Trapped In The Barracks - Story Behind The Song

Burning ants behind my looking glass

Throw a melon in the pool for laughs

Relive the memoirs of my aging past

Smoke a joint because the fun won’t last

In Top Pub we drink away the night

A hit of acid and I’ll learn to fly

She’s feeling far away and twice as high

Sit and wait for the sun to die

I know it’s fucked, but you’d be right here too

Trapped in the barracks nothing left to do

Still won’t get paid for about a month or two

Humping til my days are through

Hoping that my days are through

Had to scrap my road trip down south

Three more weeks and I’ll be on the route

Called in sick, got sacked, and headed out

Can deal some drugs to make good cash for now

After graduating from Saint Louis University in 2016, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had acquired a business management degree, and there weren’t any job openings that I found to be interesting mainly because my two passions in life are travel and music. More specifically, world travel and rock music.

After a brief consultation with my friends and family, I decided to live in Australia for 6 months post grad to “do some soul searching” - AKA go party in Australia and procrastinate making difficult adult decisions.

Upon arriving in Australia, I spent my first two weeks getting to know people in the same program that I was enrolled in. The program was called Interexchange. Interexchange was a program that helped with the visa enrollment process, setting up a bank account, helped find you a job, etc. They also offered a week long orientation in Sydney where you could spend time with others in the program while becoming acquainted with Australia as a tourist. After this week long orientation, I spent another week at a surf camp south of Sydney with my new friends. It was a great time. However, the cost of living in Sydney is extremely high compared to St. Louis, so I immediately had to get a job and find some money after my two-week grace period.

**The Cassowary. Aka the deadliest bird on Earth.**

**Derek and I carrying booze back to the hostel before dinner. No idea why I look so grumpy.**

**Derek “cleaning” our room at surf camp. Judging from the cleanliness of the room, we (more specifically, I) were still accustomed to living in college dorms**

**My friends Line - pronounced “Lean - Eh” (Denmark) and Grace (USA)**

**Line and Derrick during the last day of Surf Camp**

When backpackers from Europe or America come to Australia, it is common for them to work in a cafe or call center. Personally, I had spent my entire professional career in an office setting, so those options didn’t seem appealing. I had heard bad things about call centers as well. So naturally, I settled for the most exotic job I could find: working on a banana farm.

Because of Australia’s massive variation in climate, along with the fact that ⅔ of the country is a desert landscape that is perfect for cattle farming, agriculture is a massive industry in Australia. It is said that around 3% of the GDP is contributed by Ag, but that number is raised to 12% when value added processing beyond the farm is factored into the equation.

After consultation from the Interexchange counselors at their office in Sydney, I decided to work on a banana farm. Australia has many different tropical climate crops to farm in the north, but I was specifically counseled to work on a banana farm because it is a year round crop. Therefore, I wouldn’t have to worry about seasonal unemployment.

“FYI, it’s known to be really hard work,” the Interexchange counselor said.

“I’m sure I’ll be alright,” I said.

So it goes.

Unfortunately, Interexchange didn’t have any direct connections to a banana farm, meaning I had to search for employment myself. Naturally, I went to Google and typed in “Banana Farm, Backpacker, Australia.” The first link I clicked on was for a working hostel in a small town called Tully, which is on the Cassowary Coast in northeastern Queensland, Australia. I called Paula, the hostel manager listed on the website to see if the surrounding farms had job openings.

“No, it’s not the busiest time of the season, but if you come, we can put you on the employment waiting list and hopefully we will find you a job in a few weeks.”

“Ok, perfect, I’ll be up there on Friday.”

“Great! What’s your Nationality?”

“American. And do you guys really use the name that I saw on the website for your hostel?”

“Yes we do! Some people call it Rafters, but that’s just the name of the bar connected to the hostel. I just tell people to type ‘Banana Barracks’ into Google maps and it’ll bring you straight here.”

…

I arrived in Tully on a Friday afternoon. It’s a town of 1,500, but more than half of those are backpackers. The vibe of the town was quiet, quaint, and oddly felt vaguely familiar due to my rural Illinois background.

The first thing that everyone notices after stepping off of the bus in Tully is the massive gumboot statue that sits at the bus station:

I knew that it had existed from doing research on Tully before going there, but I didn’t expect it to be the first thing that I saw.

The “Golden Gumboot” was actually built as a monument to show how much rainfall Tully had received in a single year. It was known as being the wettest place in Australia, and its 7.9 meter height pays homage to the year 1950, when the Australian annual rainfall record was broken in the quiet town.

I found Banana Barracks on Butler Street (one of the two main streets in Tully), met Paula, and checked into my room.

One thing that Paula had mentioned at the front desk was that I was the only American at the hostel. There were around 50 people living at the hostel and I was the only American? I couldn’t imagine why, but was quickly informed by the crowd of Brits and Germans that were gathered in the main outdoor living area of Banana Barracks.

After anxiously introducing myself to the circle, I settled in and started socializing with my fellow hostel residents.

“Wait, so you’re American?”

“Yessir. Apparently the only one.”

“Yeah, but why are you here? You can’t get a second year visa, can you?”

“Uh, I have no idea.”

“So you’re just here to work?”

“Yeah I need the money.”

(abrupt laughter from the 10 other people listening to this conversation)

“You realize how hard working on a banana farm is, right? You could work in a cafe and make more than you can here. That, and be in an actual city worth living in. Every American that has come through he has left after their first day!”

“Wait, so, you’re just here because you can get a second year visa by doing this?”

“Yeah, lad. 66 days continuous or 88 non continuous.”

“What do you mean by non-continuous?”

“If you get fired from one farm and have to get hired on a different one. Apparently only a couple days can go by while you’re unemployed before it is then considered non-continuous.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it hard to get fired once you have a job?”

“Nope. If you’re boss catches you standing around for a few seconds, then he will pull the trigger. Because they know that they can replace you the next day with someone who will actually work. Either that, or when the season gets slow. They will have random drug testing and fire people with weed in their system. Usually cleans out a fourth of the farm workers.”

“Really, then why do people smoke?”

“Look around. Anything better to do?”

“What if you’re sick and can’t go to work?”

“Depends on how long you have been there and how good of a worker you are. If they believe that you are legitimately sick, they might give you a day off. Two days in a row, you’re fired. Also, never call in sick on a Friday. It’s too obvious. If you do, you won’t have a job on Monday.”

“That makes sense. Ok, well how hard can working on a farm be?”

“Depends on what you do. You’re a bigger guy, so you’ll probably be a humper.”

“A what?”

“A humper. Someone who catches the bunch of bananas on their shoulder and carries them to the trailer.”
“Oh, well, that can’t be that bad. How heavy are the banana bunches?”

“Fuckin’ heavy. There were 2 british backpackers who came in on Tuesday. Started work on Wednesday. Both humpers. Worked their first shift. When they got back here, their shoulders were so sore and bruised, neither one could lift their arms. They came to Tully for the 2nd year visa, but just said, ‘fuck it’ and left town the next day. Didn’t tell anyone. That’s a pretty common occurrence around here. Happens every 2 weeks or so.”

The comment left me speechless, and Paula entered the area.

“Kirk, there’s a farm that needs humpers. I had two British boys on it, but they worked a day and then left yesterday. You were kind of low on the waiting list, but the owner of the farm has sworn off hiring the Brits for awhile. Says the bastards can’t work.”

Queue the British guys in the room rolling their eyes.

“Turns out, everyone above you on the list was British! So, I told them that you would be available to start Monday. Sound good?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

What the fuck am I getting myself into?

Fun fact, my first night in the Banana Barracks, people were pretty excited to hear that I was American because beer pong was commonly played on weekends. I was asked to play beer pong immediately by the Brits Tyler, Tom, and Emma.

While I was nervous about meeting other people, I wasn’t super nervous about playing beer pong. I’m actually very very good at it and didn’t think I’d have much trouble making an impact in my first game.

Boy, was I wrong.

The first thing that caught me off guard was that they only played with 6 cups instead of 10. In America, this would be considered heresy, but I had to adapt rather than complain, which I was fine with. Another thing was that instead of playing out of 16 oz Solo cups, they played with 8 ounce flimsy water cups. I won’t complain about a challenge, but making cups was tough...very tough. Seemingly impossible for me.

In fact, my first game, I didn’t make a cup.

Between living up to the pressure of being an American beer pong player, meeting 20 new people within a half an hour, and these 6 tiny (microscopic) cups, I didn’t make one ball.

I got hazed for not making a cup by being forced to skinny dip by myself in the pool for everyone to see. We are talking at 5 in the afternoon, about an hour after I had arrived in Tully. The sun was just beginning to set. Fond memories. Good times. Welcome to Banana Barracks.

To be honest, I could have left Tully and found a normal job, one that wouldn’t involve hauling bananas through the rainforest. But there were a few reasons why I decided to stay.

First, it is important to know how a “working hostel” operates. Upon checking into Banana Barracks, I had to pay a deposit of $300. This is collateral to incentivize residents to fulfill their work commitment. Therefore, if you are given a job, but do not last the 66 or 88 days for a 2nd year visa commitment, then the $300 deposit is kept by the hostel. I felt like it was pointless for me to have paid $300 plus travel expenses just to see the money go to waste.

Second, I wanted to disprove the stereotype that Americans are lazy. I realize that this sounds arrogantly patriotic of me, but it was annoying dealing with locals and Europeans along the way that would label you as a snob solely for being American. Yeah, yeah, Trump, Hillary, politics, war, la dee dah. I’d like to think that I don’t fit the mold of the typical “entitled” American stereotype. I certainly wasn’t going to sit around and try to act superior based on some predetermined lack of self-awareness based on my country’s culture. I felt like it would be refreshing to work in a hostel with no other Americans. I could blend in and learn about different countries and cultures on a daily basis, which seemed like an exciting concept to me based on my travel experiences. Turns out, I was right.

Now to explain the visa situation.

I went to Australia on a 1-year “work and travel visa,” which pretty much anyone in the westernized world can obtain - assuming that they are not felons. I went with the intent on staying for 6 months and never really changed my mind about that gameplan. Because of this mindset, I never did any research on 2nd year visas. I knew that they existed, but never looked into how to get one. 95% of backpackers who work on a farm do so in order to get a 2nd year visa. However, when I started working on the farm Americans were not allowed to qualify for 2nd year visas. I was told that this was because the American government didn’t allow Australians to get a 2nd year visa.

Eye for an eye.

I was raised by two lawyers and I’m a sucker for logic, so I can’t argue with that reasoning.

About halfway through my employment in Tully, there was legislation passed that allowed Americans to get a 2nd year visa. However, they only counted the days of work after the law had passed. Therefore, only half my days (around 35) would have counted and I was not going to stay on the farm for another month and a half. Having a 2nd year visa would have been good to have as a fallback option, but it wasn’t worth staying in Tully to acquire a document that I might not use.

I started working the following Monday as a banana humper. The entire dynamic of working on a banana farm is a tough one to describe. You work 8 hours a day carrying bananas through a rainforest. Seems simple enough, but it is the nuances of the job and the people involved that made the experience so unique.

Let’s start with the bad:

The Bad

Humping bananas really was hard work (not a sentence I ever thought I would type in my lifetime). The weather was brutal. It was usually 100 degrees Fahrenheit and extremely humid. Sunburns were common after one 2-hour session. Heat exhaustion was common. And when it wasn’t super hot, it was usually pouring rain. We were in a RAINforest, after all. Granted the rain was usually a welcome break from the blistering heat that we had to endure.

It was extremely dirty work. Mud, sweat, rain, standing swamp water, mosquitoes, more mud. There were times in the paddock where a rat would be living in a bunch of bananas and run down your arm when the bunch was cut. It always scared the hell out of me. The worst part about having these rats around was the fact that puddles would gather on top of the bags covering the bunches from the morning dew or overnight rain. However, it was common for the rats to use these puddles as...their own facilities. I’ll never forget when my cutter, Sean, sliced the trunk of a tree. I caught the bunch on my shoulder and then got hit with a shower of water sitting on top of the bag.

Or so I thought it was water.

“Fuck man, I hope for your sake that that wasn’t ALL rat piss.” said Sean.

**A typical sight at Banana Barracks. Work clothes were usually hand washed in the shower - if at all - then hung out to dry on the clotheslines bordering the walkways**

There were also occasionally snakes wrapped around said bunches that would eat the rats (The rule of thumb is that snakes that can climb trees aren’t venomous). However, I also saw one of the world’s deadliest snakes (coastal taipan) about ten feet away from me. If you are bitten by a taipan, it’s usually 45 minutes to life. Luckily, the snake was just as horrified and scurried off the other way.

Photo by Denise Chanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_taipan#/media/File:Costal_Tiapan_at_Taronga_Zoo.jpg — **Photo by Denise Chan**
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_taipan#/media/File:Costal_Tiapan_at_Taronga_Zoo.jpg

There were also gigantic spiders known as Golden Silk Orb-Weaver spiders. To us workers, they were simply known as “huge fucking spiders.”

Photo by Dile Seitzhttps://www.ingwelala.co.za/archives/fauna-flora/spider-golden-orb.html — **Photo by Dile Seitz**
https://www.ingwelala.co.za/archives/fauna-flora/spider-golden-orb.html

These mammoths would spin massive webs between the trees. The older the spiders got, the higher and larger the webs would get. The biggest spiders would spin webs 8 feet in the air. Golden Silk Orb-Weavers are notorious for a couple of reasons. First, if a person was bitten by one of these guys a large stinging boil would form on their skin, which would have to be medically amputated. Second, I was told that it was a frequent occurrence to see these spiders feasting on bats and birds that were caught in their webs overnight. I never saw this happen personally, but I did see pictures.

Not nearly all times were bad times on the farm:

The Good

There were actually a lot of perks to working on a banana farm despite my previous depictions. Yeah the work was hard, but like all things you got used to it relatively quickly. We would all complain a lot, but we could all appreciate the fact that it was cool getting paid to basically exercise.

Not all of the wildlife was bad, either. There were times where wallabies would hop through the rows of the paddock. We constantly saw goannas on the paths. The trees were crawling with these funny green tree frogs that were seemingly drawn to humans. Whoever was stacking in our crew would put the frogs on their shoulder to have as a mascot. It was also frowned upon if you killed a frog or toad because they kept mosquitoes away.

I learned how to drive a tractor with a manual transmission, which helped me disprove the stereotype that Americans can’t drive stick shifts (I still can’t on a car, unfortunately).

The setting was also nothing short of breathtaking. The farm was full of lush, green banana trees on a flat plateau surrounded by towering mountains. Some of my favorite memories would be driving on the ute (utility truck) or tractor through the paddocks and appreciating the scenery.

**The view of Tully from the top of Mt. Tyson - one of the many mountains that surrounds Tully**

The people I met working at the farm were nothing short of amazing. I had my group of 3 really close friends Sebastian (British), Monia, and Maria (Italian).

**The Australian dream team: Maria (left), Sebastian (right), and Monia (back).**

I also had friends who I had gotten close to throughout the duration of the employment. Johannes, his girlfriend Julia (German), Ben and Lucy (Welsh), Benny and Bee (Belgian), Connor, who I would call McGregor because he is Irish, Scott and Derek (Canadian), and of course Jeanina (Swedish) and Paloma, my fellow yankee.

Because of such a unique and simple life on the farm, we all bonded in a very close way. We could all vent about working on the farm, drink a lot together, talk about home, bond over sports, laugh and cry about the 2016 American Presidential election. Our political discussions were great - we were all drunk ambassadors of our relative nations coming to consensual agreements over some of the most high tension socio economic decisions at the time - all while trying to make the last cup in a game of beer pong.

We represented the antithesis to the millennial stereotype. Hardly any technology, face to face conversations, real emotion, genuine care for one another. Retrospectively, it really made me realize how easily people can adapt and make the best situation with the constraints they are given.

I also got a chance to buy a guitar from Good Vibrations, a music shop in Tully.

I wrote quite a few riffs/songs in Tully, including one for “Trapped In The Barracks”. Upon leaving Tully, it was my plan to smash the guitar because I couldn’t take it with me and it would have been a fun exclamation mark to my time working on the farm.

I actually just ended up giving it to my Welsh friend, Ben, who wanted to start learning guitar. Instruments and music are gifts that should be shared anyway.

Song Description

Unlike the song “Dunk Island,” every line in “Trapped In The Barracks” is 100% based on my own real experience or observation. It literally describes the down times of living in a hostel in Tully, Australia.

While every weekend the residents of Rafters would drink, play beer pong and go to house parties, not every weeknight was like that. Imagine living in a town of 1500 people, with no internet or car. You couldn’t really leave and it’s not like you could play video games or watch Netflix to distract you. You had to come up with unique ways to keep you sane.

One day there were ants everywhere outside the door to our 8-person room. To prevent them from coming into the room, I started burning them with the reflection from my sunglasses.

We also had this really gross pool at the hostel. It wasn’t ever really cleaned, so if someone didn’t want something, we would throw it in the pool. It became a ritual. The watermelon farmers would constantly bring home watermelons, and if the melons weren’t going to be eaten or spiked with vodka, then they would just throw it in the pool. It was a pretty common practice, but nothing was more satisfying than throwing a melon from the 2nd floor balcony into a pool. It kept us sane.

Top pub is a real place. Two minute walk from the hostel. We would eat there on Tuesday for cheap, reheated mexican food and would go after work on Friday for an event known as “Toss the Boss.” You would order a pitcher of beer or cider and the bartender would flip a coin. You would have to guess heads or tails. Guess right, the pitcher is free. Wrong, pay $10. My best streak was 7, if I remember correctly. I think Seb’s best was 6.

**We were always looking for things to keep us entertained in Tully. In this case - building a tower of empty pitchers at Top Pub during Toss The Boss**

Recreational drugs were very prevalent in Australia, but there is a more in-depth story on that within a different song.

I’ve also commented on how easy it is to get fired from a farm job, but I will explain a little more on the details of the second verse:

I never got fired from my farm. The majority of workers never did. However, there were some super unlucky workers who would be 10 days away from completing their 66 days, then get drug tested and then would be fired.

While bananas are a year round crop, there were busy seasons and slow seasons, respectively. When the busy season was coming to an end (usually in January), the farm would have too many fixed costs to hit their ideal margin. The easiest way to solve this problem would be to fire workers. The supervisors on the farm weren’t born yesterday. They knew that the majority of their workers smoked weed on a relatively consistent basis. The way it would work is that in the morning, the supervisors would gather everyone on the farm and announce that they are going to administer random drug tests. The selection was done by employees blindly drawing ping pong balls out of a bucket. If your ping pong ball had a red dot on it, you would be given a swab drug test. Those employees who had drugs in their body were given the option to appeal the test, wait ten minutes, and retake it.

When the employee was fired, it meant that they would have to stay another month in order to complete their work commitment (now 88 days) and 2nd year visa requirement. Often times when this happened, the person would either leave Tully, or have to cancel all of their pre existing travel plans in order for them to stay. Becoming a drug dealer was usually the easiest way to make quick cash, so these people would usually deal for some time and either find a job or immediately leave Tully for good.

I had heard stories of workers appealing and using the ten minutes to run, do pushups - whatever they could to sweat the residue out of their system. My farm never administered drug tests, but Sebastian’s did. He had smoked the night before, and chose not to appeal the initial test. After being driven back to the hostel in the morning, he talked to Paula. Sebastian always had the reputation of being a super hard worker, so Paula made it her mission to find him a job so that he could get his 2nd year visa. He had another job within a few days. Thank God for Paula because it would have been rough living at the Barracks without my best friend there.

It is also important to mention that there were technically other jobs you could take to qualify for a 2nd year visa, but it usually wasn’t worth pursuing them due to lack of employer demand, employee qualification, and having to navigate a lot of government loopholes and formalities. I met a Canadian tour guide that qualified for a visa by giving tours of the Great Barrier Reef. However, she was a marine biologist, had the highest diving certification possible, was being sponsored by her university, and also had a personal contact who knew the owner of the company.

You get the point.

I’ve been informed that since I was in Australia, the government has become much more lenient on which jobs can be worked in order to qualify for a second year visa. I assume that this has to do with the workforce becoming more educated and seeking out more white-collar jobs leading to employer demand for blue-collar labor.

As for me: