August 24th

Happy Birthday to me!

Still out on the sea. Seems like this trip is going to be just over 2 weeks. I think in three days time we will be going to the harbour to unload.

The mackerel has been coming in nice and steady and in big numbers, which is good. I'm getting faster and better at my job which means I don't get cursed at anymore, which is also good. So life is good.

I have been thinking about Koh Rong lately and how I miss the place. Not the work but the wibe of the place itself. I want to go back there. I want to go be a boatboy for free for some of the nice boat drivers there.

I also want to go to India. To see Rajastan and Varanasi. And to go hiking in the Himalayas.

And I haven't done any of the ”must-do” things in Australia yet. There is Uluru (Ayers Rock), Great ocean road, Fraser Island, Byron Bay and so much more.

If I travel around here after I hop off this boat I am afraid I don't have enough money to do anything else when I leave the country. Except to go back to Finland and start working again.

If I am lucky this gig will spawn me another season fishing for something else. Maybe my captains son knows a boat I can go on working for the scallop season. That would give me more chance of income and it ends in December, so I would have more money to possibly do more than one of the options I have...

But time will show.

EDIT:

While sitting on the railing on my tiny spot between the net reel and the sea waiting to put on floater bubbles on to a net speeding past me faster than one meter per second, I had a time to think before the boat reached it's desired fishing spot. I will just play this out first and see what the end result is. No use for me to start getting ahead things even if I feel the travelbug itching on me harder every day.

Maybe it would be a good idea to do some research on India before just rushing off. Koh Rong will be there for me if I want to get back there. And who knows what future brings anyway?

For now it's still 45 days until the fishing season ends here.

August 18th

I was supposed to write a post when I get back on mainland for the whole fishing business but I have to do an update so I won't forget. I am now on my second trip out. First lasted 11 days and this will probably be the same. We are anchored in a small cove with few other boats because the sea has been little rough past couple of days. 2 nights ago before my captain decided to come here picking up the net was like working while riding a rollercoaster.

Today was a birthday of one of the deckhands of another boat here. 18 he turned. Young fellas. We went to the beach and had a little BBQ on a campfire. Very nice spending few hours off the boat. There was a crocodile slide on the beach. So at least 1 of them lives here. No swimming in the sea. Also many bullsharks and hammerheads around. Can find some tigersharks also in the area. Plenty of reasons to stay out of the water.

If some one had told me few months ago that I would be manhandling sharks big enough to swallow my arm I would have laughed at them. But when you grab a hammerhead by its ”hammer” it gas no chance to bite you.

And big bullsharks we don't get on board. Just shoot them with a shotgun to get them from eating through the nets.

Stingrays I don't touch. Not the big ones at least. Apparently the sting is very painful and can take you to a hospital.

Sawfish get caught up on the nets also. That is a no pick up species, but the only way to get them of the net is to saw off the ”saw”. Sawing a saw off a sawfish.

Maybe I should describe a normal 24 hours on the boat so you get a little picture on what I am actually doing:

6am.-7am. And onwards: Waky Waky! Time to have a cup of tea.

Reel the net back in from the last shot of the night. All 600 meters of it. Hope for Mackerel and nothing else. In case of sharks cut off the dorsal-, back- and the lower part of the tail fin to be frozen while we drive to anchor point. In case of edible size (black tips or small hammerheads) sharks cut off rest of the tail fin. The captain hasn't sold a fin in 3 years but keeps them anyway in case they start selling again. If there is only few sharks I get to cut the head off and gut them.

After anchoring pull all the frozen fish out of the trays in the snap freezer and bag them. Move to freezer room (-30 degrees celsius).

Breakfast time!

After breakfast cut, quarter and pack the mackerel in to metal trays averaging 11kgs each. Put in the snap freezer. I am in charge of quartering and packing. If I have a slow day my beloved captain will surely let me know about it. He is a kind of person that doesn't apparently believe in positive feedback. I guess 35+ years in fishing does that.

Around midday to 2pm. : Processing if the fish should be done by now. All left to do is clean all the boxes, baskets, knives and cutting boards used in the process. And scrub the surroundings of the working area on the deck. Free time until Tea (dinner). Down to my bed I go to watch movies on my laptop.

5pm. Tea time! Second meal of the day. Usually after this is time to pull the anchor and shoot the net out for the first time.

Around midnight: Lets see what we got, shall we? Reel the net in, take out the fish (which is hopefully mackerel and not big hammerheads) and put them in the brine tanks. If there is less than 30 trays of fish, shoot the net out again.

3am-4am: Time to check what the second shot of the night gets us. If still not enough, shoot the net out again. These shots with 10-20 trays of fish in it only take around 1 hour to pick up. Unless I am again ”fucking around wasting time”. Luckily I am starting to get a hang of how to put the net on the reel evenly so I don't get told off from that too often. Only when I am too slow picking out the fish.

7am: Waky Waky! And it all starts over again.

Timetables are subject to change. Sometimes we keep the net in the water for a longer time on one go and do only 2 shots, sometimes skip the first shot, and IF we get enough fish on the first or second shot, we pull to the anchorage and start cutting the fish straight away. In the night.

So yes, my Australian adventure has surely started.

The fishing season ends 6.9. Remains to be seen if my captain kicks me off the boat before that or if I jump ship fed up taking shit. But I think he is like that by nature. And I am polite enough person not to go all out on 64 year old guy who somehow reminds me of my grandfather. I bite it and scream and curse at him in my mind.

ps. There is absolutely nothing I can spend money here. I pay 20$ a day for food (taken out of salary) while on board. And when we go shopping I can choose what ever snacks I want. And the food he cooks is good.   

Fishing diaries

I am sitting in Heritage Resort hotel here in Weipa having a cold beer and my first WiFi connection since starting the job on the fishing boat. And my first day off. And it tastes good!
Soon it will be a year since I left Finland and it kinda feels funny. Wonder all the things that have happened there? I read from an email that my cousin is getting married soon. Big hugs and all the best for them!

I will post a string of post what I wrote down while on the boat. Still no camera so unfortunately no pictures. Those have to wait until I finish my trip and get back to civilization. And camera shops.

By the way. If any of you readers have suggestions or interests on what you would like to hear what is not here, don't be afraid to ask.

Northbound

One night about two weeks back I was browsing some plane tickets completely fed up with Melbourne. It was cold as a Finnish autumn. Temperatures topping at 15 degrees celsius and raining on a daily basis.
The job I had was good fun, but only just barely enough to pay my rent and get some food on the table. I was wasting my days away in a guesthouse -though a very nice one that is- doing nothing when I was supposed to be on my great Aussie adventure.
So plane tickets I did book and the cheapest option was Cairns. I was supposed to head to Perth because judging from Gumtree the outback jobs originated from there. But what the hell, I wanted to see Cairns also.

So on the set date I arrived to the airport with a new duffelbag filled with the clothes accumulated during the cold days in Melbourne.
There is a cliché going around that Finnish travellers always go around with a knife. I was no exception.
So when checking myself in I declared the sharp objects in my luggage and the machine instantly blocked me from going further and asked to contact a staff member. So I did and she said it was no problem and just check "no" on dangerous items. 15 minutes later I am happily reading a book in the boarding hall when I hear my name called for check-in desk 14. Didn't I just come from there? The same lovely girl greets me there and says: "when you said you had knives in your luggage, I thought of a swiss army one. I didn't expect a borderline sword!" I guess I should have been little more specific.
After chatting a while with this girl the AFP-officials finally arrive and we can go see my bags and what all the fuzz is about. Before one of them puts his hands inside my bag he double checks me: "are there any other sharp objects? needles or such?" I assured him all 4 of my sharp objects are in sheaths, although he should grab the machete by its cardboard container to avoid cutting anything. It was a nice chat with the guys and they let me depart with all of them, the kitchen knife, my army and carving knife and my Cambodian machete.
Apparently the last one is illegal in the state of Victoria but I had a valid reason for having it. A farming tool that can be useful while camping, etc. They thanked me for my happy disposition and back to my book I went having seen a part of an airport people don't normally see.

After spending a day in a guesthouse in Cairns I felt the atmosphere really antisocial and started looking for something different. The cheapest option was Asylum guesthouse so I decided to go take a look. When the staff heard where I was going they snorted and said: "You get what you pay for in Cairns."
I don't need en-suite bathroom in my dorm and Asylum seemed a little run down, but my friend told me he had good time while in there so I decided to give it a try. Within 1,5 hours after checking in the day after I had already met more people than I had in 2 days in my old guesthouse. Enough said.

Yesterday morning I was having my morning tea and decided to browse Gumtree yet again not expecting to find anything there since it had been really quiet in there and the banana season was still a week away. Somebody needed a deckhand on a mackerel boat and I thought: "Fuck it. the ad is posted 3 minutes ago so why not send them email. They won't respond anyway." I was wrong. 15 minutes later I had an email with a phone number asking to call him and talk further. Tomorrow when checking in to fly to Weipa I will remember to mention the size of them knives. I hope this 4 months will be the real start to the great Aussie adventure.


Seems Weipa is a little off the beaten track...

Unstuck

Time for me to be moving again. The job I had here in Melbourne was enough to pay my rent and bring food to my plate. Just barely. And that is why I'm not here in for.
So in an hour I will take off again and head to the airport. Tomorrow morning I will arrive in Cairns and hopefully to better grounds for jobs.
Lets hope my bad luck in jobs changes in a new city...

The world of bussies

So I did some math... In a good week I would be making 450-600$ working for KK Sales & Marketing. Which is not bad as money comes. But that is in 50+ hours of work. The national minimum wage is 17,59$/hour. You get the rest.
Now I am working in a nightclub as a bussie a.k.a. glassie. So I collect glasses, fill up the ice and carry more drinks to the bars. And this pays 20$/hour. Last weekend I worked 32,5 hours between Friday 20:00 and Sunday 13:00 so I made 600$ in that time. Yeah, I'm not going back to sales. I am not nearly ruthless enough and I apparently lack the skill to summon enthusiasm out of thin air to close in the bookings. So screw that. Back to the business I am familiar with.

Our deranged family of bussies is something I enjoy myself with. The hours are long, work is hard, but still I would not change it to being a bartender in that venue. They are there mainly to open bottles and mix very simple drinks to a bunch of retards, I mean customers. I could out do any of them if it came to that.

Last Friday was one of my most interesting working nights I ever have had. I thought doing that gig on a nude cruise years back in Finland was it. I was wrong.
For confidentiality issues I won't be able to tell you much, but I can tell you the rules:
For us: No eye contact, no engaging customers
For customers: Only sexy clothing, no long pants unless they are chaps or see through. No jackets, dresses or normal street clothing. Or anything else the organizers deem unsexy.
You understand already the rules for bussies? There was also a grope-box and exhibitionist lounge. And free condoms on all tables and bar counters.

Tomorrow is Rn'B party and Saturday the usual technoparty. Let's see if I find 85$ in change/bills on the floor again this weekend.

Winds of change

So Hunky Dory was not so hunky dory as it first seemed. The chefs knew how to smoke the new guy out. I lasted all of 3 days taking shit from the guys and them telling me I am getting payed under the national minimum. After seeing the roster for the second week and seeing only 1 shift there I said sayonara and good riddance to the guys and took off. After getting my paycheck (almost 2 weeks late) I realized that the guys were just bullshitting me about my wage. I had been paid the minimum (17.59$/hour). Oh well, guess they didn't want me there.
Lucky I landed a job in sales instantly after quitting there so my money is still coming in.
I didn't want to tell you guys about it until I had been there for a while and see the money. You know what kind of stigma door-to-door sales have. But I don't need to even sell anything, I'm just making appointments for a solar expert to go in and have a chat with the homeowners and try to sell them some solar systems. It is still hard work and lot of walking but at least I get to see all these nice suburbs and get a lot of fresh air. :)
Still looking for something else though because this is still not what I came to Australia for. But if this makes me enough money, I will bite the bullet and do something cool afterwards.