Farewell

Last night, as we stared from our apartment at the courtyard and smoked cigarettes that the signs in the apartment told us not to, Sarah put her arms around me and said something like:

"Imagine all the others that have come before us. Imagine the Irish on the boats, the coffin ships, leaving and knowing they would never come back."
And it's true. I have money, and air travel to return me to the bosom of family, and so there really isn't any problems at all with being here. It's nothing like the brave, pathetic Irish before us.

It's a privilege afforded to few, maybe the few of us who decide to up and backpack for the past 20 odd years. Maybe the tiniest, smallest percentage of people who have ever existed, some 0.000001% of people in the world as lucky as we are. And I sit and complain about no smoking in airports, and adjustment when a new world unfolds itself to me.

It's certainly man-up time!

Today was our last full day in Melbourne, until we possibly return to meet Cian and Sarah, or Glenn, an old friend I would love to get drunk with, but that story should wait for his arrival.

So our reunion with Fed Sq., Swanston, St. Kilda et al will surely be a delightful one. In a month's time, late october or early november, the summer will begin to defeat the changeable spring weather and we should be coming back to sun too, and here the sun is the type that lifts depression, the kind that coats a city in glitter, making your eyes pop with the shimmering beauty of it all.

Tomorrow, we check out at 10am, and collect the car at 11. From then on it's a rollercoaster, with 1600 km to hit in 4 days, no accommodation, just maps and a rough direction to Brisbane. Now that really is travel!
The car cost us maybe 50 euro each, to get all of that way, for the 4 days of abuse I plan to give it. A bus costs the same, with no smoking, and scheduled stops, no music and the tedium of bus journeys multiplied by the ridiculous size of the country and other people to cough, hack, murmur and wrankle under our skin.

I hope that this is the best thing that has happened us so far.

The total freedom of it all, which would normally make me run a mile, is suddenly worth embracing. Worth longing for as I fall asleep in the comfortable hospital white apartment we have stayed in here,

We said goodbye to Fed Square today on what was our best day here yet. Saturday, and thronging streets, metallers, punks, and those teenage goth girls who have taken over the world, replete with ripped fishnets and gargantuan amounts of make-up, blackened the whole square, presumably for some concert I was totally unaware of.

Our stroll only interrupted by a "free Burma" march, with 300 odd yards of a sea of people swanning a beeline through the city centre, holding up traffic that refused to beep, chanting and holding placards for their cause. We had heard of trouble in Myanmar, monks fleeing and military intervention, but without the context of news, I am still muddled as to the actual details. The earnest people and their chanting actually made my skin tingle, and we had to stop as I threw silent respect at them.

We strolled the avenue lining the Yarra, where couples come to fall in love. A path that runs right along side the river so as you can jump on the docks and fall in if you are drunk enough or deep-end inclined.

We stopped for street entertainers after getting tipsy on Jacks and cokes in a cheap bar that played bad Jazz near the Eureka Tower, some sort of 88 storey monster where apartments cost 900 dollars a week, and the one that stands out particularly was a wonderful circus performer who juggled fire whilst balancing himself on a ladder where his feet were 6 feet up, and told jokes while he was doing it. A madman, and it all reminded me of Liam and Eoin and Donal and Roni and the circus we put on for ourselves so many early mornings at 6am after too many drugs and drinks, though who am I to say that, seeing as how I have gone through the heat of my passion for banned substances, and survived as a non-addict. Non-addict, that is, except for my deep love of beer, and of course weed. But the ones who point and claim addiction are those that will never know the true, simple fun of sharing a toke with likeminded friends after a hard day, week, month, year.