By the time we had our meeting with Carol, the lady who sorts out the work, on Sunday evening, we were given a start date of either Tuesday or Wednesday, which sounded pretty good to us.
Tuesday 26th April
We had hoped that we'd been starting today, just so we didn't have to sit around and wait any longer but it didn't materialise. It annoyed us slightly that we were waiting around for the nod and it never came, so we had to hunt down Carol in order to find out the evening before. Anyway, it would turn out to be a good thing. That afternoon, the 6 of us who would be working at Huddart's farm hopped in a truck and did a test run 15 minutes up the road to meet Robbie and Lorraine Huddart, who owned the mandarin farm we would be working on, we'd been briefed that there were 2 farms we could be working in, Huddart's, which had about 6000 trees or Bell's which had roughly 60,000. Despite originally being put down to work at Bell's, things had changed and we had ended up at Huddart's. Immediately, we felt this was a good thing, not due to the smaller amount of trees but the fact that we'd be working with a much smaller group of people who were all staying at the lodge. We'd heard that Bell's also employs locals who aren't exactly known for their good work ethic. While we were there Lorraine took us through all the nitty gritty legal and health and safety things that we'd need to know and Robbie showed us round the orchard a little bit, how to use the secateurs without taking your finger off and, most importantly, when a mandarin is ripe enough to pick. We didn't expect it to be the most exciting job in the world but we were looking forward to getting started and earning some money. That evening was the last for one of the people in the house who had just been working for accommodation. Everybody had chipped in some money to buy some food for a taco night. We were eager to settle in and joined in, having a good evening round the BBQ with some beers. Even if my ankles did get ravaged by mosquitos.
Wednesday 27th April
Our first day was spent racing through the trees trying desperately to impress. It was also incredibly frustrating work. The mandarins weren't ripe and we'd only be picking a handful off each tree. To look at the mandarin would look nice and ripe but after rushing in and snipping of the tree, we'd turn it round and be faced with a large patch of green. This caused us to slow down and try and take in the whole fruit before picking it. It was hard going and it took forever to fill our buckets up. By the time the day was out we'd got through 2 of the 4 fields but there wasn't many crates of mandarins to show for it though. The following day we got through the remaining 2 fields by midday. I'd said to Charlotte not long before that I was expecting us to be sent home at lunch and not come back until Monday. When Robbie came down on his quad bike at 12 to call us up, this is exactly what he said. There was no point in rummaging through trees of in ripened mandarins looking for ripe ones that just weren't there yet. We all had our fingers crossed that 4 days of ripening would make life a lot easier.
Saturday 30th April
It seemed that no sooner had we started picking that we were back sitting around the lodge again twiddling our thumbs. It was good to know that we'd be back on Monday for definite. (That applies to the Thursday afternoon and Friday, as we wouldn't work the weekend anyway). One thing we noticed about the people of the house was their habit of saying they would do something or go somewhere as a group and then taking forever to actually do it. We got bored of waiting for anything to happen on the Saturday morning and drove out to 90 mile beach to go for wander. We'd heard good things about the beach but we were slightly disappointed. A beach to a British person has ice cream sellers, pebbles, grounds and, if your lucky, a fish and chip shop. New Zealand beaches seem to have nothing of the sort. Just sand for miles and miles. Again this was a beach that also doubles as a highway, so you've got to watch your back for cars speeding past you. We spent some time admiring the sand and the roaring waves but then headed back to the boredom of the lodge. To entertain ourselves that evening we put a film on and crammed into the tight lounge area to watch it.
The week beginning Monday 2nd May
It was back up to the mandarin farm bright and early to finally get to work good and proper. The fruit had noticeable ripened over the weekend so we were managing to get a little bit more off the trees we had already gone over. Robbie told us that the crop was very late this year and that they were probably 4 weeks behind the year before. Also despite it being May, it didn't seem that winter was anywhere in sight and it was lovely working in the hot sun.
The following day we had 2 new starters working with us who were from England. It turned out they were from Leiscester and they were pretty happy with how their teams football season was going.
The rest of the week was pretty standard and we were ripping up our tans nicely.
Friday came and we were told that we'd only be doing half a day due to the mandarins needing to be taken to market. That suited us, as it was my birthday the following day. That night was the last night of someone else in the house, however, she didn't seem as popular as the previous leaver. We spent the evening chatting around the table with a couple of people from the house. Everyone got a bit distracted when a German girl came running in saying that someone was being beaten up in the house behind the lodge. The police were called and it was a bit hectic for an hour or so. It turned out to be a genuine domestic incident and that the person responsible was known to police. Unfortunately, this was the general vibe that we got from Kaitaia. It seemed quite rough and run down, not somewhere we'd pick if we had the choice. But we didn't and that was where the money currently was.
Saturday 7th May
Charlotte had been receiving the occasional parcel throughout the week and despite her insistence that they were for her and she'd open them when she wanted to, they turned out to be for my birthday. I received cards sent from home and even a few gifts which really was a nice treat. My mum had even managed to get a cake delivered all the way from Auckland, which is a 4 hour drive from Kaitaia. That surprise had nearly been spoiled the day before though, when the manager walked in with it in her hands only for Charlotte to frantically wave it away. It was fortunate that I had my back to the whole incident. We didn't really have anything planned for the day but decided to try and hunt down a forest walk nearby. We found the road that we needed to be on but it wasn't particularly accessible in our estate car. I got out and had a scout ahead and decided that it would be easy to traverse. After the first bump in the road a loud scrape came from beneath the car. I could see that the road was worse than what we'd just crossed further up, so Charlotte very cautiously reversed. The same scraping sound came from underneath the car but when we got out to check it out, nothing seemed to really be amiss and there was no knocking or scraping when we moved. With there being nowhere to park up out the way, we gave up on this little outing and went for a drive to the other side of the forest, to see if there was anything over there. It was more accessible but there was probably less to offer than the first stop. It was just the end of a 9 hour walk that we didn't fancy doing at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, that would drop us out 9 hours from where the car was parked. On top of that, the car would have been parked up on the side of a main highway, which we didn't really like the idea of. When we bought the car, the previous owner had given us a steering wheel lock too, which he said would come in very handy. This didn't fil us with confidence about the safety of our car anywhere and we'd resorted to putting on whenever and wherever we stopped, even if it was just a quick in and out at the supermarket. With that line of enquired exhausted we gave up on the forest walk and instead, headed to Ahipara, where the others had gone surfing earlier in the day. With it being my birthday we hadn't really fancied it, add to that, it wasn't really a nice day, we were content doing our own thing. They'd finished surfing at Ahipara by the time we got there, so we just had a quick look around town and had a wander along the beach before returning to the lodge. We spent the afternoon watching a film as the weather took a turn for the worse. We cooked up a toad in the hole for dinner, having not had it since we'd left home. It was delicious and followed up with the cake my mum and dad had got, was a great dinner and pudding. The evening was spent playing cards with a few of the people from the house. I was pretty much just killing time until half 12. Brighton were playing in the final game of the season, with still the small hope of promotion to the Premier League. It ended in disappointment though and a very late night.
The week beginning Monday 9th May
It was back to work for another week of picking mandarins. We'd come up with assumption that we had definitely got the best deal out of the farms there were. Ours was the small independent farm with only Robbie keeping an eye on the progress whereas we'd heard from others working at Bell's that they were quite strict and had supervisors always keeping an eye on you. We were enjoying it anyway and as the cheques rolled in, it was good to see our bank balance increasing for the first time in almost a year. The mandarins were still causing us issues though. Most of the green ones had ripened, which was good but we were now down to determining whether or not they were yellow or orange, which was so much harder. If we doubted they were orange we'd leave the tree to come back to somewhere down the line but then we'd glance back and see Robbie taking dozens out of it, which caused huge annoyance among us workers.
Saturday 14th May
This turned out to be the trouble weekend. It was someone else's birthday and we'd all put in for food for a BBQ. We had a nice time there and afterwards Charlotte and I went back to the house to relax and watch a DVD because we are slightly boring. The rest stayed down in a separate kitchen and played drinking games, which was fine. 22:30 came around though and with the kitchen closed for cleaning, they all piled back into the house to continue their party. With no consideration for what we were doing we had no choice to cease watching the film and sit and listen to a group of 18-30 year olds sing Barbie Girl and Frozen songs at the top of their lungs. It didn't help that 3 or 4 of them were actually staff members, so there was no real control over anything as they were all pretty drunk. After overhearing somoeone ask if they could bring some locals over, we decided to call it a night and head to our room. That was slightly pointless though as with paper thin walls we might as well have been in a nightclub. We were disappointed as jobs in these places are advertised as quiet places with no clubs etc so we were sort of expecting a maturer audience than one you'd get in Auckland for example. It's not that we didn't want people to have a good time or anything but we were annoyed by the lack of respect shown to us when we wanted to sleep. Finally at around 4am, just after the 'obligatory' 3am salsa lessons it ended.
Sunday 15th May
After 2 hours sleep we forced ourselves out of bed and packed all of our things away ready to leave Kaitaia. The lack of consideration had really wound us up and we had decided we didn't want to stay any longer. We contacted the managers and told them what had happened. They invited us over to use their kayaks for the day (looking back, probably just to butter us up and save themselves a problem), which we accepted. We spoke about what had happened and they assured us they would have words with the staff members about it. They had 2 large kayaks that we spent about an hour trying to get into the river which was pretty low at the time due to the low tide. Eventually, we figured out a lever system with a plank of wood, with Charlotte getting in one kayak and being pushed out. It was all quite funny to watch and helped cheer us up a little bit. We have a wave to Suzie and Carol and paddled off down the river. The tide was heading out so it made the going pretty easy. Before we'd left, we'd been given a bag of small fishing lines, some tackle and some frozen bait, so we could sling a line over the side of the kayak and try our luck catching an eel or 2. The river was incredibly weedy and fairly filthy, the thought of falling in really didn't appeal to us and contributed to a few unsteady moments. We enjoyed being out on the water though and kayaking is something Charlotte and I were really starting to develop an interest in having already done it in Italy the year before and Vietnam on this trip. The sun was beating down on us and the tide was about to change, so we came to a convenient stopping point, ate out lunch we'd brought with us while floating idly in the water and kept an eye on our fishing lines. Unfortunately, we didn't catch anything but kept our lines as we paddled back to the house. On our way back we had to make way for a boat coming through which gave us severe wobble and we just managed to stay in the kayak. We returned to find Suzie waist deep in the river water giving it a jolly good weeding, which was a fairly amusing sight. From the vantage point of the jetty we could see numerous eels, which had eluded us while we were on the water, swimming about, having been disturbed from their hiding places in the weeds. We were told that the people at the hostel had been spoken to and that they were very apologetic and felt really bad about the situation. We were fairly confident we'd atleast get an apology from them when we got back.
Well, we didn't. In fact, we were completely ignored by all but one person who was staying in the house, a Scottish girl called Ashley. We took her apology with a pinch of salt anyway as it wasn't particularly convincing. We were now happy to stay and finish the work but we desperately wanted out the house. Fortunately, there was a spare room in the house where the staff lived (not the staff that caused the issue but other, more mature ones) and the following day we moved in after finishing work at the mandarins.
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