← PreviousWallaman Falls: a prodigious waterfallThe following Monday we arrived in Tully Heads to start WWOOFing. We'd expected to live in a big house with the family we'd come to help, but disappointment greeted us as soon as we arrived. The address was that of a small hotel and restaurant complex with cabins as rooms. The owner welcomed us warmly and showed us to our mobile home. It was a little furnished unit of a few square metres in which the heat gripped your skin and set you sweating faster than ever.
That same evening we met a French couple from Corsica who were already working on the property. In conversation they told us the job was split between the farm and the bar, so we'd end up waiting tables or cooking. The ad hadn't said that, but we weren't fussy, and we were already laughing at what the experience might be like.
The men of the family we were helping lived barefoot. And when I say they lived barefoot, they drove barefoot, worked barefoot and walked barefoot, whether on scorching asphalt, muddy ground or rotten wood. The soles of the youngest adult's feet were completely black, and his last encounter with a shower probably dated back to the arrival of the colonists. Our task on the farm was fairly simple: we had to make sure the jackfruit trees were properly tied to their stakes during the growing season.
The four of us walked along the rows, tightening the ties when necessary. Our new Corsican friends were keener than us, as we worked on the principle that unpaid work is done at a slow pace. Big chickens wandered around the grounds and it wasn't unusual to see little snakes. We worked four to five hours, broken up by a break when we were invited to have coffee in the house.
One morning, the farm's owner called us over and, very proud, absolutely insisted on showing us a video. Unsure, we went into the living room to discover… a highlights reel of a pig hunt. Set to rock music, it showed dogs surrounding wild pigs and bringing them down before the men finished and gutted them with knives.
The incongruity of the situation sent us into fits of laughter, and the man's attitude didn't help. He was so pleased with himself, and every time he appeared on screen he talked loudly over the music to tell us, "That's me! That's me!" That's when we discovered that wild pig hunting was a popular sport in North Queensland.
After a few days, we finally realised that working for nothing didn't really interest us, and we told our host we'd only stay two more days. She didn't mind but still insisted I spend an evening with her in the kitchen. There I learned to make the famous Australian pizzas, made with frozen bases, industrial products and a quick blast in the oven, for the modest sum of 25 dollars.
That didn't seem to bother the locals, who came in droves to eat or used the drive-through to buy alcohol. This country loved beer so much that you could buy it without getting out of your car. On the same principle as fast-food places at home, you pulled up at a till and paid for the alcohol you wanted before it was handed to you. It would be hard to find a more Anglo-Saxon concept. At the end of the week, we said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to Cairns to visit the area north of the city while looking for work.
We were entering the most tropical part of the country, which meant lush vegetation and trees with enormous leaves. Several botanic gardens were worth the detour for the rare specimens you could find there, and Mossman Gorge stood out for the huge boulders lining the riverbed. Cassandre treated herself to a skydive over the mountains around Cairns, and despite her initial apprehension she finished her fall with a huge smile and a desire to do it again as soon as she could.
The same afternoon, a farmer called us back to offer us a job on his potato farm, and we accepted all the more eagerly because his farm was on the road to Darwin, where we had to be at the end of August.