I Ain’t Saying I’m a Gold Digger, I’m Just Saying I’m a Cotton Picker

Word had got ‘round Emerald that a dab hand machine operator was covering hectares faster than a rabbit on a speedboat.  Church goers stared at him in awe as if he was the Virgin Mary lactating by the altar. Cattle stood to attention as he parted the snowy blanket like Moses did the Arctic. He would volunteer at the local nursing home, spinning yarns to yearning ears over morning tea as his legend grew, only to be forgotten, then replayed, and so forth. But people can be fickle as well as forgetful and recognising that his small town celebrity status probably wouldn’t last forever, he turned his back on the fame to focus on the cotton.

I’ve often said that there’s nothing purer than post-harvest ploughing. That first turn of the soil after a long barren spell, revitalising the very earth we tread on. I get hard just thinking about it. Too much? Well imagine you were buried alive for months on end and nobody knew, the dirt pressing against your chest as if you were a packet of crisps at the bottom of a shopping bag full of canned tomatoes (Don’t ask me what I’m cooking). Now picture the utter relief that same pack of Tayto must feel when a fat kid tasked with putting away the groceries grasps the crisps first. I was now that fat kid. Insects blinded by the beaming light of the Queensland sun were given a second chance. Surfacing worms wriggled free gasping for air. Gracious wombats gathered ‘round the tractor as the kookaburra serenaded their rescued families. And there I was, the giver of life, perched high in my John Deere, proud as punch. If only the hawks hadn’t noticed. Like a gang of women at a tin of biscuits, my new friends were torn asunder. Damn you cruel world, damn you straight to hell!

You see, at this point, all the cotton had been harvested. Four million dollars’ worth of raw, unadulterated, fluffy goodness, hoovered up the snout of the picker and baled out the other side. Like Charlie Sheen if he had the shits I suppose. Anyway, I was busy prepping the paddocks for next years’ season. Long days spent traversing rolling fields as wedge tailed eagles taught their young to fly over my head (I’m sure they could fly over other things too). It was peaceful, if not coma inducing, and apart from the odd breakdown to interrupt the monotony, there wasn’t much to write home about. That was, until one evening, I heard murmurs over my old transistor radio. Between the crackles of a cooked connection the words latch, trailer and pivot two tickled my fancy just enough to prise me from my precious field in order to investigate.

It’s the screams that still haunt me the most. Desperate drawn-out screeches of terror echoed ‘round the pivot. And there they lay, bodies strewn across the dusty road, legs contorted as if put together by a toddler who found them in a kinder surprise. Family members looked on helpless, mournful eyes blatantly casting guilt my way. Don’t be staring at me like that ya hefty pricks. I was a machine operator, and a damn good one at that. If it was my job to secure the latch on the trailer, it would’ve been done with the utmost care. But it was an outside job, and they’d shat the bed. Seventeen cattle, a year old if they were a day, thrown out the back of the truck at devastating speed. A proposed road trip to pastures new may as well have been a sky diving expedition without a parachute. Fetch the rifle Johnny. Play us another one farmer Mike. I’d need a machine gun to get through this amount of meat. And I couldn’t exactly take the Steinbeck approach either. Turn ‘round sweet cow and remember our happy place, luscious grasslands filled with rabbits and ketchup and BANG. Meanwhile his mates are watching on in horror thinking, this chap’s mad as a brush. And who was I kidding anyway? I’m no killer. I unintentionally murdered hundreds of ladybirds in a jar once, and sure my kill death ratio in Call of Duty earned me the nickname ‘The Ace’, but murder a herd of cattle? I feel guilty carving a Sunday roast. I’ll leave this one to you Mike, but don’t worry, I’ll plough those fields ‘til the cows come home.

Back at the ranch it was nothing but clean country living. On the upper deck I acted as Margy’s personal chef and she my surrogate mother. She had an acid tongue and an open mind which I greatly admired and without her I probably wouldn’t have survived. Below her, her brother Pat had proved a wily mentor. I’d packed in my role as his drinking partner for a gym membership, much to his disapproval, but no matter how many times he called me a poof, he always gave me a bottle of frozen rain water to soften the blow. In fairness, he was dead right. There I was prancing around with a set of heavy pom poms in the mirrored house of vanity when the man opposite me used to lift horses up by the bollocks for stepping out of line. One of those horses eventually got his revenge though, throwing Pat from a height at his Codenwarra ranch, shattering his pelvis, hip socket, collar bone and three ribs in the process.  An early but hard-earned retirement ensued for a man who’d once led a 33 day drove of 875 head of steers from Clermont to Roma, all 500 miles covered on horseback. But his adventures had shortened in distance considerably and I made it my business to drop him down to happy hour at the Emerald Hotel as often as I could. Not quite a cattle drove, but I was taking the horse to water and this lad didn’t need any encouragement. His local bar had just been allocated a stripper, or won one… I’m not sure how that works? It had caused quite the stir among the regulars but she was hidden behind a curtain out back, and at a vulgar twenty dollars a show, myself and Pat weren’t interested. He’d acquainted me with a few ladies with questionable testosterone levels as it was so I was quite happy to stick to a schooner of Gold and the role of getaway driver. And who needed her anyway? The real entertainment was out front atop the high stools as Pat and his band of merry men shared tales of yore. All I had to do was cop a bit of flak for being Irish and there I was with front row seats to the best show in town. Auyagoin?

 

 

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…