Wednesday, 19/09/2012 - 96 A.D.
My time in Sydney was coming to an end…at 12.30 pm today, to be precise, as we left the YWCA and headed to the Greyhound pick up point. After dumping our gear in the queue, I went to attend to some business, and while I was in the lavatory, Tim was baptised at the bus stop. It was a little like a flashback to Vegas, I’m not sure if they were missionaries or just crazies on the loose, but Tim only got away from his new urban reverend by claiming his bus was approaching so that the guy took his hand off his forehead. Whatever it was he doing, we need all the help we can get! This guy below wasn’t so lucky, but more about him later.
We boarded the bus to Canberra with no problems, and no crowds, as we’ve come to expect from Greyhound Australia. Canberra…what do we actually know about it? Not a great deal. It was chosen as a neutral site for the capital of the country because Sydney and Melbourne couldn’t decide which of them it should be. The surrounding area is technically a state and is known as Australian Capital Territory, but it’s not very big in comparison to the other states, even Victoria. And I’ve been told you can legally grow marijunana there…surely that can’t be true?
The bus journey was only three and a half hours long – like seconds passing to us after our 14, 15, 16 hour behemoths of the past. On the way I saw a dead kangaroo at the side of the road…well I suppose you have to see one at some point. And on the approach to the bus terminal I saw plenty of cockatoos kicking about in the grass – free, rather than in cages as we’d seen in New Zealand, but we drove past too quickly for me to get a picture. And I think Tim was dozing so he took no snaps either.
Upon alighting we got talking to Simon from Switzerland, who is the guy being baptised in the photo above. Apparently the preacher promised to cure him of smoking, which is something he’s aiming for, but because his English wasn’t so great he ended up getting the full baptism package. Simon is not like the Grayboys in that he doesn’t book his accommodation in advance, just turns up like the old school backpackers and asks if there is a room available. This is why he ended up walking with us to the local YHA where we’d booked a room and he hadn’t. He was doing a 3 month tour around bits of the world, claiming that 3 months was enough for him and after that he would want to go home to his own bed and a clean bathroom. We hardened our sunken hearts as we told him that we’d just done three months and had another three to go.
As mentioned in an earlier blog post (if you bother to read them all – I wouldn’t!), Canberra was proving hard to find accommodation for, so we’d had to book into a four bedroom dorm – the first time in Australia. It was also a mixed dorm…would we get two cute young honeys who saunter in sensual motions, or two strapping blokes with legs like tree trunks? We’d have to wait and see. Unfortunately Simon was turned away because the YHA was full due to there being some sort of flower festival on. Yes, you read that right – Canberra’s equivalent of the Southport Flower Show was taking place and it was a bloody good job we’d booked in advance. And, as we checked in, the girls behind reception confirmed that marijuana is indeed decriminalised here, but only for personal consumption. Seems strange to do such a thing in an area where all the politicians hang out! I also got told off by the girls for stating that I sometimes leave the tap running when I clean my teeth – apparently this is a big no-no in Australia, and there are posters all over the walls saying how it is a really dry country and every drop needs to be preserved. Yawn! Maybe we should send them some litres from our English reservoirs and get a bit more spending power over here, i.e. not having to buy $7.80 pints of beer, but more about that later.
We went up to our room on the second floor and prepared to say in our most polite English accents, “Oh hello there, I am James, and he’s Tim,” but there weren’t no one there in the room, although the other two bunks were occupied. So were they girls or boys? Hmmm, upon examining the evidence to hand, it was difficult to tell – bra’s slung idlly across the rucksack are usually a tell-tale sign – but in this case we had only a pair of small orange trainers to go on. Oh and some unidentifiable lotion that looked quite girly, rather than…err….boyly. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no great desire to share a room with two girls, but it’s something we haven’t done yet, and this trip is in many ways about breaking new boundaries. Anyway, they weren’t around so, after fitting the sheets to my top bunk, I went to have a shower.
At this point instant karma caught up with me. When you’re on the road you occasionally get the urge to do something naughty. The Sydney YWCA showers had been fully equipped with shower gel and shampoo which were topped-up daily by the maids. They probably weren’t the best products available on the market, but they did for me. I was running a bit low on both and had two small empty plastic bottles in my wash kit, so I thought I’d steal a bit and get the bottles full for the next leg of the journey. It took a while, but I’m a patient man, especially when there’s 30 minutes before check-out time and I’m already packed up. So, upon arriving in the Canberra YHA I went to have a shower and use the stolen shower gel. I must have been in there for about a minute before my rogue elbow knocked the plastic bottle to the floor and the lid shattered, spilling the contents down the plughole. You, dear readers, may perceive this as a simple accident, but I perceive it as Fate sending me a message – “Don’t steal nothing, coz I can easily take it away from you just like that!” Sorry, Fate, won’t do it again.
While I’d been showering, our room companions had not returned, but Tim had been out on a scouting mission and noticed that the bar down beneath the hostel was doing a pizza and a pint (not a schooner) for ten dollars if you showed your YHA pass. So we hit it. While chomping on my ham & pineapple, I noticed that there was some kind of trivia night taking place from7.30 onwards - a trivia quiz night! Great – I’d wanted to do one in Sunday, but was denied - now we could sign up and have a go! And so we did, not caring if there was a strong Aussie bias to the questions.
We got our quiz papers and made ready…here’s a selection of what we got…
Q. Who had a hit in the 1970s with Rock on?
Q. If Polly put the kettle on, who took it off?
Q. Name Madonna’s two children and the fathers of those children?
Q. In popular tradition, how do you kill a werewolf?
Q. What did the founders of the Mattel corporation call their children?
Q. Which is the most northerly city out of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Stockholm?
Q. Who originally had a hit with Shake, rattle and roll?
Q. What was the nickname of the British 7th armoured division in World War II?
Q. In Star Wars, where was Chewbacca born and which planet was he from?
Q. Which heavy metal band’s drummer only has one arm?
Q. What does AT & T stand for?
Pretty standard, eh? Right – until you hear the Aussie-based questions, like Which river in Tasmania made the news in the 1980s because blah-blah-blah? And Which five Australian rugby teams have all won the cup in the 1990s? Plus there were only two of us in the team, so we didn’t have the big group dynamic that I’m used to back in the Guest House pub in Southport. Anyway, come halftime and the first stage of marking the answers we were pleased to get our paper back and not be in last place…more like lower mid-table…like Fulham in the premier league. At this time we also had to suffer the setback of buying a couple of pints for $7.80 each. Come on! It was a decent-ish place, the type of venue you have a drink in after work, but $7.80? Well, that was it for us, no more plans to get another one in later. How do people not from Australia go for pub crawls in this country?
And then magic struck. The quiz master (who in a strange way looked just like he could have been a quiz master in any English pub) brought in his wild card, or in his lingo, his “spot question”. Basically he asks a question while standing at the bar and the first person to get to him with the correct answer written down wins a jug of beer. And his question was this:
Q. In what year did the great plague of London take place?
Well it’s GCSE history, isn’t it? I frantically scribbled down 1665, passed the paper to Tim and he ran up to the quizmaster and shoved it under his nose. “Spot on!” the quizmaster declared, also adding that it was the first answer he’d been presented with (that boy can sprint when he needs to!) And so we got our jug and didn’t have to deal with anymore extortionate Aussie bar prices. And if you’re reading this, Mr. Handley from Ainsdale High, and I doubt that you are, I say thank you nonetheless!
An aside – they do a bit in the middle where everyone in the pub has to stand up and put their hands on their heads or on their behind. Quiz master tosses a coin and if it’s heads then everyone with hands on their behind sit down (and vice versa) and this keeps going until there is only one person standing. Simple, but effective, though I doubt it would work in the Guest House – I’m envisioning something akin to a rugby scrum as people rush the bar!
The quiz went into its second half and we dropped from lower mid-table to something like third from bottom. But we weren’t bothered, what with being foreigners and the quizmaster even popped over for a chat, commenting on how he’d visited York and had family in Gravesend, Kent and really should visit them again sometime. And then he read out his second spot question for the night:
Q. What is the most common name for a pub in the UK?
Red Lion! Again I wrote it, Tim delivered it, and that jug was heading our way. The quiz master was in hysterics, laughing into the microphone, “Once again it’s our British visitors who have got the right answer!” Oooh and that jug of beer tasted so sweet because of it! We got nowhere in the end for the quiz itself, but had a great night, much merrier than we thought.
Upon returning to the YHA (well past the 10 pm cut-off for quiet time) there was still no one in our room. I didn’t know this at first, given that I stumbled in and fumbled around with the light switch for a long time trying to turn it on, worrying that I sounded like some kind of sinister night prowler. However, there was a pair of jeans discarded on the desk, so someone must have been here at some point….then left. It was getting late, and Tim had gone straight to the toilets and seen a naked Phillipino guy standing in front of the sink and washing his Y-fronts. Just when you think everything’s gone normal again, it reverts to crazy.
And what of our mystery roommates? Find out next time…
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