After a 17.5 hour journey to Red Cliffs in Victoria, AKA the middle of bloody knowhere, we were pooped and reconciled to a two month prison sentence fruitpicking. No matter how much people try to warn you about working in desert heat conditions you can't help but wonder what the bleep am I doing here till after you've booked yourself in to a hostel. Some days reached early - mid 40s! We stuck it out though, even if at times we were desperatly thinking about that credit card.
Just a little mention to all the Red Cliffs' clan...Hellooo!.. Micky, Paul (Mark!), Martin, Richard, Ally, Audrey (liiight weeeight!), Auriane, Tellu, Kris, Anna (fruit cake), Zoe, Gareth, Dylan, Damien, Matthew, David, Nicola, Willie, Elaine, Gaz, Arris, Judith, Dave, Keiron, Christa, Sheena, Lindsey & Quaime (hope we spelt this correct). Phew! Hope we havn't forgotten anyone we met there.
Ooops! Sorry Bowsie
We started working pretty quickly, through Bev & Mick's 'Top Dog' Mark! A mind numbing experience, we picked grapes for twelve hours in the soaring heat and eventually joined in with the chorus of screams and grunts of frustration from other backpackers throughout the day. Try as hard as you might not to pick fruit by the bucket coz we earnt a measly $43 each for the day. Needless to say they didn't ask for anyone from Bev & Mick's back. We soon worked out its marginally better to get an hourly paid job. Though the farmers were some of the nicest we met that day and the famer's wife surprised us with homemade sandwiches and tea. We met Aurianne and Audrey that day staying at the same hostel- terrific gals!
I soon got some longer term work in the Ralli Brothers' packing shed, along with Audrey. They only wanted women for the job because apparantly we're more nimble fingured to trim table grapes, huh! I reckon they prefered having us beacuse they turned out to be a bunch of stereotypical traditional Aussie outback men, who thought it was hillarious to make sexist, obnoxious comments. If that wasn't enough we had these rediculous clippers to trim with and were constantly cutting our fingers, all part of the process we were told! It was $12/hr which was better than before but not the best. For the first couple of weeks or so we were clocking up 6-7 hours a day, seven days a week, forming a line of zombies. Plus the locals were geting paid double what we were earning, even though its not exactly a challenging job for anyone to pick up. Some of the backpackers who'd been there a while told me that five girls got the sack on their first day! I nearly got sacked on my first day for being too slow, so I stopped being pedantic and learnt what was necessary, even though Crass Chris and the others constantly pushed us to work faster than was possible, whilst reminding us to trim the grapes to perfection! You had to be on your guard most of the time, as they're were always lurking about, or learing over our shoulders.lol Oh and don't get me started on this crazy idea of a 'pay day'! Further on down the line there were less grapes to pick and so the hours and days lessoned. So did the guys arrogantsy. Seems like they were trying the 'show 'em who's boss to keep us on our toes' tactic at first but eased off towards the end (dodgy interpretion of this approach though). We' even managed a laugh with them! Did I say that, oh.. I meant at them!
I was so glad when that period was finished. Four of us girls who worked at the packing shed went on to work for John Hunts, a fifty odd Ozzy farmer, whom we especially liked working for, not least beacuse he treated us to long morning breaks with coffee and yo yo bisquits, yum! He was happy telling us stories about his family and friends and on and on he went...lol Bloody hot days picking sultanas and red currants for a decent $16.50/hr before tax. We worked from around 7am to 1/2pm for five days at first, so I earnt over $500, which was not bad. However, it wasn't constant work so we had to find some other work in between. Our group consisted of Audrey, Anna and Zoe..
Audrey (left), French-Canadian and my 'partner in crime' picked fruit with me on the same rows - I won't even recall the rediculous conversations (and songs) we had to get us through the day. I tried to teach this wild child to dance, as requested - bloody nightmare you were.. but we had a giggle (once that was till we had no more interuptions!) xx Anna was this machine at work, zooming past us all down the rows of grapes and putting us to shame. I reckon she must of had an itchy bum or something, though more than likely its down to her years experience working on a farm in Wales! Not to mention this woman is hilarious - never enough time to scoff my lunch down, I was laughing so much. I meant what I said Anna, "in ten years time...!" Her slapstick wasn't bad either. Yelping, she blindly bounced backwards off of thin air only to find she'd hit a super strong spider web built across from one hedge to another. Classic Anna! (That reminds me, we saw a humungous stark black and white Tim Burton-esque gothic spider that no local has ever heard of..spooky!) Zoe, what can I say, you were a little trooper, always looking on the brightside and giving us encouragement with gold stars at the end of a tiring, sweaty day. Together we formed a nice little team. (If you guys have any photos/videos of us at work I can add here I'd really appreciate it! Tanx!)
I worked for brothers Sam and Tony Romeo after this for a couple of weeks or so picking and packing table grapes. Jees these guys were picky and wanted the box to be exactly the correct weight and displayed correctly. Did I mention we were getting around $2/box?!
In the words of Chris Martin "Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard...".
Meanwhile I was also working my butt off for peanuts. After a few days wait I got a job pinning down the sheets that cover the grapevines. Not really well paid work and the hours, and not to mention the person I was working for, was real unreliable. I had worse luck than Gem in getting paid and wasted a a good few hours every week chasing up my pay but got it all in the end. My luck changed when I somehow landed the best possible fruit picking job in the whole of Australia: Picking water melons for the Suppupo family! Ok the work wasn't amazing but it was hourly paid and I was convinced a couple of months picking up these melons was going to make me look like the Hulk (so far that hasn't happened) but it was what came after that made the job so great. There was four of us. 2 German lads and a girl, and one Welsh lad. We all got on well (Zee Germans even had a sense of humour!) and we all knew how lucky we were. We would finish at lunch and everyday we would get to sit down in the garden with the family, have a couple of beers and be treated to a huge freshly prepared lunch. One day it was pizza and sausages on the barbie, next it might be proper steaks and freshly baked bread. We all loved it and couldn't believe our luck! Mama Suppupo would always say "Nobody-a-leaves-a-my-house-a-hungary" and she was right!
Unfortunately the time came when I had to make a decision. The only bad thing about the job was the lack of hours, 5 a day at most. Luckily my roomate was leaving and his job came open so i took it. Picking rock melons, up to eight hours a day, 6 days a week. This I did for the next 5 weeks and earned some real good money, 1 week getting $660 (approx 280 pounds) which was good considering the rent at B & M's was only $100 (approx 40 pounds) a week. Within a week our new room mates, Kris and Tellu (from Sweden and Finland) were working with us and we all got along great, with Kris in particular loving a good chat about work once we got home! And it was also great to finally meet a guy who was actually more scared of spiders than me - in fact Kris had even done his internet research on all things deadly before he'd even left Sweden! Plus he spent more time in front of the mirror than me.
In all honesty i didn't really like the job and it was bloody hard work chasing the tractor trying to pick up half a dozen melons at once in 40 degree heat. The highlight was seeing a deadly brown snake slither right past the tractor and through our group. We were told by the farmer that they were common in the area but they usually go the opposite way to a tractor, and for every one you might see, you don't see the other nine! Then he said that the brown snake was actually the second most venomous in Oz, so basically, that means the world! It was pretty cool though, as was seeing the farmers dog chase a kangaroo that had somehow breached the fence and hopped right through the middle of the melon field in front of us. Only in Australia!
If it wasn't for the lovely peeps we met at Bev & Mick's, I don't don't know what we would have done...
Mickey, Ally, Quiame, Richard & Martin Audrey & Auriane
Kris & Tellu... advertising for Colgate Me and my boys! Willie, Mark
Micky & Richard..oh and Al!
Bev & Mick's was a pretty decent hostel to stay in whilst we worked but with no sign of Bev! It was also the local pub in town on the ground floor, so we met a few interesting hill billies! There was a small kitchen, eating/lounge area, DVD room, internet, pool tables, table tennis area and bedrooms upstairs. Watched so many DVDs in the evening, the only time we had a break from it was probably when Braveheart was played - a dozen times. Table tennis, well.. what can i say guys, I think I might have beeten you all first time round, except, and I can't honestly remember, maybe for Ally (Scottish) & Arris (English). He he! Don't worry I knew my place when it came to the table tennis competition and stayed out of it, as your idea of winning was to smash the balls at us girls..and, yes, I am refering to you, Richard (Scottish) Arris (English) and Kris lol! 
No doubt if I wasn't playing table tennis or watching DVDs Alex and I were being taught how to poker by Gareth (Irish). I had $ signs in my eyes after that. Competition? My best attempt was coming third amonst a group of twelve. Don't worry mum, dad, we were only playing with chips! Alex got me out once - probably the only one that could truly read me. That was untill our new roomies Tellu and Kris came along. Tellu was an absolute diamond at poker and beat us all so many times, I need to have a quiet word with her to pick up some tips. Gareth now asks me if I want the number for gamblers anonymous.
Usual friday night pose for Al
So you see I kept myself pre-occupied and also did a bit of Thai Kickboxing with Richard and Aurianne (French, left) and some salsa dancing with Auriane as well but with not much luck in the latter. We had a laugh though! Friday nights could get pretty chaotic at this place, and on our final night Bowsie(barman)in a drunken state sprayed the enitre eating area with fire extinguisher foam, which choked us all and covered the place in what looked like a thin layer of snow. Somehow that night I also somehow got involved in a water fight with Richard which got a lot of the hostel wet and was caught on CCTV! The little bugger started it and I wasn't about to let him get away with it. But I fell on my bum, bruised my thigh and still Richard threw water all over me again on the floor, completly defenceless. Alex found this very funny, of course. Next time Richard I will be sober! For the sake of sticking to a budget we bought goon (cheap boxed wine) on weekend nights with $5 bbqs out in the park after being pretty disciplined for the first few weeks not spending any money at the bar. I never want to touch that stuff again (Ooops!). We also went to visit the nearest larger town Mildura a few times out of sheer boredom.
Sat BBQ Clockwise: Damien, Nicola, Me, Auriane 
Love you too! 
Scary dude with the glasses gives you an evil eye when playing poker
Gareth: Oh wise one
teach me the ways
of poker!
"an 'orrible bastard!".
I've told this girl a hundred times that, in my opinion, she has a model face better than Kate Moss - she just needs to get get her technique down!
Oh yeah and I was part of this slightly bizarre wedding ceremony that took place early on in our stay at the park - not quite sure whether the bride and groom backpackers thought this was real or not. Goon must be the answer. (Pics anyone? Tanx!)
P.s. I would just like to point out that I have no idea if Anna does have an itchy bum, at no point did she ever admit to having an itchy bum and nor we did we ever discuss the topic of itchy bums.