Hey Everyone!
Here are a few photos from what we get to see when we go outside and drive to Karratha. It's the desert and it's growing on us. The hotel certainly isn't growing on us but the desert is. Maybe that's because it's been below 40 degrees for the last little while.

We have no new news from Dampier

I am sorry that I haven’t updated this in awhile, it’s just that not a whole lot new has been happening and if we had a faster connection I would load up some photos but unfortunately the connection isn’t too good here so you’ll have to wait until we get somewhere better for more pictures.

We’ve been working…a lot. In 9 days we both worked over 70 hours. It’s good though because there isn’t much else to do. So..the more money we make the quicker we can get out of here. Although I think soon we will book our flights to Perth for the beginning of February. So we can spend a week or so in Perth and I can see Karleen and then do a tour of Margaret River and spend some time down south and then start on our road trip.

We’ve made some good friends, I think that some we will be friends with for the rest of our lives even if we won’t see them much. There’s quite a few girls here from Ireland and there is two in particular that we get along really well with. I’ll miss them when we go. I think we are leaving around the same time though so at least we won’t be here without them.

There has been a ton of drama here…more than what we have at home which is certainly saying something. I guess that’s what happens when you put a bunch of girls working/drinking/living together. Hannah and I still haven’t participated in the drinking ridiculous amounts. Both of us don’t have the ability to work hungover. Especially in this heat and with the type of work that we’re doing. Cleaning rooms and wanting to barf doesn’t exactly go hand in hand.

Christmas is going to be so different here and it won’t really feel like Christmas but I think that it’ll be alright. We do a secret santa so that everyone gets to open a present and then the bosses give us something as well from the sounds of it. Then we just have a big party. We get to drink for free all day, none of us work, we get a big Christmas dinner and possibly a beach party. It’ll be a lot of fun and I’m excited for it. It certainly won’t be Christmas but it will be a good day.

We get asked if we’re Irish on a regular basis. Apparently our accents are similar?? I don’t think so at all but I guess they hear a similar accent. I don’t know, maybe it’s cause they’re loaded when they’re talking to us so they don’t really know what they’re hearing.

Sorry this is a slack update but I felt I needed to put something up, it’s been so long. I just haven’t blogged in awhile because this is a travel blog and at the moment it doesn’t feel much like we’re travelling. Sometimes I forget that we’re in Australia until I step outside and it’s 40 above. Anything below 37 degrees is starting to feel cool. We’re going to freeze when we leave this town...and especially when we get back to Canada. We miss home a lot and miss everyone even more. Especially around Christmas. It’s hard to be away from family and it’s the first time for both of us, but at least we have each other. We miss you all so much and will see you in 4 short months!

Our address is

PO Box 284
Dampier, Western Australia
6713

Please feel free to send mail. and presents. and money (Just kidding) and anything else you think we may need.

I'll post a longer one later.

Dear Outside World,

We miss you, we really do and we look forward to our return only 2 and half short months from now.

We’ve arrived in Dampier and been here for a few days now. I have finally found a weak wireless connection however facebook and hotmail is blocked. I never thought that I would see this day, the day where I am forced to go without facebook and hotmail. Wow addicted much?

We wish that we could describe to you the heat here. Hannah made an attempt today and she said that imagine the hottest hottest day of the summer and imagine sitting in the sun for 12 hours straight, with no wind and not being able to cool yourself down…that’s how we feel the instant we go outside. And I’m not exaggerating at all. It’s well over 40 degrees every day. It’s going to be weird to go outside and find 30 degrees cool. I never thought that would happen to me.

I also never thought that I would be able to say that I have lived in a desert, but now I can. When we got here I was a bit scared. It’s a dive, but now that we are working it’s not so bad. We will be making over a grand every two weeks so I can’t complain because that’s a lot of money. I don’t think that we’ll be swimming in the ocean until we get back down to Perth or to the East Coast. There is a beach here but the water just seems kind of gross and it’s right near the mine which also weirds me out because how much stuff do they dump into here.

Each room that we’re staying in has a cyclone kit. And if a cold front comes down from the north they’re be a cyclone. Someone said it will probably happen at least once while we are here. I didn’t ever thing I would be able to say that we had experienced a cyclone either. Scary.

There’s a café a short way away where we can use the internet and will have facebook and hotmail so we’ll go and check that every now and then. Feel free to send messages of encouragement. We’ll need it.

I’ll update soon and maybe post some photos of where we are staying. It’s in Dampier, which is north on the coast in a tiny town with not a whole lot going on, which is good because then we can’t spend our money.

We miss you world and will try and stay in touch.
XOXO

Farewell Perth, it was fun

Oh Perth how we love you, you and the job shop. We’ve been in Perth for 5 nights and we have managed to score ourselves a job. We’ve been persistent. Very very persistent. We’ve gone to the job shop every day that it’s been open and talked to them…a lot. On Friday we went the job shop and this guy Andrew (who works there) started talking to us about our plans and said he would send out our resume’s to a bunch of his hospitality people and then he would have a job for us Monday. There was no way that we were going to get our hopes up because we had both heard that before. But sure enough, we got a text from him saying come in so we did and he gave us a card with 3 numbers and told us a bit about all three places. He recommended one of them the most though so we got home and decided to give them a call. Hannah has mastered the phone…I give her all the credit. So she called them and talked to one of the girls who said the boss wasn’t in at the moment but he would call us sometime soon…so we waited and waited (well really only for a night, but it felt like an eternity, especially because we kept shopping and spending money). The next morning we woke up and decided that if they hadn’t called by midday we would give them a call, nothing like a little persistence. We chilled out all morning and watched copious amounts of television killing time when quarter to 12 our phone rang. And it was the guy calling us to let us know that we had the job. So, we called the girls at the hotel and they said we could start anytime this week but it was best if we were up before Friday because there’s a big event Saturday where we will be able to meet everyone. So we got on the net and booked our flights (which are going to be reimbursed!!) and called the girls to let them know that we were going to be there Thursday afternoon!

I can’t even begin to explain how excited we both are. All day we haven’t been able to stop smiling. The job itself consists of us working in a hotel doing bartending, serving, helping in the kitchen, basically anything and everything. We get a room for free to live in (now we can finally say we’ve lived in a hotel, we’ll send you the address soon, so feel free to send us…anything….anything at all, money, presents, tim hortons coffee…just kidding...but really we have an intense craving for proper coffee from home). Anyways, we will be making well over what we do at home and living and eating for free….who can complain about that!!! That’s about all…please feel free to leave your questions and concerns in the comments section located at the bottom of this post.

Secondly, after our fantastic news we did a little shopping because the weather up there is 40 degrees everyday and we get to look at nothing but the sea and red sand. So we shopped and then we decided to save lives. Right next to our hostel is a large building. And on the side of the building it says give blood. So we walked in the door and said “G’day, I was wondering if you would take our blood today??” She sent us upstairs where we filled out some paperwork, had our little interview and then filled up some bags with good old fashioned Canadian blood. It’ll be good for those lucky aussies who get it. It all went off seamlessly besides Hannah getting a little ill. She recovered with poise and grace and walked in the door of the hostel to me being ready to fall asleep. We watched a bit of television and decided we would go out for dinner to celebrate ourselves getting a job and we went to the amazing Korean BBQ. One of those places where they have a little BBQ on your table and you can cook your own meat. Unfortunately, you had to order 2 meat meals to be able to BBQ so we didn’t have a chance to do that but rather the chef cooked my meat wonderfully. As a side note, I ordered the assortment of meat plate because I had no clue what to get and I don’t think I’ve ever had that much meat in front of me at once. And Hannah got a fried egg on top of her meal. We each had about 5 little bowls of various things in front of us and miso soup and rice. It was so so good, we definitely stuffed ourselves. To finish off our meal of course we left room for dessert we had an amazing chocolate fondu. It was unreal and I’m so glad we decided to go for it. Everything was delicious. To top off an already amazing day/night, on our walk home we saw a lady dancing to Push It by Salt N Peppa. Brilliant…and next time you see Hannah ask her to do a demonstration. She pretty well did it 9 times on the way home and you could probably hear me laughing from far far away.

Okay, I just have to add this little tidbit of information last night at around midnight when we were all already asleep or just getting to sleep I heard this weird alarm from outside and I was thinking ok like what is that, we’ve already had a stabbing what else can possibly happen. So we were lying in bed and all of the sudden we hear a ridiculous sounding alarm…not at all like a normal fire alarm from home. So Tamsen (one of the girls in our room) wakes up and is like what is that, is that a fire alarm?? In which I finally clue in yes and we should probably go. So here we are dressed in really skimpy pajama’s because it’s so bloody hot running around on our floor trying to figure out where to go to get down because all the doors are closed and say “fire door, do not open, do not obstruct” So we manned up and opened the door and ran down the stairs just happening to come out of the building RIGHT beside the bar. Oh excellent. Anyways, all was well and the alarm only went off because someone burnt some toast…because when we got back into the building it’s all that we could smell. YUM