For the last 3 - 4 days my family has been going to a macadamia farm to help with the harvest. I found that that macadamia picking can be a very profitable exercise! There are two bucket sizes that can be picked, a 15L bucket and a 20L bucket. For every 15L bucket that is picked, you earn $5.00. For every 20L bucket that is picked, you earn $7.50. My personal record for the most buckets picked in a day was set on Wednesday the 4th April, 2007. I picked eight 20L buckets and two 15L buckets, which earned me $70.00.
To give you an idea of what the macadamia farm looked like, I have attached some pictures below the fold. Keep reading to see them.
The snake picture has a bit of a story behind it, which ran like this: We had just arrived at the farm, and I had gone down to the trees when my mum started shouting. I ran back up and found the snake eating the frog! The owner of the farm had heard my mum calling out, and he arrived too. He told us that it was a tree snake, and it often hung around the house. Anyway, the snake became a little disturbed by all the people around it, so it let the frog go and slithered away. We then picked the frog up and put it back on the wall where the other frogs were. Amazingly, it climbed back up and joined them, seemingly none the worse for its ordeal! I also learnt that when a frog is being eaten by a snake, it puffs itself up to make itself harder to swallow.
I also was able to drive the ute around, which was very fun. I also got the hang of the ‘proper’ way to take off in a manual. Basically you just put the clutch, select first gear, put the accelerator down until it revs, and slowly release the clutch. This should get the car off to a smooth start. By the way, there is another way of taking off in a manual, which can be read about in another post by me, The Secret to Driving a Manual Car.
