Lowbagger World

Not much to report really

It's been a little bit quiet around here for a few reasons. As the road trip begins to wind down I'm finding myself too shagged to put my experiences into words and blurt them out into Cyberspace. I'm also a little flabbergasted over recent events, namely the sell out of Peter Garrett (who's always been a sellout really, but we've just chosen to ignore it) and the banality of rural Australia has made me begin to question whether this country is worth saving after all.

No, really, this grouchy attitude has nothing to do with not being able to score pot. Honestly.

Quote of the tour

The qoute of the tour so far:

"We need a return to rampant bohemiansim"
- Armidale intellectual and mother of two

Here here!

Amongst the plane people

Well, here I am, Byron Bay. The change in the weather is a welcome relief from the biting cold of Armidale and windy chill of Newcastle. What's not a welcome change is the number of backpackers literally tripping over each other on the sidewalks to squeeze every last bit of whatever it is they're after from this once idyllic coastal town.

Like a modern day plague, they descend like locusts from the sky, devouring everything in their path to an ear-splitting whine. They take everything and leave little behind, true culture eaters. A sea-shell ankle bracelet bestows instant environmental understanding, a mass-produced rastafarian knecklace brings affinity with the suffering of the indigenous population. An unending quest for the superficial and the banal. Their impact so detrimental that many communities are now moving to halt the construction of further backpacker hostels or to even knock them down.

"Plane People", we call them, thousands of economic refugees pouring into the country, overstaying their visas and working illegally. Yet the government seems to show little interest in sending them home or detaining them in ihumane conditions. Instead, they can either expect a slap on the wrist and a free ticket home, or in some cases, citizenship or residency offered to them like the publicity fliers they themselves so frequently hand out on the streets of Byron Bay.

So why the difference in treatment between the 17,000 british tourists that annually overstay their visas and the few thousand asylum seekers desperatley fleeing oppression in their homelands? Why is immigration raiding dry cleaners in the western suburbs when they could easily round up more illegal workers in campbell parade at Bondi? Is it something as simple as the means of arrival? Or is it something more base and vile, like the colour of your skin or the language of your mother?

I'm pretty sure about the answer to that one, but you can make your own mind up.

Photos online

Some photos from the roadtrip to date. No consistent theme, just pictures of interesting things...

60 days on the road down, only 40 to go.

Click here.

Loonie of the tour (to date)

Today a well dressed, bespectacled mature man of mediterranean origin came to look through our display. After a few minutes of gawking at the photos and the rather odd implements on display, he began rabbiting to me about how the generics offered by pharmacists in lieu of brand name drugs were "not fit for dogs". Ok, I thought, here we go.

Without stopping for breath, or space for any response from me, he began dribbling on about September 11 (a favourite topic of loonies for the last 2 odd years), specifically about how Bush and Howard knew it was coming. Not entirely insane in itself, just delivered quite bluntly.

"This Bush is a lying bastard!" he exclaimed. No argument from me.

"This John Howard is a fucking prick!" Again, I could hardly agree more.

More ramblings about generic drugs and then the clincher.

"Of course, Hitler was right!"

Uh oh.

"His only mistake was killing the jews. Even Esienhower said that they had supported the wrong side..."

The next 10 minutes was filled with every kind of imaginable invective against homosexuals, young people (the cause of all the world's ills, by fault of their piercings no less), feminists and every other minority group that had dared cry foul in the last 20 years or so. When the blood had completely drained from my face and he realised he had totally lost me, he bid me farewell and shuffled off.

Moral of the story: Never trust a man in a suit.

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…

Ik ben ein aüslander!

Crazy days - saw the trusty old Outlander that took us to the rock and back, without gaffa tape, making it's way through Bega the other day. He he, gotta love those unlimited kilometers.

Also in Castellano

Hey man, wanna buy a wheelchair?

Ahhh junkies. This week's episode of public education has taken me to Liverpool and one of the last bastions of scag-heads jacking up in the street. Funniest moment (for me anyway) was the woman from the medical centre who asked us if we'd seen someone pushing an empty wheelchair down the mall. When we responded in the negative she told us that it had just been stolen by a junkey who was nodding off in the medical centre waiting room. They'd put her in the wheelchair to stop her from passing out on the floor and the next thing they know, she's off down the street with it.

Just goes to show you can't trust a smacky - with anything.

Also in Castellano

On the road...

Well, it's begun. Since last Friday, the 2nd, I've been on the road for the firm and getting into the swing of the whole engaging with the public thing. Not much to relate so far except there are more crazies in Sydney then even I remembered, either that or my new eau de toilette also attracts weirdos...

Favourite anecdote to date is of the young couple, complete with hatchling, who stopped by to check things out and learn a little more of the world around them. After explaining what it was that my multinational corporation did, the young lad with excessive nose hair asked the ineviatable question:

"So what do you reckon is the most fucked up country in the world, eh bro?"

After some consideration, weighing up years of civil war vs. intensity plus various other factors, I replied that it would probably have to be, if only by a bee's dick, Sudan.

"So where's that then bro?"

Fair question, not everyone has an intimate knowledge of Sub-Saharan African geography. So I took them to the world map we had down the end of the tent and pointed it out.

"Right here, between Ethiopia and Egypt"

"Oh, so that's Africa!" exclaimed the young girl.

…

Last time I pay out on seppos that don't know where Australia is. I felt obliged to then point out which funny blobs where Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. On request I showed them where Iraq was and could see their heads churning at the shear distance it was from Australia.

"Big fucking threat eh bro?" I asked the young lad.

He grinned and both of them looking very grateful, thanked me and strolled off.

Also in Castellano