Status: Hanging in there.
Entry: Well Overdue.
Location: Blackwater, QLD.
As a blog about 2020 could go on forever, I’ll include headings so you can skip to parts you’re interested in and photos to keep you entertained.
Work
I work as a Paramedic on a coal mine in Central Queensland. I’m in the Medical Centre for most of my day but every now and then leave for an emergency call out (mostly just vehicles with hot tyres – for which I do nothing), to run errands, or to just leave the Med Centre and not stare at the same four walls all day every day. I work a 7/7 roster: 7 day shifts in a row, then a week off, then 7 nights in a row and another week off. The 7 nights is the worst part. Once you accept the fact that you’re here for a week it’s fine. You can accept the terrible food because it’s free, you get into the swing of waking up at 0345 and getting to bed at 2000 every day because you get two weeks off per month. The nights are just so unhealthy. Your body isn’t meant to be awake at those times so your hormones are all over the place, your diet and sleeping habits are messed up, it can take 2-3 days to get back into a good rhythm on your days off and you’re just constantly tired. But everyone else on your crew is as well, and then there’s always the 2am mass hysteria that comes on for no reason to keep you entertained. If you’re unfamiliar with the 2am hysteria, it can be brought on by anything, everything is funny, you can’t stop giggling and no one will understand you other than those on night shift with you.
I mostly work with patients of low acuity injuries/health problems. Lots of aches and pains, strains and sprains. I work with physiotherapists on site, create restricted work plans so they don’t worsen their injury, and as the hospital in town only has an on-call doctor, if the Blackwater paramedics are busy, I’m 100% the most important person in a 2.5hr radius. Mind you, if my paramedic crew mate and I aren’t on site, the mine can’t operate at all, and then BMA will be short millions of dollars, so I’m totally important :) big smiley face.
The mine is different shades of brown and grey, the pits they dig are constantly changing so if we’re ever called to emergencies we have to be led in ... and out!... because we’d never find our way out again, especially in the dark. I mean every ‘road’ off the two main ones look exactly the same. If I ever get lost in a pit, driving the response vehicle on my own, I’d be lost forever, so I just want to say here and now that I love you all, listen to BTS and think of me.
There’s no phone service up here. You have to be with Telstra to get any reception at all and even then it sometimes doesn’t work. The wifi here is terrible, both at work and the camp, so if you ever message me, look, odds are I haven’t got it, or if I have then I can’t reply. I may have most of my expenses paid for by the companies for which I work but only thing I splurge on is a phone data so I can communicate with the world outside of Blackwater.
Missing Home
We’re lucky to live in an age with technology. I’m lucky to live with reception at all, up here in this hole. I say this because it means I’m truly blessed with the videos Berni sends me of her dancing, singing, swinging around her furniture to Celine Dion. Oh, I’ll save them forever.
There was a period of about 6 weeks, a few months ago now, where I was having trouble sleeping. I was fatigued and falling asleep during the day, even at work on day shift during our busiest times, but just not sleeping well at night and only getting about 4 hours if I was lucky. I think I could put it down to the stress of it and also not getting enough sleep after one swing of nights. We had tried to jam in too many activities which meant I couldn’t have a few days of sleeping and readjusting, so I was in a big sleep-debt. Berni suggested to our parents to send a gift and when I got it, I cried. It was a little pack with everything to help me sleep! A sleep tea and a nice mug, a lavender and chamomile scented room spray, hand mask and a candle. It meant the world to me getting that little gift, not for any special occasion, just because they knew I needed it.
We video chat while we have dinners, me and my famiglia. They watch me eat camp food or frozen microwave meals and I cry into said pathetic food while watching them eat homemade, healthy and tasty dishes. The reception breaks up, cuts in and out, it’s always fuzzy, lots of “What? What? Can you hear me now? Stop moving.” But it’s great and it’s like I’m back at home, yelling in person over the dinner table. They send me photos and videos of Nahla and Shadow so that I don’t miss out but it’s just not the same. You can’t explain to them why I’m not there. I think that’s been the hardest part.
Life in Central Queensland
I mean, what a chapter in my life CQ has been, such a culture shock and I’m still not used to it. Because of the COVID outbreaks in Victoria, Queensland has restricted movement from those traveling from Vic so you can get down there, but to get back up here to Blackwater you have to self-isolate in a hotel in Brisbane before you can fly up to Emerald. So essentially I can get back home, but then I’d lose about half a month’s pay for just 5 days at home. Something drastic might have to happen around Christmas, leave without pay, if I want to see my family at all this year.
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Trail in Blackwater
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There’s one café in town which knows how to make a good coffee, thank goodness. It’s a step up from Costa coffee but it’s still not Melbourne-hipster-café-coffee-served-with-a-glass-of-sparkling-water level, unfortunately. Man, I miss those. I miss acai bowls and kombucha and the variety of milks. “You ain’t gonna find macadamia milk up here” – T.Butcher, current crew mate, looking over my shoulder and wanting ghost writer credits. I can find almond milk but sometimes even that is pushing it. My friend Dee up here once asked at the local pub/café/servo (yes, it’s all three in one) if they had any vegetarian options to their lunch menu and the lady behind the counter didn’t know what ‘vegetarian’ meant. I may have exploded into a fit of laughter and tears, and left Dee to explain the word to her. Everything has meat in it. Vegans would not survive long here. We have to drive 1.5hrs one way to get to a decent Chinese restaurant. It’s in Middlemount, google it, it’s far, and there’s nothing there other than the restaurant and mining camps. I don’t like to generalise, but to give you a rough idea of what I’m living with generally speaking, the cultural diversity in CQ is different shades of white, politically, many people are rightwards leaning and they’re easy going, down to earth, extremely easy going, to the point where they’re almost comatose.
There isn’t much to Blackwater. There’s a supermarket, 3 sport fields down the back of town with one open public toilet with no paper ever so if you’re on a walk and need to poop… you’re buggered. They also have a McDonald’s… a few pubs… oh there’s a small Japanese garden at the Coal Centre! That is quite nice actually. It’s such a small town here. You can go to a party and then see everyone at Woolies the next day. Everyone knows each other's business. I was invited to lunch by a lady I’d met three times previously because she knew I was from Melbourne and away from home for so long. It was the strangest salad I’ve ever had – is it a country thing or just a her thing? It was one gherkin, blue cheese, a chicken breast, coleslaw with no mayo and beetroot…?
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Japanese Garden in Blackwater
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The only reason why I haven’t gone COMPLETELY mad, opposed to just my regular state of mildly insane, is because I’ve been trapped up here with Dee and Jas. Dee is also from Melbourne so we’re the only two up here that haven’t been back home since March. Everyone else we work with has been home a few times or their partners have relocated with them. Dee also worked in the UK as a para and we’ve discovered we have A LOT in common. Stop copying me Dee. I know it’s the ultimate form of flattery but come on. It’s been super easy living with her, we have similar ideals, know when to bug the s**t out of the other and when we need space and we just hype each other up – which is so needed this year!
Jas is from Adelaide, so has managed to escape three times now back home and, even for a few days, forget that this place exists. She’s bubbly and full of life, and her energy was such a blessing especially when this all first started, when finding ourselves up here was a kick in the teeth none of us were expecting. Not that anyone expects to be kicked in the teeth.
We’ve managed to escape Blackwater a few times and thank GOODNESS I drove my car up here in March, because the nearest town is an hour’s drive away. Keanu Reeves (my car, yes that’s his name) was brand spanking new last year and now has quite a few k’s under his belt. A few months ago, we went to Rockhampton, and spent a weekend at Great Keppel Island which was oh so needed. Sun, sea, sand, cocktails (which doesn’t start with ‘s’ but we had those as well) and I made a new friend, a cute Irish friend with an accent that had me weak at the knees. He worked on the island and yes, us three girls crashed the staff party because we’re super-duper friendly and as I hung out with my new friend, Dee tucked Jas into bed because she had more alcohol in her veins than blood. I found out the next day that Jas decided to return to said party in her pjs (ultimate party-wear, I must say) and then almost went to the bathroom on the porch.
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Great Keppel Island
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Late August we ran away to Airlie Beach for a week and it was filled with pool swimming, sun tanning, book reading, kpop singing but most importantly couch sitting and kitchen using. Since March, our weeks we spend at work we live at camp and our weeks off we pack up all our stuff and move down the road to the motor inn. We’ve had a microwave and toaster at the inn but only a kettle at camp so to say we were excited to use an oven would be an understatement. Dee and I bought sandwich presses back in April, so we’ve been managing to cook things on that as a hotplate – we’re pretty creative now. We can even cook pasta in the microwave. And in Airlie we sat down on a couch and watched a movie together, all in the same room, spaced out but together, just hanging out. I really do appreciate the small things now.
The owner of the inn at which we stay in town, Ernie, has made our stay just that bit more… entertaining. He’s sold it now, to move back to the coast to spend more time with his wife. While he was here though, he’d invite us over for dinners at least once a week which we helped cook in the big kitchen, visited us while we hung out the front of our rooms tanning and colouring and yes most of his comments were inappropriate but expected for a 73 year old man living in a small town, and honestly we needed a laugh.
Once a week, us three girls would have a night of drinking and pizza, and one weekend we’d arranged to go for a trip the following day to Carnarvon Gorge. Don’t go hiking hungover, just don’t. Heed my warning. If you’re over 30 like I am, you’d know that it takes days to recover from hangovers now and we just don’t bounce back like we did when we were 20. So, I was already in a state. To say we weren’t prepared would be an understatement. We forgot to bring food, but luckily, I’d managed to grab two bananas, a pear and a random Up-&-Go from my cupboard before we left. We had one bottle of water each. Nothing more. And to even get to the start of this walk we had to drive 3hrs into the middle of nowhere - the landscape looked like a Salvador Dali painting. The trail was 10km into the gorge, and it had a whole heap of minor trails running of it which we couldn’t do in one day – we’ll have to go back. It was pretty, it really was, and once the accommodation in the park opens up it would be a lovely place to stay amongst the trees and quiet and you could head out early and refreshed and return at your leisure. It was pretty funny. We didn’t even take a photo of the map; we didn’t know the layout of the trail, but we knew that it was roughly 10km one way. I think it took us 3hrs to get halfway and the sun was starting to set, which freaked us out just a tad because we didn’t have torches and oh, I forgot to mention the steppingstones. You’re basically crossing the river 18 times, hopping onto steppingstones and a lot weren’t stable. I didn’t start off very happy about it but the more we hopped and the smaller the stones became and the darker it got, the more confident we were and by the end we were almost running across them. At the end there are caves, where you can see Aboriginal rock stencil art and the gorge itself with lovely cool, blue water. On the drive there we had to fight some wild cows that threatened to dent Keanu and on the way back, yell at a mutated rabbit-dingo to get off the road because Keanu didn’t need to be smothered in blood.
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Carnarvon Gorge
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Another attraction around these parts of the state include fossicking for sapphires just outside of Emerald, in a town called Sapphire. Genius. We’ve done this twice now and it’s actually a relaxing, peaceful pass time. You park up and pay for a bucket which holds a few litres of rocks and dirt, you pour just a handful or two into a sieve and shake shake shake. Then after you look for any shiny sapphires you go wet it and then shake it some more. You then carefully tip it upside down onto the tables out there and spend 10 minutes rifling through the stones for something that looks pretty. Then wipe the dirt into the wheelbarrow and go get some more. I think we managed to spend about 4 hours there each time we’ve been, and we’ve found quite a few gems!
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Gems
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I haven’t had too many experiences as yet as I’ve just downloaded a dating app but one of the girls’ has been on it for a few months now and it’s an experience. City girls looking for love or whatever in rural towns. The men are just as diverse as the mining landscape, in that there is no diversity. Most of their photos are of themselves holding a fish and their profiles state they enjoy going ‘pigging’.
Topless Bettys
Earlier this year I dreamt that Betty White came to a garden party I had hosted in my extensive backyard (clearly a dream because I’m currently living at an inn and a camp). She wanted to change her top halfway through the night, so she took off her cardigan and was wearing an opaque crochet bottle green top which you could see through to her *gasp* bra! And I said Betty! (yes, we were on a first name basis, she was at my garden party after all), I said Betty, are you coming back to the party? – because damn, the girl can rock whatever outfit she likes. The next day at work I told my colleagues and one said “You dreamt of Betty White topless? It sounds like a cocktail – a Topless Betty”. Dee, Jas and I then set out to thinking about what a Topless Betty should taste like. If Betty White were to be a drink, would she be sweet, sour, bitter, what kind of alcohol would she be? And we settled on the most magical drink we’ve ever had. We’ve seen a few that are similar when we’ve been out and about this year, but none compare. You’ve seen it here first and I’m trademarking it.
White rum, crushed ice, lychee juice, creaming soda and two lychees through a toothpick to sit on top to act as boobs. It’s pink and light and is a little cheeky, and you love them so much that you drink too many and end up in quite a state.
My ‘Complete and Utter Devastation’ Over Not Being Able to See Alex This Year.
The title of this part speaks for itself. I was in a state. I cried every night for a few days, and yeah even at work. It’s been over two years now since we’ve seen each other, and it’s been shite. December last year I bought my flights to the States, on sale, super excited. I had it all planned out; I’d be there for three weeks and we’d cram in as much fun as possible. We had this whole trip planned. We would drive on Route 66, go hiking in Yosemite and Saguaro National parks, see Monument Valley, camp at the Grand Canyon for her birthday, and see the Colorado River. I would’ve finally met her mum and stepdad and seen her mum’s friends again who I met on the Camino. Ah Mary, I still plan on coming one day, don’t worry, I’ll get that hug. And then Covid hit and I had to cancel my trip. The only time this year I cried that much was this week when I watched the show It’s Ok to Not Be Ok which had me bawling in every episode – great show by the way.
Alex and I chat pretty much every single day. Do you have someone in your life who is genuinely interested in the mundane, day to day, boring, stressful, weird things that happen to you? Like how many times you bought that particular tub of ice cream in a fortnight, or having to park around the corner from your place because council workers were hacking your footpath to bits (that’s pavement, to you folk in the States), or waking up to the sound of power tools on your days off, of even just telling the other person when it’s raining and it sounds nice. That’s us. Don’t cry, Alex, I swear. I’m not there to hug you better so just, shush! And now you’re laughing, good. Well look, when I eventually make it over there our reunion will be EPIC! And who knows, maybe it’ll be in yet another foreign country for the both of us, another overseas adventure, getting lost, eating too much, patting stray cats at midnight.
To keep connected while she drove across country to visit her grandma I made her a playlist of everything I would have played if I were there on holiday (except Taylor Swift because I know she doesn't like her), I called the playlist Covid Can Suck It and it's the most eclectic mix of music. Another thing to keep us going through this tough time is that we started our own book club, which brings me to…
Alex and Patrice’s Book Club of S**t We Should Have Read by Now
There are books throughout our lives that we hear about or are recommended to us that we have every intention of reading… until we don’t. For one reason or another we just either don’t get around to it, think it’ll be too hard or too long, too boring or complex or just don’t make the effort to sit down and read. And then there’s the problem with book clubs. In order to be in a book club, you need to participate in the club part, otherwise you’re just reading a book on your own. And then you wouldn’t need to join a club. It holds you accountable, keeps you on track, brings to together with others of differing opinions and helps you open your mind to different views.
And all that nice stuff. But we didn’t want to be judged for firstly not having read these books, but also, we didn’t want to talk to people we didn’t know or listen to people forcing their opinions on us that we frankly completely oppose. Neither of us are particularly brash when it comes to opinions and we’re pretty mature about it if we do think differently. Plus, when it comes to the big topics in life we’re pretty much always on the same page. So, it was just us two sitting down thinking about which books we’ve never read that we should have by this point in our lives. We always wanted to be ‘those people’ that had read The Bell Jar. It’s like ‘those people’ who go to France and come back and wear berets, keep Euro in their wallets and pronounce it ‘Fronce’. So, we read The Bell Jar and you know what? It’s incredible. We laughed out loud and cried and it ended so abruptly and opens your mind to mental health and how society plays such a huge part. Highly recommend it. Our meetings are Whatsapp video calls around 9am Aussie time and 4pm Arizona time, always with wine and/or coffee, and they last at least an hour every single time! I was so surprised when we started this because I didn’t think I’d have that much to say about books, but I do, we do, we just talk about everything and it’s so nice (so nice).
For those of you playing along at home, here is our 2020 list of books.
April – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
May – The Color Purple by Alice Walker
June – To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
July – Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
August – To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
September – Siddhartha by Hermen Hesse
October – The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
November – Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
December – Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
We’re loving this book club. It’s brought us together even more. We love listening to the other’s thoughts and struggles with it or how we flew through the pages with ease. We were so excited to keep going after this year that a few weeks ago we sat down and came up with our list of books for 2021! This time we had more of a plan. We wanted to have a healthy variety of authors. Women, persons of colour, authors from all over the world. I’ve read our May book and Alex has read our Feb book, neither of us remember them well so we’re excited to read them again. And yes, ending the year with some creepy sci-fi. Happy Christmas, everyone. Here is our list for 2021.
January – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
February – Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
March – House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
April – Beloved by Toni Morrison
May – The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
June – Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
July – Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
August – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery AND Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
September – Ulysses by James Joyce
October – The Harp in the South by Ruth Park
November – Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
December – The Chrysalides by John Wyndham
My love for BTS and KDramas
I used to listen to kpop in high school, not religiously, but Saturday/Sunday mornings just tuning into ABC or Channel 10 or whatever it was on for an hour or so with Berni. BigBang was pretty popular at the time (G Dragon! Am I right!!!), but then after year 12 I just stopped, never really giving it much thought again until the start of this year. If 2020 has given me anything, it’s BTS. I heard a few of their songs in 2016 but I guess it just wasn’t the time for me to ‘find’ them.
Once Parasite won best film at the Oscars, I watched it at the cinemas (laughed so hard, edge of my seat thrilling, loved it) and I wanted to know what else the actors had starred in. From there I started watching these drama shows on Netflix, all in Korean, and ok, new obsession. And you know how I am with obsessions; I just completely immerse myself in whatever I like for a period of time and don’t think or breathe anything else. These KDramas, as they’re more commonly known as, can range in genre from romcom to thriller, action, drama, everything. They are mostly one season long, with commonly 16 episodes lasting 60-70 minutes each, which means everything is wrapped up in 16 episodes, there’s no waiting 18 months for a new season to find out what happened at the end of the cliff hanger. It’s done, then you move on to the next show. Yes, the romcoms can be seen by us in our Western society to be a little cheesy and over the top dramatic but that’s just their style. Once you embrace them, you learn to love them. The overly long pauses, staring into each other’s eyes, the ‘umbrella scene’ where the female lead is stuck in the rain and the male lead comes along to rescue her with an umbrella – it’s in at least 3 of the shows I’ve seen this year. The wrist-grab – someone will walk away after a dramatic chat and the other will grab their wrist, in a passionate way, to pull them back to express some emotion or other.
I think that because of the tough year, whenever I feel lost or out of control, I can tune into one of these dramas and lose myself in its world. I’m sure we all have escapes that help us cope and for me this is one of them. How important for us all to have something that is just for us, that we can immerse ourselves into that brings us joy. I luckily get to share them with my friend Tina who gives great recommendations, cries as much and laughs as much as I do, and eats as much ramen as I do because these shows are just constantly showing their characters eating!!! They either eat noodles, or bbq meat, rice soup, oh and Korean fried chicken, in nearly every episode. I think my weight gain this year is because of these dramas – spending all this time inside on my bed binge watching shows and eating all the food they eat. Tina, when I can get back to Melbourne we’re having a marathon of Goblin, let’s do it. Tina and I message each other before, during and after some cliff hanger episodes because we watch the same shows and essentially had a running commentary going all the way through The King: Eternal Monarch. Yes I will have to thank you Tina for encouraging this love of mine, ours, it’s blossomed into something beautiful and taken on a life of its own. And she sent me a kdrama care package!! Out of nowhere, it was so unexpected and 100% loved. I was actually shaking and jumping up and down when I received it. There were snacks and face masks and ramen and a card that said she wouldn’t judge me if I ate all the snacks watching just one episode of our show – which I tried so hard to space out, I think the snacks lasted 3 episodes.
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Kdrama Care Package
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Alex asked me this year on March 4th if I liked BTS, as I’d been watching a few dramas by this point. I said I haven’t heard too much of their work. I was coming off a week of night shifts and it was midnight when she asked me. 5 hours later I was still awake watching BTS music videos on YouTube and Googling everything about the Korean boy band. Now, I, well I won’t tell you how in love with them I am, but I will say that they’re my favourite group ever and the lyrics to their latest album have helped me get through this rollercoaster of a year. Their song ON which was nominated for and won 3 awards at this year’s VMAs for best kpop, best pop video and best choreography, has some of these lyrics:
Bring it, bring the pain
Rain be pourin'
Sky keep fallin'
Everyday bring it, bring the pain
It'll become my blood and flesh
Bring the pain
No fear, now that I know the way
Breathe on the small things
My air and my light in the dark
The power of the things that make me, "me"
Even if I fall, I come right up, scream
That's how we've always been
Even if my knees drop to the ground
As long as they don't get buried
It won't matter
Win no matter what
Whatever you say, whatever they say
I don't give a uhh!
I mean, yeah, bring it on. Whatever else this year is going to throw at me, keep it coming, I’m always going to be my own worst enemy so I can handle 2020, no problem.
This album Map of the Soul was written with Carl Jung’s theory of map of the soul as a guide; his archetypes/personality themes Shadow, Persona and Ego are all titles of tracks in this album. The Persona archetype relates to the social masks we wear as facades around different people and situations that either hide who we are inside or help us as armour to get through tough times. Our Ego is our conscious self, our thoughts and emotions we are aware of and our Shadow is our unconscious mind, our fears, animal instincts, creative and destructive energies and is why we are the way we are. I’ve never studied psychology but after listening to this album I’ve delved into my own archetypes, creating mind maps and trying to look into myself a bit more. It has definitely helped form a stronger sense of self and has contributed a great deal to my strong mental health this year. They’re not just a kpop boy band, they’re taking over the world because of who they are as people, their love for their fans, and they help you to love yourself before you can love anyone else.
That’s all for now, dear readers. Thank you for your patience in between posts and I promise the next won’t be too far away.
