Farmer Rowlands

The farm house kitten

Well since the embarrassing F1 update, I have moved outta Melbourne and I'm living in the glorious backwards, bogan country town of Shepparton, which is a little fruit farming town round about a two and a half hour train ride outside of Melbourne. Most of you were aware I didn't want to do my second year visa work because the thought of another year away and another year of not doing my degree was a bit too much to handle. But the decision was made for me because immigration told Aus Post if I stayed it would be against the law, so all savings plans were completely blown out of the water. I have been forced now to work in a packing shed in order to get another visa so I can come back and save enough money to get a house when I eventually get back to England or Scotland – that flat I wanted has now been reduced to £15k. I WANT IT SO BAD!!!

So anyway, I packed my suitcase, sold my beloved only-played-twice-shit guitar, sold the furniture, had a good squeeze goodbye of Andrew and a few drinks with my gay following, and said cheerio to my Melbourne in search of the easy country life.

Example of Nick's bonfire skills

Amusing romantic ideas of the easy country life though were shattered on day one. My god.. the work in this shed is hard. I am packing apples on a factory conveyor belt and living in a house with 25 other girls – most of whom are lovely and hopefully I am in the process of making some of those friends for life types that I seem to pick up along the way. And there is another Northerner here!! She's from Manchester and completely on the same wave length which is an absolute relief – I was haunted by the hideous idea that my time would be entirely spent with the Irish girls watching The Kardashians (or what ever/who ever that is). She sought me out through the crowd of accents to announce she too liked a “brew and a biccy” and had “owt and nowt ta do”. 

The landlord is fantastic and makes and pays for huge BBQ's for us, sets up bonfires and does other little house stuff. He is funny and determined which I like in a guy – he would be fit to me if he wasn't clearly taking steroids in the gym and wasn't 56ish. 

Me and the kitten. There was love there

My new resting place is on the top of the most squeakiest, unsecured and unpredictably unstable bunk bed in the world - the other day I tried to climb the ladder and hop into bed but I failed in dramatically epic proportions.

Basically what happened is the whole bed swayed towards me as I climbed, I lost my footing and had to leaver myself up using just my weakling arms. Because the arms weren't sufficient for the task of craning my giant arse, I used my knees but caught them on the side of the mattress. This resulted in the mattress being lifted in the air as I was falling back down, my head somehow got wedged between frame and mattress, my right arm was now where the left arm was and like a chimpanzee, my right leg had swung up to wrap around the top bar with the left leg just dangling there like a dead appendage. The right leg landing on the mattress only forced it down so there was now pressure on my trapped skull. From then on, probably due to a short period of oxygen shortage to my brain from mattress squashing, I can't quite remember what happened but I had miraculously escaped the clutches of the mattress frame prison and was on my back on the bed. It all happened very quickly but slowly enough for the two girls in the room to stop talking, look up from the laptop to watch what was happening and let their mouths drop in a “Oh God should we help?” expression.

Farm house puppy

Horror for someone who had only been living there around four days. Maybe three weeks in that would have been something to laugh about but no, they were polite enough not to snigger and just ask if I was OK. I tamely and exhaustedly replied with just a “yeah. Bent my nail back a bit though” before maintaining a self preserving silence. I didn't want further shame to descend upon me by saying my ears were dented into the shape of the slats under the mattress.

Oh and my back is completely fucked from work- I am in total agony.

The first day on the job was interesting, but also deathly dull at the same time– I was shown how to pack apples into punnets and was advised what was and wasn't a good apple. You would think this would be really obvious wouldn't you?.. it is not! I did not realise apples could get sunburnt!! And I did not realise sunburnt apples were not put into punnets. And you have to work at the speed of light in order to put the apples into punnets because they just spew out at you from the machine like a broken toffee vending machine (how amazing would that actually be, particularly if the toffee was ecalires. Mmm.) You have like 8 seconds to check the apples and then put eight good ones in. Checking eight apples all over, top and bottom and all sides in 9 seconds is a proper skill guys and it really does take practice. When I was working in the second shed, the supervisors name was Evie. She is some form of Asian (I think Chinese) and only learnt to speak English when she moved here four years ago, so as you can imagine it's not quite fluent and has that typical Asian twang.. for example for apple she says apoo, and bruise she says bloos, and of course very is said velly.

Sunset on the farm

Evie was checking over the apples I had packed and was very sweetly showing me which ones were bruised and had been missed. I thought I was getting really good and quick at it, now packing a punnet in around 7 seconds, when she brought over an apple I really should have picked up... She brought it over, held it up to the light which she definitely didn't need to do and said “this apoo, velly bad. Velly bad apoo you see?”. And I had to nod, make the agreeing mmhmm sound and accept that yes, yes this apple that not only had a massive bruise but was also cut in half and had a dead animal attached to it was indeed, as she suggested, a velly bad apoo. I slowed back down to the 9 seconds so as not to avoid a law suit in the future.

I remember on the first line on the first day I was of course being very cautious, making sure my punnets were beautifully presented with only the very best apples in them I would pick up an apple, turn it around a few times and say “ooh yes that's a good one, I will save that one for the top of the pile and display its shiny red side proudly.” I'd pick another and um and ar over it “.. is that a bit of sunburn? Hmm. I will keep that one and put it on the bottom maybe. Oooh this ones very bruised yeah we won't keep that one. Traaa laa laaa..” All was very relaxed until I heard this “thump thump thumpthumpTHUMP!!” I look up to see the girl I live with running towards me pointing and in a very fast Irish accent shouting “JUSTFUCKEM'INABOXXXX!!!!”

I looked over following her point and there, casting an actual shadow over my face was a pyramid of apples coming towards me on the conveyor belt. It turns out you can't really take your time to decide on the quality of apple. The deal is you you pick 5 up in your hands, turn them over and if you see nothing bad, FUCKEMINABOX! The only problem there is, you will of course miss some bruises and when they are quality checked by the bosses, it makes you look bad, like the dead animal example above. Which pisses me off immensely because you have 9 seconds to look at and pack a punnet of 8 apples but they take 20 seconds to look at 1 apple, even lifting it towards the light for a proper look and decide whether or not it's good enough. 

Sunrise on the farm

I was watching one of the girls pack and she went from human to octopus before my eyes. Her hands were moving so quickly that she no longer had hands but apple claws.

Now the job is not only very hard physically on my back, but it is SENSATIONALLY boring. No matter how hard you try to concentrate on the apoos, your mind wanders. Armed with the new information that apples could get sunburnt, I have spent quite a considerable amount of time thinking about how I might invent an organic chemical free apple sunscreen. I've imagined a fake interview with the Dragons, mulled over my pitch to them and given hefty amounts of time to think about how much money I could SO make on apple sunscreen and what I would spend it on.

How I long to own the GBR for $600k

I complain away but really but really, it pays. Although shite compared to Post wages, it's great compared to an actual in the field picking job. And the house is nice I guess. It needs some massive make overing and there are no drawers so all of our clothes are just scattered on the floor and stuffed into suitcases. Which is perfect for red backs and white tails to hide in. I have suggested getting some drawers but Nick who owns the place doesn't want to spend money getting any... even though he gets $3900 A WEEK from the house. That's $202,800.00 a year from a house. How amazing is that?? If that was me, I would make bloody well sure the place was looked after.. the bathroom needs major work doing to it, the kitchen has actually fallen apart, the bunk beds are shoddy and as I said, we need drawers and wardrobes.

Winning a game of Aussie monopoly

Well, there are 73 days to go to get my second visa. It seems oh so far away but this time next week, I will have 66 and once it's done, I can come back for a year, work another collections job for the amazing money and then I will have saved up enough to buy a flat in Glasgow. Starting a career in midwifery mortgage and rent free will be nice so I guess it's worth the shit for that. 

Right I guess I'm going to go.. It's Easter weekend so I enjoying an almost empty house and I intend to eat a family sized pizza in just a moment. Have a lovely Easter guys! And I hope you enjoy the pictures of the farm attached :)