Getting to know a different town

There are no gutters outlining the houses in Karratha, WA. It’s the wet season but I haven’t even sniffed a whiff of rain yet. Apparently one in four wet seasons up here is a fizzer – the rain just never turns up.

There is a strong whiff, however, of chlorine in the town water. In the shower it’s a haze around me. I’ve been turning the “cold” tap on, and having quite a pleasant warm shower. In the kitchen it’s impossible to get a cool drink from the sink, or to chill cooked broccoli or prawns under the tap. I’ve been wondering what happens if I burn myself – I certainly won’t be running it under warm water for 20 minutes.

I’ve got a sourdough starter going again. Flour varieties are fairly limited: so far I’ve found 1kg bags of ‘wholemeal’ in Coles. In the heat it took just three days to have a bubbling container of wild yeast. When I add water though, I have to leave it to breathe on the bench to get rid of the chlorine – otherwise it’ll kill the happy bugs.

After two weeks, visiting the supermarket is becoming less traumatic. I’m making an effort to buy fruit and vegetables (just because I don’t want to get scurvy), but I’m supplementing them with basil and spinach from the community garden. The instant coffee range is a sight to behold. There’d be a good two metres frontage of milky, sugary, just-add-water packets. It reminds me of the Indonesian sachets the Dili locals drink – despite being in a coffee-producing country.

The heat last week was pretty tough – a few days all sitting above 40. On a work day it’s fine – I can go from air-conditioned car to office, back to car, and into house. I’ve been trying to sleep without air-con (mixed success) and attempting to acclimatise by spending as long as I can on the verandah in the mornings and evenings. That’s where I’m dripping now.

I’ve been staying at the ABC house with colleagues while I find a rental. It’s a five-bedroom monstrosity that fills the whole block, except for a strip of couch grass at the front that’s watered before dawn by sneaky reticulation. Eighty per cent of houses in Karratha have reticulation, a real estate agent told me. The house is tin with black aluminium windows, a black steel verandah, and even black metal verandah shutters. I can feel the heat pulsing through the whole suburb.

I’ve found a rental, and I’m moving in this Friday. It’s also bigger than what I need, but it’s got a nice garden and shade. There are natives out the front, and room for a veggie patch out the back. There’s gas cooking and a bath. I negotiated a little on the price, and it was accepted first go – I’m now wondering how much lower I could have gone! There are about 400 empty houses in the town, because of the downturn in metal prices and the insistence of the mining companies to keep their workers in camps on the town’s outskirts.

There’s no kerb-side recycling. It’s very strange seeing a rubbish bin with bottles and tins mixed in with food scraps and plastic. I’ve been saving toilet rolls and mini UHT cartons for raising seeds. I started a compost collection in the ABC house within 24 hours of arriving. I’ve been taking the bag down to the community garden compost bins on a Saturday. It’s making me feel much better. Although, I think the housemates might have been sick of the prawn heads that had been brewing since Wednesday.

I’ve filled my recyclables with potting mix and put in the seeds of zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, watermelon (!), and chilli. After two days the cucumbers had germinated. I’ll have to order in some seeds from ‘over east’ to get the full garden variety. Not much growing goes on up here over summer, it’s just too darn hot.

I was on air for the first time today, and the old nerves rose in the form of sleepless nights and nightmares over the weekend. But despite that, and the heat, I’m taking so much pleasure in establishing a routine. My bike’s serviced and oiled, I’ve been doing a few laps at the pool (emphasis on just a few…), and this week I start boxing fitness classes – watch out!

 

 

 

A different kind of red dirt

There aren’t many places further from Tasmania than Karratha in Western Australia. It’s quicker to drive to Darwin or Kununurra, than it is to traipse to Karratha.

If you’re going on an adventure, you may as well make it a big one, I say.

In the lead-up to my drive, there was only one moment when I questioned what I was doing. Mum and I were watching the weather on ABC. After the Tassie forecast, the image zoomed out to the rest of the country. I visualised the path I would take around the south and west coasts. I looked away.

I’ve been treading water for the past year. After deciding to leave Mount Gnomon Farm, I did some wwoofing in Victoria, spent three months in Asia, and then went back to the farm, like a moth to the flame, to help for a few busy months.

Sometimes, it takes a while for the pieces to fall back in place.

Writing the job application was painful. It’d been 10 years since I applied to be the ABC’s Rural Reporter in Burnie. I had to google resume templates, cover letters, and talk to friends about how to address the selection criteria. I listened back to interviews and broadcasts I’d done in Burnie so I could put a show reel together. I’d forgotten that I actually used to be pretty good at my job.

A few days after the interview, I got a call offering me an adventure in the Pilbara. I was camping on Bruny Island that day, and a land of red rocks, cattle stations, and mining camps was almost impossible to imagine.

I was determined to travel as lightly as possible. I filled the back of the LandCruiser with cooking gear, pantry ingredients, a tool box, camping table and chair, and my new snazzy fridge/freezer. I managed to fit about 8kg of meat from the farm in the freezer, and then bacon, chorizo, and Tassie cheeses in the fridge section. And a bottle of local white, of course…

I allowed myself two boxes for “luxury” items: books, art materials, pretty pieces of material for decorating new digs, headscarves, nice linen, and photographs. I kept my clothes pretty simple – just every long-sleeved shirt that I own, work trousers, happy pants for weekends, and a couple of go-with-everything dresses. I may also have packed an original 70s, psychedelic satin dress… just in case.

My aunty is an experienced outback traveller, and she put together a packing list for me. So along with all the day-to-day stuff, I’ve got an over-flowing first aid kit, fire extinguisher, 4WD recovery gear, 2kg of jelly beans, a shovel, washing line, wire, sewing kit, various tarps and occy straps, a wheel chock (LandCruisers have a reputation for dodgy hand-breaks), superglue… and it goes on.

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I could tell you all about the 5,000km from Tassie to Karratha, but this post is getting pretty long. I loved the trip – honestly. The first couple of days I didn’t go too hard, but eventually I got up to 1,100km in one day (that was a bit ridiculous, but I had to be in Perth by a certain day). I camped in national parks and at roadhouses. I had wine and cheese before dinner every night and used a tablecloth. I even washed up before I got in my swag! I listened to The Best of Van Morrison CD approximately 45 times because I couldn’t get radio reception most of the way, and my iPod kept dying. The driving time took 6.5 days, with a break for a couple of days in Perth to meet the boss.

I’ve had five days at work, ringing cattle stations and trying to charm the pastoralists. It’s usually pretty tough for new reporters up here, I’m told, with people saying things like, “How long will you be staying? Five minutes?”

Did you want to bet on that?