The Storm

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I awoke to the sounds of rustling as people foraged through their backpacks in search of shampoo, deodorant and their clothes for the day. I guess my body way getting more used to sleeping in a hostel as I’d slept in for longer than I’d planned. After dragging myself outside and through the shower I went in search of Katie to check what was going to be on the day’s agenda, however she was proving to be quite elusive. I ended up slumped in the bean bag chairs that I’d grown quite fond of and ringing mum to get the full details on this “spider attack.” Judging from the picture the arachnid did look pretty lethal but apparently it had been exploring the home of one of our family friends when she decided to spray it. My dad on the other hand, being the lunatic he is, thought it’d be a good idea to try and rescue the creature. Unsurprisingly, the spider didn’t exactly like that decision. Long story short the good news is that the spider was rescued, the bad news was that it lost a limb in the process. Or maybe they should be the other way round depending on your views on oversized arachnids. In other news I’d dug out my Jurassic Park t-shirt from Singapore upon hearing the news of the new movie trailer soon to be released and was proudly sporting it as Katie reappeared.

With all things ready and set we jumped on the hostel bus and set off for the library, mainly for the free internet but also because we wanted to try our hand at car shopping. The air around the library was cool and welcoming as we made our way through to a pair of chairs placed conveniently next to a set of plug sockets. I know this is going to sound really geeky but I loved in there, it was nothing like the dull buildings full of row after row of old and dusty books that you’d find in England. It was an ultra-modernised environment with plenty of seats and light pouring in through the floor to ceiling windows… but most importantly it had free Wi-Fi. I could really see myself settling in here, breathing in the life of the city while doing some studying by the desks that overlooked the library’s balcony. It wasn’t difficult to picture myself spending my student days in lectures or seminars then of a night relaxing in some of the bars dotted about the city before retiring to a cramped student apartment to get some rest. I pottered about for a bit on my laptop as Katie sat next to me trying to stifle her laughter from watching Russell Howard on her phone. Not that her laughter would have made much difference as while we’d been sat there a collection of women had rolled in with their prams and the group of well-meaning parents had attempted a group sing along. Unfortunately for everyone it had quickly dissolved to a bunch of middle aged men and women singing nursery rhymes whilst the children screamed, squealed and ran around like nutters. Regardless we got down to work, we waded through website after website in search of some kind of suitable motor vehicle and after about an hour I felt like I was going to implode with frustration. We did however manage to send off a few enquiries to some local car dealers, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the cars were. After a while they just all blended into the same image.

So we called it quits and set off back to the hostel, the place was buzzing with energy and after a quick lunch we retired back to the room. Our original plan had been to visit the Koala sanctuary that afternoon but after about 15 minutes of lounging around and looking at magazines we’d both received calls of car dealers. The guy who called me owned a company halfway between the hostel and the Gold Coast, not really a journey that I was too keen on making so I fabricated some excuse for not being able to make it there but I would give him a call if an opportunity presented itself. The guy seemed nice enough but it sounded like to much hassle to make it down there. But then he said if we could jump on a train down to Loganlea station he’d send someone to pick us up and even if we didn’t end up buying anything he’d still drop us off. Well he’d won me over with that and I made a note to try and fit the excursion in somewhere over the next few days. The guy who called Katie had asked her what kind of car that she was looking for, so after she told him that we needed something to sleep in and how tall we both were he responded with <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Hold on, I’ll call you back in a moment I’ll just send some of my guys to go and lie in some vans for you!” Now I know Australians are insane anyway along with being generally nicer people than your average Englishman that you’d meet on your travels but I was really blown away by these two. They’d both offered to do things that I’d never dream of getting off a car salesman in the UK and I was very impressed. The guy called Katie back and said he had a few cars that might interest us and with his company being only a short train journey away we decided to bookmark the Koala sanctuary for the future and headed back for the hostel bus. Before we got anywhere close though a lively, athletic looking man bounced past us blaring music from his speakers. He started shouting <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Aqua Gym?” to people as he passed by as he made his way towards the pool where he proceeded to do a handstand and then flop into the water. I’d forgotten how mental some of the people at this hostel were, but with that behind us we proceeded to the station and hopped on a train to Moorooka.

Now the names of places in Australia have always amused me since I saw Woolloomooloo on a map, but this train journey really blew me away. We passed one stop called Yeronga Station and the one immediately following that was named Yeerongpilly. Finally after I’d finished giggling like an 8 year old we arrived at Moorooka. The first thought I had was that whoever the person was who owned the car dealership, he certainly had a lot of competition. Moorooka seemed to be an obscene conglomeration of various motor companies rather than a suburb, ranging from one displaying highly polished sports cars to one that was advertising a battered old minibus. Despite the masses of car companies we were able to track down the one we were after with relative ease. The manager was a middle aged bald man with a neck that had been burnt to a painful red colour from standing in the sun day after day. The car he showed us was much better than what I was expecting, plenty of boot space, brand new wheels and one of the cleanest engines I’d ever seen. I was trying my best not to fall in love with the first car I saw but that was much easier said than done after he’d moved it onto the side of the road and let us head out for a test drive. I clambered into the driver’s seat desperately trying to remember all the things my instructor had taught me; mirrors, biting point… but how did you move the seat to get my stubby legs to tough the pedals. I managed it somehow and we pulled out onto the road. I’d been driving my mum’s automatic for the past 3 months and it was dizzying trying to make sure I got all of my limbs back into the right place for a manual. Miraculously I didn’t crash or stall or run anyone over and after I was happy with how it run we pulled over and swapped seats. Now in Australia anyone can drive any car as long as they have a licence, there was no paperwork needed so it wasn’t a problem to swap drivers mid test drive. The only issue was that Katie had only passed her test shortly before we’d flown out and she’d not had an opportunity to drive since so she was a little out of practise. So anyone who knows what it’s like to drive a car that you’re not used to would appreciate how difficult it must have been for her to drive around an unfamiliar location after so long. Hat’s off to her though, she was very good, much better than I gave her credit for… but anyone who knows me personally will probably remember that I’m quite a nervous passenger and although her driving skills were excellent there was still a handful of times that I feared for my life. At one point we were in a queue at some traffic lights and on quite a steep slope and just the lights turned green we rolled back slightly before she expertly pulled away and around the corner. Any normal person wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, I however squealed and clung on to my seatbelt for dear life. There was another time when we veered to the left a bit, we were still miles away from the neighbouring traffic and yet I couldn’t help the thought <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“This is the end” passing through my head. Dark clouds loomed in the distance and you could see the sheets of rain starting to fall not too far away. Katie turned into a side road and we swapped seats again accompanied by my heart rate slowly returning to normal. We started back as rain lightly dripped down the windscreen and I couldn’t help but feel really happy with my first impressions of the car. A small part of me wondered how long the warranty would be o him and hoping that he wouldn’t fall apart a month later if he was the one we ended up buying.

We pulled back into the car dealers and parked up, but by now the rain had turned from a drizzle to a cascade. The sheer amount of water crashing around us was ridiculous and the short walk from the car to the manager’s office had me soaking all over. We made our way over to his desk and started to talk numbers. I tried to act as mature as I could but it wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped with my Jurassic Park top clinging stubbornly to me. We had hardly started our conversation when the wind picked up and the noise from the rain blocked out all hope of conversation. We looked out of the window and the rain had increased tenfold. Wave after wave was falling upon us, so much so that I could hardly see half the cars in the yard. It had felt like pins had been thrown at me when I’d run over from the car, I thought it had just been due to the velocity of the raindrops but as I looked out I could see blocks of ice clattering onto the cars. It was hailing. We were in Australia and it was hailing. I never thought I’d see it happen. However this was no ordinary hail, they were the side of golf balls, quite literally I’d read thing like that in books and I always thought the authors were exaggerating for effect but this was the real deal. A few of them smashed through the open doorway and ricocheted off the walls and cabinets. All hope of pricing up a car had now been abandoned and all of the staff had gathered inside the small wooden cabin for shelter. One employee picked up a rather large block off ice that had landed under his desk and displayed it proudly to his colleagues. Another moved over to the fridge whilst some began to make phone calls warning people to stay indoors. Now when Australians are scared of something you definitely should be and while I won’t go as far to say they were terrified, they were showing enough concern to let us know that this was a big deal, even for them. For a moment I thought that the man might have been getting some sort of emergency kit out but instead I turned around and saw that he had produced a six-pack of Corona. What can I say… they were Australians I wasn’t surprised. What really made me laugh though was when the man who’d organised the test drive came back and tried to offer me another deal. With all the destruction that was going on around us as lightening electrocuted the skies and thunder roared above us, the last thing that I was concerned with was saving dollars. The walls were starting to shake with the impact of the hail and various members of staff began to point out some of the damage being done to the cars.

One car had had its spoiler broken from one of the impacts and another had been hit by a large metal sign as it had fallen. As the rain eased off some of the workers started to scavenge the yard in search of the car keys that had once been stored on the vehicles windscreen wipers. All in all the damage was horrendous and the streets were flooded ankle deep with fast moving water. We said our thanks to the manager and hurried back towards the train station. Only to find that sheets of corrugated iron had been blown on to the tracks and all trains had been suspended due to the weather conditions. So now we had a bit of a conundrum, how were we going to get back to the hostel? It was too far to walk and we weren’t yet familiar with the buses… I ended up calling mum and filling her in on the details of what had happened and after she’d told me how lovely the weather was in Yeppoon we said our goodbyes. In the meantime super Katie had googled bus timetables and planned a route back, even though it was going to involve painstaking hours in standstill traffic. We managed to catch a bus as it sluggishly made its way through the drowned out roads and Katie very kindly paid for my ticket as I only had my bank card, I made a mental note to buy her a drink the next time we were out.

The traffic moved like treacle through the city as we looked out at the damage the storm had done. Trees had been uprooted, whole sections of roadways we flooded and road signs were bent at sickening angles. The city centre was worse though, not long after we’d gotten off the bus I felt like I was roaming a post-apocalyptic city. Enormous sections of trees had been torn away as if they were paper and strewn, haphazardly over the streets. Metal bins had been ripped open and the plastic bags inside spilled onto the pavement. There was one road sign that had taken such a brutal hit from the storm that it had been bent flat against the floor and on top of everything it was dark. The power had been knocked out over everything that had happened and although some places had managed to retain their electricity the shadows that ensnared the familiar streets near the hostel made everywhere look alien and somewhat eerie. The backpackers resort had not been lucky enough to escape the blackout and we returned to find residents wandering with torches and making sure they didn’t accidentally stand on one of the cats.

By this point I was drained and after grabbing a towel and blindly showering the stale rainwater off me I headed into the room. Now I would have been more than content to drift off to sleep then and there but the power cut had taken out the fridges too. We didn’t have too much food in there but it still all had to be cooked tonight if we didn’t want it to be wasted. There was only one way that I’d be able to stay awake enough to help cook food and that was my good friend caffeine. So instead of heading to bed we cooked food that we didn’t really want and sat there with our coffee loaded uber mugs. Consequently instead of drifting quickly off to sleep I lay there and battled a caffeine high to try and achieve at least a shallow level of unconsciousness.

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