Show, Don't Tell

I have had a few of my good mates enquire as to my health, my whereabouts and my inclinations. Mind you, on the scoreboard of sends and receipts in the communications match I am still holding my own in the Bryan Forby versus mates game!

Anyhow, I don't want people getting anxious on my account so I thought it time to ensure that the channels of communication are kept intact.

Thank you to those who reciprocate and update me on their current movements and situation because I take a keen interest in knowing how YOU are going too.

Life is different. As they say at Aldi - Good different!

Not without making some adjustments, of course. We have a dream and we want to see if we can get close to implementing it while we still have the time in which to achieve "one more adventure" so we set sail for new destinations and a change of lifestyle and that can, rarely but sometimes, mean moving out into a very remote desert and living amongst people who speak a completely different language, have vastly different values, look at life very differently, bring with them ancient understandings of their world and have some very different ways (to us) about how to interpret the world in which they (and us) now live.

So, when we bring our expectations of what we want to achieve and when we want to achieve them we will mostly be disappointed, sometimes devastated, but the lesson we learn quickly (as some of those we deal with have for 30,000 years!) is that we need to make some adjustments if we, like them want to survive. So, we come to terms with our situation and we temper, even modify, those objectives that we conjured up.

When we ask people to do something, we explain exactly, blow by blow, what we want them to do and when we want them to do it - and we get a whole lot of "yes, I have heard you, keep going" - and you even get a few "yeah" nods and you send them off to do what you have instructed. You come back at the end of the day and - presto - nothing has changed. Nothing has been done. People simply vanished for the day only to return for more coffee and to sign off the timesheet - well, not exactly! You see they reckon it saves everyone's time if, instead of signing in at the start and signing out at the end of the day, they actually do it ALL at the beginning! I don't mean each day. I mean they do the whole fortnight pay period at the opening of the season - so they don't have to waste their time or your time in doing these entries every day. So the timesheet shows what schedule they intend to achieve and not what they actually do achieve - because, remember, they pay absolutely no attention, or have any actual understanding, of the instructions they have been given - they simply don't share a common understanding of the customs and interpretation of the words we say - the language. Remember, too, that English is, at the very best, a second language for them. In fact if you count the three or four indigenous languages they speak fluently, English is about a fifth language. They practise (and we encourage this) their own language(s) as a primary method of communication. They talk to each other in their language and we English speakers don't understand a single word of it. So, they only "speak" English when communicating with us (and there is only a handful of we folk who are English speakers). And like others whose English is a secondary language, they don't share our exact understanding of the words that we actually use.

What do we do? Well a few things:

• We SHOW don't TELL. We actually get our hands dirty and work alongside them. We SHOW them by our efforts what we want them to emulate.
• We have to change our notion of TIME. Things get done WHEN they decide they need to get done - which is never NOW - it is sometime in the future when the real need arises. So, you don't clean up after you create a mess, you clean up before you need to use the equipment or the facility the next time, and usually they think that's a waste of time as you are only going to recreate the mess you had in the beginning - and, if you think of it, there is some sort of reasoning in that approach. It is different, but for us, it is BAD different. One very apparent result of this approach is that when you go looking for the tools you need to do the job it is no good going to the tool box because you are going to find the tools where they were used on he previous job! So you have to find the person who used them last and hope they remember what job it was that they did last with those tools. Easier to say "lost boss, get new ones". They see us reaching in the tool box for tools, thinking it is a new tool box each time - not the one that the tools go back into when they have been used. They are not used to having the burden of carrying tool boxes around with them! You can understand, can't you?
• You try your best to explain that, despite the horrible waste of everyone's time, you put the time you START on the timesheet when you start and then you come back and "sign off" when you finish the day. The timesheet should record the work activity, the work performed, not an anticipation of what you might do over the next two weeks. Of course we need to adjust our expectations about turning up for work! The only people who are expected to (by employers of ALL persuasion, but especially government) are we, the permanent full-time, salaried employees. All indigenous workers are either "part-time" or "casual". It works like this - you turn up for work when you want to. You don't have to come every day. You can decide on the day whether you are up to it or not. Part-timers get paid for the work they do and they get all the leave entitlements including public holiday and casuals get a higher pay rate but only get paid for the time they work, no Annual leave or Public Holiday entitlements. There is a string of "personal, cultural and carers" leave entitlements as well which means, effectively, people can take time-off at anytime. Bereavement leave to attend a funeral for a very distant relative (from places hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometres away) can last months. I have three team members who have taken three months' leave to get over the tragic loss of a distant relative or friend. They just resume working when they feel up to it. Makes it problematic when working out work schedules - which, obviously, has to be done "on the fly". You have no way of anticipating who is going to come to work today or tomorrow and forget about a weekly plan.
• It doesn't rain very often in the Simpson Desert. So, when it did rain the first time I was in for a surprise! I happened to be in Alice at the time (when it does rain it makes up for all the times it doesn't and we had mass flooding and road closures for a week, remember?) Anyhow I am working remotely from HQ and I rang the Finke office to get an update on the work plans for the day. I was informed by the second in "command" (the one who had been working there the longest) "Oh there's no-one here, boss, they all came and immediately went home - it's raining!" That's when I came to the realisation that there appears to be a local understanding in the desert that you can't work when it is raining. I take it they think their skin might be soluble and they can't risk getting it wet. Well THEY learnt something too that rainy day. You don't work you don't get paid! Our workshop is a very, very large tin shed (huge - we park all thirteen of our vehicles in there, and there is heaps of room left over) - a remnant from the railways days when they had a large work force and lots of heavy duty machinery to house. Of course no-one has bothered to wash it out since the railways boys left in 1970 and it is such a mess that, since I got the hose out, I have been finding equipment nobody knew they had. Here is this huge shed crying out for hosing down and they couldn't do that because it was raining outside! Perhaps they associated the disintegrating of skin with all forms of water, not just rain.

Well it is a very entertaining state of affairs if you don't take things too seriously - and I will pounce on this moment to say that, while I sometimes get a tad frustrated with a lack of effort, a lack of interest, a lack of attendance and a lack of planning I get compensated when, out-of-the-blue they do something that is quite outstanding, unbelievable and absolutely unexpected.

It is like taking a dose of those miracle drugs - the ones that they use to treat the most serious conditions (usually life-threatening) when they have tried everything else and nothing has worked. You DON'T want to take the things because you know that they are going to make you crook in a lot of ways that you didn't know existed when suddenly, completely without warning they turn everything around, astound the medicos and even save your life! There is simply no price you could ever pay to show your gratitude! Yes, it is as good as that.

When I lobbed in Finke, and after I had a ten-minute look-around, I made a list of objectives:

1. I wanted to clean up the town's streets
2. I wanted to get rid of the litter and shit that abounded, particularly along fencelines
3. I desperately wanted to turn what I found to be a town-wide obsession with parking abandoned, wrecked cars in the front yard, the street verges and the recreational parks into a showroom of what makes it pleasant to live in outback Australia
4. I had to clean up the Service Delivery Centre (my office, Council's establishment and the Centrelink agency)
5. I had a dream that before I expire I would like to transform the dump I found called the Council Depot into a clean, useable, functional workshop and a tidy home for the fleet.

How are things going?

1. The town's streets are far more presentable. One day at a time, little bit by little bit, regular household refuse collections and hard rubbish collection as soon as it appeared have done the trick.
2. I got the whole work crew together, put on the work gloves and the fly-netted hat, raised the standard and simply said: "Team, follow me." and together we collected all the litter and built bonfires along the fenceline (yes! We can still do those things out here in the never-never so long as we are careful and so long as we are the sole law enforcement agency anywhere in sight.) They love driving heavy equipment and love lighting fires!
3. One day my head heavy-duty machinery operator, long-time resident and Chairman of the Local Authority, decided, on a whim, to relocate one of the abandoned wrecks from in front of our office to the recreation park adjacent my abode. I indicated to him that was not a part of my dream. In my dream all these pieces of scrap metal were to become invisible! He is a peculiar fellow. He hates doing what white fellas tell him is in their dream. He has seen what white fellas do with the dreaming of the indigenous. He went off and vanished for the rest of the day until I was locking up. He appeared and simply said" "Ten". I had no idea what "Ten" referred to so I said: "Come? (Italiano for say that again)" and he said "Ten. Ten cars. They disappeared". In a day I had achieved a milestone that I had set for three years hence! I hugged him.
4. I worked on the Service Delivery, personally, each weekend until I got rid of five years build-up of dust, red ochre dirt, crap and redundant equipment and literature. It has taken four months but I have done it. Cinzia dropped in for a month and she became my mentor (and Service Delivery Advisor).
5. We have started on the Depot! We have set aside each Friday to check the healthiness of every vehicle, clean every vehicle and clean every piece of equipment from giant compressor to whipper-snippers. I also introduced them to the powerful pressure cleaner which was one of the treasures laying dormant under fifty years' worth of Simpson Desert dust. It seems that, even with an aversion to water, they actually don't mind using the pressure machine. Bit by bit the workshop is looking less like a haunted house and a bit more like a place to work on things and park the equipment.

That's not the end of the dream. There is still heaps more to do but we have made a start and it shows. I think people's mood changes when they occupy a neat and tidy and clean environment.

What's next? The Great Desert Race. A world class event that races especially built dune-buggy type cars and motorbikes (two separate events) from Alice to Finke and back, next day, to Alice along the old, disused Ghan track. It is a world class event in that mode of motor sport and we expect that the town will grow from 300 to 5,000 for the five days' duration. What does that mean? Imagine cleaning up all that shit!

Ciao

Bryan

Finke