Errata

Marvin is in his early-to-mid twenties and hails from Canada. Last night – at around quarter-to-five or so in the morning – he returned noisily from a night spent on the town and engaged in enthusiastic sexual proclivities with a brunette Irish woman whose name was either Annie, Alice or Baby Doll, all three of which were used, and none of which were corrected.
I know all of this because Marvin’s bed is approximately half-a-metre from my own and thus, I hereby retract anything positive I might have said about this particular dormitory having now discovered that the reasoning behind the absence of one of the odours which I painstakingly listed in an earlier post is essentially because it is not actually stale yet.
I should admit that Marvin is probably not actually called Marvin, or at least I do not think he is. We have never been formally introduced and the nearest I have managed to conversing with him has been his tendency to talk past me to a friend of his on the bed on the other side of the room. A conversational version of “piggy in the middle” if you like, into which I would attempt to grab at the passing conversation as it passed and start a volley of my own.
Either way, he strikes me as a Marvin, so it will do for the purposes of this anecdote.
His other friend arrived back from the pub at the same time of about half-past four in the morning and was out of the room during the evening’s performance, but when he returned later in the morning, he began a rather extraordinary speech which I can only paraphrase here:
“I was in the kitchen,” he began, “Making my dinner when that blonde woman from room ten came in. I don’t know what her name is, but she’s got curly hair, right? Anyway she starts complaining that I’m making all this noise and that I’m crashing and stamping and smashing things. And she says that she ‘wants to sleep’.”
This last quote is delivered in a hoarse falsetto, presumably for comic effect. No one laughs and he sighs.
“She was so rude.” He protests in disbelief, “I was so angry it was all I could do to keep making dinner. So rude.”
A brief and merciful silence follows and when he gets no response, he adds in a tone so petulant that it’s almost moving:
“She drives a really rubbish VW golf with a broken back window. I really hope it breaks down.”

I should, I appreciate, be thankful that it has taken so long. I’ve been in hostel dormitory’s inhabited by mewlers, pukers, interior designers, drunks and masturbators, but until last night, had only marvelled in horror at the anecdotes I had been told by other travellers about the evenings during which they had been forced to bare witness to various acts of communal-living coitus on top bunks, bottom bunks, lounges and laundries.
Judith, from the West Coast tour recounted a particularly memorable variant on the tale which happened in New South Wales. A couple returned to the dormitory and thinking that it was empty (which is, I suppose, an improvement on Marv and company) started at it on the floor in the centre of the room between the bunk beds where the hostel manager had ill advisedly laid a thick pile rug which evidently looked more comfortable than the beds themselves.
Of course the room was not unoccupied and Judith and an English girl found they had become unexpected voyeurs until Judith cleared her throat significantly to indicate her presence. The couple were mortified (also a plus) and fled the scene leaving Judith and the English girl exchanging the usual oh-my-god-did-you-see-that? sort of conversation. Bonded in disgust, the English girl then ruined everything with the startled – and startlingly irony free – exclamation of:
“I mean, what do they think the bathroom is there for?”

So consider my trying-to-sleep-while-others-are-shagging-in-the-dorm cherry well and truly popped, and with it, I have now seen my fill of legal but questionable doings in dorms and thus never have to stay in one again forever and ever and ever until the next time. Until then, I’m going to try and find a single room to hole up in now that I have a job to pay for it.
As for Marvin and Annie, well borrowing a little of the petulance from his friend, I wish them well and hope that their second date will be in the waiting room of a certain clinic (ironically, and I really am not making this up, situated at the end of a woodland path named ‘Lover’s Lane’). Harsh I know, but that’s what you get for waking up someone with a seven o’clock alarm call followed by the promise of nine hours soul destroying filing work in a gloomy basement.
You have been warned.

Stuck in the Middle

"You know, I'm not feeling too well, might go to bed early and have a bit of a lie down"

"But it's only 7.30, probably last night catching up with you"

"yeah! Give me a couple of hours and then we can think about heading over to the cinema"

So off I trot, admittidley feeling not 100% but still blissfully unaware of the events that were about to transpire. I left Vince to the TV, happy as Larry sitting watching an episode of Home and Away with our fellow room mate Lizzy.
Lizzy had been travelling on a year long visa in NZ, and was just about to start here OZ leg of her journey before heading home back to England. We shared a room not in the convential room sharing way, nothing wierd here, just that the room was split into two sections, as you entered the room door, you were faced with a single bed room, inhabited currently by Lizzy, and in the back corner there was an open section through to another room with two beds in, you guessed it, occupied by myself and Vince. Essentially the important bit about the room structure was that to get out of the room you had to walk through Lizzy's section of the room. In itself not overly intrusive giving the usual state of affairs of having to weave your way through a maze of bunk beds in the normal 30 bed dorm found in other backpack accomodation. However giving that I consider myself, and I'm sure Vince does also, a polite person, a certain amount of silence and quite walking was called for when returning late in the evening.
Anyway there I was sitting in my bed attempting to do a kind of sleeping, reading, listening to music type of deal, when Vince enters

"God Gary, you missed the most amazing episode of Home & Away, you wouldn't believe the cliffhanger, I think I'll give Clayton a quick phone."

"You know, I'm starting to feel a bit worse, I think I might just stay in and do the cinema tomorrow"

"You sure"

"Yeah, I think it's the best option all round"

"No problem, might go down and watch a DVD in the common room"

So off Vince trots, back down stairs, and off I slip into a restless sleep. The next thing I remember is Vince and Lizzy coming back into the shared room around the 10.30 mark and me waking up.

"You OK"

"I'm feeling really unwell"

"shit, you look green"

"I'll be alright if I just lay here in this one set position"

Vince then opens the wardrobe door, has a bit of a rummage around, and after about ten seconds comes wandering back over with a very large bucket.

"Just in case!"

"I'm not bloody five years old, I'm sure I'm more than capable of navigating 10ft to get to the toilet."

and with my objections made, "just leave it by the bed"

I thought to myself, I know what better way to forget the urge to vomit than to listen to some Smiths and reached for my MP3 player.
It was about half way through "Girlfriend in a Coma" when the first attack hit. First immense pain in my stomach, then incredibly violent dry wretching. At this point the bucket looked like an inviting prospect, but my dignity stood strong and like a whippet up I got, through the darkness I went, first our own room, I reached for the frame where the door once was, then stumbled into Lizzy's room, I offer my hand in apology, as surely if I were to open my mouth I would be apologising for more than a bit of noisy stumbling, I reach for the door and swung it open, god damn these people why can't the install friction hinges, the door bangs against the wall first one way then then slams back into place, god, if the frenzied footsteps weren't enough an bloody banging door that would wake the dead. My pace is now a run and I find the communial toilet on the opposite side of the corridor thankfully vacant. I use my built up momentum and hurl myself forward, dropping to my knees in one movement, I lock into the toilet like a well executed docking manoever. My mouth opens and my beautifully prepared pasta dish is enjoyed once more. The next ten minutes are spent in that one position, I become ever more aware of the echoing nature of the toilet, the next ten minutes are spent on the linolium floor, just enjoying the coolness. I eventually rise to my feet and make my way back through the banging door, past Lizzy, again offering my hand in apology, this time in a completely embarrased fashion, back through the door frame into the now illuminated bedroom.

"You Ok, that sounded terrible"

"mmmm"

I get back into bed and fall back into a restless sleep.

I awake with an overpowering feeling of nausia, I stumbled out of bed and through the darkness, I find the door frame and continue on into Lizzy's room, I offer my hand in apology and stumble into the corridor through the banging door. I find the toilet unused and slump back down into my now familiar position. I'm sure I didn't cook that much? I thought to myself as I lay once again on the floor. 10 minutes pass and once again up I get, through the banging door, stumble pass Lizzy, this time not bothering to apologise and back into the now dark room.

"You Ok?"

"Did I wake you!"

Back to bed I go, and fall back to sleep.

I checked my watch on each of my visits to the toilet that evening, I reckon I got up about every hour on the hour, each time repeating the same sorry walk to the toilet, and with each visit the volume of outflow reducing, but I'm sure the noise making each effort increasing. Finally I get to sleep about the 5 o'clock mark.

"Some night ehh"

"Yeah, sorry about the noise"

"God, you must have had a terrible time of it"

"No, no, it was Gary who was ill"

"oh"

Aparently I was quite the discussion around the breakfast table, "who was that throwing up in the toilet last night?" "Probably some backpacker, had too much to drink, I tell you, I moved into this place to get away from that nonsense"

I came down the stairs and made my way directly to the reception desk. Luckily I was leaving that day, but I was quick to offer my apologies to the owner and I didn't stop for breakfast. Not sure if it's me or the city, but there is definitely something going on with Sydney, we just can't seem to get along, bloody food poisoning!

High Employment, Low Employment

I am approximately one-hundred-and-eighty feet in the air when I get a phone call from Oddette with news of a job.
“Filing work.” She says, “In a basement, nothing exciting, but it’s a jeans and trainers sort of job which might be a bonus.”
I nod, trying to find a quiet corner of the SkyTower’s viewing deck to hole up in so that I can hear the rest of the telephone call. Not an easy task of course, given that the viewing deck is a large circular room with no corners to speak of, but an awful lot – it would seem – of Japanese students taking it in turns to crawl on hands an knees across the sections of glass floor.
I hold the phone tight against one ear and jam my finger deep into the other.
“Sounds great.” I say, wincing at the cacophony of squealing and screeching of horror and delight from the school-kids who are now jumping up and down on the glass panels. I turn my back on them and try and concentrate on the phone call.
“It does? Wonderful!” Oddette enthuses. “It’s sixteen dollars an hour, and the temps I have working there at the moment have agreed to work from eight ‘til…”
A particularly loud yell makes me look back over my shoulder to where the class are being castigated by a teacher. One of the boys it seems had been pressing a girl’s face against the glass floor panel. Charming, I think.
“Is that okay?” Oddette is asking. “Quite long, I know, but…”
“It’s fine,” I say, “Sounds great.” I think to myself, I can get up for eight, surely shouldn’t be a problem.
“Oh good.” Oddette seems pleased. “I’ll email you with the rest of the details and you can start tomorrow.”
She thanks me and I thank her and we both hang up thankfully. All in all, I admit to myself as I extract my finger from my ear canal, an impressive service given that I only signed up with the agency the previous afternoon.
The Ministry, where I shall be working for the next two-to-four weeks depending on various factors (for example, how long can the job reasonably be stretched out to?) is around half and hour’s walk from Gary and Julia’s flat and I hike down the following morning, the early sunlight splintering through dense and atmospheric fog which lends the city skyline the quality of a ghostly black and white image.
The job involves packing up an office basement, archiving the files therein before a big office move takes everything across town in neat easy-to-find cardboard boxes. The project has been going on for a couple of months already, but Mary – who meets me in reception – has decided that eleven weeks is enough and is off to the Cook Islands the following evening. I’m to replace her and have a couple of days to figure out exactly what it is that she did. It seems fairly straightforward, with the devil inevitably being in the details. Files must be packaged into special boxes, and the boxes labelled with a special label and then left in a special room. A spreadsheet – also special – must be updated and after so many entries, a contact in Wellington (presumably special, I haven't heard back from them yet) must be contacted. Not exactly rocket science, but then the pay is not too exciting either, the sixteen dollars translating roughly to five UK pounds sterling an hour.
“Still,” Mary concedes, “It pays more than bar work, you get weekends to cut loose and the hours are long enough to be able to save properly.”
Oh, that’s a point, I think, I knew I missed something from the phone call.
“When do we finish again?” I ask innocently.
“Six.”
Here, I perform a little mental arithmetic and prove that my degree in mathematics was not a complete waste of time.
“Six?” I squeal, “That’s nine hours!”
“Nine-and-a-half.” Mary corrects me, “We only take half and hour for lunch.”
I think I must have turned pale as Mary offers a consolatory smile.
“It’s not so bad.” She says, “We have a radio.”

The lease of Gary and Julia’s flat is coming up and they are moving into a smaller, one-bedroom flat in the city centre. Despite Gary’s cheerful insistence that the new floor is every bit open to me as their old, I break open the Lonely Planet and scour the hostels section regardless, after all, I do have a job now and one day, I might actually get paid for it.
My decision is eventually made for me once I bring the subject up at work. Mary suggests the hostel that she has been staying at for the last few months, and which she will soon be leaving.
“It’s like someone’s house.” She says, “There’s only twenty beds in the entire building and none of them are bunks. A really nice atmosphere.”
This immediately appeals to me, as does the revelation that the place is unequipped with the a television, which admittedly means that I will find myself missing the rest of the series of The Sopranos, but on the other hand, I am assured that its absence makes the place a lot friendlier as it forces people to actually talk to each other in the evenings which seems ideal.
I call the hostel that evening and manage to secure the last available bed for Saturday night. It is only a short walk from Gary and Julia’s flat, so the following morning Gary and I walk down with my belongings to get them out of the way while the rest of his flatmates pack things up for the move.
The place certainly looks like a house, wide verandas encircling its ground and first floors with views looking out over the parkland which drops away from its garden and affords a picture postcard view of the city skyline softened by the curling branches of the parkland trees.
I ring the doorbell and am met by a rather nervous looking woman who asks me rather shrilly if I have made a booking. I assure her that I have.
“Only we’re fully booked.” She says as though she does not quite believe me.
“I know,” I say, “I booked yesterday. Over the telephone.”
Although I am reasonably certain that this woman knows what a telephone is, almost unconsciously, I seem to be making the universal-sign-language gesture for ‘telephone’ – one hand at my ear, thumb and little finger extended.
Either way, she consults her diary and seems satisfied that the name I have given her matches the one scrawled in the margin. She leads me into a small room on the first floor with four beds arranged tightly within it. Single beds, not bunks, the room looks a little cramped and I suspect that perhaps on this occasion, two pairs of bunks might have been preferable. But the room has at least two things in its favour over some of the other dormitories that I have stayed in over the past few months. Firstly, it seems lived in, but reasonably cared for, in that some effort had been made to straighten the sheets of the three inhabited beds, and the bags are stacked neatly in the narrow gaps between them with an absolute bare minimum of underwear strewn on the floor between them. Secondly, and much more importantly, the room does not stink of the usual cocktail of dormitory odours (equal parts feet, sweat and aerosol deodorant, liberally seasoned with spilt alcohol, a lingering soupcon of tobacco and a pinch of stale semen and/or stomach acid) and this alone is enough to make it particularly appealing.
As she waits for my bank card to burble through the machine, I try to strike up a conversation and mention how the place was recommended to me by Mary. The name strikes a chord and the woman looks at me suspiciously.
“Mary used to stay here.” She says.
“I know.” I say, “She used to work where I do. I took her job you see and now she’s gone travelling again...”
There’s a slight pause, punctuated by the rattling of the card machine the woman holds in her hand.
“You’ve taken her job?” she says in what I swear is a hoarse whisper, “And now you’ve taken her bed.”
The note of accusation is rather bewildering, particularly as the statement is said without – as far as I can tell – any irony at all. Not for the first time in my life, I really do not know what to say, but some answer seems to be demanded and I’m afraid to say that my improvisational skills in this area are very poor indeed:
“Sorry.” I say unnecessarily, but in a small enough voice that I hope it might not be heard.
At that moment, the card machine finishes doing whatever the hell it had been doing and noisily spews out a slip of paper which is presented to me by the woman with a slightly worrying insistence.
“Sign here.” She says as though hidden somewhere in the innocent looking hostel receipt is a full and detailed confession for something unspecific. I hesitate a moment before just signing the thing anyway, proving perhaps that I would fare particularly poorly under interrogation of any sort, and would in fact probably sign my name to anything if a clean, odour-free room was on offer.

Charge of the Tight Brigade

My personal banker looks over the paperwork which he has extracted from the printer one more time and smiles a slightly oily smile.
“Well everything seems to be in order.” He tells me.
He has a name of course, but I forget it. Like many in his profession, the actual name seems now to take second place to the ingratiating smile, the firm handshake and the pristine suit. That his name is printed on the office door, on a small plaque on the desk itself and on each of the business cards, a stack of which he shuffles impatiently as he waits for me to fill out the paperwork he had set before me, might suggest that he has a tendency to forget it himself.
He scans the paperwork once more, then holds it in his hands and bounces it on the desk-top to align the pages and scoots it across the polished desktop towards me, dotted line first. A pen glints beside it insomuch as a fifty-cent ballpoint pen can glint.
“So,” he says, businesslike, “To summarize, the FlexiAccount is a current account, mainly electronic. You’ll get a card… everything else will be online, okay?”
“Okay.”
“The account has a five dollar base fee…”
“I’m sorry, a what?”
“A base fee.” He smiles again with movie-star teeth, “Each month we charge five dollars, unless you have over two and half thousand in your account.”
“You’re renting me an account?”
“Well if you were under thirty, it would be free.”
The temperature in the room drops a little. At least I hope it does, in fact I feel it certainly should but my personal banker’s professional warmth (I suspect he has a certificate in the subject) keeps the atmosphere more pleasant than it deserves and he remains almost totally oblivious. It suddenly dawns on me that were he in my position, he would probably qualify for the free account, and so I glower at him instead in a sort of inoffensive I-still-want-an-account sort of way.
This at least achieves the desired effect. His eyes widen a little and he attempts to make things sound more positive.
“But the best thing,” he says, “Is that with this account, your first thirty transactions are absolutely free each month.”
I frown.
“Transactions?” I ask turning the paperwork back to me to try and find some smaller print which I might have overlooked.
He nods enthusiastically, pleased to have got my attention at last.
“Sure,” he says, “Withdrawals, card purchases, that sort of thing.”
“Absolutely free?”
“Absolutely. Unless you use our competitors bank machines of course. Then you’ll be charged by us … and probably by them too. But there are so many of our machines that you’ll never need to go anywhere else and…”
I stop him, something just doesn’t seem right here.
“So after I’ve made thirty purchases or used the ATM machines or both, then you’ll start charging me to access my own money from my own bank account which you’re already charging me rent on?”
A small pause follows.
“The first thirty transactions are free.” He says again defensively.
The scary thing is that this selling point really is genuine for this particular bank. All its competitors charge regardless whenever you do absolutely anything with your account. So much so, in fact, that were I not living from hostel to hostel, I would seriously consider investing in a new mattress to sew my earnings into.
As it is, my employment agency needs a local bank account to direct any funds into, should I earn any, and so it would appear that in terms of local banking, I am between a rock and hard place – only with thirty free transactions to play with.
I sign my name on the dotted line and the banker snatches it off me and appears to be satisfied. He gives me an account number scrawled in ball-point pen on the top of a leaflet detailing the various bank charges (and illustrated with a pair of smiling people who presumably haven’t read the booklet yet). I refrain from observing that it seems to cost an awful lot to save money here and instead shake the hand which he has extended across his desk enthusiastically to me.
“I haven’t been charged for this consultation, have I?” I ask him before I leave.
He blinks.
“Of course not.” He says and laughs uproariously as though the idea is either preposterous or brilliant.

Birthday Re-Union

"Hello, to you too"

And that was it, like we'd never been away, Nomes and Chris were still the same fun souls we had spent such memorable times with on the banana bus in South America, BTB was still the same flambouent, friendly guy we had grown to love. Strange how when you meet people in a concentrated 24h, no getting away from you, kinda way, it doesn't seem to matter how long you spend apart, the time it takes to get back to the point where you left it is comparitively tiny. The night passed quickly, the jugs of beer consumed at a good brisk pace. As with all get togethers a selection of wierd animal pizzas were shared and the hours slipped by with catch up conversation and dips into nostalgia. I presented Vince with an enormous cake fitting of the milestone(I don't think the photos do justice to it, that was a giant novelty candle!) and Happy Birhthday was sung. All in all a thouroughly good night all round, not sure if we both had to go all the way to Sydney to go to the pub, but you know, The Far from the Madding Crowd looked busy. The night comes to an end and we all go our seperate ways, who knows when we'll meet again?

As it turns out, the next day at Chris and Nomes house, we made such a good impression we got invited to spend the rest of the trip with them.

Awkward in Auckland

The Auckland tourist board describes its city as “The City of Sails” and simply finding its location on a map is enough for this rather evocative description to make sense. It is located on the spit of land which connects the fly-away far North of New Zealand with the rest of North Island, and its sprawling mass borders two harbours, each spotted with islands, ships and sailboats.
My first impressions of the city were a little less romantic, in fact it initially reminded me a little of Reading in Berkshire.

Once my plane had landed at around four o’clock in the afternoon, the weather which greeted me was already wet and miserable and there is nothing quite like emerging from an airport into the anonymous suburbs of car parks, bus-stops and billboards which surround every international airport in the Western world only to discover that this time, unlike in Sydney, it really is winter, and a proper British winter at that. But by the time the airport bus has made its sluggish way through the rush-hour traffic and into town, I find consolation in the discovery of Gary and Julia waiting for me, and a particularly welcoming beer is planted into my hand. This, I think to myself, is more like it.

The following morning, I amble into town to have a look around properly. Gary and Julia’s flat is situated along the lengthy Great North Road which is spotted with what appears to be excluisvely car dealerships and petrol stations, closer to town things liven up a little and Gary describes this stretch as “like Cowley Road, only seedier". The flat itself is pleasant, and doubtless if its inhabitants were not so understandably reluctant to furnish it, it could be a cosy one as well. As it is, it achieves a sort of minimalist charm with its large, blindingly white living room being home to a handful of chairs clustered around a small, humble looking television as though slightly embarrassed to be caught cluttering the space.

Auckland is not a particularly tall city. It has instead the appearence of a city which has been dropped into place from a great hight and spread expansively as it landed. There are sky scrapers, certainly, but they look rather shy, squat and even lonely rising above the smaller buildings surrounding them. Stark contrast indeed to the proud, soaring clusters which make up the central business districts of Sydney or Melbourne. Here, the towers are few and far between, as though at some point during the planning stage, it was decided that there was no real point in building towers which scraped the sky, given that it could be argued that the local sky seemed rather lower than normal in the first place.
Today, the clouds are dense scribbles of chalk and charcoal, a teasing patch of blue revealing itself once in a while between them as they shift about with the sort of laziness which does not encourage the likelihood of a clear afternoon. Puncturing the cloud layer with a sort of impetuous defiance, and lording it over all the other buildings in town, is the Skytower, which does not scrape the sky so much as skewer it.
The Skytower, like its cousins in cities such as Sydney, Toronto or Seattle, is built for the purpose of height alone. Its bulk consists of a wide concrete trunk, crowned with a blossoming of restaurants, viewing platforms and casinos, and its topped with a large spire to make it seem higher still. It looks for all the world like a giant version of the game, Ker-Plunk, and the fact that people in colourful boiler suits are throwing themselves from the top of it (as Gary did following his birthday) simply adds to the cheerful incongruousness of it.
I meet up with Julia for lunch and she introduces me to one of the city’s many Asian food courts, which boasts a spectacular choice of kitchens and menus serving food from every inch of Asia, it seems. The choice is almost overwhelming and as I wait for my own meal (nothing adventurous at this point, I should admit), Julia’s order arrives: a tray of sushi with all the trimmings which she juggles expertly with a pair of chopsticks.
I confess to her that I have never really tried sushi properly and this earns a look of reproach bordering on abject horror.
“That won't last.” She assures me, “You can't live in Auckland without falling in love with the stuff.”

I start walking back to the flat at around three in the afternoon and as I cross the road bridge over the freeway, traffic roaring below, school kids waiting for their busses roaring above, the sun finally breaks from behind the clouds.
To my right, roads drop away steeply towards the continuing suburban sprawl, and in the distance I can see that the sunlight has ignited the harbour water, casting it in glittering silver against the muted greys of the buildings surrounding the coast. It is one of those moments of beauty which catch you completely off guard. Even though the clouds then close in once more and the view reverts to a more somber palate, it is enough and I am satisfied. You do not, I am forced to admit, get views like that in Reading, and it is as though the city is tersely proving a point before getting on with the rest of the winter.

Suburban Strangeness

(A few days ago)

Miro meets me on the steps of Sydney’s town hall, near the sign asking for the steps to be kept clear at all times, presumably in case of an emergency convening of the council. I missed seeing Miro again in Adelaide where I left him a month ago. He had then intended to travel down to Melbourne after a week, but found work renovating the hostel he was staying in and found that he rather liked the place after all – price of pizzas notwithstanding.
I apologize for missing our rendezvous in Adelaide but Miro is unoffended, in fact he seems to be completely thrilled regardless – as though missing our meeting was almost as much fun as meeting up. He has never been in Sydney before, so I hike him down to the circular quay so that he can get an eyeful of Sydney’s two most famous institutions. Duly impressed, we search out a bottle shop for a six-pack of beers – our ticket, we presume, to a party which Michaela has invited us to, somewhere out in the suburbs.
Michaela was on the same train as Miro and I from Darwin to Alice Springs, and spent six weeks in the latter defying everyone’s expectations by having a very good time indeed. In fact whilst Miro and I were mooning around Adelaide and Melbourne respectively, we were both the recipients of text messages from Alice Springs in which Michaela reeled off all the activities which were going on (the annual camel racing cup, the beanie festival – celebrating diversity with knitted hats and even the boat race along the dried up Todd River.) I had ran into her already since returning to Sydney and after informing me that she had heard from Miro that he was planning on making his way across to the city in time for my birthday, she invited us both to a party at her friends house.
Outside the tube station, a car honks its horn and Michaela waves from behind the wheel and a casual glance is enough to raise questions immediately.
“Is this a fancy dress party?” I ask, hesitantly.
Michaela is dressed in red, gold and black. Long skirt, apron and a slightly sheepish expression.
“Sort of,” she admits. “We’re having Octoberfest.”
“But it’s July.”
“It’s Octoberfest in July.” She says.
Costumes aside, this is not quite as outrageous as might be expected. It transpires from a nostalgia of Northern hemisphere Christmas traditions for one thing: some Australian’s opt for a “Christmas in July” where the weather is more suited to large, rich roast dinners and puddings rather than the scorching summer days of December. From there, the logic states, it is only a short jump to celebrate other events and activities around the same date. Hence, Octoberfest-in-July and hence the reason that Miro and I are the only men in the party not to be wearing lederhosen – not something, I’m sure I do not need to add, that was particularly embarrassing, although I did feel a little ashamed that the beer we had brought was the local Sydney variety and not something a little more German.
The party itself has been in full swing since two o’clock, and Miro and I seem to have timed our arrival just in time to for the pork roast. Plates of meat and vegetables are passed around, and our Australian beers are replaced with German ones.
Of course, as the alcohol flows and the light dims, the theme of the party begins to sink into the background and it becomes simply another group of people enjoying themselves, only with the cheerful bonus of the hilarity of the costumes (and the occasional interruption of German drinking songs on the jukebox) to keep the good humour buoyant.
It’s all good clean fun, it’s just a little strange. Miro seems to be having a great time. I leave early, but I later learn that he manages to get himself a date to the International SexPo exhibition the following day, after which I can only assume the sight of a bunch of grown men in lederhosen throwing pork crackling at each other would probably become sadly passé.

Coming of Age

The night clung heavy around the winding streets of Sydney, I sit alone in a pavement cafe, one hand occupied by a shot of Jack, the other slowly flicking through the pages of an ageing copy of The Mind in the Making. The silence is unbroken, only distant sounds of the city linguire on the nights air.
Something stirs, my ears pick up a new closer noise, I can distinguish the pants of a dog moving closer, no doubt just another one of this cities lost souls. My mind slips back to Jack, and my fingers again begin to flick, the dog is closer now, almost apon me, his pants echo off the streets tight walls like the booming of a cannon.

"Bloody hell those stairs were a frick'n nightmare, couldn't find a bloody phone box anywhere! Ended up having to go all the way to Circular Quey for Christ Sake!, Want a pint?"

"Yeah why not, haven't been to the bar yet, someone left this whisky here and I thought I'd try out this kind of brooding 1920's PI thing while you were away, thought it might draw the attention away from the fact I was sitting in a pub on my own, guiness if they've got it!

Vince returns around five minutes later with two pints and a consoling look.

"didn't have any guiness I'm afraid, so I got you this, barmaid said it was the nearest alternative, Black llama she calls it"

"black bloody llama"

"Only kidding, its boag or something"

"what time is Chris and Nomes turning up?"

"said about 7, they're going to give me a call when they're close"

"and what about everybody else?"

"As and when"

"Cool! Feeling old yet"

"Are you expecting me to keel over or something"

"well, when you get to your age, the body doesn't function as well as once did, it tends to be a little more suseptible to lifes little complications"

"shut up and drink your pint, hows the arm by the way!

A new voice strikes the air

Helllloooo!

Summer Bay

As we sheer our way across 4 lanes of traffic, freewheelin down the hill to save the gas, oh yes, Clayton does have a style about him, my excitement is starting to reach boiling point. I've instructed Vince to keep a look out for celebrity cast members, and I've warned Clayton to be ready to set his foot on the gas, in the persuit of flee'n film crew.

"I think this would an appropriate time for a bit of a sing a long, don't you?

"no" Vince snaps

"ha ha ha, no!" Clayton agrees

"what's wrong with you guys? here we are fast approaching the spiritual abode of Home and Away, and you can't let go for one minute. We're all amongst friends here, and I know you're both as excited as I am, so come on."

"no" both at once, tone raised

"hold me in your arms, don't let me go, I want to stay forever, closer each day, Hoooooome and Awaaaaaay!"

"Take the wheel Vince"

"what"

"just take the bloody wheel"

"jesus, why?"

And at this point things became a little wierd. You have to bear in mind that I hadn't seen Clayton in about two years, and up until this point he had been quite friendly and civil, and to be honest who could really have predicted that such an australian institution could be like a red rag to a bull.

He turned to me, and reasonably calmly said "shut the hell up! I swear to god if you don't shut the hell up, I'm going to jump into that back seat and make you shut up"

Well, never being one to heed a warning, I thought it to be an appropriate time to start another verse
"hold me in your arms........................."
To which, Clayton like a whippet, unbuckles his seatbelt, puts down his beer and flys at me. A scurmish ensues not unreminisent of a playground brawl. Clayton being a bigger man than I, added to the fact that I'm pretty much pinned in to the back seat of his Tokyo drift supercar, overpowers me easily, and starts to pound down on my upper arm
"are you going to shut up?"

"hold me in your arms......"

"shut up"

"don't let me go....."

"shut up"

"I want to stay forever..."

CRASH, THUD, SPLASH!

Vince has lost control of the car, and we have ploughed straight of a pier, through a beach and have come to rest with the tide lapping at the tyres of the car.

"what the hell happened"

"anybody hurt"

"no I'm alright"

"I'm alright"

"I've got a bruised upper arm, thanks Clayton"

"shut up man, it's you're bloody fault this happened, I'm getting out to assess the damage"


We all pile out the car and notice that other than a little scartch on the front bumper there is no obvious injury to the car. I look around to try and figure out where the bloody hell we are, and to my surprise and excitment we have run into Palm beach, or as you guys might know it Summer Bay, what are the chances of that.

And despite what Vince might claim that was the true story of when we visited the set of Home and Away.

Gary and Vince are here. Like, right this moment...

Back in Sydney and all is rather familiar – except the rain which greeted me on arrival of course, which managed to put even Melbourne’s legendarily inclement climate to shame. Getting in early in the morning, I checked into the Central YHA, which is well respected and has earned a good write up in the Lonely Planet guide. As ever though, it turns out to be another soul-less warehouse of travel-stained souls clogging up cramped dorms in nine floors worth of space. On top of which, the place was seriously overpriced and so the next day I bit the bullet and phoned the lovely Wattle House, where I had spent my last few nights in Sydney previously, the dorm here turned out to be cheaper than the YHA, and much more pleasant: a large room with three beds arranged in it – and no bunks at all.
The following morning, I get up early and catch the train to the airport so that Gary should arrive to see me leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb looking as though I own the place. Gary gets delayed in the customs queue and so I end up getting a crick in my neck and rather tired. He ultimately finds me lounging on one of the waiting room chairs, looking wide-eyed and uncomfortable. I usher him back to the homely charms of the Wattle House and try to impress him with the complimentary hot water bottles and fleece blankets.
Jetlag notwithstanding, I then drag him into town the wrong way and fail to look as though I’ve been here as long as I have and get completely lost in the back streets behind the fish market. It’s one of those quite pleasant getting-lost-in-the-back-streets type of routes which should be featured more prominently in the guidebooks, allowing as it did, for us to discover a number of curious looking buildings, some interesting looking moored boats and the back of the casino.
Sitting down for lunch of pie and chips on a bench near the wharf (accompanied by a guy with a steel drum performing a mean rendition of Yesterday) I receive a phone call from Clayton, who has the day off and whose flying lesson has been canceled due to high winds.
“Gary’s here.” I say.
“No shit?” Says Clayton, sounding genuinely surprised even though I am fairly sure I mentioned that Gary would be about in the email he told me he read.
Clayton’s car picks us up and in its own inimitable style (roaring of engine, screaming of breaks) we barrel across the iconic bridge, into the countryside and get lost again. The locations which we eventually decide to visit, Lake McQuarrie, the largest salt-water lake in the world and Palm Beach, the location of Home & Away’s Summer Bay, both prove rather difficult to find and despite their considerable fame, seem inadequately signposted and rather elusive. That it should be possible to hide a lake the size of the one we were looking for was perplexing to say in the least, but a more important and pressing question presented itself as we approached Palm Beach in the gathering darkness: How were we going to stop Gary from singing the theme tune from Home & Away, over and over and over again?

Two worlds collide!

God, customs lines are long and boring and smelly, well, maybe not so smelly, my irritation derives from a lack of sleep and my obvious frustration at temporarily being kept apart from my one true love Jules, Wait a minute I'm not meeting Jules, I'm meeting Vince, what the hell happenend there. It's a trip to Sydney for Vince's birthday, pull it together, this lack of sleep is affecting me worse than I thought. God, who would have anticipated that to get a cheap(ish) flight to Sydney , you would have to leave in the middle of the bloody night, I mean cummmmoooon!
If nothing else sitting on planes allows you a little time to think about things, and it was somewhere around half way over the Tasman that it set in, we have been travelling for now seven months or so, and throughout that time I hadn't seen Vince until this now fast approaching point. Some would argue of course that this in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not one of those people. Although time has passed so quickly and we've packed in quite a lot over the months, it's never nice not spending time with those you like, and that has certainly been the case. So given this duration and perhaps *more importantly a chance to break the routine of work, I find myself quite excited about the forthcoming meeting of minds and beards.
Sydney of course holds bitter sweet memories for me, as, if you remember, this was the real first port of call on this travelling extraviganza but also the place where I came down with a bout of food poisoning and resulting cold sore, which at least temporarily cast a little grey cloud over proceedings, for christ sake! We didn't even make it to Home and Away beach, well, that was certainly going to be put right on this attempt at Sydney. On a side point we've become completely addicted to H&W, not sure if this is because NZ TV is so utterly appauling or for some reason the whole of the UK just got it wrong, for my own self respect, I'm convinced all of you got it wrong, and channel 5 is the greatest visionary TV station in the history of broadcasting.

"Anything to declare sir!"

My mind quickly turns to the packet of Mintos I purchased in Auckland Airport, that are tucked in my pocket.

"no" I offer feebily

"Anthing to declare sir" her voice elavated from the last attempt

"no" I do better this time

"I just didn't hear you"

"cool" another countries immigration department fooled by my put on nervousness, now off to the fields to plant non indigenous seed species, ha ha ha!

Or alternatively off to the airports main hall, in the hope that Vince has shown up and purchased me coffee and a bacon roll. And there he was, not with a carboard sign or standing next to the chauffer he had hired to take us back into the city, nope, just sitting there reading, ahh well nothing changes, good to see the guy anyway, and for those interested in an independant analysis of his health, well...looks like he's lost a bit of weight, and all this galavanting in the Australian bush, has either left him with a bit of a tan or he's was just a bit dirty, too early to say.


*refers to nothing