Ok, I'll start from last night. After my dinner I went for a massage to kill an hour, which was pretty good - I had a slightly stilted chat with the girl doing it, which was odd. I grabbed my stuff from Marcus and met his girlfriend briefly, who was extremely sunburnt. I chose not to point this out and got a taxi to the airport. All uneventful until the plane was delayed by an hour or so, and I learnt that the flight was only 3 1/2 hours, so there was no chance for a sleep (I still haven't had one and it's 8pm, 36 hours since I got up - that may account for my slightly dry recounting of todays events). I sat there in a state of semi-conciousness for the flight, becoming increasingly disgusted with a big Aussie bloke a couple of rows in front, wearing southern cross boardies & bumbag, and an AFL hat. He was really brash and loud, sitting next to a young indonesian woman who I really pitied. I think they were together, but I hope not. On the way off the flight he swore at the stewardess, saying they were "fucking useless" for being late, but he was caught at the top of the stairs and warned that if he continued in this vein, he would be kicked off his transfer flight. I hope he was.
So it was about 6 am when I went through and started looking for somewhere to stay. I rang all the places listed at the information place, to no avail. They were all either full or told us to call back after 10, checkout time. Myself and a bloke I met at the information stand, Andy, headed into town regardless, and as we did so it turned from a grey, listless day into brilliant sunshine, wonderfully warm by the time we got into town. We proceeded to walk all around the city, to every place we could think of, all of which had the same answer as the ones we called earlier. Eventually 10 am came around and Andy found a place, the Old Swan Barracks, which is the, umm, old barracks near the swan river, I guess. We checked in and they didn't have any sheets available (??) so we went for a walk, had some breakfast and went to Fremantle to meet a German mate of Andy's, Marco, who works in the city selling cosmetics, and has a house and car provided - an odd career choice, but it seems profitable. 'Freo' seems like a nice little city, there was an Asian food festival on in the centre, and a load of cool shops. I nipped into a Bottle Shop and bought a VB Longneck, and asked the friendly bloke behind the counter what there was to do of an afternoon in Perth, and he said if we were feeling adventurous then V-fest was on in the city, and we could jump the fence. The festival features Queens Of The Stone Age and Smashing Pumpkins, among others. Andy and I were immediately awestruck, and ran and got the next train back into the city.
On the way we asked some people where the V-fest was, and the girls next to us piped up and said they too were going to the festival, and they too didn't have any tickets and were going to hop the fence. They also told us about where they were from, near the Margaret River, where there is also a pro surfing competition this week, which sounds awesome. They had a load of wine/goon in their bag, which we supplemented with a 5 litre bag more from Woolworths Liquor. We headed down to the festival site and wandered around to find a secluded place to drink my beer, and found a corner near some Aborigines who were sitting around chilling. One of them came over and bummed some tobacco from the girls, and I decided to ask them about the Aussie attitude to Aborigines. This sparked, as I sort of expected, a load of exclamations about pretty much entirely bad experiences, interspersed with "they're not all bad" then more sweeping generalisations. Lauren had in fact been out with an Aborigine, albeit one fostered by white parents, and at this point two women came over - Carla, who was quite young, and her mum Natasha, who was rather drunk - they claimed they too were planning to sneak into the festival, and after sharing our drink with them and vice versa they asked us over to join them and their friends/family, a group of about 10 men and women, all of whom were sitting around drinking port and smoking. We had a good chat and a laugh, and Lauren whispered that they (meaning carla, her mum and sister) were "some of the good ones." Carla lead me by the hand over to the other guys, and asked one of them - Richard, who had 'richard' tattooed on his arm - to move up. He looked at me bemused and said, simply, "no" but Carla said we should all sit like a family and I was allowed to join. Shortly afterward the Police showed up, and I was a little worried as I had been told that drinking in public was illegal, punishable by a A$200 fine. The policeman saw me holding a beer, looked over and proceeded to stop the guy round the corner from peeing in the bushes, then returned to me who foolishly still had the beer in hand. The conversation went as follows:
Cop: What's that you got there son?
Me: Umm, a beer?
Cop (pouring it on the ground): Right then, you know what that means.
Me: No?
Cop: It's illegal to drink on the street here mate.
Me: Even in parks?
Cop: Yep.
Me: I didn't know that, I thought it was just the streets.
Cop: You got any ID?
Me: Yeah, sure...
(passport is handed over, details taken, all noted down - during this one of the Aborigine guys comes over and tells the cop to treat me like they're treated, i.e. told off and made to move on. Cheers mate, I'm glad he came over)
Cop: Right mate, I'm going to give you a 24hr move on notice. You have to get out of the area bounded by the riverside, Barrack Street, Wellington Street and William Street, if I see you in this area in the next day I'll chuck you in the back of the van. Now get out of here. Oh, and watch who you associate with, you'll get robbed.
Me: You mean...
Cop: It's up to you mate, just watch who you hang out with. You will get robbed.
By this time Lauren had come running over, making sure I was ok, and pleading with the cop to treat me nicely. It was too late obviously, and I walked away, scared shitless a bit. We ran away to a more secluded spot, and after some discussion the girls decided to try and get in through the staff entrance, and I saw the policeman again and ran away. I saw Marsi again later, turns out she bought a ticket for A$130, met Joey Castillo from QOTSA and then failed to get in as she had no ID. Disaster. I decided to give in at this point and chicken out, returning to the hostel, as we were certainly not going to buy tickets or break in.
Here are some thoughts on Australia, by the way. It is really expensive, Perth is at least as pricey as London in many respects, which is especially shocking after coming from Southeast Asia. The people have been by and large pretty friendly, the main beef (apart from the police run-in, I mean) has been the price of everything. This may end up cutting my journey a little short as the budget is being eaten quickly - A$70 or so today and we didn't really do anything. Also, the telly is crap - Fox seems to show an endless stream of Australia's Next Top Model/Shark Attack Stories/Ice Road Lorry Drivers/Nonsense, interspersed with Family Guy/Futurama/King Of The Hill/American Dad/Simpsons marathons. Wierd.
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