Week 2 - down under (the vines)!
Full of beans or should I say ‘seeds’ and raring to go, Tuesday we set out at 5.30am for our new job title of vine training. Basically we wind the vines of the grape trees onto the lines of wire so that they don’t get damaged or come away in bad weather (yeah believe it or not they do experience some degree of bad weather here)! Anyway that was fun and really easy, (when you were'nt catapolting grapes into the air by accident). We also had kangaroos bouncing around us for company,(hopefully i didnt knock one on the head)! The guys we were working with were cool and the weather wasn’t melting my skin off. So we did that for a couple of days and then had Thursday off as there was a storm the night before and the vines were drenched, which would have meant us getting drenched (especially me) as I’m quite vertically challenged, once I get into the vine I’m almost lost forever! Add to that, my ipod blasting the boring hours away, it did take a couple of good screams to get my attention. But other than that I was quite happy rummaging through vines and kicking back to ‘welcome to the jungle’.
That’s where the week began to take a turn for the worse, (or the better) depending which way you look at it. We started work at 6.am on Friday morning ready for another day of rummaging, however about half hour in, we were stopped and told to start a different job, leaf plucking. Easy we thought, well until they said we were gonna get a ‘contract’ rate instead of hourly rate. This basically means you have to work fast and hard all day for peanuts and not have any guarantee of what you may earn at the end of the week.
On that vine tree, we walked!
So that was the end of that. An interesting, short lived experience, which we enjoyed and haven’t regretted. A Welsh mutiny ended it and we are proud of ourselves for not bowing to slave labor!!
Right, ill get off my morally high horse and move on.
To celebrate our new found freedom Lucy and I went out on Friday afternoon and started looking for a job and had some wine. Not necessarily in that order!
That night Simon and I decided to paint the town green and have some more wine. Nothing like getting hammered when you have something to get hammered about (not that I need an excuse).
Monday, still waiting to hear about potential jobs we decided to buy an inflatable dingy, rubber ring and water pistols! Just what we needed to release the tension of the last day’s events. Had a cool time down the Murray River, couple more bottles of wine thrown in and we were well over it! (Yes, there is a pattern forming here including vines and wines), but seeing as I’d had a small hand in cultivating the extremely tasty grape I felt I should at least have said my goodbyes sipping my efforts.
Full of beans or should I say ‘seeds’ and raring to go, Tuesday we set out at 5.30am for our new job title of vine training. Basically we wind the vines of the grape trees onto the lines of wire so that they don’t get damaged or come away in bad weather (yeah believe it or not they do experience some degree of bad weather here)! Anyway that was fun and really easy, (when you were'nt catapolting grapes into the air by accident). We also had kangaroos bouncing around us for company,(hopefully i didnt knock one on the head)! The guys we were working with were cool and the weather wasn’t melting my skin off. So we did that for a couple of days and then had Thursday off as there was a storm the night before and the vines were drenched, which would have meant us getting drenched (especially me) as I’m quite vertically challenged, once I get into the vine I’m almost lost forever! Add to that, my ipod blasting the boring hours away, it did take a couple of good screams to get my attention. But other than that I was quite happy rummaging through vines and kicking back to ‘welcome to the jungle’.
That’s where the week began to take a turn for the worse, (or the better) depending which way you look at it. We started work at 6.am on Friday morning ready for another day of rummaging, however about half hour in, we were stopped and told to start a different job, leaf plucking. Easy we thought, well until they said we were gonna get a ‘contract’ rate instead of hourly rate. This basically means you have to work fast and hard all day for peanuts and not have any guarantee of what you may earn at the end of the week.
On that vine tree, we walked!
So that was the end of that. An interesting, short lived experience, which we enjoyed and haven’t regretted. A Welsh mutiny ended it and we are proud of ourselves for not bowing to slave labor!!
Right, ill get off my morally high horse and move on.
To celebrate our new found freedom Lucy and I went out on Friday afternoon and started looking for a job and had some wine. Not necessarily in that order!
That night Simon and I decided to paint the town green and have some more wine. Nothing like getting hammered when you have something to get hammered about (not that I need an excuse).
Monday, still waiting to hear about potential jobs we decided to buy an inflatable dingy, rubber ring and water pistols! Just what we needed to release the tension of the last day’s events. Had a cool time down the Murray River, couple more bottles of wine thrown in and we were well over it! (Yes, there is a pattern forming here including vines and wines), but seeing as I’d had a small hand in cultivating the extremely tasty grape I felt I should at least have said my goodbyes sipping my efforts.
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