Blenheim is a town in the region of Marlborough that famous with thousands hectare of vines planted. Most of the people staying there for the vineyard work as you can see many backpackers there to earn extra money.
After apple packing work finished, we also followed the trend and shifted to Blenheim to have a try on vineyard work as vineyard work is the only available seasonal work during winter. There are jobs pruning trimming wrapping striping vines. Mostly men do pruning stripping and girls doing trimming wrapping.
After arrived at Blenheim, we got the offered to work as wrapper in vineyard and were headed there the next day to start work immediately. We started work early in the morning, before the sun rise. The temperatures were frosty, and though the sun had already come up, there was no warm to thaw our frozen bodies.
In order to work at vineyard, you must be good in physical health and keen. Because you are outside all day, exposed to sun, strong wind, rain and the job was very difficult, tricky and taxing.This tough job need to be done over the cool winter, therefore clothing is essential. Gloves, wind breaker, long sleeved jumpers, hat and sensible footwear are very important to protect yourself. My feet got injured as a result of inappropriate shoes wore.
Work need to be done: Firstly pull out and remove all broken canes, follow by trim the extra nodes and canes and finally roll and wrap the canes onto wires.
The only mobile toilet at vineyard, it easily take you 10 minutes or more from the place you work to the mobile toilet. Crazy, and I know it!
It wasn't a good pay job, because minimum wages doesn’t applied instead of piece rate basis, NZD0.39 per tree. The more tree you trimmed and wrapped the more you get paid. However, I can only get 80 trees a day in average which is approximately NZD 50 in total of 3 days hard work. That's ridiculous!
After 3 days of hard work, we reward ourselves with spicy Indian foods.
The only good thing work at vineyard is that you could enjoy a spectacular sunrise, and array of dusky colors in the sky when the day well into dusk. However, I wasn't in the mood to take photo on that as I'm was subdued, exhausted with what I have done after work.
All in all I would say it was a decent experience and the pain was simply unforgettable. Itsn't a good way to make some money for travels in New Zealand.
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