Well, I have since moved on from the hoo ha of my last post and currently living in a lovely town just twenty minutes from Perth. It is refreshingly normal to live in a town with a bit of hustle and bustle in it and some great weekend markets with plenty of bargains to be found if you like fish, fruit and veg. It has a real cafe culture about it and despite it being winter, the sun still shines and actually gives off a little heat which is a bonus...sadly though, the carefully cultivated tan from my South African days is gently fading back to the pale and pasty look.
I have found a spot of work for a few weeks again working in a backpackers, this time though for financial reasons rather than a lifestyle choice. It couldn't be more different from the place I worked in in South Africa if it tried. For a start, there is more than one shop and more than one other backpackers, not to mention all the restaurants, bars, cafes and entertainment centres. The beach is a ten minute walk away and the area for "bathing" is pathetically small although nice enough give or take the McDonalds right on the beach front. Everything in Australia (I presume more so on the East Coast) is set up for backpackers - it is so easy and so unchallenging and so bloody normal that it's like home with sun and different accents. Almost.
There are backpacker car markets, backpacker car rentals, backpacker bank accounts, backapcker mail holding and forwarding, backpacker guided tours (all extorionately priced in my view), numerous backpacker buses, backpacker houses that aren't actually backpacker hostels and of course, the obligatory backpacker food and booze specials. Everything is sorted for you before you've even arrived...so tell me...where's the fun in that?? I'm sure I have the slightly romanticised view that travelling is all about getting off the beaten track and trying to go where no backpacker has been before, or if they have, then not many of them! It'll be hard if near impossible to find this in Australia, despite being in Western Australia, which plenty of travellers don't get to and planning on a jaunt to the Northern Territories. I shall however, give it jolly good try!
Made the usual mistake of talking racial politics the other night when slightly inebriated, although this time to white Australians about Aborigines rather than Afrikanners regarding tribes. I have to confess to not knowing perhaps as much as I should regarding the history of Australia and its current political climate, but I'm working on it and will still argue equal rights whether male, female, black white, pink or blue. Sadly, it didn't seem to cut the mustard and the over riding comment from that night from a white Australian was: "99% of Aborigines are trash, 1% are okay and 99% of white Australians are okay and 1% are trash". Oh plus the usual, when I sort to discover more on this astonishing view, "...but there are statistics to prove it". How you define human "trash" I'm not quite sure.
However, it was just one fella with his one view and I'm sure I'll come across many other people with different perspectives on life here. It's always interesting to talk and while living in a backpackers you really do meet people from all over the place from all walks of life.
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