Saturday 29 October 2016

Life with cows and the Gibb river road

So by now we have worked here on the station for a month and probably will work for another one and a half. As I think I already mentioned, we are working in a station that is like the stop-off before the abattoir. So basically all the bush around the Kimberley region is full of cows, who live totally free for whole of their life, very often not even ever seeing a human being. Then they are mustered in all of the stations. Mostly helicopters, motorbikes and quad-bikes are used for that, as doing it on  foot or even on horses would be too difficult because of the large areas. So the cows come here in big double-decker trucks, we unload them (they have usually been caught not even a week before they get here) and then we process them. If the cows come from tick-infested areas, then we dip them in water, mixed with a solution against ticks. Then all the cows are drafted, which means that we sort them into groups (getting to know some of the groups takes a bit of time, as they have a different name for everyone - we have mickeys, heffers, pot pots, steer, spadejobs, export cows and so on and so on... every category always has sub-categories as well). The main part of my job is getting the cows and bulls from their pens and chasing them down the lane-ways, keeping them moving (coming through the gate one by one for example) and later, when they are all ready to go into the pens (probably different ones that they were in before because we have sorted into new subgroups) then I use the quad-bike to chase them back. For example they may come in as one group but be taken back as four or even six different groups to as many different pens. In order to do that a lot of different gates have to be opened and closed because the yards are kind of like a big labyrinth that can be changed around according to the needs.  I also help to load the trucks, clean the water- and feed draughts, bring hay for the pens that don’t have a feed drought, fix the fences and basically do everything that is needed.

The cows can be very smart sometimes. For example they figure it out very soon that if they brake their water draught then they will get better water - we have automatic systems in every one that have floats, so when the water level gets too low, more water will flow into the drought. Of course the water gets warm in the 40 degrees that we have outside, so if they break the system they will get a constant flow of cold water. But that means firstly that the pens of the cows downhill from the ’smart ones’ will get flooded and if it happens more than once in a short period of time then they get stuck in the deep mud and we have to pull them out of it. Secondly it means that the pens that are further away from the water pumps will not get any new water at all because all the water goes into the water draught of the cows who have overflowing draughts. Whereas the cows that are in the open paddocks have realized that they can go further away from the water draughts (to get the good grass and stuff from the farther corners) when it rains, because they don’t have to stay near the water anymore. Not to mention the fact that some bulls discovered that it they work together to lift up the pipe above their food draught, then they have enough space to go outside. The latter resulted in us finding 30 bulls in a pen one morning that was supposed to have 80. So they can be pretty witty sometimes.

Another thing that I did not realize before is that cowboys don’t have their cowboy clothes because that is their style and they're trying to be fashionable. Everything actually has a point. For example, the hat covers the face and neck and the dent in top enables you to grab the hat with one hand to use it to chase the cows from one place to another. A 5-dollar straw hat (that you could use for any fruit-veg picking job) breaks in a couple of days if you try to use it like that. The small scarves are for the dust. And I would not even dream of going to work without jeans (or any other long pants that are made of a stronger material) because the fences are burning hot and you will need to jump on them and over them for sure.

So most of the cows that live here are big and wild and will not really let you go close to them. But there are some of them that are pet cows. For example there is a threesome – Snowflake, Chockflake and Peaches, who always chill around together (outside the yards of course) and they love their scratches and pats. In return they will lick you with their long blue tongues that are just about as soft as sandpaper. And then there is Lenny, who is the sweetest big bull that I have seen. He just came up to me one day when we were drafting (I had to stand in their pen to open the gates and help the others form that side) and I was not sure how to react at first, because as I said, they are usually not very approachable. But later I found out that he will come and rub his head against you and is the most gentle animal ever. And then there are the calves of course, who are the cutest things ever. The newborns are cool as they are still discovering the world. For example one discovered that it had a tongue and it was trying to look at it from every corner for twenty minutes and looked very surprised that it was attached to it and that it could move the strange thing. The same happened with one calf and his legs the other time (imagine someone walking and trying to stand up, being surprised and a bit afraid of their own legs at the same time).

One thing that bothers me is the concept of eco marketing, seen from this point of view. So all our cows are being grown naturally and are very ’eco’ but that also means that no additional vitamins or food supplements can be given to them to fight some of the diseases. And when a cow is sick and you treat it with any medications then the price drops drastically (even after the withholding period that most of the medicines have - the period that it takes for the animal to get the medicine out of this system). So as soon as you try to help the cow (and I am not talking about injecting it with some hormones to make it grow faster or anything like that), it is considered bad in the nowadays great ’eco-friendly world’ and the cow is "not as good".

Before Australia, cowboys were something out of the movie for me. I did not really realize that they actually exist. But it is a whole different world. They do actually listen to country music and go to rodeos, catch cows with lassos (but only as a competition). They have their famous bull riders and famous bulls (people actually know some bulls all over the world by name). They have their own brand products – you have like a „Prada“ of ropes that you use for staying on bulls when they are bucking; you have the „Adidas“ of cowboy hats or an „Armani“ of clothes or other stuff that they use. So a whole new world in opening up to me (I don’t think I’ll get too deep into that world, but is very fascinating to have some peeks)

But speaking about other nature around here, it gave me quite the scare once as well – I was cleaning a big water tank a few weeks ago and opened the tap on the outside bottom part that is used for letting water out, when I felt something weird on my hand. It kind of felt like two or three ants had bitten me or getting burned by a stinging nettle, so it was more of an uncomfortable itch than anything else. So I went back to the tap and saw a Redback sitting on the tap (who does not know, a Redback is Australia’s second most venomous spider and in top five in the world according to any lists that I found on the internet). So anyway, the skin was a bit reddish and there was a small drop of blood in the middle. I thought that as soon as it gets worse, I will go back to show it to someone, but it really never did get worse (so I was not sure if I had gotten stung by it at all). In an hour, there was nothing else to be seen than a tiniest puncture mark, which turned into the tiniest bruise on the next day. Well... after some more googling, I found out that only 6-10% of all people have a reaction to the bite, which means that I most likely was bitten  by one of the most venomous spiders in the world but just did not have a reaction. (as the spider was sitting right were I had been bitten and it definitely was not an ant, that leaves a mark like that).

So yeah... the days are long (start at 6am finish at 5-6pm), the temperature is hot (35-40 degrees) the work can be very physical and hard but every time that I feel tired or fed up, something good happens. For example you see some kangaroos hopping by you, while you go home at the sunset, dead tired of anyone or anything, especially when you have had some d***head bulls who just will not do anything you want them to. Or you pick up a newborn cow, discover that the shit on it is not dry at all (and cover yourself completely with it) and you take it back to the nearest pen (being frustrated that you did it at all  because it probably isn’t even the right pen) and then the next day you discover that the calf has found a mother (not necessarily the right mother, but that does not matter, as long as it has a mother who takes care of it). So little good things, mostly things that the animals around here do, are the things that really make this job great.

But we have not been working the whole time. We had a plan to go to the Gibb River Road from the moment that we bought our car. The Gibb is supposed to be a kind of a must-do for 4WD cars in West Australia but it closes down during the rainy season because you can’t really get over all the flood-ways and rivers plus the rain washes some parts of the road away. But now we also had a job that we liked... which was a bit of a problem.  So we managed to talk the people in the station into letting us go on a trip for a week - which owed us some jealous and envious looks, because noone else was getting a week off and had to work. But to be fair, we had planned Gibb for longer than we had planned to be cowboys so we would have gone anyway... the difference would have just been whether we came back or not.

So just as we started our trip, when we had driven for about 100kms (and heading off to 660km of gravel road with no towns or mechanical services etc) we heard a loud pop under our hood. When we stopped to take a look we discovered that one of our radiator hoses had burst into two pieces. We used the cheap and horrible duct tape that we had to patch it up and headed to Derby (the last actual town on our way to Gibb river road, where we were planning to get all the food and fuel etc from), very hopefully. As it was Saturday afternoon, no mechanics were working and no shop or wreckers that sold any car parts was going to be open before Monday. But we did find two guys just having beers and chilling in a garage (that was actually also closed) and fixing their boat or something like that. As it happened they had an old Pajero (the same car that we have but a different model) in their back yard, that still had the radiator hose intact and they were happy to give it to us for free as long as we took it off and put it in ourselves and they even threw a bit of coolant in our radiator. That was another happening in our „extremely lucky Australia“ series. In the same series is: 1. Getting exactly the car that we wanted on the first day of arriving to Australia with less than a half of its market price 2. Getting the jobs that we wanted without really going through too much trouble 3. Getting an optometrist in Broome to open a shop especially for me on a Sunday (they are all closed on sunday)... three times, because I needed new glasses and also wanted to order some prescription sunnies (the sun is really hard on the eyes) 4. the Redback thing 5. We met some cool guys at a gorge, who pulled up at the gorge at the same moment that we did (going the opposite direction on Gibb), we gave them beers, they gave us other stuff in return and we had the nicest chilled two hours before going our separate ways 6.I can’t remember them all, but unbelievably good things keep happening to us on this trip.

Anyways, The Gibb River road.... we were told to carry at least two spare tyres, 40 litres of water per person and were warned that we should drive in a convoy as there are no cars on Gibb and it is so incredibly dangerous. Well sometimes (read:all the f***ing time) Aussies seem to make things worse than they actually are. Gibb was just a gravel road – ok, the rains had washed some parts of it away a bit and we had to cross water about ten times during the 660km but... we did not break any tyres (nor did we meet anyone who had), there was water available in at least three places on the road and we saw 6-8 cars every single day. And people help each other... especially on a road like that, almost noone will pass you, when they see that you have some trouble. It is remote, but people behave differently in remote areas as well.

We did see some crocodiles and accidentally swam with two of them - we did not see them before getting out of the water. They were freshies so they do not really attack them unless you step on their foot or something like that. But even knowing that they are quite harmless, I was not keen on crossing the water inside a cave in another gorge with two crocodiles being next to the water and at last three inside it. so we did not go to the end of the Tunnel Creek. We also saw a turtle and loads and loads of kangaroos and cows. Plus some bigger and smaller lizards. And I could also describe how amazing the nature was, but I am not so poetic, that I could actually explain you any of this. We also discovered (not the first time) that we are not really good tourists because after a few days we stop appreciating things. If the gorges (even one of them. even the least amazing one) were in Estonia I would tell every person visiting Estonia how great it is and that you have to go there.

Unfortunately the wet season is really near so some of the gorges were already closed and we finished the Gibb in just three days. So we decided to go and see the Bungle Bungles as well, which was also very cool, except the drive into the national park because the road was so corrugated that it took us more than 1,5 hours to drive 50km. the Bungle Bungles are basically these mountains that look like orange and black striped domes. It is hard to believe that these things actually occur naturally if you don’t see them yourself.


But now we’re back in the cattle station to work some more. The weather has gotten hotter since we left and the air is more humid, plus the mosquitos have also appeared. So if I post anything else in the near future it will probably be about cows (or other animals) because they are a cool bunch of animals when you get to know them and we’re not quite done being cowboys.

PS. I will not add pictures here right now, because the internet is even worse than it was before (it took me 40 minutes to add this post, although I had pre-written it in the computer), but I will add pics in facebook. If I feel incredibly patient one day, I might add them later.

Wednesday 28 September 2016

How we became cowboys

So when I last wrote, we were about to hit the road to go through the Great Sandy Desert. I must have remembered a different section of the Great Sandy (it continues after Broome), because the part we went through was anything but sandy... or a desert. The bush was very high and there were even quite a lot of trees. But it was big, so we did not drive through it with one day, but stopped for a night.

When we got to Broome, we decided that there was no point in looking fr a job because it was Sunday, so we decided to be tourists for a day. In Broome there occurs a natural phenomena called The Staircase to the Moon (actually you can see similar thing in other places in the northern part of Aus as well), which happens on about three days of the month (and not the whole year) during the full moon. The last time we were here, we got here on the second day of the staircarse, but there were bushfires around Broome, so we could not see it (plus we locked ourselves out or our car, hurrying to go and see it and had to ask a former car-thief aboriginal guy to help us break into our car) and on the other day that it was supposed to happen, there were clouds. This time we were determined to see it. So this time we actually saw it on one evening (the second one was cloudy again). The Staircase to the moon is basically the moonrise (the moon is very big and orange and seems to be close) over the low tide areas of the gulf of Broome. And when you are located in the right place then the big pools of low water are lit up and they create an image which is similar to... a staircase to the moon. So that was very cool, but I have so shitty camera that I did not even try to take pictures of it so you can google it.

The next day was supposed to be our big job-searching day. We did apply to some of them that we found in gumtree but we spent most of our day not doing much. So when an Italian bloke that we met, saw us sitting in the caravan park, he was telling us „I thought you were going to find a job. You are not going to find a job sitting over here in the caravan park.“. Well... a couple of hours later, an Aussie guy that we had had beers with the previous night came home from work and brought us a piece of paper with an add „Station hands wanted“. I had actually thought about working in in a station before (actual cowboys and stuff) but I never thought that I would be considered for the job as I don’t have any experience. So we called them immediately and they said that they would consider us if we thought that we were up for the job. We promised to rock up at the station to talk about it more specifically. After a 70km drive (20 of which is not tarmac but sand, and it is used by heavy trucks every day, so you can imagine the condition) we arrived at Kilto station, had a couple of words with the manager and promised to come back the same evening to start the next day, as we still needed some working clothes for the job - steel-capped shoes, as we don’t want to lose our toes when half a ton of cow steps on them and hats... I did feel kind of pretentious showing up with a cowboy hat but it was the same price as the normal hay-hats plus my head is so big (because of the hair) that I did not have much of a choice anyway.

So what exactly do we do here? Erik is mostly driving around with a tractor and doing stuff (cutting hay, meintenancing the machines and so on) and I am in the export yards. That basically means that we have big yards with several different pens full of cows and bulls (about three thousand of them at the moment) and we are chasing the cows all day from one place to another. The cows have previously been brought up in open paddocks (or completely in the wild... so they are wild, free-range cows) and then brought to the yards. From here, they will either go to the abattoir (a fancy word from slaughter house), to Indonesia, be put on more feed (if they are not big enough) or to some open paddocks to wait for their time. So we are sorting them according to their size, sex, if they are going to be breeding more, if they need any medical attention, branding, cutting the tips of their horns (mostly for themselves, as they like to poke each other. but also for us, as they get stressed when we are trying to make them go from one place to another and they try to attack us) and so on. So yeah... a lot of chasing cows, climbing fences, opening gates and being chased by cows, all in quite a heat (the fences are burning hot during the day but I can’t be a pussy and wear gloves when noone else is wearing them), as the winter is ending now, plus we are more in the north as well. So far I have liked the job, because it is very different from what I have done before, the pace of working is quite relaxed, except the running every now and then, and the people I work with/for are also nice. You don’t have to worry about looking neat – I can be covered in cow shit and nobody cares; you can swear and curse all you want, as your supervisors are doing exactly the same. I wouldn’t even mind dragging dead cows away with the car if the smell at the death-pit would not be so horribly disgusting and thick (but that’s just one fraction of the job- usually 15min to 30min of the day)


We live in a shed (as everything is a shed in Australia) and we get fed every day so no cooking after or during the long days of working. There is more wildlife here as well, than in the towns. For example there are big lizard-like animals (goannas) living here; the ones we have seen are about 1,5 metres long. A pink geko lives in our room, although it does not want to show itself often. There are frogs living i the bathroom-toilet shed. One time when I decided to go to the toilet, I saw two or three frogs in the shower, two-three were on the walls and edges around the toilet pot, and as I pushed one off the toilet seat (thinking this was the last one), I saw three in the toilet, who did not care at all that I tried to flush them off (they usually jump out when you flush). So I decided that it is just so much easier to go behind the toilet. And of course there are cows and bulls running around as well – the naughty ones who have escaped the pens or paddocks and also some friendly pet-cows. There are also very cool birds – many different colours of birds that I would call parrots, but also storks, hen-like birds and so on.

Thursday 15 September 2016

Pilbara bushlife

After the last two days at work (Saturday was a full day, so 1,5 times eleven hours’ pay, which was great) a good-bye gathering at our place and the Sports Club, and cleaning up the house so as not to get fined for not cleaning up after all that the previous tenants of the last two months had left behind, we finally hit the road and left Onslow behind for good. The first drive to Karratha (3 hours) seemed long and slow because we were not used to these long drives anymore. In Karratha, I wanted to buy almost everything that I saw because firstly I could (no possibilities in Onslow for any kind of equipment) and secondly, everything was so much cheaper (sometimes 150% cheaper and other times 3-4 times or even 7 times cheaper than Onslow General Store). Did some illegal camping just out of Karratha (can give tips if anyone needs to do the same in the future :D) with a great view to the sea and mangroves to get all geared up on food -next shop 635km- and fuel -next, very expensive one 573km away, (if we would have gone straight, which we did not). Our next stop was the Millstream Chichester national park with an Oasis in the bush (some pools and rivers, great views from lookouts) where we stayed for one night; did not pay entrance, but paid for camping, which was enough for us.
On the road again

Some aboriginal rockart

Have to be careful while admiring the rockart

For Vidrik

Just chillin



The leaving party

Playing balls at Onslow Sportsclub

Onslow Sportsclub


Our view at the illegal camping spot near Karratha

Some more rockart

A wildflower


Python pool


Next day we headed for the Karijini National park. The main park is in the south, which we already saw four years ago when we were also in this region. We decided to take the northern road, because we had not been there yet, although there were no roads on the map that actually lead towards the park. Actually there was nothing at all on the map on this road except a town name „Wittenoom“, but we’ll get to that. There was also a gorge that we had visited the last time on the western side of Karijini (gorges are deep narrow valleys with steep sides, which Karijini is known for) that was one of my favourite ones, and since it was only a 30km detour, we decided to see it again. Nearing the gorge from the exact opposite direction than we had done the previous time, we found ourselves on a road that was less than two cars wide and had rock walls going straight up on both sides. There were some wider pockets between its bending curves for when you met another car, but as it happens often in the West, we did not meet any cars. The last time we had been in the Hamersey gorge, the parking lot and the facilities were still being built and we were able to swim and climb in its pools alone for a long time before the next visitors came. This time, everything was all ready and polished and we found seven cars in the parking lot, German echoing all over the valley. The gorge still had its colorful wavy walls – a psychedelic effect guaranteed- and the water was still pretty and clean, with trees giving shade and so on, so despite all the people, it was still worth the detour.
Hamersley gorge

Hamersley gorge

Lunch break

More of Hamersely


The road to Hamersely

When we headed back where we were actually planning to go (the road going east north of Karijini), we saw big signs about Asbestos danger in the area. As the map said, there were no roads to be seen that would go left, and our necks were already going sore from staring to the same direction. But all of a sudden, we saw an asbestos warning sigh in the middle of the bush, and that would only mean a side road. Sure enough, we found a road(-ish kind of thing), more of a path for cars. The track kept following by the side of the road along the hills until it finally disappeared between the hills, getting more and more 4WD as we went on, with big stones paving the road, indicating that water must be using the same road from time to time to escape the gorge. There were trees and bushes, in contrast to the low bush that had been surrounding our way at the main road and we moved slower and slower due to the ’road’ getting worse and worse. Suddenly, when we were already anxious to find out where the road leads to (and well... we were getting further and further away from the actual road and from any possibility of help in case of breaking down), we found a car and a an offroad caravan camping. It turned out that they had a map with even the offroad tracks on it and the track we were on, was leading to the southern part of Karijini. So we followed the road for another couple of kilometres and decided to follow the other exporers’ lead – why not camp in a beautiful place with all the privacy and freedom to run around naked and do whatever we wanted. The hills in Karijini are not made up from your usual reddish layers of Australian rock. I found stones on the ground that were ranging from bright red to yellow, from deep purple to ink blue and many many that were like nature-made paintings smashing all these stones together with tectonic forces. (I collected some stones and tried to make a Rainbow Serpent – the aboriginal mythical creature, who lived in the Dreamtimes and is responsible for most of the significant geographic landmarks of Australia. The serpent was often helped by a giant mythical kangaroo which I did not attempt to recreate mostly due to the sun setting). We also had a campfire and were sorry that we did not have any kangaroo tails with us because this would have been the perfect place for cooking one for the first time.

The next day we got back on the main road and after some driving found ourselves near some houses. We found ourselves in a seemingly deserted town with beat-up houses and smashed up cars. When we saw a man walking around and mowing the grass(?), we decided to take the small road north, despite the fact that in some of the maps there wasn’t even a road. There were more asbestos signs (on one, the word ’asbestos’ had been changed into ’zombies’) as we followed the road, which was partly quite good asphalt, partly had more holes than there was asphalt, partly rough 4WD track and sometimes had pieces of it carried away by floods. At the end of the road, we found what seemed to had been another small town, except this one did not have any houses left. There were small roads and stone steps and some plants that did definitely not occur naturally in this area. On the road, we found a side of the hill that was quite bluish-gray and it seemed that someone had been mining it. We decided that they had had an asbestos mine and a quite lovely place to live until someone discovered that asbestos was bad for you and there were health risks, which is why everybody moved away. Later, after googling the town, we found out that we had guessed right and that there were three people still living in the first town (the one with houses). So after visiting one more unmapped road to another gorge, which looked pretty much similar to the last one, we decided to move on. It is funny how you become immune to amazing things after a while. You can look in awe for hours and wonder how such beautiful things can occur in the nature. But when you see too much of it, you feel bored about things that you would previously have been so amazed of. The season of wildflowers was still going on in Karijini so the colours of the bush was constantly changing... luckily I did not grow tired of that.

The rainbow serpent that I made

Camping alongside the unmapped track

Asbestos warning

Psychedelic rocks

Wittenoom church (everything is like sheds in Australia :D)

No more fuel

This is what happens when you don't wash your dishes


After leaving Karijini behind, we got to Auski tourist village, which is an overpriced place (well... the prices are the same as in Onslow), like they all are, to get a few more litres of petrol (we did have some more in the jerrycan, but not enough to get us to Port Headland, which was the next reasonable town) and we were recognised by a girl, who had also worked in Onslow but had left a month before us. Australia IS a big place, but there are only so many places where you will stop so I guess that we will see more of some people that we have already met. So right now we are in a Caravan park in South Headland to wash ourselves and our dishes (which have been ’bushwashed’ for the last couple of days), freeze the bottles of water that kept our esky cool for the trip and do some job searching. But we will probably head on to Broome because there seems to be more vacant positions for the kind of jobs that we are searching for. Luckily we have our AirCon working now, because tomorrow, the Great Sandy Desert awaits us with even lower bush and higher temperatures.
Making bonfire

Wittenoom petrol station and restaurant

Wittenoom vehicles

Near the end of wittenoom road

Asbestos hills

Did not want to climb higher (as I was not sure about getting down)



A truck on the road

Wittenoom

Thursday 8 September 2016

Enough of Onslow

So the time has come to leave Onslow. All the mismanaging and psychopathic behaviour of the managers finally drove us away (the job itself was not actually bad... if only they would have different managers). As it has become a habit of mine, I had to send a letter to the owners of the shop explaining the situation as well (I have already written it but I will send it when we leave. I still have three days of working there to go. And now the managers are actually sucking up to me because they need someone to do the last three days since one girl is ill.  It is a shame, because I still really like Onslow. The first time that we went to sports club (a bar with free pool, darts and other sporty games) we did not know anyone. The last time we walked in, 6-7 people raised their hands to welcome us... so we have made some new friends. So why did we leave? The last drop was when...
When we came to work here, we were promised 35-50 hours a week. I got about 33 during the first weeks, then 38, so I was quite OK. Erik got about 34 during the first weeks as well. Then the French couple was fired (they gave their notice two weeks ahead, they came to work on Sunday and they were told that it was their last day of work because a new guy was starting on  Monday; a week later Sharon came and gave us all a story about how it was because of the French guy’s knee injury because it is not very useful for them I we start going without any notice; not even the supervisor knew anything about that excuse or the reasons for the firing; and the knee injury had healed by the time they were fired) and all of the Sundays (we get 2x salary then) were given to the new local guy although he is really not very consistent or good at his job. So all the hours were redistributed so that Erik got even less hours. So he started taking an interest in how many hours anyone had got and was trying to understand the logic of distributing the hours. Then we made the mistake of mentioning Sam and Sharon that Erik’s birthday is coming up and we tried to get the hours rearranged so that we would have some time to cook some Estonian birthday food (potato salad and so on). Their response was that for a week they made it a point to mention every single day that we will be fired if we do anything to the house during our birthday party (there were less people in total at that „party“ than we have had living in this house together and we tried to explain it to them several times that it is not that kind of party... it is a few people eating and talking) and we both got full days on the day of the birthday and the day before that. Generally traditional Estonian birthdays are about people eating a lot and drinking a lot of vodka. If you don’t have time to prepare the food then you can only concentrate on the second part.
After the „party“ they came for an inspection and they were the friendliest people that I have ever seen, taking interest in our life (generally that does not happen... they do not really want to have anything to do with you) and saying that the house looks very nice and clean. And the next day back at work we were called in the office and what we got was something like that (with a hissing and very threatening tone): „You have been harassing people about their hours; you are breaching your contract; you should be fired right now and asked to leave; you are not allowed to discuss your hours with anyone; we thought that we were doing you a favour by giving you more hours; you stole the new people’s roster from the office; we have it all on the video; we could call the police“. Yes, we have talked to other workers about our hours but I do not remember signing anything that had me promise not to do it (and anyway, they kept the only copy of whatever I signed. Both the contract and about the breaks that we are allowed to have – which I think they have been breaching themselves because we do not get four breaks when we work more than ten hours). Yes, thank you for giving us more hours on that one week but clearly you gave them more to disrupt with our birthday plans. And the point was not that we want more hours or less hours... we wanted the hours to be more fair and distributed between us in a logical way. Yes, both of us peeked at the roster that was in the office which was probably not the right thing to do. But we were just curious about the new names and wanted to know who they were replacing. If we had any normal communication in the store we would not have had to do that anyway. (that is actually taken out of my letter to the owner... I just added a few details and took some out. I did not write to him about drinking vodka :D)
But before I leave this chapter behind me, I need to describe some of the people that come in (because I actually meet every single person in the town) I know the names of most of them but I will not mention them. And I would really love to add some pictures, but they (especially the aboriginal people) would probably not appreciate it much.
One of the most colorful people is an old (aboriginal) lady who often comes in and is looking for her „keycard“ (bank card) because she is sure that she left it in the store. She forgets things so she has systems to help her remember them. All her bags have „ME“ written on them in red. She always wears a big hat that has the pin number of her keycard written inside it. She wants to take our previous supervisor (whose partner is a local cop) somewhere in the bush with guns and then they are going to... „...you know what we will do with them guns“. She is quite fun to talk to except sometimes when she pours all of her coins on the counter to buy something but there are several people behind her.
Then there is one (aboriginal) couple who are always bare feet and wear the dirtiest clothes and have the dirtiest faces and sometimes have the dirtiest little babies that I have seen. The man (eyes usually red and half-shut) has blonde highlights in his hair and is quite big. They sometimes come in with purchase orders and sometimes I am counting their coins so that they can get some diapers or cigs. And then other times they come in with hundreds of dollars and buy alcohol and sweets and sodas.
Then there is one (aboriginal) lady who has real trouble getting out of the car even, she is so big. At first she was also rude with me but after some time she is quite nice. The problem with her is that I can smell her presence when she is already in front of the shop. When she walks through an aisle in the shop, you can smell it a couple of minutes after she has left. And sometimes she comes in and buys a lot of things as well and stays near the checkouts. Then I always try to escape the register for a couple of seconds at the time to get some oxygen.
Then there is a white old man who comes in and buys at least one bottle of the same white wine each day. So he may come in in the morning to buy the wine and some vegetables and then again in the afternoon for just a bottle of wine and then again in the evening for another bottle of wine and a bread.
Then there are the Wheatstone people (they are building a gas plant outside the town and there are about 7000 people living and working there) who always have several separate orders of food. So other people in Wheatstone have given them money or a card and asked for some snacks and stuff (they get their food straight from their suppliers and it is cooked for them there so they only get additional stuff from the town) and the people who come to the store then have sometimes 6-10 different orders that they want to pay for separately and packed separately.
And so on...
Anyways we are leaving on Monday and will first probably go to Karratha (a actual bigger town). They have actual normal grocery stores with much lower prices and some choice plus shops for clothes and electronics and so on. After 7 weeks of not seeing normal shops, I will probably want to buy all the food that they have and everything else as well. But we will still find a job for a month or so somewhere between here and Broome because after Broome we want to take the Gibb River Road (660km of 4WD road with amazing natural sights) but we’ll see what happens. First we will rest from the work for a few days and then we will see what happens.
Our bedroom with my additions to the wall

Our living room

A small room that we have adjacent to our bedroom and a local aussie guy visiting us

Also our house

Onslow General Store

The area for breaks

A saltlake

Checking out the sunset near the salt jetty

Onslow salt jetty


Monday 29 August 2016

The world's greatest supermarket

About life in OnSlow and working in the world’s greatest supermarket

I already explained that Onslow is far from everywhere else. In addition, there is not that much to see and explore on our days of (one day per week) around here either. Or so you’d think. Onslow didn’t always used to be where it is now. It was first built by the mouth of Ashburton river (about 20 km from the current location) but for several reasons, including the fact that cyclones and storms kept destroying it, it was moved. So the old town site is one of the main attractions around here. Basically it is a network of gravel roads (or gravel paths) in the middle of very low bush (like the rest of the 100km radius around here) with little notice boards beside the roads where you can read „This is the place where that and that building was, this and this person built it and later it was taken there and there“. So there are no actual buildings left and the current Onslow does not have them right now either. Some material was used in other buildings, some were (partially) restored somewhere else. But after long driving and reading the unbelievable information about the buildings (and seeing literally nothing) there are still 1,5 buildings left.  But there is a nice picnic area on the way to Old Onslow that actually has shade (there usually are some trees around rivers), so we spent most of our trip out of town there and going to Old Onslow was worth it despite the lack of things to see as well.
Everyone kept telling us how this is the best time to see wildflowers. Generally about 7-9 months a year the northern part of of western Australia is dominated by sand and yellow and brown remnants of plants. But during the winter, it turns green for some months and at the end of winter, out of nowhere, fields of colorful flowers appear. All thi is very great, but as we found out if the visitors centre, the most amazing ones are mostly south from here or even more north. So with only one day off, there wasn’t really a big chance for us to see them. But we did go out of down to a gravel road (4wd access only) that went through an area that was painted brown on the map, which indicates aboriginal lands.
We did see some small wild flowers as well (patches of yellow, purple and white) but we found some much more interesting things. As soon as we turned onto that road, a big 4WD came, passed us, stopped, reversed, stopped right next to us and the people in the car (aboriginals of course, two very ghetto-looking young guys in the front, a young thin woman and a not-at-all-so-thin and not-very friendly-looking older lady in the back, and a very big fella at the very back) wanted to know where we were going and advised us not to get lost. After just a few hundred metres we found an abandoned car by the road that was beaten up pretty bad (probably just for fun) and went to see if we could get anything useful out of it. we got one speaker but nothing else because we had left our tools at home. (we returned later for the radio and other speakers... luckily noone had burned before that) In the next two minutes we saw two of three more abandoned cars, but they were already old and burnt. In total, we found about 6 cars in the 30km that we drove on that road.
The newest of the abandoned cars

After about 25km we saw some tyres lying around on the field, and well... because we can drive anywhere then we had to go and see. And what we discovered was not only a field of tyres, it was field after field after field after field. And it was not (just) a dumping point. Someone has clearly arranged the tyres – in most places the distance between any two tyres was 2,5-7 metres, so someone had intentionally been spreading them in seemingly random way, but definitely spreading them, because they were not in piles or anything. Some where also noxt to each other in a row, but that was the minority. So after drifting a bit between the tyres we thought about going back but decided to go on for a couple of more minutes. Suddenly there were trees and even a river appeared, with the sign „Kane river“. Well... it was a river in the rainy periods, right now there were just little ponds of water where the river usually was. After crossing the river we saw a bush camp by the road. There were some sheds and shades built from random pieces of metal and wood. When I saw the ’village’, I suddenly remembered that I had seen the name „Kane river“ before numerous times and t was one of the abo communities that sometimes came shopping in town and I often had seen their name on the list of accounts (will explain about it probably). The indigenous people around here are not particularly happy about being taken pictures of so we did not go close or take any. But we did decide to drive up the river a bit and saw some shades built by the riven that we caught on camera because we were filming the driving. (by the way we will put together some videos as well some day, because we have a lot of material... the first one is almost ready). We also climbed a small hill on the way (of course with the car) and saw fields on termites nests that were mostly higher/taller than a grown up person is. The termites’ nests have actually been dominating the landscape ever since we came north from Carnarvon. The other people that we live with with were slightly surprised that we found things to see that they had not even heard about (talking more about the tyre-fields and bush-towns than the termites nests).
Causeway over Ashburton

In the middle of tyre fields

Stubby holders are a must here

Cane river

Just another one...

The home of termites

Anyway... since we do spend most of our time in the fabulous general store, then some typical moments about that. Everything I write about is about the specific people who go to our store. So when I say ’the caravan people’ or ’the aboriginals’ or ’the miners’ etc. then I don’t mean all of them but I mean some of the specific ones that come to our store. but these are some of the most outstanding pople from the general population. So I hope that they don’t take it personally.
Every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning is delivery day. That means that all the people work on that days because we have truckloads of stuff and practically no storage space whatsoever. That means that all the aisles are full of boxes and ladders and people running around. Plus we have more customers on these days as well because well.. you know... it is delivery days and all the things that we ran out of, will be in stock again. Or at least that is what they hope. Actually I don’t know how this works but someone keeps ordering random things that we don’t need and keeps not ordering more of the things that are actually popular. So for example some breads run out the first day while there are huge piles of other things. The same is with cigarettes - since I’m in the registers then I have very close contact with that part of the store. A client comes in „Could I have a pack of winny blue 30s?“ „Sorry, we’re all out“. „What about Winny gold 30s?“ „Sorry, no 30s. But we have one pack of 20s left“ „Naah... what about PJ gold 30s?“. „Only have PJ red 30s“. „I’ll have the PJ blue 30s then“ (the number indicates the cigarettes in one pack, it can be anything between 20 to 50 cigarettes... at least in our store)
And then there are of course those, who make the whole situation even harder by forgetting or not understanding things: „Can I have a pack of PJ gold?“ „Sorry no PJ gold or PJ blue“ „I’ll have a pack of PJ blue then“ „We are out of both PJ and Winfield blue“ „I’ll have a Winfield 20s then“ „No winfield blue“ „A pack of Winnie 25s then „ „No Winfiled blue in any size“ „Give me a PJ gold then“... and so on
In Australia, people do not pack their bags themselves. It is the job of the person in the checkout to pack the bags while the person is waiting and watching. The bags can not carry a lot of weight and break quite easily (a bit bigger and about the same strength, if sometimes not weaker, as the bags that you put your fruit and veg in in Estonia) so I pack A LOT of bags in a day. Some people do not care a all: „Just put the 2l milk on my cookies, no worries“. Some people are very specific about how they want their things packed and they constantly keep correcting you when you put something in „the wrong bag“. You can usually recognize there people and then it is a matter of secretly learning to read people's faces. So I take a juice, put it in a bag. Then I take the sugar and start putting it in the same bag, if the eyebrows start to frown, I quickly get a new beg and pretend that I was always going to put the thing there. One time I put a small box of strawberries (6 strawberries in a box for 5 dollars) on a bag of chips. And the lady got very angry at me because I was ’crushing the chips’. When I told that to Erik, he started laughing at it, because he sees how things are handled before they ever get to that lady’s bag where the strawberries may break them.
A lot of people have accounts in our store. They are mostly some workers that buy under the account of a company or they are representatives of the abo communities. When the workers come in they unload two-three trolley-fulls of stuff on the counter (they have about 30x30cm of space for the stuff on the counter because our wonderful managers keep piling boxes of different sweets on the counters which I keep graciously knocking down every day) and spend thousands of dollars. And I pack all the tings in about 20 different bags.
Since we are in a town that has a lot of indigenous people in and around it, I can’t leave them out either. There are some that are really quite nice (apart form the smell... they are used to living in very different conditions than we are... and I think that they either can’t smell themselves or do not care... but either way the showers and them really are not the best of friends) and who I actually get along with and chat. And then there are those who really don’t want to get along with you. For example for a lot of the caravan people or others as well, it happens that they already start paying, they remember something that they forget, they apologize at least a few times and then they either tell me to stop scanning their things or say that „I just forgot the milk, I’ll be back in 30 seconds“. Anyways they kind of feel bad about it and they let me know, how long they’ll take.
And then there are those indigenous people, who want to make you feel like you are the worst worker in the world. They look at you in an angry way and keep tapping something on the counter nervously while you are serving the previous customer. (I’d always like to ask „I will come and see how fast or good you are at your job... if you didn’t just get money from the government“). And then when it is their turn, they start counting the little 20 cent sweets, that have been in front of them on the counter the whole time that they were ’In a great hurry’ and calculating (not actually calculating but having me calculate) how many they will get for a certain amount. Or they will go and bring some more soft drinks and have me wait for them again.
A lot of the indigenous kids don’t go to school either. So there is a law around here that we can’t serve any school-aged kids during school hours (unless they have a card that proves that they are just on recess and are actually going to school). So the local kids generally can’t read or calculate or, it seems to me, can’t realize the concept of money at all. So I have little angry kids yelling at me every once in a while promising that ’their mother will come and bash me up’... which of course has never happened. I haven’t even met an angry parent yet. When it’s not school hours the kids are not supposed to come in in groups, only one by one... but that is something that the managers can do themselves if they really care about that.
At work we are not supposed to ’stand around and do nothing’. Stopping for 10 seconds and thinking about something counts as doing nothing, so we constantly have to be in action. Our wonderful managers Sharon and Sam are looking at us from the security cameras even when they have a day off or are at home. So generally we either fill up the cigarette cabinet, clean around the checkouts, check the trolleys and bring them back from the parking lot or organize things of do something similar. And then there are days when all the cigarettes are filled, everything is clean and there are no people in the store. When that happens we just go around and try to look busy (very often actually doing random things) once I asked my workmates how their afternoon had been and one of them said „We have just been going around and touching things for hours“. It is usually not that slow though. There are days when all the trolleys are randomly around the centre of Onslow because noone has time for that.
But yeah... I am more and more surprised every day how much junk people consume. It is no problem for a person (both indigenous and white) to spend hundreds of dollars on sweets and colorful drinks. And they don’t mind that the 0,2l coke is almost the same price as the 2l one... they like the small ones.
I know that it may seem from my post, that I do not like Australia or Onslow etc. That is actually not the case at all. Onslow is the friendliest place where I have ever been to. The people all know each other and get along. I have had long conversations with some of the indigenous people and get along with most of them quite well. There is a community garden with a large wood-heated pizza oven which is free to use; there are free workouts of football, basketball etc every week and so on. I once saw a freestyle rap battle in the sports club (a bar in the midde of the sports facilities) between a somewhat crazy aboriginal lady and a white-haired old rich looking white lady. So Onslow really is a nice (and quite interesting, considering the size) place. It is just a very different experience to live in a place like this with people like this. And Australia as well... apart from their food culture and their Aussie slang, that is often difficult to follow, it is definitely a place worth visiting... why else did we come back here.