After two months in Middlemount where we worked at the pub, we moved on to Yeppoon. We stayed at a campground for almost two weeks and enjoyed life with a pool and lots of free time. The 26th of January was our first Australia Day! This was supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year in Yeppoon with a full day beach party. Strangely enough, the party was not on the beach… There was however a market and live music. It was not quite as big as we had thought, so after a couple of hours strolling the market and soaking up the atmosphere we returned to the campground and had a couple of beers with our fellow campers. When the evening came we went back to the city centre as this day (as most public holidays here) is mostly celebrated by drinking and partying. We went to a bar where we met Jenny, an Australian teacher who told Will(em) that there is a desperate need for more primary school teacher. She offered to help us figure out what is needed for him to be able to teach in Australia, so we met up with her a couple of days later. She was amazingly helpful and made calls and showed us what qualifications and what kind of paperwork was needed. The friendliness of Australians keep surprising us! It is however quite a hassle to get everything, so we put the thought of Will working as a supply teacher on hold until we get a bit more time to figure things out. Because already on our second day in Yeppoon we received a call from Mitch, a cotton farmer in Theodore who needed help during the harvest. Since working in 40 degrees (but aircon) in Middlemount was not extreme enough for us apparently, we accepted! So we had a nice job lined up! The work meant 10-12 hour days a couple of weeks straight, which was perfect for us, trying to save as much money as possible before we start our next adventure road tripping the east coast properly!
So we are currently in Theodore, a small town with nothing except for a couple of small shops and a very busy bottleshop. Our work consists of building cotton modules with module builders. Big machines who just push the cotton down into a big rectangular shape (about 19.000 kg of cotton in one module!) until it is tight enough to be taken out of the machine, at which point you start all over again. When we first got an introduction of the work we were going to do, we were all thinking about how easy it would be to fall off the module builder (3m high). Will was the one being able to prove that to us when on his second day he managed to trip and fall off. He luckily was hardly injured though, just some cuts and bruises but nothing serious, and he just kept on working, as the tough guy that he is. The work is moderately physical, a lot of the time the machine does the hard work for you. But for every load of cotton being thrown into your builder, you have to balance on top of the builder and tell the buggy driver exactly where you want your load to make it as even as possible. The last loads are always the one who give the most work since you have to make sure as little as possible falls out of the builder. This means you have to push (by hand) quite a lot of cotton into the right place while the buggy unloads. The more cotton falls off - the more you have to pick up by hand. Every time either one of the pickers or the buggy’s break, it means we get to work at a slower pace. So we are sometimes very grateful for the fact that the machines are quite old and there yet has to be a day where nothing broke down. We do this work in about 40 degrees with a burning sun, on hot steel machines with warm cotton. We drink about 5-10 liters of water per day per person to compromise for this. It’s hard work but I love doing it. I’m always so dirty when we’re done, the beer has never tasted better and I’ve never slept better! We are constantly bruised, full of cuts and every morning we get to wake up with a sore body. It’s a great opportunity to get fit again after enjoying the pub food and drinks a bit too much for the last two months though.
On Tuesday we got to experience what rain means around here. In about 2 hours there was enough rain for us not to be able to work for 3 days (with full sun) because the cotton had to be dry. Even though we enjoyed being able to recover for a bit, three days inside a hotel room (because it’s the only place with a comfy temperature) was just a bit too much and now we are anxiously following the weather forecast hoping it will not rain again. On the bright side: we definitely got confirmed we fixed the leak in Oscar!
We are now going towards the end of our work here and are already looking for a new job on other cottonfarms. It’s a good way to earn money in a short amount of time and the longer we do it, the easier it seems to get. Of course, after a certain amount of days where we worked more than twelve hours a day without a break we are having trouble getting through the day without getting totally exhausted, but we do really notice the improvement in our muscles and being used to the temperatures. To give a better idea of what we do ( I don’t think you can comprehend without seeing it) I found some time during work to take the go pro with me. That video Will come as soon as i've found a spot with enough wifi to upload it.
