Melbourne, Apr/May 09 – Home at Fitzroy

The journey out to Australia was much more tiring than coming home. As Alex Garland once observed in The Beach, the jetlag is far worse if you fly from west to east than the other way round. Piling up the hours, in effect you’re saving them up in the piggy bank for the future return home. A long gruelling flight to Kuala Lumpur was followed by a similarly gruelling eight-hour stopover.

I dozed on my brand new suitcase, wary of dropping my guard in the crowded terminal, and wary of falling over as the suitcase had wheels. The flight to Melbourne lasted another eight hours and I slept like a baby. It was midnight on Wednesday by the time we landed in the city. I had all sorts of paranoid fantasies about my electronic visa being declined as I stood bleary-eyed at the passport desk, but the security guard waved me on through without a second glance. Good to have ya back mate, what’s crankin’?

I caught the shuttle bus into the city and stayed for a few days in Elizabeth Street Backpackers, a huge and chaotic hostel just down the road from Flinders Street Station. I wasn’t in the mood to party – I was very low on cash so my priorities were to find a permanent place to stay and, more importantly, a job! I was excited about living in Melbourne for the next few months though, as it is regarded as the cultural epicentre of Australia. First I needed to find a comfortable, cheap and conveniently-placed base to explore the city.

Unfortunately, Melbourne being full of travellers, all the hostels were full and vacant rooms in house-shares were scarce. I was naïve to think rent would be cheap. The metropolitan area is huge, stretching away for miles in all directions, into dozens of suburbs I didn’t even know the names of. I think one of the hardest parts of moving to a new city is getting to know all the place names, so you don’t look like a gormless twunt when you have to ask somebody for directions. I had little time to work with, and I would soon have to surrender my precious $65/night double room at the hostel.

I did find somewhere, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. ‘Home at Fitzroy’ was its name. A small suburban house twenty minutes’ walk from the city centre, it wasn’t in any of the backpacker guides or Lonely Planet. It billed itself as Melbourne’s greenest hostel and a relaxing place for long-term backpacker stay. Essentially it was a very large house-share, featuring an ever-changing cast of twenty or so inhabitants, some uninhibited partying, and as one internet review memorably stated, “bong-stained retro furniture”. It seemed to survive solely on word-of-mouth recommendations, and was one of the most extraordinary places I’ve ever stayed in.

The suburb of Fitzroy is one of the highlights of the city – a melting pot of bohemian culture teeming with life at all hours. The main strip of Brunswick Street is packed with restaurants, cafes, bars and live music venues. There are big events and gigs every night of the week. Down the other end of the street sits the CBD, an easy walk away. A few streets across is Lygon Street and Carlton, another bustling area. There was always something happening. When I had no money (which happened to be always) I used to just wander through the noisy streets, floating between the crowds and soaking up the night-time atmosphere.

The hostel itself was established at the end of the 90s by a good-natured Aussie couple, who seemed just to want to rent out their property and meet some travellers. They extended the house out into the back yard, built an extra storey of bedrooms and created a courtyard for people to mingle and play table-tennis. Solar panels on the roof powered the hot water. On the house fridge was pinned a grand ‘manifesto’ in grubby laminated plastic, spelling out its aims as an exercise in sustainable communal living. As time wore on it appears they tired of the labour and delegated a series of travellers to manage the hostel and collect rent etc. When I arrived there it was descending into chaos.

It was the sort of thing I would have loved to be part of back in my uni days. There were so many people coming and going. Ex-housemates who knew the door code came back to visit all the time. The whole house was painted in psychedelic colours and furnished with a cluttered retro-futuristic theme. There was a sunken circular pit in the lounge where people would lie on bean-bags and read by the fire. People would plug their music players into the battered house stereo and blast out dance music, ambient stuff, rock or hip-hop depending on the mood, time of day, and their level of inebriation. The tea and coffee were free, and there was an internet room where you could surf for free, and some giant bookcases stuffed with thousands of volumes of eclectic reading in numerous languages, left by an endless succession of travellers from around the globe.

The owners had just appointed Linda, a new full-time manager, to steady the ship and get the place running smoothly again. There were lots of complaints about the noise from the neighbours and the place constantly teetered on a knife-edge of being shut down. In a way it was one of the city’s best-kept secrets, a whole world away from the cattle-market chaos of the big backpacker hostels. But in fairness it was the kind of place that needed constant vigilant attention and should not be left to run itself.

As with most hostels there were cliques and counter-cliques, and a few nutters that made it difficult for the rest. There was a group of Kiwis and Brits who took it on themselves to get pilled up and stay up partying for three days most weekends. There was not much point sticking around in the house when their sleep-defying chemical frenzy was at its peak. It took me a while to make friends purely because there were so many names to learn. Each day would bring a tide of new faces barging through the front door. I was just one man and it felt like a lunatic asylum.

Some of the long-termers were pissed off with Linda for spoiling their fun and trying to change things too quickly. She got her friend in to help decorate and the friend promptly painted over the messy Uluru mural in the computer room, which actually brought one of the long-termer girls to tears. I was glad of somebody trying to bring order to the place and I helped where I could with the tidying up. We went through all the books in the book-cases and threw a lot out; there were some really old ones there. I shared a quiet dorm room right at the back of the yard with a Swedish guy, Olof, and we cleaned that room out. Olof even jerry-rigged a clever pulley system with string and a water bottle to stop the door from swinging open and bringing in the cold. If Linda ultimately succeeded in her purge I do not know.



One of my favourite places was the posh cinema down the road that showed independent films. I often went to the discounted screenings on Mondays, a cheap hit of culture for the hard-up amidst a bountiful well of sophistication. I’m not proud about it but one week we paid for one movie then sneaked into another film for free at the end. I got caught out by a keen-eyed usher when I tried it again the next week and was effectively barred from coming back; all to save paying $6 for another ticket! I felt like such a cheap wanker and I couldn’t even look him in the eye as I left. But all I can say is the longer the economic crisis goes on, the more will try to follow in my footsteps.

The parties came thick and fast. A girl who was leaving held a fancy dress party, where people came dressed as superheroes and movie characters and danced away in the lounge in the middle of the afternoon. You can’t really potter about making yourself a cup of tea when that’s going on. Another time the house-share across the road invited the entire hostel to their ‘tight and bright’ party. The idea of ‘tight and bright’ is pretty simple, guys wear something tight, and girls wear something bright. The small house was bursting to the seams with revellers by the time we all got in, but it was a very well-organised party, where you could help yourself to unlimited booze by paying a $10 cover charge. It was the sort of thing that would have been really good if there’d been half as many people there and we could properly mingle. I sort of hung around at both events, neither present nor absent, not really getting in the mood.

Meanwhile there was always a lot going on in the city. A guy I knew, James, kindly gave me a spare ticket to see the show Suitcase Royale at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was alright, a bit zany and surreal like the Mighty Boosh, but lacking that show’s fantastic absurdity and clever musical routines. I was very glad to sample one of the events though. I couldn’t help thinking how great it would be to live in Melbourne if I had money.

Due to the recession, backpacker jobs were suddenly very scarce indeed. I searched endlessly for work without success and had to borrow money from my parents. I’d envisioned myself bagging a high-flying IT job in some fantastic city skyscraper and living the life of a prince on my super-high wages. But I was in dreamland, living in denial of the stark economic wasteland, where all that might be available was a bit of miserly-paid bar or restaurant work. If I was lucky the hours I worked in such a job might cover my rent at the hostel, then in a few months I might work my way up to a call centre position and find a room in a house-share. Sod that. After a long time of scratching and saving I was done working in crap jobs.

After a few weeks in Melbourne I got tired of the rut I was in and realised I was probably barking up the wrong tree. Either I was looking in the wrong places or looking for the wrong thing entirely, and this vast city of money and culture would yield no treasure for me.

Once again I was out of options and out of cash, so I returned to the comforting bosom of the strange, prosperous land that is Western Australia. Surely I could find a job there!

Mar/Apr 09: the return home

Time to make a confession: much as I worry about the environment and mankind's future and all that, over the last couple of years I've built up a heinous 'carbon footprint' from all the flying I've done. Every time I take a flight, I think guiltily about the clouds of noxious jet exhausts burning up the ozone layer, and the little baby dolphins down below who cry confused tears at mankind’s wanton destruction of their beautiful environment. Yet I prefer not to confront the dilemma, as I could not have done the things I have done without this invention.

If, for instance, I’d wanted to come home from Australia in the olden times, I’d have had to splurge all my life savings on a sea ticket and then sit on a ferry for months on end, among the rats and disease, reading poorly-bound books of Victorian pornography. Now it took little over £200 and a single day of flying. And that's the problem really - it's just too convenient for people to ever do without, especially skint backpackers!

There had been rumours for months that an airline was set to introduce cheap flights between Perth and London. Doing some research at a Manjimup internet café I found not only was the rumour true, but that a return trip to the UK and back was just within my means. I’d got my second working visa, a couple of paycheques in the bank, and enough money that I could borrow to make the trip a reality. There was no reason not to do it!

I departed the hostel at Manjimup in much the same way as I had arrived; anonymously and with little fanfare. It had been a weird solitary experience out there in the countryside, and getting my visa had become not only a struggle against time but against homesickness and my waning enthusiasm for the whole adventure. Nevertheless I had worked hard and been rewarded, in hindsight, with a string of memorable experiences. After a few weeks’ break to catch up with my family and friends I would return to Australia to continue the journey.

The flights were with Air Asia X, a budget Malaysian airline who had very recently opened up a long-distance route to London. My total round trip (a flight from Perth to Kuala Lumpur, a return from Kuala Lumpur to London Stansted and a separate outwards flight from KL to Melbourne) cost just £550 – half what you’d pay for an economy seat with one of the big airlines. You had to fork out a little extra for meals and heavy baggage, but they thoughtfully included things like toilets, seats and windows for free, so it was a steal.

The long-awaited day finally arrived – Sunday 22^nd March. I was coming home. Early in the morning I checked in at Perth’s international airport and got the final black passport stamp confirming I was leaving Australia. And soon the plane was up and away into the sunrise, circling the Perth city skyscrapers as it gained height. Five hours later, we landed in Kuala Lumpur, the bleak airport buildings surrounded by palm trees and dripping in tropical heat. After a short break, and some authentic Malaysian KFC, it was time to check in again and begin the journey to London. I got two Malaysia passport stamps even though I’d only been in the country three hours!

The flight to London took fourteen hours and I battled in vain to stay awake, trying to beat the jetlag. The spadeful of caffeine they put in the airport coffee helped. Though the seats and legroom were reasonably generous it was obvious this was a budget flight, as all food and drinks were extra, and you had to pay for a handheld flatscreen thing if you wanted to watch movies. There was no map showing us our position either. Hopefully the pilots had one!

I saw a brilliant (if terrifying) thunderstorm out of the window at one point, the clouds towering up into the sky, firing huge bolts of lightning earthwards. I wouldn't like to have been stuck under that. Other than that it was a smooth flight. The night seemed to last forever as we followed the earth’s shadow around the globe.

The plane touched down at Stansted late on Sunday evening, back in good old Greenwich Mean Time and back in the bitter cold. As the throngs of passengers exited the plane we found the automatic bridge was broken, the airport toilets were flooded and there were huge queues at the passport desk. Yes, this felt like Britain alright! Clutching my Home Office immigration card, I advanced through security and met up with my good buddy Rick, here to collect me. It was fantastic to see him after all this time.

After more than 24 hours of travelling I was suddenly wide awake again and ready for a beer. Unfortunately we’d missed all the pubs shutting by about half an hour! Thankfully when we got to the Travellodge the guy on reception agreed to open up the bar and sell us a few bottles so we could drink in the room. I don’t know if that’s officially endorsed in the Travellodge rules and regulations but we were bloody grateful for this act of kindness!

And the next day I returned home, to my family in Yorkshire and to the old life I had almost forgotten. I'd seen my mum and dad quite recently in Melbourne but it was good to be reunited with them so soon. The next three weeks were a comforting blur of cups of tea, family dinners and trips to Blackpool to catch up with mates. Most of the people and places I’d missed were just as I remembered them. I began to regret the return plane ticket with my name on it, calling me back across the globe. I was seriously thinking of delaying my flight out so I could go over to a festival in Belgium with my mates. Yet I knew that whatever I sought from travelling was still out there and I had to go find it, sooner rather than later.

This was an ending of sorts – it marked my transition from a backpacker to a ‘suitcaser’. Things would have to change; I left behind my travel guitar, roll-mat, sleeping bag and trusty 65L rucksack and switched to a suitcase big enough to transport a midget in comfort. I threw out the faded rags I’d been wearing constantly for the past year and bought new clothes. I doubled the size of my wardrobe.

I stocked up on anything and everything I might need, mindful of the sky-high prices in Aussie shops. I got an international driving permit, a travel insurance extension, a new YHA card and sorted out various other jobs that had been mounting up. I put several gigabytes of songs on to my music player, found some books to take, then played a special ‘comeback gig’ in Blackpool (supporting the Blue Pig Orchestra) and said farewell to my friends. They seemed more used to me not being there now, and so did my family! This travel lark was nearly becoming routine for me.

And so I flew out from the UK on 14th April, back to Kuala Lumpur, and then on to Melbourne. And so ended a magical three weeks; an expensive folly that rejuvenated my soul. Now I had to get back out there and discover how to live again.

Feb/Mar 09: Bondy does Manjimup 2

My experience in Mildura left me seriously disillusioned with backpacking and Australia in general. The town had a weird, unfriendly atmosphere and I didn’t stay a moment longer than necessary. The only place I could think to go was back to Manjimup. It was two thousand miles away on the other side of the country but I knew the score there and there would be no more nasty surprises.

Before dawn on the Tuesday, I began a jumbo day of travelling, catching a taxi into town, then a bus and train down to Melbourne, followed by a Jetstar flight all the way over to Sweet Home West Australia. The total cost was about $250, pretty cheap considering the gargantuan distance. The beatific city of Perth didn’t seem to have changed once iota since I’d left, and to be honest I don’t think it ever does. I stayed the night with my good friends Shannon and Troy out in the suburbs then caught the bus down into the country the following morning.

And a few hours later I was back at the hostel where I had spent Christmas and New Year. This remote place seemed fixed in history too, everything was the same as it had been. The afternoon was muggy with quite a lot of rain, and the grounds smelt of trees and wet earth. Lots of the old faces were still knocking about. Even the surplus food I'd left on the kitchen shelf had not been touched. I had mixed emotions at returning; the feelings of a caged rat mixed with the gratitude for having accommodation and a job sorted with people I trusted.

It was good to catch up with the folk I knew but I felt detached from them now, like a Vietnam veteran who’d seen unspeakable horrors. They didn’t know what things went on in Mildura and maybe they were better off protected from that knowledge. I quickly settled into my metaphorical foxhole and got ready for work the next day.

Abdul gave me a job on his vineyard crew, a considerable act of faith considering there wasn’t much work about. The big grape harvests were only a month away and we were preoccupied with grape-thinning, checking the vines for underdeveloped grapes and pulling them off. It was a cushy job; lots of strolling around and all the grapes you could eat. The work/drink/sleep cycle resumed and I awaited my first paycheque with glee.

Up until now I’ve always used the real names of people in my blog, but I’ve become increasingly aware that this information is very visible on the net, especially with search engines like Google that instantly index pages and render all form of embarrassing anecdotes instantly readable to the world at large. Therefore I would like to invoke my “author’s right” to change names, on the basis that everything else I write here is truth and actually happened.

Our shift leader was a guy named Jim. Yes, Jim. That was really his name, honest. Jim was a hell of a guy; friendly and open yet scary as f**k at the same time. A wizened fifty-something sporting a sizeable beard and long hair combo, he looked like one of ZZ Top, dressed like a farmer and liked to hunt. He’d lived a life, surviving against the odds like the settlers of old, and had scores of stories to tell. Several of his front teeth were missing and he had the deep, deep sunburn of a rural Aussie. Hard as nails in appearance and character, but rigorously honest.

I wish I’d known him for longer and got to hear more of his stories. He’d spent years travelling round labouring on farms and as a fisherman, yet he knew how to fly a Cessna plane too. He told us lots about his family and his upbringing. Every generation of his family seemed to have been involved in some kind of conflict: his grandad was an IRA foot soldier killed in a London bomb blast; his father was a mercenary in the Far East and served time in an Australian prison for tax evasion; Jim himself was born out in the deserts of Central Australia and endured a tough upbringing at the hands of his violent father. Yet he maintained a philosophical outlook on life and was grateful for all that the school of hard knocks had taught him.

Now he’d been mysteriously reincarnated as Abdul’s trusty right-hand man. It was often he who would collect us at first light and drop us back in the afternoon, and administer bollockings when people weren’t pulling their weight on the team. When Abdul was chastising us in broken English he’d stand at his side nodding vigorously like an assistant manager of a football team.

His dream was to buy his own farm. He was an avid fan of hunting and for some reason had taught all his six kids how to use hunting weapons. He told me the youngest two, six and seven, were already experts with throwing star knives and horse whips. It seemed like a bewildering alternative lifestyle, and yet through this they bonded as a family and gained hand-eye co-ordination, practical skills and a tolerance to pain. As Jim told me, “all of them have broken fingers at some stage.”

At home his wife took care of the cooking and he took care of the man stuff. Everybody had a job. I got the sense he was grounded in the frontier mentality of the outback and saw this as the future for his family. It’s not something you'd want to try in your own back garden but it seemed to work well in its context.

He had a strange sense of humour. One day he told us a joke that went something like, "What's funnier than a deaf man being run over? A blind deaf man being run over." We were talking another time and he said, "I saw an awesome catfight in town the other day. Two women absolutely beating the shit out of each other, scratching, pulling hair, it was great. It got me turned on in the end, I went home and gave the wife a right good shagging!" Most of his stories seemed to end with him shagging his wife. No wonder they had so many kids.

Meanwhile the money started to trickle in from Abdul. He was a dependable boss in some ways but a confusing one in others. He would only pay me by cheque, meaning I had to wait for one of the shopping runs into town to cash it and get my hands on my wages. Sometimes it would be a long wait. The shopping runs happened three times a week and featured mad scrambles for the remaining places in the hostel minibus. If you missed the call for the bus, tough shit, you’d have to make do with whatever food and money you’d got, unless you fancied a three-hour walk into town. Soon the grape-thinning work dried up and we were relegated to grape-picking, which paid the same hourly rate but carried far less hours.

Around this time the immigration department emailed me to advise I’d been granted my second working visa. This was brilliant news. After all my calculations and planning and nervous hand-wringing the whole process turned out to be ridiculously simple. I’d spent half an hour filling out my details on the website, paid the $195 charge, and they received and approved it within two days. It was all done and dusted. I started to wonder what to do next.

In the meantime the hostel found me a few other odd jobs. I chased a tractor filling vats of grapes at a vineyard – in one day we harvested an incredible 11.5 tons of fruit. I picked grapes for another farmer, an irritable bloke called Fabio. He wore ridiculous denim shorts that looked like hotpants.

Then they sent me to a truffle farm to help two scientists in a buggy take soil samples from under hazelnut trees. That was a pretty interesting day. I got the impression the two male scientists were a couple. All the orchards and farms were busy harvesting and the hostel was full of complimentary boxes of fruit people had brought home with them.

In March came St. Patrick’s day and all the Irish contingent had a massive noisy party. It stretched over two days. I was invited to join in, but to be fair I just wasn’t in the mood. I’ve nothing against it but not being Irish, or even part-Irish, I’ve never really seen the point of celebrating it. I might as well celebrate the national holiday of Belgium.

95% of the people staying at the hostel were from outside Australia, which is as you'd expect. Working hostels exist solely to help backpackers and travellers get seasonal work. But there was the odd Aussie knocking about too. One of these was Paul (another false name), a guy in his thirties much besotted with partying and having a good time. A friendly bloke, he always had something interesting to say or some relevant 'pub fact' to chip in with, and he was an awesome drinker. He would think nothing of polishing off a single 4-litre container of goon (cheap backpacker wine) in a single night.

I liked the guy but I couldn't help speculating to myself what he might be running from over east to want to take up residence here. Maybe not everyone has the same sense of home and family I do. Incredibly he had been living at the hostel for over two years. Some people just loved the place - the people, the undemanding work, the simple lifestyle - and wanted to stay forever. I was wary of this happening to me; I didn't want this place and this situation to become the be-all and end-all of my life.

The English Premiership (or the EPL as it's called) had a very strong following among the residents. People would often get up to watch the football games live in the middle of the night. One of the hostel's blessings was a comprehensive TV package including all the sports and entertainment channels - a slender thread which halted the slide into full-on anarchy.

The TV room was packed for the Man United-Liverpool match, which began at about 10pm our time on a weekend. All the Irish and lots of Koreans were crammed in on couches and chairs. All those pre-season tours in Asia seem to be be paying off - the Koreans love Man United.

As the only English person in the room (and one of the few Liverpool fans) I felt strangely isolated. Most of them had never even been to the north-west of England and here they were, shouting, tensely watching, united in their passion for English football. Needless to say the smiles were wiped right off their faces when Liverpool pulled off an amazing 4-1 win! I really enjoyed that night.

As always there were many joys to be had living the backpacker life, but I was sick of it. Sick of hostels, sick of dorm rooms, sick of living out of a rucksack and sick of being away from home. I’d been away from my friends and family for fourteen months. I’d missed out on such memorable events as Euro 2008, the financial collapse of the world and an ailing Michael Jackson’s decision to play 50 concerts in London. Friends had had babies. I’d always thought it possible to stay away from home indefinitely, visiting country after country on some sort of magic carpet ride, but now I knew home was more than just a state of mind. The pull was too strong.

Luckily my call was answered by a plucky low-cost Malaysian airline and its ambition to undercut all the big boys. Before I knew it I’d ‘slapped plastic’ and booked a plane ticket back to London.