We finished our 88 days!

I am so happy to say, that we have finally finished all of our 88 days of farm work! It hasn’t been easy. It has been super stressful, because we had a few challenges along the way. We ended up in a lot of pressure to finish our days, since our visas are just about to end and we still had 68 days (10 weeks) to go, when we came back to Australia in October after spending a few weeks back home.

But, we made it! We were lucky to find a job at an orchard a few days after we returned and we worked there 4,5 weeks until we got fired, got a new job the same day and ended up working there around 6 weeks. We are planning to look for a new job in the mines, so we can earn heaps of money and be able to travel up north.

However, before starting work again, we are in Cambodia. It was pretty spontaneous, that we decided to leave and booked the flights. Paul has been wanting to go back there for ages, since he missed it a lot. It is also were we met, so it will be fun to go back to the island together. We’ll apply for our second year visa down here, so we can start a whole new year once we get back to Australia. For a start we are planning to stay in Cambodia around 1 month. Hopefully, the visa doesn’t take much longer to get approved. But we’ll see how we go!

So who have we been working for the past 6 weeks?

Back in August we were in Fowlers Bay, South Australia, when we met a few farmers. We asked them, if they had any work coming up, since we were looking for a job. Unfortunately, one was retired and the other one had all the staff he needed. Instead, the recommended us to apply for a job with CBH, a grain handler and exporter. So we thought, why not apply for a job with them and so we did. In the meantime, we found work for 1 week down in Esperance at a farm, and went home for three weeks.

The day after our arrival in mid October, we went to an induction for a job as a Receival Point Operator with CBH. To be honest, after the induction we actually weren’t too sure, that we would be happy with this job. It seemed a bit rough working in all that dust and the incredible heat (we had the induction in Merredin on a 42 degree day). We thought, that we were gonna work in full sun all day with only a 30 minute break throughout the whole day. However, we still decided to go through with our application, because the orchard owner, that we were gonna start working for, initially said he only had around 2 weeks of work for us.

We got the job with CBH, but they couldn’t tell us, when we would start, because it all depended on when the harvest would be fully on-going. We could only get a slight idea from the website, that said the harvest in our area started around 1st of November last year, so we thought that was when we were gonna start.

We ended up working longer than 2 weeks for the orchard and slowly we started talking about, that we weren’t really sure, we were gonna do the CBH job, because it seemed so rough and also we knew the harvest this year was gonna be short, because it had been a really bad year. We started to worry, if we would even be able to stay long enough for CBH to finish our days. But, we knew the money was a lot better and that we could work more hours. Eventually, we got fired from the orchard, so it didn’t leave us much choice.

I call it destiny, cause they day we got fired from the orchard, a lady from CBH called us just a few hours later to ask, if we could start working for them the next day. We were stoked and we drove to Northam and moved into our free accommodation the same day.

When work is so much better than you expected

Since day 1 we have loved working for CBH. We have worked and lived with so many lovely people, had so much fun and learned so much. The work was nothing like we expected. We haven’t been working in the sun that much at all, since there was plenty of shade around the site, we were working at and the bosses were really cool regarding breaks. It’s been a really hot season, so we have had plenty of days with 40+ degrees with huge risks of getting dehydrated. We were told to take breaks, whenever we needed it, drink plenty of water, eat icy poles (ice creams with electrolytes) and keep work to a minimum, when it was too hot.

It has been hard work at times, but it has also been fun work. It’s been interesting to be a part of the grain handling process and achieve a bit of knowledge on how it all works. We are already planning to go back there to work next year, if we’re back in WA or maybe find work with a similar company in another state.