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It didn’t take long for me to get a job in Renmark. We sent off an application form to the local packing shed and got a call the following week. After a day of training we started work the following week. The training mainly consisted of scare stories of how we would hurt our backs and never work again if we didn’t use the correct procedures. The work consisted mainly of sorting and packing oranges. The women sorted the fruit and packed it and the blokes shifted the boxes from the conveyer belt to the pallets. There were two different lines - imaginatively named line 1 and line 2. Most of the time line 1 was the line that you didn’t want to go on. Most of the boxes on this line were 25 kilos and it was tough work with the boxes coming onto the conveyor belt thick and fast and not enough blokes working on the line. The boxes needed to be packed 7 rows high - a lot higher than my height of 6ft. As you can imagine it was very tough. Even some of the big, strong blokes were struggling at times, so for only a relatively strong guy like me it wasn‘t easy! Line 2 was not as tough, although usually as busy. The boxes were only about half the size usually but the supervisor over there was a total power hungry b**** who obviously thought that supervising at a packing shed was a really important job. So there was some debate about which line was the better. I think all in all line 2 was the lesser of two evils. The one job that no-one wanted to do was packing the container with 25 kilo boxes. The container was one of those that went on the back of a large truck and it took around 800 boxes to fill. Tough work. It kind of makes you appreciate an office job a lot more! Needless to say I didn’t last there too long. I did enough work to qualify for my second year visa and then once I received confirmation that I could stay in Australia a couple of weeks later I decided enough was enough.
Renmark is quite a nice little town but not somewhere I would want to spend a lot of time in. It was certainly a lot nicer than Shepperton, where I did my other seasonal work. It is located along the Murray river and in the summer it would be quite a nice spot. The town had a club and a pub, which we frequented quite often. Other than that there really was not much entertainment there. The entertainment we made by ourselves - usually playing football or drinking the night away gulping down gallons of goon, We had some really funny nights in the hostel which made up for the awful job we were doing during the day. Nights that spring to mind were an Elvis tribute night down at thhe Renmark club, singles night at the Renmark pub where for one night in the year all of the singletons in the area came out on the pull for their biggest night of the year and the one and only Richard Branson on acid night where a Richard Branson, 40+ year old aussie in the hostel had a bit much of the wacky backy and the rest) and proceeded to stand on the table and nosedive head first onto the floor, busting his nose in the process. It was an interesting experience as all of us that did the 'Renmark experience' could vouch for.
The hostel we stayed in was called Renmark-Paringa backpackers. It was run by a really nice elderly couple and was kept very clean. The kitchen was miniscule and was a bit mad at meal times but on the whole it was a nice little hostel. Most of the backpackers there were Korean. Some of them very nice, some of them very antisocial. It was certainly a cultural change. One thing is for sure though - the Koreans love their football and it was fun joining in with them playing football at weekends.
You meet all sorts of people at hostels, as I have come to discover over the last year or so. Richard Branson on acid, as mentioned earlier, was one such character. Renmark brought about an especially unique experience with another especially unique character even stranger than Richard - a 40 year old Australian male who obviously had some serious issues. He looked like Jesus - long hair & beard and was a religious fanatic. I was sharing a room with him, along with two others and there had already been some incidents before a night culminating in ‘Jesus’ lying in his bed shaking vigorously in a boiling hot room. After a while he started chanting Jesus songs. It was as if he was being visited - perhaps the second coming? I was personally freaked out by this. I had no idea what this guy’s problem was or what his past was and what he was capable of. He was a total fruitcake. It ended up with him spending some time in the local hospital. The shaking wasn’t an illness I don’t think - more of a psychological problem. Needless to say I moved rooms. As I said - you meet all sorts of people. Character building, I guess!
While in Renmark I celebrated my 30th birthday. I must admit that if I was choosing somewhere to celebrate a landmark birthday it wouldn’t have been Renmark! But it was a great night spent at the hostel and Alan one of the Korean guys cooked up a Korean barbecue. The birthday celebrations continued for the whole weekend with nights out in the Renmark pub and club. It was a double celebration as my second year working holiday visa had come through the same week and it was time to make a decision of what I wanted to do - stay in Renmark lifting large boxes or head somewhere else. After a bit of thought (actually not much!) I decided to go back to Melbourne. One of the guys in the hostel offered me a lift and that was all the encouragement I needed to head back to the best city in Australia. I’d miss the people I met in Renmark, but certainly not the packing shed…..
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