We were dropped off in the middle of Chinatown, and I began to wonder if I had taken the right plane. There were Asian people everywhere and not many words of English were spoken. I heard about a game called “Spot the Aussies” that is played in Chinatown. I don’t know if it’s true, but it could really be, because they are really hard to see. I have nothing against Asian people but I didn’t come to Australia to learn Chinese or Japanese history, and after a couple of days I was dying for some Aussie feeling.

I hung out with five other girls from Sweden the first couple of weeks. I had three weeks to go in Sydney before my Jackaroo/Jillaroo School started, so no employer would hire me, and I just thought that I had to spend as little money as possible. Sydney is not my cup of tea I think. The city is too big and there are too many people. I come from a small town in Sweden with approximately 10,000 inhabitants, so I kind of got slightly claustrophobic.

I did somehow visit some of the places that tourists usually visit, like the Opera house, the Botanic Gardens, Bondi beach and I took a stroll across the Harbour Bridge, but that’s about it. The rest of the time I used for exercising, watching TV, talk Swedish with my Swedish friends and stuff like that.

I didn’t really feel that my adventure had started until I was left on my own on a train to Tamworth, where I was going to the Jackaroo/Jillaroo School the next morning. When I arrived in Tamworth there were already one Dutch and two Germans that were going to the course as well. The Germans kept dropping in and I began to wonder if I had taken the right train. When we left Tamworth for Leconfield we were thirteen people. Seven of these were Germans. So much for the Aussie feeling.

The course was great though. It was a lot of fun and we had beautiful weather all week. My plan was to work on a farm for two months and thereafter go to Cairns. Two days after the end of the course my new German friend and I got a job on a farm and we went there. Unfortunately, we had three days of very bad experiences. My friend decided to leave after three days and on the fourth morning I couldn’t take the bad conditions any longer.