Coffs Harbour update

Saturday 1st – Friday 6th November The weekend was short and was spent watching badly scratched DVD rentals. A little shopping was done in town where a strap on – pocket bin was brought for the car. On the packaging, underneath the photo of the bin in use (filled with rubbish) there was a note saying 'contents not included'. Small and Tall also stopped briefly in the Bongil Bongil National Park. A nice forest with a supposed big wild Koala population which Tall and Small saw none of. Back at the caravan site there was still no wireless Internet, the scruffy neighbor's dog still barked at them through the fence and heaving buckets of water at it just made it yelp and then carry on. Orange beetles started appearing, Tall one noticed them at his feet in the shower and counted seven, at night time they reappeared hammering on the car windshield to get to the light of the television screen, this place was hardly bliss and it would get worse.... They visited the local, eccentric Fresh Produce store. To which the nut case woman running it greeted Small one by screeching here is my best customer... did you know we also sell meat??!! Small one then watched as she pissed off each customer in turn by asking what they were having for dinner. Some did not respond and just waited for their change, the lady was un-phased and just retorted cheerily deranged, “have a good evening then thanks very much!”. Tall and Small did not want to go there again as the lady never shut up. Back at the caravan site that night a man's voice came from the dark outside the car saying “hello? Hello?”. Tall and Small wondered who it was and said “hello? Yes?”. The un-seen person the other side of the net curtain answered “what you guys up to?”. Tall one responded, “what do you want?”. He said he was curious. Tall and Small looked grimly at each other. Tall one put his head outside the net curtains to see it was the aboriginal guy who camped in a tent on his own in the middle of the field. He was standing swaying and holding bottles of VB Beer. Through his liquor breath he wanted to know if we were fruit picking, he thought we were, he thought what else would we be doing, and he thought that's it, we must be fruit picking, so he guessed right. Tall one politely said “uh-huh” in response to his rambling and said, 'well goodnight then?' and closed the camper van door. Ever since they have avoided his tent like the plague and never even made eye contact. Back to work on Monday and eight backpackers were brought in to help from a nearby hostel. Mostly Germans, one guy called Randy had a third nipple on his ear lobe...??!! Another guy camp as Christmas wore spectaculars as large as jam jars and had his white socks pulled right up to his knees below his tight orange shorts. There was also a little Asian lad who was terrible at picking, with half as many trays given in as everyone else, Bev had told Tall one he would be fired the next day. A strange middle aged man had also turned up dressed in a business suit and displaying his buisness card with his own Photography business – asking if there was any blueberry picking work for him. Bev told us later that he had been phoning for months asking for the work, but she had been putting him off as last year he was mixed up with drugs with two other pickers. Tall one and Small one continued to rotate on who stayed in the cooled Machine room and who went out on the quad 'gator' bike to collect fruit. The chocolate wallaby was still trapped in the orchard and looked a little thirsty. Back in the machine room the middle aged woman were bitching slightly less, but their skimpy clothing wore in the hot sun showed there blue vericus veins on their legs up, and along with the hair nets, it was none to attractive in there. Bruce had promised to show Tall and Small how to use the fork lift for loading the fruit, but everyday had ended up doing it himself and taking twice as long. Infact he didn't even like to let Tall and Small cellotape the paper sign on to the crate without holding the cellotape up for them. It was not until he had to stay in hospital over night from a problem with his ear that Small one got to use the fork lift and get screeched at with random directions from Bev, still managing to do it faster than Bruce. The weather that week had gone from 31 degrees to quite cold and over cats in low twenties. Rain had almost stopped work on Thursday, but for once Small and Tall had worked a full week (for some reason the farms working week ran Thursday till Wednesday). They had also decided to walk to work everyday to get healthier, which almost killed them. A trip to town to get more rentals happened on the Tuesday, where they ended up with another ten after getting free replacements for the scratched ones. While using an Internet consol in the shopping Mall a shrill girls' voice cut through the air and an arm came around Tall one's shoulder “alright darling how's it going!”. Tall and Small looked in horror, it was some rough aboriginal girl stinking of booze neither knew. Small one said he was busy on the Internet and did not want to 'chat'. She kept on rambling about where's that accent from then? Small one ignored her so she came back to Tall one with her arm round him and said “I think he;s from Iraq don;t you darling??”. Tall one said “Please get off me” and pushed her away, she left.... Another drunk aboriginal friend lost. Friday it rained all day and thunder stormed badly. The town and roads were flooded, and Tall and Small still had to go to the farm and pack what was left over from the night before. The dirt road to the farm was like a river, and a view across the fields and sugar cane plantations to the mountains covered with mist, looked like we were in some tropical jungle. We packed for a couple of hours and todd on hundreds of worms which had crawled into the wet concrete floors. Small one touched a spider as big as his fist with only five legs left, and then squashed the life out of it. It rained so much the caravan still leaked so they went to town to buy a second canopy and ended up buying a small cooker for $30 as well. Now with two canopies over the camper they have created a huge tent site the size of a circus big top – hopefully they won't get asked to pay more rent?? It never stopped raining till the next morning and Tall and Small thought the aboriginal guy in his tent must have drowned. Tall and Small visited Bev Saturday morning to load the van with the fork lift for her (as Bruce was still in hospital with his ear). She told them her friends who lived local had to travel up a road so flooded they used their 4x4 with a snorkel, and the water came right up over the bonnet as they drove through the floods. Small and Tall may have to buy a snorkel and goggles for the front of Tony soon. Thursday 29th – Friday 30th October Thursday was sunny so there was work, and it was the first time Tall and Small would be working in their new role in collecting and packing the blueberries with the machine. Tall one was allocated to using the gator quad bike to drive up the orchard every half an hour and collect all the pickers filled trays, then come back and weigh and label them for the machine. Inside the netted orchard a chocolate wallaby and a wild koala got trapped. Bruce the owner, phoned Koala rescue and they snet out two grey haired, middled aged women in their cardigans to get it. Who wondered around the orchard for an hour calling to it without any kind of net. Finally the thing made a dash through a hole in the netting, the site of them offering tea and biscuits was enough. Meanwhile Small one started the machine at 11am, his role was more supervising the machine that it was running properly and nothing got stuck. He had four women with hair nets working on a platform above checking fruit as it came down the conveyor for damages and another at the end packing the filled 'clamb shell' cartons. The group of women bitched all day about the quality of the other pickers fruit and bitched about small one as the oldest women there obviously felt she had been past over for his role. She kept pointing out to Bruce that she had years of experience on machines in factories and making snide remarks that Small one was letting squashed fruit come through and was making the machine squash it. After all the fruit was packed and the pickers had gone home, Tall and Small tied up and then helped Bruce and his wife Bev load the pallet of today's fruit onto his van. Unfortnatley this was a painful process of watching Bruc use a fork lift in an area as big as a 2 pence piece. He turned in circle and went back and forth and back and forth trying to pick up the pallett and then get it in the van and failing while his wife shreieked “BACK.... STOP.... BACK AND FORWARD..... SIDEWAYS, MAKE IT GO SIDEWAYS!!!”. No one listeed to her and Small and Tall got a headache just watching. Bruce then drove the fruit to the lorry depot and Small and Tall came with him so they could do this job when he was absent. He found out on route that Tall one had no license and Small only had a license for Automatic, so said his wife would have to do it anyway. So Tall and Small had a ride and got an extra forty minutes work for nothing. He dumped the pallet at the depot and said the fruit would arrive in Sydney at 2am, and be for sale tomorrow morning, less than 24 hours from when we picked and packed it. We got back to the farm, which we were surprised at as his driving was terrible. Then we went home to have half a cabbage for dinner. Tuesday 27th - Wednesday 28th October Tuesday morning was spent at Bonville Creek Farm again, with the bald boring machine expert and Steve who they had met in Jenolan. They went through the machine and how it ran for an hour and then chatted dully about farms and blueberries for another two whilst Tall and Small stood looking very bored. It rained the rest of the day and Tall and Small drove into town to see if they could join a video rental shop and buy some pizzas. They stopped first at the hospital where Small one got looked at for his tonsillitis and got a subscription. Hospitals were always a fun place to be. They then went on through the driving rain to a rental place, Video Ezy. They had both noticed how despite the pouring rain, there was a lot of over weight middle aged women who chose to walk the pavements bare foot??? Into Video Ezy and aftr half an hour they had chosen 7 titles for $7. At the counter however they were told they needed proof of address, unlike Sydney where they just needed a credit card. They put the titles back and left. After another ten minute drive they found Blockbusters. Small one asked to join first and was a bit dismayed when they took his credit card details including writing down the three digit pin on the back. They looked round th shop for half an hour and found five out of the six titles they needed for the six and $6 offer. They was a terrible selection and small one did not like them having his card details, so they left and closed the account. Ten minutes later in the rain they found another rentals store, Network Video. After another half an hour of looking and a $20 deposit later, they had eight titles for $7 and two pizzas from Dominos. It was a fun day. Wednesday morning came and the rain was slowing down, and there was still no internet. Tall and Small had no work, but at least they had eight DVDs to occupy them. Unfortunatley Small one decided that he must take his medication four times a day literally every six hours on the dot, and insisted on setting an alarm for 11pm and 5am to take more. This meant that neither of them got a good nights sleep until his tonsils cleared up. On the plus side they did go to the cinema for the first time in over a month. They saw a documentary film called The Cove, about an annual dolphin slaughter in Japan. After that they went to the beach and re-thought their plans of visiting the Pet Porpoise pool. Tuesday 20th – Monday 26th October As Bonville Creek farm was trying to upgrade by using a huge packing machine instead of half a dozen middle aged women in hair nets, they said no picking on the Wednesday as they were having lots of trouble. On this day off Tall and Small went to a local town on the way to Coffs Harbour, called Sawtell. It was very very windy and after splashing in the ocean for half an hour and being molested by a fat Labrador and German Shepard they sat on the sand in the sun. Because of the wind their eyes had to remain shut, as the grains grinded full blast into them, filling all their bags, pockets and books with sand. After the not so relaxing day at the beach they went back to Bonville Caravan Site after spending $40 on burgers in town (this was not so bad as they purchased an MP3 Adapter player for the ancient car radio, which the cashier only charged them $3 instead of $12). For once they actually had neighbors, a strange elderly man and a middle aged women had a fold out tent opposite them. They did not speak to them and just left the next day without incident. So much for neighbors. Back at work on Thursday which was scorching hot. The other pickers were all starting to be noticeably odd. With young German girls rudely pointing at Tall and Small as they walked past without saying anything and later started throwing Blueberries at them. At lunch time they aggressively came out with a string of unimaginative questions, 'whats your name, where you from, you done this before, how long you been here???'. All were dully answered by Small one, whilst Tall one hid behind his straw sun hat. There is also two strange middle aged men, one bearded. Both seemed to work mutely, and go back and forth over their own work and even over onto Tall and Small's rows. Another unwelcome co-worker was one of the three leeches Tall one found attached to his ankle. Two had only made it on to his sock, but the third was wrestled off of his skin leaving blood flowing for about twenty minutes. Small one spent just as long trying to burn the bastard with a lighter. The weekend came and on the Saturday they traveled to the famous 'Big Banana' of Coff's Harbour. Supposedly the first 'big' novelty statue in Australia. It was as dull as it sounded and half the place was closed. Tall and Small saw some of the banana plantation trees though to get an idea of what larger and yellow fruit looked like in an orchard. That night it rained till morning, and Small one found his mobile had been dropped and left in the grass and rain all night. For the next three days he spent dismantling his phone and drying it in front of the heater. At the same time the 'free' wireless Internet was no longer detected, and right up until Monday it was still not showing, and still not at the moment. When Small one asked the wife running the caravan site, she seemed to question quite seriously 'YOU use the Internet?', 'yes your husband said we could'. She then claimed she new not what the problem was and to speak to that same husband. The void of the Internet was filled with beer on Saturday night, and Tall and Small were drunk for the first time since entering the country. Sunday night was a tremendous thunderstorm and the sky flashed blue and white for hours, then the rain came.... The rain did not stop, and carried on all through Monday. Unfortunatly the campervan seemed to leak through the top of the doors so the bedding was wet. The wife owner of the caravan site had also said that they had already had four severe floods in the last year... the other fresh fruit place round the corner was still closed from the damage. Tall and Small wondered if their canopy and little campervan would last. Tall and Small did not expect any work that Monday on the blueberry fields, until Tall one's phone rang and it was Bev, the old lady from the farm. She and her son Steve ad left four message on Small One's broken phone since last night. They wanted to promote Tall and Small just after a week to run this new, monster fruit packing machine. Steve said they would get paid more, at $19.40 an hour instead of the $18 they were on (when they were only actually on $16.40?). They arrived at the farm and were shown the new machine for the first time, which filled the room with conveyor belts, computer screens, revolving tables, hoppers and belts. Bev left them with the technician to explain how ti worked for a few hours. He was the worst person possible to explain anything, starting from the end he worked sideways with his explanataion and then wondered off on tangents talking about how he fixed something, then back to how a hopper was cleaned and where the clam shells went. Tall and Small looked bewildered and noticed that this machine that costs thousands had a lot of 'patches' made of cardboard and cellophane holding lids up higher and channeling fruit where it was supposed to go. They did a few test runs with blueberries and it seemed to work okay, they were due back tomorrow to talk with the son Steve and go through it again. Thunderstorms were due all week anyway, and although they might lose their hand working in the packing house, at least they would be away from the leeches, burning sun and the weird berry pickers. Friday 16th – Monday 19th October Friday Tall and Small did absolutely nothing all day, and sat on their computers in the camper van, going a little stir crazy. Saturday Tall and Small visited the nearby town, Coffs Harbour. Walked up the sandy beach by the jetty where a lot of children seemed to be in some running, swimming, paddling competition. A walk up a pier and a breakwater to Muttonbird Island, a reserve where this type of bird burrow underground. At the far end two-three whales could be seen spouting and spraying in the ocean with a whale watch boat in tow. Another food shop at $75 and back to the camp site. Where a dull Sunday was had, where again Tall and Small did nothing all day and went even more stir crazy. The only thing of note was that the owners of the caravan site turned on the NO VACANY sign that night, even though Tall and Small were the only people staying in the front site, where all other sites sat empty. Monday was the first day at Bonville Creek Farm. Deciding not to walk but drive in the end they arrived at 8.15am to be told because of the rain they would start at 10.30am. They went home, which just happened to be there with them parked at the farm, and waited. Bruce then showed them around, it was not a huge place and only had one big shed and a caravan outside. A big white netted area of blueberry bushes with a kookaburra trapped inside. Bruce told us to look out for snakes and kangaroos, but not worry about them. He also told us if we found blood running down our leg it was probably a leech and to take it off. Small one looked worried. He showed them the blueberries, which were in rows of bushes in the big netted area. You got a little white pot which you roped around your waist, and a small tray at the end of your row. It took about 20 minutes to fill a pot around your waist and two of them filled a tray. You had to take each berry off one at a time, being careful not to crush it, not to tear the skin on the stem, no to leave the stem, and make sure it was big enough and ripe enough, so it took time. Lucky we were only paid by the hour not by the basket. The sun was bearable, and the work went fast. There were a few other people working, mostly women. They went home and Small posted his photos in the local post office, where the small girl serving him was a nervous wreck when he said Ireland had no postcodes. The tried the stone cold pool and sat back into the camper van, good or bad this would be the routine for a few weeks to come.