My thoughts and wishes bend once again towards the open road

Final post from Perth!!!

This is my final day at work and we’re set to leave on Sunday. Living in Perth for nearly 3 months has been an interesting interlude but I’m VERY happy to be moving on. Overall, here and in Sydney, I’ve been working for 20 weeks since November…not much by the standard of an average year at home, I suppose, but compared to most backpackers, that’s a hell of a lot. I’m really going to relish the next couple of months with no work, no temping, no offices, just travel, experience and good times. Oh yes.

There will be ceremonial throwing-away of the work shoes.

You’ll be happy to hear that Laura and I found ourselves a boy to travel with. The three people we met through our advert were all fantastic – genuinely. I was hoping we could meet someone cool, but was prepared to have to wade through a lot of rubbish to get there…humanity being what it is. In the event, however, we met three fantastic guys and choosing would have been genuinely difficult but that David, our travelling companion of choice, seemed to click with us and understand our sense of humour and inane in-jokes, thus rendering himself the obvious choice.

He’s a twenty year old German guy who’s just got back from travelling in New Zealand (I love meeting people who’ve been to New Zealand, because everyone who goes there does the same things - “Did you climb the Franz Josef glacier?” “Skydiving – yes, at Taupo.” – so there’s always a lot to talk about). He plays guitar (he told us he knows 50% of all the songs in the world, which hopefully includes some Andrew WK, right?), he drives, and whilst he’s not French, at least we can practise our German. I think he’s a bit scared of our taste in music, however: when we asked him how he’d feel about us playing metal in the car, his face fell somewhat.

We set off on sunday. Tonight I have after work drinks, then a final night out with people from Rainbow Lodge - the hostel I lived at - at Black Betty's, a crappy club which for some reason is a huge backpacker institution - when you meet people on East Coast who've come from Perth, they always tell you to go to Black Betty's. I could say it was overhyped, but there's a live band and all-you-can-drink for $10, so that would be a lie. Then tomorrow I'm putting in my final shift collecting for Protection of the Earth and Wildlife (apparently I'm one of the top earners for them!! Great, but...just how do they raise enough money to keep this charity going?!) and then we're having a barbeque at our house to say goodbye to our housemates. Seemed like a great idea last week, but now that autumn's setting in and temperatures are dropping to below 20 degrees (!)...we'll probably end up huddling indoors.

We're better prepared for this epic roadtrip than you might think after Todd, the guy who sold us our car, gave us a lesson in car maintenance. Todd, who is lovely, fits certain Aussie stereotypes to the T: he works on an oil-rig up north, he loves cars, he's mildly sexist and racist but his heart's in the right place. He showed us how to check the oil, jump start the battery and change the wheel, all the while pointing out that since we were travelling with a boy, we wouldn't need this knowledge as "He'll be able to do this". Todd wasn't referring to a specific guy, just to the fact that all boys know how to fix cars, of course. He gave up most of his sunday morning helping us, and installed our new stereo for free, so I'm incredibly grateful to him...we bought him a six pack to say thank you.

In other news, or rather, The News, there is currently some really awful stuff going on here in some Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory: there's been rioting and gang warfare in remote Aboriginal settlements, and this comes at the same time as a report has been leaked which discusses the hideous crime and abuse that has been going on in some settlements...it's horrible, and a lesson in what happens when one community has suffered so much ill-treatment and been completely sidelined, and left to live in poverty. The health of many Aboriginal children is worse than would be expected in a developing country, apparently...and drug abuse levels are astronomical. Some towns have "Alcohol free zones" now. Clearly, Australia is trying to address all these problems and is pumping money into various projects but it's just such an intractible situation...there's very much a catch 22 in that you can see why so many non-indigenous Australians are prejudiced against Aborigines, but that racism hinders change...arrrghh.

It's too easy to forget, or to ignore, how bloody the history of this country is, and how recent.

Plans plans and more plans

I've just organised my flight home plans (again). As things stand, they look like this:

3rd August, 8:10am: fly Sydney - Nadi (Fiji)
3rd August, 10pm: fly Nadi - LA (10 hours, arriving in LA at...1:20pm on the 3rd of August. Gotta love that international date line).
3rd August, 3:30pm: fly LA - London. Arrive at Heathrow at 9:45am, 4th August.

Nearer the time, I will look into funds and will be staying in LA for a week or so if I can afford it...we'll see. I hope I can because otherwise, I think you'll agree, that's a pretty punishing schedule. It may be only 26 hours on the clock, but in real time there's alot more, and most of them will be spent hanging round airports. Hello deep vein thrombosis... (don't worry, I intend to wear my flight socks. And march round the plane religiously every 2 hours. I'll probably do those in-seat exercises as well).

Anyway, back to the more immediate future: Laura and I are currently in the process of selecting a travelling companion. We want to hit the road with 3 people rather than 2, for reasons of sharing petrol costs, camping costs, etc, because our car is big enough, because travelling with 2 can be quite intense and we don't want to end up killing each other, and because there's safety in numbers and we don't want any crazed psychopaths killing us either. (Just watched Wolf Creek the other day...)



Obviously cool and collected backpackers would probably have made a lifelong friend in Perth by now, someone just dying to join them on their outback adventure, but quite frankly we...just haven't. So! Next step is locating an eligible travelling buddy. We set the ball rolling a last weekend by putting up adverts in various hostels/internet cafes around town (stop laughing...it's cool...lots of people do this. OK?!), the calls started coming in, we've been vetting the applicants and tonight we meet our first candidate.

Our advert specified (in addition to GSOH, HWP, DDF and LTR, obviously) that we're leaving next saturday, going up to Broome and taking a couple of weeks on the way, and that we can provide a tent. The requirements we didn't state include the fact that we want a boy who can protect us from scary strangers, fix the car if necessary, has a guitar for entertainment and won't take up too much space (a small but strong mechanic with minimal luggage aside from guitar, for example). Shouldn't take us too long to find the right person...right?! Oh yes, we also want somebody non-English (for variation), preferably French so we can brush up our language skills...

We're meeting one guy tonight (a long-haired, guitar playing German...right ball park?) and two tomorrow (a French guy with a great accent and an Israeli). If we don't get on with any of those, we'll start calling the girls back...(ah, discrimination, isn't it great?) Expect a full report on the interview process by the weekend (I envisage it as something like the flatmate interview sequence at the beginning of Shallow Grave).



This is my ex-landlord (the scary one...ah, he's lovely really) with Laura and a couple of other housemates, Ben and Jay. Jay, the blonde guy sitting down, is the sweetest guy in the world. Seriously.


And this is very true: http://www.gapingvoid.com/youcannothaveitall.jpg