Author's notes:
-
Written for
: "In a Sunburned Country event"
for stories set in Australia.
-All characters are at least 18.
-Writing is Canadian English so colour vs color and neighbour vs neighbor are normal.
-I would like to thank ElectricBlue for offering to translate some of
the Australian character's sentences into Australian slang. In the end I decided
to leave it alone.
-I've taken some literary license with some of the scenes. You'll know it when you
hit them.
-This is neither a reconciliation or BTB story, although.....well, I ain't sayin....
Crash
Jared banged through the front door with a huge smile on his face. Events around town had been depressing lately so some good news must have happened. With the declining prices of coal rumours of layoffs and mine closings were once again the talk of the Tumbler Ridge. A one industry coal mining town, it had been an up and down economy for years. The closure of the Wolverine mine four years ago had almost gutted the town. Having it start back up in the last few months had been a godsend to the community, but coal prices had recently declined again and were hovering close to the cost of production.
"Is there good news sweetie, like maybe back to work?" I asked hopefully.
His grin got even larger, he was excited, "there's a recruiter in town Chloe. I went and talked to them this afternoon. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. They desperately need trade people for the bauxite mines in Australia and look what they offered me," thrusting a piece of paper in my face.
I read the paper in silence the figure mentioned at the end astonishing, "that's like half again what you make," I looked up in amazement.
"Yeah, the pay in US dollars really helps. And it's a five year guarantee of employment along with eight weeks holidays, medical, dental and the other benefits. We'll be in a camp, but they'll fly us out to Perth whenever we want to get away for a holiday, even a weekend."
"But you don't know anything about bauxite mining," I threw out.
"Don't need to, the equipment is the same as we use for mining coal. There's nothing they use I'm not familiar with."
I sat down in a chair feeling overwhelmed, then mentioned the obvious, "we'd have to move to Australia."
"They take care of all the details. We just have to get on a plane. It's that simple."
"When?"
"Thirty days. They even start paying me the minute we climb on that plane for Australia."
"But we just got married...." I trailed off. We had, three months ago, although we'd been together for the three years before that.
"The recruiter liked that part. He thought it would put some spirit in the camp to have newlyweds. It'll give more of a feeling of family. We'll even have our own quarters. Come on, think of it as a huge adventure in our lives. We both know there's not much future here in Tumbler Ridge with the ups and downs of the coal industry. By the time we get back we'll have enough money to buy a house cash. We can search for a stable mining town in Canada, or hell, we might even like it enough to stay in Australia."
I felt sorry for the landlord when we handed in our notice. The town had a glut of vacant houses because of the economic downturn and I wondered if he'd be able to sell or rent it again. His face had gone a little white when we gave him our notice.
The good thing about Jared's job as a heavy duty mechanic was he was kept on working for longer periods mothballing machinery, or called back early to get it working again if they were re-opening a mine. In addition there was winterizing and a host of other maintenance or warranty things that couldn't be put off. Out of the last three years of shutdowns he had only lost a total of a year a few months at a time. Still that was a pretty big gap in income. Of course the regular miners suffered far worse.
We met in Vancouver when he was on holidays and I'd just finished my last semester at the University of British Columbia. I was working as a waitress at a local restaurant trying to decide about my future life when he and some friends arrived for dinner. Somehow we clicked almost instantly and when he asked to pick me up after my shift I impulsively said yes. By the following September I was living in Tumbler Ridge with him, my biology degree a useless wad of paper on the wall. The amount of work for marine biologists in a coal town in the mountains was precisely none!
Jared is 27, five feet ten inches tall, dark haired, brown eyes and muscular from all the heavy work he does. I think he's a real hunk. Myself I'm 26, five feet six inches, blue eyes, blonde hair and he tells me I'm a pretty good looking package. I'm not to sure whether to believe him because his eyes almost never stray from my thirty-six C tits. Unless of course I drop my panties. Then he's Mr. all over!
Being newlyweds you'd think we'd be tearing up the sheets, but he turned out to be somewhat inept in bed. He's a premature ejaculator and can't seem to last more than a minute or two at the best. It's something we're working on although our efforts are impaired by his refusal to engage in oral sex. I could live with the lack of penetration, but without even anything like an orgasm from his tongue, it's been pretty one sided between us. I have hopes though that things will work themselves out.
Thirty days later we were landing at the Vancouver airport and climbing onto a plane to Australia. I won't bore you with the arduous, long flight. We touched down in Sydney long enough to change planes, then flew to Perth. I would have liked to spend some time in Sydney, it rivals Vancouver as one of the most beautiful harbours in the world to see from the air. I would have also loved to see their world famous Opera House.
From Perth it was straight onto the company plane for a long flight to the camp. We swore we'd never do anything like this again without a couple of days for layover. We were exhausted and apparently the last passengers boarding. The flight was full and there were only two seats available. One halfway down the plane and one at the very back. Both had the seats beside them full so there was no way we could sit together.
The seat midway down was okay, but the pair at the back had a hulking guy whose head towered a good six, maybe eight inches above the other men. The guy had to be at least six and a half feet tall and very, very large. But I could see it was a muscular large, not a fat, overweight physique. He was so big he was taking up half the remaining seat.
Eying the space I realized there was no way Jared was fitting in there and even for me, it looked like it was going to be tight. It was pointless even asking another man to give up a seat, no male was going to fit in beside that hulk.
Resigned to my fate I walked down the aisle, smiled at him and asked if the seat was taken. He made an effort to squeeze his bulk a little more to the side, but it didn't help much.
He offered his hand and introduced himself as Brad apologising for the discomfort. I guess he could see it on my face. He was a pretty good looking guy, I told myself. I could do worse than him for the next eight hours trying to settle in beside him after introducing myself. Despite his efforts to move over we were almost cuddling it was so squished.
He leaned over and whispered in my ear, "you can sit on my lap Chloe if it's any easier," then snickered.
I punched him on the arms lightly and shook my finger at his naughtiness, giggling along with him.
"Not going to happen." I whispered back, "besides you might fit in the cargo hold better! I think I'll go talk to the pilot."
He threw his head back laughing uproariously at that. I liked his laugh, there was something cheerful about his deep chuckles that appealed to me. I noticed Jared looking back and gave him a thumbs up indicating everything was ok.
Despite Brad's laughter his eyes had that little boy look of disappointment and I rolled my eyes at his behaviour. Seriously, did he expect me to walk on the plane and give it up? Tons of guys had hit on me at the restaurant and I gotten adept at handling them without creating anger or disappointment.