I called the hostel I was booked into so they could come and pick me up from the bus stop. When Collin arrived in the battered old camper van, any sense of normality I’d felt two minutes earlier completely vanished! He pulled up and helped me load all my bags into the van. He was a guy in his mid to late sixties, with the trademark no-toothed grin that I’d come across so many times in these small towns.
When I got to my room I met my three roommates, a brother and sister, Gun & Jai, and Stella, all three from South Korea, and none of them with any conversational English. My nightmare had begun….
Of the 28 backpackers, only six of us were Western. Even with the six of us, only four were English speaking. The other two were German with only a limited grasp of the language. The other 22 came from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
I was dreading the next three months or so that I would be spending in this town. That night, sitting on the sofa watching some crappy Ozzy reality TV show, (one good thing was that I’d rarely have to fight over the remote)! I was starving because I hadn’t managed to do any food shopping before the supermarket shut. Then, as though they could read my mind, two of the Japanese girls, Haru and Mai, brought me over a plate of sushi they’d made and a slice of cake. I instantly thought things wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared.
The next day, being a Saturday, I wasn’t able to start my hunt for work. Luckily the sun was shining, so after walking around in circles exploring the place for about an hour, it was an acceptable time to start drinking. So I poured a glass of wine, and enjoyed the rays whilst sitting outside and reading my book.
By Monday I was bored; there was only so much sitting around and doing nothing I could do. At least I could get started with the jobhunt. After taking the Koreans to work, Collin drove me to a few places to apply for the usual picking/ packing jobs.
That day, I also met the other English-speaking people who were staying at the hostel, who had been in Adelaide for the weekend. They were an 18-year-old couple from New South Wales, on an adventure from the boredom of everyday life (Bless them – not much of an adventure)! Still, it now meant that I had people to talk to.
Within a few days I’d got work at nearby packing sheds, so at least I wouldn’t be climbing up and down trees picking fruit all day. Of the six of us at the hostel, one left to head back to Sydney. The other five of us all ended up working together at the sheds. The boys lifted boxes of tangelos, mandarins, oranges and the dreaded lemons.
Us girls were basically putting the fruit in boxes…all day! It was awful, back breaking and mind numbing!
We stood infront of huge conveyor belts, and went the fruit flew down we had to pack them according to size and quality (good fruit went to UK/ US, bad fruit went to Japan)!! All the really bad fruit we had to put in a giant bin, which then becomes orange juice. The stories I’ve heard about what goes into the juicers…. Besides manky oranges, people claim to have seen birds, rats and even snakes. It’s enough to put you off fruit juice for life.
We started work at 7am each day, had three short breaks, and finished at 5.30pm. Days were long and hard. Throughout that whole time, we didn’t get to talk to each other except on breaks. Also, ipods weren’t allowed, so we were along with our thoughts all day! One advantage was that I had time to think about what I was going to do once I left Renmark, and plan my trip. On almost a daily basis my plans changed… a result of having too much time to think about it! Other than that, I’d sing in my head, or sometimes as loud as I could because no one could hear me anyway, to keep me occupied.
Evenings were spent mainly at the hostel. The communal area was based around the kitchen, so we’d all cook together most nights. We also had some friends who were camping nearby. Occasionally we’d get a big group of us together and go to the campsite, take some beers, and have a BBQ, then sit around the campfire the boys had so proudly made! Two of the boys had guitars and were great singers, so they’d provide the entertainment for the night.
At the weekend we’d all go to the pub, which was as exciting as it got. Still, it wasn’t a bad life, but only because I knew it was temporary. It could’ve been worse, I could’ve been back in a tent in Gin Gin.
After a few weeks, work started to quieten down, going from six days a week to five, then four, til eventually we were only working three days some weeks. By now, the money I was earning barely covered the cost of living, which meant I couldn’t afford to put anything in savings.
One good thing with the lack of work was that it affected all of us staying at the hostel, so on our days off, in the glorious 35-degree heat, we could spend time together. We had BBQs aplenty, or spent the day sitting by the river with an esky full of beers eating fish and chips.
Sometimes, if the weather was crap and I was stuck in the hostel, all day, the Koreans would make me food. It’s tradition in their country to eat soup when it rains, so that’s exactly what we’d do! Spicy, Korean soup, it was lovely! And we weren’t allowed to wash up after either (even though we always offered), because they were the hosts. Instead, they’d all play rock, paper, scissors to decide who did the dishes!
One afternoon, at work, after spending the morning outside due to an acid spill in the warehouse, the roster went up for the following day. I saw that again, I wasn’t rostered on the next day. It meant that three days into the week I had only worked once. Getting my 88 days done was going to take forever, and on top of that, I’d have no money saved by the end of it, in order to carry on with my trip (which was all planned by now)! An example of how unpredictable backpacking is, that you can never make definite plans because things never work out the way you expect.
You have to wonder how the locals in these towns survive, never knowing when their next day at work would be. Somehow they cope, despite having mortgages and mouths to feed etc. I’m lucky that I only need to look after myself!
So anyway on this day I’d just had enough and decided that I’d move on to yet another hillbilly town in search of more work. On that afternoon’s break, mind made up, I checked my phone, and as if I’d had a sign from above, I had missed calls and a voicemail from my old employers back in Melbourne asking me to come back. They’d called a couple of times before in the two months since I’d left, but as my priority was always to get my 88 days done, I’d not even considered it. In fact, I’d never planned to go back to Melbourne for long, just long
My last week in Renmark, everyone decided to leave at pretty much the same time, but to go off in different directions. We’d all had enough. The 18year old couple had split up since we’d been there (the pressures of travelling get to everyone)! Tom was heading back to New South Wales and Renee was coming on the bus with me to Adelaide, to the nearest airport, so she could continue with her adventure. She’d grown into a really confident girl in the time that I’d known her and was happy to travel alone after her break up! Brummy Kev and two guys from Tazzy were going on a road trip to Western Australia. We were leaving just two people from our group of friends, and that’s only because they had no money at all so weren’t in a position to leave.
It was sad, as we’d all grown so close over the last 8 or so weeks, living and working together. But as always with travelling, you meet people, have fun, and at some point have to say goodbye. We were all going on to better things, and more importantly, leaving Renmark behind us!