update from the border

Well, for the second day running, I’ve driven into Canada in order to drop a u-turn and head straight back into the US. It seems that the Americans can’t get rid of us and the Canadians just don’t want us.

Our troubles started on Sunday afternoon, one mile short of our border-town, Bowbells, North Dakota, with Brian and Anne-Maree’s camper blowing a tyre. Once we’d swapped the tyre, we returned to our trucks, Andrew discovering that he’d blown his alternator and Brian that he had a busted fender. Both problems needed to be fixed before crossing the border.

Most of Monday was spent waiting for parts. We fired up the trucks at 4pm, set out shortly afterward, and counted down what was meant to be our last seven miles of road in the US.

Canadian Customs was deserted when we arrived. Brian went into the office and told us all to wait in the trucks. He reappeared about 20 minutes later, clearly agitated, and motioned for us to turn around. Contrary to advice given by one Customs official, our man in the office insisted that we needed a broker to handle our paperwork.

The word last night was that Greg was considering pulling the pin on the job due to the cost and time associated with the red-tape, however, this morning the decision was made to proceed.

We all went up to immigration to get our visas while our broker went to work. At lunchtime, the call came through from the broker to say that everything was in order. Half an hour later, spirits reinflated, the convoy was back on the move.

We made it past the witches’ hats this time, about 100 metres further into Canadian territory. This time the problem was with the cleanliness of the machinery. Two Customs officers in black flak-jackets came out with extendable wands and pointed at little clumps of mud on the tyres of our ridiculously shiny tractors. They told us that they needed to be cleaner and, what’s more, they needed to be cleaned back in the United States. Once again, we got the signal to turn around.

Coming from Australia, I am familiar with stringent Customs regulations. In one respect I can understand where the Canadians are coming from – they’ve got borders to protect – however some discretion must be shown. From the first bushel that these machines cut, they will never be 100 percent clean again. Mouldy grain, spouting roots in the grain tank is one thing, but a few specks of mud on the tyres of a tractor is another. If we’re being sent back to scrub our tyres, so should every second pick-up crossing the border.

Reality is, the reason we’ve got work in Canada is because they are in desperate need of harvesters and, the way things are at the moment, they’ll be lucky to get their whole crop off. If we’re turned around again tomorrow, Greg will pull the pin on the job. If this happens, quibbling over some dirt will potentially have cost our farmer a lot of money, not to mention Mr and Mrs Maple-Leaf their piece of toast in the morning.

After we’d finished scrubbing the tyres tonight, Andrew summed up our frustration with succinctness that you will only find in the words of a boy from rural Australia.

“If this isn’t good enough, fuck ‘em. They can cut their own wheat. I’m not sure what they’ll use…scissors for all I care”.

For those back home, Scorched, the telemovie I worked on before I left Australia, is due to air on Channel Nine this coming Sunday 31 August at 8:30pm. If you watch carefully, you may see someone you recognise in the press conference scene at the end (apart from Georgie Parker!).

Set in 2012, the story is based on a firestorm that sweeps through a drought-stricken Sydney. The script is pretty two dimensional, but that's what everyone needs on a Sunday night! It's directed by Tony Tilse of Underbelly fame, has a strong cast, and, from what I hear, boasts some pretty good special effects. I hope you can tune in.

Click here to check out the website.

Task of the Day

Task of the day was washing down the headers. We've spent two full days getting all of the machines spotless before we cross the boarder.

We'll set off tomorrow for Minot, North Dakota (about 200 miles north) where we've got to have one of the combines serviced. On Sunday we'll move up to Kenmore just south of the Canadian boarder, so that we can get there early Monday morning. We'll spend about half a day at the boarder being processed and inspected.

Rolling Out of Faulkton, SD

The crew was split up yesterday, two combines being sent to Hallock Minnesota. Ron and I will be taking our trucks and the two remaining combines North-West to Canada, about 300 miles north of the boarder in Saskatchewan. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of going to a different country.

I've been wanting to get a video of the crew on the move for a while. Scuba, Andrew, Christian, Ron and I are staying in town for a couple of days before we leave, so I ran up the road a bit and got my video. Lars and I swapped trucks before the boys left, which I was a bit pissed about. His truck is a newer and more comfortable 2005 Columbia Frieghtliner but it doesn't have the character or rumble of 'number six', a 2000 model.

Lars and #6 roll out first, followed by Timmy in #9, both hauling combines and grain trailers. Paul is in the third truck blearing his horn, towing the grain cart. Turkey comes by forth, towing the 8-bed bunkhouse. And Dan is bringing up the rear in the service truck, towing the two headers (the things on the front that cut the wheat!).

Killing Time In The Field

It occurred to me the other day as I drove by Scuba Steve (England) brandishing a rifle, that I'm no longer amazed when I see a gun. Our foreman Brian (the other guy in the video) keeps both his and Paul's rifles on the back seat of his pick-up. If things are running slow, he'll pull one out for some target practice. In this case, they were shooting at a bottle. You can't actually shoot game unless they're in season, even though many, like deer, are overpopulated. They take poaching pretty seriously. If they catch you, you get thrown in jail.

Pheasant hunting is really big around Faulkton. Pheasants are everywhere at the moment. The season will open in a couple of months. As the boys are cutting, the birds will run out of the crop. Apparently, during the season, hunters will stand on the edge of the crop with their shotguns and pick them off as they make a run for it.

The Five Thurman Combines Working in Scott City Kansas

Pauly (Ohio) took this pic of the boys in the back of the grain cart trying to fix something. The booms above them are unloading augers of two combines. Left to Right Andrew (Aus), Brian (our foreman from Denmark) and Timmy (Aus).

City Boy on a Tractor

Ashley from Faulkton rode with me and Timmy for an afternoon while we were unloading trucks into a farmer's silos. I love taking pics but it means that I'm rarely the subject, so it was nice to get a few action shots of us working.

Timmy's quite knowledgeable about tractors. He thought it was an early 60s model. Amazingly, it still runs. The farmer uses it to drive an auger that we put under the trucks to elevate the grain into the silo.

Sunset From the Top of a Silo in Faulkton SD

Kellie Pickler Concert

Timmy and I rocked out with a bunch of 14 year-old groupies the other night at the Brown County Fair in Aberdeen South Dakota. They were there to see Kellie Pickler who’s pretty big on the country music circuit over here.

It was also the first night out for my new Durango cowboy boots. The boys were pretty supportive of the purchase. Pauly chipped in a dinner plate belt buckle to complete an ensemble which had me looking the most country of all the boys.

It was a great night. The town received a big dump of rain just before the concert so the arena turned to mud. I didn’t want to get mud all over the Durangos, so I followed the lead of some other revelers, ditching the boots and hitching up my jeans.

Tim and I spent the later half of the night trying to get through the cordon in front of the stage. We managed to get in during Kellie’s last song and arrived down the front just as the 14 year-olds started calling for an encore rendition of one of Kellie’s better know songs “Red High-heels”. We joined the chant and got a posi next to a young cowboy wearing a ‘Marry Me Kellie’ t-shirt. Kellie came back and it was high-fives all around.

If I arrived at the show a cowboy, I left a metrosexual. I managed to dig some pink thongs out of the mud, which I wore out of the pit, and my workingman’s feet were left soft and supple from all of the mud. As I’ve said before, I’m in the nation of paradoxes.

Post Concert Beer With Christian (Denmark)

Mud Pit at the Kellie Pickler Concert

Me and Timmy (Coonamble NSW) getting ready for a road trip from Julesberg Colorado to Fort Collins Colorado (Sun July 13). We had about four days off.

The sweatbands are a classic example of a Walmart purchase - you buy it because you can.

A trip through the elevator

This vid is a bit lengthy but it you'll get a good idea of what I do when I go through an elevator. This facility in Mellette South Dakota can process trucks really quickly. I was generally in and out within 20mins.

Those with an ear for detail will notice that I got my weight conversions wrong. The gross weight of my truck on the way in was 110,000 pounds or about 50 tonnes. 35 tonnes was my net weight i.e the amount of grain I hauled in. In terms of the capacity of the freight trains, one grain carriage will hold about 220,000 pounds or about 100 tonnes. A fully loaded freight train has 110 carriages and is nearly 2km in length and will haul nearly 100,000 tonnes of grain to its destination.

Turkey

Turkey assumed his position as crew-clown as soon as he stepped off the plane. During his first few days in town, when asked where he was from, he would reply, “I’m from Barham, New South Wales”. When met with blank looks from locals, he’d add with a reassuring tone, “It’s right on the Murray”.

From day one Turkey asserted that he did not drink beer, starting off on the wrong foot with some of the boys. On his second night in town we went down to the Plum Thicket Inn in Kiowa. I think Turkey was a bit homesick, perhaps starting to realise exactly how far from home he was (flying out of Melbourne was the first time he had been on a plane). He propped himself up at the bar, away from the rest of the group, and flagged a bartender wearing a red Budweiser cap. “I don’t drink beer, I drink bourbon”. “Ok, what are you having?”. “Wild Turkey”, he replied, slapping the bar. And so, ‘Turkey’ was born.

The bartender took a liking to Turkey. Toward the end of the night, we saw him finish off a bottle, giving Turkey two and a half nips, and open up another bottle to round it up to three. Needless to say, Turkey was feeling pretty festive by the end of the night. We had to leave when he started chatting up the wife of the biggest guy in the bar.

Turkey gets more than his fair share of shit from some of the guys. For all of his goofiness, and despite the fact that he can easily get on the nerves, I reckon he’s one of the bravest on the crew simply for his tenacity. His goofiness is best illustrated through this incident recently videoed at the laundrette in Gordon Nebraska.

The Elevator

Going to the elevator is one of the things I enjoy most about driving a truck because it is where you meet people; other truck drivers, many from overseas; the boss-man checking on things at the unloading pit; farmers' wives, many driving semis for their husbands who work the combines out in their fields; the local sheriff who comes in to the office for a chat; the Mennonite farmer driving his 1956 Chevy tip-truck; the 15 year-old kid dumping trucks all summer so that he can buy his first car.

Most towns in the Wheat Belt will have at least one elevator. In a usually sleepy town, the elevator can be a hive of activity for a couple of months of the year, providing employment for many, the means by which the farmer makes a living, and the facilities to distribute a staple product to America and the world.

Many facilities are the same as they were when they were built back in the 40s. In many cases, they are the reason for a town’s existence, whether they established a town or they are what keeps it alive after everything else has closed.

If there are a couple of big crews in town and conditions are good for cutting, it can get pretty busy. The busiest elevators we've seen were in Vernon Texas.

Andrew took this photo while in line. Up to 50 semi-trailers would snake around the backstreets, sometimes spilling out onto the highway, queuing for the weigh-bridge. A lot of the wheat dumped was loaded on to freight trains and transported down to the Gulf of Mexico to be shipped overseas.

We ran into a lot of problems in Texas because the trucks could not dump the combines fast enough, meaning that we’d have to stop cutting. What could have been a 45 minute round trip was taking up to four hours in some cases. Frustratingly, the elevators were disorganised and underequiped for the volume of crop this year.

I’m hoping to put up a video shortly to show exactly what happens when I go through the elevator…

Mount Rushmore Pics

Abraham Lincoln






















George Washington

Fast Food Nation

Telling people back home about my journey, it’s amazing how many made comments along the lines of “you’ll get buff”. Well, the opposite is proving to be true. I think many have the idea that I’m over here wandering around wheat fields with a scythe, threshing grain with my hands. Reality is that I sit in a truck for up to 15 hours a day writing stuff like this in my down-time.

Inactivity being one enemy, American food is another. The food we’re provided on the job is great because it’s home cooked and there's a lot of variety. It’s the down-time eating that’s the killer. It’s an exhausted fact, but it is just too easy to buy junk food in this country. Or rather, it is hard to find nutritious food.

If you go to a restaurant, every meal will come with some sort of potato, which can be fried five different ways: French fries, American fries, waffle fries, hash browns or crisps.

Salt and sugar is addictive, which make’s the problem self-perpetuating; the more you have, the more you want; water just doesn’t cut it when it comes to washing down a Double Quarter Pounder.

One night a couple of weeks ago in Scott City Kansas, the neon signs got the better of me. Each time I drove past Dairy Queen, my mouth would water at the thought of an M&Ms Blizzard. Despite being pressed for time, I gave in on one of my last runs; I parked the truck diagonally across the carpark, and ran into the place like a little kid running for the toilet at the service station.

Alarmed by the prospect of having to buy new sets of pants and shorts, I bought some scales the other day. However, I got my weight conversion wrong. Weighing in at 195 pounds, I spent a whole day quietly freaking out about the fact that I’d put on 15 kilos (logic didn’t really kick in). It was in fact only five kilos.

In his book American Journeys, Melbourne author Don Watson points out that as a visitor to America it is easy to become obsessive about staying thin. For the first time in my life, in the Fast-Food-Nation, birthplace of the Big Mac and home of the one litre cup, I am snacking on raw carrots (Watson also points out that this is a nation of paradoxes).

Haswell, Colorado

Ron took this photo. I like it because illustrates our experience of Haswell Colorado. Most of the crop that we cut there was drought stricken. Compared to the dense wheat of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, the land was desolate.

An east-west railway line divides the town. Everything south of the line has been in drought for several years. Amazingly, they just don’t get much rain on that side of the tracks.

Flies were about the only animals left living on the land and they were pissed off about it. They had a manic intensity about them. They’d assemble in a pack, surround you and then bite, often forcing a retreat into the truck.

The crop being so light, it took ages to fill a truck (a whole day in one case). For me, it was a great time to catch up on sleep, read, takes some pics. We’d been running pretty hard the previous five weeks, so the rest was welcome.

From day one, my journey has been full of rich characters, usually people defined by their imperfections. Coming in contact with these people evokes intrigue and admiration. Regardless of what makes them imperfect - whether they drink or smoke or swear a lot, hold the odd prejudice, or bend the rules – what most have in common is that they are genuine.

Authenticity is something that I aspire toward. It is particularly hard to achieve if you are different within a subculture with a strong status quo, which is exactly my situation. And, saying this, many of the characters that I’m meeting fit in well because they are rebels, a celebrated persona in the country and I think especially so amongst harvesters.

As for how I’m going, I think pretty well. As I’ve said before, I think there exists a mutual respect between the country and city boy. However, I am on their turf. I do get frustrated every now and then when things of interest to me do not register at all with the other guys. They do come to me for camera advice though.