G’day all, how ya goin?

Its been a good while since our last update so theres a fair bit to catch you up on. As we left off in our last blog we were due to imminantly start work on the local strawberry farm and were (shockingly) looking forward to doing so.

Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that we are now professional strawberry pickers (and packers in Aimees case). We now know precisely how a strawberry is to be picked, what a ‘runner’ is, how the ‘spotty’ leaves come about and exactly how a punnet is to be packed (there not just chucked in, oh no!).

Impressive huh?

We’ve actually been working now for a little over two weeks but ill take you back to the first day for an insight into life as a pro picker…

So, whilst quietly preparing an evening feast at the hostel I was informed (at about 6pm) that I would be working the following morning. There are a convoy of minibuses that leave the hostel at 6:45am so I was straight off to prepare my lunch, excited to be experiencing a completely different job to anything id done back home. Fruit picking, out in the sunshine, easy life. That’s what I thought anyway. If you imagine a yoghurt advert with the guy skipping through grassy meadows, in the sun, with a wicker basket in hand, merrily plucking strawberries as he goes - whilst eating the best ones - then you have a pretty good idea of what I was expecting.

So the next morning I was up at 6am and aboard the bus bang on time for the 20 minute journey to the Twist farm. We were greeted on arrival by Brad who is the foreman on the picking side of the farm.

Now, I shall pause here for a second to highlight the fact that ‘Brad’ is not in fact his real name. I was slightly alarmed by this revalation. Was ‘Brad’ on the run for murdering slow pickers??
Maybe he had beaten a backpacker for missing a spotty leaf?? Yes, I’ll tell you now, I was worried.

It turned out however his name is Paul Bradley, hence the ‘Brad‘. He claims to not be on the run for murder or any other form of strawberry related violence.

Anyway, after signing in with Elaine (who is married to one of the owners of the farm) we were duly taken aside by Brad for our training. Our training, we were informed, would take “a lot longer than half an hour”, but we would only be docked half an hour for it. It took a little over two minutes and went something like this:

“This is a red strawberry”.

“This is a green strawberry”.

“Pick the red ones”.

After our extensive training we were off to join the rest of the pickers who were enthusiastically lining up along the rows of plants a little further up the field raring to go (yea right).

So here I am, with my green plastic tray, in which you place the strawberries, as well as a ‘handle‘, which is a metal holder thing for the aforementioned green tray. Tooled up, you could say. Its pretty technical stuff.

So at the almighty “Rightyo!!!” from Brad, which, so you know, is the call for work to begin, we were off. For half an hour I was thinking it wasn’t too bad. After an hour my back was aching slightly. After a couple of hours I was in agony and that’s pretty much how it stays for the rest of the day. And then the next day. And so on. People like to tell you that “it gets better”. Im here to say that they are LIARS.

Imagine touching your toes for 8 hours a day and that’ll give you an idea what its like.

I even had a conversation with a scouse lad today about how it was better to stay bent over all the time. That was a strange conversation, especially to anyone casually walking past.

There are though, certain positions in which you can limit the pain somewhat, such as the single leg squat, the half kneel, or my personal favourite, the crouching picker hidden strawberry. In fact im thinking of releasing a strawberry pickers Karma Sutra.

You need to be careful though as Brad (and Elaine), as well as their team of disciples (basically the people that have been there a while and therefore think they are also in charge when their not) are watching. Always.

If your not careful and think you can take it easy for a few minutes there will be a call from Brad likely to include one of; “pick with both hands lad”, “Don’t lean on your handle lad”, “Watch those runners lad”, “Make sure your getting all those spotty leaves lad”, “Come here lad, your missing berries - if you cant see that you wont see anything”.

They should really give us all orange jump suits and chain us together at the ankles.

Even more shockingly, after speaking to people who have worked on some of the other local farms, this is actually the best one!

At present we’re working 3 days on 2 days off, which we’re glad of when the days off come round, but unfortunately its not good news for our bank balance. We’re reliably informed that they (the strawberries) are coming and that soon we will be working every day. We both keep saying how great that will be. Somehow I think we may not be quite so happy when it becomes reality.

So, that’s pretty much a day in the life of a picker.

I thought Aimee had got the easy job. Im not sure id want either though as it turns out. Picking out in the fields, at least you get the opportunity to chat to different people from all over the world every day which is quite interesting. In the packing shed however, talking is forebidden (unless you’re a supervisor apparently). You just work. Non stop.

You are supposed to pack 100 punnets an hour. On the first day Aimee was averaging around 55. After a couple of days though she was up to speed although it is literally just flat out, constantly.

You get a “smoko” after two hours, which is a ten minute break (which they dock you 15 minutes for), followed by a twenty minute lunch two hours after that, and, depending how many hours your doing that day, maybe one final “smoko” later in the afternoon (this is the same for all of us).

For the pickers, a break is a break. That’s what you’d expect right?

Wrong.

Apparently, in the packing shed, the clock does not stop. When you return from your “smoko” therefore, you are expected to ‘catch up’ on what you didn’t pack during the break and as a result your often behind your target for the day.

To summarise, strawberries equal bad. If you have the choice, avoid strawberry farms with a passion.

Moving away from the joys of the Twist farm, we’ve been spending a lot of time in and around the hostel just chilling out in the hammocks around the pool or watching films. Mainly things that don’t involve spending money.

This hostel (The Maroochydore YHA) is primarily a working hostel so the majority of people here are staying for a while, so as a result we’ve got to know most of the people. As you’d expect theres a few odd balls, such as a certain Asian fellow called Nick with a VERY strange hair cut who also has a post it note on his wall informing him precisely of his days events (e.g. 6am - get up. 6pm - eat. 10pm - go to bed etc) and Nils “THAT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA!” the German (don’t ask). Generally though, everyone is pretty sound and theres a good mix, including British, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, German, Dutch, Swedish, American, Canadian. Oh, and the odd Aussie too.

Evenings that precede a day off tend to involve alcohol of some description, beer if you can afford it or generally ‘goon’, which is dirt cheap local boxed wine ($9 for 4 litres), along with numerous games of pool or a poker tournemant.

Rather worryingly, the goon boxes have a phrase on the box that states:

“Contains fish products”,

In wine?? I know its cheap but seriously…

Ooh, we did also have a game of Scrabble, in English, with a load of Germans, and lost. Well, technically we were only ‘advising’ them in their game but they were still better than us which was rather worrying.

Being money conscious mature adults, we have (obviously) attempted to stay away from the alcohol where possible but, occasionally, resistance is futile. We’ve only had a few nights out (or in as the case may be), the first of which found me asleep in the dining room with various vegetables on my head and a tag on my ear stating “Leicester 0 - 1 Palace”, courtesy of one of the cockney lads from here - minus a box of goon.

If we have ventured out its generally been to the Quay bar, which is a local Kareoke bar which just so happens to serve REAL pints as opposed to the stupid scooners and pots they usually serve here. Such a small detail but so so good. They also have a happy hour in which pints are $2.50 (about £1.20).

Neither of us have fancied abusing the eardrums of the unsuspecting public on our visits but probably most memorably, Joe (the other cockney from the hostel), did adorn the stage, requesting an Eminem song only to go up and freestyle his own lyrics. To be serious for a second, he was really good.

We’ve also been out for a meal with a group from the hostel a couple of times as well to ‘The Beach House’, which is a bar/restaurant on the river front here that has a steak special on a Monday for $8.90, along with $9 jugs of beer. For that price we decided it was rude not to.

As far as the night life here goes, what is described above is pretty much it. There are one or two venues masquerading as clubs, but they really are pretty dire, although you still do have a decent night as its generally just full of backpackers out having a laugh.

We do also (once in a while) try and remember that we are in Australia and go and see some of the surrounding area rather than sitting around the hostel (which is very easy to do). A month or so ago we visited the Blackall range, which is a range of mountains set in a national park about half an hour drive from us. It was a hostel tour, which was cheap as a result and pretty much consisted of walking through rain forest to a waterfall with a view overlooking much of the surrounding national park. You can swim in the water there, which a few people did, but once another visitor happened to mention in passing that there were leaches in the water, well, that was it for us, we were staying firmly on terra firma.

John, our driver for the day, duly emerged from the water with a nice succulent looking leach merrily feeding from his pale freckly leg (he’s Irish), which confirmed for us that we had made the correct decision in staying dry.

On the way back to the hostel we stopped off in Montville, which is a picturesque little town with local businesses selling all sorts of handmade crafts and novel items lining the main road. They also have a number of fudge factories, which was the primary reason for our visit. It didn’t disappoint. With a bag of assorted fudge each - which was duly wollopped before we completed the 20 minute journey home - we were back aboard the bus and heading back to the hostel, arriving feeling a little queezy.

For the record, the Snickers fudge is by far the nicest.

We also, last week, managed to persuade Gayle (the manager here) to let s borrow a mini-bus for the day and took a drive to Coulum, which is famous in the area for its beach as well as its mountain (which apparently is the cone of what was once an active volcano). First off, we decided to climb said mountain, which to be fair is not exactly Everest, but for someone with, how can I put this politely - limited fitness - is actually quite strenuous. It took us about half an hour to reach the summit, although Mary and Patrick (the two Germans we are room sharing with) decided to show us all up and run to the top and down again, twice, before we even reached the top.

James also seemingly suffered a bout of virtigo about half way up, going a strange shade of gray, having a lie down for 5 minutes and then going back down. Bless him.

The climb was worth it though as the views were pretty spectacular, offering a panoramic view out into the ocean and along the coast one way as well as inland to the mountains the other.

We had a minor ‘scare’, for want of a better word as we were approaching the summit, as James (now at the foot of the mountain) rang one of the group to say that the bus “wasn’t there“.

He had been down a while though before ringing so we were suspicious. Patrick was also nowhere to be seen.

Anyway, again on the way down we had various people claiming that the van “was gone” before we finally reached the carpark at the bottom to find a gap where once the van had stood. Beside which Patrick stood, seemingly unable to contain the giant grin on his face.

For the record, if Patrick was not the single worst liar in the world ever we MIGHT have fallen for it. Unfortunately though, he is. It turned out that James and Patrick had, in their infinite wisdom, decided to push the van around the corner in attempt to fool us all into a blind panic.

10 out of 10 for effort.

On the way back we stopped at Coulum beach, which was ok but nothing special and the sun had now clouded over which dashed any hopes of sunbathing or swimming. It was ok though, you don’t need sun to make sand castles, which is what we did for the next half an hour or so. It was more like a sand fortress to be fair, including an underground entrance to the main quarters. Im here to tell you, it was impressive.

Finally (We’re approaching the end now people, try and stay with me), a few nights ago we carted a couple of (stolen) trollies worth of firewood along with copious amounts of alcohol over to the neighbouring Chambers Island and made a campfire on the beach.

We had a guitar along with at least a couple of people who could play it without piercing any eardrums and so the night passed with much drunken singing around the campfire, along with a strange mutation of a moonwalk from Paddy and various football songs. The main event though was the strawberry related songs that were formulated amid a haze of goon. Yes, its now reached the stage where we often find ourselves discussing strawberries in a very serious manner. For example, a few of us caught ourselves in the local supermarket the other day, gathering around the strawberry punnets and debating whether or not we would have picked them. The final decision was that they were a discrace and we, as proffessional pickers, would be ashamed to be associated with them. Needless to say the staff at said supermarket were a little taken aback by our heated discussion.

Enough about strawberries, where were we? The campfire. Just to point out that It was arranged primarily as a leaving party for a few people from the hostel, Paddy and Karen and Joe and Elsa, who were leaving the next day.

It was a cheap night and one of the best we’ve had here, or anywhere really.

So, that’s pretty much it for now. We’ve now been working on the farm for a little over a month so two more to go (whoop whoop). As a result we are planning on leaving here around the end of September sometime and continuing up the coast towards Cairns. For now, im sat next to the pool in the warm afternoon sun whilst Aimee lounges in a hammock reading her book.

Hope all is well back home in sunny England and we shall update you again soon.

Ciao for now,

Mark and Aimee x

UPDATE: I was reliably informed yesterday during work that Brad has on at least two occasions " punched someone to the ground" on the farm. He's coming round to the hostel for a BBQ later today. He shall be consuming alcohol. Recipe for disaster - un-hinged psychotic aussie + beer = bystander being punched to the ground...

Nice to know.

Anyway, i shall now leave you with that thought, speak to youse all soon.