Days 415-421! What a week it’s been! This week is full of lots of work, both farming and bartending. But on top of the work, I finally had my first surf lesson, which was incredible, AND I made a new friend who’s going to help me produce my own music! How cool is that?! I’m living a very fun life right now, even with all the hard work, the perks of this town are outwaying all of that at the moment!

Time for some more farming! I woke up on Thursday, February 20th at 6am. I’m slowly starting to get used to waking up this early, but I’m still not super thrilled about it. I’m missing the days of waking up early to surf or sleeping in. Not much of an option right now!

I kickstarted my workday with some Agris-Fos spraying to help the trees fight off the Phytophthora disease. It’s a preventative and an aid in helping already sick trees, which there a few scattered across the farm.

It’s a sweaty job carrying around a heavy backpack and walking the rows of trees. But I still have a smile on my face while I jam out to music and enjoy the beautiful day outside.

I have a lot of time to think while I’m out on the farm, working by myself. And the thought has continuously crossed my mind, “why am I doing this?” I’m working myself silly right now, but I have to remember, as long as I complete 88 days of this work I can live in Australia another year if I want to! I think that’s pretty dang doable!

Also, I’m learning all about this new industry, even if it’s a tough job.

In the afternoon I did some mowing and then set off home around 3pm. I immediately threw on my swim suit and loaded up my bike with my surfboard. It was time to surf!!

The session was okay… it was another one of getting dumped by waves. My friend Max was supposed to come surf with me, but I never saw him… turns out he did end up coming but just surfed a different part of the beach that was better for him and his board.

But while I was out in the water, I met a man who owned the brewery nearby where I live! He was a super friendly guy and was actually giving me pointers on where to be, when to paddle and stand, etc. But I was still struggling.

So when I got out of the water, I decided it was finally time for a surf lesson!

I got in contact with the guy I was supposed to have a lesson with before and got it all set up! On Sunday morning, I was going to have a private lesson!

The rest of the day I spent relaxing at home and resting up for my next day of farm work.

It was a gorgeous morning on Friday, February 21st. The clouds were covering the sun and there was a nice cool breeze, which made the morning of trimming much more bearable.

The day before, Aly (one of the owners) and I were chatting about a bug called the Assassin bug. I had never heard of it or seen one, but apparently the bites are quite painful. And well… sure enough, they are.

Of course the day after we talk about it, I got bit by one while reaching into a tree. At least it wasn’t a wasps nest (some slight foreshadowing)…

The bite ended up not looking too bad, but when I got bit it felt like I was being burned by something and I was scrambling to figure out what had bit me. I have plenty of spiders crawling on me all day, so I was trying to find one… but instead saw the assassin bug.

For the rest of the afternoon, I wrapped up the mowing for now! In a week or so I’ll be right back to it! I was also able to chat with a couple friends from home, Ryan and Maddie, while I worked! Not a bad time to catch up with friends while I’m wandering the farm, it made the morning and afternoon fly by!

While I was finishing up work and putting everything away, I found this cool snake shedding… still haven’t seen one myself but they’re around!

After work, I met up with my friend Paddy and we went to Turners Beach! I tried surfing for a bit, but the ocean was too choppy. So for the rest of our beach time, we body surfed waves and tossed around an Australian football. It was a great time!

To top it off, we went back to Paddy’s place to jam. We unfortunately lost our access to the jam shed (the storage locker’s owner wanted it back), so we had a little jam in his living room.

Saturday, February 22nd came around and it was time for my long day of work. I had a nice greeting this morning from one of the farms horses though!

It was another morning of pruning… but to add to the job, the area of the farm I was in was littered with wasps nests! The first one caught me by surprise and luckily I didn’t get stung. But around 25 wasps popped out around my knee and I ran super fast away from that tree!

I found a few more as I went and unfortunately ended up getting stung once. It wasn’t too bad since it got me through my glove… but back to back days with the assassin bug… come on!

I ended up pruning all day and when I wrapped up, I hurried home, showered, and had around an hour to lay down and rest before my next job!

Today was a big night at the hotel. We had 4 different DJs playing throughout the night and this led to a big crowd at the bar. It was a fun night and super busy, which always makes the night go faster. The long day is definitely tough, but I’d rather do this than sit alone on a Saturday night since my friends would all be working!

I might take a weekend or two off though soon to rest up, but we’ll see!

Even after a longgg day, I didn’t have a chance to sleep in… because it was FINALLY time for my first real surf lesson (I had one in Thailand in 2023… but it was pretty mediocre).

So on Sunday, February 22nd, I got to the beach a little before 9am for my hour and a half lesson. I thought my instructor was going to be the guy I’ve been texting. But it turned out, my instructor was a French surfer named Julian! I actually have met Julian a few times, he’s been up to the pub, so I was excited to finally get to know him and learn from him as well!

The session was INCREDIBLE. I couldn’t have asked for a better lesson. Before we got into the water, I told him I was wanting to really work on fixing my bad habits, since I’ve been teaching myself, and we discussed how to read the waves and when and when not to surf at a beach.

We ended up getting into the water in a way I’ve never done before. On some beaches, there are points (rocks going out into the water) that cause the waves to form. A way to get in, and not fight the waves all the way from the shore, is to get onto the rocks and then after a wave comes, to jump into the water, onto your board, and then paddle hard to the lineup.

It was a little daunting at first, but ended up being quite easy!

Then the lesson began. At first, Julian was giving me little pushes here and there to assist my paddling. I caught a couple waves this way and he was able to help fix why I was nosediving so much along with my positioning on the board (the positioning was why I was nosediving so much), what to do when starting to nosedive to avoid it, and how to turn my big board faster. All this information was super super useful!

Eventually though, he stopped helping with the extra push and instead was giving me help on when to start paddling and when to pop up. This took my surfing to the next step and I was starting to feel and understand how I was supposed to be catching these waves.

I ended up catching a bunch of waves, wayyyy more than I had ever caught before, and I even caught a couple of really good waves too! One of which made me feel like a true surfer, I paddled the wave myself, popped up when he told me to, and even turned down the wave as I descended it! It was a really steep wave too and when I got back to Julian he said he was pleasantly surprised I caught it because he misjudged the steepness of the wave! I was buzzing after that and wanted MORE of that type of surfing. Not the surfing I had been doing… more like falling.

The lesson went over its hour and a half and Julian was genuinely impressed at where I was at with only having surfed for one month with no instruction. That was really nice to hear since it’s been kind of frustrating these last few sessions on my own.

The lesson was over, but Julian said he had nothing else to do but surf today. So he was more than happy to hang around and help still, but he was going to catch his own waves too.

Unfortunately, my leg rope broke on one of the last waves… so I decided to play it safe and head in. But of course, when I decided this, a HUGE close out wave came and all I could do was just hold on as tight as I could to my surfboard while the wave took us out. It washed me almost all the way back to the shore and I was able to boogey board back in safely!

I immediately wrote down all the information Julian had imparted on me and was VERY excited for my surf sessions to come now that I was equipped with this new knowledge. I’ve always wanted to surf and now that I finally am, I’m really falling in love with it! It is such a cool sport! I want to keep getting better and better at it and while I have access to these amazing beaches, I’m going to go as much as I possibly can!

After I got back on my bike, I immediately went to the surf shop in town and bought myself a new leg rope! It feels a lot sturdier than the last used one, so I was looking forward to testing it out.

But, it was time to relax a little bit before my work shift at 4pm. It was a really slow shift behind the bar and I got to go home early which was nice too. But I enjoyed my time chatting with customers and my coworkers as well.

Monday, February 24th was upon me and it was time to head back to the farm.

It was a hot, but beautiful day on the farm. I started my day with more chemical spraying and was sweating my butt off while working.

But I had something exciting to look forward to after work… and no, it wasn’t surfing. For the afternoon, I trimmed more trees and narrowly avoided more wasp nests. I had to go full mission impossible mode to sneak into the tree and snip branches without disturbing the hive.

After work I stopped by the grocery store and then after dropping off my groceries, I headed over to my friend Nathan’s house.

Nathan is a newer friend, but I’ve known of him since arriving in Yamba. He plays in a band that plays at all the pubs in the area and coincidentally, we were at the same birthday beach day the previous week! While we were there, we got to know each other and it turned out he had a little studio for recording and mixing songs at his place! So after getting his contact info, he was game to help me record some of my music!

So today, I was finally getting to bring my ideas to life!

Not only did we jam out a bit, but we also chatted about life and music and shared a bunch of our favorite artists as well! He’s a super nice and cool guy and we clicked really well! I’m excited to have another musical friend in town.

I played him some of my songs and we worked together to put bass and other melodies to the songs. I’ve really been only thinking about lyrics and the rhythm guitar, so this was a blast to come up with ideas and hear how they came together.

We ended up working on my song about Australia, which is a surf rock style song, for the entire time. This is going to take a lot more time and work than I thought, but it’s going to be so freaking cool when it’s all done! I can’t wait to share it with you all!

We made a rough draft of the song and called it a day, but we spent about 3-4 hours on it! I learned a lot about the process to putting a song fully together! It still needs a lot of work, but the vision is there!

We probably will be meeting up weekly to jam and work on the songs! What a wild life I’m living at the moment… farming, bartending, surfing, and making music… this is a DREAM for me (minus the farming a little bit).

After I cooked and ate dinner, I finished off my night with a FaceTime with my parents!

They’re currently in Cairns and are a few days away from wrapping up their time down unda. For them, Australia/New Zealand weren’t on their list of places to visit. But I gave them the little reason to check it out! Andddd they’ve been really enjoying themselves, it’s been really fun to see! Hopefully jet lag and their very long trip back to the US doesn’t affect them too much, but I’m so happy that I got to spend time with them in Sydney and that I’ll also be getting to see them in just a few months!

Tuesday, February 25th was here and it was time to get up nice and early for the farm. Instead of horses greeting me this morning, a little family of kangaroos was out and about while I got up to more chemical spraying.

It was another very hot day, but I powered through the morning and then spent the afternoon pruning more trees. Thankfully, no wasps today! I’ve been working by myself the last few days because the family has come down with a nasty cold… so hopefully, I won’t be catching that! I’ve already had my fair share of colds this past year!

After work, it was time to put my surf lesson skills to the test! I rode my bike to Turners and paddled out into the ocean. It’s such a good feeling after a hot day of work!

The session was BY FAR my best solo surf session yet! The past sessions I’ve caught no waves or no good ones for that matter… today I caught THREE very good waves! One was even my second wave I tried to catch. I was thinking all about what I learned and when I felt a mistake I would correct it! I was far from perfect and had a couple of close out waves sweep me around… but this session was a blast!

I had a couple too steep of waves that caused me to fall pretty hard into the water after standing up on my board… BUT I wasn’t scared or hesitant about it and tried anyways!

Eventually, I got pushed into a rip and get dunked around by the waves enough where I called it quits and boogey boarded my surfboard back to the shore. After this, pretty much all the surfers got out of the water anyways because the wind picked up and the waves got worse. For my first hour session post the lesson, I’d call it a big success! I’m going to keep going solo for now, but I’ll definitely have another lesson in the near future!

To be able to see the difference from before and after the lesson was super motivating too! I’m so excited about surfing right now!!

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing and resting up for another day of farm work!

Wednesday, February 26th was here, which marked another week of traveling! I woke up bright and early for more work on the farm. It turned out the owner was going to be out and about today, so it was another day of working by myself around the farm.

I spent the morning spraying more of the chemical which fights off phytohthora. The rows I’m working on are super long and I probably sprayed around 500 trees the entire morning!

During the afternoon, I pruned more trees in the same block. I also had a moment of inspiration where I came up with an entire new song! So that was pretty cool! I’ll keep working on it, but I’ll add it to the list of songs to produce with my friend Nathan!

I ended up working an extra half hour because tomorrow I’ll be leaving work a bit early. I need to head to Maclean so I can apply for my temporary drivers license! Once I entered Australia, I had 6 months to use my foreign license… but those 6 months are almost up!! Pretty crazy!

When I got home, it was time for the beach! I grabbed my surfboard, waxed it down, and headed to Pippi’s where I was hoping there’d be some okay waves. A big storm swell is coming in as a cyclone forms in the north east of the country. Most of the beaches were really choppy and Pippi’s was no exception.

I did end up catching one solid smaller wave, but I mainly got thrashed around by a lot of big closeout waves. It was still fun though! And I had lots of time to work on my paddle technique.

There were a lot of jellyfish out today too. Some really big brown/grey ones floating around in the water. But washed up on shore were A BUNCH of blue bottles (man o’ war), hundreds of them! Mixed into them was some very pretty Blue Dragons, which are a type of sea slug or nudibranch! Also packed with a not so friendly sting, but they’re super cool to see.

The seagulls had themselves a buffet today!

Exhausted, I biked back home and had dinner. I had one more task to do before I could fully relax for the rest of the evening. I needed to print out the application for my license, so I headed up the hill to the hotel to see if they’d print it out for me.

They of course did, I said hello to my friends behind the bar, and then headed back down the hill. I spent the rest of the night playing some guitar, watching tv, and eating a very tasty plant based cookies and cream ice cream!

This was another really solid week! I did lots of work on the farm, had my first surf lesson, had some successful surf sessions, AND started the process of producing music!! What a crazy life I’m living right now. I’m looking forward to plenty more of all of it! Hopefully I can be a little less tired from all the working I’m doing, but I’m able to save up more money for fun adventures at the moment. And I’m also securing another year in this fun country!

Next week there’ll be a lot of surfing, a lot of farming, and hopefully a successful drivers license application!

Who would’ve thought I’d have an Australian drivers license!

– Elie