Workplace 15 - A Country Life

This particular job was a little more remote than most. The commute was a beautiful scenic drive north of Brisbane and up to the Glasshouse mountains region. If you haven't been there you should really go check it out, takes about an hour to drive from Brisbane. And what was so incredible that I would break my normally strict job-snobbery rule of no commute longer than 15mins? Well I had been discussing fruit picking jobs with my beautiful and amazing friend Kim and she had somehow got us a job picking cherry tomatoes out there. Adventure!

We located the place eventually after leaving Brisbane far before normal wake up time, fruit pickers get up early apparently. And we got lost a couple of times. My new employer was a small fruit and veg store by the side of the road, run by the owners who also lived on site. The property also held a field of cherry tomato vines. I don't recall it being a large field but for two unexperienced teenage girls it was daunting enough.

Eager as always, we covered ourselves in hats and sunscreen (as well as the rest of our clothes ofcourse) and impatiently watched as Mr Man (I don't remember his name...) demonstrated how to locate the tomato, pick it without bruising it and put it into a bucket. You know, the technical stuff. 

And that's what we did. All day. It was hot, boring, dirty work and the only way to break the monotony was to sneakily throw the hard, green tomatoes at the other person. Looking back, it was fairly understandable that this behaviour was frowned upon. Having finally secured myself a physical, outdoor-sy job where I could use my hands and feel the sun on my back, I was exceptionally keen for the announcement of lunchtime.

Lunch! Well-earned, deserved, healthy appetite built up. It was awesome. The owners told us to grab lunch from the shop and they'd take it out of the pay for the day later on. I don't remember what we had for the main part of the lunch but there was definitely ice cream involved in there somewhere. Love ice cream!

We packed it in about mid afternoon pleading exhaustion and chronic boredom and received our, I must admit, disappointing pay. It was probably fair pay but for how wrecked I felt, it didn't seem worth it. We agreed that it was probably in everyone's best interest that we didn't come back the next day. I think Mr Man was less than impressed with our efforts as well. 

So back along the pretty scenic roads, smellier and dirtier then when we had seen it hours earlier. My most vivid memory of the whole day is off eating KFC on the way home and being so hungry that we didn't wash our hands first. Just looking at the burger being

 held in our filthy dirty hands, fingernails all black and crusty. We didn't even care. It was food. We went and washed our hands afterwards and laughed about how easily we could have done that first but it didn't occur to us.

My first and only time fruit picking. I'm most content to leave it to backpackers and country kids. 

Find yourself a fruit-picking job if you like working outdoors and want to keep fit, apparently it's excellent money at some places and you will definitely sleep well at night.

Those more suited to office jobs or who dislike dirt would not enjoy this job at all.