{"id":765,"date":"2016-11-25T06:02:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T06:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nickispenblog.wordpress.com\/?p=765"},"modified":"2026-02-19T21:59:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T21:59:39","slug":"bundaberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/25\/bundaberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Bundaberg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bundaberg – like the ginger beer, except not at all\u2026 True, it is the place one of my favourite drinks is made, but this resulted in my mind creating visions of the city quite far from reality. In fact, the city seems nothing more than a functional settlement, its sole purpose to provide a base for farmwork, factories and the like. Aside from the droves of backpackers who arrive to work on the farms (us included), there is a noticeable lack of young adults here.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katy (a French girl who was my flatmate in Brisbane) and I arrived late Saturday evening, just as a storm hit. One of the impressive variety, thunder crashing and lightning striking down from the sky, streets flooding, building and road lights flickering under the force. All the while birds zipped between a small gathering of trees, screeching incessantly. A rather drastic and memorable entrance.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first night was spent in the first available hostel we contacted, though we chose not to immediately sign the week contact they pressed on us on arrival, with the not so tempting offer of paid by the bucket tomato picking work. A decision we were thankful for on speaking to our roommate who had been earning around $30 a day for 10 hours work!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following day we left the hostel early. Our mission: to find a reasonable weekly rate with a high chance of hourly paid work. A mission we soon began to realise was much harder to attain than we had hoped. After an 8 hour day, every hostel option we had found exhausted, we reluctantly began to sign our souls away for what the receptionist told us rather unconvincingly, would reward us (most likely but by no means certainly) with hourly paid sweet potato picking work.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Home for the workers<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly our luck turned. My phone rang and a different hostel owner told us to come immediately, he had guaranteed hourly work starting tomorrow and lots of hours. We didn’t need telling twice, hurrying through town with our bags, feeling like we’d just won the lottery.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the work began\u2026 7 days, 84 hours without a day of rest.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As thankful as we were for the work, Wednesday, the first 15 hour day we endured (three hours longer than we had expected) nearly sent us over the edge. I developed chronic backache halfway through day one, I can almost feel the muscles growing in my fingers and arms and I can no longer look at fruit and vegetables without visioning the production line they have travelled to land on that shop floor.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tomato packing production line<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My mind has become numb to the work, almost numb to everything, as we stand completing the same task hour after hour. It has made me question human sanity. Our ridiculous need to sort fruit and vegetables by colour and shape. The superficial importance overtaking the actual taste. And the waste… The food waste, the energy waste, that this whole process takes, I just cannot understand. The whole experience is a polar opposite from my Wwoofing farm work in New Zealand, which focused on environment, ecological and efficient processes.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I am very thankful for the job, the wages and the learning experience. But I now, more than ever, find the urge to boycott supermarkets and buy from farmers markets where the fruit and veg would have a more personal, less traumatic, journey to my plate!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bundaberg – like the ginger beer, except not at all\u2026 True, it is the place one of my favourite drinks is made, but this resulted in my mind creating visions of the city quite far from reality. In fact, the city seems nothing more than a functional settlement, its sole purpose to provide a base … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,391],"tags":[41,45,57,103],"class_list":["post-765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-solo-travel","tag-australia","tag-backpackers-life","tag-bundaberg","tag-farm-work","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3049,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions\/3049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickispen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}