Take your pick!

When you’re backpacking around Australia and you run out of money, there’s only one thing for it – fruit picking! Working holidays have a long tradition in Australia, and backpacking around on the cheap means you get to see more of the country without having to save your money for years. If you’ve got the time and the notion, you could pick your way from one side of the country to the other while seeing some of Australia’s prettiest rural areas and making friends with the locals.

Picking is something almost every backpacker will have some experience with. When it’s harvest time, growers employ backpackers by the bucket load and in some cases you can just turn up and get a job straight away. What you’ll be harvesting will depend on where you are and what time of the year it is. All kinds of fruit and vegies are grown around the country, from delicious stone fruit like peaches and apricots to greens like asparagus and brussel sprouts. You could also harvest shellfish like rock lobsters, prawns or scallops if you’re in the right place at the right time.

Meeting other backpackers is all part of the fruit picking experience. In places that hire travellers regularly you can meet people from all over the world and talk to people of many cultures who have found their way to a distant orchard or vineyard in search of some extra holiday cash. The transient nature of pickers creates a solid if somewhat temporary community. There’s a real sense of camaraderie amongst pickers, which can even extend across the country. When travelling around, you might find yourself bumping into the same people from orchard to orchard. Some places have accommodation on site, so you can kick back and relax with your new mates after a hard days work and swap travel stories.

If you want to minimise the hard work and find the best places to pick, you should start making friends with the locals who are old hands at the seasonal work. They’ll be able to give you hints and tips on how to pick faster and easier so you don’t break your back in the first week. And while most orchards are run by decent growers who look after their pickers, some should be avoided. Building friendships with other pickers should stop you from ending up in one of these ‘hard labour’ joints.

Quite often you’ll find that fruit picking is a ‘pay per piece’ affair, where the more you pick the more you’re paid. This means that the harder you work, the heavier your pockets will be at the end. Don’t be disgruntled if at first your earnings are a bit on the lean side – it could take a while but you should improve and start being able to earn more in less time. If you want an hourly pay rate, you should keep your eyes open for farms that grow fruit that bruises easily – they need their pickers to take care with the fruit and so an hourly rate encourages slower more careful picking. Grapes are a good fruit for this type of work.

Most picking work is during the warmer months, and you should be prepared. Obviously, orchards grow outside under the hot Aussie sun. You should wear a big hat and sunnies, a long sleeve shirt and of course a good lathering of sunscreen. Make sure you bring a big bottle for water too – picking is thirsty work! Protective gear for your hands and feet is also required, since some places use pesticides and you don’t want to get that stuff all over you. There are often fun and games with creepy crawlies like spiders and insects, so be warned!

Finding work shouldn’t be too difficult. A temporary job agency can find work for you, and often a decent pay packet to go with it. There are heaps of sites on the net that post jobs regularly, and some are specific to backpackers and those on working visas. Some backpacker hostels have a noticeboard or even a jobs database, so make sure you check these out. And of course the good old local rag classifieds will have an employment section where you can look for temporary and casual work for all kinds of interests. Don’t forget to ask other backpackers what they’re up to – if they want to leave just as you arrive, they may be able to pass their job on to you! Make sure you keep the flow going by passing your job on to the next person too.

If you want to go picking when you come to Australia, you’ll need to get a Working Holiday Visa before you leave home, since visas won’t be granted once you get here. These last for twelve months, and you can get one if you are between 18 and 30 years of age. You can do any type of casual or temporary work on this visa, but you must not stay in any one job with the same company for more than 3 months. If you don’t want to be taxed up the you-know-what, you should get a Tax File Number too.

Picking is hard work, but it can be fun too. You’ll end up with great stories about how you managed to drive the tractor through a fence, fell off the ladder or some other form of accidental self-harm you encountered on your working adventure. But it will all be worth it for the friends, the experience and of course the extra dollars!