Newcastle – Juanito's Travels

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Newcastle, Australia & Tubbercurry, Sligo – 1995 BlogPt14

2022, raining, I read a few chapters, no, just a couple of pages, of Jungle of Stone. I had thought of working on my Minecraft world a bit while I listened to the rain. Then I thought I’d just listen to the rain and now I’m listening to the rain writing about listening to the rain.

As I head closer to my 50th birthday I don’t think I really need to leave my mark on the world. I don’t want the most Instagram likes. I haven’t even got a Tik Tok account. I doubt I’ll ever write a book, be a Hemingway, but perhaps I wouldn’t mind going to Pamplona one day. I don’t want to watch the bullfights though.

I didn’t even feel inspired to write another blog post. There was a time in my 20s when I forced myself to write. I even wrote a film script which got the interest of a well-known Australian Director and an option from a UK producer.

Some days I think I have a good idea for a story. I’ve usually forgotten them by the next day.

I don’t really want to leave much of a mark on the world now. I just hope that I contribute to making it a slightly nicer place. And hopefully not a shittier place.

I’ve started doing a Sustainability and Circular Economy course online with the University of Cambridge. I first remember getting interested in sustainability, the environment and what have you back in 1992 or 1993 maybe. It was somewhere between finishing school in 1989 and travelling to Ireland in 1995.

I was down in Newcastle visiting my best friend from high school, Christophe’s brother Luke – who had started calling himself Luka at that stage. Christophe and Tanya were in Scotland at the time and although I wasn’t great friends with Luka he’d said I should come down and check out Newcastle. He was hanging out with a bunch of hippy, druggo freaked out types. Even a couple of punks. I just remember a few of them. There was Johno who had this back goatee and was into spirituality and pentagrams and had weird eyes, smoked weed incessantly and collected two dole checks, one under his real name – which I assume was John or perhaps Johno – and one under a fictitious name. He was studying music at some music institute. There was also Pia who was going out with a guy called Canine. They were all a bit freakish. On occasions the punk dudes would come over and have a bit of smack. Pia warned me off trying it. I never did. Even those who use such dangerously addictive drugs can have the sense to warn others off going down that slippery path. I was fine with heaps of weed and the occasional mushroom and LSD trip.

These dudes, except for the punks, all lived in the same house with Luka. I forgot to mention that.

The drug scene distracted me a bit. I mean the reminiscing about the Newcastle drug scene of the early 90s. It wasn’t really ‘the drug scene’. People did other stuff besides drugs. Listening to Rage Against the Machine, the Butthole Surfers and the Pixies (plus others). Playing music – I may have had a go at like a tambourine or triangle. I wasn’t very musical and considered myself a writer or something. Sitting around talking. Occasionally getting some food. Going down the dole office. Visiting other people’s houses. Probably having sex. Though I never did during my time in Newcastle. Like with Agatha, I would have if I had the opportunity, just the opportunity never came up and wouldn’t come up until t 1994 when I met Corinne and travelled up the east coast (again this is a fictitious version of the events, see earlier posts where I explain I met her at a Hurstbridge train station in Melbourne – though much of the rest is trueish).

But back in Newcastle. It wasn’t a drug scene per se. Just everything we did tended to be done stoned.

After hanging out with Luka a bit I ended up renting a garage in a share house with Matt, Aaron, and the guy who worked at the Thai restaurant, who might have been called Rowan, or Lauren or something. I more remember that he’d bring leftover Thai for us, which was very nice of him. Matt and Aaron were going to the University of Newcastle. Rowan may have been going to uni as well but I was more interested in the Thai food.

One day we were out walking around with the guys on the way to the dole office. A few years earlier Newcastle had been hit by an Earthquake and many of the roads had cracks in them. We went past some place on a stormwater drain on the way to visiting some dudes. Possibly to hang out a bit, possibly to get some weed. Possibly to do both. Who knows? The dudes had planted this amazing guerrilla garden on the edges of the stormwater drain. I’m not sure if the drain is the right term, it was like a mini version of one of those pretty big ones like they had in the movie Grease where they were able to race cars along. A stormwater thingy?

The one in Newcastle you could race a few BMX bikes along.

The dudes in the house, well maybe not a house, it was more a shed or abandoned factory type thing you could access from the stormwater drain, had marigolds growing, and some veggies. I can’t remember but I imagine some beans and maybe a zucchini, and some tomatoes. They may have had a few sunflowers growing as well. I was intrigued by the garden and asked the dudes I was visiting about it. They said it was some organic, permaculture garden thing.

I was straight into it. I think maybe after we’d gone to the dole office I went to the library, got a library card and rented out a VHS video which featured Bill Mollison, one of the creators of Permaculture, this sustainable gardening/ farming system, and watched it. It explained the general principles of Permaculture. I got inspired and went and got some beans seeds and some other veggies seeds and found a patch in the backyard and planted them. They started growing and I was amazed, but then I ran out of money and went up to Queensland for a few weeks and when I got back the grass had grown over the spot as neither Matt, Aaron or Rowan were interested in looking after veggies. They also hadn’t done any dishes since I’d been away so I did all the washing up when I got back as I can’t fucking stand piles of dirty dishes.

I felt like Neil from the TV series the Young Ones. Neil plants the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed. Except when your housemates neglect the seed altogether.

Anyway that was the start of my passion from gardening.

This post was meant to be about my trip to Sligo with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car. It’s turned into one of those ‘3 years earlier’ things TV shows always do now.

1995

Around 3 years earlier. I had hired a video about Permaculture featuring Bill Mollison. I got into sustainable gardening. I wanted to help the planet. I wanted to be green. I started doing gardens at friends’ houses in Melbourne. I sent off to Eden Seeds for heirloom seeds. I focussed on mixing the three main types of plants in Permaculture, and sustainable gardening – legumes (things like beans and peas) which put nitrogen in the soil, heavy feeders like tomatoes and zucchinis, and root crops like carrots and potatoes. In that way you helped keep the soil healthy, without using chemicals. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs used the same method growing beans with corn and pumpkins together, to maintain the health of the soil and get greater yields from smaller spaces.

And now, in 1995, after working for a year on a farm in Nutfield, Victoria, for Bev and Peter Brock, who I met after doing some WWOOFing on a farm in Gippsland, Victoria, and a few months on the biodynamic farm of Inigislas, Wexford, I was now heading to another organic farm in Tubbercurry, Sligo, to do more to save the planet.

Oh I forgot to finish my story about my adventure with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car.

Well, we had driven from Donegal to Sligo in the carrot car. I was getting more and more annoyed at Agatha’s fresa (Mexican way of saying posh) friend who always wanted to go buy oysters from restaurants and thing like that, and who wouldn’t go skinny dipping in the Atlantic, who wouldn’t let me drive the carrot car because I didn’t have a licence, who was basically super boring.

I mean I was always going to get dropped off in Sligo to go work on the farm, but now I was super ready to be done with the carrot car and go help plant some actual carrots. I was still into Agatha mind you. We didn’t have, and would never have, a sexual relationship – sounds like a statement from former President Clinton when you put it like that – but I did find her to be a soulmate. Someone I’d like to spend more time with and whom I’d miss having around for years to come. But her fresa friend, I was totally over her.

I can’t even remember where the carrot car dropped me off. I think I’d maybe contacted the German guys who ran the WWOOFing farm I was going to and they said they were going to be in Sligo city that day and that I could get a ride back with them. Whatever happened, I said my goodbyes and ended up on the farm in Tubbercurry which was where my Irish granny, Bridget Marron, who we just called Bee was born before coming to Australia as a 10 year-old girl with her father and uncle after her mother died.

But more on Tubbercurry next time around. I’ve been giving too much backstory in this post so I’ve run out of space.

50-Year-Old Backpacker, A Juanito’s Travels BLOGnicle. Bangkok to London Detention BlogPt4

1995

Flying from Bangkok to London. Hurrying to pick up the sapphires I bought from a gem store in Bangkok so I could recover some of my travel savings. Crazy.

Fuck. I was nervous. This is crazy. Gems, Bangkok, London. How did I find myself in this situation?

Too late. It was done now.

I got on the plane leaving Bangkok. We take off and are on our way. 15 or 20 minutes into the flight there’s an announcement in Thai. A Thai couple next to me look at each and are obviously worried. I look at them and wonder what the fuck’s going on. Then the announcement in English.

Ladies and gentlemen. There is an issue with one of the plane’s engines. We will return to Bangkok to inspect this. It is nothing to be concerned about, it is just a precautionary measure or words to that effect.

Fuck.

We put our seat belts back on. I look at the Thai couple nervously, they look at me nervously as the plane turns back to Bangkok. I start to meditate, if I’m going to die, I’d like to die calmly.

But we make it back safely. We land and head back to the terminal and wait maybe 3 hours or more. Then we’re ushered back onto the plane. We strap ourselves in again but I think how could they possibly fix a faulty engine in just 3 hours? It didn’t seem possible.

We take off. 15 or 20 minutes later an announcement in Thai. I look at the Thai couple again and they confirm with a nod and another worried look. They didn’t fix the engine in 3 hours. I resign myself to the fact I might die again (not that I actually died the first time, just to be clear), I was pretty calm about it to be honest. Up there in the sky, what else are you going to do, there’s no point panicking, you can’t go anywhere, if you’re going to die you’re going to die. I just started meditating again.

We head back to Bangkok for a second time, we land safely a second time. This time it’s late in the evening. We wait a few hours and it’s clear to all us weary passengers the plane’s not going to be fixed quickly. When you’re fixing engines, – and I’m not an expert aircraft engineer or anything – but when you’re fixing engines, I think, take your time! After another few hours they tell us we won’t be flying until the morning so they put us up at a hotel.

I get to the hotel, put my head down on the pillow and start sleeping. I feel like I’ve only slept for a few minutes when the phone rings again. The plane’s ready. Apparently. We’re going back out to the airport.

So we’re all put back on the plane. It’s a different one, they must have given up on the one with the broken engine which I think’s a good choice. for a third time, they send us on our way. 15-20 minutes into the flight, nothing happens. 30 minutes in nothing again. After a couple of hours I look out the window and we’re crossing the Himalayas. It’s sunrise I think, and the peaks are that early morning pinky orange. Feels like we’re not too far above the biggest peaks in the world and I can look down into the valley trying to spot some animal or something. It’s amazing that us humans can just pay for a ticket and then get into one of these things that fly over mountains. I feel like I might take it a bit too much for granted nowadays, even post COVID travel restrictions.

I think about my sapphires. I had to be able to sell them in London otherwise I’d run out of money in a day or two in London. Actually I hardly even had enough for a night in London. It wasn’t 40 baht a night there, you had to pay real prices in British Pounds!

When my friends Christoph and Tanya had flown over to London they were in a similar position, they barely had a couple of hundred pounds between them. Luckily Christophe was the chatty type and he got to talking to a British couple on the plane. When the British couple found out how little money the couple had they were like, you’re not going to last more than a week in London on that.

The British couple then offered the lucky bastards to put them up for a week at their house so they might have time to find a job. I was praying for something like that at the moment thinking my sapphire plan was rubbery at best, non-existent at worst.

I manage to get a bit of sleep and do a bit of meditating to calm my racing thoughts. We fly over Pakistan or Iran or Iraq or somewhere and then over Europe. Eventually, in the early morning – another morning, I was losing track, we had a sunset when we crossed the Himalayas, morning, night, who knows – we arrived in London.

I get out and line up for immigration. The immigration officer looks at my passport and looks at me.

“How much money do you have?” she asks. Christophe and Tanya had been asked the same question so I knew it might be on the cards. Seemed like Australians often rocked up on a wing and a prayer.

“60 pounds I think, maybe 65. I have some more money in my bank account”. I think I had about $10 or $15 Australian in my bank account.

“60?”

“Yes”.

“Is that all?”

“I have some sapphires I bought in Bangkok waiting for me at the post office.”

“Sapphires?”

“Yes”. I was starting to feel very stupid. Well stupider than I really was. “I can take them to sell them on Bond Street.” I showed her a bit of paper that the dodgy Thai guy gave me. She looks at it with the scepticism it deserves.

“And you have no work permit?”

“No”, although Christophe and Tanya had very little money they did, at least, have work permits, so they were reluctantly let in despite their small amount of cash. I suppose they also, by luck, had a place to stay. I had no work permit. Mainly because I was an Irish citizen so I didn’t need one, so I didn’t bother with it. But I didn’t have my Irish passport, or any proof of Irish citizenship apart from my red hair. And, since I was travelling on my Australian passport I was being treated as a broke Aussie instead of a broke Irishman.

“I think you’ve been duped on the sapphires”, she says.

My heart sinks, I know she’s likely to be right. “But I am Irish.” I say.

She goes and chats to her colleagues. She tells her colleague something like, ‘he says he’s Irish’, and they mumble and the like.The rest of the plane have now mostly made it through immigration.

“You say you’re Irish. Have you got proof of that?”

“Well, no, not on me. I was waiting for my Irish passport in Australia but they didn’t have it ready so I had to leave without it. I had to send them my foreign births registry papers as well, so I don’t have anything at the moment.”

“Well, I’m afraid without a valid work permit we are going to have to refuse you entry into the UK”.

My heart sinks, after this long journey I was just going to be sent straight back. The immigration officers chat. All the other passengers have gone, I’m the last one standing there. The airport seems almost deserted. I’m alone, I’m tired, but I’m kind of calm. After a while the officers get back to me.

“Apparently Thai airways don’t have another seat until tomorrow afternoon. We are going to issue you a 24 hour permit so you can leave the airport but you need to return for the flight tomorrow afternoon. Had they had a seat on the next plane you’d be going straight back. But they’ve cancelled that flight.”

“What if I can prove I’m Irish in that time?”

“If you can provide proof of your Irish citizenship in that time we can give you an entry visa.”

They hand me back my passport with the 24 hour visa. They tell me I have to be back at the airport by 2 PM or something the next day in order to be deported.

I walk out and try and find my backpack. Everyone else has long gone so they think it’s abandoned and I have to go to a special spot to get it. At least I’d gotten this far, I’m kind of free and I am in the UK, for now. And I can at least get out of the airport. Thankfully Thai airways only had that one plane operating between Bangkok and London due to the other one having a bung engine, which allowed for this little reprieve. I can do it! I can make it into the UK! I just had to prove I was Irish and use my Irish luck! Don’t know how I’m going to work out the rest, but something will work out, just got to stay positive.

I feel like I’m in a Hollywood film, 24 hours, and maybe 60 British pounds, plus whatever I could withdraw from my Australian bank account, to sort out the gems and my Irish citizenship. The clock starts its countdown.

It’s 3 or 4 am, the tube trains don’t start until 5.30 or 6.00 am or something. I’m dead tired so I find a bunch of passengers who are sleeping by the departure gates. I crawl under some chairs, desperate to get an hour or so sleep. Not having had a decent sleep for about two days now.

5.50 am, I’m at the tube gate buying a ticket and waiting for the train into London. I get on a train and head into London. The city is just waking up once we’re out in the open I can see over the houses, with their chimneys wafting steam and smoke. The sun is just coming up and there’s a similar hue to that which I saw over the Himalayas the previous night or morning, it was all a bit disorientating now.

7.15 am. I get into London. I have the Irish embassy’s address, but they don’t open until 9.30 am. So once I’ve identified where it is I just loiter in the general vicinity.

I’m hungry but super short on cash so I decide to get a piece of fruit.

“Excuse me, do you know where I can buy some fruit?” I ask a gentleman in a light trench coat.

He laughs his jolly English laugh, I think it’s like a nervous tick English have when they are uncomfortable talking to hippy backpackers on their way to work (obviously he was on his way to work – the hippy, being a hippy, can just roam around freerange during office hours). An Australian talking must sound quite quaint. He points me in the direction of a fruit stall without pausing much. I find the place and I think I decide on an apple, or perhaps some stone fruit were in season which sounds more like my cup of tea as I’m not that fond of apples. I’m happy I’m getting to see a little bit of London now, if they kick me out of the country, which I’m still hopeful they won’t, at least I’ve got to look around a little bit.

I take a stroll and find a place on some roundabout and watch the traffic go by. Eating my piece of fruit. I think I may have taken some bread rolls, and a little plastic packet of butter and jam from the plane so I munched on that as well. Or maybe I bought a bread roll. I must have had some water or fluids as well. Though unlikely very much as I was still thirsty.

9.30am comes around and I head straight into the embassy. I explain my situation. I got to London, no money and the stupid English want to kick me out if I can’t prove I’m Irish and they have my passport ready at the Irish embassy in Canberra and my proof of citizenship papers and all that, I’m seriously legit Irish.

They are rather friendly. Of course, they’re Irish. But they don’t think they can do anything for me at the moment as it’s night time in Australia. They’d have to fax through some request and have the Australian embassy fax something back, and I’d probably have to come back the next morning to see if they were able to do something. But I could try in the afternoon just to see if they’d heard anything.

I thank them and head back out into London.

I have all my luggage with me. Thankfully that was just the backpack which wasn’t super heavy. So I decide I might as well explore a bit and maybe go and check if my sapphires had arrived. If they were going to kick me out of the country I at least wanted to pick up my sapphires first.

So I walk down to the GPO. Probably more of a hike than a walk, Google maps tells me it’s an hour’s walk from the embassy which I could do relatively easily in those days, even though my back was feeling it along the way.

I’m able to go through Hyde park, and I sit for a bit and watch the swans and then check out Buckingham palace, and then onto the GPO. Without Google maps I’m not sure how I managed it. I must have had an analogue Google map.

Having acquired the sapphires in such a dodgy manner, I’m half, or even 4/5ths expecting they wouldn’t have even sent me anything.

But, somehow they are there waiting for me!

Because it still seems very shady – still I say now, back then I was hoping through my idiocy I may have just got lucky and I could actually sell those stones. After I collect the package I take it to an inconspicuous corner of the place and pour out its contents. Yes indeed, the gems are there. Well, maybe I can sell them? I think.

I make my way to Bond Street – perhaps using my great knowledge of the Monopoly board, as I had no GPS, figuring it must be around Regent Street and the other green one. The address the Thai gives me is of course not able to be found (although Bond Street itself exists, why else would they put it on the Monopoly board!). I wander around a bit more and I find a Christie’s auction house. At least they might be able to tell me if the sapphires are worth anything.

I walk in and ask if a valuer can take a look at my sapphires. They have me wait, there with my backpack in their fancy shiny wood lined corridors. Soon a polite English gentleman comes out and greets me. We go into a room and he has a look at the sapphires.

“What did you pay for them?’ He asks. I tell him the amount and he grimaces. “They are not worth that. But, at least they’re real, I’ve seen plenty bought for similar amounts which turned out to be pastes” – I later found out pastes are just a fancy term for fake gems, or more precisely where you have a slither of real gem pasted onto some glass or something like that.

“So I can’t sell them here?”

“Well no-one will want to buy them, they are very dark, and not the type anyone here in England wants. We prefer the lighter colour ones.”

My heart sinks to a further level. The titanic level. Where only James Cameron would be able to find it.

I head back to the embassy, just in case they’d heard anything. The embassy hasn’t heard back from Australia. I’d have to try again the next day.

I go to Hyde Park and sit under a tree. I’m more depressed and despondent than I have ever been in my life. I assess the situation, little money, enough to last a day or two max, but not even that if I have to pay for accommodation. I have no Irish passport, so I’ll have to come back to the embassy tomorrow. After internally crying and despairing and swearing, I think. Think John, think. I was going to have to find a place to stay the night at least and get some cash.

Firstly I get onto. the cash situation. I needed cash if I was to stay in the UK, otherwise I might as well just go back home. So I find a public phone. Luckily my dad had bought me a phone card so I could call home. I rang my mum. It was sometime in the middle of the night over there (In Australia), but I couldn’t work out exactly what time it was exactly. It didn’t seem to matter really, she was just kind of just glad I wasn’t killed or had my kidneys taken out yet.

I explained the whole situation as best I could. Somehow bought sapphires off a dodgy bloke in Bangkok, they were real but not worth much, so can’t get money back. So could I borrow some money in case the Irish organise proof of me being Irish in time for them to stop the deportation process. Kind of sounds funny now, but believe me at the time it wasn’t!

Luckily my dad had also told me that I could withdraw money using my Australian bank card in England as I had no idea you could do such modern things and had mostly planned to rely on travellers cheques and just leave my useless bank card in Australia. My mum says she’ll work something out but she’ll have to wait another nine hours or something before the bank opened. I thanked her and got off the phone, relieved to have crossed one worry off of my list. Well it was at least in progress.

It was already around midday in London, even if they could get the money straight into the bank when it opened I still wouldn’t see any more money until the early hours of the morning. So the few pounds I had left would have to last the night at least. And I didn’t really even have enough to stay at the worst hostel for a night. Or not enough to do that and eat as well.

Next thing then was to try and find a place to stay, for free. Ah, ha! I had the address and phone number of Newcastle Chick and British Guy (see previous blog posts if you don’t know who they are). I’d written to them before I’d left and said I was coming over to Europe, so they would not be too surprised if I rocked up. I think they’d even written back and said they looked forward to catching up or something like that.

Surely they’d let me stay with them. British guy had stayed with me a few nights in Melbourne the year before after all (again, see previous blogs if you’re lost). He’d be right to return the favour, it was just what people did. Anyway, I didn’t have much fucking choice (pardon my French, but I was tired and upset at the time).

So I get out British Guy’s and Newcastle Chick’s number and I ring and ring, and ring, no answer. I think, fuck it, I’ll just make my way out to their flat. I had their address. But first I walk around a bit more, catching a few sites like Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square (maybe that’s in the same place, who knows) and other third reich empire style stuff that showed how great the British empire was compared to say, the third reich, as they treated all their natives in India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other places nice, unlike the Nazis who were plain nasty. No, no the British were a benevolent lot and only interested in making sure everyone could enjoy a nice cup of tea picked by their subjugated subjects sweetened with tea grown by slaves in the West Indies, on doilies made from wool grown on stolen Aboriginal land down in Australia. I also get a slice of vegetarian pizza for £1.50, and some sort of drink. Then I head out on the tube.

Newcastle Chick and British Guy lived on the outskirts of London. I can’t remember exactly where, but there was a museum which had a Picasso exhibition on, and it took a fair while to get there. It cost another few pounds to get on the train. I was watching every precious pound trying to make sure I could get through the night at least.

By the time I got out to the place it was getting dark, around 6 or 7 pm, the banks in Australia would still not be open for a while. I checked my account anyway. There was enough in there to get £5 out. That was still a precious amount when I was so close to completely running out of money so far from Australia. Probably still didn’t have enough overall to get a place to stay though.

I tried ringing Newcastle chick and British guy’s flat again, again no answer. It was starting to get very late now so I just made my way to their house and rang their doorbell several times. Again, no answer. I found a pay phone and tried ringing again a few times. Desperate, I decided to try a different tact.

For some reason I had Newcastle Chick’s mother’s phone number with me in my little address and phone book. Possibly because in those days nobody had emails or social media, or mobile phones, so one of the only ways to keep in touch with people when you travelled about was to hand out your parents’ address and phone number.

I still didn’t know what time it was in Australia but I called Newcastle Chick’s mum anyway. Unlike her daughter and British Guy she actually answered! I explained my situation and that I really wanted to get in touch with her daughter and partner, I read out their phone number, and yes, it was correct. I read out the address and yes it was correct. Supposedly as well they were meant to be home as far as she knew. I thanked her and went back to their flat and tried ringing the doorbell a few more times. I assumed they were out and would be back at some stage, so I just waited by the front fence, a low brick wall, for what seemed like hours and hours.

At some point it became obvious that this just wasn’t going to work out. But it was too late to even try to get back into London centre and it was now almost 3 days that I’d been without proper sleep. I could barely keep my eyes open.

It was cold, but I had a few decent clothes, and importantly a green woollen Melbourne tram conductors coat that Evan, who’d done my first vipassana course with me in Victoria, and who used to be a Melbourne tram conductor had given me. So I found a spot in the front yard outside the flats where Newcastle Chick and British Guy lived, a place behind some bushes, and I just crashed.IT was a big city, people probably just assumed I was homeless and ignored me. I woke around dawn and headed back to the train station again. I didn’t bother to try the buzzer for the guy’s flat again. What was the point? I found a bank and checked my money situation. Still nothing, so I ring my mum and dad again, my dad is awake and super stressed but he’s been up to the bank and my mum tells me that my dad said the bank said that it could take few hours for the money to show up but in my account but that they’d put $250 in my account. It wouldn’t have possibly been easier if my dad had told me directly, but he never talked to me directly much. $250, It wasn’t much, but I thanked them as it was a life saver. They said my sister Christine said she could lend me a further $500 but she hadn’t been to the bank yet.

I still had a bit of cash so I made my way back to the Irish Embassy to check on the passport situation. When I walked in they immediately recognised me and gave me the good news that the Irish embassy in Canberra had faxed a copy of my passport to the office and that they had put a notary stamp on it to verify it so this would probably be enough to show the immigration officers at Heathrow Airport. They were also sending the passport to the London embassy, so it should be there in a few days’ time. I thanked them profusely.

I checked my bank again, and this time, yes, money was there, things were starting to look up! I went back out to the airport, walking past a bunch of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians waiting to be deported. I went into an office, showed my papers, and they had no choice but to let me stay in the country, giving me a brand new stamp. I felt bad for all the other guys as I walked out a free man. They didn’t have the same Irish luck as me.

I was now officially allowed to stay in the UK. How I could do so for more than a few days, I didn’t quite know, but one step at a time.

50-Year-Old Backpacker Blog, A Juanito’s Travels Chronicle. Plans & Preparation? BlogPt2

2022

I’ve got this Google Sheets spreadsheet that shows all the places in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Italy, Greece and Turkey, I want to visit with my wife on our next trip – as the title of this blog suggests I’m dubbing it the 50-year-backpacker trip. The Google Sheet’s stored in the ether somewhere. I have a column for place names, one for estimated airfares, one for estimated accommodation costs, one for costs of travelling by train, bus, or boat between cities and one for notes on what we might do on a particular day. Such as ‘visit the Vatican’ or ‘walk around piazzas’. I’ve made allowances for travelling between places, resting and even to try and fit in some laundry which I failed to budget for when my daughter and I travelled back from Italy after her German excursion/ exchange trip which led to me wearing a long-sleeved business shirt in the steamy weather of Bangkok which was the only thing in my bag that was clean. You can read about our last Bangkok adventures here.

I’ve got a fairly well paid government job to cover the costs outlined in my Google Sheet planned trip. Though I don’t have a house or any of those other ‘grown up’ things. I don’t have the money for a house, in Australia at least. Partly because I divorced a few years ago and now I’m a single dad supporting 1.5 kids (my daughter is 0.5 now because she pays me $300 board a fortnight). Partly because I married a Mexican who has had me travelling back and forth to Mexico for a few years – for the record not complaining about that, just in case I get a chancla from my wife, which I may enjoy in the right place. Partly because house prices have gone completely crazy and the little money I had left after selling the house I had with my ex-wife went on private school fees and above mentioned travel. For housing price craziness I suggest reading Robert J. Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance.

So basically I’m on a pretty decent income but also pretty poor, at least by local standards now. Apart from a pretty reasonable superannuation balance. But rather than save more money for a house deposit I’ve decided to go on another trip because, you know, fuck it, it’ll be fun, and you got to do something to mark turning 50 besides getting a pirate earring and a tattoo. And after reading Irrational Exuberance I’m still waiting for a housing market post-COVID crash, which may still be a few years coming.

1995

Leading up to my first trip to Europe, I worked as a farmhand, or Farm Manager according to my resume, planting trees and the like for $10 an hour cash-in-hand. I had a return plane ticket to London and about $2000-something dollars in cash and traveller’s cheques.

I had one contact address in Ireland of an Irish woman who used to live close to the mother and boyfriend of my best friend from high school Christophe, in the Gold Coast suburb of Tugun in the state of Queensland.

On a side note on how times have changed, and the irrational exuberance of the housing market, Tugun used to be considered a little bit of a shithole – no offence Tugun. Now a former boarder of my mum paid around $700,000 odd for a tiny little flat there under a flight path.

Back in 1995 I wouldn’t have had any interest in what a house cost, it was just a house, who gave a shit what it cost, I was the motherfucker Nirvana generation, a band I’d seen at Fisherman’s Wharf on the Gold Coast in 1992, also with Christophe. In true grunge style, on the way to the concert we’d stopped off at some dude’s house to smoke some hash. I was so wasted I ended up just lying in the mud peering over people’s heads to get a glimpse of Kurt Cobain. Much fun was had by all.

Before my departure for Europe I think I’d been up for a quick visit to the Gold Coast, to say high to my mum, probably argue with my reformed, yet still mentally ill alcoholic father, and probably say hi to a few sisters and my brother, and some friends, including Christophe, from Palm Beach Currumbin High School, who still lived on the Gold Coast. Or was Christophe down Byron Bay at that stage? After being a born again Christian for a while who hated lesbians like KD Lang, he’d turned into a born again pot-smoking hippy type. I also considered myself to be a hippy type in between my grunginess, I even used to not wear shoes in Melbourne for a while. Hippy types tended to head down to Byron in those days. Now you have to be a Hollywood superstar or the like to live there. To all those types: Get Bent ;).

Christophe and his high school sweetheart girlfriend Tanya, whom I’d say was my friend in the end as well, had long ago been over to Scotland and worked in pubs and restaurants on the common young Australians’ former right of passage/ coming of age adventure to the heart of our old imperial masters. Christophe had taken the chance during the adventure to have an adventure with some woman at a backpackers while Tanya was upstairs sleeping. Christophe tended to do such things, he claimed it was because he was half French. Christophe and Tanya stayed together for many years, and at least one more Christophe ‘adventure’ that I knew about, until one day while Christophe and I were away doing a Vipassana meditation course in Queensland, Tanya went off and had sex with their landlord/ neighbour in Coorabell, a Polish guy named Sky. Coorabell is not far from Byron Bay, which is in New South Wales if you don’t know that already. Chris after maybe 4-5 occasions over the years of doing exactly the same thing was completely outraged and broke their relationship off.

Tanya moved next door and had a few kids with Sky. I accidentally caught up with her years later when I booked an AirBnB style thing in the little flat type thing which I didn’t realise was the same flat Tanya and Christophe used to rent just a few metres away from Sky’s house.

But that’s another story. The thing is, us Aussies often looked to go and have a bit of a working holiday/ jaunt in the UK in our twenties and I was no different. Except perhaps that part of my motivation was that I was chasing after the memory of a Swiss woman I had an adventure with for a few weeks myself. You have to catch up on my previous blogs if you’re lost at this point as they’re all connected.

I can’t judge Christophe or Tanya, my wife and I met while I was still married to my first wife. Life’s not always meticulously planned. My ex-wife and I separated almost immediately after my current wife and I met. My current wife and I split up for a bit between meeting and me returning to Mexico a year and a bit later. My ex-wife and I also stayed living together, in separate spaces, for about another year. I went back to Mexico a year and a bit after first meeting my wife-to-be and we got together again. I travelled back and forth to Mexico for a couple of years. We got engaged after I got divorced. Then we got married. Then we navigated the Australian immigration system. Now we’re together. Well not at this very moment as my wife is over in Guadalajara helping look after her terminally ill father. I was over a few weeks ago helping out. It’s tough. You can read more about Guadalajara here.

Again, plans? Life’s often a bit complicated to fit neatly into columns on a Google Sheet with daily rundowns on activities and costs.

So, with my trip to Europe preparations. I didn’t have much. I was still a hippy/grunge type in my early twenties. I had the address of the Irish woman, who used to live near Christophe’s mum’s house in Tugun, whom I’d never met. I had a copy of my WWOOFing guide. I also had one other contact in Britain of a couple I’d met in Australia.

Now, I forget the name of the couple but that’s also a little tale in itself. I lived briefly in the town of Newcastle in New South Wales, a largish town about two hours’ drive north of Sydney for those who don’t know, in 1993 or 1994, somewhere around then. It was around the time Christophe and Tanya went off to Scotland, and perhaps some other places, I know Christophe went off to Amsterdam at some stage to get wasted after saving for months in London and Scotland. Hippy power, in the weed capital of the world!

I’d gone to Newcastle because I was invited to visit Christophe’s brother Luke, who was living down there and I ended up meeting many of the colourful hippyish type crowd down there and renting a garage at a shared house where we tried very unsuccessfully to grow some hydro weed. We weren’t all peace and love type hippies, that was more the early 70s, we were those born in the early 70s, mainly unemployed or uni-going pot-smoking youth and perhaps something like archaistic , or at least ‘fight the power’ type hippies with a grunge bent.

Whilst in Newcastle, I met this woman whose name I cannot recall at all. She had met this British guy in Newcastle or somewhere, who was over here in Australia backpacking. They had an adventure and decided they wanted to continue having more adventures in life as they’d fell in love and blah, blah, blah all that romantic stuff.

Anyway, British guy whose name I also forgot, ran out of money and had to go back to England. He was flying out from Melbourne and was really skint. Broke as a two-bob watch as my father might have said in one of his senseless ranting where he’d also say things like ‘mad as a cut snake’ and ‘I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire’. Actually he may have used to say ‘mad as a two-bob watch’, which I don’t think makes any sense at all, but whatever, British guy was skint and had nowhere to stay in Melbourne. Newcastle chick was still in contact with me, somehow, I don’t know how we keep in touch before the internet, maybe by carrier pigeon or something. Newcastle chick rang me or wrote to me or something, and asked whether British guy could stay with me like 2 nights, and whether maybe I could feed him some rolled oats or something, as he was part Scottish I think and that’s what Scots love to eat. Unfortunately I had no scotch to offer him as only in later life have I discovered it’s nice, and been able to afford to try it, though I mostly now prefer tequila due in part to my falling in love with a Mexican, from the home state of tequila, and the town of Tequila, Jalisco, during my own adventurous travels.

So British guy comes and stays with me in the room I rented from that chick who went over to Europe or Asia in the Fitzroy share house for three months (see previous blog posts). And he’s all grateful and like, “if you ever come over to Britain, please look me up and you can stay a few nights with me”. I put that in double “quotations” as it will be something I’m very likely to refer to in subsequent posts, so I want it to be a firm quotation for the records. And I say to British guy like, ‘that’d be great’, and ‘no worries, have some more rolled oats and chickpea stew’. At that stage I had no job at the Brock’s, nor an adventure with a married Swiss woman, so no plans of really ever going to Britain. But I kept in contact with Newcastle chick, and British guy, when they reunited in Britain in the months that followed.

So before I set off overseas on my adventure I have a couple of random addresses and a WWOOFing guide, a return ticket to London with a stopover in Bangkok and potentially Kathmandu and New Delhi, and an idea I’d like to try and catch up with Corinne in Switzerland, as mentioned in previous blog posts.

So I was almost set to go. I went down to one of those camping stores in the Melbourne CBD. There used to be like a camping store district there where you could buy camping gear, maps and shit. I’m thinking around Little Collins Street or somewhere. I bought myself a brand new pair of Scarpa Italian leather walking boots, and a nice blue backpack. I’d also already gotten my Australian passport so I could actually get out of the country, and for good measure I’d put in my application for an Irish passport, as a result of my Irish lineage through my grandmother from County Sligo who moved to Australia after her mother died around age 10 to live on farms in central Queensland. I also needed to get some vaccines for India, Nepal and Thailand which were recorded in a little yellow book.

As my departure date got closer it became clear my Irish passport wouldn’t be ready, but they said not to worry they could send it to the Irish embassy in London so it’d be waiting for me when I arrived there. Sounded all reasonable, so, of course, now worries.

Scarpa, backpack and at least one passport in hand, I left the Brocks’ farm with kind blessing and many happy returns. They’d met Corinne so they were not too surprised I may want to try and see her again, though she hadn’t written – and I think I may not have written to her either – and I hadn’t mentioned that was partially the reason for going over to Europe. I forget, I also had her address amongst my handful of addresses, but since, as far as I knew, she was still married, I wouldn’t be just rocking up to her door, and, unlike British bloke who got together with Newcastle chick, I wasn’t exactly invited over there, so it was still just a thought bubble.

So I went down to Melbourne for the last couple of nights before I departed and stayed with my sister Louise. Her asking me to find other accommodation really triggered this string of events so it was perhaps poignant or something like that that I was back there to start yet another adventure.

I noticed on Louise’s bench a bit of paper with what looked to be a flight number. As Peter Brock flew around Australia doing a lot of racing and doing appearances I was pretty familiar with the Qantas flight numbers so I immediately thought my mum might be coming down to see me off. The next day I wasn’t too surprised to see her in Melbourne ready to come with me to Melbourne airport to see me off. Apparently my ranty dad forced her to go down to see me off, perhaps an indication that deep down he really loved his oldest boy and wanted someone down there by proxy to see him off in a tearful farewell.

So the next day, my mum came with me to the airport and tearily watched me as I passed through those special gates where non-ticket holders can’t go for security reasons. Though back then I was still able to bring the little Swiss Army knife Corinne had left me when she’d left after our adventure almost a year previously through the special gates and on the plane with me. I mean, it was such a little knife, not as though someone could used it to slit someone’s throat, hijack the plane and then fly it into some building shortly before some other people from the same terrorist organisation did the same thing at a few other locations, including the building right next to it, right?

I miss those days, where we were innocent enough to allow a little Swiss Army knife on the plane with you.

I was seated in the smoking section of the Thai Airways plane. Another historical curiosity now! I hadn’t smoked hardly at all since my first Vipassana meditation course – apart from the very occasional joint – about a year earlier. One of those joints was on the very first day after the course where I was walking around with this guy Evan, this Greek communist type guy, who’d also done the course with me. We were walking near the war memorial, and botanic gardens in Melbourne, chatting incessantly, still catching up on 10 days of silence when I blurted out, ‘I could do with a joint’, and then, I reached down on the ground and somehow someone had dropped a bag of weed right there in the middle of this huge park. True story. Anyway, it was a sign from the gods, or perhaps temptation from the mischievous sprites, so I smoked it. Evan abstained.

With the weed, I guess what comes around goes around. Some years earlier on the Gold Coast we were smoking weed with Christophe and a few random guys who’d moved to the Gold Coast. We were on Burleigh Hill, in Burleigh Heads, at night trying to find some caves or something in the little bit of rainforest that still exists on the headland there, and I freaked out and thought some monsters were going to eat me or something so I ran as fast as I could down the path. In the process, I dropped all my weed! I had a Twisties chip packet in case the cops pulled us over and put me in jail for 25 years, which they used to do in the sunny state of Queensland in those days. The amount I picked up on the ground in Melbourne was about the same. Go explain that rationally!

Enough distractions. That was the planning and preparation for my trip to Europe. Next stop was Bangkok.