12 WEEKS A LOW PAID COTTON WORKER

I discovered through film that I was quite impressionable. Forrest Gump convinced me to stay loyal to the Snickers for fear of chocolate related disappointments. The Lord of the Rings taught me that even when you have the perfect ring, marriage is not the answer. Inception had me following my dreams. Then waking up a lot, only still to be dreaming and so forth until… hang on. Maybe that was Groundhog Day? But the film that resonated with me most was 12 Years a Slave. I remember watching it and thinking, that’s the life for me. My quest for a second year in Australia coincided with my cotton picking ambitions and so to Emerald, up in the Central Highlands of Queensland. Not quite the Mississippi Delta but still hot enough to burn a hole in the most frugal pockets.  

I was to stay with Margaret, a family friend fresh off a double knee replacement, and her brother Pat, a former rodeo champion and my country mentor. They lived in an old, quaint timber-framed cottage. Think ‘The Notebook’, but on stilts. Well Pat dwelled between the stilts and that’s where I found him. An aroma of bacon and cabbage hit my nostrils like a local anaesthetic. IRISH, he yelled. I presumed that wasn’t the dog’s name.  Over dinner we sunk Golds chased by Stone’s Ginger Wine. He shared with me his epic tales of musters gone by whilst I sat there trying to think of a story that didn’t reveal my feminine side. I stumbled up the stairs and into what would be my palace for the next twelve weeks, and boy was I shitting myself.

Rocking up for work on day one having never been whipped was quite intimidating. Farmer Mike decided to forego all pleasantries, ushering me into a Ute and barking at me to follow. It took an eternity to find first gear and Mike wasn’t waiting, hooning up the paddock in a cloud of merciless dust. Having rallied through the 7,000 hectare farm, I caught up to him as he pointed me to a rusty, old excuse for a tractor being operated by an old cobber named Steve. My hand sizzled on the cabin door as I hopped in. Christ it was intimate, and worse still, there was no air con. Trying to avoid him like a child playing Operation, I contorted my body with all my might, but only achieved the feeling of a lap dancer in a sauna. He didn’t seem to mind me dripping all over him, but before I could panic, an unforgettable waft of must landed on my tongue. Slipping away into the afterlife seemed like the only option, when suddenly, Steve was gone. If he’d just confessed to his wife’s murder I was none the wiser, but realistically it was probably something to do with farming and getting the tractor to move.

They were the best of times, they were the worst of times. A fellow picker coined that term. Anyway, the first time the tractor decided to cut out was twenty minutes into my solo shift, day one. I sent for Mike. He arrived like a bull in heat but luckily I wasn’t his type. With a screw driver in either hand, he pierced the side of the engine, sparking her up like a defibrillator would a Chinaman on Bondi Rescue. He looked at me as if I didn’t have a degree in journalism and I smiled back at him like I didn’t think he was the killer from Wolf Creek. As he grunted back to his Ute, I cursed him from high heaven (under my breath so not even I could hear). It cut out again almost immediately but this time I called Steve. Turns out we shared a common enemy, but not much more. He had a girlfriend in the Philippines whom he’d never met and Steve was in the process of selling his car to put her kids through college. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that long distance relationships can be difficult, because who was I to deny true love?

Upon sunset I parked the tractor up and hopped in my Ute. With no phone signal and no clue how to get home, I was pretty anxious already, but when I bogged the two rear wheels of the jeep in black dirt, I was already writing my own obituary. The stars lit up the road, coming at me two by two. Must be the Southern Cross. Turns out a herd of cattle had heard it was my first day and decided to surround the jeep for some devilment. Four wheel drive, front wheel drive, I even got a cow to give me a push, but to no avail. I was proper stuck. Left for dead on a cotton farm, I said to a cow with a wry smile. Like I hadn’t been warned by the film.  But instead of answering me, the cow took off. They all did. Beeping in the distance had created a Lion King style stampede. Farmer Mike had come to the rescue. I knew he loved me. He looked me up and down with more disgust than pity. You’re supposed to be out there for another hour. I should’ve ran away with the cattle. 

Yet as my picking improved, so did our relationship. Let me tell you about the art behind cotton farming. It’s all about efficiency and straight lines. In a 100 hectare field that’s roughly 1.2km in length and at a speed of 10kmph, the time lost missing one row on a cut could be reasonably punished by death. With only a few inches to play with on either side of the mulcher, I’d be driving down the pivot like a spectator at the most intense table tennis encounter imaginable. Fortunately, I drove her straight and through. After a couple of weeks in the hotbed on wheels, I was promoted to a 2013 John Deere. It was as if I’d made the leap from paper airplane manufacturer to commercial pilot.  Chilling air-con, a booming stereo and a Sat Nav that rendered me redundant. One push of a button and her internal map set her on her way. All I had to do was sit back, relax, and video document my mind slowly unravelling for all my friends on Facebook. At one point I questioned the very need for cotton. How many people even use cotton buds these days? Not me anyway, the trauma after all this would be too much to take.

Tbc…