I have been working and living on this remote and small island for 3 weeks, and to be honest so far I think the life I lead here is not too bad.
My work here is as a kitchenhand, I have to wash loads of dishes, prepare food materials, and clean the kitchen, restaurant and toilets. Recently I have also learned to make lunch meals, so during lunch time I also have to make sandwiches and burgers. I start working in the morning at 11 o'clock, have a break from 2 or 3 PM, go back to work at 5 and finish at around 10. I work 5 or 6 days a week. The hotel provides us full-time workers accommodation and food. Everyweek I get paid about 500 dollars.
After work i simply go back to the house we live to watch TV or sleep. I don't go out usually because there are many mosquitoes and sandflies everywhere, and normally the weather is hot and it rains a lot. I don't spend much money either, on this island there are only two shops, and everything the sell is at least twice the price when compared to mainland Australia, that is truely terrible. So life is very simple here.
The best thing here is that people are mostly very friendly. The aboriginal, Torres Strait islanders, are exceptionally friendly. I have an aboriginal worker, Tina. She's a very nice person. She has a big family here in Torres Strait, and she has family members all around here. She had introduced me to some of her family members. Lase week when I had a day off, I went to ride dingy, small boat, with her, her brother Issac and 2 of my co-workers. The dingy belongs to ther brother, and her brother drove the dingy for us. When we started the weather was okay, we sailed to Thursday Island, made a circle around it, and then sailed to the sea among other islands. Then we planned to do some fishing, but after her brother dived into the sea twice, he then said it's not suitable for fishing that day. We then sailed to the back of Horn Island. We went to a shallow water there, I went into the water, it was warn and comfy, and there were lots of oysters growing on hte rocks under the water. Later the weather changed, it's now wet season and it generally rains everyday. We thought we had to go back, but the weather was so bad, it rained very heavy, and the wind was strong. Our little dingy seemed like nothing in the wild sea. The waves were high, and that made our ride very tough. We had to cling to the dingy very tightly, if not we surely would fall off it into the sea. The rain hit hard on our faces, and every time we fell off the tip of a wave our bottoms and backs hurt. It was lucky for us to return safely, I thought. The next day my whole body ached.
That's the simple life I'm living here. I think I can really stay until the 2nd week of April, and then start the next episode of my journey.
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