Sleep is hard to come by. My travelling companion for 22 hours is a taciturn French student, who farts, reads interminable articles by Baudrillard about 'Le anti-globalisation', and fails to see the irony at work. He ignores me, gallically, even when I speak to him directly or climb over him to get out to the dunny. Mercifully I have a window seat, and can look outside. I too can play the ignore game, you bastard.
A couple of hours after leaving Singapore, a young girl is discovered, all on her own; she's maybe 10 or 11. Her ever-loving parents had put her on the plane in London, expecting British Airways' finest to keep a close eye on her, and make sure she's OK. British Airways' finest have evidently been deployed elsewhere, and don't catch up with her till somewhere east of Java. She's quite unaffected by the trauma...
And so to Melbourne. Customs seem over-interested the soles of my shoes, and start asking me simple questions about my employment, which at 4.30am, I can't answer in any rational fashion. Weirdly, it doesn't seem to matter. Txt msgs. The first one to come in is from Cathy:"Q: What's the commonest sort of owl in Britain?
A: A teat owl".
Phone calls, tea and buns, then I commandeer a trolley, and trundle my way out of the airport, cursing DHL, who had wanted 320 pounds to ship my camping gear to Sydney - as a result I'm carrying every damn thing I need for the next 5 weeks. I hate them all.
Breakfast, of a sort, and a few hours' nap in the Motel Formule 1. It's fairly low-brow, but cheap, and surprisingly quiet. I need 45 minutes of the alarm going off, and 30 minutes under the shower, before I'm awake. I crawl out, find another trolley, and wheel all my kit back towards the terminal building, before hopping on the SkyBus in to Melbourne.It's a long haul from Spencer Street station to the tube, and I curse DHL again. They really are a bunch of bastards. Then at last, I'm off on the Metrolink to Richmond to see Sal, Johnny, Paul and Pip. Or I would be, anyway. The taxi takes me all of 300 yards from the station to George Street, and disgorges me onto the pavement. But there seems to be no-one in. I sit on the pavement a little. I lean against a tree a little. It rains a little. Still no-one in. A quick text to Sal, to check I've got the right house, street and suburb, a phone call from her, and Paul comes to the door - he's been having a nap. Wise man.
I've arrived.
Later, there's lots of wine, and a visit to the Greek restaurant, which is divine, some whisky, and I crash out about midnight. Whatever time that is.
5 days of food and wine mayhem, and catching up with old times. Plans to drive out along the Great Ocean Road get quietly shelved, as I decide it's my holiday, and I'm not going to rush anywhere. Next time, maybe.
Instead, I walk around town with Paul to the CBD and St Kilda, and the Botanic Gardens; we hire a car and head out to the wineries in the Yarra Valley, via Black Spur, and on Saturday we head up to the Bill Ricketts Memorial. To be fair, I also sleep a lot, and drink far too much far too late at night - as if the two could be connected. Johnny and his workmate Max fly in from Sydney, where he's been on a week-long training course. He's anxious to blow away a few cobwebs; another late night is called for. Shares in various Yarra Valley wineries are shown to spike mysteriously in mid-July 2004. Ivana comes by with stunning garlic prawns and sound advice on where to travel. Friends come and go; a good time is had by all. In short, Melbourne is an extremely agreeable city...
Musical discoveries: The Waifs, 'Up All Night', Black Cab, 'Altamont Diary', and DJ Shadow.
Photo-opportunities: Melbourne Botanic Gardens, Black Spur, Yarra Ranges N.P., the Yarra Valley, Mt Dandenong, and the Ricketts Sanctuary. Ricketts is somewhere I've wanted to go for 10 years, since I saw it on the TV back in England; it's truly eerie and moving. The Mountain Ash up on Black Spur are unfeasibly grand.
Wineries: Rochford, Domaine Chandon, St Huberts, and Yering Station, for Cab Merlot, Shiraz, Sangiovese, Pinot Noir, and The Mighty Botrytis.
Great finds: The Cleanskin bottle shop on Swan Street.
Best meal. Lamb kebab in the Agapi Greek restaurant on Swan St, and red snapper in sweet chilli sauce, in the Victoria Vietnamese restaurant on Victoria St.
Tuesday 20th. I had thought to leave the cares and preoccupations of dear old England behind. Six days in Melbourne, and what do I find the common talking points to be? Speed cameras and road tolls, driving while using a mobile. 4 x 4s (or rather, Toorak fucken' tractors, mate). Young girls' thong underwear, tattooes and piercings. Dubya and Iraq. Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 911. The antics of Shane Warne. And so on. Plus ça change...
I get up mid-morning, shower and pack. Wander down to Swan St, buy a paper, and an egg-and-bacon sandwich at the North Vietnamese takeaway, and sit in the sunshine to eat it. Smoke a cig. Wander in to the Cleanskin shop, and buy a couple of bottles of Pinot and Shiraz as a prezzie for Sal and the posse. It's a hell of a life. The guy behind the counter says "How's your day goin', mate?. Y'know what? It's going pretty bloody well.
Time to move on; I've been here close on a week already. So I bid Richmond farewell; hop on the Virgin Blue up to Sydney, to meet up with the rest of the crew for the next part of the journey. Going through Customs, I lose my pen; it goes in one side of the X-ray machine; when I collect my stuff the other side, it's not there any more. It's nothing special, but it's been with me a while, and I'd just bought a pack of refills for it. It won't be the last pen I lose before the journey's done; in fact it becomes something of a leitmotif.
The flight up to Sydney is pretty smooth, the touting for a bus out to Potts Point slightly less so, but eventually I get one, as it's starting to get dark, and we move off through the growing rush-hour. My fellow passengers are mostly backpackers; I guess I am too, in my own little way - mostly thanks to DHL, who are still a bunch of bastards.
The way this bus works is simple, straightforward, and clearly understood by 24 of its 25 or so passengers. The driver picks up a load of people at the airport, and takes them wherever they want to go; there's no fixed route, and no timetable, he makes it up as he goes along. Everyone gets to their destination - sometime. The one person on the bus who fails to understand this doesn't have the excuse of being foreign, or not speaking the language; what she does have is impatience and pomposity, in spades, so she becomes fair game for some gentle entertainment.
The Gods Of Entertainment have smiled on us today, as another tableau unfolds over the driver's 2-way radio. Another driver, let's call him Bob, has picked up a load of passengers, and promptly run out of diesel, by the side of the freeway. Bob is not a happy man, and tells the lady in the booking office (let's call her Irene) all about it. Tells half of Sydney about it too, via the radio. Bob, as all good Bobs should, always fills the bus with fuel at the end of his shift, so the next driver isn't inconvenienced. One of the other drivers (let's call him Nicko) has failed to accord Bob the same courtesy, and Bob tells us all what he thinks about that. Irene says she can't possibly send another bus, because all the drivers are committed. Bob asks what the thundering chuff he's supposed to do with all these passengers, then. Irene tells him it's not her chuffing fault, and don't take it out on her, please. Skip 20.
Bob is still stuck by the side of the freeway. Another driver, let's call him Davey, says he's got a half hour to spare, so he'll drive on over with a can of fuel, to get him on his way, and whereabouts is Bob exactly, please? On his way to telling him, Bob tells us all, not for the first, second or even third time, that he always makes sure he fills the chuffing bus with fuel when he's finished with it, and just what sort of low creature it is that wouldn't do the same for his fellow man. Irene suggests Bob might have mentioned that once before. Skip another 20.
Davey has now arrived, at the point where Bob should be, but finds himself sans Bob. Bob is strangely quiet on the subject. Davey is now late for his next pickup, entirely the wrong side of the city, and on a freeway where he can't turn round to head back to where he should be. Davey is not a happy man, and tells Irene so. Irene is starting to field calls from passengers wondering where their bus might be, and shouldn't Davey be more concerned about that? Bob now sees fit to mention that somehow, miraculously, his bus has sprung in to life - how, we don't know - and he's gone about his day, some half hour since. Davey tells Bob that he might have chuffing well mentioned it before he (Davey) drove half way across New South Wales to rescue him. Bob tells Davey that he always makes a point of filling up the bus with fuel when he's done with it, mate, and that none of them would be in the bother they now are if Nicko had done the same, like any half-decent bloke would. Both Irene and Davey tell Bob they've heard all that before.
And that's about where this tale peters out, as we pull up at the Challis Lodge hotel.
