The Surrealism Of It All

I spent a couple of relaxing days back in Hobart, treating myself to a couple of replacement T-shirts, a much needed hair-cut, afternoon cappuccinos and late nights watching the England cricket team begin to reclaim the ashes. I was staying at the Adelphi Court YHA, one of the homeliest hostels I’d stayed at. It’s out of centre location meant it attracted an older crowd such as the man from Hong Kong who’d kept me awake with his earth trembling snoring. Hostel bunks were more often then not basic mattresses on rickety metal skeletons that would squeak with any kind of movement and the ones at the Adelphi were worse then most. However, no amount of kicking at the frame was enough to stifle the Hong Kong man’s snores.
Robert was a very polite Australian guy in his mid-30s, in Tasmania for work, we shared the viewing of the early evening cricket sessions together in the large expansive common room that looked as if it belonged in a manor house.
“So are you a big cricket fan?” he’d asked me when we first met.
“No not really, I’m not usually interested… I am now,” I said as my fellow countrymen had taken a lead in the series.
Suitably rested, I bid Andrei, his family and Tasmania farewell as I made my way back to the mainland of Australia. The journey to get from Hobart to Melbourne was an eventful one. I'd booked an airport transporter shuttle bus, but 15 minutes late and with my plane due to take off in less then an hour, I rang the air porter HQ to be told that the bus driver had forgotten to pick me up. Terrific. They sorted out a taxi for me and I got there with just 10 minutes to spare before boarding was completed after a heated discussion with the taxi driver about who was going to pay the fare. I abandoned him outside the terminal building in dramatic style with shouts of “I’ve got a plane to catch!” and promising that the guys at the shuttle bus HQ would reimburse him.
On the evening of the flight there was a nasty storm blowing through the area of Victoria and the Bass Strait.
"There are winds in excess of 80 kilometres per hour and so we may experience some turbulence," announced the captain. The 'some turbulence' was more then enough to cause shrieks of terror and lift us out of our seats at times.
The captain piped up again on the descent. "We may experience some more turbulence as we attempt to go in to land," he said. Wait a minute. Attempt? You attempt to do things that you haven’t done before. You don’t attempt to land a plane. You bloody well land it, or else you shouldn’t be flying it in the first place. I didn’t like the implied gamble that he was taking. On the approach to the runway, the plane rocked from side to side, seemingly at risk of a wing hitting the tarmac if we continued in the same fashion. It was almost as if the pilot was building up the courage to do a barrel roll. White-knuckled fists clung to the armrests and breath was held as we levelled out just in time to touch down. The relief was palpable in the air with the eruption of cheers and applause.

* * *
Of all the life in Australia, there is one that is more feared by backpackers then all the snakes, spiders, dingoes, sharks, jellyfish, cassowaries and crocodiles - the bed bug. I'd seen terrible cases, with people having had an estimated 200 bites in one night. And once they infect you they can get into your clothes and bags and lay their eggs and so it takes some effort to get rid of them. I’d noticed that they seemed to go for some people more then others and I'd noticed that women were generally more susceptible. I'd managed to stay clear of them so far but that was soon to change.
I was staying in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne though officially in the city of Port Phillip to the south of the huge Albert Park, the home to the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. It's a grungy, down to earth place. The prostitutes and drug dealers are still around but it had cleared that side of itself up in recent years and was now known as a fun-loving precinct with dirt-cheap accommodation. Unfortunately, in Jackson’s Manor, the hostel I'd chosen for my initial stay an infestation of bed bugs took place. They must have got into the furniture of the common room as they quickly spread. Before I knew it, I was waking up with scores of bites down my back and joining the growing number of guests switching dorms and complaining. It was like a military campaign trying to get rid of them, with the steaming of mattresses and various chemicals being lain. The moody guy who was running the hostel had been too slow to act after the initial reports, probably in no small part due to the pay dispute he was having with the owners. It was a shame; I quite liked the hostel, the people and the area. One of the people staying there was Stanley, a middle aged mature student from Sri-Lanka. He talked more then an old woman on speed on national chit-chat day. He was a good-natured bloke though he tried to come across as a know it all and had the annoying habit of making you repeat everything you said. I introduced myself when I first met him in the hostel kitchen. “Hello, I’m David,” I said. "What?" he replied. I repeated myself, a little more loudly. "Oh, I'm Stanley," he replied, "Are you on holiday?" "I'm travelling around Australia, I've come to Melbourne to look for some work." "Huh?" "I said I'm travelling. I'm stopping in Melbourne to get a job." “How long have you been in Australia?”
“Oh, about four months or so,”
“Hmm?”
“Around four months!”
"Oh right. Where are you from?" "The UK." I answered. "What?" "UK!" And so it continued. My query into where he came from led to him talking non-stop, covering subjects including the suitability of George W. Bush as president, the political persuasion of the average European, the tram system of Melbourne, the benefits of eating chick-peas, the strengthening Indian and Chinese economies, the alcohol content of beer, the popularity of chocolate and the suicide rate of people that gamble, all before I managed to get another word in.
Melbourne and Sydney will always be compared to each other as the two biggest cities in Australia. Though not as aesthetically pleasing, Melbourne is billed as 'the most liveable city.' There are hundreds of hip, yet unpretentious cafes, traditional pubs and restaurants. There isn't the same glossiness of Sydney but any spare time available is well spent hanging out, taking in the buzzing yet laid back vibe. The place is as multi-cultural as you can get - the second largest Greek population outside of Athens lives in Melbourne. There are people from all over Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. I'm sure there are problems that you get in any sizeable city, yet there didn’t seem to be any major issues with crime or violence even in the supposedly slummy area of St. Kilda which was really good to know in such a culturally diverse place. If Melbourne is indeed the most liveable city with such diversity, then maybe the rest of the world should take some lessons.
I moved on from Jackson’s manor to the Greenhouse Backpacker in the centre of town and spent a morning washing the bed bugs out of everything that I owned. The place had got a mixture of reviews from the people that stayed there, its sheer scale making it hard to socialise. The industrial sized kitchen could get over-crowded and the dining area resembled a prison’s with rows of long tables. But it was spotlessly clean with the friendliest staff of any hostel and the free breakfast, occasional evening meal and the relaxing roof garden area made it a great place for me to base myself after my new hair-cut had helped me to score a job in the city.
I knew I was lucky. I was blessed to have knowledge in an area of demand which made things easy for me in a country crying out for skilled workers. I felt sorry for some of the people that had come half way around the world and needed to supplement their travel budget by handing out leaflets in the street, cleaning toilets or fruit picking. I’d heard about how hard the work in the fields was; backbreaking physical effort in the harsh heat of the Australian weather on a minimal wage. I was happy to be able to sample Australian working life in an office, the laid-back attitude meaning I had an easy time compared to similar jobs back in the UK. I was welcomed with open arms and there wasn’t the office politics that I’d been used to. Being around at the time of the Ashes and the Aussie rules football final added to the fun with an almost party atmosphere with theme days and sweepstakes for these sporting occasions. Though, I soon became ‘the pommy bastard’ as the cricket was won and I took the sweepstake for the football final. The Melbourne Cup was the pinnacle and was treated almost like a public holiday, many places of business closing for the day for a horse race that lasted less then five minutes.
With a break from moving from place to place, I welcomed the chance to live a life with a bit of routine to it. It was interesting to stay in the same place for a significant amount of time and getting the chance to spend time with the same groups of travellers who were also staying in Melbourne long term and making use of the ‘working’ bit in their holiday visas. There were people on the road from completely diverse backgrounds and yet living in a hostel was a great leveller. There can't be too many places where a group conversation can include people from every continent, political persuasion, social class, religious connotation or sexual orientation at once. It was almost the beginning of a cheap joke - 'There was an Irishman, Jewish man and a lesbian...'
I was learning that beyond the stereotypical 18-30 beer swilling party crowd there are certain skewed characteristics of the average backpacker. There was an almost universal contempt for George W. Bush and right wing politics in general and it makes sense that people of that persuasion would more likely to be the stay at home type, working off a mortgage and going to Ikea at weekends. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just unlikely many people in a hostel has that lifestyle as a major ambition. I’d met many would be writers, artists and musicians, many of whom had thrown away perfectly good jobs at home with a sense of not doing the right thing with their lives. The traveller community is indeed full of dreamers.
Ask many of the people what they miss from home and inevitably, friends and family comes top of the list. However, many people would say that they didn’t miss anything. I almost felt guilty by how little I missed home. Was that bad? Of course I would think about home and the people there, but I was too engrossed in seeing new places, meeting new people and learning new things about myself and the world. The idea of going back to the UK was more scary then the one of leaving to go away in the first place. And I knew it would all be over in a blink of an eye.
I did miss a few home comforts though. Decent Heinz products were impossible to get hold of. There are tins of stuff masquerading as baked beans but were in fact nothing more then tasteless fibre pellets. And don't think you're safe with soup, I made the mistake of thinking a bowl of tomato soup would make for a healthy tasty lunchtime treat. Pouring the contents into a saucepan I dismissed the initial observation that the viscous fluid seemed a little bit thick. When I dipped in my first square of bread, I needed both hands to pull it back out and I could have done with a chisel to use with my spoon. Undeterred, I managed to swallow some of the stuff, coating the insides of my mouth and gullet in the gunk that had the consistency of gloss paint that hung around for hours afterwards. I gave away the second can that I had bought, the recipient at first grateful for a free meal, pointing out the word ‘condensed’ on the label to me as if this was where I’d gone wrong. However, the addition of water made little difference to its palatability. Our relationship was never the same after her stomach cramps started and she lost her taste buds for the rest of the day.
And what the bloody hell is Vegimite all about. I felt duty bound to try some, heeding the advice to spread it thinly on the corner of toast I'd sacrificed due to the reputation of it’s powerful flavour. It was nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe, it was very much like Marmite that has been buried underground with some kippers and a hot radiator for 1000 years. It became known affectionately as 'convict Marmite' by the non-indigenous backpackers. It was hard to understand its popularity, the average Australian’s enthusiasm matching that for the Tim-Tam challenge. This is the idea of biting the corners off of these 'convict Penguins' to suck up tea through them. It takes some skill, I saw some people that got themselves into an awful sticky mess.

* * *

I made my way slowly, deliberately forward, up and over the ledge and knelt down. Looking to my right I could see faces, their features contorted into caricatures of themselves. I gave a slow wave that caused the smiles to widen to yet more grotesque proportions before their owners waved maniacally back. I took a look around me, at the multitude of life that was almost too much for my mind to comprehend all at once. It all seemed to be heading directly toward me, seemingly closer then it actually was as it passed. None of it mattered though, not until I glanced up and saw the huge dark shape passing overhead - the silhouette of a killer.
The eyes appeared lifeless and cold and yet seemed to be taking in all of the details within the small confines of the claustrophobic space. The jaws hung slightly agape giving it the look of hungry determination with rows of razor sharp teeth revealed. Its movement was seamless but deliberate and purposeful and it carried the threat of incomprehensible speed and power perfected by millions of years of evolution. As it passed overhead it gave me the little attention I deserved: I was in its domain.
James waved me over, pointing to his eyes with his fore and index fingers in a ‘V’ shape and then pointed forward into the abyss. I leaned forward and began to kick my legs, using my hands to hold my body off of the silt-covered surface as I moved along. Where were the others? They should not have gone so far ahead. I looked around; James had disappeared into the semi-darkness behind me. Nevermind, as the instructor the other two guys were his problem. I was doing my own thing.
I found a tooth in the silt and carefully picked it up. It was the size of half of my small finger and had the appearance of more a weapon then a tool as I held it up for the faces to see. Another shape appeared overhead amidst the chaos. It was flatter and less intimidating then the one before and as it passed I reached up with my gloved hand, allowing my fingers to brush gently over the soft membrane of the underbelly of the giant mantra ray. As it swam off in the direction I had come it was passed by James. He paused to look at me and shrugged his shoulders in question. I shrugged back in answer. He continued swimming on ahead in search of the two novice divers.
The presence of James combined with my own had caused a temporary lull in the activity in the immediate area. I began to swim back scanning in three dimensions for the creatures that I had come to see. And then at the edge of my peripheral vision I saw the shark, slowly skulking along the surface. It was massive, at least my body length and half again. I knew it was a Grey Nurse shark and had no interest in me so my apprehension was buried with this knowledge combined with the thought I was putting into what I was doing and the surrealism of it all. My eyes stung from the water that had got into my mask and the refraction of light made the experience seem as if I was watching everything in 3-D from another world. A second shark passed me by, a smaller Bull shark. I decided to continue back to the end of the tank that was one of the main features in Melbourne Aquarium and check in with James and the others.
James had his hands on the shoulders of one of the other divers. He was short and very skinny, almost too thin, and had been full of apprehension while we were getting kitted up. The other man, a large guy with a barrel belly was kneeling in the silt taking it all in very calmly. James looked up at me and banged the sides of his fists together. He wanted me close by. I found out later that Too Thin had lost the regulator out of his mouth and had freaked out and so James wanted everybody close together in case anything else happened to Too Thin. We swam back toward the exit/entrance point stopping about half way back. We formed a jagged zigzag shape with the relative positions of our bodies. With any luck the sharks would use the four of us as a slalom course.
The large Grey Nurse passed by on the right. I was furthest back and watched it flexing its jaws, chomping down on something invisible to my vision with awesome power. It began to turn and I pivoted on my spot, daring not to take my gaze away from it. The shark passed barely two feet away as I spun to the other side to watch it as it went behind my back. I caught a look at the faces, concern etched across their features from beyond the Plexiglas.
Facing back forward, I saw Too Thin had his arms wrapped around himself and had a slight juddering motion to his form. I had my own problems apart from the cold that was kicking in, the dry air I was breathing had awoken Terry, the cough that I'd had for so long it now had it's own name. I'd found out in a moment of terror during my last dive that it was possible to swear underwater. I wasn't so sure about getting away with a coughing fit. I tried in vain to keep Terry in check, stifling the spasm that the coughing gave me by trying to keep the shape of my mouth in control around the regulator as it cut into the insides of my mouth. The moment passed and I got control of my breathing again. I was becoming happier in the confidence that I was gaining underwater.
Before long James gave us a thumbs up. It was time to surface. I slowly inflated my Buoyancy Control Device, two quick taps of the air valve at a time and began my ascent. As I got to the surface, the other guys took their turns to get out. As I hovered around, a metre or so beneath the surface, I looked around to see a Bull Shark heading straight towards me. James had advised for us to move to one side when they swim straight at you like this. There was no obvious choice of which direction to take as the shark and I formed a straight line with our bodies, the direction to move in down to chance.
I moved left at the same time as the shark moved to it's right, leaving our courses to make an inevitable union. We had began the ridiculous dance like when a couple of pedestrians walking opposite ways start moving left and right in time together in a futile attempt to avoid each other. Wanting to spare the sharks' blushes, I continued left. It got the message and passed along the right side of my body. I'd drifted away from the exit point and it was all I could do to avoid kicking the shark in the face as I swam toward the exit point.

* * *

The signs that label the road as the B100 do little justice to the reputation of one of Australia's proudest tourism attractions and one of the world's great road trip experiences. Winding 175 kilometres along the Victorian coastline, past world renowned surfing beaches, temperate rainforest teaming with animal and plant life and iconic cliff tops, it was a shame with my time in Australia nearly up, I could only take a couple of days to appreciate the Great Ocean Road.
I opted to take a tour rather then hire a car and drive it myself. I'm glad I did. Bruce our guide was good fun, highly knowledgeable and gave us some unexpected bonuses like when we made a stop in the bush to spot koalas and feed feral parrots out of our hands. I was already thinking up jokes about pulling the birds or having a red head eating out of my hand when Bruce told us it was the males I had attracted, their red heads the give away for the King Parrot breed.
I was always a little concerned with what people I might end up sharing tours with but I was particularly pleased when Maria and Cecilia stepped aboard. Stereotypically Swedish with long blonde hair, blue eyes and stunning good looks I was already adding Sweden to the list of countries I wanted to visit as I got chatting to them.
Also on the trip was a man called Greg from Switzerland. He was a good few inches taller then me and so had a permanent slouch to his demeanour from having to crane his neck all of the time. He was also a rubbish timekeeper; we lost time after he was late back from lunch on the first day. We had wanted as much time as possible at the 12 Apostles, the stunning rock formations that rise out of the sea. The two of us had a mad dash to get our photographs in as we opted for an additional helicopter flight. The Apostles deservedly sit alongside Uluru and the three sisters as icons of Australia even though they are slowly disappearing. Just after arriving in Australia I was disappointed to learn that one of them had turned into a pile of rubble, the constant battering of the sea causing one of them to collapse. A greater irritation turned out to be the walkways and viewing platforms which are constantly thronged with tourists as the area is the biggest draw in Victoria. It takes a long time to move along the platforms whilst pausing to let the Japanese tourists take pictures of each other.
We found quieter spots to enjoy the amazing coastline, more secluded beaches and look-out points that showed off the beauty of the coastline that never seemed to end. One of the highlights was a lookout by London Bridge, an island of rock that was once reachable by a narrow rock bridge. Unfortunately, the coastal erosion had caused the bridge part to fall into the sea, but not without making an amusing story that was keenly re-told to us by Bruce.
Just before the bridge collapsed, a couple had walked out to the island and were trapped with no way back. The T.V. crews arrived before the rescuers to capture images of the trapped man and woman. The couple got an unwanted 15 minutes of fame when their pictures were beamed all over Australia and made it impossible for the two of them to cover up the affair that they had been having to their spouses.

We arrived at the Grampians just before twilight and passed the evening with a delicious barbecue laid on by the hostel hosts rounded off with cheap wine from the drive through bottle shop. By now I’d drunk enough Goon to last a lifetime. Suitably jolly we went off to spot some kangaroos that were known to be rife in the area and unafraid of people. I must have thought I was David Attenborough, managing to creep up to a group of them that were feeding while the Swedish girl's camera flashes worked double time behind me. The girls were making cooing noises at the small kangaroos I managed to hand feed. Or else they were cooing at me...
The next day spent hiking through the bush and hills of the Grampians was excellent, even if it took a big selling job by Bruce with his CD collection to get us up and onto the bus by day break. Getting back to nature was a welcome relief after the weeks I’d spent working in Melbourne. I was finding out that wasn’t really the city person that I thought I was.
We could only cover a small amount of what the mountain ranges had to offer in our short time in the Grampians but it's obvious that a lot of cash was being spent on the area to get the facilities up to a good standard. At McKenzie falls for instance there was a new state of the art toilet facility that sure beat pissing in a bucket of sawdust as elsewhere in the bush. But I wasn’t sure that the huge sign bragging about the toilet was quite needed, going into detail how it works and that $230,000 had been spent on them. They were obviously very proud. In comparison, it seemed a little odd that there was only a small knee high indicating the trail to get to the falls themselves.