Quakers for World Peace

There was a demonstration earlier outside the Carrington Hotel. Women are standing around in combative poses, sheltered from the sun by rainbow umbrellas and hoisting high a fearsome six-foot banner insisting that 'Quakers for World Peace!!'. There are two of them.

They helped me realise what disturbs me about this place. Unless I've made a horrendous mistake - and no, you're right, it's not likely - then nobody in Katoomba ever blinks. Not the Quakers. Not the busker with his small head and wiry hair and eyes that are pale and have no pupil. Not the kids with sneers and piercings. Not the Buddhist monk in his orange robes, who seemed so confused. And certainly not the man advertising his classes in Chinese Swordsmanship... it's The Midwich Cuckoos. They patrol the streets without blinking, and duck with no purpose into shops where nothing is ever sold. Katoomba has all its business on the main, steep street. There is a shop called 'Electrical Furniture, & Bedding'. Mark the position of the comma and make of it what you will. I certainly have.

The place is a devil to walk around - much like Bristol, actually - but at least it's stretching my calves back into shape. I did the walk along the Federal Pass again, but decided to run it. In my flip-flops. There was much in the way of stubbed toes and elbowing of fat tourists. They have cheated the 900 Giant Stairs by taking the cable car and puffing their way along the forest floor.

Late on Monday I had booked a day of abseiling and canyoning with 'High'n'Wild'. That night the weather finally changed. After three days of scorching sun we were caught on the fringes of a distant overnight thunderstorm, and I could see the flickers of distant lightning on the horizon. By the next morning a shroud of mist had rolled in, thick and wet. It was the respite I had been waiting for. I turned up hungover and with anorak at the pick-up point and discovered, to my surprise, to be the only one on the course. The day before had eleven punters and the day after had seven - I just fluked it. The guide was a decent guy and we agreed to miss out the abseiling and spend the morning climbing on fantastic sandstone at Mt. Victoria. I did five climbs of 25 metres - a grade 10 which I could have done in carpet slippers, three 15s and a 16. None of it was very difficult but I'm out of shape. Miss my bouldering. This business with the ropes is all very well, but I miss the focus of Me VS. Gravity and remembering how to make your fingers work. After lunch we went to the Empress Canyon. Canyoning is gorgewalking, abseiling, swimming and scrambling in narrow winding gulleys shrouded with ferns and fallen branches. After an hour of wending a way through the cold waters the route finishes with a thirty-metre abseil down a waterfall and a bone-crunching trek back to the car. There are worse ways to spend $140 bucks.

This hostel is pretty good. Most of the travellers here are outdoors-type, and the lounge is full of weary people by evening time, tired out by hiking and climbing. We drink beer, and read, and play pool or boardgames. Two German lads went out into the drenching mist in their raincoats to play the giant chess in the garden. They chased a stalemate for forty minutes and the fog boils upwards under the lights. There is a cheery woman, I think from France - a divorcee, almost certainly - with a boyish haircut that suits her perfectly but she seems sad when she thinks no-one is looking. Belgians or Canadians with pimples. White girls who haven't worked out that white girls should never wear their hair in dreadlocks. An Australian is camping in the garden. He was told to wait two or three days for his visa to go and work in the movies in San Diego, and has now been waiting for two or three months.

A billboard on a church near the hostel has a picture of the bible and suggests that you 'Meet the author before you read the book'. I can spot at least two problems with this, but it is part of a bigger picture, a recurring trend in curious attempts by the churches of Australia to entice new followers: a hoarding in Townsville told me that 'God doesn't want shares in your life, just a controlling interest'. Hmmmm. The Father, the Son and the Vice-President. In Wollongong there was a poster of a brand new pair of boxer shorts and the question, emblazoned across them in bold type, was, 'Which would you prefer for Christmas?' Firstly, there was nothing offered in exchange against the underwear, and secondly - assuming that joining the Church was the alternative in mind - this is a very dangerous question when addressed to anyone whose wardrobe is as tattered as mine. Quite frankly, I need the pants.

I'm back in Sydney now, after another two hours on the train opposite a tubby girl in plaits who wouldn't stop farting. I've checked in to the YHA at Bondi Beach, and the fog has dissolved into thin sea haze. Tonight there is a BBQ on the roof and tomorrow I'll try and remember how to surf. This place has a decent computer - I've backdated some photos all the way to 'Tom Waits...', and for good measure, I've included below the very first picture I took in Australia, jetlagged sunrise 4am wide-awake from the seventeenth floor of the five-star Sydney Shangri-La, a shoddy self portrait and for my brother's delectation, the sand-surfing girl.







*******************************************************************

"Why won't you leave me be?"
"That's an interesting question, Lenny. The most common theories about supernatural appearances suggest that, when the incident cannot be attributed to individual psychosis, a ghostly manifestation is generated by worldly matters left incomplete. Revenge, you see, or unrequited love. The need for acknowledgement, and so forth."
"Mr Rosicky, why have you got a moustache?"
It was true. Mr Rosicky had grown a luxuriant walrus moustache since he had been dead.
"Well, why not? Didn't you know that hair keeps growing after you've died?"
There was a pause. Leonard studied the growth.
"You mean that," Leonard gestured accusingly at the dense moustache, "is an accident?"
Mr Rosicky became defensive.
"A man needs a hobby! Besides, don't you think it makes me look younger?"
"Well... you're dead, Mr Rosicky."