The Greyhound
It was 10pm. The dim lighting and stifling heat in the back of the bus created a passable simulation of purgatory. We waited as the rest of the passengers boarded the red Greyhound en route to Sydney. I tried my best to remember that a 12 hour overnight up the coast was the most cost effective solution to the fact that I don’t have teleportation. I began chatting with the larger man to my left who assured me that it is best to accept the reality that we would be bumping shoulders for the next half day. Showing me his YouTube and Instagram, he explained that he was a street magician leaving after a successful season on the main streets of Melbourne. “Magician” seemed to be a bit of a misnomer as he was more of an entertainer who thrilled the masses with witty banter and comical props. His most recent video: 1.2 million views! My Instagram posts, in comparison, typically receive 10 likes on average. Were his videos 100,000 times more entertaining than my artistic photographs? Maybe. He was pretty hilarious and we laughed together in the dark silence.
After what felt like a long time, we took off into the night and the lights dimmed even further. Outside of town, the street lights flashed by and we blasted off into the space-like void that exists between the major Australian cities. I slept in short spurts. Time after time I fitfully awoke to find that a) we weren’t there yet and b) only five minutes had passed. Each pothole was a bouncy reminder that sleep is a precious commodity to travelers, especially those who have opted to travel extended periods on a night bus. All bitching aside, we got a couple hours of sleep and appeared not long after in Sydney without all of the fuss and pat downs that come complimentary with airline travel.
Day One
We only had three short days to travel around Sydney so we decided to get right to sightseeing. We plotted the most direct route to the famous Sydney Opera House which would take us on a winding footpath through a large park and garden. We didn’t get far. A building with large stone columns appeared to our right only five minutes into the walk. The names of famous artists decorated the exterior of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, each one a reason to enter. At first, we peaked our heads inside the door to find the price list for admission. We were met only with a security guard in all black that avoided eye contact at all cost. Surely the prices must be around the corner. Or the next one. Before we knew it, Rose and I were well into the heart of the museum. Either it was free or their security department was lacking. One thing led to another and we ended up spending several hours wandering the halls. Marble busts and classic oil paintings contrasted sharply with geometric shapes made of wire and pantyhose filled with turmeric. We sampled perfect paintings, recycled rubbish, and everything in between.
After a two hour detour, we were back on track through the well manicured gardens. Not long after, the Sydney Opera House came into view. Much like the thousands of tourists out front, I thought that it was well worth the hype. Finished in 1973 at the cost of $102 million, the Opera House is considered as one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. It is often described as being composed of giant sails, but it is really a sphere that has been divided into many pieces and reassembled. Contrary to popular opinion, I think it looks more like a stegosaurus from the side and a conquistador helmet from the front. One thing that they don’t tell you is that it is composed of countless tiles that reflect the sun and created a glimmering effect that you can only appreciate in person. After the compulsory photos out front, we headed underneath the Opera House to get a drink.
After enjoying a beer right on the water, we walked back towards our hostel through the CBD. As we got closer to the famous Market Street, the sidewalks went from busy to nearly impassable. While Melbourne had some luxury fashion stores, Sydney abounded in them. Prada, Chanel, Gucci, Versace. Famous names left and right. Queues formed in front of each as serious men in suits let in limited amounts of people at a time. For the watch enthusiast, plenty of Rolex, Grand Seiko, and Tag Heuer stores were to be found as well with even fewer people permitted inside. I had never been anywhere where there was enough demand to support so many big label stores. Soon, the constant press of the crowds grew tiresome and we retired to the hostel.
Day Two
Another rough night of sleep in a hostel. Our roommates, who had been sleeping all day, came home around 3 a.m. and spent the next hour rummaging through luggage and milling about in the dark. I peeked between the curtains multiple times to figure out what they were up to, which was stupid given that I can’t see anything without my glasses. Our new norm was a general lack of sleep.
Hostels are a great way to save money because they provide many of the benefits of a hotel for a fraction of the cost. The downside is that you normally have to sleep in a room with four, six, or more beds. You never realize that privacy is such a rare and valuable commodity until you have to give up your apartment for a bunk bed in a room full of strangers. Hostels represent a roll of the dice. Each evening, you could meet your new best friend or your worst enemy. You never know. In Melbourne and Sydney, we happened to be sharing rooms with party goers who would sleep past dinner and return well past midnight to their ever exploding nests of scattered clothing to repeat the cycle over and over.
After relaxing in the morning, we ventured toward the wharf to catch the boat party that we had booked. Not sure what to expect or how many people were attending, we wandered around where the boats were docked. A queue of 200 people of all ages stood waiting as a black, military-looking boat approached. We realized that this was the line that we needed to be in but we hadn’t anticipated so many people to show up. We joined the line and stood there, chatting while they checked people in. During the 45 minutes that we stood there, somewhere between 20 and 30 people speaking French cut the line to get to the front. Our friends from the UK commented that cutting a queue was something of a sacrilegious act in the UK but fairly common in other places like France and Italy.
The ship eventually backed away from the dock and began picking up speed, bringing a fresh ocean breeze that cleared the stagnant heat that had generated on deck. For the low price of $28AUD ($17.50USD) per person, we had gotten tickets for a five hour tour of the Sydney harbor and access to what became a private floating dance club. For a large portion of the tour, I sat near the rails of the mid-level deck where I could get the best views and enjoy the music at a moderate volume. I would have paid double for a boat tour that was half as long, so the music and dancing was an added bonus. The harbor was many times larger than I imagined with many side passages and dozens of boats passing by on either side of us at any given moment.
After taking in the view, we climbed the final staircase to get to the roof deck. The DJ blasted his music and the bodies of 100 people pulsed to the rhythm. It was a stunning view enhanced by the Opera House to one side and the Sydney Harbour Bridge passing overhead. We swayed shoulder to shoulder. Each mild wave produced a subtle rocking of the dance floor, an effect that was amplified on the third floor of the yacht. The rocking motion created a mandatory shuffle in the crowd that followed a beat produced by nature. Occasionally, another large boat would pass us by and leave us in its wake. The larger waves would momentarily toss the crowd side to side in a corresponding lurch. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend finding a moving dance floor. It gives even the stiffest of head bobbers a natural-looking sway and encourages even more dancing from the more comfortable guests.
Getting off the boat, we opted to skip the after party. Dancing for five hours in the intense heat of the sun leaves little appetite for more partying. We followed others that we thought might be headed for our hostel. The closer we got to the group, though, the more I could here the undertones of an argument. Out of the 20 young men gathered round, half were French and half were English. The biggest guy, who had a large beard and greasy-looking long hair, grew red in the face. A shouting match ensued. Each side had one guy at the forefront that accelerated the aggression and two or three guys trying to hold him back. The tension could only build for so long. The bearded man received several quick blows from the other side. The air became electric as hundreds stopped in the streets to look on. The mob moved side to side as more and more blows rained down. The dull thud of faces meeting fists could be heard from down the street. Shirts tore. Faces were covered in blood. The group stumbled from the sidewalk into the street, fighting among the densely packed cars. Honks sounded and shoes went flying. They vanished around the corner.
Rose and I looked at each other in amazement. It had been a long time since I had seen a fight and I’d never seen anything that resembled that bloodthirsty bunch. We continued up the street, trying to process what had just happened. At the next intersection, Rose turned around to say something and two men ran behind her in the same moment. I called for her step towards me. As she did, the hulking, bearded man appeared and nearly ran her over. He turned in circles looking for the two men, saw them running, and took off once again after them. The police began showing up. Maybe it was good night to stay in.
Day Three
We checked out of the hostel on our third day in Sydney. We hadn’t seen half as much as we wanted to, but we were on a journey up the east coast. Besides sitting in the parks and reading our books, we didn’t have much planned on our final day. As we walked through one of the parks, there was a metal pedestal overlooking nothing in particular with a sign on the side that named the place the Speaker’s Corner. The listed hours were 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays, so we would be in the right place at the right time.
Around the starting time, a short, chubby man huffed and puffed as he carried a pair of chairs from a building off to our right. He stopped directly in front of us and wiped the sweat from his forehead. We offered to help but he waved away the offer as he caught his breath. He left the chairs propped against a tree and sat his messenger bag next to our bench. “You’ll be here a minute, right?” We shook our heads. “Good. People will think it’s yours.” He walked away and vanished behind the building he had taken the chairs from. Rose and I looked at each other. The bag must have been holding a decapitated head or a diamond-encrusted chalice that he stole. The police would swarm us in a moment, open the bag, and lock us away because they thought the bag was ours. Actually, that only happened in my imagination because the man returned minutes later with more chairs. It turns out that he was one of the speakers setting up for a modest audience. He was the self proclaimed Mr. Bashful, epiphany specialist.
Another man brought chairs for his own audience. He was the 83-year-old Helmut Cerncic, the champion Austrian bodybuilder who beat Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1964 Mr. Herkules competition. These days he didn’t look like a bodybuilder but instead sported a thick mustache and a gold chain prominently displayed through his unbuttoned shirt. He had a thick German accent and a habit of flailing his arms in all directions to prove a point.
Without much introduction, he launched into continuous speech, each idea linked to the next. He spoke for an uninterrupted 15 minutes about mass, light, space, and atoms and he seemed to know a little about everything. Helmut had the workings of classical education. Before the invention of computers and phones, people actually had to memorize things (what?!). He never lost this skill. He quoted Sanskrit, philosophers, scientists, the size of the sun, the size of the universe to the decimal.
“Light travels at a speed of approximately 299,792,458 meters per second,” Helmut said in a carefully pronounced and precise way.
“In a vacuum,” said a man who had recently sat down next to us. His accent was even thicker than the Helmut’s—likely Russian.
“There is no such thing as a vacuum,” Helmut reassured us with a corresponding waving of the arms. The man next to us snorted and rocked in his chair.
“You’re a liar. You are very silly.” The Russian-sounding man stood up and began pacing around his chair and took to waving his arms as well. They began debating whether a vacuum could truly be achieved or if it was theoretical. Before leaving he said, “You know nothing. You haven’t even published your own research.” He stormed away to join the other group of listeners that had gathered around Mr. Bashful, just out of earshot.
Helmut then described the history of the “hecklers”. He explained that, because it was a free speech platform, people often disagreed with the speaker. Those that couldn’t contain their disagreements would often lash out verbally. These were the hecklers. Each speaker had to come up with their own strategy for dealing with them, which ranged from making fun of the heckler to challenging them to a fight on the spot. It seemed that Helmut’s strategy was to continue to talk about his opinion without letting the challenger get a word in.
This was soon put to the test once again as a muscular man in his 40’s approached with a cigarette, a coffee, and an arms-crossed stance that said he was going to disagree with whatever the speaker said. What followed was an intense debate about the finer points of physics. While I was able to follow the general arc of the debate, many points were brought up that never crossed my mind and they disagreed on every single one of them. You would think that published science is agreed upon by everyone but nothing could be further from the truth. They disagreed on how big the universe was and how it started, whether light came from matter or the other way round, and which scientists were worth listening to. There was a protracted argument as to whether it was Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein who was the idiot or “ignoramus” as they preferred to say. Did the Americans fund a space telescope to prove the Germans wrong and did they fund a large portion of the Nobel society in order to win a larger portion of the Nobel prizes?
Two hours was about as much as we could take. We walked away feeling intellectually stimulated in a way that rarely happens in daily life. It’s not often that you get to listen in to two people who disagree intensely but can quote facts, numbers, and books in an endless loop to see who will falter first. It would take years to learn even a fragment of what they had memorized. Entertained and educated, we left the park and caught our 11 hour overnight bus to Byron Bay.