Post-Hervey Bay

Poor Claudia; returning from Hervey Bay and the wonderful season that she had was always going to be very tough. It was made tougher by the difficulty that she had finding work again. For months she moped about and made half-hearted attempts to find something. Her art, which had bloomed while faced with the daily inspiration that the Humpback Whales offered, was neglected again. While she never stopped looking for work, like so many who become disheartened in their search for employment, she looked on-line, in papers and contacted a few agencies. When nothing happened it was just the papers and on-line. Anything that looked interesting or a bit different, she veered away from. An attempt to encourage a different approach or to help her would be rebuffed. In reality, I am sure that it is a situation that many would recognise. Searching for work is a debilitating process if there is no immediate success. I did not think that Claudia was any different to others and while I was disheartened at my failure to inspire her, I thought that this was more me at fault than her. I had always prided myself in my ability to get work whenever I needed it. I was proud that, before the immigration department wanted one off me, I had never had a CV/Resume. My attitude to finding work was to door-knock until you got something, but I knew that this was an eccentricity rather than a particularly good approach. It had meant fifteen years of crap jobs and no real career, -nothing to feel proud of really,- but I did not let myself look at it that way.

When Claudia did get work, it was in a fashion that most people give no real thought to, but for her it was further proof of her inability to do anything. She got a job through someone who knew someone. I knew that the guy who had started up a distribution centre alongside us needed a second person to help him run the business while he chased clients. Simple as that. After a chat with Claudia, he felt that she would easily be capable of running things and of course, he was right. The company distributed two distinctive lines of office furniture, both up market, the one being a very posh modular system developed in Holland. Claudia handled orders, deliveries, the phone and faxes, she learnt the products, she took over roles that had been run by people in the Melbourne head office who had left and not been replaced. She gave the local branch it's smiling face and personality.......... and she alternated between being bored and feeling insecure about it all. What could I do? It seemed to me that Claudia was just going to be that way - always. She had more status and responsibility than she would ever be able to have in Germany without many years more experience and many more bits of paper relevant to what she was doing. And despite this she was not merely dissatisfied, but actively unhappy with her work. Speak to her now about it and all that she will remember is that I got her the job and, when the decision was made a year later to close the place because Melbourne clashed with the local boss and times were a bit tough, her boss left without speaking to her. Those two things. Her boss was a queer old stick and when the place closed, he didn't speak to anyone, he never dropped by again - nothing. It was strange because he had regularly dropped by for a chat in the mornings or a beer at closing time; we had our Christmas party together because it was just the two of them. And then he locked the door and left! Not a word of thanks to Claudia, not a reply to any calls she made requesting a reference - nothing. Bizarre and bad mannered to the rest of us, it was a body blow to Claudia's fragile confidence and I was very angry and upset by the hurt it caused her. Melbourne loved her to bits and she could have gone down there to work, but no, she will downplay all that.

This whole blog is an attempt to analyse our time together and where the cracks in Claudia showed themselves leading to our ultimate dissintegration as a couple. As a result, at times it looks like our time together was a constant struggle. That is not correct. Together we were a very, very happy couple. We had a great house, garden, friends, our weekends were filled with fun and adventure when we packed Helga up and headed off. We never fought or had real arguments , there were never sulks or moods that dragged on more than a couple of hours, we were always able to keep each other bouyant. All this despite money being tight and our circumstances modest. We loved each other dearly and were deeply commited to each other.

Yes, Her Happiest Days!

While the early mornings were tough and the evenings were a busy time for someone exhausted by a long day on a small boat catering for clients whims; the actual days would qualify as the happiest of Claudia's life. The excitement would start once they cast off. Princess 2 would chug out of the Marina, normally the second boat out, and the skipper would have a chat with the passengers. The crew would point out one or two landmarks on the way out and they would set about preparing tea, coffee and the nost wonderful fresh damper with honey. Once past the sand banks, they would be in Platypus Bay proper and everyone would be scanning the horizon for the distinctive puff of a whale 'blowing' or coming up for air. There were many other things to see; there would always be a few dolphins about each day and once in a while there would be a sighting of the elusive and endangered dugongs. Crossing the shallows would always stir up a few Bull Rays that would be clearly visible as the water was only a few metres deep with a sandy bottom. A bar of sand that was exposed always had a crowd of pelicans and other assorted sea birds.The air would smell of the sea and suntan lotion. Fraser Island would be off the starboard bow, it was the 'quiet' side of Fraser with no traffic on the beach and no campers around, it was all stupefyingly beautiful. The atmosphere was relaxed yet there was an edge of excitement as everyone hoped to be the first to spot something. It was usually David who spotted the first whales though, there is no substitute for experience. Princess 2 would head towards them and stop some way off. If the whales were curious, as they usually were, they would come up to the boat for a closer look. With the engine cut, the only sounds were excited whispers and squeals of people shuffling for a better look, combined with the 'blowing' of the whales as the milled around the boat. There are terms for every bit of their behaviour that can be witnessed while whale-watching - spy-hops, tail-slaps, breaches- and the passangers would jostle from one side to the other as the curious whales passed beneath the boat. The mothers would pause to feed their calves, suspending themselves in the water while a mischevous calf was more interested in peeking at the boat. It was truly electric; the awe and excitement among everyone was palpable. It made strangers laugh, joke and chat among each other as if they had been friends for years. If you have never done it before, you have to go whale-watching on a small boat. There is nothing to beat it.

And this was Claudia's daily routine for the whole season. It was going to be very difficult to get back to the world that the rest of us had to live in.

Claudia's Happiest Days

Claudia's second job was at an Irish pub and restaurant called Hoolihans. It was a warm, friendly and very popular spot that served good food and appealed to locals and visitors alike. She would wait on tables until the restaurant closed at 22h00 or so. She loved the crowd that she worked with and they all loved her, but then people always love Claudia. She is impossible to dislike. Her smile is immediate and engaging and on a more superficial -ie. day-to-day- level she has always been very easy to get along with. Deeper down - like the rest of us- she is a more complicated character, but still eminently lovable!. She was always better at registering her dislike of people she disapproved of, whereas I tend to be diplomatic and avoid creating that situation where a person knows that you do not like them. Claudia had no such fears and good on her for being like that. I always feel vaguely false and a bit of a wimp in that sense.

The place she stayed in had bedbugs and it became too unpleasant to remain. Claudia got the offer of renting a flat above a 4x4 rental centre and she took that. What incredible luck. It was huge for one person and she had privacy and all the space she could possibly want. The chaps at Ozi 4x4 loved her and she was happy to help clean vehicles and sort the camping gear out that came back from the trips to Fraser Island. She did that just because she felt that she should contribute a bit because she was staying there cheaply - and like any girl, she enjoyed the attention. It was more respectful than the constant ragging she had to contend with at my workplace. I was happy for her that she had all that. I bought her a mobile phone and we had better contact with each other. It was heaps better than trying to coordinate when she would be near a phone booth after work for our daily chat. While she was generally kept too busy, this did not mean that she did not still have those moments of terrible depression when she would sob on the phone and beg me to come up and visit her. I drove up as often as I could. It was a long way to go in Helga for a weekend and I was shattered on the Monday after a visit. Looking back now, it seems silly that in a period of her life that she will call her happiest, she could still be haunted by these feelings of loneliness and inferiority. Everyone loved her, she was showered with compliments, whether it was by clients on the Princess 2 or at the restaurant. These would make her giggly and wonderfully bubbly when she accepted them or was surprised by them, but there would soon be a self-deprecating comment that was designed to bring herself down to earth rather than just an attempt at modesty. It was jarring to hear and it is a feature of Claudia that I never got her to control.

In retrospect we should perhaps have started to confront these problems, but at the time, I thought that they were just the excitement and passions of such a busy few months. I had my own job that kept me busy and tired me out each day. While I was certainly missing her, like many blokes, the TV and computer could fill the gaps that a visit to friends and a beer could not. Claudia would torment herself with guilt at any manner of things.

Hervey Bay

I took a very excited, nervous and scared Claudia up to Hervey Bay a week before the season began in late July. The original idea was to stay in a hostel as she was not going to be paid much. It was going to be one of those jobs that you did for love, not money. She started out in a place on the front called Bucaneers Backpackers or something like that. It has since closed anyway. It was a little neglected, but it seemed quiet and the people who ran it were nice enough. We spent the weekend getting Claudia settled in and met David, the skipper. I had to be back at work on Monday. The drive was a good four and a half hours in Helga and I headed back late that Sunday night. Claudia was desperately unsure of herself and there were floods of tears. She was scared she would get seasick, not understand what clients said to her or just generally fail at what she had to do. Leaving her there, I felt like a parent leaving their child at school for the first day.

Needless to say, Claudia Steiger took to it like a duck to water. I visited a fortnight later having given her a bit of time to settle in and get her confidence. She was loving it. The first week had been spent preparing the boat for the season. It got taken out of the water, the hull was scrapped and they painted her. By the time I visited they had been going out every day and she had all the routines off pat, which on an old, converted fishing boat like Princess II was great to watch. Princess II had the best package of all the boat trips running out of Harvey Bay - and I think there were eight of those. The clients were picked up if necessary and the boat left at 07h00 sharp. There was bottomless tea and coffee with cake in the morning and afternoon and a big BBQ for lunch. The hospitality was great all day and the whales never disappointed. (OK they did once, when we took friends Ian and Kate out, but that was the day after the best breaches ever and Sod's Law.)

In the early days, the trips were co-ordinated with a spotter plane, but now, whether there are more whales or more boats or both, they are not a problem to find. Princess II just chugged out to Platypus Bay and back, she was the slowest and oldest and that is why trips in her were an all-day affair. The bigger boats would hare out to the bay in twenty minutes, they were an assortment of catamarans and fancy charter boats with high tech engines. Their guests always struck me as the sort of people going out because friends had told them they had to do that when they were up in the region or they had seen a programme on TV that featured one of the high profile boats. They stayed at the fancier hotels, let their children run amock and went inside for a beer and a chat with friends when nothing was happening outside. Not Princess II's passengers. They were always a cheery lot who were not in a rush to fit every other site in on the same day. They would have their own binoculars and were quite often regulars who would come along every year and they were the sort of people you could strike up a conversation with and not have to find a different bit of the rail to lean on after five minutes. In the midst of all this was Claudia, very tanned and very happy. She had built up a huge file of downloaded data on whales and whale-watching and studied for ages before she left Brisbane. She could answer the most technical, scientific and anatomical questions that any guest could throw at her. Indeed, it was funny to hear about her biting her tongue when David responded to a question with an answer that ten years ago was an accepted fact, but recent studies had suggested that.......! and Claudia would have had the details of those recent studies to hand. Sweet.

A full day out was long and getting back from a trip out generally meant you were asleep by eight. Claudia did not have that luxury. Once back, the boat had to be emptied and washed down. She then had to cycle home to shower and change for her second job.

Planned Surprise

I came home one night and I never even picked up on the fact that there was no mention of the whale-watching job. The flat was spotless and there were candles lit. We had a great meal with a bottle of Rosemount Estate red; it was all waiting on me coming in. We watched a bit of TV and sipped our wine before I had the glass taken from my hand and was dragged into the bedroom. A very rare occurrence at the best of times. As we lay and cuddled afterwards - spoon position, me behind, the conversation went something like this:
"Charles?"
"Ja."
"I got the job."
"What?"
"I got the job."
"What job?"
"On the boat, I got the job."
"WHAAAT?!!!"
At this point there was no containing her and she was like the family mutt that thinks it is going to the park with the kids and a ball. I was still in a state of shock and disbelief. Both of us remember this moment to this day. Claudia maintains my expression was brilliant. I was not just shocked that she had the job, but that she had managed to contain herself. She could NEVER keep things to herself and most certainly not things like that. She was way too bubbly and full of excitement when things happened to keep a surprise for a whole evening. She couldn't stop talking about that either. She was so pleased that she could keep the surprise for the right moment and plan and execute a perfect evening for it. I was dumbfounded, but inside my fear that she would not get the job was immediately replaced by a fear that it would all fall through. I did not tell her though - that would have been wrong, this was her evening and she had made it a beautiful one for us both. She was so happy that her eyes filled with tears and we had to hold each other for ages. A beautiful evening. I was relieved for myself and very pleased for her.

A Glimpse of Future Problems

After a year of attracting remarks about how hard-working and what a great work-ethic Germans had, Claudia stopped working with me. This was a result of the company breaking up and part of it going into receivership while the other bit (our bit) restructured to include all the service department staff from the main retail branch. We now had extra staff who had been there longer and they got to stay while Claudia left. I think that she was quite relieved. The work was very heavy and not a challenge and she was starting to feel that she should try to improve herself a bit more. In the beginning, like anyone who has worked in a non-native language environment, she had had concerns about her ability to deal with people off the street - understanding them and being sure that she was being understood. Time spent with us had helped this, but she did not have to deal with that many customers and still looked like a startled rabbit when someone asked her something. It was time for her to move on and out of her comfort-zone anyway. For a couple of months she messed around not knowing what to do and making half-hearted attempts to find out about things that related to the study that she had done. I did not pressure her because she struggled with a feeling of despair that I put down as a lack of confidence that she would eventually get over. There were a few 'I-am-useless-I-don't-know-what-to-do' crying sessions, but I took those as normal insecurity.

Claudia, as I mentioned in a previous posting, had been captivated by the Humpback Whales that stopped in on Hervey Bay on their journey back south to Antarctica. A sort of pit-stop for the new calves that were born a little further North and needed to build up a bit of strength for the long trip South. There is a bay called Platypus Bay, between Fraser Island and the coast where the whales come in to rest. The boats would head out from Hervey Bay's Marina with excited viewers who would get to spend a day, or a half-day out watching the whales. When we were out on Princess II the previous year, I asked the skipper where he got his two crew members from. He had said that they were just seasonal workers who had applied before the season started. By now we were approaching June and I suggested to Claudia that she apply and perhaps spend the three months of the season in Hervey bay and I would visit her on the weekends. There followed months of hand-wringing and 'I can't' arguments that I had to counter before she plucked up the courage to call. Once she did call and apply, more weeks passed and she fretted and stressed as she waited to hear back. All her hopes were on this and I was so afraid of the state Claudia would be in if she did not get the job. It became a little unnerving. The skipper, of course, had no such sense of urgency. For him, whale and dolphin-loving girls would be a dime-a-dozen and he would never have had trouble filling his crew roster. Cold comfort to the two of us. I was coming home to find Claudia tearful and asking whether I thought that she should call or write again, or what to say if she called. It was nerve-wracking.

Confronting her Fears.

The great thing about living where we were and leading the life that we did was that we never felt that we were getting stuck in a rut. Now, how unusual is that? We recognised that fact and it made us appreciate life in Australia all the more. For the first time in our lives we felt that we were keeping busy and doing things that we wanted to; or, at the very least, things that our finances permitted us to do. We both learnt to SCUBA dive and that meant a lot to us. It had always been something that I had wanted to do, but the money and opportunity had never co-incided. I would be somewhere in South East Asia where a course would be cheap and I would have the money and time and then I would go out schnorkeling. That would be a big mistake because I would get back to shore and think "Bugger that, I will keep the £100.00 and I will be able to stay here a week longer." And that was because the reef would be so accessible to a schnorkeler that it would seem a shame to waste the money to go just a few metres deeper. At last I got round to doing it.

Claudia was different. She had gone on a trial dive in Malaysia a few years earlier and had not enjoyed it. She had felt panicky and claustrophobic, but had always wanted to overcome her fears and experience the pleasures that the sport offers. We did our course with the biggest and most expensive school in the region figuring that they would have the highest standards and not be trying to cut costs/corners and rush someone through who may need a bit longer in the pool etc. That logic may not have been correct, but Claudia felt more secure looking at it that way. In the end it all went well and that was the main thing. Claudia was immense. We were 'buddys' right through the course and on a number of occasions I saw her fighting with her fears. Fighting claustrophobia is not an easy thing as anyone who has been there will know. She soldiered on and as far as all the others on the course was concerned, she was always part of the group that got everything right the first time and did not make mistakes. I know that this required a bigger combination of self-discipline, self-control, concentration and plain old guts than the rest of us needed together. Our first two Open Water dives were at Stradbroke Island under the most appaling weather and sea conditions. Visibility was not even two feet, there was powerful surge and the chop was so bad that everyone bobbed around sea-sick. The group divided up and went down with the instructor in pairs and Claudia and I were last. We did the drills and then swam a pattern, during which we all got tangled in fishing line and I was the only one who could move enough to cut us loose. It was very unpleasant for everyone, but for Claudia it must have been a nightmare scenario. We all consoled ourselves with the fact that we would never, ever dive in similar conditions again and had had the toughest possible testing. The rest of the course was a breeze after that.

It is humbling to watch someone grapple with something that only they can fight; to see the stress and pain it causes and then see them come through on top. She was very brave and I had huge respect for her whole attitude and approach. I wonder now if I ever showed it. Then again, being too effusive in my praise of anything she did would have won me short shrift. There was a fine line.

A Happy Life Continues

The previous post may appear a little bizarre appearing alongside the rest, but it does have it's place. Read on and you will see it in the correct context. It is funny looking back now that Claudia always used to worry back then that it would be her regular 'unserviceability' and my frustration at it that would eventually push us apart. Often after I lay, spent, next to her, she would start to cry and tell me that sex was important in any relationship and if it was not there, it would eventually end because of it. She would say "I know that one day you will leave me because of this". I always tried to reassure her that it was not the case and I really believed it wasn't. I had a very deep and powerful love of Claudia and while there was heaps of frustration on my part, I was careful never to make a scene or reduce her to tears over it. Having said that, I also marveled at my own patience at times and took to keeping a diary of our sex life. Nothing other than a tick on a day when we successfully completed intercourse. At the end of 2000 when she went back to visit her family for Christmas and I was shifting names and numbers into my new diary, I tallied these 'scores' up. The pattern was interesting and amusing. There were two days all year when we had sex twice in a day, there were two days in a week that we had never had sex on (Tuesday and Thursday, I think), three times all year we had sex on consecutive days the longest period with no sex was 42 days and there was a period of 37 days too. Three quarters of encounters were on a Saturday - I already teased her about the 'Saturday-after-breakfast'. As in: " So do we have a Saturday-after-breakfast this weekend or do you want to get up early for garage sales/the beach/a camping trip?" On the other side of my face, I did not laugh. It was sad for two people who were so committed to each other that we had to put up with that much so early in our lives together.

We had been up to Harvey Bay together and went out on a boat called 'Princess II'. It was a life-altering experience for Claudia. She had tears of happiness in her eyes from the moment we saw the first whale until we went to bed that night. (No, there wasn't any sex!). From then on, she was passionate about them in a way that transcended the silly, teenage/greenie attraction to whales. We had become frequent visitors to Brisbane's nearby Stradbroke Island and the whales passed by there in the distance on their annual migration up and down the East Coast of Australia. There we had a few spots that became 'our places', where we could sit for hours on end and watch and photograph the dolphins that surfed through the waves against the dramatic setting of cliffs, rocks, she-oaks and Pandanus. If I were to pick specific hours of my life, some of those on Straddie, -sitting with Claudia, watching the jumping dolphins while the sun rose or set against the cliffs- would be hard to beat if I lived to a hundred. Thinking about it now, the feeling of homesickness makes my guts feel like my throat has been cut a week. I could weep.

Behind Closed Doors

Our sex life was a little difficult. Claudia could not have a vaginal orgasm and she knew only one way to get a clitoral orgasm while having sex with a man. This involved her sitting on top and just grinding herself back and forwards and crushing her clitoris against my pubic bone until she came. While I never complained, I think she was aware that it was a little painful. The rash that we both developed in the early days had long gone, but something else remained. Claudia always found sex painful. To me she always felt a little dry, but my suggestion to use a little lube was always rejected like it would be admitting to a certain inadequacy if she used any. I don't think she realised that starting out could be as painful for me when she was not juicy. I loved the taste and smell of her and would NEVER turn down a chance to go down and that was not just because I wanted to get her wet. She never got over a certain shyness and made me feel like my enjoyment of oral on her was something vaguely disgusting. This always made me a bit sad, not least because she would never fail to come when I licked her.

I have never got much from a blow-job and this was fortunate because she hated giving them. If she tried, within a minute she would be looking up expectantly at me or swapping her hands every few strokes. She said that I gave no indication of whether I was enjoying it or not - I just felt that I hadn't had time to settle into it. Whatever. It meant that a blow-job was never on the menu, but it was not a problem.

The problem was her pussy. She got thrush with terrible regularity. It was blamed on the pill she used, the 'climate' in her pussy, the humidity of Queensland, knickers that were not 100% cotton, me, hair on the shaft of my cock etc. You name it, it took the blame for a while and steps were taken to resolve it. The gynaecologist was the one who got the most visits, different pills were tried, creams, douches, pessaries - I lost track of it all. The worst was that sex was a rare thing and it could only be initiated by Claudia. Actually, that was not just when she had problems, that was for the duration of our relationship. It was NEVER me who could give her a nudge and a wink and tug her into the bedroom. I was always made to feel like a dog begging at the table - looking starved and wagging my tail feebly. If the mood took her, I got 'lucky', but then 'lucky' was relative. For years my first words after coming were "I didn't hurt you?", I could not bang away for too long, I had to wait until it was OK with her for me to pull out and then I knew that for a week, she would be 'unserviceable'. It was really dreadful, but because we loved each other, I never made an issue of it. I am sure that to this day my technique is a little retarded by this sensitivity to her pain. She got angry quickly when the subject was broached anyway, so I learnt to steer clear of bringing it up. I always tried to tell her that we could have fun in other ways, but she was having none of it. She was very shy and conservative in some ways. In the beginning she swore that she would never let me see how she masturbated and it was about six months before she did. She was so embarrassed after she came, she couldn't look at me for the rest of the day without giggling. It was almost her thirtieth birthday before I got to put a finger inside her to show her where her G spot was and what a vaginal orgasm was. The day before her 30th, she had a vaginal orgasm while I was inside her and she was beside herself with excitement. It had been such a long and exhausting process getting her there that I did not feel anything other than relief that we had got achieved something. For the duration of our relationship I was having to masturbate more than I was having sex. It always felt sneaky and nasty having to do it because I could not do it in front of her. If I needed release and she did not, I had to leave the room and attend to the matter 'in hand'. If I was horny when I went to bed, I would have to get up and go to the bathroom for a wank. She was such a sexy woman that it was almost a nightly routine.

It will be clear to anyone who reads this that I am not happy now, but it is important to know that while our sex-life was not the happiest, we were in deeply in love and the rest of our lives together more than made up for problems with sex. We kept ourselves so busy that I recall very few lie-ins on weekends. We would have got up early to go and do something and we would have loved doing it because we would be together, laughing, holding hands and enjoying our lives. And enjoy life we did - apart from this one element. Of course now I get a little resentful when I think back because she could be a right bitch about that one element and was always prepared to make me feel bad about my desires in order to boost herself. I know it was painful much of the time and I can remember that some months it was almost too sore for her to put tampons in, but knowing what I know now...... Selfish shit! For all her moral posturing back then, I don't know how she lives with herself now.

And Away from Work

Away from work, things were fine for the most part. I had still not had my immigration issues resolved and those dragged on until the end of 2000 or thereabouts. Never mind all that now.

Claudia and I were reveling in the Australian life-style. For me it was close to what I had experienced growing up in Africa. Wide open spaces, wildlife and places to explore and be alone. There were so many things to do outdoors that one just never knew exactly what to do each weekend. In Brisbane we had fairly easy access to the coast to the North or to the South. So depending on the weather and our mood, we would head off to the Sunshine Coast or the Gold Coast. We found little places that became favourites -Bribie island and Maleney among others. We built up a collection of camping equipment that meant that there were no restrictions on where we went. The only thing that we needed to worry about was the time to do it all. We had a collection of 'liberated' milk crates that each had specific items in them - cooking, food, camping, car spares, tools etc another plastic box held bed linen. We had a couple of cool-boxes - "eskkies"- as they are known, which we would fill with fresh ice every two days when we went away and that kept the milk and butter fresh/solid. With everything organised in that fashion, we were able to leave on a Friday night after work having only spent a few extra minutes in the morning throwing all the crates into the back of Helga.
Helga was a 1983 Nissan Patrol seven seater with a 3.3l naturally aspirated diesel and a four speed box. She was a part of the family. Claudia was never comfortable driving her, which was unfortunate as she is a brilliant driver and would have enjoyed some of our tougher trips even more if she felt that she had contributed a bit to the driving. The truth was that Helga had done over 300 000kms and while mechanically everything was fine, she did need a delicate touch - double-de-clutching to help the gearbox and assist the braking for example. Her steering was also very vague. Helga was very special and was spoken of as if she was human, she was part of our toast when-ever we opened a bottle of wine. We developed this relationship with her because of the places we went with her. We had a book of little-known tracks in Queensland and we followed the ones we could. This meant that some days we could drive for hours through bush or forest and not see another vehicle. Being nice to Helga, I am sure, meant that she was less likely to suffer some catastrophic failure that left us stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It is true. Helga was special and I still think about her.

Back to Reality

Back in Brisbane Claudia turned the flat into a home that it was a pleasure to return to. She was great at spotting things at garage sales that, with a bit of sanding/painting etc. would aid in the flat's transformation from a bachelor pad into a home. Plants appeared and flourished; herbs, flowers and vegies were planted. Crappy bits of furniture were replaced as I discovered the inside of shops I had only ever driven past. My attention was drawn to adverts that I had a bachelor's blindness to: (Carpets: Final Clearance'; 'Curtains and Linen -Must Go'). Where our day-to-day lives were concerned, we were very happy together.

Claudia started to work with me and in so doing just proved what a wonderfully flexible, incredibly hard-working person she was. We had started to move a huge volume of 'pre-loved' machines that we acquired through tenders and auctions. The volume of product was huge and the work to clean them up and prepare them for resale was heavy, dirty and involved a lot of carrying of monitors and CPUs as well as standing in an un-airconditioned warehouse in the heat of a Queensland summer. My work generally kept me in the air-conditioned comfort of a workshop and office. Claudia quickly learnt how to handle rather complicated and technical work on both the software and hardware side of things. We had, for example, hundreds of CRT monitors that needed to be tweaked to give their best output, having deteriorated after a few years in use. This involved removing the back of the monitor and re-callibrating all the colours, voltages and sometimes the yokes. It took a steady hand and a very good eye for colour for this to be done well. There were computers that needed to be pulled apart and have parts cleaned, catalogued and packed while still taking every precaution against the risks of ESD damaging the goods. (Electro-Static Discharge - natural static we all have that damages chips, basically.) She was the guru at using Word or knocking up an Excel database when one was required. Her dislike of mess and bad organisation meant she would always speak up when something had not been completed properly and this kept the boss on his toes as well as the rest of us. She handled all the menial work without any complaint and that is always a good measure of the work ethic of a person. She would unload trucks and the look of surprise on the drivers' faces was always most amusing.

It was great fun having her there. Claudia was the only woman and handled it well. The teasing was never-ending and bordered on harrasment at times, but she took it all and handed it back too. I never needed to stick up for her on any issues and that was testament to how strong she was within herself. She became the one person that everyone would ask after, such was her impression on people. They would have forgotten everyone else's name, but they could still remember her helping them. The two of us were there to open up at 08h00 and we would lock up at 18h00. They were long hard days and would have been so much longer and harder were it not for the cameraderie and effort that Claudia provided. I have always been so very proud of the work that she did there.

Settling in Together

A happy tanned couple returned from that trip out West. We were no sooner back than it was time to go away again. This time for the Big Event . . Seeing in the New millennium!! We decided - fairly late in the day- to go to a National Park called Kinkuna which was on the coast on the way up to Hervey Bay (of whale-watching and Fraser Island fame). We left late on New Year's Eve and only got to a camping spot on the beach about an hour before midnight. From we left the Bruce Highway, we played a game of 'pop-the-toad' as we drove along through a never-ending stream of cane toads crossing the road. The last part of the journey, through the actual park, was made following the stars in what we believed was East in order to reach the coast. There were no sign-posts, many fishermen's tracks and the four-wheel driving was through thick sand and mud along roads made very bumpy by the network of tree roots that held the sand together. There was also no moon. By the time we lifted the tailgate, sorted the mattress, put a few candles down in the sand and popped the champagne, we were exhausted. The sandflies and mosquitoes followed soon after to make it a night punctuated with whines and bites.

The following days saw us going on long walks and abstaining from sex because of our rashes, although we did manage one memorable bonk in which we are certain we were seen and heard by walkers, but hoped the steamed windows and tropical thunderstorm hid things a bit. ! The beach had a lot of pumice which Claudia collected. A very creative person, Claudia had visions of little sculptures and tea-light holders and everything except a means of removing callouses from feet. We collected banksia heads that could be sanded down into a fairly common Australian souvenir, we found a dead sea snake that was so long that when held over my head as high as I could, it's head still rested on the ground. We watched the birdlife, we tramped through the mangroves looking at the funny little crabs and other creatures that lived there and we swam in the ocean. We watched the sun rise and set, we walked along the beach hand-in-hand and loved each other's company. We cooked on an open fire, ate the biggest sweetest pineapples ever and Claudia set about teaching me to appreciate red wine. We were blissfully happy despite the bites, scratches, sunburn .... And the rash!

Not Ready..? Huh!?

When Claudia arrived in early December 1999, I had wanted to have a car and a flat. A con-man at a 2nd-hand car dealer made the car bit difficult, but the flat was there. I had found a lovely little place in leafy, convenient Paddington with the most wonderful landlord and a pool on a really quiet street. I was beside myself with excitement when Claudia came out. I had filled the flat with every delicacy that I could think of, there were flowers, the place had been scrubbed from top to bottom. I had wheels in the form of a loaned Mazda 323 while I waited for my other vehicle to be sorted out. My heart was swooping and soaring on thermals of delight and happiness. After a tough year managing the transition from backpack to suburb, I was a happy man.

Claudia arrived at 06h30 and was terribly jetlagged. I dropped her at home and rushed off to work. It took a few days for her to find her feet, which I understood perfectly. People often remark that travelling to Australia from Europe worse for jet-lag than the other way around. She had the sunshine, a lovely garden and the pool to help her recover while I went off to work each day. She relaxed like this for ten days until we closed up at work for the Christmas and New Year break. By then I had the vehicle I wanted and we could head off for a spot of camping.

Although she had a lot of time to herself and I been careful not to upset her, Claudia seemed a little cold in the beginning. It struck me as a bit strange given that she had had the courage to give up her job, flat and, essentially, her life in Germany to come out and live with me. There had been no passionate lovemaking to celebrate our reunion. I tried not to read anything into this and struggled gamely not to appear a hormone-enraged bull. After a year of dream and fantasy serving as buildup, it was very difficult. The reason that Claudia gave for this was that she "was not ready". No more than that. Just "not ready". This continued for almost a fortnight during which time we slept together, but with no sexual intimacy. I was happy to go camping when we finally got the car as I had taken to masturbating into the bathroom sink quietly each night so that I did not become too much of a nuisance at bedtime. That way Claudia got the cuddle she wanted and I fell asleep without a raging erection causing me terminal insomnia. It was very difficult for me, but I did not want to mess things up and my love was big enough and my respect for her feelings was strong. Of course, now, with benefit of hindsight, I just wonder if she had been running away from something rather than coming out to me.

Eventually on a trip over Christmas to Roma, away out in the West of Queensland, we made love. The setting was terrible, we were in the back of our Nissan patrol, forced to sleep there by rains that were too heavy to allow a tent to be pitched. The sex was obviously not great, but there was the novelty of curious kangaroos peering in the windows. I had had a full battery of sexual health tests done before Claudia came out and I put the lab reports in a discreet, yet obvious place for her to see. She assured me that for my part I should not worry as the last man she had unprotected sex with was this doctor she had the affair with in 1998. I accepted that. Claudia was on the pill when she came back to Australia. It was great not to have to use condoms. Unfortunately, we both soon developed a rash which we put down to the awful dampness, heat and humidity. This, combined with the fact that we were washing ourselves from a bucket as we camped rough, seemed to make sense and we assumed it would clear up upon our return to Brisbane. Later we decided that our use of Wet-Ones as a means of cleaning ourselves after sex was probably the main reason for this rash.

Despite all this, we were both very happy and enjoying ourselves. This is proof that our love was strong, and things that loom large in my mind right, now were just little glitches in our new life together back then.

Coping With Separation.

So how were Claudia and I doing so far? We were both coping very well actually. Once I was working, e-mails flowed back and forth on a regular basis. We had the time differences off pat and as a result I was able to predict Claudia's location and make regular phone calls to her. During 1999 I spent an average of $5 per day calling her. It was lovely, we could chat for five minutes or an hour depending how we both felt. We could cheer each other up, we could surprise each other with the things that we said and we just seemed to grow closer. The calls were part of a regular routine as were the e-mails. We never used on-line chat. I don't know why really, I suppose that we felt that there was more in an e-mail than casual silly chat that can waste half your working day and provide endless distraction. In the end I was very glad too. But more about that later....

My visa had been due to expire in August, but my boss and the company directors were prepared to sponsor me and help me stay in the country on a business visa that would tie me to them for a couple of years. I was happy to give this a try and Claudia was pleased about it too. She loved Australia and was keen to return. Returning to Germany had just meant falling into the same old rut and she was a bit miserable. It was always going to be a long and difficult process for me to get through Australia's notorious immigration minefield. I had no degree, trade or diploma, only heaps of on-the-job-knowledge which is difficult to quantify. I had achieved all the Apple Australia technical certifications, but that was not enough on it's own. The company had been advertising in the national and local press and on-line for some-one like me and only been inundated by MCSEs, no-one who knew Macs. But being too highly specialised for a red-tape behemoth in the form of a government department, it was never going to be easy to convince them that a Mac specialist had skills that no number of home-grown MCSEs could ever deliver without years of experience. The following two years were an endless round of applications, rejections, appeals while immigration lawyers grew rich. I could fill a blog with this saga very easily.

Our relationship held steady during that year and Claudia was happy to come out at the end of the year when it seemed that I would be able to stay on. Recent events, of course, have me wondering just what she got up to in that year, but I never felt in the least bit concerned at the time and she certainly never mentioned if anything bothered her about what I might be up to. It is really sad that I now look back on this period and try to remember if there were any warning signs. It seemed so marvellous to me and others who knew about us that we could both be so sweet and dedicated to one another while so far apart for so long.

Viva Brizvegas!!

I liked Brisbane from the day that I arrived there. It had everything that a city needed plus good weather, great geography, open spaces, energetic city fathers and a lovely river running through it. (Unlike that useless, wet, brown stripe that runs through London or Melbourne and more like Perth's Swan River.) I stayed in a Hostel called Aussie Way. It was great, there was a house behind it that the owner had purchased and it housed the long-termers. There was a pool, it was close to the city, the station and all the nightlife on Caxton Street and, most important, the atmosphere was good.

I set about looking for work. My original plan had been to get a bit further north to where the mines were, but my cash was not going to stretch that far. I let my fingers do the walking and then I hit the road with a list of addresses. Because I have been a bit of a journeyman, my CV does not make the greatest reading. I need to speak to people and that way I can often get my foot in a door. After a couple of days, the drilling idea petered out. I would need to go up North and find the guys in the field offices. There were only besuited engineers/pen-pushers living the comfy city life chasing contracts. Next stop - Apple Service Centres. I had worked in Holland for ADT, a part of Global Resources who had established a Europe wide repair facility for certain models in Apples range. Working as an Apple Technician seemed like a good idea. Brisbane had a number of Apple shops according to the trusty Yellow Pages and armed with another list, I hit the road again.

Later on, people who knew Brisbane's Apple scene were a little disbelieving when I said that I walked to every Apple-related service agent in one day, but I did. Most were helpful, one was very helpful and the last one asked me to come in two days time and do a bit of work for them so they could evaluate me. Done. I had the job and I was stationed in Brisbane.

On The Road Again.

I crossed the Nullabor by coach this time, it took 39 hours from Kalgoorlie to Adelaide. My bum was mince and my nerves frayed by the assortment of humanity that took the trip with me. My last few days in Kal were spent with the rest of the townsfolk nervously waiting to see if a huge tropical cyclone would turn inland enough to reach us. It caused huge damage at Exmouth on the coast, but all Kal got was a bit of flooding and a few days cut off from the rest of the world. The railway line was also damaged. They had evacuated the mine anyway, so I had come back into town with everyone else. It was a strange way to leave - vaguely surreal with the closed roads and shops and the busy pubs and threatening sky and powerful winds.

I didn't hang around in Adelaide, I had seen and enjoyed so much there with Claudia that It felt wrong to be there without her and so I sneaked out and made my way the long way round to Melbourne. The East coast of Australia had it's cute and quiet little towns and roads, but it lacked the rough and ready feel of Western Australia. Out west, travelling felt more daring, more adventurous. You wouldn't round a corner and find a homely place that sold Devonshire teas or a chance to fish for trout.
Melbourne failed to impress me on that first visit and did little to redeem itself on future visits I was to make. It was as if it pretended to be grander than it was, somehow. The city centre had it's share of blue chip-type companies and the buildings along some streets were grand, but I could never shake the sense that there was a lot of old money around that was not going as far as it used to in terms of making the place as sophisticated as it wanted to be. In Scotland they would describe it as being 'Fur Coat and Nay Knickers'. (Know-what-I-mean? I will think about this some more and come back and edit this post when I can find a better way of putting this.)

I flew to Tasmania because it cost the same as the ferry and I would get there quicker. I thought that I wasn't in a rush, but I did feel the need to keep moving. In Tasmania I met a Canadian who seemed a decent type. We decided to hire a car for a fortnight and drive around the island as this was going to be the best way to see all the quiet little corners that make Tasmania so special. What a gorgeous state. What a pleasure to buy fruit and veg from farm stalls that had honesty boxes for you to drop your money in. I think that was perhaps one thing that summed up the cleanliness and the innocent ways of the place.

Before I left Perth, I had posted off my laptop to Claudia. It was the single most valuable asset in my life and I had not ever used it on the mine and I thought it was pointless carrying it around any more. In Hobart I had to send a fax off to explain to German Exise that it was mine and it was not going to be sold. That 2-page fax cost 22 bucks to send!

I loved Tassie and it is high on my list of Most Desireable Places to Live. I still imagine it as the one place where Claudia and I could happily settle. It was the sort of place where education and law-and-order are not besieged by budget cuts and bad personal discipline. I flew back to grotty Melbourne and headed up to Canberra. There I spent two days taking in the War Museum and Memorial alone. I then went to Parliament and I sat in the public gallery and heard democracy in action - a couple of days debating and voting on an Internet bill. Bloody hell! If we all did that sat in on a circus like that, I think we would be more inclined to look for benevolent dictator, a sort of Daddy-Knows-Best type. And that for a parliament as open and progressive as the Australian one. I shudder to think what you would get in the UK or Germany for instance; or for that matter, the European Parliament!

It was off to Sydney next. Not my kind of place. You will perhaps have gathered that cities don't grab me much, not sure why really, I don't think that I am that much of a country bumpkin. Perhaps it is when the weather is crap, a big city just seems to hold so much sadness in streets that locals stride through without ever pausing to think - and the weather in Melbourne and Sydney has always been crap when I have visited. London has bits like that too. I went through the Basic To Do list for the place and headed north. By now I was sick of the type of UK traveller that one meets on the East coast. Finished uni, out for a year, away from the wrinklies and attracted to Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay or Airlie Beach like flies to shite. Dreadful sorts, not backpackers at all. OK, it was not only the Poms, but they were the majority and the other nationalities that did the same sort of thing at least seemed to have dreads and a weed habit already. For that reason I skipped Byron Bay and went straight to Brisbane. My finances were also running low and it was time to find more work.

Alone again - but with hope

I made my way back to Kalgoorlie with a heavy heart. I had a lot to smile about. All my feelings were positive, but nonetheless tinged with the sadness of having to leave Claudia. We were both certain that we had something good and strong and we both felt that it was going to be worth every bit of effort that we put into it. This was the early days of e-mail and there were few internet cafes around. (Kalgoorlie only had public access at the library where you were still expected to book your time slot.) Back then phone calls were still dear and there was not the selection of cheap calling cards that there is now. Being on the mine for 28 days at a stretch was difficult to us both and we resorted to good old snail mail with me collecting my mail from the Post Office in Kal where Claudia sent them Poste Restante.

My letters to Claudia would have been grubby, reflecting the places they were written. Atop the diesel bunker while refilling the tanker for the rig; next to the rig waiting for rods to go down on the odd occasion that we had a spare man to do a bit of the grunt work or near the campfire. Blazing sun and freezing nights, I wrote my letters and studied my 'German in Five Minutes' with the single-minded determination of a man on a mission. Claudia would slip sweetly from my thoughts into my dreams at the end of each shift and my heart would cruise in overdrive through each day. It was wonderful.

Months past and it became time for me to leave. I could only work for one employer for three months at a time, it was a condition of my visa. I had made some good money and my reason for being in Australia was to travel and enjoy all of it. It was time to move on. And I did

Borrowed Time

Claudia was exhausted when she arrived. She had to sit next to someone smelly and fat the whole way and there were noisy and drunk people on the bus to make the experience worse. We retired to the hotel and clung to one another, so very thankful that we had not missed each other. It was so close to complete disaster, for Claudia especially. It would have meant that the bus trip was in vain, those days in Adelaide would have been spent alone and trying to re-arrange a flight to Cairns. It did not bear thinking about.

We were more relaxed and less frantic for our next week together. We walked around the city, through the parks and galleries. Our bodies had got close, now our minds got closer. We made plans for the future. When my visa was up, I would go to Germany and we would be together again. It was something I was happy to do. I had previously lived in Holland for a year and I was confident that I would settle in.

We learnt more about each other. Claudia had finished an affair with a doctor where she was the third-party being fed a regular diet of lies about when he would leave his partner and how he had stopped seeing her. She was passionate in her determination never to be involved in something sordid and demeaning like that again. Funny now how that sticks out in my mind. It must have hurt.

Claudia had a degree in Pedagogy and was uncertain what to do with it. In the mean time, she was living in her own flat in Dortmund and working at an institute that was closely associated with the scientific community and the publication of results, papers, statistics etc. An assistant to the secretary and a little dull and demeaning for someone with her qualification and young aspirations. Still, she did not really know what to do with her degree and work experience, which involved time spent at various rehabilitation clinics on teams that worked to rehabilitate adults who had suffered brain trauma as a result of accidents, strokes etc. Humbling for anyone and depressing for those not suited to it. Her dilemma is shared with many thousands of European graduates. So many have studied so hard for something that, only after qualification do they realise has no equivalent salaried post in the real world and, at best, is only seen as proof that they are not blue-collar material. Even this is questionable when one sees how many now retrain as trades-people. As the world's elitists throw increasing amounts of money at giving increasing numbers of their children increasingly useless degrees, we all curse at the dregs that are left in the trades charging increasing amounts for a deteriorating quality of service and workmanship. And then we question our leaders as to why the country is filling with foreign workers. Go figure! - increasingly!

Rant aside, the two of used the time to seal our commitment to each other. Photos show the two of us sitting on the grass in parks, relaxing in the morning sun on our hotel balcony and we both have that fresh happy look of contentment, a touch disheveled from the cuddling! When the time came for Claudia and I to part, we both knew that we would see each other again. We knew it.

Near Miss

I spent the next few days feeling very blue and lonely. I couldn't get Claudia out of my mind, the time spent together had been so filled with happiness that I now spent my time changing my dreams to include her. Whatever I did, where-ever I went, I wanted to be alongside her. I hated that she wasn't there with me, that the backpackers unspoken code was that you did not stand in the way of another's travel plans; that there was a time to move on. But we had both been respectful of that.

I made the decision to leave and head back towards Kalgoorlie a few days early. Bag packed and train ticket in pocket, I was walking out the hostel when I paused at the door to let the manager in. "Good luck. Hope we see you again", he said. "Oh by the way you did get the message posted on the board for you at lunchtime, didn't you?" I hadn't. I walked back to the noticeboard and there it was - a message from Claudia !!!! She was getting the bus back to Adelaide that night. I was dumbfounded! She had changed all her plans to spend 30 hours on a bus from Alice Springs to see me again. This truly was the greatest girl in the world. And the good fortune of meeting someone as I left the hostel who not only knew about the message, but also had the courtesy to ask if I had received it! If anyone had doubts about the two of us, this would have to dispel them all. With a soaring heart I went back to our Love Inn and managed to get our previous room. Claudia would be there the next morning and I couldn't wait.

In a Trance

Yup, the next few days passed in a state of trance. We got closer and the makings of something good was most certainly there. We sat next to each other at five in the morning hoping to get a glimpse of the elusive duck-billed platypus, we cooed over a koala mum and her incredibly cute off-spring as she shambled ( they move like a crawling baby with a 'heavy' nappy) right by us and went up a tree. So close in fact that my shot was out of focus and I was never forgiven for that. We shared our first kisses in a secluded bay while the others played a game of cricket. Our first passionate kisses were at the originally-named 'Remarkable Rocks' - which always seem to feature prominently on postage stamps and tourist posters. A truly memorable site for a truly memorable event. That sealed us, the long trip back to Adelaide was completed in a state of bliss and arriving late we looked for somewhere a little more comfortable than a hostel to spend our first night alone together.

The hotel was on a busy street and probably had no rating stars at all, but we were both on backpackers' budgets and were comfortable with it. The verandah ran the length of the building and the bathrooms were at the end of the corridor. It was clean and it was enough for us to lie in a comfortable bed together. Passion blossomed, but I held back a bit as I did not want to spoil things by being fumbling and clumsy. Claudia did not care, but recognised my insecurity. Am I the only guy who has noticed that once a girl is 'hot', there is little that will stop her? Anyway, I managed to avoid anything that would have made it feel like a fumbling one-night-stand -something in me that, I suppose, puts me apart from many blokes just keen on getting their end's away. But something that I always hoped would make things more meaningful.

The next day we looked for another place that was a bit further from the main road and had fewer 'dodgy' types in the lobby. We found a lovely place south of the markets. There we stayed for the next few days before Claudia had to move on. Her trip was only a month long and she still had flights to Cairns and a trip to Alice Springs that were booked and paid for. Our limited time together meant that we feasted on each others company the whole time. Again, Claudia was prepared to throw caution to the wind, complaining after a couple of days that the condoms were making her itch and she did not like them anyway. I was reluctant not to use them, preferring to cut back on the sex or just do other things. We played lovers games and cared about nothing but each other. I remember waking next to Claudia with the rays of morning sun shining through the big sliding door and warming the bed. I lay there quite beside myself with happiness. One of those moments of such extreme happiness and contentedness, spiced with love that make you think that life could never feel so good again.

All too soon, Claudia was gone. She was on the bus up to Alice Springs, going to stay at the place I recommended her and from there she was going to fly to Cairns and then back to Germany. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers, we clung to one another and promised to call and write. Then she was gone and I was miserable but elated that I had found such a wonderful person and shared time with them. I had another few days to spend in Adelaide and then I was going to head back to Kalgoorlie and the mine.

We Meet ....

The arrival of 1999 saw a countdown clock set up near the town hall in Adelaide. (Remember back then we were all excited about the millenium?). Little did I know it was the start of a ghastly countdown for me.The trip to Kangaroo Island was done with fairly new tour company run by Tim and his Dutch wife, Bianca. Two nicer people you could not wish to meet. The group set out from Adelaide in the back of Tim's Landcruiser and caught the ferry across to the island. On the island, there was another person to join us for the tour. A German girl, Claudia Steiger joined the tour and hopped into the back of the LandCruiser with the rest of us. She was a bit shy, which was quite understandable given that all the rest of us stayed at the same place in Adelaide and we had already done a wine tour together - we all knew each other and she was the outsider. Her blond hair was bleached by the sun like a real surf chick. She wore a big white long-sleeved shirt that contrasted wonderfully with her deep tan. She had khaki shorts on and was wearing her hiking boots. As we all chatted and asked her the odd question, she wrapped her camera in her hat and then the camera strap went around the hat and then it all got unraveled again. I was captivated. I am sure that the others could see that there was a chemistry between us. It was this girl who did the heartiest thing to me. I fell in love with her. I thought that I had known love before, but this seemed different. It was so powerful and, from the start, just felt so right. We lived worlds apart, we spoke different languages, we had very different pasts, why would our conviction be so total.

It is impossible not to sound a bit of a drip while waxing lyrical about the love I have for Claudia, but don't give up on me. I am sure everyone has pondered elements of what I am describing and I know it is a bit toe-curling to hear someone else trying to describe it.

Kangaroo Island is a great place to spend a bit of time. There is so much to see; cliff walks and views, seal colonies, wildlife, secluded beaches and bays and more. The tour took in all of this and, in the process, Claudia and I became inseparable that day. We were camping and on the first night we rolled our swags out a little to one side and we chatted away into the night. She kept saying that she wasn't tired and couldn't sleep, but she later admitted, she just loved the talking. I had chopped about ten onions for the evening BBQ and as a result my hands were absolutely reeking of onion. She teased me about it (for years after too!), but that didn't stop us holding hands as we finally nodded off.

Across the Red Centre.

After a number of months, it was coming up to Christmas and the mine I was working on closed for three weeks over Christmas and New Year. I took the opportunity to cross the Red Centre and get to Alice Springs from where I planned to head down to Adelaide and back to Kalgoorlie via the Nullabor. I went across as part of a tour group in an 'Oca'. An Oca is an Australian-made vehicle supposedly designed especially for rough outback country. Well...... As an indication of how tough the road was on vehicles, we had both batteries tear loose from their mountings, the air-con compressor drop off, the power steering pump drop off, the transfer box failed and the gearbox lost first and third. Everything that could be rattled off did - lights, numberplates, mud-flaps, mirrors. We stopped every hour to tighten things that were failing and still we lost stuff. The tour group was a collection of Europeans and Japanese who were not really experienced in the outdoors. I was the only person who couldn't walk away from the vehicle for a smoke while some poor bugger who had been driving all day tried to fix things and keep us moving. I had to get down and bark my knuckles too. (An attitude difference between those from the Northern and Southern hemispheres that I have noted frequently. - Being prepared to 'muck in'. Why is it so unthinkable to some people?) There were two unplanned nights between Laverton and Ayres rock, but, all in all, it was a good experience. After the sights and Christmas, I made my way down to Adelaide, via Coober Pedy. In Adelaide, I enjoyed the wine region of Barossa, the galleries and New Year. And finally I booked myself onto a tour that was to take me to Kangaroo Island where my life was to change forever....

I could mention far more about the trip to Adelaide from Perth and I have so many good things to say about the people I met and travelled with and the things that I saw, but that is not the reason for this blog. Perhaps some other time....

A bit of a background...

All this started in 1998 when I was in Australia. I was there on a one year working-holiday visa and did not have a lot of money, so I was taking the working side of the holiday pretty seriously. I had landed in Perth and started working in Kalgoorlie where prospects were rumoured to be better. They were indeed, but the work was considerably tougher. 'Kal' is a mining town about seven hour's drive East from Perth. Like all true, hard-boiled mining towns set up in the last century in the New Countries, Kal has broad streets, inhospitable climate, unattractive suburbs and a very special charm that would always make you glad that you took the time to visit it. I was living in an old brothel that had been turned into a hostel. It primarily accommodated men who were working in the area, but had a really friendly and unintimidating atmosphere that made it a great spot for any backpackers who passed through.
I suppose that 'brothel' bit caught your eye. Well, like most old mining towns, Kalgoorlie had a relationship with the oldest profession that was as old as the town itself. This relationship exists to this day with a street that has a number of these establishments that are still used as intended. My hostel was one that had been sold and redeveloped. The rooms had a few more beds crammed in, but touches like the pool table and mirrors on the ceiling remained.

Anyway, for work, I ended up doing drilling. Exploration Drilling. RC, air core and diamond drilling. Huh? Well Kalgoorlie was gold territory and to find where the gold was, people had to dig holes and check out what they removed for traces of gold. Methods like air core and RC produced a bag of dirt for every metre that they went down. This was drilled up and blasted out with air pressure and the results would be examined by a bored geologist who would make his way out to the site, (puncturing every tyre on the way and expecting an off-sider to fix them). Geologists would then have an idea of what was under the ground. This was how companies assessed the viability of a claim and decided whether it merited further development, ie. do we build a mine or not. When things looked good and they decided to take a closer look, that is where diamond drilling took over. Diamond drilling was gentleman's' drilling because it did not use air pressure and meant that there was less dust, dirt and mud. It also went deeper and could be slightly directional which meant that you could be situated on the side of a large open cast pit and drill down and towards the middle of the pit so the geologists could advise on where to go next.

It was hard work, they did not like men over 30 or under 25 because of the physical demands of the work. While actual miners might have a 9-day-on-5-day-off routine, drillers would be 28-days-on-7-off and on less pay, although that was not the case in the Eighties. Now that is 12 hour shifts in the baking West Australian sun with water and the sandwiches you made for sustenance. After that you would retire to a camp bed in a tent after a meal around a fire cooked by the 'tucker-fucker' - and that would be you every few days. Hard yakka, mate!