Is there any grey nomads out there that have worked the mango harvest.In the sheds, dont think I could handle the plantation work a little to old for that, iether packing, maintenance etc. Would be interested in any leads.
I havent worked the harvest Gypsynolmate, but remember they do it in November, which is the build-up to the Wet season,and there is very, very high humidity levels!
We worked the mango harvest at a big shed at Giru (south of Townsville), several years ago. Were put on for the harvest at a place near Humpty Doo, in NT, 5 years ago, but whilst waiting for it to start, got a much better offer (mine-related in WA). They were expecting the harvest to start mid to late Sept. It is later in Qld and the start time in that state seems to be earlier the further north you go. At Giru, we started the harvest at start of Nov and finished early January. There's also mangoes round Katherine and (Ithink) Kununurra. Husband and I worked in the shed. Try to avoid picking (outside) and de-sapping (inside, where stem is taken off under running water - real yuk job!) Husband lasted only a couple of days de-sapping; his skin didn't take to being in big rubber gloves all day. He moved onto the sorting trays, which is a good job. I was mostly on packing, sometimes on sorting - both of which I liked. The Giru shed was large (NAP was the company). We were on an hourly rate. Daily hours varied, because so did the fruit, but hourly was good because we often worked into the night and racked up lots of hours. At smaller sheds they had a set daily rate and didn't earn nearly as much. At Humpty Doo we were going to be on an hourly rate. We got the Giru job via ad in Townsville paper. Humpty Doo was ad in laundry in Howard Springs Caravan Park - where quite a few harvest workers were staying. If you have a fork lift licence, could be useful.
