Trevelyan’s The Place

Well it’s been a long time since we have put a post up and many will be wondering “where the bloody hell are ya”. Where?…. This year Aotearoamer is parked up at Trevelyan’s Pack and Cool Stores…. Why?… because we are sick budgies looking for a different perspective in life, we just want to remind ourselves of what working is like and working is exactly what you do in these packhouses. Last year we experienced the kiwi fruit season in Gisborne and had an absolutely awesome time with our dear friends Ian & Tui Harrington. What a blast that was… worked our butts off for a few months… ate well and drunk even better lol.

But this year it is Trevelyans Pack and Cool Stores at Te Puke with good friends Jim and Tristine Cooke…. what an amazing place…. huge site. Jude started off in the weights and counts… it’s sort of auditing the packed boxes making sure the fruit is the correct weights and numbers. Myself I started in the Bin Tip which is where the fruit is loaded onto the conveyer belts… sounds straight forward but what a operation it is, so complexed.
“NEK MINIT” Covid-19 Lockdown and nowhere to go…. trapped in Trevelyans Campground with quite a few others… no problem though as we’re still working and it’s a three minute walk to work. Lockdown is pretty serious shit people and to meet the requirements under the Governments “Marshall Law”, they recruited myself to lead a Covid-19 Team because of my 36 years experience as a Paramedic, who then recruited Jude for her experience plus 9 others for the newly formed team. Our job… well it started off as a staff wellness thingy as well as helping staff understand and comply with social distancing and personal hygiene. There was no clear cut role and so it was a dynamic role that kept morphing into many other areas such as auditing allocation registers for contact tracing, assisting security to police the social distancing, assisting with ideas to improve on Covid-19 systems already in place or not yet thought of. Our roles are mainly under the H&S Manager and I have to admit I am learning so much off him, he’s a good operator and very supportive to our team… not often you can say your manager has your back. Anyway let me tell you about Trevelyans’s, we first heard of this place last year when our friends Jim and Tristine told us about it. We had already committed ourselves to NZ Fruits in Gisborne which we have written a post about already, so when the opportunity came up Jude and I drove to Te Puke for a visit. We arrived at midday and Jim and Tristine were on days off giving them a chance to show us around, as soon as I walked into the canteen I fell in love with the place, it was big and full of amazing smells, the food displayed was really up my alley…. yum.

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The other thing that caught my attention was when the workers walked off the shed floor they were all smiling, laughing and chatting…. a far cry from NZ Fruits and that’s no reflection on the workers more the management and pressure they’re under. This year as we all know, is the year of “MEGA-GERM”🦠, the viral version of the global killer meteor, the Microbial Psychopathic Maniac we now know and fear as Corona virus aka “Covid-19”. Ok enough of the corona crap… conspiracy theory or just one hell of a natural genius of a virus it’s here and we have to deal with it. Now Trevelyans as I said is one awesome place to spend a season packing kiwi fruit and although the owner James Trevelyan wants his pound of flesh when you are employed, he makes sure you have a lovely environment to work at. It must be difficult having a limited time to get thousands of bins of fruit packed in time to meet a time limited market demand. I will say one thing about James Trevelyan that impressed me…. he didn’t know me from a bar of soap but I found him very pleasant to talk to. Being realistic his interest was in making sure production was maintained throughout Covid-19 which meant the bonus was continued employment for anyone that was prepared to work or needed work for a variety of reasons, so all round it was a win win for all. Being of Covid-19 Team and especially Team Leader wasn’t exactly making me friends with employees as the role of my team and I was to constantly be on the tail of those that breached the Covid-19 policies and our routine of indicating with your arms to move apart and holding two fingers up to indicate 2 meters become so repetitive it could almost be turned into a dance routine by adding music. The push back by some was often aggressive with snarls, evil glares, threats and some photographing you if they thought you were standing too close to someone hoping for a opportunity to crucify you or one of the team… petty pricks they were. As time went on most were accepting of the way it was, however at the same time you could see their tolerance levels were fading and in all honesty so was our team stamina. The consistent in ya face policing was slowly taking its toll on the team, although we are determined to see it through, the last weeks were starting to show some cracks in our resilience… yep the employees were getting tired of the tight policies and we were psychologically tired as well…. “come on Jacinda, end the lockdown”!

Date 14/05/2020 and Level 2 is here, the team and I are running around changing all the signage, remarking the seating and tables in the canteen and outside areas, plus changing hundreds of 2 meter distancing signs to 1 meter. The main shifts are off for a few days as the site gets ready to go from gold kiwi fruit to the green kiwi fruit so a great opportunity to make all those changes I mention which also means we don’t get the time off. It’s been an awesome experience so far, Jude and I have really learnt a lot about human behaviour in these environments. Trevelyan’s Pack and Cool Stores have done an outstanding job making sure that the Packhouses remain open, which keeps over a 1000 people employed. The whole management team has done an amazing job along side security and especially our Covid-19 Team who being at the forefront, engaging the employees, taking the angst from all corners have done an outstanding job and I’m proud to have been their Team Leader, these girls we affectionately call “Curly Sue”, “Ady”, “Serious Cheryl”, “Ms B”(Brigitte) and “Happy Jude” are an amazing group just thrown together that developed into a tight unit and why is that an achievement… because we had nothing in common, from different walks of life and different personalities, different full stop…. awesome. Level 1 arrives and so did Princess Cindy (PM Jacinda Adern) whom sent some of the Trevelyan’s management into an excited spin, I visualised them as cartoon characters running around in figure 8’s waving their arms yelling in squeaky voices “The princess is here, the princess is here” (ok I’ve got an imagination) but it looks like the end of Covid-19 and of course employees at Trevelyans will be celebrating…. not just because Covid-19 has been rid of but that means our team will be rid of as well…. yep we are to be removed from the face of the earth and banished to the depths of history not worthy of a place of mention…. except for our blog of course.

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Now it’s time to enjoy the full nine month long weekend before returning next year. We’ve manage to keep our sanity because of the wonderful team we worked with and the guys that shared the camp with us. To many to name but as a special mention to good mates Jim and Tristine and new friends Bill and Gael Black whom I called “The Publicans” whom lived in a caravan directly across from. Almost every night Bill would light the fire in his 9kg LPG cylinder converted into a brazier and we would all sit around the warmth of the fire BBQing mussels, sausages, steaks, onions….. well anything BBQ’able actually and washed down with a cold beer, wine or whiskey. Yep life this year was hard lol… but the old saying goes “Life is hard… but harder if you’re stupid”.