We arrived in Shepparton like two weary pilgrims to Mecca. We thought we had come to the land of milk and honey, we quickly found out that was not the case. We found cheap accommodation at a caravan park near Tatura, west of Shepparton. We spent over a week heading to the CVGT office daily to try and get picking work. We quickly found out there were hundreds of other backpackers like us waiting for work.
We had done some work months before we arrived, applying for work at orchards that had accommodation on site and steady work. Some how it seemed we applied either too early or too late. After the first week of waiting we decided to be overly aggressive and go first thing in the morning to the CVGT office and put our names on the "list". After sitting around town for a few hours we headed back in to the office and managed to catch the eye of one of the blokes in charge. He brought us in and within minutes we were on our way to a job 60 km away in Tongala to pick pears.
He gave us the address of the farm and a caravan park nearby (even calling first to make sure they had an opening) and we headed out. After checking in to the caravan park in Tongala, we called up the farm and they told us to come over and check it out. Upon first sight it seemed like an overrun, really small, family farm; these turned out to be approximately correct. The place is quite overrun, leaving us in constant fear of snakes in the tall grass, and the place is fairly small, though the family keeps lots of different animals and many different fruits and vegetables. The next day we started picking pears for $30 a bin, when not playing fetch with one of the dogs, though only got two days before it started raining.
Still not making much money, hoping the coming weeks will bring more consistent work.
