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Robinvale or was it Robinjale?

Robinvale


or should it be renamed to Robin-Jail?

This is the place where any backpacker will find work. FACT!
It's loaded with vines, tree fruit, ground fruit and veg. There is work there most of the year.
ONLY GO THERE IF YOU ARE DESPERATE.

We stayed on a camp site which was $90pppw. Not bad. Free use of the kitchen, bathrooms and water.
Good you think? wrong. We only had one drinking water tap, which when it was empty it was empty. We found out that it was nearly empty as the water was green with moss coming out the tap.

The water that we showered in was from the river (murray river) which was fine. Until the floods hit us and the water turned black from the silt. The mosquitoes were terrible. As soon as the sun went down, everybody went to bed. River Ross fever was going to hit this town.

One day the weather was great 30degrees. The it went up to 42degrees in a matter of one day. Then it hit us 50degrees. You might think wow thats great weather, but i'll kid you not in the middle of no where, where the flood waters are 100meters away. 50degrees is the worst heat you can be in. There's no shade and no air.

We managed to get work. Aimee drove the tractor, and craig pinned covers over the top of the grape vines, along with a 10 wo/man team.
After two weeks the work dried up, we had enough money to last us for a few weeks. Off we drove again.....

next stop Torquay!

Off to Kapunda

We drove another few hours in search of a town called Kapunda. This is where we had been promised some work on the grape vines.

We had been invited to stay at Racheal and Peter's house. Well in fact in their granny flat at the bottom of the garden.

Racheal and Peter had gave us a number to call for a guy who had work. He said we could have a job. Great. The bad news was that the season was meant to start in Feb and I don't think still to this day (march-11-11) the season has still not started. Australia has suffered with bad weather this year..

When we was in Kapunda there was a benefit show on the sports field in Aid of raising money to help Chris Rowe, his whole family had been murder by a guy his sister went to school with. It was great to see the whole town turn up to it.

We only stayed a week in Kapunda. We could not find any work and our finds was nearly dry. We had to find work some where, and quick. So we called every Madec (employment agency) in SA and in Vic. We had a call back from the Madec in Robinvale. BINGO he said we could start work tomorrow, but we had to be there by 5pm today to sign up.

It was 10.55pm and it took at least 5 hours to get there.
We had to say a quick good bye and off we drove again.

We would like to say a very big thank you to Rachael, Peter, Harrison, Willham and Micky for letting is stay with you.
If we get the chance to come over again. It would be amazing to see you all again.

Whyalla

We stayed on another free campsite on the side of the road, this time near the notorious Indigenous town. We was around 400m away from one of their cabins. I was quite scared. I couldn't decide weather I was scared of the Aboriginals or the dingos. As Ben told us they liked to hang around here. And nick your shoes when you leave them out side the tent.

When we arrived at the first major town/city in SA we had to say our goodbyes again to Ben and tanja. And carry on and drive over to Whyalla. To go meet some friends from Birmingham.

It was so good to see some familar faces from home. Steve, Steph and family welcomed us into their home. It was great to hear some brummie accents, and some english homely feeling.

We stayed a few days in Whyalla, we had a quick tour of the town. Steve took us on a 4WD, now thats something I'd love to have a go at.

We introduced them to This Is England '86 with thanks to Sarah..

Sadly it was time for us to hit the road again..

Thank you to Sharon and Kirk for letting us stay in your home.

WA SA

We was only 19kms from the border, the border Craig and I longed to cross. It took us a few days to get there and we finally done it.