Breakfast Beer At 20,000ft

I feel like a very hi-tech, 21st century, digital kind of girl. I am sitting in the departures lounge of Karratha Airport with my new Netbook perched on my knee, tapping away at the keyboard and feeling very smug. The smugness has arisen partly from the fact that I can now write and access the internet from anywhere (yes, I know I have been slow to catch on to this but it is very exciting now I am finally in the mobile digital age!) and partly from the fact that I seem to one of the only normal people here. Like on any flight to or from Karratha, most of the passengers are Fly-In Fly-Outs and half of them seem to already be intoxicated. It is 8.30am.

To understand how common this situation is, I must first explain a little about FIFIOs. These guys live in Perth or Melbourne or Brisbane and leave their families behind to fly out to Karratha for a few weeks at a time where they work solidly, earn a ton of money and then fly back home for a couple of weeks before starting the cycle all over again. It’s not like they are banned from drinking alcohol – most of the guys falling over and starting fights at that bastion of refined drinking, the Karratha Tavern, are FIFOs – but, like everyone working on mine or oil and gas sites, they are subject to random drug and alcohol testing every morning, which means they have to be really careful about what they drink the night before. Passing the test means a 0.0000 reading (there really do have to be that many zeros – The Husband just typed that in for me). There must be absolutely no trace of alcohol in your bloodstream – one beer too late at night could have serious repercussions. You’re sent home and are then inducted into the illustrious ‘Breakfast Club’ – tested every morning for a week which, as it can delay your start at work by up to two hours, does not make you particularly popular with the boss. Of course, many of the men have found a way around this with the ‘nine before nine rule’ – you can knock back nine beers as long as you drain the dregs of your last before 9pm. They are nothing if not resourceful.

Anyway, that was a bit of an aside, but my point is that these guys haven’t exactly been deprived of alcohol, it’s just that they are bound by strict rules which seems to make them want to rebel. As soon as they’re on R&R, they let loose, whether it’s 8 in the morning or 8 at night. They’re like the rowdy groups about to embark on a two week package holiday to Benidorm that you see in the bars at Gatwick, downing pints of lager with Jack Daniels chasers at 6am. Except the FIFIOs do it every four weeks or so. Qantas have even stopped serving spirits on its flights to and from Karratha because of the trouble they were getting from trollied FIFOs. From November, the airport bar will only serve alcohol from 11.30am for similar reasons. So here I am, amongst drunken men, some still in the fluorescent shirts they are required to wear when on site (which leads me to think that they’ve been drinking since they finished their shift last night), unshaven and wobbly. I think I might put my Netbook away now in case one of them throws up on it. I just hope I’m not sat next to one of them…