I have recently returned from being on HOLIDAY. A full-on actual far-away TRIP. A travelling ADVENTURE, you might say. To a whole other HEMISPHERE. Australia, no less. Please bear in mind that I haven’t been away from England for more than 3 days since 2006. So you’ll forgive me for being a little over-excited about the whole thing.
My brother lives in Sydney, and I went over for a couple of weeks to see what all the fuss is about. We also did a bit of a road-trip, from Cairns (you know, where Kate Ramsay in Neighbours went for an early-mid-life-crisis last year) to Brisbane (you know, where Scott and Charlene in Neighbours moved to circa 1989).
Now, don’t worry. This isn’t going to be one of those poetic travel-guide pieces, full of descriptions of sunsets and fauna and boomerangs and whatnot. You know the sort of thing. Oh the bridge, oh the clown-fish, oh the creeks, oh the Opera House, oh the koalas, oh the dingoes, etc etc.
Instead, I thought you’d much rather hear about a few of the choice characters I encountered, the people who splashed local colour into my very own mental scrap-book of Australian memories.
Yes, here for your reading pleasure, I present my run-down of Australian Oddballs and Weirdos. Enjoy…
1. Crazy Tropical Fruit Man. Whilst I was having lunch at the Daintree Tea Room Restaurant, where you get to eat outside in an actual bloody rainforest, the manager came over looking somewhat worried. ‘I hope it won’t be a problem, but I’m just about to give these people a talk about tropical fruit.’ Ah, I thought, that explains the table of massive weird fruit in the middle of the dining-area. ‘Er, no, of course not, go ahead,’ I said politely. I glanced over to the table he had indicated, and saw a group of slightly puzzled faces eyeing him warily. They didn’t appear particularly pleased at the prospect of their Exotic Fruit seminar, or indeed to have been expecting it at all. ‘Does everyone have to have one?’ I asked my brother, mildly panicked. We didn’t hang around to find out.
2. Small Urinating Child. During our foray into the rainforest, we visited Bruce Belcher’s Daintree River Crocodile Cruises (well, who wouldn’t?) to spend an hour on said river in search of said crocodiles. At one point, we were instructed by our guide to stare desperately into a clump of bushes to see ‘Scarface’, a big scary male crocodile. The poor little 2-year old girl with the couple next to us freaked out completely when all the grown-ups fell into a hushed silence and promptly started weeing. Her Mum whisked her up as though about to hold her over the side of the boat, realised that could be considered bad parenting in a you-tried-to-feed-me-to-a-crocodile kind of a way, and let her finish her wee on the floor of the boat instead. We then all spent the rest of the trip avoiding piss-rivulets. Nice.
3. Crazy Drunk Wallaby Man. Magnetic Island is a beautiful tranquil place, a peaceful haven where you can really get away from it all. It’s also inhabited by a whole host of completely mental people. Including the lunatic who lives amongst wallabies, feeding them, talking to them, generally living at one with them. I’m not sure if he thinks he is a wallaby, or some kind of King of the Wallabies or maybe he has appointed himself Official Guardian and Overseer of All Things Wallaby.
4. Witch. Mid-road-trip, we rocked up one day as darkness fell at a rough-looking truckers’ motel in the middle of nowhere, hoping for a room. It was like Bethlehem, but with portacabins. As we parked up, next to the burned-out relics of old trucks and the vicious-looking roaming herd of wild turkeys, we seriously considered abandoning the idea. Especially when the proprietor-lady turned out to look exactlylike the witch from Simon and the Witch. And the first words out of her mouth were ‘Oy, you!’ (although to be fair, my brother had just barged into her laundry-room). However, as luck would have it, it turned out to be brilliant. Mostly because the steaks they served in the restaurant were bigger than my head.
5. Porridge-Debate Ladies. On the final day of my trip, I was sitting on the Sydney-Manly Ferry, eavesdropping to the conversation going on behind me. In which 2 older ladies were furiously debating how you make porridge. First, they argued about oat-milk-water ratios. Then there was a dramatic hob vs. microwave interlude. And then it emerged that Older Lady #1 makes her porridge the night before and then reheats it on the hob the next morning. Which surely just means you end up with one congealed oaty lump. Older Lady #2 was completely aghast (as was I, come to that). The only thing they could agree on was that you should buy the cheapest oats available. As Older Lady #1 put it, oats is oats.
Well, she’s right. They are.
No comments:
Post a Comment