When I went to Perth I sent out an e-mail to the local SCA group asking for somewhere to crash, and I lived with a knight and his family for the time I was not working in the mines. We had a week off every three weeks, so about a quarter of the time I spent in Australia was spent in Perth with the SCA there.
When you’re stuck in a mining camp, there is not much to do in the evenings. You can drink, followed by drink more … and then crash out when they close the bar, and go to sleep and wake up the next morning and start working. Or you can watch TV, which is boring. So I did SCA stuff. I hand-sewed garb, did tablet weaving, practiced sword-work — that sort of thing.