Bowen

Got down to Bowen and headed straight for the tourist office to see if they had info on fruit-picking and farm work in the area. Figured we should work a while seen as we had been away for 11weeks! They had loads of info which was good and advised us to drive round the farms and ask if they had work or to check out the local notice boards in town. We also got to see the 'Big Mango'. Feeling quite optimistic we set about going round the farms. We drove up to quite a few only to discover they didn't need any labour. It was mostly tomato picking at the time of year we were there and apparently the season had been terrible and there wasn't much work!! Just our luck. A couple of them reckoned if we waited until the weekend we might get something then. We decided that was a good idea seeing as we'd been round so many in one day with no luck, chances are the rest would be the same. Therefore we few days chilling out, exploring the area, fishing. All the usual stuff. It was quite a nice town and it had beautiful beaches. We got booked into a campsite, pitched our tent and we were all good. One of the days we were at Queens Beach and William caught a massive stingray. Very exciting. He cut his line though as he didn't want to get to close.

The weekend came and we headed of on our job hunt again. Passed a few farms that didn't need labour. Then we came upon this big farm and went in to ask. Turns out they needed staff in the packing shed and could we start the next day. Ye!! All good, especially since it was inside as the picking of tomatos is back breaking work bending down in the hot sun. Turns out it was a corn packing shed and our job would be working on a line to feed the corn into a machine to cut it to size (had to feed 60 a minute), stripping the dirty leaves off the corn (strip 20 cobs a minute) , then packing it in the small plastic trays to go to the supermarket (pack 15trays a minute). It was long days, in the first week we each did 66 1/2 hours. And were very sore by the end of it. 6 days on out of 7 with 10-12hour days starting at 7am. However, it wasn't to be as Williams hayfever flared up and he got a really bad rash. Not good so it wasn't feasible for us to stay any longer. We did two weeks and made some money which was all good. Although, the swollen legs, sore back and aching arms and legs weren't so good. We did meet loads of great people though. The line we worked on was a good one and we made friends that we will probably always stay in touch with. We also attended a few nights out with our workmates, one of them was a charity hawiian party which william wore his kilt too and caused quite a stir. We also had a bit of a leaving do as there was another couple who had been there for 4months leaving the same day as us and they had a big night out planned with the staff which we also got invited to. It was a good night.

We shall have happy and not so happy memories of our cron packing shed work. We also now know good and bad corn, dirty leaves, long stems, over-trims, if the corn has been water deprived etc...haha. We shall not miss the earplugs, rubber gloves and hair nets

We spent a few more days in Bowen with some good friends we had met who were on the same campsite as us before moving south again.