I have spent the best part of 20 years in the Mining and Mining support industries, being based in mining towns in Aus (Roxby Downs and Cobar) and various places overseas as an Expat (Laos, China, Mongolia and Canada). Wow where did 20 years go, I remember the first time I left, my friends thought I was nuts, as I was going to leave my comfortable life in Australia and live in a third world country and my family thought I would be back in a couple of months. Coming from having lots of travel experiences I fell in love with the travelling/working lifestyle, seeing the world and getting paid to do it. As I’m writing to you I feel like I have come 360 degrees and ready to go home and settle my roots back in Aus. I’m surrounded by passports, visa applications, removalist quotes, selling a house and household items and juggling travel itineraries.
In summing up this life, its been adventurous, stressful at times, hectic, culturally challenging, “remotely” challenging, rewarding and super for building true resilience and making outstanding memories.
My hubby and I have lived in Canada for the past 4 years as expats and played tag so to speak as being the FIFO. My hubby is Mongolian and me Aussie. We met in Mongolia when I was sent there to work 7 years ago when we were given the opportunity by our employer to move to Canada, which has been a great opportunity to live and work here but unfortunately I became victim to the mining downturn in March and was laid off. Even though my hubby still has his FIFO job we really only moved here for me to accept a transfer so we have decided to move back to Aus.
Life in Canada is truly awesome, Canadians share lots of the same interests as Aussies do, mainly in the summer lots of socializing and BBQ’s etc, winter is a true hibernation and you don’t see much of your friends, unless your big into being caught in a blizzard or doing outdoor snow type activities.
I have found here that it’s the same as everywhere you go as and EXPAT with a FIFO, initially you’re a complete outsider and it takes a lot of work to make friends. I’m a firm believer when you’re in these circumstances that friends need to become your absent family. I find most people are very set in their lifestyles particularly in a place like where I am now as it’s not a mining town, generally most of the people here have grown up here. But I believe wherever you go you need to hunt, gather, and nurture good friends, it’s like speed dating to the extreme (I’m inserting some laughs in here hope this doesn’t all sound weird), I have spent a good two decades now making friends in the locations I end up in and usually end up with a super network which is what I have done in Canada.
Most people I have been friends with here don’t have other partners doing FIFO so it’s a little hard for them to get their heads around at first but I must say I have built and amazing network of very supportive and helpful friends. My neighbours all around are my emergency network, and I think this is one of the critical things especially when you have kids, there is always someone on hand in a crisis.
Its been significantly important that my hubby and I support each other in our resolve and make sure our family has really good balance, we spend a lot of time together as family when we are all home or each independently doing things with them when we are just a single parent, and also making sure we get some time to ourselves sharing things we love to do together like movie or date nights.
I find my kids are really independent helpful beings because we are a FIFO family, its hard on the 5-year-old most of the time but she copes. I also raise an 18-year-old, have had her since she was 14 so she is a significant helper too. We run a tight ship especially when only one parent is home. We are super reliant on Skype and face time for keeping in touch with whichever parent is away.
As a side note to Deb and people of her page I’m truly grateful there are people like you out there sharing other people’s FIFO highs and lows, it’s not a circumstance or lifestyle that everybody understands only people who are on the inside of it.
