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Bruises, scratches, sore muscles, backache, 5:30 am starts, nine hour days in the stifling heat, broken stems, up and down the ladder all day - welcome to pear picking!
I have been picking pears close to Shepparton for just over three weeks now and it has been tough going. The money isn’t very good at all - we are paid by the bin and the bins are huge so it takes a long time to fill a bin - especially when the pears are quite small as well, which happens many days. Add to that the poor fitness, speed and technique of a unfit and inexperienced fruit picking backpacker like myself. To be honest it was very tough in the beginning and I wondered what I was doing here to be honest. But after a few weeks doing it now, I am getting used to picking fruit and have accepted my lot my the next three months or so. One thing is for certain though. I won’t be making my millions picking fruit, burt at least I am earning a wage and also working towards qualifying for a second year visa. If I can get through 88 days then I can apply for a second year in Australia and I am now focusing on doing that.
The farm in which I am working is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. 10 km from Shepparton which is quite a big town of around 60,000 people, 5 km from Mooropna - nicknamed Fruit Salad city. Population of around 7,000. I’m not sure how a place of 7,000 people can be a city but that’s Australia for you! As you can imagine it’s fairly isolated here with no transport, no public transport and one little shop close by which doesn’t sell much. I am relying on the generosity of fellow fruit pickers with transport to get a lift in to Shepparton to do the weekly shopping but everyone here is really friendly and there is always someone willing to help us pickers that don’t have a car!
My first day was on Friday 13th September. Good thing I am not superstitious! I was staying a couple of days in Shepparton Backpackers which is a working hostel. They can find you work and they provide the transport for a cost. However, I decided to go down the route of finding work myself and after a couple of days I was lucky enough to ring the local harvest labour office at the right time and land myself a pear picking farm. I headed straight there after buying some camping equipment and had been living a tent for the first two weeks However I have now moved over to the other camp where they have rooms for the same price it is to stay in a tent and now that the weather is turning a little colder with Summer over I have definitely made the right decision. The camp looks very much like a prisoner of war camp actually, with the rooms reminiscent of the cooler Steve McQueen stayed in in the Great Escape! The only thing missing is the barbed wire fence but when you are this isolated I guess trying to get out would be pointless anyway with no transport!
It’s pretty tough work. We start at 7am now, but it was 6:30am previously and work through to 3.30pm or 4 with about half an hour for lunch. The more bins you do the more you earn and with nothing to spend your money on here you pretty much save everything you earn minus accommodation and food. A lot depends on how good the trees you get and how big the pears are. The bigger the pears and the better the trees, the more chance of getting more bins. Some days I can get three bins, most days it is about 2 and a half. And that is pretty poor in comparison to some people. There is a guy here who can do 10 bins a day. How, I don’t know! But he has been doing it for years.
Days here are pretty much full of routine now. Get up for work, have breakfast, pick pears, get back from work, shower, have food, watch TV and go to bed at about 9pm. The good thing is that the crowd here are all friendly and we have a bit of a laugh which I think is really important when you are doing a job like this. If you go in with the wrong attitude you won’t survive fruit picking!
I think I will be here until middle of May so as long as it all doesn’t go pear-shaped (pardon the pun), which is looking pretty likely now having got past day 22 of 88 already. Once the pears are finished the apples begin so plenty of work to keep going!
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