Australia Adventure: Phase I!

Damn, I haven’t touched this page in a while! It seems to be a recurring theme in my writing that I emerge from some exile/adventure and begin blogging again.

However, my present adventure has taken me a little further from my normal stomping grounds. After finishing the geological field season in the mountains of the Yukon (our camp got snowed out....in September!), I started planning my next trip, and that was Australia!



Downtown Perth!!


I have been here in Perth on the West Coast for over four months now and many interesting things have happened to me. I would like to tell you about my journey and to do that I will need your attention for three blog posts. This is because I feel that my Australian experience has taken the form of three phases thus far. Each phase is distinct from the other and has given me great perspective into who I am and in what direction I wish to position my life.

The first phase being my arrival and consequent job search. So with that in mind, I feel it is appropriate to begin with my reasons for coming to Australia. Traveling to the land down under came about during my final year of my geology undergrad, as I wanted to start my geological career off with a bang and thought that Australia might fit the bill. It is also worth noting that wages are quite higher here with minimum wage being about $16-20/hour, and a starting wage for a junior geologist of about $350/day as opposed to $275 for most places in Canada. So, my main reason for the move was to find geological work in order to further my career. However, I felt that I needed to shake things up a bit in my life. Four years of university in my hometown had left me with many great experiences, but I felt that I needed to branch out. I needed to see if I could thrive on my own; to become this person that I had a vision of but was unable to achieve in my current state.

So, I said goodbye to my family and my friends and boarded a plane out of TBay. It wasn’t easy saying farewell to the people I cared most about, knowing that I may not see them again for quite some time. Looking back now, I don’t think I had a grasp of how long I would be away. Perhaps I had it in my mind that I would be back for Christmas and celebrating with everyone. Whatever my initial thoughts, I did not make it back for Christmas holidays, but more on that later. So after some quick stops in Toronto and Los Angeles to visit some friends on their own journeys, I landed in Perth on the West coast of Australia. Perth is considered the centre of the mining industry in the country, so it seemed like a no brainer to travel there first.


Fishing with the cousin and friend!



I was fortunate to have an Irish cousin living in Perth with his girlfriend (now fiancé) who invited me to stay with them. They live in one of the Northern suburbs which is an hour bus/train commute to the city. I was glad to have a room to myself as I was terribly jetlagged, and only recovered after a full week of rest. During this time I began to explore the city and get to know its transit structure. However, my top priority was getting a geological job and I launched myself full force into achieving my goal. I quickly found the city’s public library (for the free wifi of course) and set about looking on job sites and company profiles. I had spent a considerable amount of time in the summer contacting recruiting agencies and browsing through job sites so I had a good idea of the best way to go about finding a geo job.

I made appointments with recruiters, dropped in on company offices, had coffee with industry officials, applied for countless positions online and met with connections I had made through my time at university. I decided to craft my job search as a job itself, with me working a nine-to-five day. I would spend countless hours in the library applying and sending emails. I would travel to areas in the city with dense populations of geology offices and go to each one, receiving welcoming smiles but no job offers. It almost made no sense, as the city of Perth is on a mad expansion streak and the mining industry here is booming. However, due to the slowdown in the global economy and the low price of iron ore, geologists across Australia have been laid off as exploration programs were shut down and investors began sitting on their money. My search went on for almost four weeks before I began to feel discouraged. I had exhausted myself in job seeking and was disparaged at my lack of success. There were times that I felt coming to Australia had been a mistake, and that a flight back home would soon be in order.

But my lack of a job was not the only reason for my sorry state. I was spending my week frantically searching for work and neglecting my social and entertainment life. I would travel back to my cousin’s house every day for dinner, which ensured that I would not be doing much in the night as it was a good hour transit back into the city. Sure, I would go out on Friday and Saturday night with people I had met during the week but for the most part I was feeling unfulfilled. It doesn’t help that I then turned to the comfort of TV to kill time at night. I have many shows and movies on my computer and I began watching them...a lot. During the month of November, I made it through all the seasons of Dexter. It was enjoyable and comforting for me to come home and indulge in watching a serial killer kill other serial killers (hooked straight from season one). It was almost like an escape from my lacklustre job search and I fully embraced it. Looking back, I can clearly see that I withdrew from the world for a time. I’m not happy with myself for letting it happen but I eventually emerged again, and decided to go to the beach!

It saddens me to admit that it took me three weeks before I made it to a beach. However, once I walked onto the white sand and stared into the welcoming blue ocean I felt a sense of relief. It was as if a wave of happiness surged through my body at the sight of such wonders. Needless to say, I would make many more trips to the beach in the near future.



The beach!!  And a special stone from a good friend :)

My previous paragraphs may paint a bleak picture of my beginning in Perth, however there were many great times. I had met a girl from France on my connecting flight from Hong Kong and we ended up living close to each other so we explored the city together. My cousin introduced me to his friends and took me fishing with him. I visited many clubs on the weekends and thoroughly enjoyed my introduction to the Perth dance scene. I hit up a gay pride parade where Wynter Gordon performed. It was a lot of fun, but it got real tiring being hit on by other men.

Quite interestingly, I had kept in touch with a friend from my elementary school in Abu Dhabi who had moved to Perth and arranged to meet up with him. He ended up inviting me out on a boat with his girlfriend and their families to cruise along the Swan River and do some wakeboarding. It was great catching up and awesome to try wakeboarding. Got up on my first try!

I also attended thesis presentations by geology students at the University of Western Australia. It was neat to sit in on another university’s lectures and see how things were taught and delivered. I made some connections with the students and was invited to a cocktail party at the Fire and Ice Bar in Subiaco. It was a great night of socializing and boozing!

And then there was Stereosonic. A full day concert packed full with DJ sets by the biggest names in the business including Avicii, Porter Robinson, Zedd, Calvin Harris and Tiesto. I enjoyed travelling from stage to stage to take part in the sights and sounds each DJ offered up to the throngs of crowds before them. I found my place in the middle of the sea of people, loving the enthusiasm and inclusivity of the crowd.  



So many DJ's!!

So, all in all the beginning of my journey wasn’t that bad. But I couldn’t help feeling unfulfilled and I figured that my job search had reached a tipping point. I then decided to look for other work unrelated to geology. This would allow me to stretch out my time in Perth and get through to the New Year when the market might be in better shape. More importantly, it would give me a purpose and hopefully drag me out of my sorry disposition. Passing a downtown hostel, I saw a posting for a data entry role at an office firm. They offered good money and hours so I contacted them and was offered the job.

Searching for a geology role took a backseat to my new job as I worked Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm at the office. I was working with a team of women that was quite international, consisting of the countries England, Ireland, Denmark and of course Australia. We would spend the day combing through letters and correspondence from the 1950’s and 1960’s between aboriginals and government representatives in South Australia. This allowed me to familiarize myself quite well with the state of native affairs in Australia. It surprised me to find out how similar Australia’s history with aboriginals was to Canada’s. Residential-type schools, reserves (stations they call them here), and the crazy shenanigans we all hear about. Within those documents were stories of horror and pain, and of hope and redemption. It troubles me that things were (and in some cases are still) that awful.

Getting to and from work every day from my cousins’ house took a great deal of time. I was spending a combined two and a half hours a day on the bus and train. It was running me ragged as I consider sleep to be one of the most valuable of commodities and I wasn’t getting enough.

Three of the girls I worked with were staying at a hostel downtown and were always talking about the drama and shenanigans involved. It sounded like a lot of fun and I began considering whether I should try the hostel life. They invited me to try it for a weekend, thus beginning the second phase of my Australia journey. A phase I will share with you in my next entry.

Check out Australia Adventure: Phase II!

 

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