My first summer birthday & time to start working
Trip Start
Jun 26, 2007
1
53
60
Trip End
Ongoing
Kerikeri,
North Island,
New Zealand
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
After I left Nicola in Paihia with the kiwi guys, I made the short drive north to the rural town of Kerikeri where I hoped to start earning some money again. Scarily I am actually looking forward to working but more importantly pcking up my first pay check in 7 months. For accommodation I stayed at the Hone Heke Lodge (BBH Hostel) where you can get a cheap dorm room for one week for only 112 NZ Dollars.
Orchard work is very easy to come by here and within 4 hours I was employed for mandarin thinning. So the following day, me and what appeared to be the rest of the hostel started in the orchards. We were initially on an hourly rate however that changed on day 2 when it became a contract rate for each tree thinned. And before you know it you had to work your arse off to earn the minimum wage of 11.25 NZ Dollars an hour. So a lot of people left after the first few days (including my thinning partner) and I would have joined them if I didn't need to desperately earn some money
lots of Mandarin trees
. Another draw back was being threatened that if we left before the end of the first week we would get no pay-packet, so I was in a no win situation. If your curious what mandarin thinning is... it involves stripping the tree of any small fruits and dispersing any clumps of fruit enabling the bigger fruits to grow. Yep Its that interesting!!! Frustratingly I am not one of the quicker workers so I was averaging about 60 Dollars a day before tax for an 8-9 hour day (equivalent to 7 Dollars an hour) but even the better workers were just making 100 Dollars a day and that usually involved missing lunch, equivalent to the minimum wage hourly rate. Although you could earn more if you got a lot trees with very little fruit on them, unfortunately these trees were quite a rarity. But how I made 9 days working there in beyond me before I finally quit after earning a paltry 36 dollars for 8 hours work, not helped by sweltering temperatures and under priced trees. Lets say the turnover of backpackers were very high and comparing tree prices to other orchards around Kerkeri our contract rates were about 40% lower. So if you plan to do fruit work in Kerikeri, avoid the Kapiro Orchards like the plague.
But after a bout of bad luck with the mandarin thinning, I stumbled across another job in kiwi pruning at a guaranteed 13 NZ Dollars an hour
Men hard at work, Mandarin thinning
. Lets say the atmosphere in a lot better and me and the other workers are coming back to the hostel in a less depress state. However the knightmare images of mandarins were soon replaced by perculiar shaped kiwi fruits.But that's enough talking about my work. Lets talk about Kerikeri!!!
At Hone Heke Lodge, the evenings are being passed by watching DVD's, surfing the net or playing pool and table tennis, so it is very difficult to spend much money. Plus with only 1 pub in town there isn't much incentive to go out drinking. But despite the homely feel to this hostel, this stay will always be remembered for the washing line thief. It was a Friday night and I had left any remaining damp washing on the line to dry the following day however by Saturday afternoon my jeans were missing and I wasn't the only on affected as another 6 guests had clothing stolen ranging from underwear to shoes. Lets say the owners of the hostel weren't particularly helpful with remarks of 'you should have brought the washing in the previous night' and were quick in blaming the Maoris.
Otherwise Kerikeri is famous for its waterfall (Rainbow Falls) but with the 4km walking track along the river is
closed so you need to drive all the way to the falls.
Famous for Old buildings...................... need to be updated............
