Jason Wells

“If you don’t live on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”

I’m now more of a crispy red color, thanks to my nap. I did one hour on the front, one hour one the back, plus a little swimming. I don’t burn easily but out here, that’s all it takes, even with sunscreen. But it doesn’t really hurt, so it can’t be that bad. And it sure is relaxing to lay there in the breeze with the ocean crashing on the beach in perpetual rhythm. After a while you even get used to all the topless women wandering around too. Mostly. While there I met a guy who was receiving a haircut from a girl, right on the beach. She offered to give me a cut too, for A$10, and I almost accepted just for the novelty of it. The guy liked my blue Oregon Coast Aquarium shirt, with the yin/yang live fish/fish skeleton on the front, and wanted to buy it from me for A$20. I refused.

On the way to the beach I encountered a very large reptile of some kind. I also encountered two Kiwis playing chess on the porch of my hostel cabin. I swear they told me it was a ‘manatee,’ which it definitely isn’t. It was over a meter long and tame like a city squirrel. When I first saw it I was apprehensive; the only lizard I’d seen anywhere near that size was a crocodile. But this fella was more scared of me than vice versa; When I approached for a closer look, he shambled away. Guess it was rummaging through trash.

After I ate dinner I scoped out the bars. The one with the best crowd was beginning to fill up so I got a schooner of VB and found a table. I chatted with these two girls from London briefly, but they were just about to leave when I got there (preparing for a sailing trip like the one I’d take the next day). I didn’t see anyone else who looked interesting, so I took off. I bought some postcards to send home and stir up some serious envy.

So now I’m back at the hostel. This one is different from the other two I’ve been to. Here, each dorm is a discrete cabin. The cabins are very simple, almost primitive, but not in a bad way. There’s no need for sturdy construction, insulation, and so on when the weather’s basically perfect all the time. You almost don’t even need shelter here. It’s clean and simple and it suits me fine. And at A$12 a night, an unquestionable bargain for lodging 100 meters from a beach.

I got to Airlie Beach earlier this morning. This bus ride was even longer than the last one, a full 18 hours, but it was more tolerable because I was in the first row, though I did have to sit next to a large Austrian. He wasn’t Schwartzeneggar, but he was big. I froze on this bus, while I melted on the last one. Guess the a/c works a lot better up front; I had no blanket or even a towel, but I learned that putting my backpack on my lap warmed me up a little. They showed “Titanic” on this trip. And now that I’ve seen it, every human on earth has now seen it. I was the only one left. I’m not in a great mood right now. I’m exhausted and lonely, and I’m beginning to think coming out here alone was a mistake. Plus I’ve had a major setback, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Airlie Beach is a real improvement over Brisbane. The beach is nice, not Bondi but close enough. In one respect it’s far superior to Bondi: it’s close proximity to the Whitsunday Islands and, of course, the Great Barrier Reef. The town itself (pop. 4000) is touristy, but it’s tolerable because it really has a buzz. At the beach I took some pictures of the scenery. What I hadn’t yet realized is that Airlie Beach is topless. I laughed when I realized what a pervert I must have looked like, wandering around the beach with a camera!

When I registered at the hostel called Magnum’s, an annoyingly chipper desk clerk named Rose sold me a diving package deal. 5 days on a ship plus 2 free nights at the hostel, with PADI training and certification as well as dozens of dives for about A$500. It sounded great…

Except for one thing. “You don’t have asthma, do you?”

It’s something about the cold, dry tank air combined with physical exertion, I’m told. Even mild asthmatics can die or suffer brain damage while diving. They can’t breathe, they panic, they come up too fast, and their lungs explode, or they get the bends, or go into convulsions, or get air embolisms, something along these lines. And I have severe asthma. I’d die quickly. I can’t go.

This bad news hit me like a sledgehammer. It was a bitter, bitter disappointment. If I had known this, I might not have come to Australia at all! After I left the doctor’s office I had to lean against a wall for a bit to regain my composure.

So it’s time for a change of plans. I’m still going sailing to the Whitsundays, and I will see the barrier reef, but it will be snorkeling. I cut the trip down to three days since there’s no need for PADI certification. This also has the virtue of being considerably cheaper. It will still be fun I’m sure, but what a nasty surprise. I still wonder: is there any way I could’ve deduced this medical requirement before I left? Hell, I didn’t even know there was a medical exam before you are allowed to dive! Seems obvious in retrospect. Anyway, the trip isn’t until tomorrow evening. So a nap on the sunny beach sounds really good right about now.

Weather did not permit. It began to rain early in the morning, so Kathy and I canceled our plans. At this point I was beginning to lost my patience with Brisbane. The city is banal, the weather sucks, and I spent 17 hours on a bus to get here! So I went back to the transit center to see how I would get to Airlie Beach, my next destination. On the ride over I got to talking with a guy named Simon, who was coincidentally staying in the same dorm at the hostel as I was. We decided explore the city together for the day. I’d already seen some parts but not everything. Simon’s pretty cool. He’s from Birmingham, England. He builds scaffolding at construction sites for a living. He was in New Zealand for 4 months and is wrapping up his 6 months of travel with a 2 month stint in Australia. He told me about NZ: glacier walking, rainforests, skydiving over a volcanic lake, etc. He much preferred it there to Australia. I have to admit I had a tinge of envy when he described what it’s like there. I kept thinking about this dull city. He had a lot of curiosity about the US, having been only to Florida. (Florida is the most popular destination for Europeans in America, I’ve discovered.) He really likes beer and when I told him about Portland microbrews he was practically ready to fly over! He doesn’t use computers, but he was really interested when I told him about Quake. He’s a good guy, though he does have an unfortunate automatic distrust of natives (Aborigines here, Maoris in NZ) as well as Indian and Pakistani immigrants to England. Several times he made comments reflecting this attitude. This mild form of racism is easy to find out here. I don’t recall hearing as much of this sort of junk back home, but that may be more about political correctness in the US (which doesn’t exist here) than anything else. Everyone needs someone to hate, don’t they?

We walked and talked our way over the entire city over the course of the day. In the late afternoon we made it back to the hostel. I estimate we walked about 15 miles. Boy, was I happy when I remembered the hot tub they have here! Soon I was soaking in the hot water with a cold bottle of VB in my hand. Four hours and eight beers later, it was dark so we got out. The Victoria Bitter was much more agreeable this time — I had twice as many as that night in Sydney, yet I was pleasantly buzzing rather than ready to hurl. So what was wrong the first time? An unsolved mystery. I managed to get slightly sunburned while I was in the hot tub, even though it was overcast.

After the beers I went back up to the dorm. I decided to skip dinner. We found an Australian TV show that plays cult classic movies. This time they played “Dark Star,” a really low budget sci-fi flick directed by John Carpenter. I had never seen it before, and I loved it! It was like “2001: A Space Odyssey” but with a crew of insane hippies instead of astronauts. One of the best lines I’ve heard in a movie: “Use phenomenology.” It was brilliant. Highly recommended for anyone who has a taste for campy sci-fi. Then there was a show called “eatCarpet” that shows film shorts that film students created, and some of them were absolutely fantastic. I wish these two shows were available in the US. It was the perfect way to end the day. I guess you can find a relatively good time even in this dull city.

The next day (today) the weather’s been gorgeous. About time. I’m checking out shortly after the laundry finishes. Then I have six hours until the bus to Airlie Beach departs. I have no idea what to do — I’ve done just about everything you can in this town. Poor Simon, he has two more weeks here. I hope he doesn’t go insane. I know I would.

After I got back to the hostel I read a paper. This whole Timor thing is really huge here. I often wonder if anyone hears about it in America. Refugees from Timor are already arriving in Darwin. I hear it’s gotten very nasty there, with all the military and refugee tent camps in the sweltering humidity. I wonder what it will be like when I get there. Next I checked my email. It’s painfully expensive at this kiosk, A$10/hour. But Hotmail (and its equivalents) are incredibly useful to backpackers. Often it’s the best, or even only, way to get in touch with someone with no permanent address or phone number.

I ate some gross dinner here, or tried to, anyway. I saw “Bad Boys”, a movie I’m sorry I didn’t miss. Maybe I sound like a film snob, but most of the movies I’ve seen here are really bad American imports. I happened across the two Canadian girls again after dinner. We got to talking. They’re from British Columbia, not far out from Vancouver. They had been in Sydney and didn’t like the Sydney Opera House. They were looking for something to do tomorrow. I told them about a beach on North Stradbroke Island called Point Lookout that I was planning to spend the day at tomorrow. North Straddie isn’t very close to Brisbane, so if you go it’s a full day trip. It was supposed to be uncrowded and have nice beaches and good hiking. The alpha girl, Kathy, was interested but her docile companion (who made so little impression on me, I’ve already forgotten her name) was less enthusiastic. Nevertheless I persuaded them both to come with me so we’ll head out 9:30 tomorrow.

I met two American guys out here last night. Two guys from Florida. They are in Australia for only two weeks and were heading south from Cairns. The first guy was just here to party and get drunk, but the other guy actually wanted to see the whales and go diving on the reef and so on. They invited us (the 2 girls from BC and me) to go bar hopping with them, but we were all too whipped from the bus ride. We crashed early to make an early start for the trip to the beach weather permitting.

After Byron Bay we passed through some cheesy touristy developments along the Gold Coast, including Surfer’s Paradise, which is the most wretchedly tacky of them all. But I admit there is a certain odd attraction to its unabashedly kitschy nature. A really nutty lady on the bus got my attention when she began to rant about the Y2K “catastrophe,” nuclear weapons, cyclones, the terminal danger of Australians placing their faith in American military security guarantees, etc. Her bigoted attitude towards the Indonesians might be understandable in light of the general East Timor situation, but it wasn’t charming.

Around 12:30 the bus pulled into the Brisbane transit center, and from there the hostel courtesy shuttle picked me up. I met a Kiwi (which is, for those who don’t know, a citizen of New Zealand) and two Canadian girls, but I was in no mood to socialize; with no shower in 28 hours, I felt and looked like something washed up from a flooded graveyard. But after a shower I was a new man. This hostel is nicer, and cheaper, than they one I stayed at in Sydney. Each dorm has its own shower — luxury! The hostel also has its own hottub, and also a tennis court, albeit one so small I first thought it was a racquetball court.

I hiked a few kilometers to the Botanic Gardens in downtown Brisbane. It was pleasant if understated. In fact, Brisbane is modest compared to brash Sydney. In its own way, though, it’s much closer to the Australian core. Some Australians will admit to liking Brisbane, but for most, Sydney is “too congested” and “not a good place to live.”

An example of Brisbane art: a ceramic mosaic.

Afterwards I hopped on a CityCat, which is the catamaran ferry that was recommended to explore the city. Not long after I boarded it began to rain. I dreaded the rainy walk back to the hostel, but luck was with me; the rain broke minutes before I had to get off. The tour was unremarkable and slightly disappointing. I was expecting something more like the Sydney Harbor cruise I suppose. Some of the passengers were school children, wearing their uniforms. That British custom never really took in the US but is a common sight here.

So in the twilight I walked back to the hostel. I witnessed a parade competition between the New Zealanders and the Samoans. The Samoan half of it walk right by me, singing and beating drums and carrying a papier-mache bull. Kind of odd. Then, as I walked across a park as a shortcut, I saw an Aboriginal family hiding behind a park shelter. The head of the family approached me and asked for money. This, unfortunately, is my first exposure to Aborigines. I failed to give him anything, for truly, his people have been so completely demolished by the wrecking ball of history — by guns, germs, and steel. The issue was decided long before I was born. His people will have to somehow assimilate or die; spare change won’t help. (Happily, I discovered later that my pessimism was unwarranted. But I still believe spare change won’t help.)