A Fruit Picker's Life - Or What A Lot Of Tomatoes

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It's about 5 o'clock in the morning, and the alarm bell is ringing. I seem to have no trouble at all getting up at this very hour, or even earlier when the job calls for it. It is still dark, and the temperature is getting cooler and cooler at this hour, as each day passes. The winter season is setting in at Bundaberg, although the days are still hotter than a British summer. After breakfast I stumble onto one of the several mini buses, and get shoffered to work, door step to farm gate. We are staying in a working hostel, we pay rent and they find, and take us to work. Each night the job list is posted on the noticeboard, indicating which farm we will be working on the following day. The whole concept seems a little bizarre to me, but it works.

The squash picker starts early in the morning, arriving at the farm for sunrise. Adorned from head to foot with attire to protect form the prickles on the bush, I start my first job as a fruit picker. The squash are simple to pick, just a little snap of the branch leading up to the fruit, ensuring that the stem is still left on, and being quite small, several can fit in the palm of hand with ease. A group of six followed a mechanically operated boom up and down each bay of bushy rows, picking the squash and placing them on the boom's conveyor belt, transporting them to the bin. Simple as that. The boom sets the pace, which is more effective, time management wise, for the farmer, otherwise you probably just wouldn't go that fast. Since the bushes are so close to the ground, it hurts your back a little, all that bending over, but if you bend your legs and keep low, then it's not too bad. As the pickers are always allowed to take home any of the 'rejects', I cooked up a few of the squash, fried them with a bit of Tabasco sauce, mmmm.

Mid morning, it is time for 'smoko', regardless of whether you smoke or not, an excuse for a break and some munch. It's all about the food, and the lounging in the sun. A little reminder of the time that we saviour, and what we are all working for. So after 15 minutes, or 30, who cares too much about the time, we set back to work.

On the same farm, although normally after all the squash has been picked, it is time to move onto the eggplants. These are easier to pick, not as close to the ground, but requires the use of cutters to strip them from the plant, leaving a small stem at the tip. However, covered in small flowers and pollen, when the bushes are lifted up in search of the fruit, it goes flying everywhere, including down the throat and up the nose. Invites and encourages sneezing. I wore a face mask one time to prevent the sneezing, which did work for a short while, but since it caused me to breath in and out the same hot air, I couldn't keep it on for very long. There were also rotten and decaying eggplants on the ground, instinctively hiding under the bushes, waiting for unsuspecting backpackers to approach so they could creep underneath their feet and make them wince in disgust. The little buggers! Not so easy to hold though, butterfingers me managed to hold about three before accidentally throwing them up in the air, like I was about to perform a bout of juggling with the fruit. It was alright though, pleasant work.

Midday, it's time for lunch. Best part of the working day, time for more food, and chats with the fellow backpackers, and even with some of the farmers, who are often very amusing people. They have a completely different outlook on life, live their lives for completely different things and reasons, and find fun in things that I wouldn't normally think about. Small town life must make you a little bit crazy though, in the end. Quite a lot of the people here have never left Bundaberg, and haven't seen any other part of their own country. Bundaberg, or Hicksville (as we like to call it), is quite a small place, although is becoming more and more evident of being bigger than I actually realised to begin with. There are a great deal of backpackers here, and some of the locals don't seem to like us at all, something about "they took our jobs", or whatever, I thought we were doing the shit jobs that they didn't want to do themselves, personally. Times up, back to work.

The work here can be quite random, on this same farm, another day, the same little group spent the day pulling the plastic grow bags out the soil, ready for the next patch of reharvesting in those specific bays. I found this quite enjoyable, strange as that may sound. I just whacked on the iPod, listened to some tunes, and danced away, pulling up the plastic along the way. Felt more like a workout than working, much the same as all the work so far had been, felt more like learning about agriculture, rather than working. One of the guys I was working with pulled up a brown snake and held it in his hands until he realised what it was, then threw it onto the floor and screamed 'snake'. I was completely oblivious to this at the time, dancing away to Aquasky. Brown snakes are the most deadliest of all the snakes in Oz, one bite can kill in 15 minutes, so you can understand his reaction to it. It was just a baby one though, and posed no threat, but the farmer killed it anyway, thinking about our safety. As I said, I didn't know about this at the time, but have since seen my first wild brown snake, also a baby. In fact it was the size of a worm, but the women in the tomato shed screamed and stood on chairs, whilst one of the others killed it with the use of a broom. Myself and the other backpackers found their reaction very amusing, especially considering the size of it! Back to the farm, I got covered in so much mud that day. The mud itself was really dry, but with the heat as strong as it was, the sweat was just dripping down my face, combined with the mud, equalled Chez with a mud mask! I like being muddy, just realised!

Another of the random jobs I had one day was picking corn on the cob on an organic farm. I think this was my favourite job so far, walking through a corn field, snapping off the waist height fruit as I went along. It was really easy to fill a bucket, then I had to shout 'bucket', when someone would come running along with a replacement empty bucket, and so it would begin again. It was really easy, great fun! However, I was not doing this for long, the tomato plants were in need of being tied up, a job long over due. It was really tedious and boring, the beginning of the attack of the killer tomatoes.

All the work I have done has been hourly paid, except from picking cherry tomatoes, which was paid by the bucket. At $11 per bucket it sounded pretty good, until I saw the size of the buckets, and realised that it would take an hour to fill a bucket. It was slave labour, and all the people on the farm acted like savages, stealing the cherry tomatoes off other peoples rows, and I wouldn't have been surprised if people swapped the identification tags in the buckets over, although I didn't see it. The actual work was alright, although a slight strain on the back and knees, but it was the wage that sucked, it's not so easy to pick from a bush with with hardly any fruit on. Turns out I'm slightly allergic to the pesticide used on the plants too, came up in a small rash on the places that the plant grazed my skin. Thank fully, I was only at this farm for a day and a half. Got to see the sunrise in the morning though, pretty spectacular, a saving grace, along with my iPod. Attack of the killer tomatoes, indeed.

Afternoon 'smoko', well deserved, after all that hard work. And the best thing about it is that the working day is almost over. It was not so important on all the actual farms, but definitely in the tomato packing shed, where I have been working for the past few weeks now, and since I am so great, they keep asking for me back! I'm doing something wrong there, but the work is too easy to be bad at! After eating my energy filled banana, and the mandarin that Adam has picked for me from the citrus farm, it is time to go back to work, one last time.

So, the tomato packing shed, lots of tomatoes moving fast down a conveyor belt, when it stops it makes me spin out and almost fall over. You have to sign a form with the 'shed rules' on, one of which is that bitching i not allowed, someone needs to remind the normal staff about that one. My first job there was to remove the stalks from the tomatoes. Could there be a more boring, mind numbing job, think I may have lost a few brain cells by the end of the day. No music is allowed either. No music, and everyone has to be nice, but not talk too much, starting to sound like a Nazi concentration camp. The second job was sorting between grades 1, 2 and 3 in quality, and removing the rejects from the line. Passes the time a bit more. The third job is to fill boxes with the tomatoes, after a machine has sorted them into like sizes and colours. You get to move around doing this job, and it is a lot more fast paced, so it is my favourite of the three. When I close my eyes to sleep I see tomatoes moving along, or rolling down like a never ending waterfall. There are so many colours in the tomatoes at different stages of ripeness, that they look more like apples than tomatoes most of the time. I am definitely sick of the sight of tomatoes, but luckily, not sick of the taste of cooked tomatoes. It certainly feels more like work when you have to sweep up at the end of the day. And gone are the days of sunshine, I fear my tan will fade. I just can't believe that some of the women have been working in this place for 12 years, it would be enough to develop a fear of tomatoes. Picture this too, there is actually someone employed to check that the little stickers on the citrus fruit have been correctly put on by the machine, in the citrus shed, what a boring job that would be.

Home time! If it is still light, and warm, I like to take a swim in the very small pool that we have at the hostel, otherwise, I get to watch the sunset as the bus drives me home. You see so much of the day being up so early, sometimes the sunrise and the sunset. Beautiful. Since there is not too much to do in Bundaberg, after cooking dinner we may watch a film in the TV room, or socialise in the garden with the other backpackers. Despite having work, or not, it is customary to go to happy hour at the local bar on a Friday night, and to smuggle in some 'goon', as alcohol is not allowed in the hostel. Now that we have the only double room in the whole hostel, we often have people in our room for a small party. It is certainly the people here that make it easier to go to work. It's like living in a giant shared house, full of many nationalities, but all who have something in common. The fact that we are in Australia, and have run out of money, he, he!!

Still having lots of fun, and I am glad that we decided to experience this part of backpacker culture in Australia. It's just a shame that I'm not in the field as much as I would like to be. I'm not sure whether my hands will ever be clean again though, through gloves too!! Just don't get it!! Working in this sort of environment has surely been insightful into a different world, that crosses my normal, everyday world. I will always make sure that I wash my fruit and veg before eating it from now on, and I suggest that you do too. See you all later, got to check the noticeboard, damn, in the shed again tomorrow.

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Photos

What a lot of Tomatoes
Sure is...

Squash
Shinning in the morning sun.

Sunrise over the Squash office
Worth getting up for.

Baby Eggplants
Those too small to pick.

Mud Masked Chez
You can't see it here as much as it was to begin with, but still got a lot of mud on my face, after a day of pulling plastic.

Rows of Tomato Plants
Attack of the killer tomato.

Attack of the Killer Tomato
Filling boxes in the shed.

Sunrise Over a Field of Sugarcane
Part of the farm at the tomato shed.

Rainbow At The Shed
Aaahhh.

Party In Our Room
What more do I need to say.

The Bum Tomatoes
In more ways than one.

Lost ducks, by the pool
(Really they are tomatoes)

Comments

[christine (mum)]

all that mud
you know that people pay loads of money for a mask and lucky you got it for free. maybe the colour of the mud will take the place of your tan well only for a little while. you always did like to play in the mud.love the ducks. take care. mum xxxxx