After a big night out in wellington for my friends birthday I missed the morning ferry I’d booked due to having a hangover, so I waited till the afternoon ferry and started my trip south. The ferry trip takes around 3 ½ hours from Wellington to Picton, the scenery and views towards the end of the journey through the beautiful Marlborough Sounds are breathtaking.

I arrived in Picton, having now missed my bus to Blenheim I booked in at the first hostel I could find (Atlantis Backpackers). I booked my room, dumped my belongings and then ventured out to explore the little town of Picton, I spent some time on the waterfront relaxing in the sun and then walked down past the shops before stopping to fill up on BBQ ribs at a restaurant.

I returned to the hostel and settled myself in bed, started to watch a film until I heard at least 3 different people having sex, now I guess I should explain the room set up, it was one large room with a few wooden walls which didn’t even reach the ceiling separating the room and then just curtains between the beds, so naturally you can hear everything. So I’ve ticked that of the bucket list.

I changed my plans and set of to Nelson the next day, I stayed there for 2 nights and messaged a guy who had some work available in a cherry orchard and I told him that I was in the area, we agreed to meet about 45 minutes drive from Nelson in a little town called Motueka. The emails hadn’t been so fluent and I was unsure of whom I would be meeting. I wondered if I should message my mum and tell her where I was going, just in case, but I changed my mind and figured it couldn’t be that bad.

At first I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him, a sun baked guy wearing short shorts, a shirt with only one button done up and a small hat, he definitely looked a lot older than he is. He sat down with me on a bench in the sun and we discussed what I had done previously in NZ and the job that I did back in the UK. It was then quiet for a moment and I wasn’t sure what to say. He then said, “c’mon this is an interview, tell me about yourself”

I can tell you it felt nothing like a job interview but I accepted and told him about my hobbies and what I’ve done with my life. He said that he didn’t think I was right for the job so I asked him about what doubts he was having, he assumed that my job in the pack house was easy going and then perhaps I wasn’t a hard worker. I then explained that he could give me a chance to prove him wrong.

He accepted, I arrived in the accommodation that he has onsite at the orchard, got myself settled and then chilled out for the rest of the day. I was still a little unsure about the job at this point and why he doubted me so much.

The orchard isn’t that big and he only sells from a stall at the orchard, in local towns and at local markets. He has various different fruits that he grows. He has cherries, boysenberries, peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, pears and apples. Each of these fruits also have different types, take the cherries for example, he has 6-7 different types of cherry.

I started work the day after I arrived with a few odd jobs like digging a hole so he can move his water pump, sweeping up and pegging down some netting as the cherries were not yet ripe to pick. The next day we started picking, at first I guess it was hard to choose the ripest colour but when you focus on that colour it obviously gets easier to pick, although when you change to a different type of  cherry you have to start all over again. It wasn’t a hard job and in some cases it was pretty fun climbing up and down a ladder all day. Towards the end of my employment I became less motivated and didn’t enjoy it all that much. but I guess that is the same with every job after a while. I did however eat at least 50-100 cherries each day, he tells us we need to try them to help with knowing what is ripe but once I’d tasty the sweet succulent cherry I couldn’t seem to stop.

It rained pretty heavy for 24 hours after a week of being here and it destroyed the cherries, basically when it rains the water stays on the small indent at the top of the cherry near the stalk and after a few hours it splits the cherry making it useless. This then becomes extremely annoying when picking and sometimes we had to just go through all the trees and remove all the bad ones which was pretty depressing as we were not picking and getting the satisfaction of collecting hundreds of cherries. Although when it did rain the owner still found us work to do, some of the girls were just grading the cherries and I got a job creating a trolley to transport boysenberries around the orchard out of a baby’s pram, so that was something new. I had no clue what i was doing, I had mentioned to him about a treehouse I had made back home so i think perhaps he thought I was creative, had a good go at it though and the end product seemed to work so thats positive.

Whilst I’ve been living and working here the turn over of staff has been pretty excessive, basically he likes to meet everyone first to find out about us and then makes his judgement like he did with me, but he obviously doesn’t want slow workers and 7 people were only here a few days before they were fired or told there was no longer work for them due to not working hard enough. So I can sort of see his point when it comes to hiring people.

I’ve now finished my job here in Motueka after just over 5 weeks of work standing on a ladder and picking cherries. He explained to me earlier today that I was a “Dark Horse” and that he’s glad he took the chance on me, I then replied saying “I’m glad you gave me a chance to prove you wrong” to which we both then laughed.

I now plan to travel further south and continue my adventure…

“Be somebody nobody thought you could be”

William Chapman