"How wonderful it is for children!"
This is the first time in two weeks I've had any time at all to write a goddamn' thing - the job is finally done, and good riddance. A typical day meant rising at 6am, a quick breakfast and shooting by 8, then filming throughout the day. We were often still on the go at 10pm. It's a horrible non-stop drib-drab way to film, and I'm exhausted. Still... it's done. The others have taken the kit and will soon be airborne. I shared a taxi from Cairns airport and in about an hour I'm booking into my hostel.
Cairns is hot, stinking hot, and this is just the end of winter. I still shudder thinking about the heat in London mid-July. This does not bode well for January. It all seemed pleasant enough to begin with - when we landed in Sydney International two weeks ago, it was dull-grey and overcast, spitting with rain. I felt quite at home. We sailed through customs, arrived at our hotel, unpacked the kit and the camera was rolling about two hours after we landed. We raced around Sydney far too quickly for me to take it all in, but it seems a fine city and I'm looking forward to returning. While in New South Wales we spent a couple of days in the Hunter Valley vinyards... took a sunset flight over the Blue Mountains but missed the sun... stayed in a wilderness lodge and failed miserably to catch yabbies... and everywhere the talk was of expense accounts, luxury spa treatments, dress codes for dinner... the horror... the horror. I would turn up at cocktail hour in my camo shorts, microphone slung over one shoulder and tripod on the other. The idea of paying through the nose to experience the bush, the wilderness - it was all a lie, a veneer, massively sanitised and utterly sterile. Kangaroos with a second-generation Pavlovian response to feeding time, and cockatoos that try to wrestle the bacon from your plate.
I sound ungrateful. Maybe I am. But it seemed sheer hypocrisy to film beautiful Queensland beaches and advocate swimming to families while standing yards from the sign warning of the recent spate of crocodile sightings. Gushing on about how "Wonderful it is for children!" but failing to mention the emergency bottles of vinegar kept on the beaches to neutralise jellyfish stings. It is a long ride from Cape Tribulation to the hospital, and all the longer when your legs are on fire.
OK, I am ungrateful. "Everything looks perfect from far away"... and things are feeling brighter already. It wasn't all bad. Out of business hours, talking to Australian (and more often foreign) waiters, travellers, drivers, barmaids, rangers: these people have the marrow. They have all the good stuff. The highlight while actually filming was taking the waterproof camera onto a catamaran to shoot a sailing lesson. Those things are fast. I was out on one hull, filming the presenter dangling from the trapeze, shroud in one hand and camera in the other. She hated it, and I remember feeling quite smug. A precious and precocious self-styled princess with a laugh like a chisel... engh-huh-huh. Engh-huh-huh. A ridiculous Aussie ocker accent that would probably have seen her lynched in certain parts of the Northern Territories. Engh-huh-huh.
I'm still not entirely convinced I'm here. It's a bit surreal. Aboriginal man with skate-wear and bicycle, weaving lazy loops and lines and figures-of-eight in a train station car park, hawking phlegm onto the road. Walking alone through Maitland on AFL final day, and the shop shutters close as I pass. Saturday, 3pm, and I feel like Clint Eastwood riding into an oppressed mining town. Crocodiles smiling crocodile smiles in the mangrove swamps. A distraction so the marsh flies can chew on my leg: this is an eco-system evolving. Spiders the size of walnuts. A cassowary chick - there are fewer cassowaries than Giant Pandas. More than 100 species of plant depend on cassowary digestion to germinate. But then the three-course dinners with expensive food I don't recognise and wine I am supposed to agree on. I fell asleep at dinner for the first four nights. And throughout it all, that laugh - engh-huh-huh. Fat tourists with fat ankles and knee socks, bodies like massive poached eggs.
I'll probably feel better in a few days when I've caught up on two weeks of sleep in six-person hostel dorms... Cairns seems good but I don't think I'll stay long. I'm going to head slowly South - hopefully find a ride-share somewhere. I still need to get my license back. I had my wallet stolen by some scheming junkie reprobate about five days before leaving. He picked a fight with me and his pal picked my pocket while I was distracted. Getting out of London felt unbelievably good.
No climbing yet. The rocks that I've seen look fine, but we've usually been going past them at 80 kmph on the way to interview some prick about his restaurant. I'm starting to get some spite back inside me, which is good. I have been sad and tired this year, but I can feel my bile building again. I've filled most of a notebook just since leaving London. I'm already sure I'm not going back to camera assisting. Every day I can put between me and that fawning subservience is a good day.
I'm going for a plate of noodles and a beer. After that, I have absolutely no idea what happens next.
Cairns is hot, stinking hot, and this is just the end of winter. I still shudder thinking about the heat in London mid-July. This does not bode well for January. It all seemed pleasant enough to begin with - when we landed in Sydney International two weeks ago, it was dull-grey and overcast, spitting with rain. I felt quite at home. We sailed through customs, arrived at our hotel, unpacked the kit and the camera was rolling about two hours after we landed. We raced around Sydney far too quickly for me to take it all in, but it seems a fine city and I'm looking forward to returning. While in New South Wales we spent a couple of days in the Hunter Valley vinyards... took a sunset flight over the Blue Mountains but missed the sun... stayed in a wilderness lodge and failed miserably to catch yabbies... and everywhere the talk was of expense accounts, luxury spa treatments, dress codes for dinner... the horror... the horror. I would turn up at cocktail hour in my camo shorts, microphone slung over one shoulder and tripod on the other. The idea of paying through the nose to experience the bush, the wilderness - it was all a lie, a veneer, massively sanitised and utterly sterile. Kangaroos with a second-generation Pavlovian response to feeding time, and cockatoos that try to wrestle the bacon from your plate.
I sound ungrateful. Maybe I am. But it seemed sheer hypocrisy to film beautiful Queensland beaches and advocate swimming to families while standing yards from the sign warning of the recent spate of crocodile sightings. Gushing on about how "Wonderful it is for children!" but failing to mention the emergency bottles of vinegar kept on the beaches to neutralise jellyfish stings. It is a long ride from Cape Tribulation to the hospital, and all the longer when your legs are on fire.
OK, I am ungrateful. "Everything looks perfect from far away"... and things are feeling brighter already. It wasn't all bad. Out of business hours, talking to Australian (and more often foreign) waiters, travellers, drivers, barmaids, rangers: these people have the marrow. They have all the good stuff. The highlight while actually filming was taking the waterproof camera onto a catamaran to shoot a sailing lesson. Those things are fast. I was out on one hull, filming the presenter dangling from the trapeze, shroud in one hand and camera in the other. She hated it, and I remember feeling quite smug. A precious and precocious self-styled princess with a laugh like a chisel... engh-huh-huh. Engh-huh-huh. A ridiculous Aussie ocker accent that would probably have seen her lynched in certain parts of the Northern Territories. Engh-huh-huh.
I'm still not entirely convinced I'm here. It's a bit surreal. Aboriginal man with skate-wear and bicycle, weaving lazy loops and lines and figures-of-eight in a train station car park, hawking phlegm onto the road. Walking alone through Maitland on AFL final day, and the shop shutters close as I pass. Saturday, 3pm, and I feel like Clint Eastwood riding into an oppressed mining town. Crocodiles smiling crocodile smiles in the mangrove swamps. A distraction so the marsh flies can chew on my leg: this is an eco-system evolving. Spiders the size of walnuts. A cassowary chick - there are fewer cassowaries than Giant Pandas. More than 100 species of plant depend on cassowary digestion to germinate. But then the three-course dinners with expensive food I don't recognise and wine I am supposed to agree on. I fell asleep at dinner for the first four nights. And throughout it all, that laugh - engh-huh-huh. Fat tourists with fat ankles and knee socks, bodies like massive poached eggs.
I'll probably feel better in a few days when I've caught up on two weeks of sleep in six-person hostel dorms... Cairns seems good but I don't think I'll stay long. I'm going to head slowly South - hopefully find a ride-share somewhere. I still need to get my license back. I had my wallet stolen by some scheming junkie reprobate about five days before leaving. He picked a fight with me and his pal picked my pocket while I was distracted. Getting out of London felt unbelievably good.
No climbing yet. The rocks that I've seen look fine, but we've usually been going past them at 80 kmph on the way to interview some prick about his restaurant. I'm starting to get some spite back inside me, which is good. I have been sad and tired this year, but I can feel my bile building again. I've filled most of a notebook just since leaving London. I'm already sure I'm not going back to camera assisting. Every day I can put between me and that fawning subservience is a good day.
I'm going for a plate of noodles and a beer. After that, I have absolutely no idea what happens next.
posted by real sly shady at
6:26 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home