Week 11 Sat 13th – Fri 20th Feb)
By the 14th of Feb we were both feeling pretty shot to pieces as we had been working without a break for some time (see copy of our work record we keep). Although we were getting faster at picking our stamina was getting hammered and the fruit was becoming worse to pick so we were looking forward to a lie – in and a day or two off.
The final day of picking before our break on the 14th was a bit of an exciting day. We were all finishing off the block of Nectarines and it was really warm as usual. Ily was up the ladder about 4 or 5 trees down from me and all of a sudden I heard her let out a little scream as I looked around I saw her come down the ladder so bloody fast she sort of jumped down from about 5 – 6 foot shaking her arm. On closer inspection I could see what she was jumping from, it was a massive red spider and below is a picture of what it looked like. As you can see it is a bit of a monster with a massive rear although the one below is not exactly the same you don’t really ever want this on your arm. Ily was rather unlucky as it was wrapped around a piece of fruit which she picked and as red like the fruit she did not see it. Luckily she managed to jump off the ladder and shake it off and it climbed back up its massive web to the top of the tree.
At the time neither of us knew what the thing was so we called George over which is the ganger who looks a little bit like Whistler from Blade and he told us what it was and said it’s not a problem as is not venomous but will bite a bit! It’s funny because any spider that can bite you and leave a mark and apparently a nasty sting for a couple of days is not nice in my book, but out here if it does not try and kill you it’s classed as nice!
We had to finish our row of fruit and George said “that’s ok, Graham’s brave, he will go up there and get the rest of the fruit”. Obviously he could see that I was solid, but my response was something like “No George! I am only a Pom and don’t get paid enough for this (with a few swear words in for effect)”. We managed to finish our row but after that we picked much slower.
That night the run of encounters with wildlife continued. Graham really needed to go to the toilet and went over the outhouse (picture of the outhouse in last week’s section) at dusk which is always a special time for wildlife here as you see the end of the pesky non – stop in your face flies and say hello to lovely mosquitos which bite so hard you scratch yourself raw like a dog until you bleed.
Anyway, Graham walked to the toilet and done the usual checks for life threatening snakes and was all clear so good. Was about to walk straight into the end cubicle which is the one used as the others are too scary or smashed up and on the wall was the biggest stripy spider seen to date. We quickly got Lloyd and Dianne to come over with the rest of the camp to tell us what the hell it was and Lloyd explained that it was only a Huntsman spider and a small one at that, they are harmless (as mentioned previously that means it bites, draws blood and can leave you with a nasty sting for a few days but nether- the – less, harmless in the context of Oz!) then started to try and poke it.
The great thing about the huntsman is that it they don’t spin webs, they don’t need to as they are so quick they can catch a fly out of the air by running after it! That kind of gives you an idea of how crap these things are because they also love getting into vehicles and once they are in you can’t catch them to get them out. Anyway, for your enjoyment a picture of the beast is below. You will note that the camera flash makes its eyes glow which is another tale – tale sign of what it is apparently. I recall a time in New South Wales when we were camped in a truck stop at the side of the road (The night we were swarmed by strange little files) and remember looking into the nearby rustling bush with the torch and seen lots of what I assumed was rubbish metal reflecting back at me! If I knew then what I know now we would of high -tailed it down the road!
The remainder of the week was thankfully much more sedate, we had time off at last so washed clothes and bedding etc and then started to think about more van improvements to carry out as we were told to expect a week to 10 days off between fruits. That would take me near or past my birthday and annoyingly World Superbikes was on in 8 days time for three days which would take us to day 11 so we decided not to go and to wait until Moto GP later in the year. Instead, we decided to focus on van improvements and we decided to improve the rusted up bodywork and leaky roof as mentioned prev. We also had just ordered some new foam for the bed and cushions and got it cut to measure as our cushions and bed, although expertly re – covered by Ily, are as hard as sleeping on wood board so you have to wake up in the night to switch sides because one half of your body is dead. Just because I ran out of photos to upload here is one of Ily with TED - Awesome!
The final day of picking before our break on the 14th was a bit of an exciting day. We were all finishing off the block of Nectarines and it was really warm as usual. Ily was up the ladder about 4 or 5 trees down from me and all of a sudden I heard her let out a little scream as I looked around I saw her come down the ladder so bloody fast she sort of jumped down from about 5 – 6 foot shaking her arm. On closer inspection I could see what she was jumping from, it was a massive red spider and below is a picture of what it looked like. As you can see it is a bit of a monster with a massive rear although the one below is not exactly the same you don’t really ever want this on your arm. Ily was rather unlucky as it was wrapped around a piece of fruit which she picked and as red like the fruit she did not see it. Luckily she managed to jump off the ladder and shake it off and it climbed back up its massive web to the top of the tree.
At the time neither of us knew what the thing was so we called George over which is the ganger who looks a little bit like Whistler from Blade and he told us what it was and said it’s not a problem as is not venomous but will bite a bit! It’s funny because any spider that can bite you and leave a mark and apparently a nasty sting for a couple of days is not nice in my book, but out here if it does not try and kill you it’s classed as nice!
We had to finish our row of fruit and George said “that’s ok, Graham’s brave, he will go up there and get the rest of the fruit”. Obviously he could see that I was solid, but my response was something like “No George! I am only a Pom and don’t get paid enough for this (with a few swear words in for effect)”. We managed to finish our row but after that we picked much slower.
That night the run of encounters with wildlife continued. Graham really needed to go to the toilet and went over the outhouse (picture of the outhouse in last week’s section) at dusk which is always a special time for wildlife here as you see the end of the pesky non – stop in your face flies and say hello to lovely mosquitos which bite so hard you scratch yourself raw like a dog until you bleed.
Anyway, Graham walked to the toilet and done the usual checks for life threatening snakes and was all clear so good. Was about to walk straight into the end cubicle which is the one used as the others are too scary or smashed up and on the wall was the biggest stripy spider seen to date. We quickly got Lloyd and Dianne to come over with the rest of the camp to tell us what the hell it was and Lloyd explained that it was only a Huntsman spider and a small one at that, they are harmless (as mentioned previously that means it bites, draws blood and can leave you with a nasty sting for a few days but nether- the – less, harmless in the context of Oz!) then started to try and poke it.
The great thing about the huntsman is that it they don’t spin webs, they don’t need to as they are so quick they can catch a fly out of the air by running after it! That kind of gives you an idea of how crap these things are because they also love getting into vehicles and once they are in you can’t catch them to get them out. Anyway, for your enjoyment a picture of the beast is below. You will note that the camera flash makes its eyes glow which is another tale – tale sign of what it is apparently. I recall a time in New South Wales when we were camped in a truck stop at the side of the road (The night we were swarmed by strange little files) and remember looking into the nearby rustling bush with the torch and seen lots of what I assumed was rubbish metal reflecting back at me! If I knew then what I know now we would of high -tailed it down the road!
The remainder of the week was thankfully much more sedate, we had time off at last so washed clothes and bedding etc and then started to think about more van improvements to carry out as we were told to expect a week to 10 days off between fruits. That would take me near or past my birthday and annoyingly World Superbikes was on in 8 days time for three days which would take us to day 11 so we decided not to go and to wait until Moto GP later in the year. Instead, we decided to focus on van improvements and we decided to improve the rusted up bodywork and leaky roof as mentioned prev. We also had just ordered some new foam for the bed and cushions and got it cut to measure as our cushions and bed, although expertly re – covered by Ily, are as hard as sleeping on wood board so you have to wake up in the night to switch sides because one half of your body is dead. Just because I ran out of photos to upload here is one of Ily with TED - Awesome!
work_record.xlsx | |
File Size: | 17 kb |
File Type: | xlsx |
Week 12 Sat 14th – Fri 21st Feb)
So work was well underway on the van this week, Ily had managed to borrow a sewing machine from Lloyd and Dianne and had started to strip out the old cushions and re – cover the old cushions. The old ones had been re-covered multiple times since the 80’s when they were made and as you can appreciate they were pretty bad and fit for burning. Luckily, when we bought the material to cover them originally we bought way too much and therefore had plenty to make new covers on the foam we had made bigger to fill in the gaps in the bed.
Despite the use of the sewing machine, it still took some 5 full days to re – make the covers as zips were added to the covers and elastic so that you can remove them and machine wash. The covers were also overstitched with an over-stich machine so that they would not fray and they look great and really professional, Ily was pretty fed up at the end of the job and it was probably not the best time for me to start talking new curtains!
The work to the bodywork of the van was also a nightmare, the roof still had one leak and was an utter mess of mastic and scabby paint, the bodywork was thick with rust trails and chips in the paintwork, although in really good nick considering the year of manufacture being 81. Work to the bodywork involved getting some really abrasive cutting compound and then getting some agricultural machine rust sealer, which is great stuff as you paint it over the rust and it kills and seals it but in a really hard-core way so you know it’s not coming back any time soon. After the body work had been treated a rust inhibiting primer was then added and this stuff was quite easy to paint and gave a nice smooth finish.
We needed to get the final colour of the van the same as the original so found a place in the local town that mixed automotive paints. We went along in our rather patchy van and spoke to a young chap who found the code for the paint on the van and then he went and got it up on the computer. He started to mix the paint for us and I picked out some wet and dry 2000 grit paper to flat back the primed areas. We were having a chat about traveling and England and he then asked if I wanted brushes to which I replied no because I had a set of artist brushes all ready and then he handed me the paint and said there you go mate take it. When I asked how much he said don’t worry take it! We could not believe our luck as we managed to walk away with paint and paper for free. To put it into context the small pot of primer was about $40 so I was expecting anything up-to $100 for this.
The paint went on the van with difficulty as it was so hot a skin would form over the paint after about 2 mins after the lid was removed and then you had to stir and waste more paint as it dried. One pot of the paint was not enough so we had to go back into town and get more which was also free to finish the job.
Whilst we were waiting for the paint to go hard over 48 hrs we decided to start work on the roof. The condition of the roof was shocking with mastic, bitumen paint and stains everywhere. The mastic which was used previously had gone yellow as was not a proper outside UV stabilised mastic so all of the mastic was cut out and replaced with UV stabilised roof mastic, which took a while. The roof was then sanded lightly to get rid of the accumulation of grease and stains and then painted by roller with a white glossy outside roof paint (2 coats). Once the paint had dried the roof was then waxed to seal it further along with the bodywork. Where the fibreglass roof had popped away from its fixing the water was getting trapped in the small run – off gutter along the side of the van which over time had rusted inside the channel. The fibreglass had to be re – fixed down and then due to the deterioration on the channel with rush we decided to seal, prime and paint and then ran a layer of mastic along the channel to seal it properly to prevent further corrosion.
Ily set to work on the bull – bar and all of the black bits with a sub – frame black paint which has come up really well and makes the van look about 10 years younger.
It was kind of lucky that we managed to sort out the roof properly as some thunder storms have started coming in as of late and the rain comes down quite hard at times but with the repair jobs for the 1st time in three months we no longer have any leaks (touch wood). One thing about the storms here which is pretty cool is that all of the orchards in the area have hail cannons. Until a couple of weeks ago we never knew such devices existed but they are situated on the orchard in a building and they are a massive funnel which shoots out a barrage of compressed air and a flammable gas I forget the name of now every few seconds. It makes the loudest boom sound you have ever heard especially if the wind is blowing in your direction. As hail stones here can damage a whole orchard full of fruit so badly that it’s un – sellable they have to put the cannons on to break up the clouds and hail within the clouds. It has about a 5 – 10km blast radius in the skies above and if a bird flies over the cannon whilst its firing the vibration will kill it knocking it out of the sky, that’s how powerful the things are. They sort of bang then you can hear a strange whistling noise then it bangs again, when they all start going off it sounds like you are in a war movie its great (apart from when you want to sleep).
Another great thing we have discovered this week is that our friends on the site (younger ones from England in the packing shed) have a hard drive which has 500+ movies installed and some TV series like the whole of Family Guy etc. We went into town and bought a 1 Terabyte hard drive for $99 and it plugs directly into the TV, from there we can watch movies like a DVD player and it takes power from the TV, so not a massive drain on batteries like a separate DVD player and it’s the size of a pack of cards so easy to store away which counts in a small campervan like ours.
Finally as the internet here has been so shockingly slow and it’s been a nightmare updating this site we went out and bought an antenna which plugs directly into the little side jack on the dongle. We were sceptical at first about whether it would make a difference as its tiny but it makes our internet speed from 30kbs to 500kbs so we have broadband speed at last which makes this whole process much quicker. I can highly recommend buying one if you have a mobile dongle they are available for about $40 or £30 here so probably similar price in England.
As we have not been doing any exploring this week or working, we attach photos of the outside of the van. Unfortunately in the wet as it happened to rain when we are updating this site and we are glad to say we have no more leaks!
Despite the use of the sewing machine, it still took some 5 full days to re – make the covers as zips were added to the covers and elastic so that you can remove them and machine wash. The covers were also overstitched with an over-stich machine so that they would not fray and they look great and really professional, Ily was pretty fed up at the end of the job and it was probably not the best time for me to start talking new curtains!
The work to the bodywork of the van was also a nightmare, the roof still had one leak and was an utter mess of mastic and scabby paint, the bodywork was thick with rust trails and chips in the paintwork, although in really good nick considering the year of manufacture being 81. Work to the bodywork involved getting some really abrasive cutting compound and then getting some agricultural machine rust sealer, which is great stuff as you paint it over the rust and it kills and seals it but in a really hard-core way so you know it’s not coming back any time soon. After the body work had been treated a rust inhibiting primer was then added and this stuff was quite easy to paint and gave a nice smooth finish.
We needed to get the final colour of the van the same as the original so found a place in the local town that mixed automotive paints. We went along in our rather patchy van and spoke to a young chap who found the code for the paint on the van and then he went and got it up on the computer. He started to mix the paint for us and I picked out some wet and dry 2000 grit paper to flat back the primed areas. We were having a chat about traveling and England and he then asked if I wanted brushes to which I replied no because I had a set of artist brushes all ready and then he handed me the paint and said there you go mate take it. When I asked how much he said don’t worry take it! We could not believe our luck as we managed to walk away with paint and paper for free. To put it into context the small pot of primer was about $40 so I was expecting anything up-to $100 for this.
The paint went on the van with difficulty as it was so hot a skin would form over the paint after about 2 mins after the lid was removed and then you had to stir and waste more paint as it dried. One pot of the paint was not enough so we had to go back into town and get more which was also free to finish the job.
Whilst we were waiting for the paint to go hard over 48 hrs we decided to start work on the roof. The condition of the roof was shocking with mastic, bitumen paint and stains everywhere. The mastic which was used previously had gone yellow as was not a proper outside UV stabilised mastic so all of the mastic was cut out and replaced with UV stabilised roof mastic, which took a while. The roof was then sanded lightly to get rid of the accumulation of grease and stains and then painted by roller with a white glossy outside roof paint (2 coats). Once the paint had dried the roof was then waxed to seal it further along with the bodywork. Where the fibreglass roof had popped away from its fixing the water was getting trapped in the small run – off gutter along the side of the van which over time had rusted inside the channel. The fibreglass had to be re – fixed down and then due to the deterioration on the channel with rush we decided to seal, prime and paint and then ran a layer of mastic along the channel to seal it properly to prevent further corrosion.
Ily set to work on the bull – bar and all of the black bits with a sub – frame black paint which has come up really well and makes the van look about 10 years younger.
It was kind of lucky that we managed to sort out the roof properly as some thunder storms have started coming in as of late and the rain comes down quite hard at times but with the repair jobs for the 1st time in three months we no longer have any leaks (touch wood). One thing about the storms here which is pretty cool is that all of the orchards in the area have hail cannons. Until a couple of weeks ago we never knew such devices existed but they are situated on the orchard in a building and they are a massive funnel which shoots out a barrage of compressed air and a flammable gas I forget the name of now every few seconds. It makes the loudest boom sound you have ever heard especially if the wind is blowing in your direction. As hail stones here can damage a whole orchard full of fruit so badly that it’s un – sellable they have to put the cannons on to break up the clouds and hail within the clouds. It has about a 5 – 10km blast radius in the skies above and if a bird flies over the cannon whilst its firing the vibration will kill it knocking it out of the sky, that’s how powerful the things are. They sort of bang then you can hear a strange whistling noise then it bangs again, when they all start going off it sounds like you are in a war movie its great (apart from when you want to sleep).
Another great thing we have discovered this week is that our friends on the site (younger ones from England in the packing shed) have a hard drive which has 500+ movies installed and some TV series like the whole of Family Guy etc. We went into town and bought a 1 Terabyte hard drive for $99 and it plugs directly into the TV, from there we can watch movies like a DVD player and it takes power from the TV, so not a massive drain on batteries like a separate DVD player and it’s the size of a pack of cards so easy to store away which counts in a small campervan like ours.
Finally as the internet here has been so shockingly slow and it’s been a nightmare updating this site we went out and bought an antenna which plugs directly into the little side jack on the dongle. We were sceptical at first about whether it would make a difference as its tiny but it makes our internet speed from 30kbs to 500kbs so we have broadband speed at last which makes this whole process much quicker. I can highly recommend buying one if you have a mobile dongle they are available for about $40 or £30 here so probably similar price in England.
As we have not been doing any exploring this week or working, we attach photos of the outside of the van. Unfortunately in the wet as it happened to rain when we are updating this site and we are glad to say we have no more leaks!
Week 13 Sat 22nd – Fri 1st March)
This is probably a bit of a surprise to everyone as we have actually updated the website on time at the end of the week instead of a month late! Anyway, this week starts on Graham’s birthday and it was a Saturday without work so we decided to head into town to do a bit of shopping and to see what was about and to relax as we needed to get some supplies. In particular Graham needed more clothes as since being in Australia has lost quite a bit of weight and now none of his shorts bar one pair fits properly, the others he has to roll up in order to keep them up.
Walking through town it was much more busy than normal and it was market day. We walked through the market and saw that there were a lot of shops having sales on trying to get rid of all of their summer gear. In the end we were lucky and through various shops managed to pick up four tops and three pairs of shorts totalling $55 which has to be the bargain of the century here as you can pay $40 – 70 for one item of clothing. As we were walking through the market we saw a fenced off section in the middle and noticed that it was a petting area for kids to play with small farm animals. There was a small baby cow, baby pig, some rabbits and all sorts of other strange animals but the little pig was hilarious as it was running around smashing into other animals with its snout and trying to flip the rabbits over. It was running through a dog tunnel like it was a dog and the cow kept walking over it – it was pretty funny but I suppose you had to be there to see it.
We carried on into cash converters to look at the second hand stuff as in England you can get really cheap electronics, games, tools etc there so we went to see if anything was worth- while buying. Iliana bought a Nintendo DS with her but forgot to bring the charger and we have tried to buy one everywhere here but they don’t do it for the original model so we bought a second- hand model for $30 which is newer and a couple of games.
As mentioned before stuff here is pricey but for some reason electronics like TV’s, computers etc are quite a bit cheaper. For example, in England for a top of the range smart TV you can pay about 2 -3 K, here for the same make and size you will pay about $800 or £600! Laptops are also much cheaper and we were quite tempted by a few in the cash converters place as they had one there with quad core AMD chips and crossfire graphics card for $500 or £300! That would cost about £1500 in the UK or about £1000 second hand. They also had a real top of the range machine for $600 with an even higher spec. Although we were tempted and Graham has been after a fast machine for a while we decided to wait to see how the money situation goes as we have not worked much lately. I asked the store assistant if they take offers and he said that once the machines had been there a few weeks they did so we will probably go back and check it out again in a few weeks’ time.
On the fruit picking front as I type this we had a great day on the Peaches, we picked 13 bins today at $22 dollars a bin and did not start until 7:30am and finished at 1:30pm which gave us $286 which is good going despite the fact that we are still the slowest pickers. The thing is that we are up against loads of pickers who have been at it years and all of the slower pickers that started with us have left so we are the only new starters left. We think though that given a bit more time at it we can still get faster as our stamina improves and the weather cools. We have been told that it’s going to get busy with apples, pears etc soon and we have heard from Lloyd and Dianne that the picking on the upcoming fruit is much better so we are pretty determined to keep at it until May when our 88 days are up.
The evening of my birthday was quite good as we sat around with the others from the camp drinking and playing Monopoly until 3am and due to Iliana’s money skills she managed to win which was good. Graham did not do too well as paid over the odds for rubbish property and we suspect his decision making ability was decreased somewhat by the boxed wine he was drinking.
Going through the week the weather from Monday – Thursday took a bit of a nosedive as there were thunder storms forecast but normally when they forecast rain or storms it seems to miss us but lately we have been getting the odd one. The storms never really properly hit until Wednesday and it was one of the strangest sights seeing the massive weather front roll towards us we have ever seen. I suppose the only thing we can compare it to it the scene from the film Independence Day where the alien ships come out the sky with the clouds running off them across the sky. Pictures of the storm are below but it was the speed at which it hit which was absolutely amazing and we managed to film it on the camera and will try and upload the file to the website. The massive storm bough the heaviest rain we have seen here non – stop all through the late afternoon through to the following morning. We were picking plums on the following day so needed to get an early night however the rain was so loud on the roof of the van we found it hard to sleep and guess what – still no leaks so the roof is finally fixed. The most annoying thing about the whole evening was that the dog was sleeping on the floor at the bottom of our bed and we got to sleep at about 2am, at about 4am we heard the sound of the dog coughing and then it was sick all over its bed! The little bugger then tried to crawl under our bed away from the sick then decided to jump onto our bed to get away from the mess. At this point we were both very annoyed and tried to shove him outside in the rain but he just led there playing dead and we could not budge him. We decided to leave him be and went back to sleep then the little bugger puked bile over the bottom of our bed.
The van looked quite a state the following morning and did not smell to good, the dampness of the night and the fact that it was 6am time for work and we had probably only slept for about three hours did not make for a cheery day. Also the temperature had decreased right down to 18 – 20 degrees and believe it or not we were freezing all day and needed to wear hoodies and jumpers, even in the sun!
As we are typing this we have tomorrow off (Sat) so are looking forward to a sleep in (without the dog) and to get some supplies tomorrow. We are working Sunday on Nectarines so hopefully will be a productive day and week with the potential to earn some decent money once again. We have finally cleaned up the van, all of the sheets are washed and we are ready for another long session of working hard. We will update again soon and would like to say thanks to everyone who wished Graham a happy birthday and hopefully will speak soon.
Also, if there is anything anyone would like us to take a photo of or know about which we have missed or ask a question then add to the blog, email or call us.
Walking through town it was much more busy than normal and it was market day. We walked through the market and saw that there were a lot of shops having sales on trying to get rid of all of their summer gear. In the end we were lucky and through various shops managed to pick up four tops and three pairs of shorts totalling $55 which has to be the bargain of the century here as you can pay $40 – 70 for one item of clothing. As we were walking through the market we saw a fenced off section in the middle and noticed that it was a petting area for kids to play with small farm animals. There was a small baby cow, baby pig, some rabbits and all sorts of other strange animals but the little pig was hilarious as it was running around smashing into other animals with its snout and trying to flip the rabbits over. It was running through a dog tunnel like it was a dog and the cow kept walking over it – it was pretty funny but I suppose you had to be there to see it.
We carried on into cash converters to look at the second hand stuff as in England you can get really cheap electronics, games, tools etc there so we went to see if anything was worth- while buying. Iliana bought a Nintendo DS with her but forgot to bring the charger and we have tried to buy one everywhere here but they don’t do it for the original model so we bought a second- hand model for $30 which is newer and a couple of games.
As mentioned before stuff here is pricey but for some reason electronics like TV’s, computers etc are quite a bit cheaper. For example, in England for a top of the range smart TV you can pay about 2 -3 K, here for the same make and size you will pay about $800 or £600! Laptops are also much cheaper and we were quite tempted by a few in the cash converters place as they had one there with quad core AMD chips and crossfire graphics card for $500 or £300! That would cost about £1500 in the UK or about £1000 second hand. They also had a real top of the range machine for $600 with an even higher spec. Although we were tempted and Graham has been after a fast machine for a while we decided to wait to see how the money situation goes as we have not worked much lately. I asked the store assistant if they take offers and he said that once the machines had been there a few weeks they did so we will probably go back and check it out again in a few weeks’ time.
On the fruit picking front as I type this we had a great day on the Peaches, we picked 13 bins today at $22 dollars a bin and did not start until 7:30am and finished at 1:30pm which gave us $286 which is good going despite the fact that we are still the slowest pickers. The thing is that we are up against loads of pickers who have been at it years and all of the slower pickers that started with us have left so we are the only new starters left. We think though that given a bit more time at it we can still get faster as our stamina improves and the weather cools. We have been told that it’s going to get busy with apples, pears etc soon and we have heard from Lloyd and Dianne that the picking on the upcoming fruit is much better so we are pretty determined to keep at it until May when our 88 days are up.
The evening of my birthday was quite good as we sat around with the others from the camp drinking and playing Monopoly until 3am and due to Iliana’s money skills she managed to win which was good. Graham did not do too well as paid over the odds for rubbish property and we suspect his decision making ability was decreased somewhat by the boxed wine he was drinking.
Going through the week the weather from Monday – Thursday took a bit of a nosedive as there were thunder storms forecast but normally when they forecast rain or storms it seems to miss us but lately we have been getting the odd one. The storms never really properly hit until Wednesday and it was one of the strangest sights seeing the massive weather front roll towards us we have ever seen. I suppose the only thing we can compare it to it the scene from the film Independence Day where the alien ships come out the sky with the clouds running off them across the sky. Pictures of the storm are below but it was the speed at which it hit which was absolutely amazing and we managed to film it on the camera and will try and upload the file to the website. The massive storm bough the heaviest rain we have seen here non – stop all through the late afternoon through to the following morning. We were picking plums on the following day so needed to get an early night however the rain was so loud on the roof of the van we found it hard to sleep and guess what – still no leaks so the roof is finally fixed. The most annoying thing about the whole evening was that the dog was sleeping on the floor at the bottom of our bed and we got to sleep at about 2am, at about 4am we heard the sound of the dog coughing and then it was sick all over its bed! The little bugger then tried to crawl under our bed away from the sick then decided to jump onto our bed to get away from the mess. At this point we were both very annoyed and tried to shove him outside in the rain but he just led there playing dead and we could not budge him. We decided to leave him be and went back to sleep then the little bugger puked bile over the bottom of our bed.
The van looked quite a state the following morning and did not smell to good, the dampness of the night and the fact that it was 6am time for work and we had probably only slept for about three hours did not make for a cheery day. Also the temperature had decreased right down to 18 – 20 degrees and believe it or not we were freezing all day and needed to wear hoodies and jumpers, even in the sun!
As we are typing this we have tomorrow off (Sat) so are looking forward to a sleep in (without the dog) and to get some supplies tomorrow. We are working Sunday on Nectarines so hopefully will be a productive day and week with the potential to earn some decent money once again. We have finally cleaned up the van, all of the sheets are washed and we are ready for another long session of working hard. We will update again soon and would like to say thanks to everyone who wished Graham a happy birthday and hopefully will speak soon.
Also, if there is anything anyone would like us to take a photo of or know about which we have missed or ask a question then add to the blog, email or call us.
Week 14 Sat 2nd – Fri 8th Mar)
We started back to work on the Sunday and were told that we were picking Nectarines and that they were bringing the other pickers across from the other farm to help as they wanted the fruit off of the trees asap. We started picking the fruit and it was evident why they were desperate to get it off as a lot of the fruit was over- ripe and a lot had gone spongy. It turns out that the reason why most of the Nectarines had gone bad was because of the rain as the rain seems to damage them so it must have been really bad timing for the orchard to of had that massive storm last week.
Despite the fruit being bad we really went for it as we had not worked a great deal in the recent weeks and were fully charged and recovered. We managed to pick 15 bins by the end of the day and we worked for 7.5 hrs so we were roughly managing a bin every 30 mins which is quite some going over the course of a whole day. We were really happy with this achievement as 15 bins = £330 dollars and we really went for it for the rest of the week. Despite getting more and more tiered as the days wore on we kind of managed to speed up picking although we never managed 15 again this week we managed 11, 13, 10. It was a bit of a pain because they ran out plastic bins as we picked a few hundred between the group on the Sunday and therefore they only had the giant wooden apple bins left so we had to pick into those ¾ full. The thing was the giant wooden bins filled up to ¾ full are supposed to be the same as filling a plastic bin but it was obvious that it was not and we think it took another 5 – 8 bags to fill which slowed us down. Apparently, they were going to weigh the bins to see how much extra there may be in the wooden bins and then maybe pay us more but as it stands we never heard back from the weigh- in and have not been paid anymore for the bins.
There were two varieties of the Nectarines to pick and the second variety we started to pick on the Tuesday afternoon and they were a bugger to pick as the ground had a white plastic sheet running along the row to reflect the sunlight to colour the bottoms of the fruit. The plastic was a pain as kept getting caught on the tractor and on the ladder and the worst thing about it was it was so hot picking on the stuff because the sunlight was reflected back up at you. We nearly ran out of water by the end of the day as you would pick for 10 mins and then need to stop for water as you were sweating so hard.
The Nectarines were finished on the Wednesday and we were told to pick Plumbs on the Thursday and Friday. The Plumbs like always were an absolute nightmare as were tiny, the trees are much taller and bushier and they have loads of spiky bits which tear your arms and hands apart. We worked like mad trying to make money on these things but they were so small we only managed 7 half bins all day which is only $105 dollars compared to the bigger fruit where you can make much more money. The thing we don’t understand is you would think that you would be paid according to the type of fruit that you are picking however this is not the case as you get paid only for the bin size you pick. It is stupid because I am sure they sell the fruit at different rates and you cannot compare Plumbs with Apples so consequently, everyone looks fed up on a Plumb day, especially when they are tiny.
Below are some photos of us picking plumbs and imagine that we get paid only $15 dollars for one of the bins so pic with the 3 full bins = $45 or £30! Also you can see that the rows are quite muddy in sections and on the Friday we had to pick through a completely flooded section and Graham drove the tractor up on the side of the row to avoid getting stuck however the wheels dug in and he nearly rolled the thing which would have been quite embarrassing.
Luckily for us we only worked a couple of hours on Friday to finish the variety off and have until Tuesday off when we start on either Peaches or on the next variety of Plumbs. We will be glad when all of the Plumbs are gone! Soon the stone fruit season will finish here and the Apples will start and we can earn some cash.
We know we probably have moaned quite a bit on this site about Possums so to prove how close they are to our van to make that dread full noise we have photos below of one we managed to get at night as we were sitting out with Lloyd and Dianne and it also has a young one hanging off its back so looks cute but such a major ball ache at the same time.
There is not really much more to say for this week as all we did was work. There is a formula 1 road show in Shepparton on Saturday which as we are writing this we have already been to but will upload the stuff on next week’s section and we also have Monday off as it is a public holiday here called Labour Day.
Before we forget Graham would also like to congratulate Mr Mark Robbins for his latest purchase of the new Ducati Panigalle (I think that’s how its spelt!). How he ever got his misses to agree to let him buy that given the end that the 1198 suffered is a true hero in Grahams eyes. Graham was sort of worried he may have lost his bottle after Germany however it’s nice to see that he has not learnt – Legend!
Despite the fruit being bad we really went for it as we had not worked a great deal in the recent weeks and were fully charged and recovered. We managed to pick 15 bins by the end of the day and we worked for 7.5 hrs so we were roughly managing a bin every 30 mins which is quite some going over the course of a whole day. We were really happy with this achievement as 15 bins = £330 dollars and we really went for it for the rest of the week. Despite getting more and more tiered as the days wore on we kind of managed to speed up picking although we never managed 15 again this week we managed 11, 13, 10. It was a bit of a pain because they ran out plastic bins as we picked a few hundred between the group on the Sunday and therefore they only had the giant wooden apple bins left so we had to pick into those ¾ full. The thing was the giant wooden bins filled up to ¾ full are supposed to be the same as filling a plastic bin but it was obvious that it was not and we think it took another 5 – 8 bags to fill which slowed us down. Apparently, they were going to weigh the bins to see how much extra there may be in the wooden bins and then maybe pay us more but as it stands we never heard back from the weigh- in and have not been paid anymore for the bins.
There were two varieties of the Nectarines to pick and the second variety we started to pick on the Tuesday afternoon and they were a bugger to pick as the ground had a white plastic sheet running along the row to reflect the sunlight to colour the bottoms of the fruit. The plastic was a pain as kept getting caught on the tractor and on the ladder and the worst thing about it was it was so hot picking on the stuff because the sunlight was reflected back up at you. We nearly ran out of water by the end of the day as you would pick for 10 mins and then need to stop for water as you were sweating so hard.
The Nectarines were finished on the Wednesday and we were told to pick Plumbs on the Thursday and Friday. The Plumbs like always were an absolute nightmare as were tiny, the trees are much taller and bushier and they have loads of spiky bits which tear your arms and hands apart. We worked like mad trying to make money on these things but they were so small we only managed 7 half bins all day which is only $105 dollars compared to the bigger fruit where you can make much more money. The thing we don’t understand is you would think that you would be paid according to the type of fruit that you are picking however this is not the case as you get paid only for the bin size you pick. It is stupid because I am sure they sell the fruit at different rates and you cannot compare Plumbs with Apples so consequently, everyone looks fed up on a Plumb day, especially when they are tiny.
Below are some photos of us picking plumbs and imagine that we get paid only $15 dollars for one of the bins so pic with the 3 full bins = $45 or £30! Also you can see that the rows are quite muddy in sections and on the Friday we had to pick through a completely flooded section and Graham drove the tractor up on the side of the row to avoid getting stuck however the wheels dug in and he nearly rolled the thing which would have been quite embarrassing.
Luckily for us we only worked a couple of hours on Friday to finish the variety off and have until Tuesday off when we start on either Peaches or on the next variety of Plumbs. We will be glad when all of the Plumbs are gone! Soon the stone fruit season will finish here and the Apples will start and we can earn some cash.
We know we probably have moaned quite a bit on this site about Possums so to prove how close they are to our van to make that dread full noise we have photos below of one we managed to get at night as we were sitting out with Lloyd and Dianne and it also has a young one hanging off its back so looks cute but such a major ball ache at the same time.
There is not really much more to say for this week as all we did was work. There is a formula 1 road show in Shepparton on Saturday which as we are writing this we have already been to but will upload the stuff on next week’s section and we also have Monday off as it is a public holiday here called Labour Day.
Before we forget Graham would also like to congratulate Mr Mark Robbins for his latest purchase of the new Ducati Panigalle (I think that’s how its spelt!). How he ever got his misses to agree to let him buy that given the end that the 1198 suffered is a true hero in Grahams eyes. Graham was sort of worried he may have lost his bottle after Germany however it’s nice to see that he has not learnt – Legend!
Week 15 Sat 9th – Fri 15th Mar)
As mentioned, there was a Formula 1 road show being held at the showground in Shepparton on the Saturday. As we were stuck for something to do and needed to go into town to get a Gazebo from Bunning’s (like B&Q), we decided to have a look. Firstly, getting the Gazebo for outside the van was probably one of the best ideas we have come up with as this Gazebo comes with fly netting sides (not solid sides) so you can actually now sit outside without getting constantly harassed by flies or mosquitos. We have set up a couple of camping chairs and two tables which we can store our tools, surfboard, spare gas and other outside stuff away under the larger table and we can eat at the other. We have also rigged up electric to the fan, for the hot days and light, so when it’s dark you can still use the space, it makes a change from being sat in the van all of the time. The only thing is its coming into autumn here and it would have been good if we would have thought of it earlier as the shade it provides and the breeze coming through the netting is much cooler the van and would have been handy.
We left Bunning’s and headed towards the Showground to watch the Formula 1 road show. We turned up at the main building and gate and parked the van and walked straight in. There was a hanger at one end of the ground which had some formula 1 type cars inside, a V8 supercar which competes in one of the series here and other bits and pieces for you to read or have a look at. As you walked towards the hanger on your left was a large oval marked out in heavy duty pedestrian barrier and this is where they were going to be doing the display. We have put some photos of the event below and you will see that it was quite a small event and there were not that many people there to watch at all but I suppose the town is not that big and it was a really hot day so some people probably never bothered to get out of their air conditioned house. The funny thing about the day was they were hyping up how they were going to burn out this formula 1 car around the track and talked about all sorts of rubbish for about half an hour before they got on and did something. They then disconnected this car from all the laptops and machines fired it up and it drove off did about two doughnuts and a couple of wheel-spins then it just overheated and cut out!
They were saying it was too hot a day for the engine to cope and I suppose not going through the air in a relatively straight line would not allow any, or minimal airflow through the radiator so it’s not surprising it only lasted a for a short while before giving up. It was a bit of an anti-climax though because the car was extremely loud and I think it would have been great to see it going properly. Anyway, it was time for the V8 supercar to have a go and this thing looked more like a road car so you would have thought that it would have lasted a bit longer but nope! It died after about twenty seconds because it to overheated due to the weather.
We are glad that we did not waste too much time waiting for the action like others their as it was pretty poor. The best thing for us about the day was seeing some of the older/ classic cars which were parked up just outside the hanger and we have taken some photos of them below.
With the excitement of the Formula 1 day over (after about 1.5 hrs of being there) we decided to head back to camp to put up the Gazebo and to sort out some of our stuff to make it look more tidy.
When we got back to the camp at about 2ish we noticed that the shelve in the large cupboard under the sink had broken at the back as it was only fastened by one screw though the particle board which was a really bad design. Over time with the weight of all of the food bearing down it had decided to give up and this was starting to cause it to break at the front. A bit of a pain in the rear so we had to fix it and luckily Lloyd had found some old timbre lying about on the camp and I borrowed his saw and drill and started to put together a fix so that it would be more stable in the future. The only problem was all of the food and things we had built up over the time here had to be removed and our van looked like a bomb had hit it by the time all of the stuff was taken out. As all of the stuff was removed we decided it was a good time to rip out the old carpet in the cupboard and put down the flooring tiles we kept from doing the floor in the van.
What started out to be a relaxing chill – out day quickly turned into another DIY day as we put the flooring down inside and gave it another coat of the white paint inside and ran mastic where the flooring met the sides. Once this job was done we quickly took all of our stuff out of the back and set to work giving the rest of the back of the van a final coat of the white paint and ran much more of the mastic along the floor and all of the gaps in the units and around the sink. The mastic and fresh coat of paint made all of the difference to the inside. As Lloyd and Dianne were leaving on the Sunday and we also decided it was time to add another shelve to the wardrobe because it only had one and the clothes were piled high and kept falling over. With some more wood we found lying around the camp we cut a shelf to size and then fitted it inside and then put all the clothes back inside properly which made all of the difference as now you can actually find what you want to wear instead of having to go rummaging through everything.
With all of those jobs done and the Gazebo put up we decided to sit down and relax but by this time is was about 8pm in the evening but it was well worth the effort because now a couple of the annoying little jobs have been completed. Sitting in the Gazebo with the fly net sides down was great as it not only stops the flies but the mosquitos have a hard time getting through the netting also and you can see them all waiting on the outside of the net, there are loads of them so it’s no wonder that we kept getting bitten.
That night we were sat outside in our new area and about to think about bed when the rest of the people from the camp came rolling in. They had been to a BBQ at one of the people’s house that they work with and they saw us sat outside and all came in with their chairs and started drinking. Most of them were pretty drunk already so it was kind of a catch up game for us so we started on the 4 X beer. Things were going well and then they all decided that they wanted to go walking around the orchard in the dark to try and find a snake. As they all worked in the packing shed they did not know their way around the orchard so we decided to go with them and the dog came along. In hind sight it was probably not the smartest decision either of us had made because out in the orchard in the dark by the various canals and ponds of water it would have been quite likely for us to run into a brown or tiger snake and it would not have been a good ending if one of us had gotten bit. Luckily, nothing happened when we were out walking, we were all probably way too loud and scared off any wildlife which may have been there.
The next day we woke up early to see Lloyd and Dianne off as they were leaving to go to Inglewood as they go there every year after picking to search for gold. We got some pictures of their motorhome attached to their car and as you can see the whole set up is pretty massive and I would imagine a bit of a nightmare to drive here despite having the larger roads. Dianne left Ily her sewing machine as we still have work to do to fit new curtains and we promised them that when we finished working here in May we would head on south to Inglewood and drop it off to them.
It would be interesting for us to see the gold fields at Inglewood and hopefully we might get a bit of beginners luck when we eventually get there.
The rest of the day was a quiet one as we sat around with not much to do which was nice for a change. We when down the road into Tatura to get some food shopping done and the rest of the day was pretty much staying in the shade of the Gazebo hiding from the heat. For some reason despite the fact its autumn here the temperatures at this time were unusually hot and it was almost as hot as the summer, about 35 degrees or higher most days.
Monday was Labour day which is a public holiday here and although the others on our camp had to work in the packing shed we had the day off and we were also told that we did not have to work on the Tuesday so we had a bit of time to relax. So the Monday was another day of relaxing and we just sat there playing games and messing around on the internet. Our plan though was to take advantage of the fact we had Tuesday off and head into Shepparton and go to a couple of caravan canvas specialists to see about getting a quote for our pop top to be replaced. The pop top on the van desperately now needs to be replaced as its getting more and more ripped and new holes are appearing all of the time and that’s not good news at night when you have your lights on inside and all of the nasty insects get in. We must get through a can of death spray every couple of days due to the amount of bugs that get in.
We headed into town on the Tuesday to the first place on our list who told us that they would not be able to do the work as every van seems to have a slight variation and we needed to go to a specialist. They pointed us in the direction of another company which was also on our list so we headed straight there. The guy at the second place was helpful, he went through the options that we would have in terms of material as they don’t replace the canvas with canvas anymore because it’s weak and can rot if packed away damp (like a tent). Instead there is this other plastic type material that they make covers for things out of which they use. We ran through what we wanted with the man and also got him to price to replace the roof lining and all of the internal carpets (after our failed attempt in Melbourne).
Whilst we were in the shop talking we heard this almighty smash come from the road outside and when we went over to take a look it would appear that an old lady in a 4x4 pulled out of the side road right in front of an oncoming vehicle and smash. The strange thing was there was a third car also smashed into the front of the 4x4 so god only knows what happened there! The only thing we know is that the Aussies are friendly enough to chat to and can’t seem to do enough for you but get them behind the wheel of a car and they turn into complete arseholes. It is quite surprising that given what we have seen on the road that there are not many more accidents.
Anyway, we went to the third and final place on the list and spoke to a very lively chap there who was running through different options and he took down all of the measurements both for the pop top and for the work to be carried out inside. He gave us two options, the first one would be the price if he did all of the prep work like removing the old pop top and internal linings etc and the other would be the price if we did all of the prep work. The problem with the pop top removal is that the original one is riveted into place at the top and the bottom so you would need to drill out the rivets carefully to remove which I suppose will take a bit of time. We had a better feeling about the first chap that we went and saw as he had the exact internal material we wanted and seemed to be more of a professional about things but we get the feeling that he will be rather expensive. To date we are still waiting back for their prices so we can choose which one to use, we had read on the internet that it can cost anywhere from $800 - $1500 to get the pop top replaced and we also have quite a bit inside we would like them to tackle so we have set our budget at $1500 and we will have to wait and see what people come back with.
The rest of the week we were back on picking the dreaded plumbs which we hate doing but we managed to pick 10 bins on our first day back which is a record as they were much bigger. The rest of the week was a bit of an uphill struggle as they seemed to get smaller and we have lost interest trying to do well on them as we know that this is hopefully pretty much the last of them and then we will be back on bigger fruit.
We have also had a bit of a change in the weather as of late and it feels much cooler than it did now than earlier in the week. The temperature has dropped right down to the low to mid-twenties and at night the temperature goes down to about 8 degrees. It has been a bit of a shock to the system as we were used to have mid-twenties in the early hours of the morning so we find ourselves now wearing all of the long trousers and jumpers that we bought over and have been in storage since we landed.
Just a final message to say good luck to Iliana’s Dad Paul with his latest round of hospital visits and that we both wish him all of the best and hope that he gets better soon. Finally, same to Graham’s mum who had a lucky escape from a mystery illness which sounds like it could have been serious if it had not been caught in time.
We left Bunning’s and headed towards the Showground to watch the Formula 1 road show. We turned up at the main building and gate and parked the van and walked straight in. There was a hanger at one end of the ground which had some formula 1 type cars inside, a V8 supercar which competes in one of the series here and other bits and pieces for you to read or have a look at. As you walked towards the hanger on your left was a large oval marked out in heavy duty pedestrian barrier and this is where they were going to be doing the display. We have put some photos of the event below and you will see that it was quite a small event and there were not that many people there to watch at all but I suppose the town is not that big and it was a really hot day so some people probably never bothered to get out of their air conditioned house. The funny thing about the day was they were hyping up how they were going to burn out this formula 1 car around the track and talked about all sorts of rubbish for about half an hour before they got on and did something. They then disconnected this car from all the laptops and machines fired it up and it drove off did about two doughnuts and a couple of wheel-spins then it just overheated and cut out!
They were saying it was too hot a day for the engine to cope and I suppose not going through the air in a relatively straight line would not allow any, or minimal airflow through the radiator so it’s not surprising it only lasted a for a short while before giving up. It was a bit of an anti-climax though because the car was extremely loud and I think it would have been great to see it going properly. Anyway, it was time for the V8 supercar to have a go and this thing looked more like a road car so you would have thought that it would have lasted a bit longer but nope! It died after about twenty seconds because it to overheated due to the weather.
We are glad that we did not waste too much time waiting for the action like others their as it was pretty poor. The best thing for us about the day was seeing some of the older/ classic cars which were parked up just outside the hanger and we have taken some photos of them below.
With the excitement of the Formula 1 day over (after about 1.5 hrs of being there) we decided to head back to camp to put up the Gazebo and to sort out some of our stuff to make it look more tidy.
When we got back to the camp at about 2ish we noticed that the shelve in the large cupboard under the sink had broken at the back as it was only fastened by one screw though the particle board which was a really bad design. Over time with the weight of all of the food bearing down it had decided to give up and this was starting to cause it to break at the front. A bit of a pain in the rear so we had to fix it and luckily Lloyd had found some old timbre lying about on the camp and I borrowed his saw and drill and started to put together a fix so that it would be more stable in the future. The only problem was all of the food and things we had built up over the time here had to be removed and our van looked like a bomb had hit it by the time all of the stuff was taken out. As all of the stuff was removed we decided it was a good time to rip out the old carpet in the cupboard and put down the flooring tiles we kept from doing the floor in the van.
What started out to be a relaxing chill – out day quickly turned into another DIY day as we put the flooring down inside and gave it another coat of the white paint inside and ran mastic where the flooring met the sides. Once this job was done we quickly took all of our stuff out of the back and set to work giving the rest of the back of the van a final coat of the white paint and ran much more of the mastic along the floor and all of the gaps in the units and around the sink. The mastic and fresh coat of paint made all of the difference to the inside. As Lloyd and Dianne were leaving on the Sunday and we also decided it was time to add another shelve to the wardrobe because it only had one and the clothes were piled high and kept falling over. With some more wood we found lying around the camp we cut a shelf to size and then fitted it inside and then put all the clothes back inside properly which made all of the difference as now you can actually find what you want to wear instead of having to go rummaging through everything.
With all of those jobs done and the Gazebo put up we decided to sit down and relax but by this time is was about 8pm in the evening but it was well worth the effort because now a couple of the annoying little jobs have been completed. Sitting in the Gazebo with the fly net sides down was great as it not only stops the flies but the mosquitos have a hard time getting through the netting also and you can see them all waiting on the outside of the net, there are loads of them so it’s no wonder that we kept getting bitten.
That night we were sat outside in our new area and about to think about bed when the rest of the people from the camp came rolling in. They had been to a BBQ at one of the people’s house that they work with and they saw us sat outside and all came in with their chairs and started drinking. Most of them were pretty drunk already so it was kind of a catch up game for us so we started on the 4 X beer. Things were going well and then they all decided that they wanted to go walking around the orchard in the dark to try and find a snake. As they all worked in the packing shed they did not know their way around the orchard so we decided to go with them and the dog came along. In hind sight it was probably not the smartest decision either of us had made because out in the orchard in the dark by the various canals and ponds of water it would have been quite likely for us to run into a brown or tiger snake and it would not have been a good ending if one of us had gotten bit. Luckily, nothing happened when we were out walking, we were all probably way too loud and scared off any wildlife which may have been there.
The next day we woke up early to see Lloyd and Dianne off as they were leaving to go to Inglewood as they go there every year after picking to search for gold. We got some pictures of their motorhome attached to their car and as you can see the whole set up is pretty massive and I would imagine a bit of a nightmare to drive here despite having the larger roads. Dianne left Ily her sewing machine as we still have work to do to fit new curtains and we promised them that when we finished working here in May we would head on south to Inglewood and drop it off to them.
It would be interesting for us to see the gold fields at Inglewood and hopefully we might get a bit of beginners luck when we eventually get there.
The rest of the day was a quiet one as we sat around with not much to do which was nice for a change. We when down the road into Tatura to get some food shopping done and the rest of the day was pretty much staying in the shade of the Gazebo hiding from the heat. For some reason despite the fact its autumn here the temperatures at this time were unusually hot and it was almost as hot as the summer, about 35 degrees or higher most days.
Monday was Labour day which is a public holiday here and although the others on our camp had to work in the packing shed we had the day off and we were also told that we did not have to work on the Tuesday so we had a bit of time to relax. So the Monday was another day of relaxing and we just sat there playing games and messing around on the internet. Our plan though was to take advantage of the fact we had Tuesday off and head into Shepparton and go to a couple of caravan canvas specialists to see about getting a quote for our pop top to be replaced. The pop top on the van desperately now needs to be replaced as its getting more and more ripped and new holes are appearing all of the time and that’s not good news at night when you have your lights on inside and all of the nasty insects get in. We must get through a can of death spray every couple of days due to the amount of bugs that get in.
We headed into town on the Tuesday to the first place on our list who told us that they would not be able to do the work as every van seems to have a slight variation and we needed to go to a specialist. They pointed us in the direction of another company which was also on our list so we headed straight there. The guy at the second place was helpful, he went through the options that we would have in terms of material as they don’t replace the canvas with canvas anymore because it’s weak and can rot if packed away damp (like a tent). Instead there is this other plastic type material that they make covers for things out of which they use. We ran through what we wanted with the man and also got him to price to replace the roof lining and all of the internal carpets (after our failed attempt in Melbourne).
Whilst we were in the shop talking we heard this almighty smash come from the road outside and when we went over to take a look it would appear that an old lady in a 4x4 pulled out of the side road right in front of an oncoming vehicle and smash. The strange thing was there was a third car also smashed into the front of the 4x4 so god only knows what happened there! The only thing we know is that the Aussies are friendly enough to chat to and can’t seem to do enough for you but get them behind the wheel of a car and they turn into complete arseholes. It is quite surprising that given what we have seen on the road that there are not many more accidents.
Anyway, we went to the third and final place on the list and spoke to a very lively chap there who was running through different options and he took down all of the measurements both for the pop top and for the work to be carried out inside. He gave us two options, the first one would be the price if he did all of the prep work like removing the old pop top and internal linings etc and the other would be the price if we did all of the prep work. The problem with the pop top removal is that the original one is riveted into place at the top and the bottom so you would need to drill out the rivets carefully to remove which I suppose will take a bit of time. We had a better feeling about the first chap that we went and saw as he had the exact internal material we wanted and seemed to be more of a professional about things but we get the feeling that he will be rather expensive. To date we are still waiting back for their prices so we can choose which one to use, we had read on the internet that it can cost anywhere from $800 - $1500 to get the pop top replaced and we also have quite a bit inside we would like them to tackle so we have set our budget at $1500 and we will have to wait and see what people come back with.
The rest of the week we were back on picking the dreaded plumbs which we hate doing but we managed to pick 10 bins on our first day back which is a record as they were much bigger. The rest of the week was a bit of an uphill struggle as they seemed to get smaller and we have lost interest trying to do well on them as we know that this is hopefully pretty much the last of them and then we will be back on bigger fruit.
We have also had a bit of a change in the weather as of late and it feels much cooler than it did now than earlier in the week. The temperature has dropped right down to the low to mid-twenties and at night the temperature goes down to about 8 degrees. It has been a bit of a shock to the system as we were used to have mid-twenties in the early hours of the morning so we find ourselves now wearing all of the long trousers and jumpers that we bought over and have been in storage since we landed.
Just a final message to say good luck to Iliana’s Dad Paul with his latest round of hospital visits and that we both wish him all of the best and hope that he gets better soon. Finally, same to Graham’s mum who had a lucky escape from a mystery illness which sounds like it could have been serious if it had not been caught in time.
Week 16 (Sat 16th – Fri 22nd Mar)here to edit.
This week started off as last week ended, luckily it was our final day of tiny plumbs! We got up at the usual 6am and headed down to collect our tractor etc. and started picking at about 7.30am. Pointless really as we were fast running out of fruit and by 9.30am the block of fruit was cleared within 2 bins of fruit for us. Nightmare! Fortunately though, despite having gotten up early for not much financial reward, it still counts towards our 88 days required for our second year visa, plus we had the rest of the day to ourselves. We decided to spend the rest of the day and Sunday relaxing as we were off until Monday, plus we had been invited to have a few drinks with the other people on the camp to celebrate reaching half-way of the required 88 days. It seemed a little pointless to us as the other people here work in the packing shed and work different days to us so they have generally worked more days in total because it’s more of a Mon-Fri affair for them. For us it’s more casual and we tend to pick when the fruit is ready. Despite the fact that it’s more labour intensive and a less predictable income, we prefer doing the picking, as when you have a good day you can earn two or three times more an hour than you would in the packing shed. Plus having listened to what they do all day we think that we would probably die of boredom from the conveyer belt type work or stress of the possibility of getting the sack. Apparently people are getting booted out all the time for the smallest of things, plus there is less and less work available at the moment in the packing shed so they could all be looking for another job if things don’t start to pick up in there. This is because, although we are still picking the fruit (it has to come off the trees or it will spoil), the fruit can be kept in cold storage until a buyer is found. If a buyer is not found then it stays in there and the packers are without work or it slows down.
On Monday we started colour picking the block of Peaches. They are massive. Some so large you can’t close you hand around even a 3rd of the fruit. Unfortunately colour picking in this case meant that you cannot pick anything that wasn’t the deepest of reds, any yellow on the fruit that had the slightest tinge of green was not allowed to be picked. This meant that we had to go quite slow to make sure we were picking the right colour fruit. Although it sounds really straight forward, some fruit was the right colour on one side but as soon as you turned it, it would be green on the other and by the time you had turned it sometimes it would come off in your hand. However by about a third of the way through our second bin we had really got our ‘eye in’ on the colour and it became a lot easier to see which ones to pick without even having to look at the backs. Unfortunately, most people picking that day didn’t really bother listening too well to what they were supposed to do and about three hours in they pulled us all of the fruit because far too many green fruits had been picked. That was a bit frustrating as we had really begun to speed up by this time, however George (one of the main supervisors) said to us as we left with our last bin that if they all picked bins the way we did, we wouldn’t have all been pulled off, which cheered us up a bit. So the majority of the peaches had been left on the tree to ripen a little further before we could come back and strip pick them (take all the fruit).
As again we had only worked a few hours on Monday and still hadn’t heard from either of the pop-top canvas companies we had visited last week Graham gave them a chase up call to find out what was going on and if they were still going to quote us on the work. Both of them had said that they had been really busy and would get us a quote trough either later on that day or the following day. Sure enough later on that day the second company that should have been quoting us for the work did get back to us and only quoted $1,000 to remove the pop-top, make up and put up a new one with bigger side vents, plus replace all the roof and side lining. We would have to remove the carpet we had attempted to put up previously as it would speed up the process and mean we could have the work done by them in a day so we wouldn’t be without our ‘home’ for too long. We still haven’t heard from the first guy who was supposed to quote us so we’ve assumed he’s not interested or too busy to fit us in and will be going with the quote we got as it seems really reasonable for the amount of work and from what we’ve seen on the internet.
Unfortunately, however this meant more work to the van had to be done to prep it to be taken into the canvas place for the finishing touches internally. Therefore, after having chatted about it for a little bit we decided to do all the electrical upgrades we needed before sending it in so the cables could all be chased in behind where the upholstery was going to go. Tuesday morning we got up early and headed into Shepperton to buy all the bits and pieces we needed to strip out the old carpet and wire up a new bank of multi sockets to the front of the van (as our only sockets are currently at the back). We also bought a new light for the roof, and new sockets for the back as they had all discoloured to a gross yellow over the years, which would stick out once the white leather affect upholstery was put up around them. As we were going to rip out all the carpets etc. we thought it best to rip out the old curtain track system, as the curtains would constantly pop out of the track, they hung terribly and gave poor privacy, plus they were in the way of the new upholstery that was due to be put up. So we decided to buy some cream coloured ‘sun-out’ material and ily would make the curtains on a curtain wire system instead. Unfortunately, by the time we had run around town getting all these bits and pieces it was quite late for us to start doing any work. So we decided to chill out, cook some food and watch a movie before bed.
The next day we started work on the van, Graham started ripping down all the carpets we had put up, which had been an absolute nightmare to put up as the glue took forever to dry, and now was a nightmare to pull off as it had gone the consistency of chewing gum. But little by little he was making progress with a scraper in hand. Ily had decided to start making the curtains and decided to do them outside this time as there would be more space and wouldn’t be in Graham’s way inside. Unfortunately though because of the wind that had picked up over the end of last week the Gazebo looked like a hurricane had gone through it and it took a long time to sweep out and clean everything up. By the time she started doing the curtains it was quite late on so only managed to get the first two, half made, before packing up time. Plus we’d had a minor incident with the small pliers/cutters we had, in that they wouldn’t cut through the curtain wire, so Graham decided to give it some, and they snapped in half with the mouth of the cutters jammed shut on the wire. So for that night we decided to just tie them up with some string until we could go and get some new pliers. The next day it was miserable, the rain had come in during the night and it had been raining all morning only lightly but enough for it to be dangerous to be messing about with the sewing machine which had to be plugged in through an indoor multi socket. So we decided to take the day off from DIY and just chill out in the van as it was quite cold outside but nice next to our heater. Ily decided to make a lamb stew at about tea time to warm us up and we decided to do it in the kitchen so we could do it on a slow cook and not consume our entire gas bottle. We had been in the kitchen on camp for about 10mins and the Hail cannon stated going off. This is normally a sign of bad weather coming in. We looked outside and sure enough a really dark, heavy cloud was heading straight for us. Within second it was over us and seconds later a massive rain storm hit us. We stood there staring at the rain that was sheeting it down sideways and swirling in a twister effect. It came down so fast that within a couple of minutes the water was starting to come over the step into the kitchen. It subsided temporarily but it was still fairly heavy and graham decided to make a bolt for it to the van to make sure the water wasn’t getting in. He came back moments later sopping wet but just in time as the next wave hit. The Hail cannon started off again and the rain came down just as hard but this time accompanied by hail stones. They were quite large and bouncing off the walls spinning sideways that they would bash into your legs so we had to try wedge the kitchen door shut from the wind and rain. Once it had finally subsided we went back to the van the pair of us quite wet as the road adjacent our van was a small lake and sat it out until all the rain had all but stopped. The stew was quite nice for warming up with that night.
The following day we had to work and were back on the Peaches, so it put a halt to our DIY. The peaches were being strip picked this time so it made for really good picking and we managed to pick 12 bins by one o’clock which was the end of our picking day as only half the block had matured sufficiently.
here to edit.
On Monday we started colour picking the block of Peaches. They are massive. Some so large you can’t close you hand around even a 3rd of the fruit. Unfortunately colour picking in this case meant that you cannot pick anything that wasn’t the deepest of reds, any yellow on the fruit that had the slightest tinge of green was not allowed to be picked. This meant that we had to go quite slow to make sure we were picking the right colour fruit. Although it sounds really straight forward, some fruit was the right colour on one side but as soon as you turned it, it would be green on the other and by the time you had turned it sometimes it would come off in your hand. However by about a third of the way through our second bin we had really got our ‘eye in’ on the colour and it became a lot easier to see which ones to pick without even having to look at the backs. Unfortunately, most people picking that day didn’t really bother listening too well to what they were supposed to do and about three hours in they pulled us all of the fruit because far too many green fruits had been picked. That was a bit frustrating as we had really begun to speed up by this time, however George (one of the main supervisors) said to us as we left with our last bin that if they all picked bins the way we did, we wouldn’t have all been pulled off, which cheered us up a bit. So the majority of the peaches had been left on the tree to ripen a little further before we could come back and strip pick them (take all the fruit).
As again we had only worked a few hours on Monday and still hadn’t heard from either of the pop-top canvas companies we had visited last week Graham gave them a chase up call to find out what was going on and if they were still going to quote us on the work. Both of them had said that they had been really busy and would get us a quote trough either later on that day or the following day. Sure enough later on that day the second company that should have been quoting us for the work did get back to us and only quoted $1,000 to remove the pop-top, make up and put up a new one with bigger side vents, plus replace all the roof and side lining. We would have to remove the carpet we had attempted to put up previously as it would speed up the process and mean we could have the work done by them in a day so we wouldn’t be without our ‘home’ for too long. We still haven’t heard from the first guy who was supposed to quote us so we’ve assumed he’s not interested or too busy to fit us in and will be going with the quote we got as it seems really reasonable for the amount of work and from what we’ve seen on the internet.
Unfortunately, however this meant more work to the van had to be done to prep it to be taken into the canvas place for the finishing touches internally. Therefore, after having chatted about it for a little bit we decided to do all the electrical upgrades we needed before sending it in so the cables could all be chased in behind where the upholstery was going to go. Tuesday morning we got up early and headed into Shepperton to buy all the bits and pieces we needed to strip out the old carpet and wire up a new bank of multi sockets to the front of the van (as our only sockets are currently at the back). We also bought a new light for the roof, and new sockets for the back as they had all discoloured to a gross yellow over the years, which would stick out once the white leather affect upholstery was put up around them. As we were going to rip out all the carpets etc. we thought it best to rip out the old curtain track system, as the curtains would constantly pop out of the track, they hung terribly and gave poor privacy, plus they were in the way of the new upholstery that was due to be put up. So we decided to buy some cream coloured ‘sun-out’ material and ily would make the curtains on a curtain wire system instead. Unfortunately, by the time we had run around town getting all these bits and pieces it was quite late for us to start doing any work. So we decided to chill out, cook some food and watch a movie before bed.
The next day we started work on the van, Graham started ripping down all the carpets we had put up, which had been an absolute nightmare to put up as the glue took forever to dry, and now was a nightmare to pull off as it had gone the consistency of chewing gum. But little by little he was making progress with a scraper in hand. Ily had decided to start making the curtains and decided to do them outside this time as there would be more space and wouldn’t be in Graham’s way inside. Unfortunately though because of the wind that had picked up over the end of last week the Gazebo looked like a hurricane had gone through it and it took a long time to sweep out and clean everything up. By the time she started doing the curtains it was quite late on so only managed to get the first two, half made, before packing up time. Plus we’d had a minor incident with the small pliers/cutters we had, in that they wouldn’t cut through the curtain wire, so Graham decided to give it some, and they snapped in half with the mouth of the cutters jammed shut on the wire. So for that night we decided to just tie them up with some string until we could go and get some new pliers. The next day it was miserable, the rain had come in during the night and it had been raining all morning only lightly but enough for it to be dangerous to be messing about with the sewing machine which had to be plugged in through an indoor multi socket. So we decided to take the day off from DIY and just chill out in the van as it was quite cold outside but nice next to our heater. Ily decided to make a lamb stew at about tea time to warm us up and we decided to do it in the kitchen so we could do it on a slow cook and not consume our entire gas bottle. We had been in the kitchen on camp for about 10mins and the Hail cannon stated going off. This is normally a sign of bad weather coming in. We looked outside and sure enough a really dark, heavy cloud was heading straight for us. Within second it was over us and seconds later a massive rain storm hit us. We stood there staring at the rain that was sheeting it down sideways and swirling in a twister effect. It came down so fast that within a couple of minutes the water was starting to come over the step into the kitchen. It subsided temporarily but it was still fairly heavy and graham decided to make a bolt for it to the van to make sure the water wasn’t getting in. He came back moments later sopping wet but just in time as the next wave hit. The Hail cannon started off again and the rain came down just as hard but this time accompanied by hail stones. They were quite large and bouncing off the walls spinning sideways that they would bash into your legs so we had to try wedge the kitchen door shut from the wind and rain. Once it had finally subsided we went back to the van the pair of us quite wet as the road adjacent our van was a small lake and sat it out until all the rain had all but stopped. The stew was quite nice for warming up with that night.
The following day we had to work and were back on the Peaches, so it put a halt to our DIY. The peaches were being strip picked this time so it made for really good picking and we managed to pick 12 bins by one o’clock which was the end of our picking day as only half the block had matured sufficiently.
here to edit.
Week 17 (Sat 23rd – Fri 29th Mar).
Firstly – Happy Birthday to Penny – hope you had a good one
So this week started off with a day off and we decided to run into Shepperton to get a few more bits and pieces we had forgotten on our last trip to get the DIY stuff for the van, including the replacement for the broken wire cutters. On return, Graham carried on with the stripping out of the carpets and ily tended to some other chores as we weren’t too keen on using the sewing machine on the indoor multi socket that had been caught up in the torrential rain of the day before last in-case it wasn’t fully dried out. The most depressing thing about that rain storm was that ily had cleaned out the gazebo so it was spotless (earlier last week) and surveying the sewing area set up in there now, you can see where the rain had carried a small river through it and brought with it al kinds of mud and leaves etc.
Picking started again on the Sunday and we carried on through to the Wednesday which again put a halt to our DIY. But we were happy to do something a little different than DIY on the Van. Plus on our first day on the Peaches we managed to pick 23 bins, which mean over $500 for one day’s work which we were quite chuffed with. As you can see on the foto below we were picking along in the row and all of a sudden out of nowhere this mammoth size moth flew at us and landed on the fruit we had picked. When we explained to George he told us it was something like a ‘widget moth’ and the grubs are really popular with fishermen as you can get some really big catch with them. We have decided to call them bird moths though as they are about as big and fly in a similar style. ;-)
The following day we were on pears, which were tiny by comparison to the peaches but we were picking them into the bigger bins. We had an outside row as well which meant that a lot of the fruit was sun damaged or bird eaten so a lot of the fruit we were picking had to be thrown on the floor. But we still managed to pick 7 bins which is the more than we’ve ever picked of the large bins on apples, and pears slot in together better in the bin leaving few air gaps, so we are hoping when we get back on the apples we will have improved.
The following day we were back on the peaches as George had requested that we finish the block with, two or three other tractors he’d selected. We were really chuffed as we managed to pick 14 bins of peaches by 11.30 which was more than any of the other pairs on the other tractors. We then got on the Pears later that day after getting new bins on our tractor etc. and managed another 3 bins going at a much steadier pace. By Wednesday we were picking pears again and we all finished the block of by 12o’clock but we were managing a big bin in half an hour which beats our previous picking times on these bins by almost half, so we were quite chuffed by that. When we got back to the van that afternoon we totted up our picking records and noted that we’d managed to make just over $1500 in just 5 days of picking. We we’re really made up by that and just hope that the apples and final block of Peaches will be good picking as we had this week.
Thursday we did some more DIY to the van finishing off the curtains and stripping carpet, fitting electrics etc. which should all be finished by Sunday, ready to visit the canvas place on our next day off and get some things finalised before working out a day to get the pop-top and upholstery completed.
Friday we decided to have the day of as it was good Friday and we’ve been working quite hard on the van and picking etc. One of the supervisors had told us about the Toolomba Fishing Club which had events going all over the Easter period. He had said how on the Friday after the fishing competition they had a bit of a ‘do’ on in the evening where you can have a sit down meal in the club house, there’s a bar with reasonably priced beer etc. and they have live music on. We got there at about 6.30 as the food service was between 6-8pm. We turn up in the middle of nowhere (essentially a big field) where you go into a corrugated metal structure ‘the club house’ and go through and out into a back area where there is a big fire pit, a truck with a bands instruments set up where a band would come on intermittently and play cheesy country music and a massive que to a buffet style meal served on plastic plates with plastic cutlery – Not quite the ‘club house’ soirée we had been sold ;-) .
Even worse was the taxi ride we had to endure getting there, because there were 7 of us the nearest taxi firm with a 7 seater was based in Shepparton and they wanted $80 dollars one way fare. We decided to try and get hold of the local company Tatura Taxis which is essentially a one man outfit and after a hour of trying we got through. The bloke did not fill us with reassurance as on the phone he was saying he didn’t often go that far (it was only about 5 – 8k’s away) and that he didn’t know where the place was! After he apparently looked on Google maps he decided he would take us and said it would be two journeys at $25 – 30 dollars a journey. As this was cheaper we decided to use him – big mistake!
He turned up cracking jokes and was an elderly Irish guy who was a bit mad. We set off and he kept going on about how he didn’t know where the place was but had a rough idea. He kept asking for a house number but the address we had from the website was something like “fishing club, Toolumba” then a postcode. When we tried telling him to put it in his sat nav he just couldn’t understand how you would put an address in without a house number – dumbass !
We got to a cross roads and Ily said the road name to him to try and jog his memory and he was like “right here then love?” He was clueless and had to jump out in the middle of the road to ask a guy in a bypassing truck where to go. Eventually we got there but it cost us $43 dollars one way, needless to say on the way back we booked the taxi from the big city and they did the return journey for $40. I think people out here just drink and drive because there is no way you can rely on a countryside taxi service here it’s a nightmare.
Anyway the do at the club resembled a rough beer festival but was ok, what promised itself to be a cheap night ended up expensive with the taxis so we were probably better heading off into town!
So this week started off with a day off and we decided to run into Shepperton to get a few more bits and pieces we had forgotten on our last trip to get the DIY stuff for the van, including the replacement for the broken wire cutters. On return, Graham carried on with the stripping out of the carpets and ily tended to some other chores as we weren’t too keen on using the sewing machine on the indoor multi socket that had been caught up in the torrential rain of the day before last in-case it wasn’t fully dried out. The most depressing thing about that rain storm was that ily had cleaned out the gazebo so it was spotless (earlier last week) and surveying the sewing area set up in there now, you can see where the rain had carried a small river through it and brought with it al kinds of mud and leaves etc.
Picking started again on the Sunday and we carried on through to the Wednesday which again put a halt to our DIY. But we were happy to do something a little different than DIY on the Van. Plus on our first day on the Peaches we managed to pick 23 bins, which mean over $500 for one day’s work which we were quite chuffed with. As you can see on the foto below we were picking along in the row and all of a sudden out of nowhere this mammoth size moth flew at us and landed on the fruit we had picked. When we explained to George he told us it was something like a ‘widget moth’ and the grubs are really popular with fishermen as you can get some really big catch with them. We have decided to call them bird moths though as they are about as big and fly in a similar style. ;-)
The following day we were on pears, which were tiny by comparison to the peaches but we were picking them into the bigger bins. We had an outside row as well which meant that a lot of the fruit was sun damaged or bird eaten so a lot of the fruit we were picking had to be thrown on the floor. But we still managed to pick 7 bins which is the more than we’ve ever picked of the large bins on apples, and pears slot in together better in the bin leaving few air gaps, so we are hoping when we get back on the apples we will have improved.
The following day we were back on the peaches as George had requested that we finish the block with, two or three other tractors he’d selected. We were really chuffed as we managed to pick 14 bins of peaches by 11.30 which was more than any of the other pairs on the other tractors. We then got on the Pears later that day after getting new bins on our tractor etc. and managed another 3 bins going at a much steadier pace. By Wednesday we were picking pears again and we all finished the block of by 12o’clock but we were managing a big bin in half an hour which beats our previous picking times on these bins by almost half, so we were quite chuffed by that. When we got back to the van that afternoon we totted up our picking records and noted that we’d managed to make just over $1500 in just 5 days of picking. We we’re really made up by that and just hope that the apples and final block of Peaches will be good picking as we had this week.
Thursday we did some more DIY to the van finishing off the curtains and stripping carpet, fitting electrics etc. which should all be finished by Sunday, ready to visit the canvas place on our next day off and get some things finalised before working out a day to get the pop-top and upholstery completed.
Friday we decided to have the day of as it was good Friday and we’ve been working quite hard on the van and picking etc. One of the supervisors had told us about the Toolomba Fishing Club which had events going all over the Easter period. He had said how on the Friday after the fishing competition they had a bit of a ‘do’ on in the evening where you can have a sit down meal in the club house, there’s a bar with reasonably priced beer etc. and they have live music on. We got there at about 6.30 as the food service was between 6-8pm. We turn up in the middle of nowhere (essentially a big field) where you go into a corrugated metal structure ‘the club house’ and go through and out into a back area where there is a big fire pit, a truck with a bands instruments set up where a band would come on intermittently and play cheesy country music and a massive que to a buffet style meal served on plastic plates with plastic cutlery – Not quite the ‘club house’ soirée we had been sold ;-) .
Even worse was the taxi ride we had to endure getting there, because there were 7 of us the nearest taxi firm with a 7 seater was based in Shepparton and they wanted $80 dollars one way fare. We decided to try and get hold of the local company Tatura Taxis which is essentially a one man outfit and after a hour of trying we got through. The bloke did not fill us with reassurance as on the phone he was saying he didn’t often go that far (it was only about 5 – 8k’s away) and that he didn’t know where the place was! After he apparently looked on Google maps he decided he would take us and said it would be two journeys at $25 – 30 dollars a journey. As this was cheaper we decided to use him – big mistake!
He turned up cracking jokes and was an elderly Irish guy who was a bit mad. We set off and he kept going on about how he didn’t know where the place was but had a rough idea. He kept asking for a house number but the address we had from the website was something like “fishing club, Toolumba” then a postcode. When we tried telling him to put it in his sat nav he just couldn’t understand how you would put an address in without a house number – dumbass !
We got to a cross roads and Ily said the road name to him to try and jog his memory and he was like “right here then love?” He was clueless and had to jump out in the middle of the road to ask a guy in a bypassing truck where to go. Eventually we got there but it cost us $43 dollars one way, needless to say on the way back we booked the taxi from the big city and they did the return journey for $40. I think people out here just drink and drive because there is no way you can rely on a countryside taxi service here it’s a nightmare.
Anyway the do at the club resembled a rough beer festival but was ok, what promised itself to be a cheap night ended up expensive with the taxis so we were probably better heading off into town!
Week 18 (Sat 30th March – Fri 5th April)here to edit.
It was Easter bank holiday and we had the Saturday and Sunday off but had to work on the Monday and really needed to put an end to the prep work for the van so we spent the Saturday getting the final bits and pieces we needed for the van and the Sunday we spent doing all of the final bits. Graham could not work out why a simple 12 volt light in the back of the van wouldn’t work and spent ages trying to get it wired in and then realised that he blew one of the fuses but luckily had some spare which cured the problem. The new light only came with two black wires to connect so must have put them around the wrong way on the first attempt. Ily battled with the curtains and we managed to finish at about 8pm that evening, We were planning on having a Sunday Easter roast with the new halogen oven we bought but ran out of time so it was a quick dash to Mac Donald’s for us then straight to bed to get ready for the start of the Apples.
Looking at our work sheet we were getting concerned about the amount of days we have worked since being, at the moment we are on 40 days and we have been here since the beginning of February. The rules surrounding the second year visa are not clear on the website and the people here in the camp seem to think that if you stay with the same employer for three months regardless of the days worked you can get the 88 days signed off. The way we have read it on the internet is that you can claim for weekends off if you work the average amount of days in the week for your industry i.e 9-5 on a 5 day week in a factory in one week would entitle you to 7 days sign- off, in which case we would be nearly on 60 days.
We spoke with the orchard manager Benny to see what he understood the rules to be and he seemed to think that it is 88 worked days. Given this, and taking into account that the Apples normally finish on the 20th May we would need to work an average 5 day week up to this date to get about 85 days and we figured the rest we would work for free to get signed off. In order to clarify we phoned immigration to ask the question and the lady on the phone was certain it was 88 days for part- time or casual workers, which is what our tax file number is based on so unfortunately we have to do the full 88 days.
Anyway, we started on the Monday to pick the Granny Smith Apples. We were told that they were normally good to pick as they were big apples and could fill a bin easily. In fact they were tiny little things and they matched the colour of the trees so you could not see the ones growing at the back. Also, most of the Apples were sunburnt and gone yellow which had to be chucked out and the rows were really tight so you could barely fit the tractor down the middle, let alone have enough room to get down both sides of the bin to fill. Another pain was the fact that you have to be gentle with them or they bruise and if you pick to hard you rip off the bud which they get annoyed about because that is next year’s fruit (which by the way we are sick of hearing). It took us 4 days to finish the block of Apples and our knees were hurting us as you have to crawl to get the ones at the bottom. Another kick in the teeth was they were only paying $27 dollars a bin not the $30 we got for the previous Apples so instead of getting the $690 dollars we thought we were going to get for the work we got $60 dollars less which makes us wonder if it is worth hanging around.
Despite all of this the week ended on a bit of a high as we were chosen to pick the last block of Peaches. They split the group into two and one group were on the Peaches and the other was on the Apple Pollinators which is a nightmare as the Polinators are spread out all over the different blocks of fruit. We were told that there were 30 rows of Peaches and 11 tractors and we would finish early. You should have seen it, as the Peaches are massive and you can earn big money everyone was going mental. We unluckily got there first in the morning so got the outside single row to start which has less fruit density and generally they are more rotten but we went crazy and knocked the whole side off in about an hour. We then went straight into a double row and after ten mins of picking here the fastest pickers had already finished their double row and were starting the new one next to us. We worked like crazy and kept up with them all the way until the end then they disappeared onto their next row about 10 mins in front of us. We were happy at the progress we have made and kept going out onto a new 2nd double row which we hammered through. We even overtook slower pickers who were still on their 1st or 2nd row and managed to finish in time to double up on some other slower picker’s row and took a couple of bins off them. By 1pm we had filled 20 bins without a break and earnt $440 dollars – we are definitely getting faster.
On return to the camp we were desperate for a shower but surprise surprise we had run out of water again. We have a 5000 gallon tank which it’s our job to fill but the tap is broken. It sort of works but when you turn on to fill it can be tricky and turns itself off. We had turned it on the previous day and left but in the night it decided to stop and therefore no water! The bloody thing takes about 2 days non – stop to fill up and when you run out all this yellow water comes through the taps as the scum at the bottom of the tank tries to come through, it can clog up the taps or shower heads. It then takes a while for new cleaner water to run through and un-clog, the tank is gravity fed from a nearby channel and the water that you shower in has a funny smell which we will not miss when we finally leave.
The weather here is definitely got a bit cooler recently, which is odd to us as ever since we have arrived in Oz it has been really hot. As we are south in Victoria they have the most seasonal variance and we are now in Autumn. At night the temperature goes down to about 6 degrees which is chilly but we have a heater in the van on a thermostat so we leave that going all night and it keeps the van at a steady 20 degrees which is plenty and turns on and off to keep the temp constant. During the day the temperature goes up to about 20 – 28 degrees in the shade so it’s like England’s summer but much more reliable with hardly any rain (bar the odd storm). The weather here is great really and as we are writing this we are sun bathing and it’s about 30 in the sun. The only problem is that as soon as we finish here we will not all ways have power unless we pay to stay in a site and it will be winter which in Perth is about the same as here in the Autumn. We are not sure if it will be that comfortable at night so wondering if we should do what everyone else does here and head north to Queensland or the northern territory as its their summer. It’s a tropical climate up north and they only have two seasons, a wet and dry season, their summer is the dry season. It will mean though a massive road trip the likes never done before probably through the middle of Oz through Alice Springs but we are going to see what we feel like doing when the time finally comes.
Two of our fellow camp mates (Colin and Anna) got laid off in the packing shed on the Wednesday and decided to leave and head north up to Bundaberg as there is some potential work there in a packing shed so now we are down to 5 of us left.
here to edit.
Looking at our work sheet we were getting concerned about the amount of days we have worked since being, at the moment we are on 40 days and we have been here since the beginning of February. The rules surrounding the second year visa are not clear on the website and the people here in the camp seem to think that if you stay with the same employer for three months regardless of the days worked you can get the 88 days signed off. The way we have read it on the internet is that you can claim for weekends off if you work the average amount of days in the week for your industry i.e 9-5 on a 5 day week in a factory in one week would entitle you to 7 days sign- off, in which case we would be nearly on 60 days.
We spoke with the orchard manager Benny to see what he understood the rules to be and he seemed to think that it is 88 worked days. Given this, and taking into account that the Apples normally finish on the 20th May we would need to work an average 5 day week up to this date to get about 85 days and we figured the rest we would work for free to get signed off. In order to clarify we phoned immigration to ask the question and the lady on the phone was certain it was 88 days for part- time or casual workers, which is what our tax file number is based on so unfortunately we have to do the full 88 days.
Anyway, we started on the Monday to pick the Granny Smith Apples. We were told that they were normally good to pick as they were big apples and could fill a bin easily. In fact they were tiny little things and they matched the colour of the trees so you could not see the ones growing at the back. Also, most of the Apples were sunburnt and gone yellow which had to be chucked out and the rows were really tight so you could barely fit the tractor down the middle, let alone have enough room to get down both sides of the bin to fill. Another pain was the fact that you have to be gentle with them or they bruise and if you pick to hard you rip off the bud which they get annoyed about because that is next year’s fruit (which by the way we are sick of hearing). It took us 4 days to finish the block of Apples and our knees were hurting us as you have to crawl to get the ones at the bottom. Another kick in the teeth was they were only paying $27 dollars a bin not the $30 we got for the previous Apples so instead of getting the $690 dollars we thought we were going to get for the work we got $60 dollars less which makes us wonder if it is worth hanging around.
Despite all of this the week ended on a bit of a high as we were chosen to pick the last block of Peaches. They split the group into two and one group were on the Peaches and the other was on the Apple Pollinators which is a nightmare as the Polinators are spread out all over the different blocks of fruit. We were told that there were 30 rows of Peaches and 11 tractors and we would finish early. You should have seen it, as the Peaches are massive and you can earn big money everyone was going mental. We unluckily got there first in the morning so got the outside single row to start which has less fruit density and generally they are more rotten but we went crazy and knocked the whole side off in about an hour. We then went straight into a double row and after ten mins of picking here the fastest pickers had already finished their double row and were starting the new one next to us. We worked like crazy and kept up with them all the way until the end then they disappeared onto their next row about 10 mins in front of us. We were happy at the progress we have made and kept going out onto a new 2nd double row which we hammered through. We even overtook slower pickers who were still on their 1st or 2nd row and managed to finish in time to double up on some other slower picker’s row and took a couple of bins off them. By 1pm we had filled 20 bins without a break and earnt $440 dollars – we are definitely getting faster.
On return to the camp we were desperate for a shower but surprise surprise we had run out of water again. We have a 5000 gallon tank which it’s our job to fill but the tap is broken. It sort of works but when you turn on to fill it can be tricky and turns itself off. We had turned it on the previous day and left but in the night it decided to stop and therefore no water! The bloody thing takes about 2 days non – stop to fill up and when you run out all this yellow water comes through the taps as the scum at the bottom of the tank tries to come through, it can clog up the taps or shower heads. It then takes a while for new cleaner water to run through and un-clog, the tank is gravity fed from a nearby channel and the water that you shower in has a funny smell which we will not miss when we finally leave.
The weather here is definitely got a bit cooler recently, which is odd to us as ever since we have arrived in Oz it has been really hot. As we are south in Victoria they have the most seasonal variance and we are now in Autumn. At night the temperature goes down to about 6 degrees which is chilly but we have a heater in the van on a thermostat so we leave that going all night and it keeps the van at a steady 20 degrees which is plenty and turns on and off to keep the temp constant. During the day the temperature goes up to about 20 – 28 degrees in the shade so it’s like England’s summer but much more reliable with hardly any rain (bar the odd storm). The weather here is great really and as we are writing this we are sun bathing and it’s about 30 in the sun. The only problem is that as soon as we finish here we will not all ways have power unless we pay to stay in a site and it will be winter which in Perth is about the same as here in the Autumn. We are not sure if it will be that comfortable at night so wondering if we should do what everyone else does here and head north to Queensland or the northern territory as its their summer. It’s a tropical climate up north and they only have two seasons, a wet and dry season, their summer is the dry season. It will mean though a massive road trip the likes never done before probably through the middle of Oz through Alice Springs but we are going to see what we feel like doing when the time finally comes.
Two of our fellow camp mates (Colin and Anna) got laid off in the packing shed on the Wednesday and decided to leave and head north up to Bundaberg as there is some potential work there in a packing shed so now we are down to 5 of us left.
here to edit.
Week 19 (Sat 6th April – Fri 12th April)here to edit.
The week started with us being told that we would be doing some pruning work on the Apple trees during this week and only the people who could keep their concentration would be given further pruning work. We arrived at the other orchard just in time to hear the instructions that we were being given on how to prune. The problem is that English is not the first language of many farm workers and all we could make out was that you had to rip the new shoots off of the tree and generally do a thinning out of the leaves so the light could colour the apple.
After our great 60 second instructions in broken English we were fully ready and able to start pruning the apple trees. We stood both looking at the first tree with all the leaves and branches everywhere and thought, what the hell do we do with this mess. Grahams plan of attack was instead of just standing there looking confused he just started to rip at random leaves and branches thinking that if the foliage was thinned out a bit that would be enough. We both lasted about an hour in which time we had done about 3 small trees where the experiences pruners had done about 20, in the end we were told that they had an “easier” job for us to do.
Feeling a deflated at not really being given a chance we walked over to where our “easy” job was and to find out what it was. We were told that it was now our job to spread out and peg out the white sheeting that they lay sometimes between the rows of fruit trees to help it colour up. Fair enough we thought that does sound pretty easy, that was until they brought over the pegs that we has to use. They were the most battered old bent pegs you have ever seen and they were ridiculously long and pretty much impossible to drive into the ground. Furthermore, we were told that they were running out of these pegs so we had to be careful not to lose any or “waste” any. We did wonder how we would “waste” the pegs, how do you waste a peg? Unless, we suppose you enjoy smashing them into the ground so much you just go around like a demented person hitting them in needlessly! Anyway, this is the kind of odd management structure and instruction we get so who are we to question.
As always with farm work when they say it’s going to be easy they are lying and what they mean is it’s going to destroy you and make you very fed up, which is exactly what this job did. The process of putting down the sheeting involved walking along and pulling out the side of the sheeting every couple of meters, then at every post putting a couple of pegs in the sides. Where the sheeting joined a new bit or a bit at the end you had to make a join with three pegs – simples. It would have been a very simple task if it was not for the completely destroyed, torn and rotten sheeting. The sheeting is apparently expensive so they re– use it. The stuff must be about 10 years old as contains all sorts of tears and holes and not to mention last year’s rotting, mouldy fruit. The stuff was a nightmare to work with as Ily would pull one side and I would pull the other and the middle would be missing so it was not taught at all, also they would twist it up when unrolling it out for us and not join the pieces (or rags as we like to call them) up so you had to put bits together like a jigsaw.
Spending from 7am to 3:30pm Monday – Saturday was a living nightmare, Ily managed to faint one day (only slightly) due to exhaustion and we both had such aches and muscle strains, by Wednesday we were both struggling to sleep. In may sound like we are making this out to be harder than it was be you got to believe that this made the job of climbing ladders all day fruit picking seem easy.
We took some photos but not many again as there is not that much excitement going on at the moment and we worked all week just having one day off again so hopefully we will still get all of our days here. The others on the site who work in the packing shed (Lee, Rachel and Megan) have not been so lucky and they have not been working as are now waiting for us to pick Apples so they are bored out of their minds at the moment. They have made a nice addition to the camp though by putting their old 80s sofas from the rooms out on the grass so now it looks like a squatter camp, however, it does look comfy.
here to edit.
After our great 60 second instructions in broken English we were fully ready and able to start pruning the apple trees. We stood both looking at the first tree with all the leaves and branches everywhere and thought, what the hell do we do with this mess. Grahams plan of attack was instead of just standing there looking confused he just started to rip at random leaves and branches thinking that if the foliage was thinned out a bit that would be enough. We both lasted about an hour in which time we had done about 3 small trees where the experiences pruners had done about 20, in the end we were told that they had an “easier” job for us to do.
Feeling a deflated at not really being given a chance we walked over to where our “easy” job was and to find out what it was. We were told that it was now our job to spread out and peg out the white sheeting that they lay sometimes between the rows of fruit trees to help it colour up. Fair enough we thought that does sound pretty easy, that was until they brought over the pegs that we has to use. They were the most battered old bent pegs you have ever seen and they were ridiculously long and pretty much impossible to drive into the ground. Furthermore, we were told that they were running out of these pegs so we had to be careful not to lose any or “waste” any. We did wonder how we would “waste” the pegs, how do you waste a peg? Unless, we suppose you enjoy smashing them into the ground so much you just go around like a demented person hitting them in needlessly! Anyway, this is the kind of odd management structure and instruction we get so who are we to question.
As always with farm work when they say it’s going to be easy they are lying and what they mean is it’s going to destroy you and make you very fed up, which is exactly what this job did. The process of putting down the sheeting involved walking along and pulling out the side of the sheeting every couple of meters, then at every post putting a couple of pegs in the sides. Where the sheeting joined a new bit or a bit at the end you had to make a join with three pegs – simples. It would have been a very simple task if it was not for the completely destroyed, torn and rotten sheeting. The sheeting is apparently expensive so they re– use it. The stuff must be about 10 years old as contains all sorts of tears and holes and not to mention last year’s rotting, mouldy fruit. The stuff was a nightmare to work with as Ily would pull one side and I would pull the other and the middle would be missing so it was not taught at all, also they would twist it up when unrolling it out for us and not join the pieces (or rags as we like to call them) up so you had to put bits together like a jigsaw.
Spending from 7am to 3:30pm Monday – Saturday was a living nightmare, Ily managed to faint one day (only slightly) due to exhaustion and we both had such aches and muscle strains, by Wednesday we were both struggling to sleep. In may sound like we are making this out to be harder than it was be you got to believe that this made the job of climbing ladders all day fruit picking seem easy.
We took some photos but not many again as there is not that much excitement going on at the moment and we worked all week just having one day off again so hopefully we will still get all of our days here. The others on the site who work in the packing shed (Lee, Rachel and Megan) have not been so lucky and they have not been working as are now waiting for us to pick Apples so they are bored out of their minds at the moment. They have made a nice addition to the camp though by putting their old 80s sofas from the rooms out on the grass so now it looks like a squatter camp, however, it does look comfy.
here to edit.
Week 20 (Sat 13th April – Fri 19th April)here to edit.
We worked on the Saturday putting the last of the sheeting down (Hooray!!) and finished by 10am so decided to sleep for the rest of the day and take it easy as it had been a hard couple of weeks. It was so nice to finally have a day of the next day and we decided to do a “Dexter” marathon and we finished off series 1 and got part way through series 2. Don’t know if anyone reading this has seen the series but it’s about a serial killer who works for the police and he is sort of a good guy, sounds strange but we both love it and have series 1 – 7 (about 80hrs) on the hard drive to get through. We also now have 24, breaking bad and other series on their along with more films and we have nearly filled the 1 TB disk up.
Sunday came and we all decided to go into Shepperton to get some supplies again and a few bits and pieces. We really wanted to get a cafetiere as fed up with normal instant coffee and went into K – Mart and got one for $10 along with a new plate set for $7 – well cheap. As it was Sunday we decided to cook everyone a Sunday roast which included Beef, Potatoes, Stuffing Balls,
Yorkshire Puddings and different veg. We fired up the new oven and Ily baked a cake for everyone which was nice. The roast dinner went really well and everyone enjoyed it and we are thinking about giving it a go again next week as it kind of gives you something to look forward to at the end of the week. Even the rats in the kitchen got quite excited as we could see them running about hiding behind things like the fridge and they even run along power cables from the plug sockets, quite clever and a good balancing act.
Monday came and we were told that we now would be pruning and to go out to meet everyone by the Apple block. We met up with the others and got our instructions again and were set to work. This time instead of being hesitant and looking like you are struggling we just went for it and ripped hell out of the trees. It would seem from what we can see is that everyone sort of does it a different way than each other and we honestly think that some of them have no idea what they are doing. They are just going through the motions of pulling off branches surrounding the Apples so they get more light, removing water shoots and then moving on.
The job itself is very mundane, after a couple of hours of pulling and ripping branches etc with your hands your hands do get a little sore and you get very, very bored. The only bonus of doing this sort of work as with the work putting down the sheeting is that you get paid on an hourly rate which is about $24 each a hour or $16 each a hour after tax. On an 8 hour day which is what we have been working we have been earning, roughly $250 a day between us which is good.
We were the only English doing the pruning the rest of the workers are from places Indonesia, Thailand, China and therefore most of them don’t speak English. We can see why they have been chosen thought because they work like crazy, they just keep going and going and they even shout and have a laugh all day (which can get irritating) and we both have no idea where they get their energy from because they are really quick.
The pruning work went into its second day on Tuesday and unluckily for us both we were put in close proximity to the noisy girls. These girls sound and look about 12 years old and they are flat out screaming and going mad all day. To make things worse is that they have a music player and speakers with them and the music that they enjoy is sort of strange Asian boy band music with a mixture of the English and other language. Its soooo corny and it just keeps going and going, to top it off there might be some cheesy rap music done in a sort of boy band way. You would think at the age of some of these girls they would have grown out of this sort of $hite by now (unless they are really 12/13) and by the end of the 1st hour of the day we were both ready to be shot in the face as anything was better than listening to that rubbish.
The day went painstakingly slow and we both were feeling a little knackered still from doing the sheeting the previous week (only having 1 day off) and I think we were both a little relieved when we were told that the following day (Wednesday) we would be back picking again.
It was time to make a start on the Pink Ladies, the Pink Lady apple is now (apparently) the most common Apple to be grown as it sells the quickest and can demand quite a high price. Apparently, when the 1st block of Pinks were put in at this orchard it was the 1st time they were grown in Victoria and they demanded a price of over $2000.00 a ton. Considering that we now get paid about $60 to pick a ton and looking at what goes into production I wonder what the profit margin on the fruit is? Speaking to the orchard manager here they no longer export much of their fruit to places like the U.K because the fruit is now being grown cheaper in places like Africa, I suppose because they can pay not a lot of salary and if the workers slack, can dispose of them easy (make of that what you will).
The 1st pick of the apples was to a block of young trees that were barley 6ft tall so no ladders were needed but due to the hail storm we wrote about the other day they had lost about 30% of the crop. Looking at the fruit you could see where the hail stone hit the Apple and it had bruised, then a hole forms and it goes black and mouldy. We had to throw all of the rotten ones on the ground and pick only the really red ones. The colour here of the pink ladies are different to England, apparently when they were being sold to the U.K they would just pick the whole lot about now as the U.K market would accept the non – ripe pink ones but when you actually see them proper ripened here they look like a Gala. We picked slowly and only managed two bins before the block was finished as there was not a lot ready, we were told that we had until Monday off as they are waiting for the fruit to colour and then we would start the 7 day a week picking for about 5 weeks.
Relieved that we have a bit of time off we decided to make the most of it so went straight to bed and slept for a bit. The others on the camp were a bit bored and we decided to drive into Tatura and get Pizza’s and beer and make a night of it. Ily found that they do a box of cocktails (2 Litre) for $25 and decided to give that a go and Lee went for his normal slab of beer, Graham decided to stay with what he loves the best here which is the rocket fuel boxed wine.
We wasted no time in getting on it and played a music game where you guess the artist and song. Me and Ily stood little chance of getting anything right against Lee as he only has to hear the first second and he can often get them right. I think looking back Lee got about 90%, Ily and me struggled with the rest, he is like a human music encyclopaedia from music like The Who through to Pendulum. The night carried on and we were looking at stuff on U-Tube including the classics like every day average guy, some literal songs and some Michael Jackson stuff. By the way the bloke who does every day average guy also has done a load of other things which are quite funny such as the “Rapist Glasses” and “Hands”, we think the bloke has lost the plot but it makes us laugh.
As the night went on we got increasingly bored of playing music through small laptop speakers and we decided it would be a good idea to all sit in the van and fire up the stereo as we have 6x9’s which are drilled into boxes which given good bass etc so Ily, Me, Rach and Lee started the 1st piss – up in the van. It turned out to be a good idea as it was warmer and the quality of the sound was much better plus the seats are more comfy and the fridge is closer.
By 10pm we were all absolutely steaming. We had to run the van whilst the music was going as we had it on flat out and Rachel (who was also on the boxed wine) was absolutely off of her chops. It was hilarious, by about 11pm though it was all too much for her and she passed out during Snoop Dog. Lee had to take her back to the room and put her in bed but she threw up all over the bed and had a pretty rough night hugging an outside mosquito / spider ridden toilet all night – Lucky girl.
For the rest of us though it was moving into the golden hour (the one where you are at your peak before you slide down hill) and we put the table away to try and make a small dance floor. Combine that with putting the flash onto strobe mode on your phone and turning lights off and you have a mobile disco. It was a quality night but in the end Rachel was being more- sick and Lee had to look after her so it was left to me and Ily to carry the party on. We did a few Cypress Hill tracks and then thought it was time for the Smiths but disaster struck and we could not find it on the I Pod. Luckily, we got another copy off of Lee who is also a fan so all good. Anyway, it could not technically be classed as a party we had as, “a party ain’t a party without a Phil Colin’s tune!”
The next day was a bit of a rough one, there is something magical about a boxed wine hangover here as it still effect’s your ability to walk and do basic manual tasks the next day. Rachel was still in bed and still being sick and the rest of were in bed until after mid – day. The rest of the day was spent sorting out this webpage, it has taken 4 hours to write up this last lot and we are at 29 thousand words so far! Tomorrow is Friday and as we want this updated today will just say that tomorrow will involve going to dreaded Bunning’s and then looking for a rear box for the van and the bits we need to build it into a swing out box. That’s all for now.
here to edit.
Sunday came and we all decided to go into Shepperton to get some supplies again and a few bits and pieces. We really wanted to get a cafetiere as fed up with normal instant coffee and went into K – Mart and got one for $10 along with a new plate set for $7 – well cheap. As it was Sunday we decided to cook everyone a Sunday roast which included Beef, Potatoes, Stuffing Balls,
Yorkshire Puddings and different veg. We fired up the new oven and Ily baked a cake for everyone which was nice. The roast dinner went really well and everyone enjoyed it and we are thinking about giving it a go again next week as it kind of gives you something to look forward to at the end of the week. Even the rats in the kitchen got quite excited as we could see them running about hiding behind things like the fridge and they even run along power cables from the plug sockets, quite clever and a good balancing act.
Monday came and we were told that we now would be pruning and to go out to meet everyone by the Apple block. We met up with the others and got our instructions again and were set to work. This time instead of being hesitant and looking like you are struggling we just went for it and ripped hell out of the trees. It would seem from what we can see is that everyone sort of does it a different way than each other and we honestly think that some of them have no idea what they are doing. They are just going through the motions of pulling off branches surrounding the Apples so they get more light, removing water shoots and then moving on.
The job itself is very mundane, after a couple of hours of pulling and ripping branches etc with your hands your hands do get a little sore and you get very, very bored. The only bonus of doing this sort of work as with the work putting down the sheeting is that you get paid on an hourly rate which is about $24 each a hour or $16 each a hour after tax. On an 8 hour day which is what we have been working we have been earning, roughly $250 a day between us which is good.
We were the only English doing the pruning the rest of the workers are from places Indonesia, Thailand, China and therefore most of them don’t speak English. We can see why they have been chosen thought because they work like crazy, they just keep going and going and they even shout and have a laugh all day (which can get irritating) and we both have no idea where they get their energy from because they are really quick.
The pruning work went into its second day on Tuesday and unluckily for us both we were put in close proximity to the noisy girls. These girls sound and look about 12 years old and they are flat out screaming and going mad all day. To make things worse is that they have a music player and speakers with them and the music that they enjoy is sort of strange Asian boy band music with a mixture of the English and other language. Its soooo corny and it just keeps going and going, to top it off there might be some cheesy rap music done in a sort of boy band way. You would think at the age of some of these girls they would have grown out of this sort of $hite by now (unless they are really 12/13) and by the end of the 1st hour of the day we were both ready to be shot in the face as anything was better than listening to that rubbish.
The day went painstakingly slow and we both were feeling a little knackered still from doing the sheeting the previous week (only having 1 day off) and I think we were both a little relieved when we were told that the following day (Wednesday) we would be back picking again.
It was time to make a start on the Pink Ladies, the Pink Lady apple is now (apparently) the most common Apple to be grown as it sells the quickest and can demand quite a high price. Apparently, when the 1st block of Pinks were put in at this orchard it was the 1st time they were grown in Victoria and they demanded a price of over $2000.00 a ton. Considering that we now get paid about $60 to pick a ton and looking at what goes into production I wonder what the profit margin on the fruit is? Speaking to the orchard manager here they no longer export much of their fruit to places like the U.K because the fruit is now being grown cheaper in places like Africa, I suppose because they can pay not a lot of salary and if the workers slack, can dispose of them easy (make of that what you will).
The 1st pick of the apples was to a block of young trees that were barley 6ft tall so no ladders were needed but due to the hail storm we wrote about the other day they had lost about 30% of the crop. Looking at the fruit you could see where the hail stone hit the Apple and it had bruised, then a hole forms and it goes black and mouldy. We had to throw all of the rotten ones on the ground and pick only the really red ones. The colour here of the pink ladies are different to England, apparently when they were being sold to the U.K they would just pick the whole lot about now as the U.K market would accept the non – ripe pink ones but when you actually see them proper ripened here they look like a Gala. We picked slowly and only managed two bins before the block was finished as there was not a lot ready, we were told that we had until Monday off as they are waiting for the fruit to colour and then we would start the 7 day a week picking for about 5 weeks.
Relieved that we have a bit of time off we decided to make the most of it so went straight to bed and slept for a bit. The others on the camp were a bit bored and we decided to drive into Tatura and get Pizza’s and beer and make a night of it. Ily found that they do a box of cocktails (2 Litre) for $25 and decided to give that a go and Lee went for his normal slab of beer, Graham decided to stay with what he loves the best here which is the rocket fuel boxed wine.
We wasted no time in getting on it and played a music game where you guess the artist and song. Me and Ily stood little chance of getting anything right against Lee as he only has to hear the first second and he can often get them right. I think looking back Lee got about 90%, Ily and me struggled with the rest, he is like a human music encyclopaedia from music like The Who through to Pendulum. The night carried on and we were looking at stuff on U-Tube including the classics like every day average guy, some literal songs and some Michael Jackson stuff. By the way the bloke who does every day average guy also has done a load of other things which are quite funny such as the “Rapist Glasses” and “Hands”, we think the bloke has lost the plot but it makes us laugh.
As the night went on we got increasingly bored of playing music through small laptop speakers and we decided it would be a good idea to all sit in the van and fire up the stereo as we have 6x9’s which are drilled into boxes which given good bass etc so Ily, Me, Rach and Lee started the 1st piss – up in the van. It turned out to be a good idea as it was warmer and the quality of the sound was much better plus the seats are more comfy and the fridge is closer.
By 10pm we were all absolutely steaming. We had to run the van whilst the music was going as we had it on flat out and Rachel (who was also on the boxed wine) was absolutely off of her chops. It was hilarious, by about 11pm though it was all too much for her and she passed out during Snoop Dog. Lee had to take her back to the room and put her in bed but she threw up all over the bed and had a pretty rough night hugging an outside mosquito / spider ridden toilet all night – Lucky girl.
For the rest of us though it was moving into the golden hour (the one where you are at your peak before you slide down hill) and we put the table away to try and make a small dance floor. Combine that with putting the flash onto strobe mode on your phone and turning lights off and you have a mobile disco. It was a quality night but in the end Rachel was being more- sick and Lee had to look after her so it was left to me and Ily to carry the party on. We did a few Cypress Hill tracks and then thought it was time for the Smiths but disaster struck and we could not find it on the I Pod. Luckily, we got another copy off of Lee who is also a fan so all good. Anyway, it could not technically be classed as a party we had as, “a party ain’t a party without a Phil Colin’s tune!”
The next day was a bit of a rough one, there is something magical about a boxed wine hangover here as it still effect’s your ability to walk and do basic manual tasks the next day. Rachel was still in bed and still being sick and the rest of were in bed until after mid – day. The rest of the day was spent sorting out this webpage, it has taken 4 hours to write up this last lot and we are at 29 thousand words so far! Tomorrow is Friday and as we want this updated today will just say that tomorrow will involve going to dreaded Bunning’s and then looking for a rear box for the van and the bits we need to build it into a swing out box. That’s all for now.
here to edit.