I finally heard from the birthday girl this evening. Claire called from Brisbane to tell me about her brief but career-affirming experience on a capsicum farm in Stanthorpe, a considerable distance southwest of Brisbane. She drove up from Sydney in one long trip a couple of days ago, to check into a hostel overseen by a man she described as very ill-tempered. After her ten-plus hours on the road, she crashed for the night in a room shared with six other females, to be woken for the bus at 5:30 am. She was assigned an inside job sorting peppers (considerably more attractive than outside picking them in the Queensland sun), but there she was subject to crabby women yelling at her to work faster, better, harder. She says with the whole day sorting peppers, she had lots of time to think through her career direction and her next move in OZ. No surprise that she concluded that picking, packing or doing anything to peppers was not going to be part of the plan. She stuck out another day, then packed her stuff at the hostel, broke the news to Mr. Nasty Temper (who was none too pleased -- he plays a role in organizing the pickers), made some arrangements for her next adventure and checked into a hotel.

After a night's sleep in relative luxury, she sounded buoyant. She planned to head south about an hour's drive to Coolangatta, where she will start Sunday as a volunteer at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, a zoo she visited some weeks ago. She looks forward to some time back in the company of zoo animals, even sweeping out cages and shovelling you know what. Then she'll be set to travel a bit once her friend arrives from Canada in mid-April, before heading home at last (we hope) in June.