00:00It's a cool morning at the Bort Caravan Park where grey nomads Geoff and Val are waking
00:14up from a long night.
00:17The couple from Western Australia have been picking olives in the small Victorian town.
00:24They work from midday until midnight.
00:28In their late 60s, early 70s they're happy to do so.
00:32What is it about this type of work that you like?
00:35Stress free, go home, leave in eight weeks.
00:40Val was a telephonist in PNG in her early years.
00:43She also worked in pharmacies and delis.
00:46Through his life Geoff has been a mechanic, farmhand, truck driver and jack of all trades
00:52which has come in handy.
00:54You just come to work, sit on the machine, you fix it, something major goes wrong, somebody
01:02else comes and does it for you.
01:06It's not stressful or anything, some days it is.
01:10Ruth Sutherland is in charge of over 300 staff on this olive grove and she says they actively
01:16recruit grey nomads.
01:17Yeah, the grey nomads are cool.
01:20So we have a nice group, our harvest staff are generally made up of a group of grey nomads
01:25and the rest are backpackers and the grey nomads generally, some of them have been coming
01:31here for a long, long time, well over a decade and they're just really reliable, they're
01:36very experienced, they're a good part of our team and it's nice to have that mix of people
01:40and cultures actually at the farm while we harvest.
01:43Ruth says employing an older workforce has a lot of advantages including being gentle
01:48with the millions of dollars worth of machinery.
01:54And she encourages more people to apply, however it's not all roses, they do expect you to
02:00work long hours.
02:0112 hour days, 5 days a week, but really it's just being open to being trained and then
02:09just being attentive on your job and communicating with us when you need help because we're always
02:15supporting all our team 24 hours a day, they're harvesting and we've got people out there
02:18supporting the machines, we've got mechanics, technical staff, operations staff, so everyone's
02:23there to make sure that we support our harvest staff.
02:26Why do you think the employers like you?
02:29We're here for the 8 weeks and they don't have to worry about us too much, maybe our
02:34age too, we're pretty consistent on coming back.
02:42Just with all our life experiences, we look after the machines fairly well and we don't
02:53party every night.
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