Great friends

How remiss of me to not mention our wonderful friends in Mackay - Maurice and Dennis.  We seemed to keep bumping into one another in the respective 'kitchens' around Mackay and now find that we gravitate towards the same spots - happy to share our bathrooms, kitchens and dining rooms but woe betide anyone else who thinks they can share these with us, lol.  Great people, lots of tales and frustrations to share.  We seem to have found the same special spots and often meet in the same place for tea, bed or to charge our toys. 

Dennis

Maurice

The cause of the power surge in Mackay

Its funny how protective of 'our' space we can get, we have been using the free hot showers at the Bluewater lagoon and the other day when we turned up there were a whole bunch of backpackers there using 'our' shower (the one in the parents room because it is hotter!!!!) - how dare they, who did they think they are!!!!!!

A tour of our renovated kitchen

Yes - so exciting we have had a kitchen upgrade, so I thought I would share some pictures with you.  We have recently installed air conditioning so it is always nice and cool, I havent managed to find the heat setting yet, but hopefully in time I will discover that.  The view from the kitchen window is great as is the view from the dining room - really we have fantastic views from all rooms in our house - even at times from the toilet and bathroom we have uninterupted views of the surrounding landscape!!!!!

Dining room table and sink

Our new stove - currently steaming poumpin and potatoes for work tonight

View of our dining room with kitchen in the background

Sugar - and not a lot else

Well life in terms of blogging is pretty boring - we are both working in the sugar factory and have a 5 day shift coming up - apparently they like us and apparently we have the shittiest jpb and apparently no one else likes doing it and as we come as a two-some it is convenient to put us on the machine together - they say it makes a change from having to track down the youngsters who are shooting up in the toilets - so good employers are hard to find i guess.

Sugar Australia

Yay we are both working again - this time together out at Sugar Australia.  Becasue i have worked there before I get to be the boss - hehehehehehe, if he dosent toe the line I will sack him. 

So our first night working together was just that - the two of us on the 1000kg bags - come on guys I know I have worked there before but isnt it a bit of a big ask to expect the newbies to run the machine by ourselves.  Not too worry we had a bit of instruction and it didnt go too bad.  Our only glitch was trying to squash 2000kgs of sugar into a 1000kg bag - hmmm bugga.  We got it stopped before we lost too much sugar on the floor and then sucked out the excess, about 300kgs - it goes back to the refinery to get reprocessed.  Thank goodness for big vacuum cleaners!!!!

I have also had Tony helping me out at the laundromat this week - so thats another new OZ experience.  He is following my instructions quite well, dont know if he likes it or not though?

Tonight and Friday night we are working again at Sugar Australia on the 4pm to midnight shift and then again Monday, Tues, Wed.  We get 2 half hour breaks fully paid so that is quite nice.

The weather here has turned cooler and the weekend gone was pretty cold really.  Apparently it was 8 degrees on Saturday which for Mackay is a bit unusual.  But I guess we shouldnt complain too much because it is probably colder back in NZ.

Sugar Australia

Well to keep myself busy I have been doing some work at Sugar Austalia - I semll like, look like, taste like and feel like candy floss.  The first night was spent packaging 1000kg bags - we did approx 100 in the 6pm to 2am shift (and i mean thats a whole lot of sugar in one bag - wouldnt want to be the one to put a forklift through that.  AND one of the guys i worked with was Darrel Wiki from ?? yes you guessed it Rotorua.  The second night was spent packaging these little ones - between Jon, myself and the machine we package 70 per minute. 

I have discovered a great team to work with and really dont mind the night shift apart from not being able to have a shower when i get 'hone' - might have to rig up a makeshift bath especially now Tony is home to stand guard at 2am!!!!

Tony the kitchen hand

Well he is back in mackay after a long and tough 7 days.  He has never had cleaner hands in his life and they feel nice and soft (perfect for massaging i think). 

Tonys room was slightly different to mine mainly in size - mine was about 3 times bigger - hehehehe girls rock. 

However because of the shift hours he worked he got to discover a part of Middlemount I didnt get to see - namely Blue Mountain Park.  Not a very high hill and apparently the only one there!!!! with views for miles in every direction.

So it is nice to be back together again.

From the frustrating to the downright bloody annoying

Well I haven’t blogged about the 2 toll fines the previous owners of George received – they sort of seemed irrelevant somehow, despite the paper war I had to go through to prove that I purchased the vehicle AFTER they incurred the fines by driving and not paying on a toll road in Sydney – the toll itself was $4.00 each but by the time the notice had got to me it had incurred a penalty so they were $13.00 each.  So made a quick call to City Link completed the required paperwork and had it witnessed by a friendly police officer and posted it off.  Yesterday I got more mail (thanks Rosita for being such an awesome personal secretary) which looked suspiciously like the previous mail from City Link!!  Well it wasn’t, quite, it was from Civic Compliance who now handle the overdue infringement notices and this time there were 2 fines of $119 each, dating back to January 2011 – I kid you not.  So once again I get on the phone – hey guys how many times do I have to tell you that I purchased the vehicle in MARCH and once again I have to write a letter explaining why I wish to be excused from paying these fines – ho hum.  This time I got a bit clever and asked if they could check the system for any other unpaid fines – thankfully there are no more.   Definitely a case of buyer beware!!!!!!

The Mac Village - Middlemount

 So now that I have a bit more time I have loaded some photos of what the camp looked like – also took a photo of me in my uniform but I suck at self photos so you don’t get to see that one!!!!

The Camp is actually quite big as you can see from the map – well I hope you can, and is split into blocks hence my confusion when they told me my room was 5081 and I couldn’t find it in the dark on the first night – its actually room 81 in Block 5000. 

So this is a little bit of what the camp looked like and my very first pair of steel capped boots

– im still not 100% sure why I needed steel capped boots for housekeeping but maybe one day someone will enlighten me.

Room 2-076

View from my front door

Another view from my front door

Tony gets to experience Middlemount

Timing couldn’t be worse – I finish work on Tuesday and catch the Wednesday 5am bus back to Mackay and Tony arrives in Mackay Tuesday night for a weeks work in the kitchen.  What is more frustrating is that before I left I mentioned that Tony was coming up to do a weeks work and I would be happy to stay on another week if they needed me.  Thank you but no was the response – I had been back in Mackay for 4hrs when I got a call from Chris to say they had rung and wanted me back tomorrow – not going happen guys. 

Day 2 and onwards

Up at 4am and down to the dining room for brekkie then off to the office to check in.  The office staff rang through to let Leslie know I was there and while we were waiting asked if Cabe had let me know I needed to check out of my room that morning – that it was temporary accommodation – umm no.  So Leslie arrives and we jump in her buggy and head to my room and do a quick pack and head down to ‘A’ block laundry, in the process I lost my pj’s which I had left under my pillow and in theory should have been handed in when my room got cleaned, hmmm – the case of the missing pj’s remains open.

And so off to work – we worked in a team of 3 – myself, May and Stanley – I was on dust, sweep, mop which actually entailed wet dusting and wiping any marks off the walls, cleaning the filters on the air conditioner, emptying the rubbish and putting in a clean bag, sweeping and mopping the floor.  For those rooms that have been vacated we also have to wipe the cupboards, drawers and fridge and hope like heck that it doesn’t need defrosting.  I thought the girls were joking when they told me you take it outside and hose it with the fire hydrant – but no as I was to discover the next day this in fact was no joke. 

My days work finished at 2.30 with the exception of the last day when we finished at 4.30!!!!

There were some great people out there, I worked with May, Stanley, Jess, Sharon and Wendy  and generally had a good time.  We had some fun times like when you accidentally knock the shower nozzle while you are crouched in the shower box cleaning it – some blond moments like when I mistook a tv for a computer, some frustrating moments like Day 2 when we got pulled up by management for not cleaning to a high enough standard – doesn’t need to be 5 star but 4 is the expectation.  Some scarily disgusting conversations, like what is it that the men leave behind on the walls!!!!!!!  Some despairing moments like when you walk into a room and cant see the floor or desk for clothes – (do not touch any personal belongings but still clean the room) and walls and shower boxes that are black from coal dust.

All in all I had a good week and the experiences are hard to capture in words, I missed Tony and not having someone to talk to about my day – and now I am in Mackay (with a throat infection) and he is in Middlemount!!!!

A week at Middlemount – in brief (well probably not)

So much to tell, so little space to tell it in.  Last Monday we went into Mackay labour Hire to drop off our CV’s and talk about work options – walked into a huge argument between the boss and one of the staff members, he was shockingly abusive and it was quite embarrassing to stand there and witness the language, so left our CV’s and scarpered.  Later that day we were talking to a german couple who had called into the same place later that afternoon and have ended up with work, they spoke of the paperwork they had to complete etc etc.  So we were feeling a little confused and wondered if our timing was not the best so Tuesday morning we popped back in to check if everything was in order – essentially it was and they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Feeling a little more reassured that we had done everything we needed to we headed off to the library to blog and email, had only just set up the computer when Chris from labour hire rang to see if I wanted to do a weeks cleaning at Middlemount (one of the mining villages) – sure I said – when?  She let me know I would need call in to the office to fill out some paper work, catch the 2.20 bus that day and would need black pants and steel capped boots – so we got into action and at 2.20 I was on a bus headed for Middlemount.  Arrived out there at 7.30 after having called into all the other ‘Mac Villages’ (Nebo, Copabella, Moranbah, Dysart, Middlemount).  Met the assistant manager Cabe at the office and got a room key, a map, told the kitchen was open 4am - 8am and 4pm - 8pm so I still had time for tea and to report to the office at 5am in the morning.  So off I went with my map in the dark trying to find room 5081, despite my map it was not happening for me and a friendly bloke spotted that I was walking backwards and forwards so pointed out to me that actually the 5 stands for block 5000 and my room number was 81 – so much easier to find my room now I knew I was looking for a door with a 81 on it.  Next stop the dining room and a similar dilemma – once again a kindly soul took pity on me and told me that I needed to swipe the tag on my room key to get past the turnstile.  All so simple when you know how!!!!