Looking for apples
They say “change is the only constant”. And, just like that, things started to change. We finished picking pears but we had to wait before going to another farm to pick other variety of pears. There was still a long way before my farm work came to an end 🙂 In the meantime, they sent us to pick some Fuji apple. They told us it would be for one or two days maximum and then we would go back to the “good” pears. I still remember that phrase lol.
So, as many situations in life, people will take advantage of you. Why do I say that? Because they made us pick for three days in a block where, to make one bin, it would take you like 2-3 hours. I never saw anything like that before. For some unknown reason (unknown to me, not to them), the trees were empty. They didn’t have any fruit whatsoever. That means you needed to walk and walk to pick just a few apples. Like if you were in the middle of the jungle trying to get some food to survive.
From the supervisor to the CEO, all of them knew that that job should have either being paid per hour or being paid per contract, but at a way higher rate. Yet, nobody did anything. They would just say: “yes, we know this is unfair but there is nothing we can do”. I remember how I spoke to some of the pickers trying to make them raise against that unfair situation. I would tell them: “if all of us leave now, they would have to pay us more”. But, of course, like history has shown us many times, revolutions are not that easy.
Some said that they had a couple of days left so they didn’t want any troubles. Others said they really needed the money so 50 AUD per day was better than 0. Of course, everyone’s opinion is to be respected but I think that behaving like that is what triggered slavery back in the day and nowadays. Yes, you get something, which is “better” than nothing. But if you always agree to that “better than nothing”, they will always take advantage of you.
Anyway, after those 3 bad days, we did go back to the pears, but not to the “good” ones. We picked some small blocks of pears which (not because they were sick or something like the apple trees), because they were still very young, didn’t have much fruit either. So, for 3-4 more days, my salary was still ridiculous. I shall mention that during that bad week I was working with a partner. His name was Felix, he was 18 and he was from Germany. He was a very kind guy and I take advantage of this writing to send him my greetings 🙂
I thought about it for some time and after talking to my roommate Jason (from Malaysia), I decided to try to change my situation. And just like that, I changed contractor.
Time for a change: a new contractor
Basically, the whole time I’ve been working for Jeftomson. Jeftomson is a huge pears and apples farm in the region of Shepparton. They have many farms, contractors, supervisors and managers. Each contractor has several farms where they bring pickers to work. So, when I changed contractor, I also changed farm (even though I was sill working for Jeftomson). For those of you who haven’t picked before, I will show you now what bins and ladders look like.
Of course, that particular bin is the one we used at Jeftomson, but I also had the “pleasure” to work some spare days in other farms. In some of those farms, they would use wooden bins, which were bigger and so could fit more apples. That would mean you would need to spend more time to fill up the bin. That would mean they should pay you more, right? Well, yes, they “should”.
The reality was different though. It was way better working with smaller plastic bins… Some of these farms were also using way older and heavier ladders, which made everything harder. By the way, normally, when working with wooden bins, they are not on the ground, but on some platforms attached to trucks, which you would need to drive yourself. As you can see, everything is made to help the picker pick faster and make more money (irony mode ON).
The roller coaster started to go up and down and for the following weeks, at least work-wise, I was on the “up” side. I was picking on my own, the trees were good, the farm was good and the manager and supervisors were good, so, I was able to make some good money. Social-wise, however, I started to feel a little bit lonely.
Everyday I would spend around 10 hours on my own, working alone. And while this has been a great way to get to know myself better and to grow as a person, at the end of the day, when I would go back to the hostel to have a “normal” life, I would feel as lonely as working. I don’t mean to be racist with what I’m going to say now, not at all, but I will just try to explain how I was feeling at the hostel.
I had already lived in the past with people from China. Back then and now, even though I tried my best to socialise with them, I found it very hard. From my side, I can’t speak any Chinese. Most of them, however, even if they don’t speak it perfect, they do can speak English. By the way, just so we are clear, not everyone at the hostel was from China, but they all spoke Chinese. There were people from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong-Kong.
I felt like they didn’t try at all to make the effort to speak in English when I was around. I must say that I felt proud of myself because, for like a month, I was able to deal with this situation just like with any other. Like I didn’t care too much. But after a month working alone and not talking to anyone at the hostel (except to Jason), plus having to share room, bathroom, kitchen, etc., I felt I had enough. And so, I started to check on Gumtree and Facebook. And finally, the second weekend of March, I moved to a shared house.
Before I keep on going, I would like to show you what every sunset looked like from the balcony of my room at the hostel 🙂
Time for more changes: the shared house and my new partner
Back to the main thread, it wasn’t like the house was a social-meeting club or something like that. But, at least, I had my own room (for the first time since I came to Australia) and I didn’t need to wait to go to the bathroom or to cook. So, we were 4 people in the house. Tim, who was the owner and was coming from Albania, and two guys from Malaysia. One of them didn’t speak too much. The other one, who, although spoke way more, he was always working, so I couldn’t see him much. P.S: Another good thing about having my own room was that I finally was able to sleep without earplugs. Some guys snore in an unbelievable way 🙂
Life was going well and one Monday (which we had off) I went to my first part-time day job. We call part-time jobs to the days when we work outside of our farm. Normally, people would look for any of those when they felt like they didn’t have enough working from Monday to Saturday and they would also want to work on Sunday. In my case, because we have had some days off that week, I agreed with Jason and we went to work together to another farm. It was my first day working with him, but it wouldn’t be the last. Before talking about that, here you have a picture of that day:
Time was passing by and finally we finished picking pears. Next was going to be green apple (or Granny Smith), but we had to wait some days before the fruit was mature enough. While waiting, I got to work two days pruning apple trees. It was my first time doing it. We were paid by tree. The first day they were paying us 70 cents per tree and the next day 65 (because they said the trees were easier to prune, but it wasn’t true).
On the first day I was doing too much (as even the supervisor would tell me later). That led to me not pruning too many trees but with my hands destroyed. The next day I did a little bit less and made more trees. Just a quick explanation: when I say I did too much I mean I pruned the tree more than I should, which means I didn’t prune too many trees, because I was spending too much time on each tree. And just like that I learnt a new skill which who knows when it will come handy 🙂
After those two days, I went to work with Jason for some days while we were getting ready for our farm. That’s what my contractor told me. Eventually though, I got to pick with him until we were done with the green apple (like a couple of weeks or so). Before working with Jason I already knew how to pick. But I think I was making some mistakes, like when pruning. Meaning: I was being too naive.
One of the things I’m learning in Australia (and I’m not saying that in this country people don’t work or they don’t work in a nice way) is that in many times/places in life, people don’t care too much about how you do your job, but about how fast you do it. At the beginning it was hard for me to grasp this. But eventually, little by little, date after day, I started to let my self go and so I was able to add new skills to my set and to understand/do my job in different ways.
In a nutshell, I was able to understand that there isn’t just one way to do your job. I was able to understand that life is not written in binary, but that there are many colours between black and white. I was able to understand that what you do is neither good nor bad. The tag is to be tagged after you take into account what’s the impact of your actions and how many people are affected by them.
These, and other things like trying to not be too emotional with whatever situations you have to face in life, trying not to think too much about things in general and trying to always have a B plan, were just some of the stuff I got to learn from Jason. I think the key for me to learn so much from him was that we come from very different backgrounds. His life/childhood has been completely different to mine.
This is really the main reason why I feel like travelling and travelling. I can learn and learn from all the incredible people I run into while discovering a little bit more from this world 🙂
I was saying that eventually I teamed up with Jason and we were done picking the green apple. While that happened, St. Patricks came (nothing like the one in Sweden) and also Easter, which forced us to have four days off. About all of that, I have some proofs 🙂
P.S: The guy on the left-hand side of the picture is Marcus. He is a nice guy from Hong Kong who I met while I was still at the hostel and with whom I also had a good friendship 🙂
As you might have guess by now, being where I was, I didn’t have many entertainment options. There were some bars, restaurants and pubs in the city of Shepparton, which, as I mentioned before, was just 5 km away. We went there to have some beers for St. Patrick’s day and we had some chats and some drinks at my place. Other than that though, while you were not working, there was not much to do around.
To break the routine, we went to the city of “Bendigo”, which was big enough (around 100000 inhabitants) and not too far away (around one hour and a half). The city was nice and we happened to see some Easter celebrations, which made our day even nicer. We spent some time wandering around, checking out the city and the celebrations. Eventually, after having lunch, we drove back to Mooroopna.
The big pause
We worked a few days after the Easter break and we finished picking the green apple. Next fruit: pink lady. Problem: this variety of apple is supposed to mature under a cold weather, which was something we didn’t have yet. Even if April had already started, which would mean Fall had already started, we didn’t feel much of a change temperature-wise. Because of that, I didn’t get to work during the second and third week of April. One or two days without work is ok, your body appreciates it. But two weeks is too much. Specially when you are in a small town without anything interesting to do and you don’t have a car to move around.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. That’s a very nice saying and that’s what I tried to do during my two weeks of unemployment. It seems I was doing well and I had already thought how much money I could make at the end of my time there. However, sometimes life doesn’t agree with your plans, specially when you are not in charge of the circumstances.
I could have cursed, cried, got angry, tried to dance so the temperature would drop, etc., but, how could any of these actions possibly help me? I know it sounds obvious but the truth is that many people in this world, when reality doesn’t reflect their own reality, get emotional and react in one of the ways I’ve just described. With what goal? With what purpose? Do we really get anything out of becoming negative emotional? Nothing. In any case, it’s the other way around. We just make the situation worse.
I think we are somehow stuck to these emotional reactions. We are hooked to them like if they were drugs and, even if we know they won’t help us in anyway, we feel like we can’t take on the situation before having succumbed to the negative emotions. So, with the two weeks of lemons, I made tons of limonade. Those two weeks were probably the period of my time in Australia where I grew the most.
I tried to find jobs. I called, sent emails and even showed up in some farms. But the outcome was always the same: there was no job. So, once I acknowledged that I was trying my best to improve that situation (a situation that didn’t depend on me but on the weather) but I couldn’t, I tried to relax and accept reality as it was, not as I wanted it to be.
Everyday I tried to make the most out of it. I tried to move forward with the planning of the trip, with the purchase of the car, with the packaging of my stuff, etc. I would also use my time to study French, to do yoga and meditation and to try to think about my future. About my future I thought that I would like to travel the world while helping people. I would also like to write a book about it and a novel, a regular one. After these two weeks I wasn’t able to come up with an exact plan about how to achieve what I just mentioned.
For sure I’ll keep on trying. Maybe I find the inspiration while I travel with Chaves, or maybe I will never find it. But, if that happens, and I have to go back to what most people do (and hate), at least, for a small period of time, while I tried, I got to get to know my planet and its inhabitants a little bit better and to escape from the never-ending loop. P.S: Who would have told me? Almost five years later, the novel became a reality 😁.
Future apart, during those two weeks I was also able to (finally, it wasn’t easy) buy a car! I also bought all the stuff we needed for our trip and planned the first two weeks of the same.
I also went with Jason and “Hao”, a friend from the hostel, to try to catch some fishes. As you might imagine we didn’t catch any 🤣, but at least we spent some time together enjoying mother nature 🙂
What I did catch was an amazing dinner cooked by Elsa, a girl I met at the hostel and with whom up till today, I still have good relationship. She cooked for us (Tim and I) a great Chinese dinner and we had a great night together 🤙.
The end of the farm work and the beginning of a dream come true
The last week of April, after having changed contractor again, I picked pink lady from Monday to Thursday. Why did I change contractor? Because when I told my former contractor that the last week of April was going to be my last one, she got crazy about it and said that she couldn’t give me a job for just one week because the manager of the farm would not tolerate that. Like, it would be the end of the world if they would have to find a replacement for me. Wait a second, maybe she was just flattering me and I didn’t realize 😅! Anyway, the new (and more powerful) contractor was able to get me a job for the last week of April.
We were going to be working from Monday to Saturday (in theory) but we finished earlier. We started 40 people and in the following weeks, as the fruit would get its colour, they would be hiring 100 or 150 more people. That’s the funny thing about working for a big farm, they don’t care about pickers at all. When the fruit is ready, they hire as many people as possible, so they get their fruit picked and then the pickers, after some days, don’t have any more work 😒.
The colour was not very good and the manager and supervisors were complaining the whole time. They would threat us saying stuff like: “if you don’t know how to do the job properly, you can go home. I have many contractors ringing me every 10 minutes so I can bring their people”. I just tried to apply some of the stuff I had learnt throughout my time there. So, after breathing in and out and realising that it was just my last week there, I did my best to do the job “properly” and to not care too much about what they were saying.
Everything comes and everything goes. And “just” like that, my farm work came to an end. “Just” like that, 2 months and 3 weeks passed. “Just” like that, thousands of apples and pears passed from the trees to my hands, from my bag to the bins and from the bins to the mouths of millions of Aussies.
Farm work: ✔
Getting tidied up to go back to civilisation: ✔
Next stop: let’s go!
Thanks for reading and till the next post 😉
