1 May 2011 - Koramba Cotton, NSW

Sunday afternoon in the sun, about twenty eight degrees. I have just erected the side shade awning, mainly to give me some privacy and establishing a greater sense of permanence.

Chris and his fellow workers were out the door just before seven thirty just like any other day, as they will be tomorrow, the national Labour Day holiday. Twelve to thirteen hour days, seven days a week, until the harvesting is done with; Chris is prepared to hang in there and after the few full days he has already managed, I am sure my husband will do so just as well as the young bucks he is working beside.

His team consists of three backpackers; an Englishmen, an Irishman and a German, and of course himself. His supervisor is a chap probably more senior than Chris, or at least one that has been left out in the sun to mature more than him. There appear to be three women workers; an aboriginal woman of middle years working the modules as is he, one driving as the errand fetch-it, and another in the weighbridge office whom Chris believes to be the manager, Daryl’s, wife. Otherwise the whole affair is a very much a male operation. It is quite possible that there are many more women working in the gin, a place that Chris is not likely to actually enter.

The farm is owned by an elderly American, who is currently here with his daughter. From some papers and a plan that Chris has to carry with him at work, I gleaned the following facts last night:

• The cultivated or cropped area of the farm is 15,807.16 acres (or 6,397.07 hectares).
• Chris started work in Field No.20 which has an area of 299.98 acres (or 121.4 hectares)
• He then moved on to work in Field No. 24 with an area of 157.4 acres (or 63.7 hectares)
• Today he was expecting that their team would be moving to Field No. 1 with an area of 329.88 acres (or 133.5 hectares)

I find the size of these areas just mind boggling!

I am also reminded of a comment that Daryl made when he came to visit us just after we arrived. I asked if the recent floods had impacted on the operation. He said it had, but in a positive way. They had lost 1,000 acres of sorghum, but the plus side was that the extra water had been able to be let into the irrigated channels from the outside flooded zone and as a result, they expected a bumper crop of cotton.

No doubt the American will be rubbing his hands together as he watches the trucks trundle through the weighbridge.

My own routine is coming together and so the next weeks will just have an element of sameness. I like patterns to my day when I am alone, with my little disciplines and ways, especially when so much of the days to come could otherwise be lonely and boring.

This morning I ventured into the “laundry” here. One look at the washing machine, table and floor told me that there was much to be done before the washing of our clothes and linen could be started upon. I cleaned out the machine, a relatively modern extra capacity machine that has been treated cruelly. The lid and bowl surrounds were disgusting with dirt and the receptacle at the top of the agitator has washing powered cemented into it; I decided to return another day with a skewer or spade to sort that out. Otherwise it is an excellent machine and did what it should in a timely fashion. I collected the rubbish and litter from the floor, walls and table and deposited that in the rubbish drum beside our camp, then swept the floor with our broom, and only hope the broom will not have been ruined. I then scrubbed the table and the floor in a rather haphazard fashion leaving both however in a much improved state. Perhaps no one else will notice, but I certainly will!

I next attacked the camp or rather the car park on the side of which we are camped. Plastic bag “glove” over one hand, and bag in the other, I walked around gathering empty (and surprisingly in some cases, full) cans and bottles of liquor, wrappers and cardboard beer cartons, and all sorts of other litter you really don’t need to know about. That too all went in to our drum. I will have to get Chris to ask the supervisor when and if someone actually comes around on a regular basis to empty this, or we may be faced with over spilling garbage in our “back yard”.

I am working on the premise that if people encounter a clean environment, they are more likely to keep it that way. There appears to be no roster here, and apparently the communal ablutions are in a disgusting state. Obviously Diego keeps strictly to his culinary obligations and is not the all rounder “house-keeper”. But then why should a 5-Star chef be anything else?

Ten minutes to ten; time for a coffee, and then I set off in my sturdy shoes and sunhat along the road with the intention of reaching the McIntyre River. Just north of our entrance I came upon another track running parallel to our own route in, and turned into that out of curiosity just as a big truck bore down on me with a great cloud of dust. I decided at that instant that I would abandon my plan to walk along the road, but instead would explore this side track. I am so glad I did because I have now found a route for the walk I shall take on a regular basis, an hour there and back, leading through the scrub adjacent to the cotton fields or rather the banks of the irrigation channels that double as farm roadways, passing through areas well populated by a variety of birds and flowers and emerging at a complex pumping system on the banks of the river originally sort.

My other options of walks included driving through to Boomi and walking circuits of that town’s wide and deserted streets, or walking along the road being subjected to dust and the unlikely danger that anything untoward might occur. The other option which, though obvious on the face of it, is to walk up through the back of the farm past the workshops and up to the fields, however there are signs everywhere about "authorised access only" and the need to have safety gear, and also the speeding farm vehicles stirring up their own lot of dust. This track with little evidence of use, but still within the confines of the farm boundary, although I am sure not included in the statistics above, will serve me well.

As I logged on, I learned that both my sons are here in Australia, just for two days on business. It is unfortunate that we cannot hook up, even for a drink as I did with Kit and his wife in Rome one sunny afternoon nearly three years ago. The reality is, it would be easier for me to catch a plane to Auckland to see them than travel to Canberra for that brief encounter. And even stranger still, Larissa and her family will be in Brisbane this same month, as they disembark for a day from their cruise. All three of our children will have come to this country and we will miss them all. Such is life!