Week 15 – 26th Feb – 4th March

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Job hunting’s rubbish. Over the weekend I had started to consider the possibility of staying in Melbourne and finding some work other than seasonal, fruit-picking type work. I liked Melbourne pretty much as soon as we arrived and I thought it was definitely somewhere I could happily stay. The fact was we needed money fast and would be up for doing pretty much anything. However, in order to get the second year visa extension, we still needed to do another 6 weeks of work on the harvest trail. We booked another night in the hostel and spent the day looking for jobs - mainly on the Internet. It wasn’t looking too good. Around Melbourne the two main areas for seasonal work are north and east of the city. Heading north, around Shepparton was one option, but we’d heard from plenty of people that it’s not pretty shit place to go. East of the city, the Yarra Valley area is supposed to be very pretty but we had called a number of people in the area while we were in Warrnambool with any luck - they said there was nothing around whatsoever. I was always think that it’s bollocks when people say that - there must be work, it’s just knowing where to look. And that was our problem, we didn’t know all the places to try and there’s no central organisation that provides an up-to-date list of harvest trail vacancies. There is a government website and phone number (Harvest Hotline) but it’s shit! I did a bit of looking around a got a few numbers to call. The first place, in Shepparton said no straight away, while the second place, in the Yarra Valley said that there’s a shed-load of apple-picking available. At last some success! We said we’d be there the next day and took it easy for the rest of Monday.

We packed up and I got the van from the car park, having just managed to navigate my way form the multi-storey back to the hostel. Bloody stupid driving system in Melbourne - driving on the left (the correct side of the road) it’s one if the only cities in the world where, in order to turn right at a junction, you have to get into the left lane. Bizarre! I don’t think I broke any road traffic laws, and I kept my wits about me and made sure I didn’t completely cock things up! It was approximately one-and-a-half hours before we arrived at Aerie Heights Backpackers in Yarra Junction. On the way, the scenery turned into lovely rolling hills and just a nice country vibe. They only had one bed available, which we knew before we left, and I was lucky enough to get that. Tom and Jay were perfectly content to stay in the van. It was the first time we had made the bed up properly. Normally, we have a back seat and the bed takes up one half of the back of the van. We quickly figured out how to attach the extra bits of metal frame and hey presto, a nice double bed! We would have put up Jay’s tent, but Lorraine, the owner, said that they no longer allowed tents due to the risk of stuff falling from the trees and causing injuries!

The ‘hostel’ is more of a caravan/cabin place in the hills. Lorraine has a nice large house with one 8-man dorm, while the rest of the accommodation consists of cabins and caravan, painted in a fetching shade of avocado green. There’s a decent kitchen, a TV room with a pool table, washing facilities, the ubiquitous barbeque and a cast iron fire pit surrounded by benches. There are roughly 30-35 people staying here and it’s a mixture of English, German, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Israeli, Belgian, Swedish, Kiwis and Aussies. We’re all picking either apples or grapes.

We got all our stuff sorted and chilled out for the rest of the day. The lights outside and the power in the kitchen and TV room go out at 11pm, which makes it a bit like being back at school, but at least it ensures everyone gets a decent night’s sleep. Up at 0550 the following morning, it was dark and a bit chilly. After a bit of a drive, we started work 0700 on Wednesday morning. You have to wear a bag on your front, into which you put your apples then you empty that into a wooden bin which is about 4’ x 4’ x 2 ½’, so about a cubic metre. We were told that Golden Delicious apples bruise very easily, so we had to handle them with care. On my first day I managed to do 4 bins, which I was pleased with because we had been told that most people tend to do 2-3 maximum on their first day. This was the first fruit picking I had done since I was about 15. 10 years ago my mate Kieran and I decided to try our hands at gooseberry picking and quickly jacked it in after a couple of hours. I’m glad to say that apples are much better! Tom had a couple of incidents with his ladder when it slipped and he must have landed awkwardly because he was struggling to put any weight on his right foot. Later on it ballooned up and it looked like a pretty nasty sprain which put him out of action for the rest of the week. He did some light duties around the hostel which earned him 8 nights worth of free accommodation.

I woke up on Thursday and really couldn’t be arsed! I managed to drag myself out of bed and got stuck into picking apples! Naturally, I was intrigued to know what the orchard record was for apples picked in a day. David, our supervisor, told me that someone did 6 bins in a day, which I thought was pretty bloody good going. I counted that I filled a bag with, on average, 80 apples and that it took around 25 bags to fill a bin - ergo 2000 apples per bin. Our day is from 7am-4pm, so that means working constantly at a rate of 1 bin every hour-and-a-half or 1 apple every 2.7 seconds, or one bag every 3.6 minutes! Trust me, you do think about these things when you’re doing such a monotonous job! I managed to do 4.5 bins on my second day while most people were doing about 3. When we got back to the hostel everyone said that it was a pretty good effort. I think I pissed a few people off on Friday though when I picked 5 ½ bins - I was well chuffed with that. It’s worth putting in the extra effort because we’re on contract-rates here - $33 per bin. I decided that, to get the most out of the day, I wouldn’t bother taking any breaks - I’d eat a sandwich quickly after my second bin, then another at around lunchtime. I prefer to work like that - I tend to fall asleep when I have to take a break! I was at least making sure that I was taking on plenty of water though. The obvious bonus about working in an orchard is that it doesn’t matter if you forget your lunch - you can just pick it off the trees! I actually quite enjoy it - it’s much better than working on vines in Loxton. For starters you’re moving around a lot more, so it’s better exercise, secondly it’s a much more comfortable climate down here and thirdly there’s plenty of shade so the sun doesn’t bake you! I managed 5 bins on Sunday, which would be our penultimate day before a two-week gap while the next variety ripens up.

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