I've spent a good proportion of the past few weeks doing sweet potato related work. Picking them, planting them, cutting vines to plant, rescuing caterpillars, fixing irrigation pipes, driving tractors around - you name it. Today I was mostly weeding out diseased potato vines and re-planting the space with a healthy vine cutting. The disease in question is 'Little Leaf', which makes the plant look rather like a bonsai vine. The farmer has also taken us to the beach a couple more times, but not warned us the day before so I've been swimming in the sea in my work clothes. The sun dries you out pretty quickly afterwards unless you're fixing water pipes, in which case you were going to get wet anyway, even before the water fight starts...
The farm that I usually work on doesn't operate every day so I've been round a few other farms too. I've picked tomatos for a wonderfully crazy lady; I've picked regular capsicums; and I've worked on various other sweet potato farms, who all do things slightly differently. I've also picked mini-capsicums and it's something of a Sisyphusian task to fill up a bucket because they're so small. Also, I have no idea what they do with them once they're picked as I've never seen them for sale anywhere. I leave Bundaberg in a few days, having been here about six weeks. I've had four days off. I think that's quite impressive.
Outside of work, life is fairly quiet. Some of my friends have done some gigs in the beer garden but the library is still the hub of most social activity. However, I did something really, really exciting last night: I saw a loggerhead turtle come on up to Mon Repos beach and lay her eggs. I've never seen anything like it, it really was amazing. We had a guide with us (to make sure we didn't disturb her) who realised that she was laying the eggs too close to the waters edge and that they'd get destroyed. He had to dig a new egg chamber further up the beach and we were allowed to help carry the eggs. Very strange things, more like ping pong balls than chicken's eggs. It was a wonderful night, plus the sky was clear and there was an abundance of shooting stars. All very, very exciting.
