Nine years ago in the upstairs dorm of the Kose Pension, central Turkey I met two Aussie guys who, when they weren't spending their time putting ox's wax around their .... were cycling from Greece to Iran. A few months later on the flat-lands of Bangladesh I met another Aussie, a girl, who I shared some time volunteering with painting trees and planting tumeric.
Nine years later on a roof-top bar in downtown Melbourne I was meeting them all again.
Trev, Gap and Lisa. I always said that if I was in their area I would call in and I guess Indonesia constitutes their area for me and with them all now living in the same city it felt like a no-brainer.
Australia - Ayers Rock, Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, Koala Bears, the Outback and Rolf Harris. In the end I saw none of them. While it would have been incorrect to say I didn't experience much of Australia I decided that instead of the diverse topography of Fraser Island I would play some Texas Hold 'Em and see a penguin and six dozens seagulls on Philip Is. Instead of throwing some shrimp on the barbie', I'd have some Thai green curry at Trev's family house. I might not have gone to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for an Aussie Rules shake-up but we did play some pitch n'putt in Waverly and shoot some pool at Charltons. And maybe we didn't sit around a bush-fire and sing Waltzin' Matilda but we did have some long conversations on subjects as varied as why travel to turbo-chargers.
A friend once told me an old Arabic saying, that the best guest and the best fish have one thing in common, they both begin to smell after three days. Maybe then I was lucky, but after the guts of a week hanging out with the guys around town breathing in Melbourne life and trying out the local bars and brews when time came to move on again it only felt a bit depressing.
Nine years can pass by quickly. However aside from the disappearance of some dodgy beards, a few new relationships and the cute addition of an eight-week old girl not a lot else has changed. Laughing, joking, slagging. It could have been Cappadocia, it could have been Rajoir, but nine years on it just happened to be Collingwood. Same craic, different place.
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