Beaten by a Blow

Onion Picking

In 1971, just before I turned thirteen, we moved to Weribee South, opposite the mouth of the river. In the afternoons the school bus drove past an unkempt bay pony next to a disused dairy on an old soldier-settlement block. The noise of the bus’s diesel engine and the tyres screeching along the bitumen would stop the pony from eating. She would take off down the paddock with her tail up and her nostrils flared to the wind. She had such great spirit. She was everything I’d dreamed of, sitting in a paddock on her own.

I didn’t understand why she was alone. I knew one day I’d somehow set her free. I dreamed of riding her along the beach and into the waves, riding through the bush, camping under the stars and living off my wits, travelling from town to town – that was the life for me. Every night I went to bed dreaming about the adventures of Ginger and me.

Dad had said flatly, ‘No horses.’ They were too expensive to keep. Six kids and one income, we’d learned not to harp when it came to money. ‘We can’t afford it’ covered everything from ‘We’re too busy’ to ‘We’re not wasting money on that.’ I already knew one thing about my life. If I wanted something, I’d have to get it myself.

I wondered whether, if nobody wanted her, I could have her. Or at least look after her and take her for rides. I thought that would be sort of the same as owning a horse.

One afternoon when I was visiting the pony the cocky called me over. He was in his early sixties, slightly hunched; his face was worn with heavy sagging lines and he smelt of alcohol and tobacco.
‘Wanta horse, hey? I’m sellin her. She’s hard in the mouth and she’s foundering a bit.’ Her hooves were splayed, with the fleshy parts hitting the ground. She’d go lame quickly on the road.

‘She needs a bit of lookin after – not in perfect condition, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. You can have her if you buy the extras as well, right. Saddle, bridle, halters, the lot. I won’t split em, understand me? Well boy, do you want her or not?’

‘Yes sir, I want her but I haven’t got any money yet. But I could ride her for you, and look after her and that, until I get the money. I’d brush her and take good care of her. Get her out of that soggy paddock.’

‘No, no, no. I’m not wastin me time with a kid hanging around the farm, too many things can go wrong. I’m gunna sell. That’s it.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘A hundred for the pony and a hundred for the gear, rightio.’

‘I can work it off for you, if you’ll let me. I’ll clean the dairy and sweep the sheds and that, whatever you want. I can work after school and on weekends.’

He paused. ‘Well, the onion season’s about to start. The first lot’ll be ready for pickin mid-December. Holiday job. Make a man of ya. Mr Pipi down the road’ll be starting soon, go and tell him I recommended you.’

I went over to Mr Pipi’s. He had olive skin with thick black hair but he spoke without an accent.
‘How old are you?’ he asked when I told him why I was there.

‘I’m thirteen, nearly.’

‘Not even thirteen, you’re too young. This is man’s work.’

‘I can do it, but. I help me dad out in the factory all the time. And he reckons I’m a good worker. What are you paying?’

‘No rates, it’s piecework, ten cents a box. You stack your boxes at the end of each day, I want them stacked in lots of fifty. And I don’t want to be paying for half-boxes. Is that clear?’

‘Yes Mr Pipi, when do I start?’

‘By the look of the onions, I reckon you can start in about two weeks. When do you finish school?’
‘We’re not doing anything at school now, so I can start when you want.’

‘Call by in a week or so and we’ll talk then.’

My parents agreed to let me work. When it came to money, I knew Mum would never say no. There was a tribe of us. Mum loved babies. She’d had seven, one died before it was born. We mostly avoided Mum, we knew we’d get an earful about Dad and how she couldn’t cope. If we felt sorry for her we’d get more jobs. My older brother started part-time work when he was fourteen, that’s when Mum refused to buy any of his clothes. And that became the standard. I knew if I started onion    picking I’d have to go without the Levi jeans I wanted.

I called in to see Mr Pipi late one afternoon. He was on the tractor in the onion paddock, turning a row into a wave of earth and onions ready for picking.

‘There you go, boy. When you’ve picked them I’ll open up the other rows until we’ve picked the paddock clean.’

If I could pick and stack a hundred boxes a day I’d earn ten dollars a day, which worked out at four weeks’ work to buy Ginger. That would leave me a couple of weeks to ride her before school started.

Dad dropped me in the onion paddock on Monday morning and headed off to work. It was daybreak. I watched his car disappear through the dust suspended in the damp air and then I was alone. There were no clouds in the sky and no wind. Not even Mr Pipi was up yet. There was only me, a paddock full of onions, and in the distance Ginger strutting around.

I thought I’d get started, get as much work done as I could before it got too hot. It was supposed to be in the high thirties. The soil had a light crust and was powdery underneath. I picked my first onion and put it in the box. The onion tops, with a tinge of green through them, were still firmly connected to the onion: I could pick up the tops without the onion falling off. My first box seemed to take ages, but I didn’t have to move far because it was a thick crop. Pretty soon I was kneeling in the dirt, my knees and thighs covered in lumps from the milk thistles.

Mr Pipi and his worker arrived about an hour later. Mr Pipi got straight onto the tractor while his worker followed beside the trailer, putting boxes out along the rows. After they’d finished the boxes Mr Pipi came over to me and said, ‘You’re working too slow. Here, I’ll show you.’ He said I couldn’t pick quickly if I was kneeling or sitting on the ground. He bent over and started picking the onions in clumps. He gathered the onion tops like he was pulling in a blanket with his fingers; he picked up to eight or ten in one go and put them in the box. ‘Do it like that,’ he said. ‘Don’t drop them hard into the box either, I don’t want them bruised. You understand?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I know, I know.’

‘Now,’ he said, ‘when the box is full, give it a firm but gentle push down and heap the box up to a hump, so when the onions settle, the box will be full.’

‘Yeah, I know, I know.’

‘I know, I know, I know. Is that all you can say? You don’t know, that’s why I’m telling you. Go back and fill up those boxes you’ve already done before you go any further, and wear shoes from now on. There’s snakes in these crops.’

With that he turned and walked away. I stopped for lunch. Mum had packed her trademark sandwiches – raisin and apple, and Vegemite and tomato – and a drink. When Mr Pipi came back I didn’t feel like picking more onions, so I stacked my full boxes. I wanted to believe that the money was mine. I’d picked thirty-five boxes: three dollars fifty. It didn’t seem a lot for the work I’d done. I went back and started picking.

Mr Pipi came over, yelling and screaming. ‘Don’t stack your boxes there, that’s the farm road. Stack them in the rows you’ve picked. Come on, how old are you?’

‘I’m thirteen now, Mr Pipi.’

‘Well, use your brain. I don’t want to be coming over here looking after you all the time. Okay?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah I kno -’ I stopped. ‘Yes, Mr Pipi.’

I rebuilt my stack on the empty section of the row. When I’d finished I stopped and looked across the paddock: there were thousands of onions, probably millions. My eyes followed the fence line to Ginger and then back to the onions. I was a long way off my hundred boxes a day. The rest of the afternoon I concentrated on picking up as many onions as I could in one scoop and tried to forget about Ginger or counting the boxes.

That afternoon I picked thirty boxes - more in less time than in the morning. But I still had only sixty-five for the day. Six dollars fifty.

Waiting for Dad, I gave Ginger a pat and a hug. She rubbed her nose into me and whinnied and nodded. I imagined riding her into the sea with the waves crashing over us, jumping through the breakwater.

The next morning I waved to Ginger as I walked into my onion paddock. Today I wouldn’t stop for lunch until I’d picked forty boxes. My legs stung from the nettles, but I rubbed dirt into the red welts to stop the itching. I was still picking when Mr Pipi and the worker went in for lunch. I needed another five boxes. After I’d done them I ate my sandwiches. I was starving. It was hotter than yesterday. When I stopped, the sweat poured off my body and mixed with the dirt, making me itchy.

Mr Pipi coming out of the house was my cue to start again. I worked hard in the afternoon, even though my body started feeling like it wanted to go to sleep. When the sun reached the chimney I knew Dad wasn’t far away. I packed up. I’d picked forty boxes for the afternoon. Eighty boxes for the day: eight dollars. I had to get faster.

I tried to get Dad to leave earlier the next morning, but he liked his cup of coffee and a crack at the crossword. He wouldn’t budge. I had to get a hundred boxes today. Finally he dropped me off and I ran into the paddock from the bitumen and started work. When Mr Pipi arrived I didn’t even bother to say hello.

‘Look, look,’ he yelled, his hands outstretched. ‘Your stack, it fell over. Fix it straight away before the onions get squashed, and fix the other stacks as well so they don’t fall over. Okay?’

‘How did it fall over?’ I asked.

‘You don’t stack right.’ He pointed to his worker. ‘Joe, he’ll show you how to do it.’

Joe didn’t speak to me. He just showed me how to place the boxes. Two boxes along, four across - this gave the base. Then the opposite on the next level. I lost half a morning restacking, so I didn’t stop for lunch; I ate my sandwiches, raisin and apple, while I worked, and by the end of the day I’d picked and stacked sixty-five boxes. It was okay considering the time I’d lost.

When I woke up Thursday morning my hands ached, they were red-raw and swollen. Mum said to wear gloves. Dad said to piss on them. The ammonia, he said, would harden them up. I didn’t want to piss on them but I relented. I wanted my hands to have black calluses in the lines of their fingers and palms like Dad’s.

I started slowly, my hands still aching. It was lonely, but I wasn’t in a classroom and I was making money. I loved being in open spaces, except for the occasional dust storms that cut into my eyes. Every day was a different sky and I had time to think. I mostly thought of what Ginger and I would do when I grew up, and was working in the outback and living under the stars.

Even though it was still morning, I stopped and ate my lunch and drank the lemon water Mum had packed for me. I was starting to feel better. I kept going all day and when it was time to finish I worked through until Dad   arrived. He built machines and knew numbers and time per product. I needed a system, he said. I had a system: I didn’t stop. He helped me stack the boxes. Ninety boxes: nine dollars. Tomorrow I would get my hundred boxes.

I started well the next day. I concentrated on grabbing as many onions in one go as possible. It was hot and windy and my eyes were sore from the dust. The sun had gone behind the chimney as I picked my hundredth box. Dad was late. It was pub night. I decided to stack the rest of the day’s pickings. Then I sat under the cypress trees to wait. I was too tired to walk to the road and it was good to get out of the wind for a while. I lay down on the boxes and fell asleep. Joe woke me up, pointed to the road. ‘Go, go boy, go,’ shooing me like a cow. It was sunset and I walked and hitched the five k’s home.

The old man came home a bit after eight with a new neighbour he’d brought back from the pub. He introduced me to Mr McHugh as his number three son. We knew each other, but neither of us said so. One afternoon, Mr McHugh, half pissed, dressed in a shirt and tie and his hair thick with Brylcreem, was down around the pier looking at his new mooring. We were on the pier smoking. He came over and said he’d kick my arse till my nose bled for smoking. He said he knew who I was and reckoned I was a smart arse. Then he started stabbing his finger into my chest. Now, sitting at my kitchen table, he was pleasant and polite and wanted to know all about what I was doing. But I didn’t tell him anything and moved away into the lounge room.

Saturday morning I set out to pick a hundred and five boxes. That would give me fifty dollars for the week. After stacking the boxes, I went to Mr Pipi for my money. He counted the five hundred boxes, nodded and gave me five $10 notes. I was rich.

The following week the picking got harder. Mr Pipi had run the tractor over more of the rows, and with a little overnight rain a few days back the ground had hardened. The turned-up onions weren’t loose in the ground any more; some were caked in dirt, some I had to dig out with my fingertips. The first things to go were my fingernails and then the tips of my fingers wore thin, until they were sore to touch. The onion tops browned and became frail, and when I tried to pick a lot at once the tops snapped and the onions fell back into the row.

I picked four hundred and seventy boxes that week, but when Mr Pipi came to inspect my work he picked up a box and screamed, ‘Look, you’re not putting enough onions in the boxes.’ He unstacked a couple more and pushed his foot down on top of them. ‘Look, they’re not bloody full! You’re only half filling them, for Christ’s sake. I’m not paying for half-boxes.’ He looked at me sharply. ‘I’ll give you eight cents a box.’

‘No way, Mr Pipi, you told me not to squash the onions and I didn’t. And I overfilled the boxes like you asked. We had a deal.’

He said something in Italian and walked off. I followed him. I had to get my money. I’d worked so hard for it, it was mine and I wanted it.

He went into his house at the back of the property and I knocked on the door after him. His wife opened it and I asked for Mr Pipi. When he came to the door he said nothing, but slowly counted out the forty-seven dollars and handed it to me. Still angry but relieved, I turned and headed home; he yelled out that he wouldn’t be paying ten cents a box in future unless they were picked properly. Then he went off in Italian once again.

So far I’d made ninety-seven dollars. I was almost at the halfway mark.
On Monday a man called Roger turned up in the onion paddock. He had a slickback hairdo like Elvis, a wiry build. I didn’t trust him. He did give me smokes, though. I wouldn’t buy them but I didn’t mind smoking his. He said he was a professional picker.

It had rained on the weekend and the onions were caked in dirt. Roger had Mr Pipi redig the onions with the bar to break them up a bit. You beauty, I thought. Finally, I wasn’t on my own with Mr Pipi. Roger was an ally, not an enemy. He taught me to pick faster. He told me to            concentrate and watch what I was doing, to bend over and reach as far as I could without moving, to move less and maximise my position.

‘Start picking on the side of the row, not in the middle, and grab the tops of the onions near the base, using the little finger like a hook. With the rest of your hands grab clumps of tops, and as your hands come together your forearms can gather onions as well.’

I could get almost a quarter of a box like that. If I gathered up a few clumps of dirt in the process I left them there. I didn’t go back and I didn’t do things twice. I could only gather large amounts occasionally, when the outsides of the row had been picked. I set my picking around this strategy.
The only thing was, now that Roger was here the paddock would run out faster than I’d planned. I would have to work harder to get the money I needed. In the cloggy soil I averaged about eighty-five boxes a day, and on Saturday, back in softer soil, I picked a hundred.  Fifty-two dollars and fifty cents for the week. One week to go and I should have the money.

On the last Monday night it was almost dark by the time Dad arrived. I kept working so he could help stack my boxes - that way I could pick more. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get more than a hundred boxes a day. And I wanted to ride Ginger home on Friday night. My back ached when I straightened up, but the pain was only temporary. I was used to the heat and my hands didn’t hurt much any more. Even the dust in the wind cutting into my body didn’t bother me too much. Only my legs hurt. In bed they ached, when I woke up in the mornings they ached, and when I walked they ached.

By Friday lunchtime I had four hundred and fifty boxes for the week, sixty boxes short of my goal, and there was about a day’s worth of onions left to pick. I was stuffed. Roger drank a few bottles of beer for lunch. He was a good bloke but he lied a lot. What he said on Monday was different to what he said on Wednesday and different again on Friday. Some mornings he was pissed but he could still work. He was renting a caravansomewhere. It didn’t seem much of a life and I was glad I had a bed to go to. I lay down on the empty onion boxes under the cypress trees where the cool offshore breeze was blowing.

The next thing, Dad was waking me. I’d slept for six hours straight. I went to Mr Pipi for my money and said I’d be back tomorrow. He said they were going to process the onions on Saturday and to come Monday. I only had one day left to get the money.

On Sunday morning I heard Mr McHugh in our lounge room. He’d come to confirm he was going to buy the pony for his daughter, Sonia. Dad said no worries. He said I couldn’t afford it anyway. Mr McHugh was loud, laughing nervously; he shook Dad’s hand and walked out. I sank on the edge of my bed, listening.

Later that day, a small crowd gathered around the front yard. I went over to have a look. I saw the distinctive   colours of Ginger coming around the bend about a kilometre away. I froze. As she got closer I felt sick. Mr McHugh’s daughter rode Ginger over to me and said g’day. She said, ‘We’re calling her Honey.’

I was trembling and sick in the stomach. Ginger rubbed her nose into me and pushed me, like she normally did. Sonia said her dad had promised her a horse if they moved down here, then she jerked the bit hard to the left and rode off.

I walked around the back of the house and there was Mr McHugh, who was in an unusually good mood without a drink, talking it up to my old man. He shook Dad’s hand and thanked him. The old man must have told him about the horse.

When I walked back into the onion paddock on Monday morning I looked across at Ginger’s empty yard and the dust-blown paddock. There were a few rows left to pick, but my motivation was gone. Roger arrived and said, ‘Let’s wax em,’ and by lunchtime we’d stripped the paddock. Mr Pipi paid us. That’s how I found out Roger was getting seventeen cents a box. I looked at Roger but he couldn’t look at me. I’d earned my two hundred dollars but I was half a day late. I walked past the dairy shed. The cockie was sitting on a drum with a bottle beside him, fixing something. He slinked a look at me then returned his attention to what he was doing. I took a deep breath. Dust swirls and roly-poly weed were already inhabiting the onion paddock, Ginger was gone and my childhood was over. I felt different: older, harder, stronger. The sky was a clear light blue; there was a slight breeze blowing and I walked home.

Sonia and I did start to get to know each other after that. We were the only two about the same age in the neighbourhood. She would bring her horse over and we would see each other down the beach. The farrier fixed the hooves and Mr McHugh booked her into pony club. Ginger would have had a different life with me: sleeping under the stars, swimming in the river, stuff like that.
That winter I worked for other farmers picking cauliflowers and cabbages after school for a dollar forty an hour, and when the onion season started I picked a hundred boxes every day I worked until I had enough money to buy a horse. Dad helped me find a little piebald gelding.

Extract published courtesy of Viking
© Dennis McIntosh