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Published: July 30th 2006
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Bedroom
My bed... in mine & Sarah's bedroom David and Beth were my original fruit picking contacts. However, when I had first called them, they didn't need any extra pickers, so they gave me the number for Koolkuna.
After 3 weeks at the berry farm, I was collected by Campbell and taken to Balnagowan Organic farm.
Balnagowan is in Walcha, whose small country town is a half hour drive away. It is a working sheep and cattle farm, as well as being an Organic farm employing backpackers and marketing fruits such as zuccinis (corgettes to us Brits), yellow button squash, potatoes, snow peas, beans and shalots.
On the farm live David and Beth, who are parents to Kristin (residing on Norfolk Island), Angus, Zoe and Campbell. David and Beth both picked the fruit with us and gave us other jobs to do. Beth cooked all our meals, and what glorious food we were given! Amongst regular portions of lamb and steak (freshly grown on the farm), with special, yummy creations for the vegetarians Sarah and Maria, we ate a variety of delicious meals, most of which was home grown. We also had morning tea and scrumptious fruit snacks... luckily we were picking hard to burn most
Sarah
Sarah's bed! Many girly chats were had here... :o) of it off!
Zoe studies and lives in Armidale and we were lucky enough to be invited and attend her 21st birthday party, which involved card-drinking games (King of Beers) and also Goon of Fortune... Goon being the Ozzie name for boxed wine and the washing line being the wheel on which the inner bag of goon was pegged before being spun and choosing its victim to dribble its contents of 'wine' into! Anyway...
Angus (25) had just moved back home after his studies, and was beginning a part-time job in property evaluation (or something!). On the days he wasn't working, Angus picked fruit with us and we were most appreciative of the weekends he drove us to various houses and towns for parties and nights out!
Campbell (18) had just finished school and was back at home, helping out around the farm and working for mates who lived nearby.
Kristin didn't visit while we were at the farm, but David and Beth got away for a few days to visit her.
Fellow pickers
On the day I arrived at the farm, I went straight out to the paddock to start learning how to pick
Ready for work
This is how we rode to work each morning! With buckets and knives in the back, ready for pickin! zucchinis. I met Dorien (Danish), who was lovely but sadly left a week after I'd arrived; Dave (English), who hadn't been in the country long and had decided to earn his extra year, hoping to spend a year in each half of the country. Sarah (English) had already spent 9 months in the country last year, but had learnt about the extra year so booked a flight and returned to Oz after only 3 months working at home. She was great and we became good friends, sharing many girly chats in our cozy bedroom! She also took up jogging with me, to hush the guilty voices in our heads! We debated swimming in the dam but it looked sooo cold! Maria was a very hard-working German girl, who had a few giggles with us and set off to continue her travels a few weeks before us, after working 8 weeks on the farm.
Hailstones
Having met everyone and attempted picking some zooks, we took the fruit back to the shed and I learned how to wash and pack. To keep us from getting fed up, we played dance music in the shed and boogied the zucchinis into their boxes!
Riding to paddocks!
Deb & Sarah ready for action... During our afternoon break, a storm began and I soon understood why Beth and David were worried for the fruit. After a couple of hours of rather large hailstones falling from the sky, David went out to check the fruit. He returned with very battered, dented zucchinis. Unfortunately the storm has also damaged the smaller growing fruit and it took over a week for fresh, unharmed fruit to come through. With limited work to do while the fruit were recovering, we were given extra jobs. I tried my hand at shearing a sheep, mustering (on a dirt bike), as well as weeding snowpeas and the newly planted zucchinis.
Every other day we picked yellow button squash (lower, scratchier, more fiddly and back-breaking than zooks). As the weeks went by we also followed the tractor collecting potatoes, picked the delicate zucchni flowers (a delicacy don'tcha know) and I even got to drive the tractor! The truck took the fruit to market every Sunday and sometimes Thursdays, so these days got pretty stressful at times!
Every 10 days, the farm was presented with a minivan of tourists who were on their trip between Brisbane and Sydney. They came with their
Dave
Dave shows us his knife... tourguide, to experience life on an Ozzie farm! As well as looking for kangaroos and wombats, they were taken mustering etc and we took each group for a BBQ by the creek which definately beats picking!!
Party time
Sometimes while the tourists were staying, we would have to give up our beds and go down to Todd's. He lived about 10kms down the road and the evenings would usually consist of poka games, alcohol and the occasional firework... Cam would come too, and his friend Revee and maybe Revee's little bro Hugh. Angus and Todd's mate James came from his farm down the road, and one morning he even came to help us pick (with our hangovers... the fruit won't pick itself!).
Angus was also kind enough to drive us to Tamworth for a night out,
and arrange accomodation at his mate's house. On another weekend we went to the Walcha Show, where we watched rodeos, Revee in a banger race and I even bumped into my old pals from the berry farm!
I became friends with James and he invited me to spend my only day off on his farm. We spent the day rounding up
Maccy!
Riding to work in the Ute... Maccy came and hunted mice... thousands of sheep and moving them between paddocks! In the evening I was taken kangaroo hunting...
So... after many isolated yet thoroughly enjoyed weeks on the farm, I decided I could easily be a country girl! I then headed back to the buzz of Sydney to meet my good friend Rose.
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Sameer
non-member comment
hi
you are very beautiful :)