The cotton harvesters

As it seems to happen to us this time in Australia, we found a new job quite quickly. As soon as we decided that ’now we are going to start looking for a job seriously’, Erik found an ad, that seemed to have something to do with his skills base and since we did not have any direction or plans as to where we wanted to go next, we decided to drive 500km to a job interviw in Moree. So the next day after getting there, Erik disappeared for four hours for his interview and when he got back, he said ’I basically took the job. I am going two hours south from here tomorrow for an unknown period. And you have work tomorrow as well. The future of whether you will get a job in the same place is uncler though’. So Erik flew off the next morning (quite literally, as the new boss  flew him to the other town in a small plane) to start the job as a ’go get’ at a cotton harvesting company. On the field, he is the guy who helps doing the maintenance to the huge picking machines and supplies them with fuel, water, and whatever else is needed. while the picking is going on, the people driving the pickers do not have time off during daylight hours, so he often also does the grocery shopping etc).

About  my first day of work... everyone who has been in Australia, especially in rural or remote areas of Australia have encountered big machines being transported from one place to another and they always have the escort cars in the front and in the back with big signs ’oversize load ahead’ on them. So on my first day I was the one driving the escort car on the back, while one of the pickers (that covers two lanes of the road... which means the whole road in these areas) was being transported from one town to another. I guess they were satisfied enough with me (despite all the prejudice looks that I got for being a small girl with dreadlocks) because the next day, I was told to pack my things and drive to the same place that Erik was sent to (near Walgett, who wants to follow us on the map) because they were putting me in a tractor. I think I mentioned in my last post that I just recently started driving a car.... oh well...

Anyways, the pickers go over the fields and spit out huge bales of cotton, which look like... you know when you were a kid and there were no cotton pads in anybodies household. You  just had rolls of cotton where you had to tear a piece out of. Well the cotton bales are like that roll of cotton wool, only they are 2,5 tonnes heavy and quite big. I bring them out of the field with a tractor (and a ’bale grabber’attached to it) and put them neatly in rows by the fields in sets of twelve bales.Before I even sat into the tractor, I had heard from four-five people about eight times in total that ’whatever you do, do not break the bales’. So on my first day I was quite worried about that. But so far (three weeks and 900 bales later) it has been a clean run. When the picking is going on then our work starts at 6.30 in the morning and goes on until at least 6-7... sometimes later.

Our longest day so far was quite a marathon. I started grabbing the bales at Walgett at 6 in the morning (the pickers had already gone to the next place days ago with Erik and everyone else. I was still there because my tractor had broken down and I had to wait wor the spare part to arrive.) I knew that I had to finish the whole field on that day and also drive the tractor to the next place on the same day. It was going to start raining the next day and the farm I was on, really was not a place that you wanted to get stuck in when it rains. Their soil is mostly clay, so when it rains, the water stays on th ground for a while. The previous year when it had rained they could not reach the highway by anything else but a boat for three months. Of the 14km that separated them from public highway, 10km were under water. So yeah. Since I did not want to wait for the rain and tractors are not allowed on public roads after dark, I was whizzing around the field the whole morning like a lunatic, not even stopping for five minutes. I finished at 1pm, cleaned the tractor a bit (it was covered in pieces of cotton plants and cotton) and hit the road. I drove all the way to the next place (again without any stopping for breaks) on side roads, full of kangaroos, sheep and cows but no people going max 40km an hour, because that was the fastest that my tractor goes... which is quite fast for a tractor. I finally reached my destination by six o’clock (I was guided to the field, where one of the pickers from our company was, through a two-way radio because it wa alredy pitch black by then). The only other vehicle that I saw on the last hour of my journey was another tractor, with a guy in a cowboy hat waving at me. By that time I had been working for 12 hours straight without a break. I even ate my sandwitch while driving. So I casually started cleaning my tractor and was planning to finish my day (the boss said that he would pick me up from the field soon). But then I was asked if I could work some more, because everyone were afraid of  the rain and wanted to get as much done as possible before that (the quality of cotton deteriorates significally when it rains and so does the price). So I spent another couple of hours grabbing bales - I warned the boss that I was already seeing halucinations because of the fatigue and I was planning to work the rest of the night in slow motion, just in case. He was fine with that and said taht it was completely fair. So I finihed the field at 10pm, called the boss to ask, if he wanted me to do another field and got the orders to wait until I was picked up and driven home. Ten minutes later the boss came and said ’guess what. Someone has broken a bale and we have to pick it up today. So we drove to another farm (there were ten picking machines on the field in the middle of darkness, each one as big as a house). We picked up a bale, which is a very very sh***y job, because the only way you can pick it up is to do it piece by piece by hand and feed the small pieces of cotton back to the picking machine. And little pieces of cotton and other plant parts and dirt keeps flying around you, so if you do it without a face mask (which no one could locate in the middle of the night) then after you are finished, everything in your throat and behind your nose is covered with cotton fibres and much much more.

 After we had done that, me and Erik were allowed to go home fortunately (he had been on the big field with all the pickers the whole day and pevious days), we were just asked to transport a big water tank on a trailer back back to the workshop. So we got back to Moree at midnight, after an 18-hour workday and decided to get something to eat. As it happens, the only place to do that, is McDonalds. So we decided to go there. After we had ordered, we encountered a small trouble. With our brains fried by the overworking we had forgotten about the little detail of the big trailer with a water tank behind our car. Well... we only got stuck for a little while and had to reverse out and I had to explain at all the next drivethrough windows, why I was not in my car (it is not allowed to walk through a drive-through in Australia). In the end, most of the workers and other customers (who also had to back out of the drive-through to let us out) were very interested in who we were and what we were doing and in the end cheering for us when we got our food.

After that day there have been many days working in the workshop in Moree, as we can not go on the fields when it is wet. By now we have cleaned and serviced all the machinery and have started reorganizing and bettering the shed (covered from head t tow in different oils and fuels at the end of the days) . We even went out to the field for one day, before it rained again tonight. So now we are waiting for the fields to dry out again (some more fixing stuff in the workshop) to get back in the action. The time flies much faster on the field than it does here.

We also live at the workshop (which is a big shed with lots of tools and parts and a break room, shower etc.) We live in a tent and have put up a large tarp that keeps away the rain. It is nothing fancy, but it would be stupid to pay for a hotel room or sth if we only come ’home’ to sleep on picking days. Since there is not much time to cook even, we have started to discover the world of frozen food. I must admit, some frozen food is not as bad as I would have thought, but whenever I have the chance (like the day off today) I still like making fresh food. Some other workers live here as well, but thay are a bit better off at their caravans.

We are counting the days to going to the next continent. The job right now is a good money boost for our travels and we do appreciate it a lot (in four days of working here I earned the same money as I earned being a teacher in Estonia in a whole month... and that was with all the bonuses and pay rises that I have gotten back there). But a change of scenery and culture is most welcome. Everyone who has been in South America is welcome to recommend any cool places and give other tips. We do not really plan ahead, so all suggestions are welcome .

Ps. The pictures are of a very bad quality because they are from my phone which is often covered in sand and oil etc. But I thought taht you understand what I am writing about a bit better if there is some visuakl aid. We’ll get better ones before leaving here. 

Transporting the picker

My tractor with the bale grabber

Fixing the picker in the dark

Erik helping to change the plastic wraps on the picker

Loading the picker on a seemingly tiny trailer

Our boss refuelling the plane before flying me to Walgett and landing beside a field on unsealed road after the sunset

Our camp

Big machines, big tools

Our life in Victoria (and travelling back North again)

I have not written a blog for so long that people are actually starting to talk to me on facebook to ask me, what I’m up to. So it’s probably time to write something to avoid this terrible burden. Just joking. I am still happy to talk to you... but you will generally have to be the person to start the conversation :D Usually when I’m travelling I just get so sucked in by the ’here and now’ that I just don’t bother keeping in contact with anyone. So it’s definitely me, not you. So don’t take it personally - I literally do not make the effort to write to anyone.

 Ok. So we have lived most of the time since I last wrote in Kinglake  which is about an hour away from Melbourne. To get to Kinglake, which is on top of a hill (about 700m from sea level), you need to take a very narrow and winding road with some quite scary curves with a view straight down from the cliffs. It is a tiny town, which has a shop (a really bad one with empty shelves, no choice and high prices), a pub, a pizza place, a fast food place, an op-shop (second hand), a petrol station and a library. We even met some hippies who are building an earthship, which is the first of its kind in Victoria. We occasionally tried to visit them and hang out, but they are always very busy building. 

Actually we lived about 5km out of town on Erik’s employers’ farm. We had an old small caravan, which was inside a big shed, because it was so old, that it would have  been  leaking rainwater otherwise. The shed used to hold 3000 rabbits, that our hosts used to grow. But now all the rabbits are gone and it was occupied by us and about 30 round hay bales. So technically it is the biggest place we have ever lived in. We had a little gas stove in the caravan, a fridge and some kitchen space in front of the caravan and a sink outside the shed. Our shower and toilet were outside so it was still a bit like camping, but much more comfortable. The best thing, however was the view. When you sit in front of our shed (which we very often did) you have a view over a big valley, with mountains on the other side. In the evenings the whole valley turns orange and pink, when the sun sets to the other side. In the mornings, the valley is usually filled with fog, which slowly rolls away when the sun, that rises from directly  the opposite  side of the valley, starts illuminating it with amazing colours.

I worked in a little eco-friendly winery about 15km from where we lived. I was the only paid worker of the place and spent my days doing various tasks in the vineyard or the winery. For example in the vineyard I helped to prepare the vines before picking (moving the wires that the vines lean against, tucking in the vines that had come out, dropping bad fruit, cutting away the shoots, taking off and putting on nets). In the winery I helped with the wine making, the majority of which is... cleaning various containers.  We move the wine from big containers to barrels or sometimes smaller containers, from barrels back to containers, from barrels/containers to bottles and so on. An all the equipment needs to be hygenically clean after every use (with no bacteria or other small creatures living there) because when you get someone living in your wine that you don’t want there, then hundreds of litres can go to waste. So pretty variable job actually with amazing views.

Most people probably don’t know but I got my drivers license just before leaving Australia. And I have happily let Erik drive the whole time, because I don’t really like driving either. Or I have always been very insecure about it and not wanting to do it at all. Well, on the cattle station I already had to drive a little. It was an old ute, that didn’t have third gear, but it did not really matter because all the roads were so sandy anyway that you would have gotten bogged if you tried to use a higher gear. But it was a good practice for me, because I finally got somewhat comfortable with using gears and driving in general, without having the pressure of traffic. But  when I started  working  away from where I lived, I have finally had to start driving. It is still scary (although the road that I took to work is not nearly as windy, narrow and steep as the other side of the hill), but I am finally becoming a ’real grown up’ person who can drive a car, as long as I don’t have to drive into a bigger town... I’ll get there but not just yet :D. Anyways the views are just amazing all the way from home to work, with vineyards and hills and fields and hot air balloons in the air almost every morning.

Erik works in the forest most of the days. He and his boss are doing forest regrowth surveys. That means that they come back to the coup that has been harvested, about two years later  to check if there is enough regrowth. That basically means going up and down the coup, stopping every 20 metres and then inserting the data into a gps-device, whether the spot is ’stocked’ or ’unstocked’, that means that they write down if there are enough of the seedlings that they are looking for and if not, then what is the reason for it (a quite simplified explanation, but he can tell you about it himself). I went with him one day to see what he is doing and after two hours I was bright red in my face and soaking wet. He did tell me in the beginning already that it is not just walking back and forth, but I had to experience it myself to believe it. Firstly, the ground is not flat or even reasonably semiflat – it is going up and down steep hills all the time. Secondly, when a person generally walks in the forest, he either has some small tracks of he will at least go around bigger the objects. That is not the case here, as they went straight through or over whatever they had in front of them. And thirdly (which I fortunately I did not see), very often the plants are spiky and horrible and a much higher bush than you are.

We were both very lucky with our bosses . Mine were  a bit posh nature admirerers, who try to do things as naturally as possible. They have travelled quite a bit (even had a very short stay in Estonia) and are sweet people with a broad horizon. (it can sometimes be frustrating to meet the Australians who have a very limited view of the world, eat only steak without any seasoning  and chips, and whose only travels have taken them to Bali). Getting a bottle or two of good wine every now and again adds a bonus (although, as I have mostly been more of a 5-dollar bottle buyer, I feel like I probably can’t appreciate their 45’dollar ones enough). Erik’s boss’s family, on the other hand, have travelled through almost every remote place in Australia. They had a 4WD adventure company when they were younger so they took people through the deserts and remote bushlands on a regular bases. But they are not the kind of people who would just settle with doing the same route the same way every time. So they always found challenges, for example going to places during floods or driving 2WD cars instead of 4WD ones on tracks (or very often without any tracks) that other people didn’t even dare to take on. We invited our bosses and some of their friends to our place for the independence day of Estonia and made them potato salad (the Estonian version), sašlõkk, devilled eggs, lack bread with herring and offered them Vana Tallinn (Erik’s bosses wife liked it so much that she ordered a box of it from Estonia). So had a very nice night with bonfire and nice people.

 And since we are both the only worker of our place, it is very easy to arrange and rearrange or working schedule. We can basically always take a day off or start when we want. That does not mean that we barely work or take advantage of it too much. On most days we still go from 8 to 5 but we do use the possibility to have some long weekends when we want to do something. For example we had a trip to go surfing and to the Grampians national park with two other Estonian couples. And last weekend we had a trip to Tasmania. We actually, at one point, had plans to go there in January and find a job there. But since we do not think ahead much, we discovered that it would cost us 800dollars and a month of waiting to get there with our car. But since we had heard so many good things about it and it was the only Australian state besides Canberra that we hadn’t visited then we decided to go there as well.

Since we are all about saving money (we actually spend money on other things, so we’re trying to even it out) we found a couchsurfing family, booked a rental car and were off. We were staying with a 60-something-year-old couple (Chinese and Aussie) just across the bay from Hobart. So we actually had a view of Hobart and mount Wellington from out bedroom window. And our hosts were so nice, that when they heard that my birthday was coming up, then we arrived back ’home’ to the smell of Rhubarb cake, that had been done following the same recipe as Estonian grandmothers do (our host had searched for the recipe on the internet).

Anyways, we discovered a small fraction of the amazing island (we only had 3,5 days) in our little rental car which was a very different driving experience  - the car actually picked up speed fast and didn’t rock, sway and rattle like our own car. Tasmania has a very diverse landscape (already in the small fraction that we saw), with hills and bays and peninsulas and rivers and lakes. There is a big part of the island (almost a quarter) that is totally inhabited, has no roads going into it and no people living there. The rest of the population of the island, is shattered around in small towns and villages, the biggest one being Hobart, with almost 200,000 people. There are steep rocks sometimes hiding  caves and beautiful beaches, the peninsulas occasionally look like you are in Sweden. That is, until you start looking closely, then you see that the plants are very different. The colours are much brighter and fresher than in the mainland and the climate is strange. Since the biggest known hole in the Ozone layer is just above Tassie, then it is hot there in 18 degrees already.

We had heard from a friend of ours that Hobart has a pretty good live music scene and he recommended us two punk bands to go and see, if we get the chance. We found out that one of them was performing on the Saturday we were there, so having no knowledge about Hobart nightlife, we headed to Bristol Hotel (where the band was supposed to perform the net day) on the day before, hoping to find likeminded people. That had been quite hard in our travels because we have mostly been in country towns (or out of towns) with occasional visits to Melbourne, which has just been too big for us to find our place. Bristol Hotel was a mixture of Zavood, Genialistide klubi and Kroks. It had this unpolished and rugged look (many Aussie places just do not have a nice atmosphere) but it was cozy. The floors were a bit sticky, the people were a bit strange (a healthy mixture of people from alternative styles), the security guard did not pay much attention to what you were doing unless you were causing trouble and the atmosphere was to our liking. One room had a black metal concert going on (faces painted white and black and all) and the other room had live hip hop performances. We left just before the bands were getting better because the beer was starting to taste too good considering that we had come with our little car (it is theoretically allowed to have one mid-strength  beer an hour is Australia). 

The next day we came back with high hopes. The concert was taking some time to start. We took saw a band come on and decided that it was probably not the band that we came to see, because it was more of a college pop-rock band with slight hints of punk music. And I thought I was being paranoid when people were gathering before the gig and I didn’t even see even one mohawk (there had been at least one the previous evening) and people seemed to be a bit too ’fashionably’ dressed. Well... it turned out that the ’college rock’ band was the punk band that we had come to listen. And the main performer, that I had been pretty excited about too because they had been described as mixing punk music with country and emo music... they were the living copy of Foo Fighters. Not that I have anything against Foo Fighters... but that was not what I was expecting. It was still a fun night and all but I was looking for something more raw. The night was still fun and Hobart does have a pretty colourful night life and different options. I was a bit annoyed by a gay guy, who was a bit too absorbed by being gay. I think it is a bit sad, if your sexual orientation is the only thing that defines you enough so that you have to mention in in every third sentence and only talk about that. Yes, thanks. I already understood you are gay the first five times you mentioned that, would you like to reply to any topic without bringing it up.

Anyways, Tasmania is the first and probably the only state in Australia that I would actually like to live in. I am not saying that it is my favourite, because  I still love the wildness of the North West of Australia a bit more. But I would never want to live in the West for the rest of my life. In Tasmania with its rugged and gorgeous nature and just the right blend of culture in the Capital... I really would not mind.

We planned to depart Kinglake on the Easter weekend. I am actually glad that we didn’t because the roads were just so full of people who were all going Easter-camping that the main highways had the average speed of 20kph and all the lunatics with their trucks, boats, caravans and different vehicles that did not even look like they were supposed to be on roads. Anyways we had to postpone our departure mainly because a very important bolt in our engine decided to break into two pieces and in order to get it out, the whole engine had to be taken out. So while Erik spent 3,5 days (starting with the sunrise and finishing way after the sunset) days getting out the engine and putting it back (with the occasional help of his boss/our host) and I drove around a rental car, earning just enough to cover our living-costs, the repair costs and the price of the rental car while doing so.

Leaving Kinglake was a bit sad because  we had to leave all the animals behind again (and well... the people also). We had a little (it took us almost 24 hours) d-tour to buy some moonshine for the road from an aquaintance, went camping on top of the Great dividing range (which we had to go over at least five times on our way north), spent another night with our former hosts and left Victoria behind us. We tried to meet some friends in Sydney (th guys that we lived with when we were in Sydney four years ago) -  started making the arrangements almost two weeks beforehand and told them that we were only stopping in the city to meet them.  When we got there then the two of them that we had managed to contact were out of town camping so we decided to wait one more day. The next time we did not hear anything from them so we decided to leave, feeling quite down.

Moving up north we visited some Estonian friends, Guide, Kaari and Raimond,who live currently in Tamworth - gave them a call the previous day and just arrived the next...no problems. We spent two nights at their place, catching up and just enjoying living in a real house for a while.

We met up Jaanika and Karl near Byron Bay – they were renting a room in a very hippie house. I love hippies and all but sometimes things can be a bit too much as well. In addition to the three actual bedrooms, there were people living in front of the hous in a van, in a ’room’ that had been crated at the back of the living room with the help of some cupboards, one (in the end two) people were living on the terrace under some mosciyo nets and all the children (at least four of them but you never know), were sleeping on the living room floor , the door of which, that was leading outside to the terrace was always open, even during the night, because one of the head-hippies, who was also the mother of most of the children, said that the energy does not move otherwise. Jaanika cleaned the house three times a day (I can’t even imagine what that place looked like before she moved in and started cleaning), if you left your food in any of the common areas (the kitchen cupboard for example) then it had a big chance of disappearing. And they even asked if we could contribute to make up for our living there (we slept in Jaanika and Karl’s room, Erik made some video editing for one of them and when we took J&K with us for two days then they also took new people into the room that had already been booked for in addition to all the wine and other stuff that we shared with them), which we really didn’t feel they deserved.

But near Byron we went surfing for the second time...the first time I probably didn’t even write about.... But to sum things up: I managed to get one nice long slide on the board a once each time of surfing but I was on my hands and knees... no sign of getting up on the board. Erik got up a few  times the first time already and therefore did even better the second time. We visited Nimbin again as well and stayed a few nights. Nimbin is the first and only town that I have been in during my life, where the main place in the town that has any action (people and music etc) in the evening does not serve alcohol. Imagine a place (a cafe? A bar?) in Estonia that is popular in the evenings without serving alcohol... Nimbin was created when in the 70s (maybe it was 60s) the local greenies celebrated the fact that they had successfully managed to stop logging in the region and decided to celebrate it with a festival. Instead of the festival ending, more and more people came and in the end there were some people who decided that they will stay for good.

We went camping again for a few days with J&K. Of course we had to choose a camping place with questionable road conditions as the rain clouds were gathering so we had to pull their car out of the muddy road when we wanted to leave. Right now we are in Moree caravan park and started looking for a new job. We are in a bit of a hurry because our visa ends at the beginning of July and we do not have much time left here.

By now we are getting a bit tired of the easiness and the level of control in Australia so we are already looking forward to South America a lot. Our second year in Australia has also been good because we already know how things work and it is quite easy to find our way here. I have learned about myself a lot and have learned to analyse myself and discovered some new things about me. I guess the relative easiness of our travels here have made it possible - there is no actual question of figuring out the society and life out around here.  With that I am not saying that I would not like to discover Australia more There are surely more amazing places here that we have not seen . it is just such a big country. But South America will be full of challenges again. At first we were planning to buy a car in Chile but now we decided that we are distancing ourselves from the locals too much if we do that. Without a car we will have much less possibilities to discover some places by ourselves but I do believe that we will get to know the people and the culture very well and we will get to go to some places that we couldn't even find without some local tips.