own gym and always have enough to live off...I'll need to win the lottery, I guess."
"Good luck. There are worse dreams than wanting a stable job." Like dreaming of a rock star you couldn't have. Especially when you had to reject his daily offers to make your other dreams come true. "It's one of those things you take for granted until it's taken away without warning." Audra hesitated, then ploughed on, "I'd like to work at a remote weather station in a place like this one. Seeing things few people get to, taking observations for posterity, but most of all...alone, I guess."
"You don't like people?" Serge sat up in surprise. "I wouldn't have thought that about you."
Audra bit her lip. "It's not that. I do like people. I've lived most of my life in the city, in a household with five kids where you barely get five minutes to yourself. I...you'll laugh at me when you hear this. Annette warned me about the accommodation here, saying it was just like a minesite with single rooms and all, but I almost squealed in delight when I saw it. It's the first time in my life that I haven't had to share a room with someone else. I love my family, but they always seem to need help with something. For as long as I can remember, I've done the laundry for all seven of us, just to make sure I had clean shirts for school and then for work. Cooked most nights that I was home, because Mum just never had the time or the energy by the end of the day. Is it a dream to want to only have to worry about myself?"
"Nah, I know what you mean. When I'm on the farm, Dad always worries about the price of wine and grape yields and who's been bought out by the big wineries. Whether he'll get enough workers for the harvest or the pruning, and whether drought or fire or hail will ruin this year's crop. Whether he's better off selling the whole crop to another winemaker, or going to the trouble of pressing the vintage himself. My brothers all went to uni, did agriculture or viticulture or courses in how to make sheep cheese, and now they're all planning on getting married and having kids, to Mum's delight. I'm the youngest and Dad damn near disowned me when I said I didn't want to go to university. As for getting married...I was more interested in health and fitness, not wine. Family...shit, I love them, but they're not the ones living my life. That's me. I have to make my own choices." Glass clinked. "Want another beer? I think these are both normal ones. No fruit or vegetables this time."
Audra accepted the drink and hugged her knees to her chest as she stared out over the dark ocean. "Thanks. Yes, I love my family. But it feels like I do less work out here, even when I'm still on laundry duty. I have time to myself. Almost makes working here feel like a holiday." She laughed. "Don't tell Annette I said that. When we're fully booked and I've had to clean a record number of rooms in less time than it takes to drive here from town, sometimes I vacuum so many rooms and scrub so many showers that I can still hear the hum of the vacuum cleaner at dinner, or I wake up with my fingers cramping around an imaginary spray bottle in the middle of the night."
"Why don't you have a job at a weather station? I haven't finished my qualification yet, but I thought you said you'd graduated."
Audra sighed. "Yeah, I graduated earlier this year. Most of the meteorology jobs in Australia are through the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology. They have one graduate intake a year." It still hurt to think about it.
"Did you miss out last year?"
She thanked her lucky stars that it was too dark for her to see the sympathy on his face. Or for him to see the tears escaping from her eyes at the memory of Leon's mangled car and him lying in hospital in a drug-induced coma, like an ad for why seventeen-year-olds shouldn't own V8s, drive fast and drink alcohol. "Sort of. I didn't get my application finished before the deadline. So they didn't accept it and I had to wait another
"Good luck. There are worse dreams than wanting a stable job." Like dreaming of a rock star you couldn't have. Especially when you had to reject his daily offers to make your other dreams come true. "It's one of those things you take for granted until it's taken away without warning." Audra hesitated, then ploughed on, "I'd like to work at a remote weather station in a place like this one. Seeing things few people get to, taking observations for posterity, but most of all...alone, I guess."
"You don't like people?" Serge sat up in surprise. "I wouldn't have thought that about you."
Audra bit her lip. "It's not that. I do like people. I've lived most of my life in the city, in a household with five kids where you barely get five minutes to yourself. I...you'll laugh at me when you hear this. Annette warned me about the accommodation here, saying it was just like a minesite with single rooms and all, but I almost squealed in delight when I saw it. It's the first time in my life that I haven't had to share a room with someone else. I love my family, but they always seem to need help with something. For as long as I can remember, I've done the laundry for all seven of us, just to make sure I had clean shirts for school and then for work. Cooked most nights that I was home, because Mum just never had the time or the energy by the end of the day. Is it a dream to want to only have to worry about myself?"
"Nah, I know what you mean. When I'm on the farm, Dad always worries about the price of wine and grape yields and who's been bought out by the big wineries. Whether he'll get enough workers for the harvest or the pruning, and whether drought or fire or hail will ruin this year's crop. Whether he's better off selling the whole crop to another winemaker, or going to the trouble of pressing the vintage himself. My brothers all went to uni, did agriculture or viticulture or courses in how to make sheep cheese, and now they're all planning on getting married and having kids, to Mum's delight. I'm the youngest and Dad damn near disowned me when I said I didn't want to go to university. As for getting married...I was more interested in health and fitness, not wine. Family...shit, I love them, but they're not the ones living my life. That's me. I have to make my own choices." Glass clinked. "Want another beer? I think these are both normal ones. No fruit or vegetables this time."
Audra accepted the drink and hugged her knees to her chest as she stared out over the dark ocean. "Thanks. Yes, I love my family. But it feels like I do less work out here, even when I'm still on laundry duty. I have time to myself. Almost makes working here feel like a holiday." She laughed. "Don't tell Annette I said that. When we're fully booked and I've had to clean a record number of rooms in less time than it takes to drive here from town, sometimes I vacuum so many rooms and scrub so many showers that I can still hear the hum of the vacuum cleaner at dinner, or I wake up with my fingers cramping around an imaginary spray bottle in the middle of the night."
"Why don't you have a job at a weather station? I haven't finished my qualification yet, but I thought you said you'd graduated."
Audra sighed. "Yeah, I graduated earlier this year. Most of the meteorology jobs in Australia are through the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology. They have one graduate intake a year." It still hurt to think about it.
"Did you miss out last year?"
She thanked her lucky stars that it was too dark for her to see the sympathy on his face. Or for him to see the tears escaping from her eyes at the memory of Leon's mangled car and him lying in hospital in a drug-induced coma, like an ad for why seventeen-year-olds shouldn't own V8s, drive fast and drink alcohol. "Sort of. I didn't get my application finished before the deadline. So they didn't accept it and I had to wait another
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