The Auzie Experience, Cairns to Sydney avec Bernie Mac. AUSTRALIA (April-July 2009)

Captain’s log...... our boeing 747 has sustained minimal damage from the clingon attack we will have to stop and refuel our gullets in Australia and gather provisions as well as take in the local sites.............. (Star Trek was great!!!)

Our flights from Tokyo International left at similar times but where our oneworld tickets predetermined that we have a stopover at Brisbane to then catch an internal flight to Cairns using the infamous Qantas Airlines, the Mac would take their sister company Jetstar straight to Cairns. As Bernie would land in Cairns first we were expecting him to have a taxi upon arrival ready to drive us to our booked accommodation. Of course not even the simplest of arrangements went according to plan. Having arrived at the domestic terminal we were expecting Bernie to be waiting at the arrivals area preferably with a bottle of the fizzy stuff. We waited 15 mins and collectively we reached to the same conclusion that Bernie had not even thought about coming to meet us at the domestic terminal and to be more precise that he hadn’t even made it outside. As we walked to the international terminal which for the record was deserted we found the Mac curled up in the corner of the waiting area catching some shut eye. Let us hope that Bernie never becomes prime minister of Nigeria as he is so predictable that an assassin wouldn’t need much of an IQ in order to get in the mind frame of his target.
Ok we were all in a gigantic ford falcon on our way to Gilligans Backpackers Cairns. As we drove from the very small Cairns airport into town I must say that I was not impressed at all with the area even less the architecture. This is Australia, a country which didn’t even exist until 300 years ago when a Captain Cook came across New Zealand in search of the mythical southern continent. I would try my best to take a neutral stand point and to put my experiences with Australians in London to one side.
I had never really thought about what to expect from Australia, of course beer would play a dense role in the grand scheme of things. Seriously I thought the east coast of Australia was one long sandy beach. I will address this later!. Having spent 3 days in Cairns which in my opinion was 2 days too long, there isn’t really much to say. There is nothing to see in Cairns but I hear there is much to do apart from going on the taky pub crawls which make you guzzle cheap alcohol and perform sex positions with strangers (which for some of the readers i.e. Dom Adlem is bliss). In fact the beach area makes some of the worst stretches of coast look more appealing. What they do instead which completely bamboozles me, is to you use a manmade lagoon which overlooks the coast. We went out every night in Cairns, it was really “the same shit but different toilet”. The hostel was really nice especially for the price we paid, with the inclusion of Bernie searching for rooms for 4 is really economical and relatively easier.
I guess some of the aristocratic snobbery from backpackers in Japan had rubbed off on us and we rented a very decent car instead of travelling with the rest of the cattle on the Australian Greyhound busses. Having two black men with a say on the vehicle of choice proved difficult, where Mark and I wanted space and practicality, Bernie and Weli wanted rims and hydraulics. We wanted Toyota Corrolas and they wanted 4x4 Jeeps. Well we settled for a Toyota Sportivo Camry, it was a dam nice car, I am writing this having just rented a Toyota Yaris. We had an intricate plan for our east coast experience. We would drive to Arlie Beach and visit Whitsunday Islands times two nights then drive to Brisbane time 2 nights and finally Byron Bay times two nights before returning Bernie to Brisbane Airport where he would return to Europe to talk of his travels. This did not happen, not even close in hindsight what we did proved to be much more beneficial for Bernie. Australia is huge this cannot be underestimated having driven well over 7000km I really appreciate its size. We drove for 4 hours to Townsville where we stayed in a really nice hostel for one night before setting out to Arlie Beach. The hostel had a great atmosphere down to the individual who ran and maintained the building. His name escapes me but he definitely made us feel right at home instantly.
The drive from Townsville to Arlie beach was a monster. As Russian KGB from Rounders famously said “he lays down a monster.... the f@ck you lay that down”. Guys the road infrastructure in Australia is woeful making an English country land look like route 66. Along the east coast of Australia we have pretty much one road connecting the towns such as Cairns and Townsville in the North with the more prominent cities such as Newcastle, Sydney and Melbourne in the South. This route is known as the Pacific Highway or alternatively Bruce Highway. Now the word Highway has been desecrated on every Australian road sign because by definition a highway is surely a free flowing road i.e. dual carriage way similar to our motorways in England. To be more truthful the roads are terrible making the long journeys such as Brisbane to Sydney. The road is ancient and passes through every settlement and town along the east coast which results in numerous variable speed limits. For instance you leave a relatively small town and find yourself cruising at a comfortable speed (120kmh) to then suddenly be told to reduce to 30 as it is a school zone. This occurs time after time making road rage an everyday occurrence here down under. For my second rant I shall focus my attention on the criminals that call themselves car rental companies mainly Hertz, Avis etc. The area of the rental agreement that I will address in this entry is “Young Person Surcharge”. By definition this surcharge is applied to all customers under 25 years of age. This has no bearing on the experience of the driver, simply age. I am fed up of paying a young person’s surcharge to the crook rental companies. I have news for them; I am 25 in October which means they will never claim that extortionate charge from me ever again. So where were we, oh that’s right Brisbane would be the scene of radical sports. The trip from Arlie Beach to Brisbane was broken up and segmented with failures and successes to tediously boring to discuss.
We rented a place near Story Bridge in Brisbane in a backpackers place called Bunk, very nicely nestled in Chinatown. Did you know 1 in every 3 people are Chinese? The apartment was more like a bachelors pad and perfect for the four of us to hold foreplay (predrinks) before nights out. I have failed to mention the sessions of pro evolution that were had, alas that is a story for another blog entry. Whilst Mark and Weli spooned each other in their quaint queen sized bedroom, Bernie and I wondered the streets of Brisbane. We walked a couple of km over Story Bridge and caught a ferry across the River to the CBD, the weather was perfect and the site line was great. We got off at the CBD terminal which had great early 1900 colonial architecture very Pall Mall like. Brisbane has a very wholesome feel to it, a great place to live. By wholesome I mean very clean and pleasant. A farmers market was being held that sunny Friday afternoon it made me miss home. We both indulged on huge German sausage style hot dogs with plentiful amounts of sour crout. We simply just got lost in Brisbane which in all honesty is quite hard to do. After picking up a free tourist map we saw that the infamous XXXX beer brewery was close by. We didn’t hesitate and we made haste to the brewery where we booked for two on the brewery tour. It was an insightful tour giving a comprehensive history of beer from its origins right up to present day production. I think it is something that all beer lovers should read up on. For example do the phrase “he got away scott free” originates from the Tavern days in England where a scot tax was charged on all beer consumed within the London region, therefore people who consumed beer in the countryside were said to have gotten away scot free. You live and learn.... and then die and forget it all.
Bernie’s holiday was coming to a closure and I could tell that he wasn’t completely happy with his trip in the sense that it missed an extraordinary event. This was swiftly dealt with once we had booked the ultimate skydiving experience over Brisbane. We would drop 14,000 feet, which is approximately 60 seconds of free fall from an aeroplane. I cannot speak on behalf of Weli and Bernie but for me it was an amazing experience and I will struggle to describe it thus I have decided to leave it to all your imaginations or alternatively you could check out my dvd. It all happened so fast, one minute we were looking at the brochure the next minute we were getting in a propeller plane painted green with a dragons face climbing rapidly to the desired altitude. Bernie dived first, then all of a sudden I see Weli being thrown out like a bag of spuds, one second he is there the next he is gone. Shit I am next...........That was the pinnacle of Bernie’s visit for me and I am guessing that Bernie feels the same way. The remaining time we had in Brisbane consisted mainly of site seeing and walks around the city. The plan was to drop Bernie at the airport and for Mark and I to drive to Sydney where we would return to London for 10 days. As they say the rest his history.