Today we continued as we had left off the day before, helping to pick from the machine. The time passed quickly enough, with a little conversation and a lot of work. Laura was helping Ken, a Japanese guy who’d already been working there for 5 weeks. Apparently he ‘d bought a motorbike and was spending his free time painting it. Other things about Ken.? He only eats nectarines, drinks water and smokes at work, no other nutrition enters his body, and he’s been doing Karate for 16 years (and still is).

Mark was helping Nathan, a 25 year old local who had just started this job after being sacked from another one. he plays football, drinks beer and lives above a pub with his sister who waits on him. Other than working, he shoots, fishes and drives too fast. He’s also incredibly racist, against the aboriginals only we thought at first, but he’s generally prejudiced against anyone you care to mention. He.s fun to chat to and friendly, and his claim to fame is that he punched Peter Andre at a night-club for taking his shirt off (very valid reason we feel).

On the bottom platforms, we had Sam on our left and Collin on our right. Sam is an Englishman who enjoys swearing and smoking nearly as much as Nathan, but is certainly not as violent by nature. Touring Australia with his girlfriend and another friend (we think) in a big blue campervan, he’s using this job for quick cash too. Sadly though, they are giving a large portion of their salary to the pub and bottleshop in return for large amounts of beer. He enjoys talking to Nathan about football (Ozzie rules) and shooting, although we think he’s a little nervous about going out to hunt himself.

Collin is a Scotsman and is relatively quiet and refined. He does however spend his pay in the pub with the others, often until 2:00 in the morning, but he feels no need to swear and talk about killing animals as much as them. He’s here for a year after completing a university course in Law in Scotland, so makes for some very interesting conversation.

The final member of our happy band is Allan, the driver. Known as Youngie, because he’s old, (and his surname is Young) he seems to have taken this job some time ago after stopping work with Telstra. He too, enjoys talking about fishing, sport and cars, and is in fact just as racist as Nathan. Together, the two of them can argue until they’re blue in the face about the aboriginals or the "nationality of the day" being no good. Meanwhile, us tolerant international backpackers stand in stunned silence, before throwing our rebuttals at them. Youngie is married with children and lives locally. He’s very frustrated with his work, as only driving along very slowly and stopping occasionally is very unsatisfactory. Sadly he makes the situation worse by driving too fast and so having to stop for longer and even go backwards.

Together we are an interesting crew who surprisingly get on very well and seem to manage to find things to discuss on the long afternoons. When today was over, we were happy with our new positions which would certainly provide plenty of stories to tell back home. We had beef chow mein for dinner and yes, another early night.

One man down, we finished off the afternoon’s work and then went home to shower. Tonight’s dinner was pork snitzel, potatoes, cauliflower, French beans and a delicious cheese sauce, one of our best dishes yet.