more from the outback

Ladys and Laddettes and Gents and Gentettes… we are having a rip roaring time here. Since the last time I blogged, which seems like forever ago, much has happened. Robbie Dare, the mayor of the shire and my true boss and the owner of the roadhouse and everything else, has come and gone. He’ll be back again in a week or so, but I’ll tell you more about him later as he is truly a character. This week has been much more interesting and I’ve finally got some photos so you can get an idea of what we’re dealing with here in Bedourie. I’ll just base this bloggerino around those pics and also insert some pics that aren’t mine that will shed some light on Bedourie and all its splendor.



That one above is a picture of yours truly behind the bar. If you’ve looked the Simpson Desert Oasis Roadhouse up on google chances are that you’ve seen a picture of the bar with a few patrons behind it. Well this is a picture of me behind that very bar. Wild, I know.

Another day, just the other day in fact, Robbie took Erin and Bev and I to see the pelicans. This was something truly like nothing else you’d ever see. There’s this lake nearby (when I say nearby I mean an hour or so drive) that fills up during the wet season, which was extremely wet this year. For whatever reason the pelicans always come there to breed and they lay their eggs and then go off in search of fish. They fill up on fish and bring them back 100-200 kilometers and puke up piles of fish for their hatching babies. It really can’t be described, which is why I took pictures and video of everything going on so you can get the full effect. Anyway there are supposedly something like 100,000 pelicans and 300,000 eggs at one point, but of course loads of the eggs don’t hatch or get eaten or the babies die or whatever. You know how nature goes. Anyway, below is a picture of that so you can get a rough idea of what I’m talking about... and below that is a video, which may be even more descriptive as it were. (oooooh... video, aren't we gettin fancy here?) Anyway in the video you can't really tell... but the birds just keep going in the distance for hundreds and probably thousands of meters. It was crazy.





The baby pelicans are truly revolting in that they look like aliens and smell like donkey poo. There are piles of dead fish everywhere and that really doesn’t help with the stench, but take a look at this baby and tell me that it comes from our planet. You can’t.



It is truly bizarre. Robbie Dar drives his car quite fast. The speed limit (yes there is one) is 100 kph and nowadays if you get caught doing 140+ you get your license taken on the spot more or less. Lucky for Robbie when he got caught doing 156 kph years ago this law wasn’t in place and luckily he had already slammed on the breaks from 180 kph, which he was doing before. This was years and years ago though… so that’s understandable. Anyway, the drive out and back from the pelicans was sweet because a good chunk of it was offroad and bumpy and roller coastery and crazy style. Our truck followed somebody on the way there, but on the way back I had to get back to run the bar so Robbie was booking it and flying over humps and bumps and turns. And then it was back to the bar where all the action is. You see – Robbie enjoys his rum and he gets very generous after he’s had a few (although he is very generous to begin with) so one night he bought Erin and I a few beers after my bar shift was over and we had a grand old time sharing stories and everything. He’s got some ridiculous experiences, both from his life and from people he’s met, but those are for another time. Below is a picture (not one that I took) to prove to you that there are people in this town and that the bar does actually get somewhat busy from time to time.



The scenery here is pretty unique and the sunsets are usually amazing.



Anyway that’s all I’m really excited to write about at the moment. There have been plenty of other things going on and I’ve got little notes jotted down about them, but I’m more compelled to show you pictures at the moment. We’ve been really heavy on content and light on visual stimuli lately so let’s turn that around right here. Enough of my boring rambling and get some pics up there! So enjoy please.

Oh and just so you know I’m still working out like it’s my job… I’ve only missed two days so far since we’ve been here so keep a tally. Love you all and miss you!

- Jesse “pictures in lieu of words” Meredith

The Last Few Days of Cairns

Ok ok ok I can do this. A blog. I know what that is. Or at least I used to. I feel like Erin. This is going to be difficult but I think I can spit out something meaningful on this page.

So as most of you know I get very few days off from work so I am running with that as my excuse. Especially since on the boat there is nowhere for me to run so I will take any opportunity I can get to run with anything. So let's see, since my last post I have been working working working. I am now a Rescue Diver which means I got my Stress and Rescue certification. That class was tons of fun. I don't remember if I talked about this already. We spent all week rescuing pretend panicked snorkellers and pretend missing divers. I am pretty good with the panicked snorkellers but not so much with the missing divers. A couple times I swim right over the divers with their bubbles practically floating up in my face and I somehow still don't spot the missee. But a lot of the time I got to take the roll of panickee and my job then is to cause as much trouble for the unfortunate soul charged to pretend rescue me. I lie docile in the water weakly calling for help. As soon as a rescuer gets close I lunge. Reach for the face and remove their mask and throw it far away. If I can pull some hair in the process I do that. Then I want to get their fins off too while trying to pretend drown them (cuz that's what a real panicked snorkeler would do. They would grab onto anything floating and try and pretty much stand on top of them in the water.) Once their fins are lost then they have no chance against me with my fins. After a while I have to let them drag me back to the boat in the life ring. But they are dragging me back to the boat kicking without fins and every so often I will start kicking slightly and surreptitiously in the opposite direction. A few small kicks with my fins will completely counteract their furious kicking without fins and we will begin moving in the wrong direction and the rescuer can't figure out whats going on. Ahhh good times.

Besides that I have slowly moved up the ranks of Trainee Dive Controllers so that I am more or less the senior TDC on the boat. I get to tell people what to do a little more and get more of the cooler responsibilities and fewer of the shit jobs. That all is good and bad. I miss all my friends who were above me in the trainee totem pole. They are gone now since they finished their trainee program and have their Dive Controller certification. But then new peeps come in and can be pretty cool I guess. But now I am just about done with my traineeship. I have five days this coming week where I help out with an Open Water certification class. Then I take my actual Dive Controller class the last week in May. Then I am out of the water and out of Cairns. FINALLY. No that sounds too ecstatic. I have had a fabulous time in Cairns. I love it here way more than Sydney (though I loved the people I lived with in Sydney way more than the people I live with here). I've pretty much decided that all I want out of a job (and life?) is to be able to wear sandals and a tank top if I so please. And I so please quite often out here.

So once I get my professional diver certification I believe I will be heading off to Western Australia. I don't really know right now but my tentative plan is to see the west and then the north and the rest of the East Coast and then Tasmania and then New Zealand before I head back home in Augustish. It will be a lot and I don't know if I can handle it and I wouldn't be too upset if I got stuck again in one of those places cuz I really liked it and couldn't see all the rest. But I really want to get back to the northern hemisphere for at least a little bit of the summer up there. I would not be happy to go straight from cold winter here to cold autumn there.

Let's see what else is going on here...Like I said it's getting colder. The water has dropped a couple degrees in the last couple weeks which is a big big difference. There were about two people on the boat wearing wetsuits at the beginning of this month and that was because they were doing 8-10 dives per day and thats a lot of body heat dissipating without a wetsuit. But now everybody is bundling up in a wetsuit or two.

Besides Australia stuff I spend my time checking up on my Dodgers and my Lakers and my fav The Stanford Vball Team. All are doing well or did pretty well so I am happy. I got to see a Laker game on tv out here which I loved. I would love it a lot more if they could finish off the rockets. I seem to be missing amazing seasons from all my favorite teams. Way to start playing really well as soon as I leave. And I watched the season finale of The Office last night which I thought was just ok. There were some amazing episodes leading up to the finale but there wasn't any good flow to the season ender. Also is Steve Carrell leaving the show? I thought I heard rumors but I don't know. Anyways I won't ruin anything from the finale in case you haven't seen it. Besides that I went and saw Wolverine in the cinema last week. I thought it wasn't all that good. Too many crappy lines and the plot was pretty bad. If you like Hugh Jackman with his shirt off then it might be the movie for you but I just thought they had a lot of cool characters in the movie but they were only in the movie for a couple minutes here and there. I want more mutants! I'm psyched to see Star Trek though I haven't ever really seen any Star Trek tv or movies before. Alright thats enough from cairns dive central. I'm happy to be back in blogdom. Hopefully Jesse and I can pick up the blogpace now that he has internet and I have more days off the boat. Thank you to everyone who has sent emails with life updates or left messages on the blog. I love you all. And

I hate USC

B

Outback Experience

Blog-a-log. What time is it? Blog time! Time for me to write one and time for you to read one. How long has it been? We’ve been away for almost a month… and that’s simply not acceptable. I’m in the outback now so I’ll have time to write, but there’ll probably be nothing to write about. This blog may well encompass everything that we already have and probably will experience. Then again we might get surprised, but based on what we’ve seen thus far, well let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.

Ok – first – the backstory. I can’t remember exactly where we left off last time and since I’m writing this at the house (and don’t have internet here) I can’t check. I’ll just start from when we got back to Sydney and got our relocation campervan. Lindberg was/is up in Cairns. Taylor was/is back in SanFran/Stanford area. Erin and I were heading up from Sydney to Brisbane in a big ole campervan at $5 a day for 3 days. We stopped at various beaches along the way. I body-surfed and got pounded into the sand while Erin struggled (fruitlessly) against the rip currents. We sunbathed and read novels and frolicked in the sand and watched surfers with the high-rises of Brisbane in the distant background. It was neat. Anyway – then we got to Brisbane and realized we had no plans beyond that. So we went to a hostel and figured out we had no money left. Well not no money, but not as much as we would have liked. And I actually had no money because I had to give the campervan people $1000 bond. They refunded it to me, but for some reason it didn’t go through the bank for-ehhh-ver. I had $6 in my bank account for ages. And at the same time my debit card (from the US) expired so I couldn’t even use that. And one night Erin lost her wallet at this internet place and couldn’t get it because it was already closed. And of course all her debit/credit cards and whatnot were in the wallet. And so we lived for a night on the $6 in my bank account and $7 in change that we had in our pockets. It was great – truly a rewarding experience or something like that.

So we decided we needed jobs. So we went a job-searching. Many, if not all, of you know how horrible it is to look for jobs. It is especially bad when you want to get a job without lying to your future employer and you have to tell them you only want to work for 1-2 months and they’re looking for somebody to work a minimum 1-2 years (I tried to apply at the Belgium Beer Café… similar to the Bavarian Bier Café, but not as good). We did get a breakthrough when I asked some girl at the hostel we were staying at about jobs because a job was opening up at the hostel. Erin and I talked to the manager and he said he had to figure some stuff out, but he’d get back to us. In the meantime we went all over the place searching for jobs and got a couple leads. We also came up with the idea that we wanted to experience the outback and that maybe we’d do a farmstay or homestay or whatever you wanna call it. We found loads of places where we could do that, but you don’t get paid for your work. Instead you work 3-5 hours a day for food and accommodation with a family… usually on a farm somewhere sweet. Then we had a breakthrough. Patrick at ‘Travelers at Work’ hooked us up with jobs in Bedourie, Queensland (where we are now) working at the Simpson Desert Oasis Roadhouse. They paid to fly us out here and we’re working in the bar or the motel or the shop or wherever.

So that’s the backstory… and that’s really the whole story. The town has between 90 and 150 people in it at any given time. It has a roadhouse, where we work, with a bar/restaurant and a grocery store and motel/cabin rooms. It has a pub where everybody in the town apparently goes to get drunk almost every night. It has an information center where the lady that works there when asked ‘well what do you do here?’ replies… “well, I mostly work as much as possible. I lead a really low and slow life.” And she was about 27. It has a community center, which Erin and I used today, which is basically a basketball court with holes for tennis poles and nets. It has a pool and artesian spa, which is fantastically out of place but almost unenjoyable due to the ridiculous amount of flies everywhere. We’ve been told a couple cold nights will more or less kill them all so we’re waiting for that. Also you can just hold your breath under the water for as long as possible. No, it’s not that bad… but it is bad. I’m really getting used to the flies. I look like those African kids you see with the flies on their faces because I can’t bother to keep them away anymore. What else does the town have? Hmmmmmm…. Overpriced everything! Groceries cost approximately 2-5 times what you’d normally pay elsewhere in Australia simply because the roadhouse is the only place that sells them and they can charge whatever they want because the nearest store is 200 kilometers or more away.

Erin and I have decided to take this outback experience as an opportunity to really see something new and ridiculous that we’ll never see again and to make some cash. We’re working as much as possible and making a decent wage (and paying next to nothing for accommodation) so we should come out of this with a good chunk of cash. We also decided that since we can’t do anything else, we’re going to get our minds in peak mental condition by reading as many books as possible and our bodies in peak physical condition by working out 4-6 times a week. My legs and shoulders are really sore right now so the latter goal is going well so far. My brain feels fine so the former goal is getting there I guess.

I dunno – I think that’s all. There are actually some funny stories I’ll be able to tell, but I’m tired of writing right now so that’s it and that’s all. I’m sure you’ll be able to deal with it. I’ll try to get some pics asap so you can see what we’re dealing with here. Oh, the Bedourie airport is a shack with a strip of asphalt about as long as you can run while holding one breath surrounded by a fence. I can’t even imagine the windshield of the planes landing in Bedourie… they must be covered in flies. Maybe those bluey glowing electric bug zappers don’t exist here. I think I’ll import them and pile up all the flies I kill and sell them to frog breeders or something. There’s gotta be a market there somewhere.

Ok I’m done-zo. Keep it real.

- Jesse “what are we doing here? Short answer – not much” Meredith