In my last post I talked about all the help I have been given by my sponsors and in this one I’ll talk about how I managed to come up with the rest of the money that I needed for this trip as I have still had to do a lot of hard graft to get into my current position.
You see for the last 7 weeks I have not been calling Wellington home, instead I have been living and working in a little country town in South-Eastern Queensland, Australia called Kilcoy. There isn’t a lot to do in Kilcoy other than work and session the local skate park so the time has flown by and the money has flown in . Some of you may wonder what work there is in Kilcoy if it is such a rural little town? Well In 2010 I replied to an internet advertisement on a Kiwi Mountain Biking website and was lucky enough to be accepted for a job in Patagonia, Chile digging mountain bike trails for a company called NZ Trail solutions. This turned out to be an amazing 3 month long experience and for once I returned home with more money than I went away with. Between the money saving and riding on average 2 1/2 hours a day to and from work it was the ideal job for a bike bum, and as it was so effective I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to email Jeff at NZ Trail again in February this year to see if he had any contracts that might suit my needs. A couple of emails later and lo and behold the job placement in Kilcoy popped up for the time leading into Europe departure. So I packed my bags and jumped on a plane to Brisbane completely unaware of the epic adventures and experiences that would occur over the next seven weeks.
As I sat in Brisbane airport typing this I couldn’t believe that I was actually alive let alone in one piece, I don’t quite know where to start with some of the stories but highlights would be fulfilling a childhood dream of catching a wild snake in the bush Steve Irwin style (without the pesky stingray). Unfortunately for my life preservation chances (which I don’t think exist anymore), I didn’t just stop at one and proceeded to catch a total of 4 snakes over my time in Kilcoy, 3 of which are on the “Highly Venomous” list, luckily I escaped with no bites or missing limbs and in all honesty will probably attempt to catch several more in the future because the adrenaline rush/satisfaction is amazing! however these encounters were just minor incidents compared to what happened on my fourth week of digging.
On one fine Monday afternoon at about 1.40pm , I was busy building a little drop off on my section of trail and decided that I really wanted this particular rock for a support pillar. I knew it was heavy and took extra care in lifting it up to a comfortable height and started over to where I wanted to place the rock. I got halfway to the drop off point when my left foot slipped on a rock and gave way, this forced me to try and heave the rock off the side of the track before I fell over. Unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough and only succeeded in dropping the rock onto the end of my pick axe, this then catapulted the mattock end (wide steel end) up and it hit my head with some serious pace.
I stumbled briefly as the impact left me very dizzy, but regained my composure enough to let my crew-mate know I was alright, I then felt a warm running sensation moving down my head and put my hand up to see what it was. When my hand came back down covered in blood I knew things were not good and walked up to the smoko tent and sat down for a bit while one of my crew-mates attended to it as best he could. I then got up and the two of us walked 20 minutes back down to the onsite caravan to have a proper look at the wound. What we found was a gash about 2 ½ inches long, an inch wide and straight down to my skull for the entire length of the cut. It was a bit weird seeing my skull popping out like that. We jumped into one of the guy’s cars and wandered on down to the hospital only to be told that if I wanted stitches there and then it would cost me $60 Australian but if I waited until 5pm I could get them done for free. Now I do like to think that I am a pretty tough dude (Read: probably just a wimp) but I was quite surprised at how little the whole ordeal hurt so instead of paying I went home for a few hours and relaxed before going under the knife. We arrived back at the hospital at 5.30pm and after a lengthy wait the doctor came over to check out the wound “oohh yea, that looks tasty, guess we’ll get the big needle for this one”. One BIG needle later and I couldn’t really talk properly anymore and my head was being sewn back together like a ripped soft toy, 10 minutes later and I was looking like Frankenstein 2.0 and feeling not much better, however after a week of looking like a mummy the stitches came out and the cut has since healed up perfectly and I now look fairly normal again.
However it has not been all snake bites and head bashing here, I have had an amazing time, I meet some awesome people, got into more mischief than I ever thought, learnt some new skills, smashed myself into the ground training for the upcoming season and had more than one lucky escape. I will be putting up a couple of photos of my trip up on here and will also put a Facebook link up from my user gallery so if you like you can see all the other stuff we got up whilst living out in the middle of nowhere!
Facebook link to Auzzie pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.468192303194519.127481.100000112617733&type=3
Racing for my Dinner 