The Grand Armee

Regular readers will be aware we’ve had many European backpackers helping at Moss Wood over the last year and since the French contingent has been strong, we have alluded to Napoleon’s Grande Armee.

It seems that last year, we had the advanced guard and this year we really do have the Grand Armee because of our 24 pickers, 18 were French. In fact, we’ve never had so many French visitors in Margaret River and they’ve proven to be a friendly and hard working bunch. It’s not uncommon to see large groups of them socialising at various locations in the region and they have occasionally earned the wrath of the local rangers with their camping habits, but not the Moss Wood pickers, of course! We’re not sure whether we could make the same observations about Aussies doing the backpacking thing in the Greek Islands but let’s hope so.

Just as Napoleon picked up other nationalities along the way, so have we. This year we had two firsts – our first Russian, and our first Finn, Henna Rantakangas. Henna, a diminutive soul, with an iron constitution and who has the expected fair skin, is delighted by her grapepicking tan and can’t understand why we keep harassing her about wearing sunscreen.