I'm A Working Man Doing the Best I Can

This post is being typed from the inter city train from Newcastle to Sydney, returning from an interview for a Railway Network Controller, which I am confident I aced. The whole idea of coming to Australia was to make money to travel further. Pure and simple. I figured taking a job as a train driver would be a quick and easy way to make more than enough money to accomplish that, but as far as things were looking that wasn’t going to be as easily attainable as I had previously thought. So I basically threw out resumes for any railway job I could find, and lone behold I get a call back for this position. The opportunity being clear to me, I jumped on the three hour train ride to Newcastle with haste. The interview went smoothly, and now I return to the hustle and bustle of Sydney.

For a while I had been contemplating moving to Newcastle anyways, and today was a good opportunity to scout out a future home for myself. From what I saw during a quick stroll around the city centre, it could be good and it could be bad. It definitely has that low key feeling down, sort of like a small town in a decent sized city. It was funny to see people walking around downtown in bikini’s and board shorts (downtown is right on the beach). The bad is that it could be possibly white trashish. I did see some quite hickish looking people, which is always a presence in a strictly blue collar city that Newcastle is. It sort of reminded me of pictures of the old neighbourhoods in the American port cities like Baltimore or Boston. Either way it remains to be seen how I’ll actually like Newcastle, but I know whatever my situation turns out to be, I’ll make the best of it.

On the work note, I have managed to get a couple shifts of labour work. Last Friday I did some landscaping work for cash in hand, and on Monday I was called for a shift unloading twenty five kilo sacks of potato starch from sea cans onto pallets. I calculated that I lifted roughly ten tons that day. And I get to do it all over again tomorrow! As ball busting as that manual labour is, it’s money in the bank. And if I do that regularly, I definitely won’t need to be hitting up a gym!

I managed to do some more sightseeing the other day as well. A bunch of us from the hostel donned our beach wear and took the ferry to Manly Beach for the afternoon. Apparently we were a day late. It was not a hot day by any means. Not even warm for that matter. I sat on the beach in board shorts and a hoodie and didn't dare jump in the freezing cold water. All in all it was a nice beach that will turn out to be a great spot in summertime if I'm still in Sydney.