Chapter 1: The Job

Woo-hoo! I had a job.

Fuck! There was nothing like an economic depression to bum a bloke out. I’d been a Sparky for several years, and things in Queensland had been tight for a while in the early nineteen-nineties for work.

I’d not had a job for a couple of months, the credit card was damn near maxed and unemployment benefits only go so far. Due to the lack of work in the Bundaberg area, my brother and I had decided that we would move up the coast to Airlie Beach. It is a coastal town in the Whitsunday Region of Central Queensland.

Ryan had scored a job in a restaurant as a kitchen hand, so that prompted us to move. He had done most of his four-year apprenticeship as a Chef back home but had a falling out with his boss. The prick had refused to sign him off as complete. He was hoping to find someone in Airlie to take him on so he could get his accreditation as a Chef.

Me, I was just looking for work, there had been nothing going on at home for me. Ryan was five years younger than I was, and I went to live with him to keep an eye on him to make mum happy. Not that my babysitting worked out really well because the job I had scored, just two weeks after we arrived in Airlie Beach was on Lindeman Island.

Mum and dad carted a load of our stuff up to Airlie for us and stayed to celebrate Christmas with us. I had done the job interview a couple of days before they came and was hired to start on the Monday after Christmas, so we really had something to celebrate.

Back in the early Nineties, Lindeman Island had one privately owned resort and one private residence, the rest of the Island was National Park. It’s just one of the seventy-four odd islands in the Whitsunday Region. Other than the occasional cyclone, it is a gorgeous region to live in. Hamilton Island is one of the better-known islands, but I never did get there.

We tradies worked for ten days and then had four days off. So, I got to spend a long weekend every fortnight in Airlie with my brother and the mad bunch of mates that he had made at the restaurant. Chefs and kitchenhands are a strange lot and know how to party hard. I was to learn that the ones on the Island were no different from the mainlanders.

Before I started work, I caught a bus to Mackay as I needed new work clothes and then I flew to Lindeman on this tiny little plane. That was cool until I saw the runway we were to land on. The back end of the runway sat at the base of the mountain. The front end finished on the edge of a cliff.

The plane turned and came down over the mountain and dropped onto the runway. It is a very short runway. I’m damn sure I wasn’t the only one who gripped my seat hard and hoped like hell that the pilot pulled up before we ran out of runway.

Fortunately, for us, the bloke had done this before, and he stopped the plane in time. He turned the plane around with room to spare and pulled up outside a simple covered area that was our reception point. Personally, the reception area was a bit rustic and needed sprucing up.

I was collected by the maintenance foreman, Mark, and then taken to Housekeeping’s office to be assigned my room. At the time, the Island was a popular destination and at peak occupancy. For another four weeks, it was still the Christmas school holidays for Queenslanders. The resort had just taken on ten new staff members, including me.

I was given a room in one of the old dongas (demountable building) that were near the runway. This variety of temporary accommodation was split into four single rooms. Three dongas faced the other three, and we had a covered area between them. An ablutions donga closed in the mountain facing end, so you got to look out over the cliff at the sea facing end.

I was put in the dongas with eight other guys. The rest of the staff stayed in a two-story brick accommodation block that had recently been built for them. However, it was full at the time, and the girls were given preference. I had to walk downhill and past the golf course for about 200m to get to the staff cafeteria and then other 100m downhill to the workshop.

The walk was fine on sunny days, but a bit of a pain when it rained. Also, the walkway wasn’t sealed between the golf course and the runway. We had a gully you had to cross that always had water in it. The gully and the bushes on either side were a pain to navigate when you were a bit tiddly and/or forgot your torch.

We didn’t have any streetlights to get from the canteen to the donga at night, and I often forgot my bloody torch. I spent the first five weeks living in a donga. It wasn’t a bad room as you had privacy and no roommate to annoy you. It was just bloody inconvenient to get to the amenities.

The staff considered that there were five main activities outside of work hours, golf, fishing, out-rigging canoeing, drinking and sex, not necessarily in that order. If you hated paddling, golfing and fishing and abstained from the last two, then you had better like reading, swimming and bushwalking.

Actually, I thought it was a cool place to live. The Island was like a small town, and as far as work went, I had to learn to fix pretty much everything that could be connected to electricity. One major hassle was that you couldn’t run down to the nearest store and pick up spares or a new item because we didn’t have that type of store. Even sending stuff away to the mainland to be fixed was a chore.

Everything came on the plane or by ferry from Mackay. Airlie was too small to use for ordering parts. So, the parts and new items frequently came in on the flight from Mackay in the morning, if you were lucky. The big stuff came via the ferry.

One of the rules on the Island was that the staff wasn’t supposed to fraternise with the guests. I know it happened, but I was a good boy in that regards. There were more than enough hotties in the staff to keep me happy.

It amused me how often the personnel changed over in the months that I worked there. Probably only about a quarter of the ninety-odd staff members that were there when I arrived were still there when I left. The rest had been replaced at least once, if not more often.

The workers came from everywhere as well. A lot of the less skilled people were back-packers or University students at this time of year. They would hang around for about four to six weeks then they would move on again.

The transient people were the best choices for fun and light entertainment. You didn’t have to worry too much about getting a reputation as give it a fortnight and those who may have known, were not there anymore.

I spent the first week just getting to know the lay of the land. Fortunately, I’d learned enough in my previous jobs to not have too many problems settling in, workwise. One of my primary responsibilities was sprucing up the old units on the eastern side of the hill that the main resort was on, so I had plenty to do.

Me, I’m about 176cm tall and have a slim build. I’ve got broad enough shoulders and had enough muscle density in the right places that it wasn’t hard to tell that I was fit and looked after myself. I wouldn’t call myself handsome, but I think I scrub up okay.

I keep my nondescript reddish-brown hair short. I wasn’t into the mullet look that was popular at the time. I have been told that I have a wicked laugh and sexy aqua eyes, go figure. I didn’t have much trouble picking up blokes or sheilas, so I must have something going for me.

Oh, that’s one thing you might find a bit odd about me, as I’m bisexual. If a person took my fancy, I’m just as likely to say yes. Having bisexual or gay tendencies in any way shape or form wasn’t something a bloke advertised too loudly in the nineties, so I did have to be a little discreet with some of my choices.

I’m also not scared of much, crawling or hopping things, the sight of blood, heights or the dark weren’t issues for me. My pet hates are cockroaches and crows. I’m not scared of them; I just don’t like them. Have you ever looked into a cockroach’s face? Ugly little bastards. Crows have those beady eyes that watch everything you do, and they will thieve the weirdest of things.

My lack of fear makes me popular with the girls, as they soon realise that I’d rescue the frogs, spiders and other crawly things from their rooms. I’d even get calls on the hand-held radio from the staff to come and rescue guests from the local inhabitants.

There were three other electricians on the Island with me. Matt was married, and his wife, Anne, ran the Housekeeping department. The Resort owners liked hiring couples if they could get them, as they tended to last longer on the Island than single people did.

The other two guys were around my age of twenty-four. David and Brandon were still single. David had a girl back in Mackay, but he tried to convince us it wasn’t serious, mostly because give him a couple of drinks and he got friendly with any sheila who would let him. He was a mad keen fisherman in his off hours, so he was cool.

Brandon was younger than me by a year, and his passions were out-rigging, boats, surfing, skin diving and getting wet in any way, shape or form. He loved the sea. He fished with David because it kept him happy and only if they went out in the boat. I learnt that Brandon was also entertaining one of the ladies from Housekeeping.

The boys having love interests suited me fine, as I generally didn’t like getting that close to the guys I worked with. They weren’t bad looking boys, but neither of them got my motor running. I was sharing the off weekend with Brandon. He often went to Mackay rather than Airlie. Better shopping and his people lived there, he told me.

Two of the people I had flown to the Island with were Kerry and Trish. Kerry was a cook, and she was working in our (the staff) cafeteria, she cooked breakfast and lunch. Trish was working in one of the shops in the Resort area. It sold trinkets, clothes and whatever gadgets were touristy.

The girls were both from somewhere in Victoria, where it snowed. They weren’t really big on the heat and humidly of the Central Coast area of Queensland. They were travelling around Australia and were planned to spend two or three months on the Island until the worst of the summer heat, was over before heading west.

They were nice sheilas, and I mostly hung around with them after work. Neither of them was drop-dead gorgeous, but I’d fuck ‘em if they wanted me to. I had wondered about doing both of them together since they shared the same room.

Kerry was a bit on the cuddlier side, but I didn’t mind having something to hang onto. She was a brown eyed brunette and had lovely big boobs. She was about 10cm shorter than I was, and her hair wasn’t a lot longer than mine either.

Trish was closer to 182cm tall, had medium length dark blonde straight hair, and she was very slim. She wore glasses and had a longish nose with blue eyes. She didn’t have much up top, but she did have lovely long legs.

They were great girls, and they didn’t mind having a drink and a laugh with me. We flirted for the first couple of weeks, but none of us made any moves on the other, and it didn’t really bother me. They were my mates and suitable for sharing the downtime with.

I did get a hug and some very lovely kisses for New Years from them both.

I had mostly behaved for the first couple of weeks on the Island.