I didn’t pass the interview stage at Bunnings and I am now waiting for the feedback letter in the mail, but I have re-applied already. Julie has been for her induction at Domino’s and will meet with the local manager tomorrow to work out her shifts. Meanwhile, it’s a cold wet weekend here, so we’re staying indoors. Except that I’ve taken the Suzuki down to the creek that flows out of our suburb to play in the mud for a little while. Very satisfying!
Ouch. Nearly the end of the month, so much has happened and I haven’t managed to update here.
Julie returned to Domino’s for her first shift and her uniform wasn’t in yet. Don’t really know what the Manager had been doing with his time, but that day was his last day at the Weston store, so we figure he had already tuned out. So she came home again. The following week, she called the store first, to hear that the uniform still wasn’t in. So she has agreed that she will start after we get back from the Melbourne trip.
Then we had some visitors, which makes a nice change to our otherwise dull and boring life (yeah, right). Darcy & Mary arrived as planned from Geraldton (WA) because Darcy was participating in the dedication of the memorial to National Servicemen. They arrived the day before and we all went to dinner, then next day I took both of them into the drop-off point near the War Memorial. They had a great day and I collected them mid-afternoon, with both of them looking thoroughly sunburnt. They headed off the next morning, intending to go back via the Great Ocean Road.
Meanwhile, Julie’s work continues to be a major source of stress. Some nights, she doesn’t get home until 7pm. On top of that, her allergies have kicked in really badly and it doesn’t help that she lives in the allergy capital of Australia, which is the driest continent in the world. On that note, the 10-year drought has finally broken. We have had so much rain right across the southern half of the country, it’s just amazing. Canberra’s dams have gone from struggling to maintain 50% of capacity to well over 75% in just a few weeks.
On my job front, I haven’t heard any more from Bunnings, so I did some poking around on the Seek website and found a job with Deanes Transit group, who operate out of Queanbeyan. Actually they own Deanes Bus Lines (where they started) who do the regular Queanbeyan to Canberra commuter services, as well as Transborder who operate between Canberra and Yass, the Airliner which runs between Civic and Canberra Airport, and the CountryLink service connecting to the train from Sydney and doing the run from Canberra to Eden, down in the afternoon and back next morning. Anyhow, I submitted the application on a Sunday and they called me at work on Monday morning! Went for an interview later in the week, and what I have to do is get a NSW Driver Authority, which means I will be authorised to take fare-paying passengers. Once I have that in place, they will put me through familiarisation and get me on the road. The one aspect in my favour is my availability, which the complete opposite of most of their drivers. I will be in line for possible late night charters (Friday night only for me), collecting the bunch of drunks from their function and returning them to their hotel, weekend charters from Canberra to who knows where, and I need to upgrade my Medium Rigid licence to a Heavy Rigid before I can move from “buses” to “coaches”. I’m starting that process when we get back with a 2-hour lesson, where the instructor will tell me where I need to brush up.
And both dogs got a haircut and both look very chic in their new trim line. Both of them were too matted for anything other than “short”.
Saturday. We are now on the road for Melbourne. The ACT has 2 consecutive long weekends this year, so we made use of the chance to take 4 days of leave and have 10 days to play with. It’s Saturday today and we only managed to drive for about 3 hours, because we just had so much to do before we left, including me collecting Julie from work after she drove the Suzuki there to get the school holiday payments organised for the kids in the residences. We are stopped for the night in a truck rest area, away from the main stopping area, about 50m from the road, but I think we are both so tired that we won’t notice the road noise. We’ll have about 6 hours on the road to Brooke & Paul’s place tomorrow, where we will once again shoehorn the bus into their driveway.
Sunday. We made it to Melbourne after nearly 7 hours on the road, which of course includes all the driver rest stops, puppy piddle stops, meal breaks and so on. We once again managed to annoy the neighbour opposite (which isn’t very hard to do, apparently) by putting the front wheels onto the grass on “his” footpath to get the bus into a position where it would reverse into the driveway. But I did manage to get in in there on the first go, without scratching anything this time. It’s so good to see the family again.
The learning curve on the bus continues. Earlier in the week, I went into the Road Services office and got the Heavy Vehicle Licence handbook, so that at least I could read for myself what I would have needed to know if I needed to do the written (online) test. As it happens, because I am only upgrading, I don’t need to do the test, but the information is useful. One piece of said information was that I should be tweaking the relief valve on the air tanks every day, so after some consultation with others on the CMCA forum, I have started doing that. Then I found another relief valve puller at the back of the bus and gave that a good yoink. It squirted black oily goop on the driveway. So when we were stopped at a dirt rest area yesterday, I decided to give it another yoink, but this time the goop bounced back at me instead of the other way and I found myself covered in it – shirt, face, glasses, hair. Once we had stopped for the night on a gravel area, I decided to give it another go, this time staying well out of range! The end result was that it was blowing air out onto the large dollop of goop on the gravel, and the air pressure gauge went down a long way, so I have obviously hit the same air pressure system. Turns out that the one at the back is a sump for the compressor that runs off the engine, which delivers nice clean air pressure to the tanks at the front.
Monday. I noticed that the grey tank appeared to be overflowing after just one shower, when it should have been almost empty. After again consulting the CMCA forum, I got Paul’s garden hose, shoved as far as I could up the drain hose and gave it a good back flush from the tap. When the tank started overflowing again, I knew I had got through the blockage, turned the tap off, pulled the hose out and proceeded to drain the tank onto the roses.
It’s been great fun staying with the kids and enjoying the interaction with Jack & Harry. And enjoying Brooke’s cooking! All that weight that we had managed to lose – some of it’s back on already.
And as the month closes out, our black tank has just started to overflow onto Brooke & Paul’s driveway. Definitely not a good look (or smell). So as soon as the commuters’ cars have moved from the street, we’ll be digging the bus out of the driveway and taking it to a caravan park to use their dump point. Obviously we are either flushing it way too often or using too much water when we do. The learning process continues! Update: Did that and by the time we got there, the caravan park had closed. So we are now parked partly on the footpath outside the house and we’ll have somewhere to take the bus tomorrow, except that we will take it to a free, public dump point instead.
And the other big news of the day: Paul’s Police entrance test results came back and he passed! His next step is to gather the necessary paperwork and formally apply to be accepted as a Police Recruit. We are all very proud of him.
AND, the study materials for the course have to do for my NSW Driver Authority are now available, so I’ll collect them on Monday after we get back home and I’ll be doing the course on the following weekend.