Hard yakka lifts fitness
LIFTING up to 60 bags of concrete mix weighing 20kg each and spending eight hours on his hands and knees is gruelling work but for Cam Mcgill, the “hard yakka” beats an office job any day.
Running his own business – Townsville Kerbing and Landscaping – is like smashing a solid eight-hour gym session every day, so it’s no wonder his job was recently named one of the toughest in Australia.
With a recent study by Mercury Cider revealing the toughest – and most physically and mentally demanding – jobs in Australia, Mr Mcgill has actually done three of them.
Growing up in a small country town in Victoria, the now-32-year-old father of three worked from a really young age on his family’s dairy farm.
“I worked on the farm my whole life until I was 16; I remember getting up with Dad at 4am to milk the cows before school and footy in the morning,” Mr Mcgill said.
He said his parents instilled a good work ethic in he and his younger sister Cassidy – who many people would know as being one of the contestants on reality TV show Love Island last year.
“I started getting paid for doing jobs around the farm from age 12. I’d be loading the hay bales and my sister would be driving the ute up to the hay stack. We were busy but we were looked after.”
In 2006 he packed up and joined the defence force in Townsville – another one of the toughest jobs identified in the survey.
“Even in the army, I could never sit inside so we’d do our theory work outside if we could,” Mr Mcgill said.
After leaving the army after six years, he moved back to Victoria and started his own earthmoving business for a few years, before he, his wife and three young daughters moved back to Townsville.
These days, he works alongside a small crew doing kerbing and landscaping around the region, where he says his job is even tougher in the summer months.
“It’s pretty tough. You’re making mixes, you’re on your knees for eight hours a day trowelling, making mixes and by lunchtime you’re starting to cramp in your hammies,” Mr Mcgill said.
To take care of his muscles, he tries to stretch before he hits the tools first thing in the morning, finishes the day with a stretch or a swim and once a month books in a massage.
“It’s hard yakka for sure, particularly up here, you’ve got to get the job done quick and get out of the sun,” Mr Mcgill said.
“The bigger kerbing jobs, you're lifting between 30 and 60 20kg bags up to the trailer then once it’s mixed you’re pushing the wet cement in the wheelbarrow to where you’ve got to spread it.
“Even talking about it makes me wonder why I picked this career,” he laughed.