WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES! (16 JUNE 2014)

Coincidence....serendipity....right place at the right time....karma....fate.....que sera sera....choose your own take on the latest from the MobileMarshies.  Liz has a job...and it all hinged on one day!

So, dear readers, please ignore my last in which I spoke of our plans to make our way north to Point Sampson before turning south again....we are already back in Carnarvon after a mere week in Exmouth. An explanation is obviously warranted. 

We had originally planned to leave Carnarvon for points north on Monday 16 June, but, having looked at the weather forecast which was predicting ferocious winds on the nose throughout the day, we took the decision to stay put for another 24 hours. An herein lies the tale. 

As we later discovered, an English lass who had been working part time in the park office had something of a hissy fit and walked out well before she had been expected to move on. At about 1630 hours that same day, as we were pottering about the van in the throes of the final pre-departure pack-up, Andrew, the park manager, skidded to a halt in his electric cart on the road in front of our site. 

"G'day, Andrew, what's new?"  "Is Liz about?"  "Yep, I'll get her for you."  Liz emerged to hear that the park owner had asked Andrew if he thought there may be anyone in residence who would be interested (and capable) of taking part time work for the 'busy season'...July and August...to fill the gap left by the premature departure of the late lamented Pommie back-packer.  The co-pilot's eyes lit up immediately. "When do you need answer, and when would I be required to start?"

Rather than bore you with any more of the fine detail, suffice it to say that Liz accepted in principle later that afternoon. The only remaining matter for resolution was a starting date.  We decided to head north as planned on the Tuesday morning with the Vogts and finalise the matter of the job by phone link from Yardie Homestead. 

The electronic communications challenges presented by the location of Yardie made things somewhat difficult, but we managed. After a series of calls to and from Matt, the park owner, and a fair bit of 'message tag', a start date of Monday 23 June was agreed, and our planned two to three weeks in the Exmouth - Karratha area was a thing of the past.

We did stay the week with our Victorian friends at Yardie Homestead and later for a couple of days in Exmouth itself, but took our fond farewells of them on Sunday and here we are, back at the Big 4 Plantation Caravan Park, Carnarvon, our home now until 1 September. As the header of this blog indicates, this all came about because we delayed our departure by a day.

Liz has already completed her first day (it's Tuesday 24 June as I write), a pretty solid 10 hour shift which included orientation for the morning, familiarisation with the computer booking and accounts systems, and gaining a good understanding of the various site sizes so as to ensure that a spot allocated to a new arrival would be large enough to accommodate their rig (something with which we are only too familiar...from the opposite perspective). She was pretty confident that the experience she had gained working as the medical receptionist at the Eastwood Physio services would stand her in good stead, and this was clearly the case. At lunch time Andrew announced that he had no concerns as to Liz's ability to manage the office, and she was on her own for the afternoon. Nothing like a splash off 'deep end' to sharpen the focus.

Matt, the park owner, flew in from Perth in the later part of the day and spent a few hours with the travelling whiz kid at the end of which he announced that he was equally satisfied with Liz's skills. I suspect that this was more than helped by the fact that during this period, amongst other things, Liz had to deal with a terse and quite unreasonable prospective client who cancelled a cabin booking at the very last minute and could not be made to understand the park policy of no refunds for a cancellation at such short notice (which is standard throughout the country). Matt's comment was apparently along the lines of, "well there is no doubt about your ability to handle people."

So here we are. After these first couple of days Liz will work for five hours a day, six days a week on a rotating roster with the other office lass. To date the roster management has been somewhat haphazard....Liz is already onto that. As she told Matt, after rostering staffs of 40 or more through 24 hour shifts, this is a doddle.

The pay is not earth-shattering....$22.00 an hour, but there is a real spin-off benefit...our park site fee is reduced by $90 a week. And, as important as anything else, Liz is acquiring new and very potentially useful skills and experience.  As she very sagely commented  "I'd much rather book people into a caravan park than empty bed pans!"  

As for your scribe...I'm really looking forward to the next couple of months. We already have a good rapport with two couples we met during our last stay (the blokes are keen and good fishermen) who are just up the road from our site. They do not plan to leave until the end of July at least, and then there are our other friends from Busso who are moving into their on-site van for three months at the end of this week. What with that, contacts already established at the local RSL, and a myriad of those 'little things' to do around the van, I'll not be bored (not to mention catching up with a few week's worth of blogs).

But I must add a rider to my pronounced blogging ambitions. There will be a delay. I have not been feeling totally 'on song' for the past two weeks or so....nothing serious....just not quite right. Well, things deteriorated badly during the our last two days in Exmouth and really came to a head after we had hauled back down to Carnarvon on a miserable wet and windy day on Sunday. I have now been diagnosed by one of the local medicos as having developed severe bronchitis (Liz was amazed to hear that it is not pneumonia...she nearly carted me off to the local hospital on Sunday night my breathing was so bad). I did spend most of yesterday tucked up in the cot, and am now on a programme of antibiotic mega-bombs, increased doses of steroids and a two hourly nebulizing routine for the next ten days at least. 

Thank goodness we are staying put. So the male Marshie will be hibernating in our mobile cave for a few days whilst herself is engaged in ensuring that I can claim 'kept man' bragging rights at happy hour (when I'm fit enough to resume that social activity without risk of serious deterioration.....or worse, a verbal lashing from 'The Matron')

I hope to be pottering on the keyboard in a few days or so with the last of our Kalbarri adventures and our trip to Exmouth.