It’s a Goa!

Roadtrips are expensive, even when Australian fuel is roughly half the price you’d pay in the UK. After making our way from Perth to Esperance and then heading North, we realised we’d have to make a pitstop to work again if we were going to see more than 5% of this vast country.

So after a thoroughly enjoyable first leg of our trip, we arrived in Carnarvon with just enough money to get us to the next possible source of work if Carnarvon didn’t come up with the goods. There are plenty of plantations here growing pretty much everything from bananas to watermelons and it’s a well-established spot on the ‘harvest trail’ making it a pretty good place to run out of money. However, the town itself is pretty grotty and run-down with more than its fair share of down-and-outs loitering around.

The challenge was set, to find jobs and save up $6000 (£2600) in six weeks so we could carry on North before the rainy season got into full swing and hopefully make it all the way to Melbourne in time for Christmas without having to work again.

To achieve this financial goal, we’d have to live very basically and work a lot of hours. Caravan parks would be a bit expensive so we’d have to try a combination of parking up in lay-bys and asking our employers if they’d kindly let us camp on their land (which would have the double benefit of saving us fuel from commuting). We’d only have to put up with these living conditions for six weeks so we reckoned it’d be difficult but achievable.

First, we decided to try asking at the backpackers hostels. The ‘go west’ magazine positively gushed about the Fish and Whistle (it also had a funky and modern looking ad) and recommended it as a place to find work but we couldn’t find it - what we found at the address given was a very old, dingy and uninviting building called the Port Hotel that had no obvious entrance. We gave up and found the YHA which had quite a promising looking noticeboard for jobs.  We spoke to the receptionist (who looked like a female version of Lurch from the Adams Family) and she basically said we’d only be given a job if we stayed at the hostel ($220 per week) and if we left the hostel she’d phone our employers and have us fired. So great terms there, then! We said we’d prefer to live in the van in the yard behind the hostel and she said she’d give us a $10 discount if we did that! Looking around the place, it seemed to be full of stoners and borderline-alcoholics so we left in disgust to try and locate the elusive Fish and Whistle.

We found that one of the boarded up doors of the Port Hotel actually opened so we stepped inside and asked if this place was in fact the Fish and Whistle. It turned out that it was, so we asked about jobs. The friendly (and human-looking) receptionist said there were no jobs and no rooms available but suggested that we drive up and down the two roads running parallel to the river, as this is where we’d find the plantations which would usually have notices outside displaying “workers required” if they needed help.

So, we head off up and down South River Road and North River Road. The  weather was too hot and it felt very intimidating driving up to farmhouses and asking for a job. The nearest we got was swapping phone numbers with one grape farmer, who also said we could camp on his land if we were given work. We also spent a nice couple of hours touring a banana plantation and being shown what kind of work we could do, but when it came to the crunch, the farmer was only willing to give us five hours’ work per day, in return for board and lodge when what we needed was hard cash. He showed us a beautiful camp spot under the mango trees but it wasn’t enough to tempt us.

Pretty disheartened, we decided to check out the famous one-mile jetty (can you guess what it is yet?). We took the fishing rod (as a last minute decision, just in case) and a little picnic. After paying our $4 each(!) we started our mile stroll, asking other fishermen coming the other way if they’d caught anything. None had.

We took a seat under a kind of pagoda thing and tucked into our sandwiches, then noticed a row of three or four men reeling in fish after fish. Once we’d finished our sandwiches I wandered over to stand beside them and cast my line out, using no real bait, just soft-plastic lures. Within literally 30 seconds I could feel a bite on the line. I looked down into the water and could see a huge swarm of fish surrounding my line! A few seconds later I knew I’d caught a fish and quickly reeled it in, a funny looking long fish, which one of the experienced Aussie fishermen informed me was a Snook. So this continued, every time I threw the line in, it came back with a fish on the end of it after less than a minute. This was amazing! Soon we had quite a collection of fish to take home for dinner and we’d ended up having a fun and productive day after all.

 As we left the jetty, proudly carrying our catch of the day, we remembered our purpose in Carnarvon (although we had considered opening a fish stall to raise money) and asked the guy we’d paid to get onto the jetty if he knew of anywhere locally who’d be looking for workers. He gave us the names of a couple of places, so we decided to check them out the next day.

That night, once Tace had masterfully gutted our catch, we had an immense supper of barbecued fish and those ever helpful and sympathetic Aussies kindly provided us with some tinfoil to wrap them in. All that fishy goodness would mean we’d be super brainy for our job hunting mission!

In the morning, we rocked up at a company called Double G. With a name like that we expected to be dealing with melons! However it was a tomato packing shed. We noticed the bright, airy and relatively clean working environment, the music playing in the background and a sense that the workers were having fun. We stepped into the manager’s office and met Mark, an affable enough chap who wouldn’t entertain the possibility of employing us unless we promised that we weren’t Manchester United supporters. That hurdle easily overcome, he told us he couldn’t promise us anything but he was pretty sure a couple of people were leaving at the end of the week, so it’d be likely we could take over from them. He asked how long we’d be sticking around for and we told him we’d leave in the next day or so if we didn’t find work and left it at that.

The next morning, Mark phoned us to say he’d found us some work at his friend’s farm, that he’d passed on our phone number and to expect a call soon. Sure enough a guy called Glenn phoned to invite us over to his farm for three days of watermelon seed planting! So there was a melon connection after all… We agreed to arrive for work at 1pm the same day. The trip there wasn’t without mishaps unfortunately. We’d stupidly left our solar shower on Bessie’s roof, so at some point it fell off never to be seen again. Then we went to completely the wrong farm, jumped out of the van ready to start work and were not exactly given a heroe’s welcome! Eventually we found Glenn’s farm and it turned out to be one we’d been to and declined a job the previous day!

  Glenn showed us to the field we’d be planting and showed us how it was done and off we went. It seemed quite easy at first, but the constant stooping soon took its toll on our backs, buttocks and thighs. Nevertheless we soldiered on and before we knew it, it was 5pm and we could leave, recover and be back for 8am the next day. We really got on well with the two other farm hands, Laurie, a bemulleted hillbilly type but a great guy nevertheless and Shannon, the first aborigine we’d met since arriving in Australia.

Our second day of watermelon seed planting was sheer pain. Laurie and Shannon were making jokes about having backsides like Jean-Claude Van Damme but it was true, the muscles in our thighs and buttocks tightened up so much that they felt rock solid, but not in a good way. We enjoyed the hour-long lunch break (with a huge box of biscuits) and blitzed the field, finishing a whole day ahead of schedule! We’d done ourselves out of an extra days’ pay but we didn’t want to prolong the agony. Happily, Glenn rewarded us for our swift work with a bit of extra cash than we were expecting and some cold beers so that was a result! He also informed us that Mark from Double G had sent us over to Glenn as a bit of a test to see if we were slackers or not. I also reckoned that he’d tried to get us some work pronto so we wouldn’t leave town before he got back to us with a job.

On what would’ve been our third day of melon seed planting we were so thankful we’d finished because we simply could not move. Our bodies had totally seized up. Luckily we got to relax for a couple of days before becoming tomato-meisters at Double G…

We packed tomatoes for six weeks, seven days a week (although we did have one day off at the end of our first week as our friends Lisa & Trevor who we’d met in Esperance were in town and we took them fishing at the jetty and got drunk). We befriended a German girl called Froggy who had met the Hoff so we were well impressed by her. It was mind numbing work but very physical - the job involved lifting and carrying 10kg, sometimes 20kg boxes of tomatoes constantly. I worked out that on average, we each lifted one tonne of tomatoes per hour. Needless to say we both developed big biceps!

At first, we were still working on the idea that we could get away without staying in expensive caravan parks and Mark had hinted that his brother might be able to sort us out so we could camp on his land, just around the corner from work. Meanwhile back at the caravan park, all the wealthy ‘grey nomads’ with their super posh Winnebagos and huge caravans were taking pity on us in our little VW and every day we’d arrive home to find some kind of gift of food or utensil or whatever on our little table with a little note! Eventually one couple of long-term residents, Diane and Red, offered to lend us their trailer-tent as they were living in a static caravan. We weren’t altogether sure about this, we’d become quite set in our ways and loved living in Bessie but it was getting a bit cramped and messy in there since we’d been working and getting up at 5am every day, then being totally knackered after work. One day we got back from work and saw this huge tent up in the camp spot we’d had our eyes on for a few days (it was closer to the entrance and had a power socket so we could use our laptop) so were a bit disappointed. It turned out it was for us to stay in! Diane and Red gave us a guided tour - now I know it must seem strange to those back home used to bricks and mortar for us to describe a tent as palatial, but that’s how it was!

We were excited and overjoyed at this luxury accommodation so we decided to stay in the caravan park which was at least a 10km drive away from work so our financial target was looking hard to achieve, especially as there weren’t many tomatoes to pack in our second week, meaning we worked shorter hours and took home less money…

So did we achieve our target? Our bank balance on our last day was $5800 but the pay week ends on Thursday which means that next Friday we’ll get our last pay packet which should be around $200. Mission accomplished! In the end we didn’t live badly at all. We ate very well, had one great night out at the pub (followed by a 6am start and a 13 hour, very hot day) kept up a reasonable social life and managed to treat ourselves to a Magnum ice cream each payday.

In the end, I think we’ll remember Carnarvon fondly. The weather is spot-on perfect for a start! What I really like about the place is that most people work with some kind of fruit or vegetable, so there’s a bit of a bartering system going on. We’d pinch a box of tomatoes from work and hand them out to people in the caravan park and in return we’d get grapefruits, starfruits, sweetcorn, bananas, red peppers, you name it - and it was all as fresh and tasty as can be. One guy at work had taken this to extremes and would always have loads of bread which he’d hand out to the workers. He’d also get seafood - we were invited over to his place for a barbecue because he’d got his hands on 40kg (seriously) of tiger prawns. Basically this guy never had to go shopping!

So now we’re back on the road and heading North, into the extreme heat. Wish us luck and Bon Voyage…