Settling down...

Before anyone is allowed to work offshore they have to undergo specific training including: first aid, CPR, fire fighting, helicopter crash escape and survival techniques. The training takes three days and is a combination of theory and practical and gives you four years working offshore. On completion you receive a certificate (this one I wont loose like my degree!) and a little card with your picture on. A picture that they take of you looking overly worried about the impending tasks and not wearing a scrap of makeup. It’s not a good look.

Overall, the training was really useful, pretty exciting and some parts could come in handy one day although there are some skills that I would never like to put into practise namely escaping from a capsized, sinking helicopter. In this exercise you are wearing: your bathers (thats Aussie for swimwear), overalls, a survival suit (all in one, airtight, skin tight number), booties (swimming shoes), a life jacket, a rebreather (think baby carrier on your front), gloves and a hard hat. What I’m saying is that you’re three sizes bigger and have lost about 80% mobility...and now you have to swim. 

They execute the training step by step to keep panic to a minimum and you have to do each exercise twice; once holding your breath and once using the re-breather. This is NOT an oxygen tank. This does what it says. Just before submersion you take a deep breath in and exhale into a pipe which part-fills your ‘third lung’. You then re-breathe this ‘air’ (depleting oxygen supply) until you reach the surface. It is not a pleasant experience. You can only re-breathe for about thirty seconds before you become dizzy and disorientated. Once submerged and capsized you have to smash out the window, undo your seatbelt and escape.

It was a busy week and as well as training to be Lara Croft we also had to move house. What a drama (that’s an Aussie fav phase!)!! Amazingly, we managed to bag the first property we viewed in Mandurah; a waterfront apartment with a parking space for a boat! It’s an open plan place with balconies front and back. We are five minutes from the beach, which makes me very happy, close the the Arts Centre, which also makes me very happy, and have lots of restaurants close by. Our closest eatery is a champagne and oyster bar which is located about 25 meters away! We have signed a contract for six months so if I were you guys I’d try and get out here coz it really is nice :-)  

Since securing a job and a long term ‘home’ the focus was now on making friends. This can be quite a daunting task as you have to put yourself out there a bit and push your normal social boundries. Having said that I wasn’t doing too bad. I had found a cultural companion for arty outings and a bashment buddy for hitting up the reggae joints what more could a girl ask for?! Oh wait, neither of these people were Aussie so that was the next task: find Australian friends. 

Karaoke, kangaroos and cocktails

So the first trip out to the rig went well; no major dramas and the work was easier than expected. Now I was back on dry land for an uncertain amount of time I had to make the most of it and spend my first Australian pay cheque (obviously this was not going to be a problem).

I hadn’t been shopping in ages and to be fair for once I actually needed stuff rather than just wanted it. Winter was approaching on 1 June and the 40 degree days that greeted me in Oz had dwindled to mid 20’s. Mandurah is a really small town but it does have a shopping mall and so off I went purchasing a jacket, some jumpers and a shawl for the cooling temperatures. 

The one thing the rig lacks is a bar and if you think the UK has a drinking culture you can think again (Mum, I know that sentence is not going to make you happy but that’s real talk!). The Aussies start ridiculously early and drink is companion to every activity; canoeing, boating, cycling, cinema, kids assembly (no joke - a fellow rig pig confessed this to me) and obviously the traditional Aussie Barbi. Any and no occasion warrant a good drink and my to-ing and fro-ing from the rig was no exception. On my return I hit the town with Jimbo and his harem of women, The Pussycats, consisting of me, Lady D, Miss Danger and Scratch and Sniff. After sampling an array of cocktails and various watering holes we landed up with free entry into one of Perth’s clubs. These were the kind of hook-ups I needed to establish in a new city and succeeded in in free entry and queue jump the following week. It was nice to establish a social network and to know which clubs and pubs to go to. 

Jim's Harem

As well as establishing friends and knowing the spots in Perth I also had to explore Mandurah which has a grand total of four pubs (one of which isn’t recommended for women!) and two clubs. I’d already been introduced to a friend of a friend from England (thanks Liz!) and had found out that a rig buddy of mine, Bunney, lives down the road from me with his wife Mel (who, may I add, is a professional chef) so I was starting to form a local crew! Sampling Mandurah’s pubs I found that Murphy’s does brilliant pub grub and hosts karaoke on a Wednesday night. After song number two me and Suz were taking requests and treating the pub stage like we were headlining at Glastonbury; we rocked the place and are full blown locals now with the bar staff knowing how to pour our drinks and security not needing to check our ID’s. 

Mandurah also has a lot of tourist things to do based around the canals. To make use of our water front property we decided to hire and boat and go canoeing so that we could go pass our house! Hiring a boat costs $90 an hour and it was a real treat. We cruised around the canals admiring the villas, mansions and yachts. I thinking boating is something I will be doing a lot of especially when summer comes back around. Canoeing was a little more strenuous but fun none the less. I was soaked by the end and despite sharing a canoe with Suz my arms ached the next day! Like surf clubs there are canoe clubs a plenty and Suz enjoyed it so much she is thinking about joining one. Me, I’ll stick to the motorised forms of transport.  

Canoeing in Mandurah