Uncharted waters

It's been a whirlwind last week for this lowbagger on the road as a salaryman. The route has taken me south along the coast road into south-eastern Victoria. I'm holed up in a bright but soulless caravan park in Traralgon, marking time but getting into the vibe of the rock show nonetheless. My now ex-flatmate asked me try and find out what was really going on out here with the people and although I need a bit more time to form any concrete conclusions, my first take is madness. Yep, that's right, plain, unadulterated lunacy. Now I couldn't pretend for a minute to have met all of the rainbow of humanity in the last few weeks, but I sure have encountered a veritable truckload of freaks. It's getting beyond a joke, either I'm going deaf or people really are saying the things to me that I think they are. I'll look into this one further and report back…

It's also a bit weird feeling like a stranger in my own land. Sure, I've always been brought up to believe that Victorians were a strange folk, but I can't have changed that much in the intervening years. I notice that people talk to me slowly, as you would to one who speaks English as a second language, complete with exaggerated gestures. The inevitable question after any conversation of more than 5 minutes is where do I come from and some surprise that I'm actually Australian. Surely my accent hasn't changed that much or is it simply that down here, they hear strange things about them queer folk from Queensland…