Happy Paddy's day from Echuca!

Adrian 1505
Originally uploaded by bigquestionmarks.

Hello everyone, as promised we’ve updated our photos and videos. We’ve been working like crazy the past few weeks we’ve barely gotten a day off.
Some good news though, I’ve upgraded to a tomato shed, and we finally bought a CELL PHONE!!!
It’s great, for some reason we now feel like humans again instead of somekind of drifter, that’s the amazing power of the cell phone!
Go ahead, give us a ring: (04) 3201 3597

We’re both doing great, Dayle took on the night shift at her tomato shed so we devised a message passing system with these cheap 35 cent notebooks we bought. The idea was that we’d keep each other updated on our activities and what food we’re running out of etc… Go figure, come back from work to read a ‘note’, what I end up reading is a 7 page short story of Dayle’s day – she’s a journalist alright.
Shed work is weird, there are different stations they put you on but mostly we've been working the conveyor belt. Basically tomatos come down a belt and you sort through them and throw out the bad or funky ones. The only problem is that the belt speed is pretty fast, so you end up with tomatoes wizzing past you all day you develop a feeling that your in a fast car looking out the window. Then the abrubt stop when they shut off the belt for lunch, you feel like you're going to fall over, or that everything is still moving. In the end, your brain feels like mush from watching tomatos for 10 hours, so it's great to settle down with a book of ActionScript code and a cup of tea at the end of the day.

Living here a month we’ve begun to pick up on some of the slang and talk of the Ozzies, Dayle and I have compared some notes on what we’ve heard.
Tomato = Toe-ma-toe
Garbage = rubbish
Pot = half pint of beer
“How ya goin’?” = “What’s up?”
Hello / General inquiry / What? = Aye!(?)

And we’ve now both been driving in the land down under. It’s odd, but you get use to it, natrually everything is on the opposite side of where it usually is. You just have to keep repeating: “Stay to the left, stay to the left!”.

Well now we’re starting to get on our feet and off the credit cards. We have a lot more fun photos to upload and we’ll be doing that shortly.
Tonight some of the kids are off to the pub to enjoy the green beer - karaoke was last night!

Talk soon,
Adrian & Dayle






Pear picking in Oz on Vimeo