A Very Ozzy Christmas in Queensland, Australia

MmMmM...

Champagne &

Pavolva!

Elaines creative decorations!

My favourite German couple- Jan-Felix and Elaine

Lydia, Moi et Marie

Dori and Lydia

15 Backpackers, One Hot Australian Day, Lots of Cold Beers!

Represent, World-wide! England, Ireland, Hong Kong, Belgium, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, South Korea, Canada, and France! WHAT UP!?

After grading onions and harvesting watermelons on the farm in Queensland, Australia for a few weeks the winter holidays were creeping ever closer. When we were hired, we all knew we were expected to work through the Christmas and New Years holiday, but as the holiday got closer the word on the street was that we might actually get a day or two off for Christmas! I, myself dont make much of Christmas these days- traveling sort of does that to you. It would be nice to be with the rest of your family for dinner and so on, but all in all, its not a big deal. Would I trade in traveling to go back for a few days? No.
Still, when I found out that we had 2 days off and there would be free beers for us waiting back at the onion shed... I was pretty happy! And so was everyone else, it was a great surprise. It had been a long day in the Australian sun and a few cold beers would do the trick!

Dickson from Hong Kong and Marie from France, 2 amazing people!

Lydia from France et moi! Man I miss her so much!!

The lot of us! Now theres some hard-working backpackers

Working in Queensland, Australia: Where the Watermelons Grow

The beginning of another beautiful sunrise

I woke up everyday around 4 am, which would give me just enough time to see a beautiful sunrise, wash up, have breakfast, pack a lunch and be out of the door for 5:15 am. Then around 15 backpackers including myself would hop into a rickety old van that could barely hold us all and drove 15 or 30 minutes down some lazy, red dusty back roads until we reached a exspanse of melon fields.

We made sure to always bring  a few liters of water and a good lunch because once we were out in the field there was nowhere to fuel up or go to the bathroom for that matter(even popping a squat was out of the question as there are no trees or grass in the fields) Just flat, red sand on the horizon. Anyhow, somehow the girls made due!

Once we got to the general area of the field everyday, a tractor towing a huge truck bed would meet us out there. The bed is equipped with 2 booms that attach at either side of the bed and these have conveyor belts on them. The bed is also equipped with a conveyor belt (we are sitting on it in the picture below to the left)<----

So how does it work? Once the tractor/truck bed combo is in the proper row, another tractor comes to remove the booms from their storage place on the side of the bed and assembles them to run perpendicular from the bed itself. Then the harvesters walk in a line behind the boom, picking any melons which are ripe and ready. They simply throw the melons on the boom, which then moves down the boom's conveyor belt, which is then transferred to the belt on the bed. The melons then move directly to us, the packers.
Once the melons move their way down the belt, it was our job to sort the melons by size and color depending what the farmer wants. For example, medium light green in one box, medium dark green in another. 

Melon pickers walk barefoot to make sure not to crush any melons

Sometimes youve gotta make your own fun!

<3 Lydia!

 Usually we would work from 530 am-1030am and then break for lunch under what shade was still left under the roof of the truck bed.

Then we would continue on until the afternoon, sometime between 130 and 330 pm. Some days were okay, reasonable heat.. and they passed by quickly. Other days were brutally hot, stifling, you broke a sweat by 8 am and didnt stop sweating until the shift was over! Those days passed so sloooowwwlyyyy.. it as if theyd never end. Luckily most days I worked with Lydia, my bestie on the farm:P Her and I just clicked from the day we met, and we spent most work days just laughing our asses off! She was like my personal stand-up comedian for 8 hours a day, and a great friend to me. Im really glad I had the chance to meet her and cant wait to meet up with her in Asia, (or perhaps in her homeland of France one day?) We both preferred sorting onions to packing watermelons, but working alongside eachother helped pass the days and weeks on the back of that truck bed. Overall, packing watermelons is not the worst job in the world, but I cant say I miss it. I do however miss all the great people I met on that farm. :)