The Kindness of Friends

I'm writing this from Perth; Nat's house, specifically. It's Friday morning. Nothing, so far has gone to plan. Everything, so far, has been wonderful.

I had grand plans to leave Exmouth last Wednesday. My schedule for the week was to be as follows:

Sunday 17th Jan - last day of work at the Pub

Monday 18th Jan - pack in AM/staff Christmas party at Town Beach in afternoon/night

Tuesday 19th Jan - get act together

Wednesday 20th Jan - drive to Perth

Thurs-Sunday 21-24th Jan - get act further together/visit with friends in Perth

Monday 25th Jan - begin road trip to Melbourne (where I'd catch the ferry to Tasmania), via Uluru

So. Last day at the pub was successful. I worked, I didn't cry, I hugged many, many people. Monday morning plans to begin packing went out the window when Manager Jess asked if I wanted to go snorkeling on the west side with her and her Mom who was visiting from Victoria. Obviously that was the better option (I had to say goodbye to the reef!), so away we went!

Last day pouring at the Pub!

@ Turquoise Bay with Manager Jess

We both were sun safe - wore long sleeves, lots of sunscreen, etc. We both neglected the back of our legs. As you will notice from the above photo, Jess is VERY fair skinned. Neglecting the back of her legs was a BAD IDEA. While I have developed quite a base tan (I am, in fact, probably the tannest I've ever been in my life), I forgot that the long-sleeved bathing suit I was wearing (for sun safety!) also cuts higher on the bum than my usual bikinis. My butt cheeks got COOKED. So we've spent the last week texting each other about how much it hurts to sit down/the gross peeling action happening. I digress.

After a very successful morning snorkel (Jess is actually Steve Irwin. She found us two sharks and three turtles!), we headed back to town to get supplies together for the staff party. Short story: awesome party.

Sophie and Jess were on food duty, Tai supervising

Michael, Corey & Paul

Jesse Cook, Channy, Flo, & Jimmy

Puppy & Tai

Sophie cooking with an assist by Tiarna

Around this time, Manager Jess (I have to specify because you'll notice there were three Jesses at this party. The Potshot employs 5. So you have to be specific) reminded me that I wanted to take tons of photos so I started snapping selfies with everyone. Here is a sampling:

Flo

Flo & Jimmy

Puppy

Jess

Sophie

Taitgen

Jimmy

Channy

I then proceeded to piss everyone off by making them take not one, but two staff photos. Because the clouds looked so beautiful!

The whole night was madness and mayhem (aided by John popping an olive oil pourer onto a bottle of tequila and dumping it straight into our mouths) and absolute joy!

Jess, Flo & Soph

T, Channy, Jess, Flo, Soph

Paul & Jimmy

Sophie

Tuesday was supposed to be "get your shit together, Kate, damnit" day (*Sorry for the Truck Talk, Mom Mom and Mrs. Dunn!*). As we all know by now, I was less than successful. I ran around doing things that needed doing, but I had promised my friends Matt and Kayla that we'd hang out! So we did. At the pub. So then, oops, I was there til it closed. And then, since they closed a little early, a whole crew of us migrated to one of the breweries in town and stayed there til close. We spent the last couple of hours agreeing that I would not be leaving Wednesday. 

Kayla & Matt

My grey-headed twin, Stewie

So Wednesday dawned, bright and clear, and I did a second attempt at my Tuesday plans. I didn't mention, but at least part of the reason I was so unsuccessful with my packing plans was that Sandra, David and Rob were also in the process of packing up the house to move out! So much of my avoidance of packing was aided by helping them move - loading trailers, carrying furniture, helping to unpack. I paid a visit to Welshie in the morning at his house, since I wasn't going to see him, and found out that he would be in town for a doctor's appointment in the afternoon... and was going to call into the pub afterwards. 

Welshie

So suddenly I had a motivator: one last night of hanging with my friends Welshie and Stu at the pub, but ONLY if I was packed. Wouldn't ya know it, a bit of motivation was just what I needed. Got myself packed, dropped off all the random belongings that I'd accumulated that weren't mine (like Kayla's yoga mat, and the bike I was giving to Puppy), and had everything ready to load up! Made my way to the pub again where all my coworkers teased me for still being in town. Well worth it to spend my last night hanging with some of my favorite people!

Welshie and Stu

I had my alarm set for 4:45 but woke up at 3:15 and was wide awake. I laid in bed for maybe 15 minutes before deciding I was being silly and should just get up and get moving! By the time I dithered about, worrying that I might have forgotten something important, it was 4:15 and I was as ready as I was gonna be. 

Met my first Echidna on my drive out of town!

With just me driving, I took lots of breaks to stretch my legs; the whole trip to Perth took me 14 hours. But I made it without incident! My plan for Perth was to scramble about... see friends, buy an esky (cooler), get a couple of things for my car, and then hopefully leave Sunday or Monday, latest. Nat and Mick, bless them, nodded along when I told them my plan of attack. They nodded along when I told them I was going to take a route that would be several hundred miles worth of dirt track. They nodded when I said I was going to leave Monday, when I said I thought I was pretty well prepared, when I told them I was going to spend a few days visiting Uluru in the middle of the country before carrying on to Melbourne. And the next morning, when I was talking my plans through a bit more with Mick, he smiled and nodded along when I finally came to the realization that there was no way in hell my timeline was going to work. They knew it already, but they let me realize it on my own. Bless them.

The first issue was weather: a cyclone over the northwest coast was going to put me at risk of flooded roads in the center, where I was planning on driving. Because I didn't really leave myself enough time for difficulties, flooded roads were going to be a major issue. Because so much of that road is very, very, isolated, small issues might take much longer to rectify than I had time for. The day I drove down to Perth I got a series of long text messages from Tai, my boss at the pub, telling me that he and one of the yardies (groundskeepers) were discussing my travel-across-the-middle plan and were worried about the cyclone and wanted to make sure I knew about some permits I need to cross through Aboriginal lands and wanted to make sure that I had plans to get a second spare tire and generally wanted to be sure I wasn't biting off more than I could chew. How lucky am I to have worked with people who are so worried for my well-being even after I've left them?

We also had long chats about my esky plan and discussed whether installing a fridge for my car would be a better plan. To my American readers that will sound pretty excessive. To my Aussie readers, it's totally normal. Aussies love to outfit their cars with all kinds of cool bells and whistles: awnings for shade, roof racks to store camping gear and jerry cans of fuel and water, dual-battery systems for running cool things like car fridges. For many Aussies, the car fridge is about having cold beer at a moment's notice (honestly, I have regular conversations with Irish and Germans who say that Aussies drink more than their fellow countrymen do. It's just such a part of the culture here). For others it's about keeping your food properly cold while camping. For me it's gonna be about not having to stop for ice every day to keep my food safe. I'll be travelling through some very hot country, so even a very good quality cooler won't be able to keep things cool for much longer than a couple of days at best. And a cooler of that caliber is going to run me a pretty penny anyway. So why not just get a fridge that can live in my car and, if necessary, operate as a fridge inside a house when I stop travelling? 

So you'll notice that lots of these plans require lots of car work. This is where I start saying that Mick has been an absolute God-send. Nat and Weronika and I went shopping Friday to check out some of the car gear I was considering. Saturday morning we traded Weronika for Mick and bought half the store. And it was all possible because Mick just said "we want you to be set up for your drive" and willingly shared his knowledge of all the gear we were looking at AND his time and expertise in actually installing all the stuff. So that's what's been happening since Saturday. I keep up a steady supply of coffee and snacks, try to keep the kitchen (and house) tidy, and Mick stays in the garage, operating on Tessie. Nat has been busy at work, Weronika has been my chauffeur during the day when we need to pick up gear and other such things, and I've been thanking my lucky stars that the universe put these amazing people in my life. 

Mick with his assistant, Daisy

The rest of the week has been a whirlwind of shopping for car stuff, meeting up with friends, and soaking up the cooler-than-Exmouth weather. 

Wiebke, me and Weronika

Daisy

Nat & Weronika @ Raffles Hotel

Weronika & Nat @ Elizabeth Quay

Cooper, Nat, Wiebke & Daisy in Nat's back yard

Cooper & Daisy

My car is all sorted out now; Mick announced it's ready to drive out of the garage today! I'm seasoning my new swag in the backyard now, the fridge is working beautifully, and my awning looks awesome. So now it's time to get my gear sorted out and packed up so I can hit the road tomorrow morning! New plan of attack is to take the southern coastal road along the Nullarbor Plain, home to the longest straight section of road in the world. Migrate along to Port Lincoln, then Adelaide, drive the Great Ocean Road in Victoria and end up in Melbourne. Let's see how Phase 2: Leave Western Australia goes!

My task supervisors

Tessie with her new roof rack and awning!

Busy, Busy, Busy

 **NB: the title of this blog post should be sung to the tune of "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)" by ABBA which Australians are shockingly fond of. You hear the original version in bars and nightclubs all the time because they don't need to do a remix... the original is already perfect.**

So I mentioned in my Christmas post that my boss at the dive shop has remembered that I'm an employee of his. The last three weeks I've worked 2-3 days a week on the boat plus my normal 5-6 days a week at the pub. With summer school holidays in full swing, town has been busy with visitors (apparently far more than usual this time of year) and both jobs have required a lot of physical and mental energy. Weeks like these make me extra grateful that caffeine is a super drug in my back pocket. Because I don't care for the taste of coffee, I've never drunk it. Because it's just too dang hot, I don't even drink a cuppa tea every day. So when I do drink caffeine it hits me HARD. Which has been so helpful the last few weeks because I can just have a Coke or an iced tea around 3pm and still be wired at midnight! Puppy warns people anytime she notices this late afternoon caffeination happening: "watch out, last time she had tea in the arvo (*afternoon in Aussie*) she was rapping in the bar!" But it gets me through the long days with a smile on my face and energy to spare. 

Heather and Gabie

Team North America staff day (two Americans and a Canadian) on the boat!

Turtle Bay, Muiron Islands

Getting ready to snorkel guide @ the Muiron Islands

New Years Eve was a busy, busy day. I had a plan to go out on a day of fun diving on my work boat (my bosses, bless them, let staff go for free when there's space on the boat on our days off and we just help with little odd jobs throughout the day) because I didn't start work til 5pm at the pub. I knew it would be a long day but I wanted to get in the water for a dive. That plan bit the dust when Sandra, in a panic, asked me the day before to come into work at the pub at 3pm. She was worried that it was going to be really busy and they'd be short staffed. So I agreed, spent the morning on the beach by myself soaking up the calm, and bailed on diving. Thank goodness I did because it was a 12 hour work day at the pub and it was 12 FULL ON hours. Dinner service was busier than usual and by the end of it, people from the front bar were coming out to my pool bar to get drinks. This is a bit unusual; typically drinkers stick to the front and the pool bar is families having dinner by the evening. Sandra popped out around 7 and informed me that the front bar was already hectic. By 8:30pm the whole place was at capacity. And it stayed at capacity for the rest of the night. We pushed people inside (no one wants a drunk hopping the fence into the pool and going for a swim when it's supposed to be closed and, God forbid, getting hurt), closed the pool bar, went to the front bar, and spent the next 4 hours pouring drinks as quickly as we could. 

We went through 18 cases of vodka. We stopped pouring drinks a full hour earlier than last year because we ran out. The Redbull was gone by 9pm and our owners had to call on the local gas station owners to open up (they had been closed since 11am) so we could buy out their stock of the stuff (the bar patrons cheered when they saw one of our owners wheeling a dolly-full into the bar). They also gave us all their ice because we ran out. Then we ran out of ice again, so the local tackle shop gave us theirs. By the end of the night there were about 3 cubes of ice per drink and, even at that, we were quite literally waiting for the ice machines to drop the next round of cubes so we could scrape them out of the bottom of the case. It. Was. Insane. But so so so much fun! Despite the chaotic numbers of patrons, people were so respectful and well behaved. No fights, no dramas, just lots of people ringing in the new year at the pub!

"I don't know what Seinfeld is, really, just that it's a show from the '90s" - Puppy, explaining her clothing choice for our Retro-themed NYE. My shirt, for the record, was a fuzzy sweater tank top. My hat was a gift from my co-worker Tiarna; it reads "Philadelphia Born and Raised"

Besides the busyness of both jobs, I have been, as Dad would put it, "trying to fit 10 lbs. of potatoes in a 5 lb. sack." Some of my friends from the dive job have left town in the last few weeks, so we've been doing last-minute camping trips to soak up the outdoors time. Snorkel trips off the west side have been beautiful recently, too - the weather has just been so good for it - so I've been spending my days out in the sun, enjoying the reef and the beaches that makes this place so special. 

Charles Knife Canyon at dawn

Lindsay and Princess

Chiara and Lindsay (and Prin)

Puppy and Taitgen (rhymes with Cajun) at Oyster Stacks

Me & Corinne (from an older camping trip)

Anthony & Emily

Flo

Ospreys near Bundegi Beach

Mitch & Sapphi the Staffy

All in all, it's been busy and wonderful and it's still too hot here but apparently not as hot as it normally would be. And in two weeks, in theory, I'm leaving to go to Tasmania. Assuming that they'll still let me in after traveling through some states that, as of recently, have new Covid cases. We'll see. 

Sunset clouds at the pub