Great Eastern Journey, Thu, 21 Feb 2013 | written by Simon
Simon with Charlie at a City, Park in Australia, Australia & Oceania

Today we woke up at an ungodly 5.30am to catch a 6.30 bus to Bendigo. We almost saw the sunrise – the one moment when we could use the fact that everything is flat, we spent at the Swan Hill station changing for the train. Well, next time.

We were meant to go to the Grampians for a day today, but we can’t, because they are on fire. Yes. Not like a little fire somewhere. The entire mountain range is on fire. Even if we were mad enough to go, we couldn’t because they closed off all roads. Fires like that aren’t uncommon here, but for me it’s something rather stunning.

Note that there is only one rail track

In Bendigo, a town built during the gold craze next to some mines, we first ate some of the local famous meat pies (pies like pies if you ask me, but then I guess it’s hard to make meat pies particularly exciting) and then Charlie took me on a fascinating journey in search of public toilets. She was adamant she remembers they were in a park we were crossing, but they kept shamelessly eluding. Looking for toilets, we saw the local parks and went up a small hill – yes, a hill! Only to get a better view on how everything else is flat. We then took a small cute talking team to a good mine, got scared of how much it costs and ran off to walk a bit more around town before we have to leave.

Do you really need that, Australians?

Now two new observations. One: there are virtually no aboriginal people to be seen around here. I’ve seen maybe five over the last week. Moreover, all of those I have seen were bums. The colonialists around here did some despicable things to them once, including regularly selling them poisoned wheat. I need to find out more about their current situation.

Two: everything is ridiculously, annoyingly and insultingly idiot-proof here. You know the ‘caution, may be hot when heated’? They have something like that on bloody everything. Pedestrian lights have stickers explaining what red, green and flashing mean, trams explain that seats with a disabled sign should be kept free for a disabled person… and they don’t just advise, they threaten you: if you don’t comply, you will be prosecuted! I thought their cigarettes policies were ridiculous, but it looks like they treat all citizens like retarded children across the board.

The journey continued to Ballarat where Charlie’s old friends live. And guess what? They took me to the local country park where kangaroos and emus run around and there are turtles and crocodiles and snakes and koalas and Tasmanian devils and wombats… so great! So, karma works, yesterday I was eating a kangaroo and today I was feeding them. These were the most lazy and civilised kangaroos ever, by the way, but still stop cute! And I even saw one with a young in is bag!

Evening of chats and board games completed the day. I hope that by tomorrow I’ll get rid of this stupid cold. Ah, yes, I forgot. Yes, you can laugh now – I caught a cold in the tropics. Night with air condition on, and it’s just a running nose anyway, will pass soon.