Lemon Picking

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Arrived in Australia and bought a car (1990 Ford Corsair) for $1400, set up bank accounts, got tax file numbers, medicare health insurance etc and then looked for jobs! In the first week of arriving, we met up with a couple of friends from England (Amy - who I went to uni with and lived with in my 3rd year) so that was really nice and also saw Nick and Becky in Toowoomba.
Secured a cotton farming job that was to start later on in April, but for now have taken jobs as lemon pickers in Childers, Queensland on a large citrus and avocado farm. We stayed in a working hostel with lots of other backpackers. Not great first impressions - fleas in the beds etc. We worked on the cotton farm for a couple of weeks before giving up. Started about 8am and finished about 4-5pm each day. The quota the farmers wanted each day from each person kept you picking VERY quickly all the time. Had to carry a sack on my front which you fill up and then gently empty into huge bins, but very gently so as not to bruise the fruit. GIANT thorns on lemon trees which took great delight in ripping any bit of skin on show to shreads. We cut socks up and wore layers of socks up our arms to try and prevent too many scratches, but unfortuantly still looked like we had taken knives to our arms - this gave us a few strange looks walking around town on says off!!!
Picking avocardo's was a nicer job and also had the added bonus of free avos to take home. Yum! No thorns on avo trees, but lots of large spiders - not so nice. I ended up with a very large and very scary looking one crawling up my side towards my armpit. Probably the size of my out-stretched hand.
My back got very sore and was quite painful to move on days off. I bought an industrial back support from a chemist which helped a bit, but after 2 weeks we decided that it just wasn't worth it (and also had the cotton farming job looming 2 weeks away) so decided to leave.

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