We get Ben tomorrow!!!!

This is the infamous photograph that appeared in all the local newspapers in Selby!
I contacted the local paper here, and I think they are running an article on Ben's adventures too!!
We can't wait to see him come through on the conveyor at Mackay airport tomorrow!
We are staying in Mackay tonight and then he flies in at 9.40am tomorrow, we're then taking him to the beach for the whole day, so he can run about and go swimming!! He won't have been walked for a whole month so he'll be shattered!

A dragline at Norwich Park Mine

Put this up for t'pit lads! Tom - control yourself!
These draglines are electrically powered gigantic beasts of machines, and weigh about 2500 tonnes, cost about $60million (£27million) and have a boom as long as a football pitch. A dragline can make a hole the size of an average-sized swimming pool with one scoop of the bucket. Pretty impressive stuff.
The function of these is after the land has been blown up with dynamite, to clear all the rubbish off the top of the coal seam (or something like that!). Every day's a schoolday.

Andy's new girlfriend!!

Honestly, I let him loose for a minute and he comes back with this photo!!
Jennifer is really popular here, in all the magazines and is on a TV programme.

Jennifer Hawkins - Miss Universe 2004!

Another big mining machine at Norwich Park Mine, Andy is stood next to the wheel.

Norwich Park Open Cut Mine near Dysart - Day In the Park

Last Sunday we went to the 'Day in the Park' at Norwich Park Mine, which is about an hours drive from here. We'd heard there were bands playing, and Miss Universe 2004 was going to be there so we were curious to see what it would be like, as it was at a coal mine after all!
We had to queue to get in, and once inside had about 1km walk to the event in a huge park. It was a really great day, and it turned out that nearly 12000 people attended!!
3 bands played who are well known in Australia, although I haven't heard of them: Thirsty Merc, Killing Heidi and Jon Stevens (who replaced Michael Hutchence in INXS for a while). The bands were all really good, and Miss Universe made several appearances on stage and stayed for the whole day, having camel rides and everything! There was a mixture of mine tours, mining equipment on display, rescue demonstrations and mining-related stalls, and also other general areas, stalls, competitions, food etc.

The proceeds for the day from donations went to the Wombat Survival Fund!! There are only 90 Northern Hairy Nosed Wombats left in the wild. The best part of the day was that we got to see a hairy-nosed wombat in a special climate-controlled trailer, they're quite big actually - and very cute!

We're back in Moranbah now, and today our air freight has arrived which was exciting - it is all our clothes so we actually have some stuff to wear now! I'd forgotten I had some of it!
The sea freight is due to arrive at the end of October so still a while till we get the rest of our stuff.
We are going out tonight to the local with Andy's work colleagues, then tomorrow we have a day trip to a mine near Dysart which is holding a 'day at the park' with some good bands and other entertainment (camel rides), the highlight for me obviously being that Miss Australia is going to be there!?!

PS - in case you were wondering, we didn't win a thing at the greyhounds - there was one bookie there who made the very rubbish odds up, and 8 dogs run so even more difficult to win!

Mackay - In the park

Another of my strolls in Mackay led me to this park in the city centre.
An Art Centre is nearby which has changing exhibitions on, so I spent an afternoon in there too! There's also a big entertainment centre, where shows are held, at the other side of the park. The 10 days in Mackay have been really good as we've explored most of the city now, seen some fantastic beaches and found some great places to eat!

Airlie Beach - The lagoon

Our final day was spent getting info on the islands and tours for future reference from Shute Harbour which is the second busiest harbour in Australia after Sydney apparantly. This is because is is the main gateway to the amazing Whitsunday Islands on the reef.
We then did some more sunbathing by the gorgeous lagoon which is a massive man-made beach/pool, and set off back to Mackay later that afternoon.

We'll definitely be back!

Airlie Beach - In the pool bar with Vaughan and Bead

On the Friday night at Airlie Beach we had a Hog's Breath steak - this is a chain of restaurants that serve extremely good steak, Mike you would love it, they recommend rare to medium! Our area of Queensland is renowned for good steaks.
After feasting, we went to one of the main bars there and Andy joined a pool competition! There were 16 entrants and Andy got through to the final, but unfortunately he lost due to a few spawny shots by the other player. The guy who won apparently goes round all the pool comps, as the prizes are pretty good, he won $50AUD for this (£23). Andy won a jug of beer so he was happy. While the competition was on we got chatting to some lads from Toowoomba (inland from Brisbane) who had come up on a fishing trip, we ended up chatting with them through the night, also met some guys from Canada and a couple from England - the lad was a Liverpool fan so Andy and him had a good footy chat. The girl from England was entering the wet t-shirt competition later that night and asked us to cheer her on, Andy really didn't want to, but felt that he ought to be there to support her... The wet t-shirt competition was a good laugh actually, the English girl went all out to win, but got pipped in the final by a Halle Berry look-a-like. The club was great, lots of good dancing tunes, and a brilliant atmosphere. We ended up having our latest night in Oz yet, a staggering 1.30am!

The next day we were very delicate and didn't get up till late. We had a look round the shops at Airlie Beach and sat by the lagoon for a bit, then went back to the hotel to sunbathe by the pool. That night we didn't really feel like another big session (must be the age) so went for a Chinese (dire) and then had a couple of drinks in town. We met up with the fishing guys to say bye, and Vaughan gave me his t-shirt as a souvenir!

A Kookaburra!

These must be the noisiest birds ever, and believe me they have plenty of competition from all the parrots/lorikeets/crows etc. Each morning we were awoken by the screeching of these, which sounds like someone manically laughing - as Hayley knows too well as she taught me the sound in the woods in Hambleton on several occasions!

Airlie Beach - Feeding the Rainbow Lorikeets!

We stayed at Club Crocodile Hotel in Airlie Beach, and every day they have a 'Mary Poppins'-style feed the birds session. A Dr Doolittle man whistles them in special ways so that all the Kookaburras flew down first to eat, then he did another whistle and the lorikeets came to dine! It was lovely to be able to feed them from my hand and seeing them flying about in the wild.

Mackay - Town Beach

This is another little excursion I made while Andy was training. It's only a 5 minute drive from the city centre, but another long 50 minute walk for me without a car! I went for a walk on the beach, it was beautiful, so I sat and read for a bit. I was the only person on the beach too, probably loads of Aussies going past saying she must be English, sat on the beach in the middle of winter!

Mackay - The Botanical Gardens

I walked here on my own while Andy was at work, it took about an hour! But it was definitely worth it, you can walk round the lagoon and gardens for a few miles - it's huge! There are lots of themed areas as well as loads of birds by the lagoon. After my marathon trek I was looking forward to a drink in the cafe overlooking the lagoon, but it's closed on Mondays and Tuesdays - typical! I find it very strange here that all shops are closed Saturday afternoons and Sundays (some open Sunday morning but not many), and also most places seem to be closed on a Monday for some reason. I just don't understand the Saturday thing though - surely the shops would make much more money if they were open when people weren't at work?!

One of our beaches at Mackay

After a week in Moranbah, Andy came home with the news that we were off to the coast for 10 days! His work has paid for us to stay in a hotel in Mackay for 10 days while he does training. So we packed our bags that weekend and headed off to Mackay. We’re staying in a motel (they are all motels here) called the Shakespeare International – which is one of those deceptively grand-sounding names. In my experience those who put ‘Royal’, ‘Grand’ or ‘International’ in their name are generally the ones to avoid. It is OK, but for a 10 day stay the room is quite small and the interior décor consists of the red bricks it was built with. So, here we are in Mackay, and we are just off to watch greyhound racing so I’ll catch up with what we’ve been up to in Mackay tomorrow…

In our first week in Moranbah we did a fair bit, Andy was working for the full week, and I tried to amuse myself in the house, with only the contents of our suitcases for company. All our cards are up in the kitchen and front room, it’s great because the few people who have seen them all (about 100+) think we were really popular back in England – haha! My presents from Caroline and Mum are on display beneath the TV, I look through them loads, and my mp3 player from SITS is an absolute saviour as my CD’s and player are on the boat and won’t get here until late October. I bought some little speakers with me so have been using it as a stereo as well as with the headphones at the beach! We went to the cinema (oh yes!) to watch War of the Worlds, it has 2 screens and shows 3 films a week, you buy the tickets at the same place you buy your huge tub of popcorn, which is quite quaint, not so good when you taste the popcorn and realised you’ve bought a tonne of salted popcorn – bleurgh (this is going to be a problem as there doesn’t seem to be sweet popcorn available anywhere!)! We have also eaten out at KFC and a little café/restaurant called the Purple Grape which was very nice, and had a takeaway from Domino’s Pizza! I think we managed to cook one meal at the house! We have opened bank accounts and I enrolled at the library which is pretty good, particularly considering the extortionate price of books in Australia. They are approximately double the price you’d pay in England, an average paperback costs about £12!

Wildlife

Our house is huge, it is actually a bungalow as most Australian houses are due to the amount of space available. It has 4 bedrooms, a double garage, a kitchen, front room, wash room, bathroom and 2 toilets, as well as a garden right round it. There are sliding doors all along one of the sides of the house, straight into the garden. It also backs straight onto the bush, which in some ways is amazing and in others quite frightening! The amazing things being that you can watch parrots and cockatiels and other unknown birds flying past whilst sat in the room or even from the bedroom, the back gate of the garden just opens up into vast amounts of land which will be great for Ben, and there are huge trees and plants everywhere which are quite spectacular to look at from your house! The frightening element of all this is the wildlife, which to be quite frank, we are petrified of. The Australians find this highly amusing, recalling stories of how many snakes they have wrestled from their garden, and only been bitten once…only!! When we cautiously asked whether we were likely to see any where we were living the reply was an enthusiastic ‘oh yes, they’re just hibernating at the moment because it’s winter, but then you’ll see them sure enough’!! Along with the spiders, and a new enemy now discovered known as the cane toad, we are so scared we have a rule that no door or window in the house is to be left open, or indeed with any hint of a gap! How we will manage this when Ben gets here is uncertain as yet! The cane toad was introduced here to eat some insects that were damaging the sugar cane here, (I have read that once they got them here they realised they didn’t eat them anyway because the cane or the insects were the wrong type) since then they have multiplied and are a pest everywhere, conversations about the toads are normally whether a cricket bat, a golf club or putting them in the freezer is the best way to kill them. Anyway, the reason why we fear these ugly creatures is that they can kill a dog if it licks the poison on its back, so Ben is going to have to have another laminated picture card added to his training collection of things not to mess with!

Front room - not a very desirable suite, but hey, it'll do for me!

The most important thing you are thinking of course, is what about the night life?! Well, I think this is going to be another culture shock, as when we asked about drinking establishments we were shown…2. The Black Nugget (also a motel) is the place to be, bar meals, live bands, the works – get this, it even has a Crystal Maze style dome (but it’s a rectangle shape) when you grab as many money vouchers as you can!! I can’t wait to get in that. The peculiar thing (or indeed great thing if you are that way inclined) is that lots of bars in Australia come complete with a bookies. So you find people playing ‘Pokies’ (like a lottery-style game drawn every 15 mins) sat next to you in the bar, and if you are watching the rugby, you can nip and put a bet on the score while you drink! This is quite a cunning move by the Australian betting companies as I’m sure they must rake in lots of money from drunken people. I just can’t see it happening in England somehow. The other place to drink in Mornabah is the workers’ club – yep, same as the working men’s clubs in the UK, we haven’t ventured in there yet, it has one of those ominous looks to it, as though it degenerates into the bar scene from Airplane on an evening. If you are into your sports, which every single person in Australia seems to be, then you can also get a drink at the golf club and the rugby club. We actually watched a rugby match the other night, my first ever rugby match – I think it was union! It was the last game of the season between Moranbah and some ‘neighbouring’ town about 2 hours drive away. The visitors, bless, hadn’t got a full team, so some of the Mornabah lads had to play for them!! I’m yet to learn the rules of rugby (despite years of travelling with Mark and Faron!!) so I concentrated on the drinking side of things. Now, even when you manage to find a bar in Moranbah – and this applies to every bar we’ve been to in Australia, you think it will then be a relatively stress-free task to order a drink… oh no, order a lager and you get asked a fairly standard question of what type of lager (XXXX Gold being ever so popular) but then whether you want a pot/tinny/pint/stubby/pitcher or something else we still can’t decipher so haven’t asked for it yet. Not only are there all these options of how you want your lager, but they are recited at you in about 2 seconds. Andy initially was like a rabbit in headlights and stuttered out the only syllable he could make out, but through a bit of trial and error we have managed to make the following discoveries: A pot is a half pint (or roughly equivalent), a pint is obvious, a pitcher is a jug, a tinny is a can and a stubby is a bottle – which comes complete with a stubby-holder, a polystyrene bottle holder to stop your hands getting cold! The drinks are served at the coldest temperatures imaginable so a stubby-holder is recommended, quite why there aren’t such things as pot/pint holders as well I haven’t grasped yet as they are equally as cold. Not being a beer drinker myself I was pleasantly surprised to find that Strongbow is served everywhere – but even that though comes with the question of sweet, dry or draught! The best thing of all in Moranbah, and throughout Australia, though are the drive-through off-licenses, they are as frequent as fast-food drive-throughs!! Most even have 2 lanes, one for drive-through and one for browsing. Quite why you need to have your beer at such a fast speed is beyond me at the moment, but the whole culture in Australia seems similar to America from what I’ve seen so far in that people just don’t walk anywhere, they take the car.

Kitchen part 2 - this is taken from our front door.

This weather situation does take some getting used to; a few days after we got to Mornabah, in beautiful sunshine and clear blue skies, it started to rain, we had a few days of grey skies and continuous rain. Now to me stuck in the house this was perfectly normal, however when Andy got back from work he said people were running to the windows to see this amazing spectacle – turns out it hadn’t rained there in about 8 months! So, this is why they are able to have open air pools. There is a bit of a water shortage issue here, and we have a ban on hoses and sprinklers. The rules just aren’t straightforward though – something like you are/aren’t allowed to water between 8am-10am and 8pm-10pm on a Monday. We should be glad we moved here this summer though because last years was even better – I found a leaflet in one of our drawers saying that odd house numbers could water on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday and even house numbers on Tuesday, Thursdsay, Saturday and none on a Sunday. They do enforce these rules as well, so I’m thinking this must be the police wanting to firstly kill a bit of time in trying to work out whether number 23 are using next doors sprinkler on a Tuesday, and secondly fill up those cells of theirs.

Kitchen part 1 - cos it's so big it doesn't all fit in one photo!!
Flowers are the ones from mum and dad and the mining boys can see their framed picture on top of the microwave!

Moranbah

It was a strange feeling when we finally set foot in the infamous 26 Belshore Street, the mysterious address we had quoted to people for the last few weeks, not even knowing whether it really existed.
Michelle, our ‘Township Administrator’ had taken us on a little tour round the sights of Moranbah before she left us at our house. She showed us the main shopping bit, where there are about 30 little shops, a huge Coles supermarket – which is the Tesco of Australia, and a shopping mall with another small selection of shops. To begin with my initial peruse at the shops was with a little disdain, they all look like you are walking down the roughest street in Leeds – however they are amazingly diverse, and very well stocked, there’s not much you couldn’t get here from a computing store to a nail bar. I thought about why upon first glance these stores weren’t desirable to me and I realised it’s because in England we rely so much on chain stores. There are not actually many places I shopped in England that weren’t chains, even the village shop was a Spar. Almost every shop I went to in England, even if I hadn’t been to the city/town before, I knew what to expect and where to look for things. Of course, the places in England where you don’t get chain stores tend to be the back streets, which is what Moranbah’s shopping centre resembles, and after visiting the city of Mackay this week, is also what this is like. Brisbane, on the other hand is much more commercial and is full of chain stores, there’s even a HMV and a Borders bookshop.

There were also all the public amenities such as police station (complete with cells which astounded us when we saw how quiet Moranbah was – the call for prison cells didn’t seem to be necessary, particularly when at our home town of Selby they have abolished theirs… a move equally as absurd for the opposite reasons!), a fire station, ambulance (again, these guys must beg for something to happen, we saw the ambulance just cruising round the other day looking for business) and a hospital – which we particularly made a note of in readiness for my pending knee injury.

The selection of sports facilities is fantastic, there is a pitch for everything you could think of, namely rugby, AFL (Aussie rules), football (soccer – tsk), hockey and I think cricket as well. Moranbah even has its own race course!! Albeit there are only 2 meetings per year, but they are meant to be great days/nights out, there’s one coming up in November and from the stories we’ve heard it sounds like we’ll be in for a good day! There’s also a squash court, a gym (which we get free entry to) and 3 swimming pools (kids, heated and Olympic-sized) – to which we also get free admission. I went swimming the other morning, I got there at 9am, which is actually very late, considering it opens at 5am and closes at 10am for the morning session!! This is for all the shift workers, or people who want a refreshing dip before work. Unlike our English public swimming pools, the ones here are completely outdoors just as though you are on holiday somewhere.

Just found out today that Ben is depressed :-(

For all those of you who are far more interested in knowing about Ben than us (Stuart!), well his eye ulcer has now gone, but he has had to have the vet out again who has changed his medication because his eye is still sore. Just got his release date through which is 24th August, so we're so excited about that... not as excited as the £350 we have to pay to the quarantine station though, or even as excited as the £300 we have to pay to fly him up to Mackay!!
The girl who looks after him told me today that he has been a bit depressed for a few days, so we're feeling sad for him now and can't wait to spoil him rotten when he gets here!!

Look who we've just found on our garden fence... we had to use super zoom to dare to get this close!! Our first spider, and unfortunately probably not our last!

Our house, palm trees in the garden and backing onto the bush!

Thanks to mum, dad and Kate for the gorgeous flowers waiting for us by the front door!!! That was a surprise!!
No houses here, or indeed in Australia, seem to have letterboxes, they all have mailboxes outside at the edge of the road. I suppose the time and injuries these boxes save the postman must be quite substantial, but to me they are a bit of a pain because you have to keep checking them on the off-chance something is in them. I think a good invention would be to have a little flag on them to say whether there is some mail in, but maybe that’s just laziness?!

Getting intimate with a kangaroo

On our second day in Brisbane we had a meeting at the Anglo Coal HQ in Brisbane with a cross-cultural trainer and psychologist! She was actually really good and spent the whole morning with us telling us about Australia (after rather embarrassingly neither of us could recall the capital city or prime minister - I blame the jet lag) and its quirks and features, also about sports, newspapers, wildlife (at which Andy went visibly pale) and the language. We got bags (literally) of brochures, maps, leaflets, etc. etc. and met up with some of the Anglo people there who all seemed nice. Interestingly they had an alcoholiser breath tester in the kitchen...

Our flight up to Mackay was on the next (Friday) morning at 6.30 so we got picked up by the limo at 5am (luckily our jetlag meant this was quite acceptable!).

Eventually, we got to what is to be our home city - Mackay, and picked up our hire car for the next few weeks, a Toyoto Avenger (or something like that). We drove into the city and stopped at McDonalds - striving for familiarity!! It amazes me how muli-national companies manage to have everything standard throughout the entire world, the McSausage and Egg sarnie didn't disappoint.

It was then time for the 2 hour drive to Moranbah where our house was waiting for us. Andy drove and I map-read - I think I may have got the best job seeing as it's one very straight road for almost the entire journey.

I have already told some people that we were very distressed that our first kangaroo sighting was roadkill at the side of the road :-( After thinking we had witnessed something remarkable, it quickly became apparant that kangaroos don't take their green-cross-code at school and were as common roadkill as rabbits are in England.

It is quite important to have roo bars fitted to your car/4x4 here as a kangaroo through the window can be serious - for the kangaroo as well!

After endless miles of road and bush and dead things, we came upon Moranbah and located our house at last at about Friday dinner!!

Andy with the 'roos

For any of you who have seen the excellent film 'Lost In Translation' - or indeed have been this far abroad, then the wide-awake at 4am is sooo annoying, and took a good few days to get out of. After that is the going to bed at 8pm stage, we actually broke records last night and it hit 10pm before we went to bed. We were so proud. We've been told that jetlag can take upto 3 weeks to pass.

In the square at Brisbane near our hotel, with a random church between the skyscrapers.

By the time we got to Brisbane we were pretty spaced out, with the small issue of a 9 hours ahead time difference just to totally finish us off! We landed at 6.30am on Wednesday 27th July after taking off from Leeds/Bradford at 6.45pm on the Monday! Little did we know as the incompetent check-in assistant smiled at us in Leeds that he had only tagged our luggage to Singapore, meaning that we were at the other side of the world with no suitcases. Strangely we were quite calm about the whole thing, as anyone who knows me knows that these things happen quite frequently in my life!! They gave us $200AUD which is about £90 between us to buy some clothes with which was Ok. We were quite excited about the driver with a proper hat and uniform on, holding a 'CYGAN' sign (unbelievably spelt correctly) as we came through arrivals, he then walked us to a limo (sadly not a stretch) and we had our first conversations with an aussie bloke, with us trying to speak 'proper' so that he could tell what we were saying. Of course, he mentioned the cricket.

After flying from Leeds, we then flew on the 10.10pm from London Heathrow on Monday night, into Singapore on the Tuesday afternoon and then flying onto Brisbane a few hours later. Whilst at Singapore airport for 3 hours we managed to fit in a massage and shower at a spa in the airport - THOROUGHLY reccomended!!! And at a very reasonable price.

We were staying at the Carlton Crest hotel in Brisbane for a few days, which I would recommend for anyone who visits us. It's very nice, 5 star, only the best! It is also right in the centre of Brisbane. As we got to the hotel ridiculously early in the morning, then they were never going to have a room ready, so off we plodded into the city in our 3 day old clothes - mmm.

The first place we ate was a true Australian place called 'Subway' - oh yes, almost as bad as McDonalds!! Then came the problem of needing to buy clothes but not actually having a clue what clothes shops are good/cheap/should be avoided. Also, because everyone (as we come to find more and more) is so darn nice all the time, then you can't just wander into a shop and drift out without having a huge converstaion about where we came from, how long we were here for and the fact we were shopping for clothes because our suitcases were still in Singapore ("hey, Sheila, get this, they're from England right, they've been in Australia for a few hours, their luggage is in Singapore so they're shopping for clothes and they're stood here so calm, wow"). We eventually found a kind of Topshop/man equivalant and bought some stuff. We had been told, by one of our friendly shop assistants, to go and walk on South Bank by the river that runs through Brisbane, so off we plodded in the searing heat (yes, this is their winter) in our jeans armed with a bottle of water. Apparantly there is a man-made city beach by the river and people swim and everything. South Bank is beautiful, lined with posh restaurants and a casino at one side, and across the river is a path all the way along passing cafes, rainforest walks, and baeutiful landscaping and then on to the beach... but we didn't make it that far, the heat, the excitement and the jetlag all gave us a big kick and we reluctantly had to turn back and beg the hotel to let us have a room slightly earlier than the rules allow. We decided, being the sun worshippers that we are, to utilise our sleep and the fact it was sunny, by going up to the pool on the roof of the 16-storey hotel and sleeping up there. This was great for a while, sunbathing in the centre of Brisbane! We then went back to the room for a nap, and ended up having a good 4 hours of sleep and waking up feeling totally washed out truly not knowing whether it was 6.00 in the morning or the evening. There was absolutely no way we could go to any of the wonderful city restaurants, instead we staggered to the hotel restaurant, which was very nice - for those of you who will repeat this story on your own travels!
So, that was out first day in Australia, the start of our big adventure!

G'day!!

I'm Helen, from Yorkshire (England), and I am currently sat in my kitchen at my house in a town in Queensland wondering how the hell all this happenned!
6 months ago I was working extremely hard doing an IT consultancy/support job at SITS Ltd, and my partner Andy was unemployed as he had been made redundant after working as an electrician in a coal mine at Riccall for 9 years - which to be fair he did for the money rather than for the love of it!
One day late January after enquiring about a job as an electrician in Leeds, the recruitment consultant on the phone asked what experience Andy had - he said unfortunately he had no experience of wiring houses because he had worked underground all his life. The guy on the other end of the phone said excitedly - 'Hey, I'll put you through to my boss, we might have a job for you'. The boss asked Andy whether he fancied working in Australia, to which Andy laughed and said we had always wanted to travel to that side of the world. Boss said send your CV and a letter in ASAP as they are coming over from the coal mines in Queensland, Australia to interview next week. That night we put together a great CV and cover letter, and sent it off by e-mail to await our fate. We probably thought we had about a 1% chance of this ever coming off! After an interview and then an hour phone interview with Australia it gradually dawned on us that this wasn't just a dream anymore it was going to be reality.... On these pages you should see the story unfold of how coal mining changed our lives...!!


...because all Australians wear these!!