Feb 09: Meet the family

At the end of January I left Manjimup. My parents were flying into Melbourne from the UK, and I was going over to meet them. Also coming from home was my good mate Anthony, known variously to our friends as Josiah, Safe Anthony and Silverback. I’d not seen any of them in a year and was both excited and – after all this time – a bit apprehensive.

I should explain something at this point: us northerners aren’t a rich people. International air travel is something exotic to us. None of my family or Anthony had ever been to Australia before, and with me being here, they decided to pawn various family heirlooms and bodily organs in the hope of joining me on holiday. The grand plan was coming to fruition.

My dad had meticulously organised a three-week trip round Australia for the four of us. We would go in a clockwise circle west to Adelaide, north to Alice Springs, over to Sydney and back down to Melbourne, taking in all the popular tourist gubbins on the way. I’d been in Australia nine months and not yet seen any of the famous sights like Uluru or the Great Ocean Road. It was a travesty. Thankfully my dad had killed two birds with one stone – not literally, he wasn’t into hunting or anything.

At that stage I thought I’d never set foot in Manjimup again. Our fling had run its course. I left on the Friday morning, and one bus and train later I was back in Perth, the state capital. After seeing nothing but trees for weeks on end I was back in the midst of skyscrapers and traffic, and it felt intoxicating. I stayed with friends in the city that evening and flew to Melbourne the next day. Similarly, I thought this would be the last time I’d be in West Australia, but I was to be proved horrifically wrong.

This was my first visit to Melbourne and I was keen to see the city. All and sundry in Australia rave about Melbourne. “You’re going to Melbourne?” they’d say. “Oh, you’ll love it, it’s brilliant.” I heard this so many times. For the uninitiated Melbourne is basically just a massive city, cold and wet and expensive. A bit like London. But I didn’t know that then, and was anticipating streets paved with gold and circus jugglers performing cartwheels on every street corner. Bondy’s verdict: thumbs down plus.

Fortunate scheduling meant my cross-country flight landed a mere hour before my mum and dad and Anthony touched down at the same airport. I didn't have too long to wait in Arrivals before the long snake of bleary-eyed people came out off the plane, and right at the back I recognised my parents and Anthony!

I waved frantically through the crowds. My mum saw me and ran over to give me a big hug but my dad and Anthony carried on, oblivious to the straggly-haired sun-bleached ocker standing before them. Eventually they recognised me and came over to shake my hand rather gingerly. We’d got a lot of catching up to do.

And after that it was just like old times; like I’d never been away from them at all. After a year immersed in unfamiliar places around totally new people, it was good to have a bit of familiarity back. We got a cab into the city centre, with my dad firmly in charge of the itinerary, and checked in at the swanky Pensione Hotel. This was one of those mid-range ‘boutique’ hotels, with fittings straight out of Ikea, en-suite bathrooms and flatscreen TVs in the bedrooms. No more bunk beds or communal showers for me. Brilliant!

Me and Anthony shared a room and caught up on old times. We’re not a couple or anything, don’t get the wrong idea. Anyway, the next day, once they’d recovered from jetlag, off we went sight-seeing round Melbourne. It seemed quite nice. It has a lot of bridges. The river Yarra features prominently. Endless processions of trams buzz up and down the city streets like big metal pigeons. My dad was enjoying the trams and the architecture. He is what is known as a ‘transport nut’ and enjoys seeing trams thrive in urban surroundings.

We went on a cruise up and down the river seeing some of the famous landmarks. The skyline looks impressive from the river; the old Flinders Street station contrasts very nicely with the jungle of skyscrapers rising behind it like mutant concrete palms. In the evening we dined out at a fancy restaurant, setting a precedent of high living which would take us through numerous culinary spheres and leave me with next to no savings by the end of the holiday.

Initially we planned to do a self-drive holiday, but after checking the logistics we decided it was simpler to go on a couple of backpacker tours, for slightly extra cost. My mum and dad were up for the adventure and so were Anthony and I. So after another day in Melbourne it was time to start our travels along the Great Ocean Road, with Dave and his merry Oz Experience bus.

Dave was an energetic curly-haired fellow who was constantly cracking jokes in a Butlins redcoat stylee. I was initially dubious, but he turned out to be a fantastic guide and a proper good bloke. There were about twelve of us on the trip: us four, and a mix of other European travellers in their twenties.

As we left Melbourne on the first morning, Dave forced us all to get up at the front of the bus and introduce ourselves over the mic. Despite being able to sing confidently on stage, I hate public speaking and really phoned it in, with none of my trademark witticisms. But it was good to hear everybody else’s story and this was a great tactic to kick off the getting-to-know-each-other process.

On the first day we visited Bell’s Beach, which is, erm, a beach. Then we carried on along the Great Ocean Road. Bit of history for you: this sprawling coastal highway was built in the 1930s to provide employment to out-of-work war veterans. It was a great journey, twisting and turning along the scenic coast, heading up and down misty hills and through lush valleys. Dave played a medley of Beach Boys tunes on the stereo to complement the amazing views. From that moment on I realised he was a dude.

Next we stopped at a koala sanctuary and fed some colourful parrots. They were very excited around people and kept jumping on our heads. After lunch in Apollo Bay we headed inland to the Otway Fly treetop walk. This was a series of massive trees spanned by metal walkways a hundred feet up in the air. There was a display of plastic dinosaurs too, for some reason. After months and months of working and saving and trying to live like a local I really enjoyed being a slack-jawed tourist again.

That evening we went to see sunset at the Twelve Apostles, a coastal rock formation that provides some amazing photo opportunities as the sun goes down. This was a memorable experience, though it was packed with travellers, and I must have taken over a hundred photos that day. We stayed overnight at the tiny country settlement of Princetown, which numbered literally four or five buildings. The backpacker tours always stopped off at the hostel there, which was wittily named the Thirteenth Apostle.

The next day we went to look at the Twelve Apostles again from Gibson’s Steps (a nearby lookout point) and by helicopter. The helicopter trip cost $70 – nearly a day’s wages with Abdul – but I was very keen to try it as I hadn’t flown in one before. And yes, it was quite good. Basically the Apostles are tall needles of rock which have been eroded away from the coast by the sea winds. And there aren’t even twelve of them so it’s a bit of a con. It was decided in the 19th Century to rename them to attract tourists – formerly they were known as the Sow and Piglets. How someone looked at lumps of rock and thought to name them after pigs I don’t know, but those were very farming-oriented times.

We travelled further along the coast, pausing to appreciate more limestone formations. This trip would be a geologist’s wet dream, it really would. Loch Ard Gorge was the site of a shipwreck in the 1890s, and London Bridge was a peninsula of rock with naturally-formed archways passing underneath it that made it look a bit like a bridge. A few years ago one of the archways collapsed into the sea without warning, leaving two day-trippers stranded.

There was a famous story (possibly untrue) that the trapped people were a man and a woman from the city who were having a secret affair. Being cut off from the land by the sudden rockfall, they were forced to shout for help from passers-by, and before they knew it the police were called. Soon the Channel 7 news helicopter was buzzing around filming the scene and it was being broadcast live on TV! They were rescued after that, but unsurprisingly it kind of blew the lid on their relationship. Dave related this story to us by drawing an amusing marker-pen diagram on the bus windscreen, a good use of props.

We were a long way from Melbourne now, and it was time to kiss the coast (and all those rock formations) goodbye. We went for a long hike through the Grampians National Park, and started a lung-busting climb up a steep hill to a lookout called the Pinnacle. The heat was intense, but after a month of wrestling with grapevines my fitness levels were pretty good and I rocketed to the top. There is a photo of me at the summit, plastered with sweat and grinning a shit-eating grin. The views were amazing at the top and you could see for miles around. We all rested in the shade of a rock, passing round snacks, then we began the trek back down.

Dave saluted our climbing exploits by playing ‘We are the Champions’ on the bus home. And verily, we were champions. Well I say ‘home’, it was actually somewhere we’d never been. We stayed overnight at the town of Halls Gap, sharing accommodation with another group coming the other way from Adelaide. Everyone pitched in to cook a giant communal pot of spag bol and it was very nice. I remember being extremely hungry and going back for seconds twice, like a fat bastard.

There was a blonde woman with the other group who looked vaguely familiar. Turns out it was Terri Irwin, widow of Steve Irwin! She was travelling with the group to do tourism research, finding out what the company’s guides taught about ecology. This might be to do with that theme park they've got up in Queensland. None of us twigged who she was until much later though.

We rose very early the next morning to begin the final leg of the trip to Adelaide. As everyone was sat eating breakfast a monstrous bang came from outside; the bus’s engine had backfired. That was a bit worrying but Dave checked the engine and it seemed okay. We had just swapped buses with the other group as this one needed to be taken back to Adelaide for maintenance. Little did we know that it was the Bus of Death.

As we arrived at the Balconies Lookout it played another trick on us; one of the side windows suddenly exploded, showering the car park with beads of glass. I've never seen a window explode like that before. It was a strange, unexplained event, witnessed by the people on another bus who imagined someone had smashed it from the inside. A girl had actually been sleeping against the window at the time – amazingly she wasn't hurt. Dave made sure she was alright and taped up the hole with a bin liner, then put in a call to Adelaide to order a replacement window!

From the high vantage point of the Balconies Lookout we watched the sunrise over the Grampians, and it was pretty special. There was an old fire lookout tower there which we took photos from. Then we went hiking to a colossal waterfall, MacKenzie falls, and did the obligatory group photo in front of the water. Terri was there, posing with her group.

Next it was time to hit the road and cross into South Australia, turning our watches back half an hour as we crossed the state border. We stopped for lunch in the border town of erm, Bordertown, which had some public toilets cunningly installed in an old town jail. This was a famous spot in the gold rushes of the 19th Century. Also we had a look at some rare white kangaroos in a nature reserve.

Then it was time for a long uninterrupted drive to Adelaide in the Bus of Death. The bin liner on the window flapped noisily in the wind but there were to be no more freak accidents. We arrived in the city safe and sound, around 6pm, in glorious late afternoon sunshine.

In three days we’d seen and done a hell of a lot, but now it was time to bid a sorry farewell to Dave and many of our group. And so the Bus of Death went off to the abattoir to be put out of its misery.