Today i am in the aboriginal community of Derby, 220 km northwest of Broome, relaxing in my $40 night motel room. I am being kept company by a large green tree frog that lives in the toilet & a mysterious animal living in the walls. I end up here after a long chain of bizarre incidents that have kept me traveling against my desire to find a place to take pause & work. I thought this a good opportunity to update you of my last days of travel. I will do so in a chronological order so if you are easily bored, start at the bottom and you will at least know the short story of how I ended up in this shit hole.
21 march: First day in Canarvon. I came here looking for farm work. It was a sunday so all businesses were closed. I spent the day finishing what some fondly referred to as my "cemetery" painting; a painting that drew lots of attention, but left onlookers frozen in silence only to walk off without saying anything. I now know that if you take a religious icon and turn it into a repeated pattern some might find it a little weird. Lesson noted.
But the real reason this day goes down on the 10 days of weirdness list was because after i went to sleep in my car in the caravan park(per usual), i woke to an aboriginal kid standing at my window in the middle of the night. I knew it was weird because he had pushed the window down from what was a crack to a wide open window easily accessible to anyone that wanted to steal, for example, the laptop that was laying next to me. As he noticed i had woken up he quickly told me that he was looking for his parents & that they had the same car as me, that he was only 13, that his father had beat him and he ran away, that he was new in town, etc. etc. There was also some forced sniffling involved. Since he was hanging in my window i felt a little cornered so i ruffled around to find my clothes & told him i would wake my neighboring friends for help. He smelled like petrol & when i saw him in the light it was obvious that he was totally cracked out. To make a long story short I woke up my friends, he realized he wasn't going to get anything from me, then said he was going to the hospital but instead went into someone's cabin on his way out and stole their wallet, toiletries & iphone. The police were called and i spent 2 hours in the middle of the night describing this kid. Two days later he was apprehended, the dude's got their stuff back & i realized the aboriginal problem in australia is real.
22 march: My friends left so I moved into a Canarvon hotel room because i felt unsafe & decided it was best to keep traveling north. I later found out Canarvon has the highest crime rate of any town in Western Australia, but they don't tell you that at the Visitors Center...
23 march: Started driving north without a plan, ended up stopping 600km later in the tourtist town of Exmouth in search for a job.
24 march: I remembered that both the tourism & hospitality industries make me feel awkward/fake/uncomfortable & that it was best if I just kept heading north. But then my car wouldn't start again so some random guy in the gas station called his friend "the (car) healer". He rolled up in a pimped out Land Cruiser (the rolls Royce of Australia), pushed up the sleeves of his cleanly pressed work shirt, prepared his magical hands to touch the engine of my old faded gold station wagon, closed his eyes & poof - the car started (i thought it was a miracle)! I drove and drove into the night, dodging cows, kangaroo's & goats until i found a caravan park. The office was closed so i snuck in & slept.
25 march: I woke up especially early so i could sneak out of the caravan park without paying. You see, i threw away my wallet in Kalbarri & now only had about $100 to make it to the next major town where i would get my new debit card. I took my car to the gas station but after i filled up the bloody thing wouldn't start again. This time to my rescue was a crazy drunk homeless man trying to give away puppies. He told me that the trick is to slam on the dash while i start the car. This is fourth place i have been told to acost my car in order to get it to start. First, i was told to hit the starter with a cricket bat. Second, to vigorously turn the steering wheel back & forth while starting the ignition. Third, to hit underneath the steering wheel & now this?...i thought for sure he didn't know what he was talking about. But guess what .. it works every time! Moral of the story: keep an open mind. You never who will teach you your next life altering lesson.
26 - 28 march: Since i had no money & days to kill before i could pick up my debit card in Port Hedland, i thought it the perfect time to visit the Karijini National Park, only $7/night camping fee (which was almost optional since you just put the $ in a box at the beginning of the park)! I filled up all my water bottles and headed into the beauty. these were lovely days spent hiking in gorges, swimming in beautiful swimming holes & choking on flies. I now know why the international Australian greeting is a person waving their hand in front of their face (to keep the flies away). Because it was too hot to sleep in the car i had to whip out the tent. Quickly i realized that if you buy a tent for $35 - you only get $35 of tent. I think it was a midget tent. When i slept i had to keep the bottom unzipped so that i could straighten my legs. Below are some images I took at Karijini. You will notice the amazing blue striations in the rock. I found out at the visitors center that it is asbestos...strange.
29 march: With $39 in my pocket i left for Port Hedland where my debit card would be arriving the next day. I spent my remaining money on petrol & prayed that it would get me 300 km. To keep my mind off the dwindling petrol i played the tambourine to all my favorite songs & even made up a few of my own (a new hobby that might turn into a profession when i get back to the states). I love my tambourine (thanks meegs). Anyways, after hours of angst i made it to my destination with little petrol to spare. The town was fine. The place I was staying at turned out to be a a senior citizen vacation spot so as you could imagine i was very popular. I made besties with the caravan park gossip girl who encouraged me to take France, a 65 year old Austrian hitchhiker, with me to Broome - 620 km north. He didn't speak a word of english which worried me but turned out to be the least of my problems.
30 march: Debit card in hand, the 65 year old Austrian hitchhiker & myself took off for Broome. Along the drive we did try to converse but it merely resulted in escalated sound levels and incoherent hand gestures. Besides this things seemed to be going fine...We stopped halfway where France filled up the car with petrol & purchased some lemonade. We took off again and about 10 minutes later I heard some weird noises coming from France. I looked over at him & his eyes were rolled back in his head, his face was filled with blood, the veins on his neck about to burst and his tongue was sticking out at me. Holy shit, did France have some sort of terminal illness & came to Australia to die quietly in my car? What was wrong with him!!!? I pulled over to assist with whatever kind of heart attack, epileptic seizure or stroke he was having & as I started to shake him he fell forward, dropping his lemonade. This is the point where crazy thoughts of scandal poured through my brain: France and I all alone in the outback, he is dead, I claim that I don't know who he is, no one believes me. Just as I jump out of the car & remember that I haven't seen anyone driving for hours, France returns to life as if nothing happened. What...the...fuck? I was so pissed- he says he just choked on his lemonade but I didn't believe him, it didn't look like choking...but anyways I kept driving because there was nothing else to do. I just saw this strange man go through all the stages of death but now he is fanning me because I am so upset. The rest of the drive was really uncomfortable.
31 march: Broome is nice. I was mostly excited because I had a job as a Camel Leader (which I got over the phone), guiding people down the beach at sunset on camels. To play it safe though I also had a trial in the afternoon at a beachy cafe/market with "homemade" foods. Once again I realize that this is a tourist town & there are no farm jobs so my hopes were really focused on the camel job. I was set to meet with her in the morning at her house. As soon as I walked in though, it become quite obvious that she was a filthy, camel loving, bible thumping, Christian. i say filthy because it wasn't exactly a house but a spider den, her front teeth were rotten, she showed me the room she had for me - it was covered in cockroach shit & then when she introduced me to the camels I had to stand there while she practically made out with one. And I say bible thumping because she had crosses everywhere (maybe she would have bought my painting?), was babbling on about Good Friday & wore a shirt that said something along the lines of, Jesus is our savior. Since I have no mechanism that helps me hide my emotions, upon closing she could see I wasn't as gung-ho as our initial conversation over the phone. I don't know what happened but I think she used her Jesus powers to extract the truth from my mouth & I told her about my cafe trial and that I wasn't so sure I liked the camels (they were actually really unfriendly) but that I would let her know the next day. She told me it wasn't the camels I had to worry about but getting along with her. She also started to tell me how annoying the kids could be and that sometimes you just want to yank them off the camels and shake them. I left the place in a hurry cursing myself & swearing I would never be a Crazy Christian Camel Lady.
In the afternoon I had my trial at the "cafe" which ended up being a place where they take frozen hamburgers, battered fish & chips and deep fry them. They had me sweeping, mopping the floors with some crazy bucket contraption & organizing the grocery shelves. Maybe I was just in a jaded mood but hated it & found myself dodging people I saw around the caravan park because I was embarrassed (sad I know). I will pick fruit, I will muster cattle, but I will not flip burgers & restock market shelves. I just can't.
1 April: I woke up with a new zest for life. In my sleep I came to terms with the fact that I didn't want to do either job nor did I have to. I also remembered that deep down hospitality is not my thing but that i was lured in by my vision of mystical camel tours & that I truly just want to be back on a farm! I called both of my potential employers and told them I was going to pass, packed up my stuff & started my trip North to the farming capital of Western Australia, Kununurru!
Yes, in case you are wondering, I do feel like a crazy person on the run without any direction except North. But that's me I suppose - never willing to settle!! Ironically this is why I am sitting in a creepy motel room, exhausted & in need of some air conditioning. Now I will continue my journey in hopes of finding some work that will fulfill my Spirit Quest/Australian Adventurer job profile.
Cross your fingers.
