Karratha: Half Way

September 2015

I had a few days off in Karijini at the start of September but now I was back and ready for the second half of my time in Karratha. There was a rare treat on the first Saturday of the month when Alice came out to Evo's with us!

Alice!

Alice was the main supervisor and had been there for ages! She was the person that got shat on the most by management. I tried to help her out best I could because she literally did everything. The reason she had stayed so long other than her boyfriend was she, like Cassie, had been strung along with false promises of sponsorship. They were going to offer it to both of them, then only one of them but not really saying which one and then it ended up being neither. A prime example of the amount of bullshit that's thrown about in this place. For this reason it was to become Cassie's last month here and Alice decided she would leave before the end of the year too.

Ollie had already left after he was finally sick of it. He hadn't left town though as he had got a more permanent proper job with the agency we work for, Globe.

At this point I was questioning my decision to stay. I really wanted the money and to try to find something else would be a risk that I might lose out financially. Also, you can't be sure that any new job that I found would be any better than this one. After one particularly frustrating shift I emailed The Lions Den (the place I worked three years ago). I planned to finish the year in Cairns and it would be great to go back there but they never replied to me and so I took a concrete pill and decided to stay until the bitter end!

Posh function

Anyway, I'll stop ranting. We had quite a fancy function in the second week. It was some award night for businesses in the area and it was very posh. We had to pretend that the Tambrey was really upmarket. This was just after Luke arrived. He was to be my room mate for rest of my time in Karratha. I had got used to my own room so I wasn't so keen on sharing but he was cool. We had many rants about work.

We had some new housemates too. Eric and Veeto. Eric was a tall swede who was an interesting character. He like to sit of the sofa and giggle and youtube videos. He led Veeto a stray a little bit. He was from Singapore and the pair of them went out a lot with some Estonian girls from the other house. Who would have thought someone could like Evos so much.

There was an incident in the bathroom one particular morning. Someone had left quite the gift in the toilet. When I found it someone had stuck a note on top of it saying "this is disgusting!". Luke described it as the sweetcorn log. It was the source of much amusement as accusations flew over who left it. Eric seemed to think it was Veeto. Eric is huge, Veeto is tiny, there's no way it was him. Eric got really annoyed when we wouldn't believe him. It is a have-to-be-there story but it was funny.

Flies!

Completely random photo but this just shows how many flies there are here! This was after just a week of replacing the sticky pad. So many flies!

Look who's back

This was an impromptu staff party. For some reason everyone ended up at the pub playing pool but look who's back! Hayden and Beki had managed to escape Karratha once to do some farm work near Perth. It hadn't worked out for them so they came back, voluntarily! Madness, I know!

Bye Rob and Cassie

A few days later it was the Rob and Cassie's leaving party. Rob was driving to Melbourne and Cassie was catching a ride with him. There was a party at Baddock for them which involved many antics. I think they were doing Dirty Dancing.

Love this photo

Many people have come and gone since I've been here but I think this one was the most upsetting. Beki cried a lot!

Much love in this pic

Buddy

The Corbett house adopted a dog for a month. The owner went away and asked Nicole and Jamie to look after it but it ended up that the people that lived here had to look after it themselves which annoyed a couple of people. Buddy was really annoying to start with but he started to listen after a while. You could play fetch with him all day long, he wouldn't quit so I used to throw the ball in the pool to give me a bit longer between throws.

Free drinks

Danny, the alcoholic manager, seemed to be on a massive bender and one night we all got drunk after work. He didn't seem to mind if we went and got drinks so we did. A few times. I played him at pool and I really wanted to beat him. Unfortunately I got 7 balled and had to do a lap in my boxers!

Picnic at the beach

At the end of the month there was another staircase to the moon. This happens every month of course but this was the first time I had the night off so I could see it since June when I forgot to go see it. This happened to be quite a special one as it was a Supermoon too. There were quite a few of us and we got given half a box of fish and chips. Some people had over ordered and gave it to us. Bonus. I took some photos on my phone but they were no where as good as Katie's as she had a proper camera. A couple of days later I bought myself a proper camera!

Moonrise

Very yellow

The staircase

That's another month done. Only 2 more to go and I was beginning to count the days now! I think 3 months is a good stint here. Any longer and you start to lose your mind.