Nature is wonderful

Pitching a tent in the dark wasn't quite the gargantuan challenge I expected it to be so I was soon nodding off ahead of my first day's work on an Australian vineyard. I had been bouncing from one city to another for months and the somewhat alien, deadeningly quiet countryside made for a peaceful night's sleep. It was brought to a shuddering end at 6am when the sun breached the horizon by – no messing – a blood-curdling scream.

I had just about scrambled out of my sleeping bag in the semi-darkness when a second almost monkey-like screech split the silence. Suddenly, a full blown cacophony of simian, yelping cries broke out all around me. Now, I am fully aware of the fact that there are no monkeys in Australia but it sounded exactly like the trees around my tent were filled with dozens of highly agitated, bawling chimps.

I clambered out of my tent around the same time as my equally bemused soon-to-be colleagues with the screeching still in full swing. “What the f**k is that?” said a female English voice from still inside one of the tents.

“Sounds like blumin' monkeys!” answered a Welsh guy in his early 20s.

As it turned out, it was Kookaburras – large, nasty snake-eating birds that would wake us up in the same manner every morning for the duration of our time in Dandaragon. They break into their touching song at day-break, sunset and whenever one of them catches a snake.

After some brief introductions we headed off to the vineyard itself where we were taught how to prune a grape vine. At the conclusion of her demonstration for our 12-strong group Katy, the boss, gave us a word of warning about the electrical cutters we would be sharing between us. You pull a trigger and a pair of blades snap shut. A German girl in Australia on a working holiday visa worked on the same plot last year. She went home early minus a thumb.

Pruning isn't particularly difficult, but you get paid by how many vines you prune so you have to push yourself and limit breaks if you want to make decent money. Dandaragon, being towards the North of W.A., is also considerably hot, which doesn't help matters. The worst thing about it is the toll it takes on your hands. I was unwilling to loose a finger for the sake of a few quid so I avoided the electrical cutters in favour of a loppers until I was fully used to the process.

This meant that I had to work harder to keep pace and that my hands would finish the day in a sorry state. Repeatedly slamming a loppers closed over a nine-hour day with just the one 15-minute break I allowed myself means some sort of repetitive strain injury is pretty much unavoidable. I woke up during the night after my third day to find that my hands had seized and I literally couldn't open them. I slowly peeled my fingers back and slept the rest of the night with my palms flat under my pillow. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to coil them around the handles of the loppers and get going again the following morning. All rather unpleasant, but still far better than a dole queue.

There were also some enjoyable moments on the vineyard. The countryside around the area was beautiful and when the sun wasn't too hot it was nice to be working outdoors with parrots flying over head and kangaroos bouncing around fields in the distance. It was however a smaller variety of wildlife which provided the best entertainment. The rows of vines were infested with red, biting ants. I was nipped on occasion by one or two, but generally got away with it lightly.

That wasn't the case for a Cork guy named Dave who seemed to have a nack for putting his foot directly into an ant mound and leaving it there while he pruned the vine it sat at the base of. It didn't help that the guy had a healthy, borderline phobic dislike for insects. We would hear a scream and look up to see the lad frantically tearing off all his clothes and staggering around like someone had poured petrol all over him and flicked a match in his direction. The guy could strip to his boxers faster than a Chipendale by the end of the first week.