Daniel Clay: The Australia Diaries, part two

It’s a well known fact among back-packers that people who’ve never been back-packing don’t understand what hard work back-packing is, and how hard it is getting everything organised. Unlike politicians, who sit around doing nothing all day because they’re useless and lazy, back-packers sit around doing nothing all day because they’re depressed and exhausted. Putting it all into context, you try booking the equivalent of a fortnight’s foreign holiday once a week without feeling stressed or depressed or wanting a divorce from your wife (who’s sitting right there beside you, disagreeing with every single suggestion you make, even though you’re only agreeing with what she said three minutes earlier). It’s not possible. Which is why back-packers have a higher suicide rate than accountants. At least accountants set out in the morning knowing it’s not going to be fun.

Our plan for Australia was a week in Sydney – including two nights staying with Alison’s uncle just outside – then a week driving up the Pacific Highway to Brisbane in a camper van, a couple of weeks in and around Brisbane followed by a flight to Cairns, then, three weeks later, a flight back to Brisbane for a connecting flight to Fiji.

The flights were all booked before we left the UK, but nothing else was, so we wasted our first afternoon in Sydney trying to hire a car and a camper-van. All the adverts we’d seen said car-hire prices could be as little as twenty dollars a day, so we’d budgeted accordingly. In reality, you have to book a car for at least a decade to get rates like that, and we only needed a car for two nights. Given the short length of the rental period, most places quoted us two hundred dollars a day. We ended up at No Birds Car Hire (honestly) and paid two hundred for a Corolla over three days. Then we went looking for a camper-van and started to realise it was going to cost us over a thousand dollars to do what we wanted to do, rather than the six hundred we’d budgeted. Then I had a nervous breakdown. Then we went for a drink.

I think we were in the Kings Cross area, which, at first glance, looks like a normal high street, but isn’t: One of the great things about Sydney is how varied it all is, and how easy everything is to find – in London, in some areas, it feels as if you can walk for miles without finding a decent bar, and, at midnight or one in the morning, you know there’s a good time to be had somewhere, it’s just impossible to find where it is. I don’t know if it’s because Sydney’s smaller, more modern, designed by people who weren’t born in 1712, or just whether we happened to be in the right district, but all the streets were packed with bars, hostels, sex-shops, restaurants, and dodgy looking Scandinavians intent on having a good time. It was as if the whole of London had morphed into Soho, and instead of struggling to find somewhere to start getting drunk in, we had problems choosing which bar to go into first.

Another great thing about Australia is the men’s urinals. Rather than the flooded quagmire of inch deep urine and cigarette butts that pass for floor-tiles in English, American, Canadian, and European bars, the Australians have a sort of cattle-grid system going on, so no matter how wet the pensioners and the drunk people get their own feet, the residue just goes straight through to the trough underneath. I think Australians have put more thought into this than the rest of the world because they all wear thongs on nights out (flip-flops to the rest of humanity) and have a terror of wet toes. Whatever, those cattle-grids are a definite improvement, which was a good job, really, because we spent our first night in Sydney staggering from one bar to another in an attempt to get drunk enough to forget about our budget. Then, once we were drunk enough to forget about our budget, we staggered back to our hostel for another row and some sleep.

Saturday. Our first full day. We kissed goodbye to our pensions and stumped up something like twelve-hundred dollars for a Britz camper-van we would pick up the following Saturday, and then, as I was still working on the first draft of Swap at that stage, I spent a few hours head-butting my laptop in the Starbucks by the harbour while Alison went window-shopping (and still bought three tops and a kettle (a kettle, I said. When we’re backpacking? Why?)). Then we hit the Opera House bar for the evening. While we were there, Alison doubled our mortgage on phone calls to her mum and sister telling them we were safe and gloating about the fact we were in a bar outside Sydney Opera House and they weren’t. They gloated back that their houses weren’t about to be repossessed, and ours was. I thought about texting my sister but I’d just discovered Coopers Light Ale and decided to devote the evening to that. Another great thing about Australia; when they sell ‘super-chilled’ lager, they have the temperature digitally displayed on the pump so you can see that it really is cold. In the UK, most times, even if the super-chilled lager is slightly cooler than room-temperature, they put it in the microwave before they give it to you. One thing they haven’t worked out down there, though, is glass sizes. It varies from bar to bar, so ordering a beer can be traumatic. A pot, for instance, is smaller than a half-pint (I ordered one by mistake and cried when the barman gave it to me); a midi is just bigger than a half-pint but still nowhere near big enough, and, occasionally, they also serve pint glasses as well. In the end, I stopped asking what measures they did and just started asking for their biggest, coldest glass of draught lager. If that turned out to be a pot, I ordered another half-dozen to keep me from thinking about how much money we were spending. And a half pint of white wine to keep Alison moderately agreeable as well.

Sunday morning was one of the highlights of our first stay in Sydney for me. Crunching hangover, had to be out of the hostel by ten, had to pick up the hire-car, had to get out to Ali’s uncle’s place in the suburbs by two in the afternoon (why does she tie us down to these things?), so we woke up early and decided to go for a run. I don’t think I’ll ever go for a jog again without thinking about what it was like to jog through the botanical gardens to Sydney Harbour; In England, when I go for a jog, I always feel as if the everyday folk are looking at me as if I’m a bit of a freak; does anyone else get the feeling passers-by think you’re a thief or a flasher when you’re out for a run? In Sydney, on a nice sunny bright Sunday morning, if you’re not jogging, you’re in the minority. We tried to finish up with a Rocky style sprint up the opera house steps, but age and alcohol consumption got the better of us. We did the first eight steps, collapsed for a quiet sob, then got a taxi back to our hostel. What with the four hour hike to the bathroom, we were getting a bit short on time.

And that was it. Our first few nights in Sydney were over. We got packed up and strapped our worldly possessions to our backs, which, for Alison, wasn’t as easy as it sounds. What with the hair-straighteners, the hair-dryers, the portable air-conditioning unit, the six pairs of high-heels, the ten pairs of flat-heels, the sandals, the espadrilles, the black boots, the tan boots, the trainers, the flip-flops, the wellingtons (in green with smiley sheep faces on them), the fluffy bunny slippers with the big ears, the three sets of carefully co-ordinated bikinis and military uniforms to go with each set of footwear, the cattle-prod to keep me away in the dead of the night, her rucksack was rather heavy, and she needed assistance to get it on: After she had re-packed it for the sixty-seventh time and announced she couldn’t understand why it was so heavy, I and five hostel staff levered it up onto the bed. She then sat down in front of it and got her arms through the straps. I and the five hostel staff then lifted her up to her feet. And then the complaining started. And continued. And got louder. So, a word of advice about back-packing. If you’re married, don’t. Or, if you really feel that you have to, go in different directions. We were definitely talking about divorce by the time we got to No Birds Car Hire and picked up our Corolla. And things were about to get worse. We were leaving Sydney. We were heading for Picton. We were going to stay with a real Australian family. And guess what? They could speak Welsh.