Today was our first day of work since our travels began. We started jobs on an orchard at Earnscleugh that dries apricots. Hot Saturday got as hot as 32 degrees, so we got ourselves over to Brighton Beach and had a swim in the sea – that’s been a while since our last swim in the sea at Dunedin. Sunday was sorting ourselves out, retrieving some things from storage. We were late getting away – more like 4pm. We discovered that the whippy radio aerial on the luton is whipping itself against the luton, making quite a noise of itself. Apart from that, we drove straight through to Earnscleugh and the orchard. They showed us where we could park, and we tried to find a spot away from the irrigatrion sprinklers. But not far enough – as when they came on in the evening they were watering the front of Suzi. Later in the night with a wind change it was splashing along the roof, so we shifted further back. At 3am. I can tell you that it was an amazing night sky at that stage, although I’d have been OK with missing it.
We reported for work at 7:50am. I am a stripper, which is not as exotic as it sounds. Wyn is working on the production line, preparing the apricots for drying. The fruit goes through a drying room. When they come out, it is my job to strip them off the plywood trays and put them into a sorting tumbler. Hence my job title. I wonder how Stripper will look on my CV 🙂
It was a warm day, and we were both a bit unsure of how we’d go. We were both pleased to make it to the end of the day, and have a relax in the shade. Then it was off to the Clyde Dam for a dip in Lake Dunstan. It wasn’t warm, and was a great way to cool down. We are getting better with having BBQs, although I need a bit more practice with the BBQ. I managed to ignite quite a bit of gas all at once, at some cost to my eyebrows and eyelashes and hair! So I might say that our first day of work ended with a bang 🙂