I’m in Canberra. The bus journey wasn’t as bad as …

I’m in Canberra. The bus journey wasn’t as bad as I had expected. As I got on the bus in Melbourne, I saw that there was a rather hefty middle-aged man sitting next to me. I wish that we could choose our neighbors on trips such as this:

Bus Booking Person: Would you like smoking or non-smoking?

Me: Ooh, that’s a toughie. I’ll go with the Indian, thanks.

Our driver’s name was Nigel. Nigel fancied himself a bit of a comedian, but it was painfully clear why he was still stuck in the bus driver industry. We drove a little out of the city before Nigel remembered that there was a video we could watch, but the tape was broken, and Nigel called one of the passengers, a black man with a beard and an accent I couldn’t quite identify, up to the front to fix it. The passenger asked around for some tape and a nail file, and then went back to his seat to fetch his bag, which it turned out contained quite a large collection of shiny, sharp knives.

“Please tell me you’re a cook,” one of the women sitting nearby said, staring at the blades. We never found out exactly what the man’s trade was, but eventually he did get the tape working with the help of several of the women. There was a bit of flirting going on between him and his various assistants, actually. The movie was Simon Birch, adapted from A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I read the book and so spoiled the movie, but it wasn’t bad. Thankfully I had seen it before so that when the tape broke again just at the end of the movie, I wasn’t too disappointed.

At one point we stopped to so that Nigel could rest, as is required by law, for 35 minutes. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the midnight silence was marred by our noisy emergence from the bus at a truck stop. I gaped at the carpet of stars, the Milky Way clearly visible slicing across the night sky while a group of Americans laughed and joked next to the snack-dispensing machine.

We reached Canberra at about 4:15am, and I eventually found the room reserved for me. It seemed the height of luxury to have an entire room, complete with hot shower, double bed, TV and balcony, all to myself. Needless to say I slept well.

Shauna called at about 10am, but I was already awake from the bright sunlight streaming through the curtains. We met up at the bus stop. She and her friend Rowena took me on a tour of the city, which is tiny and extremely well-planned. Rowena claimed that there were kangaroos frolicking on the gold course, but when we walked down to the site of said frolicking, no roos were to be seen. Perhaps they were stuck on that mean Par-5 just a ways up the course.

Canberra feels like the loop of highway that runs around Disneyworld in Florida, except there is no theme park here, just the Australian government. The ultra-modern Parliament house is at the center of all of this space, and it looks rather like a large shopping mall. We strode inside and I immediately began to wonder aloud whether the various parliamentarians played basketball and sang Karaoke at night when no-one was around. We also went to the tower, which from a distance looks like something out of Star Wars. It was quite cold and windy, despite the sun, and we came down after only a few minutes. The view of the city and the surrounding valley is great, though. This really is a small place. Shauna is much as I expected, although her hair is shorter and a bit blonder than I had expected. She’s really fun to be around, with a great sense of humor.

Later on, after I had dripped most of a kebab onto my shirt during lunch at a restaurant called Ali-baba’s, we tried to locate the Motorcycle Museum. We were stymied in the end, but we did manage to find the Erotica Museum, though we didn’t go in. I suspect it is now on all of our list of Things To Do By Ourselves One Day When No-one Knows Where We Are.

So here I am at Shauna’s comfortable abode. Her sister is cooking up something delicious for dinner. Earlier I humiliated Shauna’s dog Harry by trapping him in a headlock in the back yard. He then tried to avenge his honor by trying to bite my arm off and eat my shirt, which smelled like kebab sauce, but these attempts were for the most part unsucessful. The weather outside is cool and sunny, and slanting rays of sunlight are marching across the living room as The Crocodile Hunter (“Next I nearly get my arm rolled out of its socket!” he says enthusiastically, as if he’s genuinely looking forward to it) is playing on the TV, which just completes my day. Travel is more than just seeing sights; it’s seeing friends and just relaxing in comfortable surroundings; I’m feeling pretty good right now.

I’ve got a bus ticket back to Sydney for tomorrow morning, and hopefully I’ll find another place to stay when I get there. I look forward to seeing my friends in Sydney again, including Jimmy, Rick, Grant, and especially K, but I’m happy I got to see Melbourne and Canberra as well. My time in Australia is winding down, but I can’t bear thinking of going back to my job just yet.