Limes, lambs, and a day at the races

Time is flying. Again. It's hard to believe I've been on the farm for over a month. It seems simultaneously like no time has passed at all, and that I've been here forever. I feel right at home, sleeping in a freezing cold room, cooking in the kitchen where the oven takes 10 times longer and only a couple of the hobs work, and showering in a hut that looks as though it is about to disintegrate.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT to start with… I am now a proper farmer and I can drive a tractor! It’s the best part of picking, driving the full bins back to the shed, either driving the tractor or sitting on the bins as we bump along.

It’s been a long few weeks on the farm, and I’ve been up to a lot, even in the middle of nowhere! I’ve been picking, sorting and packing limes and oranges, picking up sticks ready for a new irrigation system, and now I’m back to picking them again.

Time always goes slowly when you’re working in the packing shed. The bins of fruit are tipped into a huge skip, then make their way up a conveyor belt. The bad ones get thrown out by the person sorting, then they get washed before tumbling into spinning barrels dependant on size. We then pull them out of the barrels and pack them into boxes ready to be delivered to the supermarket.

When you are sorting you can’t take your eyes off the conveyor and after a while you can’t see individual fruits any more. You have to keep shaking your head to wake up. Packing is very fast paced. Different sizes are packed in different formations and you quickly get into the rhythm.

At the minute there are 5 of us picking 32 bins of oranges on the Williams’ farm. It takes all of us between 30 and 40 minutes to fill a bin, and we’re doing maybe 8 or 10 a day – it’s great because we start early and can be done by lunch! The owners of the farm are away at the moment so we are in charge. Normally we’d be picked up then driven home, but as they are away John has given us his car so we have so much more freedom. We can stop off in town on our way home, or start a little later if everyone is in need of a bit more sleep.  

And I have an extra little job which I LOVE! I am in charge of the animals. So I feed the 2 cats, three dogs, and the little lamb, Dotty. She is the cutest thing alive and I absolutely love her. She was left all alone on a neighbouring farm and John and Cathy took her in and hand reared her when she was only 10 days old. She drinks milk, but she’s classy so she has it out of a wine bottle – 2014 Chardonnay darling =]

This weekend a lot of us had a day off so dressed up fancy and went to Leeton Races. It was great to see everyone looking nice for a change, normally we have twigs in our hair, dirt on our clothes and mud on our shoes! And the sun came out for us too. We lazed on the grass with far too much bubbly, bet on horses that never even started the race and went dancing with the locals. Luckily we started partying at about 11am so by 8pm we all think it’s about 3 in the morning, so we were home by midnight. Which is pretty important when you start work at 7am the next morning. Though it was a very quiet day, everyone picking with their headphones in…

And Now For Something Completely Different

After travelling around, never staying in one place for more than a few days, I’m settled into a life that’s going to last me a good three months.

I now live on an orange farm in the Fruitshack. There are currently 15 of us here, including David (from the beginning of this adventure) and Britta (who I lived with in Epping), all backpackers working for their days. To get a second year visa you have to do 88 days of regional work, so everyone who wants to stay in Australia for another year has to spend 3months+ as a farmer.

It’s great here. This place is incredibly beautiful – watching the sun set over the grape vines has to be seen to be believed. We are about 9 hours inland from Sydney, near to a small town called Leeton; only a 40 minute walk to civilisation, heading towards the outback. We are surrounded by farms, who contact Michael, the owner of Fruitshack, to claim us for jobs. There’s all sorts, mostly picking oranges, limes or lemons, and everybody’s favourite job, pruning; crawling under the tree to find the trunk and cutting back encroaching vines, getting scratched by the branches and hit in the face by oranges as you do. Some people also drive tractors or quad bikes and spray crops or fertilize the land. You might work just for a day, or a week or more until the job is done. It’s always different which is nice. I spent my first five days here clearing out 2 old farm houses that have been empty for 20 years. Then pruning, and now I’m on to orange picking.

Picking has been my favourite job so far. There are 3 ways to pick, from the ground, from the ladder, and my favourite, climbing inside like a monkey! Though when you’re inside you get scratched by the branches, hit with oranges, and impaled on thorns. We all look like we have been self harming from the state of our arms!

You have a tube of canvas which folds and hooks at the bottom to make a bag which can hold 100 oranges. These you either wear as a bag, or hook onto a branch if you are climbing inside the tree. We take the full bags to huge bins pulled behind a tractor and unclip it so the oranges fall out the bottom.

The days are long, getting up before the sun and heading home as it starts to set. And the work is hard, so you return each day aching.  But as we do live on an orange farm, there’s always plenty of oranges to make some freshly squeezed juice to revive you!

The Shack is a small courtyard of corrugated steel buildings just like a barn. There’s 4 dorm rooms, a caravan and an old double-decker bus that is currently unoccupied. We have a little kitchen, the Goon Room (named for the not-so-great cheap boxes of wine backpackers live on) with very comfy couches, a tv and ping pong table, and a bathroom that is… well… usable.

And we also have 14 cats.

But the greatest part of the Fruitshack is the people. It’s awesome to be in a community again, where everyone enjoys each others company. We get home from work to “How was your day?” and replies of “long,” “hard,” “boring,” and my personal favourite “meeeeergghhhh”. And then “do you want a beer?” or “can I get you some goon?”. And then the fun begins. We are a very social crowd and watch movies, cook, eat and go to the local town together on days off to either laze in the park, do some much needed shopping or go to the pub. Family Dinner nights are always fun. We pull out what we’ve got and create something with the bits, always interesting with 15 people roaming the very small kitchen trying to help cook so they don’t have to wash up!

It is heading towards winter now and definitely getting colder. I came here from Cairns, 2,500miles miles north, and it was 30 degrees+ every day. Here although it’s mid twenties in the days, at night it gets down to 7-8 degrees. And yes, you’re all thinking ‘that’s so warm compared to England’ but you have central heating. Better than that, you have insulated walls and double glazing. We have plywood and corrugated sheet metal walls, thin glass and mesh at the windows! And duvets aren’t a thing here, so we sleep under 5 or 6 blankets. 

Nobody warned me it would be cold in Australia!!

'And I'm free, free falling'

I have walked this Earth and swum in the oceans, and conquered both land and sea. There was just one more frontier to challenge.

The sky.

On Thursday 7th April I headed up into the air above Mission Beach. The plane was so small I didn't think it would be able to take off. But it did, and then it was too late to back out. The view was amazing as we soared over fields and forests, and then we reached the coast and headed out over the ocean. I could see the Great Barrier Reef below me, and I was so absorbed in looking at it that I forgot what I was about to do.

The fear didn't set in until we reached 14,000ft and the first pair disappeared out of the door. It suddenly hit me that I was about to throw myself out of a plane and I couldn't remember why I ever thought that this was a good idea!! 

After the first terrifying seconds we levelled out and I could take in the phenomenal view. You can't hear anything when you are free falling because the wind is rushing past your ears at 100mph. You feel weightless and finally realise that all those daydreams about flying came nowhere close to the real thing.

It was such an adrenaline rush! I understand now why people do it again and again, why Felix Baumgarter jumped from the edge of space; because it's just not long enough!! The jump lasts maybe 5 minutes, and it doesn't feel real. Half an hour later it was as though it was a scene from a movie, or a dream I'd had once. I'd love to do it again, but I don't think it's possible to top my location. What an incredible thing to do! Highly recommended!

And just for the record, you can't feel clouds. 

Whitsunday Paradise

Last week I found my own personal slice of heaven in this beautiful country. I found it in the ocean – of course – on a beautiful trimaran called Avatar. 

I set sail from Airlie Beach and headed to the Whitsunday Islands.

They say good things come in threes. Well Avatar had three hulls, a large central one with the galley, bathroom and bunks, and two smaller ones with little bunk holes. And in between there were nets where we would lie in the sun all day. They looked just like trampolines and my toes were itching the whole time, but the big ‘No Jumping’ sign held me back.

And then there was the three guys of our crew. Sammy, our host, was a pirate. The second we got out of the marina he pulled off his work shirt to reveal a “fk everything and become a pirate shirt”. That coupled with his dreadlocks and top hat created quite the character!

Anthony, our captain, oversaw everything, set our course and made sure we all arrived in one piece. I spent most of my time in the cockpit talking with him about sailing and the ocean. He told me how the winds worked, introduced me to the leeward effect of the islands – and for the rest of the trip I was singing an old Hawaiian song “from the mountains to the ocean, from the windward to the leeward side, we do it island style…” He taught me how to sail a boat the size of Avatar; before I have sailed 2 man boats and spent a two weeks with Ellen MacArthur Trust helping to crew our 8 man boats. I’ve never even been on something as big as the 24man Avatar. Anthony put his trust in me, gave me a heading and put me at the helm. And I loved it.

And then there was Charlie, our cook and deck hand. Now I loved Charlie. He was a young, English guy with a little ponytail, the biggest smile you’ve ever seen and a permanent laugh that bubbled up from deep inside. He made incredibly impressive food considering the size of the kitchen and the amount of people, but mostly he was just great fun to be around. He was the sort of guy who just made everyone happier.

The first day we sailed to Caves Cove, pulled on masks and snorkels and dived in to my first Great Barrier Reef experience. My God, it was pretty! Lots of different corals, lots of fish, some I recognised from Fiji like the brightly coloured Parrot Fish.

We moored off Tongue Bay that night and watched as the stars came out.

The second day Sammy took us to Whitehaven Beach, the white sand beaches you see in all the inspirational posters in offices or dentists. The final Pirates of The Caribbean movie was being filmed there last week, so the Black Pearl was anchored up with Jonny Depp swashbuckling around. And it was incredibly beautiful. The sand is 98% silica, hardly sand at all, and the tides and the currents reshape the beach every day. We were there by 7am when it was deserted except for us. By the time we left, at 10:30am there must have been a couple of hundred people there.

Back on the boat I discovered why Anthony had told me to get the first shuttle back to the boat; Tongue Bay was turtle heaven. So I stood on the deck watching giant sea turtles rising to the surface to breathe before heading back down to the depths to feed. They would appear one after another, someone would yell ‘TURTLE” and we would all run to that side of the boat to see. A few surfaced barely meters from the boat.

Then 2 more amazing snorkelling spots; Blue Pearl and Manta Ray Bay. Not that we saw any manta rays, but there were every other kind of fish, including the giant Napolean Humphead Moari Wrasse which must have been a good 3 feet long and another tall. Manta Ray Bay has been voted The Best Place To Snorkel In Australia by some poll or other, and it did not disappoint. With over 500 types of coral and 800 species of fish, it was breathtaking. The pictures do not do justice to the colours down there!

On day three we just headed back to land. Which was the last thing I wanted to do. I almost cried when I had to get off the boat. The swallows welcomed us in to the marina and were flying around me as I walked along the jetty and I’ve taken that as a sign. I am going to become a deck hand and spend my days on the ocean.

Lets face it, I’ve been headed that way for a long time.