Post-flooding roadworks and bad weather meant my overnight bus was even later than expected. These trips are weird. You might think ‘no problem I’ll just sleep’ but the legally required ‘meal’ breaks mean you’re interrupted seemingly every 4 hours. Annoyingly you HAVE to get off the bus. And what I didn’t spend on accommodation, I did spend on junk food. At times like 3am I lacked logic and self-control.
At first the bus seemed like it was taking every side road imaginable to pick up no one. As I went through Ayr I thought of a girl from Cork I’d met on Magnetic Island who’d recently been protected from a crazy mulleted lesbian who was chasing her by some kind but also slightly odd bar staff. And the meal breaks are all at awful BP stations. None of your motorway services like the UK. Oh no. There’s little seating. I tend to stand and read as many papers as I can, maybe buy something, take as long as I can to visit the bathroom, walk around in the dark for a bit, and the time is usually up by then.
And it’s just like sleeping on the plane. You wake up either in unimaginable pain or with totally dead limbs. At least I’m blessed with decent sleeping ability so I actually didn’t feel too whacked fifteen and a half hours later when we turned up at Agnes Water. But it was raining. And it never stopped. I caught the first shuttle from my Nomads hostel into ‘town’. Oh my God I thought I’d been to some quiet places but Agnes Water is like one of those small and dreadful out of town shopping centres you get in chavvy parts of British Cities, but without the threatening feeling!
I tried to work out how I was going to get to see Town of 1770 – which Captain Cook had a good look around in said year – but there’s no public transport and there were no bikes available for hire and it was raining. So, er, I booked the first Greyhound out of town the next morning and thought 1770 will have to wait for another time.
One really good thing was the wonderful girls in my dorm though. And free wifi. Wooppeee! We sat in the bar together most of the night mixing computer chores with gossip. But when last orders happened at 9:30 we were again puzzled! This country seems to be two polar opposites – either SO dead you can’t even have a pint post 9:30 or backpackers getting absolutely blasted on horrible goon! My camp is somewhere between the two.
So Agnes Water, I’m sure you’re beautiful, but I had a couple of pressing issues ahead. The first of these: Bunderberg Rum.
At first the bus seemed like it was taking every side road imaginable to pick up no one. As I went through Ayr I thought of a girl from Cork I’d met on Magnetic Island who’d recently been protected from a crazy mulleted lesbian who was chasing her by some kind but also slightly odd bar staff. And the meal breaks are all at awful BP stations. None of your motorway services like the UK. Oh no. There’s little seating. I tend to stand and read as many papers as I can, maybe buy something, take as long as I can to visit the bathroom, walk around in the dark for a bit, and the time is usually up by then.
And it’s just like sleeping on the plane. You wake up either in unimaginable pain or with totally dead limbs. At least I’m blessed with decent sleeping ability so I actually didn’t feel too whacked fifteen and a half hours later when we turned up at Agnes Water. But it was raining. And it never stopped. I caught the first shuttle from my Nomads hostel into ‘town’. Oh my God I thought I’d been to some quiet places but Agnes Water is like one of those small and dreadful out of town shopping centres you get in chavvy parts of British Cities, but without the threatening feeling!
I tried to work out how I was going to get to see Town of 1770 – which Captain Cook had a good look around in said year – but there’s no public transport and there were no bikes available for hire and it was raining. So, er, I booked the first Greyhound out of town the next morning and thought 1770 will have to wait for another time.
One really good thing was the wonderful girls in my dorm though. And free wifi. Wooppeee! We sat in the bar together most of the night mixing computer chores with gossip. But when last orders happened at 9:30 we were again puzzled! This country seems to be two polar opposites – either SO dead you can’t even have a pint post 9:30 or backpackers getting absolutely blasted on horrible goon! My camp is somewhere between the two.
So Agnes Water, I’m sure you’re beautiful, but I had a couple of pressing issues ahead. The first of these: Bunderberg Rum.
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