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.

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

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