The Return To Oz

Greetings once more, mis amigos y amigas.

Time to try and finally kick off the Aussie leg of the travelog. So, cast your minds back, through the mists of time, as I am endeavouring to do whilst writing this, and consider Sunday 21st August, 2005. For that is the day when I returned, yet again, to my sometime adoptive home: Australia.

Specifically, I arrived at Perth's international airport, after an overnight flight from Jo'burg. I won't bore you all again by saying how much I dislike overnight flights, but suffice to say, one of the first things I did on arrival at my hostel in Fremantle, Perth's harbour suburb, was grab a bit more kip. After that, it being a Sunday, I went for a little bit of an explore around town, scoping out where the suprmarket, cafes, pubs etc all were. And then, in the afternoon, I got a bit of local insight into the town.

The reason for this goes back a year or so to when I first discovered Thorntree, the bulletin board section of Lonely Planet's website. Having posted on there a few times, one of my habits when travelling now is to look up areas I'm going to travel, just to see what other people have been saying about them recently. And, through a conversation on WA, I'd got chatting online with a local lass called Jo, who'd kindly offered to meet up for a beer and give me a different point of view on Perth from the usual "what does Lonely Planet/Rough Guide/Footprint say?" approach. She introduced me to the Little Creatures microbrewery in Fremantle (gorgeous beer), and we swapped travellers' tales and the like for a while. Made for a nice introduction back to WA, although I have to admit I hadn't realised quite how much of an institution the "Sunday Session" is over there - the brewpub was packed outside, despite this being the middle of winter.

In an effort to beat my body-clock back into shape, I had a relatively early night, but got up the next morning feeling dreadful. Light-headed, faint, shivering slightly, churning stomach. And no, Mum, this was not due to alcohol, as I'd only had a few pints the previous day. Being my usual stubborn self, I attempted to just plough through it regardless, so went off around Freo (as the place is known by most locals) around all the banks, checking out what I would have to do to get a bank account, as well as getting myself a new SIM card for my mobile. By the time I got back to the hostel again late in the afternoon, I was still feeling rough as anything, despite drinking litres and litres of water. Got myself an extra blanket, to try and beat off the shivering, and had another early night.

Got up the next day, still feeling light-headed and queazy. Was by now starting to get slightly worried. In a fit of hypochondria, I went back to my African guidebooks, read through the health sections, and started halfways convincing myself I'd got Malaria. Realising this would probably be a bad thing, I went and got myself registered with Medicare, which is Australia's national health insurance organisation (Brits get free "immediately necessary" treatment, in exchange for Aussies getting access to the NHS equivalent), as well as going into central Perth to get the visa sticker for my passport, and to register for a Tax File Number (the equivalent of a UK NI number). By late-afternoon, things were feeling somewhat better, but I still felt a bit light-headed. The hypochondriac in me started whispering louder about Malaria, and I had another pretty early night, though I did spend about an hour downstairs in the hostel's bar, where somebody had put on a DVD of The Young Ones (the classic 1980s comedy, not the Cliff Richard film, thanks be) - more than an hour of Rik, Vivian, Mike and Neil at a time can get a little wearing, amusing appearances by 1980s bands notwithstanding.

And so Wednesday dawned. Another largely uneventful day, enlivened slightly by going into town and booking my Easyrider ticket. Easyrider, which is a name you'll be seeing a lot of in forthcoming posts, is one of the backpacker bus companies that spread across Australia, but is notable primarily because it's the big player on the West Coast - Oz Experience and their Big Green Buses may have introduced the idea out East, but they've never ventured into WA, which leaves Easyrider's yellow machines as the only option if you want to HOHO/JOJO your way up the west coast. And that was indeed my plan, to take in the whole west coast from Perth around and up to Darwin, starting on the Saturday. Having applied my usual travelling tendencies towards ruthless efficiency (quite why I plan things to the nth degree while on the road, but often can't be arsed even writing things in a diary back home, is a bit of an enigma), I pre-booked almost every sector of the trip. Feeling quite pleased with myself from this, and with the reviving state of my health having finally convinced me that I did not in fact have malaria, I headed back down to Freo, back to Sundancers Hostel and back to my room.

There to discover I had three new room-mates, which made a nice change from just the couple of stoner guys who had been there since I arrived. Two English girls and a Welsh lad, who helped persuade me that I was certainly well enough to go out again, and so we headed over to one of the bars in Freo that had a backpacker night on. Any of those of you who've done the backpacking scene out here will know that, in any major city, there is a backpacker night on somewhere most nights of the week - it's a bit like student nights in the big Uni towns back home. Unfortunately, the loss of my travel diaries along the way has left me unable to remember the name of the place, but I do remember that it was quite an interesting evening.

This was due largely to the fact that, rather than just play dance music all night, the place had a house band playing covers for a fair bit of the night. Nothing particularly surprising about that, you might say (though it's a trend I'd like to see more of in the UK). What was different was that they had a weekly competition of "Band Karaoke" - various of the punters had given their names and negotiated a song with the band early in the evening, and, about 10:30 or so, they each got their chance to effectively be lead singer for a song of their choice. Quite a lot of people singing Green Day songs as I recall. Certainly made a difference from most karaoke nights I've been to, as the requirement to put in a request early enough to still be pretty sober, plus the fact that you were up on stage in front of a crowd, meant that it was largely pretty good singers who took part.

I left at a fairly reasonable hour, though (about half midnight, I think...), as I had to be up the next morning and in a fit state to drive. Because I had hired a car for a couple of days, and was heading down through the south-western parts of WA to a small town famous for wine and surfing called Margaret River. And I was going there not for the wine (though it is rather nice), not for the surfing (me on a surfboard? are you kidding?), but to reacquaint myself with a distant branch of the family tree. Yep, I was off to meet a cousin.

But that will wait for another time and another posting.

Take care and have fun,

Pat