Improvements

The past week has brought a fair bit of change to my life here. On Monday I mentioned Richie that I would appreciate if I could get some more hours at work, doing 9 hours a day 5 days a week does not really satisfy me. And it’s not that I am a workaholic, but there nothing else to do here really. J And money is what I’m here for. So, after a bit of thinking and 24hours later I was on my way to Peebinga Park, the third farm we did not go to do the seeding. This time was not going to be working there, but just taking a ca 150km trip there and ca 150km back to pick up the scraper – a piece of machinery to level the fields. It was a nice day on Tuesday, so I could not care less that I took the trip on me beloved 7830 John Deere. J The following weekdays were filled with working on field 34 which due to winds has become really rough. According to Richie it’ll take at least a couple of weeks to get it into a condition that matches his idea of it. And to start with, he just gave me a brief presentation of what to do and what NOT to do. So all I have to do now is find a way to get myself to work and back at times most suitable for me. For that ofcourse I need a car!

On Friday it turned out Pete was heading to Adelaide on Saturday noon as he had a week of vacation coming and had decided to spend it in Melbourne. Good for me I thought, at least I could get to Adelaide with him. I spent the whole evening looking for cars worth having a look at, but due to a very limited budget of up to 2000aud, there was not too much to consider. Finally came across a 1991 Mitsubishi Lancer, 1690aud, having ca 285000km on speedometer but otherwise looked nice and tidy, no rust or problems reported by dealership. I the evening however I was not quite sure I was going to Adelaide. At one point I decided to give a call to an Estonian lady whose contacts I got from home. Tiina is an Aussie born Estonian who unfortunately was not home, but her husband promised to leave a note so she would call me back Saturday morning. All ends loose...

9am Saturday morning I got a call from the car dealer saying the car is available, mechanically checked and in good condition and that they are open till 4pm. Good! 1,5h later received a call from Tiina and we agreed that if I will make it to Adelaide later that day, we’d meet some time during the afternoon. All I had to do was to get Pete come and pick me up. All ends not so loose anymore...

2pm Saturday afternoon and the carpark gate opened in Adelaide airport – I was in Adelaide finally, in the airport and on my way to take a taxi to the other end of Adelaide city to have a look and hopefully buy the Mitsubishi. J To cut the long story short – I got it! To make it a bit fancy – I paid in cash! And to celebrate – I headed to the city, found a nice italian restaurant and enjoyed a great Calzone pizza with a good glass of riesling wine!

I met with Tiina and her husband Kent and younger son James in their home up in the Adelaide Hills. Lucky to have a gps on the phone, because finding your way around in the Hills the first time around is hard to say the least! Tiina’s parents moved to Australia during the second world war, she has only been to Estonia a few times, but I was quite suprised about her still good Estonian. Kent is a native Aussie who had an Estonian friend in the school. The two guys were, at least what I was told, inseparable, except on Saturdays. That was the day all Adelaide Estonians had Estonian school, folkdance and other national activities. A young aussie guy could not understand how on earth an guy could choose folkdance lessons over aussie rules (the local footy (football)). Untill the day he was asked to come along and see for himself! And the rest is history. J We had a nice long chat with a couple of bottles of wine, I got to know them a bit and they got to know me a bit. What an enjoyable evening compared to those back in Nildottie with no-one in the house but me.

But the best was yet to come... After a nice brunch on Sunday I headed to a wineyard with Tiina, she decided to show the one their family likes to most. Shaw+Smith is a small estate that started off when citizens Shaw and Smith decided to realize their old dream of making wine. Having a taste of 4 very good wines, 2 red - pinot noir and shiraz and 2 white - chardonnay and savignon blanc, consider the sunny day and the beautiful surroundings aswell and you’ll have a perfect recipe for great Sunday! After that a quick sightseeing in the Adelaide Hills, went to the Mt Lofty lookout. Also as one of Tiina's friends was located just nearby and she thought it'd would be a good idea to take me there and show a home-made zoo, we dropped by Kathy's place. Home-made zoo is a correct word for it, because there were very many parrots, very colorful, loud and beautiful, a seriouslooking eagle, an emu and some kangaroos. Photos in the album. To sum it up, it was time and money well spent, it was great to be out from Nildottie for a while and especially good to meet some people and have a nice chat.

What is more, I'll be back in Adelaide on July 8 when there's an event at the Adelaide Estonian House. Good on ya mate :)

Mixed emotions

What if I found my way back to the civilization? What if I finished working here at the farm and headed to Adelaide for a month? What if I actually bought a car? How much to spend on it? How much to save for travelling? What if I would not think of those things? What if? And what is going through my mind? The answers to those and other questions cannot be found. Or can?!

The busy days are over, apparently and also confirmed by head of staff, Richie. It’s a good thing on one hand but it is not really why I’m here. I have nothing against starting late and finishing early but unfortunately that around here does not mean a lot of money, yet it means too much free time and nothing to do with it. Also as the irish lads are now off, took them to Adelaide airport this morning, there is noone else in the house which makes it all pretty empty. Moreover as they sold their car to Andy and I do not have any myself, then I need to find a solution to get to work and back. Ok, doable, I’ll find my way around. But to shop?! I need to get there aswell from time to time. Again doable, I’ll find some solution. But for what actually?! I mean if the days will be as long as they have been for the past 2 days – 9,5h of work then it does not make too much sense to just sit around. Or am I being too grumpy and impatient?

So that’s why there are some questions in my mind. A wise idea would be to figure out what I, me and myself actually want and the rest is just a consequence of the pieces of thoughts that go through the mind day in and day out.

Taking the trip to Adelaide this morning was interesting. First time on public roads with more traffic, driving the Mitsubishi ute, right hand side wheel with manual gearbox, taking it through Adelaide. No big deal to be honest. J And did not get lost either. But that’s not important. What is more important to me is the feeling of being in a city, after a long while. And today Adelaide felt different. Maybe it was because of the nice sunny weather, maybe because I was driving, maybe because it was a city with all the nice things you can find there. Don’t know, but it felt good! And I understood right when I crossed the last intersection with trafficlights that I miss it. The city, the livelyness, socializing, people. I am not saying I am that homesick, though it will be indeed splendid to come home for a while, but I am saying that it might be time to move on. Let’s see... J

Oh, I almost forgot. I had a birthday a couple of days ago. It's now 27 years in the making and still not satisfied with the result. J Thank you mom and dad and Mattias and Merje for the package! And thank you all for all the good words! And thank whatever I did not have one of those 16-19 hour days! J However to be honest, this time around the day did not have it’s glance. It was indeed overwhelming to receive all those best wishes and to see how many people are or might be thinking of me that day, but there was something missing – the joy! Don’t worry because I am not, it’s called life and I chose to take it by the horns. J

But that evening gave me a nice shot!

Back from Parrakie (12.06.11)

To be honest, I liked Parrakie – the house was nicer, yet awfully cold, it was clean because the guys living there take good care of it, the job was easy aswell as the fields were smoothly ploughed and north-south lines were long enough so I didn’t need to make turnarounds constantly. Within 5 days I covered 909ha, out of which about 650ha was seeded and the rest sprayed for general weeds and volunteers (the potatoes which have been left on field and have started growing again). The days were long, about 14-17 hours, but the job was done and it’s still all about the money.The only thing that made working there a bit harder, were the pits that are dug in the fields because occasionally it gets horribly wet there. As the soil is not very deep and below you either find clay or rock, then the water has nowhere to go and it just floods the fields. So the pits were to lookd out for. And ofcourse my beloved centrepoints with watertaps. And ofcourse we did not manage without troubles there either. Monday to Wednesday went allright, we were having a great pace which could have allowed us to return to Nildottie already Friday morning, but just as you start thinking such thoughts, accidents start to happen. Thursday and Friday gave us 5 problems – a blow up airpump on seeder, 2 flat tyres on seeder and tractor, a snapped wheelhandle on sprayer and a snapped aircon belt on the ute. The worst thing was that the tractor tyre broke just after Dermot had finished seeding and was on the way back from the field to the yard. On the other hand we were even lucky to have that puncture – otherwise they would have still needed us in the third farm! Fortunately we got everything going again and after hard weeks work managed to get back to Nildottie safe and sound on Saturday afternoon. As a compliment to our good work we were given the opportunity of a nice meal and couple of drinks at Swan Reach pub, regardless of the utter tiredness it was an enjoyable evening to get away from work and the house and do some socializing.

I’ve added some photos here, but as usual check the albums on picasaweb for more, if you like ofcourse J

Long hours, nice income (07.06.11)

There is a reason why I haven’t posted any lines – I’ve been working! Indeed it has been hard, but the benefits are there – income. As there is no other reason for me to be here, then I am all pretty happy with it. Last week I did 70 hours in total. This week I actually had a rough ride, 93,5 hours summed up! Not bad considering there’s 168 hours in a week. J FYI a working week starts on Wednesday and finishes on Tuesday. Dermot even managed a 101h week.

To start up we (me, Pete and Dermot) were told we’ll be heading to Parrakie next week (06.06 – 12.06), so that meant we had to finish all seeding and spraying in Nildottie farm before that. Note – both farms are owned by same guys, who also have a third farm where we were supposed to go but fortunately do not have to. So knowing the above there was a long week ahead. Wednesday started off with 15 hours of work, followed by Thursday and Friday with 14 both. Nice, isn’t it?! J Considering this Saturday was a bit tiresome to start with. I have no idea what happened, did I step out of the bed with a wrong foot, but it just was not my day! Even before I got to start working, I had to

take a 3 hour break. Reason – flat tyre! Fortunately the repairman did not have a day off. Tyre fixed, off I went, for about 1km. Then there was another stop. Reason – loose pipe and a small fountain of chemicals bursting out of the pump. Luckily it was nothing to worry about and 5 minutes later I was on my way again.

Everything went smoothly untill a couple of hours later another fountain occured. This time on the field and it was a nice big one. I had hit the field centrepoint and the watertap broke. Thousands of litres of water later we got it fixed, actually Pete and Richie, our farm manager did, and I was back doing another load of spraying. Partially because of those

timeconsuming failures my day actually turned out not to be long, but extremely long. I started off at 5am and finished at night, 22hours later.

On Monday morning we made our way to Parrakie, a nice 5 hour journey.

Shopping frenzy!

Another fortnight, another shopping frenzy, this time for about 320AUD! J Yeah, it’s a lot but it’ll keep me going probably for 3 weeks now. As this amount seems pretty rediculous, I might just point out some of prices here for an idea. About bananas you know already. J

• Plasticbag – 0,9
• 2L orange juice – 4,99
• 1kg pears – 2,88
• 1kg apples – 2,70
• 1kg long grain rice – 1,89
• Cucumber – 2,98
• Pistachio nuts – 29,96 per kg
• Chicken breast fillet (2pcs) – 9,5
• Capsicum red (paprika) – 7,98 per kg
• Capsicum green (paprika) – 4,98 per kg
• Beef minced meat – 9,90 per kg
• Raw sugar 1kg – 1,69
• Eggs 12 pack (600g) – 4,55
• Seed bread (800g) – 3,25
• Yoghurt 170g – 1,69

Prices are in AUD, just to be on the safe side. J I do not remember what things did cost back at home, but yes, it is a lot more expencive here and yes, people do earn a lot more money aswell. On the other hand, I do not understand them complaining about the fuel prices. For crying out loud, it costs about 1,5-1,55 AUD per litre. Just about the same as in Estonia I guess, or even less.

Life itself has been busy, full of work and nothing else. As we had enough rain to start seeding, we’ve been up and running from 6AM till the very evening, usually finishing between 6PM and 9PM. It isn’t too bad, it isn’t too hard and that is where the money is hidden. J So wake up for me is at 5.20, quick morning push ups and sit ups to get the blood moving and warmth as the mornings are quite chilly. Once we had just +2 before the sunrise, usually 6-9 degrees which climbs up to about 15-20 degrees during the day. I open the door of my tractor at about 6AM and start filling up the tank with water and chemicals. That usually takes about 20 minutes, then it’s another 15-30 minutes drive up to the certain field. And so the day goes, spraying and filling up, unless there are some problems, which do occur from time to time. J One of the two reasons we are not working this weekend is because the pump on the sprayer decided to end its’ work contract. Well, it was an old machine already, having served for over 10 years. Another reason was one guy forgot to order the fertilizer, so even without the pump failure we would have had a weekend off. And as I said, what better way to spend it than shopping! J And I got myself connected again, so that’s good aswell. Aaah, upon getting back from work it’s just a quick meal, getting a shower, maybe watching some TV and off to bed, sweet dreams and another day starts sneaking up.

After doing some maths I found out I’ve done more than 1100ha of spraying since 09.05.11 up to today. I haven’t yet calculated the approximate consumption of diesel, but I’ll get to that aswell. J

Last week I was spraying a field (no 35) in the south east corner of the farm (while the shed is located on the north western side) and as I headed off to the field I heard Pete on the 2-way (the walkie-talkie type of thing for internal communication within the farm while on the vehicles) asking me if I could also move a truck with barley seeds from field 35 (south east) to 44 (south west). „Well, not a problem Pete, see you at 44 in an hour.“ One hour is exactly how much it took me to get from the shed (north western side of the farm) to field 35 and from there to 44. J Our manager Richie, a nice lad from UK, and also Pete are doing about 150-200km of driving around the farm in a day in their utes (the off-road vehicle with a case in the back). So that’s the size of this farm!

One more thing that comes with a weekend off is that I go jogging. Here in the farm I’ve managed to do it once every week, that is 5 times already, except the second weekend, cannot recall why though. Earlier while still in Brisbane I tried to go out twice a week. As I already started doing some maths then here are some another figures – so far 13 times and 91,91km, totaling 8241 calories. Not too bad I’d say. J

That’s all I have to say now.

Daily routine (22.05.11)

Some photos to start with :)

Without any access to the simple pleasures of life, i.e. internet, skype, blogging, I’ve had enough time to do other things, mainly work. The past week has brought along a bit more hours, days with average 10 hours of work, but have managed to make a 12h day aswell. To be quite fair with you, it was not a whole 12 hours of work, but as the law insists you have to have a half-an-hour break every 5 hours (read: lunch) and as mine just passed while driving around and spraying the fields, I added those two half-an-hour breaks on top of the actual hours. That’s the way it works here. And if you were irish, you’d add another 30-60 minutes to get more money (read: lying). So as said, I’ve had my working days filled with driving the tractor and doing spraying. Itself it’s not a hard work, but on the other hand you cannot really relax either as the fields might be quite rough – you are being thrown around on your seat like nothing, also have to keep an eye on whatever obstacles, from time to time kangaroos, rabbits, birds, mice (well, mice are always there and everywhere), foxes, but also these little fellows –

hedgehogs. As the tractor has a modern radio installed I am more than happy to use the other simple pleasures of life – BYO (read: bring your own). Usually, as I have mentioned it’s for bringing your own drinks to restaurants, in my case BYO music. Luckily the amount of music I can copy onto the USB memory sticks is about 3900 songs, that might keep me entertained for a little while.

Meanwhile 2 weekends have passed, quite ordinary, not too much going on but still have had some entertainment. Last weekend (13-15.May) started off with a shorter working day, as the irish guys needed to go to Murray Bridge to sort out their issues with their car, caused by their arrogance, ignorance and I’m-the-centre-of-the-world mentality. By today (22.May) it is still unsorted as they need their passports, which got stolen while in Sydney and now new ones are again waiting in Sydney which they do not feel like getting asap. So if nothing changes, they’ll be fined. Fine by me, this might reduce their level of arrogance.

So were was I – Murray Bridge – so far it relates to shopping and I did a heavy shopping this time, resulting in 250AUD! But that more or less keeps me covered for 2 weeks so no worries. J As we had both Saturday and Sunday also off, there was not too much to do, yet fortunately one english guy, Andy likes to do some racing, it was worth while having a peek on local highlight – speedway racing at Waikerie Speedway. It’s a dirt covered round track and the aim is, as in all forms of motorsports, suprise-suprise, not to crash and to finish first. J The event was of some

national importance, so there were a number of cars involved in various classes, starting from small engines with very young drivers and finishing with really powerful V8 dirtcars going sideways pretty much the whole

race. Andy wasn’t racing any of those however. As they say, save the best for last, so to dot the i of the evening there was a figure 8 racing, which included some destruction derby driving but not entirely. The idea was to finish, but you were allowed to do some crashing aswell, in order to overtake or to mess around with competitors a bit. But not TOO much because then you’d get penalties! And to make it more interesting, they’ve added 2 small jumps on the course, taking those might give some extra points or smth. Don’t know the rules though. It was quite interesting to watch, especially those guys with V8 cars going sideways and overtaking each other at the same time, but I’d prefer some more corners on the course and as the night was long (the whole event lasted about 5 hours) and cold (you could actually see your breath) then I probably wouldn’t invest going there again. Except when I could race myself J

This weekend began somehow differently. One evening I was told that tomorrow we’ll only have a half a day’s work again. I became a bit frustrated with it because I already had had 2 weeks in a row with both Sat & Sun off, but later that day, already half asleep I recalled – it’s Friday and tomorrow is Saturday. So no worries Margus, half day is already filled and that’s good. J Which

left the other half still open. As Pete had a football game that afternoon, Dermot and I set our way to Swan Reach to see BSR Redbacks (Blanchetown & Swan Reach joint team) play Aussie rules footy. It was a nice warm sunny day when you could actually wear only shorts and thongs (read: flipflops), a rare thing here. And there cannot be footy without a beer, or two, maybe three, sometimes four. J I don’t quite get the game yet but it’s a bit like American football, only it’s a men’s game without any protective plasticy shields or helmets. It’s a rough

game. J BSR team won a second weekend in a row with 144 points against opponents’ 53, if I’m not mistaken.

On both weekends I noticed a similarity during the events – it is a social event where everybody goes, whole families, they bring their own barbie (read: BBQ) or if possible (and early enough) use the public barbies. And when I say everybody, I refer to a lot of people from the nearby (read: 100km) communities. To make it nice and comfy for the spectators – they can park their cars pretty much the whole way around the stadium, so there’s no need to even step out of it. J Next step to so called american society.

P.S. Remember the Queensland (QLD) floods earlier this year and cyclone Yasi’s devastation in northern QLD?! Well it has had it’s affect. The Queenslanders are known as Banana Benders and that’s for a reason. Namely QLD provides the majority of bananas for the whole nation and also exports a lot of them. Due to the environmental disasters guess what has happened – YES correct, the increase of prices. And I kid you not – the price used to be around 2 AUD per kg, now it’s somewhere 13-14 AUD per kg!! 1kg of bananas is about 5-7 pieces. You do the maths.

P.P.S It is these days publicly on all media channels advertized that due to strong local currency situation it is reasonable, whoever can afford it, to go travelling. On the other hand it is a tricky position for local products to be sold abroad because the cost has increased, not only due to currency situation but also the general increase in production costs.

And that's what happens when you light up a dump and bring some beers :)

Another "days of firsts"

So finally I found out that the talks about the roos (read: kangaroos) jumping around freely here on farmlands are true. On Monday morning I saw 3 roos looking around in the bush and gicing the big green thing funny looks, today noticed another fellow enjoying himself (or herself) under the early morning sun totally ignoring my passing just about 20m away. I thought they would look a bit different from those we have back in Tallinn Zoo, maybe it's just the fact it's wintertime coming up so their fur adjusts to the colours of the surroundings. I imagined them to be less grey and more light brown :)

Monday also started up with my trying out the spraying the first time with all the procedures of making the chemical coctail in the tanktrailer, getting the sprayer inspected for any kind of problems etc. To be honest, it's not as hard of a work as I thought. I am just driving the whole unit to the certain field, get the machinery ready (yes, you can go wrong with it and then it's not good) and off I go. The driving itself is being done by GPS controlled autosteering, the use of

pedals is anyway a rare thing, just have to keep my eyes open for rough terrain (result of bad ploughing), any breathers or centrepoints on the field or other miscellaneous objects. The GPS keeps the tractors on the straight line and my other duty is to turn the tractor around at each end of the line and align it close to a centre of a new line, there GPS takes over the process again. Of course you have to calculate the wind direction, because as certain fields that are still not harvested are neighbouring the ones I spray, I might just ruin a lot of crops when miscalculating something, also it would not be a good idea to spill a big amount of the coctail out from the tank because otherwise that certain spot on the field will not grown anything within the next 5 years. :) AND it is also not a good idea to leave the sprayer running while making an unexpected stop on the field, mainly due to the previous reason. AND there are quite a few other things to bare in mind, such as the bearings and bearinghousing and if those are intact. Well at one point I was too busy finding my way around a field centrepoint while Pete (who was instructing me) noticed a bearing being broke. Moreover, having had it changed after 30 minutes hard work and just having started to head back to the shed another failure - the 2 long beams of the sprayer had got stuck into one another. As the wheels of the sprayer unit were aligned precisely and correctly AND as the whole thing had just had it's renovation it was pretty unclear why it happened. Not even the guys who have been working in that farm for 10 years have not experienced anything like it. So it must have something to do with me :) Looking at the bright side, without having had those incidents we would probably have gone to the other farms (I'll tell about it later) without enough or specific spares. No worries, all turned out just fine.

Well, I am not sure how interesting it is to read all this. Moreover, I wonder how many people are actually reading this apart from my family. So if it does not take tooooo much of your valuable time dear readers, send me a small notice so I'd actually know who am I dealing with here :)

Cheers guys!