The black hole of mushroom picking!

The Deal:

$4.50 per 4.5kg A Grade Mushrooms

$2.25 per 4.5kg B Grade Mushrooms (even if you thought they were A Grade but they didn't)

Sat: 7am - 12pm (Dom 4 boxes all B Grade)

5 hours work = $9 

(really...no)

Sun: 7am - 10:30pm (Dom 11 boxes all B Grade)

15 1/2 hours work = $24.75 

(yes seriously...)

Tue: 7am - 8pm 

(Dom 11 boxes HOPEFULLY all A Grade but let's say half and half)

(Leonie 10 boxes all A Grade)

13 hours work = Dom $38.25 Leonie $45)

(What!! Surely that can't be right)

Wed: 7am - 1:45am :/

(Dom 26 boxes let's assume by day 4 that 3/4 were A Grade)

(Leonie 23 boxes all A Grade)

18 3/4 hours work = Dom $101.25 Leonie $103.50

(this is f#@kin criminal)

In summary Dom 52hours 15mins picking mushrooms for $173.25

In summary Leonie 31hours 45mins picking mushrooms for $148.50

We felt good about this job. We hassled them and hassled them for work because we knew that they picked all year round (as these mushrooms are indoors) and they advertised that you could make up to $1000 per week (after plenty of practice of course). Sounding great we signed the minimum 6 months working agreement (as we had dreams of doing this all through Autumn and Winter for next six months), and got started with a revitalised energy. 

Pretty much after the first day (Dom would say couple of hours)...when we looked at how perfect they needed to be (right size, perfect circle, polished shiny clean), and did the math in our heads of how many we could realistically pick per hour and how much we could make, we realised that something wasn't quite right here.

After day 4 for Dom and day 2 for Leonie when we started at 7am and finished after 1 'o' clock in the morning, we said 'hell no this won't do'. We called it quits right there and gladly (and with great satisfaction we might add) slept in that very next morning.

About this experience we have just one thing to point out. If the pickers are the last stage of the quality product, then shouldn't the company actually make some effort to take care of those picker staff? In terms of say, well I don't know...maybe a bloody hourly wage!!! Sadly we felt that plenty of the foreigners working there were easy targets and easily scammed, not us.

We like to call this experience the black hole. Meaning we put it there and never want to experience or think about it again. We have a new found respect for how fucking stupidly hard it is to pick mushrooms. Hats off to those that want to do it, but we'll take ours grilled with bacon and eggs for breakfast.

So that explains the dissatisfaction on Leonie's face whilst wearing the not so 

majestic mushroom apron.

So we were jobless once again...and once again the chance for a more promising job surfaced that very same day. We headed off into the sunset back in the direction towards Batemans Bay once again (more of that to come later)

We slept at an incredibly beautiful rest stop on the federal highway between Goulburn and and Canberra overlooking the beautiful scene at Lake George. Did you know that there is a fully equipped rest stop basically every 5km along this part of the freeway? Very impressive and thoughtful of the government to actually use our tax dollars for something useful. If only they did something like that in Sydney on the freeways.

Here Leonie is making our a beautiful porridge for breakfast the next day. Organic oats, coconut oil, local fresh raspberries, and organic natural yoghurt and honey. Wowwwww! A chilly morning breakfast to die for!

Salivate.....

Can't you just taste it??

The windmills of the 'Capital Wind Farm' on the mountains behind Lake George. They look eerie and a bit sci-fi. This 140.7 megawatt wind farm was built to offset the power used at Kurnell Desalination Plant. It's been in operation since 2009, but we aren't quite sure how it all works. Hey....anything environmentally sensible can hopefully only be good though no?

We made our way to the little town called Bungendore (close to where our promising new work is...Sshhhhhhhhh...more about that later). Apparently heaps of Canberra and Queanbeyan people have had enough of living in the very exciting where heaps happens ACT, so decided to move here to Bungendore. The result means rental property prices are those you would normally see in inner city suburbs of Sydney. A bit of a shock it was for us.

As we had a meeting with our potential new employer on Sunday, we decided to cruise into Queanbeyan on Friday afternoon to spend a day there and look around and relax a bit.

Sitting there in the parking lot of the information centre on the main street of Queanbeyan, very uninspired about being back in dense suburbia, we were both discussing how much we needed showers. 

Looking up from our front window in that instance, we both spotted this above sign! We couldn't believe it! What a piece of luck! Queanbeyan had given us the best prezzie we could have received in a long time).

John Gale? Never heard of him. Apparently one of the 12 important people that created Canberra as the all important capital of Australia. Leonie was thanking him for it...

This photo (as you've already seen once before) is the face of an unhappy worker. Leonie was modelling the apron for you all right before we sent it back to the mushroom headquarters, in the post.

Enjoying a quiet night in (the van). Leonie having her avocado dinner before bed.

We decided that we deserved to have a bit of a splurge before our possible new employment (did we mention anything about that?) starts on Monday...and on an impulse we got ourselves a motel with foxtel, buffet breakfast, a bath, late check out....and we loved every bit of it.

Here you can see a VERY content Leonie spreading her wings on the big queen sized bed. We are happy to report that it was the first time we have slept in a bed since mid Jan and we didn't hit our head once getting up :)