The Life of a Backpacker - The Beginning

“Don’t think, just do.” These are the words of my friend, Calvin, which echoed in my head as I locked myself away in my dorm room. I committed to leaving Thursday afternoon to fly out of Melbourne into Brisbane to back pack down the eastern coast of Australia to Sydney. I had three days to write three major essays, plan and give two oral presentations, write one philosophy assessment and seven other smaller assignments. There were five of us going on the camping trip: Casey, Calvin, Brett and JP, and they were depending on me to pull through and get my work done to be able to go. Was I insane? Absolutely. And in the latest, darkest hours of those three nights leading up to the trip I frequently experienced minor panic attacks in realizing there’s only so many hours in a day.

In order to calm this realization, I found myself writing out hour-by-hour how exactly I would be utilizing the next 72 hours, right down to breaks for meals. My schedule went a little something like this:

Monday –

9:00am – Wake up, breakfast

9:30-12:30 – Prints culture paper

12:30-12:45 – Lunch

12:45-2:45 – Travel Reporting paper

3:00-4:00 – Philosophy class

4:00-6:00 – Australian Idol class

6:00-6:30 – Dinner

6:30-10:45 – Australian Idol paper

10:45-11:00 – 15 minute break

11:00-2:00 – Print Cultures paper

Day 1:

Now I can’t say I followed this schedule perfectly, but I was damn determined. I was going on this camping trip, I just had to put myself through the ultimate test of discipline and self control first. Thursday morning rolled around and I had never been so sleep deprived or strung out in my life. I kept looking towards Thursday promising myself this would all be worth it and it would be the greatest reward. I didn’t finish everything I had to do, but I finished everything that absolutely had to be completed and sent in before we left. After sending out handfuls of emails, Casey and I frantically ran around tying up our loose ends and trying to pack and just about missed the shuttle.

The boys flew out first thing that morning, but Casey and I were on an afternoon flight because of a presentation she had to give that day, so we got on the only possible shuttle which would get us to the airport a dangerously close 45 minutes before our flight. Once on the shuttle I exhaled and tried to relax my sore, tense shoulders. Casey passed out almost immediately. We got to the airport 45 minutes before daprture as expected, however, we were dropped off at international and had to wander around different terminals until we got to our domestic flight terminal. What a relief to finally be on our way. I stepped up to the counter and almost immediately after looking at my ticket the man stated flatly,

“Check-in for the flight to Brisbane is closed, I’m sorry.” I stepped back,

“What do you mean check-in is closed?”

“Check in closes 45 minutes before the flight departure,” he responded to me. Casey came marching up from her desk a couple feet over,

“You mean to tell me that we’re here, our seats are open and empty on that flight right now, and you’re not going to let us on?” Casey asked, attitude flaring up in her voice.

“It’s company policy. I can put you on the next flight to Brisbane tomorrow morning for only $90 though!” The man offered, completely unwilling to try and help us out. We only spent $60 for the original flight, he wasn’t really doing anyone any favors.

I felt defeated. My eyes began to sting as I fought back the tears so easily forming from the lack of sleep that was all over my face. It was now or never, we couldn’t go all the way back to Monash just to come back to the airport in the morning. Especially since it’s a roadtrip, and by the time the night comes, the boys will have already moved on to our next stop of Byron Bay. I saw all my hard work becoming insignificant and the roadtrip slipping away.

“let’s go to another airline. Now.” I said to Casey. We hurried outside into the rain. I slipped in the street, ripped the kneee out of my pants and broke my shoe. Casey and I couldn’t help but laugh. Our flight took a quick turn for the better as we got on the next flight to Brisbane, telling the boys our flight was just delayed due to inclement weather. 

Not long after we landed we were picked up at our terminal in a multicolored, hollowed out classic rape van. I laughed instantly. Not quite what I was expecting, but it was sure to be an experience. I was so happy to finally have arrived that they could have picked me up on a bicycle. There were three seats in the front and the back was just one big bed. The “Rainbow Serpent,” or “Serpent Fire” as we would come to refer to it, would be our home for the next six days as we ventured down the coast of Australia with five recent best friends, and a life’s supply of peanut butter, jelly and white bread.

The van turned out to be manual, so my aspirations of driving a European style car in the right side seat on the left side of the road immediately vanished, and poor Calvin was really the only one that could drive stick shift. We stopped for gas about halfway to Byron Bay, with our homemade CDs blaring and all the windows down. Almost immediately a car pulled up alongside of us,

“Hey, where are you guys from?” A man in the driver seat called out to us. We all exchanged looks. “You guys trying to buy party drugs?” Just as I had expected.

“What kind of party drugs?” I asked, feeding into the stranger’s question.

“MDMA,” he responded.

“What the heck is that?” I asked the boys.

“Molly,” Calvin answered, which is another street name for the pure form of ecstasy.

“No thanks!” I called back to the man.

“What about weed? You guys looking for weed?” He called back to me. This van most certainly had a bulls eye on it and it was undeniably going to be a long trip.

As soon as we pulled away Calvin laughed,

“Speaking of weed,” he said fidgeting around for something in the front seat, “look what came with the camper,” and presented an already rolled joint of marijuana. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a gift from the people we rented the van from or from the voyagers before us, but this van was getting more and more stereotypical by the second. Calvin chucked the joint out of the window, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the smartest choice for someone driving a rainbow hippie van, and then cranked up what would soon become our little adventure’s theme song,

“We don’t sleep when the sun goes down, we don’t waste no precious time…” These words blared through the one working speaker in the van as we pulled up to Arts Factory, which is the most hippie-inspired camping ground you could ever imagine. Campers can swing in seated hammocks by the lake, smoke at picnic tables around a campfire, and rest their head in tee-pees at night. The first man we encountered was wearing a tye-dye hooded shirt.

“Where are you guys coming in from?” He asked me through extremely slurred speech and glassy eyes.

“We’re from the US,” I answered.

“No, no,” he cut me short, “where are you coming from just now?”

“Oh, we just flew in to Brisbane today from Melbourne,” I corrected myself,

“No, where are you coming from in the last twenty minutes?” he pressed.

“Oh,” I said as I was starting to become confused, “we were just up at the Byron Bay lighthouse,” again correcting myself.

“What’s going on up there? Anything? Where are all the parties at tonight? Hey you guys have to go to this weed festival in Nimbin, it’s only twenty minutes away, you have to!” Here we go again, I thought. We chatted with this man for maybe another ten minutes in which time he repeated the same five things over and over again, always returning to how we have to go to Nimbin and the different sorts of weed events and competitions that go on there. We had bigger and better things on our agenda, however, and discussed our plan as we climbed into our van parked in Arts Factory’s lot to sleep for the night. JP reclined the drivers seat to sleep and the other four of us laid in the back sardine-style.