Dreamily I imagined a romantic, wooden cottage next to an old, white church and cute, little houses, the way they are shown in ‘Heidi’. I was quickly thrown back into reality though once pulling up the building. The pub I was going to work in was a rectangular box made out of a cheap looking plastic like material with no other colour being applied than yellow turning white. The interior was decorated with stuffed deer and pig heads hanging from the walls and photographs of half-naked cowgirls posing in front of Harley Davison’s. This scenario was accompanied by the sound of Slim Dusty, the country legend chanting “Waltzing Matilda”, which rounded off the image of an out-modelled, run-down western saloon.
I think I don’t’ have to say that I was rather disappointed but the prospect of hacking my way through the understorey of the jungle with a machete, casting out a fishing rod and catching the ever famous Barra Mundi and having animated conversations behind the bar while pouring drinks, allowed me to overlook the fact that I was going to work in this dusty hole. However I couldn’t have been further away from the truth.
We worked approximately 10 to 11 hours a day and when we asked our boss how things looked for having one day off a week, he just murmured something vague and changed the subject.
The main part of our job consisted basically in standing behind the bar and doing nothing. On a weekday, there’d be maybe two or three customers throughout an evening, drinking silently one beer after another with a blank expression on their faces. After attempting to have a more or less entertaining chat with one or the other and failing miserably, I subsequently just focused onto not looking too gloomy. When an old full-bearded bloke asked me in a mocking tone why I looked so sad and if my boyfriend had just dumped me, I almost burst out saying “Maybe I look this way because I am surrounded by a bunch of pathetic, beer belly carrying, dull guys, whose only physical contact is the one to their mother.”
However after being accused by our boss for trying to take advantage of him, by eating a colourful salad and not a lifeless, white-bread sandwich, though we were just paid 400 Bucks (minus tax=290, so not even 150 Euros) for a 70 hour week, we both quit on our fourth day and headed back to Cairns. The only thing I really liked about Laura, was that I got to the see Aboriginal people for the first time being well-integrated and living in harmony with the white people.
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