Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Flying Out
















I'm out of here tomorrow. I'm flying back to the coast in order to bring you more photos of palm trees and Coral Sea ripples.

I've loved my stay in the outback and with any luck I'll be back. It's uncertain, of course. But I don't feel it's time to throw my boots up in a tree and head on out of here barefoot. Not just yet.





















PS - If you look closely, you'll see that there are quite a few pairs of boots up there. It used to be the tradition that the last thing you would do before leaving the mine forever was throw your boots up into a tree. Eventually, management sent around a memo asking everyone to please stop doing that, and I think the practice has died out. However they didn't go to the trouble of cutting down all the boots that were already up in trees, so it is possible to see some really weathered boots hanging up all around the camp.

2 comments:

tunabake said...

so you really want to go back? what is the type of work you are doing there? It will be nice to see the sea again though and breath in that cool air. looking forward to more photos.
claire
xx

Naomi said...

Yeah ... there were lots of things I liked about it, even though I hated leaving Hayden home alone.

I've always loved travelling, and I like getting away from the rest of civilisation. I loved the outback landscape; I loved the quiet and the feeling that there's nothing but trees and grass for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. I liked the work, which was to do with helping the miners out with their paperwork and their mammoth 24 hour every-day-of-the-year roster. I even liked working every day, cos when every day's the same I start to notice the good things in each one.

I know that when you hear the word 'mining' you will probably think first of the environmental degradation. But it seems to me that there are a lot worse things done to the earth and to other people in the name of profit. Actually, I think that digging an enormous hole in the middle of nowhere is a pretty honest sort of a way to make a living, in the scheme of things.

I want to go back again, but just one time cos I think that that's about all that Hayden can take. It's definitely harder on the one left home alone.