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...