hard yakka

My big week starts Sunday:  packing in the morning, travel to the office in the early afternoon to assemble all the goodies for Monday’s PD. Comrade C and I drive to Gippsland in the late afternoon, check in, eat, run through notes, check slides.

I’m awake at five, get up after six, breakfast in town at seven, set up at eight, run two sessions till three, drive back to Melbourne, across town at peak, drop Comrade C at the airport, ditch the hire car, taxi to the office in Collingwood to deposit the boxes, arrive home well after seven. The animals jump out of their skins to see me.

Next day, Tuesday, up early, deal with the email, start organising for Mildura: dog, cat, bag, laptop and cables for phones, peripherals. Bus, train and tram to the office, laptop lop-siding me, wheelie-bag on the other arm for balance. Hit the office at three. Comrade S and I pack 29kgs of resource materials in a huge suitcase. The taxi loads us up at 4:30, takes us well out of our way to Tulla.

I fork out $20 overweight fee on the big suitcase, unpack my bag to extract my laptop to plop in the plastic tray through security. We have time to burn. Comrade S is famished, savage, needs food, NOW. We eat Asian, laksa, noodles. A wise decision. Our next chance to eat is after nine, too late.

Comrade S is not well pleased to be in 38-seater prop jet, calls it tiny. We lift off around seven, touch deck just after eight, wait outside the dark, deserted terminal for a taxi to make the half-hour round trip to and from Mildura.

I’m up till one trying to quell my mounting terror about the material. I’m carrying the burden for our first day, Comrade S for day two. The laptop shares our breakfast table with poached eggs and rubbery toast. We set up at eight, welcome participants at half past, start a couple of minutes early.

When they leave at 3:30 we debrief, check the following day’s slides and activities. Around five we head to our rooms. I have a bath for the first time in years. We both eat Thai: Comrade S manages several takeaway boxes; I eat at the restaurant. Back in my room, I devote hours to revamping thirty PowerPoint slides, adding graphics, fixing alignments, rewording ambiguities. 

I hand Comrade S the flash drive with my evening’s work after breakfast, pop round the corner to meet Ken, a colleague from last year’s job. He has a coffee and several conversations, some with me. It’s good to see him; he’s about to lead his fifth group of young people and mentors to Kokoda.

For two day’s we work our intellectual arses off running a PD we don’t like, haven’t done before. We pack the big suitcase, stand on the kerb, knackered, waiting for a taxi back to the airport. Comrade S sleeps before take-off. She still has a dance class to run this evening.

I guide a Pakistani taxi driver from Tulla to Croydon. It’s his third day in the job, third month in the country; he doesn’t know how to get out of the airport. More work for me, guiding us from A to B and beyond. This is my job: this is what I do.

Rock on.