Start on a High - Bundeena, Australia

…I log into the Facebook event page. Top of the wall I see a message from the organiser: don’t come to the party! “The police have come and thrown everyone out of the forest. I have been hit with a big fine. I spent last night in jail. Sorry everyone, party’s off…”

I rock up in Bundeena on new years eve. It’s a small village in the middle of a huge forest on the southern edge of Sydney’s urban sprawl.

I’ve come here for a bush party. A couple of hundred other hippies, Gypsies and ferals have RSVP’d on Facebook. It promises to be a good party. I want to start the year on a high and stay that way.

(Above: Yuuri, enroute.)

I don’t know exactly where the party is going to happen, but I figure everyone will have to go to the tiny supermarket in the village for supplies, so I drop my bag on the front step, and keep my eyes peeled for tie dyed shirts and dreadlocks.

The village is busy with tourists, and people are in and out of the supermarket constantly. Everyone looks very middle class and well dressed though. A couple of hours pass, and I haven’t seen anyone who looks like a bush-doofer. Where is everyone?

I head up to the pub to use their free wifi. I log into the Facebook event page. Top of the wall I see a message from the organiser.
“Don’t come to the party! The police have come and thrown everyone out of the forest. I have been hit with a big fine. I spent last night in jail. Sorry everyone, party’s off.”

Fuck. It’s new years eve, and I am in a tiny village full of immaculately dressed tourists and their pallid, Ipod-glued kids.
At least the beaches are beautiful, and if I wander over to the edge of the village, I should have no difficulty finding a secluded spot to camp.
I trudge up the hill away from the supermarket, headed for the bush.

At a street corner I cross paths with a blond woman in a floral print dress, walking a robustly proportioned Labrador.
“Are you lost?” she asks me.
“I’m looking for a spot to camp” I tell her. “I came here for a big bush party.”
Her eyes light up.
“Really? Here in Bundeena? Where?”
“It’s been canceled” I tell her.
“So you’re just going to camp in the forest?” she asks. “Do you need anything?”
“Well, a couch to sleep on tonight would be great” I smile.
She looks at me appraisingly.
“Well, you look pretty harmless” she says. “Come with me. You can stay at Tina’s place.”

We walk together up the hill.
“I’m Sophia” she tells me, “and this is Prince.”
I introduce myself and give Prince a scratch behind the ears.
I explain about the party being busted.
“That sucks” Sophia says. “There’s a thousand acres of forest here. You would think people could just mind their own business wouldn’t you?”
“Nobody trusts Gypsies” I say. “It’s the way we smell.”
“I’d let you stay at my place” Sophia says, “but my house is full of Greek relo’s. My whole family is here for Christmas holidays. I still get shit off them from the last time I brought a hitchhiker back to the house. Anyway, you’ll like Tina. She’s a party girl.”

Tina’s place is a two storey weather-board holiday house. As we walk up the drive, Tina appears at the top of the front steps. She is a diminutive, bright eyed woman, with a wild head of hair and an infectious smile.
“Who’s this?” she demands.
“I found him in town” says Sophia. “He needs a place to crash tonight.”
“Right-o” says Tina. “The more the merrier! We’re having a party tonight, so you can help us set up.”

Sophia, me, and Tina sit around Tina’s kitchen counter and have a smoke and a few beers.
“I don’t know what Steve’s going to say when he finds you here” says Tina.
Sophia makes a face.
“Who’s Steve?” I ask.
“Steve is Tina’s hubby” says Sophia. “He’s even taller than you, twice as wide, and he gets jealous.”
“He used to do kick-boxing” Tina adds.
“Is this his beer I’m drinking?” I ask, nervously.
“Just say you and me are old friends who’ve known each other for years” says Sophia.

Tina shows me her fairies. They are delicately crafted dolls made from white clay, and decorated with feathers and dried flowers.
“They live in the garden” Tina tells me. “All the girls have one ambition, to make their flowers bloom and grow. But each girl chooses her own way of nurturing her flower. Some of them swap their nectar with the owl, but others keep their pollen to themselves and wait for the warmer weather. I’m writing a book about them.”

Tina’s husband, Steve comes home. Steve is a giant of a man, with a pair of shoulders he has to turn sideways to get through the kitchen doorway.
“Who’s this?” he bellows, looking at me.
“He’s a hitchhiker” Tina says, arching her eyebrows. “Sophia brought him over to keep me company.”
“I smile weakly.”
“Actually, we’ve known each other for years…” I murmur, vaguely.
Steve looks at me and flicks the cap off a beer with his thumb. He chuckles to himself and kisses Tina’s forehead.
“Can you use a lawn mower?” Steve asks me.
“No problem, I say.”

Steve and I sort out the back yard, while the girls cook. We place mosquito repellent candles around the yard and balcony, clean the barbecue, and drag a broken chest of drawers behind the shed.
As the sun sets, Steve gets out a dusty 80’s ghetto blaster, and cranks Midnight Oil. The guests start to arrive. Tina’s friends are all the sort of people known as ‘the life of the party’. The men are tradesmen and surfers. The women are boisterous. Everyone looks and acts like they are still twenty five, even though they all have their teenage kids in tow. Most of the guests are well into the party before they arrive and the atmosphere is instantly exuberant.

Tina’s mate, Manny, arrives around nine thirty. Manny bounces into the house with a massive amplifier under his arm and a shy looking Japanese girl in his wake. He announces, in a rich, Italian accent:
“the party has arrived!”
In ten minutes Manny’s DJ deck has drowned out the ghetto blaster. The Japanese girl disappears into the back bedroom, and emerges twenty minutes later in a white kimono. Manny fires up his party lights. The surfer/tradesmen and their wives dance. Steve throws kilos of prawns and steak onto the barbecue.
The teenagers get busted with a bottle of bourbon. One of the mums confiscates it and we all crowd into the kitchen and have shots, to teach the little buggers a lesson.

At midnight the whole party stumbles down to the beach to watch the fireworks over Sydney harbour. The mums are booty dancing on the seawall. The dads crack another case of beer and cheer them on.

On the way back to Tina’s place we stop in at another house party. It seems like everyone in town who didn’t get to Tina’s party is at this one. Now the whole village is jammed into one back yard, a seething, raucous, beer chugging mob of bleach blonde Aussies, their kids and their dogs. There is home brewed beer on tap set up in the window of the cubby house, and a bonfire burning in the lane-way behind the shed.

I get talking to the girl in the kimono beside the fire. Her name is Yuuri. She only arrived from Japan ten days earlier, and seems to be handling the culture shock of a back yard Aussie party very calmly.
“I am starting university in Sydney in a few weeks” Yuuri tells me.
“What are you going to study?” I ask.
“Psychology” she replies. “I am a bit mad” she says with a straight face, “so I think I am well able to understand people with mental problems.”
I can’t argue with her logic.
“Well, that should make it easier for you to get along with Aussies” I tell her.

Sophia and Tina decide, around two AM, to go camping at Mystery Bay the following morning. I invite myself to join the excursion.
I find Yuuri, who has changed her outfit again, now sporting a long black dress, accesorised with heavy mascara.
“Have you seen much of Australia since you got here?” I ask her.
“Not really” she admits. “Just some of Sydney.”
I tell her about the proposed camping trip to Mystery Bay.
“Want to come?” I ask her. “We can hitchhike there and meet the others. You will meet a lot of psychologically interesting Australians, hitchhiking.”
She looks at me with raised eyebrows.
“I will think about it” she says, politely.

One of Tina’s girlfriends, a tall, slender, blonde woman, who has sent her teenage kids home to bed, conjures up a sack of green, and the party cranks up to a higher notch.

Manny, the DJ, flicks off the decks and gets out his guitar. He starts playing some tight, jittery blues. I get out my blues harp and we have a nice free-form jam until the other revelers start getting cranky and demand more techno. Manny obliges them, and clicks a Kylie Minogue track onto eleven.

As the night wears on bodies settle onto the floor, and snuggle into the couches. None of the guests go home, but just huddle together and talk and smoke. The men swap surfing stories and the women giggle and whisper. In the dim light, in the smoke haze, it’s hard to believe these carefree people are mothers, fathers and mortgagees. They seem untouched by time, still as unconcerned by the world as they were in their teens.

In the morning, Steve makes bacon and eggs and everyone stumbles into the glare of the back yard for a bacon roll, and a hair of the dog to soothe their hangovers.

I pack my bag after breakfast and prepare to hitch down to Mystery Bay. Yuuri emerges from the back bedroom in yet another glamorous outfit, shading her face under a black parasol.
She watches me pack.
“You are really going to hitchhike?” she asks me, disbelievingly.
“Yep” I say.
“I always want to do this” Yuuri says, “but I never try…”
“It’s the best way to travel” I tell her.
I finish crushing my gear into my bag, and yank the drawstring closed.
“I can go with you?” she asks me.
“Sure can” I say. “Do you have a sleeping bag?”
“No” she says, looking glum.
Tina sticks her head around the kitchen doorway.
“You can borrow a sleeping bag from me” Tina says helpfully, “Steve has half a dozen in the shed.”

We walk down the hill to the main road, that winds away into the forest to the south west.
We get a ride easily, and Yuuri sits in the back seat while I chat with the driver. An hour later he drops us off on the highway.
“Did you understand what we were talking about?” I ask Yuuri.
“No” she says quietly, looking away.

We get a series of short rides between the small villages scattered along the coastal road. I talk with the drivers, and Yuuri sits in the back seats, silent and wide eyed. I smile at her reassuringly from time to time, but she seems to be in another world, staring out the window at the passing landscape.

As we go through Ulladulla it starts to rain. We go into the hardware store. Yuuri buys a small plastic tarpaulin.

We make good progress through the afternoon, and as night falls, the rain gets steadily heavier.
We get dropped off just south of Mogo. We get out our tarp’s and make a shelter in amongst some trees, hidden from the road.
The rain eases and I make a small fire.

We sit on the ground and watch the stars emerge from the scattering clouds. The full moon sail into view.
“Are you OK?” I ask her. “You haven’t said much today.”
She smiles apologetically.
“Actually, I am speechless” she says. “I never knew Australia was so beautiful. I am looking at the ocean, and the forest. All day I cannot think, because my eyes are so full.”

I build the fire up and we swap stories about our worlds. Yuuri’s description of her life in Tokyo sounds like a flickering message from a far away planet.

I have a smoke, and Yuuri wanders off somewhere. Ten minutes go by, and then she appears again.
“The Police are here” she says matter-of-factly. “I didn’t know what words to say to them so I said they should talk to you.”
The policemen seem more confused than Yuuri, but I reassure them I am not a kidnapper, and promise to put the fire out carefully. They take our names and drive away.
“Where did they come from?” I ask Yuuri.
“I went to look for a toilet” she says, “but I couldn’t find one. They saw me on the road.”
“That’s what the forest is for” I tell her. “It’s a long way to the nearest toilet out here.”
She looks at me dubiously, then laughs.
“OK, I will go in the forest. There are no angry animals?”
“You’ll be right” I tell her, and hand her my torch.

We have some damper for supper.
The crickets start to chant in the bush. The treetops turn blue and grow bright as the moon rises. The coals of the fire flicker and I drop some more twigs onto it.
“How do you like Australia?” I ask Yuuri.
She nods curtly.
“Good.”
“How do you like hitchhiking?”
She smiles.
“I like.”