Reminiscing

This is a good photo with a nice story. My girlfriend and I were in Gove, NT working as waitresses. You can sort of see the pool next to the hotel I was working at. Those houses are about all there is of Gove and that's about it for a good long while.

During the night one night, a helicopter came down to work on some Telstra lines in the area. Apparently, Gove is so far away from anything, they helicopter in tech support. Ha!

We had worked about 12 hours and it was extremely late when my girlfriend decided she was going to at that very moment find the pilots and get us a first thing in the morning ride in the 'copter. Luckily for us they had been in the bar and we hadn't realized it (they really didn't look like pilots) and they stumbled back drunkenly to the helicopter.

"You're not gonna fly in that condition!" I yelled.
"Nah, mate. Just checkin' to make sure she's still here." He patted the machine.

That's when my girl swooped in with her charm and grace and begged the men to take us up in the 'copter first thing in the morning.

"Only if you get us some rum." he said. Rum was hard to get after the bar closed. It's illegal for liquor to be sold after a certain time. It's also illegal to get beer unless you return an equal number of bottles. Some really weird liquor laws up there. Anyway, we had no way of getting rum! So my girlfriend begged and promised the next day they'd get a rum for free at the bar.

I don't really recall what happened, but I don't recall them ever getting rum and I recall us going to bed with the knowledge that, at 7am, we were going up in a helicopter to see the beaches of the NT from the sky. We were there at 7. By 8, we thought they weren't gonna show. By 815, we had gotten in the 'copter and were starting out way up!

It was so beautiful from up there. You could see the little tiny shops all along the street (just one, really) and a pile of tents (no idea who for) next to the beach. It was warm and beautiful and the sun was shining and it was amazing. I think we only spent 10-15 minutes in the air, but it was a real wonderful start to the day. It was almost a shame work started at noon.

Sometimes I feel so blessed to know I got paid for doing something like this.

The next day, another waitress left and asked us if we wanted the last half of her bottle of rum.