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.