Back In Australia: Part One

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Last year, when I first left, I always had one eye on home. I saw it as a year to figure myself out, learn some things and use that knowledge back in England to start doing something with my life. But by and by my dreams changed. Rather than wishing for a place to live, a girl, a good job that paid enough not to worry about money, friends and a settled life, I wanted to move and not stop. As I travelled I flew further down the path of wild abandon which peaked in my last month in Australia; hitching four thousand kilometres, sleeping on the side of the road, on beaches and then the madness of Sydney. I no longer wanted what I wanted before, I wanted love and madness, and a man is defined by what he wants. With changed dreams I was a changed man.

But when I went home I had some familiar dreams. I could see myself living in Bristol, studying or working there and having a life there. Similarly when I went to Gent and spent some time with Jonas – the crazy Belgian, for those that haven't read previous posts – I saw that a life of madness was possible within a settled existence. He was working and studying, he had his own place but the night was his. We and his friends went to bars and clubs and parties and I got a similar rush to the one I get on the road from the music, the lights, the people and all the other influences of those nights. Home no longer represented the antipathy to everything I wanted. When it came to leaving Europe it was with a heavy heart. I wasn't sure I wanted to go. But that is why I booked the flights before I came back. I couldn't stay, I wasn't finished with the road, and I'm sure it wasn't finished with me.

After I left Asia, and the people I was travelling with, I spent three lonely days getting to the airport in Vientiane to fly to Kuala Lumpur where I waited a day for my flight to Melbourne. I was still thinking about the girl. She'd added doubts to the ones I'd picked up at home. I had too much time to myself, too much time to think. I was looking forward to being back in Australia and seeing some familiar faces and the welcome distraction of their company.

Back in Melbourne I stayed a couple of nights with an old kiwi friend from the first time I came to this city and took a salsa class with a girl I'd trekked with in Sapa, Vietnam before thumbing my way up to Sydney for the birthday party of a friend from a road-trip between Adelaide and Darwin. I'd actually given up drinking or smoking for a week after binging in Asia but this fell by the wayside at the party. I'd come to the conclusion that what I needed was to stay in one place a while. Last year I'd spent some time in Avalon, a quiet little beach above Sydney, and I remember there being good work there so I made my way there, checked into the hostel and signed onto the work list. I stayed there two weeks but there weren't many jobs, just enough to pay for rent and a little on top. When I wasn't working I would go to the beach which was a two minute walk from the hostel and lay in the sand and read my book. When the weather wasn't good I'd hop on the bus and head down to Sydney and see friends. Guillaume and Jess, a French couple I'd travelled with from Adelaide to Darwin for two weeks and become close to, were living in a flat in Bondai and I often went their and hung out with them and their Chilean housemates. I remember one epic absinthe and dubstep night. I also went to Darling Harbour with them and a few other French friends for the Rugby World Cup Final. The atmosphere was wild and the place was packed with French, all chanting 'Alle Le Bleu'. With a few drinks I found myself joining with them.

Stuck up in Avalon I got bored very quickly and my thoughts turned to the road again, looking at maps and picking out places to go. After two weeks I left the beach, spent a couple of nights in Sydney and then headed North. I got the train up to Newcastle and hitched from there. I aimed for Seal Rocks which I'd been told was a nice spot. A few scattered rides with a mix of characters – from a stoned teacher escaping the city in her beat up camper to an old grizzly haired rambling man on the road for two years with his dog – got me there. I got there in the late afternoon and pitched my tent in the bushes just away from the beach, then went for a swim in the waves and stretched myself out on the sand to dry off. I went back to the tent to get changed, took a couple of sandwiches and went back to the beach to watch the sunset. It was one of the most beautiful I've seen in Australia. Looking out across to the sea as rows of waves rolled in, the sun fell over the mountains to my right at the end of the beach. The skies were infused with reds, oranges and yellows and they changed several times in a minute like a trippy swirling splurge of colours. It was beautiful and I appreciated the moment, but I didn't enjoy it. It was on this beach under that setting sun where a realisation fell over me with a quiet sadness. I was no longer happy alone. Solitude had given way to loneliness. I'd enjoyed the last months with good people around me, friends to laugh with, to drink and sing and dance with. While I sat out and listened to the waves as the night filled the sky I remembered a question I'd read in a book recently and toyed with it in my mind: can we really exist unless there is someone to watch us existing?

When I woke up the next morning I had a decision to make. I'd fallen asleep trying to decide whether to carry on the road North, hopping from beach to beach or go back to Melbourne, a city I'd already fallen in love with once, and find some work, a place to live and make some friends, go out to bars and clubs and festivals. I'd spent three weeks of the last summer in Melbourne and had the time of my life. In the opposite direction there was more tramping, more beauty and wilderness but I'd be alone. I was beginning to rue going home. I was lost again with no clue what I wanted. In Avalon I had the settled life I'd thought I wanted but realised it wasn't in me, and now back on the road, wild again, I knew it wasn't giving me what it gave me before. I had no clue what to do, I didn't know what I wanted or where I wanted to be. I ended up going South, back to Melbourne. I was relatively certain I wouldn't be happy so long as I was alone. Maybe one day I could be again, but today that life isn't for me. I wasn't sure whether I'd be happy in Melbourne either, maybe the place wasn't the problem, but it seemed the right decision at the time. Solemnly I headed back to Newcastle to catch the train to Sydney. It was an easy hitch and by late afternoon I was back in the city. I picked up the bags I'd left with Guillaume and Jess and hopped back on the train, this time towards Wollongong to hitch the Princes Highway, the scenic road between Sydney and Melbourne. I hurtled along watching the city recede as we flew headlong into the ugliest storm I'd seen in Australia. The looming darkness haunted the sky, the thunder crashed furiously and the lightning licked the black sky. Meanwhile the rain poured without relent. I prayed for it to subside. I didn't know where I was sleeping that night and I was sure my $15 tent couldn't keep out a drizzle let alone this storm. Luckily the train took me through the worst it. It was still dry where it dropped me off, but it was heading my way. I felt it on my back as I stood desperately with my thumb outstretched. I didn't wait too long before a girl picked me up. She had just come home from ten years of travelling with her boyfriend, she reminded me of Rohan, the Aussie surfer that picked me up in the Gold Coast. She took me twenty minutes along the way and she offered me a place to stay that night to shelter from the storm. I opted to carry on hitching, a mistake as it turned out. Two short rides got me fifty kilometres further but the storm had caught up with me and the night was near. The sky was a deep dark blue and the the thick clouds cloaked the stars. I was dropped off under a bridge on the highway and stood there as the cars streamed past. I knew I wasn't going to get a ride from here until the morning. I sat on my rucksack until it got dark and watched the headlights flash by me. The rain was pouring again, thunder rumbled in the distance. As I sat there listening to Codex by Radiohead, which gave the whole scene a dreamy trippy quality, I felt a familiar lightness in my heart, an unexplained smile on my face. In all my recent moments of loneliness, doubt and despondency this was the first time in a long time that I felt alive and wild again. I was enjoying a new low and getting the tramp kick of old that I'd missed on my recent comfortable travels. (Damn! I'm a masochist. I may be bound to find happiness but in the same breath to sabotage it once I do). I felt like a world beater again, sheltering from a storm under a bridge on Princes Highway. I was untouchable, unstoppable. I slept there that night on a sliver of grass between the two lanes. All night cars and trucks screamed past. I barely slept, maybe a half hour here and there. I woke up with the first morning light and headed out onto the road again. The rain had stopped, the storm was over. I was off again and I felt good. I still wasn't the man I'd become last year. Doubt still hung over me but my soul felt a little lighter. I was happy to be where I was, rather than wishing I was somewhere else. That is the key to being happy – being where you want to be. I accepted a long time that the road and the life I live on it wouldn't always keep me in good spirits. I knew there would be highs and lows and that was a sacrifice I'd subscribed to.

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