That is about everything I could say about staying here as there isn't much more in New Norfolk. At least we managed to solve the problem of getting to work, ... sort of. The hostel “manager” (a little man at the estimated age of about 150) told us to go to the local car dealer and to see what we can do. After around 10 minutes of talking to the dealer we had the keys to a '95 Toyota Camry for $250/week and felt enormously grateful. That was last sunday (funnily enough nothing opens here on a Sunday save the oversized supermarket with a carpark the size of the rest of the town and the car dealer.
After 4 days of using the car, half a bottle of brake fluid, ruined suspensors, an almost flat tyre and a cooling system that almost blew up on us we started wondering if we probably did the dealer a favor and not the other way around. We will see ...
Work starts 6.30 in the morning, which means getting up at 5 (how I hate that)! The goal of our daily adventure tour through 3-house townships with the names like Plenty is the orchard of the Tasmanian Cherry Company about 30 km away. It should be relatively obvious what we are doing there: picking cherries. Cherries are nasty little fuckers which distribute pleasure on the steepest possible gradient between consumer and picker. You could philosophically ask what happens when the picker consumes the cherries while picking them. The less philosophical answer: Nothing, it still sucks. The work isn't particularly hard but extremely annoying. You go through the same movements again and again. In the morning it's freezing cold and during the day you are grilling in the sun (we all freeze our drinking water overnight so that we have cool water the next afternoon). And then there are these quality requirements, which make this work such a pain in the arse: the cherries have to be of a certain size and firmness, they need to be shiny and free of bird pecks, with the stem attached and in singles. I tell you: That sucks! You also have to do at least 80 kg with a with a cherry weighing about 5-10g ...
Wednesday was a particularly shitty day with trees almost free of cherries, the announcement that there is no picking from Friday to Tuesday (next variety not ripe yet), which means no work and therefore no money. And our engine almost blew up on the way back. By the way: we get $17,81/hour less tax, which comes out at about 100 a day.
Backpackers and Africans (loads of them) seem to be the Australian version of the German vegetable-Poles (Polish people). Today is Australia Day and as I bought a carton of beer the other day I got an Australian flag with it ...
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