Gerry_goosehart's travel blogs:
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Leaving Adelaide, third attempt
Entry 45 of 57 | show all | print this entry |
Continued from ; Leaving Adelaide, second attempt
The next few days pass lazily. I go for beers with Rob and Company in a noisy bar where throwing a double using the dice at the bar wins you free drinks. All eyes are on one member of our group - a tall Vietnamese girl who is enchanting to look at. She is working in Australia as a model and her chair seems to be surrounded by little puddles of drool as the night wears on. On another occasion, Caroline and Grant invite me to their hostel for dinner. Times must be hard indeed as we tuck into the classic backpacker meal which some will eat for weeks on end - pasta with tuna and sweet corn. Or sometimes just the pasta. Yuck.
The three of us also take full advantage of some free entertainment one evening - there's a big firework display in one of the many outlying parks. And another travelling coincidence happens. I sit in Caroline and Grant's communal lounge area waiting for pennies to be scraped together for a drink in the pub. And two likely lads bowl in - Neil and Andrew from the Aberdeen Hostel in Northbridge, Perth. The two likeable clowns with whom I had many fearless sessions of reckless drinking. How we laugh as they tell me they were evacuated here by plane - because their train derailed in the Kalgoorlie area. They only gave the fruit picking lark about two weeks before walking away, disgusted by the scandalous working conditions and pay. So much for working holiday visas. If only I'd known, we could have shared the drive across the Nullabor. We adjourn to the Saracen's Head - the pub in the narrow street below us.
It's tipping it down as I wait at the tram terminus for Neil and Andrew. A little too sensibly, I'm wearing a coat. The lads come splashing across Victoria square in flapping beach shorts and flip flops. At the other end of the line, we exit the tram and go directly to the open fronted pub along Glen Elg's popular jetty area. Opposite the town hall. Approximately five hours later we emerge somewhat intoxicated and swing by Tony's magnificent hostel around the corner for a few pints of Stella. The Australian Open tennis tournament is on TV which, for us, is about as boring as it gets. The tram conveys us smoothly back into the city where I abruptly tire of beer and decide I need my bunk at Sunny's. First, I chat with a Welsh couple out in the yard who have just bought a white Ford Falcon XF saloon to take them up to Alice. Neither of them actually drives and Mark casually dismisses this fact saying he'll learn as he goes along - the car's ' automatic ' isn't it - How hard can it be ? That's the attitude I love.
Almost a whole day is spent in the dorm room grunting and eating limp slices of delivery pizza. My former dorm mates from Perth - Neil and Andrew, have now moved in here. There's a Japanese chick in the bunk above me and she seems quite comfortable to share the room with three semi naked slobs from the UK. Through the open window, we can all hear the music drifting across the city from the ' Big Day Out ' - Australia's yearly live music festival that happens in all the big cities simultaneously. We know it's fantastically expensive to get a ticket. We don't even try.
I've made a decision not to visit Melbourne which would be the next logical step in my journey East. I've had a belly-full of Australian big city life. Quite literally. And the thought of more café culture and nouvelle-chic appalls me. I'm taking the more rural approach. With camp stove and the promise of the unexpected. There is a back road that follows the Murray River from where I can cross the Snowy Mountains and down again into Canberra. This is more my style. I wave goodbye to Mark and Laura in their hopeful automatic. And steer mine onto the ring road out of town. Then hit the gas pedal. It's bye bye Adelaide.
Next ; Mildura and Yarrawanga
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