The Apinautica - Chapter 6: Australia The First Time (Part 1)
Okay this is the first scene of my first stay in Australia from the book about my travels I'm working on. Previous chapter was in the United States.
The First Week
Monday, October 8th, 2012 - click … click … click. I’m kneeling in the dewy morning grass, trying to light some damp hay with a cigarette lighter. If I were to look around I’d see the amber morning light pouring over the tree-crested hilltops and melting away the pools of fog, but my attention is on my handful of damp hay, the cigarette lighter, and the cylindrical tin smoker canister. I’ve never been a cigarette smoker, and I’m accustomed to lighting my smoker with the kind of barbecue lighter that has a trigger you pull and it lights every time. I’m having serious trouble getting this hay lit, and my thumb is becoming very sore from the metal wheel on the lighter.
“I thought you said you were a beekeeper?” my new boss calls out from where he’s already working on a hive nearby.
It’s been a month and a half since I first arrived in Australia. I had found an apartment right downtown in Brisbane, a luxury apartment overlooking a central park even. Intended (and no doubt firecoded) for four people, I was sharing it with three Brazilians, two Colombians and a Frenchman. The life of an exploited immigrant. And the landlord profiting our firecode-breaking overhabitation was a Brazilian with the same relatively rare Brazilian lastname as my Brazilian great-grandmother. Five thousand miles away from our ancestral homeland here we are exploiting ourselves!
I found a job working for a commercial beekeeper based in the Brisbane suburbs, and from there we traveled into the surrounding eucalypt forests to work bees. The afternoon light has a particularly golden hue as it shines through the eucalyptus trees. Kookaburras would wait around for us to move hives so they could swoop in and eat any exposed bugs, chortling uproariously. Many a time I leapt in the air mistaking a curly peel of eucalyptus bark for a deadly snake.
One of the appeals of Australia at the time was the high rate of pay. I’d been making $15/hour in the states which I’d felt like was decent, here I was making $18/hour, which, with the Ausdollar being $1.25 US, was equivalent of about $22.50, 50% more than I’d been making in the states. I had been feeling pretty good about this until I learned my roommate the Frenchman was making $22/hour washing dishes (about 344% of what that would pay in the states). However, conversely, it was also very expensive. In the states one could get a decent lunch for $6-7 at the time, but here in Australia one was lucky to find a burger for under $15.
My article in the American Bee Journal came out.
“Haha maybe you’ll write about this some time” my employer, Murray, suggested as we once again disembarked the truck into a picturesque Australian forest scene.
“Maybe” I smiled and shrugged.
But then one day, as the tea billie was boiling up for the smoko break in the forest, and the kookaburras were gently giggling, Murray began talking about how honey prices were too low, and it wasn’t looking like a good season, and it slowly dawned on me what he was getting at - he couldn’t afford to keep me on. Or so he said, but one inevitably wonders, was I not good enough?
I hadn’t even expected to be paid for the ABJ article, but lo, a check arrived! As I had no other income that particular week, I found myself technically a professional writer!
I spent a week on a random roadtrip across a wide swath of the Australian East Coast, but this isn’t about that, and then it was time to buckle down and find another job. Since I fortuitously had an article then published in the most recent issue of the foremost industry magazine, I had many offers.
The previous Thursday I had come down to check out this operation, in the “Scenic Rim” region of Queensland. The area was all gently rolling hills half covered in forest, white rail fences around horse agistments, lighting that was somehow always perfect. As we rolled down the drive a muscular Latvian was just emerging like a cthonic spirit from the picturesque pond on the property, whom James [names changed. I'm tempted to say he looks like the actor James Cromwell but then again I hate pop culture references like that], the boss, pointed out as Janis [literally just googled most common Latvian name], the yard manager. Surrounded by all this beautiful scenery and they have time to go swimming at noon, what paradise is this? I asked myself.
James says he’ll provide accommodation and indicates a room I’ll share with one of the others in the house. I had rather thought after college I’d never have to share a room again but thus is the life of an immigrant I suppose. I guess you can’t complain about free anyway. He says he owns a butcher shop and will provide meat as well, and that evening the Latvians (there’s a second older one) prepare a delicious Latvian meal of sausage, sauerkraut-like-stuff, boiled potatoes and sour cream. I am happy to agree to start on Monday.
A gorgeous Brazilian girl was interested in taking over my place in the apartment in Brisbane, so I hurried to get her to sign on to formally take over before she changed her mind over the fact she’d have to share a room with the Frenchman. As it turns out I needn’t have worried, as I’d attend their wedding three years later in a castle in France, but we’ll get there when we get there.
Click … click … “you use smokers in the US right?” James asks as I still struggle to get it lit.
Things already aren’t going very well this Monday morning. Upon my arrival Graham informed me he wanted to keep that bed free if his son were to visit (his son never visited), and I could sleep in a cot on the veranda in a swag - a sort of sleeping bag with integrated mosquito net face-covering (mosquitos could and would still bite me through it as it lay against my face while I slept). It’s free accommodation though I tried to console myself, but I wasn’t feeling very happy about this development.
Finally I get the smoker lit and hurry over to join the others. This morning we’re moving queen cells from the “starter” hives that built them up to the “finisher” hives which will essentially incubate them until they’re ready to be placed in small mating nucs (short for “nucleus hives” and therefore pronounced nukes) where they’ll hatch out and go on their mating flights.
We’re doing this without gloves on, which is fairly standard. However, the bees begin stinging my hands much more than usual. I suspect it is because they can somehow sense that I’m stressed and anxious. However since James is already criticizing my skills as a beekeeper I’m certainly not about to complain of getting stung.
“Getting stung a bit?” James chuckles, glancing over at me.
“Ah, well, it happens” I say nonchalantly, brushing a dozen stingers off my hands and continuing to reach into the hives to carefully remove the queen cells. A few more sting-filled minutes go by.
“You look like a pincushion mate, why don’t you go get some gloves” he finally suggests, which advice being given I am only too willing to take, as I don’t go so far as to exactly enjoy getting immense numbers of bee stings.
While in the shed I take a picture of my hand, on which I later count 24 stingers. Being as I had brushed as many off already and my other hand was in similar condition I estimate I received about 100 stings on my hands in the course of about ten minutes. Later we’re catching queens but my hands have become too swollen to effectively do so.
“Your hands are swollen?” James asks in what I’m quickly recognizing as a strong habit of casually making condescending remarks, “A real beekeeper doesn’t swell from bee stings.” Would a non-beekeeper keep reaching into hives as they rapidly received over a hundred stings?? I ask rhetorically in my head.
The next day we were catching queens again. I’m not terribly fast at this at first as my hands are still swollen and I’d never worked on a queen rearing operation before (we can’t breed queens in Southern California because the wild drones they’d inevitably mate with are all Africanized); and so have nearly no experience in the delicate skill of gently plucking the queen from a frame of bees with one’s fingers, carefully stuffing her in a little plastic cage, and then doing so with five workers as well, careful not to be stung by them. Personally I don’t think one can be expected to be anywhere near as fast as people who have been doing this professionally for years on one’s first day, but James let me know he wasn’t impressed.
Additionally, because he has an 80% fail rate, one tends to waste a lot of time looking for queens in nucs that literally aren’t there.
Queen rearing operations are apparently only conducted by them on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays-Fridays were more general honey production beekeeping days. In the evenings, Janis religiously watches this Australian soap opera called Home and Away, and they make Latvian food for dinner. I am not much of a cook but I offer to make pasta or ravioli, but they decline. Janis is usually a bit standoffish, and the other Latvian doesn’t speak much English. I personally can’t stand inane TV, it makes me feel like I can’t hear myself think and my brain is melting, so I spend my evenings on the veranda reading until the sun sets among the beautiful surrounding hills.
At the end of the week I’m happy to return to Brisbane for the weekend and crash with my former flatmates.
Week 2
Once again we’re catching queens Monday and Tuesday. I’m catching queens about 80% as fast as my coworkers who have been specializing in this, though this is still slow enough to earn me plenty of disparaging remarks.
Over the course of the week I get to know my coworkers better. Imagine you are watching a WWII movie in which the protagonist has infiltrated some evil German operation, and there’s an SS officer he has to befriend, but you know they’ll be in an intense knife fight by the third act. That’s Janis - blonde, blue eyed,fit, Germanic accent, he’ll give you a cheerful good morning with a hint of some ice cold undercurrent. He has “GO HARD OR GO HOME” tattooed really big down his right arm. He had worked on a queen breeding operation in Hawaii but the house he was staying in burned down and now he can’t return to the states.
The other Latvian, older and stout, with grey hair and a cheerful disposition, seems good natured, though he barely speaks any English. He speaks fluent Russian, which I wouldn’t say I quite exactly “speak” but studied in university for two years so between a combination of Russian and English we are able to have the rudiments of conversation on occasion. It seems he had served in the Red Army. He speaks with his wife back in Latvia every day via skype.
Once again I return to Brisbane for the weekend. The Frenchman throws a party and a bunch of Germans and some Finns come over - other than my current and former boss I’m not sure I’ve actually met any Australians.
Week 3
“So I’ll be deducting your rent from your paycheck” James mentions Monday morning as we drive to the farm after he’s picked me up from the train station
“How much?”
“$150 a week” (rent in Australia is generally calculated weekly. Converting to monthly and to USD that's $800 USD a month)
“That seems a bit high for a cot on a veranda”
“It’s a very expensive area, I have to pay $10,000 a month for the farm”
“I’ll look for somewhere else to stay I guess”
“Good luck with that”
There’s a few minutes of silence
“Also $100 a week for food.” he adds.
I do some quick math.
“That’s $20 a day, I could eat at the pub every day for that”
“There isn’t a pub near us.”
We get to the farm around 7:30, spend ten minutes loading up the truck, drive fifty minutes to the bee yard, as we’re getting out there James casually observes “it’s 8:22, this is the time you should start your time card.” Foolish me I had been “clocking in” when we actually began work with the loading of the truck, until we finished unloading back at the farm at the end of the day - it turns out I’ve been doing these things for sheer enthusiasm and love of lifting boxes two hours a day, ten hours a week.
He further advised me that if I didn’t improve my queen catching I wouldn’t have a job. Now with non-swollen hands and four previous days of it under my belt, I catch and cage 50 queens to his 30, he has no witty remarks about this.
As dinnertime rolls around Janis comments that I’m not doing my share of cooking, and that I’m eating all their food. I return my offer to make ravioli, and he notes that they’ve eaten my ravioli over the weekend and hadn’t liked it. He blithely turns on his soap opera seemingly oblivious to the irony of accusing me of eating all their food while eating all my food.
The next day after work I borrow a car to go to the nearest grocery store. Upon my return the pantry has been completely rearranged with people’s names on shelves and an “ask before taking” sign. Notably missing is my name, though there’s a shelf labeled “Peters” for some reason. It’s unclear to me if they purposefully nationalized all my food or honestly think I didn’t have any, but this all seems very passive aggressive. Lest they think I’m taking their food I announce I am re-acquiring my food from where it had been redistributed to their shelves, and do so.
Wednesday James is gone. Janis tauntingly tells me “we’re going to make dinner, if you ask nicely we’ll make enough for you.” But I’d rather opt out than be involved in his passive aggressive games even if my own simple cooking is less exciting than their multi-part Latvian fare.
Thursday James returns with another Latvian, this is Peters.
“We’re going to have to let you go, you’re not fast enough at queen catching” he informs me in his brusk offhand manner. I don’t bother to point out that most recently I am faster than him - by now I’m happy to be leaving and am disinclined to get into irrelevant arguments. James then departs the farm again.
Friday morning he’s not around. I find Janis suiting up with the other Latvians, he’s given Peters the suit and smoker I’d been using.
“What should I do?” I ask.
“I don’t know” he answers disinterestedly.
So I water the plants, check on the chickens, and with nothing else to do eventually settle down with my book.
James returns around 11 with a new generator for a refrigerated shipping container in which extracted frames are placed.
“Come down and check on this from time to time” he says to me as if nothing is amiss, “because it keeps accidentally shutting off and we need to get the temperature down to freeze out the hive beetle larvae.” He then starts to direct me to paint some boxes.
“I thought I didn’t work here any more?” I say.
“Oh, yeah, well, I wasn’t sure. Janis had from the beginning said he didn’t want to work with you, and he’s the yard manager so what am I to do.”
“That’s alright, you have Peter now, I’ll find another job.” And like that it’s settled. It takes moments to pack my bag, and then he takes me to the train station. I’m not sure if Janis set himself against me because he personally disliked me, or felt threatened by me, or wanted to maintain the racial purity of his Latvian team, or ... genuinely thought I was a bad beekeeper. [I feel like this section could use one more good sentence to wrap it up but its not coming to me right now]
[then I lived for a week in a cute little house in Brisbane with famously cute dog (kelpie) Rupert, and the tallship Bounty sank which was mildly traumatic for me but probably isn't pertinent to this narrative for any mention]
[ original entry containing all the above events]
I envision one more "scene" for thos six month period in Australia, similarly combining exposition and narrative to adequately condense the time. I hope the above doesn't come off as merely a litany of griping about a bad work situation.