What A Lot Of Wattle

I’m currently in Melrose, South Australia, 270km north of Adelaide. It’s a small town in the Southern Flinders Ranges, an unbelievably huge mountain range. The surrounding area is completely flat and dwarfed by towering mountains, it’s quite surreal.

I’m living in a cabin in a caravan park. Seb and I have a real bed AND a fan in our room, a kitchen with a real fridge (no more waterlogged cheese, thank you Mr Cool Box), and showers. I cannot explain to you the joy of having a shower in your home, you have to spend some time on the road to fully appreciate it!!

Shower time is my favourite time of the day, because I am getting HOT and DIRTY. Temperatures here reached 48degreesC the other day, and they’ve mostly been in the mid low fourties. And I am working ‘out bush’.

Notice the big bull?

So it’s a beautiful spot, by the edge of a creek (dry) where kangeroos like to hop about in the dawn/dusk, and the cockatoos are unbelievable. There must be over a thousand in the area and they all fly out in the evening and back at about 6:30 every morning – and these are real noisy buggers, screeching away! Oh and there’s a tennis court!

Quick challenge for you; They're pretty good at hiding because they stay perfectly still. You can usually tell they are there after you see an ear flick, but in a photo it's harder. They are there, but can you spot them..?

The people are great too. There’s only a few of us. The Aussies: Darren (Boss Man), Todd (Bull Chaser Extraordinaire), Wally (“Faaking ‘ell Mate”), and Chris (Joker Of Epic Proportions – “how high did Seb scream that time he thought my stick was a spider?”). And the backpackers: Me (The Only Girl In The Village), Sebastian (The Flies’ Worst Nightmare), and Massa (The Japanese Teacher). Darren's company is called True Culture Group who are "sustainably harvesting a new era of Australian health foods while supporting disadvantaged youths and small communities". You can find out more and see some pictures of what we are up to on their website http://trueculturegroup.com.au

We are harvesting wattle seeds. So we drive out into the bush to cattle grazing paddocks (and only occasionally have to avoid a bull), and collect the wattle seed from the acaia trees. In teams we pull a sheet under the tree, pull the branches down with a hook on the end of a stick, and then hit the branch with another stick to make the seed pods fall down into the net. Then we do the next tree. Again and again until the sheet is full. Then we dump it in the trailer and go get the next sheet.

Harvest in action…

Part 2 happens back at the caravan park, though a different one a kilometre down the road. The seed pods need to be beaten to reveal their inner gold, so we force them to take on The Thrasher. “Seed pods, you will go on my first whhhistle. Thrasher you will go on my second whhhhistle. 3… 2… 1…” The pods go in and only the seed comes out. Plus some twigs and leaves and dirt. And dust. In this Gladiators scenarios I am John Sachs and the dust is Wolf. He annihilates me. In my throat, my nose, my eyes, anywhere he can do damage.

First we do some wattle angels...

Then collect up all the seed

Whack in in the thrasher. Bucket by bucket - it's a very slow process.

And then the seed comes out. The stuff around it is the broken seed pods.

Then it’s on to Phase 3 which we do at out the back of our cabin; cleaning the seeds. They go through a machine with a big sieve and vibrating plate a couple of times until they come out without any of the other rubbish. Then they get weighed and we get the princely sum of $10 per kilo. Divided by 3 – me, Seb and Massa. So we are earing the big bucks. Not. If the trees are really good, there’s no wind and it’s not too hot then you can have a good day – yesterday Seb and I worked alone and made $150 between us for 4 hours work, but when it is crazy hot you have to have long breaks, and when it is windy you loose a lot of seedpods.

It’s fun, most of the time. It’s definitely a new experience working out in the bush and being with the Aussie old boys. Sebastian has experienced true bush tucker as Darren cooked up a kangeroo tail stew last night. And though he was hesitant to try it, he figured ‘when in Australia…’ and ended up eating so much there was none left for Darren! And he’s got a new best friend in Massa. Seb loves the idea of Japan and the language and culture, and he’s so happy to have an authentic Japanese guy to talk to. I’m not kidding, I’ve never seen him look so in awe as when he opened the book Massa was reading to see Japanese symbols and learn that he reads from the back to the front, in lines from top to bottom right to left! The other night they made sushi together and now he’s busy learning Japanese. Every evening he’s reading online and making notes, and we’re watching Naruto, an anime series, in Japanese with English subtitles.

It's a nice place to be here in our little town. We're working hard, but we're enjoying it and having a great time.