Building a travel kit for FIFO and fly-in work

The archived eshu site once waved at a "Road Warrior Travel Pack" as a stocking filler. The joke writes itself if you have ever lived the roster: the warrior is tired, the road is a bus at a stupid hour, and the pack is whatever did not leak on the hi-vis.

This is the grown-up kit. It is for FIFO, DIDO, consultants who live in hotels that smell of carpet shampoo, and anyone whose bathroom changes more often than their roster.

Design for the worst bathroom

Assume hard water. Assume air-conditioning that could hang meat. Assume a fly-screen that fails and a week of inland dryness or a week of tropical stew. Assume you will be tired enough to skip anything that has more than one lid.

Tubes beat jars. Pumps beat tubs. Caps that click beat caps you have to align in the dark. Put the kit in a single wet-bag so a burst moisturiser does not season your socks.

If you need a climate briefing before you pack, read the rulebook and two-step in the heat.

The mandatory six

Cleanser. One. Mild. The one you will use with camp water. See face wash versus cleanser.

Moisturiser. One light, and a smaller richer tube if you swing between Broome and a Perth winter. That is the only time we will allow two textures. They earn it.

Sunscreen. In a quantity that will last the swing, stored off the dash of the site ute. UV does not roster off.

Lip balm. Occlusive. Not a flavoured stick you will eat.

Hand cream. Occupational. Cement, paper, solvents, repeated wash. Hands and necks and skin on the tools.

The prescribed tube. If a GP gave you something, it travels like a licence. Do not "see how you go" without it for fourteen days.

The useful extras

A small tea tree gel for feet, diluted and boring. Antifungal powder if you already know your boots. A bland shave soap and a blade you have met before — camp lighting is not the time to debut a safety razor personality. Shaving in Australian water.

A hat that actually shades. Spare tips for that hat. Sunglasses you will not sit on. A laundry plan for pillowcases if your neck is a science experiment.

Do not pack a ten-step. Do not pack a device that needs a clean bathroom and a mood.

Hotel, donga, airport

Airport security will confiscate your 250 ml pride. Decant. Put sunscreen in the bag you can reach at the gate; reflected tarmac UV is a real petty villain.

In a donga, keep the kit where the air-con does not blow dust into an open tube. In a hotel, assume the complimentary soap is a joke and use your own. In both, wash at night even if you are wrecked. Morning can be a rinse.

If you drive rather than fly, you are in the long drive as well. The glovebox is not a bathroom. The glovebox is an oven.

Skin that should not go to site

A weeping rash, a spreading redness, an eye that will not open, a mole you have been meaning to show someone — these are not "she'll be right until demob". Use the camp medic or the GP advice. Rosters are not a reason to grow a career-ending infection.

The point of a kit

The point is not to become a person with a pouch. The point is to keep the simple regime portable so the climate does not get a fortnight of free shots. Pack it once. Refill it when you get home. Leave the lemon sport gel on the camp store shelf where it belongs.

Recleans, night shifts and the psychology of the pouch

A reclean week is not a holiday for skin. You will wash more, sleep less, and meet more soap. Pack the cream accordingly. Night shift turns a "morning" routine into a fiction; tie the steps to events you can see — after the last job, after the mess-hall, before the block-out blind — not to a clock that no longer means daylight.

The psychology of the pouch is real. If the kit is annoying, you will abandon it on day three and use the lemon gel. Make it lighter. Make the lids obvious in the dark. Put the sunscreen where you put the keys. The kit is a habit disguised as an object.

Families at home sometimes send extra bottles "in case". Thank them and leave the extras in Perth. Weight limits and bathroom shelves are both finite. One working set, refilled between swings, will outlast a carton of good intentions. If a product changes your skin in a way you do not like, stop it on site rather than waiting to be a hero until demob. The roster is long. The barrier is not a contractor you can squeeze.

A week of doing it, not decorating it

The useful test is seven days, not a new bottle. Write the weather in the morning — hot, dry, humid, recycled — and match the texture you already own. If you add anything, add it on day one only, and leave the rest of the cabinet alone so you can tell what changed.

Keep a photograph in the same bathroom light on day one and day seven. Not for social media. For honesty. Tightness, shine, a rash, a nick that will not settle: those are data. If the week is worse, stop the new thing. If the week is calmer, you have a habit, not a personality.

Carry the smallest version of the habit out of the house. A cream in a bag beats a perfect bathroom you do not visit at lunch. A hat on the seat beats a speech about UV. A hose, a tap, a rinse: the unglamorous verbs still do the work the aisle keeps trying to rename.

Tell one other person the plan if you live with them. Shared soap and shared towels will undo a careful face. Shared cream at the sink will save a pair of hands. This is not intimacy advice. It is logistics.

Workdays will try to steal the plan. A meeting runs late, a site has no tap, a roadhouse soap is a joke. That is why the plan has to be small enough to survive a bad Tuesday. Two steps plus sunscreen will travel. A ten-step will stay in the bathroom and sulk.

On the weekend, resist the urge to "catch up" with a peel, a device, or three natives at once. Catching up is how faces go red before a Monday. Repeat the weekday verbs. If you have sport, rinse sooner. If you have a long drive, wear the sleeve. If you have a roster, pack the pouch before you are tired.

If at any point the skin becomes a story you would not tell a barber — spreading, bleeding, changing, painful, febrile — you are no longer in a journal. You are in a waiting room. Take the timeline. Take the bottle. Leave the forum theories in the car.

The rest is repetition. Climate first. A wash that ends. A cream that matches the air. A sunscreen you will finish. Native ingredients that survive a label reading. Paid words declared, with rel=sponsored where money sat down. That is enough week, and enough continent, for this essay to end on.