No news is no news

This is an update on my life in Australia I have been struggling with, for there is so little to write.
I'm still in Burrum Heads and still looking for a job. 


In the last months I've applied for every job available around here: computer salesman at Harvey Norman, shop manager at the aldi, data-entry-clerk, coffee-machine-operator, cemetery-park-cleaner, bartender, waiter, manager at a toy store, but nothing. Some have the decency to write me an e-mail that I will not be invited for an interview, but from most you just hear nothing.


Then again, maybe I have to be realistic about finding a job here, because the unemployment is actually worse then it looks. The unemployment level around here is around 9%, but “A lot of those jobs have gone down to one hour a week, and cannot really be classified as full-time."


And without job and money there is only so much I can do, so few places I can go to and tell about. I don't think anyone wants to hear about the latest music I listened to, the latest books I read, or the computer games I've played, but that's what it comes down to.


Luckily, in 2,5 weeks, there will be a holiday to Fraser Island that I'm really looking forward to. I'll tell about that shortly and will give some more info on the nature here, for that's the only thing that I can really talk about.


I just reread what I just wrote and wanted to say one thing: Don't worry about me, I'll be ok. I just had to get this off my chest and out in the open.

Daylight Saving Time

Since a couple of weeks all the programs on radio, my FC Twente games on TV, the moment my friends in other countries wake up and more starts at different times. Because when Europe, the U.S. (except Arizona) and 3/4 of Australia went to Daylight Savings Time, this Queensland state did not. 


After trialling daylight saving in Queensland for a total of three years, a referendum was held on 22 February 1992, with the question: “Are you in favour of daylight saving?" and was defeated with a 54.5% 'no' vote.This referendum showed that public opinion on daylight saving in Queensland is geographically divided, with the ‘no’ vote strongest in the north and west regional districts, while the ‘yes’ vote was strongest in the state’s metropolitan south-east. Overall this means that Australia, as a nation, now has 5 different time zones.
Atop of this, there is a Daylight Saving for South East Queensland Referendum Bill, thus creating a sixth timezone, but it seems a majority of the people in southeast Queensland agree with this idea. 


I find it all a bit confusing and brings me to my other point: Although it may seem otherwise, there is almost no such thing as Australia. People are from New South Wales, Queensland or Victoria and that is still divided. Australia is a Federation of States, but prior to the Federation in 1901, each of the Australian colonies was more like its own country with customs houses, railway gauges and even their own military. It was neither natural nor inevitable that Australia would be federated, in fact it wasn't even a very popular idea. (More on this here)

Preferential Voting

Much like the states in the USA, they have their own parliaments and make a lot of their own laws. Even the voting system differs from state to state, which, as ex-political science student I found very interesting. Each state has a bicameral Parliament except Queensland, which abolished its upper house in 1922. The lower house is called the Legislative Assembly, except in South Australia and Tasmania, where it is called the House of Assembly. Tasmania is the only state to use proportional representation (like in the Netherlands) for elections to its lower house; all others elect members from single member constituencies, using preferential voting. (Really Interesting!) The upper house is called the Legislative Council, and is generally elected from multi-member constituencies using proportional representation. The three self-governing territories, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Norfolk Island, have unicameral Legislative Assemblies.


This all brings in some kind of rivalry between the states. West Australians feel they are the 'forgotten state', Sydney and Melbourne have a fierce rivalry, but I have mostly seen the Queensland part of it. 
Queensland is rich in natural resources, but far away from the political centers in the south. So people from the south states who move north to Queensland are occasionally named "Mexicans" because they come from "south of the border." People from the southern states sometimes refer to Queensland as "The Deep North", in allusion to the Deep South of the United States and the socio-political stereotype associated with it.

And then there is the almost hatred for everything that is New South Wales here. Most of it is mostly joking for now, but The rivalry between the states of New South Wales and Queensland goes back over 100 years, stemming from the attitude that New South Wales was the "Mother Colony" while Queensland was viewed as a poorer cousin.
This rivalry is now mostly played out in sports though, as you can see in the Rugby League State of Origin, on which I wrote before. And the name State of Origin says it all now, doesn't it ;-)


So that's it for now on another day off. Think positive thoughts for me that I'll have a job soon.

Long Overdue

Yes, I know this update is long overdue. The reason is unfortunately really simple: Not much has happened to me in the last 1.5 month.
It's quiet here and I have great difficulty finding a job. Hervey Bay and Fraser Coast have the highest unemployment rate of Queensland. There is also no seasonal work available at the moment so I don't have much to do, and without income, outings are off the table as well.

So an average day for me exists of computer, walking, reading, listening to music and doing Sudoku's. The weather has changed over the last couple of days and the temperature dropped down to around 25 degrees, which I like much better then the 32 it was.

Next Thursday I'm having another appointment with Sarina Russo, a job agency. I hope there will be a job available in the area, but now I'm also looking at working in the mines. The pay is really good, so maybe that will be an option. The only downside will be that I will be away for weeks and then home for a bit. So the first pay will go to a laptop of my own, so I can keep in contact.

The last thing that happened was yesterday. Finally I saw my kangaroos. And now I know why I haven't seen any around, they're all living in Toogoom, about a 15 minute drive from here. I saw about 50 when we were driving though on the bus. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me (sorry Roger) but next time I will.

That's all, but I hope I have more to tell next time.

Live Reports on Hurricane Yasi... right after the Cricket!

It's really true, all the live reports on the biggest cyclone ever to hit Australia, were brought to the good people of Queensland after they finished broadcasting the 6th day of the build-up-for-the World-Cup one-day-international matches in cricket between England and Australia.

One thing I've noticed in Australia is that they take their sports much more serious then they take themselves. Australians like to make fun of each other and of themselves. It can sometimes be quite harsh, but it's always with a smile. Australia's humor is dry, full of extremes, self-mocking and ironic. Great examples here

Black Australian Humor at the side of the road.

Also, at times like this, it gets quite black. While in some cultures it may be considered poor taste to find humor in these difficult circumstances, Australians tend to look for a lighter side.
Today on the reports on the Cyclone Yasi reporters asked: "What was it like, last night?" and the response you get from people who had trees flying through their car is "quite windy." People who had half of their house blown away talked about 'natural air-conditioning,' and 'finally having that sun-roof the wife wanted.'

Brisbane Rugby Leage

But then it comes to sports in Australia. Those are taken seriously, they are very well covered, reviewed, debated, watched and bet on. Breaking News on TV is being postponed if games end up in extra time. A newspaper here (like the Courier Mail) has about 75 pages. At the end of December about 25 pages were about the floods, 20 pages were about Australia losing The Ashes to England, 10 more pages about other sports and 20 pages for the rest of the news. Also, it has an insert of about 8 pages filled with all the horse- and dog races held that day which you can bet on.
It's sports-crazy. And they watch everything. Cricket, horse racing, rugby league, motorsport, Australian rules football, rugby union, soccer, tennis and swimming. In 2008, the 10 best watched programs on TV were all sports.
Although I thought sports were already was quite big, people say it's only just starting. That's because the Rugby League is about to start, The most watched sport on Australian television with an aggregate audience of 128.5 million viewers in 2009. The biggest thing happening is supposed to be the State of Origin, which is an Australian best-of-three series of rugby league football matches between the Maroons, representing the state of Queensland and the Blues, representing the state of New South Wales. Described as "sport's greatest rivalry."
Not only Australia has this, New Zealand has the same. Prime minister John Keys of New Zealand just called new elections on November 26, highlighting the importance of the election date to fit around the Rugby World Cup - which will wrap up in October.

Such is the Australian population's devotion towards sport that it is sometimes humorously described as "Australia's national religion"
One good thing about this, is that I can even watch my FC Twente games live on TV, if I can be bothered to get up in the middle of the night :)

Ahead of the Storm

A small update from Burrum Heads.

I've been slacking a little bit over the last two weeks, just enjoying the weather, the walks and friends visiting.
But now there's big news from australia. Like if there weren't enough floods and bushfires the last month, Hurricane Season has started and it's a big one heading this way. To the right you see the actual picture of today and it's about to hit at 11PM tonight.
Luckily for us, it'll hit the North of Queensland and not where we live.
For us it only means some rain and wind.
The next picture shows how big it really is, when you put this cyclone over Europe:

We'll just have to wait and see. Tomorrow I'll blog some more and tell about the last week, about Kat started her new job and doing really well, and about hikes, bikes and the weather. (I'll rename this to Chiels Weather Blog shortly)

Everyday is like Sunday

Beach 2 weeks ago

Another small report from a rainy Burrum Heads.
The last couple of days have not been quite eventful. Either it's too wet to go outside or it's really warm and humid. Normally in the day I get up at about 7 'o clock, grab some coffee, see the morning news on the computer and I'll do some genealogy, for Kat's family or Kat's uncle. Eat, drink, go the pub for an hour and then some reading. Finished Huxley's Brave New World and now I'm plundering John's (Kats dad) bookcase and started reading Cell by Stephen King. The slow days are good for my goal to finish the BBC's Big Read before I die.

Kats picture of the frog

The nice thing about sitting outside in the breeze is also, that you can see some amazing animals around. Besides the annoying Cane Toads (Bufo Marinus - Buf voor Intimi) which are destroying the country, we see a lot of gecko's which can make a hell of noise for a small animal. When you think that there's a big bird inside in the middle of the night, it usually is a gecko.
Also sometimes we see the green tree-frog, beautiful birds (like the kookaburra), spiders and butterflies, all of which we're trying to take some good pictures of.

Soldier Crab Army

This morning Kat and I went on a little ride on our tandem to the beach. The weather was already 32 degrees at 10 in the morning, that the beach was the only reasonable place to go. Unfortunately it was low tide, so we had to walk at least half a kilometer to get in deeper water. Very fun was watching the THOUSANDS (literally) of soldier crabs running around. It's a big black army (hence the name) running over the beach and when you come close, they dig themselves in the sand.

Soldier Crab

We had a good time in the warm water and left just in time when the new thunderclouds rolled in, 'cause now its showering again.
From a soggy soils of Queensland, we wish you good days :-)

And here are some more pictures Kat and I took over the last few days.

More Army

Kat Today

Me on the tandem

St. Andrews Cross Spider

Kookaburra in the park

The Beach

Water, Water Everywhere

Greetings from a very wet Queensland. Most of you probably followed all the floods on the news. Lots of deaths, people being evacuated, 73000 people without electricity, and according to the reports, the worst is yet to come. The flash floods have now hit major cities like Brisbane, and they might be used to heat and drought, but since 1974 not to floods. To give all you people from Europe some idea of the scale of the chaos is here from the Guardian:

Queensland has been in the grip of floods – blamed on a La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific – for several weeks, and an area the size of France and Germany has been affected

Meanwhile, up here in Burrum Heads it's still ok. We have a lot of rain, but no floods. All around us (Bundaberg and Rockhampton to the north, Maryborough and Brisbane to the south) all the floods have hit, but up here at the coast we're still quite safe. (Look for interactive map here)

What we notice here is that we've been cut off from the rest of the country. All the roads have been flooded and there is almost no way in or out of the village. There is no mail untill at least monday, no newspapers, and food is on ration. You're only allowed one loaf of bread and one packet of eggs each, for instance. People are stocking up food, for the end is not in sight.

In between the rains, we have had sunny days as well. Last Saturday we went on a little trip to the dam around here. It was a massive sight to see. The lake was overflowing and the dam was almost not able to hold the water. The forest surrounding it was overflowing as well (see the top picture of this post.)
The bumpy trip up there (the roads are not as good as they used to be) was very interesting as well. Hundreds of thousands of trees, almost black in color, being used for the logging industry. The trees are almost black because of former forest fires, but they seem to have recovered quite well.

After that we went to the (now unreachable) town of Maryborough. A real interesting town to see. Buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century, some well preserved, others a little less. I was not able to take a lot of pictures for we had to leave pretty fast when the storms were about to hit, but I'll definately head over there when the weather gets better.
Well, that's about it for now. We will be safe aound here, although right now, another big storm has just started and it's raining big time again.