Apple picking!
Granny Smiths
Next day I arrived in Shepparton and went about the task of trying to find a farm to work on. I called to the harvest agency office and they delightfully told me that there was no work! Quite contrary to the phone call yesterday morning. Your own transport is essential out here, there are no hostels and they don’t collect from the camping grounds like in some other places. Still after getting phone numbers of some possibilities I pestered one woman into letting me pitch the tent at the farm.
Out on the farm, there was an old house with a load of Sudanese workers staying there. The house was full so I set up tent behind the house. It was incredibly basic, there was an outside toilet but no running water so you had to take a suscepan with you to ‘flush’ it. No showers either but a bar of soap and a few saucepans of rainwater did the trick. Later that first night a camper van showed up with a few British backpackers. They were just the scouting party, once they had a job, they sent word back to Melbourne and the next day three more showed up. It made the work good fun. They had iPods and speakers so with a plentiful supply of batteries we had music all day long which was good.
Every evening at knocking off time we indulged in a little apple wars! There was so much fruit on the ground it was difficult to see the grass some places. And most of it was very soft, ideal for hitting people with. Not hard so that it doesn’t hurt when hit and the bonus of exploding, covering the victim in apply mush. Three days of that and I had a sore shoulder 