Copyright © Tanya Piejus, 2001

2 June 2001

G'day from the Alice, part 3

All you wage-earners out there will be pleased to know that I have actually done a couple of days of honest labour this week. I spent Thursday and Friday at Outback Auto Rentals as a Mobile Vehicular Habitation Unit Sanitation Operative, or something. In other words, I've been cleaning campervans. They started me off on the biggest thing possible, a 6-berth Winnebago which I had to strip out, hoover and scour from top to bottom, test that everything was working properly then repack with washed and packed linen, crockery, etc. I think my efforts passed the inspection test by Eagle-Eyes Trevor who can spot a speck of dried tomato on a chopping board at ten paces. They let me loose on a 4-berth camper and a little 2-berth yesterday and by the end of the day I have to say I was thoroughly knackered and probably spent most of what I'd earnt that day on beer. I am, however, on probation at the moment as there are two of us interested in the work but only one full-time job, so next week I just get to do mornings until they've made up their minds who cuts the mustard. I've also written three travel articles which I've sent off to various magazines in the faint hope of publication. Wish me luck!

As for future plans, I'm spending four weeks from the 9th July on the Gove Peninsula at the remotest tip of Arnhemland at the top of the Territory. I'll be working as a conservation volunteer on a landcare project and coastal debris survey which I think is being run in conjunction with the local Aboriginal council. I haven't got all the details yet but it sounds exciting and it'll be good to be doing some practical conservation work again.

After that it's back to holiday time again when university friend, Jackie, joins me for four weeks to see Kakadu, Cairns, the Queensland rainforest and a bit of the Great Barrier Reef.

11 June 2001

G'day from the Alice, part 4

How come the Aussies get a bank holiday for the Queen's official birthday and we Brits don't? I reckon that's the only reason they voted 'no' to becoming a republic last year. This long weekend is a big event in the Alice social calendar as it is the Finke Desert Race. It involves about 100 buggies, four-wheel drives and just about any other vehicle anyone wants to race, plus 250 bikes, hurtling along a sandy course to the town of Finke 220km out in the desert. They went down to Finke yesterday, camped overnight and came back up today to finish the race where they started. My Japanese room-mate, Kenichi, took part so I went to cheer him along in his time trial on Saturday then it was up at the crack of dawn yesterday to cycle down to the start line. The cars went off first in a wild splurge of dust and gasoline, followed by the bikes three hours later. Watching 250 motorbikes careering off in groups of six was really exciting and the testosterone wafting off the starting grid was tangible.

It rained an inch overnight so the return course today was much tougher and every car and bike that came into the final loop was totally covered in thick, red mud. We didn't even recognise poor Ken when he came home he was that filthy, but you should have seen the smile on his face. The race made for some pretty good action shots which I'll get up on the website soon. It was, of course, also a huge excuse to drink beer and I have to say I overindulged somewhat yesterday. If you think you've seen me drunk, think again!

Other than that I've been to see a couple of films. 'Yolngu Boy' is a sad story about a group of Aboriginal boys and is partly what inspired me to go to Arnhem Land as that's where it's set. I don't think you've had 'Moulin Rouge' in the UK yet but I'd definitely recommend it. It might not be everyone's cup of Milo, but it's one of the most original films I've seen in a long time.

I'm still working part-time at Outback (www.outbackautorentals.com.au if you want a closer look) and picked up my first wage packet on Friday. I'm also doing a couple of shifts a week at Toddy's, the backpackers' hostel where I'm staying, in return for free rent and beer at the happy hour price of two bucks a tinnie.

So life in the Alice is pretty good.

18 June 2001

G'day from the Alice, part 5

As I'm on part 5 of my Alice emails, I must have been here five weeks now which is a bit of a shock as it seems to have flown by. Even more of a shock is that I only have two and a half weeks left before I move on. I'll certainly be sad to leave as I like the town, love the surrounding desert and I've made friends here. I could do without the bone-numbing night temperatures though. Last night was ridiculously cold. In the five minutes it took me to cycle to Outback Auto Rentals this morning, my thumbs went completely numb and there was thick frost on the cars in the yard. However, the rest of the day we've had better weather than you're probably getting over there in Pommieland at the moment and I can feel my cheeks glowing with the sun.

I only worked at Outback one day last week as we're waiting for the school holiday season to kick in. The rest of the time I've spent reading 'A Town Like Alice' - which isn't really about Alice Springs at all but I enjoyed it all the same - as well as working on my tan, recreating Mum's B&B website which I foolishly didn't back up, chatting to my mates in the Grape Shed (our lusciously purple room at Toddy's), doing odd bits in pursuit of a career in travel writing and hanging out in various Alice watering holes. My liver will certainly thank me when I leave Alice!

On Thursday night I went to see a comedian called Austen Tayshus who's worth seeing if he makes it to your neck of the woods. He was very rude about British backpackers, which made me laugh particularly loudly, and does a clever routine called 'Australiana' using various Aussie words and phrases contrived into a story. I've also got myself into a women's fastpitch softball team called the UFOs. I went to a practice session mid-week then went along to a game on Saturday. All the teams here are decked out in full matching kit, have proper diamonds to play on and ample coaching and practice facilities. The sports facilities in Alice in general put us Brits to shame. I didn't get to actually play softball this week, however, as it was a very close game and the captain didn't want to risk putting in someone who's never hit a fast pitch in her life before. I was happy just watching as it's quite different from what I'm used to playing. I've been promised a game next week so I'll let you know how it goes.

For a bit of variety this week I'm also working at Larapinta Lodge which is managed by Pauline and Trevor who run Outback. I was changing beds and servicing the motel rooms this morning and was back to my campervans in the afternoon. What with doing the linen and hoovering at Toddy's as well, I'm becoming an expert in hospital corners and towel art.

25 June 2001

G'day from the Alice, part 6

Phew! What a week I've had. I'd forgotten what it's like to do a full week's work and all this physical labour has worn me out entirely. Still, it means a lot more pennies to spend when I finally leave the Alice next week.

It's only when you do a cleaning job that you realise quite how disgusting people can be. On Tuesday at the motel I'm working in, I had a room to clean that can only be described as rank in the extreme. It took me 20 minutes just to do the microwave which was caked in cooked-on curry. The sugar in the carpet and blood-stained tissues all over the bathroom were just the next step. It took me an hour and a half to get it sorted when the usual time allocated to a full room-clean is 45 minutes. And there were two of them in the same state.

It must have been my week for this kind of grot because I then had to get to grips with a four-wheel drive campervan that looked like the renters had been doing the Finke race in it. The outside was reddish-brown rather than white and the inside, which was my responsibility, wasn't much better. When I found a urine-soaked sleeping-bag liner under the back seat I knew that the woman who brought it back and said the inside was 'quite tidy' was telling one big fib.

Apart from my paid work flitting between the motel and the car yard, I've been designing and coding a website for Tom, one of the gang that hangs out at Toddy's. There's not much content there yet, but you can see the fruits of my labours at http://www.oocities.org/tadhaggard/. I had my first talk about it with Tom over a cuppa in town and he's shouting me a decent meal as my fee. This is the sort of business deal I could get used to - meetings in a cafe and payment in kind. I may also be doing a similar sort of thing for an Aboriginal community and I should be going out bush to see them and discuss it next week. Also, Trevor at Outback Auto Rentals wants his website revamped so I'm suddenly getting a flood of online work. My other work-related news is that I had a message from the owner of a travel website expressing interest in a piece on my own site. This article about New Zealand and the UK is now on http://www.planetgogo.net - check out my name in bold type on the front page! I'm writing some other stuff to go on PlanetGoGo which I won't get paid for but at least I'll get some extra exposure for my writing which is always worth having.

I've had little time for anything other than the above this week but I did get up to some serious mischief in Bojangle's yesterday afternoon with my Grape Shed room-mates. Bo's has its own webcam at http://www.boslivesaloon.com.au if you want to see where I spend an unhealthy amount of my spare time these days.

It's more of the same this week so I'll catch you again in a few days time when I'm not up to my elbows in soap suds.

2 July 2001

G'day from the Alice, part 7

It's been another hard-working week in the Alice but there were no nasty surprises in my cleaning schedule this time. In fact, I found an esky full of food in one of my campervans which I duly claimed for the Grape Shed fridge. The instructions on the packets were all in Dutch, German and Greek, however, which made the subsequent cooking of their contents something of a challenge.

I've also been playing hard this week - so much so that I had no sleep at all on Monday night. Alice is quite the party town once you get to know a few of the locals and what's open when. We started with the didgeridoo / guitar / drum band that plays in one of the pubs, then moved on to good ole Bo's till closing, and finally to the backpackers' dive that stays open until 4 a.m. The Alice equivalent of going for a kebab is a meat pie, iced coffee and bag of pick 'n' mix from the 24-hour petrol station / supermarket / laundromat. I had to be up at 7.30 for work and once back at Toddy's it seemed pointless sleeping so it was back to a mate's for tea and chat until sun-up. The social whirl didn't last, though - I was in bed by 10 the next night.

I had a welcome day off on Thursday and wrote myself a long list of things to get organised before I catch my bus out next week. First priority was booking my flight from Australia to New Zealand which will be in the Christmas holiday season. It turns out that the cheapest option flying from my end-point in Darwin is Garuda, via Bali. It seemed a shame not to take advantage of this weird routing so I'm stopping off for nine days in Indonesia before arriving in Auckland. I also made soup from a workmate's home-grown pumpkin, booked my plane from Darwin to Cairns and a trip to Kakadu for August, got my mail sent up from Sydney and collected my substantial wages for the week, so it was a pretty constructive day all round.

This weekend just gone was the Alice Springs Beanie Festival so I bought myself a natty knitted hat in red and white stripes and last night was the Northern Territory equivalent of Independence Day so we had fireworks at Toddy's. As yesterday was also my family's summer gathering, I made a complete idiot of myself waving into the webcam at Bo's last night in order to make a guest appearance. Life in the Alice is never dull!

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