It was the September school holidays, I was kicking around our house in Ararat randomly looking things up on the Internet when I decided to enter 'disability jobs Darwin' into a search engine. Bec and I had been to Darwin the previous year on holidays and enjoyed our time there, however i had seen or heard nothing about the Disability Service system in the top end. Darwin is a mid sized city by Australian standards, 120,000 people in Darwin and 30,000 people in nearby satellite city of Palmerston making the Darwin/Palmerston region slightly smaller than Geelong. They had to have disability services there right?
My Googling ended up bringing up a website for a company called Somerville Community Services, a disability support service and family service organisation. The website looked very professional and lo and behold, they had an opening in their disability services section, a coordinators position. Just what I wanted to do! I'd worked for the past seven or so years at Skene Street School in Stawell which is a school for children with multiple disabilities. I'd had an interesting period of time working there, some really good times, some not so great but over the past 6-12 months i had been growing a bit stale. I needed a change of scenery and a new challenge. What better than to go to the other end of the continent and work with adults again?
So, I applied. my application must have been OK because a few days after my application I was offered an interview. Cool, I thought, a trip to Darwin for a couple of days for an interview! Not quite... I was interviewed at my kitchen table in Ararat via the magic of Skype. It was an interesting experience to say the least, me sitting in front of the heater with the blinds drawn to stop Mikey from sticking his big golden head against the window, while my interviewers were looking hot and a little flustered in their office in Darwin. To be perfectly honest, I thought that my interview went terribly. I stammered and stumbled on my words, I had to be led to answers, plus the Skypeing made it difficult for us to hear each other. I told Bec afterwards how much I sucked in the interview and thought nothing more of it. A week and a half or so later, I told my friend Tom that I mustn't have gotten the job. I hadn't heard anything so I figured they'd found someone else to fill the position. Two days later, my phone rang. I got the job and Bec, Mikey and my world was about to be turned upside down. It's amazing just how much your life can be changed by boredom and Google.
TITLE SONG: THE NORTHERN by ALEXISONFIRE. From the album OLD CROWS/YOUNG CARDINALS.
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