Australia
From crispyneurons
Sydney | Brisbane | Airlie, Whitsundays | Queensland Adventure | Townsville, Maggie | Cairns, Cape Trib | Return to Syndey
"Every Journey has a secret destination of which the traveller is unaware."
September 4th to October 3rd, 1999.
All dates and times are local.
[edit] 9/4/99 11:18 PM, over the Pacific Ocean on route to Sydney
Already left Portland, and heading west out of LA in a 747-400. I'd forgotten how big these things are! The jet turbines are larger than my Buick, and I had to ask for directions to find my seat. Various monitors display the plane's current location and vector over a map of the Pacific. This is all new to me, none of this existed when I last flew internationally in 1991. Pretty cool. Current speed: 921 km/h. One of the movies was "Tea with Mussolini." Not a hideous flick, but I don't recommend it.
It's been so hectic. I've spend the whole day preparing for the next month. My head is full of expectations, buzzing with preparations and plans. But now it's time to let go and relax. The fun begins tomorrow (that is, 9/6). Just 13 hours to Sydney. I find myself wondering what Toni will think of my perception of Australia.
[edit] 9/6/99 10:40 AM, Bondi Beach
I've been to plenty of beaches in my life, and I can say that while Bondi is overrated, it's nevertheless one of the nicer ones I've seen so far. It's nothing like the chilly iron gray of Cannon Beach in Oregon. The ocean is a pure, rich blue and the sand is very fine. I've never seen the Pacific from this side, as an eastern ocean. They say the Pacific, it has no memories. That resonates with my mood. It bashes the beach forever.
The trip has been surprisingly smooth. I had no trouble with customs, my backpack arrived promptly and was not damaged, and the ATMs accept my card painlessly. I'm still getting used to the money out here: one Australian dollar roughly equals 2/3 of the US dollar. So prices look more expensive to my eye. They have these one and two dollar coins that I'm already starting to accumulate in annoyingly large jingly quantites. I had a little trouble finding the hostel that I wanted to stay at, which was Backpacker's Headquarters in Kings Cross. It was no problem getting from the airport to Kings Cross -- I took the bus, and tried unsuccessfully to get used to it driving on the left -- but Cross is kind of ziggy and zaggy and a little confusing at first. But an old man noticed my difficulties and helped me find the place, even to the point of taking me right to the door. Very nice guy, he looks just like William S. Burroughs. So I checked in, dropped off my junk, took a shower and eventually took the train to Bondi. Why Bondi first? Because at this point I'm jet-lagged, and lying on a beach in the sun is about all I want to attempt right now.
(An aside: The sun beats down on my back and head like a blast furnace. The intensity is searing, dazzling. It's very impressive but I completely understand why two out of every three Aussies get skin cancer.)
But it hasn't been all roses so far. The first big negative is that by practical necessity, I must leave my big backpack unattended at the hostel. Any guest could steal it, and it bugs me. Sean warned me about this convention, and I suppose I'll get used to it over time. The other problem is that I haven't met too many people out here, not yet at least. I met a girl on the plane over, but she was connecting to somewhere in Queensland. I met another girl at the hostel, a Swedish girl named Kaise, but she was checking out that morning to meet up with her boyfriend. That's about it so far. I've met no guys at all. There are some at the hostel but they're all still asleep. I need to learn the social rhythms of the backpacker's hostel. I wasn't planning on meeting thousands of people on my first day, but it gets kind of lonely to spend the day by youself in a strange land.
But it will pick up. In the mean time, I'll let the radiant sun and crashing waves soothe my nerves.
[edit] 2:30 PM, Kings Cross
I got sick of baking in the sun so I left Bondi and went back to Kings Cross to explore. I also neurotically went back to the hostel to see if my stuff had been rifled through or stolen, and I'm happy to report that my paranoia was unfounded. In fact, not a single thing was stolen from me, or anyone else I met, during the entire journey. I look again for people in the hostel's common area, but it was deserted. So off I went.
Kings Cross is a peculiar blend of trendy coffee houses and street cafes, video game arcades, and porno palaces -- in just about equal ratios. Darlinghurst is the main thoroughfare. On both sides of the street is the core, the red light district, but to me it feels safe, even casually friendly. The hostel is in this part of town and I have no fears. It certainly doesn't compare to really dangerous places like East St. Louis. Even my initial fear of losing my stuff is fading away. I use ATMs here without a second thought. It looks iffy, but it doesn't feel iffy. (Though I might feel different if I were a girl and alone here at night.) It's a strange blend of yuppies, backpackers, bums and hookers. I found a place that rents Internet stations so I logged in and checked my email, which helped ease my sense of solitude. I took a few pictures that I hope illustrate the flavor of Cross.
The weather has been superb, like San Diego on a good day. Warm, sunny, no humidity and breezy. I'd tell you the temperature but I haven't got the feel of Celsius degrees. I generally prefer the clean sensibility of the metric system, and I have no trouble with kilometers and liters, but Celsius eludes me still.
[edit] 9/7/99 1:02 PM, near Sydney Opera House
I woke up at 9 AM today, so I assume my jet lag is cured. After breakfast I walked to Hyde Park. It's a nice day, but a bit cool and cloudy with a strong wind. Near Hyde Park is St. Mary's cathedral, which is under heavy repair. In the park itself was a political protest of some kind involving health care for disabled people. There was quite a vocal turnout for such a small interest group. I hadn't planned to walk much farther, but I kept finding more and more interesting things that led me farther away. From Hyde Park I found the Sydney Tower, a Space Needle-ish tower. It was a great place to take pictures and to get a feeling for the city's geography, which was still unclear to me. An Australian couple asked me to take their picture up there. From the Sydney Tower I walked up MacQuarie Street past the NSW Parliament building. It seemed the protest in Hyde Park had beaten me there. The crowd was much larger and shouting. It's a popular place to protest; I found a flyer for an upcoming East Timor rally. Farther north I headed, past the botanical garden to the Sydney Opera House. The architecture is much more impressive in person than seeing it in a photo. The curved shells are very graceful but the enormous cement base is massive, it looks like it could take a nuclear blast. The Harbor Bridge towers to my left. If I look closely I can see tiny human figures climbing the top of it right now. I'm told that particular tour costs A$100, and you have to turn back half way; sounds like a screwy deal to me.
[edit] 9/8/99, 9:28 AM, William's on Williams (Kings Cross)
After I left the Opera House, I took a different, more direct walk back to Kings Cross through Woolloomooloo, around the wharf. This is a deserted, spooky place. Someone had developed some expensive looking condos along the wharf, but the architecture was chillingly inhuman. A naval warship was docked to the wharf and the sailors eyed me suspiciously.
It wasn't really very late in the day when I found myself back at the hostel. I had walked several miles and was ready to rest, so I hung out in the lobby (living room?) of the hostel. I noticed two girls playing the antique Ms. Pac Man machine. I challenged one of them to a game, and won, as well as sextupling the tiny high score. After the game we got to talking. Their names are Mette (pronounced 'metah') and Daniela, hailing from Denmark. Both are nice girls and pretty cute too. Mette taught me to play backgammon, and I won that as well, really just beginner's luck in this case. They both came to Australia to learn to be surgical veterinarians. They showed me pictures they had taken of each other operating on animals, which struck me as humorously grisly. Neither have seen America and they were curious about it.
A third girl joined us: Michelle from Ireland. She's quite a wildcat, I soon learned. We struck it off pretty well. She, like Mette and Daniela, is here on a working visa for an extended period. The vast majority of people in the hostel have this kind of arrangement, and are citizens of the five countries for which it's most easy to get an Australian working visa: Ireland, Britain, Denmark, Holland, and Sweden. Because of this they tend to be working during the day and not available to actually do anything. But at night they can come alive if they want to. Often they seem to like watching TV, but when it gets late enough they are far from averse to heading to the bars. That's how Michelle is. She invited me to head over to O'Malley's with her that night. This is a popular Irish pub about four blocks away. Two other Irish girls joined us, but left after only one drink. (Oddly, I saw one of these girls again when I got to Cairns, thousands of kilometers away. She was staying at the same hostel as I was too. Strange.) We talked and danced and drank for hours. But after a while the beer was really making me nauseous. I was drinking Victoria Bitter, the local cheap brand. I doesn't taste bad but after three or four pints I was feeling ill. And I thought, "What's wrong with me?" I could not keep up with Michelle at all, she was drinking me under the table! Wondering if it was the beer, I switched to rum and coke. In a last ditch effort to keep up, I slammed the last of the drink. That was a bad move. I suddenly felt the vestibular canals spinning, and I raced to the bathroom. So the evening included an unscheduled worship at the porcelain altar. I'm still baffled by the whole situation. Four beers and a mixed drink? Not even a good start! It's puzzling, because I almost never throw up from booze; the only other time it happened was at a bachelor party in Chicago, years ago, and then I had had much more to drink. Anyway, we went back to the hostel, though on the way she wanted to call her mom in Cork. She gave me her email and a few quick kisses before we parted ways. She wants to move to Bondi Beach in a few days, possibly tomorrow.
So I tried to go to bed, only to find someone else was using it! I was too tired and sick to find out why, or to deal with the situation at all, so I just laid down on the floor and dozed off. I woke up later and realized one of the other bunks was unoccupied, so I took it, hoping no one would come back later still and have the same reaction I had just had earlier. Still not sure what happened, probably a booking mistake. Or someone was too dumb to notice that their bed was in the wrong place. I don't really know, or even care particularly. After I woke up I came here to eat breakfast and to rehydrate myself. You get a huge breakfast (two eggs, pile of bacon, two pieces of toast) for A$3, ice water for the hangover no charge. An unheard of value by my standards. The butter is really butter, but the egg yolks are a disturbing bright orange. All that mattered was that it filled me up.
That brings us to today. Likely this will be my last full day in Sydney. I plan to take the harbor ferry to explore the extent of Sydney Harbor. I have some random observations I'd like to tack on to the end of this entry: A guy at O'Malley's called me 'mate' for the first time. Almost all the movies, songs and TV shows I've seen here are American in origin. Irish people, or at least ones like Michelle anyway, talk much faster than Americans do. With her thick, high-speed Irish accent I had considerable difficulty deciphering her over the blaring music. The Danish girls Mette and Daniela tell me they prefer to sleep nude. One of the guys in their dorm actually complained about this. Aussies like -ie on the end of their words, and words with u's or oo's in them are just about always Aboriginal in origin. Just about everyone in the pub was not from Australia. Few people I've met are. The Australian media is really in a frenzy about East Timor. But does the American media concern itself with this business?
[edit] 1:00 PM, Watsons Bay
I am being entertained well. I took the train to the Circular Quay (pronounced "key"), the place downtown from which the harbor ferries depart. The ferries are an excellent way to explore the larger area because they make regular stops at many places all over the Sydney harbor. I got off at Watsons Bay. It didn't seem that interesting at first, and I really got off just to get off the ferry more than any other reason. But I'm glad I did now. It's one place where you can easily get from inside the harbor to the ocean shore on foot; it's a quick climb up a hill to the cliffs facing the ocean. I walked up to the highest point on this hillside, called "The Gap", which parenthetically happens to be the favorite suicide spot of Sydney. The cliffs facing the ocean are high.
The ocean smashes into the cliffs dramatically. Turning around, I get a grand view of the distant Sydney skyline. The path to this point was built over large rock formations. I noticed weird chunks of asphalt and concrete as I climbed up. Then I found a sign that explained why. The Gap used to be part of a military base that was decommissioned in 1981. When it was decommissioned, things too expensive or too pointless to move, such as building foundations, small bunkers, and parking lots, were left behind. Domesticated plants in gardens became wild. I found old rusty chunks of artillery and random unidentifiable metals. It was really strange, it felt like I had discovered ruins of a lost civilization, like walking amidst the Parthenon. It had a strangely mystical quality. An old gun turret looked more like a small amphitheater with a central altar. Two foot tall walls with embedded iron rings were to be found in odd places. I took many pictures, but I fear they won't convey the magic.
I've found a nice seafood restaurant overlooking Watsons Bay to eat lunch. The view of the Sydney skyline from here is excellent and the scallops are tasty. An elderly couple not far from me is drinking beer with their lunch. The ferry is due to pickup in about 45 minutes. I'm very glad I stopped here. I almost decided to skip it! I had a little chat with the waitress, who recommended that I visit Dunk Island, north of the Whitsunday Islands. I chatted also with a few fishermen who fish off the wharf. People are amazingly friendly here. But they can sometimes have problems with my incomprehensible American accent.
[edit] 4:11 PM, Darling Harbor
I got off the ferry once more, this time at Darling Harbor, much closer to downtown. It dumped us off right in front of the Sydney Aquarium, so I went in for a look. It was your typical aquarium at first, lots of little tanks full of various fish, though naturally ones native to Australian environments. But then I found the Oceanarium, which is much more impressive. You walk through a clear plastic hallway with an barrel vault ceiling-- essentially a clear tube -- over which an enormous tank has been built. Sharks and manta rays glide above your head as fish school past you. It was superb. The Aquarium also contained samples of living coral reefs, and it is so colorful and alien I'm dying to see this in person. Only a little while longer, farther north...
I now plan to depart Sydney tomorrow morning, heading for Brisbane. I'd like to go by bus if it's practical, because I think I'll get a better sense of scale than I would in an airplane. Still need to figure out the details. I love this absolute freedom I have, ephemeral though it is.
[edit] 9/9/99, 10:45 AM, Backpacker's Headquarters (Kings Cross)
O fateful day! The first Y2K glitch -- "9999" -- seems not to have seriously impacted Sydney's function. Even email is working fine, as I discovered earlier this morning. Disappointing news for the survivalists. Breakfast had its comic element also; I saw a Japanese man taking a picture of a syrup packet. There's something memorable. Oh yes, I saw a hooker in her 40s, smoking a cigarette and wearing hotpants. Lucky I'd eaten breakfast well beforehand.
I have checked out of this hostel, which I had to do before 10, or I'd have to pay for another day. But I'm not leaving for Brisbane until this evening -- the bus departs late, and I plan to sleep on it. So I have plenty of time to kill. Not much exciting action to report; I'm sitting on the roof, basking in the sun while my clothes launder themselves. Later on I'll head over to a nearby travel office to book the bus ticket. The ride is 16-17 hours, so I should be getting into Brisbane midmorning tomorrow. Perhaps I'll go to a beach later?
I said goodbye to Michelle today. She has to work today, she's found a job as a waitress at some secretive little club that has no name, for which members pay a large annual fee to join. She wants to rent a house on Bondi Beach, and she offered to let me crash at her future pad when I return to Sydney to catch my return flight home. We'll see. She's a little hard to read. I think she's a lot more observant and cunning than she acts, and her decisions reflect a complex moral terrain. She's this huge party animal, drinks like I'll never be able to (or want to), and her flirting is, well, really beyond flirting; but she borrowed money from me late one night to call her mom, like a little girl far away from home. She's simultaneously savage and tender.
Some random observations, in no particular order: Indonesians are burning Australian flags, due to the proposed Australian-led peacekeeping force in East Timor. Wonderful to see the Aussies learn a few Yank traditions... I hope the voters pass the referendum to convert Australia to a republic. I sense great potential here... but it probably won't be realized while Australia's on the British pap. American movies here are old. Why does it take so long? Certainly it's intentional.
It's a little tough to say goodbye to Sydney, I've had a lot of good times here, been to some nice places and met a few cool people. It's a great city. But I'll be back.
Next page: Brisbane...
