I
n March 2000 I joined the
man who had changed my
life. Hendrikus and I met
whilst I was backpacking in
India. He tempted me into
buying a 500cc Enfield Bullet
motorbike, the same model he had
chosen to travel on. Four years later,
we reached Australia where he then
decided to settle.
This is a letter I wrote to my moth-
er back home in England when,
alone, I was leaving Australia for New
Zealand. She was ninety-six when I
wrote it and had never travelled fur-
ther than the Spanish holiday island
of Majorca and the tulip fields of Hol-
land.
She laid the blame for this firm-
ly on Hitler for starting the Second
World War when she’d planned a hol-
iday in Paris; and on my father who,
having already travelled extensive-
ly, just wanted to stay at home. She
lapped up my experiences in various
parts of the world. I had stopped
sending hand-written letters as her
sight deteriorated. I emailed them so
my brother could read them to her. I
recently found this letter in my docu-
ments folder.
Dear Mum,
As you have never been to Aus-
tralia and I am preparing to leave
for New Zealand after almost a year
here, I thought I would try to put into
words what I experienced during my
travels.
Firstly, it must be borne in mind
that I arrived here after three months
of hard motorcycle travel from Ma-
laysia through Indonesia and that
previous to that I had been absorbing
Asian culture for three years since
buying my motorbike in Chennai and
riding through India, Pakistan, Nepal
and South-East Asia.
Imagine then, arriving dusty and
weary with the effort of making my-
self understood in a variety of Asian
languages and used to eating rice
with everything (including stewed
cows’ ears!) to a land with supermar-
kets and paved streets without ani-
mals wandering along them.
I flew from one of the world’s poor-
est continents to one of the world’s
richest. Within an hour of leaving
East Timor I was standing bewildered
at Darwin airport in the land of un-
told wealth and opportunity.
I gazed around at the carpeted ar-
rivals lounge with the coffee shop
brimming with sandwiches and pas-
tries the like of which I hadn’t seen for
years. Suddenly I was not identifiable
as a foreigner. Nobody tried to sell me
postcards, cigarettes or cans of pop.
Nobody attracted my attention with,
“Hello Madam! … Rickshaw?”
I’m used to it now, though. I soon
forgot the Asian phrases I’d struggled
to learn. Although in Australia every-
one speaks English, there are some
differences. Instead of “Good morn-
ing”, you hear, “G’Day Mate!” “How
are you?” becomes “Howya Goin?”
and “Goodbye” is “Seeya laydah”.
I know you’re not a beer drinker,
but there is a baffling array of ways
to ask for it here. The choices are
daunting regarding the measure you
want or if you want it in a bottle (stub-
by) or can (tinny). If it’s draught beer
TRAVERSE 31
it could be a schooner, glass, pot or
handle. To make it all the more dif-
ficult, the terminology changes ac-
cording to which state you are in. I
don’t know how you would get on
here, Mum but I haven’t seen a drop
of Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry any-
where!
Back to Darwin and my first foray
out of the airport. I felt safe in there.
I had explored every aspect of the
public telephone booths, the deco-
rated tiles on the floor, the modern
western toilets instead of squat ones
and the shops which, unheard of in
most Indonesian towns, had glass
windows. I struggled to use the public
phone because I’d been used to some-
one in a pay-booth handing me the
phone receiver when the call went
through and then paying at the end.
I had to work out the instructions and
use coins to contact the person who I
would be staying with. Easy for Aus-
tralians but for me it was like break-
ing the Enigma code.
My motorbike was still on its way
from East Timor by ship. When I
heard the price of the taxi fare, I near-
ly collapsed. “I could go from Delhi
to Darjeeling for that!” I thought and
thereafter had to consciously stop