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Sorting through my stuff
Sorting out my stuff in Port MacquarieI’m in Brisbane right now with six other people who I’ve been travelling with the last few days. We arrived here on Tuesday afternoon, driving into the city as the sun set, backlighting the skyline and surrounding mountains which was quite a sight. So much has happened over the past 10 days that I don’t really want to do a full report and bore you with that. Instead, I’ll write up a few stories that happened during this time which will hopefully be entertaining. Just to paint the backdrop first, after my last report I went up to Byron Bay - the once hippie paradise - met up with a really cool group of people, stayed there for 5 nights, went with the group on a two day road-trip by way of Nimbin and Tweed Heads to Surfer’s Paradise where we stayed another four nights and then went to Brisbane. But on to the stories. The good thing for those with little time is that you don’t have to read them all in one go :-)
1. The Cleaning Nazi Byron Bay, 9 am.
A room filled with eight people in deep, alcohol induced, comatose sleep. The door opened.
Four women came in, their eyes set in grim determination, and started talking loudly about their everyday problems, their daughter’s new boyfriend, the really fashionable top they just picked up on sale at K-mart and the general political climate in Eastern-Europe (ok, I made that last one up, I confess).
Drapes were pulled back, bottles thrown into waste baskets with a seemingly supernatural amount of noise. Suddenly a shrill voice pierced the already not so quiet. “Oh my God, must have been another party in here last night”. Fear gripped the hearts of the by now partly awake and fully dazed occupants of the room. It was the Cleaning Nazi. Thin enough to convince a scarecrow to join Weight Watchers and with all the soft fuzziness of an industrial meat grinder, this third-reich hybrid of a harpy and a vacuum cleaner reigned over the cleaning department of the Aquarius Backpacker’s in Byron with steel talons and iron discipline.
She screamed about going to implement a hostel-wide alcohol ban, explained once more to the -in her words - “children” in the room the intricacies of the ‘four chairs inside the dorm, four chairs outside the dorm’ policy and held up the
The Group
left to right: me, Manu, Izzy, Benjamin, David and Gabe sign saying “No alcohol to be consumed in the dorm”, commanding the dorm’s occupants to read it to her. When no response was apparent, she finally stomped out of the room and down to the next door, followed closely by her elite cleaning team. A sigh of relief was breathed by the sheet-covered shapes in the room.
One more day of cleaning Blitzkrieg without casualties.
2. I’m up here Byron Bay, sometime after 3am.
Like most nights after going out into town, the occupants of room 19 sat in their room having a small party before going to bed. Some were out in front, some in the backyard smoking a cigarette -or something else - and some were spread out on various beds, talking. There were probably some people from other rooms as well, seeking refuge from their own, boring, rooms. Granny and I were sitting and talking on the bottom bunk of the bed closest to the door when it opened to reveal the impressively big shape of the English girl from room 18 next door. She stumbled in, covered on one side of her body in what hopefully was mud and twigs and made her way
Camping
Our first camp on the roadtrip after getting lost near Nimbin. Turned out to be awesome over to the ladder to the top bunk which she tried unsuccessfully to scale. Martin and Granny shared a look, unsure what to say.
“Ehr, I think you’re in the wrong room,” Granny ventured.
“ No no, I’m up here,” Drunk English Fatty replied.
“No really, you’re one room over, hun,” I tried.
“I’m in this bed, really.”
She tried to climb the ladder again, with the same amount of success as before. I decided to go for a different approach. “I’m pretty sure you’re staying in room 18. This is room 19”.
It seemed to work as the blob swayed back and forth contemplating this. “Yes, well. There is someone from room 19 having sex in my room.”
A quick look around confirmed what I already knew: everyone from room 19 was actually in or around room 19. I tried to argue this point with Drunk English Fatty but without any success as her brain had shut down again.
On the third try, she finally managed to scale the ladder to David’s bed and started chucking the stuff that was already in there on the floor in an attempt to create
David and I
On the beach at a campround in Tweed Heads some room for herself. Clothes fluttered by our stunned faces, followed by a book. And another one. An Ipod came abseiling down, saved from death solely by the elasticity of the headphone cord connected to it. David walked in the room to find a dirt-covered mammoth in his bed. Although he didn’t use it much, choosing instead to share the bed of his camper-van with those of the opposite sex, he couldn’t leave her in his bed on general principle. He climbed in bed with her to attempt to explain the situation to her but she ignored him as she slipped deeper into a coma. Once realization set in that no one in the room was probably strong enough to get her out of the bed anyway, everyone went back to the order of the day -or rather night-, grabbing their drink, ciggy, pipe or guitar and returning to the party.
After about 45 minutes the bed creaked dangerously as the massive shape started to move slowly down the ladder. Still swaying, she looked cross-eyed at us and said “Thanks for letting me crash here,” turned around and walked out the door.
3. Ah, so you’re in room David and the hippie journalist
David playing guitar at the campground near nimbin with a local journalist 22
Byron Bay, sometime after 3 am again.
Four people sat out in front of room 19, talking quietly at the request of the security guard. Inside the room, the rest were already asleep. Earlier in the day one of the original occupants of room 19 had decided to check out to go to Surfer’s Paradise but in the end had changed his mind and so had to change rooms as his bed had already been given out to someone else. He had just departed for his own room after unsuccessfully trying to crawl into bed with one of the three English girls who had checked into the room in his stead. A few minutes later, a girl came walking up the path along the hostel rooms, drawn there by the sound of voices.
“Welcome to the party,” I said, ”what brings you out here at night?”.
“Well,” the newly arrived British girl replied, “I was just in bed in my room and this random German guy comes in and gets into my bed with me, so I left”.
“ Ah, so you’re in room 22,” I said, “And that would be our friend Benjamin.”
Killer Punch 2
Drinking games are goood -That one still cracks me up, hahahah
4. Killer Punch Surfer’s Paradise, Surf ‘n Sun Hostel, every day from 8 pm to 10 pm by the pool.
Everyone in the hostel put in $5 and the reps took this money to the liquor store to buy goon (cheap wine), champagne, some cheap liquor and lemonade and ice and made huge bowls of punch out of this. Everyone then gathered round and played various drinking games, getting surprisingly drunk in a surprisingly short amount of time. Around ten everyone received a stamp which grants free entry to a club and a free drink and then the whole group set out for said club to party. It has to be one of the greatest hostel rituals and the degree of participation from the people staying at the hostel was testament to this. It can also lead to very interesting situations and I’ll highlight a few of those in the next stories.
5. Canuck lockup One night after punch time, our group of about twenty people decided that instead of going into to town, we would go to the beach with a bunch of goon and a guitar to
Nimbin area
view from the top of a hill near Nimbin make a bonfire and chill out there. Good plan, apart from the bit where we had no firewood or anything to light it with. Luckily Gabe, the Canadian, took matters into his own hands, going off to find some firewood and shortly after coming back with a big branch that must’ve broken off a tree in the recent storm. While the rest tried to light this firewood with varying degrees of success, he went off to find some more wood, never to be heard from again. Well not that night anyway. After a while Izzy got a little worried about where Gabe went, so I walked around for a while trying to find him, thinking maybe he had fallen asleep somewhere under a tree, but to no avail. He was definitely gone but then he’d been going walkabout a few times before in the last couple of days so no one was too worried.
The next morning as I sat at the staff table having a cup of coffee with some of the staff members, one of the reps was telling how the previous night, some guy had tried to break down some of the fences in the hostel
Delinquent!
This is the sign we saw when we went to get Gabe out of jail to get wood for a bonfire at the beach, much to the amusement of the other reps at the table. Uh oh… that sounded dangerously familiar and sure enough, after some more questions it turned out that Gabe had been turned over to the police the previous night after the security guard caught him trying to tear down the fence.
After everyone was finally awake and checked out, it was off to the local drunk tank called The Watchhouse, located just a short drive away. Luckily one of the staff members of the hostel had had a run-in with the local law enforcement as well so he knew exactly when we had to go where to collect Gabe. He told us that it wasn’t really too bad, just a cold, bare, concrete cell and that he would only get a court hearing, a fine and a final warning. His next run-in with the police would mean an immediate end to his visa and a trip back home.
Upon arrival at the police station in Southport the name of the Canadian delinquent didn’t ring any bells with the officer behind the desk. There was no record of him being
Gabe the sleeping canuck
Gabe before he turned criminal arrested and he was not being charged in court as he should have been. In short, nobody had any idea where he had gone. We decided to head back to the hostel and see if he had perhaps returned there. While driving back, Niels and I spotted Gabe walking on the bridge between Southport and Surfer’s Paradise. After catching up with him -much to his relief I might add- the full story was finally revealed. After being taken away by the police to the Watchtower, it became clear to the officers that he wasn’t really that drunk or disorderly, as he was just sitting there quietly doing nothing (although we reckon he was probably quietly singing to himself and smiling a lot). So instead of locking him up and charging him, they let him go, but not before banning him from Surfer’s Paradise until 12 noon the next day. He was just on his way back since it was 11.55 am when we spotted him. Some days everything just works out.
- The same night, some weird German guy from my room broke into the TV room, took a piss there after watching TV, then went to room
Punchtime
Killer Punch at the pool at Surf 'n Sun backpackers in Surfer's Paradise 5 and took a crap on the floor right outside their room. He then went into that room covered in his own shit (there is alleged picture proof of this) and tried to sleep in one of the beds there. After he got kicked out of that room, he went back to the TV room, jerked off and eventually went back to our room and (thank god) went to his own bed and fell asleep. However when he first came back (he was still dressed at that point) he woke me up and told me I was in his bed. He really freaked me out too because I was deeply asleep and he was standing like right next to my face and you know how sometimes when you wake up somewhere other than your own room, you need a few moments to get oriented. For a minute I was sure I was in the wrong bed in a room I didn’t know with some weird guy standing by my bed, haha. It all happens at Surfer’s baby! -
6. If you fall, I will catch you, I’ll be waiting, time after time -
Cindy Lauper, Time after Time Situation scetch
Picture to accompany story 6 One night earlier, the trip into town had been a lot of fun with the hostel pretty much taking over a nearly empty club and partying there for a few hours. At the end of the evening, around 3 am three Dutch guys (Joost, Frank and I) and one Dutch girl (Nienke), were walking back to the hostel. Joost and Frank were auditioning for Jackass, driving around in shopping trollies and generally being drunk in a physically dangerous way to themselves.
When they got close to the hostel, they spotted two holes in the hang-over roof of the sidewalk, about six meters apart. After trying to get up without success themselves, they talked Nienke into crawling along the inside of the roof (about three meters up from the ground) from one whole to the next. After a bit of a drunken struggle they managed to get her up and inside and she started to crawl.
I had a pretty bad feeling about the whole thing and didn’t think they would be able to get her down again without dropping her so I had already moved up a little bit to be ready to help her down when about
With Nienke in Surfer's
She just fell from the sky.. no really, she did! halfway through and a meter and a half away from me, she put both hands on one of the plastic sheets that comprised the bottom of the roof and suddenly plummeted head first through. Probably purely on survival instinct she managed to hold on for a second or two with her legs before slipping and falling. This was just enough time for me to take two quick steps back to catch her, much to her -and my- relief. Guess it’s not raining men everywhere!
-This one seriously scared me though. That could’ve ended very badly very easily, I’m just glad I was a little more sober and fast enough. Falling from three meters up on a stone sidewalk is rarely a good thing. I won’t quickly forget the image of her diving head first through the ceiling. That evening she already had two big swellings on her upper and lower leg and the next day a pretty good set of bruises to mark the spots. Nice legs too, so bit of a shame that ;-) -
Obviously this is just a small selection of the amazing stuff that happened, I could write up at least another five stories
Haircut
Adam the Egyptian giving me a haircut at the hostel that are equally incredible. I honestly hadn’t expected to like the whole Byron Bay/Surfer’s Paradise scene as much as I did and that is all due to the sheer number of incredibly cool people you meet every day in the hostels. I can easily see why people decide to stay in one such place for a few months. Even if you don’t go out every day, you will meet many interesting and fun loving people just in and around the hostel. It’ll be hard to get settled in to a ‘normal’ hostel again. This one here in Brisbane isn’t bad but it’s just so boring compared to the last two we were in. At least it has given us a chance to rest up a little bit. I didn’t sleep more than 4 hours a night for nine nights straight so I needed a rest.
From here on out it will be back to camping for a bit as we’re getting ready to take on the World Heritage listed Fraser Island for some good off road driving. After that I might buckle down for a few weeks and do some work. It’s an expensive country and it will feel
Petanque
Petanque on Rainbow Beach near Tweed Heads with David good to make some money for a change rather than constantly spending it.
I’ll be in touch again, hope you guys enjoyed the stories!
PS. before I forget, some of the pictures (namely most of the ones that I am in) were not actually taken by me but by one of the others.
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Phil
non-member comment
Partys
Hope you stay alive long enough to go fishing