Meekatharra Reloaded

Meekatharra Reloaded ….. some of the highlights (& lowlights) of 10 days in the bush at temperatures hovering in the low 40’s!!!! (in point form …. I’m getting tired of sentence and paragraph structure):

• I watched an emu run straight into a wire fence .... with humourous results
• I had my first kangaroo .... FOR DINNER!!!! It's just a chewy version of steak. Not bad. Very lean, and no fat.
• 6am start one day, not wakeup but start. Got to see my first Outback sunrise! It was good .... but not great.
• We chased 3 sheep and 1 lamb (not on purpose) down the road in the landcruiser. The lamb tripped and fell, and then one of the sheep bailed overtop it. They both struggled to get up.... them BAMMM. They both got on their feet and ran off.
• One night, watched an Australian Quiz show in the pub and the question was "This person was born in Victoria British Columbia, Canada ......" The answer turned out to be Tara Moss .... she went to my high school!!! Therefore, I am cool….
• Got to see a few more cool animals (dingo, bungarra…. etc)
• Sinead O ‘Connor Karaoke in the Landcruiser. “Nothing compares 2 u”
• Participated in “Chase the Ace” bar game, in which one person gets to draw cards. If they get the Ace of Spades, they win $4000. There was an incident where I heard “70” and thought I WON …. But in actual fact it was “17” … Still have trouble understanding the Australian language.
• Had a CDN moment in a crowded pub on Friday night. Went with 3 straight BA songs. I had to ask everyone to “Please Forgive Me”, because “Everything I do, I do it for you” … haven’t you “Ever really really really really” wanted to listen to BA.
• Holy Crikey!!!! Hearing “Never in 15 years of fieldwork….” and “In 10 years of drilling, I’ve never seen flies this bad” from the more experienced workers is not a good sign. I’ve almost gone completely insane. There have been times when I’ve looked down at my hands and had about 40-50 flies on each of them. I’d say there were probably 1000 within 5 cm of my body. Buzzing, and climbing all over you in desperate search of any bodily fluid. I went to the grocery store, and the mosquito nets were sold out. What are the odds! But there were food covers!!! So I did a little scissor work, and will now look like a bride getting ready to walk down the aisle. Except the aisle of the church is a dusty road in the Outback. And instead of a groom waiting …. I have 1000 little bugs. Yeeeaaahhh!!!
• One great thing about being here for so long. I decided to get a few Cereal snackpacks. Kellog’s!!! Now most of the cereals have actually already been blogged about already;
• However, some new ones:
  Frosted Flakes = Frosties … and bizarrely there is no frosting on them. Theeeeeyyyy’rrrrrrr not Grrreeaaattt!
  Froot Loops – appeared a bit more sugary
  Special K – bigger than the Canadian version, and doesn’t have that crackly sound
• Had my first view of a DEADY Australians spider in a sample bag. The White Tail Spider. Crikey!
• There may have been an appearance by Keanu Reeves. Pop Quiz Hot Shot …It’s 45 Celsius, and you have no water, What do you do? What do you do?
• Took part in my first true outback Australian Barbie!
• Had a different kind of Remembrance Day Ceremony. We attempted 1 minute of silence, but the flies didn’t do a very good job complying.
• Wow, it actually rained for a couple minutes.
• I decided to give up the 3+ weeks of beard growth, and went with a Handle Bar moustache. I was quickly given the nickname Chopper, as there was an infamous Hitman named Chopper Read in Melbourne who had similar facial hair. The nickname then morphed into Chopper Five as that was my room number. I would pound my chest and then give a weather report from “Chopper Five” …. "It’s going to be hot today in Meekatharra”.
• There was an interesting show from one of the locals one morning. It began at 7:30 as he walked into the Corner Store, arms raised, and “Roaring”. He then crouched down, turned towards me and “Hissed”. Very similar to what Misty (childhood cat) used to do. He then checked around the store a bit, before making eye contact with me again. He then started doing some random punches, kicks, and then The Crane (Karate Kid move). At this point, the owner of the store says “If you are going to act like a F@#!ing Idiot, then get the F@#! Out of my store!!!!!!”. He quickly left. Rumours were he was on Petrol. Very very very funny.
• One night one of the driller’s offsiders took offence to something that was said by my coworker. Actually conversation is as follows:
  Him: “Dude, you gotta tell me what room he’s in, I’m going kick his ass”
  Me: “Sorry man, I can’t six say, what room six he’s in, that would six, just go against six work ethics. Room Six”
  Him: “Oh man, come on, you gotta tell me, I’m so “bleeping” mad. He dissed me man, he dissed me. What room is he in”
  Me: Sixry … I mean sorry, I six can’t say man. If six, you went to room six, and beat him six up. I’d get six in trouble, room six.”
  Him: “Shit man, just tell me”
  Me: “Six … I just six can’t say, you’ll have to six, find out six what room six he’s in from six someone else.”
  Him: “Fine, I’ll find out from someone else”
  Can you tell alcohol might have been involved ….. let’s just say, he didn’t show up to work the next morning.
• Finally, brought out the Don Boyd look for the final day.

mmmm mmmm .... my first kangaroo

CSI: Australia .... who ate that kangaroo?

Viewing my first dingo

A bungarra

Stop bugging me!!!

Cereal Funpack

Homemade bug net

Killer spider in the sample bag!!!

A willy willy

Chopper Five

the "Don" Boyd look

Meekatharra Revisited

Day 2
After Day 1's Disaster of missing the flight, I made sure I was on time for today's flight. In fact, I showed up 2 hours early. It was an exciting day of sitting. Then crawled (actually crawled) onto a very small plane, crawled off due to mechanical failure (thanks for noticing that before we took off) then crawled onto another plane. Little plans + turbulence = not a fun flight.

Not much exciting during the day, no hit emus or kangaroos. However, at the end of the day I met a Joey. A girl who owns the hotel i'm staying at is caring for a baby kangaroo that is 8 months old. Her name is Penny. So cute. I want one for myself. Don't worry Mom, I washed my hands before I ate!!!

Other big highlight was my coworker talking about his big "Pool" game. He proceeded to lose to one of the girls who works at the bar. Then, even worse, he loses to me!!!! and I had been drinking!!! I can't remember the last time I beat someone at pool. Must have been my lucky day!

Day 3
Happy Halloween!!! I kept hearing that no one in Australia celebrates Halloween. So why am I going to a Halloween Party at the hotel??? I'm going as Sheriff Jon. It was fun times. There were stripper cops, fallen angels, outback blokes (they weren't trying very hard), and a few guys did the old wrap yourself in toilet paper, and pretend to be a mummy. They didn't realize they weren't supposed to wear used toilet paper.

Another pool matchup .... surprise surprise I WON AGAIN. I was hitting shots that were unheard of. So unheard of, that I wasn't even attempting then.

Day 4
Another boring day of just work. I met a CDN girl working at the grocery store. Why she chose to live in Meekatharra .... I have no idea???

My streak of pool wins came to a sudden end. However, on a positive note, my nickname the local Meeka girls have called me has changed from "cute canadian geo" to "hot canadian geo".... I'll take that :)

Day 5
Home time! By this day, my body has just been ravaged by the meat, the heat, and just meeka in general. I cannot wait for the flight to get home. Back to Perth, and off to Freo Prison for the tour.

Some photos click here

Meekatharra - Day #4 & 5 - warning! graphic content

So after the many warnings, and many near misses as kangaroos, cows, emus, and sheep ran across the road, I finally hit my first animal.... It was an emu that ran out in front of the car, and I had zero time to respond. I tapped the break a little, but held firm and kept the wheel locked straight. Emus don't really cause the damage that kangaroos or cows do because they are smaller, and lighter.

Unfortunately, the emu did not take the 80km/hr impact very well. We sat in the car knowing that we would have to go back to put it out of it's misery. Our only option was a tire iron meaning we'd have to get up close and personal ith it. Fortunately a car came up a few minutes later, and there was an old bloke who took a look at us and knew he would have to do the deed. He got out a shovel. It was very heart-breaking, but as any Aussie would tell you, it's just part of life down under...

Also, we had the pleasure of changing another tire today. At least this one wasn't in the middle of the night... Only in the heat of the mid-day sun. The temperature was very hot today, up to around 37 C [In Perth it was 21 C today]. As compared to the cooler 32, 33 C that we worked in the previous three days. I think I drank about 6 litres of water, and only went the washroom (i mean toilet .... don't say washroom here, ppl laugh at you) about twice. The water just gets sucked out of you!

One more day to go .... what crazy adventures will happen tomorrow. I can't wait!!!

FRIDAY - Day 5

Not too exciting today, hung around town and enjoyed country living. Watched some store
owners go wacko losing their patience.

Took the worst flight ever, 30 minutes from Meekatharra to Mt Magnet. We stayed low and
were stuck in thermal winds (vertical winds) that are caused as the hot surface air rises
into the atmosphere. Major turbulence the whole way. The woman behind me asked the
stewardess if this was normal. She smiled and said "Yup". Just great.
Can't wait for the next adventure!

Meekatharra - Day #2 - Introducing Khaki-Man

Not really very exciting today. We did lots of work, as things went reasonably well. The biggest hastle was finding the wooden pegs that were hammered in to show locations of drill holes. "Supposedly" the cattle had knocked them all over yah right.... Cattle actually knock over pegs on purpose.... then we saw one in action. literally! They also would go through our sample bags looking for food. There isn't a lot to eat in the outback. Then crap in the samples. Nice

1st Biggest Highlight today was bringing out Khaki Man! That's me, but wearing nothing back Khaki. Australians pronounce it Car Kee. I thought I was supposed to wear Car Keys ... [true story]

2nd Biggest highlight was one cow really "Manning" up to us, and facing us down. Moo... Mooo ... MOOOOOOO. You had to be there.

Headed home late tonight again, we almost ran over a few kangaroos, we almost hit some cattle, and had some goats run out in front of us. It's KRAZY driving out here!

Continuation Incident from Day 1 - My sunnies disappeared [Sunglasses that is]. They likely fell off during the Changing of the car tire. May go back to Yalgar and try to track them down. Odds of that happening .... 5,000,000 to one. But it does happen. Flashback to "What started out as a 10km race, finished as a 10km smile". [end of week update .... the 5,000,000 won]

Sunsets in the outback are spectacular.... not sure if i'll bother to get up for a sunrise. Not a morning person. But the sunsets last for quite some time, and light up the WHOLE sky.

Meekatharra Daily Blog - Day #1 - The never ending story

I thought I would write a blog every night during my trip to the Outback town of Meekatharra on http://www.australialiterally.com/, and then also update pics on http://picasaweb.google.com/australialiterally. I'll start with Monday and every so often add another day etc.

Day 1 started with a Beautiful sunrise over Perth City. I was up at about 4:30am. Yeeeaaaah! I love early flights, especially on Stat Holidays! The flight to Meekatharra took 1 hour 30 minutes, and it was packed! I think there were 8 of us on the flight! Small plane, but better service than any Air Canada flight I've been on lately.

Incident 1 - It really began when we forgot to pick up the "hired" sat phone at the end of last week. Woops... well we have more coworkers coming on Wednesday, so we can use the one in the car. No worries.

Incident 2 - No keys for the car. The airport staff were given the keys to look after, and they forgot where they put them! Fortunately, someone left the door open!!! Not the best move as there is a Huge Break-In issue in Meekatharra as there is obviously nothing else to do.

Incident 3 - The car wouldn't start! Yeah! Turns out there was an electrical problem. We had one local help us jump start the car. He almost electricuted himself about 10 times. I stood back and watched. Far back. Once we got on the road, we noticed that nothing was working, lights, speedometer, blinkers, radio etc. The airport staff (one woman) was kind enough to lead us to the Auto shop, and she helped us get a "Hire" Car, while ours was at the Sparky's.

Incident 4 - Not really an incident. I was in charge of driving the hire car from the airport back to town. First time on the road in Australia Baby!!! It's a bit awkward using the stick shift with the left hand. I only turned the windshield wipers on once when I was about to turn the corner :)

Incident 5 - Someone left open a bottle of tire sealent in the back of our car. This stuff reminded me of the ooze you see in Ninja Turtles movies. Gross.

Incident 6 - We had to pick up a pump for the drillers at a Courier, but due to the stat holiday, it was closed. We just waited outside for 15 minutes and eventually the owner saw us. People live where they work here. So we got the pump! Patience pays.

Incident 7 - The drillers requested bread .... Every store was out of bread due to the Great Bread Shortage of 2007. Fortunately we met some stations owners who let us borrow a couple loaves from them.

Incident 8 - Complete disorganization. Due to the car switch, we left a lot of important gear behind in the old car. Woops! Also, the GPS wouldn't communicate with our PDA, and we didn't have the password for the satellite phone. Well we won't need those anyway.... right?
The day went pretty smooth once we were at work. Some nice photos below:

Incident 9 - On the drive back (me driving ... and on the correct side of the road), my coworker Jacqui tells me of all the times she has run over kangaroos, and emus, and how dusk is the WORST time. Her advice, "Don't break, don't turn, just hit the damn thing". No more than 2 minutes later, an emu comes screaming out of the bush, and I brake a little and just miss slaughtering the big bird. 20 Minutes later, a kangaroo comes flying out from the right, not nearly as close as the emu. Holy crap, this is going to be interesting....

Incident 10 - As I was driving I noticed how the car was really losing power. Then it got bouncy. Then I could smell burning. Uh oh, we blew another engine. NOPE. I blew out a tire!!! Wahoo! My first one! Good thing the sun has just gone down and we are in the Middle of nowhere!!! We'll just use the satellite phone to, oh wait no, Not working... Luckily we had a crappy jack, but we struggled to find a good location to get the car up enough. Enter the helpful aboriginal couple who stopped.

Incident 11 - We could have been there for hours if they didn't stop. The guy came out, and scoped out the situation... Who we were ... what happened ... I now know it's EXTREMELY dangerous meeting people in the bush in the middle of the night. But we were ok for him. He brought out his super jack, and helped us with the replacing of the tire. As a thank-you, Jacqui offered him another co-workers beer stash. He was quick to accept.

Incident 12 - Hmmmmm, I use the flashlight to see if we missed anything [more on that tomorrow], and found a BULLET!!!!! Jacqui said she saw him drop some stuff and scramble to pick it up. Yikes!!!! Did we ever get lucky.

After 5 minutes of driving, we caught back up to the couple (on the road now), he waved us to pass .... I wonder where the beers were now!!! :)

Lots of bad luck, but lots of good luck. Time for bed!!!

The Circle of Life!

Well I hit up the Perth Zoo yesterday. Turns out that they liked me so much, they gave me 50% off. Or it was a Wednesday special? It was mighty fun. Saw some sweet Lion action, walked by the cheetah pit 4 times until it finally showed up. The kangaroo area was wide open, so you could chase them around. I didn't, as I remember seeing a kangaroo beat up some clown on TV when I was little. The Koala was a bit of a disappointment. It just slept with its back to me. I got to see a DINGO!!! The staff there was great especially in the morning when I was the only one there. They just walked around telling me about the animals. Then the school kids showed up and it was pure MAYHEM. Then the monsoonal rains hit. I tried waiting the rain out at the Lion Pen for an hour. It brought back memories of Mufasa, and Simba. Kangaroos bounce. The rain never went away, at least not til late at night. It felt like the November rains we get in BC. Didn't I move to Australia to get away from that. Pics of Zoo below:

Today was much better. Sun was out, but it was still a bit chilly (16 C). Spent a little time on the train. Still on the job hunt. One recruiter asked me if I'd been to any other recruitment agents. I said "Command Recruitment". Letter by letter, he slowly wrote C-O-M-A-N-D-E , looked at for a minute, and then crossed off the E. "That's great Jono! I'm going to find you a job Jono" ..... "Can you please stop calling me Jono?" .... hahaha, i don't have much faith in him. Also sounds like I didn't get the sweet suite at Amy's building. I guess they didn't trust the sketchy overseas visitor who has no job. I wonder why? The search continues.

Lazy Lion

Sleepy Dingo

Wet Lion

Bouncy Kangaroos

Lazy Koala

Wet Rhinos

Shy Orangutan

Kangaroo in Kalbarri!!!

Well after travelling 500+km north of perth, the only kangaroos I saw were lying quietly on the side of the road. My list of truly Australian Animals seen were: horse, cow, goat, sheep ..... but no kangaroo. Then a golden light in the bush. What looked like just a red rock moving, was actually a kangaroo!!! Do rocks move?

Anyhow, Kalbarri was a nice little town, with some amazing cliffs. Unfortunately the winds and weather did not allow much snorkelling. However, there was the daily Pelican feeding at 8:45am. Being one of the "Overseas" visitors, I got to throw a fish at the pelican. Unfortunately, it made my hand smell like fish for the rest of the day. Amy and I headed into the National Park and did an 8km through a nice Outback Gorge. The only major issues that came up is when we had to battle a tour bus full of people for pictures. Damn tour buses.

After all the hard work hiking, Amy and I stopped off for Chinese Mexican food...... mmmm. Fortune Beans. Fortunately for us, the restaurant was closed on Sundays.

Finally, we headed back South to a town called Cervantes, which is located near The Pinnacles. It's an eerie desert of limestone structures sticking out everywhere. It's kinda creepy. I've got most of my pics up on my picture site. http://picasaweb.google.com/australialiterally

Kangaroos ..... LITERALLY!

Below is a speech I performed in High School. We were supposed to research and present a current event, but I had my heart set on kangaroos. What began as studying a hopping marsupial, soon turned in to a love affair with the word literally. It's a word that can be used in any sentence, literally. Sure it can used improperly "It was literally raining cats & dogs"; however, when it's used correctly, the result is magical.

What animal better represents Australia, other than the koala? I’ll tell you what animal does, it’s the kangaroo.

The kangaroo has a variety of assets that make it jump out, literally. Such assets are the distinct nature in which they raise their young, and their tremendous speed when hopping.

Most mammals develop in their mother’s womb. When born they are well formed, and in many cases they are up and about within hours of birth. However, kangaroos, like other marsupials, give birth to tiny underdeveloped young. When the tiny newborn, called a joey, is born, it’s the size of a lima bean. Then, the joey must crawl into the safety of its mother’s pouch, where it will continue to grow and develop.

Kangaroos are widely known for their hopping. With it’s powerful hind legs, it can jump to heights of 6 feet and can cover up to 25 feet in a single jump. Thus, kangaroos can move very fast, even up to speeds of 48 km/h in short spurts.

The kangaroo is a fascinating animal, that stands out in the Australian wilderness. One day I hope to set my eyes upon this beautiful creature.

That day will be Sunday ..... literally.