The Silence Of The Chickens (Tusk)
Trip Start
Feb 26, 2004
1
22
84
Trip End
Nov 16, 2006
Chicken Farm,
Australia
Monday, September 20, 2004
And so began our training at the chicken farm. The jist of the job was walking through a shed full of hundreds and hundreds of chickens picking up eggs 4 times a day, for the last 6 weeks. Surprisingly it wasn't too bad and we've managed to save a fair bit of cash, and learn a load about chickens.
It's almost therapeutic walking around those sheds being pecked...I guess kind of like walking on hot coals. Very spiritual. Mike even managed to solve the riddle of what came first the chicken or the egg (it was the egg). And I managed to get a lot straight in my head.
You could listen to your walkman too which is cool.
1 - Our fellow backpackers and our landlord
Started to notice how often singers mention chickens in their songs. Its bizarre! There are 7 Bob Dylan songs which either mention the word 'chicken' or 'rooster'.Everyone we worked with was nice enough. One woman was a bit mental. She had had a nervous breakdown and an organisation had placed her in this job, moving on soon to the chicken killing plant. I'm sure that will do her mental condition wonders.
I only killed one chicken and I was devastated. Managed to free one though.
I had assumed that work on a farm would be very different from my old office job. I had naively thought that there would be no 'office politics' as such, but I was wrong. Bullying, bitching and moaning happens in every job evidently. Sometimes even more extreme...one issue on the farm resulted in one guy kicking the boss' wife up the arse in one of the sheds.
And so, I began to think about office jobs and chicken farm jobs and started to compare the two in what I like to call:
Bill-run vs
2 - Me at work on the chicken farm
. Chicken-runIn an office you have to take shit all day.
On a chicken farm you have to smell shit all day.
In an office there's always some cock hassling you.
On a chicken farm there's always some cock pecking you.
On a chicken farm you're left with scars where the birds bite and scratch you.
In an office you're left with scars where the birds bite and scratch you.
Wha wha wha.
It was a tough job at times. It's demeaning having roosters kick you and hens bite you as you stick your hand under there bum..."Ah, an egg...hmmm...softer than usual...Ah, it is an egg shaped piece of shit which I have just picked up while a hen sticks her pulsating bloody arse in my face."
It wasn't all glamorous though, and I have alot of respect for these people that do this job all their lives so that I can have eggs for breakfast and KFC for lunch
3 - The Chicken Farm
. If they didn't do it we'd have no eggs, if office workers didn't do it I don't think it would make much difference.We lived on another farm with a couple guys from Portmarnock and a Dutch guy ("I don't even know the capital of my country...all my friends say it's Amsterdam but the computers say Den Hague.") who all left before us.
The town was a bit dead and not much going on, so that helped to save money. But I did feel a bit ostrichsized (sic) at times. We couldn't even find a shop open on the weekends, and yet there was karaoke down the pub every saturday.
Our landlord was a bit mental and possibly a compulsive liar but he was grand. Had some interesting friends who were our main drinking partners, including Blue...a guy who literally opens a beer as soon as he wakes up at 7 in the morning, and whose vocabulary is pretty much limited to 'f*ck' and 'c*nt'.
Dave was another really nice old guy. I even sung karaoke with him one night. Real gentle guy. Unfortunately he has since been arrested for helping a murderer dispose of a body 5 years ago, and decapitating the body with a shovel
4 - Doing the dead-run
. Seriously.I got a tip off from a rather little chicken that the sky is falling, so now we're back on the road. Heading north up and see what happens. The west coast is beakoning (sic)! Kelly, one of the girls we lived with in Melbourne, is joining us for the next week before she leaves Oz. Par-tay! Strange having no more chickens. I hope I don't get cold turkey (wha?). Can't wait to swan around Australia again. I managed to save a nice little nest egg of money. Good crack. Eggselent puns.
As for the girlfriend mentioned in the last entry, she has since flown the coup and is on the east coast. (Isn't it good...Norwegian/Swedish Wood) I was just kidding myself anyway...love just leaves you bruised. So I'm back to my old warped self which is nice. What was I thinking? That's the last time for a long time that I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket.
