Insane in the Membrane

Over our first couple of weeks in Mackay, we've had several moments of wondering what the hell we've gotten ourselves in for, but are slowly getting the hang of the tours and finding little gems around the place that possibly would've taken us months to find otherwise. I was pretty underwhelmed by Mackay at first but can see that it does have some merits in the proliferation of art deco architecture, plenty of beaches and gorgeous surrounding areas. It's also pretty flat (good for cycling) and has more charity shops than Stanthorpe, though that it getting tricky. I'm just about needing to adopt a one-in, one-out policy with clothes now if they are all going to fit in the available space, but did cheat this week by buying two tops and only giving away one. I'm well aware however, that I am fast approaching critical mass.

We both passed our driving tests and have also been authorised to take passengers. Woohoo! We now both feel confident doing the sugar mill tours and will probably only do one more of our respective day tours before we do them on our own. I will be doing the city tours and Bryn has two tours, cos he's got a bigger brain, which are to Cape Hillsborough to see wallabies on the beach and Eungela Rainforest for platypus spotting. Sadly I won't be able to tag along and see him do his best David Attenborough, as I'll be working myself, so I'll have to imagine it along with you.

Unfortunately, to be a knowledgeable guide you need to memorise a huge amount of figures if you are to have any chance of sharing general history or trivia, something I am useless at unless I can find a clear pattern of association, so I'm spending an inordinate amount of time trying to remember dates, dimensions and other assorted numbers. In previous jobs, I've always been caught out unable to remember specific targets on the spot, so I'm trying to stay positive and hope that it might help me develop a better system for remembering numbers. :o~ I'm trying to resist the temptation to offer to do an analysis on the business, cos I'm not convinced it would be welcome if uninvited, but it's so easy to spot potential areas for improvement on first encounters.

But brain frying aside, it's so very lovely to be wearing summer clothes again, particularly knowing that it's winter. I can't imagine what it's like here in summer and am reticent to find out first hand, but all going well by then we'll be heading in the direction of Tassie. Hmm.. now if I got rid of some winter clothes, I could probably fit a lot more summer things in...

One lump or two 19/05/09

It's amazing how things work out; one minute we are wondering and stressing over what/where/ how the next bit of the journey is going to happen and whether or not we'll be able to find work, when an email appears out of the blue from one of the emails that was sent last month enquiring if we would still be interested in a tour guiding job in Mackay...... errr now let me think. YES!

So after a few phone calls and an agonizing few days wait, we have the job if we can sort out our Light Rigid vehicle licenses and driver authorisation to carry passengers and so we have upped sticks said goodbye to our friends and left Stanthorpe via the medical centre for a medical and the Queensland transport centre to submit the forms and book our tests in Mackay.

The jobs are as tour guides to the famous Fairleigh sugar mill in Mackay which sounds so exciting, truly it does after 3 month of apple picking anything would sound exciting. One of us will be a driver (hopefully me (Bryn) if I pass the driving test) and the other will be the guide and we should be working about 30-40 hours a week depending on the tourist season and as the big recession is now looming over here it may be less who is to know.
The good thing is that we have work and it's got us out of Stanthorpe which was freezing between sunset and sunrise (-4C the other day EEEK) and are heading to warmer climates. So now we are currently heading north and have camped in Chinchilla for the night by a weir (it may be lovely but it's too dark to see so will have to wait till the morning).

The Choices We Make

Over the last week we’ve had a couple of instances where we have come face to face with the financial implications of our choice. We met a friend of a friend who is a business analyst and has the benefits of the comfortable lifestyle that level of income brings – great inner-city apartment, new car, new mac…. We also had a very interesting chat with a Stanthorpe engineer about the amount of hidden money in this town and how different the relationship is when you are working with a grower as a business partner rather than a seasonal employee.

Although this choice was never about the money and I know we won’t be doing this forever, it was still somewhat confronting. I had the whole gamut of associated feelings - felt the desire for material things, worried about not saving for retirement, missed the city lifestyle, worried about how we are going to pull together the money we need to do the necessary and costly work the van will soon need (engine rebuild and rust removal/respray), speculation over how much more effectively we might be able to pursue our interest in permaculture if we had the money to do the courses and have a garden of our own to play with, etc. etc… I even went as far as circling jobs I could apply for in the weekend paper and found a significant number of jobs that were both suitable and paying good salaries. Once I reached that point, I realised that I wasn’t really serious about settling down with a real job just yet, so I’m fine about it now – but what a ride!

I have been slowly chipping away at the idea of starting a business consultancy while on the road, as I would really enjoy applying my skills to helping small business proprietors to save money and improve their working practices, but there’s a fair bit of groundwork to do before I can get that started.

Anyway, there are more pressing issues at hand right now. Our apple picking job finishes at the end of next week and so far we don’t have a new job to go to. We’d like to chase the sun and head North, but nobody we’ve called so far has definite work for us. Timbercorp, a major agriculture investment company, has gone bust and all associated farms have been forced to cease operating until each project has been assessed and deemed financially viable by the administrators. This seems to have limited the availability of work considerably right now. There is a reasonable chance we’d get work if we traveled to certain towns with crops due for harvesting but we cannot claim any travel or work related expenses against our tax unless we can evidence that the work is pre-arranged. Hmm.. a quandary of a pickle!

We are off to Jeff & Katrina’s block of land today for one last weekend of bonfires before we all head off in our various directions, so I’d better get cracking with some more phone calls before we head out. We have spent several weekends out on the block with various people, below are a couple of Bryn's pics from there. It really is a beautiful place!

Ahh the serenity....

Today was, quite frankly, a fantastic day! We are picking apples again on the farm well-known around town as the best apple farm to work for in Stanthorpe. The boss is our age and very easy going, the farm is well-maintained so the trees are pruned well, making picking a breeze, we only pick what we can reach from the ground, so no cumbersome ladder work, and we are being paid hourly so we don't have to worry about picking a certain number of bins each day.

The weather in the morning was perfect - gently warm and sunny but not too hot, white fluffy clouds and trees with a good amount of fruit on them. I saw a couple of black cockatoos flying around nearby with their screeching that sounds almost prehistoric, and later on my curiosity got the better of me and I followed the sound of a large group of very excited miner birds to find a brown owl staring down at me from an apple tree.

I managed to tear my second pair of work trousers quite spectacularly up the bum by squatting down to reach some apples on a low branch, which although inconvenient, forcing me to wear my waterproof jacket around my waist to protect my modesty, was pretty funny. Bryn swears that I am getting thinner from picking but armed with another shining example like that, I beg to differ, though in all fairness, I had bought both pairs of trousers at charity shops at least 2yrs ago so they had to go sometime.

During our morning tea break, sat out with our mates Bob & Emi eating the delicious banana and date cake I made yesterday, a mob of about 15-20 kangaroos came bounding through the orchard. It quickly became clear from their behaviour that we were sitting across their usual path (they are very habitual in their movements) which freaked them out a bit and sent them off in all directions trying to get past us through the trees towards their next grazing spot. Watching such a big group so close up was brilliant!

Shortly after lunch clouds started to form and the rain came down pretty hard, causing all work to stop for the day as wet apples bruise far more easily than normal. Of course we were fully prepared with waterproofs to keep ourselves dry, though putting on my jacket meant the big tear in the bum of my trousers was out in view for all to see. Whoops!

So we were finished work by 2:30pm, giving us time to head into town and work through a short but satisfying list of things we needed to do, including visiting the two charity shops in town for new work trousers, and heading home for rest and relaxation. Ahh...

Some days can be tough, but today was brilliant fun!

All mimsy were the borogoves

So we had a weeks break from work which included a trip to Brisbane where we went hither and dither buying things we needed such as a deep cycle battery and dumping stuff that we didn't need with the rest of our belongings in storage.
Then celebrated Joey's 40th birthday on the Saturday which included both of us playing some tunes which we very much enjoyed (so much so that the decks are now in the boot of the van :) ).
We finally managed to pull ourselves free of the gravitational pull of Brisbane on Monday and would like to thank everyone who has put us up or put up with us.

Whilst on the way home we had a text from the job agent about a starting work the next day.... result!
So we our now doing strawberry runners which basically involves sorting out the good plants from the bad in a big shed along with 300 other people. We get paid between $5.55-$7.55 (depending on the variety) per crate and a crate holds 4 bundles of 25 and need to get about 25 to be earning enough but it has been a slow start and have both been suffering with back problems from standing on concrete all day.

We spent last saturday night and all of sunday at Jeff & Katrina block of land and we have started helping them get it ready for Jeff's 40th which is going to be over Easter more details to follow.

Doth gire and gimble

We’ve quit!!! YAY! Basically we ran out of good apple trees and had to go back to trees that we had already colour picked (colour picking is taking just the ripe fruit off the trees) .We gave it a go yesterday but only manage to pick 4 bins between us in 5 hours which was exhausting and soul destroying climbing up trees for 5-10 apples.
We aren’t too worried as there seems to be a lot of other work around and it gives us a break from all the hard graft and getting up at 5:30am.

Reading through the blog it seems like we have done nothing but work and sleep in the last month which isn’t true as we have gone on little adventures most weekends so I’ll try to fill in a few places now.

On the 28th February for our wedding anniversary we went a couple of hours north and camped at a site called Bestbrook which is mix of farm/stables with chalets and camping down by a creek.
We went horse riding which was Bel’s first ever time on a horse and my first time for 20yrs. It was a very gentle introduction except Bel's horse knew who was really boss so she had little control but the horse knew where it was going anyway and basically we got led around for a couple of hours along a creek and then in to the eucalyptus forest which was most pleasant and only left me slightly saddle sore for the next couple of days.

In the evening we had a meal at the main house (hmmm steak) and end up chatting to the owner and his friend Barney till late, then went back to the campsite with Barney to sit by the campfire we had prepared earlier in true Blue Peter fashion. Whilst talking to Barney, it turned out that Bel had worked for one of his mates many years ago so they gabbled on whilst I stared at the amazing array of stars.
The next day Barney drove us in his 4WD to the top of the hill to see the view down the valley which was awesome except for the combination of a hangover with the bumpy ride.

It was a great break away and left us feeling very energised.

For my birthday we went with friends Jeff & Katrina to the Steakhouse across the road for dinner which was lovely but subdued as it was a school night. Yummy more steak…. If there is one thing they do right here it's the steaks…..:drool:


Last Saturday we went off to J & K's plot of land which they bought last year, about 20Kms west of Stanthorpe. We had a very lovely evening around the camp fire with another couple Bob & Emmie who introduced me to campfire cooking (garlic mushrooms wrapped in foil & cooked on hot coals are superb) and then later Bel jammed on the trumpet (the nearest neighbour is a good few Kms away) with Bob on guitar & djeme.
It's a beautiful spot and J&K are planning to build a house on it so I have my first project as an eco designer helping them with the design.

Uphill struggles

OK, so the first week of picking was hell. Especially for Bryn cos he had to put up with me whinging about how hard it was. A couple of weeks later, when we were comfortable with it, we went from being paid hourly to contract. Contract means you are paid a piece rate, in our case $30 for a bin that is about a metre cubed, so we now have to fill 5 bins a day each to match our hourly rate, though while paid hourly managed about 3.

It's amazing how you can rise to the challenge when there are financial implications. On Monday we picked 13 between us without stretching ourselves too far and had reached a point where we were feeling pretty good about how well we were doing .. but then, right on cue, came the next challenge. Today we were moved to a new field where the trees are a lot taller than before, therefore requiring more time on ladders. This has slowed us down hugely and we only picked 9 between us and left feeling utterly frustrated. I know in a few days we will probably be coping with this as well as previous challenges but right now it seems to be a pretty tough call.

Anyway, that's about all I have the energy to write about today. Despite the hard yakka, we are enjoying being outdoors and being in touch with what goes on around us. In an office, you're very immune to the world outside.