Wednesday 21st November
Up stupidly early for another day touristing.
The girls, as per, are staying in bed to get their beauty sleep. If skinny sleep was an option, maybe I’d have stayed there too. Instead, I’m off to explore… Australia’s Great Ocean Road.
From: captainkevman@live.co.uk
To: 'My UK Contacts'
Subject: A great ocean ROADTRIP!
Date: Weds 21 Nov - 23:57
Hello Possums!
I’ve had the most awesome day… Picture the scene. I’m cruising Aussie’s equivalent of Route 66 in a beautiful red convertible, the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and a whole lot of horsepower throbbing beneath me. I’ve been touring The Great Ocean Road, and my adventures took me out of Melbourne and around 185 miles of Australia’s more dramatic southern coastline. The experience is not one I’ll forget any time soon.
I’m not usually a fan of a coastal drive. Back home, dull skies, vandalised amusement arcades, hoodies on bikes and metal-detecting pensioners do nothing to get my juices going. But over here… Wow. Turquoise seas, endless blue skies, rolling green rainforests, and untamed beauty in all directions. Plus, a whacking great strip of tarmac to see it all from, of course.
With the girls both sleeping off hangovers, I grabbed the nearest backpacker for company. This turned out to be Kristen, an excitable young lady from Canada who is wider than she is tall. She folded herself into the passenger seat of my newly rented hire-car and changed gear for me twice with her thigh.
Like all epic adventures, The Great Ocean Road is a perfect trilogy. Part 1 is known as ‘The Surf Coast’, so called because of all the huge crashing waves just off the cliff edge and all the people in wet-suits riding them. We stopped to stretch our legs at the Apollo Bay Golf Course where we’d heard rumours of kangaroos living amongst the bunkers. Did you know ‘kangaroo’ translates as ‘I don’t understand you!’ in the local Aboriginal language? Apparently, Captain Cook had pointed at one when he first landed here and asked a native “What is that?” and then just assumed their response was its name. At least, that’s what it says online so it must be true,
We found a mob of them stumping around the fairways, wide-eyed on feet like clown-shoes, using their tail like a third leg and unaware of the frustrated golfers trying to play through. One had a baby joey in her pouch, but it wasn’t tucked away neatly with its head poking out like you’d maybe expect. It looked almost fully-grown and was stretching and distending her tummy like a human teenager would if it decided to crawl back up their mum. Not what I was expecting at all.
We stopped again a few miles later when we saw koalas stretched out high up in the trees. Note, I said ‘koalas’ and not ‘koala BEARS’. Getting this wrong is one of the few things that will make an Aussie angry. And they were literally high, up in the trees. Boffins have proved that eating eucalyptus has the same effect on their brains as cannabis does to a human. They’re cute and they’re stoned. Not a bad life.
Part 2 of the trip is ‘The Green Coast’, so called because the road becomes submerged in rainforest. Here we went for a forest walk, discovered screaming birds and suicidal trees (if you want an explanation, email me) and I learnt that Kristen’s boobs were so close to her knees that she plays keepie-uppie when she walks. If she’d flashed me, she would’ve cleaned my shoes. If she’d been American, she’d have come from Massivehugetits. The increasingly irritating Canadian (who uses the word ‘awesome’ like it’s punctuation) asked if it was my first time exploring the bush and I told her, “Oh no, I had an experimental phase when I was younger.” It shut her up for a good few seconds.
It turns out that rainforest is a bit like Centre Parcs but without the igloo and yobs on bikes, so it wasn’t long before we were back on the road and heading for Part 3; ‘The Shipwreck Coast’. By mid-afternoon, we’d arrived at the landmark I’d been looking forward to most. The Twelve Apostles. I squeezed between a hoard of Japanese tourists to get sight of them from the viewing platform, but with so many cameras going off around me I felt like I was on a red carpet. I managed to get some snaps and keep everyone out of the picture, so I’ll look back on them in years to come and think I was the only person here. It was a beautiful sight and I’m not sure my words can do it justice. Abandoned monuments of rock staggered out to sea across the horizon, crystal water crashing against them in rainbow bursts. It was awesome. Shit, I mean SPECTACULAR. Damn woman has got me saying it. Someone took a lovely photo of the two of us in front of them but I stood far enough away that I can crop her out later. I won’t be staying in touch.
On the way home, we pulled into Loch Ard Gorge, a tiny little bay with some old smuggler hideouts. It was here that I learnt never to use the flash when taking a photo in a cave, no matter how phallic a stalagmite might look. A cloud of panicked bats erupted from the gloom and enveloped me, ferociously emptying their bowels in their rush to get out. In my scramble to escape what was effectively a shit-bomb there’s a small chance I may have emptied my own.
It was dark by the time we got back to the hostel, by which time “Trees! AWESOME! Rocks! AWESOME! You’re covered in bat crap! AWESOME!” was getting a little tiring. Kristen had talked non-stop and I can only assume she had been breathing through her butt-hole. It made coming back to an empty room all the more jarring. Going by the state of the place, the girls have gone out clubbing because our room looks like ground zero from a fashion explosion. As long as they don’t feel like they’re wasting their time here, I guess that’s all that matters.
Love Kev x
Replies to the guys:
Mum – I was a bit tipsy, sorry. WTF means ‘Well That’s Fantastic’.
Michael – Told you I would. You didn’t believe me!
Alex – You can read about them in the Guinness Book of Records under, “Longest Time Asleep.”
Corks Wine Bar – I’m flattered! Of course you can pin my emails up on the notice-board. If they’re safe enough for my mum to read, they’ll be safe enough for Merlot Mel and Double Scotch Scott. How nice that people are interested!
[SENT VIA THE FRIENDLY BACKPACKER PUBLIC COMPUTER]
12.15am
Before I left for this backpacking adventure, I told Michael that at some point I’d hire a luxury car and go on a road-trip. I’d experience the thrill of the open road, clear the cobwebs from my brain, and generally drive very fast indeed. He’d laughed in my face.
“You’ll never do that. You’ll over think it, get freaked out by the men in the car hire place and then totally play it safe and do a tour bus with all the grannies.”
He wasn’t joking either. He said I had a habit of thinking too much and talking myself out of doing anything. Analysis Paralysis, he called it. I’m not sure where it all came from but he seemed kind of angry. I was leaving for Aus for goodness sake, how was that playing it safe? Then we snogged. Oops.
Well, that email showed him!
Only… it turns out he knows me pretty damn well. Better than I know myself. I’d talked myself out of hiring a car before I even got to the showroom. I know nothing about horse-power and stuff. What about insurance? Mileage? Australian petrol stations? What if I looked stupid in front of a salesman? And was it really a good idea for me to be driving a strange car so close to the cliffs? I’d do a Thelma and Louise for sure.
So I did do a tour bus. With Kirsten. Who was a grandmother. Two big lies in my email home. Michael was spot on, the fucker.
I have to say, as annoying as she was, I could learn a thing or two from Kirsten. She’s probably the largest person I’ve ever met, it’s like she ATE a fat person, but her self-confidence is bigger still and she’s supremely body positive. Must be a Canadian thing, I don’t know any Brits like that.
“It wouldn’t be fair to all the other widows if I was this clever, awesome AND thin,” she told me at one point. “If I don’t keep up my calorie intake I’ll get my figure back, and then I’ll be stealing all the remaining men that are of an appropriate age. It’s a public service, really.”
I’ve decided to take a leaf from her book and will try to look at myself differently, starting from now. I am no longer fat, I am simply overflowing with awesomeness. You hear that brain? Awesomeness.
