Finucane Island ~1982, Western Australia

Leaving the kitchen

As I sit in my office, listening to the new, knock on wood *Chef Ted* and her friend/business partner chat away back in the kitchen, I reflect back on my *career*. As we await the final sale, which will give me some money to start RV hunting in earnest, I thought I would just randomly select vignettes from my past; in no particular order or importance.

In ~1980, my friend Jimbo Bell, author of the book and camera man for these photos, found here Chef Ted in a book and I spent 18 months working and traveling in Australia, and another year or so wandering around places like Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, South East Asia, India and more. After traveling and working in Sydney, Cairns and Melbourne, we headed west to Perth. So far, we had been quite unsuccessful at making a fortune.The stories, touted as gospel in the pubs that surrounded our decidedly immigrant and working class neighborhoods, of lucrative employment in the commercial fishing industries of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, turned out to be hard, well impossible for us to capitalize on, though not for our lack of  trying. If I was going to make enough money to finance a "seek the truth" trip ....er, bum around around Asia for a year, then I would have to hit it big by earning an all but guaranteed fortune in the mines of Northwest Australia.

Initially Jimbo stayed in Perth to hit his home run as house painter with two Greek compadres and I flew ~1000 km north to Port Hedland, WA, where the Pilbara desert meets the Indian Ocean to work for Consolidated Catering Company, and I entered these gates:

Entrance to Finucane Island 1982

The workers on Finucane Island came from like 50 countries. Sworn and ancient enemies like the Serbs and Croats from the former Yugoslavia, Hindus and Muslims from Indonesia, Protestants and Catholics from Ireland and the list went on ad infiinitium, living and working side by side, in an environment that was not unlike Mars. This was a severe union shop, the pay, the food and the conditions were top notch, so troublemakers were swiftly dispatched. Even if the hating was bad back in the old country, it must be put  aside, as there was work to be done and money to be made. If you disrupted commerce, or generally fucked up enough, the Western Australian Territorial Police drove out from Port Hedland in a caged truck and took your ass somewhere.

Finucane Island Today

The actual mine was at Mount Newman, some 50 km inland. The iron ore was brought by a giant railroad to Finucane, mixed with water and the resulting slurry pumped to gigantic tanker/freighters with Korean pictographs on their bows, that were anchored offshore. Even though we were all  working at the various jobs in this desert to make money, being humans, a hierarchy naturally developed, not unlike the way convicts divide by race in prison. Finucane Island was more complex due to the myriad of races, religions, and one's life path to the Island.

However these disparate individuals worked out their uneasy co-existence, there was no one lower in the social hierarchy of this whole operation, but we the *kitchen wankers*. Dressed in our tiny short shorts,(it was worse than it seems, they were polyester hot pants) polyester T-shirts and paper hot dog vendor hats. We lived in exile in our trailers: several world travelers, a hashish salesman, the only openly gay in the whole camp, AND THE ISLAND'S ONLY EIGHT SINGLE WOMEN, *GRIN* ( loved all those shampoos and conditioners  in the showers, ladies!) Like we hipsters gave one flying fuck what some dude from Serbia thought. Our customers, however, on a whim, or a bad day, could cause us wankers problems by writing a negative review of our meal in the comment book. A misspelled and grammatically incorrect comment like "pisa suc" (the pizza sucked) could result us being hauled before the union food committee to explain ourselves.

A large majority of the Aussies, Yanks, Kiwis, Canuks, Pommy bastards (Brits) and all other white and native English speakers hung out in the camp pub, whiling away non-working hours, discussing everything under the sun over schooners of West Australian beer. While this white  Anglo-centric boozer crowd might piss away their wages at our pub, the foreign, brown, Islamic, and down right frugal, hung out in their trailer rooms. Maybe they felt unwelcome at the pub, maybe they wanted to send more money home.

My first night at the pub, I was sitting alone at the empty bar nursing a Swan Ale, when Paddy walked up to me and said "Y're in me spot, laddie". I looked to my left and there was ten yards of empty bar space. I looked to my right and there was ten yards of empty bar space. As the new guy, I shrugged and moved my stool down the bar a meter, and Paddy moved into his spot to consume his nightly 24-36 pints of beer. I was to later  learn than this quintessential Irish railroad worker and serious drunk was, not surprisingly, a brawler. A 1910 brawler, holding his fists at almost belt level, like Jack Dempsey and roaring like a lion....but that gentle reader, is a story for another time.

When not at the pub, we could watch movies in this outdoor theater. A cooler of *stubbies*, a beach chair, in an iron ore desert!