Daniel Clay: The Australia Diaries, part one

Daniel Clay, author of the critically acclaimed novel Broken, returned to the UK recently from extensive travels through Australia. Over the next couple of months Fifth Estate will be publishing his travelogue in several parts as The Australia Diaries. Keep tuned in as we follow Daniel’s account of his trek across Australia: from Sydney, to Morton Island, Fraser Island, Cairns, and Cape Tribulation, along with many other exotic destinations down under.

Australia’s great, isn’t it? Even without ever having been there, my wife and I have always known it should be where Europe is: Same language. Better climate. Better surf. How many fewer wars would there have been if Germany and France had been on the other side of the world, and Australia had been just on the other side of the channel? Definitely at least fifty-two.

In March of this year, being middle-aged and dispirited, we decided to spend the equivalent of an acrimonious divorce on a round-the-world trip. We didn’t have much of a clue where to head, we just knew it had to include Australia: My wife’s got an uncle who lives in Picton, just outside Sydney, who she’s not seen since she was three, and I’ve got relatives out there too (I have no idea where; I just know a few headed that way in the seventies on £10 assisted fares, never to be heard of again).

So, finally, at six a.m. on a cool Friday morning, via Singapore, a small Indonesian island called Langkawi, another small island called Hong Kong, and with a fifty/fifty chance our rucksacks were in the hold of the plane we were travelling on, we found ourselves looking out of the window and seeing the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House for the very first time: Sydney, the little old Chinese lady sitting next to me whispered. Sydney, I mumbled back. And that, me being English, was the only thing I could think to say to her during the entire eighty-six hour flight.

The first thing we realised when we touched down was that Oz isn’t quite the laid-back paradise Australians would have you believe. Even by British standards, airport security was ridiculous, and we spent two hours in a queue while customs officials interrogated the little old Chinese lady who’d been sitting quietly next to me, then waved us drunken Europeans through with a grin and a friendly G’day. The second thing that struck us was how organised things were. Rather than the cavalry charge that passes for a taxi-rank in most airports, there was an Alton Towers style barrier system going on, with a Fijian looking bloke wearing an all white suit, naval cap, white gloves — and, I think, a machine gun — waving people into various taxis. Once inside the cab, though, normal service was resumed: We have no idea if the driver was Australian or not, because all he did was grunt at us. He was definitely a fully paid up member of the union of taxi-drivers, though, because he didn’t know how to find where we were staying and got more and more annoyed with us because we didn’t know either. Some things are the same the world over. Sort of reassuring to know.

Not only was this our first time Down Under, it was our first time in hostels. Having stayed in quite a few now, we’d class this first one — Harbour City Backpackers, in the brilliantly named district of Woolloomooloo — as being in the upper end of the hostel-market. Because we hadn’t, our first impressions were that it was a dive: Waiting in line with ten or so other creased and crumpled sweaty people with their worldly possessions strapped to their backs was a bit of a come-down after three weeks in four-star hotels: When we were told our room wouldn’t be ready for another few days we stashed out stuff in the TV room with the obligatory teenage girl asleep on the floor in the corner and hit the city. We hadn’t slept for something like thirty hours by this time and were dangerously close to divorcing as we argued over which way we should head, but all that was forgotten once we stumbled upon the harbour: With the bridge and the opera house and a couple of liners in the port, blue sky, sparkling water, the obligatory Irish bloke dressed as an Aboriginee playing a didgeridoo, it has to be one of the coolest places on earth. We sat outside one of the many quayside restaurants and tried to take it all in: I tried to take it all in with a nice cold lager but, as it was only eight in the morning, Alison gave me that look and ordered me a latte instead.

Knowing we only had six weeks to do the entire east coast of Australia, we got sightseeing straight away. First things first, a harbour cruise. We joined a few hundred Chinese people with scary looking cameras on a catamaran and set off for a two hour cruise. It’s amazing how huge the harbour is, and how, once you’re away from the bridge and the opera house, it feels much more like a coast-line than a natural bay. It’s also amazing how loud the whirr of a few hundred digital cameras can be, and how high Chinese people can jump while doing a V for victory sign with both their hands. Every time either of us looked mildly awake we would be besieged by twenty-five thousand of them wanting us to take their pictures. Again. We had photo-fatigue by the time we got off and headed back to the hostel for a proper row and some sleep.

Our bags were still there, as was the sleeping girl, and our room was ready: After living together for almost twenty years, we’d decided to spare the dorm-dwellers our love-making rituals and splashed out on a private room. If you’re unlucky enough to be married and are thinking of doing the same, I wouldn’t bother. Hostels are only cheap if you’re in a dorm, and, as we discovered later, we could have had an apartment for the week we were in Sydney for much the same we paid out in hostels: At between sixty and ninety dollars for the two of us to have a room with a shared bathroom for one night, the hostel life isn’t always as cheap as it sounds. It’s always an experience, though, and quite often more entertaining than staying in a hotel: The hostel we were in was in an old brick colonial style building that really reminded me of my old primary school. Built in 1990, it’s one of the oldest buildings in Sydney. It felt a bit spit and sawdust but was really close to the botanical gardens and the harbour. Our bathroom was just a bit further away, about four hours down the corridor. I set off on the adventure of having a shower and grabbed the first empty cubicle I found.

The first thing I noticed was that someone had glued a razor-blade to the floor-tiles beneath the shower-head. I was so busy looking at that I didn’t realise someone had also stolen the shower-head. I turned the water on and nearly got decapitated by a high-powered jet of water angled at right where my head would have been if I hadn’t been staring at the razor-blade and wondering, Who put that there? Why? The next cubicle along was alright though, and my first shower Down Under ultimately turned out okay, although I did wonder what headlines it might have generated if I had been decapitated: Debut author loses head and cuts feet in kinky hostel sex game. Great career move, says agent. Wife devastated at early return home.

I set off on the four hour trek back to our room and discovered Alison still hadn’t stopped moaning about the lack of air-conditioning, en-suite, mini-bar, plug-sockets for the three types of hair-straighteners she had in her back-pack, and all the other major disappointments in her life that had somehow been caused by marrying me. I put head-phones on while we got ready to go out for the rest of our first day in Sydney and reflected on how strange life was, really: We were further away from England than we’d ever been, and it was just like being at home.

Daniel Clay is the author of Broken – an utterly original, totally compelling debut novel, written in a fresh and distinctively British voice. Called ‘bold, prescient, engaging, and oddly touching’ by the Guardian, Broken was published to critical acclaim. The Harper Perennial paperback edition appeared earlier this year.