Day 289! Well unfortunately, this was my last day as a laborer in Melbourne! I have a feeling this won’t be the end of my laborious work activities. But I think it’ll be a bit till I do another job that was remotely like this one.

My alarm went off at 5:30am. After the entire week off, it was finally time to get back to work. So I sluggishly got up, showered, and put on my work outfit for the day.

I checked the weather when I woke up and sure enough, it was going to be another hot one. So instead of my jeans, like I’d usually wear; I threw on a pair of shorts.

In the US, all job sites (that I’ve known) made us wear jeans or work pants… but in Australia; lots of people wear shorts. I guess there might be different standards.

Either way, I was looking forward to not being as hot on the job site.

I whipped up a hearty breakfast before needing to set out on my 25 minute walk to the University of Melbourne. Today I was slated to take down the marquees that I put up last week, with the company Open Air Events.

As much as I love went looking forward to laboring, I was looking forward to hanging with the Open Air guys and some of the Arc staff I knew were also on the job today.

As the sun rose, I started my walk to the job site.

When I showed up, everything was how we left it. There was a lot to take down… I mean, this took us 2 full days to put up. But there was a big group of staff on site today and I could tell Open Air were trying to take it all down in one day:

So we got to work.

My first task was hanging with my friend Ben and taking down all of the booths inside of the marquee. While we did that, others took down the walls and ceilings, tore up flooring, and moved other miscellaneous things.

It took us a bit, but we eventually got moved to carrying a ton of steel down to the loading area. We then got moved again to tearing down some of the smaller marquees. Of course, we also had to carry a number of the orange weights… I will not complain if I never have to lift one of those again.

They worked us pretty long. They’d say, “After this task, we’ll break for lunch.” But another task would pop up and then lunch would be after that.

Eventually what they said was true and around 12:35pm, we got lunch.

We had a decent amount of the take down done by this point! I’d say 70% or it done, we were flying!

I got lunch with the other laborers at the cafeteria nearby. I ended up going with the chicken wing basket since it was the cheapest option in the entire cafe.

It was a quick lunch and we were right back to work. The sun was up and overhead and I was sweating a fair amount… I’m glad I didn’t wear my jeans today.

The next 3 hours consisted of a lot of carrying. We had to take down all of the steel that was the skeleton of the marquees. And once they were taken down, we had to carry them down to the trucks.

This was a lot of repetitive work and a lot of carrying heavy metal objects.

With how fast we were working… I knew there wouldn’t be a second day of this job.

Throughout the day, I was chatting to different guys about my plans and they all were sad to see me go. Even though I didn’t necessarily enjoy the work I was doing, it’s nice to know that the effort I put in was still noticed.

We wrapped up just before 4pm revealing a field of dead grass from where the marquees were.

I then set back out to the hostel, making my way through the nearby park. It started raining pretty much immediately after I started walking and sprinkled on me. When I got back, I showered and changed. I was feeling very snacky so I celebrated my last day as a laborer (for now).

I went to the TV room to read, but of course I got distracted by the TV. But 6pm rolled around and it was time for dinner.

I cooked up a pot of noodles to have with my leftover chicken.

I then spent the rest of the night lounging in the TV room in between a mix of reading and watching.

Even though I have no work tomorrow, I still wanted to go to bed on the earlier side. I’ll have Friday and Saturday to stay up late.

5 more days till I leave Melbourne!!

– Elie