Sightseeing and saving the fruit of your labour

Fancy a tour of some of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand with a chance to make money, get a tan, tone the body, eat lots of fruit and meet heaps of interesting people?

That's the message the Fruitgrowers Federation wants to get across to foreign backpackers and footloose New Zealanders.

The federation is trying to create a harvest trail along which people can travel for eight months of the year, stopping at different places to pick fruit and vegetables, seeing the country as they go. It has set up a website and prospective workers can check out jobs and accommodation on www.Picknz.co.nz

The exercise is being given a trial run this season in Hawkes Bay, which needs about 17,000 casual workers between now and May to gather pipfruit, stonefruit, kiwifruit, vegetables and grapes.

If it works - and the early indications are it is - the system will be offered to other regions next season.

Certainly the pickers now gathering in the Bay think it is a great idea. Eighteen-year-old Hollie Snowdon, from Taranaki, hasn't picked fruit before but found a job simple to organise through the website. "It's so easy. Just type in a few words and you've got a whole page of places with jobs. I needed somewhere with accommodation so I just typed that in and it came up with the answers. I was all fixed up in a minute."

The website found her a job and a room for $35 a week at an orchard just outside Hastings. "It's very very basic, just your room, a mattress on the floor and a toilet out the back.

"But it's all you need. When you come back from a day's work you're tired out and there's no problem sleeping. And I'm told you usually average $100 a day picking so it's a good way to save money."

Hollie said she had already met several foreign packpackers who had also plugged into the system. "They were touring the country and needed a bit of cash so they looked on the internet and found where there were jobs."

In fact one of the attractions of the harvest trail is that it offers a chance to meet people from other countries as well as see different parts of the country and make some money.

Ash Robinson, 21, of Fielding, is something of a veteran on the harvest trail, having been fruitpicking during the university holidays.

"My girlfriend and I go somewhere different each summer and we always get work in the orchards, but this internet site makes it a lot easier to set things up.

"It's good money - although you have to work hard for it - and there's lots of interesting foreign people you can meet. "It's like the United Nations out in the orchards.

"It's good fun and I hope to make a few friends I can visit when I go overseas myself."

Hollie is also looking forward to meeting foreigners "and hearing their stories."

But for her another part of the appeal is "getting out there, making yourself get up early to do a good day's work, getting a good tan and making the muscles ache.

"I haven't done fruitpicking before, just worked in a winery down in Nelson. I've been told it's hard work - you've got to fill a 20kg bin - but I think I should cope with it."

It's that sort of attitude that makes the industry keen on employing backpackers. David Paterson, a fruitgrower for 17 years, reckons they are the hardest workers.

"They just do it to make money so they can carry on their travels," he says.

"They know the harder they work the more money they'll make, so they really get stuck in."

Experience has made Ash a little less enthusiastic about the long days picking fruit. "I've learned to drive a hydroladder, which is quite good because it lets me dodge the real grunt stuff."

In fact, as that indicates, the harvest trail isn't just for young backpackers keen on hard physical work.

There are also less physically demanding jobs supervising, sorting fruit, packing and quality controlling.

There already quite a few superannuitants who visit places like Hawkes Bay every year during the picking season for a holiday and the idea is catching on.

For instance, Fruitfed director Ru Collins has a couple on his orchard this season who used to own the Hamner Springs Hotel but sold it, bought a caravan and went on tour.

"They heard about our programme, got on the website and here they are," Collins said. "The husband is working in our orchard and the wife in the packhouse. They're just the sort of people we want to attract."

Collins said he had the impression this couple didn't really need to work but did so because they enjoyed it.

"They're having fun staying in the Bay for a couple of months, working and playing and getting a bit of pocket money. What could be nicer?"

www.Picknz.co.nz