If you haven’t been there, I can’t think of any reason why you’d have heard of Moriarty. It sounds like an artistic graveyard. It was for the remains of thousands of broccoli plants that I cut there. I went to a remote farming village in Tasmania, Australia for a little broccoli harvesting! When I asked my workmates Hayley and Curtis (a local) where the city centre of Moriarty is, they pointed to a “community hall” and a Fire Station. Welcome to Moriarty. It’s basically a village of farms east of Devonport in Australia.
On my second day of broccoli cutting I was driven out to Moriarty. There I first worked with Greg, who would work with me in Tasmania right until the final day there, some 4 and a half months later at a wet cauliflower field in Ambleside.
It was a wet day, a not so fine introduction to farming life. I didn’t own a pair of Wellington Boots (or Gum Boots as Australians will have you call them) and on the first day (a very hot blistering summer’s day) I had borrowed a pair from Hayley at Work Direct (the agency I joined in Devonport). However that pair were far too small and tight and hurt my feet. So I had already ditched them in favour of my trainers.
Now wearing trainers in a rain drenched broccoli paddock isn’t a good idea. Your feet get soaked, they get cold, and at the end of the day I had written off my pair of trainers and a pair of socks. Not to mention the fact that my once fashionable jeans were condemned as well, though I dragged them out to last me until the end of my farming time in Tasmania.
I worked with a local girl there, Christi Emery, who explained to me that she can see her house from the broccoli paddock! Christi lived a busy life, spending her days on farms, and her spare time riding horses and going to motorbike tournaments.
Jonny Blair is a self confessed traveling nomad who founded and blogs at Don’t Stop Living. He sees every day as an adventure. Since leaving behind his home town of Bangor in Northern Ireland ten years ago he has traveled to all seven continents, working his way through various jobs and funding it all with hard work and an appetite for travel. Don’t Stop Living, a lifestyle of travel’ contains over 1,000 stories and tips from his journeys round the globe. He wants to show others how easy it is to travel the world, give them some ideas and encourage them to do the same but most of all he aims to constantly live a lifestyle of travel. He is currently based in Hong Kong and on Twitter @jonnyblair.
