While we’d been hanging around in Perth, Roo had discovered the tiny tent she’d taken backpacking around Europe. This had now been bestowed upon Gill, by way of creating a more harmonious living environment – and Gill was ecstatic!
Not just because she was now technically a home owner, but because she’d officially moved out – and she promptly pitched her tent as far away from mine and Roo’s as the camp ground would allow.
The next morning we went out looking for a job.
And we found one!
How’s that for efficiency?
It had been a bit of a gamble, coming here, as we’d made a few phone calls from Perth and been told “There might be work, it depends on when you arrive.”
Not really helpful when we had exactly three months to achieve exactly three months’ work. If it took us two weeks to find something, we’d have to post our forms to the pumpkin farm in Kununurra and beg them to sign for the work we’d done there… Yikes.
Fate always seems to take a helping hand in these situations though, and even though the grape-picking season wasn’t due to start for several weeks, the Down To Earth job agency hooked us up immediately.
We’d be starting tomorrow – at 6am.
‘Leaf plucking’.
I shit you not.
It turns out, there are all sorts of jobs under the umbrella of agriculture. There are even more if you try to push your luck – we met backpackers who had worked in pubs and hotels, and got the work signed off for their second year visas because the job was ‘in a rural area’. We even met people who’d been lucky enough to befriend a farmer, and he’d simply offered to sign their forms for a few pints of beer! The buggers. But we worked for ours. Although, after what we’d experienced up north, the reality of working as a vineyard labourer was considerably less arduous than we anticipated.
By now I’m sure you’re expecting a tale of incredible hardship, littered with plucking puns and accidents involving me plucking something I shouldn’t be plucking.
But no! Pluck you!
(Okay, okay, I’ll leaf it alone for now.)
In fact, this job was ridiculously easy, and even though none of us knew what we were doing, there seemed very little that could go wrong.
We walked down the rows of grape vines and, whenever we felt there were too many leaves obscuring the fruit – we plucked them.
And that’s it!
As for how many was too many, this was a matter of some debate, as we also had to ensure that the grapes were ‘adequately shaded by leaves’. Our supervisor, a toothless idiot known as Goldie (because no-one, including himself, could remember his real name), tried to illustrate the point by demonstrating.
He’d guide us down a row, pulling off a leaf here or there, and turning to us to say “See! Like that. Gotta be careful, get it just right.”
“So, that’s enough?”
“Yep.”
“But what about these grapes, then? They’re still a bit hidden.”
“Oh yes!” And he’d pluck a load more leaves. “There!”
“But… now these others are fully exposed…”
“Oh shit. That’s okay, that’s okay, it doesn’t look too bad. Um, let’s try over here…”
Basically, he didn’t have a bloody clue either.
And he’d been doing this for over twenty years.
Now, the less charitable souls amongst us may well be thinking that even a retarded Chimpanzee would get promoted after twenty years of picking grapes for a living – but then again, if you’d put Goldie up against a retarded chimpanzee in a test of mental dexterity, I’d bet on the ape every time.
I’d be surprised if Goldie’s IQ made it into double digits.
He never learned my name – even though I worked for him, and with him, six days a week for three months. He never learned anyone’s name, which made it all the more ludicrous that his strategy for marking which rows we’d done was to scrawl our names in chalk on the end-of-row support posts.
He’d come stomping down the grape vines demanding to know who was working there. “I’m Andy,” I’d say.
“Well you’re not supposed to be working here! This is someone else’s row!”
“Oh, really? Who’s row is it supposed to be?”
And he’d furrow his brow, replace his hat on his head a few times, and then stomp off back down the row to find out what name he’d written on the end of it.
As though it made a blind bit of difference!
Goldie had six teeth left, including one of the upper-middle ones. God knows what had caused this, but he’d learnt his lesson; he sat in his car, methodically brushing them after every single break.
The car was very nearly as decrepit as he was. It was a Ford Cortina from about 1982 – when square things were the height of fashion, and poo-brown paint was all the rage. By now the car had a two-tone colour scheme; shit and rust. Goldie wouldn’t let anyone touch it – probably because if they did, the whole thing would disintegrate.
Which would have been unfortunate, because it looked suspiciously like he was sleeping in it.
As I travel around, I sometimes meet people who make me feel better about choosing the lifestyle of a shiftless wanderer. Either because they’ve chosen the same lifestyle – and they’re rocking it – or because, like Goldie, they prove that no matter how far I may sink into debt and degradation, it could always be much, much worse.
The Kangaroo Suicides
As work progressed from leaf-dropping (clawing indiscriminately at the foliage until there seemed to be enough of it on the ground) to fruit-dropping (see above), the campsite also began to fill up with workers. Amongst the new arrivals was a short, highly amusing English lad I called Comedy Dave. Gill was instantly smitten. She’s always had a thing about short guys, and Dave was also cute and smart (fulfilling her dream trifecta).
She demonstrated a Tony-esque ability to put her foot in her mouth when, after spotting Dave leaving the showers wrapped only in a towel, she walked into the kitchen singing (to the tune of ‘Hey Micky!’) – “Oh, David, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind–”
And that’s when she noticed he hadn’t gone back to his tent – still wearing his towel, he was rummaging around in the fridge.
Awkward!
The ‘real work’ of grape picking was due to start in a few weeks’ time. Until then we trained the younger vines, by curling them around a series of wires strung between wooden fence poles, pruned them, ‘misted’ them – basically, whatever peculiar shit Goldie seemed to think these vines needed. Not much of it made any sense to us, but we were being paid by the hour to saunter up and down the aisles of the world’s finest vineyards with the sun on our faces and a pair of pruning shears in our back pockets – hardly worth complaining about now, is it?
Especially as I was working next to Roo. We always chose rows on either side of the same vine, meaning we could stroll along chatting – and whenever we came across a suitably-sized hole, we could lean through and share a kiss. Aww!
We also found ourselves ferrying half the campsite’s occupants to work, as we all tended to be hired by one vineyard at a time. As the workers staggered out of their tents and groped around the kitchen for boxes of cereal, Gill would try to figure out who was coming with us.
“Roll up, roll up,” she’d call, “take the magic bus to see the Incredible Kamikaze Kangaroos!”
Coaxing Rusty through the pre-dawn haze, we were glad of the extra eyeballs – the kangaroos were everywhere in the fields lining both sides of the road, and when they chose to move they were ludicrously fast.
One morning Gill slammed on the brakes as the van in front of us screeched to a stop. A medium-sized roo had pounced as they drove past, shattering the windscreen and ending up on the knee of the girl in the passenger seat!
The girl was, understandably, a little perturbed.
The roo was dead, its neck broken on impact, but it kept thrashing – and bleeding – and was so hea
vy, and so firmly embedded in the glass, that they had no choice but to drive on to the nearest garage with it still in there.
I don’t think she was impressed with that, either.
We had a few close-calls most mornings, and a couple of weeks later we clipped another small roo as it tried to bounce alongside us. We were all on edge as we pulled into the petrol station. It was common for cars to meet there to refuel, and to travel on in convoy to that day’s vineyard – but this time, not everyone would be leaving.
Halfway between here and the campsite, one old estate car had been leapt on by a giant. The big roo had completely crushed the front of the car; bonnet, grill, and the engine inside were a crumpled mess. The car was totalled; it had been towed this far by another worker with a 4x4, but it left that forecourt on the back of a wrecker’s truck.
So, all joking aside, those things were damn dangerous.
I mean, every country has pest animals – but it’s not often that they’re bigger than we are. Or that they outnumber us – thirty-four million roos, against the twenty-three million-strong population of Australia.
That’s a lot of extra penises.
As befitted a town with a population entirely composed of hippies, Margaret River had a healthy selection of op shops. It became a regular ritual of ours, visiting each of them in turn – not because we needed more clothes, but because op shops were the perfect places to acquire bits for fancy dress costumes. Week after week we went from place to place, relentlessly hunting down components for three perfect pirate costumes, to be used at some unspecified point in the future.
This idea was Roo’s brainchild, but Gill agreed that it was vital we complete this task – because, as Roo said, “you never really know when you’re going to need a good pirate costume.”
You can’t argue with logic like that.
In my time I’ve met hundreds of backpackers, but as far as I know we were the only ones who travelled the length and breadth of the country with a dedicated box of dressing up clothes in our van. It was bigger than our food box, and contained several varieties of wings, tutus and corsets, boots, belts, myriad garments which had been purchased purely for their material – which was either shiny, or sparkly, or leather – and before long, three complete, very convincing, pirate costumes.
I’ve still got mine.
But don’t tell anyone.
The girls’ other regular haunt was something I’d only ever come across in Margaret River: an entire shop devoted exclusively to beading. Literally thousands of different types of beads lined every wall in matching screw-top jars. It was like an Aladdin’s Cave… well, to anyone who actually gave a shit about beading.
The girls would rush in, gasping with delight – as though they hadn’t been in there three times that week already.
I would hang around in the middle of the shop, trying to look manly. Which, by the way, is utterly impossible in the middle of a bead shop, for two reasons; one, you’re in the middle of a bead shop. Hello? It’s been scientifically proven to lower testosterone levels just by walking past a bead shop. And two – standing there, swaying unconsciously in time to the soothing New Age music, I’d inevitably spot something really interesting – like tiny jade dragon heads, or crocodile teeth with hieroglyphs carved into them – and before thinking of the consequences I’d call to Roo, “Hey, these beads are really cool!”
And… yeah. That’s one of the least manly phrases ever uttered.
So, fail on that score.
The girls bought dozens of beads, plus the string, clasps and other fittings, home in big paper bags, and set to work eagerly outside our encampment.
And despite what you may hear, I absolutely did not join them.
At no point did I spend several evenings crafting beaded necklaces and bracelets for me to wear. If you happen to see any photographs of me wearing these kind of items, you can rest assured that I bought them that way.
Okay?
Good.
So, late one evening, as I was sitting around doing something suitably manly (and absolutely not making myself a pretty necklace), Roo held up her latest masterpiece.
It jingled.
“Look!” she exclaimed, “I’ve done it! It’s an anklet, made entirely of bells!” And she shook it in the air to prove it. It sounded like a tambourine orchestra.
I was already wary. “Uh, what are you going to do with that, exactly?”
“I’m going to wear it around my ankle, silly! So you’ll be able to hear me coming!”
To which Gill replied, quick as a flash; “Roo, the whole campsite can hear you coming.”
Touché, Gill, touché.
There was an awkward silence after that.
But the crowning achievement of Gill’s time at Big Valley was the creation of Andy’s Prayer.
Shortly after our first pay cheque, we made an investment that was to forever alter the course of human history. Well, it made us happier, anyway: we bought a toastie-maker. Not just any toastie-maker – one of those posh sandwich press thingummies, with two flat plates that come together to produce miracles.
Eating a simple toastie, with the cheese liberally coated in Mexican fajita spice, was a borderline religious experience.
Hence, after only a couple of days in the kitchen, our sandwich toaster had become a celebrity. There was a queue to use him at every meal time, and we quickly decided to invest in a length of chain and a miniature padlock, in case anyone leaving Big Valley tried to abduct him.
It wasn’t long before we named him Andy – an in joke, because every time Goldie asked me my name I said a different one; eventually I’d got tired of the game, and settled on ‘Andy’. There was no-one working in the fields called Andy, and no-one on Goldie’s paperwork by that name, but the others found it amusing to play along, so everyone had taken to calling me that – both at work and at home.
If ever I had an alter-ego, it was the toaster, and thus was he christened.
That afternoon, Gill put in ten minutes at the internet café, and emerged with a sign to stick in the kitchen above Andy. It was her own take on the Lord’s Prayer:
Our Toaster
Who art in Kitchen
Andy be thy name.
Thy wrap or bun
Or toast be done
With cheese, and it tastes like Heaven
Cook us this day, our Pitta Bread,
And forgive us our impatience,
As we forgive you, for taking more than 10 seconds!
Lead us into Taste Sensation,
And deliver us our meal,
For Thine is the Breakfast,
The Lunch and The Dinner,
For snacking and munching
Oh, Yum!
It caused us much hilarity, though as I write this, I feel sure this one short piece of blasphemy will earn me more hate mail than anything else in all my books put together. Ah well; such is life. At least it won’t be a Jihad. This time…
Good Company
As people came and went with the tide, into the mix was thrown Lauren; a pretty American chick with a voice so voluble I thought she’d swallowed a loudhailer. Now, everyone has irritating habits, and living this close together tended to bring them to light fairly quickly. Lauren was one of those people who always had to have the last say about everything – and always had to go one better than anyone else in the conversation. We call that ‘black-catting’ – as in, ‘my cat’s blacker than your cat’ – but Lauren was also touchy and argumentative, so if I’d dared mention black-catting to her, she’d probably have denounced me for racism.
Shane, a big brash Geordie with long, dishevelled hair, was a more amiable companion. Every morning we’d struggle out of our tents, cursing the cold, cursing our lateness, and empty a bowl of corn flakes down our necks before leaping into Rusty with anyone else who needed a ride.
Without fail, as we inhaled our breakfasts, Shane would be stood there at the barbecue, frying up a huge pile of bacon. He was late for work every
single day, but he didn’t care; his bacon ritual was more important.
“Why don’t you just scoff some cereal and save yourself some grief?” I asked him once.
“Becaaaauuse,” he slurred, “I LOVE PIG IN THE MORNING!”
Seemed like a good enough reason to me.
Every morning, our extra seats filled up with the last workers to drag themselves out of their tents. One morning Gill was incensed to see Lauren coming out of Dave’s tent, obviously late because she’d spent the night getting more intimately acquainted with him. Gill’s fondness for Dave was well-known throughout the campsite, and to see that her arch-enemy had moved in for the kill put Gill in an unspeakably foul mood. She sat in silence while she ate her breakfast, then climbed into the driving seat and gunned Rusty’s engine so hard he roared.
The van was already moving when Lauren piled in at the last possible second, slamming the door shut behind her.
Just as Gill gave vent to her frustrations. “I’m going to KILL someone!”
“Sorry, dude…” I started.
“I’m going to fucking KILL someone! I fucking HATE Americans!”
“Um, Gill, maybe you should—”
“Bitch!”
“Gill, you should probably know—”
“Fucking BITCH!”
“Steady on,” I warned. But I had no chance to elaborate further, as Gill was far from done.
“Fucking Americans! Why are they always so fucking loud, so irritating, and… and… BITCH!”
There was absolutely nothing I could do. Apart from boot the back of the driver’s seat. Maybe that would distract her.
“OW! Stop fucking kicking me!”
I almost believed that had done the trick – but no. Gill wasn’t letting go.
“When we get back I’m gonna take the fire-axe and make fucking firewood out of that bitch!”
“Gill hey, chill out a bit—”
“ARRRRH!” She pounded the steering wheel in rage. “Fucking Americans!”
Every fibre of my being wanted to scream out “SHUT UP GILL! LAUREN IS IN THE FUCKING CAR WITH US!” – but I couldn’t. Not without making it even worse. Diversion was all I could try, though it was a fair bit late for that already.
Kamikaze Kangaroos! Page 16