookaburras – large, nasty snake-eating birds that would wake us up in the same manner every morning for the duration of our time in Dandaragon. They break into their touching song at day-break, sunset and whenever one of them catches a snake.

After some brief introductions we headed off to the vineyard itself where we were taught how to prune a grape vine. At the conclusion of her demonstration for our 12-strong group Katy, the boss, gave us a word of warning about the electrical cutters we would be sharing between us. You pull a trigger and a pair of blades snap shut. A German girl in Australia on a working holiday visa worked on the same plot last year. She went home early minus a thumb.

Pruning isn't particularly difficult, but you get paid by how many vines you prune so you have to push yourself and limit breaks if you want to make decent money. Dandaragon, being towards the North of W.A., is also considerably hot, which doesn't help matters. The worst thing about it is the toll it takes on your hands. I was unwilling to loose a finger for the sake of a few quid so I avoided the electrical cutters in favour of a loppers until I was fully used to the process.

This meant that I had to work harder to keep pace and that my hands would finish the day in a sorry state. Repeatedly slamming a loppers closed over a nine-hour day with just the one 15-minute break I allowed myself means some sort of repetitive strain injury is pretty much unavoidable. I woke up during the night after my third day to find that my hands had seized and I literally couldn't open them. I slowly peeled my fingers back and slept the rest of the night with my palms flat under my pillow. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to coil them around the handles of the loppers and get going again the following morning. All rather unpleasant, but still far better than a dole queue.

There were also some enjoyable moments on the vineyard. The countryside around the area was beautiful and when the sun wasn't too hot it was nice to be working outdoors with parrots flying over head and kangaroos bouncing around fields in the distance. It was however a smaller variety of wildlife which provided the best entertainment. The rows of vines were infested with red, biting ants. I was nipped on occasion by one or two, but generally got away with it lightly.

That wasn't the case for a Cork guy named Dave who seemed to have a nack for putting his foot directly into an ant mound and leaving it there while he pruned the vine it sat at the base of. It didn't help that the guy had a healthy, borderline phobic dislike for insects. We would hear a scream and look up to see the lad frantically tearing off all his clothes and staggering around like someone had poured petrol all over him and flicked a match in his direction. The guy could strip to his boxers faster than a Chipendale by the end of the first week.

My job search led me to discover that I was living in a parallel universe in which casual farm labourers earned more than journalists. A career change was in order. I secured a position working on a vineyard without too much hassle and once I had bought a car, some camping equipment and enough food to last me two weeks I set off towards a place called Dandaragon.

Dandaragon doesn't appear on most maps because for the most part it isn't accessible by sealed roads. It isn't a town – it more of a small, ill-defined region. New fangled inventions such as mobile phone signal and Internet are decades away. If you're travelling there you better have good directions.

I had good directions. They came from Google Earth and were emailed to me by Katy, the woman I would work for. The four-hour journey from Perth to Dandaragon was a complicated one so the print-off of the directions was four pages long.

I'm not too proud to admit that there were a number of wrong turns made on the way but with the help of random strangers and petrol station staff I managed to keep going in the correct general direction. I was quite pleased right up until I made my scheduled turn off a main road onto a dirt track called 'Scenic Drive' sometime approaching mid-night. I consulted my directions to see where I should go next and found that there weren't any more directions. They were cut short either by Katy's email or by the printer I used. Whatever the reason, I was stranded. I had Katy's number but I had lost signal hours ago. To top things off, I was running low on petrol and had passed the last station around the same time as my phone died. I knew I had to be close to the farmhouse I was due at a few hours previously so I continued up the five kilometre length of Scenic Drive looking for a signpost or a vineyard or anything that might get me out my predicament. The only thing that indicated that there might be life on Scenic Drive was a light in what looked like a barn or large shed.

I may not be from the country but I've seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Wolf Creek and God help me, Deliverance so I know that wandering into a random farmyard in the dead of night invariably means torture, rape and murder. Besides nurturing a racking fear stemming from horror film-induced trauma I was reluctant to saunter onto someone's property in the middle of the night out of a sense of common decency. Unfortunately, I was out of options.

I pulled up at the edge of the property and, like someone having a near-death out-of-body experience, walked towards the light. It was a garage for tractors and other farm-related paraphernalia but was empty of people, be they hill billy serial killers or otherwise. I walked back outside and spotted a fairly swanky-looking farm house further into the property and a light was just barely visible through the curtained front window. I felt like an idiot, but just bit the bullet and knocked on the front door.

A farmer answered and he instantly struck me as a kindly sort. I apologised for disturbing him at such a late hour and explained my predicament. He was unconcerned by my arrival on his doorstep; probably because the lad was quite clearly hammered. Nonetheless, he had a plan to resolve my crisis and the wheels were immediately set in motion. Only two vineyards in the area employed contractors to prune them and he knew both. He threw on his wellies and with trusty dog bounding along behind him he headed towards his ute (that's Ozzy talk for a open-back 4x4). He tore off down the dirt track in the direction I had come from while my 1985 semi-vintage motor struggled to keep pace.

After 10 minutes of desperately trying not to let the bloke get away he pulled up to a gate that opened towards a small, borderline derelict house that looked to be in total darkness. We both jumped out and peered over. There were tents pitched outside the house – it was definitely the place I was after. I thanked the bloke profusely as he jumped smiling back into his ute. He waved away my appreciation and seemed happy to have done a good deed, if in a slight rush to get back to the crate of beer he had been working his way through.

I didn't feel like ruining anyone else's peace and tranquility so I quietly pitched my tent among the others and climbed in. The introductions would wait until morning.

Perth's backpacker land is flooded with Irish people and although personal experience is not always a representative sample that reflects exactly the larger picture, I was forming the belief that the Irish/non-Irish ratio was greener in Perth's Northbridge than on Dublin's O'Connell Street. Matters however, were to get still more surreal.

Myself and a motley crew of various hostel hounds decided to go along to a Latin night being hosted by a bar up the road. Bog-standard chart music played, cheap Australian beer drained and the clientèle was at least 80 per cent Irish – so all-in-all it was about as Latin as a mashed potato sandwich. However, the night suddenly became notable when I recognised someone – a guy who grew up in the same Ballybrack housing estate as me but whom I had no idea was even in Australia, never mind Perth.

For a good 20 years we lived so close that I could have stood on my back wall and spat into his front garden, were I so inclined. Now here we were on the other side of the planet still somehow living in the same neighbourhood. He wasn't quite as shocked to meet me as I was him, and I realised why when I saw who he was drinking with. He had randomly bumped into and was now travelling with two other Ballybrack natives we both knew since childhood. It's a small world – but the list of places to which people tend to travel is very, very much smaller.

I was getting nervous at the start of my second week of job-hunting. What I thought was an interview with the editor of a mining magazine turned into something of an anti-climax when he informed me as soon as we sat down in a coffee shop that there wasn't actually any job available. He mouthed off about how great his magazine was and all the great places he gets to visit before bidding me the best of luck and heading off. He even stung me to pay for his coffee. I would have to cast my net wider if I was to land anything so I started applying for every position I came across in the hope of getting something to tide me over while I found my feet.

These ideas seem like a great way of increasing your chances of getting a job on paper except for the fact that you're only going to get a response from the ones you're either qualified for or which don't require any qualifications or experience. My applications yielded two job offers – one as admin support for an oil and gas industry magazine and another as a pruner in some god-forsaken vineyard a few hundred miles north of Perth. Both arrived on the same day and oddly, so too did a third unsolicited job offer from Thailand – a property magazine I worked for about a year ago wanted me to re-enlist.

“Global economic crisis my arse,” I informed my mother, who is doing a spot of travelling herself of late and was in New Zealand at the time. “Three job offers in one day!”

“Good stuff!”, she exclaimed. “So which one are you going to take?”

“The one with the best pay.”

“Which one is that?”

“Strangely enough, the one on the vineyard.”

There was a perk involved with working in agriculture – farm labouring positions were rough going by all accounts so Ozzies with options avoided them. Foreigners are needed to fill the gap so the Australian government offers entitlement to a second year working visa as an extra incentive. Working in the middle of nowhere means there is little to spend your money on so saving is easy.

My boss-to-be told me I would need a car, camping equipment and food for about two weeks which along with a few other bits and pieces meant a substantial outlay, but the work was due to last for four months if I needed it. So that was that. I had a week to get everything together and make my way to a place called Dandaragon where I would join up with an international contingent of fellow farm labourers. We would toil long hours in the fields, live in a house with no TV in a region with no Internet or phone signal in order to provide wine to the people left in the world with the money to drink the stuff.

You come across some characters when staying in backpacker hostels and I found myself sharing a dorm with some right headers. One, an early thirties Galwegian called Paddy who had been living in Perth for over a year, was on the bunk above me. He studied robotics in university and was working for an Australian company that manufactured car assembly machinery. In his spare time he told me, he was working on a computer program that he would allow him to cheat at online poker. Although his short stature, dorky profession and thick glasses gave the impression of a studious, quiet type, he was actually a funny, eccentric sort of a lad.

He was full of off-the-wall stories that generally only came to light when the drink was flowing. One such tale was of the time when he went to Belfast as a 17-year-old to try to enlist in the IRA. He didn't know anyone so he just wandered into a bar in West Belfast and started asking random punters if they could put him in touch with the local OC. Happily, he wasn't taken as some sort of security forces plant and he returned home unharmed after being informed that the war was all but over and his services would not be required. His decision to travel to Belfast came about, he told me, as a result of a short-lived romantic notion of the IRA's campaign that had long since past. But he enjoyed telling the story all the same.

Another one started off a bit more mundane but ended in far greater personal tragedy. He got his own place in Galway shortly after leaving college and immediately set about redecorating. Walls were painted, tiles were laid and a laminate floor was glued into place with some dodgey tin of industrial adhesive he got from a mate. He slept on the floor after his day's work but he would wake up, he told me, feeling increasingly groggy and short of breath. His brother dropped by to check on his progress and was impressed by the results. He was less impressed however, by the discoloured, disheveled mess Paddy had suddenly become. He was a shade of green, by all accounts, and a trip to the hospital was deemed necessary. He was sent home after extensive tests and a short stay with the sad news that he had permanently lost 30 per cent of his lung capacity. “Don't laugh at me! I've the lung capacity of a eight-year-old girl!” he lamented, throwing his hands in the air when he saw my unsympathetic reaction to his sorry tale..

Also sharing my room were the hostel's only two French representatives – Sylvan and Thebault. The pair were of such different personalities that it was amazing that they came from the same planet let alone the same city. While handsome, brooding Thibault was quiet and darkly intelligent, larger-than-life Sylvan was probably the most out-going person I've ever met.

A particular bug-bear of Sylvan's were the big, screeching crows that seem to infest much of Western Australia. They look quite like the Irish fellas but oddly, they sound nothing like each other. To all intents and purposes the Australian version has a different accent. It's difficult to wake up in the morning to anything other than their howling cries that sound like a mixture between someone dry retching and a bag of cats being stamped on. Unless of course, you shared a room with Sylvan. He hit the roof as soon as the first bird began to vomit its morning chorus off in the distance. He would be out of bet and barreling towards the window shouting, “Zee berds! They cannot shet ap!”

Sylvan's main hobby was smoking cannabis. Not unusual in itself, but he had an oddly artistic way of approaching the practice. Anytime we went to the super market he would pick up a piece of fruit and announce that he would smoke it. I didn't really know what he meant by this on the first occasion he started manically declaring his nefarious intentions towards an unsuspecting water melon but I soon found out. He bought it, took it back to the hostel and went to work with a big grin on his face. He cut a lattice of internal chambers into the fruit and then started rolling a half dozen joints. Next, he fitted them into strategically placed holes in the outer skin of the melon, sparked up and smoked them by sucking on one end of the fruit. Over the weeks that followed he would burst into the dorm with some other unfortunate victim from the fruit and veg isle quite regularly. I personally watched him smoke grape fruit, banana, mango, a large apple and, on one of his less inspired days, a bewildered carrot.

I was quickly finding out that sharing a room with a bunch of strangers is at times uncomfortable, sometimes unhygienic and occasionally dangerous, but rarely boring.