Australian aside

So it's been a while since I've posted, and if any members of the broad readership have been wondering why, it's because I'm not yet in Mitteleuropa and don't have anything interesting to report. That's not to say that I couldn't have recounted my trip to REI to purchase various necessities (among them "travel underwear" that you can--apparently--wash nightly and wear every day; this may rate future comment, as yet it's merely a great experiment), but I think the discerning readers of this blog have come to expect a higher standard. Daily trivia no, big events and ideas yes.

But I don't want you all to starve for lack of DF blogtastic rumination, so I've decided to kill two birds with one stone and print here a piece I wrote for a collection of essays by former Let's Go writers. The collection was never actually published, so this way I get to fill blogspace and also get this bit into print. This is the first (actually, only) version I sent to the woman who was in charge of the project, and so it lacks much in the way of editing. I also had a hell of a time finding a good way to end, and this conclusion strikes me as a little too treacly/sentimental for my tastes but what the hell. Enough apologia, here is:

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I doubt any other Let’s Go researcher arrived in their destination with more, or less, experience than I brought to Melbourne, Australia, in the summer of 1998. I had worked for Let’s Go before then in almost every possible capacity—associate editor, managing editor, map guide editor, and (to alleviate post-college-graduation unemployment) receptionist—yet during that whole time never actually traveled to a foreign country on the company’s dime. In fact, despite spending several years training, advising, consoling, and holding myself out as a travel guru to tens of researchers, my international travel resume was embarrassingly meager. It consisted two trips to Vancouver (which seemed exactly like America but with different currency) and one to Cancun (which seemed exactly like America but with different currency and more people yelling “Spring break”). Spending summers in Cambridge editing the work of various globe-trotting researchers was a far better job than any history major with neither marketable skills nor discernible ambition had reason to expect, but constantly hearing about my researchers’ exploits abroad left me with a terminal case of wanderlust. Years after graduating from college, I decided to return for graduate school and realized I was once again eligible to work at Let’s Go. I immediately reneged on the various other commitments I had – including a contract to write part of a New England guide for different travel series –and hopped a plane to Australia.

My work as an editor had left me without the commonly-held illusion among first-time Let’s Go-ers that working as a researcher-writer would be the equivalent of a paid vacation, but it was not until a few days on the road that I realized how truly hard the job was going to be. My first several days passed at the psychotically frenetic pace that, I was beginning to realize, represented the minimum necessary effort to execute my itinerary well. (Which is not to say that all researchers do the job well, or even at all—some tire and end up doing only the half-assed effort sufficient to avoid a punitive pay cut (known as “getting docked”), while some find themselves overwhelmed and overtired and just quit (known as “bagging”)). Because the writer covering my beat for the previous, first edition of my section of the guide had largely bagged, the guide made a scandalously brief mention of Melbourne, Australia’s second great metropolis, and my editors had arranged for me to spend half of my six-week itinerary rehabilitating the coverage of the city. That left me about three weeks to cover the mountains, desert, river- and oceanside regions of the state of Victoria, with detours west through the wine country of South Australia and north into the old mining outpost of Broken Hill in New South Wales. And I had to navigate it all while driving on the wrong side of the road (a feat that seemed easy at first, when I was concentrating, but proved harder when I stopped paying attention—I nearly caused a grisly multi-car pileup in Mildura when I turned left into the wrong lane and straight into oncoming traffic, which scattered as I senselessly shouted “I’m an American” as loudly as possible).

On the fourth day of my itinerary, I drove my suspiciously inexpensive rental car into Ararat, a tiny town south of Victoria’s Grampian mountains (the rental car included neither a functional gas nor temperature gauge, and would eventually break down and leave me stranded a few weeks later at the foot of another mountain range). By that time, my primary impression of Australia was that I was very, very tired. In addition to constantly battling jet lag, I was beginning to feel like the victim of a conspiracy to deprive me of anything approaching a decent night’s sleep. On my first night in Australia, I snuck into a youth hostel that was closed for the season, only to find that their heating was closed for the winter as well, and woke at fifteen-minute intervals throughout the night to don another article of clothing as protection against the frigid Victoria winter. I spent the next two nights in rooms above pubs, generously offered by the pubs’ owners, who failed to mention that in both cases their pub was also hosting the town’s only disco that night, which meant that when I could sleep my dreams were punctuated by remorselessly upbeat Spice Girl anthems.

If I had learned anything about Australia thus far, it was that staying in pubs, while cheap, simply would not allow me to get the sleep I really really wanted. In Ararat, the sleep-deprivation conspiracy took a clever turn: it turned out that despite its innocuous-sounding name, the Ararat Hotel not only provided the town’s only accommodation, but also housed its most popular pub. I sighed, booked a room, and left to research the town. It didn’t take long. Ararat merited space on my itinerary primarily to determine if it would make a good base camp for trips to the nearby Grampians; the town’s one claim to fame, such as it is, is “J-ward,” until the early 1990s Victoria’s repository for the criminally insane. Since decommissioned, J-ward now hosts tours that titillate families and schoolchildren with tales of its more infamous inmates. I returned to the hotel-pub and finished writing up my copy, which took me only until late afternoon, which afforded me, I thought, the perfect opportunity to get a quick dinner and an early night of sweet, sweet slumber. I was so very wrong.

What I hadn’t counted on was that the hotel’s front exit took me through its pub, and that while it was Sunday, it was also the Queen’s Birthday, a holiday still celebrated with relish in Australia, if only because it affords one extra weekend day on which to get loaded. The pub was packed with every young or youngish person in Ararat (not more than twenty-five in total), and there was no way they were going to let something as novel as a visitor walk inconspicuously through their number. I tried, making a beeline for the door, but didn’t get very far. “Oi!” numerous Aussie voices called in unison. “Come have a shout with us.” It was more command than invitation.

The “shout” they were referring to is a drinking ritual, endemic to Oz, that serves the dual purpose of enabling mutual generosity among friends and getting everyone really, really drunk. The idea is that one person proffers a “shout” for a group, meaning that he buys them all a drink, usually a beer. The trick is that each member of the group is then obliged to buy a round for the whole group as well. That means that, for example, a shout involving eight folks means consuming eight drinks, with each round drunk off in quick succession (the only saving grace is that each drink is served in a small glass, or “pot,” that is only half the size of a pint at most). My first shout—six or so pots—ended with a quickness, and I assumed that they were just getting a fast start on the night. “When did you guys get here?” I ventured. “Pub opened at eleven,” they explained. It was six-thirty in the evening. I was in way over my head.

My accent quickly gave away that I was from the States, which generated two responses: sincere interest in the oddity of an American in their midst, and utter astonishment that any traveler would want to come to Ararat. When I explained that I was a travel writer, the response was universal: “Why the hell would you want to come here? This place is a shithole!” Eventually, I was corralled by two well-wishers, each of whom introduced me to one of two essential aspects of Victorian culture. The first had a shiny bald head that led me to compare him to the lead singer of the old Aussie band Midnight Oil, and he gave me a primer on the local orthodoxy of beer. I made the mistake of volunteering that I knew an Australian beer, Foster’s. Midnight Oil made a face that for a moment convinced me he was going to projectile vomit. “Oh Christ mate,” he shouted, “Everyone knows Foster’s is piss.” Some people overheard this part of the conversation and nodded in solemn agreement. There were three, he explained, and only three beers to drink: Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught, and Melbourne Bitter, all of which were known by their initials. Midnight Oil and his crew were CD aficionados; they could tolerate VB if no CD was available (I got the impression that MB was the RC Cola of Victoria beers). Midnight Oil stressed that Victorian beer was indisputably superior to all others (and it was, to be fair, pretty excellent to my taste), but that the rest of the country was not enlightened enough to share this opinion. Just a few hundred miles to the north, in New South Wales, XXXX (“Four-ex”) was the beer of choice.

He shook his head ruefully, at which point Midnight Oil’s mate demanded my attention, a curly-haired fellow wearing the jersey of his favorite Aussie-Rules Football team, the St. Kilda Saints. He took it upon himself to school me in the basics of Aussie-rules, in which, I was told (as I was countless times thereafter), the players wore no helmets and pads like in fey, girlified American football. St Kilda’s summary of the sport’s rules actually did enlighten me, as I appreciated later when I saw games of footy at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Most important, he stressed, there was one, and only one team to support: St Kilda. He broke into his team’s fight song—“When the Saints Go Marching In”—and when I joined in for several choruses, St. Kilda regarded me with the satisfaction of the successful proselytizer. For the rest of the evening, he would accost me and demand that I tell everyone who my team was; I’d holler back “The Saints!” with no clue why this caused everyone but St K himself to snicker; as I later learned, the St. Kilda Saints are the Cincinnatti Bengals of the Aussie Football League.

The night wore on and it appeared, after nine or so hours at the pub, that the crew was growing tired of their surroundings. They began casting about for an activity. St. Kilda mentioned offhandedly that he and Midnight Oil may well get into a fight later on; no bad blood, he assured me, it was just something to do. Someone else came up with a better idea: we’d all ride out to the countryside in a ute (sports-utility vehicle) and run over kangaroos. I voiced an objection to killing harmless kangaroos for sport, but they had a battery of well-practiced defenses. ‘Roos were overpopulated in the nearby countryside, so they were doing everyone a favor by reducing the surplusage. Plus, running them down in a ute was great sport (as, they insisted, I would soon see), and the animals were just big rodents anyway. “Come on,” they urged diplomatically, “There must be some kind of rodent in the States everyone thinks is just a nuisance.” Seeking common ground, I ventured, “sure there are—squirrels.” A fully non-ironic silence ensued, and the group regarded me with horror. “You cold-blooded bastard,” Midnight Oil muttered, then locked me in a crushing embrace. “Oi,” he pointed at me and shouted at a compatriot across the pub, “here’s a man who hates squirrels!” Midnight Oil’s friend elbowed his way across the pub and shook my hand to congratulate me for my apparent bloodthirstiness. “Bloody brilliant!” he exclaimed, then pointed at the bartender and, to my dismay, demanded that we all share another shout.

No one actually ended up going anywhere. There were shouts and more shouts, and much literal shouting, and eventually a group of folks surrounded me and peppered me with questions about the States, my work, and my impression of Australia. Did I want a personalized tour of Ararat? I did, but time did not permit. That’s okay, they said, the town is a shithole anyway. Did I know that when Joe Montana came to Australia he said an Aussie-rules player was the best footballer he’d ever seen? Nope (meaning that I hadn’t heard that, didn’t believe it, and certainly didn’t think that Joe Montana would refer to anyone as a “footballer”). What did I think of Pauline Hanson? (The leader of Australia’s then-ascendant far-right One Nation Party.) My response—that she seemed like a scary extremist—met with general approval. Did I want to stay at one of their houses instead of the pub? I didn’t, thanks. But this place is a shithole! they objected. (At this I shot a sympathetic look to the pub’s proprietor, who was well within earshot. His look back to me seemed to say, “yeah, actually it kinda is a shithole.”) Had I seen the Simpsons episode set in Australia? I had. How could they get away with making Aussies look so dumb? I had no idea. Was I sure I didn’t want to go ‘roo-killing? Um, yes. Did I want another shout? Oh, lord, no.

The classic Men at Work anthem “Down Under” refers to Australia as a place where “beer does flow and men chunder.” After several hours drinking in the Ararat Hotel, I had no doubt about Oz’s status as a place of freely-flowing beer. Worse, though, I was beginning to realize if I drank too much more of it, I might well illustrate the truth of its status as a place where men chunder as well. I excused myself and made my woozy way up to my room, where I planned to get some water and take a quick rest from the revelry. I sat on my bed, looked around the room and out the window onto what passed as Ararat’s main drag, and said to no one in particular, “I don’t think this place is such a shithole.” The next thing I remember it was seven the next morning—I had slept like the dead for ten hours straight, and exchanged all-consuming fatigue for a blistering hangover. I was delighted. And it was time to get back on the road.

The rest of my time in Victoria followed much the same pattern: I’d spend days alone, frenetically researching, and every so often make the acquaintance of some local or fellow traveler. Some Let’s Go researchers find the experience terribly lonely, but the isolation never bothered me. If anything, the solitude helped frame my sharpest memories of those weeks: hiking through the rough-hewn heights of the Grampians Mountains; driving for hours through eucalyptus-lined highways while listening to tape-delay broadcasts of World Cup soccer matches; visiting twenty-odd Melbourne bars and clubs in a single night; walking to the edge of the Mundi Mundi lookout in the outback north of Broken Hill, where the horizon stretches so far your eye can see the curvature of the earth. And I rarely went more than a few days without encountering some memorable character: a dreadlocked, pacifist hippie at the youth hostel in Bright who tried to break up a post-pub fight and received a broken arm for his trouble; a Danish schooteacher who I gave a ride up to the summit of Mt. Hotham and who spent the whole ride trying to convince me of the value of religion (“Without it, life would be unbearable,” she insisted); the pensioner in Bendigo who outlined, at great length and in painstaking detail, his plan to streamline Australian government (at the end of his presentation, I offered to vote for his plan, though I was not able to vote).

And then, all too quickly, it was time for me to return to the states to start grad school. Even though I tacked on a couple weeks at the end of my itinerary to travel on my own schedule, the time passed like a dream. This really only occurred to me as I waited in Tullamarine Airport for my flight home, staring absentmindedly in the direction of a group of American college girls, teary-eyed at the nearing end of their Australian adventure, who had apparently dealt with their grief by purchasing every stereotypical antipodean souvenir imaginable. In my haste, I realized, I had done just the opposite—failed to pick up any tangible reminders of my time in Oz—nary a stuffed koala or roo, faux-aboriginal boomerang, or statutory didgeridoo. At the time I was concerned that the high-octane pace of travel required by Let’s Go had left me without anything to remember my trip, but I needn’t have been. The intangibles I took away remain with me to this day: a handful of verbal affectations (I still say “no worries”); obscure snootiness about sports and booze (I still follow the St. Kilda Saints some and have yet to find an American bar serving VB, CD, or even MB); and an ocean of antipodean nostalgia for the strange and beautiful country I visited that summer and the strange and lovely people I met there.