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April 10, 2004

The Blue Mountains

“Do you know how much it would cost to wire 20 million dollars from the UK to Australia?. Let me take your card - I need to put some money somewhere, it's no good for me anymore. Yeah, when I told my friends I had four years to live they deserted me. It's strange that when you have a 40 million dollar fortune they all seem to be interested again”.
Now this man looked like he had money. It was a mixture of instinct and the fact that his taste in clothing was incredibly poor. His slick back slightly greying hair was articulate. He wrote scripts for major films and was clearly keen to help others out before his life was to come to a premature end.
“I can't see any Blue mist, I want my money back'. Now this wasn't meant to be funny but Isa (The German can't speak but getting better English speaker) laughed. Then it clicked. My mind cast back to 1991 - a coach trip in the Austrian Mountains. The cockney coach driver had taught me my first word of German over the intercom. “Don't say Mist over here - it means shit it German”. Yes in front of a group of German tourists I had said – “I can't see any Blue Shit” - this confirmed their strange looks. There was blue sky, a blue lamppost, a guy with a blue t-shirt on. For the life of me I couldn't see any blue mist let alone Blue Mountains. This was a severe case of false advertising - this could be seriously punished in the UK.
These mountains were distinctly brown. I could not help but think 'Wow its a mountain, I didn't see many of them in NZ'. And the famous 'three sisters'. Well this was three erosion worn pieces of rock that had been cut away from the main structure. Very unmoving. So like any good Japanese tourist I got my camera out and clicked away - even deeming a 30 second movie recording to be worthwhile.
The Blue Mountains town of Katoomba is without putting it mildly a drunk infested ghost town. I swore that everyone over 50 was either pissed, deformed or just madly talking to themselves. Katoomba is filled with pub stroke bottle shop establishments inhabited by staring inbred locals. The bonus was the hostel - what you would consider to be an original backpackers. Nice communal lounge, attractive garden area and just homely. As Katoomba is dead and full of the people described like the above everyone just stays in and just chats. This combined with the large amount of pot and drinks provides an interesting social arena. Mike was a guy to be avoided. His eyes were glazed and focus seemed difficult. When he sat he would talk at great length. “Yeah, these rent boys invited me over the road and we have been drinking since 10am, it's great being the only straight guy in the neighbourhood'. It was this sort of crap that was repeated every ten minutes along with the 'Cambodia is not fun anymore, you don't get kids throwing hand grenades for a laugh but you still get the hash pizzas”.
One by one the group would disperse - toilet stops for 2 hours the most common get away. James was from Bournemouth and in my room. Now when you feel sorry for yourself always listen to others. This guy had arrived in West Africa for the start of his travels. In the middle of the night a gang raided their group tents and stole everything - leaving the clothes and sleeping back wrapped around their bodies. For the next 5 days they tried to make it Johannesburg for their departing flight without passports, money or any identification. They made it with a combination of begging and pleading at border controls, jumping queues at passport office and forcing the Qantas staff to manually write out an new ticket with every detail. Four days of hell. They made their flight by 15 minutes. Losing a bit of clothing or damaging your camera seemed a bit pathetic in comparison.
It was time to go back to the hussle and bussle of Sydney. We lugged the bags on the train. Train behaviour is interesting and constantly keeps me amused. We have four zones of comfort. For members of the public we naturally keep a distance of between 3-6 metres. In social occasions that gap closes to between 1.2 and 3.6 metres. For friends this closes to between 50cm and 1.2m. Now our intimate zone of between 15 and 46 cms is only shared by the closest of friends or lovers. So what happens on busy trains or buses? Well you get members of the public invading our personal zones which we are not used to which in turn causes some strange behaviour. You can tell the obvious signs a) people looking at the floor or ceiling b) people reading a book without attention (using it as a prop) c) people playing aimlessly with their mobile phone. Basically anything to avoid eye contact with members of the public in their personal zone. They say that commuters look depressed all the time because they are unhappy - in fact this is more to do with the adverse reactions caused my personal zone evasion.
There was a choice. Two spare seats. Sit next to a lady wearing headphones or the guy in front with the greying slick back hair. I think I'll sit next to the women this time and just listen to any interesting conversations nearby.







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