"The computer has just killed the engine..."

This is the strangest internet cafe I have ever been in. It is dark and the lighting is restricted to a few dim uplighters and the sign behind the desk that says 'STARZONE'. The computers are very large and the chairs are those red leather monsters that adjust at every possible junction and swing wildly when you sit down. There is raised bank of monitors on the far wall and the sum effect is that of the base for an underground spy ring. The keyboard is illuminated only by the light of the computer screen. It is cool down here, off the street and away from the crowds. Too hot today, and sunny again after two days of overcast rainclouds that threatened but never broke. I miss the rain and the fog and the wind.

This, then, is Sydney, by route of the worst Greyhound so far. We were only about twenty minutes out of Coffs Harbour when it broke down, cruising at 90kmph when the engine cut out and the driver coasted into the side of the road. "Not to worry!" he called into the back, "the computer has just killed the engine." Not to worry?! Quite frankly, I'm not sure I've ever been as worried as I was after this statement. Had he just made a sweeping precis of technological progress for all of Western society? The Matrix? Self-awareness? A microchip assassin, by means of a foreign hacker? HAL 2000? It turns out the onboard computer has some mechanical cut-off switch. If the computer goes, so does the engine and this is a regular occurrence. No-one else seemed very worried. Being broken down for a few hours means being stationery and therefore actually getting some sleep. Sleeping in the bus seats is all but impossible. A yoga master would struggle. Looking back along the aisle, a series of heads, hands and legs spill across the armrests at strange and distorted angles. No-one gets much rest. I curled across both seats with my head on the armrest and my legs wedged under the chair in front. It did little good. Arriving into Sydney Central the next morning in fug of grey confusion, I collected my rucksack and simply walked for a little while. When the cobwebs were gone, I got out the map in Lonely Planet, growled, turned around and walked directly back to Central.

After the spaghetti map of the London Underground the Sydney system is a cinch. I took the doubledecker tube to Kings Cross (I know!) and started my week at Eva's Backpackers. It is expensive and four-fifths full of hearty Germans who all seem to know each other but breakfast is free and the showers are hot. In the last two days I have been climbing, badly, wandered around Paddy's Markets where porters try to hit you in the ankles with their blue trolleys, gone to the opera house, the botanical gardens, the art gallery, the gallery of contemporary art, Taronga zoo and the movies. At the opera house they were frantically preparing for the Australian Idol final. Strolling casually through the outdoor-media-event-mayhem that I know so well, I spotted a Jimmy Jib and felt some peculiar twinges. It took me a nervous moment to work out that this was from familiarity rather than nostalgia.


Taken while walking in the Rocks.

The zoo was generally quite good. They have an extensive breeding program of endangered animals which is the only justification for zoos, ever: they have two of the last thirty Sumatran Tigers in the world. On the other hand, the newly acquired sun bears were pacing back and forward in miserable laps. It's always a weird one. The echidnas seemed happy enough, and I'm always pleased to come across a new animal - the fishing cat is a large cat that catches fish. They also had the marsupial carnivore, the aptly-named spotted-tailed quoll, and bored chimpanzees chasing a lizard into the concrete moat. There is a pen full of kangaroos who were sitting around in the manner of dejected winos outside national banks. Broken. But then the turtles with cracked and damaged shells, repaired with fibreglass until they heal. Zoos always leave me feeling mixed up. Taronga also had one of the few undrugged koala bears in the country. It's a little known fact that koalas are actually omniverous - that the vast majority eat gum leaves and become stoned only adds to their appeal for the tourist market. When the toxins have been flushed from the gut, a koala can become extremely vicious. If there is no eucalyptus available they crave meat and in desperate times have been known to attack bushrangers and tourists. Like I say, this is not at all common, and the Australian media keep it quiet when these attacks do happen; in Taronga this adult female was perfectly disguised within the bamboo enclosure. You could see the bloody carcass of some small rodent spread out against the back corner of the cage. Only when a small child got too close to the window did it drop from the mesh ceiling and slam against the plateglass with a peculiar yowling noise. Flecks of saliva sprayed against the window. The child screamed and spun away while the koala continued to snarl and scratch. Yelling, the father dragged his daughter away and just as quickly the bear dropped back down and disappeared into the long grass.


Does anyone find this as depressing as I do?

I have seen more films at the cinema since being in Australia than in recent times in London. I saw Children Of Man in Brisbane, and the ending was a cheat. It's otherwise pretty good, though it has been classed in totally the wrong genre... you can't show armed police openly beating Asians on the streets on London and claim to have made a dystopian sci-fi. In Coffs Harbour I saw The Prestige, which is so obviously riddled with twists that it's hard not to see them coming - young Chris Nolan, already hoist by his own petard... I don't actually know what that phrase means, and hopefully I'll never find out. And last night I saw the second Jackass film and cried with laughter.

All these films have made a welcome respite from the cricket... I settled down, bated breath, to watch the first ball on the first day. Big Steve Harmison, tracing his run-up like he's about to rob a bank, ball in hand, nervous Australians, racing in and pow! Wide. So wide that it ends up not with a scrambling keeper but safely in Flintoff's hands in second slip. Second slip. Not first slip, but second. Martin Jenkins wrote that it was probably for the best that Flintoff got the ball as soon as possible, but that wasn't really what I had in mind. I watched the entire first day. I watched most of the second day. I watched Strauss top-edge and Cookie caught at slip. I couldn't watch the hatrick ball. I had to go back out to Muttonbird Island and listen to the first Weezer album. Couldn't take it any more. I invest so much faith in them and every time they let me down. No more cricket for me this winter - even in the unlikely event that we start to win a session or take a wicket. I should have known better. Fortunately,there have been no Australians around to gloat; the Germans asked me to explain the rules but I've fallen into that trap too many times and I bluntly refused. They started to get shirty with me, argumentative and resentful; I had to escape through an open window before things got out of hand.

I'm now at a loose end in Sydney. I've walked dozens of kilometres in the last two days doing touristy things and there is little left to do for free. My hostel is always full but never busy, and the rooftop terrace is the only safe place.

The view from the hostel roof

I'm writing quite a lot. In the dusk, fat furry bats scud between the highrise towers. Kings Cross is quite seedy and smells like Soho. I saw a woman carrying a little dog wrapped up in tartan. An old man was walking slowly because he deliberately, precisely placed his stick on the grimy cross between the paving slabs before taking his next step. There are sullen Chinese girls in baseball caps. Later, I see the woman again in a cafe by the road. Her tiny dog is trying to look dignified while sitting on his tartan blanket, laid out neatly on the pavement.

...and a quick postscript: I went to the Qantas office to work out precisely what I can do with my return ticket, and everything they told me in Brisbane was a horrible lie. I dealt with an absolute monster called Mandy. I didn't get a smile out of her until I left, and then, looking back over my shoulder, I realised that she had filed her teeth into points. One of the few maxims I have any time for is 'necessity is the mother of invention' (just look what happened to Red Dwarf when they could afford computer graphics), and having my options restricted by Mandy Khan actually brought me to realise that is both cheaper and easier for me to go to New Zealand first, in the New Year, then come back to Australia to impose on Jem and Joan on the west coast, and finally fly out from Perth...

I also swapped Bruce Chatwin's 'What Am I Doing Here' and a collection of Christopher Landon's novels - 'Ice Cold In Alex' was excellent stuff; 'Dead Men Rise Up Never' and 'Shadow Of Time' much more pedestrian - for 'Underworld' by Don DeLillo. It's a behemoth of a book which I've started three times and always given up on with the excuse that I had better things to do with my life. Now, however, I don't.

Tomorrow I book my NZ flights...

...and a second postscript: no, I don't. It is too close to Christmas and I have left it all too late. The return ticket costs a fortune that I can't afford to spend. I will do some rapid thinking over much coffee.

Check out the new links - rediscovered when sweeping out my inbox. Baker supplied Death Clock - Bob Porter discovered Disappointment.com, which is the blog Steph has waited her whole life for. The new explorers, the conquistadors pre-space exploration will all stake their claims on the internet. Archaeology is dying, a finite science - the internet is all that is left. We make our own archaeology from here on down.