life on top of the oz

.

lotsa weeks have passed since I first got to snowy roof of Australia.
snow have come and left and come again and somehow keeps hanging on and ski season is still runnin.

i am professional photographer – sounds nice.
now read what it means if u fancy:
morning ~7 i wake up drink coffe with icecream and I eat something, like oatmeal porridge or muesli or hot cheese sandwitch. and I catch first bus up to mountain. I can keep my snowboard gear in the shop so I dont carry it home but just change in the office instead .
~8 i’ll be out doing first tracks on fresh snow.
~9:30 I get back to shop and we will figure out who will do what.
we means 6 people: our boss ian, and 5 photographers: christian couple nicki&josh, ian, mel and me.

boss doesn’t actually count - he does what he wants rest of us follow roster: one of us stays in the shop, one can have free day. other three will go takin photos. photos we take at jumps. jumps we make ourselves in certain locations.
there are 3-4 main locations, pictures can be surprisingly nice depending on settings of time&space&weather
its physical job, building a jump, riding with shovel, safetynet, sign. I usually ride with my workboots (steeltoe ones I got from phosphate hill) that doesn’t make riding any easier. running up&down to give tickets and shoot.

we attract people to come to jump give them ticket with number of photo, and take photo. ~10-12 we take morning photos then we make lunch ~13-15 we take afternoon photos, after afternoon photos we help selling photos @shop
~18 leaves last bus down to our village so by that time latest we will stop work get home get shower get dinner get to watch some cartoons and often get to the pub for some drinks and darts and talks and then get to sleep.

unsurprisingly enough our job is very weather dependant. if it shines sun we probably wont take day off or be in shop, we will all go to shoot instead. good reason for that is we get payed by commission so the more pictures we sell the more pay you get.
if it rains and is foggy and feels like taking out camera is very bad idea – then we can ride or go home and watch movies or sit in office and surf in the net.
hotham is just ski resort, there is no real civilization here, everything is small and expensive. closest place for real life is bright – small town ~50km down the mountain. three times a week bus goes there so sometimes i get there too. 1000m vertical and 50km road distance makes big difference. winter here, t-shirt weather there – amazing

so hotham is ski resort. considered one of the best in Australia, not the biggest but the one with most advanced terrain, black and double black runs, with open fields and forest and rocky canyons. bad side: vertical drop is ~400m, snow is australian meaning mostly wet and heavy and more than often gets frozen and icy, powder tends to last just one day as sun melts it and night freezes it.


there are some snowparks around with rails and jumps - they are appearing as season gets older.
altogether its enjoy enjoy enjoyable.

last weekend was big party in our town – dinner plain it is (with 70 permanent residents)
theme of party was hookers&deviates. quick trip to second hand shop in bright helped me to get prepared. with some makeup and beer and shots at home our ‘family’ got ready and there we went…


next day was very conveniently my day off

cameras: im not using my camera @work. there are canon cameras in shop, some 20d and one 30d. main lens is 17-85is. its nice kit. there is 70-300is lens also for some special shots, like races and chairlift photos.

pinnacle is name of place where I rented myself all gear for cross-country skiing. skis themselves r quite nice peltonen skating ones, poles and boots are crap but still very useable. there is nice skitrail going from my village – dinner plain up to hotham – top of the mountain. coming down the mountain this way is nice thing to do.

I did it yesterday. I say quite easy it is with just one decent ascent on the way. accidentally I was very tired that day after getting lost in backountry boarding that included epic walkout from bottom of the steep icy mountain (thanks G for perfect backpack that protects my back and enables fastening snowboard onto it for exactly this kind of happenings). so these ~14km took almost 2 hr and lotsa rescources from me. on my way I met shooting range where australian biathlon is incubated and some skipeople who made me smarter:
in end of august will happen kangaroohoppet – ski marathon that’s part of worldloppet cup. it will happen in falls creek that is another ski resort just few minutes of helicopter ride away from hotham. i seriously consider participating there.

ok now hoppet is history, weather was worst possible so it was extreme skiiing but its done and although final results are not known yet it looks like my place is better than my starting number 311

yesss...

back on the other side

.

thanks to good bus driver who gave me lift in middle of the night. and I arrived to empty house (my housemates Airi and Erwin were traveling somewhere).

what next? plan was to go and work winter season in Australian ski resort so I started to find a job and I found it – photographer I will become! it was almost one month till season begins hence I could do other things in Brisbane. I did. in evenings I worked at Brisbane arts theatre as sound and light operator.

cool job. voluntary so no pay but cool job. it meant this: I was sitting up in operator booth looking at play and pressed buttons on right moments to change lights and make sound effects or music. theatre is very positive. I climbed. as usual i bouldered in kangaroo point. as unusual I went to place called frog buttress – most famous trad climbing place in queensland.

rock is cool there - dream place for crack and corner climbing.

I went to other cool place - mount coolum - cool mountain on sunshine coast, hard sports climbing routes on steep and overhanging rock. that’s place to understand my level as I couldn’t redpoint easiest - 7a route.

people say: highest hill in Brisbane is mount cootha one nice Sunday I biked there. my map of Brisbane doesn’t know that area so I got lost on my way. thanks to my intelligence I got found again so with more effort than expected I saw it – it is nice indeed.

on my way I happened to biggest cemetery in Brisbane – very nice place, strongly recommended for all living ones too.

days passed until I had to go to airport and fly to Melbourne.year was 2007 when toomas got scholarship from Indian foreign ministry to study in delhi for 2 months. I met Anshul then. by strange coincidence Anshul contacted me week before my flight and it came out his brother Gaurav lives in Melbourne so it happened I got accommodation in Melbourne – world is small. thanks Anshul!

anyhow, two and a half hours in the air and I was there. it was night but even in darkness Melbourne was very different from Brisbane – positively different. with minor problems i found house in st Kilda where I was welcome. next morning I went where every tourist will - federation square.

remark:

as noted before I worked in theatre. not alone no no no. one of my collegues was iranian. it was he who told me about elections in iran. me myself had no idea whats happening further around me than I could see. that’s how I knew about ridiculous falsified results and demonstrations.demonstration was happening where I got there, federation square is useful place full of information, places to visit and plenty of room for letting others know what you have to say.tip about bike rental in Melbourne. to rent a bike @fedsquare for day costs $35 to sleep in dormitory in st Kilda costs $25 and there are free bikes for use.I walked around saw library and had scrumtious dinner in Indian restaurant with Gaurav.next day I walked and I found noble free bouldering place built under highway.

evening came and gave me chance cook owen baked potatoes and minced meat sauce for my hosts as an example of Estonian cuisine. they liked it :)
about Melbourne: I like it. my first impression in one word would be ‘dirty’. but nicely dirty. after brisbane’s sterile postcard cityscape it was heartwarming to see graffitis and disorder in streets.

there is atmosphere and spirit in this town, something like I haven’t felt in other oz town.and there is music. you can hear it played on the streets and you can see it on the posters on the walls. you can also happen to free gigs like me on opening night of salvadore dali’s exhibition where mojo juju and the snake oil merchants gave beauteous performance. check them out!

it was Friday when I woke up next morning. I had to leave to mountain. I missed buying ticket to special hotham ‘snowball express’ bus so I had found alternative way via train and busses. early morning tram (trams is 1 of many details that make Melbourne such a nice place as it is) took me to train station, train took me through fresh south australian landscape to warrangatta.

bus took me to bright and while doing it and talking with bus driver it came out his stepfather is Estonian and lives nearby.. then I was in bright. old goldmining town where walk by old river you can. few hours later another bus took me to hotham.

and memories of green warm bright were suddenly eclipsed by snowy mountaintops. one more bus took me from hotham central down to ‘dinner plain’ village.

eventually I could step into my new home, inhabited already by 2 girls who had just made delicious pasta bolognese and didn’t mind to share it with me – sweet home indeed.

thats my home in young july 2009...

back to europe... ?

.



I wanted to see G
I wanted to snowboard
I started to feel that I need rest.
I was working 12hr per day, no weekends, 1 day off after every 14 days cause rules required it.
I actually thought I understand why they used to send people to penal servitude / convict labor or however its called – nonstop working will really fuck with your mind. at least that’s how I started to feel – somehow negatively strange things. and my job was not actually so bad there was little of freedom and change in it. so respect to these poor guys in old times who had to do real thing like monsieur Valjean.

back to nowhere. so:
1. I called to my boss and told thank you for all the pleasure but I don’t want to extend my contract anymore
2. I bought ticket Brisbane-instanbul
3. I bought ticket Townsville-brisbane
4. I booked night in hostel in magnetic island

2.april - my last day at work lasted 30 minutes less than 12 hours cause I had a flight to catch. it is funny and good feeling to go into plane (and it’s a bloody big one. fokker100 has 100+ seats) and to know everybody there, all these people there I had worked with were flying home for a shift change.

night was hugging Townville when I got there, got lift to ferry port from one of my now excollegue – thanx! and there was eddie. heh small world - eddie also works in nowhere but he also lives in magnetic island, he gave me lift to my hostel in island – thanx!.


long story short: magnetic island is nice and I have a friend there.

next evening I was back in Townsville airport to get high and low and back to bris. 3 hours for packing and Aaron gave me lift to airport – thanks!

BNE-SIN-DXB-IST=24 hours+n

I was back in turkey and Galyna met me in airport, with skirt and everything :) oh, darling happy days will now begin...

and we took bus to Ankara, so went another night with my body carried around. good old Ankara, odty and people I had seen before. few days later after gathering our snowboarding equipment – G had got me new jacket and pants . my first real snowboardingpants ever! – yeee &thanx!

Ankara-tbilisi its ~24hr ride and our company in bus got very jolly singin dancing, throwing up. so we got to tbilisi. almost. almost cause it was Saturday - time for demonstration against Saakashvili hence Tbilisi was closed down for buses in fear of opposition reinforcements.

but we had a friend inside and he came and gave us lift to busstation and then marshrutka gave us lift to gudauri and then Otari gave us room in same house of sun where we had slept last winter and then we gave ourselves some time to sleep…

snow, lots of snow. not as perfect as last season cause sun was working hard but there was new lift hence new places to go and altogether this week was offpiste grandiosa!. in our last day there were competitions – first time ever in gudauri


and we were there and georgian tv was there and although we didn’t win 1st place&skis we still gave interviews as only international participants.

so it was Saturday again and we left snow to mountains and went back to Tbilisi where was spring and our friend Mate and small kick scooter and good time and big empty flat with kitchen where we played tavla and drank lemonade until it was very late/early.


thanks Mate! next to Batumi where we met Koka & family and visited spectacular green cape - botanical garden and absorbed georgian hospitality in many ways. it was easter time my dear readers. and we saw ourselves in the news giving interview in georgian – movie magic :)

next day off we went to border and started hitchhiking and after some time/cars/distance/bus took tour in trabzone and took bus to Ankara. not for long we stayed here but south we went.

geyikbairi is close to Antalya and very lalalaaa (very positive adjective) place for climbing. so next 3 days we climbed and slept and rain was with us when we left.


Ankara.
some time here as G is more student than me, meaning She even goes to uni if possible.

and then we had to go to Ukraine!


bus 2 istanbul and turkish airlines flew us to Simferopol. I like Simferopol, it made me happy it is museum: old silver payphone (these used to be run with 2 kopek coins – remember old people?) in airport and tank in city square and city museum that is exhibit itself but inside its like museum in square ehh how can I not like it.


night. train. harkiv. G’s place is big, up up up under the roof. nice very karlsson like place.
9th of may. most important day in the whole year. that’s the day it was in the calendars when evil germans capitulated to russian forces in II world war. another déjà vu for me with all this flowers, war veterans, speeches and even statue of lenin in city square.


back to train and back to crimea. from Simferopol train station u can take trolleybus to yalta. we didn’t took it. it was bus instead that took us not to yalta but nikita. before nikita there was big gate by the road with big letters APTEK written over it. I first thought its funny place for pharmacy but then I understood it is something else – actually it is ARTEK. used to be promised land for all kids in soviet union. basically it is just summercamp at black sea that is still running with much less popularity but nevertheless.

we stayed in nikita – place between artek and yalta with popular climbing area and lot of small houses by the coast where its easy to find accommodation. we found. we climbed. we visited yalta. we also visited wing of swan and cat another climbing places next to siami.


weather got better every day and hence of course we had to return to harkiv to get new passport for G as her old passport was falling apart and caused heaps on untrust and timewaste on borders. passport office showed strong vitality of soviet customer service in government structures. effectively were people made feel worthless and tiny. but passport we got thanks to good connections. we went to see childrens rock climbing competition. amazing! so many children in every age and it was relatively small event. I remember Estonian competitions where there are couple of children in best case.

and then we went back to Simferopol and hang around there and took plane to Istanbul and bus to Ankara and we were back.

haa and I almost forgot. even before we left harkiv first time we did some shopping there. many people know that I have been riding board that’s old enough to be a dead dog – k2 tricky from last century it was. now I saw in shop board I like and bindings and boots too so now I’m proud owner of apo amenite 160 board with apo express/dark milk bindings and thirty two tm-two boots. very nice they are.

back in Ankara it was time to do go to lake eymir. nice place in property of odty. also nice is fact that to get there best way is by bikes. We got one very good good bike and other decent bike and we did eymir lake. striking trip even if with some bruises for G.


then we went to Istanbul and we went to airport and G went to train where she got 1st call trip back and I flew to dubai and to Singapore and to Brisbane and I was back in Australia.

still with justus, no courage

.




i moved. kosovo is deep in the past. now i live in more house like structure, with 3x more space and everything else is bigger too - sweet. i even can get wifi connection when i put trashbin on my bed and my laptop on top of it.

and obviously there are more roos around here, though it might just be coincidence :)


it takes time to get used to work 14 day shifts with 12h per day then 2 days off and back to work and so on... looks like it takes more time than i have here, as now over a month is done and just 1 week left but i still wouldnt consider myself being used to it.

in one of my free day i went to mount Isa where I got to see civilization once again - supermarket.


our aerodrome is tiny its more like a busstop (and if u look from right angle it is very much like a busstop)


As there are regular flights from Phosphate to mnt isa i could get flight there and back on
company's expenses. plane was cute small beechcraft king air with propellers and everything and I sat just behing pilot and i could take pictures not only from clouds.


another novelty: plane's aircon was fucked up so instead of usual chillyness in flights this ones were bloody hot. so that after stepping out from plane the usual >35C weather felt refreshingly cool.


i got lift from airport straight to the event of the month - mining expo. way to go, first time in my life. machines are big there thats for sure.


mount isa with population of 25000 is small town but its administrative center for huge area ~42000 km2 - thats almost as big as Estonia (~45000km2). isa is hardcore mining town with mine sites sitting just next to city centre.
museum and local people told me there used to be estonians and big finnish community with saunas and everything. They immigrated here before/during/after IIWW but probably got lost for now as i didnt meet them myself.
there were fossiles in museum.

there were no fossiles in mount bruce.


mount bruce is obviously mountain, small but still biggest around here so i went to top of it
nice nice nice. now i know where all this aboriginal patterns come from but i didnt meet any fossiles that should be up there (not that i know much about them anyway)

did i tell already we have wonderful food here. every month there is seafood night and as i'm always here i experienced it. it is strange to have heaps of lobsters and oysters and shrimps and whatnot to eat whatever and as much as you want for free. somehow i dont have photo of this :(
another writeworthy happening in mess was capture of snake. Once during breakfast ~5am a snake was discovered wandering under dining tables. no worries mate, soon came brave man with snakepole and big black bag and after short pursuit snake was in the bag and out of the building no much excitment whatsoever.

im dissapointed in snakes, although i've been walking, running and biking around quite much i've not really met more snakes here.
at least one day while biking i met big (~ 1.5m) dragon lizard / varanus on my way. very cool fella indeed calm as a buddhist monk and just slowly-slowly toddled he off from the road.


there are birds too. just when i biked back from mount Bruce i noticed that hawks (or eagles or whatever they are named in the books) had noticed me. maybe its cause of hitchcock but having 20+ of them flying around my head while im biking in the middle of remote outback did make me feel chancy.


we have a car. with nice flaggy. sometimes. as we have to work on unregular times sometimes and carry stuff around. so i have had my share of switching on wipers instead of turning indicators but its no biggie. cars are biggies though all have 4+liter V8 engines... why not.


and there is observatory. for observing big things in the sky that are very small from our viewpoint. its real thing with special dome and all. telescope is called Meade LX200 with 305mm aperture, 3m focal length (f/10) and bunch of different size eyepieces.


fancy apparatus with builtin gps and database so it always knows itself where any interesting skything is and it takes just selection from remote to move it there. then again its not hubble, so you dont see stunningly bright and sharp and colorful pictures of distant galaxies but still i saw rings of saturn and nice star clusters and more. right now its not best time anyway, atmosphere is too warm...

there are other things in night that look much bigger

i story is dead

.

nobody loves history anymore. not even me. yes, yes, yes, i kicked my oldest memoirs to the darkest periphery of me blog - whadda skulduggery! (but i blame females)

and test Uselves like we, miners, do...

visiting justus

.


one morning many moons ago i got mail from my boss. in the mail was offer to go to work in a project far far away from home - phosphate hill they call the place.


toomas likes this kind of things and so i went. on sunny sunday morning i flew to townsville together with my indian collegue. travelling on company's expenses is good. holiday inn has 20 floors and pool on the roof and image as one of the best hotels in town. its highest for sure.
there is also other side - getting into mine site is a hassle. u need full medical examination including ecg, audiometry, spirometry and drug test. as doctor in brisbane skipped some of tests it happend that we had to see doctor in townsville too.
also it meant us flying on later not monday morning but on wednesday. no worries, mate, 3 days in townsville with fully paid hotels and meals let me see difference between **** and *** hotels and try many different eating places in town but then we flew on...
there are stories about mines in oz. roumors say this is place where wages are bigger than imagination and workers live in a blatant luxury.
well, lets see what i have to say.


phosphate hill is a mine site, thats where they excavate phosphate ore, mix it with sulphuric acid, add some ammonia and voila they get fertilizers. mine site means high safety, common uniform with steel cap boots. you wear helmet and safety glasses and respirator in many locations.
Alltogether it reminds me estonia, the military service i did there. discipline, strict rules, life sharply by the clock etc and time is shifted here...

my day:
i wakeup 4:45am, get myself together and step out of my box


by the way, i live in 'kosovo' (thats called so as its worst accommodation in camp and we are there cause we are short timers) in a container - room is ~3x1.5m + shared bathroom that is squeezed between two rooms. this space hosts bed, table, chair, fridge, tv, wardrobe, sink, me, and many different bugs. grasshoppers are hopping in uncountable numbers around and shiny big beetles who are too lazy to fly roam around accompanied with mozzies who r always happy to suck my blood and in toilet (yep, straigght in the pot) there live frogs -


silvergreen stickyfingers who havent heard about gravity and can walk around on ceiling as flies...
haa, almost forgot, a/c is there too it that makes lot of noise and keeps my home cool.

30 minutes for eating breakfast and confecting lunch (i even have nice plastic box for that :)


and 5:40 leaves the only morning bus to the plant that is 16 km south.


here are two main placees: plant and camp (ok, between them there is also an "airport" - thats only for us cause closest populated place is over 60km away and there lives like 1 man and his dog). closest real town is mount isa ~150km north so plant is where work is, camp is where u sleep.


camp is called monument village thanks to the rock just next to camp. this rock is ancient aboriginal holyground hence taboo for white people. there are several restricted aboriginal sites around the place.
hill with monument rock is called mount cock and two nearby sites as tittie hills, shouldnt take too much imagination to understand why. 6am i step into my office to start another fructuous day


for those who dont know yet i'm contracted here to replace old computers with new ones so thats what im supposed to do, strangely not all of new computers are here yet, and noone seems to worry nor hurry. then it will be 12 hours of fun fun fun and 6pm bus is ready to take us back to camp.

dinner is available until 8pm so usually I go biking or gymming for ~1 hour, make it to canteen for 7:30pm for quick eat and for 8pm im in my room ready to watch tv.
tv has 2 inhouse channels showing 'made in hollywood' movies every night and dozen of popular skychannels too. limited human experiments have shown that the more I sleep the better i feel next morning, maximum sleep being so far 8 hours.

thats my life.

positive:
food is very good, big variety, lots of healthy stuff and in unlimited (thats bad also as i tend to eat too much :P ) quantitiy
nature is just beauty. thanks to recent heavy rainfalls everything here is very green,


except rocks that get very red at sunset
there are free to use mountainbikes (i bike mostly around camp on firetrails)
25m swimming pool, tenniscourt, fully equipped gym, bar with pool virtual golf and more.
and they pay me and they accommodate and feed me for nothing

to be continued...