Chapter 22 "The End is Near"

Mango season  at the Manbulloo Limited farm is coming to an end. Rainfall, heat and time have caused the fruit to ripen a bit faster than expected. The trees are nearly empty. The picking teams have diminished, some already starting at the farm in Queensland. Everyone is talking about leaving. Travelling. Moving on. Leaving mangoes and Katherine behind. No more mango rash. No more sap burn. No more work boots. No more red dirt in every crease. No more sore backs and wounded hands. But not quite yet…

The days are slower and so are the pickers. Less fruit means less work. Everyone is more relaxed and only worried about earning less than expected. Everyone’s job is easier… except for mine. For the past few days, the fruit that rolls out in front of us is, to put it plainly, shit. Gone are the days of falling asleep on the table, singing and daydreaming to my heart’s desire. There we are, 4 women, in a battle against the soft, overripe, over blemished fruit. Our arms, hands and wrists move like an octopus harvesting his garden in the sea, they scramble, throwing fruit left and right, catching it right before it goes somewhere it’s not supposed to. The floor around us is carpeted in mangoes. The reject bins are overflowing. The bulk line is exploding. A few seconds here and there to take a sip of water and on goes the chaos. Overripe fruit that feels like a waterballoon explodes on the belt and on our table and makes everything sticky and smelly. The job is getting less and less fun. 

Only 2 more weeks.

Chapter 21 "More Magnificent Manbulloo Mango Madness"

I last left you hobbling around on my second day off after my little accident, almost able to walk again and ready to march back out on the field and de-sap some mangoes. However, things came quite differently… And since then, much has happened (since anything that happens out here in boring ol’ Katherine is something).

That same evening, while mentally and physically preparing myself for my glorious return to the field the next day, I was told I was given a new position – the next morning, I was to start working in the packing shed, along with two other German girls who had just started working for the contractor. The shed – a place I had only really seen during the induction, a place that promised shade, comfortable and more skin bearing clothing (just being allowed to wear shorts and a t-shirt was a dream come true), cold water from filtered dispensers, coffee and tea during the breaks, a refrigerator for the food, a microwave to heat it up and a whole bunch of new co-workers I had already met at the caravan park… And that’s exactly what we got. The three of us were put right to work in the morning, the two others at packing stations and I at the grading table. Now, I’ve explained in detail how the mangoes get from the tree into the bins. Here’s what happens to them next. After the picking teams drop them off in some aisle of the orchard, a tractor comes and picks them up, drives them to the shed a few at the time, where they are written down and QCd (the Quality Controler checks them and makes a statistic of how good or bad the fruit in the bin is) and wait to be tipped into the mouth of a hungry mango washing machine. After 10-15mins of being dipped, soaked, rolled around and dried they tumble onto the white rollers of the grading table, where three other ladies and I inspect every single one of them for defects and grade them according to four different classes – rejects, bulk, class 1 and premium. From there, they take a little ride on conveyor belts to different stations. Rejects land in a big bin, bulk is packed in big boxes and class 1 and premiums fall into the bins (and onto the slowly blistering and busy hands of the packers) to be packed into boxes. They are already pre-sorted according to size, which is determined by how many of them fit into a box.The fruit, now neatly and snuggly cuddling in their box, then travel onwards to be branded with a sticker and then stacked onto pallets. After some time in the cooling room, they begin their journey on a road train and end up somewhere out there. The farm exports their mangoes all over the world, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe and so forth. Just to give you an idea: One bin of mangoes contains between 480kg and 520kg of mangoes. We tip, grade and pack between 10 and 14bins an hour. And that between 9 and 12h a day. 7 days a week. 

From that day on, I was no longer a picker, but a grader. Starting time in the shed has varied between 7am and 10am and the hours between 3 (for the first time today because the season is coming to an end) and 13.5 (during peak). The job itself is one of the most strenuous. Physically, the first week was a pain – literally. Standing on your feet for 12h a day, your neck always bent at a slight angle, your eyes facing downwards and all you really move are your arms and hands – by the end of the day, my heels felt as though I had stomped a mountain into the ground, my ankles were thrice their size, my calves were one big cramp (and woke me from my sleep, spastically cramping up at random moments of the night), my back felt like a wooden plank, my shoulders and neck were all knotted up and my eyes felt like a camera with broken autofocus, I’m surprised I haven’t gone cross-eyed yet. But just as the body gets used to waking up early and sleeping less, those days are long over and today the only thing that I can complain about are the millions of bug bites my ankles are riddled with… Mentally, grading is quite demanding, because there are a lot of things one has to remember when looking at a mango (or so my supervisor says), you are constantly concentrating on the fruit rolling by in front of you, constantly twisting and turning them to check for light and dark blemishes, sunburn, stem end cavities, soft noses, insect bites, bat bites, cuts, scratches, bruises, lenticels spotting, russet, pink spots, deformity and other oddities that appear now and then. Then you have to actually think about how much or little , how big or small the defect are and then decide in a split second if you throw it in the reject bin on your left, the bulk bin on your right, put it on a belt in front of you or just leave it to be packed in premium…  My first few days consisted of me getting confused and my supervisor telling me again and again how I’m being too strict with the grading and how it might not be the job for me. Ugh. Mangoes seemed to be her life, her job for 7 seasons in a row and here I was, silly little backpacker, not understanding the importance of finding every single stem end cavity. To put it mildly, we didn’t really click in that first week. It took a few mess ups and my frustration building up, for us to have a little talk. Basically we argued across the table with one of the other graders being the middle man to keep the discussion to a modest level. In the end, I got my confusion and frustration off my back and she told me straight to my face what’s wrong with my grading and my “evil look” and told me that if I don’t want to be there I can go pack and if I don’t want to pack I can leave. But I decided that I’m not the type to quit that fast, or let myself be chased away from a table of mangoes. So I returned to the table the next day, started getting better and because some steam had been let out between my supervisor and me, everything became easier. Now, I already mentioned that grading is mentally strenuous because one has to concentrate on mangoes all day. This however is only true for the first few days, maybe a week. After that, when you’ve gotten to the point of watching your own hands rolling the fruit, flying over the fruit and diving upon the ones that have to be sorted out, when your movements are on auto pilot, your hand eye coordination is fit and the defective fruit basically jumps into your sight the second it hits the table, that’s when it just gets plain old boring. It becomes mindless and numbing and leaves you alone with your thoughts and fantasies… One of my first methods of making sure my brain doesn’t turn into a mango and starts rotting away is singing. Because the machine next to us is loud enough to leave a ringing in your ears after work, I can sing out loud and not even the person next to me hears my wrong lyrics and out of pitch screeching. After a few days, however, I realized that I don’t know that many songs by heart and just end up singing the same ones over and over again – Ironic by Alanis Morisette, To Be With You by Mr.Big and Heart of Gold by Neil Young are probably on the top of the “Most Sung” list. Every now and then I belt out a Beatles medley and when it starts raining that song from Fern Gully pops into my head and comes out my lips. The second method is daydreaming and picturing the days, weeks, months, years to come. Of course, the images and stories that form fantastically in that creativity-starved mind of mine are usually as far fetched as they can be, but then again, there’s no law against how many colors you can use to paint your picture. 

We get two 15min breaks and half an hour lunch, just like on the field. Only here we sit on actual plastic chairs around and actual table and can warm our food (which I never do, because the line is too long and I’ve gotten used to cold pasta or rice). Conversations at the table usually circulate around work, how many bins are left, how much a certain supervisor is pissing someone off, how one would just love to be back at home and lying in bed doing nothing at the moment, further travel plans to Thailand, Bali, India are discussed, couples fight about food, size and grossness of insects and amphibians that have graced rooms, showers and toilets are shared and it is generally all quite relaxed… We’ve seen beautiful sunsets during dinner breaks, seen the trees bathed in sunlight during lunch, sat there in sweaters on gray rainy days, had storms bend the palm trees and rain drown out the noise of the machines. 

Then, about two weeks into my new position, I almost got fired – twice. Since a few others and I are employed by a contractor and not the farm itself, we were getting paid a bit less and ripped off a bit more when it came to accommodation and transport to and from work. Also, we weren’t sure if we were paying taxes, getting superannuation, and we were still given our wages in cash. While all of us weren’t happy with the situation, we didn’t really do anything about it – It’s my own fault for dealing through a contractor, a German girl I started hanging out with every once in a while decided to talk to the managers of the farm. She used my handwritten pay-slip as an example and started a whole wave of stress for the farm, the contractor and us. One evening, the contractor, his breath smelling of beer from a mile away, stopped me and what started as a normal conversation, a Q&A, turned into a hissy fit. I have never been treated that way by a boss and have never heard of anyone who has. No matter how often I tried to explain that I didn’t talk to anyone at the farm, he just went on and on about (and now please excuse the language, but I’m just quoting):”Fucking backpackers. Who the fuck do you think you are?! You have no fucking right. You work for me, not the fucking farm. I’ll give you a fucking week off and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Well, fuck you too, Mr. Contractor. After I got yelled at, let the harshness of it all go in one ear and out the other and turned around and left, he continued to let off steam at the other girl. It got so intense that half the campsite was out, watching or trying to tell him to calm down and stop traumatizing the young lady… In the end, we stayed home the next day, not knowing what to make of the situation or how to deal with it. Around noon, the subcontractor, a much friendlier and caring person, came over and told me I’d go back to work the next day and that from that week on, the pay would be higher and at some point we’d actually receive real pay slips with tax and everything . I was relieved and thankful. Only to be kicked in the dirt again in the evening, when he told me that now the managers of the shed didn’t want us back. Confused, us two went to the farm on our own account the next day to find out the reason for being fired. In the end, it was because we had just taken a day off, which we had no right to do without asking the farm. Ugh. First we’re told we work for the contractor and that everything is to be planned through him, then we get fired because our contractor forces to take a day off. We explained the situation and told them we were not allowed to come to work and finally, I was allowed to go back to work, after my supervisor told them she didn’t want to train another grader and wanted me back at the table. I guess I owe her for saving my butt. Haven’t seen my boss since that night and actually hope I don’t have to till the happy day I leave this place. Not that I wouldn’t mind to get an apology for that speech which can be classified as workplace harassment, but oh well…

After that, the thought of my money flowing into the pockets of such a person in form of rent lead to the decision to move into a different room. The other girl, who had not been taken back, had organized a room for us to share, but since she left a few days later, I decided to take it anyways. 20$ less for a whole room to myself. It’s a bit further from everyone else, but what’s a few meters walk when you’ve got utter privacy.

The evenings back at the caravan park are quite nice, depending on how late we get back. I’ve gotten into the habit of preparing food for the next 2-4 days, because I don’t want to waste precious chill-time on cooking in a hot and smelly kitchen after work. The shower is still a highlight of the day, after which I walk over to the other kitchen to be a bit social and find a place and position where my new USB modem finds signal and I can go online. Feels good to be connected to the outside world again, even though the connection and speed (or lack of) of the internet does get a bit frustrating at times. Late evenings are spent watching series or movies, having a beer or two…just chilling out and talking about the day we all finally leave Katherine.

Chapter 20 "Manbulloo Mango Madness"

04.10.2010

It’s around 10am on a hot and windy Saturday here in Katherine, the first day on which I have the time and energy to resume writing. My fingers are more dry and callused than they were the last time they flew over these keys and my leg is propped up on a chair next to me, a hot compress wrapped around my ankle and shin with a sarong. A little work related injury has bought me my first 2 days off after 7days of work, on the last of which the machine we are working with backed up over my foot and up till the middle of my shin. A scary and painful experience which my clumsy little self does not intend on repeating. But a day in bed with hot compresses and massages with Asian balms that burn like crazy have fixed me all up again and this morning I was almost able to walk normally again. Should be back on my feet and on the field tomorrow.

A week ago at 6am, we were finally sitting in the bus on the way to the Manbulloo Limited mango farm, just 15mins away from our caravan park. Waking up that early was a bit of a pain, especially because of the very lazy week we had spent waiting for the fruit to ripen. Decked out in jeans, long sleeves, a bright orange vest and my new hat, I was quite excited to get-a-pickin’. Before they let us loose on their trees though, the big boss of the farm, a very friendly short lady named Marie, and some supervisors showed us the machines we’d be working with. The Harvest Aid is a big bulky contraption with a crow’s nest on top next to the driver’s spot, from which the mangoes in the tops of the trees can be picked using a picking stick (a long stick with a clipper at the end with which one can cut the stem and grasp it at the same time). Then there is a blue tarp with water jets about 2m by 2.5m is stretched up vertically on one side and another, a bit smaller one is stretched out perpendicular right beneath it. When a mango is picked by hand, it should be snapped off with a flick of the wrist facing away from you. You then have 3s to throw is against the large tarp and let it fall onto the smaller one. It is crucial that the mango immediately gets put into water, so the sap that squirts out of where the fruit was attached to the stem doesn’t damage the skin of the fruit or the picker. From there it rolls into a little alley where a strong jet of water pushes it into a tub of water. The water is prepared with a chlorine based solution called Desap, which cleans the fruit and makes sure that the sap flow is stopped. The mangoes have to be in water 30 seconds from the moment they are picked till they hit the bin, to make sure they don’t sap on the other fruits. Now, more often than not, girls working in mango picking are given the job of the de-sapper – and so was I. My job attire differs a tad from that of the pickers; I have to wear a thick white plastic apron and rubber gloves, to protect me from the sap squirts and to keep me somewhat dry. My job description is a bit different as well; I don’t pick fruit from the trees, or more like, I’m not allowed to pick fruit from the trees. I wait till it falls into the tub of water, remove the rest stem if there is one (holding it submerged to avoid the sap squirting into my eyes or onto my skin) and make sure that the mango has been in the water for at least 30s (and that it hasn’t been in there too long, otherwise it would get chlorine burn) before I roll it down onto a conveyor belt where it takes its last journey, is given a last shower before dropping into a big white bin.

The first hours of work were spent with training, explaining, observing (a team of Nepalese who had worked here last season) and standing in the sun trying not to fall asleep and hoping to start soon. Finally, we got divided into teams of five, were dropped off in a block of trees and started our first day of work… And then the second and then the third… I was lucky enough to be part of a team which was declared a permanent team in the first week. The thing is, in the first week or two of the season, most of the fruit isn’t ready yet and one has to be very careful about what is picked. The mangoes from Manbulloo are exported all over the world, especially to China, Japan and some European countries. They have to be picked at a point where they can be processed and travel for four weeks and still ripen to a tasty, juicy yellow fruit. Indicators for a mature enough fruit are a light lime green color around the tip, a rosy blush at the top and a nice and round full shape (like a “big booty” as our supervisors tell us). This is however not as easy as it sounds and in the first days, we were often told that we were picking too skinny or green mangoes… And because the farm means business and sending out many teams that pick too much useless fruit isn’t exactly very economical, many teams were rotated in the first week. And I ended up the only backpacker that got to work every day.

After only two days the starting time was moved up to 6:30am, meaning we had to leave the farm by 5:30am, meaning our alarms started ringing around 5am. As ungodly the hour might be, after only 2 days I actually started waking up before my alarm. As soon as that familiar tune starts ringing and I have to get up and jump into my very battered jeans, another day in the life of a mango picker starts. A short hike to the bathroom, a quick bowl of cereal and a double check that all I need is packed later and I am sitting in the bus with a whole bunch of other tired people. The moon is still up and the stars are still twinkling, mocking me for not being snuggly tucked in my bed and happily off in dreamland somewhere. There are no street lamps along the way and the roads are only illuminated by our headlights. Occasionally, we swerve or break so the kamikaze kangaroo jumping across the street can enjoy another day of his bouncy little life. By the time we’re driving down the old runway leading up to the farm, the sun is rising turning the sky all kinds of vibrancy. There are usually some clouds that turn pink, whose outlines glow neon orange, but after one or two days of marveling at the sky after getting off the bus at the farm, I’m more concentrated on finding a cup of lukewarm coffee and making sure I can use the bathroom facilities before heading out to the field. I clock in using a little gray keychain-computer chip which registers my name when I wave it in front of a little black box; the display then shows “Roxanna Schiffever IN/OUT”, making sure I know that I have just arrived or am about to go back home… It is still too dark to distinguish mango from apple and I wonder how the pickers will know what to snap off the tree. But by the time our big white vans take us deep into the mango tree maze and drop us off at the machines standing silently, ready to weave in and out the orchard, dawn has shed its light on a new day and it is time for me to wake up.

Depending on the aisle, I’m either walking behind the machine, keeping pace while concentrating on my busy hands that are searching the suds for the sap oozing mangoes. Snapping off a stem here, rolling one down the metal ramp there. Every once in a while I have to scoot around to the other side of the tub to free some mangos stuck swirling in the corner or to paddle around the tub to hurry those bobbing buoyant booties along. Other times, I’m walking in front of the machine, side stepping or even inching along backwards, while still de-sapping and keeping an eye on my responsibilities. This can get a bit tricky at times, as the paths we drive upon are not paved, but are humpy and bumpy and filled with little bundles of tall grass, potholes, anthills and even small trees which I end up straddling if we just happen to stop at that spot… If we pass through a particularly good and fruitful lane and the four people picking are milking the tree for all it’s got, I find my hands moving at a pace I have never seen them move, trying to clear the tub that is backing up with an abundance of mangoes. No time to think, not thinking about time, not even noticing the fact that I’m standing on an anthill and have big fat black ants crawling up my pants until they start gnawing on me… It is also my job to let the pickers know if the fruit they are picking is acceptable or not. Often enough I call up to Siti, my driver, team leader and Malaysian older sister, “too skinny” or “too green” or “too small” or “hey, I don’t want to see this kind of stuff anymore!”… The first hours are actually fun, watching your first bins fill up, the trees still able to give me some shade along the way (except on the third and fourth day, where we picked in a block with 2-3m trees that hardly had any canopy), the majority of the flies still asleep. I do have some time to observe what is my workplace for the next weeks, but all that is really there are rows and rows of mango trees. Sometimes cockatoos or eagles fly above us, sometimes we are visited by an Australian wild turkey, a pretty big bird that looks like a mixture of a emu and a heron (bird lovers and knowers out there please don’t judge ignorant little me). We take our first break at 10am (or 9:30), the so-called “Smoke’O” named after the most popular activity undertaken during these 15min. The thundering roar of the machine is silenced, we gather in the shade of a mango tree and I usually listen to conversations in Bahasa Indonesia and don’t understand anything (except for the words they have already taught me or that are similar to those in Tagalog). Too bad 15 minutes pass so very quickly. The toughest hours by far are the hour and a half before lunch – the heat suddenly increases, my stomach starts grumbling, I’m soaked through and through in sweat and de-sapping water. By 12noon my thoughts are fixated upon how long I will last in this job and how I will probably end up quitting soon. I’m swatting flies out of my face every few seconds, if I’m very lucky minutes. I can get used to the ants that are all over the trees and ground, that bite and hurt and I can flick away. I can get used to the little (and big and very big) black bugs that scuttle across the dirt and between the dried leaves, that run up and down the tree trunk so quickly you know you couldn’t stop it from crawling up your leg if it got to your shoe. I can get used to the crickets that bounce of your back and head or visit you on your shoulder during lunch or even end up bouncing around in your pants (yes, I’ve had a very bouncy happy cricket in my pants). I can even get used to the spider-webs that adorn the trees and the big fat spiders that sit in the middle of them, clicking their tiny but scary fang-claw-thingies together. But flies… I know every creature on earth has its purpose. But how important can those pesky black buggers be? The buzzing alone is so annoying that it make my head shake like a stubborn four-year old. They seem to love flying straight into the facial openings – eyes, ears, nose and mouth. And at least thrice a day I think to myself, that if another fly should land on my lips I will eat it, just so there is one less to pester me. I almost feel violated every time one manages to land in my face and starts crawling around on my cheek, forehead or nose. And since my job has me wet up to my elbows all day, I end up swatting myself with chlorinated water or sappy fingers trying to get rid of the thing… This problem will hopefully soon be solved, as one of the German packers has offered to lend me his fly screen thing – an offer which I’ll be more than glad to accept… Lunch break starts at 1pm and is my half an hour of heaven. I eat whatever I had cooked up the day before and brought in my little Tupperware – curry rice with veggie stir fry, pasta, sandwiches, egg and salad, asian-style tuna salad – and then lie down, cover my face with my little towel to hide from the flies and dose, listening to the leaves and whatever crawls around them crackle beneath my head. The two most interesting encounters with the creepy crawly kind were those of a gigantic hissing cockroach (the size of an egg – I kid you not!) which left behind a nasty smell when one of the Indonesians grabbed it and threw it far far away, and a walking stick the length of my hand, which stalked by me between its immobile flora doppelgangers… The hour after lunch is also tough, having to get up again from almost passing out, having to leave the cool(er) shade of the tree, suit up and head back out into the blistering heat, having to work and walk while digesting. Our water is changed to “Squincher”(the name kind of made me think of something that would be used for Potions class or at the infirmary at Hogwarts), a Gatorade-like drink to replenish lost minerals and electrolytes, in the afternoon – doping to keep us going. The afternoon is hot and not matter how much I drink during the day – usually around a liter in one and a half hours – I only have to ask a supervisor to drive me to one of the port-a-potties a maximum of twice a day. By our second Smoke’O at 3pm, my spirits are lifted because I know the day is almost over and I have made it once again. By the last hour I’m more hanging on the machine, letting myself be dragged or pushed by the machine while plucking stems off mangoes and sending them on their way. And by the time we park our baby, I have just about enough energy to take off my apron and jump into the van.  We spend a few minutes back at the shed, have a cigarette, sign out - “Roxanna Schiffever Out”, wave hello to our packer friends that usually work a few hours longer than us (but start later of course) and drive back to home sweet homestead. Although my knees are killing me and I’m tired and sore and the first thing my roommates tell me when I walk through out gate is “Oh Sana, you look tired”, I do not sit down quite yet. The Tupperware has to be washed and refilled, meaning I cook my dinner for the evening/lunch for the next day, wash my work clothes by hand every few days (and am amazed over and over again of how much dirt and grime one pair of pants can soak up) and then, the last feat of the day – go take a long shower. By then, it is usually around 6:30 or 7:00pm and I feel as though it is 9:00 or 10:00pm. I go hang out by the other kitchen for a while and am then off to bed to read two pages, listen to 10minutes of “Die Drei ???” or watch 15minutes of a series before falling asleep with my book on my chest or my earphones on my head, iPod or laptop still on.

After only 7 days of work, I have taken so much with me. Aside from the little sap burn on my arm (though I am very lucky and not as susceptible to the burns – the two Korean girls in my room are covered in them), rough skin from all the sun and chlorinated water, stressed hair from being soaked in sweat all day, the bruised and bandaged foot, ankle and leg and a new embarrassing bedtime of 9:30pm, I have been productive, played an important part in a chain of events leading up to people enjoying Australian mangoes all over the world, I have met many different types of people and have gotten back in touch with my Asian side being submerged in an (almost) all Asian team, I know now that I am tougher than I thought I was, I’ve earned more money in 7 days than I did in a month in Berlin, I have celebrated a birthday Korean-style, I have copied a ton of films and series from many different hard drives, I have eaten homemade Indian chapatti with curry, I have improved my French comprehension skills (especially when it comes to colloquial speech) majorly, I have used my knowledge of linguistics to solve little translation and comprehension problems, I have gotten great tips for further picking and packing seasons, I have become homesick for the first time since I arrived here in Australia, due to the monotony of the days out here and I am getting closer to feeling out what I want to do with myself. I want to experience and I want to write and I want to observe, understand and become words. Though my system of recording what I see, do, hear, smell, taste, touch and feel is still in need of improvement, I find myself writing all day. On a little notepad in my head, I take notes and formulate paragraphs in my head, cursing the fact that I don’t have a pen and paper with me (which would only get wet if I brought it out on the Harvest Aid) because sadly I do tend to forget them by the time I’m sitting in front of my laptop. I take pictures in my mind and give them captions, knowing they will stay only mine (because the camera would just wet). I tell myself stories along the way, dreaming up non-fiction and wondering if others would care to listen in.

Chapter 19 "Daytrippin' to Darwin and Katherine Gorge Take 2+3"

20.-22.09.2010

Though I had quite gotten used to the daily routine here at Manbulloo Caravan Park – waking up with whomever wakes up first in my room (usually the Koreans), having my morning muesli, Wheatbix and banana breakfast, then my cup of coffee and cigarette in the morning sun, watching the little lizards chase each other through the pale yellow leaves on the ground and then usually going back inside to watch series on my laptop or listen to “Die Drei ???” on my iPod, usually heading into town late afternoon to go to Woolworths and take a dip in the hot springs and then gathering for dinner at the kitchen facilities in the evening – there’s only a certain amount of doing nothing I can handle. By now I have been down to the river right next to the caravan park and tried fishing (without luck), walked around outside the caravan park to take pictures of the cows during magic hour and have finished all the seasons of “How I Met Your Mother” that I have – and those were the highlights of my days. So when one of the French guys working as a packer at the farm mentioned driving up to Darwin for a night on Monday, I didn’t hesitate and jumped in the car.

And so we drove, one of the guys I was travelling with, also hitching a ride, back up the road I had already driven along twice, listening to French music. The sun beat down on my side for most of the ride up (and down) giving me a beautiful burnt sienna color on one of my shoulders, and making it impossible to sleep on that side the next day. Every few hundred meters the smell of older road-kill victims wafted into the car through the open windows and every once in a while we’d almost hit the eagles feasting on the newer ones. Around four hours and only one short stop later, we drove into the city I had just come from a few days earlier and it actually felt a bit like returning to a home-like place. My bank had already closed, so my main reason for coming up – picking up my new bank card – had to be postponed to the next day. My PADI card, which had been sent from Melbourne to Darwin a week earlier, also hadn’t arrived yet at the Cav, so we spent the afternoon walking around, sitting in the library till they closed and then having the free backpacker’s dinner at the Vic. I then visited some friends who were still staying at the Cav and managed to find an unoccupied bed in their room for the night (saving the 25$ I would/should have paid for it)… It was a short stay, because after picking up my new bank card the next morning, we headed straight back down to Katherine to still have some time to pass by the Gorge in the afternoon.

At the Gorge, we walked the track I had already done, but backwards, to get to the viewpoint faster. This time, my camera was charged and ready and I got to take the pictures I had only taken in my mind the first time around. On the trail, we met the two French couples also working as packers at the farm, the ones the guy I was with wanted to meet. So we did the rest of the trail with them and ended up back home in the evening.

Instead of a bar or a fancy lounge area in a hostel, our hangouts in the evenings take place in a covered outdoor kitchen with nothing but a gas stove, two fridges, a sink, a table with two benches and some plastic chairs. But when (up to) 14 people, pickers and packers at the farm (mostly French, two English, me and the two newest members from Berlin) gather under said roof, cooking dinner one by one and rotating to use the gas stove and the table, having a beer and getting to know each other, exchanging travel stories, it can make a pretty nice evening. That particular evening, I was invited to dinner by one of the French guys and ate the best meal I have had since my trip with Groovy Grape – Barramundi fillet pan seared in butter and onions with sour cream curried rice. I had never eaten Barramundi before, only read about this fish that can be found in the local rivers – it was excellent! The meat was white, firm and quite tasty, not fishy at all. A simple but very satisfying meal.

The next morning, some of the French pickers decided to go back to the gorge to do a hike they had discovered the day before. I joined  them of course, just dying to use my legs again. The Butterfly Gorge hike is about 12km return and is estimated to take 4h. A sign at the start of the hike showing the different paths and reminding you to bring lots of water and to wear the right shoes, the estimated temperature during the hike was 50degrees that day. I don’t think I have ever consciously walked under the sun in that kind of heat and the number alone stumped me. We started off at 11am, knowing we’d be exposed to the noon sun straight above us and after twenty minutes of walking (though I do have to add that those were going up a  steep hill) I was drenched in sweat. I could feel it dripping down my temples soon creating a steadily flowing river down to my belly button. My back stayed cool thanks to the two bottles of water I had kept in the freezer all night that were in my new super lightweight backpack I had bought in Darwin (one of those that you can roll up to the size of a roll on deodorant – sorry, only reference I could think of). Along the way there were two tanks of water, which I was quite grateful for, because I did drink more than I thought I would and it felt great to soak my hair (which only ended up dry again fifteen minutes later). The hike itself was not really hard and offered quite diverse landscapes. We started off up a steep hill on a gravel path till we got up onto the highland of the gorge. Up there, we walked through boulders and skinny trees, dry grass and some palms along the way. The gravel turned to sand every once in a while, then to pebbles and rocks as we descended into the butterfly gorge. More and more palm-like trees had dropped their lowest branches, which crunched under our feet. Down in the gorge there was more shade, given to us by the trees of the little jungle we made our way through. Here we wound through the trees stepping on larger rocks and climbing over fallen tree trunks, even crossing a little stream which surely floods the whole area during rainy season. To one side, the dark gray rock of the gorge followed our path.

The name Butterfly Gorge, and this is just a guess, probably comes from the fact that there are quite a few of these fluttering creatures around, accompanying you as you slowly but surely reach your destination. There are however some less welcome critters that join you on this picturesque walk – for one, the flies: I know they are part of life in the outback and that it’s actually not really that bad at the moment, but if you only slow down or stop for a few minutes, at least one of those pesky buggers will catch up with you and follow you, slowly driving you insane. I had one follow me for at least fifteen minutes, buzzing around my head, making it sound like it flew in one ear and out the other. But at least flies can only annoy you to death, while the other beings we encountered just might actually kill you. Australia is notorious for its many deadly animals and while travelling here, just the sight of a spider or a snake can run a shiver down your spine. And we saw both. Of course, I am not an expert and do not know which of the spiders and snakes are deadly, but better to be weary of all than to risk that tiny bite that will shorten my trip instantly. We saw two snakes, one just a baby and one about a foot long, and way too many spiders of different shapes, sizes and colors.

After an hour and a half in the grueling heat, we arrived at our destination – a little cove along Katherine river that opens to a turn in the gorge. Basically it looks like a crossroads of the river and, as I learned from the many tour boats that passed us during our stay there, the pool where the two gorges meet is up to 30m deep and actually turns into a little whirlpool during rainy season when the water level rises a few meters. After a short lunch and rest at the cove, feeding the fish and turtles that came up quite close to the shore, we left all our stuff there and swam around the corner to a sport where it’s quite easy to climb up onto the cliffs and jump into the greenish water. I have gotten used to the fact that when swimming in the local waters, you can be pretty sure that there are some crocs hidden somewhere along the shore or down deep and I’m actually not nervous about getting in with them anymore. The others preferred to stay in the water as little as possible. The jumps off the cliffs were good fun. I started off with about 3m and then went up to 5m. Two of the guys actually climbed a bit higher and found a spot at 7m from which to jump, but I don’t think my muscles would have budged if I had stood up there and contemplated about jumping. We were joined by some other hikers, some tourists on canoes and the occasional river cruise which usually resulted in us becoming tourist attractions ourselves, the guides mentioning the “wildlife” on the cliffs of Katherine Gorge.

Three hours, many jumps and some relaxing on the hot stones later, we packed up and walked the one and a half hours back to the car – definitely more strenuous than heading there. Tired from the first hike and swimming, wanting to just float back via the river, stumbling over sticks and stones, the afternoon sun in your face and the water in my bottles no longer icy fresh, I got back to the car with legs made of rubber as heavy as lead and my eyes falling closed during the car ride home. Though I did retire to bed around my usual time of 11pm, I did manage to come in 3^rd out of 7 in the poker match before that.