Six days in a car park

We've just successfully sold our car in Sydney's Kings Cross car market, but the week did not pass without incident, which is just as well because the car market is one of the most depressing places to be in Sydney, especially when you know what a beautiful city is lying on your doorstep. The car market is essentially just a level of the Kings Cross multi storey car park, it's dark it's damp and the smell of exhaust fumes is inescapable. Despite this, us and many other sellers will sit there from 9am to 5pm in the hope of flogging their car to someone else.

On Monday, not helped by having eaten very little that day, Jen fainted as we were walking back to the car. I was a few feet ahead of her and heard a clunking sound, then turned to see her sprawled out on the floor infront of a manouvering Toyota van. It's not a particularly nice image, seeing your girlfriend sprawled out like that, and as Jen started to come round we rang for an ambulance. The paramedics came and decided to take her to the hospital. She'd hit her head pretty hard on the concrete, so they were concerned and thought she should get checked out. In the end she was fine, and escaped with only a black eye, a cut lip and a bruised ego, and I had the added bonus of getting to ride through the center of Sydney in the front of an ambulance. She's fine now, and the next day was back at the car park, albeit bashfully.

As we were sitting in front of our car on Tuesday, I noticed some of the sellers at the other end of the car park were waving frantically at a car that was out of view. I figured that the car was in danger of running over or hitting something, but as it swung round the corner the glow of flames started licking up from under the bonnet. I sat rather agog for a few seconds, not really knowing whether to run over to help or to run away - whenever cars catch fire in films they blow up and I didn't really want to take the chance that Hollywood was actually telling the truth about something - but by the time I'd decided to get up from my chair someone had appeared with a fire extinguisher and put out the fire. The whole of the car market was filled with a pungent black smoke, but luckily no-one was hurt. I did feel sorry for the owner of the car, an amiable if slightly lackadaisical Irish bloke, who was returning from a test drive with a potential buyer at the wheel. It's not a particularly strong selling point for a car if it catches fire when you're test driving it, but when I spoke to the Irish guy he just shrugged as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

Yesterday passed without incident, and without customers, but one couple took our car for a test drive and seemed rather pleased. This morning they came back and offered is $1,700 for a car we'd paid $3,100 for. I said we wouldn't take less than $2,000 and they seemed happy with this and we shook hands, pleased that we'd finally sold our car, which particularly pleased me as it means I can now afford to buy new shoes. We made a loss of $1,100 which isn't ideal, but that's only 400 pounds in real money so it could have been alot worse. To be honest, I'd have been happy with the $1,700.

So we've sold and it means we can enjoy our last day and a half in Sydney, for we are flying to New Zealand first thing on Saturday morning, and if you'll excuse me until then, I've got some shoes to buy.

Australian psycho

My new friend Ed and I clinked our beers together and settled down to watch the FA Cup final. We'd only met that afternoon as he was staying at the same backpackers as us in Torquay, just south of Melbourne. Due to the time difference the game didn't kick off until midnight so we were pretty knackered but agreed to stay up to watch the game. After about 30 minutes one of the other guests came home, visibly drunk, and started violently cooking in the kitchen. From the corner of my eye I could see him pouring far too much oil into the pan causing flames to lick up to the hood over the oven. 'Hey' he shouted over at us.
'Yeah?' Ed replied. Our masterchef was brandishing a kitchen knife and waving it at the television.
'It's all paper you know, doesn't matter what's on TV, it's all paper'. He paused for a second before adding 'Fuck!' and slamming the kitchen knife into the counter. Ed and I had a quick private conversation and decided that this guy, in all probability, was a bit mental. His amateur pyrotechnics in the kitchen continued for some time, eventually setting off the fire alarm, which he artfully disabled by disappearing round a corner and making alot of banging noises. We were trying to ignore him, hoping that he would eventually tire and go to bed, but he just stayed, rattling around the kitchen occasionally swearing at various cutlery. ('Spoon! Fuck!').
Shortly after Man United made one of the more interesting plays in the first half, a kitchen knife came flying across the room like a dart, clattering off the blinds about eight feet from where we sat. To say we were mildly perturbed would be to indulge in gross understatement. Ed leaned over, as if about to impart a life-long secret, and whispered 'That's not right you know'. I nodded solemly and whispered back.
'Yeah. Rooney was never offside'.
'No' whispered Ed. 'The knife thing'.
'Oh, yeah, I agree'.
By this point our friend had disappeared out the front door, and Ed and I were able to converse at a normal speaking volume.
'Do you reckon we should call the cops?' Ed asked, nervously casting a glance over his shoulder at the open front door.
'I don't know, we probably should. Got a phone?'
Ed handed me his phone, an older style Nokia, and I punched in three zeroes, the number for emergency services. The phone rang a few times before an operator picked up. 'Hello, do you require police, fire or ambulance?'
'Police' I whispered, for Masterchef had made his way back into the kitchen and was casting appreciative glances towards the knife block. I didn't want him to know I was on the phone to anyone, let alone the cops. After being connected to the Victoria state police, it took what felt like an hour and a half telling the man on the end (whom I pictured as being an obese middle aged man in a uniform too tight with his stomach squeezed under the desk) where exactly it was we were.
'It's 51-53 Surf Coast Highway, Torquay' I said, as calmly as I could. I knew the exact address because I'd read it in the Lonely Planet a few hours before.
'That's Bells Coast Highway?' The man on the end said.
'No, SURF Coast Highway' I whispered.
'Okay'. I heard him type something. 'Is that in Bells Beach?'
'No, it's in Torquay. Surf Coast Highway, Torquay'. This went back and forward a few times including a few seconds when the phone went silent (at this point I pictured the man dipping his doughnut in his coffee) but eventually he arrived at the right address. I explained the problem and I heard more typing, then a few more seconds of silence before I was asked to repeat everything I'd just said. I could have exploded. Eventually he got all the details right, and the cops turned up a few minutes after our crazy friend had ran across to the petrol station over the road. By this point, almost every other guest had arrived downstairs, and we surveyed the carnage. The glass panel of the door had been shattered with a chair leg, and when we went to inspect his dorm room, we found that had been trashed too. The police eventually came back around 2am to tell us that they'd picked him up and incarcerated him for the night, and we all went back to what we'd been doing. Ed and I watched the end of what was an incredibly dreary football match, and I spared a thought for our friend sobering up in his cell. I don't know what's worse, waking up knowing you've tried to trash a backpackers hostel, or knowing you've ended all hope you may have previously harboured of appearing on Jamie's Kitchen.

Sleepless nights

I was quite proud the other day when I realised that not once since we got to Australia have we booked our accommodation in advance. Our tactic, which for the most part has served us well, is just to turn up somewhere and hope that they've got somewhere for us to sleep. If they don't, we move on to the next place until we find somewhere. Like I said, it's served us well for the most part, but it hasn't always...

For most of our jaunt up the east coast, we camped. It's cheap, it's cheerful, the weather was almost always agreeable and we got a load of camping stuff free with the car. So it was the best way to do things. There's alot of free camping areas in Australia, but when we were staying on the Gold Coast and visiting the theme parks, there were no free or even remotely cheap camping sites nearby as it's a big tourist area. So we went for the 'side of the road' option, which is pretty self explanatory. One night we found a particularly lovely spot overlooking a valley near a place called Mt. Tambourine, and I was beginning to warm to the idea of doing what the police don't like you doing. The next night, however, we couldn't find a particularly nice place and so ended up camping next to a reasonably busy artery running into the south of Brisbane, which was made worse by the fact that I'd managed to misplace the stopper for our air bed that morning, back at Mt. Tambourine. This was followed by a frown on Jen's face and an uncomfortable nights sleep.

The next evening just before sunset we drove all the way back up to Mt. Tambourine (it wasn't actually that far) so we could scrabble around in the dirt by the road looking for the stopper. By some small miracle I found it, and was calmly but sincerely instructed not to touch the mattress again.

Two or three nights later we as Jen and I lay giggling in the tent after polishing off several bottles of beer, I began to get ready for bed. As I undid my belt, I leant backwards all of an inch, when I heard a sound that sounded remarkably like how an air mattress would sound if it was pierced by something metal and sturdy. I looked down to see the poky bit of my belt completely embedded in the mattress. Luckily I had plied Jen with enough alcohol, so she merely repeated 'Oh my god!' before rolling about laughing.

I'm not sure how we managed it exactly, but somehow we found the puncture repair kit and successfully patched the mattress up. It was another small miracle, and I was calmly but sincerely instructed to undress at least three feet from the tent from then on.


Last week sometime, after leaving Adelaide en route to the Barossa, we stopped overnight at a place called Cudlee Creek, as there was a small wildlife park Claire wanted to visit. After over a week of sleeping in beds, the reaction to camping again wasn't what you'd call enthusiastic, but hey, it's not that bad. This 'get on with it' spirit soon waned after I discovered that I'd misplaced our sleeping bag - the bedding Jen had loving and expertly created in the Blue Mountains by stitching together a K-Mart duvet and a sheet borrowed from a hostel. I unpacked almost the entire car before I admitted that I had in all probability forgotton to pack it that morning. We ended up spending the night in the car shivering under layers of clothing and a thin blanket, and thought things couldn't get any worse until we realised we'd ran the car battery flat by leaving the lights on for too long. How I haven't been dropped from the expedition completely by now I'll never know.

Bearing all this in mind, the night before last I had the most uncomfortable nights sleep I've possibly ever had, in the wonderful (ie. it's a wonder the place hasn't been condemned) confines of Melbourne's 'All Nations' backpackers. We opened the door of our dorm to be greeted with a stench all too familiar to anyone who has lived with Jeff Davies and his atomic socks. The rooms are small and cramped, the paint is peeling off, a solitary, unshaded bulb hangs from a high ceiling like a snot ready to drop, and the mattress felt like it was filled with electrical cables and forks (all pointing upwards), and nothing else. Every time I manouvered my body into a position that was marginally comfortable, another fork decided that my ribcage was a fine resting place, or that my buttocks could use some night time prodding.

Needless to say we complained the next morning and to the credit of the All Nations, we were instantly moved into a room that wouldn't look out of place in a horror movie. It's not like us to complain but it was pretty bad - even for someone who has lived with Jeff's atomic socks.

Into the outback

We left Townsville in high spirits (as you would be too if you were leaving Townsville) and hit the road to begin our adventure last Thursday. It doesn't take long for everything to thin out, and although the first town on the road west, Charters Towers, was only 100 miles or so inland, it was becoming very apparent that you were in the middle of nowhere. We stopped for breakfast at a place aptly called Jen's Cafe, where I was denied a mouthwatering plate of beans on toast because they had run out of beans. I was half ready to dig a tin out of the boot of the car, but had toast and jam instead. I mean, what sort of cafe runs out of beans?! It's like running out of salt or something. We drove solidly for several hours, stopping only to refuel, for the outback is hot. There's two things you can say about the outback, it's hot and it is big. We arrived at a dusty looking village called Julia Creek at sunset and set up camp. It's not very wise to drive late in the afternoon in the outback, dusk is when kangaroos often come leaping on to the road making a mess of most cars unlucky enough to collide with them. Couple that with the sun's determination to block your view of the road by plonking itself annoyingly infront of you means that it's wise to get off the road before the sun sets.

On our second day we stopped at Mt. Isa, a mining town that claims you're not a real Australian until you get there. If being a real Australian means you swear at young British backpackers in a car park, or stare at them intently while they try to do some shopping, then they've definately achieved it. But I don't think that's what they're aiming for. It's an inert town in the middle of nowhere, and despite a visit to an old underground hospital which was bizarre and interesting, I won't be too quick to recommend Mt. Isa as anything other than a place for filling up the car and using the bathrooms.

So we continued on, and endless void surrounding the car in every directions. I've never seen so much of nothing. The stretch of road after Camooweal and just after crossing the Queensland-Northern Territory border is the emptiest stretch of road I have ever seen in my life. A giant sun beats down on an unforgiving blank of a desert - it's no wonder so many of the early explorers came a cropper here.

We spent the night in Tennant Creek, having driven 900 kilometers that day, and in the morning set off for Alice Springs. Perhaps we didn't see 'the Alice' in its best light, but I was not particularly impressed. It's a compact city, and appears almost as an oasis in the desert, but it looks just like everywhere else. You can eat in McDonalds or KFC, shop at K-Mart, and considering it's in a unique location, they could have made it look a bit nicer. Aboriginal people shuffle about the streets like zombies, shouting into the night giving the city center a threatening feel, and there's not much to occupy your time on a Saturday evening or Sunday morning. Still, we were happy to have made it that far. We'd driven 2000 kilometers in two and a half days, and we were proud of our achievement. Even better, we were going to see Ayers Rock the next day.

I'm not going to tell you all about Ayers Rock (or Uluru, to give it its traditional, more respectful title) because I'm running out of time, but I can tell you it was fabulous. It's one of those things you can't stop staring at, even after spending two days there. We hit the road again yesterday and pointed the car towards our final outback destination, the opal mining town of Coober Pedy.

And it is here in Coober Pedy that I write this, the big attraction here is the fact that most of the buildings are actually underground, the heat is so punishing in summer (over 50 degrees C) and the cold so unforgiving in winter (below freezing at night) that living underground gives the only respite. I'm underground right now. It's very weird.