The cherry season was fast approaching, but there was one important thing to finish out in the fields: irrigation. This time I worked with a French backpacker called Ivan. Every day we got a quad bike and a repair kit and were send to work on different areas in the cherry fields.
We worked as a team and had a good thing going. Firstly we flushed the mud out of the irrigation tubes. Then we had to check the broken ones for leaks. We had a lot of fun. Sometimes Ivan had to turn the water on and off. One day he came back on the quadbike, or quatterbike as he would call it, and said: “Hop on, the view there is amazing!” So we raced through the cherry trees to the top of the hill. It is like the property never ends.
“Aaaah” I shout for the umpteenth time. This work is kind of wet. I’ve received several showers from the irrigation tubes. I was doing my thing and dropped an opened tube on the ground to flush it. While I was working to the next one I heard the water coming. Just when Ivan was coming around the corner, the tube decided to spray a bit of muddy water on top of me. I was running away screaming while Ivan almost died laughing.
It seemed like all the creepy crawlies were coming out at this stage. I saw a really fat, hairy spider on a tree and a snake in the water. This one was nothing compared to the snake the farm hand shot. At the end of the day I hear there is a present for me. Confused I take a look as he takes a blue shiny snake from the back of his truck. He’d shot its head off. Suddenly I don’t feel so comfortable anymore, walking through the very tall grass.
If you want to stay in Australia for a second year working holiday, you’ll have to do your 88 days of regional work. In the 88 days diaries I tell the story of my three months of farm work on a cherry orchard. I worked out in the fields as a farm hand before working in the packing shed during the cherry season. Read about what I think, experience and explore, from eccentric farmers to new skills.