Roadhouse Ready

So, since it's been ages and I don't have wifi anymore (whattup 3G) for the next few months, i figured i'd do a quick update on my life at the moment.

I am working at a roadhouse about 1.5 hours from Darwin in the Northern Territory. Basically...I do everything. A roadhouse is a full service rest stop in Aussie-land. So we have a caravan park, a few cabins, dongas (little one room sheds basically lol), a bar, an information desk and even 2 water buffalos and 2 emus for good measure. So our job is basically answer questions, take food orders,deliver food, work the bar, clean things up, clean cabins, make food, re-stock things, blah blah blah.

The hours can be pretty long some days ---a split shift is 7am-1pm and then 6pm-close (midnight) usually. But, given that there's not a whole lot to do around here other than hit the pool and check fb it's not too bad. The management is terrible. A lot of reasons for this...mostly disorganization, an inability to let others do their jobs and inexperience. BUT the people are awesome and it's so fun getting to know everyone. there are THREE Americans here. WHAT?! and ALL from the East coast. Me, this kid Andrew from Philly and a girl named Emily from Vermont. So random. But there are also a French girl, Italian girl and a bunch of Brits and Aussies to round it out. We all get on super well too so that's well nice.

I make good money so...yay for that. Hopefully most of it doesn't get spent on alcohol since sitting chatting and drinking is pretty much what we do in the evenings. Ahh well. But we get to meet all these miners (gold is huge around here) and they tend to buy us drinks--as do a few of the guys on staff who have adopted me as their younger sister. I'm learning to play pool again (HEYO Lextasy) and the guys are all trying to give me tips cause they're all well good. I'm getting there hahah SORT of. Actuallly, to be fair. Since writing this update I won $50 in a game of pool....so not too bad. 

umm....let's see. Love doing bar work! Everyone's friendly and it's fun to chat with people and tease them about life. It's nice to have regulars who get to know you and treat you like a sister/daughter etc. Although you can get hit on quite a bit...which can be annoying. But overall it's really good. One thing i will say is that Aussie-land definitely teaches you not to judge people based on appearances. The number of times you'll meet people who you would in NO way call classy...but they're making 6-7 figure salaries because they're miners. It's INSANE. Also great if they befriend you and buy you drinks haha.=]

Got to speak a LOT of German last week because we had a German kid working, met a German miner, and then one of my really good friends here is engaged to a German girl so he speaks Bayerisch (which is the dialect of German where I studied abroad in HS) SO much fun. But he's leaving soon and German worker kid left. Sad day.

OH OH OH. Also---i discovered that when i say town down and whatever else with ow in it I sound Aussie. hahhahaha sooo even though those are the only things I can say in an Aussie accent---it's good to know they fit in somewhere =P hahah

anyways life is good albeit not quite in a routine as of yet. Can't wait to get off on the next leg of my journey but happy to be at a standstill for a bit. Love you all so so much!!

I'll update facebook with pictures and whatnot when i get a chance. =]

Roadtrip Part 3: Broome to Perth

Day 12: Broome to Robe River (9 hours)

This was sot of a filler day where we were just trying to get as close to Exmouth as we could in a day. So the only real exciting things were 1) staying at a free campsite which had WiFi, and 2) having cattle surround our tent overnight chomping on grass and whatnot.

Day 13: Robe River to Exmouth (should have been 4 hours...ended up like 6)

This day was....hectic to say the least. We woke up freezing in our wee little tent, so we turned the heat on in the car as soon as we could. Unfortunately we discovered later that this was a bad decision. About 20 minutes down the road our car died. We were stuck on the side of the road about halfway (1.5 hours) between 2 different towns. We popped the hood of course and tried to figure out what was up, but the oil and everythign was looking good. So we decided to try a mechanic and tow trucks. Called the Aussie version of AAA, couldn't help us. Called operators and mechanics, find out it's a public holiday, it will cost $1000 for us to get towed to the nearest town Karratha. Luckily Bessie magically starts up and we start heading to Karratha (back from where we want to be) to make our costs less. About an hour into this we decide maybe we should just try and go to Exmouth, and if we get stuck at a rest stop in between, at least we'll be closer to where we want to be. She runs great the rest of the way, even though we ran out of music and our phones both almost died (Mine was already dead).

Finally after the insanity we get to Exmouth in pretty good time, wander around town, grab some food and get set up at the caravan park before passing out for the evening.

Day 14: EXMOUTH

This was legitimately my favorite day of the trip. We woke up early and got picked up to go on a snorkeling tour in Ningaloo Reef. Highlights of the day:

1. Swimming with WHALE SHARKS. (check the pics here)

                                                    

2. Swimming with Manta Rays

3. Giant Sea Turtle

4. Swam over a proper shark

5. On a boat all day

 

6. Free trial dive (my second one) it was AMAZING.

After heading back to the caravan park, we chilled then got ready to go to a pub quiz with some of the crew from the boat then headed back to hang out with them for the evening. Sidenote. The Quiz master decided to do a party trick after the quiz and did a handstand on the wall here he then sculled 2 glasses of rum and coke. His daughter (who was like 10) was unimpressed and told him to hurry up.

Such a hilarious and wonderful day...that we weren't even sure was going to happen the day before.

Day 15: Exmouth to Monkey Mia (7 hours)

Nothing exciting,....just a driving day. BUT Monkey Mia had an AWESOME sunset and we got to have ribs. So, not a bad day.

Day 16: Monkey Mia to Dongara (5 hours)

Woke up early this AM to watch a dolphin feeding!=] 

 

 

Well, unfortunately after an awesome morning of watching wild dolphins come up super close to us, our car broke down about ten minutes outside Monkey Mia. Luckily, a bigger town called Denham was not too far away so we got a tow pretty quickly. That's where we are as I right this. Let's hope this baby starts working! ANNNNDDD she did. So off we were...$300 lighter towards Perth. Ended up sleeping in the car at a rest stop to make up time....oh the adventures.

                                    

             

Day 17: Dongara to Perth (4 hours)

SO after getting up early and ready to hit the road...we got about 20 minutes outside Dongara before our car stalled out again. LUCKILY we are expert mechanics at this point and were able to fix Bessie up with some blue (gum) tack and she was right for the rest of the journey. Somewhat unfortunate given the $300 we spent the day before...but we're in Fremont loving life...so well done blue tack. Sadly though, we sent the day preparing for our trip to end by packing up our bags for the most part, putting up the tent for the last time, and putting up ads at hostels to sell the camping gear and car. It's starting to feel real...and it's the worst. We even had to say goodbye to our SANGRIA pitcher!

                                           

DAY 18: PERTH

Jokes aside, it was so sad to see Meg leave today! We had an awesome day of running around Perth going to an art museum, meeting  up with a girl she knew from home and getting a tour of the graffiti of Perth from HER friend. So overall a really cool day! But, seeing as Meg and I have been living and working together for the past 3 months and then constantly together for the past 3 weeks...its strange to part ways. I'm definitely excited for this next leg of the journey...but praying hard that I can make it to my next job without too much stress. So here goes!

Road trip part 2: Darwin to Broome

Day 6: Drive to Katherine (4 hours)

Left Darwin this morning to head for Katherine via Litchfield National Park. Unfortunately, about 45 minutes down the road, i realized my bag wasn't in the car....so we had to drive back to Darwin in order to get it. Turns out it had fallen out of the car when we'd left the door open earlier in the day. Then, because we used so much petrol, we went to ggo grab more and in our urgency i broke the glove box getting into it. Luckil Meg saved the day and fixed it. EVENTUALLY we did end up at Litchfield Park and headed to Wangi falls which spill into a swimming hole. 

              

So we spent an hour or so swimming under waterfalls and then had a famous mango cheesecake that wasn't NEARLY as good as Miia's (shout out to Miia for her sweet rasberry swirl cheesecake). Then we ended up in Katherine later in the day. 

                                                    

Day 7: Katherine to Kununurra  (6 hours)

Woke up early this day to do a short hike up Katherine Gorge. It was beautiful, and along the way we ran into this older woman from Perth who told us we couldn't miss out on swimming with whale sharks...and so an idea was put in our heads that wouldn't quite go away. 

              

Later that day we passed into Western Australia and through the quarantine area where they took our oranges from us =(

                                   

On the bright side, we had forgotten about the time change going into WA, so we ended up having enough time to detour down to Argyle Lake and the Ord River. We stared at a lake that was 18 times the sze of Sydney Harbour and swam in a river that had both crocs and rapids, but hey, what Aussie trip is complete wihtout that? =]

 

Day 8: Kununurra to Fitzroy Crossing (7 hours)

On our way to Fitzroy, our brake fail light came on....so we stopped in Halls Creek and grabbed some brake fluid to fix er up. THEN, as we continued on our way, the battery light came on. hahah of COURSE. So we made it to Fitzroy lodge, went for a swim and then enjoyed watching the State ofo the Union match betweeen Queensland and NSW up at the lodge. We had decided to wait til morning to see if we could get Bessie started, and then go from there.

 

Day 9: Fitzroy Crossing

HAH so not the best plan on our part. We got up and got the car started in the AM, and got her out of the caravan park and 5 minutes down the road right in front of a one lane bridge and then she decided to die. So, we spent the day in Fitzroy waiting for her to get fixed up by a local mechanic. Eventually they figured it out (seomthing simple) and we headed a bit further down the road to a free campsite for the evening,

 

                                                    

Day 10: Drive to Broome (3 hours)

This was a lovely day. We drove the 3 hours or so left to Broome, got to our caravan park, and then wandered up to China town for a while. Then later that evening we went to a delicious Thai food place called SOM THAI RESTAURANT. hahahhah okay. but yeah it was good. Then geared up to watch the movie Bad Neighbours at Sun Pictures Cinema which is the world's longest running outdoor cinema. It was AWESOME.

                                               

Day 11: BROOME

Just a chill day of beach sitting at Cable Beach. The water was like 30 degrees, the weather was perfect, and the waves were awesome. SUCH a nice day. Then we finished the day by watching a few movies at the caravan park.

              

Road Trip Part 1: Barcy to Darwin

Day 1: Barcaldine to Mt. Isa (8 hours)

Really, this was a rather uneventful day....up until we got to Mt. Isa. Once we got there we decided to run to Kmart to grab some things for the trip. And, being the safety-cautious girls we are...we locked all our doors. Unfortunately this was a mistake. After our quick shopping trip we got back to the car only to discover the key wouldn't open the doors. It would unlock one of them but the door itself was stuck. And, none of the windows were down. So after much struggling and stressing, we called a locksmith who $150 later got us into our car. So we were off to find a caravan park! Sort of....because then she wouldn't start. So we sat and continued to stress for another 15ish minutes trying to figure out why our car wouldn't start and how we were going to do our trip. By the time we had gotten the car to start and actually were getting somewhere, the caravan park had closed and due to the fact that Mt. Isa is a mining town the cheapest motel we could find was $120. So...day one ended nothing like we thought. BUT, on the bright side, after a stressful day we got a much needed sleep before starting on our journey the next morning.

Day 2: Mt Isa to Daly Waters(10 hours)

This day started off quite well, because we had gotten a much needed rest, some tea and a good start to the day due to a helpful motel owner. And it continued to go well up until halfway through our journey when we broke down at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. We freaked out a bit...but luckily some grey nomads (retired Aussies who buy campervans and travel Oz) came to the rescue.  From this day forward we decided to just never turn the car off when we were on the road, in order to make sure she wouldn't have trouble starting up again. And eventually we got her going again and made it to Daly Waters. Daly waters was the first offficial place we would get to camp in our little tent and HAH you should have seen our faces when we started to put it up. Here we are in our little sedan and 2-man pup tent next to giant campervans with the most elaborate tent set ups. Needless to say, plenty grey nomads were taking the piss out of us for it. Luckily they were also there to help us out when we realized we didn't have a hammer to put in our pegs. It sounds obnoxious but honestly, we both slept well and were so excited to be at a caravan park, so much closer to where we were supposed to be and in our tent finally get some tea in us and smile about how our trip was going.

                                 

                                        

                                       

                                                    

Day 3: Daly Waters to Darwin (6 hours)

So by day 3 of the road trip we were in dire need of some sort of distraction from driving. SO, we hit up Mataranka thermal springs and oh it was worth it. We didn't stay super long but it was so nice to jump out of the car and into a pool for a bit. After about an hour or so there we were back in the car on the road to Darwin!

                                    

Upon getting to Darwin however, we had an adventure as we hadn't planned out a caravan park and drove into the city to find out where the closest one was. Unfortunately in the midst of going from a single road and small towns to a city again I struggled a bit driving and almost destroyed a wheel avoiding someone, cut someone off on a roundabout and just generally struggled. To be fair, it was the first time i'd ever driven in a city in a left sided car. so we'll blame it on that cool? Cool. 

Once we did get to the carravan park it was awesome. We had some Germans staying behind us so we enjoyed listening to their convos and trying to figure out what they were talking about based on what little i could pick up, and we thouroughly got an experience out of getting the tent up seeing as the ground was too hard to put pegs in. So, we tied portions of it to othe car and hoped for the best.

After that adventure we headed into Darwin to get food, see the ocean (WOOH!) and just wander a bit. It was wonderful and we even happened to run into an opera concert thing they were practicing for outside by the harbor and watched that for a while. Such a good night=]

                 

                                       

Day 4--DARWIN

This day we woke up a bit early and just went to spend the day in the city. Meg ended up getting her tattoo which was AWESOME, albeit a bit painful for her. Afterwards we headed up to the art museum, grabbed some gelato, sat in the park, wandered the wharf and then made sausages for dinner before a hilariously wonderful and much needed night out (aka DANCING GALORE).

                             

Day 5--DARWIN

Our final day in Darwin we slept in a bit for once before getting put together and heading off to the Darwin Military Museum to learn more about WWII and Darwin. It was quite cool but we were both a bit tired from the trek up to it...so we probably didn't appreciate it quite as much as we could have. But after trekking down again we took a quick nap in a park and then headed to the sunset market where we watched  a street performer do fire dancing and just generally enjoyeed perusing the stalls.