We past lots of emus today, they mostly just stand and watch as we go by, we’ve never seen any dead on the roads, unlike kangaroos, there were some stretches of road today where there were  several dead roos about 100 metres apart. We even saw some wild goats today (alive).

We mentioned as we checked in at the caravan park that we were looking for work and the manager gave us a phone number of someone who had rang earlier in the day seeking workers. We rang them and left a message and they got back to us a bit later in the day, we start picking chillies tomorrow.

Went down to town to get a few groceries and have a bit of a look around Carnarvon.

When we got to the Frzop property Liana took me over to the chilli patch and showed me how and what to pick, she sent Tony to work with Stefan, a Dutch traveller, they were weeding and putting in star pickets. There was no taking of our names or bank account details for paying us, or filling in tax forms, they didn’t even show us where the toilets were or tell us what time our break was to be.

In the morning I worked with Emma from New Zealand and Lucy an older Australian lady who is travelling. After lunch Lucy went home and Tony was sent to pick chillies with Emma and me.

We sat on the side of 25 litre carboys hunched over to pick the chillies which only grow to about 40cm high.

At the end of the day we told Liana that we wouldn’t be back to work again, she cracked it, and said to Emma “I suppose you’re not coming back either” (she wasn’t). We were told that we couldn’t get our pay until payday which is Tuesday. We were stunned at her attitude, not surprised that they have a payday, but surprised that they hadn’t taken bank details from us to deposit our pay into it on payday.

We went home and talked with Emma and Ken about our options, whether to hang around till Tuesday or to try and give the farmers our details to deposit our pay in the bank; we overheard Phil, Liana’s husband telling Lucy to collect her pay on Saturday, so they obviously changed their rules for her.

Emma’s boyfriend Ken said that he’d been talking to people and had been told that most farmers in the region had cash to pay workers at the end of each day because there are so many people who are travelling and working.

I sent a text message to Phil’s mobile telling him that we’d go to the farm tomorrow to organise our pay, we immediately received a text back saying “Tuesday”.

I sent a text message to Phil telling him that if it was ok with him we’d be out to the farm to organise payment for yesterday at 3.00pm. We didn’t receive a reply this time.

At 3.00pm we rode out to the farm, Phil and Liana were working in a shade house and told us it wasn’t convenient and we’d have to come back later or Tuesday. We asked what time later would suit and were told 5.30pm.

We had 2 ½ hours to kill so we went and had a look at the 1 mile pier. It’s one of the few attractions in Carnarvon.

When we went back at 5.30 there was one tax file form sitting on the table which I filled in and then I was given a cheque that was payment for both Tony and me. If we’ve learnt nothing else from all this, we’ve learnt to sort out the details before we do any work.

There are some blowholes north of Carnarvon, we’d passed the turnoff on our way into town but thought we’d be staying around for a couple of weeks and catch them on a weekend. Because we decided not to stay around Carnarvon we thought we’d go out there this morning and have a look.

On the road to the blowholes we passed lots of areas that were encrusted with salt, it sparkled in the sunshine and looked a little like snow.

The sea is really wild at the Blowholes; it crashes against the cliffs of the shore and spurts up through holes in the rocks sometimes with impressive force and with a roaring whoosh.

We stayed at the blowholes for a while taking photos before heading back into Carnarvon refuelling and heading south on highway 1.
   
 

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