My working holiday in Australia feels a long time ago now, and I guess it kinda was haha! I was 22 when I started it and had some great times travelling and partying. Shagged a couple of great looking fellas on the way as well! But aside from all that, I had to stop and work for a few months at time to earn money to fund it too, so that's what I found myself doing in Sydney in November 2014.
I'd been temping in an office, which was nice and easy enough, saving up money to travel further up the east coast with some fellow Brit friends I'd met on my travels. I was enjoying being so far away from home and being really flirtatious with all sorts of people - at work, friends, guys in shops and bars. Back home I'd have been worried about what people thought of me, but in Oz my new friends were just as carefree as me, just enjoying the travelling lifestyle - it was all just a laugh, no-one judged you and pretty much anything went.
I'd even flirted a bit with Barry the lettings manager of the estate agent who I rented a room from, trying to get him to lower the price, when I arrived in Sydney. He was a nice enough guy, but probably about 40 or 45, and not the most cheerful, with a habit of wearily rubbing his stubbly beard at the slightest little hint of a problem. He was about 6 foot tall and looked like he'd been well built once but had let himself go a bit, and seemed a little disappointed with his life despite the gorgeous sunshine he had almost all year round. I figured why not brighten his day and combine it with trying to bag a better deal for the room I was going to rent?
It was a fairly grotty shared house, mostly short term travellers staying there, but it was pretty cheap and what I needed to save money. At first Barry told me there was only one room available, and it was a double and a bit more than I wanted to pay, but after a bit of pleading, flicking my shoulder-length, sunbleached light brown hair, making doe eyes at him, and rather obviously squeezing my 30B boobs together in my low cut top in front of him, he miraculously did manage to switch me to a smaller room! I remember acting grateful, but also being kinda amused by how transparently he gave in to my persuasion. I thought I might have overdone it a bit by deliberately bending over to get something from my bag so he had a nice view of my bum in my leggings before I left his office too - that was almost mocking him! Still, I thought I'd had a result then, and remember laughing and joking with my friends later about how I had got the better of him.
Well, eventually it turned out the joke was on me.
A couple of weeks before we were due to go travelling again, my friend Beth lost her temp job. She had been staying in a different room in the same house (a double, so she was paying more), and really needed to save money so she'd have enough for travelling. We hatched a plot that she would pretend to move out of the house, but actually just move into my much smaller room with me and we'd split the rent for a couple of weeks, with us taking turns sleeping on the single bed and on the floor.
Unfortunately we weren't as clever as we thought we were. Barry only rarely actually visited the house, but we should have remembered that he would occasionally come over to prepare any empty rooms for new tenants. So one evening just a couple of days after Beth had supposedly moved out of her room and collected back her deposit, we were both sat on the floor in my room, looking at guide books and stuff, with the door wide open. The room was on the ground floor of the house and right near the front door, and he looked straight in and saw us, plus obviously way too much luggage for it to have all just been mine.
"Well this is quite clearly exactly what it looks like, right?" he said with a bit of a sneer. He wasn't a nasty man, but he gave the impression of someone who wasn't very happy in life and just wanted his job to run smoothly and to be treated with respect. Well, he clearly hadn't got a lot of respect from us.
Me and Beth were both stunned, caught red-handed and unable to come up with an excuse. We looked at each other, then down, then I said meekly "It's only for a couple of weeks. We don't have the money for both rooms."
This seemed to really wind him up. I think he went as red as I was.
"You realise it's my job to ensure each room in this house pulls in the required amount of rent? You know this is a single room, and the room she moved out of is a double. But no, you decide to take the piss and both move into the single while the double sits empty."
"I'm sorry", I muttered. It wasn't until I looked up at Barry that I realised I was doing that thing where I squeeze my boobs together again, and he was staring down at me with real anger.