A mining camp is, well, unique. There is no place like it on Earth, except of course for another mining camp.
You get to sleep in one of these tin sheds ^ which are suprisingly nice these days, you have your own ensuite, bar fridge, two clean towels every 4 days and a weekly change of sheets. Hmmm prisoners get the same don't they :o) At least the new rooms have silentish airconditioners!
But the unique thing about mining camps is the people that populate them. I spent the last 2 weeks watching a lot of them. I love to people watch, although you need to be careful you don't stare too long in a camp. A stare can be construed in a number of ways, some of which may be detrimental to your health and well being.
I did most of my watching in the mess/dinner barn.
I don't think I have ever seen so many elbows glued to tables. It's obviously less energy consuming to bring your head down to the food, than vise versa. Also breathing between mouthful's seems to be an option for some.
I was particularly entranced by one table of "blokes" who loved a big brekky each and every morning. Eggs, beans, snags, tomatoes, hash browns, you name it they piled it on. That's okay, they're big guys, they're gonna do a big days work, they need a big heart starter in the morning .........BUT......... it was the addition of either tomato sauce or chilli/garlic tomato sauce that caught my attention.
I'm not talking a small dash of sauce to the side of the plate, I'm not talking a light drizzle of sauce tomate (that's French!) either. I'm talking a huge splotch (that's Australian!) of sauce on every single item on the plate, so much so that surely in the end it just all tasted like sauce with different textures. Sooo much acid and salt..........:burrrrrp:
But what made this mining camp unique above all other things, was the laundry room "incident"
I head down to the laundry room to do some washing, there's one other guy in there. A kinda of nerdish looking guy, I'd seen him before and thought that he didn't quite fit in here. Oh, it's amazing how wrong I can be sometimes.
I walk in "Gidday mate"
He's standing facing a washing machine, he turns his head "Yeah gidday, how's things?"
"Yeah pretty good, and you?"
"Yeah can't complain mate"
Pretty normal stuff, most conversation between camp residents travels along these lines. But what happened next made me realise that this guy had been living in camp for far too long.
He took off his shirt, threw it into the machine and quickly followed this with his pants. Now here I am in a laundry room with a guy I don't know from a bar of soap, who is naked except for a rather unattractive pair of underpants. He tips in some detergent spins the machines dial, closes the lid, turns and walks out into the residential area back to his room, oblivious to how he looks and to the looks he's getting from those he walks past. I get the feeling he does this routinely.
It's a norm.
DUDE!!!
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