Up and Down on the Right Hand Side Down Under

---

Mission Successful

It seems like the secret mission with the codename study abroad semester came to an end, with most of the primary and definitely all of the secondary targets reached. Numerous parties have been infiltrated and several dancefloors have been conquered in the last months. Looking at my shoes, that have been brand new before this mission commenced, I see traces of uncountable kilometres they had to walk to and from the locations and dance all the hours in between.
I won't loose too many words about the final operation at a free private hardcore party at the beach in Botany Bay, as it's quite some time ago and it was special in some ways that cannot easily be expressed in words. As a matter of fact I was happy that I was there and part of the Core family of maybe a dozen people that enjoyed the music until way after sunrise.
On my last day back in Wollongong I visited the Nan Tien Temple - supposedly the biggest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere - and was anything but wasting my free wish to the Buddha. The Temple itself is very impressive and the atmosphere was as well - quite the opposite to the Hindu temple I visited a few months ago.
That was a really interesting thing to do and had been on my to-do list for quite a while but my days here were counted and I said goodbye to Gav, as I did before to all my friends I played capoeira with for the last months after the last rhoda we had together, and as I did to Josh, who was flying to Europe shortly afterwards.
Goodbye Wollongong, our time is over - and we had enough of it anyway.

In Search of Gold and Crashing in the Forest

The road is calling again; well, the planes are, unfortunately; and my first stop on my way up north is the Goldcoast with a never ending beach and a strip of a city with thousands of tourists near the shore. I didn't mind that too much, because I've actually never been to the beach there while I stayed with Erik for two days. Instead I went to Dreamworld and enjoyed the rollercoasters. Oh I love rollercoasters! Other attractions I really liked were this massive swing (nine storeys high; 75 km/h) and the free fall tower (120m!), that doesn't give you any hint when exactly you're going to fall while you're sitting up there for ten seconds or up to one and a half minutes, looking over the landscape and the theme park.
I really liked staying with Erik and his Girlfriend as well. Really nice people. We spent the evenings together and I was exchanging music with Erik and we chatted till way after midnight. It was good to meet them! They're the gold I found while I was there.
After two nights I travelled on to Brisbane and came to the Forest. A house of hospitality. That evening it was a dozen visitors from New Zealand, Ireland, Canada and Germany. Germany is generally way overrepresented in this part of Australia. German is the second most common language on the streets of the northern east coast and my few English skills suffered a lot while I was here, even though I spent quite some time with two Canadian travellers, going to an exhibition of contemporary art and roaming the city. Brisbane has a lot of free exhibitions in galleries and museums, most of them in the exhibition centre near the state library in the very centre of the city, next to the river bank and I went to two more. Going there on the river is the best way to get into the city and I enjoyed the ferry rides. The best exhibition I've seen there was not free, though. Welcome to Game On. An exhibition about the history of video games. Some of you might think that's stupid but I have a quite broad understanding of 'culture' and for me video games are definitely part of it. I played spacewar, the first video game ever, developed in the early 1960s, and several important milestones like Pacman and Monkey Island, as well as quite new games such as Halo 2. There were several more really interesting things to see like a robot simulator from Japan from the 1980s. This exhibition is definitely worth the time and money and I think It's going to run till the end of February '09. For all the time I was not circling the city I was in St Lucia at the never sleeping Forest and had a good time there, seeing new faces nearly every day, sharing stories, partying, or playing chess. Cool place.
Apart from that, Brisbane seems to me to be really laid back and the average population is very very friendly. Yet, it's a shame that it doesn't have enough youth culture and alternative night-life. Most of the time it's standard mass entertainment in Fortitude Valley or some bars next to it. What I don't really understand is why this doesn't change. The city is more than big enough in terms of population and young people are complaining about the situation but nobody seems to feel responsible to change something. Sorry, Brisbane; No party without music, no music without organizers. Just move a little more! - This city has potential.
The only major thing I've seen was the Global Gathering “Festival”, with lots of the same unimaginative music played on all stages the whole afternoon so that I couldn't figure out what they needed more than one stage for. But even worse was that they had the Gorillaz (soundsystem) as one of their headliners and that this had nothing to do with the Gorillaz whatsoever. Imagine you are in a random disco where every fourth or fifth track played happens to be a Gorillaz song and there is this guy who doubles all the lines of the song lyrics he can remember in a far too loud manner, messing even your enjoyment of the one good track they are playing (even if it's full playback). But there were two and a half acts that made the whole day worth going. The half one was 'the Orb', because I missed half of their set. The two really good shows were Mark Ronson and friends; a really good showcase with 12 musicians at drums, percussion, brass instruments, violins, a keyboard, a bass and a guitar plus several male and female guest voices, presenting funk, soul, rock, I'd say, and hip hop. Good stuff. After that I saw Kraftwerk live! The best visuals I've ever seen plus imaginative topics and really good sounds and track arrangements. Simply a great show. The four of them didn't even move one centimetre so that your attention was not taken from the very detailed and elaborate visuals they had prepared. Electronic music with a message - that's the way I like it. I was impressed, as was everyone. When the curtain fell all of us demanded more, whistling as loud as possible and when it slid open again they were gone and replaced by robots that had their faces and presented the track 'We are the Robots'. As they didn't move before you couldn't be sure if they hadn't been robots all the time, or even if there's any difference between robots and humans. I think that was there whole point. Fantastic show!

Welcome to the Tropics

The next and northernmost stop I travelled to was the tropical tourist magnet Airlie Beach. On arrival I checked in at the first backpackers I found and mixed with a group of young people from Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, England and Germany of course and we went to a bar, as they had vouchers for free beer. After we got a little tipsy there was a limbo competition I won because of my physical advantages, getting a jug full of cocktail as a prize. After sharing that stuff we went on to other bars and afterwards to a seedy club I left after less than ten minutes, going to another one that didn't exactly float my boat either. Shit DJs seem to have severe problems understanding one basic rule of complex auditory perception: badly mixed shit music is still shit, even if it's played very loud.
The next day I swapped hostels to a very nice one at the waterfront and came to know Victoria and Barry from Sweden and Ireland and spent the evening with them having dinner and going to their friends place and swimming in the lagune later at night. It's incredible how warm the water is at night; my guess is 34°C. At day it's even hotter and you'd prefer to lie in the shade of the palm trees next to the shore to catch a little of the fresh breeze. Nobody dares to swim at the real beach next to the hostel at this time of the year, because there are no nets and you'd risk being killed by jellyfish. But sometimes it's so hot that I might as well risk it...
After three nights at Airlie I wanted to hop on a boat to cruse around some of the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef, as that was the core of my new mission that made me travel north. As usual I forgot where we were supposed to meet and went back to the travel agency to ask. The answer I got was quite unpleasant to me: The boat was not going to go out to the Reef, because of mechanical Problems. What the hell did I come here for then? The only opportunity I had was to wait for another day and get on a luxury catamaran for a one day trip to at least see the Reef. I did it but it was not quite what I had in mind. First, it was not sailing and scuba diving was not included in this trip, second it was too much luxury, third it was only for one day, instead of three and I already booked my next flights, so I couldn't change my plans and was trapped in Airlie now. Well, what can you do. Yes, I was upset but the experience was awesome nonetheless. Snorkling at the edge of the Reef was amazing and I've seen some quite impressive things including a huge green see turtle. It's a shame that I forgot to get a waterproof camera... All the colours of the corals and fish... It defies any description and photos wouldn't do it justice either I guess; at least not with a cheap disposable camera and my lack of skills taking good shots.
Well, so I was back at Airlie Beach the same day and still there was nothing to do here really. But on the other hand you meet new people every day, as the town is filled with travellers and tourists. In fact it is the most transient town I've been to so far. People normally don't live here for much longer than six months, so inhabitants come and go all the time and you won't find anybody on the streets that tells you 'I a local.' if you asked where they were from. So I spent my time with random travellers I met, getting some to know closer, chatting with others only for a few minutes, making some friends from Sweden, Ireland, Holland and Germany.

More Welcome with Some than with Others

After one week I was eventually flying back to Brisbane just to have a stopover at the Forest for one night. At that evening one of the tenants had a leaving party, giving away all her stuff. “Please take it, all of it!” “Wow, thanks so much! Do you want some money for it?” “ for God's sake, no. I just want it all to be loved.” - I could totally understand her. Now she's on a boat to South America and the Caribbean Islands, probably for good...
The next day my plan was to fly back to Sydney in the afternoon but my flight was cancelled without giving anybody a notice, so I was booked on another flight, which was scheduled four hours later and was another hour late on top of that. Yet, all seemed to be well, as I caught the last train to Wollongong. However, because of some forgetfulness of one of the guys I used to live with the doors were locked by the time I got there (2:00 am) and everybody was asleep. Instead of bothering to wake him up I entered the house through the kitchen window (I always kept telling them to shut it at night, as it is easy to climb into it) and the first thing I did was putting my clothes in the washing machine. The next morning this guy woke me up and was surprised but happy to see me. After a few words I said I was still tired and went back to bed. The next time I was woken up it was by another tenant I used to live with (he was not exactly sane in these days either) and he told me that he went over to the landlady, who lives just next door, and told her that I broke and entered the house and probably that he was scared of me or something, I don't know. I asked him if he was stupid and told him to get professional help... (I hate getting angry with people). Anyway, he said I should better leave on the spot, because the landlady called the police. I asked him why he didn't just talk to me first and what he thought he was doing with that childish behaviour. And apart from that, what he thinks I should do now (it was raining cats and dogs and I had a heap of wet clothes in the washing machine). Well, he didn't exactly care, apparently.
It all turned out all right. I called a friend who picked me up in his car and I could dry my clothes in the dryer in his house. He was happy to see me again before I left the country and I stayed at another friends for the night later. Now that it's over it sounds like a funny story to me, breaking and entering a house only to wash my clothes and leave before the police arrive.


I'm kind of in a hurry to leave to Sydney now... I'll upload some pictures to this blog soon, so stay tuned.

---

Comments

[mica]

"After we got a little tipsy there was a limbo competition I won because of my physical advantages, getting a jug full of cocktail as a prize" --> wie geil is das denn? :-)