One of the last backyard mango pickers, Henry Petersen has spent 45 years harvesting Australia's favourite fruit

ABC NEWS (Australia)

It's been a late season for mango growers across Queensland with an early flowering and weather events causing havoc. Despite this, Burdekin backyard mango picker Henry Petersen, pushes on - reflecting on a career doing things the old-fashioned way.

Transcript

00:00 Yeah, I got it. Look at that. Beautiful mango like that going on. Somebody in Sydney could've

00:07 eaten that. Look. The bass is only, that's all they eat, that little bit, and then they

00:12 move on. Why don't they eat the whole mango? There's something about the mango that everybody

00:16 likes. Everyone I deal with, whether it's the chemist shop, the doctor, I don't go anywhere

00:21 to the bank without the mango. That's my trademark. I always give the mangoes away. And I've made

00:26 a lot of people happy. I was in Home Hill at a friend's place and he said, "I'll give you

00:32 a dollar a bucket or something if you pick that tree." I'd never been up a mango tree

00:37 and there was a ladder there. I threw it up and I plucked the whole lot and I said, "This

00:41 is my future career." Keep them in the shed for five or six days. When you take them down

00:46 there on Friday, they'll all be ripe. And when you get up there with a picker, I mean

00:50 you're battling green ants and all that, but that's where the best fruit is. Today, it's

00:54 not as dangerous. I fell out three times. I fell through the roof of a bloke's house.

00:59 Now I'm having breakfast and I landed up on his table on my bum. Nothing happened. Well,

01:04 I touched electricity wires twice, so I shouldn't be here. I really shouldn't be here. The old

01:09 backyard thing hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed out of the backyard picking

01:13 is the trestle. If we're in lawn grass, you can just pluck them down. You don't bruise

01:17 them. But normally you take a bucket up with you and then I'll be picking the low ones

01:21 and doing the same, putting them in a bucket, washing them. Our biggest year ever was 1990

01:26 in Townsville and every tree had about a ton of mangoes on them. And we picked 50,000 trays

01:33 in four weeks. And we made 100 grand each. And that was more than the Prime Minister

01:37 was getting. You see the photos, they cut them in half and they cut them all square.

01:43 The kids love it. They just take the little pieces out. That's a trendy way of eating

01:48 mango. But I like the old in the paddock way, just have a munch. Never in my wildest dreams

01:53 did I think I'd still be picking. At 72 years of age, 45 years later, it's a miracle. And

01:59 I reckon I've got five good years left in me.

02:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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