Keep Walking On

I made the same mistake twice, just to be sure… (back to Part 1 for what happened before)

And so, I went back to Wallaville on my own, while my friend and the Taiwanese girl were staying in Caboolture. But after I was back, I soon found out that a bunch of Taiwanese backpackers had just left because they thought they would be paid AUD$100/bin for picking, but only realized that it was actually AUD$50/bin after arrival.

It was a mistake when Eilif posted the recruitment message on Facebook but didn’t revise the wage from AUD$100 (for lemons) to AUD$50 (for citruses). Bad word-of-mouth quickly spread among the Taiwanese backpackers community and the hostel had obviously lost the Asian backpackers base.

Eilif did explain that to me. But what I didn’t know, and was only told by other backpackers later on, was that the bunch of angry Taiwanese backpackers worked on the farm for only one day or two, then suddenly quit due to the dispute over the wages. They had made quite a fuss because they thought they’re scammed. It’s imaginable that the farm wasn’t happy about this incident, which might have caused trust issues between the hostel and the farm. And that was possibly the reason why newcomers like me ended up waiting indefinitely for jobs.

Anyway, I knew about that too late. I was already back to Wallaville, with the hope that I’d be able to make AUD$100/day (picking 2 bins a day shouldn’t be a problem for me, and the European guys could pick 4 bins or more per day on average).

Soon, there were more new people coming, including a HK boy called Lucas who was also there 2 weeks ago but left, but returned for picking mandarins just like me. But unfortunately, all the newcomers, including me and Lucas, became jobless again before even getting started.

We were told we could work on the next day, and then the next, and the next… just kept postponing for no specific reasons at all. And then finally, there was this time when Brendon promised that we could start working the next day (again), but at night he told us (again) that we had to wait for one more day until the farm manager would be back to the office to give us induction.

We didn’t know what exactly this induction was all about. And then 2 European backpackers, who were obviously tired of all the broken promises and “maybes” for a week, asked Brendon whether we could go to work anyway, and do the induction later when the manager’s back.

With the hope of earning over AUD$100 a day in mind, and the fact that we couldn’t shake away the thought that it was just another excuse from Brendon, we came up with this stupid idea. But Brendon, instead of telling us the possible consequence of neglecting the procedure, said that we could do so. He also promised that if there’re any issues arising from this matter, we could ask the manager to talk to him and he would fix it for us.

And so the next day, a few of us newcomers went to the farm with the others and started working. The supervisors knew that we’re new and they knew that we didn’t have the induction yet, but they let us work anyway.

So here is my advice, NEVER EVER start working without the induction, no matter who promises you that it’s ok, and even if the supervisors on the farm allow you to work – it’s just because they don’t fucking care! The induction is not just about safety instruction, but also all the contract and forms signing.

Of course we’re wrong to have skipped the regular procedure, but we’re all too frustrated waiting again and again and we got a yes from the hostel owner, believing that we could trust him but that’s not the case unfortunately.

We worked for around 4 hours in the morning, until the supervisors stopped all of us because the mandarins on that farm were still very green. So we only worked half day but I’ve picked one bin on my own, which meant on a normal working day of 8 hours, I would be making AUD$100 a day as I expected. I was so looking forward to keep on working there. But the bad news came the next day. After we started working for a few hours in the next morning, we were called to see the manager at the office.

We thought that we’re going to get the induction. But instead, we were being kicked out. The manager was furious because we started working without her consent and the induction. We felt so helpless and told her that Brendon sent us there and he said it’s ok. She called Brendon but after the phone conversation, she was still mad and said that their farm didn’t need extra manpower at the moment, and she would contact us again when she needed people – which was basically asking us to fuck off and never come back again.

We were devastated. And while everyone else was still working on the farm and no one was going to drive us back, the only thing we could and should do was to call Brendon to pick us up. He wasn’t quite happy about that and said that he was busy. Anyway, we’re finally back, and there were around 8 to 10 of us who were jobless, like, forever.

Brendon talked to us about all the “solutions” and how he would help us looking for jobs in other farms, which was quite impossible because that citrus farm was the only farm on its harvest season. He did offer us jobs in the hostel, getting paid for cleaning up the pub’s kitchen which seemed to have left uncleaned for years because it was incredibly disgusting. There was a dead rat underneath the cooking stove, for instance.

It took 6 of us a full day to clean up the kitchen and stuff. And then we’re jobless again the next day. Some other European girls were offered jobs to help at the bar, but for me and Lucas, it seemed we’re not getting any help whatsoever. So I just spent some more days hanging around feeling miserable, especially when I saw other people working. What’s worse was that, the other people told us the farm was actually taking new workers every day, just that they didn’t want any new ones from Wallaville Hotel.

So the only thing I could do was to look for other places to go. And then there was this day when I was reading at the backyard, I saw Lucas looking very pale on his face, while holding one of his hands upright near his head. I asked him what happened, and he showed me that his finger was cut by the gate of the backyard (which was made of steel with really shape edges – well, safety issue here, we could have sued you, Brendon!). The cut was so deep that you could see the bone. He said he was bleeding a lot and nearly passed out. But when he went to Brendon for help, he was only given a normal plastic bandage because “it wasn’t that bad”.

Lucas was so upset and he said to me that, even though he had once believed Brendon was a good guy and treated him as a friend, he didn’t feel he was treated right in return. He thought that Brendon only cared about his business and money, and never treated the backpackers as friends, or even people, especially to us Asians.

Lucas had been working in Bundaberg before and had got friends and jobs there. He’s going back and asked if I wanted to go with him. That’s the only possible way I could see after wasting another 2 weeks in Wallaville. And so we went back to our rooms, packed our stuffs and a few hours later, his friends from Bundaberg came and picked us up by their cars.

Before we left, we went to tell Brendon and paid him the rent. He was not happy about that for sure, saying that normally we had to inform him a week before leaving, and he “thanked” us, in a sarcastic tone, for telling him an hour before we left. When I asked him how to get back the money for the bins we picked on those 2 days, he said he’s only responsible for referring us jobs and he wasn’t getting any money or commission in between, and so he would not help me get my money.

At that point I really lost my temper. So you’re the only one who had the farm’s contact but you’re not responsible for contacting the farm for us, nor did you show any sign of sharing the contact to me. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???

I asked him to give me the contact, and on the next day I called the farm. Before I said anything, the guy on the other end of the line thought that I was looking for a job, and immediately told me that their farms needed workers and I could start working any day (wow what a surprise!). I told him that I was only asking for my paid and that I was no longer in Wallaville. Then he asked me to talk to the manager, yes, the lady who kicked us out before.

I talked to her, she was really helpful and said she would bank in the money to me and Lucas very soon. Before hanging up, I said, “I’m really sorry about what happened. But may I know the real reason why we couldn’t work on your farm because actually I know you do need people.”

She said that we shouldn’t have started working before the induction, and I said to her again that it was Brendon who said it was ok. Then she told me, “No, I talked to him on the phone that day, and he said he didn’t ask you guys to go to work. He only asked you guys to go to the farm and write down your names on the waiting list.”

WOW! What more can I say? Would we go all the way to the farm just to write down our names on a fucking piece of paper? What a lie! But I was not mad at all. I already got used to these shits. This guy was just UNBELIEVABLE. Being hanging up, I reiterated to her calmly but firmly, “HE-TOLD-US-TO-WORK.”

This whole story nearly made me lose hope in humanity. And then I learned that I should never rely on people. The best way to get farm work is to call the farms directly. If you have a car, you can just drive around and stop by any farms you see, go in and ask for jobs. And there’re actually websites/online sources where you can find contacts of farms/farmers in different regions of Australia. You also have to be cautious about working hostels because some of them are not really helping the backpackers.

I’ll write about how I looked for my next farm work – the potential scams/traps I came across, and how I finally found and went to a place where I had the best farm work and backpacking experience – the best part of my entire journey.

But in my next blog I will first write about my Bundaberg farm work experience with Lucas and a bunch of Japanese backpackers – which made me feel like I was in Japan for 3 weeks!