Tuesday 22 July 2014

21 Bags

Mundubbera, A quaint town on the west side of the great divide and about four hours north of Brisbane in Queensland. This is where I have spent the last two months picking mandarins and I must say that the whole experience has had a hugely positive impact on me as a traveler and as a person.

Picking mandarins is not the hardest work in the world, but it is long tedious work with lots of alone time. This alone time is not so strange for the first few weeks as most of your concentration is taken up by just doing the job right and picking the right fruit when picking to size and color. Once you get into your rhythm and picking requires less concentration, your mind really starts to wander. So I did a lot of self-reflection and a lot of thinkning about future travels, friends, family... the list is endless, but all worthy of these long periods of reflection. Reflection a lot of us dont normally have the time for. 



So I was able to really think about myself and a lot of thinking about mastering myself and achieving happiness and I believe this set me on the right track to achieving this, but this is only the mental voyage. There is still the entire story of the physical experience to tell.   

The Hard Times

I first arrived in Mundubbera brimming with confidence, and full of hope that it would be a great place to find a job quick and easy, that payed well and would get me my visa extension. This eventually happened, which I am lucky and eternally grateful for, but only after a very tough three weeks of adversity in the job market. 

 

Mundubbera is primarily a fruit picking town and most of those fruit jobs are in mandarins, oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. Other than that there is a fair bit of beef industry and a mill in town. Up until the last few years the town has relied heavily upon seasonal backpackers for the fruit picking jobs. Droves of French, Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, Belgian, and Taiwanese backpacker usually fill up the caravan parks and free camping spots around town.

I am not sure of the precise reason why it was different this year, but this season saw very few jobs for the working holiday nomads. Reports I heard or investigated over my time in town was it was partly due to a bad season, bad flooding, frost, and farmers scaling back the number of varieties led to not a heck of a lot of fruit, and short seasons. As well one will notice the flood of Tongan nationals that are in town, this is due to a program set up with the Australian and Tongan governments, and local contractors to allow Tongans to come and pick fruit. So now a large portion of the contractors use the Tongans to fulfill their picking needs. 

 

All of this led to a to a relatively empty caravan park and Mundubbera perpetually would chew backpackers up and spit them out back toward Gayndah and Bundaberg. I felt this big time while I was there, looking for jobs ever day, driving around to farms, and always the same answers, no work. So it was tough sitting in the caravan park for three weeks without work while other would come back after a hard days work with beer in hand.

But all my luck did change and persistence prevailed.

Orange Gold

One day the skies did clear and one farm, Trotts Orchard, started to hire. Trotts is a family owned and run farm and is renowned in the town, all the locals know the farm and family. The farm is also one of the largest citrus producers in Queensland which meant lots of work and fair bin prices. 

 
We picked 5 different varieties of mandarins(Imperials were my favorite, so tasty) and we were paid per bin. It takes 21 bags in the kangaroo pouch style bag to fill a bin and generally we could do 2-4 bins a day depending on variety. Mandarins were great to pick because the trees are relatively human scale, not to big and your not bending over to pick anything. The weather was the toughest aspect for sure, minus temperatures over night and then 25 Celsius by 11am means that my Canadian thermostat never really got used to the weather. 


I had worked and lived on the farm for about two months in a house with a German named Stephan. It was a great set up for us and sometimes only a short walk to work. Despite being extremely bored and land locked still managed to meet some great friends and see some of the surrounding landscape and a few national parks(Auburn River and Mt. Walsh). 

Picking was tough at times, and at times it was boring and hard to be away from the city and bike polo but overall it was a great experience to live outside my typical comfort zone. I will most definitely cherish these memories for a long time. 


~W