Nous ne faisons que nous arrêter une nuit dans cette ville industrielle, d'autant plus que l'alerte cyclone ici est bien présente... Les gens font des réserves de nourriture et d'eau dans les magasins: l'atmosphère est assez étrange... Nous reprenons la route vers Broome...  encore des kilomètres...

We made it! We surived just over 12 weeks in Port Hedland! We worked very hard and managed to save $15,000! (that's 6,000 pound!)

We were sad to say goodbye to a lot of people (and happy to see the back of others! hee hee!) and had a good last few weeks, going out, eating well and visiting South Hedland for the first time (we had not left where we worked for 10 whole weeks...owch!) The two new girls who came to work with us a couple of weeks before we left were fab... both fom Cornwall and a good laugh...miss you!

I also went to see the stairway to the moon the weekend before we left which was pretty cool. The moon rises over the water like a giant orange ball in the sky and the reflection of the moon on the mudflats creates what looks like steps leading to the moon. It is a pretty special sight and I am very glad I got to see it...John didn't manage to go because he had to work - it was my night off so I went with Mercia, the deputy manager of the All Seasons, John from reception and Derek, an American guy who was working in Port Hedlan and living in the hotel. We had a good laugh waiting for the moon to rise as we sat in the pitch dark on the beach with mossies attacking us from all angles. There was quite a strange and errie atmosphere as we waited but we all stood up in awe as the moon rose behind the sea. It was a good night and we all went for a chinese in town before heading back to the hotel.

When everyone finished work, we all went to the pier for a couple of hours to celebrate Hayley's upcoming birthday and our leaving. We all got very drunk and sat in front of the hotel by the beach drinking till all hours...a good night was had by all.

So it was time to say goodbye....I didn't want to say goobye now. We were like a little family, eating, working, living and socialising together. It was hard but it had to be done. We were treated to a great meal from the hotel on our last night and were plied with drinks (thanks Mercia - it was very cool of you :) and said our goodbyes - once that night when drunk and again with hangovers in the morning...really hope we'll see some of the gang again some day...sniffle, sniffle...

 It is now officially winter in Oz, and we are still here in Port Hedland, living and working in the All Seasons Hotel. I say winter, the 'lovely cool weather' that everyone has been raving about turns out to be still in the high 30's (that's 90 - 100 degrees!!) And this is winter! Crazy! We have been here just over 2 months now and have been working VERY hard...so hard in fact, that we have managed to earn just over 4,000 Pounds between us in that time...not bad we think.

It is starting to get very draining now though. This is a very small town where nothing happens...it's only purpose is to mine the iron ore here and so most people are here to work. About 90% of the people staying in the hotel work in the mining industry and live in the hotel for 3 or 4 weeks at a time, then have a week or two off and return here. We, therefore see the same people daily and as we live on site, it can feel like you never get away.

On the upside, Port Hedland and the Pilbra Region, where we are, has some of the most spectacular sunsets you will ever see. Every night the sky is a different mix of reds, oranges, yellows, blues and purples and no two sunsets are the same...it is so awesome and we sometimes all run to do the room service run each night so we can have a good look at the sky.

John is now working in the Bottle Shop, which is the Aussie version of an off licence...with a twist...this is a drive through – yes, a drive through. Customers drive up to the bottle shop, John comes out, they place their order (which is usually a few crates of beer), John goes back inside, grabs the alcohol they want and loads it onto their truck or car, they hand John the money and it's a done deal, they drive away..It is mad! It is like a drive through Mc Donalds...but with alcohol, and they wonder why they have a problem with drink drivers over here?! Anyway, Danny, who usually does this job, has gone to Perth for Easter and so John is filling in for two weeks. He says he is so bored...he takes a book to work because there can be spells where no one comes at all and then 4 or 5 cars turn up at once. He does not like being on his own and would much prefer having someone to chat to but it is a softer deal in some ways as he starts at 2 in the afternoon and finishes at 8 or 9 at night, so that is good.

I, however, am still working in the Bistro. I have been doing lots more hours lately and have been doing 3 shifts a day sometimes, breakfast, lunch and dinner...this means, 13 or so hours a day, in split shifts, spread over about 17 hours, starting at 5 in the morning and finishing about 10:30 at night..very tiring! Good news though, is that Easter weekend means public holidays, which means double time! Yay! I worked 13 hours on Easter Sunday which means I get 26 hours pay for just one day.

We don't think we'll be here much longer though, and are trying to plan the next part of our trip at the moment before moving on. All in all, we are good, working hard and earning good money and having a few nights out with friends too, in the only night club in town and about the only place that didn't get affected by the cyclone...mainly because it is an open air bar and does not have a roof to blow away!

Oh yeah, and we have added a few pics to the cyclone blog too! xxx

We are still here.  That may sound a little dramatic, but had you been here, you' d be happy to say the same!  Cylone George, which was supposed to be heading north of us, decided to do a dramatic U-turn Wednesday night, and instead nose dived straight for our sleepy town of Port Hedland.  We woke up Thursday morning to a flurry of activity, as everyone got ready for a storm that, if it kept its current intensity of category 4, was going to hit us with 275 kms winds and hurricane like rainfall.  Everything that could be blown away had to be tied down or put away, and we had to clear everything from our ground floor rooms in case a sea surge flooded us out.  Exciting stuff!

We started our shift in the bistro at around 6pm when we were under yellow alert, which meant we had to prepare for the upcoming storm which could arrive within two hours.  We served the in house guests who naturally were not working, as most ships had gone out to deep sea to avoid the storm.  At around 7.30 the television and radio broadcasts were interupted to advise us that we were now under Red alert, which meant that we had fifteen minutes to close the hotel down as the strom was heading straight for us and just miles away.  Just as we finshed reading the announcement, the power went as if right on cue, and we started to ask everyone to leave as soon as was possible.  The guests went to their cyclone proof rooms, we went and got our night bags and essentials from our non-cyclone proof rooms, and starting settling down for a night on the floor of one of the hotels function rooms.  At this stage the wind was nothing short of furious, bending the trees backwards and lifting sand and small debris like they were peices of paper.  So needless to say the run to our room was a manic one!

We shared the function room floor with around ten other staff members, watching dvds and talking as the wind raged outside.  Around one or two in the morning the worst of the storm hit, and we started getting calls from worried residents about how safe their rooms really were.  We finally started nodding off one by one, and we were all sleeping by around 4 when we received a call from an Australian television network asking how much damage the storm was causing!  As if we could see outside.  The night passed without further incident for us, and it seems we were lucky to be where we were, as we found out the next day.  We woke early and headed back to our room, through the hotels grounds which looked like a bomb had exploded.  Debris was everywhere, trees were literally bent double and some had fallen, and even some metal fences that must have weighed a few tonnes were dragged across the grounds.  Our room had a small flood on one side, luckily not the side our bed was on, but we swept it out and got ready for our shift to start.  No rest for the wicked.

We began to hear stories during the day of fatalities, a woman at a mining camp ten miles north had died when her donger (like a mobile home) came apart around her and the roof fell on her.  Another couple had been killed somewhere up the coast, a similar story.  Three dead in all.  Many buildings had lost their roofs,  a local pizzerea, the local yaught club, tonnes of houses, and 8 flying doctors and 16 nurses were flown in to treat the wounded.  The storm maintained its category 4 status until well inland, and loads of mining camps were either damaged or destroyed, but most had fortunately been evacuated.  We got our power back within 24 hours so we have done quite well here at the hotel, but it is one of the few mostly brick buildings around here, most of the houses here and in large parts of Australia are just steel or tin.  Lucky for us we were not, as things may have been different. 

And so you'd think thats where our cyclone story would end, but we were told that night as we set about our dinner shift that another one was heading our way, cyclone Jacob.  That was supposed to hit last night, Sunday, but instead it breezed passed us today and was only a category one, not the category three it had been two days before, so no damage done.  The night before the torrential rain had been so strong our room started to flood again, but we used towels to keep the rain out so it ended all right.  We are both fine, if a little sick of cyclones now like the rest of the staff, we've had our cyclone experience now and thats enough for us.  Our manager just walked in to tell us that we are now all clear for the moment, so we will be taking the tape off the windows and reverting back to normal as soon as possible.  Its all ended ok for us, and hopefully the poor sods without roofs and power will get it back soon.  Hopefully this is the last blog you'll read about cyclones in Port Hedland from us!!

So much for Perth!!  After planning to stay in Perth for 3 months, we arrived to find that the jobs were not that plentiful and not as well payed as we had hoped.  We started asking about another option, country bar work, which we had heard about.  Essentially you get sent to an outback, out of the way bar where they need staff, and in return for room, food and a good wage you must commit to 3 months with them.  So, 1900 kms later and here we are in Port Hedland!

Its a tiny 'town', if you call it that, which only exists due to the mines here.  The port is officially the busiest in the world, exporting 33% of the world iron ore each year and shipping more tonnage than any other port.  There are around ten shops although we've only seen two of them, around 4 bars and two hotels.  We work in one of the hotels, the All Seasons.  Its has around 67 rooms, a sports bar, a bottleshop, a bookies (of course, Aussies love to gamble), and a bistro.  Leanne and I work in the bistro mostly, Leanne's waiting tabls, I'm doing barwork and waitering.  Its exactly what we expected it to be, with not much to do during you time off, so we have no way of spending our money.  The work is ok, it gets busy sometimes but you'd expect that.  Our accommodation is definately what you'd call 'basic' but we do have 2 movie channels so that kills some time.  Small mercyies!  Its good to be experiencing a different side to Australia, not just the touristy places like Sydney and Melbourne but the proper Outback.  When we arrived in our room it already housed a small gecko who has since moved, and a jumping spider that pounced around the window until he had an encounter with the latest hardback book i'm reading.  The town is red, literally colored red all over, from the dust that the deep mining spews into the air.  If you leave you car out for any length of time it too will change colour.  We are in cyclone country now with signs up everywhere warning what the risks are at the moment.  And, as we recently found out on a trip looking for fishing spots with another couple working with us, we are also in croc country, with signs warning would be swimmers to do so at their own risk.  Add to this the posinous snakes which are seen on the hotels grounds once a week, and needless to say you have a mix that makes us keep our eyes firmly on the ground when walking!!  Its good though, all and all, that we are experienceing the Oz of legend and not just the pre-packaged side of things.

The only real issue at the moment is the heat, which gets above 40 most days, and was above 44 everyday for about 6 days recently.  Its gets everywhere and is almost unbearable during midday, so we spend lots of time in our air conditioned room.  We have been here 3 weeks now and have 9 more to go, before hopefully heading off with healthy bank balences to spend in Asia.   That will mostly be due to not having anything to spend it on, and the long hours we are doing.  Leanne, to her credit, has to do the breakfast shift as well, starting at 5 am, so the days are sort of blurring into one another and making things go quickly.  So thats all for now, sadly we have no internet in the hotel and I have had to walk 40 minutes in the 42 degree heat to write this for you at our 'local' library.  Its expensive too dispite being dial up, so I best go and hope I have enough to pay!!  Leanne is in bed as I write, sleeping off a morning shift.  Hope fully we will have more to write soon other than about work, as we try to see the 'sights' of Port Hedland.   G'day for now.... 

so after a chilled last day at coral bay (more beach and snorkelling!) we hit the road on saturday. as its such a long way to broome we are staying overnight at christines friends house in port hedland, which apparently is a major player in australian mining (or something like that!). after driving what seemed like forever (and i wasnt even driving!) we finally arrived and had a couple of beers- of course!