We put the Gay in Gayndah, We put the Gang in Gangsta’s: Gayndah Gangsta’s!!!

With the monotonous schedule of picking (stressing the monotonous: get up, pick, shop for dinner, cook, sleep), every week-day flies by. After a week straight of mindless picking, an escape is more than necessary. It’s where this escape comes from that matters most. Our escape arrived in the shape of a beat-up, green van.

Picture three guys slumped in the seats of their Kombie, in the pitch dark, at their humble rest area home. They are exhausted from a full day of shambling around their small farm town, work cancelled due to rain. They have barely been working enough to afford beers, so the pub is not even option to curb their boredom. It’s Saturday night to boot and the three have no plans other than to sulk in their lonesomeness. They have but a shitty dinner and a box of wine to drown away their sorrows: Enter the aforementioned green van. Out jumps the inhabitants of the green van: 4 sexy German girls. These poor, down-and-out lads, understanding how pathetic they look sitting in the dark, realize the opportunity that just careened down upon them. They begin to scramble out of their van like criminals fleeing a stolen vehicle after a high-speed chase. After emerging from the van, the criminals transform into a pit crew, unloading the van, our wine, and trying to set up dinner. Conversation ensues over dinner, trust familiarity is established, and the three are invited to a house party later that night. Later that night, over joints and glasses of goon, trust is established and friendships forged. Overall it is a successful first Saturday night in Gayndah, setting the stage for many other days and nights to follow.

Ronja, Luna, Charlotte (Lotti), and Nina are their names. They have made it almost all the way around Australia in their green van, dubbed “The Green Machine.” They worked at the fruit packing shed in town, called GayPak, six days a week. 

Sunday was their one consistent day off. Often times as fruit pickers we would go weeks without a break, and almost never an employer-forced day off. Coincidentally, Sunday quickly became the one day a week we would tell our bosses that we were not going to work – it’s impossible to pick fruit and pray at church simultaneously. The girls eventually started renting a garage that was “converted” into a one room studio. Basically it was a shed with walls and a concrete floor. With two beds on the ground it was an amazing place to watch a movie, take a nap, or kill a hangover. The walls were barely thick enough to hold back the wind and were not sealed to the roof or floor. So with seven or more of us getting ready for a night out on the town, we seemed to easily upset the grumpy, old, drunken landlord. About 9:30 every night seemed to be quiet hour and he always felt compelled to come let us know. Usually he would warn in a drunken grumble/scream that could hardly pass as English. One night we showed up to the shed and he popped out of his house with a full-sized whip. Either this was his method of showing dominance or he liked real kinky sex. Needless to say, he was a real weird guy with some anger issues.

The girls happened to get us our second job in Gayndah working for a guy named Paul Slack. They had worked for him before their Gaypak job. So when he needed more pickers, they gave us his number and we were on. He said that “they [the Germans] turned a lot of heads out here.” We were eager to work for a guy whom came so highly recommended. The girls said he was so nice and attentive, coming come by to check on them every 30 minutes to make sure they were alright. For some reason with us, after the first day or work with Paul, he came by only once when we arrived and once at the end of the day. Paul was indeed as the girls said, very nice; a truly decent guy who was constantly making sure we were happy. It was a joy to work for him.

Kyle and Nick at Paul Slack's farm

After our first Saturday night in Gayndah with the girls, we made plans for “parties” (party must be said with a German accent, long on the ‘a’). At one point we had a plan for every day off for a month. We had a Hair Party to cut my hair. There was a Bumper Party to install a replacement bumper on their van. They bought us some falafel on a trip to a big city (falafel is not sold at the one grocery in Gayndah), so we had a Falafel Party, where we cooked dinner for them. In the end, we just started partying whenever we could and stopped making plans. 

When not hanging out with our four beautiful German friends, we had to occupy our time with other things. For example, we toured the town for their symbolic icons and experienced some of the good eats.

Golden Gaytimes are the best!

Gay Dan is his name... He is the keeper of the Giant Orange

 

The girls were truly our saving angels of Gayndah. I like to compare the three pathetic schmucks slumped in their van to the guys giving late night driving lessons in order to help illuminate the type of change these girls brought to our time in Gayndah.

(Note: this is not common practice. But, when you are in a town where the only two cops are on leave and have no replacements and the not even wild animals stir on the streets, you take advantage of the opportunity.)

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Paul Slack, as good an employer as he was, had a 3-4 week break between varieties of mandarins, so we were left unemployed in one of the worst places on earth to be unemployed in. We had a lead on a grape pruning job in St. George, Qld, some 700 km to the south. Our last night together was bittersweet. The girls made us a traditional German meal of meatballs in a gravy sauce with potatoes. We went out for one last rambunctious night, took our only group photo at the Giant Orange, and shut down the bars. The next afternoon we met the girls during their lunch break for a final goodbye. They had packed us individual sandwiches, each wrapped and inscribed with our name and hearts. It was as sad a goodbye as they come and driving away broke our hearts.

What is the Temperature of your Shower?

When you wake up for work or school in the morning, do you climb into a piping hot shower? Is it so hot that you must turn on the cold water to keep it from scalding your tender skin? Maybe on a lazy Sunday you like to enjoy a warm bath filled with so much soap that you can apply Santa-like, bubble beards to your face? I know growing up I could take as long a shower as I wanted. And it was steaming every time. In college, I would turn the dorm showers on full blast when I was sick creating a steam room to clear out my sinuses.

I am curious to know the statistics on the percentage of people around the world who are able to take even daily showers, let alone showers that make you sweat. I imagine people who live like this do not care if their pits smell a bit rotten or if their feet blend in with the ground. Then there are people living in “developed” countries who take their showers for granted. This may seem like outwards criticism to ungrateful lads and lasses who enjoy such luxuries as warm showers, but I am no more innocent than the rest. I have lived in a place where showers were not hot. But, it was the tropics so a cool shower was often the most refreshing event in one’s day. I could have never imagined living somewhere cold and having to take cold showers. Until now that is.

The past month we, along with about 15 other vans full of pickers or aspiring pickers, have been living at a rest area, or two rest areas rather. We trade off between the two in order to keep the local council officer at bay. One of these rest areas comes complete with a shower. Rumors circulated the rest area that the showers were warm up until a few days before we arrived. And so rumors they stayed. There was no issue with a cold shower while the lows stayed in the high teens (~60 F) because at night when we got off work it was still hot enough to enjoy a cold shower. When the temperatures started to drop to less than 10 (~40 F), things got a bit interesting. Gayndah has a climate very similar to a desert – cold as long as the sun is down and hot as soon as the sun hits your face in the morning. So, we work all day in the scorching sun until sun down, then head to the one grocer in town, just before it closes, and make our way to the rest area. It’s dark and it’s cold by this time. After a full day of crawling around in trees, getting squirted with smashed “man juice,” getting slapped in the face with pesticide covered branches, squashing spiders that hang down from the brim of your hat, the first thing you want to do is clean off. But, the last thing you want to do is take a cold shower and step out into the cold air.

Before my shower I generally go for a run, not for exercise, but to get the blood flowing, always hoping that the shower is unoccupied. Then I stand under the shower head, build up the courage, take one deep breath, and close my eyes. I will spare you the grim details of a cold shower, as I am sure everyone has had a cold shower, or jumped in a cold river before. But every single day? It tests one’s persistence to the max.

The reason I write about showers in such detail is because of what occurred 2 days ago. I walked into the shower, and piping hot water streamed out. When I stepped under the magical cascade, a huge, pure smile swept across my face. This was no ordinary smile. It was one of those smiles that starts at your feet and rushes uncontrollably up to your cheeks and jaws. The smile warmed my body even more than the warm water itself. It is then I thought about the people who never have showered in their lives. I pictured the people of villages high up in the mountains of Pakistan or Nepal who may have never heard of a shower. I can only picture their faces of disbelief and bewilderment if they were to read this post. At the same time I picture any huge suburb of any city in the US, millions of hot showers, almost completely unnoticed.

Maybe, the next shower you take, as the water flows over your closed eyes, picture someone who has never taken a shower. Or, try to picture myself, with my gigantic smile of pure joy. Hopefully, at least this one shower may be as enjoyable as my last 3 showers have been.

Breaking News: Revolution in Australia

A small town in southern Queensland, Gayndah, population 2,300, is currently the breeding ground for a small upheaval of the local government. Who are the rebels you might ask? It’s not the aboriginals. Nor is it a group of Australians. It’s the French! By nearly doubling the population of Gayndah, the French are attempting to plant a seed of rebellion by gaining control of the local economy: Mandarin production.

How can they do this you ask? Well they began by recruiting as many pickers and packers as they could find and sending them to the small, one street town. They have overrun the local accommodation facilities commonly used by fruit pickers (caravan parks and rest areas). They arrived early in the season to seize the command of the majority of the employment positions available. Currently, the population of employed fruit pickers and packers consists of approximately 70 percent French (25% South Korean or Taiwanese, the rest made up of other Europeans. There are only 3 Americans reported to have landed jobs in Gayndah). Once the French were in position, they began to take action. The first strike arrived 3 days ago when a group of pickers revolted against local farmers, demanding pickers’ rights. While this was most likely the only first of such assaults on Australian society, we are led to believe that their plan is to take over the town of Gayndah by infiltrating the economic security of the small town and expanding their power to bigger and larger towns. It appears the only downfall of the strategic political movement is that the French can’t seem to hold a job. Various sources tell us that the French employed to lead this revolution are only here to earn a second year on their visa (achieved through working in farm towns) and thus are not motivated to become “le crème of the crop” of the picking industry.

(This has been an update from the front lines of the French-Australian revolution here in Gayndah, although the accuracy and veracity of the generalizations made here cannot be backed by hard facts)

Apples in Orange?

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.

From the orchard

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.

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: 

1. They have little to no respect for their slave pickers or,
2. 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.