The Chicken

At the start of every week for more than four months, I've taken the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Shepparton. Just as I pass Clonbinane (one hour north of Melbourne), a hill looms directly in front of me.



One day, I got a lift with Paul, my boss. When this hill appeared before us, he said, "Ah! There's the chicken! I always look forward to seeing the chicken."



I was startled. "I always thought it looked like a chicken too! I never mentioned it."

"Well, Nat and Katie knew about it," Paul said, naming the two work colleagues Jamie and I replaced on this Shepparton job. "Katie always said, 'Have you seen the chicken yet? You know you're halfway to Shepp when you see the chicken.' "

I was quite pleased. So I wasn't the only one.

The next week, Jamie was driving me up.

"Look," I pointed. "There's the chicken."

"What?!" Jamie said. "Have we talked about this?"

"No, I talked about it with Paul last week. Every week I've been seeing this chicken and he says that he, Nat and Katie have noticed it too."

"Well, so have I," said Jamie. "I keep forgetting to mention it when we're driving."

A month later, Erin joined us on the job and was introduced to the chicken. The chicken photo on this blog entry is thanks to her efforts in the car. It's a good farewell present.

Send in the big guns

Jamie walked into the house and found me and Erin slumped in the living area.

"How's it going, team?" he asked, with the cheerfulness of someone who has just had a great workout at the gym.

"Mission failed," I announced. Erin and I, too, had visited the gym. Erin was up in Shepparton until the end of September. I had taken Erin to the gym this evening, hoping to get her on the 'No worries, no commitments' deal Jamie and I were on. If anyone could do this, it was me, champion negotiator, super mediator.

"Failed?" Jamie said, surprised.

"Yeah," said Erin. "The reception lady said that deal was only for people who did the '$40 for 40 days' special. She said I could get a 12 visit pass. It costs $116!" Jamie and I were paying $51 per month.

"We didn't even take it lying down," I added glumly. "I asked her if there was anything she could do. 'We're only here for a month,' I told her. 'It's join or not join.' "

"What did she say?" Jamie asked.

"She said that she couldn't do anything. The prices are set by the council and she'll get in trouble if they see she's changed the prices," Erin said. "I guess she can't help it. It's not her fault. Oh, well. I'll just jog around the lake or something."

"Yeah, that's a shame..." Jamie said absently. "Maybe I'll try talking to Mel when we next see her." Mel was a friendly receptionist that Jamie and I sometimes chatted to in the evenings.

The following night, I had just finished washing the dishes and had wandered to the living room to see what was on TV. The front door opened.

"Hi guys." Jamie was back from his evening gym workout.

"How'd it go?"

"Yeah, okay," Jamie looked vaguely dissatisfied. "I'm keeping off the legs a little. They're still feeling a bit tight." He peered around to see what TV show was on.

"Did you get to talk to Mel?" I said idly.

He brightened. "Girls, our troubles are over."

Erin sat up "I can join?"

"Here are your free gym passes for the next week…" Jamie slapped down four or five bright blue squares of paper. "...and Erin can take over Joan's gym membership when Joan leaves after next week."

We gaped at him.

"And, if we show up on the right night, you won't even need to pay the transfer fee!"

Erin and I started laughing. "What?! How -- ?"

"Cheerio," Jamie said as he bounced out of the room.

The Spider and the Doorknob

"There's a giant spider," I called as I was pulling the bathroom door shut behind me. "Oh!" I cried.

"What's wrong?" came Erin's voice from around the corner. "Did the spider jump up?"

"No," I said, puzzled. "I just broke the doorknob...and I'm bleeding." I examined the doorknob. It was made of some sort of ceramic and had sheared off at the neck.

Jamie came around. "You are bleeding! Are you okay?"

"There's a bit of blood but it's a small cut. Look at this!" I handed the snapped doorknob to him. "How weird is that?"

"Yeah, that is a bit strange!" Jamie put his finger on the stump of the doorknob left on the door. I kept my eye on the spider less than a metre away.

"God! It's cut me too!" Jamie exclaimed. He showed me the thin red lines of blood on his index finger and thumb. "That's a bloody razor blade! I barely touched it."

"We'd better fix it up so no one else gets cut."

For a while, Jamie and I debated about the best method for removing the stump or sealing the door. In the mean time, Erin had gone into the bathroom, come out and wrapped a face towel around the stump.

"How's that?" she asked.

Jamie and I stopped in surprise.

"Yeah." Jamie nodded appreciatively. "That'll do it."

We all stood there marvelling at her handiwork.

What I did today

Jamie and I woke up early to go to the gym.

Then we went to work for my 9 AM phone interview. Forty-five minutes later, the interview finished and we rushed to the car. We had a lunch time appointement two hours away at Cairn Curran. Jamie drove quite fast.

While Jamie interviewed the boss at Cairn Curran, I had two Peters show me around. I was there to audit the site's environmental compliance. I took photos with my big camera.

We were very late by the time we wrapped up. We grabbed lunch at another country bakery (the sixth one I've visited) and made our way on the windy road to Eppalock. It took less than an hour. Jamie really is a good driver.

At Eppalock, I did another site inspection. Jamie talked to another guy.

Then it was time for the two hour trip back to Melbourne. We skipped the Heathcote Bakery (been there, done that) because we were running late. Again. Jamie is rarely able to get to his Thursday footy training on time.

I dropped Jamie off and drove further along to get home. Mum had a delicious hot meal for me. I did homework. Now I'm blogging. Why am I blogging? Blogging is my friend.

Censusless

I was really looking forward to filling in a form for the five-yearly Australian census. You have no idea how much I love forms.

I was in Shepparton on August 8. Jamie, Erin and I were going to have a census party. We were a household.

The form never showed up in our letterbox. It wasn't even under the doormat. Perhaps it was because we live in a serviced apartment. Yet, when our hosts dropped by for a chat the next day, they told us that guests staying in the other apartments were given forms.

I was crushed.

I particpated in a telephone survey this morning but even that couldn't ameliorate the pain of losing my census.

An Australian treat

I've been visiting country bakeries. I'd say 20% of the reason I put my hand up for this job in Shepparton was because I wanted to buy baked goods from small country towns.

One of our favourites is the Nagambie Bakery. We've tried their apple cakes, carrot cakes, iced coffees, hot chocolates, foccacias and pizza bread, roast beef sandwiches, vanilla slices...

One day, Jamie recommended a particular sweet. It had a biscuit base, a lemon/vanilla cream cheese type-filling and a layer of red jelly.

"That's a jelly slice, Joan," Jamie said. "A great Australian treat. You've never had one? You should definitely try it, then."

So we bought the jelly slice and it was, indeed, a treat.

That weekend when I got home from Shepparton, my mum and dad told me that Aunt Tuty was coming for dinner. Aunt Tuty grew up and studied in Indonesia. She came to Australia to do a Masters in Information Technology. She met a nice Australian bloke called Graham and they got married and bought a house in suburban Melbourne.

"Hello Joan," Aunt Tuty said when she arrived. "How are you? When are you off overseas?" She was carrying a large white tray with a semi-transparent lid.

"What's in there, Aunty?" I asked.

"I don't know what it's called," she said. She placed it on the kitchen bench and lifted the lid. "Graham's mother taught me how to make it. It's very yummy and easy to make too."

I looked inside to see an ordered array of cake squares with red jelly tops.

"I know what they are!" I cried. "Jelly slices! I had one the other day!"

"Jelly slices," Aunt Tuty repeated. "Probably. I think Australians like them."

An alarming week 2

Finally, after two months navigating the administrative maze, my manager in Shepparton was able to give me my own access pass. Hooray! No more time-consuming morning inductions.

On Friday, I used my new pass for the first time. I arrived at 7:50 AM, about half an hour earlier than usual. I waved the card in front of the back entrance.

Beep beep beep.

Hmm. Doesn't want to open. Guess I'll go through the front.

I walked about 100 m to the other side of the building, up the ramp and faced the glass doors. None of the lights in the building were on. I had never been the first to arrive before.

I held my card near the reader. Beep. That was more like it. I heard the familiar click of the door unlocking and pushed my way into the dark building.

Oooooweeeeeeee! Oooooweeeeeee! Oooooweeeeeee!

"What the- !" The piercing alarm seemed to be right next to my ear. I looked up and saw the siren.

Some people arriving at the door of an adjacent building looked at me as I stuck my head back out the front door.

"I've set off an alarm!" I said helplessly. "I don't know how to turn it off!"

"I'll see if I can find someone to shut it off," a man said.

Alone, I stood in the darkness just inside the entrance. I must stood there for two or three minutes. Finally, Chris and Pat showed up for the start of their work day.

"What have you done, Joan?" they said, shaking their heads and smiling.

"I broke something," I said in a small voice.

"Tsk, tsk." Chris swiped his employee access card and the alarms stopped. Pat reached behind a tall filing cabinet and switched on the lights.

I declared, "That's the last time I come early to work."

An alarming week

At midnight, I cracked my eyes open, confused. Why did I wake up? Then I heard a loud beep, followed by another, and another. It sounded far away.

"Smoke alarm?" I thought. The pitch was too low for it.

I got up, cold, and followed the sound to the spare bedroom in our serviced apartment in Shepparton. The offending noise was coming from the alarm clock. Blearily, I whacked it a few times before my hand found the 'Timer off' button.

"Hooray," I muttered, and padded back to my warm bed.

When the alarm went off again at midnight the next day, I spent half a minute trying to work out how to reprogram the clock, then finally yanked the cable from the power socket.

Reprieve

Every day in northern Victoria is a clear day -- no rain, no clouds. We get beautiful light this side of the mountains.

It would normally be something to enjoy, this spring holiday in the middle of winter. However, we've been working with farmers and I'm starting to understand what drought means to them.

"We're hoping for rain real soon," we were told a week ago. "There are farmers out there with their fields empty. It's pretty much the end of the sowing season but they can't sow anything without water. If they miss this season, it'll be the second one in a row..."

Jamie and I walked down the corridor of the main building, towards the exit doors. We were suddenly surrounded by a constant tapping.

"What's that sound?" I said, puzzled.

We arrived at the windows and saw streaks of movement flying down from the sky and exploding on the ground, turning light grey asphalt to dark grey. The dark grey began as splotches but soon turned into a uniform sheen. I saw clouds for the first time in the two months I've worked in Shepparton.

"Rain!" I cried, almost in disbelief. "It's raining!"

"Fan-bloody-tastic!" admired Jamie.

"I'd forgotten what it sounded like," I murmured.

When we entered the next building, I felt the buzz of celebration.

"It's raining!" people crowed. "About time! Just in time!"

"There will be a lot very happy people out there today."

This is Lake Konardin in the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park. That's right, it's a lake.

Weekend in Mildura

The reason I haven't posted anything for almost two weeks is that I spent last weekend in Mildura. I took lots of photos, many of which I am happy with. Please have a look at my photo album, From Shepparton to Mildura.

I'm glad I saw it before I have to leave Australia. I might miss these landscapes.

The pub with no beer

We drove to Leitchville, a tiny town of about 500 people. Why were we in Leitchville? Because it was the nearest town to the middle-of-nowhere place we had to go to. We were there to meet David, who was going to give us a tour of the Pyramid Creek Salt Interception Scheme.

"Meet me in front of the pub," David had said. "You'll know which one it is. It's the main building in town."

We pulled up in front of the pub and parked alongside another car and a van. On the other side of the carpark, David waved to us. After a short discussion, we hopped into his car and started the twenty minute drive to the Scheme.

For the next two hours, David showed us the structures that they used to control the flow of Pyramid Creek. He took us to the pumps that sucked salty water out of the ground before it flowed into the creek. Jamie and I tasted the groundwater -- it was almost as salty as sea water. David then drove us to the evaporation pans: 200 hectares of pooled water, waiting for the sun to evaporate it and leave behind white crystals of salt. The salt is then processed and sold as gourmet salt, amongst other things.

We were almost finished when my mobile phone rang. I was surprised I was even getting reception.

"Hello, Joan speaking."

"Joan? This is Michael from Avis. Do you have one of our rental cars?"

"Yes, we've had it for about two months."

"Is it parked in front of a hotel?"

I was confused. We had left our hotel in Shepparton this morning. "Um. You mean, a hotel in Leitchville?"

"Yeah, Leitchville. We've just had a call from the hotel owner. He's going to tow your car away in fifteen minutes."

"Excuse me?"

"He says that you're parked in a loading zone and a truck is coming to make a delivery. If the car isn't moved in fifteen minutes, he'll get it towed away. I've got his mobile number. His name is Ryan."

"Oh." I racked my brains. "We're not actually in Leitchville at the moment. I don't know if we can get there in fifteen minutes. But, look, I'll deal with it. Could you give me the number?" I scrawled the number down on a media release about the salt interception scheme.

I hung up and called 'Ryan'.

"Hello, it's Ryan."

"Hi Ryan. My name is Joan. Avis called me to say that our car is blocking the way in front of the pub."

"Yeah, a little silver car? It's in the loading zone. The beer truck is coming. I need to get it moved."

"We can get there in twenty minutes," David murmured to me.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said into the phone. "We didn't realise. We'll be there in fifteen, twenty minutes to move the car. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, no worries. The truck will arrive about then."

"Good, then. I'll see you soon."

We wound up the tour and got back to the Leitchville pub in 17 minutes. Jamie hopped out of David's car.

"I'll move it and go into the pub to let them know it's been moved," he said.

"Thanks, Jamie. The guy's name is Ryan."

Jamie tells me later that when he went into the pub, it was like a scene from a Western film, when a stranger walks into town.

"I walked in," Jamie recounted, "and everyone turns to look at me, dead silence. I said, 'Uh, g'day. Is Ryan around?' and they all pointed to him."

An inland ocean near Leitchville

Giant block of city ignorance

For my work in Shepparton, I speak to many farmers and country people. I've lived in cities and suburbs my whole life. This is something I have to confess to people so that I can explain my ignorance of basic agriculture, geography of regional Victoria, even Australian slang.

Jamie has been my first line of defence in this new environment. He grew up on a farm in south-western Victoria. Often, I let him do the banter and questioning while I sit back and absorb as much information as I can without revealing my city girl cluelessness.

I am grateful that I have had this opportunity to learn more about rural life. I don't want to be an ignorant urbanite spouting off about water being wasted through irrigation, over-fertilising of crops or vegetation clearing.

Jamie tells me stories about about growing up on a farm.

"The farm back home isn't big. We grow lavendar, also some beef cattle. Sometimes when a cow has two calves, she'll pick one to look after and abandon the other. The abandoned one doesn't last long. It's just the natural way of things.

Sometimes, though, when dad felt like it, he said to me and my brother, "Josh, Jamie, if you want, you can look after the calf."

Josh and I would come back after school every day to feed it. It was really cute, looking up at us with its big cow eyes. We were its 'mum'. It would come towards me and nuzzle my leg. Every time, it would be looking for my udder.

I would hold my hand like this and it would suck my fingers. You have to be really careful, though. You have to have your hand palm upwards. Cows have strong mouths. If you held you hand like this, with the fingers facing down, the calf would snap your fingers backwards when it sucked."

Goodness. With my newly acquired knowledge, I felt my giant block of city ignorance chip away just that little bit more.

I fell again

There's a lake near where I live in Shepparton. We try to go for a jog around it in the mornings at about 6 AM. I used to run one lap while Jamie ran two, however, I found that I could probably run 1.3 laps instead of waiting until Jamie appeared around the bend.

One morning, I decided to do an extra loop in the far south-west corner of the lake. There's a bridge that cuts across a section so I thought I could cross it a few times to add some distance to my run.

It all went to plan until I headed back towards the main trail. Suddenly, my foot had caught on something and I was falling. Instinctively, I put my hands up to protect myself before I hit the gravel.

I bounced back upright before the pain hit my palms. Winced. Couldn't see the damage in the dark. I hobbled back to see a low hanging chain between two posts. It was less than a foot off the ground.

I brushed the stones and dirt off my palms as I slowly walked away. In two minutes, I was jogging again, more slowly this time.

The sky was lighter when I got back to our starting point. I rolled up my pants leg and saw a long gash of blood. It was shallow. Nothing as bad as the last time I fell.

Now, that would have been the end of it except for this postscript, the kind of postscript that often happens to Joan. An hour later, we were back at home getting ready for work. I grabbed my handbag and checked that I had the essentials.

Uh oh. Where was my phone?

Oh, I knew. I knew exactly where it was. Lying in the gravel near the south-west corner of the lake.

"Jamie, this is going to sound stupid. I think my phone fell out of my pocket when I fell over at the lake."

Jamie stopped immediately. "Oh no! Are you sure?"

"Yeah... Do you think we should get ready for work then go back and find it?"

"No, I'd go straight away. There were a lot of walkers this morning. Do you want me to come with you?"

"No, I'll be right. Where are the car keys?" I grabbed a fleece jumper, shoved my feet into sneakers and ran to the garage.

I parked as close to the western end of the lake as I could, got out of the car and started running -- for the second time this morning. I wondered what the people who saw me thought, this girl in black dress pants and a shirt, with a baby blue polar fleece top and blue sneakers running around the lake at 7:45 AM.

I was lucky. The phone was still there.

I could not have asked for better

At the start of the week, Jamie and I drive north for two and a bit hours. We do mildly confusing work for another company, then drive about twenty minutes to our apartment.

We're in a new apartment every week. They seem to get better and better. The one we were in this week was really a house with a full kitchen, king sized beds, thick fluffy towels and complimentary chocolates.

Even better, there was enough space for me to teach Jamie how to cha cha and samba. We spend a third of the evening cooking, the second third dancing, and the hours before sleep time playing the guitar and singing.

It's a wonderful life.

	We start the evening by cooking in the kitchen. Jamie and I discovered that yogurt, cucumber and rice is a delicious combination.
	The mark of a good housemate: courtesy in regards to the use of the bathroom.
	Despite having a queen bed, I only ever sleep on one side.
	We didn't turn on the TV all week. The DVD player got a workout, playing dance music. Jamie also kindly consented to being my karaoke machine.

I second that

Consultants are renowned for being expensive. If you have a senior engineering consultant come into your company to run a half day workshop, don't be surprised if you're hit with a $1500 bill, and that's not even including preparation time and travel. It's even more expensive if you ask an accountant or lawyer to do the same thing.

There's a crazy arrangement called 'secondment', where companies pay a particular consultant to work for them full time. It's like getting a new (competent) staff member except that you're paying them a lot of money per hour. It will cost you five times more to have a consultant on secondment to you than for you to hire a proper new employee. So I don't exactly understand what motivates companies to request secondees.

I'm going on secondment on Monday. I will be working from Shepparton for at least the next two months. Shepparton is about two hours north of Melbourne. I'm excited about going. I get to set up an apartment for myself and a workmate. I have the gadgets and wheels I need to do my job. I even have a generous food allowance.

I hope to organise regular internet access while I am away. The internet, even now, is a lifeline to me. I would feel lonely without you, my blog readers, my email-pals, and my Google-talk buddies.