"No Thank You" again

I returned to Brisbane on March 6 to look into an interview with Bechtel. This trip was a bit of an adventure. Mick, the son of the people I worked for, and actually the person I had spoken to over the phone about going to the station in the first place, needed to be in Rockhampton that morning, so we left at 5. To get out of the place, four creeks had to be crossed. The recent rains had brought all of them up, and the highest one came up to the headlights of the Toyota Land Cruiser. That one was also the fastest, and I rode in the box of the truck for it, in case we got swept away. A true Australian experience, indeed. This was the exact reason many Aussie 4x4s have snorkels, and I was glad for it. What made this even more interesting is that another guy tried to get out thirty minutes later with another Land Cruiser, and turned around because the creeks had risen even more. If we hadn't left at 5am, we'd have been flooded in.

The extremely well-traveled Aussie and I chatted at length about a number of things on the four-hour drive to Rocky, such as Texans, hay, New Yorkers, cattle, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin. I booked a flight online from Rocky to Brisbane, then wandered around the roughly Missoula-sized town for a couple hours, casually in search of a decent stockwhip, which I found at a saddlery pointed out by Mick. The flight was quick and easy, and I must say I was impressed by my first Qantas flight.

Once back in Brisbane, I found my way back to the Ihles', by train and on foot. The mile from the Ferny Grove train station to their house was a long one with my 55 lbs of stuff. My push on Bechtel for an interview began the next day, with a number of emails to various people. I made a trip to the office Wednesday afternoon, but found it mostly empty: the HR department was out all day for training. By then, they had received my resume from a variety of sources, so another visit on Thursday didn't seem like a worthwhile effort. I called Friday morning, attempting to reach at least one HR person, but could not. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from them, declining any offers for my services with their company. That beats sitting on my hands waiting for news I suppose. I think it's also fair to say my failure to gain employment with them wasn't from lack of trying. This was at least the third, possibly the fourth "No Thank You" letter from Bechtel in about two years, so I am now convinced I may just not be meant to be there.

So what now? Number One on my list is to get my tooth fixed. I have an appointment for Saturday the 12th, and hopefully it'll get handled without unnecessarily bother. Number Two on my list is to get out from underfoot of the Ihles. Even with a room and board arrangement agreed upon, I feel it'd be best to let them have their routines and family time without an extra guy hanging around.

Without anywhere else to be, I will be heading to the town of Newcastle in New South Wales for a few days, entirely for the sake of exploring. I would like to venture out of Queensland, yet don't want to tackle Sydney or Melbourne by myself. Newcastle has about 150,000 people, so it's not too big, and supposedly has an Irish session at one of its pubs. I'm also eager to meet a few people, since I haven't done much socializing even after being here for a month. Larry and I have a good chance of having a place to be in a week or so, but I won't write about that until it becomes a little more set in stone.