Feb 09: Mildura - a day on the fig farm

I arrived in Mildura at 7am on Saturday, having travelled all night on the bus. I was sleepy as I unloaded my bags at the station, eager to check into my new lodgings and immediately get some much-needed kip. I planned what to do later: go food-shopping, meet the people at the hostel, a few beers in the evening maybe.

The hostel looked great on the website. “Where excellent accommodation, good work and great wages go hand-in-hand”, it proudly proclaimed. I’d found it a few days ago by random, and was pleased that they could accommodate me at short notice. The manager, Vickey, told me they had grape-picking work available at one of the farms. She’d even collect me from the station soon after I arrived. Everything was going to plan!

There were a few other travellers sat in the cold waiting room waiting for lifts. I wondered if they were going to the same hostel as me. I wondered if there were other hostels. Mildura is certainly a decent-sized town, with a reputation within Australia as a major agricultural centre. The place should be swarming with backpackers looking for work, I thought, so I wouldn’t be short of friends.

Presently the phone rang. It was Vickey, due at the station any minute to collect me. She’d seemed friendly enough on the phone before and seemed to be running this place on her own. “Are you free to work today?” she asked out of the blue.

“Not really, I’ve just come on the bus from Melbourne and I want to rest, can I start tomorrow?” I said.

“Okay, well you’ve basically got two choices. You can do the fig-picking, which pays great money, or you can do grape-picking, which pays really bad money." She’d not bothered to mention the really bad money before. "If you want to do the grape-picking, you can start tomorrow, but I need people today to start the fig-picking and I’d really like to have you working there.”

After a long night with little sleep the last thing I wanted to do was put in a heavy shift on a farm, but I said I’d think it over while she drove here. The circumstances surrounding the job seemed a little strange. I decided yes, what the hell, I’d do it. I could rest in the evening. I didn’t want to miss out on the better-paying job and time was of the essence in getting my visa.

Vickey arrived in the minibus fresh from doing the morning drop-offs, and I met her for the first time. She was a woman in her late 30s with a conspicuous hearing aid that gave her the appearance of a Bond villain. I was still rather tired as she drove me to the supermarket to pick up provisions. We made a bit of small talk but she seemed keen to get me checked in and off to the fig-picking job ASAP.

As is normal she asked for the week’s rent up front, but there were numerous extras – a deposit, an ‘admin fee’ for collecting wages, and transport fees – which brought the sum up to a colossal $250. Being too tired to think straight I withdrew the wad of money and handed it to her like a trusting child, not even thinking to ask for a receipt. How I would come to regret that.

Alarm bells started to ring in my head when she talked a bit more on the way to the hostel. The 'great money' turned out to be $16 an hour, close to the minimum wage. She clearly didn’t hold any of the travellers in high esteem and made out she was waging a constant war against backpackers’ laziness and lack of gratitude. I asked her to clarify what she meant and she gravely confided, “I’m afraid the house you will be staying in is full of negative people.

“You seem like a positive person so I hope they don’t get to you. But yes, we’ve had some problems in that house. Recently there were some Canadian girls there, they caused a terrible fuss, it really gave me a negative impression of Canadian people. They’ve left now.”

She continued off on a tangent: “Living at this hostel is a challenge, but you have to embrace these challenges when you’re travelling – that’s why I enjoyed being overseas when I was in London. My dad always said I was more resourceful than my sister when it came to things like that.”

“I thought I was staying in the hostel, not a house?” I replied. Not only was it a very strange conversation but I had to shout all my questions, as she was deaf in one ear and had the hearing aid in the other. I suddenly felt stupid to place my trust in this odd woman.

It turned out the ‘hostel’ was just a couple of bungalows, supplemented by another house for overspill located on the town outskirts. I was driven to the overspill house, and it was clearly in the middle of f**king nowhere. I didn’t like the look of it; it supposedly housed ten or twelve people but was very small indeed. Still a lone voice piped up in my head: “you can do it, just a few weeks, you’ve survived in worse.”

I had just spent a month at the working hostel in Manjimup (Western Australia), and that was a bit of a hole, but it was magnificent compared to this. Now I thought about it I’d never appreciated how well-run that place was. I particularly missed Naomi – she was an absolute saint next to Vickey – and she had the added bonus of not being completely insane. My overwhelming concern was that I wouldn’t find another place to work in time and would miss out on my visa.

I lugged in my bags and my food shopping from the van, briefly checking out the house and my room. The people living here were either out at work or still asleep at this early hour. I was sharing a small bunk room with three French guys and a Chinese girl who’d also just arrived in Mildura. Like me they were standing around wondering what the f**k they had got themselves into.

Dirty plates littered the sink; the kitchen and the living room didn’t seem to have been done up since the house was built. There was one shower and one toilet that were shared by the dozen or so people living here. There was a strange ‘cocktail bar’ installation joining on to the lounge that was decked out in hideous 60s upholstery. It was a dump.

Worryingly Vickey was expecting us to work not five, not six, but seven days a week at the fig farm. Non-stop, ten-plus hours a day, week in, week out. How would we rest? Or find the time to organise future travel plans? I figured it might work out okay over a few weeks, and the total lack of any free time whatsoever would make it easier for me to save my wages.

I did a quick change into my work clothes then we set off for the fig farm, the French guys following in their beat-up 4x4. Vickey drove on through the countryside and I'm not sure if we crossed into New South Wales as the town sits right on the border. Questions were answered intermittently. She continued her bizarre monologue: “Is that a guitar I saw in your things? I love music. Do you know Chris Issac? He did a gig here at a winery recently. Oh, he was brilliant.”

I didn't like Chris Isaac but I didn’t bother questioning the wisdom of her concert-going decisions. There was already a lot happening today that bothered me. For one thing, she now had possession of my passport, as she needed a photocopy of the visa. Again, a dumb move on my part to entrust her with it, but it was the standard procedure at these places.

The farm lay on an unmarked plot of land up a dusty road, garlanded with a few rustic outbuildings and a couple of walk-in freezers. The savage early morning chill had now given way to the extreme heat of day, the sun climbing high in the sky. We could see a busy harvesting operation already in progress on the endless rows of fig plants, people swarming to and fro carrying big polystyrene boxes of fruit.

Vickey led the five of us to the farm, subjecting us to a new low in patronising ‘advice’: “As you walk on to the farm it’s very important that you lift your legs up and walk quickly. You have to demonstrate that you’re eager to work. The farmers have been through a lot of troubles and get upset very easily. And if they ask you what hostel you’re from, tell them ‘Vickey’s place’. They don’t know what Borderline Backpackers is, just say ‘Vickey’s place’.” It was all very strange.

We were left with a German girl to sign us all in. Apparently she was a supervisor but she seemed pretty new herself and didn’t know where anything was. Elsewhere in the warehouse a group of girls were busy packing the fruit into little plastic containers. They looked like they had a cushy job. We were each given a book of tickets with unique numbers in to put in our boxes, so they could check how much work we did. I was paired up with Ying, the Chinese girl.

And so the picking work began. I didn’t know much about figs, recalling them solely from the dead brown gunk you get inside fig rolls, but live in the flesh they are a difficult proposition to deal with. The apple-sized fruit bruise incredibly easily in the boxes and the trees produce a foul milky sap that burns your skin on contact. We were all kitted out with flimsy plastic gloves as protection and left to soldier on in the heat. We were expected to fill four boxes of fruit an hour.

Supervising our section was an intimidating redneck bloke called Noel with long unkempt hair and a fearsome moustache. He seemed like a proper slave-driver and was clearly used to sacking people at the drop of a hat. He looked at me like shit for turning up in rubber boots in this heat, but as far as I’d known you always needed wellies for farm work. Vickey certainly hadn't bothered to warn me to wear trainers. I complained my clippers were rusty and he simply spat on them to ease up the joint then handed them back.

I got to speak to a few other backpackers working on the farm; most of them were staying at another hostel in town. They said it was incredibly over-crowded too; there were so many travellers booked in that people had to sleep on the floor of the TV room. One guy was sharing a single bunk-bed with his girlfriend. I don’t know how the Mildura hostels can get away with squeezing people in for extra cash; whatever safety laws are in place don’t seem to be enforced.

Ying and I filled box after box with fruit as the day wore on, but it was clear we were struggling to meet the quota. She was grafting away like there was no tomorrow but I felt like I was running on empty, struggling to comprehend the day’s strange turn of events. What was I doing here? 24 hours ago I had been strolling round St. Kilda with my parents and my best mate, on holiday. Here I was, lured into the great beyond by a wildly inaccurate website, and I didn't even know what f**king state I was in!

It was early evening when they let us clock off for the day. I was relieved the hard slog was over, but I wasn’t ready for the bombshell Noel was about to drop. Turns out Ying and I had not filled enough boxes of fruit. We were sacked on the spot. It was humiliating. I felt bad for Ying too as she was blameless.

I’d heard this happened a lot to new people; these fig farmers had a reputation for being utter bastards. The staff turnover rate was very high as they simply didn’t bother re-hiring you if you weren’t fast enough on the first day. I met the owner, and he was genuinely frightening. He ran around shouting and swearing at people if they made even slight damage to his precious fig plants. They really did talk to the workers like they were stupid.

I felt frustrated and powerless. The three French guys commiserated me while we waited for the pickup. They had done okay, despite receiving a furious bollocking from the head honcho for pulling off a leaf. They couldn’t understand why I hadn’t argued the toss and demanded another chance. But I didn’t want to face this shit again tomorrow. If I quit the hostel I’d lose the week’s rent but at least I would get my day’s wages. (Though it would subsequently take Vickey five months and repeated demands to finally cough up the money.)

Vickey was surprisingly sympathetic when she arrived in the minibus. Presumably by giving it a good go I had proven myself not to be a ‘negative’ person. She said she would “sort something out” for me but I knew this would involve doing badly-paid grape-picking.

She seemed to have taken quite a shine to me; she even asked if I wanted to accompany her to a motorbike race that evening. I said I was too tired. I had horrible visions of her trapping me in some sort of dungeon and forcing me to be her 'husband'. I felt a lot better when she handed my passport back. We were dropped off at our house. Ying was making plans to leave for Adelaide and I was in half a mind to go with her.

I met some Irish backpackers who were hanging round in the living room and explained my tale of woe. Like everyone I met that day they commiserated me; I was doing excellently on the sympathy front. I guessed these were the ‘negative’ people Vickey was talking about. I soon understood why.

They’d been stuck in Mildura for weeks, waiting for occasional crumbs of work from Vickey, and they had all run out of money. Strung along on her false promises and too skint to move on. The grape-picking wages at the vineyard were criminal – just 25 cents for each full bucket of grapes. One guy I spoke to explained you’d be lucky to make $40 a day doing this; he was forced to quit after three days due to exhaustion.

I felt sorry for them but no way was I going to let this happen to me. I got a good night’s sleep and spent the next day searching the internet for decent working hostels within a day's travel. The only ones I could find had vague information or very bad reviews. I wished I’d investigated Mildura properly before I came; the reviews for Borderline Backpackers (which tallied very closely with my experiences) showed its website up to be an utter lie. I grew more and more angry as I realised I’d been had. I had a lot to learn.

Now my savings had run out and my choices were severely limited. So I did the only thing I could do. I got out the credit card. And I booked a flight.

Feb 09 - Kings Canyon and the end of the holiday

The night after we feasted on the views of Uluru at sunset, our group got together for a big celebratory dinner at the Kings Canyon campsite. We enjoyed a meal of, oh yes, more burgers, then played some party games. It was a long time since I played any party games, other than drinking games or piling furniture on to people asleep on couches.

There was that old favourite the chicken game. We took it in turns gripping a rubber ball between our knees and trying to chicken-walk along the ground to drop it in a cup; I got an excellent video of my dad doing this. Then there was the kangaroos and emus game, which involved going outside and pretending to be, erm, kangaroos and emus; then the circle of truth, where we formed a giant circle then each person took turns to stand in the centre and perform some special feat.

I told a joke about ducks and Bill Withers, and Anthony entertained us with his vast array of barcode and US highways trivia. We’re very fun people to be around obviously. I like evenings like those – the games were pretty unimaginative but we were making our own entertainment, like they did in the old days. Finding enjoyment from the surroundings, be it playing daft games or killing things in new and inventive ways, seems like a big part of life in the bush.

After darkness fell, Nick told us (almost as an afterthought) that part of the camp was haunted by sinister tribal spirits; people waking in their sleep were sometimes panicked to feel an invisible force pinning them to the ground. I took it with a pinch of salt, as Aussies have a bit of a reputation for bullshitting visitors about made-up scary monsters. But then we got a chance to see if the myth was true, spending another night sleeping out under the stars in swag-bags! Nothing happened, though we hid our shoes from the dingoes as a precaution.

And so the next morning dawned, and we did a big hike round Kings Canyon. Epic scenery, rock formations, wind erosion, wild plants, blah blah blah. More of the same and I loved it, but there just aren’t enough words in the English language for me to describe this awesome experience without repeating words I’ve written about the Grampians National Park and Flinders Ranges, etc. We had been utterly spoilt with great scenery in the last couple of weeks.

This was the longest walk we went on during the holiday and featured some tough climbs, particularly the fearsome Heart Attack Hill that marked the beginning. I liked the way it was named; no poetry, no bullshit, just a no-nonsense encapsulation of its identity. It didn’t prove fatal for any of us but it was certainly a steep unrelenting climb.

Once our group got up Heart Attack Hill we went along on level ground for a while, with the huge valley of Kings Canyon to our right and far-away scenery to our left, then we crossed a couple of bridges; then we went down to see a massive rock pool called the Garden of Eden. It’s a popular swimming spot but travellers frequently fall ill from the dodgy water. Lonely Planet recommended it for a dip, which shows you what they know I guess.

Then we crossed the Lost City, which is a plateau with loads of mesmerising patterned rocks. Nick showed us a plant which produces the natural equivalent of MDMA. He refused to tell us how to prepare the leaves, much to our disappointment! We walked along taking lots more photos of the horizontal rock strata. After all, when would we be coming here again? Most of us had filled our memory cards with hundreds of photos on this trip. A smorgasbord of colourful pixels to dine out on for eternity back home.

After three or so hours of walking we climbed down the opposite hill and that was it, the end of the hike across Kings Canyon. We boarded the bus for the final leg of the journey to Alice Springs. More driving through nothing, then we had a lunch stop at a roadhouse that kept emus in a paddock. One last emotional lunch of burgers and salad, the food we’d survived on almost completely for the past week. Clouds of flies descended on the food, ignoring most of it and heading straight for the tuna.

The bus carried on up the highway, passing an interesting turn off that led to a covert US military base. I was fascinated by all these secret goings-on in the desert. Apparently there are thousands of US personnel housed on this base – God knows why – and they get all their food flown in direct from America. Word is that they are all designated with menial job titles such as ‘gardener’ to hide their true identities. But if anyone asks, I didn’t tell you that. (I’m not dissing gardeners by the way, I’ve already got the CIA on my back after writing that.)

Soon afterwards the beginnings of a town appeared over the horizon. We had reached Alice Springs! The Stuart Highway, that friendly stork guiding us through the treacherous desert, was flying on to pastures anew – and sadly we would have to say adios. On the outskirts of town, the road bent through 90 degrees for the first time in a thousand miles. We stopped at a pair of traffic lights; again, the first we’d seen in a thousand miles. And suddenly we were back in civilisation, shops and houses and streets crowding all around us.

Nick did the drop-offs at the hostels round town; me, Anthony and my parents were almost the last off the bus. Esther was still sat there at the end, grumbling about some perceived slight from Nick. Some of the other guys would regroup later for a tour up to Darwin, but the four of us were glad of a rest from the constant activity, and also had two nights to look forward to in a big hotel.

After a quick shower everyone got together for a farewell party at Annie’s backpacker bar. There were about twenty of us who did the trip and we all sat at a long table and got uproariously drunk together one last time. Email addresses were exchanged. Verbal commitments were made to add one another on Facebook and tag each other in our travel photos. After tonight we would most likely never see each other again.

Nick came too and had some beers with us. He didn’t hold back either, he had the next day off and was evidently very happy to have a break from driving. The last I saw of my group, I was getting in a taxi and he was getting ready to lead them off to a casino! In my experience the point in a night out when your mates decide to go to a casino is the point where you should go home.

Anthony stayed out with them till the wee small hours, partying like the behemoth of high living that he is. Later he had to get the porter to let him into the room. I was passed out on my bed like a proper lightweight and didn’t hear him repeatedly phoning me. That night was a big blow to my confidence in my drinking abilities.

The next day it was just the four of us again. We lived it up in style, nursing our hangovers by the hotel pool. My parents went shopping in Alice Springs and my dad bought a fancy hat made of kangaroo leather. The hotel was really posh – it was the kind of place where you suddenly feel attractive and interesting because the staff are smiling at you, then you realise they have to smile at the guests in these sorts of places.

I went for a wander round Alice Springs with Anthony. There is a dried-up riverbed running through the town centre, the Todd River. Every year they hold a pretend yacht race on it, teams of runners carrying boats along the ‘river’ as a laugh. Like I said, in the outback you have to make your own entertainment. There were lots of Aboriginal people hanging round in the town centre. Having spent all this time in Australia it was the first time I’d seen them in any number.

The next day we flew out from Alice Springs’ tiny airport, to Sydney. We got the standard safety demonstration on how to use the life-jacket, despite the fact we didn’t pass over water at any point during the flight! We spent three days sight-seeing; checking out bare essentials like the harbour bridge, the opera house, the ferry to Manly etc. I’d been there before but it was worth the four of us paying a visit so my parents and Anthony could see the amazing cityscape and the unending panorama of harbours and coves surrounding it. We didn’t get the greatest weather, in fact it pissed it down nearly every day we were there.

Walking round Circular Quay we had a chance reunion with Matteo, the Italian guy from our tour, who was going about his mysterious business in Sydney. A man like Matteo, you don’t ask too many questions. Then the weather brightened up so we did a boat trip round the harbour. The trip was notable not so much for the views as for the tour guide’s strange obsession with Nicole Kidman and camp showbiz trivia. It was quite a good trip though – there are miles of dramatic views around the harbour.

Next we caught a long-distance train down to Melbourne and spent a few days by the sea in St. Kilda. We had literally come full-circle – by a weird quirk of fate our hotel was just over the road from the pick-up point on the Great Ocean Road tour. That adventure on Dave’s bus was now a distant memory from a fortnight ago. I was starting to realise that the holiday was nearly over; soon I would have to go back to farm work in the country.

St. Kilda had a strangely familiar atmosphere; due to its southerly location and colonial buildings it is probably the closest thing you will find in Australia to a British seaside town. Despite that it was enjoyable and relaxing. There was a harbour and a fun park and all the other stuff you get at the seaside. The streets were lined with endless cafes and restaurants, the maddening diversity of choice that is Melbourne’s trademark. The trams flocked here, bringing people to and from the city centre. We pottered round looking at trams and boats mostly, with my dad taking photo after photo.

We wanted more sight-seeing so we went on a winery trip round the Yarra Valley; a day of fine wines, haute cuisine and the painful experience of making small talk with posh strangers. Our guide, an enthusiastic wine buff named Orson, explained how the countryside was marred with bush-fires. Many of the vineyards were bravely staying open for business despite being in high-risk areas. The recent tragedies certainly took the fun out of the occasion.

And so we spent the afternoon going from winery to winery, sipping chilled chardonnay and staring at the massive plumes of smoke on the horizon. It’s easy to forget how massive the bush-fires were, and many people living rural Victoria were affected. I detected an atmosphere of forced jollity among our group. A flowery Canadian tourist named Darcy held court over the table, rapturously praising a hit new musical based on the life of Shane Warne. His passions in life seemed to be the theatre and fancy restaurants. It was interesting to finally get to meet the coach party brigade, but I still harbour a Trotskyite mistrust of them.

That night, relatively sober despite all the wine, we went back to the city and met our friend Seana for dinner and drinks. We ended up in a karaoke bar, an abrupt return to working-class life after all the folly of the wineries. It was the final evening of our holiday and we had a few beers to commemorate this, followed by a few more. Anthony put in a rare appearance on the karaoke, singing Elton John’s ‘Your song’. I was not looking forward to this holiday ending.

The day after it was all over; time to pack up and check out of the hotel. We spent a long day hanging round in St. Kilda with our bags, drinking tea in cafes and watching the hours creep by with sad eyes. My parents took me shopping for new trainers in Melbourne – after all these years I can only be forced to buy footwear with the application of an electric cattle prod or parental shame. This was the last they’d see of me in a long time and they wanted me all turned out in shiny new school clothes.

That evening we got a cab to the city and enjoyed dinner by the river one last time. My parents and Anthony talked excitedly of the flight home; it would be my last ‘posh’ meal for some time and I savoured every mouthful. I felt a mixture of happiness and sadness that I was continuing my strange wandering life while these familiar faces departed home. I felt a bit lonely to be honest, and not for the first time I inwardly wondered what the hell it was I was hoping to achieve from this trip.

We said our goodbyes outside Southern Cross station, a massive transport hub crouching under a giant freakish canopy of twisting metal. We exchanged hugs and then they were out of my life in a flash, speeding away in a yellow taxi, quickly lost in the sea of rear headlights. I headed to the coach stop, humming upbeat tunes and looking forward to my next adventure. I could hack this travel lark; loved ones coming and going did not distract me in the slightest. Probably.

While Anthony and my parents were spending a mind-numbing 24 hours on a plane back to the UK, I was going on a long journey of my own. A crowded bus took me on an overnight journey up to Mildura, a country town in Victoria that sits on the border with New South Wales. I was low on money and needed to get more farm work for my visa. That meant another stay on a working hostel and some serious hard graft!