Mishka is Busting for Change

As a female traffic controller, I’ve worked in some remote parts of WA, sometimes more than 100 kilometres from the nearest town. I’ve worked from Perth to Cue, Meekatharra, Newman and Kumarina, and I’ve been on plenty of these jobs with younger women too. In all the time I’ve worked on the roads doing traffic management, I honestly can’t remember being provided with clean, ventilated amenities on remote roadside jobs. Most of the time, there’s nothing. No toilet for the women. No toilet for the men. No private area. Nothing.

When you start working up north, you learn pretty quickly that privacy isn’t something you can rely on. If you need to go to the toilet, you need to go to the toilet. Your body doesn’t care that you’re standing on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. I’ve personally come extremely close to pissing myself while trying to find somewhere to go. Not because I’d ignored it or left it too long, but because there was simply nowhere private enough to stop and piss. A lot of the time, your only option is to wait for a big enough gap in the traffic, move the ute into a position where it gives you some sort of cover, and hope nobody comes past while you’re trying to go. That’s your privacy.

People seem to think men have it easier because they can just stand up and have a piss somewhere, but what happens when they need to go for a shit? They’re in exactly the same position. There’s no toilet. No privacy. No clean place to sit. No screened-off area. They’re still trying to work out where they can go without being seen by passing cars, truck drivers or everyone else on site.

And for women, there’s another side of it that doesn’t get talked about enough. Periods. Your period doesn’t wait until you finish your shift. It doesn’t wait until you get back to town. Sometimes it just starts. And when you’re working in the middle of nowhere with no amenities, what are you supposed to do? You might need to change a pad or tampon. You might need to clean yourself up. You might need to change your clothes. You need somewhere private. You need somewhere clean. You need to wash your hands. You need somewhere to dispose of sanitary products. But when there are no facilities, none of that is there. No toilet. No running water. No private place to change. No sanitary bin. Nothing.

And then you’re expected to just get yourself sorted somehow and go straight back to work like nothing happened. I think about the younger women I’ve worked with and how confronting that must be the first time it happens to them. You can prepare yourself for the heat. You can prepare for the dust, the long days, the isolation and the trucks flying past you. But nobody really prepares you for the fact that one day you might be standing on the side of a road, kilometres from anywhere, trying to work out how to deal with your period without anyone seeing you. Or trying to work out how to go to the toilet with some tiny bit of dignity. Eventually you just learn how to deal with it because you don’t really have a choice. You watch the traffic. You wait for a gap. You move the ute. You find whatever bit of cover you can. You do what you need to do. Then you go back to work.

Over the years, I’ve gotten used to a lot working in traffic management. The heat, dust, long days, isolation and heavy vehicles all become part of the job. But I don’t think having nowhere to go to the toilet should ever be considered just part of the job. A man having to plan when he can go for a shit around passing traffic shouldn’t be normal. A woman having her period start at work and having nowhere private or clean to deal with it shouldn’t be normal. Coming close to pissing yourself because there is nowhere suitable to go shouldn’t be normal. Having to use a ute, a bush or a gap in traffic as your only form of privacy shouldn’t be normal.

We’re not asking for luxury — We’re asking for somewhere to go to the toilet. Somewhere private. Somewhere clean. Somewhere where all workers can deal with basic human needs with a little bit of dignity.