Outback diaries: Where are you, civilized world?

As you all know we have put a hold on our nomadic lifestyle of living in a campervan and are currently working in the outback of Australia. You can read more about our previous experiences in part 1 and part 2 of our personal blogposts.

Three months later and this is only part three of our story in the outback. The reason why I haven’t been posting a lot since last time is because the blog was put on hold for a bit to watch a lot of Game of Thrones when we had the chance (yes, seriously). Not that I intentionally decided to take a break, but you see – we’ve really been working our asses off here. So whenever we had some time to relax, we decided to do something that didn’t really involve a lot of effort whatsoever. But now, we’re back and ready to let you know how our last few weeks have been.

Quiet and busy season in the Kimberley

Things are speeding up here, so that’s a good thing. Time is really flying by at the moment, and it will probably only speed up the coming weeks. The hotel we are working at has a busy and a quiet season, and the quiet season was supposed to be the last few months. But it wasn’t quiet, because tourists are becoming more and more interested in the Kimberley Region and well, there aren’t that many hotels in this part of the country. Today the busy season has officially started, and tour buses filled with people arrived, meaning that the whole hotel is fully booked. We had this before during the “quiet season”, but not every single day. I’ve already noticed it today during housekeeping that it’s going to be very busy. The housekeeping shift is from 08.00 till 14.00, but it never really ends at 14.00. Usually around 14.30 or 15.00 you’re really done with working. Today we were ready at 15.45. That doesn’t sound like a very long day to most people, but imagine you are cleaning rooms for 8 hours (with a half hour break) – that’s really a long time to be cleaning. And imagine you have another shift lined up at night in the bar. Yep, that’s the deal around here most of the times. But – I just keep on thinking about the money that I’m making and the traveling I can do with it.

Spiders and break-ins

As you could read in our previous personal blog about the outback, we have some special roommates in our room. Well, they’re still settled in and more seem to be coming every day. The funny thing is that neither Jeffrey or I really care. At the beginning of our stay I told Jeff we should get rid or them, but now I get into the shower and I know that there are 4 spiders hanging above the shower head, and I really couldn’t care less. Luckily we know now that they aren’t poisonous, so there is actually no reason to freak out about it.
Another thing we mentioned in our previous post was that there are a lot of break-ins at the hotel. Well, not much has changed in that area either. We recently fixed our car, because it was getting a bit sad to see our car standing in the parking lot with two flat tires and a garbage bag taped over one window. And even though we were lucky enough to be able to borrow a 4×4 wheel drive from a coworker, we kinda missed our own car. Also, we finally took our road trip to Lake Argyle, something we’ve been wanted to do for a couple of weeks already! Let’s just hope that nobody smashes our car window again. But, back to the break-ins: it just keeps on happening. Last week someone even broke into one of the hotel rooms, which for me is worse than breaking into the hotel, as it involves stealing someones personal belongings.

Give me sushi, now

When we went to Lake Argyle, we spent a day in Kununurra as well. There was this cute little place called Wild Mango Café. We first went there for a smoothie, then I got some gelato as well and eventually we had some lovely breakfast. It was delicious and I absolutely loved the place. Now I’m wondering; if this café would be located in Rotterdam – my hometown – while I was still living there, would I be as excited about it as I’m now? In Rotterdam you have plenty of fun little breakfast-, smoothies-, lunch-, dinner-, brunch-, cocktail- ANYTHING, places. But here in Halls Creek where we live, there is nothing else but the hotel where we work in. The pub of the town is actually located in the hotel. When we stay at “home” during a day off, we basically hang out where we work. So now when we’re going to Kununurra and we can have breakfast or dinner somewhere else, it’s just so special!
My dad recently e-mailed me asking if it’s possible to get pizza’s or McDonalds over here. Well, we do have pizza at our hotel, but there is no McDonalds. Back in the Netherlands I really hated the McDonalds, because there is nothing good about their food (okay, sometimes the taste is quite good). And while we were traveling around in Australia, we saw a McDonalds literally everywhere. The smallest towns we went had one. Now, in the outback, there isn’t a McDonalds. And I miss it, even if I never really liked going there. I guess it’s just the fact that I had the option to go there. Maybe the McDonalds represents civilization? What Jeffrey and I miss even more is going out to eat sushi. Yes, we would really do a lot for a portion of sushi. Luckily, a Korean chef has just started working here, and he already mentioned making sushi for us… He can’t get out of it now!

Missing the small things

But the things I miss the most are the simple things. While working here, I don’t have the “distractions” of traveling somewhere else daily. Luckily I’m not homesick in the way that I feel like going home, but I tend to daydream about my “past life” and idealize it. The things I miss are small, such as hanging on the couch with my sister, watching Friends and laughing about the jokes we’ve seen far too many times. Spending time with my little 1-year old nephew, just seeing him sleep or hearing him laugh. My father telling me stories about his adventures from his teen years that I’ve heard over a thousand times already. I never really appreciated any of it at the time, but now when I look back at it, I know that those moments are so special. The things I miss most aren’t big parties or birthdays. No, I miss just spending time together with my loved ones, the day to day things we used to do together.

We’ll see how it goes

We have our ups and downs in this little old town. We’ve met some great people, and unfortunately we’ve also seen a lot of them leaving. That’s the thing in a small town like this where most people come merely for work; it’s hard to stay for a long time. However, more great people will come, time is flying by and we know what we’re doing it for: saving up money to travel more. That’s what keeps us going. Sometimes we’re thinking about looking for another place and work somewhere else, because maybe a change of scenery would be good. But then we think; ah, it’s alright over here. We’ll just see how it goes.

We’ve recently purchased a Nikon DSL camera – yay, thank you online shopping! Check out some of the images we took with our new camera in the town we live in.

We’ll stay in the outback for a few more months, so through our blog we’ll try to keep you updated on our experiences. Also, take a look at these destinations for more unique places we’ve visited in the Outback of Australia and more!