A defensive ball

Exmouth! We made it, through 1400 kilometres of sand and bitumen, through suicidal kangaroos and deserted coffee stops, through chewed-up mix tapes and off-key singalongs, over-heated engines and driving barefoot.

The first 600 kilometres was easy going – we left Perth in the afternoon and six hours of happy driving landed us in Geraldton for Saturday night. The girl and I asked around for a backpackers. The first two we tried were fully booked, but we were kindly pointed towards a third. It was only once we’d paid our $45 that I started to wonder about the place. It had the shabby, run-down feel of a 1980s B&B… which is not, of course, especially unusual in a backpackers hostel. But not many 1980s B&Bs are full of junkies with dull eyes who gather to watch you unpack your camera equipment. It was only once I found the sticker from the Australian DSS that I realised we’d found ourselves in a halfway house. Geraldton is a village of the damned. We decided to write off the $45 as an insurance premium and flee north into the night. There are hookers in the high street and kids wearing basketball singlets leer at the parked cars. The police drive past with windows wound up like in Godfather.

Another two hours of empty roads on Red Bull and the Cinematic Orchestra took us into lovely Kalbarri just after midnight. We slept soundly in the sand of the empty harbour car park, and the next morning we chipped oysters from the rocks for breakfast. Inday took me to the Murchison river gorges in the morning and all I could think about was Spaghetti Westerns.

Big sandwiches of cheese and tomato – strong coffee – another eight hours of driving. All these towns are deserted and all the petrol stations are staffed by children. The kangaroos have nothing to live for as you approach the tropic of Capricorn – they are suicidally transfixed by headlights. If you are lucky, they just freeze when caught on the roadside in the full beam – when unlucky, they bound across the road to meet your oncoming car. The three- and four-trailer road trains just turn on the windscreen wipers, but Inday’s car has no Roo bars and we were forced into a dozen emergency stops by these marsupial idiots. One lunatic actually managed to jump into the side of the car as we were passing.

We spent Sunday night in Coral Bay, a tiny town built on a successful caravan park and the fact you can snorkel over reef directly from the beach. I have snorkelled before – in Mauritius, on the Great Barrier Reef, in the Whitsundays and Loch Ness – but last week we bought loads of gear and I found myself a prescription mask. I was genuinely surprised by the revelation of actually seeing things. Before, I was bemused by movement and scared of sharks – even in Loch Ness – and now I’m transfixed by colours, motion, variety, humbug fish, inky fish, pearlescent clams, cucumbers, iridescent corals, jellyfish like basketballs, stingrays, fish, fish, fish; I saw a lion fish within five minutes of getting in the water. I finally understand what the fuss is about: swimming in the warm and cold twist of the currents, living inside a nature documentary, constant sunlight and always life, thriving life.

Inday had to pretty much drag me out of the water to finish the last 149 kilometres to Exmouth. It’s a nice wee town, and everyone knows everyone else – supermarket aisles flood to a chorus of “Hello strangers” to people who are not strangers at all. The roads are fringed with Outback earth, the soft red dust, and emus squabble for scraps on suburban lawns. The sunsets are unbelievable.

We’re staying in a backpackers cabin room for the first ten days before moving in with the skipper of the charter boat Inday works on. After the snorkel in Coral Bay I accidentally left my $6 K-Mart flip-flops under the car. By the time we remembered, someone had parked a 4WD car the size of the moon on top of them. Now I’m wearing $3 slabs of foam from the local bargain bin which is a bit like strapping large pats of melted butter to your feet – they are slippery, greasy and offer no protection at all from anything, including grass.

We only had a couple of days to get settled before Inday's first day on the job – but the whale shark season has begun and daily DVDs must be made. On her first day on the water she and the two guides decided to jump in and investigate exactly what would inspire a large shoal of Baitfish to gather together in a defensive ball... you can read that again. The trio were approached within seconds by a bronze whaler shark which looks from Inday’s panicked footage to be about three metres long. Fortunately, they did the right thing, which is to gather together into a defensive ball, so she’s kept both her lovely legs.

The job is filming punters splashing around the huge whale sharks, most of which are 6-8 metres long – but there was a sighting two days ago of a twelve metre specimen, which is just about as big as they get round here. Inday gets back in late afternoon and I edit her footage into a short movie the punters collect the next day. I was working with our whore of a computer till 5.30am the other night – and up again after barely an hour of aching sleep – to finish the first edit... but I’m getting into the swing of it now. The second movie took a third of the time of the first, and I reckon I’ll get it down to one or two hours within a few weeks.

I’m aching to get back in the water but I’ve been crazy-busy sorting out the computer – learning the basics of Photoshop to edit a cover for the discs, making the DVD template and working through the bugs and shortcuts in Adobe Premiere. The computer is set up in our little room and I am tied in with a dozen cables to which I respond but do not understand. The printer is at my feet and tucked behind it lie the stacks of five-hundred DVDs and their five-hundred cases, paper, pamphlets, instructions, clothes, crockery.

I still need to find a job – in a bizarre chain of events I was actually offered work as videographer with another charter company, but neither they nor I had the gear, so I’m back to trawling cafes with a smile and a CV and my crappy flip-flops. Dad told me a couple of years ago that Curriculum Vitae is Latin for ‘The story of one’s life’. I look at mine and I’m really not sure what it says. I feel increasingly unemployable but the longer I go without working the more desperate I am to find work and the less certain I am about what kind of work I want to do. But at least I’m not A London Media Prick any more.

It was odd to pack up my rucksack again after imposing on Jem and Joan for three months. It’s been good to work on their block and incredible to meet a huge extended family who have been unremittingly good to me. I’ve hardly seen them in the last crazy fortnight before we left. It was insane. Swapping cars, taking buses, takeaway coffee… Inday and I spent our last week frantically chasing up printable DVDs… cases for the DVDs… can’t you do those any cheaper? A printer… no, let’s get one that actually prints onto discs… we’ll need a stamp… OK, now labels for the stamp – bigger labels! …why won’t our brand-new computer burn DVDs? Oh, really? …the trainee geek at the shop forget to include the burner… food… petrol… car service… After packing a bare sixth of her wardrobe into the car we just about squeezed in my rucksack, all our new kit and Inday’s diving gear.

Apologies for letting that Top 5 books thing border on violence. I’m especially sorry that I haven’t found some way of barring Tim from posting on the blog. I never wanted to quantify your favourites – I thought it would be enough just to know what they are. Baker – I’ll take a copy of Dan Brown’s Mohammed Code whenever you’re finished with it. It did put some wind in the sails to get a post from a stranger that didn’t concern Viagra, pornography or dogs eating their own poop, but not enough to warrant asking for your Top 5 records. That way madness lies… Imagine the mess! Come
On
Die
Young
Lifted
Or
The
Story
Is
In
The
Soil
Keep
Your
Ear
To
The
Ground
The
Soft
Bulletin
The
Bends
Fight
For
Your
Mind
Radiator
Good
News
For
People
Who
Love
Bad
News
Weezer
Razorlight
Good
Morning
Spider
Spiderland
Ladies
And
Gentlemen
We
Are
Floating
In
Space
Doolittle
Philophobia
Youth
&
Young
Manhood
Up
The
Bracket it’s impossible! So uplifting, these opening chords on Race For The Prize, the crawling Ex-Cowboy, insidious and violent, sinister this machine will not communicate shouting ourselves hoarse:

AND WE’LL ALL FLOAT ON ALRIGHT

because hopefully we will. I’m tired but kinda happy.

PS. Help a sister out - Monica 'Monsta' Metsers is in an online painting competition worth a couple of grand - if you're feeling that way inclined, go to...

http://www.celesteartprize.co.uk/2007/publiconlinevote/artist_6.asp

...and vote for her 'Deserted' - she says that if you like something else better, then you should vote for that instead.

I found a job, about two hours after writing this. I'm now working in the grEAT cafe, and it is rather good, too. I started washing dishes but that lasted about ten minutes - now I'm making salads and pizzas and milkshakes and coffee. The manager is relieved to have someone who is over the age of sixteen and has actually worked in a kitchen before.

Here's a show of how small and social Exmouth is - last Wednesday, Inday and I joined skipper Paul plus his pals to take the charter boat round to her seasonal mooring. There was much in the way of beer and swimming and backflips. One of the tourguides is a chirpy girl called Mel - she is going out with a microlite pilot called Gav, who also works in the local supermarket - "Oh," he says, "you like rock climbing? There's a guy just started with us who likes rock climbing. He's building a wall in his back garden." - "Of course he is," says I, "Who wouldn't? I'll have to meet him." - the next day I go to look for a job - "You can start tonight," says Rachel - I start that night - "Simon," says Rachel, "can you make more crepe batter?" - "Man, this is tough. I go rock climbing - I shouldn't get beaten by flour and milk." - "Oh," she says, "you like rock climbing? My boyfriend likes rock climbing. He's building a wall in the back garden."

Everything is coming together nicely.

We moved out of the backpackers this morning, and into Paul's place tonight. In the ten days that we've been there things have been stolen - first an Esky, from which the thieves first emptied the food - which is somehow more insulting than if they'd taken it complete - then some drinks, some food from the fridges. "Fuck 'em", we said. "they can help themselves to our beer if they really want."

We left bottles full of piss in the fridges. Actual piss, not metaphorical stuff like Tenant's or MacEwan's or Foster's or XXXX.

Serve 'em right.