Week 21 (Sat 20th April – Fri 26th April)
This week started with a nice bit of time off before we started work on the Apples, onthe previous weeks blog we said that we were going to go to look for bits andpieces for the back box and have a lazy day. This sort of happened but we werewoken in the morning by Servat (our boss) dropping our money off and telling usthat the sheeting we put down had blown up in the wind and needed to be putdown again, as he handed us more pegs and hammers. That ruined our nice chilledout morning and we had to trek over to the Apple block to look at the damagethe wind had done. It was still windy when we went over and the sheeting on the1st row was almost completely up and in the trees. This row of trees is really, really long (about 3 – 400 meters) and you can imagine what one continuous piece of white tarpaulin about 3 meters wide flapping around in the trees looks like, it looks like a bit of a nightmare to sort out. We had to wrestle the sheeting to the ground whilst one of us pegged and slowly make our way along putting a peg in after every meter. It took us two hours to finally get all of the blown up sheeting down and we nearly used a whole box of pegs up which I am sure they will be moaning about because they are so precious.
The rest of the day we went back into Shepperton and looked for the bits and pieces needed for the rear box, stopping in a number of places with no luck. We were looking for a nice sturdy metal tool box which does not cost the earth and some gate hangers with the correct diameter fixing but despite looking we could not find hangers anywhere. Annoyingly, in the U.K. we would know where to get thesethings but here they seem to have random names for shops which don’t reallyell you what sort of stuff they sell. For example, the place we needed forgate hangers (as we found out later) is apparently a shop we have driven pastcountless times called “Hunters”. Now as the Australians are mad on th outdoors and hell bent on killing animals it is not unreasonable to assume thatit was a hunting store. As we didn’t know at the time, we ended up going intoanother tool place and spoke to a chap in the shop who understood what we wereafter and knew a local engineer who would do the work but wanted $600 for thetool box alone, seems a lot of money for a bit of checker plate aluminium.
We decided in the end that the box is going to be too expensive for us at that price so decided to again park the idea until we can find a cheaper solution. The next day we spent chilling out in the van as we had not had a day doing nothing but watch TV for a while and we made some progress getting through Dexter. We also hooked our hard drive up to Lee’s and swapped some stuff across so now we have another load of movies, all the series of 24, Breaking Bad and loads more films. By the way Breaking Bad is a really great series to get into, if anyone is interested. It’s about a school teacher (Walter), who teaches Chemistry and is actually a really clever Nobel Prize winner. He’s in his early 50’s, his wife is pregnant with their second ‘surprise’ child and they have a teenage son with cerebral palsy. They are in a bit of financial trouble, and at the beginning of the first series, he gets diagnosed with Cancer, with only a few months to live. He can’t afford the treatment and has no insurance. His
brother– in – law works for the DEA and Walter decides to go on a drugs bust with him for a bit of excitement but sees one of his ex – studentsmaking a run for it. He helps him get away as he is already considering ‘cooking’ up some Meth, after discovering the street price of it, as he wants to leave some money for his family. He then partners up with this ex-student and it makes for a funny yet serious series as the two couldn’t be more different and as the operation snowballs with pureness of what he can produce; There are some serious mess ups along the way. Anyway we recommend watching it because it’s a really addictive series.
The next day we signed up to go with the people from the packing shed on one of their day trips which on this occasion was to a place called “Hanging Rock”. We woke early and got on one of two minibuses and headed off. I suppose it should be no shock to us that it was over 2 hrs drive away considering the distances here but is was well worth it in the end. We took lots of photos of the place, which are at the bottom of the two weeks update, and as you can see some of the views we managed to capture are great - but not as good as seeing it with your own eyes. We were quite surprised to see the altitudes of some of the hills etc. he as we thought that Australia was pretty much flat. We noticed that there were some decent climbing points as well where you can rig a top rope, but when looking down noticed that you would need a 200m rope and lot of balls to climb some of the faces. The place is next to a horse racing track and there was some sort of event on at the time, where hundreds of people took part in a run on the track with added assault course and lots of mud. Would have made a great off – road motorbike track we thought at the time.
That night we decided to get more booze in and have another session in the van listening to music and this time we managed to fit the five of us and the dog in which was pretty spectacular. This time though Graham decided to steer way clear of the boxed wine and bought a crate of Toohey’s Extra Dry which is a nice lager considering what has been tasted out here so far. The night went ok as wedownloaded more music such as “Big Wille Style” (Will Smith Rap Album) how coolare we eh?; and a bit of Dre 2001.
The next day (Monday) was going to be our last free day before the start of the Apples which we have heard is a bit manic so we decided to take it steady. We spent the day wandering around town buying odd bits and pieces and going for coffee. It was nice - life feels more normal doing that sort of thing as you mix with people in a normal place as opposed to being stuck in a van on the orchard – usually covered in mud from a day of picking.
We started picking the Apples on the Tuesday, it was a bit of a pain in the arse as the Apples are really delicate and will bruise if you fart on them. You are constantly getting told “watch for bruising”, “up your colour”, “watch out forleaves on the fruit”, “Fill your bin”, “Your bins too full”. It’s absolutelyretarded how anal everyone is being about these particular apples, it drivesyou crazy. Normally you would get a supervisor or two coming around every halfhour or so to check your fruit, on this occasion we counted 7 of them doing therounds and they would be staring at your bin of fruit every 10mins , for atleast 10mins. It was a complete pain in the arse because they would stand atthe bin and call you over holding one of these poxy little Apples in their handand tell you a little story about what caused a mark on the Apple that theywere holding. They would say things like, “this is where the apple knockedagainst a ladder, or hit another one whilst you put in the bin or where yougrabbed it too hard”. Honestly, it’s like CSI Apple going on here it is stupid-death to apple by blunt force trauma!
We dug inhowever and did not let the constant crap get to us, our thoughts were- theywould have bigger fish to fry judging by the way that some of the others pick. Some would literally forget the bag around their necks and just lob themstraight into the bins if they thought they could get away with it. We werealso picking at the Deer Farm which is the worst place to pick as the trees aresingle leader trees meaning that they don’t grow on a trellis and therefore arereally tall, bushy as hell and, to top it all off they have steep banks leadingup to the base of the tree. You climb up the tall ladder (which is a bigger one than normal) and the bottom foot can slide down the other side at any pointwhich makes your arse go a bit when you are up high I can tell you. We carriedon anyway, at a reasonable pace, and by the second day had sussed it and got 9bins ($270) out on a colour pick which is much better than we could have hoped for.
As the Apples have just coloured up the 1st pick on the blocks is based on colourwhich means there is no smash and grab and you have to be selective so to getthe 9 out was a bit of an achievement. The rest of the week we spent colourpicking various blocks of the Apples over the three different orchards withvarying degrees of success ranging from 6 bins to 9 a day. Allot of the fruiton the better trellis trees were also just as high and therefore it was not as easy as we would have anticipated.
On the Friday we had to drive our tractors to the furthest away orchard, Darrengold. This was quite an experience as it’s about 12K’s away and, as tractors are not allowed on the main roads here, you have to drive them the back way and it takes
about an hour to cover the distance. Iliana wanted to drive our tractor over and Graham would drive behind in the van. We left in a group of eight tractors withDaniel heading up the front in his van, he is like our supervisor but also doesthe picking (the fastest picker here) and his job is to make sure no one gets left behind or run over when we cross a main road. We set off and all was well and Graham was at the back of the group in
the van. The tractors go so slow that you have to just put the van into third and let it idle along behind to keep the same speed.
About half an hour into the trip Graham noticed that the last tractor of the group was having trouble and the engine decided to shit itself and the tractor just died on the spot. Graham jumped out the van to see what the trouble was, but could not communicate with the driver as he doesn’t speak Chinese or Indonesian or whatever all the pickers speak. Anyway, he was a little surprised to see thecolumn of tractors chugging off into the distance. So much for Daniel and hischecking everyone was all right. Graham had to jump back into the van and goafter the tractors which to be fair was easy as they go all of 10mph but had towork out how to get to the front of the group to tell Daniel. This was not aneasy job as it is a single gravel track and no matter how much horn you let offno one can hear you as the noise of the tractors and the trailers is too muchand no one driving the tractors bother to look in the rear view mirror it wouldseem. Anyway, with a bit of motorbike style overtaking and about 3K’s Graham managed to shuffle to the front and warn Daniel that we were a man down.
Apparently, one of the pistons went a bit north in the engine of the tractor and it had to be recovered and sent back to the shed for a bit of
spannering.
All said and done, we all got there safely and started to pick the other block of apples,this time we had one of our old supervisors we had when we were on the Nectarines called Wally. Now Wally is a really loud, large foghorn of a man and he has the biggest personality of all of the supervisors working at the orchard. He is constantly telling everyone how crap they are and telling them to speed up, it is really quite funny because he does it in a way which can only be described as awesome. This guy is seriously hilarious and he has come up with a couple of nicknames for Graham which are “slack ass” or “gum boots” as Graham always wears wellies to work despite the lack of mud lately – which Wally seems to find hilarious.
The next day we finished the block at Darrengold and had to head back to the main orchard again which was another hour of 10mph, again with Ily driving the tractor and Graham following in the van. Bar further banging on about picking Apples that is how our week ended, we were told that we would not have any days off this weekend and would be working straight through for the next 2 – 3 weeks solid to get the Apples off the trees. By Friday we were starting to show signs of wear-and-tear, but our picking stamina was carrying us through.
As we have been busy the website is being updated for the two weeks at the same time so the pictures are going to be uploaded for this week after next week’s section.
The rest of the day we went back into Shepperton and looked for the bits and pieces needed for the rear box, stopping in a number of places with no luck. We were looking for a nice sturdy metal tool box which does not cost the earth and some gate hangers with the correct diameter fixing but despite looking we could not find hangers anywhere. Annoyingly, in the U.K. we would know where to get thesethings but here they seem to have random names for shops which don’t reallyell you what sort of stuff they sell. For example, the place we needed forgate hangers (as we found out later) is apparently a shop we have driven pastcountless times called “Hunters”. Now as the Australians are mad on th outdoors and hell bent on killing animals it is not unreasonable to assume thatit was a hunting store. As we didn’t know at the time, we ended up going intoanother tool place and spoke to a chap in the shop who understood what we wereafter and knew a local engineer who would do the work but wanted $600 for thetool box alone, seems a lot of money for a bit of checker plate aluminium.
We decided in the end that the box is going to be too expensive for us at that price so decided to again park the idea until we can find a cheaper solution. The next day we spent chilling out in the van as we had not had a day doing nothing but watch TV for a while and we made some progress getting through Dexter. We also hooked our hard drive up to Lee’s and swapped some stuff across so now we have another load of movies, all the series of 24, Breaking Bad and loads more films. By the way Breaking Bad is a really great series to get into, if anyone is interested. It’s about a school teacher (Walter), who teaches Chemistry and is actually a really clever Nobel Prize winner. He’s in his early 50’s, his wife is pregnant with their second ‘surprise’ child and they have a teenage son with cerebral palsy. They are in a bit of financial trouble, and at the beginning of the first series, he gets diagnosed with Cancer, with only a few months to live. He can’t afford the treatment and has no insurance. His
brother– in – law works for the DEA and Walter decides to go on a drugs bust with him for a bit of excitement but sees one of his ex – studentsmaking a run for it. He helps him get away as he is already considering ‘cooking’ up some Meth, after discovering the street price of it, as he wants to leave some money for his family. He then partners up with this ex-student and it makes for a funny yet serious series as the two couldn’t be more different and as the operation snowballs with pureness of what he can produce; There are some serious mess ups along the way. Anyway we recommend watching it because it’s a really addictive series.
The next day we signed up to go with the people from the packing shed on one of their day trips which on this occasion was to a place called “Hanging Rock”. We woke early and got on one of two minibuses and headed off. I suppose it should be no shock to us that it was over 2 hrs drive away considering the distances here but is was well worth it in the end. We took lots of photos of the place, which are at the bottom of the two weeks update, and as you can see some of the views we managed to capture are great - but not as good as seeing it with your own eyes. We were quite surprised to see the altitudes of some of the hills etc. he as we thought that Australia was pretty much flat. We noticed that there were some decent climbing points as well where you can rig a top rope, but when looking down noticed that you would need a 200m rope and lot of balls to climb some of the faces. The place is next to a horse racing track and there was some sort of event on at the time, where hundreds of people took part in a run on the track with added assault course and lots of mud. Would have made a great off – road motorbike track we thought at the time.
That night we decided to get more booze in and have another session in the van listening to music and this time we managed to fit the five of us and the dog in which was pretty spectacular. This time though Graham decided to steer way clear of the boxed wine and bought a crate of Toohey’s Extra Dry which is a nice lager considering what has been tasted out here so far. The night went ok as wedownloaded more music such as “Big Wille Style” (Will Smith Rap Album) how coolare we eh?; and a bit of Dre 2001.
The next day (Monday) was going to be our last free day before the start of the Apples which we have heard is a bit manic so we decided to take it steady. We spent the day wandering around town buying odd bits and pieces and going for coffee. It was nice - life feels more normal doing that sort of thing as you mix with people in a normal place as opposed to being stuck in a van on the orchard – usually covered in mud from a day of picking.
We started picking the Apples on the Tuesday, it was a bit of a pain in the arse as the Apples are really delicate and will bruise if you fart on them. You are constantly getting told “watch for bruising”, “up your colour”, “watch out forleaves on the fruit”, “Fill your bin”, “Your bins too full”. It’s absolutelyretarded how anal everyone is being about these particular apples, it drivesyou crazy. Normally you would get a supervisor or two coming around every halfhour or so to check your fruit, on this occasion we counted 7 of them doing therounds and they would be staring at your bin of fruit every 10mins , for atleast 10mins. It was a complete pain in the arse because they would stand atthe bin and call you over holding one of these poxy little Apples in their handand tell you a little story about what caused a mark on the Apple that theywere holding. They would say things like, “this is where the apple knockedagainst a ladder, or hit another one whilst you put in the bin or where yougrabbed it too hard”. Honestly, it’s like CSI Apple going on here it is stupid-death to apple by blunt force trauma!
We dug inhowever and did not let the constant crap get to us, our thoughts were- theywould have bigger fish to fry judging by the way that some of the others pick. Some would literally forget the bag around their necks and just lob themstraight into the bins if they thought they could get away with it. We werealso picking at the Deer Farm which is the worst place to pick as the trees aresingle leader trees meaning that they don’t grow on a trellis and therefore arereally tall, bushy as hell and, to top it all off they have steep banks leadingup to the base of the tree. You climb up the tall ladder (which is a bigger one than normal) and the bottom foot can slide down the other side at any pointwhich makes your arse go a bit when you are up high I can tell you. We carriedon anyway, at a reasonable pace, and by the second day had sussed it and got 9bins ($270) out on a colour pick which is much better than we could have hoped for.
As the Apples have just coloured up the 1st pick on the blocks is based on colourwhich means there is no smash and grab and you have to be selective so to getthe 9 out was a bit of an achievement. The rest of the week we spent colourpicking various blocks of the Apples over the three different orchards withvarying degrees of success ranging from 6 bins to 9 a day. Allot of the fruiton the better trellis trees were also just as high and therefore it was not as easy as we would have anticipated.
On the Friday we had to drive our tractors to the furthest away orchard, Darrengold. This was quite an experience as it’s about 12K’s away and, as tractors are not allowed on the main roads here, you have to drive them the back way and it takes
about an hour to cover the distance. Iliana wanted to drive our tractor over and Graham would drive behind in the van. We left in a group of eight tractors withDaniel heading up the front in his van, he is like our supervisor but also doesthe picking (the fastest picker here) and his job is to make sure no one gets left behind or run over when we cross a main road. We set off and all was well and Graham was at the back of the group in
the van. The tractors go so slow that you have to just put the van into third and let it idle along behind to keep the same speed.
About half an hour into the trip Graham noticed that the last tractor of the group was having trouble and the engine decided to shit itself and the tractor just died on the spot. Graham jumped out the van to see what the trouble was, but could not communicate with the driver as he doesn’t speak Chinese or Indonesian or whatever all the pickers speak. Anyway, he was a little surprised to see thecolumn of tractors chugging off into the distance. So much for Daniel and hischecking everyone was all right. Graham had to jump back into the van and goafter the tractors which to be fair was easy as they go all of 10mph but had towork out how to get to the front of the group to tell Daniel. This was not aneasy job as it is a single gravel track and no matter how much horn you let offno one can hear you as the noise of the tractors and the trailers is too muchand no one driving the tractors bother to look in the rear view mirror it wouldseem. Anyway, with a bit of motorbike style overtaking and about 3K’s Graham managed to shuffle to the front and warn Daniel that we were a man down.
Apparently, one of the pistons went a bit north in the engine of the tractor and it had to be recovered and sent back to the shed for a bit of
spannering.
All said and done, we all got there safely and started to pick the other block of apples,this time we had one of our old supervisors we had when we were on the Nectarines called Wally. Now Wally is a really loud, large foghorn of a man and he has the biggest personality of all of the supervisors working at the orchard. He is constantly telling everyone how crap they are and telling them to speed up, it is really quite funny because he does it in a way which can only be described as awesome. This guy is seriously hilarious and he has come up with a couple of nicknames for Graham which are “slack ass” or “gum boots” as Graham always wears wellies to work despite the lack of mud lately – which Wally seems to find hilarious.
The next day we finished the block at Darrengold and had to head back to the main orchard again which was another hour of 10mph, again with Ily driving the tractor and Graham following in the van. Bar further banging on about picking Apples that is how our week ended, we were told that we would not have any days off this weekend and would be working straight through for the next 2 – 3 weeks solid to get the Apples off the trees. By Friday we were starting to show signs of wear-and-tear, but our picking stamina was carrying us through.
As we have been busy the website is being updated for the two weeks at the same time so the pictures are going to be uploaded for this week after next week’s section.
Week 22 (Sat 27th April – Fri 3rd May)
This week started off as the last one ended with much
more Apples, Apples, Apples - followed by plenty of bruising of Apples and
general scratches and scars, with the added benefit of being slightly fed
up. Another really big added bonus was
that Graham’s big toes have now gone black which we think may be kind of like a
trench foot scenario going on. We
suppose that washing for months on end in channel water and spending most of
your day wading around in shite, one of us was bound to pick something up by
now. On a positive note we are now on
series 4 of Dexter and have just got to the end of the second series of
Breaking Bad so all is not lost.
Graham decided to tell Wally about his trench foot and took his boots off to shoe him, Wally has kindly offered, in order to stop the infection spreading, to smash off his nails with a hammer as apparently they are so rotten Graham would not feel a thing, we will see! On a serious note Graham is applying nail infection stuff to his nails twice a day – good times.
So we worked through the Saturday and the Sunday and carried on the week as normal, one day it started to rain and you could hear roars of excitement erupt from all of the pickers as you can’t pick the Apples in the wet, guess why not – because they bruise!! Despite the shower it was not enough to stop proceedings and despite the language barrier you could still understand that people were cursing the lack of rain, as everyone was knackered and wanted to go home. So we all had to carry on picking and you could sort of see by Tuesday that people were starting to slow down a little although some of these pickers are machines and just keep going and going – like the Duracell Bunny.
One morning we were in the van having coffee and pancakes for breakfast (it’s a hard life backpacking) and we could hear rustling noises coming from the front of the van. We both thought that there must be something in the front, but after looking could not find anything, and as we had to get to work we both kind of forgot about it. A couple of days later after work Ily noticed that there were “droppings” in the front of the van very similar to the ones in the kitchen, which can only mean one thing – bloody mice.
We try our best to keep the van clean but with no days off for an extended period - life in the van gets a little bit minging. You get up in the morning and make breakfast, sandwiches etc. and when you get back after work the bed is still up. As the van is small and it’s such an early start on a work day, all the morning dishes are left on the side and when we park up (back at our camp), we need to switch the fridge back over to electric, put the roof up etc., which means climbing over the bed in your dirty clothes and making a mess. By day 8, the bedding could probably get up and walk out to the washing machine by itself. Unfortunately, the van is too small to have doubles of everything, so as there are no tumble dryers here you can’t afford to wash stuff on a work day as it won’t be dry in time, so you end up having to put up with a bit of skank. Our work clothes smell bad and honestly it’s a weird smell – really metallic, a bit like rust.
As its Autumn / Winter here now, mice are going wherever it is a bit warmer so it was only a matter of time before they found our van. As soon as we found the mouse droppings though Ily was on a mission to clear out the droppings and clean everything, try to find where it had gotten in and get rid of it. Wherever there were any droppings we took everything out of the van to investigate where the mouse may be hiding – it had started to get really dark and cold by this time so it was a bit of a nightmare. Ily emptied the food cupboard and cleaned it out thoroughly – luckily it hadn’t touched any of our food bar a packet of biscuits, which it had a good munch of, so we chucked them out! We then started to pack away the bed following some droppings on the floor beneath it and some even around it. That was the most disgusting thing of all, as the possibility that the little bugger had been on our bed, to get from the front of the van to the back where the food is, made us really determined to get him!! Graham put all the bedding in the wash while ily carried on going through to look for the mouse - despite the fact that it was cold night and we had work the next day – we would brave it as those covers need to be washed!
As Graham was walking back from the laundry / shower room he could hear Ily shouting that she found it. The little bast… I mean blighter was living under where our heads lay in the large storage cupboard beneath the bed and was trapped inside. Graham grabbed a bag and tried to catch the thing but it was like a little bullet. It was so quick that you could not keep your eyes focused on it when it moved so you think it was in one part when in fact it was already over the other side. Despite Lee giving us a hand with a container to try and trap it we could not get anywhere near it and in the end we think that it managed to jump out of the cupboard and out the side of the van as Graham and Lee felt it run across their feet. The problem with mice is that once they have found food and warmth they kind of move in so there could be more of them so we need to get some traps or a really hungry cat. We obviously decided to go for the trap in the end – less maintenance lol ;-). We set the thing down in the foot-well at the front as most of the droppings seem to be in the cab, plus we don’t fancy any sleepy fumbling for the alarm ending in a seriously painful wake-up call! We baited it with chocolate as have heard it’s more successful than cheese and the little bugger loves it, on the first night he managed to take the damn chocolate without setting off the trap. We need to set the trap so it’s a bit more sensitive but you risk losing a digit if you balls it up, so the mouse situation is a work in progress.
Before we forget- on a side note - they have an ice cream here called a “Golden Gaytime”, how quality is that, picture below for your amusement.
Our English friends that work in the packing shed have not had as much work as us lately and are worried about getting enough days to qualify for their second year holiday visa. In the last two / three weeks they have worked two days and as they don’t have a car they spend their time sat in their rooms watching TV – boring. To add insult to injury when they started back properly this week Meg was told that she was no longer required so she waited all that time for nothing, luckily the boss here is going to pull some strings so she gets her second visa so all is well despite her lack of money. As we write this we have just completed day number 60 of 88 and we know that we have about 3 more weeks here picking until the end of the season, we have been told that we would also be ok for our visa due to the length of time we have been here – which feels like forever.
Remember that long tractor journey that we have to do to get over to the other orchard, well, we had to go back to strip pick the trees that we colour picked the previous week. This time due to the fact that Ily was a bit fed up with doing the journey it was Grahams turn to drive over this time with Ily following in the van. This time, however, instead of taking one trailer over Graham had to take two trailers over which meant that the tractor and trailers were about 20 foot long and little unstable. Graham was warned to take it steady on the way over.
Driving along for an hour on the tractor is a really really boring experience. That day it was quite chilly as the sun was behind the clouds and the temperature had dropped off to 15 degrees so Graham did not want to hang around for longer than he needed to. He noticed that if you keep your hand on the throttle you can keep the engine red lining and the tractor going faster, if you take it off the revs die a little so he kept his hand firmly on the throttle. The bins behind were a little unstable on the way as they swayed from side to side on the rear hitch, which would have been much better if they had fitted stabilisation chains. Anyhow, we were by a-way the last to leave and could just see the last person of the group in front, after about 15mins of keeping it cranked as we didn’t want to be last back to the shed. Graham managed to finally catch up, with ily following slowly behind, and to his disappointment noticed that the tractor was being driven by one of the really slow driving Asian girls who he often gets stuck behind in the morning. No matter how close Graham drove the tractor up behind her, she wouldn’t pull over a little to let him pass. In hind sight we can see why she was going really slowly, as the road was really bumpy. However, you can keep the same speed going and not get rattled to pieces if you stand up on the tractor and let your knees take the shock - like riding a horse. She must have seen Graham’s impressive riding style in her rear view mirror and started to wave him past – awesome. Graham cranked her open, full throttle; half stood on the tractor and started to pass her by. As he was going past, he looked in the rear view mirror to see if he had enough clearance to pull back in. Graham thought ‘That looks nasty’ as he saw a load of trailers and bins going sideways across the road and piling into a ditch. Then he realised that he was speeding up at which point he knew that he’d cocked up and lost his load all over the road. All the mean time Ily in the van behind had been honking the horn and shouting at him about the loss of the bins but you can’t hear a thing over the roar of the tractor –what a beast!! Luckily, Graham was able to drive the tractor down into the ditch and drag out the trailers and the bins but it did slow down the overall progress and we were in fact the last ones back to the shed. Graham can now say that’s another type of vehicle he’s managed to bin! ;-)
That evening after all of the excitement of the week so far we had still not gotten any closer to solving how we would attach a toolbox to the back of the van or what box we were going to buy. Then the answer came to us, there is a guy here that speaks like Clint Eastwood called Richard. He is again one of the nicest blokes you could chat to, and during our time here we chat to him most days. He drives the main truck collecting the bins from all the farms belonging to the orchard back to the packing shed, and he’s also is in charge of tractor maintenance and basically fixes everything that breaks in the workshop. We spoke to Richard about our problem and he said that he would help when we told him about our idea. He told us to get the box and then he can make some custom hinge system for us which is the best news ever because we have lots of stuff to drag around with us.
On the Wednesday we had a half day and decided that we would get the tool box so Richard could fit it after work. In the end we found an identical one to the $600 one for $300 in a place called Super-cheap Auto which is like Halfords out here but actually sells things which are useful as opposed to stupid gear knobs and bad boy exhausts (although we are thinking about getting one for the van). With the tool box finally bought we headed into Shepp to get a coffee and to look around the shops. We went to K – Mart and Graham picked up a pair of knocking around shoes for $10 and Ily the same for $3.50 – Bargain.
As we have said previously we are thinking about going traveling after this work period to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Ever since Graham and Iliana have been dating Iliana has expressed an interest in photography and how she’d like to upgrade her digital camera. When we managed to break her digital camera along the Great Ocean Road, Graham remembers how upset she was and, as we have both talked about getting a camera decided to have a look in some shops. We started off by looking in JB HiFi which is like Dixons or Curry’s but really much better and the bloke explained to us the difference between a digital camera and a digital SLR camera. SLR cameras are basically different in that they have a much larger sensor for the picture which means that they can take a much more detailed photo. We always thought that it was mega pixels which decided that but apparently not the case. A digital SLR is the sort of camera pros use to take wedding photos and is packed full of features you cannot understand. The price of the Cannon version in JB was $890! As we are not photographers we decided to go to cash converters to see if there were any second hand ones as they do some great stuff there for a fraction of the price.
The problem with cash converters is that you can see the camera but they have little info on the thing itself so you need to write down the details and do some internet research about it before you buy to see if it is any good. We went in and they had cameras which looked the same for about $300 and we took down the details and went outside to look on the internet. It would seem that although they looked the same they make normal digital cameras which look like SLRs with really big lenses but only have the smaller sensor so not really a “proper camera”. We decided against getting one of those and walked down the road to the Camera Shop. When we went in we looked around and saw some of the same ones that were in JB Hi Fi. We asked the lady if they had any second hand ones to have a look at and luckily they had the same Cannon one a 600 D that they had in JB going for nearly $900 for just under $500, they also had it brand new at $700. We had a look at it and there was not a mark on it and after a little play in the shop we bought it. Ily is now really happy as she has always wanted one and finally now has one! The only problem is that now Ily has a 350 page manual to read about how to work it because this thing is so complicated and if you don’t believe us just take a look at the specs online.
As we are writing this guess what…. Snap from the front and a very dead mouse – great. For your pleasure see photo of the action below.
We finally after 10 days picking have a day off tomorrow (Friday) and we have volunteered to work on the Saturday so are quite relieved to finally get a break at long last even if it is only for a day. Tomorrow we will be greasing up the suspension of the van, fitting an aux drive belt, replacing water in radiator with proper fluid and a number of other jobs which includes a hell-a-lot of cleaning and tidying for Ily while Graham gets his grease on – Lol ;-)!
Graham decided to tell Wally about his trench foot and took his boots off to shoe him, Wally has kindly offered, in order to stop the infection spreading, to smash off his nails with a hammer as apparently they are so rotten Graham would not feel a thing, we will see! On a serious note Graham is applying nail infection stuff to his nails twice a day – good times.
So we worked through the Saturday and the Sunday and carried on the week as normal, one day it started to rain and you could hear roars of excitement erupt from all of the pickers as you can’t pick the Apples in the wet, guess why not – because they bruise!! Despite the shower it was not enough to stop proceedings and despite the language barrier you could still understand that people were cursing the lack of rain, as everyone was knackered and wanted to go home. So we all had to carry on picking and you could sort of see by Tuesday that people were starting to slow down a little although some of these pickers are machines and just keep going and going – like the Duracell Bunny.
One morning we were in the van having coffee and pancakes for breakfast (it’s a hard life backpacking) and we could hear rustling noises coming from the front of the van. We both thought that there must be something in the front, but after looking could not find anything, and as we had to get to work we both kind of forgot about it. A couple of days later after work Ily noticed that there were “droppings” in the front of the van very similar to the ones in the kitchen, which can only mean one thing – bloody mice.
We try our best to keep the van clean but with no days off for an extended period - life in the van gets a little bit minging. You get up in the morning and make breakfast, sandwiches etc. and when you get back after work the bed is still up. As the van is small and it’s such an early start on a work day, all the morning dishes are left on the side and when we park up (back at our camp), we need to switch the fridge back over to electric, put the roof up etc., which means climbing over the bed in your dirty clothes and making a mess. By day 8, the bedding could probably get up and walk out to the washing machine by itself. Unfortunately, the van is too small to have doubles of everything, so as there are no tumble dryers here you can’t afford to wash stuff on a work day as it won’t be dry in time, so you end up having to put up with a bit of skank. Our work clothes smell bad and honestly it’s a weird smell – really metallic, a bit like rust.
As its Autumn / Winter here now, mice are going wherever it is a bit warmer so it was only a matter of time before they found our van. As soon as we found the mouse droppings though Ily was on a mission to clear out the droppings and clean everything, try to find where it had gotten in and get rid of it. Wherever there were any droppings we took everything out of the van to investigate where the mouse may be hiding – it had started to get really dark and cold by this time so it was a bit of a nightmare. Ily emptied the food cupboard and cleaned it out thoroughly – luckily it hadn’t touched any of our food bar a packet of biscuits, which it had a good munch of, so we chucked them out! We then started to pack away the bed following some droppings on the floor beneath it and some even around it. That was the most disgusting thing of all, as the possibility that the little bugger had been on our bed, to get from the front of the van to the back where the food is, made us really determined to get him!! Graham put all the bedding in the wash while ily carried on going through to look for the mouse - despite the fact that it was cold night and we had work the next day – we would brave it as those covers need to be washed!
As Graham was walking back from the laundry / shower room he could hear Ily shouting that she found it. The little bast… I mean blighter was living under where our heads lay in the large storage cupboard beneath the bed and was trapped inside. Graham grabbed a bag and tried to catch the thing but it was like a little bullet. It was so quick that you could not keep your eyes focused on it when it moved so you think it was in one part when in fact it was already over the other side. Despite Lee giving us a hand with a container to try and trap it we could not get anywhere near it and in the end we think that it managed to jump out of the cupboard and out the side of the van as Graham and Lee felt it run across their feet. The problem with mice is that once they have found food and warmth they kind of move in so there could be more of them so we need to get some traps or a really hungry cat. We obviously decided to go for the trap in the end – less maintenance lol ;-). We set the thing down in the foot-well at the front as most of the droppings seem to be in the cab, plus we don’t fancy any sleepy fumbling for the alarm ending in a seriously painful wake-up call! We baited it with chocolate as have heard it’s more successful than cheese and the little bugger loves it, on the first night he managed to take the damn chocolate without setting off the trap. We need to set the trap so it’s a bit more sensitive but you risk losing a digit if you balls it up, so the mouse situation is a work in progress.
Before we forget- on a side note - they have an ice cream here called a “Golden Gaytime”, how quality is that, picture below for your amusement.
Our English friends that work in the packing shed have not had as much work as us lately and are worried about getting enough days to qualify for their second year holiday visa. In the last two / three weeks they have worked two days and as they don’t have a car they spend their time sat in their rooms watching TV – boring. To add insult to injury when they started back properly this week Meg was told that she was no longer required so she waited all that time for nothing, luckily the boss here is going to pull some strings so she gets her second visa so all is well despite her lack of money. As we write this we have just completed day number 60 of 88 and we know that we have about 3 more weeks here picking until the end of the season, we have been told that we would also be ok for our visa due to the length of time we have been here – which feels like forever.
Remember that long tractor journey that we have to do to get over to the other orchard, well, we had to go back to strip pick the trees that we colour picked the previous week. This time due to the fact that Ily was a bit fed up with doing the journey it was Grahams turn to drive over this time with Ily following in the van. This time, however, instead of taking one trailer over Graham had to take two trailers over which meant that the tractor and trailers were about 20 foot long and little unstable. Graham was warned to take it steady on the way over.
Driving along for an hour on the tractor is a really really boring experience. That day it was quite chilly as the sun was behind the clouds and the temperature had dropped off to 15 degrees so Graham did not want to hang around for longer than he needed to. He noticed that if you keep your hand on the throttle you can keep the engine red lining and the tractor going faster, if you take it off the revs die a little so he kept his hand firmly on the throttle. The bins behind were a little unstable on the way as they swayed from side to side on the rear hitch, which would have been much better if they had fitted stabilisation chains. Anyhow, we were by a-way the last to leave and could just see the last person of the group in front, after about 15mins of keeping it cranked as we didn’t want to be last back to the shed. Graham managed to finally catch up, with ily following slowly behind, and to his disappointment noticed that the tractor was being driven by one of the really slow driving Asian girls who he often gets stuck behind in the morning. No matter how close Graham drove the tractor up behind her, she wouldn’t pull over a little to let him pass. In hind sight we can see why she was going really slowly, as the road was really bumpy. However, you can keep the same speed going and not get rattled to pieces if you stand up on the tractor and let your knees take the shock - like riding a horse. She must have seen Graham’s impressive riding style in her rear view mirror and started to wave him past – awesome. Graham cranked her open, full throttle; half stood on the tractor and started to pass her by. As he was going past, he looked in the rear view mirror to see if he had enough clearance to pull back in. Graham thought ‘That looks nasty’ as he saw a load of trailers and bins going sideways across the road and piling into a ditch. Then he realised that he was speeding up at which point he knew that he’d cocked up and lost his load all over the road. All the mean time Ily in the van behind had been honking the horn and shouting at him about the loss of the bins but you can’t hear a thing over the roar of the tractor –what a beast!! Luckily, Graham was able to drive the tractor down into the ditch and drag out the trailers and the bins but it did slow down the overall progress and we were in fact the last ones back to the shed. Graham can now say that’s another type of vehicle he’s managed to bin! ;-)
That evening after all of the excitement of the week so far we had still not gotten any closer to solving how we would attach a toolbox to the back of the van or what box we were going to buy. Then the answer came to us, there is a guy here that speaks like Clint Eastwood called Richard. He is again one of the nicest blokes you could chat to, and during our time here we chat to him most days. He drives the main truck collecting the bins from all the farms belonging to the orchard back to the packing shed, and he’s also is in charge of tractor maintenance and basically fixes everything that breaks in the workshop. We spoke to Richard about our problem and he said that he would help when we told him about our idea. He told us to get the box and then he can make some custom hinge system for us which is the best news ever because we have lots of stuff to drag around with us.
On the Wednesday we had a half day and decided that we would get the tool box so Richard could fit it after work. In the end we found an identical one to the $600 one for $300 in a place called Super-cheap Auto which is like Halfords out here but actually sells things which are useful as opposed to stupid gear knobs and bad boy exhausts (although we are thinking about getting one for the van). With the tool box finally bought we headed into Shepp to get a coffee and to look around the shops. We went to K – Mart and Graham picked up a pair of knocking around shoes for $10 and Ily the same for $3.50 – Bargain.
As we have said previously we are thinking about going traveling after this work period to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Ever since Graham and Iliana have been dating Iliana has expressed an interest in photography and how she’d like to upgrade her digital camera. When we managed to break her digital camera along the Great Ocean Road, Graham remembers how upset she was and, as we have both talked about getting a camera decided to have a look in some shops. We started off by looking in JB HiFi which is like Dixons or Curry’s but really much better and the bloke explained to us the difference between a digital camera and a digital SLR camera. SLR cameras are basically different in that they have a much larger sensor for the picture which means that they can take a much more detailed photo. We always thought that it was mega pixels which decided that but apparently not the case. A digital SLR is the sort of camera pros use to take wedding photos and is packed full of features you cannot understand. The price of the Cannon version in JB was $890! As we are not photographers we decided to go to cash converters to see if there were any second hand ones as they do some great stuff there for a fraction of the price.
The problem with cash converters is that you can see the camera but they have little info on the thing itself so you need to write down the details and do some internet research about it before you buy to see if it is any good. We went in and they had cameras which looked the same for about $300 and we took down the details and went outside to look on the internet. It would seem that although they looked the same they make normal digital cameras which look like SLRs with really big lenses but only have the smaller sensor so not really a “proper camera”. We decided against getting one of those and walked down the road to the Camera Shop. When we went in we looked around and saw some of the same ones that were in JB Hi Fi. We asked the lady if they had any second hand ones to have a look at and luckily they had the same Cannon one a 600 D that they had in JB going for nearly $900 for just under $500, they also had it brand new at $700. We had a look at it and there was not a mark on it and after a little play in the shop we bought it. Ily is now really happy as she has always wanted one and finally now has one! The only problem is that now Ily has a 350 page manual to read about how to work it because this thing is so complicated and if you don’t believe us just take a look at the specs online.
As we are writing this guess what…. Snap from the front and a very dead mouse – great. For your pleasure see photo of the action below.
We finally after 10 days picking have a day off tomorrow (Friday) and we have volunteered to work on the Saturday so are quite relieved to finally get a break at long last even if it is only for a day. Tomorrow we will be greasing up the suspension of the van, fitting an aux drive belt, replacing water in radiator with proper fluid and a number of other jobs which includes a hell-a-lot of cleaning and tidying for Ily while Graham gets his grease on – Lol ;-)!
Week 23 (Sat 4th May – Fri 10th May)
So we had
a day off on the Saturday and we set about fitting the aux drive belt which went
on with not too much trouble. The only problem is that we think that it’s a
drive belt as we had to fully tension the belt to the maximum allowance in order
for it to not slip too badly but when the engine is on it does make a bit of
noise. We will probably keep it on for now but when we some spare time will get
a proper fitting one. The suspension greasing went fine and the radiator was
drained and new fluid added which now only leaves an oil change to do before we
go. We are still struggling to find out what the belt actually does as seems to
have made no difference to the van, we were hoping it would make the fan and
heaters work in the front but it has not. It would be really handy if we had
some kind of Haynes manual for the engine so we could figure a few things out.
One would imagine that although it had a lot of work done to the engine before
we got it (because the previous owner had a cylinder fixed that was not working)
that the cam belt would have been replaced but at the moment there is no way of
telling. We know that the timing of the engine is out because it shudders on
shut down so we suppose we will have to take to a mechanic at some point to
check it out. Bar the sort of rest day off the remainder of the week, i.e.
Sunday through to Friday we spent working picking Apples. As we were both so
worn out and the fruit so small we struggled to make any decent money. We
averaged for the week $200 per day for the two of us which I suppose you can’t
moan about although it’s frustrating as the more serious professional pickers
seem not to be fazed by the hours and keep picking without so much as a break
every day. By the Friday we were quite excited to hear that there was rain on
the cards for the following week and that this may cause us to have a few days
off. Giving more consideration to our position when we finish work here i.e. our
ability to survive in the winter months without heating etc (when we are on the
road living) we have concluded that the best option would be Queensland,
ideally, north of Brisbane up towards Cairns area as the climate there is
tropical and they are in the dry season this time of year with comfortable 30
degree temperatures and little rain. As we have been working there is not much
else to say and it was a pretty boring week for us with no photographs of
anything worth mentioning.
a day off on the Saturday and we set about fitting the aux drive belt which went
on with not too much trouble. The only problem is that we think that it’s a
drive belt as we had to fully tension the belt to the maximum allowance in order
for it to not slip too badly but when the engine is on it does make a bit of
noise. We will probably keep it on for now but when we some spare time will get
a proper fitting one. The suspension greasing went fine and the radiator was
drained and new fluid added which now only leaves an oil change to do before we
go. We are still struggling to find out what the belt actually does as seems to
have made no difference to the van, we were hoping it would make the fan and
heaters work in the front but it has not. It would be really handy if we had
some kind of Haynes manual for the engine so we could figure a few things out.
One would imagine that although it had a lot of work done to the engine before
we got it (because the previous owner had a cylinder fixed that was not working)
that the cam belt would have been replaced but at the moment there is no way of
telling. We know that the timing of the engine is out because it shudders on
shut down so we suppose we will have to take to a mechanic at some point to
check it out. Bar the sort of rest day off the remainder of the week, i.e.
Sunday through to Friday we spent working picking Apples. As we were both so
worn out and the fruit so small we struggled to make any decent money. We
averaged for the week $200 per day for the two of us which I suppose you can’t
moan about although it’s frustrating as the more serious professional pickers
seem not to be fazed by the hours and keep picking without so much as a break
every day. By the Friday we were quite excited to hear that there was rain on
the cards for the following week and that this may cause us to have a few days
off. Giving more consideration to our position when we finish work here i.e. our
ability to survive in the winter months without heating etc (when we are on the
road living) we have concluded that the best option would be Queensland,
ideally, north of Brisbane up towards Cairns area as the climate there is
tropical and they are in the dry season this time of year with comfortable 30
degree temperatures and little rain. As we have been working there is not much
else to say and it was a pretty boring week for us with no photographs of
anything worth mentioning.
Week 24 (Sat 11th May – Fri 17th May)
So as mentioned previously we were waiting for the weather to hit. We picked all through the weekend without a break and managed on the Sunday to hit the 10 bin target on the Apples which is quite an achievement for us but it took its toll because we were destroyed on the Monday. Monday came and we got up at 6:30am and went to start driving to work when we were told not to bother as the rain was going to come in that day. We were a bit annoyed to say the least as we were all pumped up on coffee at 6:45am with no chance of being able to go back to sleep but we suppose it was at least a day off. It enabled us to finally clean some of our stinking work clothes and have a general tidy up about the place. Our friends that are also staying on the Farm are on their last week of work and their last day is on the Thursday. As a consequence they have kind of decided to forget about
cleaning up the camp area they live in and the state of the place is disgusting,especially the kitchen which now is infested with lots of mice and stinks. We suppose we don’t blame them as everyone here has had about enough of the place and can’t wait to get away. We worked on the Tuesday which was a miserable day as it was so cold and it was drizzling with fine rain. The Apples were really wet and the moisture kept going through your gloves and clothes and the only way to get warm was to heat yourself on the exhaust of the tractor. We had only been working about 3 hrs when the heavens opened and rain fell causing the day to be cancelled. That was also annoying as we still had not had a lie – in since the 3rd May and we were walking around like zombies.
That afternoon we were invited to the end of season BBQ held by our boss Servat for all of the pickers. The weather was a bit cold but there was plenty of food and some beer to go around. We have some photos below of the people that we have been working with. You may notice that they are obsessed with making the peace symbol with their hands when photos are taken, we don’t know why that is, a bit strange we think. Our boss Servat is pictured below as well, he is the Turkish bloke with Iliana. Looking at the forecast that night it was clear that the next day was going to be a washout so we asked the question if we had work the next day, yes they said we will work as normal unless it rains. The next day (Wednesday) we got up at 6:30am again, had coffee, made lunch and was about to set off when we got a phone call saying it had been cancelled! That was really annoying as we were up and ready to go again and more annoying we were fully awake.
The whole way the place is run here is frustrating as all we want is one morning to sleep in to re-charge our batteries. With the whole day off in front of us we needed to get the van booked in to have the work done to the pop top and the internal fabric so went back to the fabric place to have a chat. We were told that picking would happen tomorrow and then break until Wednesday next week as they are waiting for the last of it to colour up. Speaking with the guys who are going to do the work we got the van booked in on the Wednesday and we decided we would sleep in one of the rooms on the camp for a couple of nights whilst they do the work. We worked the following day picking and were told on the Friday that the picking would start on the Tuesday. We were thinking great some time off but not the case as we needed more days to qualify for our visa they decided
to “help” us by giving us additional work pulling pegs out the ground – awesome.
That night we went out for a Chinese in town with Wally and his ex – partner which was a pleasant change from constantly being on the camp. It was an all you can eat job and the quality was actually very good for the price. We ate so much food that it was hard to breath afterwards! We realised at the time that we had not eaten Chinese since we left England, which may account for some of the weight loss. Friday finally came which was a boring experience pulling dirty, rusty pegs out of the ground. It was the leaving day of our camp friends also and they text us to say that they were in the local pub until 4pm waiting for the bus which would take them to Melbourne. From Melbourne they are heading out to Thailand and other places for 3 months and were flying out on the Sunday. We decided to knock off work early at 3pm to go and see them at the pub. They looked so happy to finally be away from the orchard and heading back to civilisation. We just can’t believe out of the 9 of us who were originally at the camp we are the last two remaining with what looks like another week in front of us, it’s a depressing thought. We had a good– bye beer with them and they headed off, we stayed in the pub for one more as at last we had no work until Monday so we have a whole weekend off without work. It was quite funny because Graham only drunk two pints in the pub and was showing the signs of being drunk, not drinking much in the months we have been here has turned him into a bit of a light weight. We went back to the camp to see what the condition was like, i.e. did any cleaning and tidying get done before they left and the answer was mostly no, the place still looks like a bomb of crap has gone off and the mice are still thriving. They mentioned before they left they have left us some stuff in their rooms so we had a quick look and they left all sorts of bits and pieces which will come in handy like food, beers etc. The amount of stuff which has been left is quite amazing like loads of toiletries, washing powder and cans of food etc which will probably save us a $100 in supplies. So the plan for the weekend is to get the light switch installed and wiring ready for the work on the van, strengthen the bed as it’s got a bit creaky and make a pole storage for the front of the van so we can store Gazebo poles. Hopefully the next week here will be our last and we can start showing you pictures of interesting things and stop banging on about fruit and work – we will see!!
cleaning up the camp area they live in and the state of the place is disgusting,especially the kitchen which now is infested with lots of mice and stinks. We suppose we don’t blame them as everyone here has had about enough of the place and can’t wait to get away. We worked on the Tuesday which was a miserable day as it was so cold and it was drizzling with fine rain. The Apples were really wet and the moisture kept going through your gloves and clothes and the only way to get warm was to heat yourself on the exhaust of the tractor. We had only been working about 3 hrs when the heavens opened and rain fell causing the day to be cancelled. That was also annoying as we still had not had a lie – in since the 3rd May and we were walking around like zombies.
That afternoon we were invited to the end of season BBQ held by our boss Servat for all of the pickers. The weather was a bit cold but there was plenty of food and some beer to go around. We have some photos below of the people that we have been working with. You may notice that they are obsessed with making the peace symbol with their hands when photos are taken, we don’t know why that is, a bit strange we think. Our boss Servat is pictured below as well, he is the Turkish bloke with Iliana. Looking at the forecast that night it was clear that the next day was going to be a washout so we asked the question if we had work the next day, yes they said we will work as normal unless it rains. The next day (Wednesday) we got up at 6:30am again, had coffee, made lunch and was about to set off when we got a phone call saying it had been cancelled! That was really annoying as we were up and ready to go again and more annoying we were fully awake.
The whole way the place is run here is frustrating as all we want is one morning to sleep in to re-charge our batteries. With the whole day off in front of us we needed to get the van booked in to have the work done to the pop top and the internal fabric so went back to the fabric place to have a chat. We were told that picking would happen tomorrow and then break until Wednesday next week as they are waiting for the last of it to colour up. Speaking with the guys who are going to do the work we got the van booked in on the Wednesday and we decided we would sleep in one of the rooms on the camp for a couple of nights whilst they do the work. We worked the following day picking and were told on the Friday that the picking would start on the Tuesday. We were thinking great some time off but not the case as we needed more days to qualify for our visa they decided
to “help” us by giving us additional work pulling pegs out the ground – awesome.
That night we went out for a Chinese in town with Wally and his ex – partner which was a pleasant change from constantly being on the camp. It was an all you can eat job and the quality was actually very good for the price. We ate so much food that it was hard to breath afterwards! We realised at the time that we had not eaten Chinese since we left England, which may account for some of the weight loss. Friday finally came which was a boring experience pulling dirty, rusty pegs out of the ground. It was the leaving day of our camp friends also and they text us to say that they were in the local pub until 4pm waiting for the bus which would take them to Melbourne. From Melbourne they are heading out to Thailand and other places for 3 months and were flying out on the Sunday. We decided to knock off work early at 3pm to go and see them at the pub. They looked so happy to finally be away from the orchard and heading back to civilisation. We just can’t believe out of the 9 of us who were originally at the camp we are the last two remaining with what looks like another week in front of us, it’s a depressing thought. We had a good– bye beer with them and they headed off, we stayed in the pub for one more as at last we had no work until Monday so we have a whole weekend off without work. It was quite funny because Graham only drunk two pints in the pub and was showing the signs of being drunk, not drinking much in the months we have been here has turned him into a bit of a light weight. We went back to the camp to see what the condition was like, i.e. did any cleaning and tidying get done before they left and the answer was mostly no, the place still looks like a bomb of crap has gone off and the mice are still thriving. They mentioned before they left they have left us some stuff in their rooms so we had a quick look and they left all sorts of bits and pieces which will come in handy like food, beers etc. The amount of stuff which has been left is quite amazing like loads of toiletries, washing powder and cans of food etc which will probably save us a $100 in supplies. So the plan for the weekend is to get the light switch installed and wiring ready for the work on the van, strengthen the bed as it’s got a bit creaky and make a pole storage for the front of the van so we can store Gazebo poles. Hopefully the next week here will be our last and we can start showing you pictures of interesting things and stop banging on about fruit and work – we will see!!
Week 25 (Sat 18th May – Fri 24th May)
So we finally had a day off on the Saturday and we were glad for the lie- in although we still got up early as the body is programmed to get up at 6am. The weather was a bit more pleasant although still much colder than is comfortable and we have been looking at the temperatures further north online and they are still in the 30s. We needed to get the van in a position to send to the fabric people so we did the last of the electrics which involved fitting a switch for the main van light which went well as we did not blow anything up. It was a bit of a job and the whole process including all of the drilling took up most of the day and some more sealing work was carried out to the roof of the van as we had one small leak which resulted in the change of the main light.
That evening we just relaxed and watched some programmes on T.V, the following day we went into town to look around the hardware shop again for bits to make the pole store and to get the lining for the inside work. We managed to find all of the bits that we needed as well as some new leg ends for the main seats they were scratching the floor. The whole process of going into town took most of the day and we ended up going into
a few shops to get other bits and pieces. In the end as we went for a cream pop – top we went for a white interior lining as we think that would make the space inside seem much brighter. That night we were invited around to Wally’s place as he was going to cook a roast dinner.
We went around to Wally’s that night and he had some other friends around as well, one of them was a truck driver and he was just as loud as Wally if not louder. Older Australian men are a funny bunch as they are kind of like the English but much louder but friendly. We all had a few beers and listened to some of the stories that they were all coming out with. Our friend Wally is a character, he is in his early sixties but you would not think of it to look at him as I suppose all of the farm work and fresh air must keep you reasonably fit. He sounded like he was a right wild one when he was younger as he is covered in DIY tattoos from all the different spells of jail time that he has done. Some of the highlights which have landed him in jail include punching police officers when they tried to get him out of the pub, drag racing the police in town because he was bored and had no driving
licence and sheep rustling!
I am still a bit confused about the whole of the Fosters beer situation as to why you see it here for sale but it’s not common and expensive. The first thing to say about it is that about 20 years ago it was the most popular beer out here and everyone used to drink it. This was highlighted to me by Wally who has tattooed the word Fosters on his arm because he loved it so much when he was younger. It would appear that the brand was bought by an English company and sold back in the U.K. Ever since that happened and as Australians are quite fond of Australian brands they all decided not to buy it here and in the end it became an export beer and the price shot up.
We left Wally’s at about 10ish and headed back to site, it was a really cold night with temperatures going down to what felt like freezing but what was about 1 degree. We got back quickly pulled the bed out and went to turn on the heater when it started making this horrible screaming noise. Damn our heater was broken on the coldest night possible. Luckily however the other English lot left a plug in radiator type heater which was pretty weak but with roof down it kept most of the chill out of the van. As well earlier that day we bought a fake brown mink double cover for the bed so that was good timing!
On the Monday we woke up early to go over to Darrengold orchard to take up the rest of the pegs, it was a miserable drizzly day but we managed to finish by 10am and headed back to the camp. Graham started to put together the pole store on the front of the van which involved drilling through the solid steel bull bar. It was quite a job with a battery powered drill and cheap drill bits. It took about 4 hrs to complete the job which involved 4 holes in the bull bar each taking 30 long minuets of grinding away the drill piece. In the end the drills were busted up and one has about a centimetre of drill left on it. Whilst Graham was getting on with that Iliana was doing the final two curtains for the front as the sewing machine is getting picked up on the Saturday and we needed to get the work done. Iliana did them pretty quickly in about 2 hrs which was good and we spent the rest of the day relaxing.
We were thinking about our plan for the traveling around Queensland as the main problem with the van is the space. Although the back box should cure most of this issue carrying water is a problem as most of the time we had managed to blag a shower or had enough battery power for a free camp but had to book into a site to get drinking water. Our van does have an old water tank underneath and there is a hole on the side which you use to fill the tank but the tank has not been used in a while as the pipe work to the tap had been removed. Looking at the price of a new plastic tank, pump tap and hose it would seem that we could probably get a 50 litre tank and bits for about $150 if we fitted it ourselves so that is probably what we will try and install before we head off.
The picking of the final lot of Apples started on the Tuesday and went all day, we were really slow for some reason and only got $150 for the day, we were told in the afternoon that we only had to work a couple of hours tomorrow and then that would be it, all of the fruit would be picked! We could not believe it as we have been picking for so long now we both though that it was never going to end. That night we needed to get all of the stuff out of the van as straight away after work Wally was going to follow us into town to drop off the van and give us a lift back to the farm. The rooms were left in a bit of a state when the others left so we went about having a quick tidy and gutting all of the stuff out of our van. The whole process took about three hours and we were glad when it was over. It was quite a weird feeling that night sleeping in an actual room in a double bed.
The following day we started early and picked two bins up to 10am where we all drove our tractors back to the main farm for the final time that season. It was such a feeling of relief for the both of us to finally finish and we now have a lot of time (hopefully) ahead of us without work. We went into town to drop off the van and walked around a few shops with Wally for a couple of hours to kill some time. Graham had a foot long kebab which was awesome and we had a coffee and then we made our way back to camp for the afternoon to have a rest. The following morning we got up and Servat came over to give us our final pay packet and to sign off our paper work for our visa’s. The good news is that he has signed off our 88 days so we don’t have to do any further farm work so we are good to go!
Looking at our money situation when we take out the money for the pop – top, deep cycle battery set up and water tank we will leave here with 9.5K in the bank. We will be entitled to claim some tax back on our earnings which we predict to be about 2 – 4 K at the end of the next month, we will find out in the next couple of days when we get the details via e-mail so basing our budget on a 6 month period means we can spend $70 a day. As all of the work to the van is now completed this should not be a problem for us as our biggest expense will be fuel and food.
That evening we just relaxed and watched some programmes on T.V, the following day we went into town to look around the hardware shop again for bits to make the pole store and to get the lining for the inside work. We managed to find all of the bits that we needed as well as some new leg ends for the main seats they were scratching the floor. The whole process of going into town took most of the day and we ended up going into
a few shops to get other bits and pieces. In the end as we went for a cream pop – top we went for a white interior lining as we think that would make the space inside seem much brighter. That night we were invited around to Wally’s place as he was going to cook a roast dinner.
We went around to Wally’s that night and he had some other friends around as well, one of them was a truck driver and he was just as loud as Wally if not louder. Older Australian men are a funny bunch as they are kind of like the English but much louder but friendly. We all had a few beers and listened to some of the stories that they were all coming out with. Our friend Wally is a character, he is in his early sixties but you would not think of it to look at him as I suppose all of the farm work and fresh air must keep you reasonably fit. He sounded like he was a right wild one when he was younger as he is covered in DIY tattoos from all the different spells of jail time that he has done. Some of the highlights which have landed him in jail include punching police officers when they tried to get him out of the pub, drag racing the police in town because he was bored and had no driving
licence and sheep rustling!
I am still a bit confused about the whole of the Fosters beer situation as to why you see it here for sale but it’s not common and expensive. The first thing to say about it is that about 20 years ago it was the most popular beer out here and everyone used to drink it. This was highlighted to me by Wally who has tattooed the word Fosters on his arm because he loved it so much when he was younger. It would appear that the brand was bought by an English company and sold back in the U.K. Ever since that happened and as Australians are quite fond of Australian brands they all decided not to buy it here and in the end it became an export beer and the price shot up.
We left Wally’s at about 10ish and headed back to site, it was a really cold night with temperatures going down to what felt like freezing but what was about 1 degree. We got back quickly pulled the bed out and went to turn on the heater when it started making this horrible screaming noise. Damn our heater was broken on the coldest night possible. Luckily however the other English lot left a plug in radiator type heater which was pretty weak but with roof down it kept most of the chill out of the van. As well earlier that day we bought a fake brown mink double cover for the bed so that was good timing!
On the Monday we woke up early to go over to Darrengold orchard to take up the rest of the pegs, it was a miserable drizzly day but we managed to finish by 10am and headed back to the camp. Graham started to put together the pole store on the front of the van which involved drilling through the solid steel bull bar. It was quite a job with a battery powered drill and cheap drill bits. It took about 4 hrs to complete the job which involved 4 holes in the bull bar each taking 30 long minuets of grinding away the drill piece. In the end the drills were busted up and one has about a centimetre of drill left on it. Whilst Graham was getting on with that Iliana was doing the final two curtains for the front as the sewing machine is getting picked up on the Saturday and we needed to get the work done. Iliana did them pretty quickly in about 2 hrs which was good and we spent the rest of the day relaxing.
We were thinking about our plan for the traveling around Queensland as the main problem with the van is the space. Although the back box should cure most of this issue carrying water is a problem as most of the time we had managed to blag a shower or had enough battery power for a free camp but had to book into a site to get drinking water. Our van does have an old water tank underneath and there is a hole on the side which you use to fill the tank but the tank has not been used in a while as the pipe work to the tap had been removed. Looking at the price of a new plastic tank, pump tap and hose it would seem that we could probably get a 50 litre tank and bits for about $150 if we fitted it ourselves so that is probably what we will try and install before we head off.
The picking of the final lot of Apples started on the Tuesday and went all day, we were really slow for some reason and only got $150 for the day, we were told in the afternoon that we only had to work a couple of hours tomorrow and then that would be it, all of the fruit would be picked! We could not believe it as we have been picking for so long now we both though that it was never going to end. That night we needed to get all of the stuff out of the van as straight away after work Wally was going to follow us into town to drop off the van and give us a lift back to the farm. The rooms were left in a bit of a state when the others left so we went about having a quick tidy and gutting all of the stuff out of our van. The whole process took about three hours and we were glad when it was over. It was quite a weird feeling that night sleeping in an actual room in a double bed.
The following day we started early and picked two bins up to 10am where we all drove our tractors back to the main farm for the final time that season. It was such a feeling of relief for the both of us to finally finish and we now have a lot of time (hopefully) ahead of us without work. We went into town to drop off the van and walked around a few shops with Wally for a couple of hours to kill some time. Graham had a foot long kebab which was awesome and we had a coffee and then we made our way back to camp for the afternoon to have a rest. The following morning we got up and Servat came over to give us our final pay packet and to sign off our paper work for our visa’s. The good news is that he has signed off our 88 days so we don’t have to do any further farm work so we are good to go!
Looking at our money situation when we take out the money for the pop – top, deep cycle battery set up and water tank we will leave here with 9.5K in the bank. We will be entitled to claim some tax back on our earnings which we predict to be about 2 – 4 K at the end of the next month, we will find out in the next couple of days when we get the details via e-mail so basing our budget on a 6 month period means we can spend $70 a day. As all of the work to the van is now completed this should not be a problem for us as our biggest expense will be fuel and food.