That awkward in-between stage

Hayden has applied for the job (his boss’s job) that he has been acting in for a while now. I have applied for a permanent job out at the zinc mine. We are both waiting to find out what we’ve got before we set a date for our wedding and really get started on the organising of it. In the meantime I’m at home alone during the day, trying to imagine what I will wish I had done with my free time beforehand, if I do end up getting the job I have applied for. Will I wish I had spent the days reading in bed? Will I wish I had gone to more yoga classes or aquarobics? Unfortunately, I am quite superstitious about these things and even though I know that what I spend my time doing this week has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the HR Department decides to give me the job, I’m still pretty sketchy about behaving as though I have already been given it. What to do?

In the meantime, the wet season has started. After about ten months of continuous fine-and-sunny, Townsville is at a sopping standstill once again. Our lounge room is crammed with dripping washing, the stormwater drains are overflowing and our front garden has transformed into a big pond.

Before:







































I was so bored sitting at the bottom of that beautiful waterfall in New Zealand. Hayden has trained me not to expect to hang around too long at any one spot when we are travelling, and plus it was nearly lunchtime so why were we still there?



















After:


































Ohh... cos he was getting the guts up to ask me to marry him.


I said yes, of course.

Back

Back from NZ, and back to work at the zinc mine.

I am working in a different office temporarily, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. When I went to get my cheese and biccies snack from the office fridge, I saw there was a sign on the door: Fridge Pickers Wear Big Nickers.

Not cool.

I will be back here again soon, to tell you of our Christmas adventures.

X Fest Mess

This year I’m calling it X-mas, and not just because it's easier to spell. This year, in contrast to all other years, I’m really noticing the inconsistencies and gross incongruities of it all: the reindeer, the cheery over-dressed fellow handing out presents, the Christian nativity story which, to tell the truth, I never really re-examined since I learned it for the play we did at kindy: a bearded man leads his donkey and his wife down the main street of Bethlehem, they are refused accommodation by two innkeepers before the third one lets them sleep out in the shed; then we see a star and three wise men travelling across the desert, and when we look back to Joseph and Mary, a baby Jesus doll has appeared in the manger! Whatever a manger is. The three wise men then place gifts at the manger’s feet, and all the angels dressed in white bed sheets and bits of tinsel crowd around and sing It’s a Small World After All. I always played the part of an angel, but that seemed alright to me at the time because I liked singing so much better than talking.

It’s pretty obvious that Christmas was never meant to be held in Australia. All those poor scruffy Santa’s in the shopping centres, all the winter food, the bright cosy-making decorations, when quite clearly it is much too hot for all of that. But the parts I do like are the fairy lights on peoples' houses, because it is nice when it’s finally cool enough to go for a walk in the evenings and have a look at what the neighbours have done to their place; and I like the impulse of the family to retreat from the various far-flung places we have strayed over the year, and gather back together around one table at home. The gift-giving thing I actually like as well, even though it does cause a bit of stress in the leading-up. People say that it’s not good to emphasise to children the materialism of getting presents, but I think it’s lovely to emphasise the thoughtfulness and satisfying feeling of giving things away.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we scrapped the current version of X-mas and replaced it with something more climate-appropriate, but I can't really imagine what we would replace it with. I think we're stuck with the mess of X-mas. Hayden and I are extending ours by visiting both our families plus a bit more of New Zealand and a stop in Sydney on the way home. See you after it's all over.

All Photos By Hayden

Hayden has ramped up his triathlon training after deciding to have another crack at the New Zealand Ironman in March next year.

Quite often I find ways to come along and keep him company when he's training (for example, when we cycle on a 2km loop and I "race" him by trying not to let him lap me more than once every round), but yesterday I overstepped the mark entirely by entering a mini triathlon of my own while Hayden stood on the sidelines with the camera.


We swam the tranquil but lilly-infested Aplin’s Weir










cycled off into suburbia








and finished with a short run under the trees.
















I came away tired, but with a renewed appreciation for the riverside parks in the middle of Townsville, plus a brand new appreciation of how difficult it is to swim in a straight line without lane ropes beside you.

And Look!

I've finished my first two sewing projects: the first was a pin cushion, and the second a wrap-around skirt (pictured while hemming was in progress). I'm pretty pleased with both of them; hardly any dodgy unplanned nips and tucks at all!

New Thing

I’ve always found it easy to invest in functional equipment and tools, anything with added usefulness, mechanical parts, or the potential to act as a conduit to creativity. Last time it was a laptop, and this time it is a sewing machine. I love my new thing, but I haven’t yet started on working it out. I’m slightly worried that once I get going, I’ll end up just like the lady who sold it to me, who was wearing a puckery purple home-made skirt suit with appliqué decorations atop each shoulder pad.

I had to go home and watch Pretty in Pink just to get back on track.

A Month of Christmas

I’m not feeling Christmassy yet, even though December is here and that means that the retail prelude is over and the real build-up to Christmas may begin. I learnt today that the word the Finnish use for December translates to ‘Christmas Month’, and I like their dedication and clear statement of the Christmas timeframe. It underlines the point of the advent calendar, which is my favourite Christmas tradition, even though it’s a bit difficult to participate in. It takes a lot of preparation to have an advent calendar that isn’t a piece of crappy cartoon merchandise filled with rubbery low-grade chocolates.

Signs of the more Aussie Christmas are here as well: it’s hot, and there are cherries available in the supermarket. (Also, there are mangoes dripping from every big tree in our street, but mangoes are more a sign of summer, I think, than of Christmas. The two are very separate in my mind). I have taken our Christmas lights out of their rest-of-the-year hiding spot … but I haven’t put them up yet. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. A signed invitation from Rudolf?

Excessive Leisure Shows on Feet

My feet are looking very leisured. Just the other day I had my first ever pedicure, which resulted in blood-red shiny Dracula-style toenails, and then this morning after aqua aerobics class I stood in the sun too long yapping with the other ladies; I came home to find I have a new flip flop tan line across each foot.

More news as it happens ..

Warm again in Townsville today. Warm enough for me to apply cooling peppermint foot lotion all over my arms and legs as well. It worked a treat.

Not altogether sorry to be leaving work

Yesterday was quite warm in Queensland’s North West, and as I showered in preparation for flying home in the afternoon, it got so warm as to be a verging on unpleasant in the tiny airless caravan bathroom. I was not very pleased when I turned on the cold tap and boiling warm water gushed out. The pipe that supplies the camp with water from the bores is laid above ground, which means that it really is impossible to have a cool shower after a hot day. But anyway, when I drew the shower curtain across I found I was sharing with this little frog! Such a cutie, and very clearly as surprised to see me as I was to see her (it must have been a she-frog in the girls showers, no?).

It is hard to permanently dampen my spirits on fly-home day. It is extremely lovely to be home now, and when I arrived I was greeted by so much bounty: for one, our flat seems like a spacious palace compared to the donger I stay in on site, and for another, Hayden has stocked up on all sorts of things I like to eat, plus many extra and extravagant birthday gifts.

Third, we have bounty in our tiny balcony garden: a fat green tomato, three lemons nearly the size of lemon-shaped golf balls, an enormous jalapeno chilli, basil enough to supply the world with pesto and a mysterious something growing keenly out of the compost pot. I have my suspicions about what it is, but I’m going to try to make sure before I tell.

Contrast & Irony

You'll agree it's ironic that the thing most appealing to me about working out at the mine is its surrounding landscape - of course, the landscape is the thing that is most altered by the activity of mining. I've been assuming that you got that.

It did strike me rather bluntly though, this morning as I was clearing all my old photo's off the work computer.

Desert Header

Race Day

I’m not fussed about the Melbourne Cup. I only went to see it once when I was in Melbourne, and only then because I was already living in Flemington – it seemed rude not to slap on my hat and waddle 100m down to the track to watch it in person.

I did catch it on the radio today. I had driven around to the other side of the pit from where the office is, to the West side where the truck drivers sit around in between times, smoking and flicking through FHM. There’s not much over there, just dirt and flies and huge machinery and picnic tables in the 40° sun, so I went directly into the crib hut to see a bloke about the whatsaname, and when I came out, my car was full of miners! About five of them had zoomed in there like flies; they were sitting in silence with the aircon and the race turned up on full. I sat in there and listened with them, but without much interest as I hadn’t even entered the sweep. It cost $50 to enter – and who’s got $50 to throw away on some horse that runs slow? Oh, miners do. People who get paid sh*tloads to work out in the middle of nowhere, that’s who.

Smoky Sunrise

I think I mentioned ages ago that my job at the mine site is finishing up. So why am I sending you a picture of the sun coming up from behind a pile of dirt? Because there has been another bushfire at our door, and it has been making for the most beautiful sunrises.

Like many temp jobs, this one is stretching out just a little longer than anyone anticipated. I think I said at the start that it was only going to be two months..

Bathers

I don’t think I’ve ever been mistaken for a country girl. Actually, I don’t think I would have much fun living in regional Queensland without a few key props from urban life: books, CDs & movies, face cream, coffee beans and the particular multivitamins I like I have sent up especially from Brisbane and Melbourne. But I don’t like to give myself a hard time about it; I spent a good six months when we first arrived here, testing out the products that are available in the local shops, before I gave in and decided that it would be easier and better for everyone if I acknowledged that Townsvillians’ tastes run differently to mine, and that I should just order in what I like.

When it came to bathers, it was pretty obvious that what was on sale in the local shops would not do (totally trashy, cheap and ill-fitting to boot). My current costume was clearly not up to a punishing third season, so the only thing was drive to Cairns for a shopping trip.

It was a lovely trip. One hundred-percent-successful, and the best part was christening my new togs at The Boulders (at Babinda just south of Cairns) on the way home.

The Big Night

All is abuzz at work today. Cars are being washed down, ratty old garden beds are being weeded and all the dust is being blown out of the carpark, because the CEFO is coming to visit. That’s the C-E-Fuckin-O. Last time we had some hob-nobs from the big city to stay, the mine managers decided that it would be nice for them to have sunset drinks at the edge of the pit. The day before the visitors were due to arrive, dozers were brought in to build a special platform and a marquee was put up upon it. Unfortunately, later in the day, the wind got up under the marquee and blew it over the edge and down into the bottom of the pit. Damn. So down they drove, picked up the tent, dusted it off and tried again.

This time they’re going for a simpler look. They're still going to have drinks at the edge of the pit at sundown, and this time they’re serving dinner for the special guests while the operators continue on into night shift. But they’re not putting up no flappy marquee. They’ve parked up a massive Komatsu 830E dumptruck as a windbreak. That’ll do the trick.

The Barbie

My birthday present to Hayden has taken us a step closer to the ultimate Townsville lifestyle. I got him a barbie. I decided on it after a long brainstorming session with a couple of the blokes from work. It went something along these lines:
"Get him voucher for BCF, he'll love ya!"
"Nah... get him a jetski. If a girl got me a jetski, I'd know she was truly committed to the relationship."

After that, a barbie seemed a fair compromise.

What with me being away at work for so long, and a couple of nights earlier in the week being tempered with a bit of wind and rain, it was not until last night that we inaugurated the thing, with a couple of kangaroo steaks and harmless chilli peppers. They were delicious.

Even so, I’m not going to do any more - at present - to propel us further towards the ultimate Townsville lifestyle. I’m shying away from saying the words, because I know that many people from other countries don’t understand how Australians can allow animals from their coat of arms to be farmed and butchered and sold in the shops … let alone actually going out and shooting the roos themselves. Don’t worry everyone, we’ll stop way before we get to that.

No Whingers

Rule number one of blogging is: don’t whinge about work. The previous post notwithstanding, I’m trying my best here to comply with the rule.

I have been working some long hours and some long stints all through September and into October, and so you might surmise (and you’d be right) that I have collected up a good number of niggles, complaints and issues. Just appreciate my self-restraint as I whinge about only one of them.

The sad fact is that I’m not going to get my permanent part time job. It’s not that they have retracted the offer of the job. It’s that they are no longer offering it to me in the form in which it was initially offered. You might say I have been gypped. Apparently, there are no part-time jobs in the mining industry, and apparently there never will be.

I’m not too bitter about it though, actually I’m not that bitter at all. A job that is 50% filing lost, is a whole-lot-of-hours-spent-not-filing gained. I’ve still got a couple of stints to go, before I finish up working for the mine entirely. And now that I know that I definitely won’t be asked to work over Christmas and New Year, I feel I have a lot less to complain about straight up.

Mine Fog

Lovely sunrise this morning. The dry and the dust and the smoke from the bushfires that are headed our way really bring out the colours as the sun peeks over the horizon, and I love the new east-facing window through which I get to see it.

I’m trying not to tell you what I was up to while I was watching the sunrise this morning, Sunday morning. I’d rather you thought I had been out drinking and dancing all night, or perhaps up early for a camping trip or a long drive … but no, I was filing. My new job is extremely heavy on the paperwork, and I was filing before the sun was up.

Just you think yourself lucky.