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Published: August 8th 2010
Caroline
Three months without my darling CarolineDAY 639
Hopefully most of you are aware of the story so far, but here is where it is going to take on a slightly different angle, as we have previously travelled and blogged together as Kangaroojack.
Last Monday (2nd August) I resigned from where I have been employed for the last 6 months as Electrical Project Manager and have taken a position as Assistant National Facilities Manager with a large British corporate company, who Caroline also works for.
After a really tough interview and I mean really tough, I was lucky enough to secure the position, though some of the cynical ones amongst you may say that having a very bright wife on the inside may make a difference and you could be correct but I will probably not know the full answer for a while to come.
Without endeavouring to bore you, I managed to get through all their questions, which was going pretty well until the final question they threw at me, which I had to dig deep for an answer; “How will you cope working in the same office as Caroline?” Sh*t!! I didn’t see that one coming.
Well, I thought about this for a couple of seconds and said, I have been married to Caroline for 20 Years, and have never wanted to throttle her, and we have travelled for 16 Months together and been in each others company 24/7 and the same thing applies so working in the same office as her shouldn’t present too many problems should it?
So that was now a couple of weeks ago and I was offered the position a week last Friday and this is where the fun started.
Before I accepted the position my new employer said that needed to go and be based on a remote island, for 3 Months, I asked them how many times I could return and they said, that I couldn’t.
Oh!!
So the Friday night, before we went to Thredbo, we sat in our housesit in Griffith and talked about it and Caroline said it would be an absolutely great opportunity and would help me pack my case right there and then, Mmmm, I can smell a plot!!
No seriously we both agreed that we had come to Australia for an adventure and this is exactly what we were getting, so lets just suck it up.
As luck would have it, we were due to move out of our house site on Thursday 5th August and move in to our friends Bec’s for a while whilst we just either found another house sit or something else, so inside me I knew Caroline would be just fine.
Caroline has acted as intermediary as far as my new work emails go as they have not set up an e-mail account for me yet and I am flying tomorrow, (Monday 9th August).
Let me tell you a little about the remote Island before I go any further, thanks to Wikipedia.
The Territory of Christmas Island is a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. It is located 2,600 kilometres (1,600 mi) northwest of the Western Australian city of Perth, 360 km (220 mi) south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and 975 km (606 mi) ENE of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
It has a population of 1,403 residents who live in a number of "settlement areas" on the northern tip of the island: Flying Fish Cove (also known as Kampong), Silver City, Poon Saan, and Drumsite.
So tomorrow Caroline will take me to the airport, where I get the big silver sausage to Sydney, then from Sydney to Perth, Perth to the Cocos Islands (Keeling Island) then finally on to Christmas Island, a total flying time of 12 Hours and 4600 Miles, but due to the waiting around etc it will take 2 days.
Kangaroojack’s followers will know I hate spiders, I am absolutely s*&t scared of them, and I “hate” them as much as Octopus and Crabs, so Its obviously a dislike for things that have many legs, though thinking about it I like Caterpillars and Centipedes so, my reckoning can not be substantiated.
Well Christmas Island is famous for a few things and one of them is the Red Crab and their migration is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the natural world.
Again From Wikipedia:
The Christmas Island red crab, Gecarcoidea natalis, is a species of terrestrial crab endemic to Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Although restricted to a relatively small area, it is estimated that up to 120 million red crabs may live there, making it the most abundant of the 14 terrestrial crab species on Christmas Island . Christmas Island red crabs eat mostly fallen leaves and flowers, but will occasionally eat other animals, including other red crabs (see cannibalism) if the opportunity arises.
Christmas red crabs live in burrows, in order to shelter from the sun. Since they still breathe through gills, the possibility of drying out is a great danger for them. They are famous for their annual migration to the sea in order to lay their eggs in the ocean. During the migration, the crabs cover the highway routes to the coast so densely that they can be seen from the air. Volunteers shovel the crabs off the roads and, although no harm is intended, some of the countless millions of crabs inevitably get injured.
Oh great 120 Million little problems.
I took the above from Wikipedia, have a look, or equally log on to Youtube and type in ‘Red Crab Migration’, it surley does give me the willy’s.
So Caroline and myself are going to be separated for 3 months, me on Christmas Island and Caroline initially in Canberra but I believe she is coming up to C.I in possibly September on business and where ever else she has to travel, which in her case could be anywhere in Australia
I know it will be tough on both of us, but these opportunities are here and they can’t be let go, we wanted the adventure and have got it in abundance, if we had stayed in England we would not have had this opportunity.
I will blog from Christmas Island and Caroline will blog from where ever she may be, predominantly Canberra so hopefully the Blog will gain a little bit more momentum, and hopefully there will be some great photo opportunities for me to show you what the island is like.
So finally this week has been a culmination of moving out, moving in, buying some new clothes, and getting ready for the trip. Amongst other chores, Friday the Patrol was booked in for a service, it has only done 10,000 K’s since the beginning of February a significant difference to the number of kilometres we were covering on our trip round Australia.
I also had a pleasant surprise on Friday, Helen phoned me as she was in Canberra for a weekend as her and Susan were off to see the show ‘Wicked’ in Sydney and would I like to meet up with her for a coffee?
We can always find time for the lovely Helen, and I met her in the Canberra Centre and had a nice time (sadly Caroline was at work).
Poor Helen, she is such a technology victim, her new I-Pad needed a new sim card and we had to go a get her one from the Telstra shop.
Friday night we again met up with Helen, at Susan’s place and were treated to an excellent Chinese, with James, Bree, Susan and Cecelia, it was great fun, Caroline assures me that the atomic cocktail that Susan made up was also pretty good stuff
So the weekend is here and we have an abundance of chores to do, people to see and of course get me packed.
Watch this space to find out how it all goes.
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Darryl and Sarah
Wallaby Wanderers
Wowsers!
Great news on the job front, well done! Good on you for grabing the opportunity with both hands :-) Mum and Dad start their adventure on Thursday - the Pootling Possums will be arriving in Melbourne on the 14th August and can be found under www.mytb.org/pootling-possums. Hopefully at some point you will both be in the same place so you can catch up! Enjoy! Lots of love from the 'resting' Wallaby Wanderers!! x x