I thought three months fruit picking on a gaynudist farm in rural Australia seemed like a good idea at the time. Naked farming might pose a few health and safety risks but just think of the tanning opportunities.
My girlfriend and I had only just arrived in Oz but were keen to stay as long as possible, so we decided to get WWOOFing out of the way early on. As a lesbian couple we were worried we might encounter hostility in the countryside and, although we aren’t nudists (in fact we’re both dedicated followers of fashion), this particular place sounded suitably liberal.
Naked homosexual farmers surely wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a couple of dykes with hoes.
We waited at the miniscule airport to be collected and nervously watched all the other passengers leave. Had we been forgotten? Were we stranded in the Outback?
Finally a dusty 4WD rolled up and out shuffled the thinnest man I had ever seen. Small, grey and long-suffering, this was the farm’s resident WWOOFer and the owner’s dogsbody.
Over the following week it became clear not only that the farmer’s skinny sidekick was an enthusiastic nudist, but also that he mistakenly assumed we were too. He even generously invited us to a nudist dinner party.
We politely declined, realising the high probability that we would be the only guests and the definite fact that our host would be a small naked old man. It would be a bizarre sexless threesome served with hors d’oeuvres.
As the tiny man helped us with our bulging backpacks we were introduced to the boss, a huge American queen obsessed with telling us the monetary value of every building we passed. He was also fond of braying about the cuteness of boys and their butts.
Back at the ranch we met the final member of the household, the farmer’s lodger and live-in rent boy, not that he paid any rent, Mozzie. Like his namesake he was an irritating pest. Wide-eyed and snaggle-toothed, he asked uncomfortably personal questions and tried to video us on his camera phone.
Possibly in an effort to assert his heterosexuality (a pointless exercise as we already knew he was sucking off the boss), he asked me one day if I would like to see a picture of a girl he’d slept with the previous night. I said okay and he thrust his mobile in my direction.
Instead of the smiley head-and-shoulders shot I was expecting, this photo was full-frontal, X-rated and cropped so you couldn’t even see her face. He was really starting to bring out my man-hating lesbian side.
Sadly that wasn’t our only brush with porn at the farm. One evening we were hiding in our bedroom trying to watch the ancient TV. None of the channels worked except the one that played DVDs. The disc that was in was gay porn classic, Every Poolboy’s Dream. Luckily we had brought a deck of cards.
The only benefit to “working” at such a ramshackle establishment was that there was very little actual work involved. It went unnoticed when we sunbathed and chatted, probably because everyone was so caught up in the bizarre real life soap opera that was taking place around us.
There were construction workers on the farm during our stay, renovating an outhouse. Like us and everyone else there they did no work.
In fact one of them, married with children, allegedly stole a cement mixer from the farm. The big boss found out and after much hysteria forgave him. The other workmen told us he only kept his job because they were having an affair.
Initially we had planned to stay for the full three months. But faced with the twisted reality of life on the farm, we lasted one week and then escaped on the first plane that would get us out of there and back to Sydney.
