FIFO Life

Recently I read this blog from FIFO Wife which I really liked and I thought to myself, it's about time to share with you how I live for the 6 months of the year when I'm at work.

My work starts on a Thursday, so on Wednesday every 4 weeks I get ready to go back to work. I have my shopping done for any toiletries or food items I like to take (normally rolled oats and dark mint chocolate). I pack a small bag as I just need items for one overnight stay - PJs, a fresh shirt and underwear, basic toiletries (hairbrush, toothbrush and some make up) and those items I need to 'refill' at work. My uniforms and everything else I might need during my 4 weeks on island stay at work as I have what is called a B2B (Back to Back) room. A B2B is the person who does my job for the 4 weeks I'm gone. Every Thursday 4 weeks apart, we have a handover of what we worked on and what we need to achieve and the other person takes over. It's like job sharing I suppose.

As I live in Central QLD, my travel starts on Wednesday morning. So Wednesday morning every 4 weeks, Steve takes me to the Rockhampton Airport and I leave my home, my partner, my beloved Hera and all the other animals behind to fly to the other side of the country to make a living which enables us a good lifestyle. I'm always teary when I leave. Hera is nearly 16 years old. Everytime I'm worried that I will never see her again - just like it happened with Quentin, also that was very unexpected.

The flight from Rockhampton to Brisbane only takes an hour, than I have a 2 hour stop at the Qantas Club in Brisbane. If you've never been to the Qantas Club, you pay an annual fee (which is tax deductible) to use it and there you can rest, use the internet and/or their computers, eat, drink and even shower - all for free when you're on a connecting flight with Qantas. When you travel as much as I do, it's well worth while.

Then I travel to Perth. The flight to Perth takes a bit over 5 1/2 hours. I don't mind that flight. I watch movies or read, eat lunch and have my last wine. Upon arrival in Perth I collect my luggage and take a cab to my hotel. After checking in, I make myself comfortable and I normally go for a walk and grab some take away. There's a 2 hour time difference between QLD and WA, so when I arrive at 3 pm in Perth, it's already 5 pm at home. I normally eat as soon as the take away shops open because at 5.30 pm Perth time, it's 7.30 pm 'my' time and I'm hungry. I prefer take away as I can take it back to my room eat at leisure and can sit comfortable in my PJs. Often the weather in Perth is much colder than at home and as I don't want to take too much stuff, I just don't have the right clothing to go outside. For example, last time, I flew in it was 14 (min)/27 (max) deg C in Rockhampton and 4 (min)/19(max) in Perth. Brrrr!

After dinner I shower and go to bed early. My alarm clock rings at 3.30 am, I get up, brush my teeth, get dressed and leave the hotel at 4 am to take a cab to the airport. We have chartered flights going to work, so on this early Thursday morning I sit with close to 200 people who are on the same flight as me. 200 people who just left their wifes, girlfriends, husbands, children - their entire life behind to fly up to a job on a desert island. Our flight leaves at 5.40 am and takes about 2 hours. Mostly on these flights there's about 195 men and 5 women (crew excluded). There's 10 flights a day going back and forward between the island and Perth.

Once we arrive on the island, we collect our luggage, get on the bus and get driven to Camp where we have our handover for a couple of hours, get changed, collect our crib and go to work. It's long day! We still have to work until 5 pm and normally the last night spent in a strange hotel room doesn't really give you good quality sleep. Also you're worried about missing the alarm clock ringing and potentially missing the plane. I'm lucky if I sleep 4 hours that night, so having to go through all of this and then still have to work until 5 pm is exhausting!

In the evening when we return to our room, it has been cleaned and I can unpack my things and make this sterile room home for 4 weeks. The rooms are fairly large compared to other camps, about 4 x 4 m including the bathroom. Each room looks exactly the same and contains a single bed, a TV, aircon, a cyclonproof window, desk, kettle, wardrobe and a bathroom with toilet, shower and sink.

As soon as you step in, you see the entirety of the room.

My bed laden in a blue bed spread that looks like it had been washed more times than I’d like to think about. Little Quentin sitting there and waiting for me to come 'home' every night.

I don't sit on this desk very often. After 12 hours in the office, the last thing I want to do is sitting on a desk. But at least it's a space where I can have a few personal items.

We have 12 clusters (=buildings) in camp, each cluster containing 8 wings and 2 storeys. This is the hallway when I step out of my room. Each hallway looks exactly the same and you can get lost easily.

Each wing has their own laundry. Our laundry gets done twice a week, so normally I don't use it except when I wash my clothing I wore during my travel. I don't like it to go in the dryer, so I wash it with my own washing powder which is less harsh and dry it in my room. The island is located in the NW shelf of Australia and it's hot and humid all year round. The aircon is on daily just to keep the room as dry as possible. It takes about 5 days to dry a shirt and trousers in there.

The Camp is not very old and the buildings have good facilities. These are common rooms where people can come together after their 12 hour shift and watch a game or play Xbox.

Often people sit here and wait for their rooms to be cleaned when they come from shift. There's people sharing rooms (between day- and nightshift) and they cannot go to their rooms during shift changeover. I wouldn't be able to do that. At least I have 4x4 m all to myself.

Here people take their laptops if they don't have the internet in their room and you often see people sitting here skyping with their family far far away. I have a little modem in my room, so I have internet connection. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not so but at least I'm connected with my loved ones by the click of a button and can talk to them without anybody else listening.

This is what the camp looks like at night.

The yellow lighting is used to not attract turtles to a light source.

The Camp has 4 Gyms including a 'women only' gym, it's got tennis courts, 2 swimming pools, you can play soccer, basketball and cricket. I do go to the women gym regularly but that's about it. After 12 hours with people, I just want to be alone in the little spare time I have.

We have a wet mess (=bar) where we're allowed to drink 4 light beers a night. Obviously this pic was taken during the day where everybody is either working or sleeping. The wet mess is open for dayshift after they finished working and then again in the morning for the nightshift personnel.

This is how the 'clusters' look like. Normally in the morning you see 6500 people walking here to collect their crib and take the bus to work.

I'm lucky. I work 28 day on and 28 days off. A lot of contractors work 26 days on, 9 days off. When I arrive home, it usually takes me 2-3 days to return to normal and the day before I fly out, I start getting cranky again. I couldn't do 26/9...

The company I work for doesn't have RDOs (= rostered day off), so we work for 28 days every day, 5 am to 5 pm. However, some contractors work 10 hour days and have half a Sunday off every two weeks.

There's 2 walking tracks we allowed to go on after hours - one goes to the beach. We're not allowed to go swimming but we're allowed to walk on it until I have to close it for turtle season. I took this picture a couple of days ago of the full moon rising over the Indian Ocean. Actually it's much prettier than the pic shows it.

Currently it's winter, my favourite time of the year here. The temps are around 22 (min)/27 (max) but the humidity is as always very high. In summer the temps are hardly bearable with 27(min)/45 (max) with very high humidity.

But now it's winter and the colours in the sky are just so beautiful!

So what does a typical day look like? Well, I get up at 4 am every day, do my stretches, jump in my uniform and go to collect my crib. All food for the day needs to be taken in the morning, we have no opportunity to buy or get anything until we return to camp. I catch the bus at 4.45 am which drives me to my office and I start my working day with meetings and catching up on nightshift activities.

Normally at around 6.30 am, I have my breakfast - oats with raisins. I recently started following Rhonda's recipe and am soaking 1/2 cup of oats with 1 cup of water and 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar overnight. I also add some raisins and some ground chia before I heat it up in the microwave. After 3 minutes, the oats are ready and I add a big spoonful of natural yoghurt. Very yummy! I have trialled a few variations in the past but this one is the one I like the most, so I stick to it now. We only get quick oats here, so every swing I make sure, I bring beautiful wholegrain rolled oats with me.

The day goes on and it varies in regards to what I do. It's a mixture of office and field work and lots of meetings. I try not to snack during the day but normally have some watermelon for morning tea. It's a long time from waking up at 4 am to noon. In summer I have a mixed salad for lunch. But now it's winter and there's nothing better than hot soup for lunch with a slice of light rye bread. No, it doesn't look very appetizing eating out of plastic containers but we don't have any proper plates in the office. I brought my own cutlery up, so at least I don't have to eat with plastic ones. On my shopping list for next swing I have a plate and bowl to bring here. I guess they don't want to end up with a pile of dishes nobody cleans.

At 5 pm we finish the day and either the bus will take us back to camp or we can walk. There's a 5 km walking track from site to camp which I take most days. The walking track was closed when I came back due to recent rain and just has been reopened, so I'm looking forward to walk home again.

As I'm not the most social person, I normally grab breakfast, lunch and dinner when I collect my crib in the morning. If I don't walk back to Camp, I usually either go the Women's Gym and exercise or I go for a walk to the beach or the airport - the only two walking tracks were allowed to use for recreational activities. I mostly eat in my room while watching TV. This is what a typical dinner looks like:

This one is Shepherd's Pie and Veggies. We have microwaves in the common areas we can use, so I can heat my dinner up and go back to my room and eat.

Of course, we can also go in the diners to have dinner there. We have 3 diners on camp all serving the same food. This is how it looks like in one of our diners. Work clothes are not permitted, so it's nice to see people in normal clothes instead of the high vis. All the food has labels saying "eat less" or "eat more" or "eat moderately" to help avoid obesity. I tend to disagree with their methods of choosing which food is healthy and which one isn't.

As the island is highly quarantined, all food gets cut and prepared in Perth and then send to site to minimise waste and reduce quarantine risk.



All in all, it's a good place to work and also there're a lot of restrictions in place, we all understand that if you have 8500 people on a small island you need to control them to not impact the footprint. I love my job and I love the lifestyle but yes, I do miss my fiancé, my animals, my home and I do miss normal life. I sometimes dream of Steve or Hera and wake up feeling sad that I can't just get hug. It can be lonely despite being amongst so many people. But I have chosen this life, I don't have to do it. I choose to do it to provide to my family, to enable us to do the things we want to do - both financially and timewise. It's certainly not for everyone but as long as I enjoy it, I will do it.

Now you know what it looks like where I work and where I am when I miss out on birthdays and Xmas. I'm sure you can appreciate why when I come home, I want to do the most basic things such as cooking and cleaning. I go back to normality and enjoy everyday chaos after 4 weeks of strict routine.

Have a great weekend!