Busselton. 16-20th Feb: Girders and Grapes

Monday evening marked my return to unemployment and as luck would have it Tuesday morning would herald my retreat back into the workforce. I'd been talking to one of the people in the hostel Monday night and he mentioned his place might need some help for a day or two, I wasn't clear what exactly the work was but thought I'd work it out once I got there. He called Tuesday morning to say no joy...only to then call back less than an hour later saying that in fact they did need help after all and he'd swing by the hostel to pick me up in twenty minutes. In this time I went and payed the hostel owener the next weeks rent only to be told there was grape picking work available Thursday and Friday. This now meant I had a complete Mon-Fri working week and it had only taken three different jobs to make such a wonder happen.

The place I was at Tuesday and Wednesday was a factory, all full of girders and welding. As you can probably tell from the last 6 words of that sentance my factor knowledge is non-existant. Thankfully I wasn't going to be let loose inside and instead my days outside, so me and my friend the burning sun didn't have to be seperated. It was a laid back place though and as increasingly frequent visits to the staff room were OK, I'm marginally more efficient concious after all. The first days work involved using a strimmer (or whipper stripper if you prefer) to cut the massively overgrown grass outfront and around the carpark. It was simple enough, though a bit of a strain on the arms after a couple of hours. I managed to get a massive blister on my thumb, but whats a battle scar or two? There was one dodgey moment when I was given the wrong fuel and as such the thing almost died but the less said about that the better really. The day ended with a run to the rubbish tip, which was extreemly different from UK ones, basically being massiver piles of stuff in the middle of absolute nowhere maintained by the most bored looking man I've ever seen. It's insights and knowldge like this that are the reason I'm in the country.

The second day was more difficult. We were clearly more grass, the same as the day before, the only difference being this time there were loads of girders and heavy metal objects dumped on it, waste that the company had just stuck to one side and not disposed of. It all needed to be moved, some of it needing to be welded in half or more to accomodate this (you learn to check if something is hot quickly!) and so three quarters of the day was spent lugging it all about. And sweating, lots of sweating. We whipper snipped the now empty space and just about managed to get it done by the end of the day. Well kinda. Close enough at least. It was tough going at times but at least I felt I'd more than earnt my wage by the end of it.

Why a company decides grass cutting is a mighty fine idea: Fire. It's a moderalty motivating occurance. They had a small one a week back and noticed that having massively overgrown grass everywhere aided its progress. When you consider that slap bang in the middle of said overgrowth is a giant container of explosive gas, nicknamed 'the bomb,' having it so that fire spreads is, to put it lightly, unwise. And thus a job was born and entrusted to me for two days. Fire and the threat of cataclysmic explosion, I always knew they had positive applications.

And so back to the slightly more familiar setting of a field full of grapes. It turns out picking the grapes themselves is a lot more tolerable than picking just the leaves but one downside had to be the half four beeping of the alarm in order to be starting work at 6. On the flipside finishing by 12 does give you the rest of the day to yourself, even if it is undershadowed by a creeping tiredness. On the Thursday afternoon I resisted the lure of a nap, which many took, and instead heading down to the beach...where I very nearly fell asleep amongst the sand. It wasn't that lively a night in the hostel, what with over half us working this job and being asleep by 9PM.

The work itself involved nothing more than moving down rows of grapes, cutting them down with scissors and throwing them into buckets, which a tractor comes around collecting. It's piece rate and as such we also put a raffle ticket in each bucket, at the end they totalled up how much each of us had picked and swung around the hostel the following day with an appropriate check. I got 159 dollars ( 96 pounds), working out at 13 dollars ( 7.80 pounds) per hour, which was OK with me but with a bit of experience it shouldn't be difficult to earn a fair bit more.

One thing that reduced the ammount I earnt was at the start of the second day when I had to stop picking for quarter of am hour whilst my middle finger was patched up after I took a swipe at it with the scissors. It wasn't that bad a cut and didn't hurt at all but being on the tip of my finger it bled like crazy...all over the grapes I'd just picked and beyond. It took a while to find some tape to put around it and even longer for the guy in charge to find the end of the it whilst I stood there like a muppet applying pressure and trying not to leave too much blood on the floor.

Having my finger wrapped up made it frustratingly impossible to play the ukulele I'd brought the very day beforehand. At 30 dollars I'd call it a bargain, all be it one I'd have to wait half a week to actually start using. It had been a five day working week after all, I felt like some sort of reward was in order for this feat of near normality. It was clearly not just me who though the completed work deserved celebration (not that we overly need a cause...buts its nice to have something to point the finger at if blame is called for) and Friday night was a hectic one in the hostel, complete with energetic dancing to fast, crazy French/Italian music. The weekend was more restrained by comparison but I'll not be the one to complain of another weekend of sand and sea...I even brought an icecream to punctate the mood.