Post of Revelation(s)

My trip to the outback town of Coober Pedy was followed by three unavoidable days on a bus. I went from Adelaide, through South Australia and into Victoria, round the Grampians National Park, along the Great Ocean Road and ended up in Melbourne. Deftly illustrated by Googlus Mapus, below:



I had two revelations along the way.


Revelation Number One: Tour buses are an expensive gamble. Your enjoyment of the journey is ultimately dependent on three things:

- you
- the other people
- the driver.

Get all three spot on, and you're drunk onboard, weeing in the desert and having a jolly good time. Get one without the others, and you've just spent $355 on an excursion to the City of Despair (more on that later). The object is not to spend 3 days head lolling, staring gormlessly at the seat in front. To prevent this, you need the opposite of my fellow passengers on the Christmas tour, who were only marginally less exciting than a game of Trivial Pursuit in a nursing home.

This time around, the passengers weren't the problem. The tour driver, faced with a talkative mixed group of nationalities and personalities, chose to spend his time casually reading the job section of the paper instead of helping to make our trip one to remember. In return for our $355, we wanted food, accommodation and his tour guidery knowledge along one of Australia's best known drives. But on the first day he declared that unless we asked, he wasn’t going to tell. He insisted on being just a 'glorified bus driver' when in fact, he was just in denial about what his job required. He was the missing link in what could have been a bloody good trip for all involved. In response, I pulled a face in every group photo he took. Maturity was always my strong point.

Revelation Number Two: Australia does a lot of things very well; beautiful expanses of desolate landscape, spectacular sunsets, impossible rock formations, rivers, beaches, gorges, national parks, wildlife, road kill and plain old chilling out. Then we have the cities. Aussie cities are functional, clean, set in grids, and some have a beach. They're fine for a couple of days, or if you're there on a working holiday visa. But when you’re a Londoner who's here for three months, coming to Australia and spending your time in a city is like going to fat camp and gorging on lard. Same thing, different place, boring as arse.

Which brings me to Melbourne, where I was dropped off on Saturday. The heat wave passed while I was sampling the wonders of underground living in Coober Pedy, and was fast being replaced by cold and clouds. It’s a city which, if I’d chosen to stay any longer than a day, I’d probably get to know, get to like, then get progressively unhappy about not being somewhere else. So my day in Melbourne can be summed up like this: It rained, so I paid $10 and went to watch Federer, Nadal, Serena et al play charity tennis. Apologies my Victoria based readers: No doubt there's more to see, more to say; but not this girl, not this trip.

With three weeks left in Australia, my next logical stop was Canberra or Sydney.

Needless to say, with tour bus or cities firmly off the radar for now, I needed a Plan B. Luckily, a small portion of my brain survived the bus trip. I picked up my phone, sent a text to my sister and hoped the offer still stood.

"Bonjour. You know your mate? I'm heading in that direction and I've got 3 weeks spare. Do you reckon he still needs help...?"