Celebrating New Year’s Eve in an Australian outback town at 40 degrees Celsius

I flew to Mount Isa, a small town deep in the interior of Queensland, from the Gold Coast more than half a month ago. When I was in Victoria, everyone was shocked when I told them that I was going to this place. They said that this place is extremely dry and very different from Victoria. But as the plane disappeared into the clouds, the sky turned gloomy and it was raining. It landed on the runway. Although it was no longer raining, there were still traces of rain, and the sultry air was almost saturated with water vapor.

I told my landlord, Sanjesh, who came to pick me up, that I didn’t expect it to be so humid here. Sanjesh is a Fijian who came here more than ten years ago to work as a mining engineer. He now owns four properties here, three of which are rented out to people like me and other mining-related people. Mount Isa has a huge open-pit non-ferrous metal mine that produces copper and zinc. It began mining a hundred years ago and is now owned by Glencore. The official website reads, "The Mount Isa mine is one of the largest mining complexes in the world. ". This is why there is a town of nearly 20,000 people in the deserted interior of Queensland. Although 20,000 people is very inconspicuous and is not even as big as a town in China, in Australia, this is the inner city of Queensland. Continent’s largest city.

Why does it rain so often? Although it is inland, it is closer to the ocean than Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Only a few hundred kilometers north from here is Carpenta, across the sea from Indonesia and Barbuda New Guinea. Gulf of Carpentaria. Therefore, the wind blowing from the south of the equator is a moist thunderstorm, while the wind blowing from the desert in the center of Australia is dry and can grab all the moisture. It often rains, but on days without rain, the temperature is 40 degrees.

After working on a farm for three months without seeing anyone, the house I rented in Sanjesh was only a few minutes' walk away from the city. Being able to go out and walk to a supermarket and a liquor store at any time was the happiest thing. In just a few weeks, my freezer has been filled with a variety of frozen vegetables, jelly, jelly, dumplings, steaks, milk, and vegetables. When I came to Australia, every previous host had something called a pantry. When translated into Chinese, it probably means a food storage room, which mainly contains dry goods that can be stored at room temperature. I also have my own pantry, including various sauces, oatmeal and cornflakes, canned tomatoes, canned tuna, canned asparagus, and even canned bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, of course Made in China. Looking at the pantry full of food is really a very happy thing. I really hope that I can have such a pantry in March 2022 before the lockdown.

In the mining town, there is naturally no farm to do, and there is no technology to be a mining engineer. So the only choices left were chain fast food restaurants and supermarkets. Even though I found a job a week before flying here, I still had to wait for two weeks before starting a job in the service industry. First it was McDonald's, and then Woolworths, Australia's supermarket chain. , I have really done a lot of work that I would have never thought of doing in China. I love having you here, and I love having you come again.

Although it is a small town with more than 10,000 people, all public services are still available. The open-air public swimming pool funded by the city council only costs 5 Australian dollars for residents. What are the standards for residents? I thought that just like China's household registration, I need to use a passport or driver's license to prove that I am a resident. Just saying that I live here is enough to enjoy the standard of a resident. If you want to print some information, you can choose to go to a library to print things in Australia, so I went to a small library in a corner of the city that has everything from a historical reference room, various books, to DVDs of TV series and games, and even A very spacious children's reading room. For things like public services, there is really no need to build a huge and spacious library like in China, as long as it is enough.

The Chinese New Year has arrived before I knew it, and it has been four and a half months since I came to Australia. Originally, I wanted to get together with some friends from China and Taiwan here on New Year’s Eve, but it turned out that everyone had classes. So I fried a steak in the afternoon for dinner, and cooked some Ravioli dumplings in the evening. Hahaha, it’s not that bad. You can also buy dumplings, but the Chinese celebrate a “Happy Italian Lunar New Year” in Australia. It’s also quite interesting.

Well, All in all, I wish you can explore a bigger world in the new year, I wish you can become a better person, and I wish you a happy new year.

Remember to dare to believe.