10.22pm - Meals On Wheels

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  Suva, Viti Levu, Fiji
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Wednesday 10 February, 10.22pm, Suva Motor Inn

I've said it before and I’ll say it again – the worst thing about travelling? Travelling. I’ve been up since just gone six this morning, and I’ve only just arrived at my destination. Still, there’s no shower like the shower you have one bus, one taxi, three planes and a new time zone later.

Fiji so far seems nice enough – couldn’t really see much of it on arriving because it was dark and I was running around Nadi Airport worrying about my outbound flight to Suva – my flight from Sydney was inexplicably 30 minutes late taking off, even though they’d long since closed the doors, which had me drumming my fingers impatiently on the seats when we arrived, since everyone was standing up waiting to go and nothing was happening for a good ten minutes after we landed. As soon as I got off the plane, I fled past all the ambling holidaymakers, got through immigration as soon as humanly possible and dashed about baggage claim (at one point I did a running jump over a trolley that was in my way, it was all very dramatic) and out the door, where I was momentarily waylaid by a friendly Fijian who was trying to help by telling me where to go, but since I’d already spotted the Domestic Terminal sign and was heading in that direction, he was actually hindering me, bless him. Checked in with five minutes to spare, but then was left at an unexpected loose end, because while check in closed half an hour before departure, we wouldn’t board for another fifteen minutes. So after hurrying along in a state of constant agitation for 45 minutes, I spent my last few minutes in Nadi strolling casually around the one open shop, where I had a nice chat with the supremely friendly shop assistant and admired the pretty jewellery and souvenirs available. I may have to pop back into said shop on my return journey in a couple of days.

But before I get ahead of myself and start thinking about my flight back to Nadi, I should catch you up on the rest of my time in Melbourne. Now, it’s no secret that I adored Adelaide – it’s large enough to be interesting and small enough to be quaint, and has a thoroughly laidback air. It’s also widely mocked in Australia, apparently, and seen as being a bit backward. That alone would be enough to make me root for it as an underdog, but happily I loved it before I even found that out.

Now, Melbourne is already somewhat overlooked due to Sydney’s grandeur (even though Melbourne was once the larger and prouder city). Therefore, as a proud Melburnian, Justin had been taking my devotion to Adelaide very personally, and was determined that by the time I left Melbourne, I would have a new favourite city down under. Since that would involve overtaking both Adelaide AND Sydney, I didn’t fancy his chances, but was quite game for him to have a go at convincing me all the same. To this end, he had decided to take me for dinner on one of the city’s many trams – fortunately, this did not involve a packed lunch eaten whilst standing under tall men’s sweaty armpits, but instead a swanky five course dinner in a specially kitted out restaurant car. It had tassels on the curtains and everything. (That small piece of information should tell you everything you need to know about the decor, menu, and clientele.) Also, there was freely flowing booze, which automatically made it a win for me, and J got to do a touristy thing that he’d be far too embarrassed to do with any of his real friends, which made it a win for him. We went for a drink first at the Crown Casino (at my suggestion – I just heard live music and followed it into what I thought was a bar, but was actually just one corner of the ridiculously large super casino). We drank martinis and talked rubbish, it was very enjoyable. Eventually though, it was time to meander along to the tram stop, where we filled in the few minutes until it was time to climb aboard by making fun of our fellow diners’ outfits under our breath.

The Great Ocean Road isn’t really his strong point, but since he spends most of his time in the city centre (when he’s not roaming the Malkiewicz acreage on horseback, anyway), my tour guide came into his own as we chugged slowly around the various districts of Melbourne.

"Here is just one of our many lovely parks," he announced pointedly as we passed, well, a lovely park. I nodded very seriously. (Adelaide has a lot of parks, for which I had professed a fondness over the weekend.)

“This is St Kilda, where there is a nice beach and lots of shops and restaurants,” came next. (I had also professed a fondness for Glenelg.)

“And that is Luna Park,” he added, almost as an afterthought. I sat bolt upright and fumbled for my camera.

“Holy shit, it’s even scarier than the one in Sydney!” I cried excitedly.

(A brief aside on this subject. I actually returned to St Kilda the following day under my own steam to check out Luna Park in the daylight, and am forced to conclude that whilst the smile is more leering than its brother on the east coast, the Sydney one does have something the Melbourne version lacks which for me, had added a whole new level of creepiness: the eyes on the Sydney version have enormous eyelashes. But when it’s looming unexpectedly out of the night and there is drink taken and you are on a tram with tassels on the curtains, the Melbourne one does evoke a certain je ne sais quoi, it must be said. Oh no wait, I do know what – it’s bone-chilling terror, that’s it.)

Other exciting sights of the Mal-bourne tour included the sunset view of the Yarra River, a massive and inexplicable sculpture of a purse, and the university campus where J is currently studying for his masters. It was very interesting, though it must be said that his main thoughts on tourist information seem to be denigrating the bits that don’t meet with his approval rather than bigging up the bits that do. The monstrous Crown Casino had given him reams of material; there he quietly told me tales of seeing people there gambling first thing when he used to park there and walk through in the mornings. Finding the casino hugely tacky isn’t exclusive to him though, Melburnians in general are dismissive of it, I’m told, so I can let him off his snobbery on that one. Quite frankly though, I could listen to J bitch all day, because he’s very funny. And part of the fun of travelling is precisely that – finding out the gossip on the streets of cities you’ve never thought of before, but will now find it difficult to put completely out of your head.

Since I couldn’t stalk Justin all the time, I also got up to some other things on my own around Melbs. My solo adventures included a trip to the Melbourne Aquarium, which was fantastic, even better than the one in Sydney in my opinion. I was initially attracted to the fact that they have king and gentoo penguins there, but seeing them penned up was a sobering experience. It’s a funny old thing – humans are tactile, and we use touch as a way to create intimacy and trust. But we frequently forget that wild animals don’t feel the same way. People want to pet the dingoes because they look like dogs, and petting a penguin seemed fine to me way back when, but having seen them in the wild (and in such numbers), unconcerned by humans but in no way seeking their attention or approval, it seemed pretty fucked up to watch the usually dignified kings practically falling over themselves to get at their keepers come feeding time. The gentoos are morons, I’d expect nothing else of them except to twat about the place as usual, but the reason it was so funny when a king would occasionally slip in the mud on South Georgia was because it so rarely happened. Most of the time, they maintain an aloof nobility, and make it pretty clear that they can look after themselves. It was like seeing a beloved icon brought low by age or addiction. The regal king penguin, scrabbling in dirty snow for scraps.

But aside from my penguin issues, the aquarium is a jolly good time, and let’s face it, we can’t all go to Antarctica and look at the millions toddling around there, so it’s nice to be able to educate people who wouldn’t ordinarily get the chance to see them. What’s better, after all – a few tamed or trained animals cavorting in a zoo, or people trampling the countryside in their millions to see them in the wild, creating pollution and potentially irreparably damaging the ecosystem? Or even more disturbing – people not caring at all about anything more foreign than their own pet goldfish, and remaining entirely unconcerned at the thought of these animals disappearing slowly but surely from the face of the earth? Human beings have already caused massive amounts of damage – what’s the solution to trying to fix it? I don’t know, do you? Maybe you think you do. In that case I applaud you, because for me, like a lot of these issues I keep considering in the long hours I have alone to think, there is no clear cut solution. Just this: try harder, and don’t stop thinking of new ideas.

Mind you, if you think the humble aquarium’s got me waxing lyrical (and let’s face it, this is not really a serious place, when you can also touch a shark’s egg and overhear multiple – MULTIPLE – conversations in which people point out the types of jellyfish they or their acquaintances have been stung by), that’s nothing compared to the other place I visited – the Immigration Museum. Australia started life as the land of the Aborigine, but when white Europeans arrived, we embraced the idea of terra nullius – no man’s land. And what better to do with a land that belonged to nobody than fill it up with people? Over the years, millions of people have migrated to Australia from all over the world, but chiefly the UK, so as an English person who is always vaguely on the lookout for somewhere groovy to live that’s not England, I found it fascinating to see some of the reasons other people had for hammering on Australia’s door and asking to come in. Some of those reasons were horrifying, of course – tales of asylum seekers and refugees, war-displaced families, Jews fleeing the Nazis and more besides. And Australia has not always done itself proud in such situations – for years, they operated a pretty racist policy that kept out anyone who was not a white European and preferably anyone who wasn’t English. People were tested on their understanding of a variety of European languages, and if they failed, they were denied their visa. Since if you passed one, they kept trying you on another, and not necessarily anything you’d ever need in Australia (memorably one Asian professor of languages passed test after test until they finally struck gold on Gaelic, which he failed), it was pretty much a guarantee that they could force you to fail out and deny you entry. The White Australia Policy was relaxed after World War II when they realised the government realised they would need a much bigger population if they were going to be expected to constantly go to Britain’s defence in wartime, and was finally overturned in 1975, an unfathomably late date. It’s hard to read about something which seems abhorrent to 21st century sensibilities, but only actually happened relatively recently. But the museum rather admirably doesn’t shy away from this fact though, and although it relates this part of their history with no pride, it doesn’t try and pretend it didn’t happen. It’s all a part of the journey Australia has taken, and as such shouldn’t be ignored. And as well as the old adage that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, it’s also a good way of showing just how far the country has come, and that although it has made mistakes, it has done its best to rectify them.

The whole museum is thoroughly interesting, but the best exhibit is probably the interview room, where you can choose to listen to the interviews of nine applicants from immigrants hoping to get various visas to move to or stay in Australia, over three time periods. What’s really interesting is that they’ve obviously told some of the actors to appear fairly odious or sympathetic, and although you can recommend whether you would approve or reject their application, the unseen interviewer makes the final decision. So you see an unpleasant but white and middle class English couple get approved, and a shy Chinese woman who only wants to stay with her Australian-born husband and children get rejected and sent back to China in the 1920s. You are even faced with a nicely topical Iraqi asylum seeker in the present day. My favourite thing about it was that the same actors were reused, so I watched happily as the same (presumably Australian) couple butchered a posh English accent in the 20s, a broad Northern accent in the 50s – his accent in particular was wandering, starting off somewhere near Leeds and ending up in Scotland – and then for variety, murder a South African (or Seeeth Eeeffreeken) accent in present day. That’s fun for all ages.

But it wasn’t all thinking weighty thoughts in Melbourne. Allow me to also throw in the fact that I went for a wander around the laneways (cute little backstreets full of boutiques and tiny cafés) and I found a shop called Babushkas that sold nothing but Russian dolls. Thousands of them. Russian dolls painted like Barack Obama, Russian dolls painted like Vladimir Putin (that makes sense, I suppose), big Russian dolls, teeny Russian dolls, as many Russian dolls as you could ever want or need in a lifetime. It was TOP. I was utterly delighted with it. I wanted to buy hundreds of Russian dolls but reluctantly acknowledged that this would be ludicrous on every level. Still, a shop that sold only Russian dolls. Doesn’t it boggle the mind? How can you possibly make a living doing that? There was a magic shop two doors down (a proper one, selling spells and everything) and even that was nothing compared to the Russian doll shop. Sbasyba for the memories, Babushkas.

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