TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

AUSTRALIA 1 - PART THREE

With us, essentially, not getting anyway quickly in Poland, it was decided we would make a 3-month visit to Australia as I had been saying I thought our project would work better in an English speaking country. We set off in early March 2003 and returned on 1 June 2003. The following is some of what happened. I should point out that I had wanted to go to Australia since the early nineteen sixties. Now I was there.

This third post is the second part of the four week drive we took into the middle of Australia and then west to the Queensland coast.

After the experience of Great Keppel, we headed south down the Queensland coast. We approached Brisbane and the Gold Coast, intending to spend a day or two there, but all we eventually did was visit Sea World. I think that was what it was called. I saw a dolphin, it jumped, I took a picture but it was far less satisfying than the one I took of that cuddly, little koala. I don’t like skyscrapers and that was what I saw as we approached Brisbane. It held no appeal and so we drove on.

We drove through the Gold Coast and soon found ourselves back in New South Wales. I had heard a little bit about the reputation of two places we would be passing by and, for various reasons, chose to go to Byron Bay instead on Nimbin. I can’t say if it was a good choice as I never went to Nimbin but I liked Byron Bay.

We found a camp-site and asked for a place overlooking the sea. I have this love of the sea and hearing waves crashing, or gently lapping, as I lie in bed, never ceases to please me. The owner looked a bit apprehensive and said he only had one such spot left, did we want it? ‘Why not’, I asked? ‘Because I had two places next to each other last week but the other one has slipped down on to the beach’. I parked carefully.

We stayed there, with no noticeable subsidence, for three days and experienced as much as we could of Byron Bay culture. It does seem, or seemed then, a weird mix. There were quite a few older residents and the shops obviously catered for these. There were a lot of backpackers who were also well serviced. Read what you like in that comment. But, there were also a large number of non-backpackers who had their own form of transport and therefore no need for the wearing of the ubiquitous backpack.

These people, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, had psychedelically painted VW campervans, long hair and sat outside their vans in groups, playing guitars. For one brief moment I was back in St Ives in the early seventies or the Isle of Wight in the late sixties. I had already noticed that most young Australian males had longish hair, although my comparison with Poland and England was being made at a time when the shaved look was almost de rigueur. During our three nights there, I never saw a single fight nor did I hear any raised voices. If I could find one little complaint I would have to say sometimes the guitar-playing forced me to listen harder for my waves but, as I enjoyed the guitars, and the waves managed to go on beyond midnight, I couldn’t really complain.

One night we visited The Cheeky Monkey, a true party bar. The entertainment was loud and to some of my age, maybe a little outrageous, but remember, I was still on the Isle of Wight in 1969, so I actually thought it a bit tame. The idea seemed to be that people would dance on stage and then the ‘audience’ would vote for who had to remove an article of clothing. Fortunately, from my point of view, the only guy in contention had carelessly dressed in at least ten pairs of underpants. He also seemed to know the staff quite well. Funny that.

The following night we went across the road from The Cheeky Monkey, I think, and found a little club/bar with a DJ. She was slightly over dressed too. She wore thick woollen socks, with multi-coloured rings around them, a woolly hat, a scarf and something Dr Martens might have made as an initial prototype. Her music was new to me. When asked, she told us it was audio-dissemination bastard pop and included a recording of a speech made by the late Queen Mother. We stayed a while and ended up chatting with a guy of my own age, who was sitting in the bar although I’m not sure he knew it. Greeting him with the word ‘hi’ could have also been a description of his state. The next morning as we parked in town, and as if to prove my point, he wandered up to us and asked for a match. My question as to how he was feeling was met with a blank stare because he evidently didn’t know we had spoken the previous night.

It was also in Byron Bay that I had my first experience of Australian medical care. Some time in 2001 I had sneezed while lying in bed. Not unusual, you may say, especially if you were aware of the fact that I am a hay-fever sufferer. However, I was not in the best position for doing this and, apparently, a natural weakness in the stomach area led to the beginnings of an umbilical hernia. While in Byron Bay, this began to cause me quite a bit of pain. My girlfriend insisted I visit the doctor, we found one and, as I was English, I had reciprocal treatment or something.

Anyhow, I made an appointment and arrived at the surgery at the due time. Surprisingly, I went in to the doctor at this time too. Then I spent half an hour with him while he examined me, manipulated the misbehaving piece of my intestines back into place and then talked me through all the reasons and problems for, and with, the hernia. It was quite a pleasant experience, well except the actual moment he pushed the bit back through the stomach wall or whatever it had protruded through. He told me that I would be pretty low on the list of necessary operations and certainly I should wait till I returned to England to have anything done.

Finally we left Byron Bay and headed back down the coast. We passed Coffs Harbour, where I was told Russell Crowe had just got married, this was April 2003, and continued on. I may have spoilt that story for the lady who was telling us, as I had no idea who Russell Crowe was, and actually still don’t, except that he is an actor and a celebrity.

That word has worried me a lot in my life and even more so nowadays. Is it, as often appears, an occupation? Do you have to work hard to become one or work hard at being one? Is notorious a useful synonym or public-domain prat? Is the fact that you do your job in the media sufficient qualification? And, most worryingly of all, do some people become addicted to that status and believe that others actually look up to them. I don’t care who reads this; I originally started writing it so that my children and grandchildren knew a little bit about what ‘Crazy Grandad’ had done. If you are reading, and not of my loins so to speak, I hope you enjoy it. But, even if 5 million of you read it, I would not consider myself a celebrity. I am me, or to satisfy my father, I am I. I do what I do because I have to or because I want to, or to satisfy my father again, because it is what I want (for those who may be confused here, my father would never allow a sentence to end with a preposition and was adamant that the verb to be takes the same case after it as before). Sorry, dad.

By all means, let’s make use of modern technology and communicate more; let’s find out what our heroes or those we admire think and do. I just don’t like it when those people either think they have more importance than they do or, worse still, believe they actually are important and not just a source of gossip. In olden days we would talk about the price of vegetables, food etc. Cabbages would be spoken about over the garden wall. Now it’s Katy Price or Joey Essex. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, I hear you say. I couldn’t possibly comment on your opinion, I’m not a celebrity.

Those that can inspire others will be those who retain their modesty despite their achievements not those who become immodest with their own achievements. The great racing driver, in my view the greatest ever racing driver, Juan Manuel Fangio, is quoted as saying that ‘you must always believe you will become the best….but you must never believe you have done so’. He won his last world championship at the age of 46, his record of five world titles stood for 46 years and he died, in 1995, on my 46th birthday, a bit of a bugger for him but something I feel a little honoured about. One day, just for fun, I will make a list of my top ten racing drivers, those who raced since I first watched the sport in 1957 and it will surprise everyone. But, it won’t make me any more important than anyone else. We all have our own opinions; we can choose to share them, we can hope they may intrigue or stimulate others but we should never assume we have the right for others to want to hear them.

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