Gayndah Queensland

“Tha More Ya Pick Tha More Ya Get”

Jim McNaught, Citrus Farmer

It was a peculiar series of events which led us to our first fruit picking job. We were in Hervey Bay awaiting a call from some fellow traveling buddies to get the all clear to head to Bundaberg for a pre-arranged gig picking juicy tomatoes. The call came and it wasn’t the outcome expected, the gig had fallen through. What to do now? We set the office up (laptop and mobile) and called every employment agency/farm that we could find a number for. The news was not encouraging. A cold snap had lowered yield of tomatoes and the majority of labour was sourced from dehydrated, delirious, nude backpackers. In a moment of despair we looked to the cloudless sky “c’mon give us break”. Someone was listening...

On her way to the loo Jess bumped into a friendly local, Ivan, who was playing with his giant Alaskan Malamute whilst waiting for his wife Kate. After exchanging friendly chit chat Ivan divulged that his Bro in Law, Jim, had an orchard in Gayndah and then proceeded to call and see if he could hook us up. Outcome - no work for a couple of weeks – ok... Ivan and Kate then offered us their beach front holiday home for a hot shower and a place to stay that night neighbouring Guy Sebastion! Well it was a lovely offer and the idea of some singing lessons from the man himself was a huge temptation for Steve, but we needed work pronto. That’s it, let’s just head to Bundy to door knock farms and just as we were 10 minutes out of Hervey Bay Jim calls us back – he had a couple of days work! Tom Tom was re programmed to sunny Gayndah, 4 hours west.

Welcome to sunny Gayndah

So now we are officially fruit picking gypsies. Jim sorted us out with a farm stay and a week’s work of thorn thrashing mandarins and limes. It would have to be the most physical work either of us had done. Averaging 600kg of fruit each per day! Besides the thousand scratches, early starts, long days and RSI’s we had fun and now had some money in the bank to put us through the next adventure.

Sunrise at Jim's

The fleet

Stevie going crazy, again...

Full bins in the afternoon

Mandies on chin

Living room and kitchen

Mandarin sunset

FACT: mandarins and limes have brutal thorns. FACT mandies straight off the tree are amazing and you can eat 30 in one day. FACT there is no better smell in the world then 600kg of freshly picked limes!

I got a winner!

Lovely limes, where's the Mojitos?

Special

Cool lime buggy

And for those who may consider Mandarin/Lime picking:

MANDARIN/LIME 101

·        Farmer usually provides a ‘joey’ bag and stem snips. It’s a good idea to also equip yourself with a pair of close fitting fabric gardening gloves and strapping tape.

·        Tape up areas of hands that hold the snips and also your gloves to your long sleeve work shirt in an attempt to protect yourself from thorn fury.

·        Music – gets you through the 10hr day and cuts out ranting and raving delusional fruit picking jibber.

·        Tactics – always start an empty joey bag up the ladder. Then once half full/or when your risking your life balancing come down slowly, preferably 1 step at a time, then fill the rest of the bag working the lower branches on your way back to the bin.

·        So you know what you’re in for – a bin is roughly a cubic meter = approx 400kg of fruit  = $90 (mandies) or $130 (limes) for your bank acc… minus tax.

·        Give yourself a chance – the first day you will work harder than you ever have and not even fill a bin. After the second day you think you need to go to hospital. By the 3rd day you will become enlightened and tap into your inner ninja skills. You will become one with your ladder, joey bag and snips singing songs of love and conversing with the trees... And eventually earn more than a 14yro kid working at McDonalds.

Gotta a love a big thing