Monkey Mia. Work, Rest and Play

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18.9.09 - Monkey Mia, WA

We left Perth at 7am on a Friday morning and had an 11 hour bus journey with a couple of stops at scenic roadhouses in between, we were travelling with another boy and girl who had landed the same job’s as us so quickly made acquaintance with Faye and Ben and arrived at Monkey Mia in no time. We got to the resort at about 8pm and were introduced to the boss and shown to our temporary rooms, then told we’d probably be working the next day, happily we didn’t have work so instead it was used to explore the beach that would be home for the next few months and then get drunk on the goon and beer purchased on the journey up, not the brightest idea since we would be working the morning after this drinking session. Michelle had the choice of the morning or evening shift and chose the morning just to get it over with & I had to work the morning evening split shifts which was 8am - 1pm then 6pm - whatever time the kitchen finished each night. Sometimes that wasn’t until midnight. This was my routine for 6days of the week over 2 ½ months.

As with all jobs it took a couple of weeks to get into a routine and as to be expected we had to put up with some dickheads. Michelle got a bit of hassle from a Canadian girl who thankfully left after 2 weeks of us getting there while Ben, the guy that started the same time as us and was working with me in the kitchen turned out to be work shy and left leaving me with lots of extra shifts.
The work wasn’t always easy as anyone who’s worked with stressed chefs in a kitchen will understand but the money was good and I would occasionally get food at the end of the night which would save us money on dinner.

The resort was very secluded with no public transport and Denham, the nearest town was a ½ hour drive away, there was a shop in the resort with highly inflated prices so we tried to avoid buying there and instead finding someone with a car to give us a lift into Denham to visit the ‘supermarket’ which also had inflated prices but had more on offer.
When we moved into our permanent accommodation called a donga Michelle was really upset at the thought of living there for a few months. A donga is what we called a demountable at school, a temporary building for a classroom. It had a double bed, broken chest of drawers, table, fridge and, thankfully, air-con. While I was working a shift Michelle had off, she spent hours cleaning and moving the room about to make it ‘homely’ and after getting used to it we both got quite attached and liked it there.
We spent most our days working, sitting on the beach watching the dolphins, in the room watching TV or having a nap before the next shift. There really wasn’t anything else to do!

As staff we got to go on the catamaran for free (usually cost close to $100 for the 4 hour afternoon trip) After ages of promising we’d go on it we settled on a time and booked on making sure we had the same time off work. The catamaran sails out into the ocean on the hunt for Dugong (looks like manatees) During the afternoon trip we saw sea snakes, turtles, dugong and of course, dolphins. A couple of weeks before we left we booked ourselves onto the evening trip to watch the sunset then Michelle treated me to dinner in the restaurant and had secretly pre arranged that when we got there our order would be the seafood platter but we were still to receive menus and put in an order that was to be ignored. I had always wanted to try the platter but at $120 it was too expensive so it was a great surprise when the platter nearly as big as our table was bought out to us filled with mussles, prawns, lobster, morton bay bugs, oysters, barramundi, whiting, salmon, scallops, Squid, salad and chips. We couldn’t manage all of it and had infact only ever seen one table of 4 finish it in our time working there. We made sure we left room for dessert and I ordered Kahlua cheesecake. Perfect way to end a great dinner.

We made friends with a great group of people there, the majority backpackers like ourselves so we spent a lot of the time having a few drinks. I say ‘we’ but really I mean Michelle as I always had to work the evening shift and would finish later than the bar stayed open. I would have to make up for it on my evening off! Most weeks there would be parties after work on the beach or in the Amphitheatre.
Most of the time we had work the next morning so we’d only have a couple or just have an early night but it doesn’t always work like that so there were of course a couple of mornings where we’d go into work feeling a little worse for wear. Thankfully I never suffered as much as Michelle did one particular morning when after a day of laying on the beach in the sun and a night of Strongbow, Goon and JD she went in for the breakfast shift and was rather ill. It was a very busy morning and every 10 minutes she was having to run off to the bathrooms, she couldn’t even keep a little water down. She ended up behind the bar with her head in the glass fridge to cool her down and stop her from fainting. They let her leave at 11 that morning so she could sleep before the night shift.

Another night while I think I was working, Michelle and a few people met up by the jetty for some drinks by the sea, this is where the fishermen amongst us would partake in a spot of moonlight fishing for sharks and the drinkers, well after a few, the idea of diving off the jetty sounded like a good idea, so, with everyone standing back they took a run up. Michelle wasn’t so silly though after one guy cracked his head on a turtle and so stopped at the edge while everyone else went bombing into a pitch black sea in ’Shark Bay’. All coming out cold and wet, Irish, the sous Chef decided he was going back in, at this point Michelle felt like she should just do it, you only live once! She will tell you that was one of her best times at Monkey Mia, coming out of the water with all limbs intact! After jetty jumping they decided it would be a good idea to break into the hot tub and swimming pool before climbing into bed at some crazy hour in the morning.

For Halloween we had a fancy dress party. We weren’t going to dress up as we were both on the evening shift but after getting out and having a couple of drinks whilst looking like weirdos as the only people not dressed up we decided it would be best to join in, so, with a little face paint and crazy hair we re-joined the party. That ended up being one of the best nights and no morning shift to worry about! One of the guys Operating an aboriginal tour at Monkey Mia, Capes, turned 40 and we were all invited to the party in Denham. We piled into a couple of cars and drove to the venue but unfortunately we had missed most of the food. I did manage to get Kangaroo and Dugong but there was no Turtle left, normally turtle would be illegal but apparently it was ok because they are aboriginals. After our last shifts we had a leaving party at the amphitheatre to celebrate. I was told that the shade sails over the amphitheatre had been used for no end of naughty shenanigans in the past and I was impressed that they could support the weight of at least two people, so, with that knowledge and just the right amount of alcoholic influence I decided that now would be the right time to rehearse my Spiderman impression and follow suit. I gracefully climbed the walls and scampered onto the 20ft high trampoline whist humming the theme tune to everyone’s favourite web slinger, whist everyone else looked on taking pictures and shouting “GET OFF YOU BLOODY IDIOT!”. A good night was had by all. The following morning Marty, the resort manager paid me a visit at our donga asking if I remembered climbing on the sails as he had heard about it. I didn’t remember doing anything of the sort but was told that if I wasn’t already leaving then I would have been fired, how sad.

In the week before we left we decided we should really get out and do something different so we borrowed a vehicle to see some of the local sights and took Mair and Eimear along for the ride. We visited Shell Beach, which as the name would suggest is made up of nothing but little white shells, we visited Ocean Park the aquarium and also a couple of lookout points where we could see rays, sharks and dolphins in the sea below. It was a good day out apart from the thousands of little flies on a mission to find moisture in the heat and were therefore attacking eyes, mouths, ears and noses. On the way home to Monkey Mia we stopped for a couple of French girls who were hitchhiking the west coast. The day before we left we went out on another day trip, this time with Irish (the sou‘s chef who made life hell for me in the kitchen but was an alright guy) to Peron Homestead and Peron Point to see more sharks, rays and dolphins

We managed to save over $10,000 between us in the 2 ½ months we were there which was our main reason for getting this job, but along the way we made some great and hopefully long lasting friendships, encountered dolphins almost daily, watched some amazing storms over the sea and went to loads of great parties. Overall it was a good 10 weeks.

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