“Labour, It is the health… But what then serves occupational medicine ?” Pierre Dac

After a morning guitar and household - eh Yes as small the House to be, It always takes a little ! – We discover the city of Sheffield and its murals before rolling to the East and the Papers Beach area we already know. Still us have the Northwest Coast to visit but we also need to find work. Ronald has an appointment Thursday 19 in Launceston, He took the opportunity to file a CV dans tous les bars et restaurants de la ville, puis nous passons la soirée à Lilydale – l’aire des araignées Huntsman 😀 – où nous rencontrons Manon et Dimitri, deux français depuis huit mois en Australie, originaires de la Provence.

Sheffield

Breakfast at Lilydale

Friday morning, après un petit-déjeuner partagé, nous retournons sur Launceston où Dimitri et Ronald busk pendant près de deux heures pour la modique somme d’une vingtaine de dollars, les gens de Launceston ne sont pas très généreux ! 😛 Ronald fait un essai dans un restaurant italien pendant que nous l’attendons dans un parc en jouant au Yam’s. Quelques courses et nous retournons tous les quatre passer la soirée à Lilydale. Tomorrow, nos amis prennent le bateau pour le continent. De notre côté nous passons le week-end sur l’aire de Northeast Park à Scottsdale, ne voulant pas nous imposer chez Val et Don.

C’est lundi 23 février au matin, alors que nous nous apprêtons à rendre visite à nos anciens hôtes qu’un coup de téléphone pour du travail arrive enfin ! Nous avons rendez-vous l’après-midi même à Rosevears chez Kim où se trouvent les bureaux de Linx Employment - To which we still sent three emails before this call. We will drink tea with Val and Don then will sign our contract with Suzie becomes our contact, Linx is a kind of temporary agency working with farms in northern Tasmania.

Huntsman à Lilydale

Luxury Bracknell

We see promising work paid on time - rare in the collection that is often paid for performance - for a few weeks, but by then it was the strawberries in Exton. Although they are among the three fruits that we have recommended us - with bananas and mangoes - our finances will allow us more choosy. So we start in three days, This gives us time to make water and food reserves, Hillcrest identify the farm and enjoy our last days of leave on the Bracknell area with almost every comfort : WC, barbecues – miam pour faire griller le pain 🙂 , outlet, all this on a river.

Lower Liffey Reserve

Kitchen Liffey

Wednesday 25 evening we settled on Liffey Falls area in the forest where we can make a fire to keep us warm meal times. The area is very nice with the river just steps to freshen up or rinse the potatoes dinner. The next day we fold the tent in the dark at 4:30 am, we must be on the farm at six, between kilometers on track we have to travel and suicidal animals, we can not drive too fast.

Our trays supermarket strawberries !

Ronald, Strawberry picker

After some brief explanations and signed the attendance sheet, we are sent into a tunnel by team of four : we end up with another couple, Jonathan comes from Queensland, Leena du Canada. A bucket for strawberries “inadmissible”, des barquettes pour les bonnes et à genoux sur le sol ou penché vers les fraisiers, we discover the picking at Driscoll’s ! We sow the filled trays behind us that we collect once the tunnel is finished. After picking, there is the packaging : we must weigh and close our trays to store them in a box, paid around nine dollars ; overripe strawberries, damaged or misshapen are bagged and paid at one dollar per kilo. When they told us they called it the jam, nous leur avons quand même demandé de nous confirmer que ce n’était pas ce qui était utilisé pour faire la confiture de fraise 😀 ; mais non c’est pour les animaux, a priori les vaches d’à côté adorent ça. Bref autant dire que nous ne faisons pas des mille et des cents notre premier jour – 40$ pour 6h30 de travail, oui parce que bien sûr les prix annoncés sont à diviser entre les membres de l’équipe 😛 : notre meilleur jour nous ferons 80$ en cinq heures.

At Annie and Randy

If our five days in the strawberries are not necessarily pleasant ; meetings next door are : on Bracknell & rsquo;, Annie and Randy - and their five dogs - spontaneously come to talk to us before inviting us to come over to their house to drink the homemade cider or beer.. They live in a bus converted on a ground not far from here, to 73 years and she 64 years for him, they have been together for fifteen years and will marry in May ! At their home, they offer us soup and toast, cider, wine - Randy absolutely wanted to share when he knew I was French - and country music, video or live concert with Randy on guitar. An excellent interlude !
On the area of ​​Deloraine, while we talk with one of our colleague - Guillaume, young journalist from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence for more than a year in Australia – a familiar sound makes us return : two Australians argue a game of petanque (!) and we should be.

On Tuesday 3 March, we declare package for strawberries, especially a French couple gave us a number to work in the vineyards. But the agency Linx does not seem to let go so easily its interim, since after a phone call to Suzie to prevent, she returned to the charge by offering us to work in apples. We accept, always interested in the work paid by the hour with the key.

No this is not a grapefruit !

Ronald, apple picker

So here we are south of Devonport, non loin de Sassafras, after which directly went to the Parramatta Creek Orchard site to ask if there was a place to camp, manager shows us the right pine forest in front, implying that we should be quiet there.
Hourly profitability compared to strawberries is worth, but there are many more positive points : we are five minutes from work by car, les journées sont plus longues mais plus agréables, l’ambiance est plus sympathique, un de nos collègues italiens nous a donné l’adresse de douches chaudes et gratuites à Devonport – au nord de la ville, en bord de mer, sur Bluff Road à côté des jeux d’enfant, dans le même bâtiment qu’un restaurant, il ne faut pas être pressés : deux minutes d’eau chaude puis presque deux minutes d’attente avant de pouvoir appuyer de nouveau sur le bouton 😉 ; et si le travail est plus physique – forcément une pomme c’est plus lourd qu’une fraise – il est bien moins embêtant – pour rester polie 😉 !
It may be more dangerous :p , since despite the goggles something manages to creep into my eye and send me experience the Australian emergency. Nothing serious, no foreign body was none left but scratches are visible on the eye, cream and anti-biotic drops for four days, Paracetamol for pain : everything is taken care of by the labor insurance. Ronald cares for me, especially the first night when I can not keep my eyes open, a few days later I give him the same as it is buffeted by a branch. B-)