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Published: August 8th 2007
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A ginger farmer
Everything is orange. Not too much has gone on since my last blog entry other than a mixture of working and drinking, unfortunately more of one than the other... After a week or two of financial panic we got ourselves farm jobs in a backwards little place (Hicksville - mullets and no front teeth) called Bundaberg, about half way up the east coast of Australia. We are staying in a workers hostel called East Bundy Backpackers which is about half an hour from the town centre. The hostel is far from being a palace but there is a really good atmosphere here and a mixture of people from all over the world - British, Irish, German, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, etc. As we were filling in the places of two people who had just left the hostel, when we arrived we were given beds in different rooms to one other which was a bit rubbish, but we soon realised it wasn't such a bad thing as we managed to make friends with loads of people really quickly. There is only one double room in the hostel and so we put our names down on the waiting list. Luckily for us the couple in the
Ginger
Muchos ginger. double moved on around two weeks after we arrived and so we now have our own room and space to take all of our clothes out of our backpacks for the first time in 4 months. There is a strict no drinking policy in the hostel so that those who have to work can get a good night sleep, a rule that if broken leads to instant eviction. Therefore our bedroom also doubles up as the gathering/drinking room where everyone comes to hang out, 'illegally' drink and listen to some music.
The working week is pretty similar for everyone in the hostel. Wake up at around 5/6am, eat breakfast, go to work, get home and shower, eat, watch TV or read (i am on my 12th book in four months.. shocking), socialise, sleep. On either Friday or Saturday night everyone goes to the local pub for happy hour then gets some booze from the drive-thru off licence to carry on with in the park (like a right bunch of 14 year old chavs) or back at the gaff. For our first few working days the early mornings weren't too nice but after you re-adjust your body clock and get
Mandarin picking
Muchos mandarins. It kind of looks like i am wearing dungarees but its the straps from my citrus sack... honest. used to going to bed around 10pm it almost seems normal. Seeing the sunrise each morning over the vast open space of the farms soon stops my morning moaning. The hostel arranges all your transport to work and back and finds you permanent jobs and temporary work on in between days, or if you want to work the whole week through. I have worked a few one day jobs and i am glad that is all they were as the majority have been horrible. For our first day we both worked on a squash farm. Squash grows on the underneath of prickly small bushes and so after 7 hours of picking it feels like you may never be able to walk upright again. I was lucky enough to return to the squash farm on two more occasions, out of choice may i add, as i wanted to work through the weekend to make some more dollar. Cheryl worked there for a week and actually liked it! I still don't understand why. An Italian guy we live with called Milo accidentally picked up a brown snake on the same farm, one of the world's most deadliest snakes! I have also worked
a few other one day jobs. I was (un)lucky enough to work on a cherry tomato farm for a day. Quite a few people seem to refuse to work there and it only took the first ten minutes of my shift to figure out why... You are paid for the amount of tomatoes you pick and even though i worked my ass off for 7 hours, i only made $77. Rubbish. I also worked on a sweet potato farm taking clippings for new plants. This job was also paid based on what how much you gather and i managed to earn more than the average day which was great (although i was crawling down the rows by the end of the day). On the way home that afternoon i calculated just how many clippings i had taken. 126 bundles of 50... 6300!
My first permanent job was working on a ginger farm (have a giggle on me). The day was broken into two - picking in the morning and cleaning in the afternoon. It was a pretty sweet job as it paid hourly and more than any other farm job available. I would spend all morning either sitting on
the top of a combine harvester or walking just behind it picking up pieces of ginger that it left behind. After lunch we spend the afternoon working in the shed removing stones and taking any roots of the ginger that the cleaning machinery had not blasted off. Most of the afternoon was full of England v Australia banter with the local farm workers (what language do you speak? who is on the back of your coins? etc) which made the time fly by. As the ginger season came to an end i now have a permanent position at a citrus farm which is where most of my friends also work. Six days a week i am out in the Queensland sunshine, listening to tunes and picking either mandarins or lemons. The work is paid by the bin, so whether you want to make a load of money or just have an easy day sitting under a tree eating fruit, the choice is yours. It took me a while to learn how to work through the trees swiftly but now i am slowly becoming a master at tree climbing and thorn dodging, although i have fallen through the tree on several
occasions and have some nice scars to remind me of the learning process. It is possible to make some really good money if you make the effort. Since working on the citrus farm i seem to be earning more in a week than i was back home!
At the moment we are thinking of staying for another four weeks before heading back down to Brisbane and continuing to travel north up the east coast. We have been here for four weeks today and it is already feeling like our travels up until now are just a distant memory. There are quite a few people who seem to get stuck in the Bundaberg bubble, unable to leave due to lack of funds or lack of motivation brought on by too many boxes of cheap wine. We are determined to not let this happen to us. We are just going to take as much money as we need out of Australia and then get back on the road! There really isn't much else i have to add at the moment. Its not too easy to write a blog about work and try to make it sound interesting! I probably won't be adding another work-related blog so it may be a while until my next post but at least i will have something more interesting to tell you all and some nicer photos!
Adam x
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woolley
non-member comment
sounds fun
Well look on the bright side if you do enough graff you can get a second visa .....nice brown snakes and me dont get on evil things if you get the chance mate if you have not already go to magnetic island there was some work in the hostels there free accomo from work etc really amazing place so jims back in aus at the moment so you should get in touch .So back to pompey town broke as a joke but i already did one to sweden after being back for four days so now iam broke as .Well southsea town is sunny but i sure do miss aussie big time take care boss enjoy the good life and send me a green coopers and your mob number if you get back to byron my flat mates are in that neck off the woods at the moment you should hook up with the welsh dragon and co .puss puss