In those days, Eustace hadn't dreamed she'd go on to become a speed-freak skeleton racer tearing down luge tracks at 130kmh.
She hadn't dreamed she would find such a snail-paced job as an onion-turner on a local farm, either.
"If you don't know what it is, then I'm not surprised," she says.
"To grow onion seed they plant onions in long rows, every 20cm or so in a ploughed paddock. They lay them out with a potato roller, which means they don't all end up the right way up.
"So that is where my job came in. We had to lie face down on a flat-bed trailer with our heads and hands reaching down over the edge being towed behind a tractor and turn every onion the right way up so the shoots would face upwards and grow. So you end up staring at the ground for days!"
Some of the local people I had just met were looking for workers and when you're travelling and haven't earned money for a while, it's good to take job offers as they come to you.
So I just thought I should give it a go.
"The main reason why it was so awful was because it was so tedious and repetitive and it seemingly never ended.
"So there were three of us lying on the back of the trailer and discussing the fact that the tractor driver got it pretty easy sitting in his cab just driving along.
"We all decided that as that was the best part of the job, we should suggest that we should all rotate.
We would make a stand against the tractor driver, speak our minds - how it would be good to share the chores - and all have a turn driving the tractor.
It was kind of exciting for a girl who hadn't spent much time on a farm."
"That's when you learn the grass is not always greener on the other side . . . You couldn't wait until your turn on the tractor [and then] you realised . . . you had no-one to talk to.
"At least on the back of the trailer you could chat with your mates as you were going along. In short, being on the tractor was even duller."
`I don't think it necessarily helped me as a physiotherapist other than just being aware that there are many jobs out there that you really have no idea exist and someone has to do them.
"Would I do it again? Yeah, probably.
"Has it helped me as a skeleton racer? It makes me realise that I am very lucky to be doing what I am doing. Many people would not get the opportunities that I get, especially if onion turning was their full-time job.
"Funnily enough, it was how I met my partner, Simon [Bowden]."
Eustace is spending this summer racing and training in the northern hemisphere, with the goal of making the New Zealand team for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February.