Dispatch, Week Two - 14.07.2014 - 21.07.2014

DATELINE - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - 21.07.2014

“I need to figure out a way to sleep on trains or swear to God, I’m gonna kill myself,” I said aloud, shifting in my seat from one side to the other for the millionth time, and trying to find a resting place for my feet.

The Indian Pacific Train

Nobody on that car of the Indian Pacific train going from Sydney to Adelaide that Thursday morning heard me. It was 2am and most everybody else in the car was sleeping, and snoring, and what’s more, at 45 years old I was the youngest person on the train by at least twenty years. Apparently the primary clientele of the Australian rail system is pensioners who haven’t decided to trust airplanes quite yet.

I thought I had a terrific plan. I’d purchase a two-month rail pass that would allow me to travel from Sydney to Adelaide to Melbourne, back to Adelaide, to Perth, back to Adelaide, up to Darwin. Sure, Australia is actually quite larger than the United States in terms of surface area, and sure, there were legs of the trip that would take over two days to complete, but I’d read and I’d write and I’d have time to think. I'd use my time wisely.

Well, choosing to try to read Infinite Jest and Ulysses when you’re exhausted simply doesn’t play (and I apologize to the spirits of Messrs. Wallace and Joyce for my arrogance on that score). Writing when you’re sleep deprived…well, you’ve probably read the results of that in past posts. Finally, it turns out that left on my own to think…yikes. Apparently I swear to God all sorts of things.

The week had started off tremendously. Still in Sydney, on Sunday night I was invited to a dinner party my host was having. It was full of lively characters who I got to listen talk and debate and argue and joke about Australian politics and entertainment, stuff I knew nothing about so I could just listen and enjoy. Later, I was asked about my plans for the rest of my Sydney visit. As I’m discovering on this trip, whenever you visit anywhere, people who live there demand to know your itinerary because they want to advise you as to where to go, and usually it’s a wise move to not plan anything and just take a local's counsel on the matter. So when a dinner guest heard I had two more days in Sydney, he insisted I go to Watsons Bay, which is on the coast of the city, looking east over the Pacific (which amused me in and of itself). Everyone agreed that Watsons Bay was lovely and turned back to discussing some Australian businessman who was currently being tried for murder.

Ignoring the conversation, David grabbed a sheet of paper, and began to draw furiously, finally giving me a fine map of Sydney proper which included a detailed section of Watsons Bay. It included drawings of both the ferry I would take to Circular Quay, and the ferry that would take me from Circular Quay to Watsons Bay, complete with directional arrows, and several lighthouses that I was to hit while I was there in order to get the full experience. I’ll check, but I believe he drew some birds flying over the harbor as accent.

He handed me the map, which I will cherish forever, and pointed out the way to proceed. “First, you can have lunch at Doyle’s. Use their takeout, the actual restaurant is quite expensive. Then, you’ll go up to the Gap,” he said, at which point the conversation turned from murder to suicide, discussing how the Gap is so picturesque that it’s often a site for people ending their lives, yes, yes, similar to the Golden Gate Bridge, what a shame that was, how the government was working to eliminate the temptation, so on and so forth.

David seemed impatient with the group. “Yes, yes, all right,” he said, pointing back to the map. “Well, go to the Gap, and if you decide to commit suicide, commit suicide. Once you’ve recovered, go on to Southpoint, down here,” he indicated, “where there are some beautiful lighthouses, and then…”

Watsons Bay was as advertised. Simply gorgeous and relaxing, both a nice complement and contrast to the city of Sydney itself, which is bustling while being slower-paced than an American city, to me anyway. It’s been explained to me that since Australia isn’t that old, the historical buildings aren’t so old that they don’t still have value, so rather than just knocking them down, they revitalize them. So you see trendy bars and shops in cobblestone buildings, and I’m guessing there’s a law that says no pub that ever opened on a corner can be razed, no matter how old. The lack of oppressive absolute modernity everywhere you look seems to slow things down. I enjoyed myself immensely, met a number of wonderful people, and was concerned that the first place I visited would prove to be the highlight of the entire journey. But I was happy.

The Gap at Watsons Bay

And then I got on a bloody train.

If getting the rail pass was my first mistake, deciding not to book a room in Adelaide after being on a train for almost a full day, was my second, and much, much larger one. Figuring I’d save some cash, and that I had to be up for my connection at 7am anyway, I’d just hang in a bar until closing and then crash in the train station.

No. The Adelaide train station is content not to be Grand Central Station, and closes at 9pm or so. Thus, I had no place to go between midnight and 7am. I wound up bouncing back and forth between a McDonald’s and a Hungry Jack’s (Burger King), feeling guilty that I wasn’t buying anything and not wanting to overstay my welcome at either place. By the time I got on the train to Melbourne, for eleven more hours, and then a bus for another hour before finally arriving in the city, I had my first severe thoughts of, “Just what the Hell have I gotten into here?” It’s was truly a demoralizing day, and the thought of “39 more weeks of this?” was truly trying my spirits, and not the best way to think. If you had offered me a ticket home, I would’ve taken it except, uh, I don’t have a home at present, which wasn’t very pleasant to realize either. If you had offered me a noose, I might’ve taken that as well. Friday was a long, ugly day.

Eventually, however, I got to Melbourne, met my first host there, had a glass of wine, and was able to both vent and decompress a bit before she took mercy on me and allowed to crash to sleep after a half-hour. Melbourne has been lovely. Saturday night, I went out with a friend of a friend, to grab in order: coffee (Australia and in particular Melbourne are nuts for their coffee) on Degraves St., a veal parma near Flinders, and a couple of drinks in a couple of bars that were hip and happy and a nice balm for my improving attitude. Sunday, I hit the Royal Gallery of Victoria (“Museum Guards of the World” installation TBA), and wandered the city, through the Botanical Gardens, through Federation Square where they built a courtyard and museums on land that wasn’t leveled off to a truly weird, wonderful effect, through Chinatown, and down Flinders St..

Federation Square, Melbourne

Melbourne and Sydney have a moderately fierce rivalry that is not altogether a joke. Whenever I told someone in Sydney I was going to Melbourne, and whenever I told someone in Melbourne I had just come from Sydney, there would be a mildly acerbic comment about the opposing town, and I would wait for the smile to indicate it was all in good fun, but that never really came. Melbourne considers itself to be the artistic center and feels Sydney is fine “because the Opera House is great even if everyone's seen it in a million pictures already, and if you want to go see monuments and such.” Sydney seems to not really consider Melbourne, so perhaps the rivalry is similar to, say, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But Sydney should consider Melbourne. Melbourne is dynamic, creative, and I’ve enjoyed seeing that energy.

Today, however, I’ve relaxed and had a lovely walk in a dog park at Williamstown, a little ways from downtown. I woke up and decided, “You know what? I don’t have to go full speed every moment. I don’t have to maximize every second. That’s how you wind up in a Hungry Jack’s alone at four in the morning watching Sky News cover the Malaysian Air tragedy on a grimy television mounted over the bathroom door and finding it so surreal you can barely function enough to walk back to McDonald's to wait over there.”

And you know what? Williamstown was pretty damn picturesque and I got a bunch of great photos. It was lovely. The last few days have made me realize that throughout this, I’m a)going to have bad days and b)there will be good days after those bad ones and c)it was up to me to realize that and ride the bad ones out.

Williamstown

So we’ll work on that. “…And if you decide to commit suicide, commit suicide. Once you’ve recovered, go on to…”

Now if I can only figure out how to sleep on a train…

P.S. I have booked a room to stay in the next time I lay over in Adelaide.