Hello everybody. Sorry for the long wait. The last month and a half it was near impossible for me to access the internet (due to work, work, work… and some more work), let alone update my blog. But I'm back now and will be updating the blog more regularly again... Promise :)
So yeah, those past 6 weeks we spent working as harvest laborers :) I picked apples (Red Galla, delicious apples), three different sorts of pears (Williams, Packham and Bosque) and plums (euhm... just plums...). It was hard work: most days the temperature was way up in the 30's and in the low 40's, working 7 days a week, long hours (you get paid by the amount you pick and if you want to make some money you're looking at about 10 hours per day). On top of that I fell of my 3 meter ladder twice suffering some scratches and bruises, and was getting some sort of allergic reaction to the sunscreen (at least that's what the farmer said it was... I'm thinking more along the lines of a mild pesticide) the plums got sprayed with. It was a good experience though, and I'm glad I did it... even happier after I went to cash in my paycheck :)
I spent my first working days picking together with a 50 year old Australian guy called Phill who we met in the caravan park we were staying at. This guy had a bit of a dark history, but all in all was very helpful during my first picking days giving me tips and introducing me to the art of fruit picking (“twist, don’t pull”, stuff like that). After a few days he decided to look for another job because he wasn't very happy with the working circumstances and so I ended up picking on my own... but not for very long. I got to know some French guys in the caravan park who were working at the same orchard as I was and ended up picking together with them for a week or two. Which was very handy because they had a van and could give me a lift in the morning and the evening sparing me a 9 km walk to and back from the orchard every day (4.5 there, 4.5 back). Then they decided to leave the orchard and so I ended up walking to and from work the next few weeks anyway. I shouldn’t complain though, it was good exercise for the hiking coming up and I did get a lift once in a while (although I was surprised I didn’t get more lifts hitchhiking along the road to work… Plenty of cars passed by… Probably something to do with my rough and intimidating appearance…). During my last week of picking I was joined by Siegfried who up until then had been picking in another orchard. Somehow that made the walk feel shorter… We had involved and philosophical conversations of which these topics were the most popular: “Sh*t, this walk is long”, “Why the H*ll isn’t anyone giving us a lift, we are nice guys after all” - “Why is it so f*cking hot”, and my personal favorite “How come only backpackers and foreigners pick bl**dy fruit, and hardly any Australians” (answer to that last question after carefully thinking it over: “Because they have more sense”) - Excuse my French, that’s just the way people talk around Shepparton
While I was picking fruit in the blistering heat Evy was working in the packing shed on the same orchard (which, by the way, was called “Rullo Orchards” and was run by an Italian family). Her job consisted of sorting the fruit, throwing out the “sh*t fruit” the other pickers and I picked (hehehe :) ), and packing the fruit ready for the market. She was paid by the hour and ended up doing quite a bit of overtime which compensated for the days that I made peanuts picking a bad bunch of trees (some days the fruit was very small, there wasn’t a lot of it, it was hard to get at, and/or were full of worms).
We got to know some great people during our time working (you know who you are, thanks guys) and we really enjoyed the experience of living and working in an Australian town… and not to forget: a bit of partying too :) But all in all we are happy to be on the road again. We did our goodbyes during the weekend and left for Melbourne airport on sunday. We spent the night in a somewhat cozy area of the airport and got on our 8.25 flight to Hobart – Tasmania the next day. Although we were in the airport about 14 hours before our flight departure, we still managed to almost miss our flight… Faut le faire :) The flight over Tasmania was brilliant. There was practically no cloud cover and so we could get a nice birdseye view of the island. The landing was absolutely stunning, passing over Hobart (which is located next to a river mouth in a valley surrounded by mountains), making a VERY low u-turn over the sea and landing at Hobart International just a few hundred meters off of the coastline. We’ve settled in a youth hostel in Hobart for the moment. Yesterday we spent wondering the streets and discovering the sites of this delightful town. It’s by far the most appealing town we’ve visited (Leaving out Melbourne, and foremost Sydney). Sitting on one of the harbor quays having our lunch we caught eye of a seal begging for some food at the rear-end of a fishboat/restaurant where the kitchen was located. The kitchen staff coming out once in a while to reward the seal for it’s perseverance with a chunk of fish. The seal was obviously a frequent customer. It was a funny sight.
Tomorrow morning at 6.15 (I hoped early mornings would have disappeared together with the fruit picking… no such luck) we are leaving on a 6-day tour of the island (check out the itinerary at
http://www.adventuretours.com.au/index.php/newtravel/tas/06_day_taste_of_tasmania/, it looks great). After that we’ll take a breather of a day or 2 in Hobart, hike up to the summit of Mount Wellington for a great view of Hobart and the surrounding area, and then leave for the centre of Tassie and the Overland Track, the bushwalk I’ve been dying to do since I saw the first pictures of it (
http://www.overlandtrack.com.au/). Yep, now that’s some stuff to look forward to :) I’ll let you guys know how the tour went next week before we buzz off to central Tasmania.
Bye for now.
PS: We are nowhere near the area where the tornado is hitting hard. So no worries :)
