Chapter Six

 January to February 2003

   I get back on the Oz Experience bus and travel further up the east coast. 

   It stops for two days in a remote farm. We have to be careful with water because there's a drought. It rains solidly the whole time we are there.

   As we near Mission Beach the driver tells us this is the only place you can do a sky dive with a beach landing.

   Should I? Should I? Should I?

   I should.

   I put my name on the sign up list.

   Later that day I am in a helicopter harnessed to a man. The straps slip down my narrow shoulders. I fall through the door, fall, fall, fall through the air. Wind rushes past my ears.  

   I am alive now like I haven't been since that last night out in Sydney.

   The man pulls the cord. Silence. I seem to shoot up in the sky. I can see the rainforest, the reef in the sea spread out below me.

   I'm on the beach, dizzy. I think I just lived forever.

   The sky dive used up most of the money from my Australian bank account. I go to the ATM to withdraw cash from my UK account. The PIN doesn't work. I try three times. My card is blocked.

   I use the hostel pay phone to phone my bank.

   'We'll send a new card,' the woman tells me.

   'But I'm in Australia.' 

   'Oh.'

   We arrange for a new PIN to be sent to my UK address so my parents can text it to me.

   In the meantime I need money. I have my travel covered up to Cairns. I book the next stage, to Bundaberg, where I've heard agricultural work is easy to find.

   In the hostel kitchen there is a table where people can leave their left over food for anyone to take. I eat half a packet of Doritos.

   In Bundaberg the hostel arranges casual work for backpackers. I vine sweet potatoes and pick courgettes. They call them zucchinis. They are huge, more like marrows. The work makes my back ache, all of our backs ache, with the constant bending down. The sun burns my skin and dries my throat. I work on a fish farm for one day, pulling out nets filled with silvery fish. I feel bad for them. I sit on the back of the fish truck, thinking of Bob Dylan's Visions of Johanna, feeling my conscience explode.

   There is a man staying at the hostel. I notice him noticing me. He looks like a cross between Nick and Adam with his large frame and dark curly hair. I stay away. One evening I go outside to check the work schedule for the next day. He and his friends are sitting at a table. They watch me in silence. As I walk back into the hostel I think I hear a 'hello.' I turn. They are all staring at me. I stare back. I wait for them to speak. They don't. I walk away.

   The hostel takes a group of us in a minibus to the beach. I am lax with my suncream and burn bright red. My skin tingles with heat.

   It's time to leave Bundaberg. I have money in my Australian bank account again. I have my PIN for my UK account. I get the bus to 1770.


Visions of Johanna

Chapter Seven



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