About careless woman, High tea, no-show vol. 2 and Dysart

Weekend was full of action and excitement again and luckily I got my Sunday back due to training rescheduling. For starters I locked myself out when leaving for a dinner to Powerhouse. I took the rubbish out before catching the bus, realized I forgot my earrings, went back up to get them and found out I have no keys. Bummer. I called to my landlady Valerie to help me out and she said they are out of town and coming back only on Saturday around 11am. Shitshitfuckfuck, this Friday night will be a long one then. I had options of staying with friends, going for a hotel or sleeping under the bridge (there are plenty of bridges in Brisbane) and chose the first option. Thank god I have friends. I felt such a teenager at the 7/Eleven buying a toothbrush around midnight. Or even more so getting home on Saturday morning with a hangover, hair all messed up looking very much like yesterdays news and meeting Valerie at the front door. I think I need a spare key. I think she thinks I am a careless woman. I didn’t even wear my earrings. After a quick refresh I headed back to city to enjoy High Tea with the girls.  High tea is an old English tradition of early evening meal of the lower class that is nowadays misleadingly served as formal tea with cakes, bread and butter sandwiches and sweets. The “High” relates to the dining table it was served from instead of class and formality and in reality “low tea” is the traditional 4 o’clock one with variety light snack included. Anyways, Hannah had booked a table for us from Room with Roses at the Brisbane Arcade and in my hangover I was very much looking forward to the English scones with cream cheese and jam. Instead of the scones and cream cheese I got a porcelain stand filled with small sandwiches, tarts and cakes and also a glass of sparkling which was a much needed pick me up drink. How surprising that a careless girl needs a pick me up drink at High Tea. The cakes and tarts and sandwiches were good and plenty and peppermint tea tasted like peppermint tea. I found the whole High tea setup a bit funny and think I prefer afternoon wine under the sun instead of tea and overdose of miniature cakes. Later in the evening went to have pizza to Ferny Grove and to catch up with Ross. The real Sicilian style pizza was delicious as always and got also korvapuusti for dessert. Such a healthy menu I had that day.

Sunday was a SUNday. I went for a good morning run, washed the floors and cleaned my balcony and had strawberries and yoghurt as a breakfast at the balcony. I love Brisbane. It’s mid September and I am enjoying fresh strawberries outside as everyone back home seems to complain about weather getting cold and wet again. At least according to Facebook, location, location, location J Later Marijke and I headed to Teneriffe to watch a rugby game with few colleagues…in reality the rugby game was just a good excuse to have a bottle of white wine already at 1.30pm. I didn’t pay much attention to the game, but recall that Australia won Italy and the Italy team had a player who looked like a goblin from a fairytale.  Wine and company were good, as always and I think Teneriffe is another area of Brisbane where I could live, especially as there are quite a few loft apartments there. My dream is to live in a loft apartment near the sea. It’s good to have dreams. It’s good to have lazy Sundays. This one was especially sweet as I got it back only on Friday.

Monday morning I was prepared to go to the office as I didn’t hear anything from the travel agency and thought I am flying to Moranbah Tuesday morning. With a bit of doubt in my mind I decided to give them a call to check the status of tickets and heard my change request on Friday has not been acted on because I wasn’t authorized to change the reservations (reservations are done centrally via the scheduling team) and I was supposed to fly out on Sunday which I didn’t and was labelled as no-show again and therefore no flights were booked for Monday or Tuesday morning. Are you freaking kidding me? No. Apparently the agent dealing with me on Friday didn’t know the rules and forgot to inform me about the fact that she couldn’t proceed with the request and my reservation stayed as-is. Anyways within that call I was told to be at the airport and boarding in 60 minutes in case they get a ticket for me which gave me sufficient -15minutes time to change clothes and pack and head to the airport. In that situation I was pretty glad about the fact that at work I need to wear the terrible unisex company gear and could only throw in my travel clothes, running gear and personal stuff. I made it on time, I got the ticket, had even time for morning coffee as the departure was delayed. I think my luck with these travel bookings seems to be incredibly bad as already twice I have ended up being the no-show girl. Still I was happy to make it to Moranbah early on and drive during light time. The biggest worry on my mind was the driving instructions from the airport to Dysart as the piece of info didn't seem helpful at all: “1. Head southeast on Goonyella Rd toward Peak Downs Hwy”. Nice, thank you, but how do I know where is southeast? I know left and right, but no idea which of them is southeast when leaving the airport ( I still don’t get it how guys always know where north is? I strongly believe that the inner compass is located in the Y chromosome and that’s why women most often have poor sense of direction and know only left and right) So concerned about my survival in the wildlife and while waiting for the boarding to start I got myself a compass app from istore to help me out deciding the southeast of Moranbah airport. Btw, my current location is 22°58′S 148°36′E…Like it would say something, but anyways.

Moranbah was once again sunny and warm, almost 26 degrees. The tractor brought the suitcase and I went inside to the barrack building to get the keys to my rented car. I was expecting to get a big 4WD but got a normal size automatic (pheew) car instead. And it’s grey. Or brownish grey. Here we go. For my pleasant surprise I didn’t need the compass or the driving instructions as there was a sign towards Dysart at the airport. So southeast = left at Moranbah airport, made a note to myself. Turning left I washed the windows as blinkers are also on the wrong side of the wheel which seems to be the most difficult part for my little brain to adjust. I have very clean windows in the car. After some 10 minutes of extreme excitement, windows washing and squeezing the wheel like hell I started to relax. I had empty “highway” ahead, no turns, no fellow drivers and radio playing Justin Timberlake’s Cry me a river. I started to smile, sing, relax a bit and thought this is fun. I am driving alone in the middle of nowhere BABY! The singing paused every time a road train came across. They are huge, super long and shiny trucks that make you want to close your eyes and scream when passing. For my own safety I kept both eyes open and on the road but did scream a bit.

Dysart is even smaller town than Moranbah. According to the statistics back in 2006 cencus the population is under 4000. Again, most of the people here are miners working at nearby Norwhich Park, Saraji and Peak Downs mines. The motel I am staying at is a lot better than the previous at Moranbah. I actually have a hair dryer, free internet, handsoap (not to be taken for granted here), microwave oven and an electric kettle. There is a little path of ants passing my door, but so far it is the only wild life I have seen and I think ants are fine as they are small, harmless, have a path and are following it in a very disciplined way (discipline = good). Also when unpacking I realized I had carried a fruit knife with my hand luggage (I have a plastic folder of all my travel and training papers, had put the fruit knife in it when flying out of Moranbah two weeks ago as the folder was in my suitcase, forgot the knife there and took the folder to my handbag while flying in again). So, in addition that you are allowed to carry liquids on Sundays and Mondays you are also allowed to carry knifes without getting caught up at the security check. How comforting to know this. Not. I went to the nearby IGA grocery store to get some water and lunch for the next day and was forced to leave with cup noodles as there was nothing fresh in eatable shape in their selection. At least they had wine gums *sigh*.

Tuesday was a training day again on a site 70km from the town. I drove past the mine site when coming to Dysart so I knew my way already. I saw at least 5 dead kangaroos and 1 dead koala on the way and so far I haven’t seen a single living one so am a bit doubtful if they even exist. And as my colleague commented “yeah, and then when driving you will see a living kangaroo that ends up being a dead kangaroo when your car hits it”. True. So let’s hope I will see the living wildlife when someone else is driving. I didn’t need to get any visitors pass for the site as the training was happening in an “induction centre” that was a barrack office building with about 5 employees and few extra seats. Counting 1 + 1 = 2 I realized the training is happening in an open office. How convenient. I was also told that there is a blast (explosion) happening at 1pm and the site will be evacuated at 12.30pm which gave me 3 hours time to complete 4.5 hour session. No time for BS let’s get started then. Quick and dirty we finished on time, left the office amongst all the other workers, following the flow of cars I accidently went to wrong direction and had a first proper place for u-turn after some 20 minutes drive. I was expecting to see and hear the blast but basically nothing happened…a bit of a disappointment. Back in town I continued with work from my motel and went for a run. A normal run, no emotions attached run. Refreshing.

Today was kind of a “home office” day as the next training is only tomorrow. I slept long, had a cup of awful instant coffee at the balcony and started to catch-up with emails. Around noon I got an urgent email to print, sign and scan few documents and send them back ASAP. Sure, no probs I’ll print them out in the reception and scan and email it back. Easier said than done. I walked to the reception and asked if I could scan and email few papers. “Sure, but I am not authorized to scan and email so could you come back in an hour when the reception manager is here?” *Wot? Not authorized to scan and email??* Ok, no worries. I went back after an hour, met the reception manager who said the scanner is not working at the moment but I should go to the post office and they for sure can help me out. So I went to the post office and asked for help. “Sorry miss, we don’t have a scanner here, only a fax if that helps”. No thank you, could you please advise where should I go. “Try the library, they for sure have a scanner”. Great. So I went to the library, bank, electrics store, police station (met a very handsome officer, highlight of my day) and the reception of the second motel and no one could help me. Hear this out, the entire town of Dysart does not have scanning possibilities available. So after visiting almost every store and office in town, 2 hours of wasted time I faxed the papers, welcome to 1990's Ansku. High performance. Delivered.

To kill my evening time I went for a run again with a newly downloaded the sports tracker app. I know rest of the world has used it for ages already, but I am a bit of late bloomer with things like this. I was a bit surprised to find out that my average running speed is 8.2 km/hour because I thought it was a lot less. Yay! The girl who has hated running since skating times is slowly learning to like it again. So I set myself a goal of 10km before end of September, it’s good to have goals too.

Tomorrow I will see a new mine site and bunch of new people again. And after two nights I get to go back home to enjoy the good life, friends and random weekend routines. Outback Australia has the upside of sweet home comings....and I also have a package from Finland waiting that was left unopened in a hurry to get to the airport. Hopefully some Salmiakki in there.

Good night dear friends!

//Ansku

PS: Hear this out, weather forecast promises 30°to Brisbane on Friday and 32° for Saturday. The heat is on! Sweeeeeeeeet!!!!