Kyle and I will try to make a combined effort to keep our blogs updated. His latest blog took us through the end of our first official job in Australia: picking prunes.
As Kyle mentioned in his blog, we have been joined by a friend, Nick, of an old roommate of mine. Although The van was put to the test during a 10 hour trek through the Snowy Mountains through pouring rain on our way from Newcastle to our current location: Orange, NSW. Well, Orange happens to be the closest town to our latest employment venture and is only a short drive away (assuming the van works well enough to get us there) and is home to about 30,000 of Australia’s finest country folk. At 30,000, Orange is about 10 times more populous than Kyle’s and my last job location and even includes a small university. With those odds we figured there was some chance at assimilating into the local social scene. Thus far, our efforts, albeit fairly limited, have been unsuccessful.
We pulled up to the farm and Robbie, our boss, shows us our accommodations: A small add-on connected to a large shed that included a 2m x 2m square room, shower, toilet, and two sinks. Every room came complete with a burnt out light bulb, cob webs, full-flowing leaks down the walls, and plenty of mold to go around. Our humble little abode has been aptly named The Palace, for obvious reasons. We sleep in the van; taking turns struggling through the night on the bench seat and cook and eat in The Palace.
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| From the orchard |
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| The Palace on the right with Trailer Dave's place to the left with yellow awning |
The day we arrived in Orange was the start of what was called the “Big Wet” – a week-long barrage of incessant rain and wind that left everything soaking wet, especially our feet. Record rainfalls were recorded during the week; thousands were evacuated all across the country, including towns no more than an hour from Orange. Needless to say The Palace did little to help shelter us from the “Big Wet” and for 3 or 4 days we spent almost all day in the public library (you can’t pick apples in the rain). Camping in the rain is one thing, camping in the storm of a century is in a whole different realm. The rain has been threatening for the past two weeks but never really produced. So, on a clear, sunny day, the scenery from The Palace is quite grand – rolling hills of green pastures, orchards, lakes, for as far as the eye can see.
The van has been running smoothly (we make sure to keep a fresh set of flowers on the dashboard to help give her some flower power and make her happy) except the occasional breakdown, tow, or electrical debacle. The latest being that the windshield wipers now only work as long as you have the headlights switched on and are pulling and holding the high-beam lever. The headlights have gone caput as well, so driving at night in the rain requires some solid multi-tasking. Thankfully our high-beams aren’t strong enough to cause any retinal damage to fellow drivers.
What is our newest employment venture you might ask? Well, three college graduates of course would find something on the upper tier of the job scale, reeling in the big ones right? No, we are back to the fruit picking; only this time its apples. Apple picking involves bag-like aprons, large bins, ladders, tractors, and a lot of fucking apples. When you fill a bin, you get $33 not a cent or a high-five more or less. We have been picking for 12 days straight, usually 10 hours a day, trying to fill as many bins as we can. If we get lucky, the trees are small and full of huge apples which allows us to we fill the bins in less than 20 minutes. Usually, the trees are huge and we are left to swatting at marble-sized apples from the top rung of a 10ft ladder as branches are doing their best to push you off and you fill a bin between 30 minutes to an hour. The farm is small, about 3-4 paddocks but they have a variety of Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Gala, and Pink Ladies. I have been eating about 4 apples a day (I won’t go into how that affects one’s BM’s). Gala are my favorite and are much better fresh off the tree than from a store. By means of sample counts and conservative estimating, we calculate that in 12 days we have picked somewhere around 500,000 apples for Robbie and his brother. But, let me tell you guys, it’s not as much fun as one may think.
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| Nick and Kyle with 5 full bins |
The picker/farmer relationship is one of the most peculiar I have ever seen in my life – especially when dealing with Robbie and his brother, Tractor Dave. Tractor Dave is responsible for supplying pickers with empty bins and regulating apple-picking quality. Both Robbie and Tractor Dave are as quiet as a mouse when they come checking on pickers. I have had my head deep in a tree only to come out to see Robbie staring intently from only a few feet away; not a word spoken. It is borderline creepy for us three dudes, so if there were a group of young women working here, I can imagine it would not last for long. We initiate just about every “conversation”, usually with a ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ and are maybe responded with a grunt or head nod before our bosses walk away. Our relationship with Robbie and Tractor Dave is best summarized by one of two scenarios:
- They have little to no respect for their slave pickers or,
- They are just that weird.
As I said, our attempts to cultivate some type of social life have been dismal. Our neighbors, Trailer Dave and Michelle, turned out to be quite the improvement to our living situation here at The Palace. Trailer Dave (named such only because we needed to distinguish him from Tractor Dave and he lives in a campervan) used to be a horse jockey and afterwards both trained race horses. Now, they pick a few bins a day and save their pension. We sit and share a few drinks with them just about every day. It may end up that they find us our next job as well. There are a few others picking here, but Trailer Dave and Michelle are the only ones we really mix with.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day and we finally broke down and bought some whiskey and beer. We have today and tomorrow off and are hoping to have a go at the Orange nightlife tonight with Trailer Dave and Michelle and maybe some old friends from the prune farm.
