A second batch of fruit pickers from Vanuatu arrive in Darwin. Although the mango harvest season has already begun, growers are anxious that these pickers will be quarantined for two weeks.
Ahead of lunch on October 13, a second group of 160 seasonal fruit pickers from Vanuatu finally arrived in The city of Darwin on Australia's northwest coast.
If Australians can still eat juicy mangoes this season, they will thank the pickers for it.
The pickers got off the plane, into the bus convoy, and would be sent directly to the quarantine area of Howard Springs for two weeks.
Although the harvest season for mangoes has already begun.
These seasonal workers pay for their own airfare and $2,500 in quarantine fees, not taxpayers.
Growers say their arrival is to "save" the mango harvest.
Mango is the largest high-end horticultural crop in the region, worth more than $100 million.
Largely new industries like tourism are in trouble due to border closures, and this cash-strapped region cannot afford to lose harvests on crops.
During the normal season, about 1,000 workers need to pick mangoes, sort or work in the packing shed.
Although Sydneyisers have free access to the Northern Part of Australia starting on Friday, New Zealanders will also enjoy the same free right of way from Friday.
Fortunately, vanuatu has no cases of COVID-19.
Nino Nisfro of Catherine, the nation's largest mango grower, said: "It doesn't make sense to anyone. But we still isolated them on the farm. ”
"Vanuatu has zero COVID-19 cases, and the city of New South Wales and Sydney can't do it, but they have to quarantine."
The last batch of fruit pickers arrived from Vanuatu early last month and, after two weeks of quarantine, completed the heavy mango harvest in rural Darwin.
Traditionally, backpackers have been the backbone of the mango picking army, but this year it was not. Australia has been losing ground in the island's fight against the epidemic, but efforts to attract Australians to do the picking have failed.
The NSW Government has launched an initiative to call native Australian pickers heroes. But the tough marketing strategy didn't provoke a swarm of any patriots, especially in the heat wave of rising temperatures.
The temperature in Catherine had reached 41 degrees Celsius on this day.
The arrival of the second batch of aircraft, although delayed, is still a sight to look forward to for high-end growers.
The Pacific Islands Seasonal Workers Program is a hastily developed policy by the Australian federal government to save mangoes and many other horticultural crops across the country.
But after Vanuatu's first fruit pickers arrived by plane, the program stalled and stalled. The arrival of today's second pickers, though a few weeks late for most growers, still has the potential to save the situation.
More than 300 pickers will harvest from Darwin to Catherine, the main mango-producing region in Australia, and it is hoped that these people will be enough to avoid most of the mango rotting in the orchard.
Australian taxpayers pay very little, and farmers and workers themselves pay most of the cost of flying and quarantine.
So when you see mangoes in supermarkets in major Australian cities again, be sure to remember the Vanuatuans who saved Australia.
It's a beautiful story of vanuatu people on a mission to save Australia's mango harvest, and they will create the Catherine era for the first time.
Source: Vanuatu Travelogue public number
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