Shiny happy people

Wednesday, 29/08/2012 - 75 A.D. 

Tim and I had just put our heads down to test if the Sleep Fairies wanted to visit us when instead a plane load of Japanese came to visit the luggage conveyor belt we were lying beside. We couldn’t have interruptions of this kind all night, but all of the other seats were taken by fellow airport sleepers. Fortunately I checked the schedule for domestic arrivals and there weren’t any more coming until 07:15 next morning.

Things did quieten down in the terminal once the Japanese went on their merry way, the only sounds being the rent-a-car people counting up their loose change before heading off after another hard day’s work. Then it was just us and the cleaner…and her loud, noisy, deafening sweepy truck that she cleans the floors with. I swear she came and did proportionally more manoeuvres beside me. She had that thing going for quite a while, switching it on for a bit, then off again, keeping us guessing. Didn’t much matter because my mind was processing far too many things and I wondered how long it takes homeless people to drop off when they’re kipping on a park bench.

We “got up” at around 06:00, the terminal still a long way off from coming to life. Outside there was a pleasant sunrise and it was easy to smell the moisture of the tropical climate in the air. Although it was never going to be a joy waking up in an airport terminal, it’s far superior to doing it in a bus station! I managed to knock back half of my squashed pizza sub from the night before, simply to get some fuel in the tank.

At around 7-ish along came a Qantas man to sit behind the luggage claim desk. I duly went and told him that I was missing an iPod and he said that one had been handed in yesterday. This got me rather excited, but when I telephoned the office at Sydney they said it was definitely not my iPod because it had the number 46 scrawled across the back (in future I may adopt a similar policy of scrawling things on the back, such as my name, address, phone number, email, and size of reward offered for iPod’s safe return). This was a bit of a let down after getting my hopes up, but all I could do was wait and see if anything got handed in over the next few days.

We couldn’t check-in to our hostel until midday, but we were sick of the airport, so we got a taxi into the town centre, the not-altogether-with-it driver poo-pooing Tim’s suggestion of where the hostel was located, even though he was reading from a copy of google maps. Our saviour was, of course, close at hand – Macdonalds in this case, not Starbucks, and I had a coffee while Tim had two buns with some grease in the middle that filled him up until tea time. We took it in turns for one of us to stay with the bags and the other to go a-wandering and see some initial sights. Although it was early in the morning, we could tell that it was going to be a scorcher by the middle of the afternoon, and we weren’t wrong. Hello again to shorts, shades and sunglasses!

Reef Backpackers Hostel is the type of place you go to when you’re young, dumb and full of enthusiasm. What I’m trying to say is that it’s a noisy, boisterous persons’ hang-out, but without the free beer policy that San Francisco had. It’s also one of the shabbiest places we’ve stayed in, which is a shame because if they did it up a bit there’d be a nice tropical beach-style ambience. There is music coming from all sides at every time of day – if it’s not someone butchering the chords to Eye of the tiger on an acoustic guitar in the dormitories then it’s a mix of songs about California blaring out from the back garden. But I don’t mind that…during the daylight hours! I’m still a bit cream-crackered from the night on the airport seats and could do with a reasonably early one tonight. Still, if I think this place is bad, I should check out “Woodduck” next door – it’s a hostel that’s like a 24 hour pool party for all the posers of this part of the world. I’m just jealous because I’m still the palest man in Christendom and not suitable for sitting on sun loungers.

[A window, lacking.]

First thing on the agenda for Timbo and I (once I’d stocked up with some provisions from Woolworths – remember it?) was to try and bleach the blue colours off our white clothes. The bathroom next to us was in such a state that we had absolutely no reservations about performing the act in there, asopposed to one of the more industrial sinks by the “laundry wall” downstairs (it’s not good enough to get its own room in this place…mind you, there’s no need for any driers in this climate). After using the old 1-part-bleach-to-5-parts-water method, and soaking for 30 minutes, the T-shirt appeared okay at first glance. The shirt, well, it may have been done for. We’re soaking them both in hot water right now and awaiting a further assessment.

I should point out that our bedroom (one double bed, no TV) is between a bathroom and a 4 bunk male dormitory. In addition, it opens directly onto the TV lounge! Now, back in the camper van I’d curbed my drinking quite a lot, but there was no way I was going to bed without having a tipple tonight! I’d been warned by many people that Australia was very expensive for alcohol – New Zealand was bad enough – and yes, this was indeed the case, at least for beer. Wine, on the other hand, isn’t so bad, probably because they produce so much of it here. We bought a bottle of sparkling wine each…not sure why…maybe we’re celebrating being in a new country. Now we just need to find some vessels to drink the stuff from or we’re really in backpackers’ territory and drinking straight from the bottle! 

["Wot no champagne flutes?"]