Koolkuna Berries

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From Tamworth, I was collected by Lother and taken an hour away, to the berry farm in Niangala. Here, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries, amongst others during the season, are picked. They are then sorted and the ones that aren't perfect enough to use for selling in punnets are used for jams and ice cream. The farm also offers self-picking for tourists.

The fellow pickers were Emily and Robyn (Ozzie), Colin (NZ), Jamie (Pom), Troy (Romananian/Oz) and Jerome. After me arrived Japanese Dai and Kaori, who I loved hanging out with and learning Japanese! John came along to do maintenence, once Glen had returned to Uni.

We would begin picking (mainly blackberries but back-breaking strawberries for one hour each morning) around 8am, depending when the fruit was dry. Every hour, the fruit would get sorted into trays and taken to the packing shed so they were cooled ASAP by Barbara (Lother's wife). After each break we had to wash out all our buckets (6 each) and head back out to start again!

Our breaks were set at 11am, 1pm and 3pm and we stayed in the 'picker's quarters', where we shared 2 to a room, had our own kitchen and walked to the showers (20c for 2 minutes). There was little to do in the evenings besides play Uno and watch TV so sometimes after work we would jog and a couple of times we swam in the chilly dark dam!

Lother would drive into town a couple of times a week and we could nominate a space in the car to do our food shopping.

As much as I enjoyed working on the farm, the authority was quite negative, and I found this upsetting as some of us weren't the fastest pickers as it was! The highlight of the farm was Channel Seven camera crew coming to film us on Valentine's Day!

After 3 weeks on the farm, I called the number I had originally been given and arranged to be picked up, much to my new Japanese pals' dismay!

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