Not Singing In The Rain
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2008
1
30
99
Trip End
Jun 14, 2009
Proserpine, Australia
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
I dragged myself to the bathroom like a female version of the cornflake man, washed my face and brushed my teeth, stuck my eyes in and applied my much needed mascara, in preparation for a days work at the farm. During this time, my darlin' Phill had packed our bags with 4 litres of water, our lunch, suncream and made me a much needed cuppa. He patiently sat waiting for me. Slightly refreshed but not even slightly awake, I joined him for my cuppa. He was shaking his head at me as if I commited the biggest crime of the century but at the same time, he was wearing that sexy smile that makes me go all gooie and weak at the knees. A silent, apologetic, half of a smile was enough for him to know that we were fine, it was just yet again, another morning episode! Nine Months into our relationship, he's used to me in the mornings by now. Poor sod! Apparently, his Dad is just as stroppy at the crack of dawn, which is why I think Phill tolorates my nonsence! It's in-humane to be up at that time, isn't it Viv, you'll back me up on this one? eh!!
At 6am, the bus driver and owner of the hostel/pub pumped his horn to our fellow fruit picking buddies. The sun was on it's way up as we headed to the farm. It was raining and had been all night. The silence was noticable. On a grubby bus, full of grumpy, grouchy, goonheads not a word was spoken, not even to our Irish friends Rochelle and David. 45 Minutes later we arrived. We drove for 5 minutes down a dusty lane and dropped off a few of the the fruit packers who work in the open sided sheds. For miles around us, thats all we could see was rows and rows of bushes that grew as high as my thigh. We followed the regular gang from the bus and stood around on the edge of the Egg Plant fields. What happens now.....? A few minutes later, a banged out pick-up truck comes hurtling towards us like the crazed Cruella de Ville. A small framed lady in her early Forties approached us. She had long fair hair covered by a white floppy sunhat, weathered skin and was smoking a rolled cigarette. To our surprise, she seemed quite friendly. Considering the rumours that we'd heard about her last night we thought she was an angel! How wrong can one be! Her first word to us were "Oww, lots of new ones!" She rubbed her hands together, had a twinkle in her eye that spelt evil! She introduced herself as Jackie.
Jackie gathered us "new ones" together and gave us our training. She chose a row of bushes to demonstrate the talent required to cut her precious egg plant! This is going to be our new highly skilled jobs for the next 3 months. We paid full attention as she droaned on and on! "This is too big, this is too small, this is just right!" (only it's never was just right, just the opposite!) She spread out a bush (one of millions) using her arm and cut an egg plant off at its stem using clippers. Piece of pee! We helped ourselves to gardening gloves and clippers and off we went to our rows. I was chuffed to find myself on the row next to my man and our new Irish friends. This is gonna be fun! We layed out 6 large containers in row about 10ft apart ready to fill. We started. 2 minutes in I shouted to Phill "Whoppie!! This beats the Jobcentre anyday!!" I was elated! After all our hard work saving for our dreams to come true, here we are! I was proud of us!! Check us out!!
· 10 minutes later "Is it time to go home yet?"
· 1 hours later "My back hurts babe!"
· 2 hours later "Whats the time babe?", "9am babe", "Tits!"
· 2.5 hours later "Do we get a break or what?" (soaked through to knickers, shoes full of mud and water!)
· 3 hours later Jackie shouts "Break time!"
· 3 hours, 10 mins later Jackie shouts "Right, you lot, break over, back to it NOW! Oi you, do you want to get the sack? NOW!!"
· 4 hours later, Phills hurt his arm, he doesn't know how or why.
· 5 hours later - Lunchtime! Try sitting down with broken backs, sore hands, wet clothes from head to toe, goose pimples, wet sandwiches and soggy snapped fags and not a toilet in sight! (but this is our dream....right?) Faces like wet slapped bums!
· 5 hours 20 mins later "Right you bunch of useless bastards, back to work NOWW!"
Get the picture? Another 4.5 hours of horrific ball/back breaking work, topped off with a twonk of a Farmer hurling abuse at us, screaming at everyone to speed up, checking our buckets with contridicting rules of what fruit is too small, or too big, thriving off her authority, treating us like we're scumbags, prisoners, bootcamp victims whilst we're soaked through (by tears).
The coach arrived to take 12 cold, miserable, used and abused backpackers home subjected to a day of pure slavery! I'm not joking you, I'm not exaggerating, I'm telling it as it is! I'm not afraid of manual physical labour! If it was just me feeling like then I'd be worried. It's not just me! Phew Thank God for that!!
Day off tomorrow!! Yippee!! We couldn't go through that again! We came home, showered and got hammered with our similarly pained Irish friends. We weren't drinking to get drunk, it was for medicinal purposes....to ease the pain!!!
Goodnight!
xxxx
