Mackay and the strawberry debacle
After deciding to continue our travels in our new set up we decided to go to Mackay North Queensland. The plan was to see my dad to help with some auto electrical issues we were having after I tried to install our duel battery system from our van into our new wagon. Along with looking for some fruit picking work in the area which was looking plentiful. So we packed up all of our stuff and started the 2100 odd km journey.
3 days of solid driving, 2 nights spent camping in our new trailer and we made it too Mackay. We took a few days to catch up with family and get all our auto electrical issues sorted (my dad is a mechanic of 30odd years who has also worked at 4wd accessory fitters). We started to apply for jobs in the surrounding areas such as Bowen and ayr which were plentiful in fruit farms. After a week and hundreds of applications we had heard nothing back, we were so confident we could find find work seeming we have experience and good references to vouch for us. Frustrated we ended up calling some of the farms to see what the problem was. We were informed that because we were not staying in there hostels (paying them a large part of our wage) they would not even look at our application.
Eventually we did get a reply from a strawberry farmer after expanding our searches, only problem it was in Caboolture 1000 km away. Needing work we decided to pack up and chase this job, we heard picking strawberries was hard work but how hard could it be. So another 1000 km and another night at a free camping spot on the way and we found our selves in Caboolture ready to work the next day. We had an address and a time to head to the farm to start our first day, we made sure we were up nice and early and were on time. As soon as we got out of the car my heart sunk. The man I talked to on the phone I talked to sounded like he may have had a slight asian accent, but on the farm no-one spoke English apart from 1 of the managers and even then it may as well been another language. I have not felt uncomfortable like this ever, it was very unsettling having everyone else speaking another language seeming talking about us behind our back. we decided to try make the most of it and after having a very rough run through of how to pick strawberries we proceeded to work 11 hours with no break. We were then informed that the 80 trays of strawberries we picked would only get us $1:40 each instead of $3-$3:50 that we were originally told meaning we made $112 between the 2 of us for one of the hardest longest days work of my life. Needless to say we were not going to continue with this slave labour.