The Outback Life Change
Jazz and I met on the Gold Coast and got married there. We had lived together on the Gold Coast for years doing the same thing day-to-day. We were definitely stuck in a rut. We both decided we wanted a life change…
We found out that King Ash Bay Fishing Club near Borroloola in remote Northern Territory was looking for someone to run their kitchen. So we applied for the job and got it! We found out later that we were the only people to apply.
We wanted a life change, and I can assure you we got it. On the Gold Coast we were operating a very successful multimedia company and staring at computer screens all day. Now our daily activities include peeling potatoes, changing oils, washing dishes and mopping floors. I lost 5kg in the first week we were here.
There are several obstacles here that someone running a kitchen closer to civilisation wouldn’t experience. Firstly, ordering stock. A simple enough task. Well we order stock on a Thursday, to be delivered the following Thursday as the truck comes down from Darwin only once a week. The stock we order is to be cooked almost 2 weeks away! When we do our ordering, we don’t even know what we have run out of yet because we only just received the stock we ordered over a week ago. Even to get the stock, we have to drive a 21km dirt road, then another 20km of highway to get to Borroloola to pick it up from the transport company.
Because all our stock needs to be freighted here, we need to add 15% to the price of the stock straight away. It’s expensive.
And the weather. Insane hot and humid. It has cooled down now that we are out of the wet season. Most days are about 33 degrees. Perfect temperature to make it almost unbearable in the kitchen.
The next challenge is opening 7 days a week. That’s for the whole season, which is from the start of March until mid November. 234 days working 7 days straight. At the time of writing this we are up to about day 60. All the days start to blend into each other. My parents live here at King Ash Bay. And they own a small houseboat. On day 50 they actually came in and ran the kitchen for us for the night and let us go out on their houseboat for the night. It was simply fantastic. After working so much it felt like we had a week off.
We certainly were expecting a big life change when we took the job of running the kitchen here. It’s not the typical outback life change that people would have by going to work on a cattle station, but nothing Jazz and I do is typical.
