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Published: July 11th 2009
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Woohooo we have a new job! After coming back from work exhausted and still skint, the hostel owner finally found us a better job. We've joined 5 other folk picking oranges just up the road for a lovely Aussie farmer, Steve. (he also likes motorbikes, what a coincidence) Our first day I was up and full of porridge for our 8.15 depart from the hostel in the little minivan. On arrival at work, our team, now known as Team Scotland by everyone else was given a tractor with the empty bins and drove out to a wee area of grape vines, noooooooo! (note: A- Team Scotland was originally thought of as from Swedish decent, cos we're so tall??? and B- hold on tight when Ross is driving)
Fortunately these vines are different to the ones we were doing before, they're much smaller and we only have to tidy them up a bit. Also we only do the pruning for a couple of hours until the oranges are dry and warm enough, 9 degrees to be precise. The picking is much like apple picking except for the ladder type and tree height, and the jaggies, more on them later. The ladders don't
have a support, we're just supposed to dig them into the ground and lean them against the trees, and oh yeah, they're about 14 foot tall! Which is quite necessary due to the extreme tallness of the trees. Now I was lucky enough to be the first one to fall out a tree, don't worry, no broken limbs. I was also the first to have a tractor driven over their foot, again, no permanent injuries! So anyway I was up the ladder, doing my thing picking oranges and suddenly I was under the ladder, stuck to some branches and I'm pretty sure my foot was above my head. I call out in panic to Stef who promptly starts laughing, then I scream and fall a few feet through the tree. Eventually I get my feet beneath me so I'm standing on a branching, yelling out to Stef 'how far from the ground am I!' when the aformentioned branch snaps and I somehow land on my feet (without dropping any oranges). Turns out I was only 2 foot off the ground by that time. But it was scarier at the time!
The jaggies. If you'd ever seen an orange tree you'd
see that most of the branches have spikes coming out of them, up to an inch long. We have to punch our arms through the branches and search for apples, usually accompanied by a 'ow' when we get jagged. Fortunately the scars only last a couple of days so I should be scar-free by the time I get home.
One of the greatest things in this job is the use of heavy machinery. Besides being allowed to drive the tractors at their highest speed, woohoo, we have been taught to drive the forklift. It's great fun! I'll put a video of me and my skills on facebook asap. It's pretty tricky trying to see over the front to what you're trying to lift and to judge which way to go when stacking them but I like it!
Another great thing is the farmer's dog's, a bit of a consolation for missing Rolo. Indie and Bella are the gorgeous labs that absolutely love eating oranges and avocados! And live for playing fetch with the oranges. Ross frequently neglects his picking duties to cuddle the pups!
Apart from work, life is still pretty quiet. We went to the local horse and chariot
racing a couple of weeks ago which was pretty good fun and we ended up only down 10 bucks between us. We did win quite a few times too. I've also been delighting Stef and Ross with my culinary skills on a Friday night, think it's inspired by watching Masterchef! Chilli, pizza and last night a chicken curry. We also just had a bacon buttie in honour of our day off today, mmmmmmm. So later me and Stef are off the cinema to see Year One, our weekend treat, then maybe off to do the weekly food shop. 😊
In other news, I'm famous, again. One of the free weekly backpacker magazines has a nice pic of me and a wee interview. I shall try to upload the page in a bit.
Other than that, we're very excited to see mum in about 3 weeks and all the stuff that we're doing before we meet her, including the Neighbours trip, yeeha!
xxx
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becky
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yikes those ladders look scary