Sydneys short summary

In Sydney I stayed in a small hostel called the Dury House Backpackers. I stayed there for my entire time in Sydney and really enjoyed it! At first I wasn't too sure, because it seemed kind of dirty, the kitchen was small and the fridges (each room had its own) were always full and not clean either.
But in the end I just loved the company of the people in the hostel, enjoyed the evenings and didn't mind the superficial dirt. Ok - a big part was that it was really cheap and offered a lot for the money! (free rice, toast and jam around the clock!)

The wifi could have been (much!) better, but I was lucky and could reach the library wifi from my bed :D
I met many people, most lived there for a long time and others returned back after traveling around Australia or in other countries. Because I was staying in this place for a long time (I hadn't stayed in any place this long for over half a year) I think I grew very fond of everyone there and the hostel felt a bit like home.

During my stay I wanted to work, I settled for a job in labouring/ construction, because the teaching would have been a pain to get everything organised. I should have thought about that in Germany and already gotten all the forms, infos, proofs and translations. Now sending my friends and relatives on a hunt for my certificates seemed unneccesary. I did try and asked around in the department of Education and sent an application to an independent school, but they never answered. The Department of Ed. said I'd first have to file for different things (which all cost money) before my application would even be considered.
So I dropped it and did the easy White Card (an online questionaire for 40$) and then got a job soon after. I worked for a shipyard on Goat Island. An island in the Sydney Harbour which is actually all national park except for the shipyard which was founded in the early 1920s (I think).

On my way to the shipyard and a cruise ship is just arriving

I was working with these 2 famous characters: Kelso (Scrubs) and Sherlock - helped me alot on the shipyard!

The weather was really bad though. And because they needed to paint the car ferry, they couldn't because of all the rain. And so their painters did the job the normal labourers should have done and they didn't need us extra labourers (the painters belonged to the company directly, we were hired via an agency). So the weather made me loose my job.
Not a week later after I had applied for other agencies I got a call saying I could work on a construction site. I agreed and started the next day. It was much more physically challenging but was paid better. AND they wanted me to work overtime which was also nice, because then I of course got more money. I worked with different tools, like a grinder, jackhammer and drills, but mostly shoveling. Then after a week I was helping another guy with simple tasks so I hadn't my gloves with me. When they wanted me to jackhammer, I asked the office for some gloves got some and was walking out when the foreman came and he got angry, that I wanted their gloves and rudely told me to get my own. At the end of that day the foreman told I needn't come back. Later the agency told me he thought I wanted to steal some gloves and didn't want another stealing backpacker. Great...

View from the construction site in Sydney (you can see the bridge and Opera House in the background!)

I again went searching for a job. It was harder than I thought considering others were working 2 jobs and cheating to keep both. Then finally my first agency called me and told me I could go back to the shipyard. That is where I stayed till I left in the end of April. The car ferry was still on the island but slowly everthing was finished painted and we were tasked to fix everything together again, like handrails, doors and other things. Shortly before easter the ferry went into the water and luckily I was allowed to stay and helped work on the next big project, a fire tug boat from the sydney harbour authorities.
In between I had helped on smaller side projects, exchanging windows on a cruiseboat, waterblasting barnacles off pontoons and glueing other pontoons together. It actually was pretty cool working there, escpecially because it was a rather odd job (going on an island each day and working with boats was pretty awesome). Mainly the coworkers were really relaxed and friendly!

Small boat on the slit

Old boat propeller from the small boat(it should be nice and shiny!)

Big boat on the slit (the fire tug)

Happy Jakob on his last day on the bridge of the fire tug

Of course I did many other things while staying in Sydney. With the people from the hostel and other friends I went to the cinema, did different walks, visited several beaches, partied in different bars and clubs or just relaxed in the hostel with a beer. People celebrated birthdays, their last days in the hostel and then that day came for me too. Silja (the friend I visited in Auckland and with who I traveled Australia before) arrived in Australia and we planned to do the east coast. Together we went on a boat cruise in the harbour and walked in the blue mountains with my roommate John and his sister, who came to visit him before leaving Sydney.
Finally it was time to part ways with the dury gang and start traveling again!

The 3 sisters, big thing to see in the blue mountains

View over the blue mountain area

Panorama of the Opera House, Bridge and a cruise ship docked in Circular Quay (the founding spot of Sydney)

Ocean and pools at Bondi Beach

Panorama from the north coast (you can tell I like the panorama function on my phone)

I will write some more posts about this time, but wanted to summarize this quickly for most. Friday I arrived in Melbourne after doing different tours around the East Coast. Here I will stay about a week before flying to Perth.

Random pic of the day: Poor trees just might fail!

The resemblance is uncanny!

Working on a Vineyard near Blenheim (-> Feb 1st)

Beautiful sky over the campersite

In Blenheim I refueled and then checked out the hostel, where Daniel, Fabian and Oliver were staying. I know thse 3 boys from back in Germany, so when I found out they'd be in NZ, I stayed in contact and we finally managed to meet up! They also had another friend with them: Victor. They met him in New Zealand and were travelling together for the last months. I payed a weeks rent and drove down to their campsite. After that we did some shopping and chatted about everything. They forgot to tell their boss another guys would like to join and apparently the boss didn't have any more capacity for new workers...
So I got ready to go searching for a job myself.
Because I booked the car for 2 days we were able to drive around the next day, which was sunday (so they didn't have to work). We drove to a bridge over a small river and jumped off the bridge, after seeing a maori guy do it.
After that we went to a beach and had some fun there. A bit later we returned to the hostel and relaxed at the campsite. Had some fun with other backpackers, singing and making music on our guitars/ guilele. My friends went to bed early to get up at 5am in the morning.
The next day I drove the car to the Blenheim Airport and returned it. I only had recently thought about how to get back from the airport, as it wasn't in town, but a few km outisde. I tried hitchhiking again, but no one stopped. After I waited a few minutes I walked a little and now and then stopped at possibly good spots, but no one was kind enough to give me a lift. In the end I walked all the way back to the backpackers and started my search for a job. And in between I tried saving my files (see the other post) with the help of Olivers laptop.
The next days I again phoned all places known to me for work but got nothing. I then usually walked around town and visited the library to use their wifi and internet to search for a job or just had a look at several shops, if anything turned up.
It ended up to be something like a routine for me. Then at the end of the week the boys also lost their job. They weren't fired but their boss just told them there was nothing to do for them, so "No work tomorrow!"
So we started searching for some job together. I had also been on the lookout for a place to stay and found a house, which was cheaper than the campsite and was perfect for the 5 of us! We moved in after the one week on the backpackers. SO now we were staying in an annex of a hjouse, which an elderly couple was renting to backpackers and other people. Probably not entirely legal, but I don't know the laws of New Zealand... We stayed in this small appartment with a kitchen, washing machine, good wifi and living room. From here we tried different things to find some work.
In the end someone mentioned it to our landlord who said he'd ask a friend for a favour. And sure enough we had work 2 days later. It was just enough to pay the rent and have some food, because we just worked there for 2 days, but that's what we needed.
Then the boys old boss called again and we started working for him again. This went on for another 2 weeks or so untill I left.

We had a fun time hanging out together, doing puzzles, playing games or just relaxing after work. Then in the beginning of February it was time for me to leave and head back north to Auckland.

The work was always on a vineyard. For the landlords friend we did some leave plucking. So we removed leaves from the vines, so the grapes were visible and could air and sun, to ripen faster (I think).
For the other boss the first week we did some wire lifting. The vines all grow on wires and we had to lift these, so the vines grow up and not in all directions. Also on some areas we had to reattach the wires to the poles, which were supposed to keep them up, because of alot of strong winds in the past few days. So alot of them were just dangling in the air, so our job was to keep the plants neatly behind the wires, so it looks good and the grapes are more accessible.
The last few days we also started plucking leaves for that boss. Though they didn't give us any info about  safety hazards or anything. The landlords friend gave us informationa bout the pestizides (it's chemicals, so wash your hands before you eat!!) and he gave us gloves.

That was my work in New Zealand. Unfortunately not as long as I had hoped, but apparently the weather was really bad for the grapes this year. No proper sun, or too much change, just not good. We were told some contractors had hired 20 hands last year and worked overtime. This year there barely was enough work for 10 people. That's why it was so hard. Also he told us the weather was no good for apples, we had already noticed the apples was really expensive! And mainly imported. Now we knew why.

Sorry I don't have any pictures of work, the few I made are all out of focus and I usually had my phone in the van while I was woking.

We found this "sound gun" on one of the farms, it makes a loud sound once in a while to scare away the birds