Homeschooling for idiots...

Eldest son has been worrying me of late. His teacher has been on and off sick practically all year, necessitating his class being shared around the rest of the school - sometimes for days on end. Add in the fact that he changed schools in April, and it's fair to say he hasn't exactly thrived academically this year.

This is a worry.

The idea of homeschooling had come up already this year, when - in his budget - State Premier Colin Barnett decided to charge those on a 457 visa (us) a $4,000 school fee from 2015 (read my take on it here), which would mean I'd have no choice but to home-school all of them (living nightmare). So, by way of preparation for such an eventuality, and to see if it might benefit the eldest boy, I decided to attempt a two day trial with him.

“Oh please no,” groaned DH,“next you’ll be breastfeeding him and knitting him cardigans out of hemp!”

This, I felt was a little unfair; it’s true that until that moment I had considered home-schoolers to be poncho-wearing hippies who ate their own placentas, but faced with concern for my son’s education, I was having to reassess this judgement.

Anyway, what is hemp?

The first morning of the experiment dawned brightly, and I leaped from my bed full of enthusiasm for my new role. I suspected I might turn out to be a pretty amazing teacher, a sort of cross between Robin Williams in ‘Dead Poets Society’ and Michelle Pfieffer in ‘Dangerous Minds’. 

In no time at all I’d have my son reciting Latin phrases and scribbling algorithms on the white board in empty college classrooms at night, after he'd finished cleaning them, (or was that Good Will Hunting?). I was about to create a boy genius! And the fact that I don't know any Latin or what an algorithm actually is did not diminish my enthusiasm one jot!

I hadn't actually organised a lesson plan, or studied his curriculum, instead I figured I'd just teach him things as they occurred to me - you know, let him learn organically - after all, how hard could it be? Besides, I have an impressive collection of books - ancient Greek drama, sociology, Shakespeare, the entire collection of Jodie Picoult novels - there was bound to be something educational in there.

Turning to the bookcase I scanned the shelves; my eye fell on Trinny and Susannah's 'What you wear can change your life' - a book containing what I consider to be vital information for life, and I mean vital; until I had learned that narrow A-line skirts are the only style I should consider, I had actually gone around in skirts cut on the bias *shudder* the memory still haunts me.

Moving along the bookcase, I spotted ex-Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell's autobiography 'My Story', which although an inspirational and ultimately uplifting tale, was unlikely to launch my son onto a path of academic excellence. Pity, a bloody good read.

In fairness this should be on the national curriculum..

Surely there was something worthy of study among all these books? My eye fell on a grammar book - excellent, grammar is a vital component of a comprehensive education, and the fact that I am a qualified teacher of English to speakers of a second language (TESOL) must mean that I know this stuff inside out - right? (This line of thinking of course completely ignored the fact that my entire career as teacher of speakers of a second language entailed making animal-themed masks with my students, or teaching them the song 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' - but that was a minor detail.)

I may need this...

Opening up at a section on restrictive clauses, I quickly read through to the bottom of the page understanding nothing. I tried again, still nothing. Do people actually know this stuff? Surely nobody needs to know this stuff? I returned the book to the shelf, telling myself I can always hire a tutor for the stuff I don't know.

I found a book about Vikings and Celts - aha, perfect! - and got him to read aloud for several minutes. (Actually it was quite interesting; did you know that the Vikings originated from Germany? No, me neither.) After that we drew some Viking ships for several minutes before running out of Viking-themed things to do.

Time for a geography lesson, I decided, pulling out an atlas. I like atlases, I find it endlessly fascinating that imagined borders not only result in differing customs, costumes, cultures and languages, but often physical differences too. Opening to a map of Europe, I prepared to quiz my son on some capital cities:

"Capital of Denmark?" I asked him, eyeing the map for the answer.

"Err...Germany?" he replied.

"Capital of Scotland?"

"Um, Wales?"

It was worse than I thought, the child knows nothing! I instructed him to study the map while I made some coffee and gathered my thoughts. 

Refreshed, I tried again:

“Capital of Denmark?”

"Um, Germany?" he countered.

Closing the atlas I decided to move onto life-skills. If he was to be a useful member of society he needed to be able to cook. Plus a future partner would thank me for creating a well-rounded, modern and thoughtful individual. We were going to make some bread!

Forty minutes later, our loaf emerged from the oven, rock-hard and inedible (I guess yeast was vital after all), and I was beginning to have doubts about the entire experiment.

I phoned DH, "This is hard! We're not really making any progress at all! And besides," I added, hushing my voice, "I really don't think he's trying at all!"

Hanging up, I thought I'd try once more. "Shall we try some Japanese Haiku poetry? That just might be your thing!" I trilled brightly.

“Mum, can I go back to school tomorrow?” my son asked suddenly, eyes pleading with me, and I'll be honest, I was a bit relieved, this teaching lark is harder than it looks. Defeated I agreed – our experiment was at an end, only several hours after starting.

I had failed.

My son may have learned nothing, but I certainly had: teachers do an amazing job, it takes real vocation, skill, planning and most of all, patience to teach a child, and is not something just anyone can do – not even placenta-eating hippies. And any parent who successfully manages this at home, well, I take my proverbial hat off to you!

Of course, come 2015 I may find that I have to home-school - perish the thought - and if so a mere browse of my bookshelf simply won't suffice, more's the pity. For now I’m going to leave the teaching to the teachers and confine my involvement in my children’s education to the safe territories of shape-appropriate clothing advice, and animal-themed mask-making...

Dull days in the outback and fraudulent messages from down under....

Look, I'm not saying I'm not happy to be up here in the outback, thousands of kilometres from civilisation; light-years away from bookshops, cafes, swanky bars, cinemas and the beach - and did I mention bookshops?

No, I'm not saying that at all.

However, I will admit that the first line in her memoir 'Diplomatic Baggage', by journalist and diplomat's wife, Brigid Keenan, does strike a proverbial chord with me when she writes:

"Oh God, I don't know if I can bear it. This is my first morning in Kazakhstan and it is only 11 o'clock and I have already run out of things to do and I have another four years to go (that means one thousand four hundred and sixty days) until this posting comes to an end. How on earth am I going to get through it?"

Hilarious read...

A certain truth rings loudly from this paragraph for me. Yes it is a privilege to live somewhere as extraordinary as the Pilbara - how many people can claim that? But I sometimes wonder if my awe of this existence, and thrill at the uncommonness of it, rather overshadows the actual experience itself. I suspect my sole satisfaction in living here is more to do with the the fact that I can amaze people with this information at a dinner party in the distant future. A bit like the Japanese tourist whose holiday high-point is showing people the photographs afterwards.

We've been here six months now, and now that things have finally settled down, I'm finding there's not a whole lot to do.

Of course there are the basics: there's a library, post office, newsagents, chemist, supermarket, off-licence and breathtakingly over-priced milk bar, but these things can only entertain one for so long before a yearning for the house of horrors that was Midland Gate Shopping Centre kicks in.

Yes there is a vibrant community up here and people really have to make an effort if they are to survive. Unfortunately I've little interest in being sociable unless there is wine involved, so this aspect isn't quite working for me.

View from our house...

                                                                     

And so now my days consist largely of watching CNN on the laptop (no TV channels yet) or listening to the Bush Telegraph on the radio, while fending off a lingering feeling of guilt about the still packed bags which sit accusingly in the bedroom (with all the moving we've done over the past couple of years, unpacking everything feels a little pointless).

DH did gently suggest the other day that I might think about sorting out the laundry room, which currently resembles a church jumble sale. Stung I told him I was very, VERY busy raising HIS five children, to which he replied - not unreasonably - that "Anyone who can have a bath in the middle of the day is not that busy."

I honestly could not argue this point.

Of course things do happen here occasionally; we recently had the Caravan and 4x4 Car Show Extravaganza, the title of which rather over-sold the event I felt. But there was at least a free bouncy castle which went down a treat with the children, and I even bought a can of diet coke from a stall...

But more exciting was the annual Red Dirt Rocks Ball, to which myself and DH looked forward enormously despite slight misgivings about whether 'ball' might be the correct term, particularly when the flyer mentioned that men weren't expected to wear a tie.

We debated hotly over whether my floor-length silk gown was rather OTT for the event: DH felt it was, I felt it wasn't (knowing secretly that it was too tight so the point was moot). In the end I decided on a cheap knee-length party dress from Norma Jane. It would, I felt, do just fine.

It didn't - I was decidedly under-dressed. I had underestimated the women-folk of Paraburdoo and Tom Price, who had pulled out all the glamour stops for this event. It was a little like Miss World in there (without the swimsuit section) and the women were almost exclusively in floor-length gowns adorned with diamontes, rhinestones, tulle, and in one case a full floor-length tutu! With matching hair! She looked like Glinda of Oz. I felt shabby by comparison.

The town hall had been dramatically transformed (again, I had expected little more than a few flaccid metallic balloons and some streamers) with glowing furniture, draping white fabric and glitter. If you squinted it almost felt like we were in a nightclub, and for one night I suppose we were. The whole evening was great fun, it's just a pity it only comes once a year.

Mutant Messages from a New Age Fraud

Anyway, as part of my efforts to 'make the most of it' up here in the bush, I've been trying to read as many bush/outback-based books as possible.

My first attempt was 'The girl in the steel-capped boots' which I devoted three and a half minutes to before discarding (although interestingly DH read the whole thing - he said it was because it was about life as a FIFO worker, but I reckon the romantic story-line had him captivated).

My next attempt was 'Mutant Messages from Down Under', by Marlo Morgan, which proved to be far more interesting.

The premise is a 50-year-old American health worker travels to Australia for work, and is contacted by an Aboriginal tribe named 'The Real People' who claim to carry the last remaining essence of humanity, uncorrupted by civilisation. They invite her to what she thinks is some sort of award ceremony to thank her for her work with young disaffected Aborigines. She is driven several hours into the desert and effectively kidnapped and taken on a four month walkabout, where she learns their spiritual secrets, masters their culture, learns about desert-living and eventually discovers that she's been chosen to bring their message to the world.

I was captivated! This book is the most widely read book about Australian Aborigines in the world and has been translated into more than 20 languages. I briefly wondered if I could track down this tribe and get them to tell me their secrets to share with the world - I would lose so much weight with all that walking around, while getting a lucrative book deal afterwards! I considered getting in touch with her for their contact details.

Whenever I particularly love or hate a book, I tend to search out reviews to see if others agree. It was then that I discovered that this book had been exposed as a fraud over and over again.

Of course the signs where there - it had occurred to me that if a group of non-English-speaking Aborigines threw all my belongings onto a fire and then insisted I follow them on a four month walkabout, I might actually resist a little - a lot in fact (assuming I hadn't considered the potential weight-loss and lucrative book deal which might ensue).

A more authentic account

Also, the author is obliged to sleep on the ground in the bush, with nothing but a small dingo fur to keep warm. I thought about this for a minute - I mean, who in their right mind would do this on the very first night, having been essentially kidnapped, without making a fuss? (See the photo above for a shot of typical bushland - the potential for snakes, spiders, dingos and all sorts of other nasties is endless.)

Also, why would a group of Aborigines choose an American woman they don't know to pass on their secrets to the world? Many critics have pointed to the fact that much of the so-called 'Real People's' culture and secrets have nothing to do with real Aboriginal culture, and are more like the practices of north American Indians, something Ms Morgan might be more familiar with. And in fact when Hollywood were on the verge of taking up the story, a group of Aborigines travelled to America to confront the author about her lies. She tearfully confessed apparently, before continuing to peddle her tale once they'd left.

Would I recommend it? Well if you get it for free why not? There's always something to be learned from a book. However, as a piece of literature it's pretty poor, and there are better books on the outback out there. I'm currently reading Bruce Chatwin's Songlines, which promises a much more authentic story about outback Australia.

More on the book hoax http://marlomorgan.wordpress.com/

From wanderluster to exile to expat - five years away and we're still standing (sort of)...

Last month marked the fifth anniversary of this family leaving Ireland. Five years - it sounds at once such a short period of time - a snippet, an ad break! - and yet the world we left behind us in Ireland seems like a murky dream, something from another lifetime.

These past five years have been eventful - life changing even. When we left Galway for Abu Dhabi back in 2008 it was with the idea that we might stay away for a year, maybe two at the most - you know, have an experience, open our minds, and all that jazz, before returning to the comfort of our lives.

However, the collapse of Lehman brothers shortly after we left - and the gory aftermath of that - combined with the realisation that this world was far bigger than our tiny part of south county Galway - meant that pretty quickly we knew we wouldn't be returning to Ireland any time soon. If ever.

In the UAE I never really thought of myself as an expat, never sought out Irish people in particular, didn't give any of it much thought to be honest. Apart from the 15% of the population who are indigenous, everyone else is from somewhere else, and nobody intends (or indeed is permitted) to stay long term. This is understood and so the only question is 'how long will you stay?' Most of the friends we made had lived in at least one other country, moving on when new and better opportunities arose. It was a way of life and we wanted in.

However, the nine months spent in Ireland after we were forced to leave the UAE (a long story) and before we left for Australia changed all that. I suddenly wanted to stay just where I was. Safe, understood, familiar; I could nail pictures to the walls of my house, order a black coffee without twenty questions, say things like 'I don't believe in God' without fear of nut-jobs reporting me to the authorities. Exotic was over-rated I had decided.

Coming to Australia wasn't thrilling.  But like the many thousands who leave Ireland every day, Australia wasn't a choice, it was a lifeline. Suddenly I was part of a group, exiled from our home country by countless feckless governments and our own fecklessness too if I'm honest. The massive mortgage we'd happily taken on six years earlier now effectively excluded us from a life in Ireland, since it could only be serviced  from the other side of the planet.

And in contrast to my light, excitable steps through the departures gate on the way to the UAE, this time I felt herded on to the plane, shambling along with all the other poor sods no longer needed in Ireland.

I sought out other Irish people, wrote articles about the experience of being part of this diaspora, read the Irish Time's Generation Emigration, and felt angry and frightened that I might never live in my own home again. How things had changed!

But as time went on I grew tired of this victim-hood, and found myself reinventing myself, I became an 'Expat', a 'Trailing Spouse', because these names suggested I'd chosen this life, that I had control over it - 'Look at me, we're off on our travels again! So very bohemian, such gypsies!' 

'How exciting, and daring!' people would say to me. 'Yes yes, it is,' I would reply vaguely, fingers crossed behind my back.

Of course I was deluding myself - I still am! But having to live in another country because your own country can't offer you anything can be a humbling experience - shaming almost - and leaves you feeling powerless, like a plastic bag being tossed around on the breeze. And the question of 'how long do I have to stay here?' loses its urgency as time passes in favour of 'How long will I get away with being here?'

Does it lessen the experience of living abroad I wonder, this lack of choice? Are my children learning any less about the world because we didn't really want to come here? Probably not, although it is up to us to view this as an opportunity not a punishment. Sometimes it feels like neither, sometimes it feels like both.

Being on a 457 (temporary) visa makes this even worse, because should you lose your job, you have just 90 days before you are obliged to leave the country at your ex-employer's expense (that's if you even have savings to sustain you during this time). We've experienced the curse of redundancy twice in the past year. Twice we've sat, shell-shocked, frightened, trying not to contemplate the worst case scenario of our situation, because it's literally unthinkable. Return home to what? you'll say to those well-meaning people who tell you you're better off at home.

When DH's employer brought us up to the Pilbara, we were overjoyed to have beaten the loneliness of FIFO and delighted at our good fortune in finding another, better job than before! When two months later - a week after they agreed to sponsor us for a permanent resident visa - DH's employer told him 'sorry, no more work', we felt as if we'd cashed in all our chips. Our luck was officially up. Is it us? we wondered. Is it we just continuously make the wrong choices? Was the well-paid FIFO job which had been turned down in favour of the Pilbara job the safer choice? How can you tell what's best for your family when you're in a foreign land?

I wanted to get out. I wanted to leave Australia and once more seize the reigns of my destiny. Australia represented the lack of choices in my life and I wanted to just leave it behind.

We looked at Canada (very stable, liberal, boring?). We looked at Norway (excellent education, years of work ahead, funny language?), then we looked down the road - because like it or not, it was the easier option in the short term. Luckily 'down the road' offered a job. Perhaps a stable one, perhaps not, I don't know, I've given up looking at it that way now.

I suppose the point of this post is that in these times, in this economic climate, we can't second guess any more. We can't plan too far ahead. There's no such thing as forever. All we can do it keep going, try to make the right decisions. Take each week at a time and hope things get better. And today they are better.

What will the next five years hold I wonder? Will I still be here, plucking stray spiders from the walls without fear, the way my children do? Will I be cutting every word in half, sticking an 'ee' on the end of it without a thought? Will I be packing my eldest off to university in Perth? Only time, as they say, will tell...

Time on my hands, feral children, and the Warlu Way...

I found myself uttering a sentence yesterday which caused me stop in my tracks, and dwell on what I had just said.

Sitting on the grass, watching the children's Twilight Faction Sports Carnival, I complained to a friend that life in Paraburdoo had "too many hours in the day".

Imagine saying that? But so many of the time consuming aspects of life - such as a school commute, work commute, two-hour round-trips to the supermarket - are non-existent here. It takes five minutes to walk to the local shop (I never drive), the kids skip off to school in the mornings three minutes before the bell, and DH's job is a five minute drive away.

The hustle and bustle of life has fled, leaving behind a simple, uncluttered existence of chores, family, and internet shopping. Lots of internet shopping.

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the mindless shop-wandering I used to spend so much time doing, because I do - emphatically. I miss going into a newly discovered cafe and perusing a menu I've never seen before. I miss piling everyone into the car on a Sunday and saying, 'right, where shall we go today?' Oh and I miss bookshops with all my heart and although Amazon is generally better value, it's not the same as flicking through a book, feeling its weight in your hands, smelling the pages before you commit to buying it.

Of course you can pile into the car and head off on a Sunday, but unless you're a big nature freak, and are happy to spend hours just looking at rocks and grass and stuff, there's nowhere to actually go. You can literally drive for hours in any direction without even passing another car on the road.

We've taken the five hour trip to Karratha - our nearest 'shopping town' - a couple of times, just for a change of scenery. Although when DH announced, following a couple of circuits around the ugly, industrial, broken-pavemented eyesore, that it was a 'lovely little town,' it struck me that we'd been away from civilisation for too long.

But I'm not complaing. The children have quickly become feral, and play out until twilight, often requiring a search and rescue team to recover them when it gets too dark. As soon as they finish their school day, they joyfully kick off their shoes and run barefoot to the playground or skate park.

And we have a constant stream of children running through the house, all equally barefoot and feral.

I can honestly say I've learned more about Australia since I got here than I did during the year I spent in Perth. Being in a small community can force you to get up close and personal with your surroundings, engaging you in a way that would be impossible in an anonymous city.

The Pilbara

Learning stuff I didn't know...

I've been lucky enough to find a small amount of paid work from the local magazine, which has meant having to learn pretty quickly about all sorts of odd things. For example, when my editor emailed me some notes and asked me to write up a short piece about the NAIDOC celebrations, my first question was, 'what on earth is NAIDOC?'

Having read her notes, this question was quickly followed by, 'and what is a damper-making competition?'

'What is a Welcome to Country ceremony?'

'What is pindan dirt?' 

'What is spinifex?' 

'Can you use the word Aboriginal, or is it more PC to say Indigenous?'

(OK I didn't ask her all those questions, I looked them up on Wikipedia, I didn't want to talk myself out of a job.)

Anyway, in case you're wondering, NAIDOC is the National Aboriginies and Islanders Day Observance Committee, and is celebrated for a week every July. It acknowledges the contribution made by the Indigenous people and celebrates their culture. It's a big thing up here in the Pilbara, and every town has some sort of event to celebrate it. Perhaps they did something down in Perth, but I simply don't remember...

Damper being made...

Damper is a traditional bread made out in the bush, by swagmen, drovers, stockmen and other travellers, and is baked over the coals of a campfire.

The Welcome to Country is a ceremony used at the start of official meetings, launches or other occasions, and involves acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land. An Indigenous person performs the protocol, by either song, dance, speech or ceremony.

Pindan dirt is the blood red dirt you see up here in the Pilbara. It gets everywhere! Our silver grey rug which I lovingly bought in Abu Dhabi is now beige.

Spinifex is the spiky pale grass you see everywhere around here. It's almost silver in a particular light.

As for what to call the first settlers in Australia, well the jury is out it seems and depends not just on who you talk to, but where  you are in the country. Some consider 'Aboriginal' insulting, choosing instead 'Indigenous' or even 'Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders', or in some cases, the politically incorrect 'blackfellas', but it seems that the people themselves are quite happy with 'Aborigine'.

The Warlu Way

All around this part of the world, there are signs for the Warlu Way. I was curious about this - what did it mean, since some of the signs simply point into the bush? I did a little digging and managed to write a short piece about it for the magazine, but they didn't use it in the end, so rather than let it go to waste, thought I'd share it here.

The Warlu Way weaves its mystical pathway across 2,500 km of remote and rugged landscapes through the Gascoye, Pilbara and Kimberly regions.

The Warlu (pronounced Wah-loo) comes from the Aboriginal dreaming of a giant sea serpent – or Warlu – named Barrimirndi, who emerged from the sea at Coral Bay and meandered his way across the land, forming waterways as he went.

According to the legend, Barrimirndi had become angry with two boys who had cooked and eaten a Gurdarnkurdarn (Mulga parrot), and, following the smell of the singed feathers, he went in search of the boys. Travelling underground, the creature wove his way up the route of the Fortescue River, cutting gorges and rivers into the landscape.

Every now and then, Barrimirndi would break through the earth to the surface to check the scent of the trail, creating a waterhole, before disappearing back down below to continue his subterranean journey.

He reached his destination at Jirndawurrunha (Millstream), and coming up at Nhanggangunha (Deep Reach Pool), he discovered the boys.

Barrimirndi raised the boys up into a wananggaa (willy willy) where they were hit with flying sticks which broke their arms, leaving them useless. When they fell to the ground he swallowed them whole.

The local people wept and tried to pull the boys from the stomach of the serpent with sticks, but to no avail. Returning to their camp by the river bed, they wept some more. Angered by this, Barrimirndi rose and drowned them in a flood of water.

The legend goes that the spirit serpent still lurks in that same rock pool he created at Nhanggangunha, and the Yinjibarndi people believe you must approach it in the correct way or you will be harmed. Firstly, when entering the pool you must take a handful of water to your mouth, then spit it out and call out ‘nguru’ to let the serpent know of your presence and that you respect the land.

Traditional Yinjibarndi elders must do this first, to explain to the spirit who the strangers with them are, asking that they too are protected. The Yinjibarndi people also warn visitors not to stand so close that their shadow crosses the hole created by Barrimirndi - when he broke through the earth – for fear he might be disturbed and take them.

The Warlu Way is now an inspiring drive which takes you from Ningaloo’s most southern tip, through breathtaking Karijini National Park, with its stunning gorges and rock pools, and onto the equally stunning Millstream-Chichester National Park.

The trail continues on to the Dampier Archipelago, and up to the Burrup Peninsular, where the world’s oldest and largest concentration of petro glyphs (ancient rock art) is to be found. It finishes its journey on the white sands of Broome – the gateway to the Kimberley.

Boot camp for financial fuck-wits, and why I need to learn to drive a dump-truck...

One thing I've noticed about Paraburdoo is that it is very much a town on the make. Everyone here is working towards the day they leave, and making money is the name of the game. This sense of shared purpose is almost palpable here, there is no time for frills or fripperies, you get in, make your money, and get out.

This ethos is so at odds with the way DH and I have operated up til now -- money is made and wasted; if it comes in nice packaging I will most certainly buy it -- that in many ways this is the best place we could have come to; a financial boot camp if you will.

Chatting to just about anyone you meet goes something like this:

Me: 'So, how long do you intend to stay here?'

Person I've just met: (screws up face to mentally figure out how many years left on mortgage) 'Umm...I think about another two years at least.'

Nobody I've met intends to stay long term, but they won't leave until it's paid dividends.

This also means that many people I've met are working two jobs. What else is there to do? They will insist.

Haven't they heard of Facebook?

And no job is too menial or demeaning. The other day I casually mentioned to a new acquaintance that I was considering looking for a job:

New acquaintance: 'They're looking for people to wash cars out at the airport!'

Me: *unblinking stare* 

NA: 'It's good money!'

Me: 'Oh (you are actually serious?) I wasn't thinking anything too physical, you know...'

It has occurred to me that back in the low-fat-soy-latte-drinking-middle-class-real-world, we're very much obsessed not so much with what we earn, but how we earn it, or at least how we describe it. Nobody is just a Painter and Decorator anymore, they are a 'Colour distribution technologist'. And no self-respecting shop assistant would settle for anything less than a 'Customer experience enhancement consultant'. And in the chattering classes, nobody is ever unemployed, they are in the middle of a 'project', 'taking some personal time' or embarking on their own business start-up venture.

Here in Paraburdoo, there is no room for such affectation; it's all about the buck. I'd like to be part of this, but so far my only options seem to be the aforementioned car-washing job, or cleaning up after the men in the Rio Tinto accommodation. Call me a part-time-freelance-writery-person-who-rarely-gets-paid/full-time-not-very-good-at-it-domestic-engineer, but these options just aren't appealing.

I thought about starting a local newspaper, but honestly, apart from 'stray dog found on Ashburton Avenue', I can't think of what I might put in it (plus the town Facebook page has missing dogs covered). Of course I could write a very lively gossip column -- trust me, I really could -- but I don't think this would make me many friends. 

To be honest, in a town like Paraburdoo, if you want to make some cash your best option is to learn to drive a dump truck, and having a degree in anything other than mining is a waste of your time. I casually mentioned to DH that I might do a truck-driving course, how hard can it be? But he felt strongly that this was a very bad idea.

It's true that I can't reverse out of a tight spot without him yelling 'lock it hard, LOCK IT HARD!' repeatedly, and parallel parking and myself are as strangers, but to my mind it isn't a necessary life-skill, you'll always find another space a bit further away if you look hard enough. And besides, what does 'lock it hard' actually mean?

How hard could it be to parallel park this thing?

Yes it's odd in WA, but the more manual the position, the more money you earn. A trades person (or tradie) will never struggle to find a well paying job, but someone with a PhD might. In fact, I have a friend who's husband ditched a promising career in zoology to drive a drilling machine. That's WA for you!

Another thing I've noticed in WA in general (I'm not sure about the rest of Australia) and Paraburdoo in particular, is the way anyone who does anything vaguely manual must wear a navy and luminous yellow/orange uniform. From postman to rubbish collector, to council worker to senior architect, you must wear this costume. I briefly considered applying for an admin job in DH's office, but even the girl behind the desk is obliged to wear this unflattering get-up. Why, I wonder? Perhaps she's expected to wear a hard-hat to do the photocopying, after all, anything could go wrong...

Don't use the photocopier unless you are highly visible!

Having said that, DH is also obliged to wear this gear, and I for one am quite pleased about this since it saves me from the pangs of guilt I used to feel from my bed in the mornings, listening to him ironing his shirt before work...

Of course this is all in the name of safety (everyone knows that being a postman is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet), and Paraburdoo is keen on its safety measures, although perhaps they are a little over-zealous? Many of the Rio Tinto bus-stops -- which service the mine and are dotted around the town -- bear the sign -

Seriously, if you need this sort of advice I'm surprised you've managed to put your shoes on the right feet, or indeed made it to the bus stop in the first place...

At trip to Karijini National Park...

Oh dear, we really need to get used to the idea that this is not a country which can be easily traversed in three hours by road. And when people tell you something is 'just on your doorstep', what they actually mean is that you don't need to take a flight to get there.

Yesterday we decided to visit the famous Karijini National Park, which had been described by several people as - yep -- 'on our doorstep'.

It isn't.

Setting off with a picnic, five bickering children and half a tank of petrol, we figured we'd be at the park in an hour.

And yes, we did reach its outer edges in just over an hour, however we quickly discovered that the Visitor Centre was 55 kilometres away, and all the attractions were of similar distances and in various directions. And the road had given way to a red gravel track making for a bumpy and uncomfortable ride.

I had imagined visiting the park would be a bit like visiting The World Showcase in Disney World, where you can visit eleven countries in an hour, shuttling from fake Marrakesh to fake Oslo in a matter of minutes. Sadly nature isn't quite as accommodating as the Disney Corporation; it takes time, patience and a lot of petrol, and to see all that Karijini has to offer  -- the falls, the gorges, the pools, the fauna -- takes many hours or even days, and many people choose to camp there and make a holiday of it. How naive to think we could simply rock up, park the car, check out the nature and still be home in time for The Voice?

Instructing the children to please put away their Nintendos and look out the windows, we kept our eyes peeled for kangaroos, dingos or anything else of interest. 'Is that a lizard? Look, LOOK!' yelped DH enthusiastically at regular intervals. 'Nope, it's a strip of tyre....' 

We drove for what felt like an eternity through bush land and I wondered what secrets the surrounding mountains held, and what we might be missing. Karijini is truly a stunning place, but oh so vast!

More termite mounds...

Not knowing which sign to follow, we finally opted to follow one for Kalamina gorge, which lead us up a bumpy, winding road to a smallish gorge overlooking a rock pool below. It was beautiful to behold although sadly nature doesn't come with a safety rail, and the splendour was rather spoiled by the three youngest children who hold little or no regard for their personal safety.

It was clear that there would be no swimming in the rock pool below (how would we get to it without literally jumping from twenty feet above?) so we opted to simply sit on the flat, four billion year old rock and have a picnic, while trying to prevent the baby from hurling himself into the water below.

The visitor centre is miles from anywhere....

After a fretful lunch, we decided to continue on the road towards the Visitor Centre where I hoped to peruse a gift shop and look at nature on a flat screen TV. Tragically it was closed, and it had also started to rain.

The petrol tank was by now starting to look a little thirsty -- we had been driving around for almost three hours -- and the nearest petrol station was an hour and a half away.

It was time to retrace our steps and head back, so we reluctantly turned the car around to make the two hour drive home. All we had seen was a gorge too perilous to get close to, a closed Visitor centre and at one point I thought I may have seen a dead snake on the road. 

Next time we visit Karijini National Park we will leave the children behind and book into the Karijini Eco Retreat, which offers luxury camping accommodation -- or as they call it ecommodation --  allowing us to be at one with nature while lying on our bed, viewing it on the Samsung Tab 2. Less perilous and far less petrol.

'Glamping' in Karijini Eco Retreat...

Postcards from The Bush....

One thing I like about all the moving around we've been doing over the last few years, is how you can walk -- quite literally -- out of one world and into another (and as if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared!) One day you're living in a house on the west coast of Ireland, surrounded by green fields and grazing cows, the next day 'home' is a 16th floor hotel room in hot and dusty downtown Abu Dhabi.

And where you once woke up to the sound of tractors chugging along the road and 'Morning Ireland' on the radio, you are now woken by beeping taxis and the international edition of CNN news on the TV. All that is required to implement this dramatic transformation is enough money to board a flight (or preferably an employer willing to relocate you) and the will to do it.

Just over a week ago we did it again, we left the Perth hills and tumbled -- head first -- from one world right into another.

The journey, which we planned to do in two days, ended up taking three (we stopped over in Kalbarri on the first night -- yay! fabulous! and Carnarvon on the second night -  boo! a tumble-weeded ghost town!).

It is hard to quite comprehend how enormous this country is, and I blush to think that in the past I've grumbled at the idea of driving from Galway to Dublin. Such a journey is but a mere trifle when compared with the drive from Perth to the Pilbara, which is just so arduously time-consuming that at times I contemplated simply turning back and taking a flight. And despite promising to share the driving with DH, I found that after approximately twenty three minutes behind the wheel, I would start nodding off so mind-boggling long was the road ahead.

You could be forgiven for thinking the scenery would be dull and unchanging, how interesting could it be?, but what was so surprising was how the landscape kept changing its mind; you could be driving through pale grassland for several kilometres, only for it to suddenly be replaced by red sand and rock; now red sand and blackened trees; and now we have dark and broody hills; and now  -- allakhazam! -- we're back to grasslands again! And there were mountains, and flat plains, and funny little rock formations at one point (which google tells me are termite mounds) -- which looked like miniature mud huts from a distance -- and which disappeared just as quickly as they appeared as we sped by.

My pictures turned out crap so I pinched this one!

What was also new to us, was the fact that there are NO shops along the route. As we pulled out of the car park of Bates Motel in Carnarvon (an homage to 1970s motel (very shabby) chic) on the last morning of our journey, DH asked me did I want to stop for coffee and snacks before we hit the open road. 'Nah,' I replied nonchalantly, 'we'll get something along the way'.

HA! BIG MISTAKE! Reader, if you are planning a long drive through outback Australia, take no chances and pack several picnics!!  After two hours I was fantasising about the Applegreen service station in Enfield, with it's cafe, Burger King, toilets, shop and play area  (you can even buy wine or a mug with your name on it if you fancy).

After four hours I was wondering which child we could do without...

Five hours after my oh so dismissive refusal of food and drink, we fell on a roadhouse and happily paid twenty dollars each for sausages and chips for the kids (no extra charge for the grey hairs in them either!) and twelve dollars for a very underwhelming cheese sandwich. The coffee, which was four dollars, turned out to be a mug, a water boiler, and an un-labelled jar of powdered coffee. We gave it a miss.

The coffee wasn't the only thing over-priced!

We arrive in Para-Para-Paraburdoo!

So here we are. First impressions? Basically I've moved to 1962 with wi fi capability. The town is small, safe (nobody locks their houses), everyone knows each other, and the children are now having the sort of childhood I had back before every stranger became a potential paedophile and every activity a potential death risk. They have free rein to wander where they want, can walk to school, walk to the shops or their friends houses. In short, it's heaven.

My main gripe with motherhood has always been the driving around and waiting bit. Over the years we've ditched dance classes and eschewed play dates because the waiting around to collect/drop off has always been just too much like hard work, not least because the rest of them have to come too. Here my participation is no longer required.

It gets better; on Friday night we put the 12-year-old in charge of the others, and DH and I took a leisurely stroll, hand in hand, through the green and across the road, to the local inn where we had dinner. I haven't known this kind of ease in years, and quite truthfully, I feel like I've been let off the hook from the demands of modern day living.

Our new home is a bit of a menagerie, with resident mice and termites, not to mention the frogs which playfully leap out of the toilet bowl at the most inopportune moments (I swear I've never moved so fast in my life), but this can be easily remedied by a visit from the local pest controller and the foresight to flush before and after you sit down!

The town is largely owned by Rio Tinto, whom are very much the main employer, owning most of the properties and subsidising local energy and amenities. They even have a community advisor who kindly talked me through any issues I might be having, when I accidentally bumped into her at the school.

This means there is a certain 'Big Brother' feel to the place at times, and I briefly felt a little like Jeanne Tripplehorn in the movie 'The Firm'. 

"I wonder if the house is bugged..." I pondered to DH, "Maybe we can never leave..."

 Of course such a small community has its drawbacks, and DH has warned me to be on my best behaviour, "You don't know who you're talking to" he warned forebodingly. He would say this of course, being from Innishbiggle, the original Valley of the Squinting Windows...

On the first day of school, chatting to the registrar about the long journey we'd just undertaken, and the rip-off road house, she interrupted me with "I'm surprised D didn't warn you about it!" 

-"How do you know I know D?" I shot back quickly, (D is a friend in Perth who used to live in Paraburdoo). 

-"Haha, everyone knows!" she chuckled, "we've all been looking out for you!"

On Wednesday's the Big Truck rolls into town bearing supplies for the supermarket. If you don't want to run out of milk or bread or anything else, it is wise to stock up before Saturday, as I learned three days in when we ran out of bread, and were forced to resort to an 80 kilometre drive to the neighbouring town of Tom Price (they didn't have bread either).

So, this is my first post from the bush, and I've still much to learn about the place. I'm going to start by concentrating on finding a decent radio station, since the only one I seem to land on here is a Christian one, and despite its promise to make sense of our modern age with a biblical slant, I'd much prefer my favourite ABC Classic FM thank you very much!

View from our front door...

Another suitcase in another hall....

I'm sitting on a mattress in the middle of my bedroom, surrounded by suitcases, boxes and deconstructed IKEA furniture, contemplating our next move.

We're moving to the Bush and once more I am heading into a harsh, dusty and unyielding landscape, inhospitable to human life and far away from civilisation.

I have a habit of doing this.

Of course the difference is that -- unlike living in  RAK or Al Ain, which are not unlike the Pilbarra in terms of sand and rock -- in the bush I can't simply jump in the car, drive two hours down the road to buy some gold from a vending machine in a gilded palace, more's the pity. No, this will be like moving to a village in the Empty Quarter, a 16 hour drive from Perth, where my local shopping options are confined to an IGA supermarket.


I'm really not sure how I'm going to cope with a life that doesn't involve hours spent mindlessly wandering around shopping centres, waiting to be seduced by things I don't need and can't afford. Hitherto I have considered this to be a pass time, and the prospect of not being able to do it fills me with a fearful awe.

I'm also worried about whether there are any TV channels up there, or even a decent internet connection! If not, I may have to -- gasp -- get dressed and go out and speak to someone! I've forgotten how that works.

But the set-up was too good to turn down; DH has been offered an excellent job with -- and this was the deal maker -- free accommodation! No rental agreements to sign, no sniffy inspections, no sycophantic letters to prospective landlords, begging them to rent us their house. Hooray!

I'm going with a very positive attitude, this is a chance not to be missed. We're getting to live in a part of Australia which many Australians never even get to see, and best of all, the children can walk to school -- another deal maker right there.

I'm seeing the whole thing as an experiment; life stripped down to the bare bones of existence, centring on the simplest elements of home and family. I'm hoping to rediscover my old passion for cooking; to concentrate on writing something decent; and maybe even take up belly-dancing -- yes, there are classes! (This is hugely ironic since I tried several times to attend a class in the Middle East, but kept getting the times or days wrong - how strange it would be to learn to shimmy to the sound of an oud in the Outback?)

Our new home is to be in the small mining town of Paraburdoo, in the Pilbara region; a town so small that apparently each house has its own unique number. 'Paraburdoo' comes from the Aboriginal word for 'white cockatoo' which according to DH are to be seen everywhere in the town.

So, dear reader, next time I post I will have left the beautiful Perth hills behind me, and travelled fifteen hundred kilometres north, to embark upon the next chapter of this bizarre life I seem to have stumbled into. Wish me luck!

A cursing toddler, fighting fires, and the next Jean Butler...

A new problem has developed in our house; we can't stop the baby from swearing.

It started innocently enough with him hissing 'I HATE you!' every time he was annoyed about something -- which was actually a little bit funny; there's something intrinsically hilarious about a three-foot-tall tot, with the face of an angel, spouting such venom -- but he's fast developing the vocabulary of a sharp-faced docker.

What did I say?

Strolling around Target with him the other day, he sat bolt upright in his buggy lisping 'You stupid bitch!' over and over again to anyone who so much as looked at him, much to the distress of an old woman smiling in at his pink, plump, ringletted-self.

This has developed into him yelling 'Oh SHIT!' every time he throws something over the balcony outside (which is often, and in fact when we had our grass cut recently, a treasure trove was discovered down below -- kitchen implements, toys, electrical gadgets --  tossed mercilessly over the top by this rambuncious two-year-old).

It's hard to avoid this sort of thing when there are four older siblings for him to copy, and he mimics everything he hears, and although we have tried everything we can think of to stop him -- ignoring him, scolding him...err actually that's it really --  it is proving to be pretty much impossible once he's warmed to a particular profanity.

It's a stubborn age, the proverbial 'Terrible twos', and the most innocuous of events can descend into a flinty-eyed battle of wills. When he toddled into the kitchen chewing a plastic tampon applicator the other afternoon -- which he had valiantly rescued from the bathroom bin -- it took a two minute struggle and half a block of cooking chocolate to release the offending item from his grasp.

A smart business card isn't everything....

However, truculent two-year-olds aside, we are once more in the proverbial shits, since DH was let go from his job four weeks ago. He seems to have a unique knack for carefully selecting employers who don't seem capable of planning beyond a nice logo and swanky offices, and the four years of work he was offered (which to be fair I didn't want him to do anyway, what with it being the hateful FIFO and all) materialised into little more than a few months up in the Pilbara.

As I type he's being interviewed for a city role, for which I'm crossing my fingers and toes, although worryingly, I've seen this company's offices, and they're pretty swanky....

Yes we are little more than surf bubbling onto the sand, swept along in a fickle and precarious economy, in a permanent stage of 'reaction' rather than 'pro-action'. I would like to be able to charge in -- Joan of Arc-like -- and save the situation, but sadly am qualified to do little more than answer the phone (and speak on it long enough to actually get fired -- this happened once), or write about two-year-olds'. And so it remains for DH to once more put out this fire. Perhaps he should have been a fire fighter....? Certainly the mindless idiots who like to regularly start bush-fires up in these here hills would keep him gainfully employed for much of the year. Well it's a thought....

And finally...

Forget the fabled Dubai Stone (in fact I lost a stone within three weeks of arriving in Abu Dhabi; this had a lot to do with 50 degree heat and an inability to flag down any taxis), I've gained at least a stone since arriving in Australia.

When discussing the many attractions that Australia has to offer, 'outdoor lifestyle' is a much touted phrase, with 'wonderful beaches' and 'ubiquitous parks' being some of the biggest attractions to life Down Under.

All this somehow lead me to imagine that I would be long, lithe and honey-limbed within weeks of getting here, spending my days frolicking with the children in the sand, while DH looked fondly on, turning steaks on the barbie.

It hasn't happened, in fact quite the reverse. Living up in the hills, while undoubtedly beautiful, has meant that I drive everywhere. Add in the fact that unlike Galway city -- around which I could wander for hours --shopping is mainly confined to shopping malls, and it takes approximately forty minutes to visit every shop in my local mall; the freak-magnet which is the wonderful Midland Gate.

In addition, and much to my regret I'm not that fond of going outdoors. Not at all. Yes I do love a bucolic scene as much as the next person, but I'd rather look at it through the prism of a window. Or perhaps on the telly.

No, heaven for me is a book, a fireplace and an open bottle. And so I decided the only way to lose some of this excess poundage was my old friend, the dance class.

And so I took myself off to an Irish dancing lesson last week, in the hope of dancing away this extra weight, while rediscovering an old passion. I suspected I may still be rather brilliant in fact. A career in Riverdance may still beckon, I reasoned.

My hopes were dashed within minutes of arriving as I realised rather quickly that my brain can't remember steps as efficiently and quickly as it used to. And despite the very patient male teacher taking me through them six, seven, eight times at a go, I struggled to reproduce them the second the music started.

Quietly confident this will be me quite soon

To be honest he looked genuinely alarmed as I huffed and puffed -- beetroot of complexion -- thighs, bosoms and bottom repeatedly rising then pounding into my body, as I hopped up and down, and he kindly ignored me while I sweated and hyperventilated alone in the corner for a minute during the hornpipe.

For three days afterwards I shuffled around like a ninety-year-old on death-row, my calves in shreds, albeit with the satisfaction that the pain was due to exertion, rather than over-indulgence and stiff-jointed laziness.

My Perth Pounds will be gone in no time, I'm sure of it!

Back to school headaches...

First off, I want to say that so far I'm very impressed with the Australian primary education system - honest I am. Classes are so well staffed that last year I gave up asking the names of all the different classroom assistants I encountered after a while, settling instead for a nod and smile.

And the 11-year-old girl (AKA 'the tweenager') - following a series of interviews and auditions last year - has been offered a place in a high-school dedicated to the Arts for 2014. This is very good news considering the fact that many people send their children to private schools for their secondary education, and the school in question is not just of good repute, but also free. Winning!

Teachers here are well-paid and well-accommodated as far as I can tell (many work part time, sharing classes with other teachers for one or two days a week), and mercifully - apart from a brief mention in the school creed - they generally keep God out of the classroom.

Like anywhere, the standard of education a child receives rests almost exclusively with the abilities of their teacher, and for the most part we've been lucky in having some truly excellent teachers (although my eldest son's last teacher was, I felt, a little unable to understand his 'uniqueness', and seemed quite confused by the level of blood, excrement and Islamic zombies which made their way into every essay. And when I suggested we keep in touch via email, so that I could keep abreast of his progress, she looked as perturbed as if I'd just suggested a threesome with her and the principal.)

So yes, generally I'm a fan of the education system here.

That is until we get to the agony of the school stationary lists - of which we received four - detailing a long list of items expected to be purchased before the children return to school after the summer hols. I'm pretty sure these lists were churned out of an Enigma machine, since 90% of them made no sense to me whatsoever. The remaining 10% just seemed unnecessarily precise and exact.

My six year old - who has only recently learned to wipe his bottom effectively - had a list of 17 items on his, totaling $85, containing items (among many, many others) such as -

CODE      QTY  BIN                            DESCRIPTION      
2014796      4     410    BOOK EX WA 300X215 48PG 24MM THIRDS
1290053      1     940    PENCIL CASE OMAX 215X125MM TARTAN 1ZIP POUCH
1290126      1     941    PENCIL CASE OMAX 375MM246MM TARTAN 2ZIP POUCH
1689320      1   1145    COUNTER PLASTICS 30S

Mission Impossible

I read through the whole list several times, and apart from the question 'why does he need two tartan pencil cases? - and why TARTAN?' I was at a loss as to what on earth it all meant. The 11-year-old's list was even more complex and twice as long.

When I was six we were required to show up to school with our packed lunch - unless you had school dinners in which case you brought nothing - and that was it. And on PE day it was nice if you brought some shorts and a t-shirt along, but should you forget these items, you simply stripped down to your knickers and vest (which sounds a bit weird now to be honest, but they were simpler, more innocent times...) and pranced about to Music and Movement in your undies.

Now this I understand...

Last year, when we showed up on our first day of school with nothing more than his school bag, the six-year-old's lovely, wonderful, oh-I-miss-her, teacher, dismissed my apologies and said 'to be honest, all this stuff coming through the door is a bleedin' nuisance'.

She was a very wise woman.

Emboldened by this memory, this year we rocked up to his new teacher's class in much the same spirit, bearing little more than a pencil case and some crayons.

-'Does he have all his things?' she blinked.

- 'Oh, haha, no, not yet!' (cue to tell me it's ok)

- (Silence)

-'Oh ummm...sorry...!' my smile faltered..

She fixed me a stare and turned around to talk to another - better - parent, while two dozen parental heads turned to get a look at the bad mother among them. Taking my cue to exit, I slunk from the classroom, shamed and chastised, the two-year-old toddling behind.

It couldn't be put off any longer, I headed to Office Max to address the problem.

Two minutes in it was clear that a) anything we might need had been sold out, and b) I was losing the will to live. The specificity of the lists were making my brain hurt ('wooden ruler, unpolished - 30CM'. 'Scissors, blunt end, 150MM SS').

'Sod it, I'm going to K Mart'! I told the two-year-old defiantly. He nodded solemnly.

And an hour later I emerged from K-Mart laden down with several bags of brightly coloured plastic items which would 'do', vindicated that I had out-witted those horrid lists, PLUS I had saved myself a couple of hundred dollars in the process.

OK, so we still don't have half the items on the mysterious list, but so far nobody seems to have noticed....

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE WHEN WE BOTHER TO CHECK; my last post about FIFO - honest!

'Don't it always seem to go

that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone'

So sang Joni Mitchel in 'Big yellow taxi'. 

In a similar vein, the Greek philosopher of Stoicism, Epictitus said , 'He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has'.

I think it's safe to say that one of life's truisms is that we rarely appreciate what we have until we've been deprived of it. And I've been thinking about this quite a lot of late, now that I'm all husbanded up again.

I feel like a latter day George Bailey or Ebenezer Scrooge, having had a mirror held up to my life to show me what is important; and like Dorothy too, everything I needed was in my own backyard all along (actually this metaphor doesn't hold up - after all, DH wasn't in the back yard, but up in the Pilbara, but bear with me dear reader).

Of course the separation wasn't of my choosing - nor DH's for that matter, choice has become a luxury in these times of recession - but like everything in life, it's best to learn something from a bad experience, even if it's simply the knowledge that you never want to experience it again.

Happiness was in the backyard all
 along (metaphorically speaking)

With DH gone, life became an A-to-B-to-C like chore, with jobs to be done, boxes to be ticked, but with little or no joy. Night time was the worst, spent shooting out of the bed every 30  minutes or so, throwing the light switch to illuminate imaginary intruders in dark corners. Eventually I would fall asleep, just as rosy fingered dawn began to announce herself through the thin curtains, leaving me whey-faced and exhausted.

On other nights a few glasses of wine ensured not just a false sense of company and well-being, but guaranteed an uninterrupted sleep, albeit with a sluggish sense of regret the following morning. 

Catch 22.

I've always rejoiced at a new day, excited at what it might bring, but this optimism had been replaced by despair and a mental countdown of how many days remained until DH returned.

I had stopped leaving the house for anything other than essentials - the school run or emergency groceries from the nearby over-priced IGA, and had fallen into what can only be described as a sort of agoraphobic pattern; life had become a waiting game. Waiting in the house. Waiting for DH to return.

I tried to stay away from people, since I would inevitably find myself talking about my situation, tears sitting thickly at the back of my throat, threatening at all times to spring forth and mortify me.  My wonderful Australian friend, K, ignoring my protests, would occasionally drag me out for a coffee or a glass of wine, 'I'm not like this in real life, honestly' I would tell her, 'I'm way more fun, and I'm thinner too!...it's just...it's just...' my eyes would start to fill. 

I wasn't a widow for goodness sake! And unlike some of my friends who have recently emerged from relationships, shell-shocked and shaking, my marriage wasn't over. This - ludicrously - was just a work arrangement. All this pain, for a JOB? And not a particularly good job at that - unlike the myths you hear about FIFO in the Australian media, we hadn't paid our mortgage off in a miraculous amount of time or were half way towards saving for a holiday house. This was merely a way of getting by.

What was worse was that my children had stopped asking for their father; hardly noticed his absence after a while. I was mother and father to them, but not doing a particularly good job at either role.

I think the all encompassing feeling during this time was that of being 'unsafe'. It can't be denied that a few glasses of wine helped this feeling disappear for a while as the alcohol flooded my system and a sense of ease descended. And thus I was heading into the grubby role of becoming a FIFO statistic, a casualty of what this way of life can do to some people.

My only attempt to counteract all this misery was to take to my local pool every now and then, to thrash out my frustration, lap after lap, limbs striking water in angry slaps. It helped. 

Eventually I insisted I would not become a victim to this, would not be defined by my husband's absence. But equally I would not accept this as a way of life. I told DH he had to come home, and come home for good. And mercifully dear reader, he did.

And now there is a sense of warm awakening - like Spring - which is slowly spreading through my day, like green shoots emerging from cold, dead winter ground; a sense of safety restored. I'm being reminded what life used to be like, following eight months of having DH rationed to three and a half days in each fortnight.

I remarked to him yesterday that I feel like a newlywed - almost coy -  unaccustomed to having him there when I wake in the morning  to push a freshly made cup of coffee into my sleepy hand; someone to switch off the bedside light when I fall asleep, book collapsed on my chest. Someone to help with the children's bedtimes; to discuss the day with. To unwillingly rub my feet and fight over the remote control at night. To share my life with.

That was the point after all, wasn't it?

And like Mr Bailey and Mr. Scrooge, I've been given a second chance. Not just with DH, but with Australia - this massive, beautiful, dog-earned continent, waiting patiently to be explored by us, which at times I've hated over the past few months, and upon whom I had almost given up.

Last Sunday marked my first year in Australia. Here's to 2013 - my second year here, but really, just the beginning...

He's home!