The Fabled Gated Kangaroos of Morisset

Morisset (33 ° 7' S 151 ° 30' E) has a rather curious reputation. While local Australians might associate it negatively with the mental institute which opened here in 1909, more recently it became famous with foreign visitors attracted by the wild kangaroos that can be encountered in huge mobs on its grounds. Nanny State had the last say, unfortunately, and the hospital was sealed off with gated bridges to stop the punters from getting in. More fool Nan. As I previously mentioned, for close to 10 years I was held under virtual house arrest at my parents' property south at Lake Haven, on Budgewoi Lake. Even though Morisset was only 20km or so distant, I found it almost impossible to visit. In 2013 I had bravely caught the train which connects Wyong and Newcastle, and disembarked at Morisset. I sloshed around in the rain and mud, looking for a Buddhist temple which was supposedly existed around here. I was hoping it would be something like Nan Tien Temple, in the Illawarra, but it was actually fairly basic in comparison.

Cham Shan Temple, in Morisset (Australia, 2014)

It took almost a decade for my agoraphobia to recover sufficiently enough to allow me to return to Morisset, but this time I had my heart set on locating the kangaroos which had gone viral at the Psychiatric Hospital. As it turned out, this was a rather futile gesture, as the authorities had discretely put a stop to this unauthorized caper by sealing off all access roads to the facility. It is a pity because the hospital sounds fascinating in its own right. There is also reputed to a haunted ruins in the vicinity, with the rather ominous name of "Hospital for the Criminally Insane", and a cemetery containing many unmarked graves. It made me wonder: Wouldn't it be better to capitalize on your assets when it comes to tourism, rather than shutting the whole game down??? (For the full report of my defeat searching for the now gated kangaroos of Morisset, click here.)

Stumble on Baby Step #2

For every six hotels I stay at going forward, one will be like Hotel Gosford, and one will be comparable to the Bayview Hotel at Woy Woy, which I have just checked out of. Yet another will be like the Ocean Beach Hotel (Nightcap at Umina), my next step on the road, where I will still be staying in a pub, but at least I will have my own toilet. The Nightcap will be grade 3, while the Metro Mirage in Newport will be one step above, at level four. Hotel Gosford has been the grungiest of my hotels thus far, partly due to its location, as well as facilities and clientele. Bayview Hotel is just as cheap as Hotel Gosford, but has a friendlier vibe, and a sunnier outlook. That might be due to its location, and the demographics of the city. 

In Woy Woy the population is more gentrified, genteel, and geriatric. Local motorists stop for you when you are crossing the road, rather than beep their horn as in Gosford. There are a lot of zebra crossings... too many, in fact! I feel guilty holding up the traffic. My room was facing north, and directly opposite the Central Coast Ferries wharf on Brisbane Water, which is critical for my attempts to knock off the first two six baby steps out of the Central Coast. All things considered, it was quite cozy, though a little dated.

Afternoon sun in the standard Queen room at the Bayview Hotel (Australia, 2023)

The only problem was that there was no table nor chair, so I was forced to sit on the floor with my laptop resting on the side of the bed for my lessons for iTalki. And while sitting on the floor might be comfortable in Japan, where homes and hotels are often built around this discipline, Australian accommodation is not as accommodating. Carpets can be dusty and unhygienic, with none of the spring of your typical tatami mat. After a couple of hours of sitting crosslegged I would get sore legs, numb extremities, even muscular spasms. I assumed that I would get used to it eventually.

That said, I ticked off the first of the my baby steps easily enough. To be fair, I was suffering mild derealization upon arriving at Davistown, after talking to the boy with the toy brontosaurus on the boat, and the Elvis impersonator at the bus stop on Paringa Avenue, near the shops. In retrospect, my anxiety level seemed to be about 1.7 Distress Units (DU). After that early success, I was confident and complacent (which is always a dangerous combination). Unfortunately, the second baby step to Empire Bay on the other side of Cockle Channel didn't go so smoothly. It was a stormy day, and I had foolishly left my raincoat in the hotel, thinking that it wouldnt rain until evening. As soon as I arrived at the wharf, it started pelting down... (For the full report of my setback on the catamaran to Empire Bay, click here.)

How to Escape the Central Coast (in Six Baby Steps)

If the Lake Haven epoch was ruled by the car, and my fragmented Gosford ages built upon the bus, the coming Woy Woy microlife will focus on ferries. During the two months that I hope to spend there, acclimatizing for the hop across the Hawkesbury, I must:

1 -- Cruise to Saratoga or Davistown on Central Coast Ferries (if I am too anxious for whatever reason, I can try to bail out at the first available wharf!)

2 -- Catch another catamaran to Empire Bay, the last stop on this service some 30 minutes from Woy Woy. I could then hike back to my hotel via Daleys Point and St Huberts Island, with their multimillion dollar views. 

3.-- Catch a Fantasea ferry from Ettalong to Wagstaffe Wharf, en route to Palm Beach, and explore the nearby national park.

4.-- Take the same ferry once more, this time directly to Palm Beach, before returning to Woy Woy. This will be a one-hour round trip over deep water, and my first landfall on Sydney territory in nine years.

5.-- Return to Palm Beach, and then get the bus to Newport, some 10km south, where there is a hotel that I can (barely) afford.

6 -- Stay at said Newport hotel one night, to see if I can handle it..

 

The Saratoga docking at the Central Wharf in Davistown, on Cockle Channel (Australia, 2022)

Each cruise will be a baby step in the escape from the Central Coast, and the migration to Sydney's Northern Beaches. I have a lot of mucking about in boats to do!

Rebellious Qi

I have read that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, panic attacks are blamed upon rebellious Qi, an uprising of that fundamental lifeforce also called "Chi" (or 氣) . This theory resonates with me as several occasions before my first attack, I suffered freak spells of dizziness and unsteadiness on my feet. One evening I was walking towards the Monolith in Shinjuku (新宿) when a sudden whoosh! of energy surged from my legs to my crown. A week or so later I had my first (official) attack, at the aforementioned tower. Whenever I moved my arm or turned my head, a powerful force would shudder through my body, with a reverberating din similar to the bionic sound effects in The Six Million Dollar Man. Time had slowed down, it felt, and every event was full of dread significance. As the attack progressed, I was startled to notice luminous sparks spraying up from the bottom of my visual field, like manic laser beams fired in an old arcade game... (For more on Qi rebellions and the herbs that can remedy them, click here,)

 

Deconstructing Cannabis

My world expanding, it is comforting how I inherit new windfalls all the time now, assets that I can use in my life right today, not in some speculated future. Long Jetty is in my orbit finally, Morisset is within my reach. Recently I was informed by one of my physicians that I could be eligible for a bit of the old medical marijuana, which is slowly being approved for therapeutic use in Australia. Cannabis supposedly has anxiolytic properties, although I will believe that when I feel it. In my experience, the only substance which reliably reduces anxiety is booze, and the doctors would never prescribe that. In fact, some of my first panic attacks were sparked by the wicked weed.

Call me a sucker for punishment, but it would be great to get back into pot, in spite of the possible anxiety it might provoke. Fortunately, the marijuana that they now dispense here has been stripped of its treacherous tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound which gets you high, and suffused instead with cannabidiol (CBD), a miracle substance being investigated for its anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective promises... (For my complete deconstruction of medical marijuana and how it may help with panic disorder, click here.)

Reawakening the Tiger

I have been reading a few blogs about a trauma intervention called Self Regulation Therapy, or SRT for short, which is based on Peter Levine's book, Waking the Tiger. It sounds similar to CBT, but there is one crucial difference: in SRT the focus is on repressed energy in the body, rather than faulty thinking patterns. It is psychosomatic, rather than just cognitive, or psychological. You could call it psychophysiological, which is rather a long word, and difficult to pronounce. Whatever the name, SRT has resonated with me, because I have been disheartened with CBT for quite some time. Session after session, I have met with K.A. at Your Strengths in Wyong, or Dr Goripati, to receive their wisdom, and pretend that they are actually helping me. They keep stressing that the solutions to my panic attacks are cognitive, I just need to change the way I interpret my thoughts, blah blah blah. They say it over and over again, but I can't get it to work for me. They claim the thought comes first, then the fearful reaction, but in my experience it is the other way round. First I feel anxious, and then I cognize, and catastrophize. It has led me to believe that panic is a symptom of the hindbrain, the reptilian brain... the part of our anatomy that we share with the birds, and the beasts. I notice that whenever I disturb the lorikeets which abound in my parents' garden they shriek instinctively, empty their bowels, and then burst into flight. For them it is the equivalent of encountering a wild lion, but they do it every day, and they never appear to suffer from any mental trauma afterwards... (For my complete observations on SRT and how it may help with panic disorder, click here.)

Halfway House (One Mile at a Time)

You know the deal: for years I have been quashed, sunk in quicksand. Since late 2011 I have been barricaded here at Breezy, the House on the Lake; like a convict have I been confined, with only the birds (and my parents) for buddies. Stormboy and his pelican, that has been my plight, stranded 'midst the sandstone scarps. Storms have come and gone, planes streaking across the sky, yet I have been steadfast as the stones, and just as sullen. Much as I yearn to passenger one of those planes which hourly pass by overhead, I remain trapped, saddled by my agoraphobia, and a lack of appropriate funds. It doesn't matter much that I have a job now, and savings are accumulating swiftly... Australia is a huge, expensive country, and I will need an awful lot of cash to traverse it. How much is an open question, the intersection of a number of sliding rules. Basically, the longer I wait, the easier it becomes. But I am so tired of waiting, and I would love to kick things forward, anyway I can. At the moment, any move would be a good one, even one which took me just to the top of the driveway. I would be at least one step on my way, halfway out of my hole. And once my momentum had recovered, that one small step could turn into a second, and then into a third...

The Garage.. aka the Halfway House (Australia, 2017)

A few months ago, my Mum decided to convert the garage, which sits on the top of the hill, into a granny flat. Well, it might be just a granny flat for her, but under my stewardship it could inflate into a pod, a Halfway House no less. Within a few months weeks days, I will be relocating up there, and living by myself. Even if it was my Mum's idea, I should not be too suspicious. For better or worse, I will soon have my own place, for the first time in six years! 

An empty space (Australia, 2017)

Granted, it is never going to be as nifty as my Shinozaki digs, with its programmable bath and explosive water pressure, but it promises to be nice, nonetheless. The days of watching my parent's British chatshows and murder mysteries are coming to an end, and that alone is something to savour, whether I end up with a wall-screen TV or not.

Insert window here (Australia, 2017)

My Mum has ordered an air-conditioner, courtesy of Kelvinator, and a kitchen where I can cook spaghetti carbonara (if I ever learn how!) Even as I type the kitchen is coming together, sink and drawers, red tiles on the walls, and a bench where I can remotely teach. I can look down at Breezy at the bottom of the hill, and contemplate how far I have come.

Kitchen in the works, in the Halfway House (Australia, 2017)

It is just a few short steps from there to the top of the hill, but for me at least, it will be an Armstrongian leap. Once I move in I will be able to order Indian food from The Entrance, and watch Viceland in the early hours of the morning. It will be as great a step forward as getting off Work for the Dole, or of getting off the dole itself. It will be like having an Absence every day of the year! And as the old expression goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart grow stronger.

Cracking the Code

For many years, JavaScript evaded me. I wanted it for my website, I could see its potential for my life, but I just couldn't wrap my head around how it worked. It was a fruit I couldn't reach, a nut that wouldn't crack. I made a promising debut in the biz, you might say: I grew up with a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and learned BASIC at an early age. I even programmed a video game in Year 10 Computer Studies, a racing car simulation with sprite and treacherous track. That was in the age of the Commodore 64. When the Internet arrived, half a decade later, I fancied that it could provide the platform for a new kind of literature, an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure style of fiction. I started to write a novel which I hoped would be like the magic book from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: a device that was more storyteller than mere story, bespoke but bewilderingly cuttingedge, an intuitive, intelligent machine. HTML was cool and easy to pick up, but it wasn't interactive enough for my goal. I soon realized that only JavaScript could deliver the desired dynamism. Unfortunately, computer languages had evolved since my TA forays, and this new lingo looked a hell lot more complicated than BASIC. What is it with these functions, attributes and elements? I remember asking myself, frustrated; what does object-oriented mean? Looking back, I can see that I had succumbed to the same misconception that scuppered my efforts to learn German in Year 11: I did not appreciate that every language has its own grammar. As language leaners know, grammar is the hardest part. Master the grammar, and the rest will follow.  


This breakthrough was 20 years in the making, but something miraculous has happened in the past few months... I suddenly get JavaScript! Of course, these days I no longer write fiction... I suppose you could say that fiction writes me. Life is a code (Baudrillard), a narrative (Lacan), and JavaScript is the interface which enables me to read this code, one line at a time...

We all have algorithms running in our minds at any time, unfathomable routines, an endless chain of signification (to put it in Lacanese). Functions waiting to be triggered, like samskaras lurking in the murk. The first step is to codify what it already there, conscious and unconscious, constructive and destructive. Then you can set about reprogramming yourself. Currently JavaScript can predict how far I can drive from home, estimate my tax due  (var taxdue = taxableIncome * .19;), and even tell me when it is time to move out. Piece by piece, my personal assistant is taking shape. The Grand Algorithm is here!

Bracing for the Jump (Take Two)

The quickening of Capricorn continues, and quite surprisingly I find myself working at a steady job, saving cash, and rolling to a 9-5 routine (but let's call it a 09-22 roulette instead). The Hard Native nightmare is coming to a close, and a Soft International morning is rousing all around me, radiant gold and fringed with birdsong. For the first time in years I feel like I am back in the saddle, finally able to spur my stallions into speed. Shangri-La is looming, and while it might seem a lonely place from this angle, it is nonetheless lightyears more agreeable than the limbo I have been locked inside for so long, that Cold Buddhist Hell of Immobility. Hell is warming up, and as the ice thaws, the contradictions of the Lake Haven Age emerge in their sordid gore, mammoths marooned in the muck, samskaras scorched into the sediment. It just goes to show that I was indeed in a Yin phase back then, a Shiva stage if you must... now Yin is yielding to Yang, Shiva shifting to Shakti, and suddenly the future is not just a futile fantasy, but a reality which must soon be lived. To quote an old song: the time to hesitate is through. But have I been mired in the mud so long that my wings refuse to fly? I know from experience that freedom is a habit, and muscles can waste from underuse...

On May 26 the Travel Fund passed the magic milestone of $4000. In former times this would have been reason enough to trigger a migration movement, a Jump into a brand new life. My original plan, fleshed out in 2011, was to fly to Cambodia, which I'd discovered was the cheapest nation in the region, and then just glide around for a while, propelled by affiliate advertising. Smoke some ganja perhaps aloft the ruins of Angkor Wat, shoot pool with beer gals and gangstas, strafe the straits of Vang Vieng. Play the Indochinese dating game. That was the plan, but then I lost my AdSense, and then my world collapsed. Even if I had the money for an airline ticket, I would not have been able to board the plane. I wouldn't have even made it to the bloody airport! Confined to a box, I decided to find freedom within that box, chasing the macrocosm in the microcosm. It worked, almost too well: I regained my sanity within that straitjacket, but in the process, alas, I misplaced my wanderlust. Since that time, I have spent every single day at my parents' house, on the shore of Budgewoi Lake, on the NSW Central Coast. Every day, and every single night, held captive... well, every single night, captive, except one. And that night is the subject of this account.

Rear shot of the Bridge View Motel, at Gorokan (Australia, 2015)

The Grand Algorithm contends: when one has been in the same place too long, inertia develops. Inertia is to vagabondism, of course, what rust is to iron, or fear is to Mind... it is the Mind Killer. Right now, inertia is the habit I need to break, the momentum I must quickly reverse. Indochina is out of the question this year, I get that; Sydney is too hard, too; but soon I will have the funds and the fortitude to conquer them both, and it is vital for me to get back into shape. For this reason on June 10 I packed my tiny rucksack with pills and a Samsung tablet and leaving my Mum and Dad watching murder mysteries at their home, walked up to the Bridge View Motel situated at the end of the street. My goal was to spend the night in that motel, monitoring my anxiety, and getting a taste for the Vagabondist voyage which will presently commence. You might call it a dress rehearsal, a trial run. I was feeling kind of weird as I made my way up Malvina Parade, suffering mild separation anxiety. Contrary to expectations, this wasn't typical agoraphobia that I was down with, just run-of-the-mill scepticism. I was doubtful, in other words, about the wisdom of this whole experiment, and worried that I had made a mistake by heading out here. The ground was soggy as I walked, and grassseeds clung to my trouser legs.  At reception I purchased a room with my credit card, and was presented the key to my door. The friendly owners had assigned me a downstairs room, right on the main road, positioned just behind the swimming pool. I was a little concerned about the location, and what isolation hid behind that door. As soon as I opened the door and inhaled that classic hotel aroma, my fears faded. All of a sudden I knew that I was on a holiday, 2km from home. And I thought to myself, rejoicingly: Why have I left it so long?

Plenty of room to stretch out in my cosy space (Australia, 2015)

There was a Bible by the bedside, little bars of soap in the bathroom, and soft pillows on the bed.

Too cold for a swim just yet, but the view looks nice (Australia, 2015)

There was a dead cockroach in the corner but, hey, that was better than a live one.

Freedom in the box: Stan Grant interviews Dr Cornel West, famous dissident, on Awaken, NITV (Australia, 2015)

After settling myself in and taking a short nap, I strolled over the road to drink a few beers at Wallarah Bay Recreation Club, our local establishment. I had some overpriced carbonara, then retreated "home", to consume a few beers more, in the freedom of my hotel room. I pumped up the aircon, and flicked through the channels on the TV. It felt refreshingly cool to be in control, setting the agenda, instead of being hostage to my Mum and Dad's viewing habits. Sadly, the cable library promised at the Bridge View did not prove to be as extensive as I had expected. It basically consisted of two sports channels featuring badminton and the like, and two lame movie channels. Free-to-air NITV turned out to be the best thing on. I watched some program about land rights in South Australia, an Aboriginal graveyard being excavated to make way for the railway. Observing this documentary, I felt distressingly aware of the size of this land, the huge continent I am fated soon to cross.

But do I have the guts to actually cross it?

Tales and Travails of the Agoraphobic Traveler

In my dream life I wouldn't be tethered to one place as I am now but would roam around the world, roam the world relentlessly, sailing like a stowaway on a galleon in the Age of Discovery. In my dream life I would not cower under Capital and all its cronies but would glide instead atop the gradients of the global gift economy, glide them triumphantly, scooping up on the way social media merits, couch surfing kudos and any Bitcoins that I can find strewn across my path, like tokens in a classic Sega game! In my dream life I would sip fruit cocktails and iced coffee on beaches where oxen wade through the waves, meditate on mountain tops, and stalk narwhal with my karmic kin beneath the arctic ice. I'd study astrology with the masters in Varanasi, India, Shi'ite morality in Qom, Iran, and the Gospel of Ayahuasca in Anyjungle, Peru, shapeshifting there with the shamans, dancing with diseases, communing with the spirits of stars. I'd recount my adventures every day online, all my expeditions and explorations, my sublime revelations, to an eager and envious audience as farflung as my passions and my ports of call. From time to time a reader might click on an ad or flick me a coin, and thus kick me one step further down the rambling road. That's the gift economy in application, the hitherto unharnessed power of popularity: my exploits today would finance my epiphanies tomorrow, and my epiphanies tomorrow would excuse me for the excesses of tonight! In this way, a perfect feedback loop is formed; like a snake swallowing its tail, the cycle never ends...

Though I like to call myself a Vagabondic, truth is I am an agoraphobic. For the past three years I have been unemployed, living with my parents in regional Australia, and confined to a small and shrinking world. Before this handicap hit me I did indeed glide around the globe, I glided around the world gleefully, domiciling in Japan for 10 years where I taught English and enjoyed all kinds of adventures, most of them legal and legit, heaps of them happy and some of them sad, all of them educational in one way or another. Every day in Japan was an adventure to be honest, an adventure and a cultural experience, as well as an initiation into the enigma of the East. If I had known, back then, that one day I would be compelled to crawl home to the sanctuary of Mum and Dad in smalltown Australia, that would have been like totally my worst nightmare... it would have been worse than a nightmare, in fact, because nightmares get awoken from eventually, while this affliction just keeps persisting on and on and on. It goes to show that fate, destiny, whatever you like to call it has a strange habit of reversing things, turning reality into dream, and dream into reality; now the Prodigal Son is home again, not because he wanted to return, but because he was forced to... and for a long time he was not particularly happy about that fact. He was pretty pissed off about it, to be blunt, and couldn't understand what had happened. He had assumed, during those long halcyon days in Old Harmony, that his Australian life had been put far behind him. As it turns out, however, his Australian life is suddenly back in front of him, back in all its hoary glory, like a sumo wrestler in a cage fight, 400 pounds of grimace and pain. And, alas, the sumo is too big for Sonic to jump this time!

Right now, I can travel only about 25 kilometers from home before I succumb to anxiety and dread. That's my Safety Zone, a circle with a radius of 25km. When I approach the edge of the Safety Zone my palms and scalp get sweaty, and my muscles seize up. The world closes in around me, and I worry that I am not really real. If I am driving a car, my zone is even smaller, I am not sure why. Maybe it is because driving is inherently more stressful??? hmmm, that sounds sensible enough. Crowds and loud noises frighten me, and coffee is a definite no-no. Although I used to travel frequently on the train, these days I can manage only one stop in either direction from my local station before I am forced to bundle out the door, hyperventilating. If I try to go two stops, I might well have a panic attack.

For the past three years, this Safety Zone has been my prison. Now, it wouldn't be so bad if I was stuck in New York City, Paris or Prague. In such cities you could spend a whole lifetime within a 25km radius and never get bored. That's true too for Tokyo, and Seoul; hell, it is probably also the case with Tehran! These places have density, and history, and soul (and no doubt, plenty of agoraphobic artists there trying to make the most of their handicaps, trying to turn their afflictions into art!) The location of my exile, on the contrary, is a scrap of suburbia on the edge of scrappy bush, in what could possibly be the most boring barrio of the world: the Central Coast of New South Wales, north of Sydney on the eastern shore of Australia, the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. I am sorry if I have offended the locals by dissing your 'hood such, I know you guys love it a lot up here. I have to concede the weather is nice, if repetitively so. There are a lot of nice beaches in the area, which attract hordes of holidaymakers every summer. There are never any earthquakes (well, not that often anyway!), nor are there any volcanic eruptions, nor political strife of any kind. That's partly the problem, though: nothing interesting happens! For me, a bit of danger always spices things up, like mustard on a dull cut of beef, or a hip-hop sample on an atmospheric Drum&Bass tune. This place is too vanilla, too white bread, too white trash for my tastes. If you are a fisherman, or a surfer, or a birdwatcher or tattoo artist, then the Central Coast is your paradise. If you are more interested in culture, and cuisine, and couture, then it is more likely to be your hell. That is my opinion, and I stand by it. But then I am biased, because I don't really want to be here in the first place.

For a recovering agoraphobic, even a trip to the letterbox can be a struggle... but it could also be an amazing adventure! It depends on how you look at it. (Australia, 2014)

I have been in a lot of weird predicaments in my life, to be sure, but this predicament is the weirdest of them all: I am a traveler who is afraid of traveling, an agoraphobic traveler. Much as I pine to paddle across the Pacific, visit Vang Vieng, or shapeshift in the aforementioned Amazon, Fate has me dealt me another hand. In fact, She has placed me under virtual house arrest, for the foreseeable future at least! Lousy luck, you might say... lousy Lady Luck. Here at Vagabondic we like to delve deeper into the nature of things, however, and accept that every affliction has a spiritual meaning, a higher purpose if you like. Ian Thorpe's depression had a purpose, according to my edition of The Secret Language of Destiny: it manifested to manipulate him into diving deep into his repressed emotions. My Dad's Huntington's disease, meanwhile, might well be another kind of spiritual crisis, a lastditch intervention to coerce him into curtailing his need for control, before life pulls the plug and ends his present incarnation. Possibly my panic attacks and agoraphobia have a purpose too, possibly they are trying to tell me something. "But what on Earth could they be saying?" you might ask, and I have to agree, it is a tough question to answer. In order to find out, I believe we need to rise above our workaday ego concerns, and try to see things from a higher perspective. We need to see things from the perspective of our souls. I remember that my psychic mistress Janene used to say, during my apprenticeship, "If you can find happiness in a box, you can find it anywhere." Her premise was that even if you have just had your legs broken by a psychopath, your arms cut off, and the remainder of your body boxed in the basement, you could still be as blissed as a Buddha so long as you were plugged into the Source. Well, I am not quite at the Misery stage yet, but I definitely feel restricted, like a bird with clipped wings, or a dog on a lead, left to guard the yard all day long alone. But inside this restriction, perhaps, my future freedom resides, like the dots in a yin/yang taijitu, those phaseshifting telltales. Possibly, agoraphobia is commanding me to venerate quality over quantity, the local over the global, the trivial over the epochal, the micro over the macro. I have always been such a macrominded man, it is hard for me to be content just with the little things in life. I am going to have to learn to appreciate them, however, if I am to ever escape this mad torturer's dungeon. Furthermore, I suspect this ailment is challenging me into becoming more tenacious, more determined to achieve my dreams. Higher I is telling lower me: You are going to have fight for your dreams, fight for your right to orbit the planet... one hardearned mile at a time. And we are not talking frequent flyer miles here! This is the real deal, Marco Polo style.

Recently I discovered that my new Samsung smart phone (Galaxy Pocket Neo) automatically uploads every single photo that I take during my daily movements to Google+, where Google keeps hold of them, immortalized on the cloud. Using cues like the date, time and GPS location, Google curates my pictures into artfully arranged albums, and even sends me an email inviting me to inspect its handiwork. How cool is that? A little creepy, but cool nonetheless! When I view the photos at the end of each day I am always amazed by how much territory I managed to cover, and all of the beautiful scenes that I was privileged to have witnessed. For an agoraphobic, it is not a bad effort, and it shows that even in a small world there is still so much to see. Maybe one day Google could write blog entries for me based on where I go, who I interact with, and what music I listen to on my iPod. The Andy Warhol of tomorrow could make a new movie every day with footage culled from Google Glass, and a hectic and heroic social life. I don't have much of a social life at all these days, but I do have my Samsung smart phone, and I have a Safety Zone 50km from edge to edge. That's 1963 square kilometres of world for me to explore, and document here online! One small, hesitant step at a time, of course, with Valium always at hand...

Wyong, Then and Now: Courtesy of Samsung and Google+

At the south-west edge of my Safety Zone lies the town of Wyong, population 3600, the seat of local government and the region's most important transportation hub. I have been catching the bus there a lot lately to see a psychologist about my agoraphobia, and challenge myself on the train. To pass the time waiting for my appointment or to celebrate a successful mission on the rails, I like to walk around and take photos of things that entice me. While I used to think that Wyong was a hole, I have been impressed lately by the number of old colonial buildings in the town. My Mum, who grew up here, knows the history of all these buildings, the families who used to live inside them, knowledge that I will attempt to preserve in the (evolving) photo essay above. Click on the link above to take a stroll through the streets of Wyong, a mile in my shoes, recorded for all time! 

Walking in Weemala: Can I reach the beach?

Right at the other end of my Safety Zone, on the Pacific Ocean, slumbers the small holiday hamlet of Budgewoi. Bustling Budgewoi it ain't... the town boasts all the buzz of a game of lawn bowls, or a mufti day at a nursing home. It does have some nice bushland, however, miles of long empty beaches, and it is the outdoors stuff that has been attracting me there lately. In June I drove over there and attempted to trek the path at Weemala Wetland all the way to the sea. Although it is a short path, just a few hundred metres, I was too anxious to complete it, and I had to scurry back to the safety of the car. Six weeks later I returned and this time managed to punch through all the way to the sand, where I was rewarded with views of bitou bush and Bird Island, bobbing out of the waves. This breakthrough perked me up, and emboldened me to probe further afield, further up the coast, where I am sure plenty of natural wonders await me.

Norah Head: Local landmark with a lighthouse

South of Budgewoi, well within my Safety Zone, Norah Head heaves itself out of the scrub and rocky coast, to become a prominent local landmark. There is a lighthouse and a few beaches in the vicinity, the most famous being Soldiers Beach, one of the many places in Australia devoted to the legend of the Anzacs. Even in the middle of winter you can find decent numbers of people here, swimming and surfing, or exercising their dogs on the sand. Looking south, other headlands loom out of the salt spray, taunting me with their proximity. 

Sunny San Remo: A neglected suburb

As a young man fresh out of college I worked as a cub reporter for the Wyong Shire Advocate, which had its office in Toukley, a quiet holiday town. During my second year at the Advocate my editor assigned me the round of covering the northern part of the Wyong Shire, specifically suburbs like San Remo which felt they were being neglected by the paper. One morning a week I would drive up past Budgewoi Lake and see what was going on. Frustratingly, I never managed to find many good stories. Nothing much seemed to happen in this part of the shire. Returning for a series of visits this winter, I found San Remo to be as sleepy as it ever was. There are a lot of colourful murals, however, many of which bear Aboriginal themes, and depictions of local wildlife. They make suburbia that bit more cheerful.

The Entrance: My gateway to the wider world

The town known as The Entrance is the most multicultural part of my realm, and potentially the most exciting. In summer when Lebanese women sunbathe on North Entrance Beach with their scarves and tattooed boyfriends, the place starts to resemble a baby Beirut. In the Thai restaurants on The Entrance Road, woks sizzle with the heat of Bangkok. White guys walk the streets with their Asian girlfriends. If I could hustle myself one of those, I might almost be content to live here.

Wyrrabalong National Park: Refuge of red gums

In early July I rode bus #29 from Lake Haven shopping center over to North Entrance (or do they call it The Entrance North?), passing through Toukley and Norah Head on the way. My plan was to walk back the three-hour route through the depths of the Wyrrabalong National Park to Wallarah Bay Recreation Club east of Toukley, where my Dad and hopefully a few beers were waiting for me. When I dismounted from the bus near Wyuna Avenue, I was feeling a little shaky and slightly derealized/depersonalized, afraid of the blue sky and shining sun. I wasn't in the mood to hang around here on the edge of my Zone, so I commenced the walk home more or less immediately, by following Wilfred Barrett Drive which comprises a section of the busy Central Coast Highway. It wasn't so pleasant getting hammered by the passing traffic and tagged by burrs on the edge of the road, so I quickly ducked into a bicycle track which the council had constructed, leading into the national park. It was calmer and more comfortable in the bush, and I felt a lot safer, but the path presently looped back to the highway forcing me to share my journey once again with the speeding cars, trucks and buses. A few miles later I spotted what looked little more than an overgrown rut trailing back into the bush, and I decided to give it a go. The rut proved to be a more interesting alternative than either the highway or the cycleway, and it led me on a a wild voyage through the heart of the forest. I soon encountered a whole network of ruts, in fact, all of them named after the local flora: red gum, burrawangs and magenta lillypillies. The ground was sandy, and littered with seed pods. At one stage I mounted a small ridge, which granted me a stupendous view of the national park, and miles of red gums. No sign of civilization at all!

---

If these photos sometimes seem clumsy and clandestine, that's because they were taken furtively, on the fly. I apologize for any fingers in corners of the frame, blurriness and so on. When you are taking photos on the boundaries of your range, you don't have time to compose the scene artfully. It is rather a case of shoot and run. Nonetheless, I hope there is something Mirror Sydney about these suites, with all their attention to detail, the celebration of the minutiae, preservation of local history, and the elevation of the microcosm over the macrocosm. I hope that, as time goes by, I will get more adventurous, and push a little further against the bubble that encases me. One day I might even make it to Bateau Bay! 

The 7 Hindrances, and the 20% Accomplishment Rule

I might dream of conquering the world, but Reality reminds me that we rarely achieve more than just a fraction of our goals. How much of a fraction is a troubling question -- from my experience it could be a quarter, it might be just a fifth. In the summer of 2006 I was enthralled by a Utopian hope: despite my deepening debt I sincerely believed that medical trials could save me, and manifest for me the jetsetter life I was craving for. Not only would I be able to kick back in Kagoshima (鹿児島) with the cool kids, living it large, but I could use the payments from each trial to party around the planet. Of course, it never worked out that way, and Telephone English (TE) became my actual saviour. Here was evidence of the 25% Accomplishment Rule in action... I didn't qualify as a lab rat, but I was delivered from poverty just in the nick of time, and pumped full of cash. Some of my goal was realized, to be sure, but not all of it, and that was the thing. There were a few Hindrances standing in the way: love was one of them; health, another...

When I started teaching at TE I had big plans to take two months off every year and fly off to Thailand, Iceland, Australia and destinations even further afield, such as Jamaica. In the end I got stuck at my first port of call in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and most of my funds were squandered there, entranced as I was by tropical romance. I did score a short stopover in Bangkok and two trips to Australia, but much as I would have liked it, I never reached Iceland. Jamaica was completely out of the question. So, my original plan was only partly achieved (25% achieved, perhaps, or only 20%, I haven't figured out the exact percentage!) I had a lot of fun nonetheless and Nga became a cause in herself, a Baudrillardian seduction... she derailed my plans, blew my budget, and in the end I accomplished only a quarter of my aim, or even less than that (how much? how much?) In 2011 I quit TE and abandoned Japan and returned back to Australia, where I the One World Orbit was conceived. Imagining that Google Adsense could free me from employment entirely, I researched the cost of living in Indochina, which various guidebooks suggested was the cheapest region on Earth. I intended to spend three years jaunting around Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, northern Thailand, and southern China, mucking about on the Mighty Mekong (the Great River, the River of Nine Dragons, ແມ່ນ້ຳຂອງ, 湄公河, etc, etc.) I called it the Indochinese Triennium. It would have been perfect, but my Adsense collapsed, and then I lost Indochina. All I have left is China, which is one-half of Indochina, semantically speaking, but pragmatically much less than that. It is just one-fifth of my original plan, or even a sixth. Furthermore, when I go to China I will have to work to survive, at some school like Wall Street. It sucks but it is better than nothing, and at least I will be back on the road. I can always visit Cambodia in my holidays, and plenty of other nearby nations! That is, if the Seven Hindrances give their assent.

Floating Worlds

Sick of hanging round the house, I rose early and rode Busways #90 (ticket: AUS$4.60) over to Budgewoi, on the opposite side of the lake. The cops were arresting some dude at the interchange at Lake Haven while I was waiting for my bus... typical. There was a big mob of single mums and truant teens congregated round the commotion, rubbernecking, teeheeing, bumming cigarettes... standard. It seemed like it was going to be a warm day, which is usual in this part of the world, at this time of the year. Once the bus pulled up, however, it was all air-con chilled and comfy, if somewhat claustrophobic. Pushing through the scrum, I climbed the step, paid the driver, and took my favorite seat behind the midriff exit, the one fronted with its own perspex shield. Maybe it is because it is shielded that I like it so much, it seems to offer some protection against something, I don't know what. I pulled out my iPhone and was checking the news when I noticed my old Salvation Army mate Simon stepping up on to the transport, so I gestured him over to sit with me. He obliged me cheerfully, the bus took off, and we were on our way through the dewy, sun-sparkled, spider silk-strewn streets. A little bit later, on the approach to Toukley Bridge, my drinking partner Steve boarded, and took a seat in front of me. I am not sure if he recognized me or not, but I certainly recognized him. I am starting to build up a network of Negroes up here in the Wyong Shire, 18 months after moving here, I am getting to know the scene pretty well. People wave to me when I walk the streets, they beep their horns as they drive past me. It makes me think I have been here too long, and that it is probably time to roll the dice again, and jump to a new locale. Do another Quantum Leap, and materialize into a brand new life. I have still got a year to go before the jump, but the coordinates are already being plotted, the warpdrive readied for action! Soon I will be on my merry way, winging myself to a whole different city/country/civilization, and Australia will be just a memory (again.) Anyway, I had a bit of a chat to Simon before he got off, and told him some yarns from my time in Japan in exchange for a bit of his life story. He seems like a drifter to me, a natural nomad: originally from Leichhardt in Sydney, he now works at the supermarket at Lake Haven, and is looking for a decent place to live in the vicinity. He complained about all the hoops you need to jump through to make it with the landlords these days, the character references required by real estate agents, the proof that you have a job, etc. Listening to Simon talk, I felt my resentment rise. Why do they make it so hard for nomads like us? I wondered. What's up with all this Nanny State nonsense? It's discrimination, that's what it is! discrimination against those who don't fit the regular profile! Discrimination, in other words, against people like me. Simon bundled out once we hit Toukley to attend his interview with the real estate agents, and Steve disembarked shortly afterwards. I was all on my own in my fave seat as the bus lumbered on, through the backstreets of Norahville, taking me on a nostalgia trip of my early adulthood (I used to work at the newspaper here in 1994/95). Ahead of me, blonde-haired women were sharing tips on how to rort the Housing Department, while their blonde kids ran amok up and down the aisle. It is a very blond(e) blue-eyed part of the world here, and kind of a fascistic one... a welfare fascist state, if such a thing is possible. A whole lost tribe of Britons grown up feral among the gum trees and rainbow lorikeets, DNA bleached by the relentless sun. Flotsam and jetsam of a vanished Empire, washed up on to the Antipodean shore. Quite a few people up here are on the dole, myself included. Public transport in Australia seems reserved for folks like us. This is not Japan, where CEOs are humble enough to catch the train to work. Here in Oz humility is not a virtue anymore, and the CEOs probably get around town by helicopter. We turned on to Budgewoi Road and motored along past holiday homes, caravan parks, and even the odd golf course. Fibro shacks presently yielded on the right to a long, scrub-lined beach. This was Lakes Beach, in fact, and my mission for the day was to follow it homeward, back to Norah Head, where Wallarah Road would pick me up and carry me through Toukley to the Wallarah Bay Recreation Club. Where hopefully my Dad and a couple of beers were waiting! While in the area I also wanted to have a peek at Lake Munmorah, which the satellite pics claim is up here. I like to get a mental map of the geography, wherever I am living; I like to know my way around on foot, just in case I get lost and can't find my way back home.

Lake Munmorah, looking north and somewhat east, towards Newcastle (Australia, 2013)

The satellites were right... Lake Munmorah was up here, and I found it easily enough, near the sleepy retail heart of Budgewoi. The lake was smaller than I imagined, and its shores less developed than its companions up here, such as my mistress (Budgewoi Lake). Seaweed padded the bank like a rotting carpet, encasing within in it fallen tree trunks and pieces of driftwood washed up from God only knows where, the occasional strewn bottle of beer or crumpled aluminum can, packed full of mud. The coastal plain from Tuggerah to Newcastle is riddled with lakes like this one, perforated with them, and I have often wondered how they formed. My Mum reckons they all started as bays: the western foreshores of the lakes were once beaches on the open sea, augmented by headlands and river mouths, and all the other usual Australian coastal features. Over time the bays clogged up with run-off from the rivers, and sand bars surfaced offshore, eventually linking up to create shallow lagoons within their perimeter. Having colonized the sea, land was in turn colonized by life, and the sand bars were overlaid with spear grasses, shrubs, trees, possibly even a littoral rainforest or two. Animals moved in to consume the plants or those animals which fed on them: birds, marsupials, fruit bats, frogs. Invasions washed over the region like high tides on a sandy beach, like tsunami. Four waves of human conquest followed, the last of them the Anglo-Saxon wave, settlers lured by the promise of prawns and outdoor sports, cheap housing just a few hours from the suburban sprawl of Sydney. That's the whitefella history of this region, the local Darkinyung Aboriginal people doubtless have their own creation story. Since the whitefellas won, their version became history. And so it will remain, until the whitefella settlement is itself submerged, and thrown back to the bottom of the sea. I'd say it will happen sometime before 2200, courtesy of Global Warming! Thus we have been warned; thus we will be warmed.

From the lake it wasn't that far to Lakes Beach, through an arm of somnolent suburbia. I strode past Halekulani Bowling Club with its attendant courtesy buses, crossed the channel which connects Lake Munmorah and Budgewoi Lake. Budgewoi actually means "meeting of the two waters" in the local Aboriginal language, and I wouldn't be surprised if the name sprang from this very channel, the one I was lucky to cross today. I continued over the Central Coast Highway, its asphalt surface burning hot in the sun. Waves could be heard crashing reassuringly not too distant, and there was a soothing salt smell in the air. I looked forward to being able to walk along the beach, and feel warm, soft sand between my toes. But the ocean also provokes in me a fear which is close to primal, so I was a little apprehensive about getting close to it. When I walk along the coast it feels like I am literally on the edge of the Earth, and I worry about falling off. Kind of irrational, but that is how it feels. Perhaps it is a symptom of agoraphobia. 

Michael's Walk floats across this meadow, on the Budgewoi Beach Circuit (Australia, 2013)

One thing I noticed during a previous trek up here is how dramatically the vegetation changes the closer you get to the sea, plant leaves growing waxy, forests giving way to heaths and meadows where grevilleas flower in their sclerophyllus pods, and tiny blue wrens flit between the grasses, twitching like cicadas. Many people might think that the Australian landscape looks the same wherever you go but once you get to know it, and let go of your preconceptions, you will see that it actually comprises a cacophony of tiny habitats, each with their own inhabitants, noisy miners for the open spaces for example, more mysterious birds for the thicker bush. There are kingdoms built on top of kingdoms on top of kingdoms, realms on top of realms on top of realms. If you know how to read it, there is a story to be learnt here. In a burst of creativity Divinity beget the elemental realm from which emerged, from Sheer Nothing, the stars and planets, the galaxies and black holes, time and space itself. Stars burnt for billions of years, then burst into fiery supernovas, generating the heavy elements in their death throes. On rocky worlds orbiting second generation stars such as our own these elements aggregated, giving birth to the mineral kingdom, sandy beaches and mountains, volcanoes and tectonic plates, wide oceans shimmering beneath their local suns. Amazing enough, but greater glories were to come, on the planets lucky enough to be in the right place, with all the right conditions (the Goldilocks Zone): from the dexterity of carbon molecules began to order themselves, spontaneously, into life. Thus arose the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the fiefdom of the fungi... and finally the most audacious creation of all, the House of Humanity, Self-Awareness manifested directly into flesh...

As I traversed the sand drifts and scrub which bordered the ocean, I realized that the hot sun was making me thirsty. I looked out wistfully for a vending machine, but I knew I would never find one, not out here. I was on the edge of civilization, the interface of the cultivated world and the primeval nature from which it sprang. Even if there was a vending machine out here, it probably wouldn't work. This was not Japan, where green tea reprieves await you at every bend in the road, even way out in the wilds, near the summit of Mt Fuji. No, this was not Japan at all. I cut through the scrub, where volunteers had toiled to restore natural vegetation to the Pacific shore, and located some kind of path. The path (named Michael's Walk) led me to a boardwalk which floated over a patch of dry swamp. At the end of the boardwalk I found a sign describing the dune restoration project, dedicated lovingly to the memory of Julie Luff, a local resident and dunecarer. 

In memory of Julie Luff, a map of the Budgewoi Beach Circuit Walk (Australia, 2013)

Just a few steps on, the ocean now in sight, I was stopped in my tracks by a crucifix hanging from a paperbark tree. The crucifix was emblazoned with the mysterious name, "Shane", and accompanied by a bouquet of wilted flowers. I stood mesmerized before this makeshift shrine for a moment or two, wondering who Shane was, and what had happened to him here. Was it an accident, suicide, or death by drowning? His spirit might well still be hanging around here, haunting this sun-scorched coast.

Michael's Walk, the dedication to Julie Luff, and now Shane's tree, I thought. It seems like every square inch of land here is named after someone!

Memorial to a guy named Shane (Australia, 2013)

Everyone tries to leave their stamp on things, something to signify that they had been here. Dogs piss on trees, and monarchs brand their heads on to their stamps and coins. Patting the bulge in my pocket as I made my way down to the beach, I pondered: Why are the coins so heavy in Australia, so clunky, so chunky? I would like living here more if the coins were more practical. A pedantic thought, perhaps, but I believe there is symbolism in everything, even especially in the currency, in the currency that a country chooses to use. What does the Australian 50 cent coin tell you about this country, anyway: that we are clumsy people, that we're ruled by a foreign Queen? The huge coins are like the huge pills the pharmacists expect you swallow... they are not user-friendly. Not like the pills or the coins in Japan.

Bird Island, off the Lakes Beach, in Wyong Shire, NSW (Australia, 2013)

I took off my thongs and tumbled down to the beach, ready to commence my long walk to Norah Head. My eyes running along the shore, I tried to imagine what it would like flying over this coast in a passenger jet, headlands falling away beneath me, sandstone glinting in the sun, coal ships queued up on the approach to Newcastle, that great port to the near north. A jolt of electricity passed down my frame, adrenaline squirting up my arms, towards my hands. It was too much to think about, even to simulate it. My phobia was too strong. Mild despair gripped me, and a sinking feeling... when was I ever going to get off this rock? I remembered a month or so earlier, during an anxiety attack, I had been afraid to even look at the stars in the night sky, due to the overpowering sense of dread they engendered. To gaze upon the face of that naked immensity, that colossal emptiness, is truly a frightening thing... an entire Universe twinkling in the sky above, all those stars and floating worlds, stretching away remotely, but yet bearing their presence forcefully upon yours. That's the thing living in Australia, you see a lot of stars at night. You are dreadfully exposed. Beneath our feet, things are no less comforting. What really goes on down there, anyway? 

Tumbling down the stairs on to the warm sands of Lakes Beach, near Budgewoi (Australia, 2013)

Sometimes these days it feels as if I am living in a floating world, cast adrift on a rising tide. The ground beneath my feet seems solid enough, but I know that the whole continent is riding like a raft on a magma sea, creeping north, irrepressibly. Above me the sky, that infernally cheerful blue sky... what could be more steadfast than that sky you might think, what could be more dependable? But like the ground, the blue sky is a deception, a lie... you could even call it a mirage. The sun is not yellow at all, it is white, and the blueness of the sky is merely an effect, caused by the scattering of the solar radiation through the atmosphere. As Einstein boldly proclaimed, we are all trapped in our own little bubbles of relativity only rarely encountering all the other floating bubbles out there, like ships passing in the night. Rare is the man or woman intuitive enough to notice when the bubbles bounce against each other in a momentary collision, soft film walls yielding ever so slightly. Rarer still is the man or woman who can pierce the film which separates our floating worlds in a resounding pop!, and dive through the mirror from one universe into another, merging with it, breathing underwater.

Cape York Birding: Day 1 (Gunning for the Golden-Shouldered Parrot)

Two months ago I flew to far-north Queensland with my father (pictured, directly below) to flee the southern winter and also spot some birds, which are his specialty and his big love in life. After hanging out in Cairns for a while we winged it further north up to Cape York, a vast peninsula riven by monsoonal rivers, saturated with tropical savannah, and timbered with millions of termite mounds, all of them artfully erected to avoid the blistering sun. Cape York teems, too, with birds: brolgas, jabirus, Papuan frogmouths are just some of the species to be found, palm cockatoos smart enough to use tools, and flocks of rainbow lorikeets so prodigious they literally blot out the whole sky. Of the 900 or so bird species that inhabit Australia, Dad and I identified more than 100 during the six days we spent up there, dodging the roadtrains, and crunching the corrugations. That was cool and all, but from the outset my father had his heart set on snaring two specimens which are rare, kind of endangered even: I'm speaking here of the red goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiates), and the golden-shouldered parrot (Psephotus chrysopterygius). To hunt them we enlisted the aid of gregarious guide David (Chook) Crawford, of Close-Up Birding Adventures. Chook actually has a golden-shouldered parrot painted (second photo below) on his vehicle, and commands an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Cape. He knows its trails and creek beds like the lines of his hands, and he has plenty of entertaining yarns to tell (most of them custom-crafted for the campfire!) He is the original Crocodile Dundee, to be frank, and he did not disappoint us... he found us the parrots which were his emblem, and he found them fast enough (on the first day of our adventure to be precise!) That was the highlight of our Cape York birding expedition, day one: my father got his wish, well half of it; I meanwhile had the chance to explore a part of the world which is as exotic as it is isolated, and penetrate right up close to the northernmost tip of Australia. If we had gone just a little bit further, we would have reached New Guinea. Where, quite possibly, another Chook might have awaited us!

Dad watches brolgas fly over the Nifold Plain, on the Cape York peninsula (Australia, 2011)

Chook collected us early at the Bohemia Resort, which had become our base in Cairns. Despite my hangover I was excited to be getting out of town and traversing some fresh territory. Excited I was, but also apprehensive, as I have had enough panic attacks on the freeway in recent months to know that driving can be treacherous for me. We struck off across the verdant farmland north of Cairns, cutting through the canefields and lush country, heading for the nearby hills. I was seated in the back; my Dad, meanwhile, rode shotgun. I might not have known it at the time, but this was to be the first of many missions across the mountains, east to west, west to east, then east to west again, as the peninsula narrowed inexorably towards the tip. Chook confessed to being in something of a hurry, due to reports of bushfires in the vicinity of Musgrave Roadhouse, which was our beeline for the day. He wanted to get up there as fast as possible, in other words, in case the fire closed in. So, there wouldn't be much time for twitching on the way. We were immediately consoled with the promise of a healthy flock of golden-shouldered parrots flapping around in the bush near Musgrave. "He's up there right now," Chook said; "we'll find him." I wondered briefly why Chook had chosen to refer to the parrots as "he". They couldn't all possibly be males, could they? And even if they were, a flock of "he's" still constitutes a "they", surely?

Chook's Pajero, adorned with the endangered golden-shouldered parrot, sitting on a termite mound (Australia, 2011)

Ascending the Atherton Tableland towards Kuranda, Cairn's answer to Katoomba, I felt my anxiety climb... in direct proportion to our altitude. The reality of my plight had sunk in: this was to be a 1300km round trip all the way to the top of Australia and back, and the journey had only just begun. And there was no possible way I could pike out this late in the game! To take my mind off things I chatted to Chook, who turned out to be quite a captivating guy. He disclosed that he used to work as a guide at the nearby Mareeba Wetlands, then decided to start his own business chasing birds. He claimed that while birdwatching had something of a geeky reputation, he wanted to bring a bit of mystery and manliness into the equation, a bit of the Aussie larrikin spirit you might say. Glancing ahead at my Dad in his greygreen shorts and T-shirt and his goofy greygreen hat, I couldn't help but feel that the geeky birder stereotype might be here to stay, though, for a few more years at least. Best not to say so openly, I supposed... I might get shot down for blaspheming like that! So, I reclined in my seat, and tugged the handgrip by my shoulder, which for some reason soothed my spirits somewhat. Chook ploughed on, tearing up the Mulligan Highway through Kuranda to Mareeba (16°59′0″S, 145°25′0″E), where we paused to pick up some supplies and fuel. From the windows of the Pajero, Mareeba appeared to be a classic Outback Australian town, just pimped up with palms. While Chook filled the tank I wandered into the service station to buy a Coke or something like that, and maybe a bottle of water to hydrate myself. I would have loved to stay and have a look around, but that fire up north was moving in... there was no time to linger.

Just a quiet country street, in Mareeba (Australia, 2011)

So we rolled on, mauling Mt Molloy (population 273), Mt Carbine, Desailly, and finally landing on a prick on the map called Lakeland, where we halted for lunch. Somewhere along the way, my iPhone lost connectivity with the rest of the world, and the Internet died. I could no longer check my earnings from Google AdSense, or post updates to Twitter. I took plenty of photos though, of all the scenes that passed my window... most of them were blurred and rubbishy. My camera, nonetheless, was recording a more accurate depiction than my brain, which was clouded with fear, and _subpanic: derealization flattened my senses and my perceptions, rendering the world two-dimensional, like a screen. You might call it tunnel vision. I clutched the handgrip besides me, and tried my best to relax. Thankfully, traffic was light: a few grey nomads in their campervans, 4WDs coated with red dust, and the occasional piece of mining kit being hauled up to Weipa. Chook explained that campervans would be useless once we hit the corrugations; from that point on it was 4WD territory, 4WDs and road trains only LOL. Pineapple and peanut farms surged past along with the telegraph poles, and miles and miles of open bush. The sky was a euphoric blue.

Pausing to take in the view, on Route 81 (Australia, 2011)

Beyond the Cooktown turnoff, the road mounted a ridge, and presently we were presented a spectacular view of the surrounding country (16°46′0″S, 144°88′0″E). This was something worth stopping for, so Chook pulled up, and we all got out...

Dad checking his watch, in his goofy greygreen birding hat (Australia, 2011)

... to join a small scrum of sightseers. It was evidently a popular vantagepoint, and every conceivable surface (road, railings, cliff-face) was covered with graffiti. We paused to take in the view, which was righteous, nonetheless.

Across the canyon, looking east (Australia, 2011)

I was surprised how hot it was outside, in contrast to the air-con comfort of Chook's Pajero. It was something like 30°C (86°F), and getting hotter all the time.

Mysterious tree with yellow flowers, possibly a kapok, alongside an aluminium can (Australia, 2011)

Curiosity satiated, we repaired to the car, to resume our ride. The road raced on, across stony, bone-dry territory. Chook pointed out various birds as we sped, quite a few of them raptors. He declared that you could tell how interesting a raptor was by the way it flew... those with upturned wings were the ones worth watching. When we arrived at Lakeland Roadhouse, I noticed some kind of bird of prey was circling the plains below. Its wings, disappointingly, were lowered. "Probably a whistling kite," Chook remarked.

Welcome to Lakeland Roadhouse (Australia, 2011)

We sauntered inside and ordered lunch. Chook recommended the house hamburger. I was about to discover that dining on the Cape revolves around hamburgers, steak and toasted cheese sandwiches (which they serve with cute little pickles here.) My burger was good, though; I gobbled it down, then paced around the roadhouse for a while, trying to keep my anxiety at bay. Something about being trapped in a restaurant ramps my blood pressure up: it might be the acoustics, the loud voices, all the cutlery clanging together? Chairs being dragged over tiled floors don't help one bit.

The sign says $2 for a shower at Lakeland Roadhouse (Australia, 2011)

I took a note how much it cost to use the bathroom. One day when I am traveling across Australia on my own this information might be useful, as raw data in an algorithm (or a comparison chart). The bathroom reminded me of a dream I had sometime, somewhere... was that the dream I was over there in the Congo, fleeing with the refugees down that rust-red jungle highway? Yes, that might have been the one.

There was a small gifts shop inside the roadhouse (Australia, 2011) 

I explored the small giftshop, with its local paraphernalia...

On to the dirt (Australia, 2011)

... and then, gratefully, it was time to bail. Leaving Lakeland, we abandoned the Mulligan Highway, and picked up the gauntlet offered us by the Peninsula Development Highway. More a rut than a road, the highway tailgated what remained of the former telegraph line, built in colonial times to connect Brisbane with its farflung northern domains. Like the colonial telegraph, the highway was decaying, disintegrating, and returning to the bush; before too long bitumen dropped away, to be replaced by rutted corrugations. Right about this moment I realized: this is the real Outback, right here, this is what it is all about! Termite mounds lifted themselves from the earth, the first of them short and scrappylooking, spaced far apart, but as time flew by they grew larger and more confident, some of them fashioned like the smashed chimneys left behind by country housefires, others like miniature Ulurus. Roadtrains, those apex predators of the Australian road, emerged from the woodwork, dragging their own dust storms in their wake. Chook withdrew to the side of the road whenever one passed, allowing it plenty of room. "The road's all yours, big boy," he would said, or words to that effect. And I would ask myself, again: Why does everything up here get called a "he"?

Road etiquette of the North: the small give way to the large (Australia, 2011)

As Chook disclosed, this was the road etiquette of Cape York: the small give way to the large. And there are none larger out here than the roadtrain, 100 tonnes of torment, 22 wheels of whiplash and whiteout. Chook implored us all to wind up our windows as it barrelled towards us. The Pajero rocked, side to side, as the shockwave hit, and then we were splattered with sand and soil. Looking around, I noticed that all the roadside trees and bushes were smeared red with this kind of abuse.

Throwing out the anchor, and battening down the hatches (Australia, 2011)

We were entering a strange world, a Gulliverian domain where everything was larger than life: bugs, men, trucks, even the farms which carved up the land here. The farms, actually cattle stations, were the size of European principalities, and most of them boasted airstrips. One of the principalities was called Artemis Station, and it was on this sprawling property that Chook had last sighted golden-shouldered parrots. We dropped in at the homestead to see if they were still around. The station owners did a lot of work helping the local parrot population, Chook informed us. They monitored their movements, and their numbers, and reported it all to the relevant authorities.

Arriving at Artemis Station (Australia, 2011)

Inside the house, I felt like I had stepped back in time, into the rustic décor of my wheat belt youth. The lady of the house put a cuppa on and we talked to the Boss about various topics, most pressingly the bushfire at Musgrave. It was moving in fast, our host confided... in fact, it seemed to be gunning straight for the roadhouse herself! Alarming stuff, but the Boss had a piece of good news, too, something that lifted our spirits: the birds were here, he divulged, and naturally we could visit them right away. Bullseye! I thought. This is how the west was won! But first there was a coffee or a cup of tea to drink, a coffee or a cold beverage, and a biscuit or two to chew upon. I stood up the whole time, fighting the urge to panic, wishing we could all just get on with it, and stampede out the door. Standing up always renders me restless, for whatever reason... it gives me vertigo, not just the fear of heights kind, but the crazy headspin version too. I suppose I could have just sat down on the nearest chair, but that might not have been polite. And it would not have been the knightly thing to do, in this land of He-Men, and He-Women...



Looking for golden-shouldered parrots, on Artemis Station (Australia, 2011)

Eventually we were back outside roughroading across rugged terrain, the Lady of the House in her vehicle, us bringing up the rear in the Pajero. The spirit of the chase had finally gripped me, and I was fondling a pair of binoculars excitedly, in expectation of an imminent glimpse. The Lady screeched to a halt, so suddenly we nearly rammed her. This was evidently a significant vantagepoint, so we all scurried out... to join about a dozen golden-shouldered parrots frolicking in a clearing. Yatta! I rejoiced, lifting my binoculars for a closer look. We've found the birds. Only problem was, my Dad couldn't see them, not unaided anyway. By the time we pointed them out to him, and his atrophied brain had registered the  headings and coordinates, processed all this information, and relayed appropriate instructions to his eyes and limbs, the birds were gone, a puff of brilliant feathers, a burst of green on green. For a moment it seemed this whole expedition would be in vain, like Burke and Wills' quest for the Gulf of Carpentaria... doomed by a lack of vision. I could sense Chook's frustration: you can lead a horse to water, but how do you make him drink? Some kind of elegant solution was called for. Thankfully, Chook provided one. Retreating to the Pajero momentarily, he returned with a tripod-mounted scope, fitted with a video camera display. Now all he had to do was focus on the parrots, and my Dad could stand behind him, enjoying a close-up view on the screen, without needing to make any fiddly moves. Up close and personal, that's the way Chook rolls. My Dad, suffice to say, was in twitcher heaven.

Remnant of the old telegraph line, at Musgrave Roadhouse (Australia, 2011)

The day was dragging on, and the westering sun had turned the bush a peculiar shade of burnt sienna. I was looking forward to getting a beer, and putting my feet up. Fortunately it wasn't that much further to Musgrave Station (14°46'50"S, 143°30'14"E), our deadline for the day. Located halfway between Cairns and Weipa, 570km south of The Top, Musgrave Station sits atop the aforementioned telegraph line, remnants of which are still visible, as are other interesting relics...

Posting box, beneath the rafters at Musgrave Station (Australia, 2011)

... such as the grave of Samuel Thomas, a pioneer and local identity, lying in a dusty corner of the carpark.

The grave of Samuel Thomas, killed in 1919 (Australia, 2011)

As late as the 1930s there were Aborigines running around in the bush, Chook admitted. Musgrave served as a fort as well as a telegraph relay station in the frontier war. Thomas was apparently a victim in one of the skirmishes. A victim or a perpetrator, it is always hard to tell.

Waiting for a beer, and then maybe a steak or hamburger (Australia, 2011)

Finally, after a long day rushing around, clutching my handgrip, biting my tongue, etc, I could crack open a cold VB, and kick back. Watch some Imparja TV at the downstairs bar, as a harvest moon rose in the clear night sky... who could ask for more than that? A hot shower, and then the chance to fall asleep in a cabin with the air-con on, while wallabies jumped around in the dark outside.

Shine on harvest moon (Australia, 2011)

Only problem was that bushfire closing in just over the airstrip. We could see it after nightfall, an ominous orange glow on the horizon. And if we survived that, another day of gunning around the bush awaited me. Because while Dad could cross the golden-shouldered parrot off his bucket list, there was still one significant critter left to go. Whether he would be able to see it unaided or no, that was the question.