From My Notebooks in 1975: Leaving Sydney, Australia

From the outset of my journey, I was very clear about several promises I made to myself.

First: I would do it in one single, unhurried journey and then write a book about it.

Second: It would be a complete journey, overland, uninterrupted, visiting as many countries as I could on the way round.

Third: I would travel as frugally as possible in order to get as close as I could to the indigenous people I was moving amongst. I would go as deep as I could into their lives, accept any invitation that came my way, and make myself vulnerable to whatever came along.

To make that possible my fourth promise was: I would always travel alone.

Two years into the journey, in November 1975, I was about to break that last promise. After several months living with Carol on the commune it became obvious that we should stay together. Our feelings for each other seemed as steady and solid as a rock. It became impossible for me to contradict her desire to travel on with me. She understood my purpose, she was powerfully independent, and I knew she wouldn’t shrink from any risk I felt like taking. So during the last weeks before I sailed away we rearranged things on the bike so that she could ride behind me, although there was no pillion seat. She was unable to get a berth on the ship. Instead, she would fly to Sydney and meet me after I got there.

So that is the truth about Australia and Me.

For six months Carol and I travelled together and I could not have asked for a more perfect companion. She humoured me in every way, and in the end, I found it impossible to explain to her or myself why, but it just wasn’t working for me.

In June I told her I had to go on alone. It was the most painful decision I have ever made. So that’s why, in Jupiter’s Travels, my account of Australia is the weakest part of the book, and she isn’t in it. At the time I felt I had no choice. I can’t second guess it fifty years later.

What follows is from my notebook after we met up in Sydney in December 1975. My notes begin after we left Sydney to move up the East Coast:

December 15

Caravan bed was very comfortable. No insects. Very musical bird in the morning, which changed pitch, or key. Heard nothing like it since the bottle bird [in Africa]. Gloria [our host] made grilled tomatoes on toast, made several shame-faced references to night before. [Don’t ask!]

Rode out along riverside where I photographed the aborigine family the day before – he swore at me profusely – “I’ll fucking toss yer in there,” indicating the river.

Another hot day. The bowls teams were out already – some women among them. Back to highway, the eucalyptus, to Macksville, Nambucca Heads, always broad rivers with banks of dense, dark green vegetation, willows etc. Tried to get lunch at hotel in Ulmarra – seemed like a pleasant, shady little town – but failed. Next town, Maclean, didn’t do so well in a café. Next door was a better place, not seen till later. The menus had articles about Australiana pasted on to them – early servant problems, the birth of amateurism in sport, theatrical history, a gold strike story.

Rode on to Ballina thinking it might be nice, but too busy, likewise on coast. Back on highway to Surfer’s Paradise – visible on horizon from Twerd Heads, Australia’s Miami Beach. Highrise hotels/apts. All the names borrowed from Miami, Vegas, Riviera, but seemed not to warrant staying. Began to think of getting to Brisbane and found Mike MacDonald’s name in my book. Phone engaged. Rode on busy hwy and lunched at road hse. 10 miles south of Brisbane, dropped bike. In Queensland now – no “schooners”, only “tens”, “sevens”, and “fives” [when ordering beer]. Got grilled barramundi. Talked to young Yamaha rider. Lots of nervous twitches, mannerisms, faded blue eyes. “Dja know abaht Mikuni carbs?”

Called Mike’s number again. His mother answered in a thin elderly voice, to say he was away on another trip in south-east Asia and wouldn’t be back till Jan.6th. Eventually she invited us to stay – and then repeated it, so we decided to go. Her house on the river at Brisbane – cool and very pleasant, but her husband senile and she a shrunken spirit, so hard to take. Perhaps alone I could have switched them off, but it’s not necessarily good for me to do that.

We rode into town to a carol singing in town square, with small redbrick church of Victorian mien, trimmed with white stone, squatting at the foot of high rise bank buildings. A tableau of angels and shepherds frozen on the balcony in a floodlight, but ugly amplification made “compère” running it like a night at the Palladium.

Most impressive sight in Brisbane, the bridges, two matching ones like Waterloo bridge. General feeling like, say, Port Elizabeth [in S.Africa] Tall modern office buildings dominate everything but few period buildings in the centre – one called Inns of Court, built 1916. 3 storeys each with balcony and canopy.

MacDonalds actually have a beautiful position by riverside, landscaped as park. House allows air to pass through and cool it. The father, Kev, has a snooker table in the basement and plays, or lies on a couch watching his portable TV set, which he also brings up with him at night. He won’t leave the house if he can help it. She’s sewing for a wedding. One wall has Chinese characters drawn, one on each brick. Mike plans to teach Chinese. It becomes harder and harder for me to place him now in my memory. All I recall is his shorts, and some kind of woolly hat he wore. His mother says she couldn’t remember me from the pictures, but she supposes that’s because she took me for an Arab.

Carol, on the road north from Sydney