Australian Hookup DisasterDisaster

I wipe sweat off my brow and start on another vine, plucking grape after grape until my basket’s overflowing with them. Today marks day 50 of my 88 days doing regional work, and boy do I miss the beach. I’ll do pretty much anything, though, to obtain my second Working Holiday Visa here in Australia, even if that means moving out to Murray River and waking up every morning as an arachnophobe to spiders crawling over my bed net.

Exhaustion has woven its way into every muscle fibre today. At 1 AM last night, this scuffling sound woke me up. I shone the torch up to the ceiling expecting to see a frog – the infestation of flies attracts the creatures inside – but jumped out of my skin when I saw the undercarriage of a wolf spider on my net, right above my face.

It’ll all be worth it though, when I’m back in the Sunshine Coast.

There’s a positive to regional work, and it’s the friends you make. People group together in the middle of nowhere and you bond quickly. Sonny. All the girls seem to bond well around him. He’s one of the only Australians here, and is doing farmwork to afford his travel around the west coast of the country. Adelaide and Kangaroo Island are next, he says.

“You should come with me,” he says to nobody in particular.

We’re sitting around the lake, him, this Mexican guy and four other British girls, myself included, watching the sunset over the lake. The water always turns a sort of brick red this time of day, and birds squawk in different harmonies from the gumtrees behind us. It’s the most peaceful hour in the day, one of my favourite moments when we’re all done with work for the day. You’ve braced the cold showers in the shack, lathered up on insect repellant, and all that’s left to do for the day is sleep.

Lucinda, one of the girls, chirps up and says she’ll join him as soon as she’s completed her 88 days. She’s the first person I made friends with at the grapevines, and I’d still class the girl as my ride or die, even though she fancies Sonny like I do. Long blonde hair and ocean blue eyes, she’s the type most men second-glance, and her sunshine personality makes her easy to talk to. I sit next to her, feet at my chest, as she and him discuss scuba diving activities, a pang of pain striking through my chest for a guy i’m not even in a fucking relationship with.

“Lucy,” she says, pieces of blonde hair turning with her as she faces me, “you should come. Oh my god, it would be fun.”

Sonny gleams at me. “You should.”

Goddamn tall, blonde Australian men. That guy will be my downfall. It’s the extroverted personality that piques my attention as a shy introvert whose weakness is group interaction. He makes you feel welcomed and his blue eyes, the same cerulean colour as the sky, melts me faster than ice cream does out here in the forty degree heat.

“Maybe,” I say, looking back to the sunset to anchor myself there. It’s one thing having Sonny’s presence central to my universe, but another having him know that.