The life and times of a reluctant backpacker.
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| Victoria Square |
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| Working in the showgrounds |
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| Showgrounds setup |
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| Gametable |
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| Rick and his icecreams |
So here I sit in the common area in Adelaide Central YHA (Youth Hostelling Association) surrounded by 25 or so people of varying ages from countries as widespread as Ireland, Britan, France, Germany, Holland, China, Malaysia, Brazil, USofA, and even some dejected looking Aussies.
This is however just another normal Thursday afternoon with people relaxing on couches dwarfed by their towering baggage, or playing fast and loud ping pong matches for hours on end. Some sit at the provided computers emailing home or checking Facebook updates. Others sit on the balcony smoking in the late afternoon sun of the Australian winter. Beside me a Chinese couple feast on peanut butter and store brand bread, in the kitchen to my right various culinary delights are being concocted from instant noodles and pasta, to questionable meats soaked in exotic unknown sauces. Soon, once the larger part of the population returns from the days exploring the common room will fill up with conversation, clinking bottles and cups, and the omnipresent smell of instant noodles once more.
This is the space each person must make their own and after living here for almost 4 months now I have become well accustomed to the routine chaos and daily challenges of vying for a laptop spot at the charging table, finding the big saucepan for boiling pasta, or making sure my beer in the communal fridge doesn’t disappear.
The more time I spend in hostels however I have learned to notice some things that every new guest does, Upon arriving in the hostel you firstly must pay for your accommodation, find your room and then find a suitable empty bunk to make your own. Now in times of high traffic you will most probably be stuck with a top bunk since the long term folk like me will have made the bottom bunk into an impenetrable fortress of sheets and towels, this is paramount if you plan on staying for more than a few days as it grants an added degree of privacy in a shared room, allows for late night reading with your bunk light which without cover would aggravate those trying to sleep in the fluorescent glare from your bunk. Finally it lets new guests know that you live here and this is your space, not to be disturbed, certainly not somewhere to dump your bags and if the only free bunk is over mine then most of the good storage spots around the floor will of course be filled with my junk.
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| Radelaide |
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| Everfresh |
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| Black Swan |
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| Adelaide Entertainment Centre |
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| Celebrations in the hostel |
So now our new guest has established somewhere to sleep and keep their bags they must venture out into the common area, Every so often some people will refrain from doing this and just resign themselves to living in their bunk for the duration of their stay, personal reasons or not this is not a good tactic as it makes the other guests suspicious of you.
Everyone is quiet when they first arrive on their own to a new hostel, you don’t know what the social structure is, who are the long term people, who arrived today like you, and who will be gone by 7am tomorrow, but that’s easy to find out once your not a total recluse, most new guests will invariably head to the kitchen first, for obvious reasons, it allows you to fade into the background and watch the people interact around you, perhaps joining into a conversation almost immediately, as you fight with the cellophane wrapping on your chicken curry noodles ($1.50 in K-mart) Every new person who arrives will slowly make some food or a hot drink and find themselves a piece of food shelf real-estate, stash their food and then venture to the tables to sit and consume their spoils as they study further the group dynamic around them.
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| The aforementioned kitchen |
Now I myself have been in this situation many times and I have learned from experience that the longer one spends thinking without speaking the more removed you become, so first order of business is to say something loud generic and universally agreeable such as “man these noodles suck” or the tried and tested gem ”so where are you guys from” after that your in, one of the gang, in three hours you will be like old buddies who have travelled together for years, simply because every other person in the hostel is in exactly the same situation as you, new town, new people and no idea what your doing. And that’s the best part,
So this has been my routine throughout Malaysia, Thailand, New Zealand and Australia with varying levels of success, thankfully in the hostel I now live in I have forged a pretty strong group of friends who are all living and working here for the long term. Life changes in the hostel once you become a long term person, no longer does the night guard ask you to prove your residency, one becomes quite adept at snatching up any food left on the free food shelves, and by now I even have a preference of which seat I eat at, where I read, which bathrooms have the best showers and facilities and so on, basically it is like living in a gigantic student shared house with multinational guests of all ages from parents with toddlers, to pensioners stopping over for a night on their way cross country,. It is a great environment and each day you meet some amazing people, And some really weird Australians now and then.
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| Monitor mixing station onstage, norwood |
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| Adelaide from the coastline |
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| Markets art |
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| ALPACAS! |
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| Adelaide Royal Show |
Working in Adelaide is turning out to be quite interesting recently with a few long term employees leaving the company I was recently asked to take on more gigs and operate audio for some shows coming up soon. (with an added 25% on wage!!) Combining this with the fact that working in the hostel I am now doing 14 hrs a week in exchange for free accommodation I should be able to support myself comfortably while saving money for further travels.
Within Central AV I have mostly been working as a stage and PA rigger and general crew hand setting up and de-rigging shows, stages, and various corporate events. I have had a chance to operate sound for some gigs and as a result will be operating more live sound as they feel comfortable to leave more work to me. What they consider a hard sound gig here in the corporate field is basic compared to work done in theatre at home. They have a lot of Staging. Trussing, Drapes, Lighting and large sound systems so I am gaining useful experience in a wide range of systems, techniques and technologies. At the same time learning how to speak Australian and understand this strange species.
Day to day life in the hostel is a mixture of routine and surprise, usually one wakes at nine for free pancakes but some mornings you may find a queue of 30 people. Or even worse a somnambulant backpacker has slept through the pancake shift and left the residents without their free breakfast.
Some days you will meet three or four new people who are either one day in the hostel or staying a weekend before departing, rarely do we get a new addition to the long term group but whenever we do they are inevitably interesting people like the rest of us.
A few certifiable space cadets have passed through here and we are all certainly more aware of the dangers of untreated psychosis in wandering Aussie backpackers since our time here.
We’ve had Giggles the middle aged lady who laughs and talks to herself and inanimate objects all day long. Or another gent who mumbled and talked to himself awake or asleep, eventually culminating in being removed in the middle of the night due to freaking out his whole dorm.
After a while you become accustomed to these people and they inevitably just become part of the intensely interesting fabric of hostel life.
Most evenings when everyone is eating and talking after their day in the city and its environs groups form and drinks appear. Now having had countless evenings like these before I started to notice the trends and can nearly guess what people will be talking about depending on the group, time of night, and number of drinks consumed,
I have talked with so many people about the impending collapse of our financial, religious, political, and social institutions that I can only hope that the conversations we have had are being had in in every city around the world. When I look at the local, national and international media I lose all hope in the future of our society, but this faith is quickly restored when I meet some intelligent young travellers like myself and realise that the future of all these institutions lies in a 6 bed dorm with 19 - 29 yr old backpackers who will soon be our future leaders. Once they finish drinking goon and eating instant noodles from the saucepan.
I have gained a wider understanding of people and the way they work as I have travelled, I have learned how people react in certain situations or how they respond to interaction based on surroundings and context.
Most people, be they introvert or extrovert are basically all doing the same thing, trying to find out who the hell they are, what they are doing and how do they fit into the world in their own way. Each person obviously has their own preferred technique. Some will engage directly and talk about everyday occurrences, news stories and the weather. Others put on a show, talking about their great and exciting lives, regaling listeners in stories of past triumphs and future plans to be even more awesome. I myself am guilty of this at some times but usually only in response to someone who has engaged in a conversation of bigger and better stories each out-doing the last.
Other people don’t engage at all, and they leave the conversation to the loud people, I prefer this approach and I like to observe the group and their developing structure before I join in and speak my part.
Watching new people meeting in a group for the first time is very interesting and as it happens daily here I like to watch the process play out with various twists and turns. People of many different nationalities, ethnicities, social standings, and personal standpoints meet in a neutral environment, they sit at a communal dining table and conversation slowly sparks around the table until some leave, some stay and more join in. Now this new group will begin conversation naturally about something mundane, the location they are in, the weather, the food etc… Then as time moves on the core group will engage in more substantial conversation, whatever the topic may be.
Now this is where the interesting behaviour begins. An alpha male/female character will emerge quite early, driving the discussion and subconsciously taking control. Sometimes there may be two contesting alphas vying for control, especially if there is a desirable mate at the table. These conversations inevitably result in shows of prowess, knowledge and past achievements until one of the alphas emerges victorious.
Other individuals at the table sometimes don’t wish to engage in the contest for alpha and are happy to join in the conversation when it suits them, these tend to be more relaxed individuals who are not interested in leading the conversation in order to make their point. They will speak when it suits them and will leave their opinion for others to consider, as opposed to the alpha male beating his hypothesis into his opponent with a sharpened thesaurus.
Finally you have the supplicants who desire to lead the conversation and have a mouth full of opinions to regurgitate on the group, yet they lack the certain “je ne se que” to take control of the situation and end up beaming smiles at the alpha agreeing over-enthusiastically and subconsciously mimicking the body language of the person they want to get their point across to.
Interestingly enough, once the alpha departs it is these supplicants who eagerly dive into the discussion relishing their new found position as head of the table, only to find the conversation has died, the points have been made and the group will soon dissipate and go silent.
That is one example of the things I have learned from spending too much time sitting and reading or typing in the common living area of hostels.
The second one I enjoy is watching two males politely fighting with each other as they talk to a newly introduced female.
She may be sitting quietly eating and the two males will begin to talk between themselves, their slightly amplified conversation usually revolves around some racy topic chosen to engage the female without having to talk about something too intelligent.
Once they have dropped a question her direction the contest has begun.
Now unless one of the males concedes defeat and retreats the inevitable result of these conversations is either the female will leave and ignore both males as they try to out-do one another, or she will pick one male to talk to and slowly exclude the other male until he gets the idea and leaves.
This may seem like amateur anthropology without any prior knowledge but really it is just observations of what I have seen many times each week in the hostels I have lived in,
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| River Torrens |
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| Packing up |
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| Luis |
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| Giant Video screen |
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| Weymouth St |
People seem to feel comfortable fitting into a stereotype sometimes and in the travellers lifestyle there are a few typical travellers who re-appear in different incarnations each week.
You have the lone male, educated but not travelled, well dressed and terrified of the freaks and hooligans surrounding him. However he hides this well as he reads his book in the same seat every day isolated and quiet showing no signs of nerves until his shaking hands betray him as he removes his glasses or takes a drink.
Now this guy is just nervous as he is outside the comfort zone and is unfamiliar with living in such close proximity to such loud smelly crass backbackers, party animals, hippies, and other silent recluses. The whole thing seems to be quite intimidating at first but with time our newly fledged traveller will find his feet and feel more at home in this group.
Then we have the educated and travelled male who has seen it all before and concentrates the bulk of his time to conversing loudly with the most desirable females in the room, although after time this male can be found to show a feeble human side once the cocky façade is peeled away. He is most probably a more travelled version of our first male and has become accustomed to the freaks and weirdo’s surrounding him but has not learned to understand them. Thus bounding around confidently and taking every new girl on the same walking tour of the city is his technique of settling in and soon he too will become more down to earth as he gets to know more long term people. This guy is always a great asset when going out with a new group or hitting the town.
The freaks and the weirdo’s are a great bunch, of course they possess varying degrees of mental instability, strange habits, a tendency to talk about conspiracy theories a lot and probably have a unique odour to boot.
But these people are the backbone of the travelling community.
The so called “squares” don’t seem to understand someone who plans to travel for more than the standard 3-12 months. Or why one is not excited by the prospect of going home to dedicate their life to paying a mortgage and raising 2.5 kids with a station wagon and spiteful wife. The F.A.W. are the artists, musicians, writers and thinkers of our generation, and although they may seem strange with their dreadlocks, ponchos, tattoos and piercing they repeatedly turn out to be the most insightful memorable and enjoyable people you will meet on your travels. They talk a lot about a different way of life and even if they don’t achieve exactly that they have at least made others sit and think about their life choices in at least a new context or different light.
Then we have the group of friends, these people are hard to get to know as they have brought their group with them they keep to themselves, they rarely engage other guests unless going drinking with them.
However if getting to know a pair or trio of friends they can bring a new energy and comfortable banter to people who are just getting settled into a room of strangers.
There are many more strange characters found in the hostel on any one day, such as the aged backpacking couple. Young family, reclusive creepy guys, overzealous middle aged women, teenage travellers with daddy’s credit card. And countless others that make up the great unwashed.
The one downside of living here for so long is you inevitably out-stay most of the people you meet. In my 4 months I have met countless people and forged some great friendships, some one night camaraderie’s, friends with no name, girls with beautiful faces and funny shoes, international people who communicate with broken English and sign language. Often I have seen someone at reception in the afternoon and after a quick hello never see them again during their 8-10 hour stay. Others live in the hostel for days or weeks but just refrain from social interaction. Plans fall through, names are forgotten, but the memory remains,
I think someday I will look back on these days and remember some of the greatest people I have met, people who taught me things about myself if not through their words then just through the observation of their actions.
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| Angry Bird |
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| Cyclists on the Torrens |
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| Cherub tag |
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| Bridge on the torrens |
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| Pidgeon |
In other news I have settled into daily life in Adelaide quite comfortably, my routine usually begins at 8-9am getting cleaning/pancakes/bedmaking done before breakfast and coffee around 10-11, then perhaps hop on the long board to surf the sidewalk in the morning sun and pass the time until lunch to go eat with one of the guys in the Chinese food court, $6.50 for all the food you can stack on one plate. Back to the hostel to do an afternoon shift like cleaning the windows or sort the recycling, 2 hours a day ensures free accomodation, often I will have a shift with my job in CAVs and dressed in techie black I spend the night setting up, operating or taking down a show in one of the many large venues in Adelaide.
Nights I often call into La Boheme where Maurice works and I may have a short smoke and a drink before retiring to the hostel to catch up with friends over food and drinks in the common room into the late hours of the night.
My last 4 months have basically been a shuffled mix of these elements, interspersed with some great nights, great days and strange encounters.
I have now been travelling for 7 months and it has flown past. Thailand and Malaysia feel like a lifetime ago, Adelaide has been my home for 4-5 months now and I really feel at home here with my work and friends, I will miss this place but it looks like I will be here for at least another few months, living the dream and trying to save some shiny Australian Dollars!!
Until the next time I send my best wishes to everyone at home, please forgive my poor communication skills but I have become fairly detached from my online activities. My laptop rarely sees the light of day anymore.
I look forward to hearing from home and getting the latest news from everybody. I still have no idea where this journey is going to take me next, or where it is going to end. I would love to join forces with anyone from home who feels like taking the leap and travelling the world too!! It is nowhere near as difficult or as intimidating as you might think.
Soon you too could be writing home about your adventures in Australasia!
Talk cha
Frank!
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| Chocolate shop |
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| Black swan closeup |
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| Relaxing |
