The Idler

Honey Bear

I am still haunted by the memory of my day filling plastic Koala bears with honey. .

Warily I cast my mind back to Australia, 1987. Stuck in Perth with no money and a broken down van, I had no alternative. “Job in a honey factory, you say?” Ok, it didn’t sound as appealing as a day down the beach lying next to a board and pretending to be a surfer, but with nice thoughts of sweet smells, bee hives and flowers evoked I took the job.

The factory was a small wooden hut, and we stood there for hours, screwing on lids, sticking on labels and packing boxes. And we did it slowly. Really bored, slowly. But in our own ways we were happy, at least we were until it was our turn to work the honey machine. .

The honey, you see, had to be heated up to make it runny. Then it was pumped from a big vat out the back into a giant silver funnel. You sat below the funnel, using a foot pump to release bursts of honey into the plastic Koalas. Simple, except that the honey was pumped into the funnel quicker than it could physically be released into the bears. There was a mirror above you so you could keep an eye on your honey level, and as soon as it got near the top you had to run round the back and switch off the pump. Except that you kept forgetting.

Just as you were finding a subconscious rhythm on the machine, allowing your mind to wander away from honey bear land, the sweet stuff would hit you from above. Cascading from the honey heavens, the goo was merciless. You’d be buried in a sea of stickiness in seconds. Then it would keep on pumping all over you, all over the floor, under the doors and out onto the street, until someone got to the pump. It was horrible, and it was all over your head, in your eyes, up your nose, down your trousers, everywhere. .

It took about an hour to clean up a dreaded honey overflow, and we lost several hours of production that day. In all I think I earned about �10, Several days later I cut short my trip and returned home, still traumatised and slightly sticky in places.

Jim Drewett