In local news: the food festival has been cancelled because strong winds prevented organisers from putting up a marquee. A man was caught speeding. Two teenagers broke into an industrial plant, found the keys to a moving crane, and promptly injured themselves. A “male person” was seen in a residential back yard, but ran off before the owner could ask him what he was doing. His intentions are still unknown. Welcome to Berri, Riverland, South Australia. This was the TV news bulletin last night.
As you can tell not a lot happens in Berri. The place is tiny and fairly devoid of personality. The population has gone from 6000 to 4000 over several recent editions of the Lonely Planet. There is not a restaurant to speak of and the couple of pubs are dives. The place is designed for driving so everything is really far apart when you’re walking. Tubbercurry it ain’t. On the plus side the locals are incredibly friendly, and will stop and offer you a lift every time if you’re carrying bags of shopping up the road to the hostel. And the weather is fantastic at the moment. We’ve all the time in the world, so this may be another long entry.

(In national news, Australia has its first saint and the story is being covered with such glowing uncritical praise of the Catholic Church that it’s a bit uncomfortable. “Australia’s first Official Miracle” the headline went on the news channel.)

We arrived in Berri off the 4.5 hour bus journey from Adelaide slightly nervous as to what to expect. So far the hostels had been all been very clean, albeit with some lack of privacy. Berri was the first destination where we intended to settle, as it were, and find the harvest work necessary to apply for a second year’s visa. We found a hostel online which was described as “the best working hostel in Australia” with a swimming pool, sauna, tennis courts, lounge areas, games room etc. The reviews were all good; we’d tentatively booked in for three weeks. It was important that this was a nice place.

We didn’t expect it to be so dirty. The walls in our room were covered in marks and stains and looked like they’ve never been cleaned. The bed was a cheap metal-framed affair which had at some point in its history collapsed, and was now being held up by two bricks. The mattress was brown and paper-thin. The pillows were equally measly. There were two single duvets for the double bed. We were provided with clean covers at least – a Tigger duvet cover and a motorbike one. I took the motorbikes.

After exploring the bedroom we moved into the kitchen in our “summer house” – to be shared eventually with 10 other people. All the windows had blinds which went down to the floor and could not be opened, so the place was dark. There was an open bin in the middle of the floor. There was a huge fridge which was filthy, room temperature inside, and smelly. The cutlery drawer was filthy. The food storage presses were filthy. The whole place was filthy.

Our first reaction was to panic and look for other places to stay and work. As the wifi (as everything) didn’t really work in this hostel, we had to do research via the modem on my phone. There was no 3G signal so the connection was exasperatingly slow. Eventually we found another two working hostels two hours up the road in Mildura. We looked up some reviews of the larger of the two and found stories of backpackers being promised work every week for weeks on end, people’s cars being vandalised by the backpacker-hating locals etc. We decided to try the smaller hostel. A phone call revealed them to be booked out for the next month.
So we sat and thought about our situation. The place was dirty, but we were at least in our own separate house with a kitchen rather than in the busy main hostel house. Work seemed to be plentiful, even if we had to wait a couple of weeks. The rent was relatively cheap at $300 per week for the two of us. Better the devil you know. Batten down the hatches, we’re staying in Berri. To make it pleasant we washed the walls in our room, cleaned the shelves in the fridge, cleaned the out the cutlery drawer, and used the carry handles on our rucksacks to tie up the blinds and let some light in.

And now that we’ve been here a week we’ve kind of got used to it – dare I say warmed to the place, and we’re quite enjoying it. The other backpackers are all sound and we’re getting to know more of them as the days tick over. It’s a bit boring during the day when everyone’s at work, so we’ve gone through the Berri attractions and we’re visiting one each day, no matter how dull it sounds.  It usually consists of a not unpleasant walk to read a plaque on a wall or look at a mural on the underpass of a bridge. These in Dublin wouldn’t make it into the guide book.

It’s looking good for work at least, and we’re hoping to have some by the end of the month. Hopefully we’ll be able to tell you what the work is like in the next blog update. Until then we won’t have anything to report. In the mean time Marie’s reading Bill Bryson and I’m reading Joseph Heller and listening to Underworld’s new album and that’s about as interesting as it gets.