australia day 1: “new year’s day”

Above: flying into Sydney.

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I'm writing this text in 2019, because I don't understand at all how I didn't write more about Australia just as soon as I got back in 2018. I do understand why I didn't write about it while we were there: because we were fucking Navy SEALs of exploratory ambition and accomplishment when we were there, every damn day, ignoring our normal human limitations of insomnia and zero fitness and chronic laziness, fueled by a simple but powerfully effective rallying cry: "WHEN ARE YOU EVER GOING TO BE IN AUSTRALIA AGAIN?"

So it's mildly shocking and disappointing to go back to these posts to look at "the best vacation ever" and find that it's mostly unannotated photos. I am going to redress (?) this undersight (?) as soon as I learn how to speak English again.

Luckily, it was "the best vacation ever", so I might not even need English, and the events are burned into my mind. All except the last 90% of the flight from PHX to SYD, which my mind may have simply erased/repressed out of sheer trauma.

But when we did arrive, first in Brisbane and then in Sydney, at 10am or something, we were treated to a, no lie, two hour wait for our rental car. This is the line, which mostly did not move. This is, how you say, "not a good mix" with 18-hour jet lag after a 36-hour flight (EDITOR'S NOTE: someone please check these numbers).



Once we finally had the car (the right car), and finally made our way out of the parking garage (having le steering wheel on le wrong side makes an important difference, imagine that), it was how you say "smoooz sailink" all the way to Kiama, where we were spending our jetlag days.



The idea behind convalescing in Kiama was to not waste jetlag days in expensive Sydney, but instead chill out somewhere next to the ocean for three days or so, see the surrounding countryside, learn how to pronounce the name of the town we were staying in (kai-AM-a, this took about a week to remember), etc.

I probably never did mention what we're doing in Australia, is that possible? (EDITOR'S NOTE: Mmm yes it is). I'm playing in Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail. We'd just decided like two months previously that Australia was "too far away, sorry Australia, we will never see you, you will never see us, we will die strangers" which is such a depressing-ass thing to decide about somewhere, I can wholeheartedly recommend changing your mind about this kind of decision, or, even better, not making this kind of decision in the first place. Or no wait, best yet: if you do find yourself making this kind of decision? Just find a reason to go there immediately. You get the extra satisfaction of just saying "fuck it" to some depressing restriction you've put on your life mostly out of sheer laziness and/or fear.



So, that's what Chatham was: the reason to go to Australia after saying no it would never happen. And, foreshadowing: "it all worked out". Well, you know what I mean. Australia, Chatham.

ANYWAY: after getting used to the whole steering wheel being in the wrong place thing (thank you very much Nelson for driving), the next "wow we're on a different continent" moment came when we drove through something like a forest on the way to the coast. The cicadas were, i'm not exaggerating, deafening. OK we did not end up deaf, but they were so loud that you could feel their massed voices bouncing around in your ear canal (your aural canal?), the only other thing I've ever heard/felt quite like it was a clarinet trio that was aiming to hurt you.



I always love when you're on vacation near the coast and the ocean first comes into view. Once it did come into view we, well, stopped to look at it and I took a picture of this bird because he was there and was providing another indication that we were somewhere far away.

Then we drove down the less scenic side of the Grand Pacific Drive to end up in relatively sleepy Kiama. Where we had surprisingly good Chinese during which we began to fall asleep, having been awake for, I don't know, 39 hours by this point (EDITOR'S NOTE: Come onnnn, you're not even trying). I have not been happier to see many beds in my life, I'm pretty sure this one is in the Top 10 Beds I Was Happiest To See.