Hughenden

Although we were apprehensive about working in an outback Australian pub in the middle of nowhere, we decided to give Hughenden a chance. We tried our hardest to embrace it as a positive experience and stuck it out for five weeks, before finally deciding that we couldn't hack it any longer. It's a wonder we lasted more than a week; our first couple of days were certainly an eye-opener to the "real Australia", as the locals like to call it.

The Place

A pit-stop on the way to Mount Isa, Hughenden is located in north Queensland, more than four hour's drive from the coast.

When we arrived in the town, we felt as though we had stepped back in time. The shops were closed from midday on Saturday and all day on Sunday, and it wasn't unusual for the power to the whole town to randomly go off now and then without warning. And when the local clothes shop had sold out of flip-flops, rather than waiting for three weeks for the next delivery to come in, it seemed more logical to borrow someone's car and buy some more from the nearest town - which just so happened to be Townsville - a four-and-half-hour drive away. And once we arrived in Townsville, we were deluded in thinking it was a wonderful city because we were used to living in a place which is a flash-back to the 1950s.

Aside from the odd road trip, contact with the outside world was made via our mobile phones, but even then we had to buy special phones and SIM cards in order to use them in the outback.

Once we'd visited the town's greatest assets - a dinosaur statue which marks the beginning of the 'outback dinosaur trail' and the vastly boring Porcupine Gorge - there wasn't very much for us to do when we weren't working. We borrowed a TV to curb the boredom, but unfortunately Channel Ten - Australia's best free-to-view channel - was unavailable, and outback adverts are even worse than conventional ones. Mostly appearing as though they've been shot in someone's house rather than a television studio, they consist of either community notice boards about coffee mornings or kids with annoying voices telling you to shop at a store called Golders Roma. We did occasionally sunbathe by the hotel swimming pool, until we heard that the creepy gardener liked to perve on us as we lay there. With so little to do, like most people who lived in the town, we inevitably resorted to drinking in the pub.

Drinking in Hughenden is done to the extreme. So much so that one Saturday night, a woman was escorted off to hospital in an ambulance because she'd had too much to drink. That same night a middle-aged man was mugged behind the pub, someone was arrested for possession of class A drugs, and someone else was badly beaten up.

Working in the local pubs (The Great Western and The Royal Hotel) meant that we were constantly exposed to people in their worst states. We had various things thrown at us and were verbally abused to the point that we became accustomed to the 'c' word. Maybe their aggression has something to do with all the XXXX Gold and Bundaberg rum they drink...

The People

Our first afternoon in the pub was spent getting to know the regulars. We listened as we were told that the gardener had taken a swing for the landlord's daughter the night before and we actually witnessed one customer kicking one of the barmaids and hurling racial abuse and other obscenities at her because she asked him to take his dog out of the pub.

That evening we were having a drink with another local, and his whole family came into the pub to try to get him to go home. We sat there in muted embarrassment, silently sipping our drinks and avoiding eye contact while the kids cried and begged their father to leave with them. He, however, remained in the pub while his eldest daughter shouted insults at him from the car as they eventually gave up and drove away.

Speaking to that same man on a different occasion, he told me the 'funny' story of how he freaked out the landlord's daughter upon her arrival in the town two years previously. He described how he waited until her parents had gone on holiday, leaving her in charge of the pubs, and how, in the dead of the night, he scattered chopped up kangaroo around the porch of the house, so that she'd awake the next morning to a massacre of blood and guts. And to think that in England you might welcome your new neighbour with a hamper of goodies.

Another regular customer to the pubs is only allowed to be served with take-away drinks. On our first shift we were warned to stand about a foot away from the bar when he came in, because if you refuse to let him drink in the pub, his reaction is to take a swing at you. Luckily neither of us ever had the pleasure of serving him.

But that's nothing compared to some of the people the landlady has had to deal with. She's actually been spat at in the face and been squared up to by men twice her size.

To begin with, it seemed that the people in this place were either extremely nice or extremely horrible. For every person calling you a c**t - for anything from refusing to serve them another drink to refusing to get in their car - there's another offering to buy you a drink or lend you their car. But the longer we were there, the more we heard people slagging off their best childhood friends and discovered that no one in the town could really be trusted. This, I might add, was not helped by the 63-year-old handyman, who, even at his age, seemed to get big kicks out of stirring trouble between people.

And everyone was racist towards Aboriginals. The remarks we heard were shocking. Perhaps I'm naive, but I honestly didn't think that people spoke openly like that in this day and age. Especially those from our generation.

The Accommodation

For working six to eight hours a day, five days a week, our weekly salary was $400 plus free food and accommodation. This sounds like a pretty good deal, but we would have preferred to work longer for our money so that we'd have something to do. When we arrived in Hughenden, we were told by everybody that we'd get used to doing nothing, but five weeks in the outback town almost proved to me that it's actually possible to die from boredom.

Most of our time off was spent watching television in our make-shift living room. Having a whole backpackers' hostel to ourselves seemed great to begin with, however on closer inspection, the building turned out to be a massive mobile home, consisting of about 40 rooms and, situated in the shadows at the back of the pub, was actually quite a scary place to be at night.

We were told by someone that one night, after Sophie had finished work, they'd seen one of the regulars follow her into the hostel to try to find her room. Luckily she didn't see him, otherwise she'd have screamed the place down if she'd looked up into the mirror while brushing her teeth to find him standing behind her. About a week later, a different man looked Sophie in the eye, randomly said a number - which just so happened to be her room number - and then asked her whether she was freaked out. Another night I heard someone scuffling around outside my bedroom window and about a week before we left, the gardener got viciously drunk and came into our hostel looking for us. He'd obviously taken something too, because he had a nasty crazed look in his eyes. Luckily two of the guys we worked with were having a drink with us, so they managed to scare him away. Although, he was that persistent they had to actually physically remove him and call the police in case he came back once they'd gone.

Not only did we feel unsafe by the people roaming around our accommodation in the dead of the night, the fire alarms were constantly bleeping because the batteries were running down, and their solution to this was to simply rip the batteries out, rather than replacing them.

Most of the time we had the hostel to ourselves, however occasionally the other rooms would be let out, without prior warning to us. The worst we felt during our stay in Hughenden was when a massive group of people with babies and children stayed in some of the rooms. They used every single piece of toilet paper and filled every bin to the brim with dirty nappies. The cleaner wasn't called in for days, even after we specifically asked for the place to be cleaned. We even went on a two-day trip to Townsville and came back to find the mess still there. I won't even begin to describe the stench of faeces that's left to fester for four days in 32 degree heat.

One of the rooms was let out on another occasion to the landlord's friend - a man who supposedly used to be a drug barron and once bulldozed someone's house because they owed him money. Everyone in the town seemed afraid of this old drunk, but we lost all respect for him when he stole our toothpaste, deodorant and soap while he was staying in our accommodation. I must say that I was particularly frustrated by the soap, as it's highly likely that it was the only anti-bacterial hand-wash in the whole town. In the kitchen of the Royal Hotel, apparently shower-gel is an appropriate alternative to anti-bacterial soap.

The Food

Because being in the outback generally means that you're hundreds of miles from civilisation, you obviously can't expect the food to be that fresh. Meals are accompanied by vegetables that have come out of a tin and mashed potato that's come from a packet. You do, however, expect it to be hygienically prepared. But, from working in the kitchens of both pubs, I can confirm that it's not. The surfaces, cupboards and fridges look like they haven't been cleaned for decades and the organisation was appalling. The walk-in fridge at the Royal Hotel was chaotic, with out-of-date bottles of sauces covering the shelves and garlic bread sitting on the floor to collect dirt, not to mention the raw meat which is stored above the salad, meaning that blood drips onto the lettuce leaves. I'm pretty sure that if health and safety did an inspection, the place would get shut down.

Although it too could have done with a deep clean, the kitchen at The Great Western wasn't as bad. We did spot a couple of cockroaches scuttling across the floor, however this is inevitable in any hot country and at least the pizzas here were edible. We consoled ourselves that the heat from the pizza oven would kill any bacteria and Sophie took to eating only deep fried food for that very reason. It's no wonder we put on weight.

Summary

From all of this it should be apparent that I would strongly advise against any backpacker working in an outback pub, especially in Hughenden. I'm sure there are some nice places, however I wouldn't want anyone to risk finding out. On speaking to people about our ordeal, the general consensus - from Aussie men themselves - is that it probably wasn't the best place for two young girls to work, as outback men, due to a lack of sex, would have seen us as 'fresh meat' and, with nothing else to do, drinking alcohol could have become a problem for us. So, to sum up; we felt unsafe in our accommodation, we endured regular verbal abuse and we were bored to the point of depression. We didn't even save a great deal of money, which was our sole reason for going there in the first place.

Eventually we decided that enough was enough and, after five weeks, we escaped. The first thing we did was get jobs - Sophie in Byron Bay and me in Brisbane. For two-and-a-half months I lived in the West End, working in a pub and saving money. While I was in Brisbane I enjoyed a rugby league game (the Broncos against the Dragons), partied in Fortitude Valley, where I saw DJ Sasha at The Met, participated in Melbourne Cup Day and generally had a much better time than I did in Hughenden.

So now, with some money saved, it's off to Sydney for Christmas and New Year!