Kings Cross

On Monday morning Peter dropped me off near Central Station where I sat in a Starbucks, drank coffee and used their Wi-Fi. I needed to come up with some kind of plan. Something to do.

From Starbucks I migrated to the pub next door, and replaced lattes for Coopers. After two I drifted through the city towards Kings Cross, stopping in Hyde Park for a couple more Coopers.

I sat near Captain Cook in the park

Without ever having any firm intentions, I checked into a hostel near the station on Darlinghurst Road. My room had four beds, one of which belonged to a Kiwi who was drinking whiskey and coke.

My new Kiwi friend

The Kiwi was in Sydney visiting his brother, who lived in one of the city’s far off suburbs. His brother’s wife was apparently too prissy to allow him to stay. We talked and drank and drank and talked and ended up getting drunk together. Not exactly a good start to my time of exile away from Erskineville. The height of my drunkenness saw me wandering down Darlinghurst Road, not remembering the way back, having to get a taxi ‘home’ and then pawning my phone as payment because I had forgotten my wallet in the room. I managed to get it back later in the evening and payed the poor man in a currency he probably appreciated more.

On Tuesday morning I decided to check out. I didn’t get far, however, and merely checked into another hostel down the road. I would end up spending the next week there while I looked for ‘backpacker’ work – call centres, chugging and office administration. It was my aim for the last 5 months that if I had to do a shit job – and this was becoming ever more likely – then I should be doing it and seeing Australia at the same time. And so despite attending an interview to be a chugger at a company called “Face-to-Face” and two other interviews lined up for telesales and administration I made the decision to head towards Queensland in search of farm work.

Sydney skyline from the roof of my hostel

And another...

The beautiful skies invite photographs

It took me over a week to arrive at that decision. In that time, my last week in Sydney for the time being, I managed a slow, ponderous existence. When I look back it seems like my brain was processing all the changes of circumstance. Anger and sadness and insecurity, and indeed, curiosity and exhilaration circled my head in this, the most iniquitous of Sydney’s suburbs.

I went back to Erskineville on Tuesday, again with the intention of taking the car (I had had the battery partially charged on Saturday morning). This time I simply chickened out – the consequences of being caught without a licence were unknown and ominous. Instead I left the car there and returned to Kings Cross.

On Thursday I met Jess and she brought the remainder of my possessions. Neither of us was able to make a decision about what to do, so we walked away from each other still broken up. I have not seen her since.

Over the weekend it was Clare’s birthday and we went for dinner at Wagamama’s in Darling Harbour. That night was also the much hyped “Earth Hour” and so we ate in partial darkness (amusingly, parts of Sydney would suffer a complete power failure a few days later for around three hours – a much more grand, if inadvertent, gesture). On Sunday we drove to Stanwell Park and had a picnic and I took many of the same photos that I had taken when I was there with Jess for my birthday.

Beach at Stanwell Park

Taken from our picnic spot - a plane takes off