← PreviousHeading down Australia's west coastOur bodies were starting to adapt naturally; our body clocks ran like clockwork. We now woke with the sun around eight, and after a quick breakfast and a shower we were already off. We finished our visit to Cape Range National Park with a fantastic canyon. The road there wound along a ridge beside a red rock cliff. It was a breathtaking sight, and I took the chance to film with the drone while Cassandre took photos. We feasted our eyes before driving two hours south. Coral Bay was a small coastal town with the charm of places where people come to have a good time on holiday.
The long beach of fine sand was, as all along this west coast of Australia, edged by turquoise water. We sunbathed for a couple of hours before grabbing a sandwich at the local bakery and getting back on the road. A few hours later we were in Carnarvon, a small town of a few thousand people. We booked a room in a mobile home and went to enjoy fish & chips at the only restaurant open in the place. We ended the day with a film, something we hadn't done in ages.
We kept putting off arriving in Perth because it inevitably meant the holiday was over and we'd have to seriously think about taking on hard work again to continue the trip, as our bank balance was slowly but surely approaching zero. We'd already spent two days poring over job ads and nothing seemed really interesting. We weren't fussy, but it was hard to weave between all the scams and other attempts to exploit the cheap labour we were. Cassandre was searching Facebook groups when she spotted a tempting offer. I decided to go for it and contacted the person directly by private message, saying we were mobile, flexible and ultra-motivated.
I even went as far as offering to drop by her agency's office within the next few hours. To our great surprise, she accepted and asked us to meet her two hours later. Bang on time for the appointment, we turned up, and after a brief chat she told us: "Your English is very good; unfortunately, for this job the employer is looking for bilingual native speakers from English-speaking countries." Having spent time with Irish and Scottish people, we couldn't really see how our accent was harder to understand, but we didn't say so. Cassandre asked her to call us at the first opportunity and said we'd jump at it. She promised she would, but we'd learned to be wary of promises in Australia.
We moved into the Airbnb we'd rented for a week. A slightly stooped old man welcomed us with his son, who was younger than us. Their listing had been online for a year and no one had booked through the site yet, which didn't surprise us much. Cassandre had chosen it for the price, but the description wasn't exactly inspiring. Once inside, the place wasn't so bad. It was a flatshare for Chinese students attending university in Perth, and everything you could want was within reach.
We spent the weekend visiting Perth, its beaches and its hipster neighbourhood of Fremantle. The city's atmosphere was peaceful and airy. We'd been warned that Perth was windy, but it was still surprising to feel this constant wind that never seemed to stop. It made the heat bearable, but it was a pain on the beaches, where the sand flew in every direction and got everywhere.
Shortly after waking on Monday morning, I got a call from an unknown number. I answered and found myself talking to Paul Mart, the manager of a hay plant. He asked if we were available to start quickly, then explained the job: six-day weeks followed by four days off, alternating between day and night shifts. In practice that meant six nights of work, four days off, six days of work, four days off. Repeat until exhaustion. Each day or night of work would last twelve hours, and we prepared ourselves to dig deep into our mental reserves.
Paul suggested I come and see him the next day so he could show us around, and I saw Cassandre frantically shaking her head. I didn't understand what she was doing, but then she mouthed "Rottnest Island" and it clicked. We'd planned to visit the little island the next day, so I suggested Wednesday to our future boss. That was no problem for him, and he hung up promising to text all the information straight away. Sure enough, my phone buzzed once and we discovered the work address: New Norcia, 1 hour 50 from Perth. That would do.