Sunday, October 17, 2010 – At Least The Rent Was Cheap

One of the most attractive things to us about Dingo (aside from the town name) was the cost of our accommodation while employed with the roadhouse. Upon arrival, we were told that our rent would be $50 each per week. For those of you not so good with the numbers that worked out to $400 a month between the two of us, a steal of a deal no matter where you’re living. This helped greatly with the saving of travel funds, as rent was only one third of what we were paying in Melbourne and it was deducted right off of our pay cheques every week so we never really missed the money per se.

Darren, the owner of the roadhouse, has three houses that he uses for some of his workers. When we first arrived in the booming metropolis of 150 people though, his houses were all full, so for the first four weeks, Leeanna and I lived on the premises at the roadhouse in one of their motel style units. The room was like a smaller version of something you’d see at a lower-middle of the road hotel. While the room was clean and modern, with a TV and mini fridge, it was also very small, especially when there’s nowhere for you to go. Making matters worse was the fact that we were often working opposite shifts and on different sleeping schedules. But we made it through that first month and were thus moved into the “big, Queensland house” that we now call home.

When we were finally told that we would be moving into one of the houses we were more than ready to move out of the roadhouse accommodations. We moved in with an English bloke who also worked in the kitchen by the name of Dan. Dan, Leeanna, and I had become good friends while we all lived at the roadhouse, and often enjoyed such leisurely activities as tennis and drinking beer and drinking beer while playing tennis. Sadly, when we moved in, our four bedroom house was pretty short on furniture, consisting of a couple couches, an armchair, and a couple of non-functioning televisions. So like the troopers we are, we set out to round up some beds, a table, and some mismatched chairs from the roadhouse storage area. Naturally, Leeanna and I opted for two single beds, as if there’s one thing we love more than each other’s company, it’s sleeping on our own!

The last piece of the “make-it-a-home” puzzle was working out what to do on the television front. When we arrived, we were surprised to see that there were two fair size televisions in the house. Naturally, neither of them worked and we were forced to scrounge up a small 13” television from one of the other houses. In addition to this, our house had no television signal or DVD player, so being the criminal that I am, I permanently borrowed a DVD player from one of the roadhouse rooms. No one’s noticed yet. A few days later, we were blessed with good fortune for once when one of our co-workers found us a 27” TV in the electronics dump and picked it up for us for $5 after hearing about our sorry state of living. It goes without saying that since that time, we have watched an abnormal amount of DVDs and television seasons on DVD.

For the first while, there were only three of us living in the house, although we were eventually joined by a couple of young British guys, Johnny and Adam, who were big partiers. When they weren’t getting silly drunk, they were generally trying to get in the pants of these two German birds that worked at the local pub. It definitely changed the dynamic of the house, although it was not meant be, as they did not last in Dingo and headed back to Brisbane after only a few weeks.

For a while after that, there were only three of us in the house, although we’ve recently been joined by a nice Irish couple, Liz and Andy. They are definitely a lot quieter than our other housemates and are thankfully a lot tidier as well!

In addition to worrying about what kind of housemates we might end up with, a constant concern for pansies like Leeanna and I was what kind of critters would find their way into the house. We try and keep the windows closed most of the time, but things still manage to get in. We had one mouse living in our kitchen, but he eventually succumbed to peanut butter poisoning. Frogs and geckos are common intruders in the house, and I am proud to say I am turning into quite the capturer of amphibians. What we were really afraid of was cockroaches, but in the eleven weeks we’ve lived here, I have only seen one of the giant beasts. For the most part though, most of the wildlife we see has been outdoors. Dingo is overrun with cane toads and green frogs, which at night can be found everywhere patrolling the sidewalks. Leeanna had an encounter with a mob of kangaroos while she was out walking, although she became quite frightened and promptly ran away. My personal favourite sighting is when I saw a King Brown Snake, which is the second deadliest snake in the world. Luckily for the snake I was in a truck, or else I would’ve went Chuck Norris on his ass.

After all the wildlife sightings and roommates, one question remains, where’s the dingoes in Dingo?