Good question. I've been asking myself the same one for almost a week now. The strawberry situation turned out to be more boring than watching paint dry, and we weren't really making much money at all doing it. Towards the end, I averaged about $12 an hour! I never thought I would miss waitressing so much! I found myself dreaming about other jobs I could be doing, while dancing to my iPod and packing as many strawberries as I could as fast as possible. It was okay for a couple of weeks, but I think all in all, I actually got dumber from packing and picking strawberries. It was nice having all you can eat strawberries around all the time. We made some pretty darn good products including cheesecake, stewed strawberries for our cereal in the morning, and of course, strawberry banana shakes! Believe it or not, I actually still love strawberries (or strawbs as they call 'em in the industry!) but I certainly won't be picking or packing them again. There is one thing that is good about doing these types of jobs, you certainly figure out what you don't want to do with your life, and it gives you a bit of a kick in the pants to get motivated. That being said, now I will totally contradict myself:
So what now? Well, the initial idea was to head across the country and try to get a job in the mining towns, which has turned out to be a bit more of a lengthy process than we had planned. Basically, it seems as though a job in the mining towns wouldn't be feasible until the end of September, or even later depending on which one we would work at. I'm not ruling it out at all, in fact, I hope it does work out because it would mean really good money, but as of right now, I'm not quite sure how the cards are going to fall. If the mining town doesn't work out, I think Mick and I will be traveling to the Northern Territory, and picking Mangoes for a couple of months. You're meant to make pretty good money doing it, nearly $2000 a week if you are good at it, but I'd even be happy to make $1000 a week! If that is the case, I'll have a good chunk to keep traveling on (including getting home for at least Christmas...don't worry).
So, that's it in a nutshell (I feel like I should say: "that's it in a strawberry punnet", but that's too cheesy, but, I guess I just said it anyways!) I think we're headed to pack Mandarins with our friends from Italy. They live in the Alps in the winter and work as ski instructors and are traveling for their summer. We worked the strawberry fields together, and they've headed off to pick Mandarins, so I think we'll follow suit, at least for a couple of weeks, and see what happens. Fruit picking for a couple weeks, and traveling for a couple of weeks seems like the adventure cycle that I'm bound for, at least until we hear from the mining jobs. It seems to be my mantra these days, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see!
Confused? Me too! I guess I should embrace these times of uncertainty. There are so few surprises in life, at least in most people's lives! Not mine lately!
