Peter Moore - The Wrong Way Home: London to Sydney the hard way

The Wrong Way Home

London to Sydney the hard way

Peter Moore

Vagabond Editions

Copyright 1999 Peter Moore

The Wrong Way Home
Published by Vagabond Editions
ISBN: 978-1-907988-06-6
Copyright Peter Moore 1999
Cover by Rawshock Design
Photos by Emma Wood
Vagabond Editions
www.VagabondEditions.com
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Contents

E ver since I drew moustaches on the pictures in Yvonne Vacslaviks project on Russia and then stuffed it up the manhole in the sports storeroom hoping no one would ever find out, people have been asking me What did you do that for?

On that occasion it was Miss Dudley, my chain-smoking primary school principal. In the intervening 25 years she has been joined by my mother, my father, my employers and anyone silly enough to get into a relationship with me. Whether its sabotaging a primary school rivals homework or spending joint savings on front row tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert, people have always struggled to understand why I do certain things.

I guess I shouldnt have been surprised back in 1994 when no one could fathom why I wanted to travel from London to Sydney without flying.

The astrologer at the Daily Telegraph reckons its because I have my moon in Aquarius, the sign of perversity. Well, maybe. Everyone was telling me it couldnt be done and that there were any number of ways I could fail. For one thing, I only had $5000, and Australian dollars at that. My research a cursory glance through the appropriate Lonely Planet suggested I would also have problems getting through the former Yugoslavia, securing a visa for Iran, crossing from Pakistan or Nepal into China, crossing from China back into Asia through Vietnam or Laos and finally, getting from Indonesia to Australia.

To be honest, perversity was only part of the reason, though. The rest was pure, unadulterated hippy envy. They had the best music. They had the best drugs. They could have sex with whoever they wanted to without worrying about their penises dropping off. But most of all, they had the best trips.

Ask any ageing hippy theyre the ones wielding extraordinary power in large law firms and banks and theyll tell you that the greatest trip was the overland journey from London to the East, circa 1967. A guy could grab a chick hell, he could grab three or four if he wanted to and head off on a long, laidback odyssey to India and Nepal and Thailand and other places people only ever saw in National Geographic . Along the way hed find enlightenment, a brightly-coloured shirt to match the amulet he bought from a gypsy in Camden market and, if he was really lucky, a kilo of hash for the price of a packet of crisps.

Close to thirty years later I wanted to see if the trip could still be done. I was leaving my job as an advertising copywriter and putting my Filofax into storage. I wanted to travel home overland without flying as a way of blowing my mind and enriching my life.

Can you dig it?

Miss Dudley couldnt.

Soundtrack: Fat Bottomed Girls Queen

M y journey back to Sydney began at Londons Victoria Coach Station in the company of people with Billy Ray Cyrus haircuts. I hadnt planned it that way. I hadnt even imagined it could possibly be that way. But circumstances well, OK, a severe lack of funds meant that I would be catching a bus straight through from London to Prague. Those very same circumstances meant that the coach would be an Eastern European one.

The ticket had only cost 45, which I didnt think was too bad for a 22-hour trip across Europe. I bought it from a company that advertised in TNT , a magazine that mysteriously appears outside tube stations in places like Clapham and Ealing and Shepherds Bush, and other places cheap enough to attract slumming Aussie backpackers. It claims to be a guide to free-spirited adventure but in reality its more of a how to guide to the debauched lifestyle that passes as living as an Aussie in London. The bus company certainly knew their demographic. Across the top of the ad, in bold print, was Dont forget. Beer only costs 12p a pint in Prague. I considered myself lucky to get a seat.

I shouldnt have. Even the prospect of cheap alcohol hadnt lured any other travellers to use this particular bus company. There were only Eastern Europeans in shiny tracksuits, denim jackets and achy breaky coiffures. The really frightening thing was that they all had exactly the same haircut the men, the women, the children, even the driver (although in all honesty his hair looked more like Eddie Van Halen circa Jump). But instead of line dancing, they milled around the battered coach, guarding cheap red, white and blue striped plastic hessian bags loaded to bursting point with Marks and Spencers undies and appliances from Woolworths.

Two of the girls at least I think they were girls passed the time practising a dance they had learned during their stay. It was an updated Charleston, done to an annoyingly catchy song called Doop. They flapped their arms, shuffled their feet and waved their upturned palms with great vigour, moving aside only to let the conductress past as she dragged the bags full of contraband towards the open hatches on the side of the bus. Although the conductress was built like an East German swimmer (she had that slightly crazed look that comes from taking one too many growth hormones), she was struggling.

The coach spluttered to life, belching a cloud of black diesel smoke that hung ominously under the low roof of the coach station. The two Czech girls stayed outside long after the rest of us had boarded and busily continued to practise their dance steps. Eventually the conductress dragged them on board, a task that proved only marginally easier than manhandling the passengers bags. We pulled out of Victoria Coach Station and inched our way through a cold, wet London night towards Vauxhall Bridge and Elephant & Castle, the girls continuing to practise in the aisle.

I was sad to be leaving London. I had spent close to a year there, and in many ways it felt like home. I had my favourite pub, the eccentric Prince of Wales near Clapham Common, where I would always find some startling new relic amongst the cluttered Steptoe and Son decor. I had my favourite cafe, the Northcote, where I seemed to spend every Sunday dining on greasy sausages, bacon and mushrooms and drinking from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles glass (spookily, always the one with Leonardo on it). I had even come to appreciate the vagaries of the English weather. But if I were to be totally honest, what I had come to enjoy most was the drunken, wasteful, doleful existence that is the Antipodean scene in London.

My first taste of this Antipodean lifestyle came during my very first weekend in Britain. Barely off the plane from Turkey, I was invited to an expat cocktail party. Now before you getting ideas about me hobnobbing it with Londons Aussie cultural elite in the Groucho Club, let me just point out that it was a little get-together thrown by two Kiwis, Wayne and Stuart, and that it was held in their backyard in Clapham. Whats more, their idea of class and sophistication amounted to covering the backyard with hay.