Help feed the nation and pick some fruit

With Covid-19 threatening to impact the nation's summer food crops because of difficulties finding seasonal workers, I'd like to share my experience as a young person growing up in the country who threw himself into fruit picking from the age of 15.

My goal is to start a conversation about the opportunities for young people who are on holidays or without work at the moment, to get out and do something which will benefit themselves and the nation.

My family settled in the Goulburn Valley, the food bowl of Victoria, Australia.  Every year at harvest time, local orchardist, Santo Varapodio would be on the local news lamenting the fact that the Goulburn Valley had high levels of unemployment and yet local fruit growers struggled to find enough pickers.  This problem has not gone away, so I’d like to encourage more people to get out and give it a go as I did 37 years ago.

 

In 1982, I couldn’t wait till I turned 15, the legal working age so that I could go and earn a few extra dollars during the school holidays. My goal was to save up enough money to buy a canoe, a goal I achieved after two weeks of picking fruit.

 

Picking fruit on contract rates or for wages is damn hard work.  Up at 6am for a 7am start, working in the elements, heaving a picker’s bag up and down a ladder all day, will leave you feeling exhausted.  You will never enjoy a better night’s sleep.

 

Picking fruit was more than achieving a financial goal; it was a transition into the adult working world, having somewhere to be on time, working to expectations, interacting with people of all ages and nationalities.  Whilst the work is not the most stimulating, I enjoyed listening to the cricket on the radio and stirring up our fellow pickers, the poms and the kiwis working side by side as our teams battled each other over the summer. 

 

Picking fruit is a skill, which if you are prepared to persist at will be rewarding.  The first year I picked two bins a day, the next year three, the following year four and then five.  Hard work does pay.  That first year saw me earning $150 a week, not bad for a 15-year-old when the minimum adult wage at the time was about $140 a week.  Compared to what I would have earned sitting around the local pool and watching the cricket on TV, I was miles ahead.   While the money was ok, the life skills I learnt along the way were more valuable, even if it was that I never wanted to have a lifetime of hard physical work. 

 

In addition to picking fruit during my high school and university years I delivered catalogues, worked in my parent’s mixed business, fruit packing sheds and a nursing home. Having a job, however menial is an obligation to turn up on time, ready to put in a day’s work for a day’s pay. Furthermore, it’s a display that you’re not afraid of hard work, which is a quality I look for in people when making hiring decisions.    

To those young people out there wondering what to do with their school and university holidays, get on the phone, find out where the work is, adjust your expectations, help feed the nation and go pick some fruit. 

If you have gotten this far an wondered what has this got to do with cycling, I bought myself a nice shiny new 10 speed racer from the money I saved from my  delivery rounds and from season two used it to ride out to the orchard.