Retirees take up farm work to become a much-loved part of Australia’s seasonal workforce

Just don't fall. It's a cool morning at the Board Caravan Park where Grey nomads Jeff and Val are waking up from a long night. The couple, from WA have been picking olives in the small Victorian town. They work from midday until midnight. In their late 60s, early 70s, they're happy to do so. What is it about this type of work that you like stress free? Go home, leave in eight weeks. Val was a telephonist in PNG in her early years. She also worked in pharmacies and delis. Through his life Jeff has been a mechanic, a farmhand, truck driver and Jack of all trades which has come in handy. You just come to work, sit on the machine, you fix it, you something major goes wrong and somebody else comes and does it for you. That's yeah, it's not, it's not stressful. Or am I? Some days it is. Ruth Sutherland is in charge of over 300 staff on this olive Grove and she says they actively recruit grey nomads. Yeah, the grey nomads are cool. So we have a a nice group. Our harvest staff are generally made-up of a group of grey nomads and the rest are are backpackers. And the grey nomads are generally, some of them have been coming here for a long, long time, well over a decade. And they just really reliable. They they're very experienced. They're a good part of our team. And it's nice to have that mix of, of people and cultures actually at the farm while we harvest. Ruth says employing an older workforce has a lot of advantages, including being gentle with the millions of dollars worth of machinery. And she encourages more people to apply. However, it's not all roses. They do expect you to work long hours, 12 hour days, five days a week. But really it's just being open to being trained and then just being attentive on your job and communicating with us when when you need help because we're always supporting all our team 24 hours a day. They're harvesting and we've got people out there supporting the machines. We've got mechanics, technical staff, operations staff. So everyone's here to make sure that those we support our our harvest staff. Why do you think the employers like you, we're here for the 8 weeks and then they don't have to worry about us too much Yeah, maybe our age too. We're pretty consistent. I don't coming back yeah and oh, we're just with all our life experiences that's. We'll look after the machines all fairly well and we don't party every night.