Life at Glen Helen

So I’ve been at Glen Helen for about 3 and a half weeks thus far. Still haven’t gone stir crazy yet!

I’ve finally gotten the hang of things here (or at least I think I have). I’ve made quite a few mixed drinks, and I now know all the beers we serve and where to find them in the fridge. I’ve even picked up some of the slang words for some of the beers. Australians shorten everything, even the names of beverages. I’ve also gotten really good at heating up meat pies in the microwave and restocking the refrigerators. I really enjoy restocking. I have no idea why. As soon as someone buys a drink, I have to fight the obsessive need to immediately replace it.

I’m not the world’s best gas pumper (I swear, the thing doesn’t like me and gets stuck specifically when I try and use it), but I’ve slowly gotten the hang of the whole waitressing thing. I’ve even done it en français!  It took me a while to work up the balls to do it, but there was one day at the bar where the guy was having trouble understanding the price of something, so I just switched into French. He looked so happy to not have to struggle to work out what I was saying in English. There was even one night in the restaurant where I waitressed 2 of the tables entirely in French. Explaining honeydew melon in French was not easy though. I really want to brush up on my language skills. On the few occasions where I’ve shown people to there rooms in French, there has been a lot of me pointing and gesticulating and referring to places/buildings as “things” because I can’t friggin remember the vocabulary words. It’s slightly annoying. But it’s been good fun!

I got my very first bee sting! Ironically, it happened the day after I was having a conversation with someone describing how I’d never been stung by anything, and felt that I was kind of due for it. I was down at the Glen Helen gorge with the housekeeper and the helicopter pilot, laying on my towel in the sand trying to get some color. I rolled over, and a bee must have been underneath, and I got jabbed right in the bikini line. It stung a bit at first, but then when I pulled the stinger out I winced in pain for the next half hour. But at least I now know that I’m not allergic to bee stings! Found out the hard way on that one J

I’ve also seen my first wild dingo. I didn’t quite believe anyone that they actually existed at first, since everyone else seemed to see them and I never did, but I saw one by the water hole 10 days ago or so. A dead one was also found down by the gorge yesterday. Not sure what happened to the poor little guy.

I’ve also gotten accustomed to cleaning bathrooms. I mean my own is a damn disaster, but I can make the campground, bunkhouse, and homestead bathrooms look spic and span. It’s not so bad really. You just put on the rubber gloves and scrub away!

I figured up here I’d spend most of free time reading and writing and watching all 6 seasons of Lost. But I’ve yet to open a book, and my DVDs are still in their shrink wrap. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I do with all of my time, but it does seem to go rather quickly. Heck, I even went over 2 weeks in between blog entries! I spend a lot of time with my coworkers. What we do with our time is a great question, but the time does seem to pass quite quickly. It’s the slowest time of the year up here, so there aren’t that many of us working up here at the moment. There’s the housekeeper, the currently helicopter-less helicopter pilot (the helicopter doesn’t get here till next month, so he has a lot of free time on his hands), two other girls who basically do the same job I do, the two owners, and their son who is usually a manager but is currently the interim chef, since apparently 2 days before I got here the regular chef sliced his figure and had a psychotic meltdown and ran away. Very small group, so you almost have to go out of your way to not be friends with people. Mid-day trips to the gorge for swimming and nighttimes on the outdoor couch with a drink or two seem to be quite commonplace. But I’m really enjoying it all so far. Everyone gets along pretty well (for the most part J) and it’s a cool experience. It’s almost like living in a plastic bubble though. We work together, eat together, hang out together, and have nowhere else to go. Isolation doesn’t even begin to describe it! I really don’t mind it all though. I rarely find myself bored.

Here are a few more pictures of my new little world. Here’s the outside of home sweet home:

And here is a photo of the front of the homestead. This is what you see when you turn off the main road and head into the driveway:

This is the inside of the homestead:

That’s where I work, watch tv, go “out” (sometimes we take over the bar at night for a little night out on the town…), eat my meals and vege on the couch.

Let’s see… what else is there? I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the Giants win the Super Bowl! The game was on Monday morning, so instead of Super Bowl Sunday I had Super Bowl Monday. The guy I basically replaced, a Patriots fan from Connecticut, was still here then, so I got to watch the game with a fellow American who was rooting for the other team. It was a fun morning.  We didn’t get the commercials though. Instead we were treated to random images of Australian landscapes.

And I must mention my pet! Yes, I have a pet in Australia. His name is Toilet Frog. I named him that because he’s a frog who lives in my toilet bowl. I usually see him at night. One evening one of the guys fished him out of the bowl and set him loose, but about a week later toilet frog re-appeared! I’m convinced that he’s gotten attached to me, and I’m really happy that he found his way back, even after he was given the choice of freedom.

I’m slowly getting used to the bugs here. They are everywhere. You just kind of have to embrace them. The wasps are especially fascinating. They’re quite pretty, but they’re huge. Not terribly aggressive, but their size makes them a bit intimidating. Sometimes the guys catch them and then stick them in cups in the freezer so that they can tie strings to them. Then once the wasp wakes up from its freezer coma, it flies around with a piece of string attached to it. We sure do know how to entertain ourselves out here!

 I’ve also completely planned out my journey around Australia, and am now just in the process of booking everything to secure my place. It’s going to be quite the whirlwind tour, but I’ll get to see most of what I wanted to. It’s kind of funny how with a whole year to see all of Australia, in the end I’ll be cramming 90% of my sightseeing into 2 and a half months. Time sure does fly!

That’s all for now. It’s only about 100 degrees here today…practically sweater weather!