Back in Texas (Early)

In yet another unexpected turn of events, I am back in Texas.


Tuesday, July 15th, I was working around the homestead of Gamboola when it became time for my lunch break. Just then, my mother called from home saying that the Ft. Worth Fire Dept. had called looking for me. Back in December I had taken an initial entrance exam for that fire dept, and had been given a ranking that led me to believe that I wouldn't be called up. It had been pretty frustrating to be denied my most desired job after such a trivial test, but I just resolved myself at that point to put all my efforts into moving to Australia.

So imagine my suprise when they call me up 7 months later, saying that they are interested in me after all! The biggest catch was, I had to be in Ft. Worth on Sunday, July 20th. Basically I had five hours in order to figure out wether I was going to drop everything I had built up with my Australia trip to go for the fire dept. It's not even a sure thing (by any means) that I'll even get a job with the fire dept. yet, as there are a few more tests, interviews, polygraphs, and such that I need to get through. If I was going to get a ride out of Gamboola, I'd have to hitch a ride with Lisa the next morning... she just so happened to have already planned on going to Cairns that very day, something she only does every 3 to 4 months!

I realized I would need to have the discussion with Tony about my options by about 5pm, before he retired to his own building for the evening. Five hours to make a huge life decision. Do I stay on Gamboola, a place I felt had become my new home, where I was having the best time of my life working outside everyday in the Outback... or do I put all my chips in to fly back to Tx on the drop of a hat for a shot at my most desired job as a Ft Worth firefighter. If I came back to Tx and don't get the job, I'll have no car, phone, job, or place of my own. So quite a bit on the line!

Tony was VERY understanding of the situation. When I explained the phone call that I got, he was straight to the point saying that basically I'd be stupid not to try and go for it. I don't think I could have left on such short notice without his complete blessing on the situation. I decided that cutting the trip shorter than expected was not selling out, but simply pushing it in a different direction. Here I was about to, for the second time in six months, pack up everything and move across the Pacific ocean with no guarantees. So I packed up everything that evening, and decided that this is the time in my life that I'm able to take big risks and move across the world for reasons like this.

I took the ride with Lisa at 7:30 the next morning from Gamboola Station to Cairns. It is impossible to explain how hard it was to leave Gamboola on such short notice. I had begin to take for granted that I'd be out there for several more months, and looked forward to the projects and experiences that would have been in store. I think it's for the best that I left so fast, as the reality of what was happening didn't set in for a few days. When I got to Cairns, I called up Charlie Marino and his wife, the couple who been such excellent hosts for me every time I had been in town. I couldn't leave town without saying goodbye! Well I had the chance to hang out with them one more evening, and then I was at the airport early the next morning.

Luckily for me I had my mother, cousin, and sister looking online to find the best return ticket for me, as I wouldn't have been around a phone or computer to be able to do it myself. By thursday evening I was back in the ol U.S. of A.

..

On Sunday I was in Ft. Worth to attend orientation and to do a practice of the physical ability timed course that we have to complete within 5.5 minutes. I was pretty apprehensive about the test, it seemed like it would be exhaustive, and I would be amazingly embarrased if I had cut my trip short and got a ticket back to Tx just to FAIL a physical ability test. Well, when I ran the course in practice, I finished in 4 mins 8 seconds no problem at all. So by this time tomorrow hopefully I will have made the same time on the actual test! After that there are a few more parts of the process, and I should get a job offer / not get a job offer within one month from now. Please wish me luck!

July on Gamboola

As my internet time is pretty limited (less than an hour, every 8-9 days) I decided to copy the bulk of a message I just sent to one of my friends to the blog. That might be cheating, but it's the only way I was going to have time to put something up here!



This weekend we had a big aussie bbq out on the station with a few blokes from Cairns, a great change of pace for a night! Last week my boss and I completed our first and main round of fence work(600 miles worth) that began over two months ago, so that feels nice to have accomplished. It's the middle of winter here, so lucky for me the afternoons got down to a mild 84 degrees F the other day. Jeez, summer will really kill me here, with temps constantly over 110 and humidity you can cut through with a knife.. but the whole point of being out here I guess was in a way I felt like I was getting a bit too 'soft' in the city, and wanted a place to harden up, and this place offers as good a challenge as any for it!
The weeks seem to be slipping by pretty fast here. We work 6 full days a week and take Sunday off, which I usually take advantage of by lounging around, playing guitar, and reading some Tom Clancy. This week we had a couple of real solid blokes from Cairns hangin around, so we all went fishing on a 'secret' part of the Mitchel River this morning. No fish, but still had a great time talkin and relaxing.

Quite a bit of time out here I will completly love it and completly hate it at the same time. I guess hate is the wrong word, but the duality of the emotion is still overwhelming. It's hard work and the isolation is pretty taxing, plus the cumlative effect of all the subtle cultural differences that remind me that 'home' is something far away... but at the same time I'm absoultly loving the challenge, the people, and the landscape. I don't have to remind myslef that for years to come I'd kick myself if I didn't soak up every moment of my time out here to the fullest..

every day when we stop for to have our lunch under some tree along the river or elsewhere, we always survey the surroundings, sit down, and ask eachother 'I wonder what all the people in the cities are doing right now?.... poor bastards'.

Pictures and Updates

Check out some new additions to the layout, plus I've added a few pictures to the last 6 postings. My trip visiting my family is going great... I've had a few more 'firsts' which I'll write about soon. Hope everyone is doing great, hope to hear from all of y'all!

Stockyards, Wildlife, and the RFDS

And meanwhile, back on the ranch..

Life has been great. The contract ringers began working on Wrotham Park Station immediately after the Chillagoe Rodeo, so there is much more going on these days. Gamboola Station is still technically the OutStation for Wrotham Park, with only the Walsh River dividing us. A few of the cattle paddocks even overlap both properties. So the mustering at 'the Park' affects our work as well sometimes.

There is one day that continues to stick out in my memory as particularly noteworthy. One Tuesday Tony and I planed on going out on our 4x4 vehicle to work on miles of barbed wire fences for the day, but the manager from Wrotham Park (Tony's boss) called to say that we needed to come fix some timber rails on a stockyard that was currently being used. A stockyard is a big fenced area (made of steel or timber) with many small compartments and corridors where all the cattle are herded into for sorting, branding, and so forth. While I always look forward to a day of barbed wire fence work (the moving scenery makes for a quick day), having plans change at the last second is nothing unusual on a working station.

Although I have spent quite a bit of time (About 20 days worth) working on replacing the rails of a stockyard close to Gamboola Homestead, this was my first experience with one actually full of cattle. Between the cattle in the stockyard and the many more waiting queue in the surrounding holding paddock, there was literally well over 1,000 cattle within a 1 kilometre radius of me. The noise, the smell, and the danger of being charged while we cut the new timber rails made for quite an interesting working environment.. to say the least.

By midday we had finished and after lunch Tony and I headed out to check on a few bores (man made watering holes for the cattle). It can be quite an adventure just to get to each one, and we always keep an eye out for wildlife. Tony likes to quiz me on me growing knowledge of the local birds, trees, and flora, but what we really look out for is wild boars and dingos.. a major nuisance and threat to the cattle. At each bore we got out to check the waterlevel, and the first thing that always overwhelms me is how picturesque the scene is. Many times there is an old, tall windmill on the far side of the water, flocks of white birds and black duck taking flight on our arrival, and a waterhole lined with lilypads.

At one bore I must have been distracted watching the ducks fly off when all of the sudden I heard Tony yell 'RUN! QUICK.. RUN!'. I had never heard fear in Tony's voice before, so I turned and ran, and had jumped through a barbed wire fence before realizing what had happened. Apparently when we had walked up to the water, we inadvertently had cornered a large Boar, who in turned had decided to charge us. We usually always bring a shotgun with us when checking the bores, but of course the ONE time we don't..

The other wildlife is usually not so terrible. This particular day we came across a total of about 25 wild boars and sows, 3 dingos, 25 wallabies, 4 kangaroos, 3 goannas, and4 emus, just to name a few. Not to mention all the crazy bird species. This is one reason why I almost never have a bad attitude about my work.. as each day is literally an Australian Safari. Many people backpack or live in Australia and never get to see half of these animals in the wild. There are also some fresh and salt water crocodiles on the station too, but I've yet to see anything but day-old evidence of them on the waterside.... thank god.

Another interesting event just last week was an 'R.F.D.S. Field Day' hosted at Wrotham Park. The Royal Flying Doctor Service is the famous emergency service that does exactly what the name implies. Isolated Australians rely on the RFDS as their ambulance service in life-threatening situations. For example, Gamboola Station had to use the RFDS just under a year ago when one of the contract ringers lost two fingers while working in the stockyard. Well, the last Friday of May a RFDS plane came to Wrotham Park to refresh whoever was interested on basic CPR and first-aid. They also offered free skin checks using some advanced camera equipment. I found it bizarre that of all the years that I have been going to the doctor to get my skin checked out, I got the most technologically advanced service in the middle of the Australian outback.. and it was free. While waiting for the skin check, the pilot was nice enough to give me a tour of the aircraft and some of the medical equipment, which along with the stories I exchanged with the flight nurses made for quite a fulfilling day.

**
My mum, my brother, and his wife and kids are all visiting Australia for about two weeks. They had made these travel plans before I finalized my own trip, and well before I knew that I would be working at Gamboola Station. Since my mum had no original plans of making it up this far north, I decided to take a week off from the station in order to fly down to the Gold Coast and meet up with her and the rest of the family. This was surprisingly easy to do, as my manager truly believes in the motto 'family first'. While there is much work to be done in just a few short weeks, they thought that I should jump at any chance to see my mum while she was in Oz.

Currently I'm in Cairns for a few days, where I have been meeting up with my brother and his family. While my mum visits my aunt in Adelaide, they had come up to visit the Great Barrier Reef and the Rainforest. The next post I'll go into all my Cairns adventures, but right now I really gotta sign off. There is a bus coming to pick me up in an half an hour...... so I can to go skydiving. :)

Chillagoe Rodeo

While working on the fences last week we came up on some wild horses on the other side of the fence. They were some of the biggest horses I've ever seen, and I don't know what it is, but there was something very awe-inspiring about the moment. That's all I'm saying..

The big news of course was the Chillagoe Rodeo that went on last weekend. Now I knew this was going to be an event of about 2-300 people, but somehow I found myself more giddy in anticipation of 'people!' and 'civilization!' than I knew possible. It must have dawned on me that this would be one of the biggest, no scratch that, THE biggest affair I'd be attending in a long time. So I was defintely going to make the most of it.

When pulling into town, I had one of those radically new perspective that turns your world upside down. This was because for the first time in my life, I drove into a town with a population of 200 people (about half my average classroom size in Uni) and the very first thought in my head was 'oh wow, look at all the buildings and people!'. Sigh.

I got to bunk up in the house adjacent to the General Store, thanks to Vicki, the same lady that I met on the plane and who found me my current job. A bed next to an extra laptop with broadband internet.. I was in heaven. It's a blessing I was able to remove myself from the room to go to the pubs and the rodeo.

There are two pubs in Chillagoe, known commonly as 'the top pub', and 'the bottom pub'. The top pub is known to be more of a family-friently environment, heck they even have a little playscape out past the beergarden. The bottom pub is supposed be be a younger crowd, but much more roudy.. and the more the Vicki and other adultstried to warn me of it, the more appealing it became. I was on my own for friday night, so I started off with the top pub, mainly because I was looking for a feed and they were the only ones serving food. After getting my steak and salads fix for the night, I befriended four cops from Cairns who were in town to watch over the rodeo weekend. They were an interesting mob, and once we made it to the bottom pub (and quite some grog later), they did everything in their power to get the bartender to admit she liked me, but no avail.

Now I've been to quite a few rodeos before, but never one in which I was asked so much if I personally would be riding. My classic response was 'there isn't enough tequila in this town to get me to ride a bull this time, sorry mate..' There was some great riding tho, including some great bull rides and cattle drafting by some blokes I know. The real excitment was Saturday evening, when the outdoor bar (3 plastic tables) got busy and the live band showed up to play. I was in the middle of 'the bush', surrounded by a great number of aussie bushman (and 'buckle bunnies') about my age that were ready to have a great time. So I decided 'when in Rome..' and matched them step for step. All I have to say was that I've rarely had better nights than that one. By the time the night was over, most of the people there seemed bent on shouting out 'Texas!' everytime I went passed them. Besides meeting most of the guys around my ages, I made good new friends in two canadian girls that were backpacking and currently employed at the bottom pub. (Yes, one was the same bartender earlier mentioned).

Well, now back to life as normal.. to be honest when driving back to Gamboola on Sunday afternoon I kind of felt relieved, one of those 'ahh HOME...' moments. Speaking of which, I've been putting some serious thought these last few weeks on where I might want to call 'home' next, once I move back to the States. I had always kinda assumed that it would be Texas somewhere, but now I find myself thinking that I might want to try out some part of Southern California, the D.C. area, or maybe somewhere even farther north.. who knows?

My New Life on Gamboola Station

Friday's work just finished up and I thought that while I sit here mellowing out to Kenny Chesney's most recent album I'd write up another post for the ol' blog. I do that on paper now cuz my internet time is sporadic and sometimes very limited.

I remember putting so much emphasis before I move here about some of the statistics... 4 hours from a decent town, 2 hours from the nearest town of 200, mail and ambulance by plane, ect.. Yet now that I'm working out here, the isolation doesn't even seem to cross my mind for weeks at a time. Sure, I look forward to the day that I'm back in Texas and the big cities (God I never knew how much of a Texas guy I was until I left the state) but right now I'm exactly where I should, and more imporantly WANT to be.

It's another month or two before the contract musterers get to the station, at which point there will be 12 other jackaroos/jillaroos about my age to spend some of the evenings with. Mustering season (rounding up the cattle to the stockyards for sorting from all over the station) will last about two hard months, and there is plenty to do as we Tony and I prepare for it.

Most days Tony and I work side by side, recently either putting new timber into the stockyards here at the homestead or riding out all day for work on the miles (and miles and miles) of barbed wirce fences. During the wet season of Jan. and Feb. the waterways swell and mess the fences up something awful, so I think with 600 miles of it and MANY waterways it's fair to say that there's enough work to keep a few men busy year in and year out.

The weather is amazing, very few clouds and plenty of sunshine. Granted, the sun in the afternoon hours sometimes feels like an oppresive deamon straight out of hell... but hey, welcome to the Australian Outback eh?

Tony, my boss and manager, is 45 and a good man in all measures. He moved from Cairns out to the bush when he was about 18 to find life as a stockman, and he's very good at what he does. He's a hard worker no doubt, but lucky for me he deosn't have any desire for us to overwork ourselves. He says there's no point in running ourselves completly into the ground out here, and I couldn't agree more. He expects good work tho, so every time he leaves a job for me to do by myself, I make sure that I do it right. I decided the first day I got here that I was never going to make the man repeat himself or point out something done half-way. It's not like I can just make new friends out here or anything...

Lisa, Tony's wife, is an amazing cook. When you're on an isolated cattle station, you better be prepared to be in love with steak. Luckily I fit that bill. Even better, I have never had a predictable meal since I've been here. It's been nearly a month already (and MAN has that flown by) and almost every dinner has been something different. Heck we even had a great curry the other night. Speaking of eating cattle, the second week I was out here I had my first experience actually cutting up a beast. We drove out into one of the paddocks nearby and found a good fat cow with no calf, and an hour later we had a month's supply of cut up beef in the bed of our Toyota Landcruiser. Btw- I'm driving pretty well on manual these days.. after my lesson on the Gold Coast with my Auntie Jo and Uncle Jeff it's been a piece of cake.

I'm working 6 days a week right now as there is a lot to catch up on (seeing as Tony and Lisa didn't have any station help for a few months), and I told them that I had no problem at all working Saturdays.. "seeing as I don't have any hot dates lined up". When we knock off around 5, I head straight to the shower and mellow out to some good music. Uusally a 4X Gold Beer (the local favourite) is in order back near the main building as I chat with Tony and Lisa. I've been putting in a little less than an hour a day on the guitar, at which I'm still a beginner, as I decided that I might as well utilize my free time in the evenings to get much better at that. Dinner is accomanied by the show 'Two and a Half Men' which comes on every weeknight, and unless there's a good Bond of Indiana Jones movie on TV I'm out before 9pm.

While riding back from fence work yesterday I was thinking about the fact that I may go see the Great Pryamids of Egypt before I get back stateside. And then I thought about the fact that I COULD do that.. or darned near anything else that comes into my head. I'm enjoying it so much here that I might just end up staying here longer, which will help me put plenty of money away to make my trip back go through South Africa, Egypt, Italy, Germany, France, and Ireland a real possiblility. As long as I have enough away to get my own feet on the ground for a car and my own place when I get back (to wherever it is I decide to call 'home' for the next phase of my life).. anything goes.

Don't spend a second worrying about me out here, I'm having the time of my life out here.

The Song in my Head

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
**And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life **


Meg and I went to a see The Fray live in concert on Janurary 29th, 2007.This was the lyrics to the title song of their new album. The next morning I found Dad. It's taken a long time before I could listen to this song...

Arriving at Gamboola Station

Friday afternoon and the week's work is done. Time to sit down and use my limited internet time..

I first want to start out by commenting on just how wide open Australia's arms have been in welcoming me and helping me so far. Not just my family, but complete strangers as well. EVERYONE has been so eager to serve the greatest of hospitality, and to show off their own small piece of Oz. I gotta say, it's pretty humbling to feel so welcomed..

My week on the Gold Coast was filled to the brim. A barbque at the next door neighbor's was held, the second one in as many weeks in my honor. The first being a family one in Adelaide in which I got to see my cousins Paul and Simone. Not that I particularly deserved a barbque, I think Aussie's are just that quick to use any excuse they can find to have one.

The best part of the Gold Coast, hands down, was watching the sunsets from my Auntie Jo's backyard. A lawn chair overlooking a big water channel, a XXXX beer, country music blaring from the stero (Thanks to my ipod), and a bit of family to harass. Nothing could be better.

Here's where the 'making connections' goes from funny to absurd. So the lady I met on the plane that found me the job on Gamboola lives in a small town called Chillagoe of about 200 peole. Half my graduating high school class. Well it just turns out that my Aunt's next door neighbor GREW UP in Chillagoe. Well, she was kind enough to call up her dad (the one man cop of Chillagoe 20 years ago), who called up his old friend in Cairns, who in turn offered to pick me up from the Cairns airport, show me around town for the weekend, and then personally drive me the 4 hours from Cairns all the way to Gamboola. Talk about luck (and kindess of heart). Oh, and plus the neighbor's daughter was nice enough to teach me 'twinkle twinkle little star' on the chello. Oh yea.. I'm cultured now.

Charlie Marino and hiw wife were as great of hosts as any others, and Charlie knew PLENTY of old history of the area.. so we got along great. We were walking down the Espande St (waterfront upscale restraunt district) and Charlie was pointing out a nice Itallian restraunt which used to be the building he grew up in. As we walk by it, the manager drags us in and insists on sharing a bottle of expensive French champagne and an hour of interesting conversation about his family in Austria and so furth.. I tell ya, the twists and turns of this trip are as interesting as they are unexpected.

A four hour drive through the middle of nowhere and I am suddenly at a place I now call home:

Gamboola Station
Private Mail Bag 21
Cairns Mail Center
4870
QLD, Australia


The address is Cairns of course because that's where the mail plane takes off from. I got to see it land today as the airstrip is about 100 yards from the stockyard the manager Tony and I were working on.

Gamboola Station is a MASSIVE property on the Cape York Penninsula. To get an idea, think about the 1000 kilomters of fence that we will be checking in the coming months. That's a enough fence to strech from Austin to Dallas, back to Austin, and back to Dallas again. The homestead has three main buildings. The kitchen, which has vistor's quarters upstairs (hint hint), the house of the manager Tony and his wife Lisa, the ringer's quarters. The ringer's quarters has about 4 bedrooms, a bathroom and laundry facilities, and the single bedroom is my own. The others will be occupied by the 12 contract musterers that will come in 7-8 weeks and stay for about 3 months.

You couldn't create a place that was more of what I was looking for. I can honestly say that I'm very very happy with the place and excited for what the rest of the year will be like living here. Tony is smart, hard worker.. but he takes the time to explain everything. I've been honest with him about what I do and don't know about this sort of work, and he's very patient in teaching. In return, I've just make sure to work hard and make sure he doesn't have to repeat himself. The first week we begun work on an extension to the stockyard.. a lumber fence made from raw materials cut on-site. I've begun learning how to weld, as well as driving manual 4 wheel drive vehicles. I've oiled my saddle and bridal, and will begin riding next week it looks like.

A normal day:

5:30 Wake Up
6:00 "Brekky"
6:30 Work Begins
9:30 "Smoko" - short break for some freshly baked snacks
12:30 "Dinner" (lunch)
2:00 Back to Work
5:00 Shower, read some Tom Clancy, and do whatever
7:00 "Tea" (Supper)

One good thing so far has been the fact that wallabys are such a normal site that I've begun noticing them as much I would a common deer. As long as they stay off the dirt roads, we'll get along. A danger of the place tho is the sun. The radio often reminds me that the UV index is "10... extreme". Extreme? I didn't know it went that high. Long sleve shirts, a broad akubra hat, and sunscreen every few hours is the only way to go. The lecture my mother has been giving me for YEARS on sun protection has only now decided to settle in.. but better late than never.

I know that this has not been my most 'flowing' post, but there has just been SO MUCH going on and also I'll throw in the exuse that I'm pretty tired after spending an entire day working on the stockyard fence. Hope everyone is doing great..

Adelaide and the Gold Coast

So it's been a while since my last posting, and I know that if I were to put everything that I've done in the last two weeks into this blog... well it'd be awfuly long and very few of you would read it all. That said, here I go anyways.

My time in Adelaide was busy yet somehow very relaxing. Adelaide is a town on the southern coast of about one million, and so many small things about it reminded me of Austin. It holds a huge amount of festivals every year (I got to see their 'kite festival'), yet it's not a huge destination city. My uncle Frank took me out to the cliffs to show me his new model plane that he's been flying, equipped with a live-streaming video camera and matching headset. Maybe it's just me, but I thought that was a great way to get a good view of the coast.

One day we took a drive into the country where we stopped at a sleepy easter-weekend country market where I got the chance to hold a joey (baby kangaroo) among a few other animals. The animal care-taker wasn't letting just anybody hold the animals, but sufice it to say that she could tell I was from out of town. (I think me having a camera at a country version of a yard-sale might have been her first clue.) I got to see the beach, the mountain range, and even a short bushwalk to see a waterfall in the middle of the woods. Only thing was, there was no water. South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent, and right now they're experiencing their worst drought in ages.

Another notable event in Adelaide was my Auntie Suzzane's insistence that I see the movie 'Wolf Creek'. Knowing that I was going out into the outback to work for months on end, she thought this would be the perfect movie for me to watch. Yet she always said this while trying to hold back some laughter.. If you're unfamiliar with wolf creek let me just explain it this way. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" meets "Hostel" meets "Crocodile Dundee". My aunt has a very sick sense of humor.

A quick stop in Sydney to get my tax file number and then I was off to the Gold Coast.

The Gold Coast is the name for a strip of beach that goes for miles and miles and covers a few different small towns and one city called Surfer's Paradise. As the author Bill Bryson put it, this is Australia's Florida. If the city of Adelaide is a well kept secret out of the spotlight, then the Gold Coast is right on the other side of the spectrum. High rise hotels and residencial buildings guard the coast in a way reminisicnt of Miami. But enough of a geography lesson.. back to my trip.

My Auntie Joanne and Uncle Jeff have just built a BEAUTIFUL new home overlooking the water channel just a short drive inland from Surfer's Paradise. The house is incredible, the view is impressive, and the best part is that the neighbors are all close-knit as well. One evening a neighbor took me to see the an Aussie Rules Football game in downtown Brisbane (about 40 minutes north). I had my doubts that I would even understand the game, neverless enjoy it, but it turned out to be even better than rugby in my opinion.

Besides a Aussie Rules game I also had the chance to get on a wakeboard for my first time. This was a great opprotunity to show people just how easy it is for me to pick up new skills, namely the skill of holding on to a rope for half a second and then planting my face into the water. After fine tuning that trick to an art, I able to finally figure out how to stand up straight on the board. This, I found, made for an even more impressive fall.. again only seconds later. After a few encores I felt that people's patience was growing thin, and the sun was setting, so I got off and let the other neighborhood kids have a go. A bunch of d*m showoffs if you ask me.

One major roadblock to my understanding of my Australian heritage was the game of cricket. Oh cricket. Aussies seem to love their cricket in a fashion similar to that of vegemite. They take it as a national icon, but accept that you foreigners could never appreciate it like they do. And mostly they're right. Yet two days ago I found myself wrapped up in a backyard game of cricket. And while I still don't think I could ever sit in a stadium and watch the sport, I happily report that it's quite fun to play. It was close enough to baseball that I got really sad realizing that I won't be seeing a batting cage for at least another 8 months. :(

There is plenty more to share but I wanted to give y'all a quick snapshot.. I know it's been a while since my las tpost. I hope everything is going good back in the States, and I will be posting the address of the Gamboola Cattle Station here in the next few days. Thanks for the comments (please keep them p.c. tho), I really do appreciate hearing from y'all. Take care!

Station Work!

I've spent the last week looking into where I was going to travel next, revolving mostly around where the best casual jobs were. I had heard of a fruit picking industry in many places, but without my own transportation it seemed I was at risk of spending more money than I could earn in most places. I then started considering going to a 'jackaroo' school.. a 5-11 day course teaching travelers all the basic functions of a station worker and then helping them to find employment. Had done some research on these even before I came over to Oz, so I was pretty close to signing up for one up in Queensland that I could attend after I finished working at the easter show here in Sydney.

But..

Right as I'm in the middle of doing some more job searches yesterday, I get an email from the lady I sat next to on the plane from Honolulu to Guam, and then on to Cairns. She owns and runs a general store in a small town WAY OUT in the bush (about 3 hours inland from Cairns!) As the general store owner, she knows people from all around, and had promised to keep her eye open for any station work openings. Well yesterday she sent me a great one, a huge cattle station about 2 hours west of her had an opening for a stationhand! The people are supposed to be pretty nice, the pay is well, and my room and all meals are included. This is exactly the thing I came here looking for. The hard work and isolation will be pretty demanding at times I'm sure, and am I prepared competely for it?.. probably not.. but that's the point. I wanted something completly out of my comfort zone.. something very different. And this sounds exactly like what I was looking for. It's funny, but the quickest way of getting there will be to take a ride as a passenger of the MAIL PLANE that goes there weekly.

Being such a massive ranch I'm sure I'll be doing plenty of fence work, but there will be plenty of opprotunities to ride. From May - July the station will bring in 12 more men to help muster the cattle, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty with that as well. Mostly I have no idea what to expect, but I know enough to have jumped on the opprotunity and plan on starting in about 2 weeks.

Being as they want me to work for quite a long time (till around close to the time I'm currently scheduled to fly back to the States), I've decided to make sure and visit my Aunts before I go up to the bush. Last night I called my Aunt in Adelaide and booked a ticket over the phone Syd-Adelaide.. this morning, actually arrived here at 8am (12 hours after calling her). Next week I'll try to get up to the Gold Coast/ Brisbane area to see my other Aunt for about a week before finally going out to the station.

I had originally hoped to see my other cousins in Melbourne and some more of the country.. but this is one of the consequences of having a no plans trip. I knew I could never do EVERYTHING in 9-10 months, but wanted to take the best opprotunities I could as they came up. Wish me luck... and keep in mind, if i end up needing a doctor, they'll have to fly one in. Just like the weekly mail.

HOSTEL!

So I've finally done it, I took a train into the city and checked into a youth hostel downtown. As a member of the YHA, i'm staying at the Railroad Square YHA right next to central station. When I went to find my room (it's a 8 bed co-ed), I found it to be in an actual train car, positioned on the platform of central station. So when I look out one of the windows, I'm looking straight out onto the other platforms of one of the busiest stations in the city. Anyways, I just got a kick out of that...

http://studenttravel.about.com/od/sydneyhostels/ig/YHA-Railway-Square-Sydney/YHA-Railway-Square-Dorms.htm

I've always prided myself in growing the list of cities that I had personally explored, having wondered up and down the streets. D.C., New York, Sydney, Baltimore, London, Chicago all on it. However it soon became clear to me that there's a big difference between roaming a city by yourself for an afternoon, and actually trying to settle into the social scene. Staying out it in the suburbs was great as I got to spend a lot of time with my Nan who I never get to see, seeing as she lives half way across the world from Texas and all... but today marks my introduction into the actual backpacker culture that I flew all the way over here to find :)

This past week has been very productive, as I've broken through pretty much all the red tape that I needed to get past before being able to truly be a 'permenant resident' of Australia. My bank accounts, insurance, and citizenship documents are finally up to date, and I even have a job interview to work as an attendant for the 2 week Royal Easter Show coming up here in Sydney! (wish me luck). It's held at the Olympic Park area and is supposed to be a big deal... kinda like a state fair for the country. Forgive me if the whole documents and resident stuff seems a bit boring, but getting that all taken care of consumed much of my energy and travels over the past week. The rest of my energy went into trying desperatly to learn all the bloody lingo here in australia... anybody who thinks they speak english here are sadly mistaken...

G'day from Australia

So today is my third day here in the Sydney area, and so far everything is great! I had hoped to post a little more often between now and my previous update, but my Internet situation has been pretty precarious, even when I was in Chicago..

I'm paying here at an Internet cafe here at Cronulla Beach so I'll give y'all a few highlights:

In Chicago I had a chance to visit the Field museum, which had some world-class features including the famous SUE t-rex. Walked along Lakeshore Dr to see the famous 'bean' and skating rink, before heading to the top of the Sears tower. It was perfect timing because the sun set about 20 minutes into being up there, so we saw light, sunset, and the city by night all within one hour. Meg then treated me over to Gino's East Pizzeria where I had some awesome Chicago style deep dish pizza, before heading to the top of the Hancock Building to visit meg's friend who lives in a studio apartment up there. (The view sure beats the one I used to have in Jester...)

The "Eye Ball" was pretty amazing, of course the closest thing they played to country was 'save a horse, ride a cowboy', but none the less I had a great time there and at bars afterwards.

Jetting to Hawaii, i touched down in Honolulu and called up ol' Trey Mohle, who luckily was free for the evening to hang out. I actually got to hang out with an old family friend Elham and her fiance Jess as well.. (she was a next door neighbor back in 1990). So Elham, Jess, Trey, and I hit up some dinner on Waikiki beach, saw an amazing sunset, and then Trey took me back to the U.S. Marines base on the island that he's stationed at. When I think of 'barracks' i think of what I saw Forrest Gump sleep in, rows of bunkbeds in a big hall. No no.. Trey's 'barracks' are private apartments that again make my college living quarters go to shame.

After a morning of lounging on an INCREDIBLE beach on-base (I was the only one there!!), I was off for my marathon flights to Guam, to Cairns, and then finally Sydney..

Nan and Rod came to pick me up at the airport and took me on back to her house (where my mum grew up) so that I could settle in and recover from my jetlag. (This would be the morning of Friday the 7th) I did it with a little tv, a lot of sleep, and of course a little Vegemite. Apparently the small amount of Vegemite I like to put on my toast startles even my Nan... supposedly you're supposed to put it on a little more sparingly.. but of course that's never my style when it comes to food..

Yesterday I took a train into the city and hit up all of the touristy stops, walked the Harbour Bridge, toured the Opera House, had some coffee down at the Rocks, before taking a ferry over to Manly Beach. The ferry took me clear down and across the harbour, affording me an excellent view of the entire harbour. The evidence is all in my camera, but I don't have that on me, and I've yet to find a time-efficient way to upload the darned pictures online for y'all to see. After checking out the beach and talking to a few fellow backpackers, I then made my way (by ferry, train, and bus) to the famous Bondi Beach. It was packed, and in a single conversation I talked to people from Germany, Spain, Mexico, and Italy. They all seemed to like me plenty till I told them I was from the U.S.. which seemed to be quite a mood killer.

Today Nan, Rod, and I have come out to Cronulla Beach so that they could shop and that I could check out the beach. Each beach has it's own character, but I've quite enjoyed this one.. the shopping strip is full of little shops and cafes and plenty of people my age.

Well I just wanted to get a post out there since it's been a while from my last update.. but I hope everybody is doing fine.. and please send me some emails and comments to let me know how you all are doing as well

cheers

Day 1 :Chicago

Yesterday morning before I left Texas I took the opprotunity to see Barack Obama speak at the Austin Convention Center for a town-hall meeting with my mum. Had to leave the house at 6:30am, which was pretty rough considering my crazy 'LAST NIGHT IN AUSTIN!!' night had only ended hours before. Obama only got to answer a total of 8 questions, but its amazing how many points of discussion a politician can tie into each long answer. While keeping my mind open, I have been an Obama supporter for over a year now... so I was very happy to see him speak in person before I left. And if your curious, I did make sure to early vote, but for the general election I'll probably have to figure out how to mail in an absentee balot..

Yesterday evening I flew into Chicago O'Hare and took the train into the city. The train system here is pretty easy to follow, and it was great that my first up-close view of the downtown buildings came from an elevated train weaving through them.

It's in the 20's (F) here, but luckily last night it was never windy so it was actually really good weather. Speaking of which, this is kinda sad to admit but last night i walked around in my first actual snowfall. I'm not talking about the "hey look at those little white specks... what are those... um i think it's snow?" that we get every 4 years in Texas. 21 years old and it's my first time to actually experience a snowfall since before I can remember (read: before 3 years old). The novelty of the snow lasted for about 2 minutes and then I realized that I was making it EXTREMLY obvious that I was an out-of-towner. As if the longhorns cap Meg insisted I wear didn't do that already..

Once I met up with Meghan at her school (the Illinois College of Optometry), we took the train up to Lincoln Park to check out the bar scene and meet up with some of her friends. Grabbed dinner at a bar/restraunt called Trinity, but we got there just late enough that they were only serving their 'late night menu'. Pretty much the 'munchies for the drunkies' menu. Both of the bars that we spent most of our time in (we met up with her friends at the second one) had huge irish themes goin on, and pictures of local firemen from 50 years ago. The people were pretty friendly, it seems most of the people my age down at the bars were originally from somewhere else, so I never felt out of place.

On my next post hopefully I'll have spent some time downtown, so I can't wait to see how that goes. Sadly, I think the weather report said it's going to be pretty windy during the time I'll be down there... and I'm just not sure if I'm ready to experience 'windy' during a Chicago winter just yet : /

pass it on...

Please pass the url dakotahinaustralia.blogspot.com on to anybody that you think might want it, surely I can't think of eveyone off the top of my head..

4 days left...

So I finally leave for my year-long Australia expedition in 4 days!

I've been thinking about this trip since I was in high school, heck I even cosidered pushing off my first year of college for it. Now I've finished college and have absolutly no reasons not to go.

I don't really have any solid plans for what I'm going to do once I get over there. I do know that I'm going to arrive in Sydney and hang out with my Nan for a while.. I have a whole lot of paperwork to take care of once I arrive.. need new paperwork for my aussie citizenship, a tax ID number, aussie credit card, etc.


Things I want to do:

- see my two aunts and uncles that live in Adelaide and Brisbane, as well as cousins scattered across the country.
- find some work on a cattle station up in Queensland or elsewhere.
- learn to surf
- get lost somewhere
- try and visit parts of asia via cheap local airlines
- keep a flexible plan so that I can jump on any good opprotunities

As I'm getting rid of my cell phone (ahhh!), this blog as well as my email address (posted on my profile) will be the best way to contact me while I'm over there. Will play around with skype and international calling cards, but that will be figured out more later on.

I want to finish by giving thanks to my family for helping me make this trip possible. My nan, mum, and brothers, and aunts have all been a great help so far, and I wouldn't be making this trip so soon without their advise, tips, and support.