Friday 13th

Diverting slightly from the normal Australian themed travel blog/counselling session - I wanted to get a few things off my chest regarding the horrific events of Friday 13th November 2015.

The first time I applied to go to university, I applied to study journalism. I enjoy writing and enjoyed performing arts – my eventual aim was to become some sort of reviewer or writer around this area. In order to see if it suited me, I arranged myself a weeks work experience in the local newspaper in my home town – The Chronicle and Echo. There is one experience from this week in particular that stuck with me and still influences the way I look at the news today.

There was a fairly high profile rape case in my town and I was lucky enough to be at the paper in the week that the sentencing happened for the rapist. So I accompanied the reporter over to the court room and listened to the retelling of the details. The victim was a young Chinese girl who had been thrown out of a club for being too drunk. This was when the predator saw his chance and led her away, eventually bundling her into his car and driving away to a secluded area and… well I’m sure no further detail is really needed. The part that stuck out for me actually occurred after the sentencing just outside the courtroom. All the local journalists from radio, papers and television gathered outside the courtroom and resolved as a group to forgo covering certain details of the case as they may affect victim sympathy. They decided as a group the fact the girl was Chinese and spoke poor English would change public opinion on the case. Now, I’m not saying their logic is flawed – the more cynical readers may see that detail and think it was a miscommunication or that somehow this justified the mans actions.

However, whether their logic was right or not… I was amazed – there was no leader or boss telling these journalists to edit their coverage and yet they were conspiring as a group to emit certain details from a story on their own. Imagine how much worse this censorship could become if there were powerful people involved? Politicians, leading business men, governments, people with real influence… Imagine a paper with a certain political alliance and how they could censor their coverage? These guys hadn’t had any of that and had still chosen not to cover a major personal detail of the victim.

This has always lead me to be a little bit cynical in what you read and take notice of particular angles or language choices. Which leads me onto the topical event that has inspired the retelling of this memory.

Paris suffered a devastating terrorist attack earlier this week which has been met with what I see on my facebook page as 3 waves of responses.

Wave 1: #PrayforParis

This was the initial reaction of people, who don’t know the meaning of the word pray, responding and thinking they were making some sort of difference or providing comfort with their hashtags and profile picture filters. I find this just ridiculous. When a friend of mine snapchatted about ‘the power of the internet’, I couldn’t help but laugh. What power? What difference do you honestly think you’re making? ISIS aren’t sitting at home panicking because peoples profile pictures have changed and fake sentiments were trending on twitter. What happened in Paris was just horrific and I’m sure we all condone the actions of the 8 men who found themselves inspired to blow up and shoot innocent people. We all want to help, we all want to make a difference and create a world where these things don’t happen. But while we all become keyboard warriors in these occasions and stay silent while our governments exacerbate these situations and argue about the refugees running from these horrendous men, we do nothing to help. I simply don’t know what the average layperson COULD do to help. Taking to the streets is a show of solidarity. Helping the victims and refugees is a show of solidarity.

I hate to break it to you, but following the crowd and social pressure to change your profile picture to a flag changes nothing.

Wave 2: Why is everyone shitting themselves about Paris when other tragic events occurred?

This was the wave I fell into. Having seen Beirut on the news a couple days before I was disgusted at the huge amounts of airtime Paris was getting. You’ll find a trend in this sense: if most of the victims were Shia Muslims? You’ll hear minimal about it and the language will be considerably less sympathetic and more ‘this happens every day’.  If white people are effected? Be it directly in the sense of white victims or indirectly in the sense of this is a location we use for tourism – it’ll monopolise the media attention and attract huge amounts of social media backlash. It’s mind-blowing to me that this happens. Are those lives expected to be at risk because of their location? Is it justified because of their religion? Don’t they deserve the airtime?

Back in June there were several attacks on one day around the time of Ramadan – the two I remember were the beach shootings in Tunisia and a mosque suicide bomber in Kuwait. The number of people directly affected (death toll + number of people injured) by Tunisia was around 40. The number of people directly affected in Kuwait was much higher than 100+. When I bought the newspaper out of curiosity the next day, Tunisia gained itself a double page spread, while Kuwait had a quarter of that – half one page. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that when British people are involved, it’s going to get more coverage. But the level of bias coverage and sidelining of Kuwait shocked me. The language used was different. The length of time it was covered in the media was different.

So yes, I do understand why Paris will be highlighted more. But was the extent to which this happened justifiable? Also, I thought this bias may be because I was in the UK. Because we were closer in geographic terms and probably political terms too… but even in Australia this bias is simply unavoidable and in my opinion inexcusable.

Wave 3: The news does cover it, you whingers clearly just don’t read the news.

Now if you’re going to act like a 13 year old child and take everything literally and at face value then yes – those proclaiming the other incidents weren’t covered are incorrect. The other events were covered. I won’t bore you all to death and repeat myself – I think the above paragraph argues this point quite nicely to be fair. The emphasis and treatment of different stories was hands down euro-centric and extremely biased towards white victims outside of predominantly Muslim areas.

But I do wish to address all those people arguing that this is fine and we are to blame as the news covers what catches interest and people simply aren’t interested in the other stories. I think the majority of people would agree with my sentiment that the news and media of this nature are supposed to be above simply supplying the demand that is there, focusing on turning profits and should just be reporting the events that the world should know about. I agree this is not the reality in the slightest, but does that make it right? Because, what I like to refer to as the uneducated masses, know no better than worrying about white faces and not others, should that be what our news coverage entails? I like to think that the highly influential and well educated people that run the media should be using their power to educate people about the state our world is in and help us to make better decisions in the future based on the mistakes we are making and the real world events that are taking place. Not add to the ‘us and them’ feeling that most people already have in order to make money.

The coverage we get is what leads to the xenophobia that is exhibited so widely and groups like the English Defence League and Britain First… The media is what snowballs an already tragic situation and raises the tensions between cultural groups.

I’d like to end on a favourite Spiderman quote of mine: with great power comes great responsibility…

…a responsibility that unfortunately our media does not take seriously and aren’t held accountable for.

The start of the adventure...

Another friendly face on the scene is one of my dearest course mates from university – Zakhiya. She arrived in Australia back in May and I don’t think she’d blame me for saying that her and Australia didn’t exactly get off to the best of starts. But that’s her story to tell, so I’ll just mention it in the relevance to my story… Ziggy (the nickname) left Australia after a few months to visit family in South Africa for a couple weeks to re-centre herself, figure what was going on for her and then come back to Australia for a fresh start. This is where I come into the picture. Me and Zig had been talking on the phone from time to time and basically making rough plans for her return down under. We decided that, hey, y’know what… we were going to enjoy Australia! I didn’t feel ready to settle down and work so soon after arriving in Australia. I wanted to see a bit of the country first and I wanted to encourage Zig to do the same – focus on enjoying Australia and not put the emphasis on working or finding a job so soon.

So here was the plan: Zig would arrive back into Australia, I would drive from Gold Coast to Sydney to pick her up and then we would start travelling together up the east coast headed toward Cairns by late-December/January time– settling only when and where we decided we had found somewhere we actually wanted to settle and work for a while. Sounds pretty sweet right? And the idea was if we didn’t end up working, we would just travel for less time with the money we had but completely prioritise enjoying that time! There is just no point being stuck somewhere miserably job hunting slowly whittling away what money you have, when you could enjoy your time with the budget you have and just leave if you had come to the end. That was the logic we were working on.

The drive down to Sydney from the Gold Coast directly was a monster 10+ hour drive. Let’s remember, I was picking Zig up in Sydney, so this stretch would be a solo journey. Now, back in the UK, I had happily travelled up to Lancaster/Kendal from Northampton alone in one go… a 3-4 hour drive (the time mainly dependant on your drive style). So I knew this kind of time was do-able and sensible and therefore chose to break up the journey into three parts.

Okay, so maybe I’m not being entirely accurate. The drive time was somewhat of a concern, but the main motivation was that I just wanted to get going! I was impatient… I’d been stuck in the same place for almost a month when I was supposed to be adventuring. But I waited it out, in compromise for the company and the adventure ahead. For the journey to Sydney, I gave myself a timescale of 5 days. I chose to break up the journey in Coffs Harbour and then Port Stephens - booking 2 nights in the first and another 3 in the second. YHAs were my hostel of choice due to their guaranteed parking and membership scheme. And then off I went…

However, I did not exactly do thorough research when looking at these places. Let’s start with Coffs Harbour. Coffs Harbour is a beautiful small town with a big roadside banana, many blueberry farms and good opportunities for whale watching. What wasn’t anticipated by myself was that the YHA was basically a working hostel for travellers working on blueberry farms in order to obtain their second year visa. This meant, come 6.30am, the place was basically desolate and then come 5pm, you should dream on if you were thinking of showering or cooking as everyone had just arrived back from their sweaty day at the farm. This would surely spell disaster for a solo traveller with no one around and nothing to do? Cue Lizzie – my company for two days who had simply decided that the second year wasn’t worth the three months misery picking blueberries. The farms loss was certainly my gain. I was lucky enough to arrive the night of a night food market, which gave us entertainment for one night and then the next day we went on a big banana hunt and a long steep walk to watch 5 whales! This was also the location I obtained topless back shot numero dos (see… we really were on a similar level). So, thanks to the company, Coffs was not a complete loss! The nutella and banana crepe was on point and the whales were incredible.

The next day, I partook the next step of the journey down to Port Stephens. The YHA at Port Stephens is not like your normal hostel – it’s beautiful. Set in the surrounds of rain forest, it is similar to the kinds of cabins I’ve stayed in previously in Thailand. Except that they’re not cute double private rooms… They’re dorm rooms. Something about this didn’t work for me. Even the kitchen was a ‘bush kitchen’ and there wasn’t a major social hub. The place wasn’t dead, but wasn’t the kind of buzzing I needed to meet people. The one girl I spoke to in my room had moved here to settle on the promise of work in the hostel – frankly, I thought to myself, I could think of nowhere more boring to settle. Had I thought Coffs previously was boring, Port Stephens was a whole new type of boring. To be fair to the place, there was probably more to do. But parking was difficult everywhere and nothing that was given to me as an idea at check in really resounded with me. The place is popular for dolphin/whale cruises – well I’d seen those for free in the previous location so why would I pay for an hour or so cruise for the same experience? And as for the location – there was simply nowhere to walk or get to without driving or taking a bus which was irritating.

The one thing I regret I didn’t partake in was the sand dunes – you can go on organised tours and sand boarding etc. If I had gone with friends or found some there, I probably would have occupied a day doing this. But as the only people I’d encountered seemed on a different level and completely content to sit at the hostel all day, I missed this. After staying one night, I thought to myself, fuck this. Why am I wasting time alone and in this shitty place when I can get one night refunded and check out two nights early. So I booked myself into Bondi YHA (a placed I’d dreamt of for years) and set of the very next day.

A trait that I love and hate about myself equally is that if I’m not happy somewhere or doing something – money becomes of little relevance and I’ll change it. It has gotten me in some messes previously – booking a flight out of a ski resort in France the day after my family left leaving me to no transfer or accommodation for a night being my most memorable fuck up. But it is this trait that really accelerated the next stage of this mad journey that took some unexpected changes in direction to be explored next time… I guess if I were to learn anything from this it would be:

Lesson number 3: do what feels right to you. If something feels wrong – change it. Everything happens for a reason in my opinion and you’ll end up where you’re supposed to be. Your happiness has no monetary value so if you’re in a financial position to sort yourself out – why waste a single day somewhere that you aren’t meant to be.

Surfers: Coz i'm moving on up, you're moving on out!

Before I begin: please forgive the M People reference but it was in my head and I simply couldn't resist!

First two lessons that Australia had to teach me… covered. Now let’s move onto some of the more fun parts of my time here so far! As previously brushed upon – Becky was a mere 190km North from me. That’s a 2 - 2.5hour drive. In the UK, you’d probably think about that kind of distance as substantial… but in the vastness that is Australia, this suddenly became entirely commutable. Add cruise control into the mix and the journey was hardly a hassle at all.

Mixed up emotions + seemingly easy journey + promise of friendly face and fun results in the manic first 3 or 4 weeks that I was in Australia.

Week one – meet in Brissy
Week two – me to visit Sunny coast
Week three – Becky to visit Gold Coast

That’s the simplified version of the crazy amounts of driving I did anyways. Now Brisbane – some say a boring city… and it doesn’t help that we ended up there on a Sunday evening as my birthday was the Monday. But I still had an absolutely fantastic time for my birthday there – drama free. We drank, met new friends, ate maccas and went to bed. What more could I have possibly asked for?

The reggae live band performing at our hostel bar was a particular highlight for me. Well that and Becky having a little drunk panic while walking to the second bar as she realised we were following three strange men, through the middle of a city we didn’t know, at 11pm, passing a shady looking park, which would have been perfect for an unnoticed rape. Not sure whether I think she’s suspicious or I’m too trusting, but you’ll be glad to know these three particular guys were harmless.

My visit up to Sunny Coast was equally drama free. I spent a lot of time at Beckys place of work eating pizza and waiting for her to finish working – visited some nice tourist spots like waterfalls, where we took the first of what I hope is many topless shots from behind in Aus, and sea life centres, where we learnt about sealions and made friends with sharks, as well as picking up a yankee buddy along the way.

Now… onto Surfers Paradise. Not as drama free as the previous meet up spots, it’s safe to say. Much of the drama, I won’t go into. Frankly because I’m sure none of you really want to read the intimate details of what we got up to and because you never know who is going to stumble across this in the future… Better safe than sorry.

For those of you who attend university in the UK, we arrived in Surfers just as the Aussie equivalent of tour kicked off. Students from universities all across Australia were gathering in Surfers to compete at sports, followed by getting well and truly wrecked. We certainly met our fair share of interesting characters; from little boys lying about their age to guys trying to force kisses purely for wanting to dance on a podium as well as the resident Aussies of the area who looked after us (well, namely me) when we were no longer able to ourselves.

Many people you speak to find Surfers brash and tacky. For me, Surfers was the first place and first time in Australia that I really started to let go, move on and have some fun! The first night we went out was the last night I incessantly checked my phone for any response from the SG boy. It reminded me that there is a bigger pool of fish out there so to speak (none from that week that I intend to ‘hook’ to continue the metaphor). I mean, I’m not really in a position right now to be looking for marriage so… game on right?

As stupid as it is, Surfers will always have a place in my fondest memories for this reason. It represents moving on: realising that you can’t change or control someone else’s behaviour, only your reactions to it. So why lets those reactions keep you miserable while they’re clearly paying no attention? I don’t really want a lesson from this memory – but if there was going to be one, I guess that right there would be it.

Oh and it was the first time I really danced in ages. Just got tipsy and danced like it didn’t matter. And that is one of my greatest joys in life. Drunken dancing… actually scrap that, any dancing!

So a big thank you to the many new faces that helped me move on to the next stage of my emotional development at that point. Most of you won’t even know what you’ve done – I mean damn in a month or two, you won’t even know my name in all honesty. But I guess that’s exactly why it helped…

A Friendly Face

190km north of Palm Beach, where I was kindly being hosted by family, who emigrated here 7 years ago, was my post-university housemate and somewhat soulmate, Becky Craven. During those early weeks where I felt lost and… well to be frank, shitty, having a friendly face so close was a definite benefit (though my bank account may disagree!).

As previously mentioned, I arrived in the country like 5 days before my birthday. For this, we arranged to meet in the middle in Brisbane – an hour travel for each of us, grab a hostel for the night and have a few drinks to celebrate. So off I went on my hour coach trip, excited to see her again after 2 months… and having felt so lost and strange over the previous days, the sight of a friendly face as she approached the train barriers almost ended in tears of absolute relief!

Oh my God, I thought to myself, if I were watching/judging you right now, I’d be laughing at you. How pathetic! You’re supposed to be an independent backpacker, leaving behind everything she knows to explore the world and you’ve lasted a whole 5 days before nearly crying at the sight of a friendly face! Yeah… real intrepid Paris…

Obviously, as you know from my previous post, my emotional situation was a tad more complex than that… but you’re always your own biggest critic right? Who doesn’t love beating themselves up from time to time ;)

Now travelling alone is never a concept that has scared or worried me in the slightest. As an only child who wasn’t entirely miss popularity at school, I kind of got used to the idea that if I really wanted to do something, sometimes if no one else did, it was better to do it alone than miss out! After my first solo trip to Rome for my 21^st birthday, I quickly realised that although you may depart alone, you’re never really alone, not if you don’t want to be at least. Anyone who has ever stayed in a hostel will support me in this I’m sure. Don’t get me wrong, there are hostels that won’t fit in with you… but you move on and you’ll find ones that do and when you find those it’s glorious. The freedom is hard to explain… The idea that you decide what you want to do, and the chances are that someone will want to do it with you. If they don’t – no loss you came alone anyway, but that feeling of not having to compromise or debate with someone about what you want to do vs what they want to do… or even worse… someone who comes for the ride and does ‘whatever you want to do’.

However, what I hadn’t accounted for is that sometimes, when you’re going through shitty emotions, you just want someone who knows you already. Knows what you’re like, knows when you’re overreacting, knows how to handle you, knows the backgrounds and sensitivities you have… which is what my blonde bombshell coming through those train barriers represented for me. Someone I could talk to and not have to explain why it had been so hurtful, or the behaviours that had led to this etc.

So this takes me towards another realisation I had about myself and life in general – wanting to spend time with someone familiar is not a sign of weakness and dependence. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t do it alone or you’re too scared. Sometimes it just means now is not the time for that. Previously, I would have judged others for not wanting to venture out alone because I’d never experienced that horrible insecurity of just wanting someone familiar by your side. I've drawn a bit a strange conclusion from this one... not necessarily your traditional life lesson but:

Lesson number two: be patient with yourself. Don’t worry about what others are going to think about what you’re doing and equally, don’t judge others as you never fully know what they’re working through. Sometimes familiarity and security are necessary and worthwhile and can help you develop more than beating yourself up about how weak you are for wanting it.

Welcome to Australia

So after two months of life down under, I have finally found time and inspiration to open up my laptop and capture some of the emotional whirlwind that this has been so far. Travel blog? Somewhat… Capturing all my emotional break downs and epiphanies along the way? Possibly… The only thing I can guarantee is that this is going to be all real and all me. This is new for me – I’d normally just stick to the travelling part, the funny stories. Those will come too! But I feel like this is such a rollercoaster and there are things I want to capture that fall outside of what I’d normally comfortably publish for all. For those of you who know me and don’t get to see this side of me for whatever reason, may I respectfully ask you keep all judgement to yourself :) We all make mistakes and I told you so or you’re a mug comments help no one and neither does unrequited advice ;) God it’s ridiculous that I even have to write that but here we go then:

I arrived in Gold Coast after 3 weeks in Singapore, 6 days before my birthday, ready to start my one year working holiday in Australia - the trip I’ve been dreaming about for years! The sun, the beaches, the cities, the partying, the Aussie hunks… All of it. The reason I’ve saved so hard and been religiously watching Home and Away and Bondi Rescue… and how did it feel? Euphoric? Too good to be true?

Nope it felt wrong. I was in the wrong place. I should be somewhere else... Okay, so perhaps I should rewind a little and fill in some more info for you guys.

I’d spent the previous 3 weeks in Singapore, where my Dad and his family lives, seeing a boy there who I’d met 6 months previously on a diving trip and had been talking to on a daily basis since. The last few weeks before leaving the UK, I’d barely even thought about Australia because of my apprehension and uncertainty about seeing him. But it was great! We went on a diving trip together (which he got me through… stupid seasickness..), we ate together, we stayed in fancy hotels together, we drank together. All seemed to be great until one day he just dropped off. He wasn’t interested in answering my messages or seeing me, despite knowing we had limited opportunity to actually spend time together. You have no idea how frustrating that is – I was infuriated! It’s one thing to ignore me when I’m halfway across the world, but when I’m literally 20mins away from your front door? Are you serious?

Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, great just move on. He’s clearly not serious? And yes you’re right I probably should have moved on. But I was invested and genuinely thought we had a shot at something… so eventually he met with me and we had the conversation that needed to happen about the future and how hard it was going to be. And don’t get me wrong, it would have been hard. His job would have meant he would be at sea maybe 6 months at a time with 1 month on land between. Add to that, the cultural differences: a Singaporean Malay muslim boy and an English Buddhist girl – doesn’t take a genius to spot where the difficulties could have arisen. That’s how I saw them though – difficulties. Not roadblocks, but difficulties. Turns out I was alone in this thinking – but we agreed to a little more time. Everything was about to change, I was moving to Aus, close enough for weekend visits, we had til December when he’d be gone with work to figure out if it was worth the heartache. So that was agreed upon after a long night talking and lots of chicken nuggets and cigarettes.

And now we are back up to speed as about a week after this, I flew out to the Gold Coast. The first few nights were difficult. There was nothing stopping me being with him, in the same country as him, before his job made that impossible, yet here I was in Australia? The guilt was real. The feeling that I was just in the wrong place was crushing at night as I try to sleep.

And as you may have detected by the underlying bitterness in some of my writing - after less than two weeks in Australia, yet again, he drops off the edge of the world. Things became difficult after my request for a Skype call on or around my birthday (I mean gee.. how unreasonable...) until one day just no replies - even to this day may I add. Should I have seen it coming? Yes! Would I change a thing I did? Well, maybe I wouldn't be so wounded a second time around, but that's what experience teaches you I guess. I wouldn't change a thing I did, but my emotional reactions will be different in similar situations in the future.

So my feelings of guilt and being in the wrong place were completely misspent. I feel like I robbed myself of that glorious 'finally' feeling I should have had, by investing too deeply in someone who didn't invest half as much. But this is what I realised: it doesn’t matter how beautiful the surroundings, how hard you work to get there or how privileged you are to be there, if you’re not living in the here and now, the present moment, you can always find misery.

Lesson number one: try not to concern yourself with where else you could or should be, but make the most of where you find yourself. I’m not saying not to dream of better places, but don’t dwell on places that you can’t get to right now. You do nothing but rob yourself of happiness this way.