I think we just call them Western Australians
You’re going home in a crocodile!
Based on my anecdotal evidence alone I’ve been stung by more things on the east coast than here.
Plenty of sharks though
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Lots of sharks, and quite a few rocks aren’t there? I remember a lot of people surfing with helmets
Nah most of the beaches are great, really flat sand.
If you go swimming around some of the points there’s heaps of rocks, so plenty of seals and then plenty of things that eat seals.
The beach where I live looks like that picture for aaages.
Watching a local AFL team’s training session get washed out due to rain.
Also lubricating to overhear one of the guys say that he didn’t see it coming. There were big fucking dark clouds moving towards the ground as I was on my walk!
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Just had my car in for a rego check and service. It required 4 new tyres as well as a fair bit of other work that I’m expecting to cost up to $1500.
The mechanic has been a bit snowed under this week so didn’t get the chance to finalise the paperwork but never mind, he just handed me the keys and said to pop in next week sometime to fix the bill up.
Gotta love living in a small town.
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I’m not 100% sure it’s first gear lubrication, but it’s not grind my gears either. I spend 10 minutes coming up with a name for a new thread about getting stuff off your chest, but I couldn’t think of anything witty, so this is going here. I guess this is a ‘safe space’
So I’ve never known by biological father. My existence was the result of a jolly good house party, a few too many alcoholic beverages, some rather moreish illegal substances and the annoying fact that the were no chemists/Woolworths open in the wee hours of the morning sometime in early 1991 for a quick condom trip.
My mother passed away from drug releated issues a few years after I was born, and I was raised by my grandparents along with the man who my mother was dating at the time she passed away. I am not his child, but he took me on as his own, and for all intents and purposes, he’s my Dad, and always will be. He’s also my godfather.
For all of my childhood until my early 20s I never knew anything really about my biological father. Other than the snippets of information I had been fed from my grandparents, extended family on my mums side and my ‘Dad’. My grandparents discouraged me from finding out about him. They held him in a rather low regard, and probably rightly so. My Dad reckons he met him once or twice in the late 80s/early 90s, but given it’s 30 years ago, and that sadly he’s a chronic alcoholic, he doesn’t really remember much.
So yeah, grew up not knowing really anything about him. Dad had thought he was from South America, but couldn’t be sure. We used to have agood chuckle that he may have actually been Diego Maradona, and perhaps my mother met him for the Centenary Cup in '88.
Fast forward to when I’m 24, and I’ve returned from Europe and I’m searching through my documents as the then-girlfriend and I are moving in together, and I find my birth certificate. Up until this point, I’d never really looked at my birth certificate. It’s not something which you really take notice of, until the few times you really do need it. Anyway, I spotted a name on the document under biological father which I had never heard or seen before. A little bit of social media detective work later, and low and behold, I discover him. I initiated a bit of conversation with him, but it’s hard. He didn’t know that my mum had passed away. Esentially, he’d split with her about 6 months after I had been born.
He was born in Cuba, and his family fled Cuba when he was young as his family were political dissidents. They fled to Spain, before re-locating to Australia. His parents moved to Florida in the U.S. in the late-80s, in the hope that the rest of their family that were still in Cuba would flee to the United States. He decided to move to the U.S. shortly after I was born to be closer to his parents.
He now has a wife that has been married to for 20+ years, and I found out I have 2 half brothers and a half sister. All younger than me. The eldest brother, and daughter don’t really want to know me, but that’s understandable and I’m OK with that. The middle brother and I get along like a house on fire. We chat regularly on Facebook messanger. He’s a bit of a wild guy, bit of a redneck. Actually runs his own hovercraft tours company down in the Floria keys. He’s promised to take me out alligator hunting when I go over eventually.
I also discovered that he has now recovered from skin cancer, which he was just getting over when I discovered him. Sadly he couldn’t come out to Australia for our wedding which I did extend an invitation too. I was a bit annoyed by that, not so much that he couldn’t make it, but tried to make amends by offering me money for the wedding. I was annoyed, because that’s not what I was after - it’s a bit late in the play to be offering up child support. I got over it.
Anyways a few months ago, my biological father messages me and asks if I would be OK if he came out to Australia I was/am. This morning he messages me and tells me he’ll be here for two weeks in the back end of next month from the 15th.
I believe it’s just him and his wife. But, I’m exciting. I’m also nervous as fuck. So much to say that is hard to communicate over Facebook messenger. We’ve chatted a few times via Skype, but everything I was to say, it’s got to be face to face. Turns out he’s staying with family friends in Campbelltown, which is Hella convenient as I’m only 15-20 mins from Campbelltown.
I’ve decided I need to write everything down I want to say, and talk about. But yeah, that’s some big news that I now have a date of meeting my biological father. My Dad is cool with it. My grandfather passed away last year, which is probably good because despite being in his mid-90s, frail and mostly imobile I’m sure he’d give throwing a few punches. My grandma sadly is in a nursing home with bad dementia, so thankfully she doesn’t need to meet him.
But yeah, excited, nervous, scared, anxious, just some of the shit that’s flowing out of me right now.
Yeah, didn’t know where to put this, but my psychologist is currently away, and I need to get some shit off my chest. Perhaps that can be the new thread “Getting shit off ya chest”.
As I write this, he’s buying me a Miami FC Messi Jersey too. 
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That’s a lot!
Question: does your work give you access to an employee assistance program? Since your regular psych is out I wonder if that’s a good no strings free option to decompress all this stuff and clarify and process what’s in your head?
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Make whatever thread helps you mate.
That’s a helluva story, with no small amount of tragedy, I don’t have any advice, I have no idea what that would be like, but I’m sure you’ll handle it the right way.
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Wow that’s a lot to unpack there. Sorry I don’t know how to say anything meaningful but please keep us updated if you feel like it
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Cheers guys,
I know that’s a lot to unload on you in a post, but kinda did need to get it off my chest. Probably should have chucked a disclaimer in there.
I’ll make that thread, and probably move the post in there.
@ozbreaker we do have an EAP which I haven’t used. It was hard enough to get me to go see a therapist in the first place, I don’t know how comfortable I am using a work one. Dunno.
Any further discussion to be held in the new thread, keep this for other less heavy first gear lube.
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If it’s any help, we’ve had EAPs for some staff over the past few years and apart from initial contact, there’s zero involvement on the work front.
Standing in line for a slide at a waterpark here in Bali today.
Some middle eastern looking guy starts smoking in the line.
A local guy comes up to him and just starts slapping the shit out of him, it was glorious.
“I’m not a staff member, I’m a local here, I live here, have some respect”
Bam, bam, bam
Another Aussie guys says righto if you wanna fight take it outside there’s kids here.
Bam, one for the road.
I think if more people got the shit slapped out of them there would be less jerks.
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So over the weekend I have come down with this nasty strain flu. It’s floored me. Work tells me I am going to need a doctors note. That’s fine, gonna need antibiotics I reckon.
So I rock up to my Doctors office in the mall at their opening time of 8am. Turns out they’re not taking bookings today, because theres only two GPs in, and they’re booked out.
Annoyed, I grab a mask and head to the second doctors practice just outside the mall. I’m feeling like on deaths door, tur s out they open at 8.30am. Whatever.
Go back inside the mall head to Gloria Jeans, grab a long black. Need something hot in me cause its fucking cold and im shivering like a junkie.
Get my coffee, go sit down. 5 minutes later, a cop stands in front of me, his partner just behind him. They’ve had a report of me being suspicious (I’m in a hoodie, mask and trackies). I explain to them that I’ve got the flu, I’m not junkie, but they still run my license. 
So I finish my coffee, I’ve worked out it was the manager of GJs who called the cops on me. He’s giving me side eye. I must admit, I look like a junkie.
So I go back to the doctors, make an appointment. Earliest they can book me in is 9.30am. An hour away, thats fine. I go back inside the mall, and buy a tonne of Chicken & Noodle soup, bread, and some bottle water.
I go sit in my car for 45 minutes, rock up at 9.25M.
Informed the Doctor won’t be here until 1.30pm, and he’ll have 6 patients in front of me.
Fml
I’m asuming the flu or soup addled brain has arrived in the wrong thread and you’re not a masochist!
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You can go to a police station and get a stat Dec to say you are unfit for work, some chemists also do this. Out you could try for a telehealth appointment but this is not the sort of thing you have the brain or energy for while you’re properly sick. 
Second this, telehealth is your friend in this case. They’re actually pretty good. My mum ended up getting Covid over the weekend and my dad is being treated for cancer, so she was in a panic to get some Covid anti-virals for dad. Problem is they’re just under 65 but did a telehealth call, explained the situation and got the anti-virals straight up
I feel you, it’s a motherfucker. Covid a few months back was a walk in the park compared to what I’ve endured the last week.