A Mango!

After a few days in Kakadu I was heading towards Darwin. I stopped at a servo in Corroboree about 100 km short of Darwin. Whilst getting a cold drink I got chatting to an aboriginal couple Les and Salina. They told me they worked on a mango farm and needed some new workers, 4 people packed it in that day. Before I even had time to think about it a call had been made and the farm owner was on his way to have a chat with me about it.

Turns out Frank, the guy whose farm they were working on was an Irish man living here for 30 odd years. He took care of everything, gave me directions to the farm a few km away and said he’d be back in the morning with all the proper paperwork. I was staying with Les, Salina and their two dogs, Jabba and Diesel. It was a decent deal for me, no camping costs, toilet and showers. There was a spare mattress which I slept on outside. There was a huge fan too which had setting from girly breeze to hurricane force gale. I positioned it right in front of my mattress and turned it on full. Lets see the flies land on me with that wind!

Next morning I was up and ready for work at 6am. Frank arrived and took me back to his place to fill in the paperwork, which was nice for me when I got there his wife gave me some eggs, toast and tea, glorious tea After also promising to drop over some tucker later he dropped me off with my crew to become a mango picker. It’s not exactly easy work but compared to riding a bike in the sun all day it was sweet. There was shade when working under the trees and ice cold water to drink whenever I wanted. Unfortunately the work at Franks place was nearly finished and after only 2 days all the mangoes were picked so the nice convenient setup with Les and Salina came to an end.

Next morning it was off towards Humpty Doo to Arnhem Fruits where I would continue working. It was 40km away and despite being on the clock I insisted on cycling. No lifts along any part of the journey, if I can ride I will. No one seemed to mind, if I was daft enough to want to ride around Australia why even try to convince me to take the lift. When I got to the main farm I checked into the accommodation they provided, air conditioned cabins, 5 in each. $23 a day was the charge which included 3 meals – breakfast, packed lunch and dinner. $23 isn’t a lot but if the food was dodgy then I’d rather cook myself. Still I’d give it a shot and see what it was like.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 10:06 pm by Ross and is filed under Australia, Northern Territory, Tropics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.