First foot in Thailand

As you might have guessed after reading my last post, our job interview at Fletcher’s went all good. It wasn’t really an interview, we just had to see the doc, who checked, that we are drug-free, and met an other guy, who told us, how much we’re gonna earn. That was it.
The next day was induction day. Approx. 25 newbies, two supervisors and a lot of talking. A lot of bloody boring talking. I fell asleep twice, even though I only attended the meeting for 6 hours, before I pretended to have a doctors appointment. In fact, I really had one, but noone would have cared if I hadn’t.
The topic about all the talking was ... ermm ... I’m not quite sure, but I’d reckon ... Fletcher’s. Or sth. like that. Maybe I was a bit distracted by trying to catch some sleep...
Anyway – the others told me, there had been a test after I had left, and the supervisors hadn’t asked for the answers but told them to their listeners. Well... they seem to need us workers desperately. :-)
The good thing about that is – they also need us in the arvos! And as I said last time I blogged, there’s quite good money to be made. So we work like 50 or 60 hours a week, get enourmous sums of money and are some sort of happy with that. Happy enough to keep going. One week remaining. Thailand is waiting!


Two weeks ago, we got some qoutes from various travel agencies about flights from Sydney to Phuket. The cheapest price those professionals could find was about 1100Au$!!! Damn. How should we pay that? We earn some money, but we don’t want to throw it away for a flight!
Well, so I started my own research. The hostel provides us with Wireless Lan, so all is good. I really managed to build up a funny route, which is a little cheaper than the quoted fares were. From Sydney we’ll fly to Brisbane, from there straight on to Darwin and stay there for three days. Next stop is Bangkok, and then we’ll hop in the plane to Phuket. That’s four flights, instead of one, and they all add up to ... 550Au$!!! Oh man, I was so proud of myself, I would have loved to dismiss all these lovely smiling, but completely incompetent ladies who shocked us a whole afternoon long!
Yep – we hit the “book”-button immediately. So I’ll leave Australia after almost 15 months on December 3rd...


The work at Fletcher’s is not too exciting: I changed departments, so now I have to change the sheep from one chain to another, vacuum them and ram some plugs up their asses. Have never seen so many assholes in my life before – probably not even added up together!

So we have to do some fun-stuff in our few spare hours: We love to play soccer, basketball, watch movies, have a huge BBQ, some pool-party or go out with the hostel-crew, which sometimes comes up to 15 young fellas. Oh yeah!


Isabel and I celebrate our 2. month today. Woohoo. And we’re still getting along really, really well with each other, get up in the morning, have brekkie, bike to work, have our breaks together, drive home side by side and then do what we have to do – shopping, the laundry, chill out...
Weekends are always great, last week she woke me up with some hot chocolate and a beautiful prepared brekkie – ready to eat! What else could I wish for?


Well... maybe my 2nd visa. The government hasn’t mailed me anything yet, but that doesn’t matter – even if they decided to throw me out, two weeks time would be more than enough to leave the country.
Aifs has extended my mail storage, after I wrote them a really angry email... all good.
And – christmas is coming! We’Re trying to find some nice Santa-hats, to take the best pictures on the best beaches in Thailand. You might get a little jealous, if I tell you, that we’re sweating here with 35°C every day, but you will get even more jealous, if you’ll get to see those pictures... :-)

Anyway – tomorrow is another at Fletcher’s, eight hours only, overtime has been cancelled, after school has finished and heaps of schoolies are trying to earn some bucks for lollies and stuff. *Arrgh* Isabel and I answered by working on Saturday: You get paid double the normal wage – from the first minute on – and just do some cleaning, some standing around and take some pictures. Definitely worth it! *g*


All in all, it’s not too bad here in Dubbo. We keep our good spirit up by studying our payslips – over and over again. And then we realize – we’re already standing with our first foot in Thailand!

Becoming Bill Gates by boxing brains?

Early start: The alarm clock rings at 5.04am, far before the sun rises. Isabel and I get up, more or less voluntarily, switch the light on and walk into the kitchen. Markus and Oli are already sitting on the table, having breakfast. We take our Muesli flakes, some milk and join in.
Isabel made some sandwiches for lunch yesterday, as well as some rice with corn & beans. All good. So it’s my job to wash the dishes and fill up our waterbottles. Everything goes into our backpacks, and off we take.
It’s not really dark as we ride along the highway, on our rented pushbikes. Approximately 5km until we reach Fletcher’s, our new employer. The sun is just about to rise as we arrive at this enourmous factory.

“Which number, boy?” The receptionist grins gently. “79. Thanks.” He hands me my clothes, a blue shirt and some blue trousers. I grab a pair of earplugs and a hairnet and walk towards the lockers, get changed there and look pretty similar to any of the other 900 workers, each of them earning good loads of money here.

After entering the slaughterfloor, we gotta wash our hands as well as those green gumboots, which were waiting in the locker for me. Here is where we get some gloves and a plastic apron, put the earplugs in and enter the abattoir.

Let’s get started. Three sorts of jobs are waiting for us: Remove the fat out of those sheep corpses, disjoint the bowels or cut off their heads. We do it in a rotating system, so everyone does every job for half an hour, to avoid getting too bored.

All right, so we switch our brains off and start working. Same motion, time after time, one sheep every five seconds, 4000 sheep per shift, 8000 sheep per day, 40000 per week. Incredible figures!


After 3,5 hours we have our first teabreak, get out of the abbatoir, sanitize all clothes, our boots and hands, open our lockers, grab some food, put the backpack back into the locker, have a quick wee and rush back to the slaughterfloor. All within 20 paid minutes. Same jobs again. Another two hours, until lunch. Half an hour break. Unpaid. Same procedure as earlier on, just 10 minutes more time for eating. Back to work.

By the time the machines stop going, it is ten to three. 8,5 hours have passed by, 8 hours are paid. 136$. Not too bad. But not enough.
Markus, Oli, Isabel and I sit outside on a bench, having a sandwich and a drink, enjoying the sunshine. It is Friday afternoon, most of the guys passing by are looking forward to their weekend. We’re looking forward to work some overtime.

10 minutes later, we’re back in the slaughterfloor, dressed up as we have to be. The afternoon shift has started, and we’re waiting for some supervisor to tell us what to do.
Finally, one of those guys with the blue helmets comes towards us and asks, if we have ever packed brains. No, I haven’t. Markus and Oli have spooned out some yesterday...
All right, so he’s gotta show me. The guy, who cuts off the heads now, puts them on a conveyor belt. They are taken straight into a machine, which is supposed to cut them right in the middle. Well, that’s the best case – otherwise Oli and Markus have to improvise, as they try to get as much brain out of those heads as possible. Some of these sheep must have been clinically dead, before they were killed, we’re wondering, as we discover some grubs moving through those heads. Weird.

Markus and Oli chuck the brains on a tray. As soon as there are approx. 20 of them, I replace the tray by an empty one, put the full one into a freezer and leave it in there for a minute or so. Now, that they’re a little bit colder, I pack the brains into plastic bags, one per bag, and those bags into small boxes, 6 bags per box. These little boxes are squeezed into a bigger carton, 40 at a time. That’s 240 brains per carton. And I believe, that there must be enough customers, to buy hundreds and thousands of these brains, even though they seem to be expensive.

Because the only reason, why we’re working overtime, is the money. After 8 hours, you get paid 1,5 times the money you usually earn, after 10 hours even double the amount of it! Incredible! So we’re standing in that little chamber, talking, having fun, working in a pretty relaxed way, and earn almost 35$ per hour!!! Can you believe that? And there must still be some sense for the company to pay us overtime!

It was dark, when Isabel and I finally left the premises. 14,5 hours of work were done, and we earned 320$ today. Markus and Oli decided to stay on for another 2,5 hours, they finished by 11.30.pm. And we all got more money than we had earned with picking oranges in a whole week! Fascinating.

Back home we just stripped off our clothes and went to bed straight away – tomorrow we will sleep in and have a wonderful Saturday off. Awesome!

Die, scurvy, die

Happy Birthday, dear Mum! Hope you have a wonderful day, ey?


All right. So the next day we started to pick oranges. Pretty funny, in my opinion. Up the ladder, down the ladder, grab every orange you can reach and throw them into your bag. Empty the bag in the big bin and wait for it to fill up. Three bins per person per day is the general expectation. That’s approx. 1,2 tonnes of oranges we have to shift. Each. With bad trees. With the good ones, you can reach up to 8 bins each – set the case you’re a little more experienced than we are. ;-)


The money is not too bad, sometimes we reach an hourly rate of almost 25$, cause we finish our three bins within 5 hours and get paid 8. Great deal. *g* Furthermore, I became the driver of our little team, and we’re allowed to keep the car in the arvo and drive around town with it. Fuel is supplied. All good.

You’re wondering, how orange picking can be fun? I’ll tell you: We get up in the morning at 4.45, have some brekkie, brush our teeth and get going. Us, that is Markus, Isabel, Chris & Alex, two other Germans from this hostel, John, a Japanese guy, who joined the team yesterday, and I. We drive down to Dan’s place and pick him up. Dan’s our new supervisor, sort of. Relaxed Ozzie mate, doesn’t take himself too serious at all and is more shy than bossy. Awesome. Then we hit the highway, approx. 50kms out to the orange plantation. Long way, if you’re aware of that the sun isn’t even up. Why should we be?


6.30: We arrive at the orchard. Sometimes we get into picking immediately, otherwise we hang around for another half an hour, cause we’re not that motivated or maybe still tired. As soon as we get started, our brains go crazy, somehow. We philosophize about genesis, the roles of men & women as well as PCs and stuff. We found out, that there’s no computer game simulating the hard life of an orange picker, that men are the elite of the world and that Eva must have been Paris Hilton. Sounds weird? Well... maybe it is. But it also is good fun. And that’s the main thing, ey? ;-)


Backpackers are generally poor. Poor enough, to eat 2 oranges in a 10-minute-break, just because they’re for free. And poor enough to take loads of them home, even though they just store them in their room. Who cares?
Everytime you eat an orange or a grapefruit, which are grown on the orchard as well, you gotta say: “Die, scurvy, die.” Usually we say it in German, but that doesn’t change the fact, that we’re seriously fighting against this bad and painful diesease which once killed thousands of sympathetic sailors and seamen. Come and fight with us! Eat more oranges!


There’s another thing about backpackers: They never get enough. So – even though we’re earning over 100$ per day with picking oranges, we applied at Fletcher’s, a huge, local meat processing company. Just because they pay 17$ per hour.
The application was succesful. Might be, that today was our last day on the orchard. Tomorrow is some kind of job interview, but our hostel mates told us, that they’d take everyone. So we’re looking quite forward to that. No worries.

You’re wondering, why I’m talking about hostel mates? The answer is pretty simple: Markus had enough from being alone with a couple in a 3-bed-dorm. So we all moved out. Isabel and I booked into a double room, Markus has two mates staying in his chamber. And we’re all happy with this solution – even though I miss the space and the air-con. *sob*


The trouble with the undergroundmotel is almost over: Markus never got his last payment. Jenny’s explanatory statement: He was working on a contract, which bound him to a one-weeks-notice, in case he wants to leave. Markus had never read that contract, so he didn’t know anything about that. But he doesn’t worry.
We all seem to have received our final payslips, Jenny said she had sent them to our postal address. Letters of recommendation might follow. Only problem: My aifs-program has expired, and these guys sent all my mail back to the sender. Either to Germany, to the motel, to Jenny – wherever. They didn’t even tell me that there was any mail! Oh, I hate them. After having set my flight to the wrong date, they’re now sending all my mails back. I couldn’t believe it, as they told me so. What is that for an organisation? Why did I pay them any money? Must have been young and dumb...


South-East-Asia seems to be for sure now. Plans are changing all the time, so you can never take anything for sure, but I’ll tell you the latest: I decided to get my 2nd visa. All examinations are completed, I’m just waiting for an email from the government granting me another year in Australia. Why? Well – Isabel has some financial problems, and that’s not what you need when you wanna go on an unforgettable trip to Asia. So we thought about taking a plane by the beginning of December, work straight through until then, earn as much money as we can and relax afterwards. Without a visa, I would have had to leave at the latest by the 20th of November, so now we have 2 more weeks to work. At Fletcher’s – up to 2000$!

We’ll see, if they’ll take us. Shouldn’t be a problem.
I better switch off the computers now, sit down with Isabel and Markus and say: “Die, scurvy, die.” Maybe the last time as an orange picker...

Plans – made to be changed

Dubbo, 24th of October in 2007. Sitting in a luxury motel room, one double, one single bed. Markus sits on the single bed, typing on his notebook, Isabel lies next to me, writing in her diary. I’m really happy right now.


A lot has happened over the last almost two weeks. I’ll try to report in some sort of a chronical order:
Martina was fired and she and Denise left the White Cliffs Undergroundmotel on October, 13th. Two days later, Martina got accused to have stolen heaps of stuff from the motel, like cash and other valuables. Complete nonsense. What she really had taken, was an empty ice-cream box, an empty styrofoam box and a pillow, which had been left in the motel. The problem was: Some guy rang up and wanted to have his pillow back, which he had forgotten two weeks ago or something like that. Huge insurgence, Richard called the police and forbid us to acces the internet for two days, so that we couldn’t get in contact with the girls. Ridiculous!
We called him, and sorted it all out, he told us it was all for our personal protection, so that the police wouldn’t start tracking down our names or anything like that. Even more ridiculous! The pillow seems to be worth 60$, and Richard gave the police the vehicle rego number of the girls, asked us heaps of questions... we couldn’t believe it! Because of a simple pillow! We were convinced that his wife Jenny must have had to do something with that...


Chris and Steve came back from their holidays and took over the management. Richard is in Orange, where Jenny usually lives, still with his broken leg. They’re a lot easier to get along with, honest and upright. The only problem was: They’re just the managers, and have to follow the orders from Jenny and Richard. And Jenny seemed to give many orders lately. Lunch was gone. Isabel and I were allowed to have lunch, when we worked 5 hours or more during our morning shift. And Chris and Steve always made us knock off after 4 or sometimes 4,5 hours. I once made it to 5,5 hours, but just because Steve gave me some extra hours with building the chook house. Nice chap. But we’re quite happy with having or own lunch, cheese toasts, roo-steak or any left-overs from the evening before.
But even they got very rare, because we usually had the evenings off. So, Markus, Chris and Steve handled the dinners, and Isabel and I sat around, watched some movies, told endless stories or stared into the stars... I didn’t mind having some time off with her... :-)


One lazy afternoon, we thought about further travelling plans. The laptop was running, and we found a world map. All of the sudden, I had the idea to go to Asia, and she agreed immediately! Awesome! No 4WD, no Broome, South-East Asia. By the end of November, we should be out of the motel, we thought, and could fly over to Kuala Lumpur, travel around for 2 months and then see what happens. She’ll probably fly back to Australia and explore the West Coast then, and I might be heading home... But I already planned to head home for the middle of August and the end of November, and it changed twice, so I won’t promise anything, ey? ;-)

I got used to being 20. Not as bad as I thought it would be. Still young enough for travels and adventures. Which sort of adventures? Well... read on!


I decided not to get my 2nd visa. My appointment would be today, over in Broken Hill. Approximately 1000km west of here. Well... we’ll see, if the government will be pleased to hear that!
Why? Isabel and I got fired at the motel as well. Sunday morning, Steve asked us to come into the laundry, at 8am, and he and Chris told us to be packed by 9.30. *shock* Explanation: There was not enough work, and they could not have told us earlier on, no way. Few days ago Richard had still promised us a couple of weeks work, and now, all of a sudden, it was over!
We woke Markus up, who decided to leave as well, had brekkie, packed our stuff and were brought to Wilcannia. Not for free, no, we had to pay 50$ for a ride, which might have cost 20 bucks for fuel and which would have had to be made anyway, because Steve and a mate of his went to town as well. /\$$#0L€$! Really, really sad that such a wicked time had to end like this!


So – there we were, in Wilcannia. If you trust the word of mouth, it is New South Wales’ most criminal town! No bus leaving in the arvo, not heading to Sydney. As poor backpackers, we wouldn’t want to afford the motel, so we decided to stay outside.


Bought some bread at the supermarket, booked a bus ticket for the next morning 6am and chilled out in some sort of park. Pretty relaxed, until the sun went down and it got dark...
We lit some candles, grabbed our torches and unpacked heaps of food: Melons, bananas, apples, bread, butter, jam, salt, pepper, corn, soy sauce... everything we had. And everything that had to go – we didn’t want to carry it.
Markus placed approximately 40 bottles of our beloved self-brewed beer next to our table – until the first bottle exploded and cut my ankle! Blood ran down on my thong, and we placed the bag with the bottles in the nearby rubbish bin.


Great idea: All in all 5 of those bottles exploded, piece by piece, always with the bang of a gun. Amazing. We decided to leave the rest of the beer in the park, for any lucky Aborigine to find them next day.


But the bottles weren’t our biggest problem: We were a little bit afraid because of all our valuables: Markus and Isabel with their opals, Markus and I with our laptops and Isabel and I with our cameras... we knew very well, that heaps of black fellas were quite aware of our presence, and could only hope, that they wouldn’t know about our treasures.
Seems as if they didn’t, but we always watched out for guys straying around. 10pm there were a few youngsters, maybe our age, who seemed to watch us, and later on, at approximately 1am, we got paranoid about 3 little gangsters at the age of 10 or something – what were they doing at that time down at the river? After a while, every shadow seemed to move, every noise could have been steps and our two knives, unpacked to cut the melons, laid ready-to-use on the table – even though the melons were already eaten. Oh dear, it wasn’t all fun staying outside that night.

At least it was nice and warm, we had a beautiful, starlit sky, and after 3am we all calmed down, as Isabel and I explored Wilcannia by night. We still all felt relieved when the sun finally rose, packed our stuff and walked to the bus station, brushed our teeth over a rubbish bin, so tired, that I hit my head painfully at the bus timetable, climbed into the bus and fell to sleep immediately...


After a 7 hours ride, just intermitted by a short brekkie break, we found ourselves in Dubbo. 30 000 inhabitants made the impression of a huge city to us, some supermarket and a couple of places to stay felt like civilisation.
We found an awesome motel, 250$ for three persons per week is a good rate, especially if you look at the luxury we’re enjoying at the moment!


Next thing was to find a job: We called the Harvest Labour Line, but unfortunately they couldn’t help us. So we started door-knocking, walked from café to café, from motel to motel and from restaurant to restaurant, smiled, asked for a job, wrote down our mobile numbers and left again. Some sort of frustrating, but still funny with Markus and Isabel. In the end, we were unsuccesful. Sad, but true.
One guy from a job agency called us to send us down to another city for some tree planting, but we weren’t happy with that – we all wanted to stay in this luxury motel! So we refused. Today he offered us a job as orange pickers – we agreed. So, tomorrow we’ll all start to pick oranges. My first fruit picking job ever! I’ll tell you what it is like. Definitely.

Problems with mice are all over, and we finished the tanning of our roo-skin just in time to take it with us. Markus and I will share it, after we’ve done all the hard work, and I’ll probably send my half home to Germany – what a trophy! :-) Markus wants to use his as a loin cloth... *lol* Well – in my opinion he looks better like that.


Isabel and I enquired at a couple of travel agents about the cheapest flights to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Saigon. We’ll have to buy some travel guide to precise our plans, and I have to wait, how many days the government will give me to leave the country. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for work, we’ll keep having fun and we’ll keep changing plans. *g*

Life is beautiful!

Isabel arrived the same afternoon. One glance, one kiss – and she was my first girlfriend in Australia! Well – she still is. Chris is no Single anymore. Unbelievable, ey? After one whole year of travelling around, I finally found a girl, which seems to suit me not too bad.
At least we’re living in the same room, sleeping in the same bed and doing the same sort of work. Maybe we’ll hire a 4WD some time and drive straight cross the Outback over to Broome. Would be a great adventure. And Isabel is the sort of girl who could handle that... but well, we’ll see.


In the first place, we have to keep working. Earn some money. Last week was very busy, all the school kids from NSW and Vic came along with their parents to fossick for opals or just on their way through to somewhere. Had 52 hours in the end, busiest week ever – and damn good money. Only drop of bitterness: Richard, our beloved boss, went on a motorbike ride with his son, Dan, and never came back. Not yet. He fell over, broke his leg, and is currently in the hospital down in Adelaide. Poor man. His wife, Jenny, took over the management, and she’s unbelievably stingy. Results are: Less working hours, less food, less fun, less motivation. None of us can really stand her. I had two big fights with her, she blamed me for corrupting the pool, stealing food and that sort of stuff, which I absolutely couldn’t understand. Well, somehow we managed to sort that out, and we agreed on living together in some kind of peace. I do my work, and she lets me do it, without talking into it. I can live with that solution.


Isabel gets some hours as well. On the first day, we walked around in White Cliffs, looking for a job in the hotel, the pub and the shop (hey, big choice out here!), but had to experience we were two days too late. Well, we talked to Richard, and he found some little jobs that needed doing, and Isabel also got into making beds and stuff. All good.

My birthday was brilliant! Thanks everyone for the lovely wishes, mails, ecards... Got a cake, a “no worries”- Shirt and some chocolate from Isabel, bought some Baileys and we had a great day. In the evening, we went out for some shooting and came back with a roo. Markus wants to use all the meat, make some steak and goulash, and we’ll try to tan the skin. Amazing, how much you can learn out here!!!


20 sounds a bit old. In earlier years, I always thought, as soon as I’m 20 I’ll go to Uni. Well, this “plan” has changed. Uni will have to wait. :-)
So, now I’m a twen, and it doesn’t feel that bad. It just sounds old.


Isabel had birthday as well, just 9 days later. I returned the favor with brekkie in bed, 120 candles, a volleyball and baked a handmade cake! (Thanks for your hand, Markus!)
Isabels parents advised me to buy an opal for her daughter, and she couldn’t believe her eyes, when she first thought, it was from me. *lol* Beautiful piece, that she got!


My visa application was unsuccesful – in the first instance. Was some sort of misunderstanding, cause I didn’t receive that letter with the required contact details in time, so the government sent me an email, that my visa was refused. Oh dear, I was happy!
But well, two days later I got the letter, arranged an appointment with the doc in Broken Hill, informed the governent about these news and got the answer, that all is fine. Further processing depends on the results of my examination.

The tanning of the roo-skin is making good progress, should be finished in a few days time. Harder work than we thought!


I finally got my tax back! Awesome! Took only 10 days to receive the money! Terrific. Markus told me, he had to wait 9 months once back home in Germany. Ozzie bureaucracy rules!

We’re trying to keep our staff quarters neat and clean, so Markus and I repaired the warped bathroom door, while Isabel and I tried to catch some mice. But these bastards ate our bait and left the trap behind! Damn. Gotta think of another solution to get rid of these “$)%I?=”$...


Plans about the future are a long way down the road. Now, that Richard broke his leg, we’re waiting for Chris and Steve, the two managers, to come back, to take over the business, so that Jenny can head back home.
Nobody can tell me, how long they’ll need my hand, maybe until the end of October, maybe til the mid of November... who knows? And – who cares? I don’t. I just enjoy my time out here, earn some money, have some fun and gain some life-experience. Life is beautiful!