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.