1/3~1/13
I took the train and the bus to Manjimup, where I would work in for the next month. It took me about 4 hours to Manjimup but I didn’t feel it was a long time. Compared with the trip to Exmouth, it was nothing. I also walked to the train station alone this time, with all my belongings. The weather was no good, the clouds covered all the sky that made all the buildings seemed to be concealed by the yarn and that also made the leaving become a little depressed. Again, I was going to somewhere that I didn’t even know. Maybe I am already get used to it so I didn’t feel so helpless this time. That’s great to me, I thought.
The order of the working hostel picked me up at car park of bus station. She drove me to the supermarket and told me to buy some foods that I was going to eat in the next few days. She said the hostel will transport us to the town three times a week and we can get our supplements. I grabbed some cans and instant noodles and then jump on the van. On the road to the hostel, all that I could see was the trees and the farms. On the flat, endless pasture, cows and sheep ate grass leisurely. I also saw trees planted well organized in rows. I thought that would be the fruits that I was going to pick and pack in the future.
The working hostel, which is surrounded by the trees, has three one floor cottages. The road to the hostel is not made by asphalt. Outside of the houses are a ground and a pool, in the pool there is a stick, on the stick I saw our national flag. Wonderful! That means there must be some Taiwanese lived in it. I was guided to a mix, 8-shared room. That will be my bed for the next month.
After I settled down, I wandered around the hostel. There is also laundry and a playroom. In the playroom, there are a pool and a table tennis table and I saw a familiar face. I had joined a gathering when I was in Taiwan in July. The purpose of the gathering was for the people who are going to work and travel in Australia to share and exchange information. In the gathering, there were only a few male so I remember the face of the guy who now stood in front of me in the playroom. His name is Leon, only a letter more than my name. I told him I know him when I was in Taiwan but he couldn’t remember it. He told me some information about this hostel and work. After a short chat, I told him that I was tired and I wanted to hit the hay.
When I lied on my bed, some of my roommate came in and out; the noise kept waking me up. I could tell from their language that most of my roommates are coming from Korea. Most of the people come to Australia for working holiday will meet Koreans in many different ways, like in the language school or at the work place, but not do I. I hadn’t met any Korea friends, except Jin, in the first month but I only know Jin for a few hours, so accurately saying, I didn’t have the experience to live with the Koreans. To my surprise, all of the Korean roommates are male.
One of my Taiwanese roommates told me that our room would become the gym at night. The Korean even used concrete to fill the bottles and put a stick in it. They used it to exercise their biceps. I joined them at night. Some of the Korean even teach others how to dance the Brazil dance.
The first in job I got in Australia was also the first job in my life. What I was doing was to drive a little truck and fertilized the little oak trees. That was an easy job but it was also boring. Two Japanese, Jun and Kiyo, worked with me. They rode on the quad bike doing the fertilization. The little truck I drove was a light orange, 4WD with roof on it. The trees were very low so I had to bow down and sprinkle the chemicals around the trees. At first it was funny but after doing the same movement over 3 hours, it became a torture. 8 hours later, my right back and wrist hurt a lot due to the same pose I did for the last 8 hours.
When people get bored, they will always find something interesting to do. That is the nature! What I had done was driving the truck as fast as it could and made a drift when I turning the truck severely into the shed to supply the chemical. Every time I drifted the truck, it always trails a fog of dust behind it. Not only drifted on the road, I also drove fast in the farm. The rugged road made the truck jump up and down. In the truck, I was thrown up when the truck ran through a hole or a mound. Honestly, that was interesting.
When it’s about time to end, three of us drove rapidly back to the shed. I made some drift when I tried to chase after my two Japanese colleagues. Although I saw the boss but I didn’t reduce the speed because Damo and Nat had told me that Australian think that Asian people can’t drive, part of it is true and part of it is just because most of the Asian drive batter car so Australian envy them. I thought it’s time for me to wash the bad name of the Asian. I made a perfect drift and the tire made a perfect circle on the ground. I told myself that was pretty cool but the boss didn’t think it was. He told me if I did that again, the day would be the last day for me to work here. How sarcastically it was.
It took us three days to fertilize all the trees. My boss told there wouldn’t be any job for us next two weeks. Everyday there will be a roster on the bulletin board. There are a lot of farms in this area need backpackers to work for them. Sometimes you don’t know which farm you are going to work for tomorrow and sometimes there will be no job for you, but rarely. All the farm order will call the hostel holder to inform how many people they need and she will arrange it and make a roster. I told the hostel holder, Naomi, I wanted to work on weekend.
The second job I got was to pick avocado. Avocado is a soft tasted, cream like fruit. Most of the Australian like to eat it in breakfast whilst most of my Taiwanese friends hate the taste. I remember that in front of my grand grandparent’s house, there are few avocado trees. When I was little, my mother would blend it with milk, water and sugar. That was tasty and I like to drink it.
Avocado trees are not tall. Most of them are as tall as a two-floor building. It is easy to pick the avocado from the tree but sometimes you have climb up to the tree or use the ladder to reach those grow on the top. It not a hard job and best of all, you can talk to your friends whilst you pick it. I work with Leon and Kiyo, the Japanese who also work with me for fertilizing. I kept talking to Leon. Sometimes we even sang the pop Taiwanese song. We only work for five hours that day.
On Monday (1/7), I was sent to a farm to pick up broccolis. That was a shit job. Broccolis grow on the ground so we have to bow down to pick it. Each of us had a knife to cut the stem and place it on the truck. There was a convey belt perpendicular of the truck that lay in fount of us. We have to keep our speed with the truck. I hardly remember that there was anytime I stood. I bowed all the day. The temperature in the morning in Manjimup is very low and the broccolis need water, these two elements compound a result, which was my fingers felt fucking freeze when I was working. My wrist and my back hurt very much. My rain shoe was leaking so my toes felt as freeze as my fingers. I kept hoping that the time passed as fast time as it could. But the time passed as slow as though watching the snail crawling. Every minute and every second were endless torture to me.
Next day I changed to another farm but the job was also picking fucking goddamn broccolis. When you do something for a long time, your brain will start to think something to scatter your attention. What was I thinking first was how to improve the skill of picking broccolis. In which angle of cutting and how to use the knife can make the speed become faster. I tried and tried and eventually found a best way for cutting broccolis. The method separate in two steps, first step is to snap the stem when you cut it. The stem of the broccoli is very crispy so when the sharp knife touch the stem, it will snap very easily. The first step will reduce the time of bowing, which is very important. Before I tell the second step I have to describe the process of pick up a broccoli. It would take you average 10 seconds to pick up a broccoli. First two seconds is to cut the stem and the successive 6 seconds is to tear down the leaves and the last 2 seconds is to put the broccoli on the convey belt.
The first step can reduce half time of the cutting movement. The second step is to cut the stem short but not too short. If you can cut the stem short, you can reduce a lot of time in tearing down the leaves. I can complete a process within 5 seconds. That means before I run into another mature broccoli, I could stand up. My wrist won’t feel hurt when I go home. I even practiced my left hand to cut broccolis. I could use my left hand as good as my right hand.
We worked from 6:30am to 6:00pm on Tuesday (1/8). That was 11 and half hours. Something suddenly popped into my mind in that afternoon when I felt fatigue and exhausted. That was something what my father told me when I was little. He told me if I didn’t hit the book, the only thing I can do when I grow up is gathering the garbage and sell it in a low price. When I thought about this, I couldn’t stop laughing. I told myself, when I came back to Taiwan, whenever I fell tired in study, I should think about this day. That was really fucking tired. Thank god I have two days off on Wednesday and Thursday before the next picking job on Friday.
In Manjimup, or should I say in this hostel, if you don’t have a car, you are stocked in the hostel. All that you can do are paying pool or table tennis, reading, watching TV (we have 500 channels here), drinking, watching the movies in your computer, cooking (some people take a lot of time in cooking everyday) and chatting the gossips.
This is a very small place so the gossips pass from ear to ear very quickly. For instance, who likes who, who went out to ‘enjoy the star view’ with who last night and even who slept with who. Discover gossips is my nature. Within several days, I’ve already known most of the gossips happened in this hostel, no matter in the past or still happening right now. But most of the time, I do reading.
