Bondi & Coogee
I spent the morning talking to my sister in Melbourne. Vodaphone has finally resolved their issues – YAY!! I then got on a bus to North Bondi to meet Timmy, an Aussie friend of sister’s Aussie boyfriend. Timmy went to Berlin with us for New Years’ last year. We walked down to the beach and then headed into Coogee where he and his Swedish girlfriend have just rented their first apartment together and boy are they excited. We spent the day on the beach and then at a restaurant enjoying VB and Carlton Draught at Fiveo’s.
Timmy broke his leg in July at Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark. It was raining and muddy and he was wearing waders. He was quite inebriated when it happened so the details are a little fuzzy but apparently he stepped into a hole and his foot got stuck in the mud and he fell. He went to the medics who looked at his foot and immediately ordered surgery and a hospital stay. Timmy had been working in Copenhagen for months saving up for a summer of traveling around Europe with his mate Johnny and after he had an hour of waiting for the ambulance transport and thinking about his now ruined summer, he decided he didn’t feel too bad and he’d be damned if these stupid Danish overly cautious medics were going to foil his vacation plans. So he headed off back to his campsite and made it a couple of kilometers to the car where he passed out cold. When he woke up, his leg was killing him and was swollen to 3 times its size. They waders were too constricting so he had Johnny pull them off with all his might. (Waders are typical fishing wear – rubber boots that seamlessly turn into rubber overalls complete with suspenders and a very goofy style.) Johnny should have cut the waders off but they weren’t thinking very clearly. Of course, pulling his leg which was practically stuck in the waders was a monumentally bad idea. When he was free of his waders and had increased his pain level by tenfold, he went back to the medic. He by then had broken his leg in 10 places and spent the beginning of the summer at the hospital. After a few surgeries he, Johnny and his wheelchair toured Europe as planned. Don’t get in the way of an Aussie and his fun (or his beer.)
So Timmy and I got to be gimps together. Although, he has a super nasty scar to remind him of the accident and I am much more fortunate.
I haven’t yet told you of the phenomenon of the Australian flies. Holy crap. At first, I thought I was the only person afflicted by this amazingly persistent beast. I walked through the streets of Sydney swatting at myself like a mad woman. Then I noticed other people in the same state of frustration so I worried a little less about seeming crazy to onlookers. I think Bill Bryson put it best in his travel novel which I am currently reading, “In a Sunburned Country.”
Here is an excerpt…
“I had gone no more than a dozen feet when I was joined by a fly – smaller and blacker than a housefly. It buzzed around in front of my face and tried to settle on my upper lip. I swatted it away, but it returned at once, always to the same spot. A moment later it was joined by another that wished to go up my nose. It also would not go away. Within a minute or so I had perhaps twenty of these active spots all around my head and I was swiftly sinking into the state of abject wretchedness that comes with a prolonged encounter with the Australian fly.
“Flies are of course always irksome, but the Australian variety distinguishes itself with its very particular persistence. If an Australian fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging him. Flick at him as you will and each time he will jump out of range and come straight back. It is simply not possible to deter him. Somewhere on an exposed portion of your body is a spot, about the size of a shirt button, that the fly wants to lick and tickle and turn delirious circles upon. It isn’t simply their persistence, but the things they go for. An Australian fly will try to suck the moisture off your eyeball. He will, if not constantly turned back, go into parts of your ears that a Q-tip can only dream about. He will happily die for the glory of taking a tiny dump on your tongue. Get thirty or forty of them dancing around you in the same way and madness will shortly follow.
“And so I proceeded into the park, lost inside my own little buzzing cloud of woe, waving at my head in an increasingly hopeless and desultory manner – it is called the bush salute – blowing constantly out of my mouth and nose, shaking my head in a kind of furious dementia, occasionally slapping myself with startling violence on the cheek or forehead. Eventually, as the flies knew all along, I gave up and they fell upon me as on a corpse.”