Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 38 - Sydney After 15 hours of travel I heave myself up steep and familiar streets. The houses sit low and frumpy, riding the waves of the eastern suburbs. There was a mad dash through Guangzhou airport to get the connecting flight. The checked bag, with none of my fleet-footedness did not make it which at least lightens my load up these hills. The streets were flatter in my mind's eye, smooth and reverberating with the sound of my constant footsteps. As I walk I try to remember my life here. And not the prosaic outline of events and people, not the rosy, compressed joy but the feelings. Was I happier? Was I happy? I can't recall. I had expected a wave of nostalgia but there is none. I expected a welcoming ceremony and the keys to the city. But the city doesn't remember me, it's moved on. I own nothing of it and there is no debt to my past residence. Places are memories but they do not have memories. If I search for the familiar and comforting here that is not surpr...

Seth Sentry The Metro Theatre Sydney 24/05/2013 So I'm at a gig. Scribbling away at a reporter-style notepad to pass the time. It's awkward, how the hell did Bob Woodward work with such a small piece of paper? I guess I look a bit like a reporter what with the pad and the trench coat I'm wearing. Or maybe a music journalist given that I'm at a gig. A bad music journalist since I thought the first support act was the main act. One and a half stars. For him and me. But I'm standing where I suppose a music journalist would stand. Leaning dispassionately against a wall, elevated by a single step, close to the exit, next to a heavily bearded guy. In my defence the support act looked a lot like the main guy, I googled it. That's how familiar I am with Seth Sentry, I had to google his face. There's another support act on now. He is also not Seth Sentry and I could have told you that without the aid of a search engine. He does have a song about Thundercats though ...

The new guy, whom we shall call Jonny (for that was his name) had never considered himself racist. But there was something that grated about taking orders from Asians with a limited command of English. Being the new guy though meant everyone felt entitled to boss him around and deny him the privilege of using the spray guns. You could see this behaviour as the result of Balram's autocratic management style, the more experienced employees desperately grasping any shred of self-respect they could by elevating themselves above the others in informal authority. Jonny had never been especially patriotic, feeling the line between patriotism and nationalism to be too thin. But removed to a country far from his home soil he took a slightly arrogant pride in his Englishness and the automatic respect he felt should be afforded it. He had hoisted the cross of St. George in the front lawn of his conscious. Whilst he knew not what history was taught in Asian schools some of his nation's glo...

Based on true stories. Scene: The White Wash, a carwash/café in Sydney. "Will! Will!" Who was Will? It seems he was urgently needed. "Fix Will!" Will must be broken. The new guy had no idea how he might be fixed but a job at The White Wash was probably not the solution. Newly resplendent in red uniform his head spun in 360° of confusion as instructions in diverse accents issued from every direction. Judging by the frantic gesticulation that accompanied the order he was required to do something to the 'wheels' of the car in front of him, clean them perhaps. The impassioned voice was that of Balram Halwei, manager of The White Wash. Two days previously the same voice at the end of a phone had brusquely told the new guy to be at the carwash at 9AM on Sunday morning for training. Sunday morning had arrived and here he was yet it would be two further days until he actually learned the name of his immediate superior. Naming on the whole was a haphazard affair i...

Day 400 - Sydney My list of favorite cities reads like the signage above an international fashion store or perfumery - London, Paris, New York...um...Sydney. So the latter is somewhat incongruous but here I was carried back across the country on the wings of fond remembrance and affection. I was on a high, in my mind (a fertile, febrile place) returning like a conquering hero. Flushed with western success life seemed a simpler game or if not simpler then one at which I was now more adept. I'd taken a room in Coogee for a couple of weeks and its streets (street) and bars (bar) held happy memories. Amy and Laura were my temporary flatmates, Jeanette, being away for Christmas, was the other resident whose room I had taken. I went directly from the airport to Coogee Bay Hotel not even stopping to dump my bags. Amy and Jayne were back from their tomato farming and familiar faces were there in force. Christmas is an understated affair in Australia, they don't go in for the cold, dar...

Day 380 - Margaret River It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. It was a Tuesday, it was like any other. Me and the Cornish lads had slogged through another day on the vineyard and were driving home. I switched on my phone to check messages, my housemate Emily had text. All our stuff's on the street. Martina showdown. It had been building to this but with 3 days left before we left Margaret River she'd actually done it. Perhaps I should recap? The housing situation at Tunbridge Street had been deteriorating since, well, since I moved in really. I'd have to say that this was in spite of rather than because of my presence. I hadn't met the landlady before I took the room so my first contact with Martina was after wo...

Day 365 - Margaret River A couple of notable milestones had passed. The first was the completion of my 88 days of regional work. This was a cause for relief and elation given the slender margins of time I had to get it done. Despite the sheer monotony of each working day the weeks had zipped by at an acceptable pace. Despite the specified three months seeming to stretch endlessly into the distance on that frigid first morning in the vineyard I could now thumb my nose at Labour Solution's exploitative employment and return to the cosmopolitan splendor of Sydney. Except I couldn't. Whilst I would consider it an appropriate gesture for the Australian government to buy you a plane ticket back to civilisation at the completion of your regional work this doesn't appear to be official policy. So, though I calculated that I had pruned, wrapped, pulled, thinned, constrained and otherwise manhandled in excess of 21,000 vines up to this point I would need a few more to return east. T...

Day 333 - Margaret River Despite the inestimable pleasure of sleeping in a bunk bed, sharing your toilet cubicle with wildlife, bare concrete floors and Gwendal, it was time to leave the hostel. And yet I did so with an amount of reluctance. I'd become used to the place, a part of the worn furniture, institutionalised you could say. So when the offer of a room in a house came I clung fiercely to what I knew and shied away from a new place and new people. I'm not sure that fear will ever entirely desert me, my nature is my nature, but at least in my age and my wisdom I can push through it with a modicum of sense. The house was familiar, I'd been there before after a night in the pub. As had most of the other patrons once word got around of a party at 46 Tunbridge Street. The 100 or so unexpected guests were soon surreptitiously pointed in the direction of another, 'better' house party at an unsuspecting and unfortunate address down the road. Poor Frodo didn't k...

Day 282 - Margaret River Saturday night tears at the thin fabric of human culture, exposing the beast beneath. -- Margaret River Lodge motto The hostel was quite unlike any I had stayed in before. Monday to Friday its residents dutifully rose early to toil in the vineyards surrounding the little town. To endure biting wind and stinging rain while working on grape vines that produced wines that they couldn't afford. Come the weekend though there was full-scale rebellion against this government-ordained monotony. A cauldron brought out and placed in the centre of the kitchen, goon and evil spirits cast into it for unholy concoction and ungodly intoxication. We whooped, we caroused. We painted our faces and shaved our heads. We steeped ourselves in wine, (lack of) women and song. We played topical drinking games like 'wine waterboarding' (not me) and entered the swimming pool via the shopping trolley delivery method (me). In short we were frothing. I had swiftly (well it ma...

Day 257 - a black hole To put it in the common parlance 'shit just got real.' If that phrase has a flippant air then it is unintended and unwelcome, I just don't know how else to put it. Likewise what do you say to your best friend, your constant travelling partner of the past six months, when they call to tell you they are being deported? Do you say "It'll be alright.", 'cause it won't, certainly not now, maybe not ever. What words soften the blow of accusing eyes delivering a fast-track conviction, how do you comfort a person that's become a...criminal in the blink of an eye? You only need have an immigration official cast an eye over your passport to know they are not from an organisation to be crossed, be you on the border of Australia or Zambia. A sullen, unflinching seriousness must either be rigorously instilled in them or else the recruitment process heavily selects against individuals displaying more than a ounce of levity. Withering star...

Day 237 - Margaret River The train cut through an orange land so sparse that not even clouds bloomed in its yawning blue sky. It passed stations so small that the platforms could hold three or four people at most. I saw dwellings here and there, each a battle against nature won though the ongoing war still inevitably lost. From the eastern hubbub to this western desolation I wondered, as I would many times over the coming months, how on earth I ended up here. I carried a knot in my stomach, whether from fear or food deprivation I couldn't be sure. This was new, this was different. Barring a few days in Brazil I had never so boldly struck out on my own. Leaving behind a pleasant Sydney existence, friends, a well-paid job, the comfort of familiarity, to start again on the other side, to create a life over again. Yeah it was probably fear. I changed from train to bus at the end of the line and the landscape softened as we continued south. Wetter and greener, life returned in the form...

Day 201 - Sydney A solitude wraps me as I walk, the ferries blow their funereal horns as if through some foggy dock on the eve of war. I turn up the collar on my favourite (only) winter coat and press on over the swing bridge and past destroyer, submarine and magnificent 3-masted sail ship. Wooden boards give a resonant thud as my smart-shod feet strike them and ibis stalk the grassy swath to my left. The sun traces its shallow arc in the sky as I arrive at the office and day two hundred and one stirs to life. The transience had paused and routine replaced it. Faces and places became familiar and relationships lasted past a day or two of crossed paths. Heck, such was the order of my life I had even taken to eating muesli for breakfast (with soy milk, natch). My job was going well, I worked with Kim and Lorraine auditing the company's Australian contractors and daily impressed my colleagues with technical wizardry and savoir-faire. On the home front myself and Michael had moved in...

Day 181 - Sydney 13 days into this unexpected tangent in the trip and some notable achievements could be listed. We were now regulars at the Coogee Bay Hotel (henceforth CBH), a bar known (to locals at least) as 'the animal pen'. We had taken in the famed Bondi Beach. I had swum on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. I had a job. Once more I had plunged into the masked ball of interviews where every interviewer pretends that they are offering the world's greatest job and every interviewee maintains the fantasy and professes to have dreamed of one day having such a position. I could now add 'senior administrator' to my garlanded résumé. The company? Accenture Plc., a multinational management consultancy firm with 250,000 employees. Well to be accurate 250,001. Not bad in less than a week. With a view from my desk of Sydney CBD 'fallen on my feet' would be an apt phrase to use. Before I started though myself and Mike found the time to catch up with our Irish par...

Day 168 - Sydney Surprising fact about Australia #1: It has seasons Surprising fact about Australia #2: Some of those seasons are cold Surprising fact about Australia #3: I was in it. And cold Everybody likes surprises don't they? Unexpectedly finding two men in your flat when you return from work qualifies as a surprise right? The alarmed screams seemed to indicate so. Scaring Amy and Jayne has proved to be one of life's simple pleasures but traveling nearly 5000 miles to do it could be deemed excessive. Myself and Michael would have to find something else to do in the land of Oz. That something else was the perpetuation of travel by way of the accumulation of capital. Gainful employment in short. Like a bombshell we had exploded back into the girl's ordered existence and with the shrapnel flung wide we settled into catching up over a couple of boxes of goon. Bangkok's sweltering temperatures and dollar beers lay far behind us though we were as culturally,...