Our Time in Townsville
Hello!!!
G'day and greetings from the Land of BBQ's and Kangaroos.
SO we are in Australia, the job I acquired whilst in Thailand, is the reason we came to Australia, and it brought us to Townsville.
Townsville is in Queensland, somewhere between Cairns (in the North) and Brisbane (in the South of queensland). We flew from Bangkok on the 17th oct, after having a fabulous 3 weeks nearly, with the Cartwright family. As you have seen from the photos, we had a great time.
Amy and I were excited about moving on from Thailand, which by the way is a fantastic country, we will go back as soon as we can. Many people think that Thailand is a waste of travellers time, it has too many tourists some say, it is ruined by the westerner some others say, but hey give the country a chance, they do well with tourism because it is a beautiful country. Sure there are those who go and abuse what is on offer, which is a shame, but if you delve, if you look beneath the bright lights and ladyboys, you will see people with very tight traditions, people who between making as much from the tourists as possible, have a definate belief that if they feed a statue or a picture coconut, they will lead a perfectly happy prosperous life. They seem to get by without any major problems.
We lived through a military coup, whooah, that was tough. We saw some truly amazing natural beauty, were not put off too much by the tourist trap, and would say to anyone planning on going to Thailand, to get it done. Go see it before it changes more.
So we boarded a plane heading to Brisbane, with butterflies in our bellies, not scared of Australia, but the new adventure thing kicked, we love new adventure.
Landing at Brisbane was a pleasure, what a nice clean airport. We went to the passport/visa stand and we had all these things we would use to gain entry, as we had heard of the whole "have you got $5000 to get in" stories from people, and actually had only about $500, showed the lady our passport and she asked if we were on holiday and we said no "working holiday visa", and with a stamp of approval we were in Australia. No questions asked. We were now in OZ.
We had to find a flight to Townsville, but before we did I had to smoke something, and walking outside onto Australian soil, really did feel like we were in Australia. With the sun blasting the ground, not hot though, a steady 25 degrees, we could feel a beautiful breeze that told us we were not in Thailand anymore, not the 99% humidity, or the crazy 35 degrees we were used to. Smile's cracked our faces. We were happy to have come here, we thought. We strolled back into the airpport where we would find our tickets to Townsville, and the flight left just 2 hours after we arrived in Brisbane.
The luck of the Irish was with us that day.
We found ourselves sat on the plane next to a guy called David, from Melbourne, who is a sparky working on the mineral plant/mine that is just outside Townsville. We got chatting about where we had been, and our plans for Australia. David, seemingly interested in what we did, said that if we liked we could stay at his for the night. He had an apartment that was free, given by the company he works for, with a spare double room. We accepted his offer, and shared a taxi to his from Townsville airport.
That night we went out and had some grub and a beer, and was just about to look at a backpackers hostel, when he mentioned that we would be welcome to stay at his for a while, untill we sorted ourselves out. We were very lucky indeed, David had just saved us all of our money. Which we would have used for board in an overpriced tourist hostel. We accepted on the basis that he tells us when he has had enough of us, and we would when we had had enough of him. You don't get many Davids to the pound, thats for sure.
We went in search of the company we were meant to be working for,Tropical Diving. The map showed that is was just a street away from where we were staying, so we went off looking.Wasn't there though, we then found out it had moved. Not too far but not on a main street, where customers would stroll past. Oh well we thought, we found it the next day. We were met by Suz, who was the bosses daughter in law. After conversations with her all of our ideas of her were mashed, when this disproportioned hairy woman greeted us with a fag hanging out of her mouth and an ashtray brimming with dead ciggies, in the bus that is used to pick up clients for a day out on the Reef.
She told us a bit about what went on in Townsville, showed us some sights then wanted us to go shopping for boat meat. We went.
The next day was work day number 1. We had to go 2 mins to the harbour where the boat was to be, and wait to be picked up. John picked us up, he is the big bossman. A middle aged fat man. Work started at 6am, loading the boat etc, then it was a 3 hour journey across the Coral Sea, out to the outer barrier reef. Wheeler Reef was the name of the dive site. The journey was a nightmare, after meeting all of the staff and the clients I went on to be thoroughly sick, all the way to the reef. I guess it was rough that day, and my sea legs for some reason were left in Thailand. On arrival the captain urged me to get in the water, which I did and to my relief was the cure. THe reef there was just beautiful, teeming with all sorts of marine life, from Turtles, to rays, to sharks, and fish, so many new funny looking fishes everywhere.
Jess, a chick from New Zealand, was in fact the boss of the boat, when it was out, as she'd been there longer, and Nick an Ozzy Dm, from Melbourne originally, living on Magnetic Island. Both are very cool peeps, and then there was the captain Kym, or skip as we called him. Proper ozzy geezer. Kym would make us laugh through the pain of working for Tropical. Thanks mate.
So the days were very long, and getting longer. As we got to know the business, and the people running it, we were hearing horror stories. Not just from who we knew but from random people in the internet cafe! Tropical had not been paying people, and generally acting like twats. We were concerned. We had doubts when we found out that the owners and management had no diving qualifications between them and that they couldn't organise a bunk up in a brothel.
After countless problems with things being forgotten by the office staff, like essential parts of a customers request regarding dive equipment and things not happening how they should have, in turn costing the customer the whole fee for the reef trip, minus a dive, or getting in the water at all, for no refund. We were constantly apologising to clients for their f**k ups, when if organised properly, could be a successful company, keeping customers.
It was getting so tedious, working 15 hours ripping of divers, snorkellers and anyone else who gave money to Tropical Crusie and Dive , As John Magrin (owner), got fat, we got tired and weak. Things were going from bad to worse, and to top it off had to deal with his arrogant fat lazy son Tony, who has had both driving and skippers licence's taken for drink driving, and Suz who drives a bus full of passengers in the morning has epilepsy. Danger!!! This clearly is not a good company to be associated with, and we are in fact going to report them for bad standards.
So we started looking for alternative work. We found it in Brisbane, so have quit Tropical, and have flights booked for wednesday to go to it. We are now living the nightmare of waiting for Tropical to pay us nearly $1500. So I would advise anyone who is planning to work or visit Tropical, to reconsider. They really are a bad set of business people, losing customers left right and centre, and the family run business is actually a load of fat lazy no good robbers. Also, and I quote, opening Suz'z thighs would be like opening a cheese toasty. Cheers Kym, that one will live forever. hehe.
So after rattling on about Tropical we have now resolved the problem, and no longer eat cheese toasties.
We have met some cool people here in Townsville, which is actually like a throw back to the 1950's with the girls actually following the fashion trends of Marilyn Monroe, and Minny Mouse. While the pubs are always full with handle bar moustaches, and pokie players. Townsville is cool, but not for us, plus you can't even swim off the beach for fear of salties biting your legs off.
We did have a nice day over on Magnetic Island, we had a BBQ on the beach, was cool. Nicks friends were living the ozzy dream, playing cricket and footie on the beach green, whilst there ladies cooked for them. We plan to come back this way at some point, as there are many great things around the area, and upto Cairns. With the rainforest not too far from here, and plenty of attractive things to do, so we will be saving a bit of cash to do everything we want, but til then work, work work.
We are going to work part time for a dive school in Brisbane, helping a new business grow, sounds interesting, also has free rent. WHich you can imagine being used to it, couldn't turn it down. The job being part time means we can both go and earn proper dollar doing something else, and Amy has an interview to work for the Wilderness Society making people cough up a bit of cash for protecting the wilderness, and I will be working in construction, I guess ruining the Wilderness. Not why I chose it though, Mick, who we are working for has a mate looking for labour. So hopefully it will be cool, pay well and be flexible with what we want to do. We are now free to visit Dan, B, and Adam in Sydney for xmas and NY. So that is sweet.
So you have got a right eyeful from this part of the blog, but we are always happy and enjoying ourselves, now we are free again, the adventure moves on, hopefully to higher heights, so fingers crossed we will be sorted out nicely.
Will let you all know what Brisbane is like and whether we will stay there..........
posted by Kieran&Amy @ 6:07 PM
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