Flying into Sydney overnight, I was fairly tired as I queued to pass Australia’s stringent entry checks. They were ostensibly concerned about introducing new apple diseases into the continent, but it turned out that the x-rays and bag searches were just an excuse to have a bloody good chat to welcome the new visitors. I was invited for a full bag search by two customs officials, and jokes exchanged both ways covered topics ranging from bombs and terrorism, to drugs and orchard plagues, going via “don’t steal my stuff you cheeky convicts”. As I told them on my way out, it was a much better experience than being selected to queue in ‘Lane X’ when I was leaving the USA. “We try our hardest,” they said. “To be ineffective?” I thought, readjusting a colony of carrot-eating ants in my coat pocket.
I met an English chap called Andy when I was on the west coast of Thailand a month or so ago - we had been the only western people in town so we decided to strike an alliance. Our paths parted, but when I was in Bangkok a few weeks later, I occasionally thought I saw a figure with his distinctive gait in the distance along the road. It turned out to be him as I eventually bumped into him face-to-face - although actually, his face is less recognisable than his walk. You can never be sure it’s him unless he’s on the move. Anyway, he would be arriving in Sydney a day after me, and we arranged to meet up there.
With a lack of sleep, and various illnesses between us, we managed to turn a few days in Sydney into a fairly miserable experience - made worse because we didn’t seem to be able to leave. The plan was to head up the coast towards Brisbane where Andy’s Auntie Pauline would greet us with open arms. But in our lethargic state we couldn’t decide between the choices of public bus, tour bus, or hiring a car. Realising we weren’t going to break the deadlock, we thought that signing up to an organised pub crawl might shake things up a bit. This turned into a perfectly pleasant, if slightly raucous evening, and on our way back into the hostel we showed our key cards to the night manager and tried to engage him in friendly conversation using some hilarious jokes no doubt time-worn by the Austrailian customs officials - crazy banter concerning our intent to burgle the place etc.
Anyway, in the morning we knew we didn’t have our Sydney escape plan ready, so we asked to extend our stay. We were told politely that the night manager - an American, it turned out - had been slightly unnerved by our hilarious gags, and recommended against our continued custom. Well, our retaliation to this unfortunate decision was two-fold: (1) renounce our YHA membership, and (2) invoke everyone’s favourite legal weapon, the race-hate laws. I’m not at all familiar with Australian law (and forgot to demand my copy of Hansard before customs) but I presume they have something similar to the UK’s, intended as a bit of a catch-all. Of course, the trick to this as a white male is to be ready with your patter so they don’t have time to question exactly which race has been persecuted. Believing we had left the power-dizzy employee to have an embarassing conversation with his manager about the difference between US border patrol and the YHA reception desk, we spilt onto the street with an intent to sort out our journey plans more hastily.
Once we put a bit more thought into it, we managed to narrow down the choices fairly easily. Hiring a car was written off (and the pun here will jump upon you quickly) when Andy remembered that in the UK he had crashed cars as though it was a hobby - in fact, he was under a self-imposed ban. We looked into the public bus network, but when we started to plot a draft itinerary it turned out that we were completely unable to reconcile the place names on the timetable with anywhere on the guide book’s map. So, we signed up for the slightly more expensive organised tour pass especially designed to take young English tourists up and down the east coast. Before we knew it we were on the happy bus sailing north towards the sunshine, and hopefully to somewhere more welcoming to the ethnic majorities.
Some people - although surprisingly few - have expressed their disappointment that there have been only a small number of bulletins from my time in Australia. Well, let’s be clear, you don’t go to Australia on holiday per se; instead you travel in the capacity of emissary to the Queen. I’ve really just been checking up on the far corners of her Commonwealth, making sure no-one’s about to vote for severing ties in a referendum, and correcting a few mispronunciations that have crept into the local dialect over the last couple of centuries (not that I’d know any better, really). And with any time left over, I’ll cast a glance at the opera house or harbour bridge.
The fun bus took me from Adelaide, through Melbourne, then on to Sydney. On the way, we passed through various national parks, and drove along the Great Ocean Road. The Grampians, so-named because ‘Grampians’ means ‘mountains’ in Scottish, provided some pleasant walks with interesting scenery. We even managed some cross-country skiing on the Snowy Mountains, so-called because… well, you really don’t need my help with all this.
