What Makes A Sweet Guy Turn So Mean?

BACK around the turn of the century I lived in a share house in Brisbane's southside.

We rented individual rooms from the young owner, who was buying the house off his parents and lived in a granny flat out the back. It was a three-bedroom house with another little granny flat area downstairs and a little bricked-up area that was a bit cheaper but brought to mind a prison cell rather than somewhere to put down roots. Relatively quiet despite being just off the South-East Freeway, it still brings back great memories like jumping from the balcony into the pool while hurling insults at siblings; and not-so-great memories like progress on a uni assignment due that afternoon being slowed by the landlord and his mates smoking hash in the kitchen little more than two metres away.

There's also some frankly terrible memories, most of which revolved around a bloke called Newton. He rented out one of the rooms and pretty much immediately brought problems, not least because of some very severe alcohol issues. Newton would get paid on a Thursday, leave the rent on the table Thursday afternoon then be broke Friday morning after drinking his bodyweight in whatever was going.

When he first moved in Newton had a pregnant girlfriend Carly. When he was sober Newton would confide that he wanted to be a good father; when he was drunk he was completely uncontrollable. One night there were some loud thumps before Carly came screaming and crying out of his room.

Newton had thumped her.

Carly left in a taxi. It wasn't the first time he had hit her.

They broke up soon afterwards.


FAST-FORWARD a few years and I'd watched someone close to me fall deeper and deeper into despair. She felt that her then-partner was becoming more and more controlling; the first time I travelled overseas I heard that he'd thumped one of her sons. Not a great feat given he was 6 feet tall versus a jockey-sized 16 year-old.

Wasn't the first time he'd thumped someone either. After she finally left him he would leave truly vulgar messages on her phone, stand by her work and shout out obscenities, tell their two kids lies about why their mother had left. Out of this woman's six children, that man's actions have effectively poisoned the relationship between her and four of them that a regular mother/child relationship is virtually impossible. For years afterwards my greatest fear was that I would get a call from the police saying this man had been around and that she was now in hospital.

Or dead.


COUPLE of years later and I'm working the night shift at an inner-city backpackers. Two men and a woman walk past. I recognise them from earlier so don't check keys. About an hour later one man walks out in a rush, followed closely by a livid other male.

The woman comes up to me and asks where they've gone, explaining that the first man to leave was someone they'd been drinking with that once everyone went to bed decided to try hop in with her, despite the second male being her boyfriend. The boyfriend comes back in and they move around the corner to where the vending machine is. Soon afterwards I hear what could either be a soft drink can being opened or a slap. I'm not sure which so I call the bouncers from the bar downstairs, who check the footage and find that she had in fact been assaulted. The boyfriend is kicked out; the girlfriend stays but I later hear joins him again the next morning.

On another night a man checks out at 1am. Weird, but ok. He's in a double room but only wants his $20 key deposit back. A girl walks down soon afterwards and asks about him. Turns out he's just thumped her, then destroyed her phone so she couldn't call anyone at home. I get the bouncers to come up and keep an eye on her. We find a phone in lost property that accepts foreign sim cards so she can call home.

This lady swears to never speak to him again.


At the start of 2015 Rosie Batty was named Australian of the Year. This has shone a spotlight on domestic violence in Australia as Rosie had come to prominence in the most shocking way possible after her ex-partner murdered their son after cricket training in February 2014. Since then Rosie has become a strong advocate for victims of domestic violence - and victims they are. I've heard people try and make excuses for domestic violence. "She was asking for it." "She provoked him." "She shouldn't have done that."

How are these ever excuses? Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly wrote about domestic violence in his song "Sweet Guy" (the chorus of which is the title to this post, visit here for a version sung by Vika Bull). How could lyrics like

"I must be mad, I must be crazy,

Everyone tells me so

Everyday I see it coming,

Now I'm facing the wall, waiting for the blow"

not have people up in arms?

I'm typing this as I watch an ABC documentary called "Hitting Home", watching victims being interviewed by police & counsellors soon after being beaten. How can someone rationalise this behaviour? Why should people live in fear of physical harm or death? How do we deal with this? What do you do if you hear of domestic violence? Right now there's a story about a woman, Kate Malonyay who was verbally abused by her partner before leaving him. This apparently put him so far over the edge that he killed her. It's that moving - and that familiar - that I've had to step away from the computer for a few minutes.

I don't have the answers. The conversation has started though. It's a start, but not a finish. The finish line is a long way away, something that sprung to mind in July 2015 when doing laundry at the Birdsville Caravan Park. Two middle-aged women were chatting to each other while I washed three days worth of desert grime when suddenly one of them made a comment about being hit. One of them turned to me and apologised, commenting that I probably didn't want to hear about domestic violence.

"He loves you to death doesn't he," the other one commented.


How is this a thing, and why do we accept it?

Ten Years On: The First Day

LONDON, early May, 2006. The coach pulls out from outside the St Christopher's London Bridge hostel. I grab the microphone from its hole in the middle of the dashboard and walk up the two steps to the main section and kneel down on the aisle seat of the first seats on the right. Forty-six pairs of eyes look up expectantly - we're heading to Paris, and it's my job to tell them about it.

The previous two days had been a blur. There was talk after the training trip about partying for 48 hours; I'm not sure any of us last much past 11pm. I have to go to head office to collect all my equipment and spend the rest of the time trying desperately not to freak myself out at what's coming up.

I have a few drinks with some of the crew the night before but still struggled to sleep through a combination of nerves, exhilaration and the thought that the girl I liked was more interested in another bloke. Perfect for starting a new job in customer service the next day, I'm sure you'll agree.

Eventually it's time to get out of bed. I've already woken up no less than five times, urgently checking my phone to make sure I haven't slept through the alarm and turn up late for my very first day of my dream job. I haven't, but when I do eventually get up I'm buzzing even without a hit of caffeine. Only dark rings under my eyes hint at the patchy night's sleep, but given in my preschool photo I had dark rings under my eyes people probably thought I was ok.

We take the tickets from passengers as they board - later on I will give each one a small card that we swipe every time they start a new sector. We've actually got some fairly cool technology: each guide has a mobile phone with GPRS & Bluetooth connections; a small palm computer that contains data we download at least daily; and a small printer/card swiper that will not only pick up whose cards we've swiped, but also print out vouchers for excursions in each city. These sales are pretty important to us as they we get a commission on each one sold.

Eventually everyone's on. We've got 45 passengers, a fourth-year guide called Grantos who's there to help me out, and a second-year driver behind the wheel. Paperwork completed, I stand up to give my first talk. As everyone looks up at me, I have an internal panic attack - what am I going to say? Will I make sure everyone gets on and off the Dover-Calais ferry ok? Shit, what if no-one likes me?

I begin to speak. I welcome everyone on-board, and for before I have too much time to think and stuff things up, I begin the safety spiel.

"First of all, there are three emergency exits on-board this bus: the two doors, the windows, and the two emergency hatches in the roof. To open the doors, pull down on the red lever and push the door out..."

My tour-guiding career has begun.

Ten Years On: The Training Trip

SCENE: the Park Crescent Conference Centre, London. A would-be tour guide, eager to avoid the palaver of his first interview, has arrived early to find no one around for the classroom part of the training trip. He's nervous as hell about what lies ahead and not finding anyone in hasn't helped the anxiety now building within, when who does he spot walking up the stairs but the most charismatic driver on the circuit the year before.

Matty J was actually the second person I already knew on that training trip. Back in 2005 when I travelled around I came across Laura a few times - she was the person travelling back from Pamplona with Tash in the Greatest Love Story Never Told. She'd emailed me in early 2006 to say she'd also been accepted, which had gone a long way to alleviating any stress I had about the upcoming training. Matty had been a driver back in 2005 but after a change in policy could no longer drive. Given his natural charisma they'd asked him if he'd like to come back as a guide, something that we were all glad he'd done. Over the coming month Matty would speak so highly of the returning drivers and guides that you couldn't wait to meet them out on the road.

While a driver in 2005 Matty had provided one of those low-grade highlights that sticks in the memory. Coming into Nice from La Spezia I'd spent a bit of time down the front of the coach chatting to Matty and the guide. Matty kept going on about this great bridge in Genoa. Watch out for the bridge, he said. You gotta see this bridge.

Naturally I kept an eye out for this you-beaut bridge, making sure I stayed awake as the distances to Genoa counted down. Soon enough we saw Genoa to our left as we skirted around the edge of town - hang on a minute, we're now in town and where was this bridge? I asked Matty about it in Nice later that night and it turned out he'd missed the turn, left the autostrada, had to find somewhere to turn around then finally got back on the bridge, which to be fair was a very nice bridge.


Back in London and there were 13 of us on that first day, 12 on the second - and that's the way it stayed until the very end. After the second classroom day we had a spare day to finalise our preparations for the actual trip around Europe, so naturally a few of us decided to have a few at the St Christopher's bar. During the meal breaks Matty had insisted that everyone needed to have a nickname by the end of the training trip. Had to be done. Part of the gig.
Sitting at the bar at St Christopher's bandying names about Kellie (who incidentally never got a nickname outside of "Kel") looked across the table, pointed her finger and said:

"I have a nickname for YOU. You're Frodo."

That was it. Matty picked up the ball and ran with it, to the extent that people I'd worked with for a number of years had to think hard if they ever had reason to use my real name.


A COUPLE of days later we all met at head office to begin our trip through Europe. While it sounds like a great trip - four weeks around Europe with a crew that would turn out to be great mates - there really wasn't a lot of fun involved. We were up and on the bus coach early on most days; once on-board you had to be ready to spiel at any time the boss decided you should. Sleeping was strictly banned and would inevitably lead to a spiel on whatever destination we'd just left.

Each day at least one guide was deemed "Guide of the Day". The idea was that the guides would run the day the same way they would on the road. You had to be at the pick-up place 30 minutes before departure, clean-shaven, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Those of us who'd travelled with the company were up first, which is how I ended up being Guide of the Day for the Amsterdam-Berlin leg.

It started off pretty well - I joined the crew (which now included the trainee drivers) down at the breakfast room of the Hans Brinker, then decided I'd use the bathroom and clean my teeth to get rid of the egg smell from a couple of hard-boiled eggs at breakfast. Unfortunately my timing wasn't the greatest, as I only realised after sitting down to ponder life, the universe and everything that I realised it was already 0755 and that I should already be out the front collecting everyone's keys and guiding them to the coach.

When I got out of the bathroom the Boss was waiting for me - she was not a happy camper and seeing me with a toiletries bag probably didn't help my cause. I copped an earful for not being at the pick-up at the correct time and that while she had some of the keys she didn't know where all the others were. About the only thing that saved me was that I'd collected most of the keys at breakfast and handed them over straight away.

So on my big day in charge I'm already in trouble. I manage to get through my Germany spiel at the border, but feel a little more confident as we approach the final service stop, a former East/West German border post called Marienborn. I'd been lucky enough to have Kim as my guide when I'd done this talk the year before and she really set the scene for us as we approached the remnants of the Iron Curtain across Europe. I used my memory of that talk, a little bit of research, a little bit of previous knowledge and just a hint of journalistic license, I managed to give a spiel that not only finished at the exact moment we'd pulled into the services, but that also drew a round of applause from the Boss. It was the confidence boost I'd needed - all of a sudden the morning's dramas seemed a lifetime ago.

Time off the coach was fast-paced. We only visited many of our day stops for a couple of hours - in that time you had to find out information about the hostel, find the nearest facilities (internet cafe, laundromat, supermarket, ATM etc), check out the sights, get back on the coach, share the information then get ready to be called up for a spiel. Service stops were similarly-paced: go in, find out where the toilets were and how much they cost; what food was available and any quirky things about how to order it; and anything else to watch out for (like Old Mate grabbing your bags). It was only in the overnight stops that we had the chance to really take in our surrounds, which is where most of my favourite memories of the training trip come from. I can remember sitting down with Louise at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna chowing down on a Sachertorte on a glorious spring day; a few days later I was running through Munich's English Gardens, trying to stay warm in the middle of a snowstorm that I was definitely not prepared for. Probably the best part of the trip though was being taken up the Jungfraujoch - the bosses were realistic enough to realise that most of us wouldn't spent $150 or so to take one of the world's great train rides 3571m up, so they paid for us to go on our free day in Lauterbrunnen.

Top of the Joch.

The problem with such a rushed preparation - especially at the day stops - was that you didn't get to see all the major sights. During training I didn't make it into the centres of Dresden, Bern, Avignon or Tours; of those during my guiding career I only ever made it into Tours and that for a very short time before gastro struck and I had to rush back to the hotel. Avignon was my own fault though - I was Guide of the Day again and rather than send myself out to the Palace of the Popes or the Pont Saint-Bénézet I decided the small village of Villeneuve would be my research topic. Very nice, very pretty, but useless for people who come to Avignon to visit Avignon.

At least twice during the training we were taken out specifically to get drunk. While this sounds pretty sweet, the rationale behind this was to see both how we'd react while drunk, as well as how we'd pull up the next day. It was during the first of these nights that John became Timberlake (mostly shortened to Timbers) - with his glasses off and hoodie up, he busted out a few dance moves in an Amsterdam nightclub that were the envy of someone somewhere.

After four weeks of pretty hard slog we headed back to London. Between Paris and Calais we had to complete our final tests - 200 questions, pass mark 100, fail and the last four weeks were a waste. After re-boarding the coach in Dover we were given the order to come down to the Boss, get our results and (hopefully) get out first sequences. I was last on the list, so tried to get a couple of hours kip before going down. I couldn't, partially because my dorm mates were making lots of noise, partially because I was nervous as hell, but mostly because Matty had given me an Irn-Bru to drink and that stuff is like Red Bull for Scots.

I eventually gave up and headed downstairs to join those already celebrating. While down there Laura came up to me and said we'd tied for first on the test and that she was hoping to beat me (all friendly banter). My look of relief must have been pretty strong because she then realised I hadn't been given my results! When it was finally my turn to go down the Boss confirmed I'd finished equal first, and that I'd be working the very first day of the season, taking one of two coaches travelling between London and Paris.

Holy shit! The first coach!

With my results done we went down to a small private area for what proved to be the very last time we were all together, a point the Boss mad to us before we started getting hammered. She was right - two were sacked during the season, while one didn't even make it to her first assignment in what was the only ever recorded case of someone not being happy with being sent to Greece to work.

The crew.

That was all in the future though. My tour-guiding career started in two days time!

Ten Years On: Moving Overseas

A Kunstmuseum. That's what's in Liechtenstein - a kunstmuseum.

Before anyone writes to complain, I should point out that the German word for art is "kunst", so a kunstmuseum is quite literally an art museum. So stop tittering, it's culture you heathens.

I got to learn a few fun facts about Europe during my last few months in Port Douglas. As part of the preparation for the training trip we had to complete worksheets about each country and city we travelled to. This would make building our spiels a hell of a lot easier as well as forcing you to do some fairly decent research. It was while doing this that I found out about the aforementioned Kunstmuseum, as well as that just about every country in Western Europe produced sugar beets as a major crop. How this could possibly be interesting is beyond me, but the boss wanted it so I wrote it down.

While the workload wasn't all that great - 11 country and 31 city information sheets completed - it was important to me to complete it all before I left Port Douglas as I knew that when I got to the UK my focus wouldn't be on filling out pieces of paper so much as bending the elbow at the pub. It would also give me something to read on the long flight over.

The remainder of my time in Port Douglas went in a blur. Highlights included a Christmas trip out to Mossman Gorge, where while relaxing in the rockpool I saw the most unbelievable sight. Ahead of me the swimming hole dropped off to reveal the most stunning vista of rainforest-covered hills, a scene that never failed to put me in a great frame of mind. In the foreground this time around though, three hands holding VB cans emerged from the water as some travellers looked to get their beers across to the other side.


EVENTUALLY it was time to leave the tropics for a new life overseas. I had a return ticket to London even though I wasn't sure if I would indeed be back - call it the "in case of emergency break glass" back-up plan. Mind you, that back-up went out the door when I discovered the crumbled remains of the paper ticket in my jacket after doing my first bit of laundry in the UK.

Was it a sign? I didn't care - I was having way too much fun. I'd ended up back at the Generator in London after a week at a mate's place in Cheltenham and got to know a few of the crew in our dorm. We were mostly young Australians and Kiwis that took full advantage of the £1 pints before 9pm. At one point we'd all gone up to the bar and ordered the maximum four each just before 9; soon afterwards bar staff circled the bar trying to find where all their pint glasses has disappeared to.

Then March 28 was upon me. I moved from the Generator to the St Christopher's at London Bridge, then got ready for the first official day of training.

How would training go? Would I get along with everyone? Would I be able to handle it?

Ten Years On: The Interview

SO just to recap: I've travelled to the other side of the world for a job interview. I've lost a contact lens, put on a weak pair of glasses (that would give 99.99% of the population a massive headache), arrived about 30 seconds before the interview was supposed to start, then realised that my planned speech on King Edward VIII was going to suck compared to everyone else's.

Right.

So I have to change my talk. What in God's green earth can I talk about for five minutes that will get me my dream job? It has to be something that will interest everyone (that's cricket out); that includes some humour (cricket's out) and can't be about travel (cricket's out).

What can I talk about that's not cricket?

Then it comes to me. As the oldest of Mum's six children I can remember most of our health problems over the years, from one brother's deafness until he got grommets, to another brother's illness with what was eventually diagnosed Coeliac Disease, to the youngest two being born with red hair.

I also spoke about Amniotic Band Syndrome, a condition that affects one in 1000 live births and can leave babies with cleft palate, syndactyly or missing limbs. I got the middle one - it was part of the reason I was so socially awkward. But my rationale was to try and get this out of the way early as I thought it might have been an issue down the track. Why would it have been? I don't know - but I "knew" that it would come up at some point.

For a talk that was made up on the spot it actually went pretty well. I got a few chuckles throughout and relaxed after my talk right up until the lady in charge said that she was going on leave that afternoon for a week. This was a problem: we'd been told the follow-up interviews would be in the week after the presentation, so I'd planned to head back to Australia a week later.

Shit.

I had to come clean. Before heading home I emailed the company again, explained the situation and that I could either go something over the phone, over the internet (this was pre-Skype), or when I arrived back in the UK next, which I'd decided was definitely going to happen at some point in 2006.

I don't think I'd ever been so eager for someone to come back from leave. Every morning I'd come into work and check my emails for a response. When it finally came in they'd agreed to do a phone interview - the best-case scenario really. Not just because it meant I would know if I'd got the job before flying back over, but also because I could pace up and down the station throughout.

That was how it went down. I did the interview wearing a hole in the carpet with my incessant pacing while being questioned on Europe, travel and the price of fish in Denmark this time of year.

A few days later I popped back into the office to grab something before we got insanely drunk. While there I quickly checked the computer and found a new email notification.

From the company.

...

...

I WAS IN!

Actually, I wasn't in per se, but had got a place on the training trip. We would head around Europe gathering information that we would use on the circuit. We'd stop at every stop along the way, including my first-ever trip to Switzerland. We'd even visit Liechtenstein.

I was going to Liechtenstein! I don't know if anyone has been as excited about going to Liechtenstein as I was that night. Switzerland as well, but Liechtenstein! Home of... bank accounts? False teeth? I dunno, I'll let Future Stuart deal with that.

Ten Years On: Home Again, But Not For Long

... SHE didn't keep in touch.

Coming back home to Brisbane was a shock, and not because of that. It was partially that I was back living with a parent for the first time in nine years, partially the fact that I didn't have a job or any real plans for the future, and partially because I had the worst case of jet-lag and plane flu going. The first night I was back in Brisbane I slept for 18 hours straight, then struggled to keep regular hours for another couple of weeks after that.

It did give me plenty of time to think though. Something that had struck me while travelling was that far from being miles above the rest of us, most tour guides were simply regular people, albeit ones with a bit of personality, a love of travel and an ability to talk on a microphone. This appealed to me, not least because I'd spent my childhood in the car criss-crossing the east coast of Australia either moving cities or visiting relatives.

I'd also spent a couple of years down in Canberra talking on a microphone for a community sports radio station. In that time I'd gone from helping out with the breakfast show to writing and voicing ads, hosting music request shows and doing live outside broadcasts, which included the Prime Minister's XI cricket game against England in 2002, and what I believe was the first-ever live indoor cricket radio broadcast in Australia.

Did enjoy writing and voicing the ads though.

It was someone that I met then that provided me with an option for the foreseeable future. Terry had developed the idea of "smooth jazz" while working in the USA, but had never really had the vehicle to develop it in Australia. He'd come on board in Canberra as that station entered its last few months; now he'd made an arrangement with an ex-pat dentist who'd purchased a licence up in Port Douglas. The offer came through: come up to PD and work with him, with the potential to run the station down the track.

I didn't jump at this straight away. Firstly, the money they were offering was barely enough to survive on; secondly the idea of becoming a tour guide was becoming increasingly attractive, and even if I didn't get work as a tour guide there was always the option of moving over to the UK and making use of the two-year working holiday visa before I turned 30.

We eventually came to an agreement with the wage; more importantly for me was that I could fly over to London if I got an interview to become a guide. It would be a flying visit that would cost at least a couple of thousand dollars, but in my mind the payout would be worth the risk.


AND so I spent the Australian summer of 2005/06 living in Far North Queensland. I settled into a dorm at the Parrotfish Hostel, and could walk to work in about five minutes. Nights were spent in the hostel bar chatting to the few that ventured this far north during the wet season, occasionally heading to one of the bars on Macrossan Street if we felt like kicking on. One of my favourite memories is of being in the Courthouse Hotel the night Australia played Uruguay for a place in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, chatting to an Englishman who'd last been in Australia when we'd qualified for the 1974 event. It was an omen, although over the 90 minutes of regular time, 30 minutes of extra time and the ten or so minutes of penalty shoot-out there were no guarantees that any omens would do any good. The noise when John Aloisi kicked the winning penalty though was something else, as was everyone radiating love and affection in every direction as we celebrated a great sporting moment together.

In November 2005 I travelled over to London for the interview. I planned on staying in London for a week as the second interviews were to be held straight after the group interview. We'd been asked to give a short talk on any topic; given that I'd prepared my talk on King Edward VIII, a man who'd given up the throne for an American divorcee.

I arrived in London on a cold November day and had the interview the next day. From the start things started to go badly wrong: I lost a contact lens down the hostel sink as I was putting it in. I hadn't brought any spares, so I either had to run around London with only one good eye (not appealing) or use my glasses, which I hadn't updated for at least seven years and were not strong enough for me to be able to see properly (not great for finding way around a city). Eventually I decided weak glasses were better than one contact lens.

Because this had taken me a while to get ready, I was now cutting it fine to be there on time. Thoughts of spending thousands of dollars then missing out by five minutes unhelpfully crowded my mind the way people were crowding the London Underground. The glasses had turned out to be a mistake as well, as I struggled to read which platforms I was supposed to go on for London Bridge. Had I simply stayed at the hostel where the interview was I would have saved a hell of a lot of hassle, but I didn't like their showers. Slightly ridiculous.

I eventually made it with a couple of minutes to spare and was led through a rabbit warren to the interview room. I began to relax - I'm here, it's all good - then panicked again as the first two interviewees got up to give their talks. The first guy gave a talk about how he was taking a school group through London on July 7 that year - the day of the terrorist attacks. Somehow he managed to take a very serious event and put his own twist on the story, without degrading what had happened. The next speaker gave a talk about shoes, with slides and everything. Both were very good and all of a sudden my talk about England's eight Eddie was was looking like his decision to abdicate - terrible.

So I'm in an interview room with nine or so other people. I've flown halfway around the world, can't see properly, arrived with only a minute to spare, and watch the first two people be brilliant.

What the hell am I going to do?

Ten Years On: The British Isles

FOR two months travelling around Europe the Real World was like your credit card bill: you knew it was there and that you would eventually have to deal with it, but it was nice to get away from it for a while.

Unfortunately like the credit card bill, the Real World has a way of forcing itself into your consciousness. In this case it was in the form of phone calls and text messages from home checking to see I was ok. It was July 7 2005, when suicide bombers detonated three bombs on the London Underground and one on a bus in Tavistock Square. I wasn't in London at the time, but would see the wreckage of the bus a few days later when checking into the Generator Hostel around the corner. A few days later London came to a stand-still in a moving memorial to those who died in the attacks.

I ended up spending a few weeks at the Generator with Jason, where we took full advantage of the £1 pints before 9pm. Jason managed to win the infamous Hardman competition, which at a place with cheap drinks and backpackers from around the world was as shenanigan-based as it sounds. We had to leave eventually though - if only to give our livers a chance to recover. Jason went to the USA and I went to Cheltenham to catch up with Hamish and Leanne. I ended up using their place as a base to explore more of the British Isles, catching the Megabus up to Edinburgh before ending up in Inverness drinking with people who'd just come back from living a year in the same suburb Mum lived in before heading across to Ireland to jump on a three-day tour around the southern part of the country.

Leanne and Hamish at Chepstow Castle, Wales.

That trip around Ireland had plenty of highlights. To start with I'd struggled to find the hostel I'd booked, trudging around for a couple of hours before finally finding the place. When I got there I discovered they'd cancelled the booking after a John Stuart had arrived to check in - they thought he'd made a double-booking with the wrong name! Luckily they still had a spare bed...

The trip was a lot of fun - I'd gained a lot of self-confidence after travelling with Jason and was happy cracking jokes and being ever-so-hyperactive. This trip was also the time when I managed the second-worst effort with a member of the opposite sex. We were at a bar in Galway and was about to go home when the most attractive girl on tour came up to me, put her hand on my chest and said that she and her friend were grabbing a drink then going back on the dancefloor and I was very welcome to join them. Not thinking anything of it I grabbed a drink (where she put her hand on my chest again and invited me back to the dancefloor) and joined them on the dancefloor, soon after which the friend went to the loo. She then went up to me and said "it's just you and me now".

...

...

I kept dancing and thought nothing of it.

Soon afterwards the friend came back, gave me a strange look and kept dancing. The locals kept trying it on with both girls, something I mentioned to them as we walked back to the hostel. The girl looked at me and simply said "I was waiting for you to save me Stuart".

...

...

Shit.

* I would like to point out for the record that the only effort that has ever beat this was the man who left a girl at the steps of a pub on the Gold Coast and told her to "wait here, I'm just going in for a drink" after she'd picked him up on the beach and said she lived locally and her parents were away.

That trip around Ireland was the last part of my trip. It had been an amazing experience - I'd gone from being very unsure of myself in a small country town to being able to start talking with strangers (albeit only in certain situations, but still, it was a start) and even having the personality to attract members of the opposite sex.

Even if I didn't have a clue until well after the event.

I had so many things to ponder on the bus back to London. I had resigned from the newspaper partway through the trip after realising that I couldn't just return back to Cooma. I didn't want to go back to Brisbane either - there was this whole wide world worth exploring! What I really wanted to do was become a guide for Busabout; unfortunately this dream job wouldn't start again until May 2006 and it was August 2005 when I was pondering all this. I could always get my UK Working Holiday visa straight away, but then I'd miss the Australian summer for a UK winter, which quite frankly sounded awful.

And more to the point, would that girl stay in contact?

Ten Years On: Bonjour, et bienvenue à l'Europe

IT WAS one of the greatest thrills of my life - well, one of the greatest you can have on a tour bus.

We'd boarded the bus at Busabout HQ on Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. I'd caused a bit of a drama for the guide by not having my e-ticket printed out, but nothing too major. We'd made it to Dover, saw the White Cliffs, passed through French immigration and chilled out on the ferry across to Calais.

We drove off the ferry and soon afterwards saw a sign - Paris 270. That's when it truly struck me - I was in Europe, was in France, was heading to Paris. It was the first time I'd been somewhere where English wasn't the local language, the first time I'd driven down the right-hand side of the road. We could barely contain our excitement as the kilometres to Paris ticked down, partially because we were getting closer but mostly because Jason and I had foolishly decided to have a beer on the ferry and now both of us were in rather urgent need of a pee. We began a card game to take our minds off increasingly full bladders, only for the guide to come up and tell Jason that she knew him from somewhere. The passages of time have meant I can't remember the exact nature of their previous relationship, other than she was the ex-girlfriend of a guy who's aunt had a worker that once drove through Cooma while blasting Eagle Rock through the windows of his hotted-up kombi-van.

We (and by we I mean me) didn't actually pay that much attention to the guide. She knew all her stuff and gave some good tips (watch out for the guys at the bottom of Montmartre as they'll try and rip you off), but had one of the most annoying voices going around. Imagine trying to listen closely to a drill bit going down a blackboard and you've pretty much got it.

At any rate we made it into the rest stop for blessed bladder relief and Paris itself with no problems, deciding to celebrate by going out for a drink. There was Jason, Cat and myself; we had a random Canadian that was dossing in our room as there were no spare beds in any of the Busabout hotels; and Cat Stas from Perth.

Cat, Jason, me, Cat, Random.

We went for a feed at the La Marmite restaurant at the back of this picture where we all tried snails (they tasted like mushrooms rather than chicken) before going for a drink. I can't remember much of the night other than Jason, Cat Stas and I were the last three standing and that we tried to get some Frenchmen to sing La Marseilles after we'd sung Advance Australia Fair.

Next day we were out and about exploring Paris before joining Cat Stas on the Fat Tire Bike Tour. We hadn't bought our tickets from the guide the day before but were told in no uncertain terms that this would be a highlight. They weren't wrong there - I don't know what else we could have done that compared to sipping red wine on a boat on the Seine while cruising past the Eiffel Tower as it lit up. We'd been up the tower earlier that day and had someone try to pick my pockets (a silly idea as my hands were in them at the time), but this was something else.

Also on the tour were a group of college students from North Carolina, USA. We joined them out for a quick pub crawl afterwards, where once again Jason, Cat Stas and I were the last ones standing. My main memories of the night are drinking Australian beer in a Canadian bar in Paris, producing a perfect French accent as we struggled to explain to the taxi driver where we were staying, as well as getting hosed by a barmaid for singing too loudly. Or off-key. Or just singing at all, it's hard to remember which.

One of these women didn't like my singing. Jason approved, but by this point he approved of most things.

THUS began a trip around Europe that still ranks as one of my favourites to this day. If the opening suggest we enjoyed a drink or thirty-six, then that's because that's exactly what happened. We went Paris-Brugge-Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Budapest-Vienna-Munich-Venice-Rome-Florence-Cinque Terre-Nice-Barcelona-Madrid-Sevilla-Lagos-Lisbon-Madrid-San Sebastian-Bordeaux-Paris over two months, making friends wherever we went. Most of the guides and drivers were good fun to be around, often joining us for nights out when they didn't have to work the next day. We started to build up a crew in Amsterdam that stayed with us for quite a few stops; many are still friends to this day.

Top to bottom: Jason, Jacqui, Josh, Kylie, Bec, Tash, Bec, JP, Nat. Took this nine times on nine cameras!

Prague was a bit interesting. We stayed at the Busabout hotel which was miles out of town; so far out that they'd organised a short walking tour which in part explained just how to get into town. While out the guide warned us to watch out for old mate who liked to prey on tourists. No worries, eyes are open.

Second night in and we're at the five-storey nightclub in the middle of Prague with the crew from the hotel plus Susan and Yeliz, who were on Busabout but staying in town. Most people headed home relatively early but I kicked on with Susan, Yeliz and and English bloke called Gatley. We all walked out of the club and fell into a conversation with some Danes, only to realise that Gatley and Yeliz had vanished.

This was a drama. It wasn't that we didn't trust Gatley, but moreso that Susan was naturally quite concerned for her mate. Susan and I spent a good couple of hours searching Prague; at one point we went into a casino thinking they'd gone in for a flutter. It was a bit different to any casino either of us had been to though - you could either play the tables or watching naked girls dance around on stage. Or both.

Eventually we decided to call off the search and hope that Yeliz had gone back to their little apartment. Susan offered the spare bed so I could have a sleep and avoid the taxi fare back to the hotel. Yeliz eventually made it back to walk into a massive spray from Susan, who was still relieved to see her friend again. Turned out they'd gone to another bar and had a few more drinks before heading back to their respective hotels.

Back at the Busabout hotel though people were starting to get a bit concerned about me. When Jason woke up to find me not snoring away he began to think the worst, as did Tash, another Queenslander who ended up joining us for most of our trip. Tash went on the rampage, knocking on everyone's door trying to find out what had happened to me. They eventually found Gatley who told them I'd been with him when leaving the nightclub; eventually Cat texted me to see where I was. I've never seen anyone so relieved as Jason was when I finally rocked in mid-morning!


I FINALLY left Jason in San Sebastian. We'd somehow managed to fluke getting there for Running of the Bulls, although that's not what I remember most about our couple of nights there. Jason and Tash by this point were a well-established travel couple, but there'd been whispers of shenanigans in Lagos. Jason had decided that was it - break-up time. When we arrived into San Sebastian Tash was there to greet us, only for Jason to take her aside and explain it was over. Tash went off to Pamplona with Laura (another Busabouter), while Jason, Cat and I found some accommodation and chilled out on the beach.

Later that afternoon Jason began to regret his decision. He asked me for some info and whether I'd seen anything that night; I'd gone home early with sheer exhaustion though. He then thought about things a bit and wondered whether he'd made the wrong decision. We knew Tash and Laura had to come back to San Sebastian on the last bus from Pamplona - when they arrived the scene was pretty much out of a Hollywood movie. Except that I was carrying a formerly-kidnapped soccer ball with me. True story. Had ransom notes and everything.

Jason and Tash stayed in San Sebastian and eventually took the ferry to Portsmouth. Cat and I travelled together to Bordeaux before I left her there, heading back to Paris and London. And Cheltenham. And Scotland. And Ireland.

But that's another story.

Ten Years On: Ye Olde England

LAST week I lied: next stop wasn't Europe, but the South Korean capital Seoul. I was flying Asiana, an airline I'd heard absolutely nothing about but was the cheapest on Zuji.

It was a pretty comfortable flight up too. I'd mentally prepared myself to be smack bang in the middle of large people with odour problems but instead found myself on the window seat with no-one else in my row of three. Combine that with a fully-charged iPod and the flight was about as gentle an introduction to travelling to the Northern Hemisphere as you could have hoped for.

Once at Incheon Airport a crew of us congregated together. There was an Englishman on his way back home, a few Kiwis and myself. The rest of them all had a hotel booked for the night in Seoul itself; this was something that my super-cheap ticket apparently didn't include. I didn't want to spend a few hundred dollars on a hotel room for one night, but thankfully the Englishman (we'll call him Chris) offered for me to crash on the floor of his room.

Once in Seoul we did what most young men do when in a strange city - had a feed and found a pub. We ended up somewhere called The Beer Club, where I can't remember much other than they served us beers in large urns and that we went through a rather lot of them.

Pictured: a beer urn.

Even though Chris and I headed back relatively early we were still a bit dusty the next morning on the bus back to Incheon. This was nothing compared to one of the Kiwis who'd spent the morning driving the porcelain bus then had to do the same again when arriving at Incheon. The bus ride itself didn't help, with the suspension so bad that the bus rocked from side to side while travelling straight down the highway!

The rules of international travel state that if you have a good run on one leg (exit row seat, three seats to yourself, attractive Scandinavian sitting next to you), you will pay for it next time. This is exactly what happened to me, finding myself at the back of the plane and in the middle seat. There was a shortage of the "European" meals as well, and I remember the flight attendant tried to give me a big spiel about how to eat the Korean meal. Not that I listened - after being in the air for a few hours I would have eaten just about anything!

Towards the end of the flight I found myself having a chat with Chris at the very back, catching glimpses out the window of fields arranged every-so-neatly below us. This was Europe - the place I'd always dreamt of visiting and I was there! Well, nearly there. Had to land first.

We eventually got to Heathrow and began the tedious process of getting through immigration. Jason had already arrived and got the third-degree about his plans; Cat (our other travel companion) and had the second-degree when she arrived. Me? Pretty much straight through. Had all my documentation ready to go and everything.

Waiting for me at Arrivals was an old friend Bec. She was over doing her two-year working holiday visa and having her there as I stumbled into the light was a great help. We took the Tube (riding the Tube!) back to her place, stopping along the way for a quiet beer in a pub (beer in a pub!). It was there I had my first John Smith's and instantly decided it would be my beer of choice every time I visited the UK.

A day later we caught the train up to Leeds where Bec had a work trip; I got to tag along and pay a bit less than I would have otherwise. After spending a couple of very pleasant days pottering around this Yorkshire city it was back to London where we met up with Jason and Cat.

Tomorrow we would be in Paris.

Ten Years On: Leaving The Country

SO I missed out on last week's post as I was down in Sydney and couldn't be bothered taking the laptop down with me. The reason I was down there though has absolutely everything to do with this next post.

So 2005 began and I was doing ok. There had been some dramas at the paper that seemed to have resolved itself, although I had the feeling that between this, that and the other I wasn't going to be in Cooma for much longer. It was around this time that I realised that my long-held dream of travelling around Europe was within grasp - I was working full-time, had just about cleared my debts and had absolutely nothing holding me to anywhere.

I was originally only looking into Contiki as that was the only European tour company I'd heard of. They had a tour that went around most of Europe including a few former Soviet republics - who wouldn't want the chance to go somewhere not many do? I mentioned this to a friend back in Brisbane and he was interested; all we had to do was arrange a time. Then Jason, Cooma's resident sports business owner, told me about his plans. He planned on travelling around Europe with a company called Busabout, which didn't run tours but instead had regular buses that picked you up and dropped you off at their preferred hostels. You could spend as long as you wanted at each place and if you didn't feel like playing with the other kids on tour, you didn't have to.

Oh, and Jason was definitely going. In May.

I wasn't going to get a better opportunity to travel. My main concern at that point was always going to be how I would react to others - while I was (and still am) comfortable with my own company, excessive social anxiety meant I struggled to meet new people, or even communicate beyond asking for another beer. I didn't have enough money, but that wasn't anything a bank loan couldn't fix.

Arrangements were made to take three months off work, the passport ordered and the flights booked. On my last day at work I wrote my last piece, a little column looking back at my time in Cooma. My bags were already packed and waiting at the office for the afternoon bus up to Sydney. Soon enough the farewells were done, the bus boarded and Cooma disappeared in the rear-vision mirror in the late-afternoon sun.

Next stop: Europe.

Ten Years On: Livin' In The Country

SO by late 2003 I was just about to finish university and already had my first, full-time journalist job working at the Cooma-Monaro Express. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started, but what I do know is that I wasn't listening properly and certainly wasn't a newshound on the hunt for stories. It wasn't until the editor sat me down just before she went on leave that if I was sitting around bored that I could always do something wild and crazy and ask her if there was anything that needed covering.

That was something of a turning point for me. I'm not sure why I had to be told to ask for work given I'd been a pretty good self-starter at Triple S in Canberra when I worked there, My work-rate went up pretty much immediately, which was useful given at the time I wasn't that far off getting sacked. I only found that out much later, and whether it would have been deserved is another concept, but the fact is I was letting myself down by waiting for stories to fall into my lap rather than going out and trying to find them (even by asking the editor).

Once things had settled down and I'd passed my three-month probationary period I began to throw myself into small-town life. I began by joining the Dodd's Hotel Cricket Club, where in my debut I didn't bat, didn't bowl and dropped a catch - the only thing that stopped it from being a complete disaster were the three catches I took early in the opposition's innings! After the game I was warned to leave the work car at home and got a lift to the pub for post-game celebrations, where Australia defeated New Zealand in the 2003 Rugby World Cup semi-final. A great night and a great introduction to Cooma life.

Sport in general offered me a great way to meet people around town. In 2004 I joined the Cooma Cats Football Club (Australian rules football), although the season before I'd played at Snowy Oval for Belconnen after I'd made the move south. That game was marred by a busted nose that required a trip to the Cooma Hospital and that still spontaneously bleeds to this day. That aside, you couldn't ask for a better bunch of blokes by your side. I still keep up with the Cats results and fervently hope that next time we win the premiership that I'm able to be there for the grand final.

The Cooma Cats playing at their home ground of Snowy Oval.

It was also through sport I met a bloke by the name of Jason. At the time he ran the Primary After School Sports (PASS) program down in Cooma for a guy called Mal Meninga; I remember interviewing Mal down in Cooma one time and the discussion veering from sport to how our mothers were too squeamish about the cold to come down from Queensland to visit! Jason also ran the indoor sports centre, where I joined his mixed indoor soccer team and discovered a knack for goalkeeping. I was only in goals because Jason and the other bloke were much better than I was, but one semi-final I managed to stop just about everything after we went a goal down. At one point with only a couple of minutes to go the opposition's best player lined up from just outside the keeper's box - had the shot gone in we were done for. Luckily the ball struck my arm, bounced out, went to Jason up front who then scored the equaliser. In three seasons we didn't lose a game, although that didn't extend to the indoor cricket and indoor netball.

In 2004 I began to write longer feature stories for the paper. Again I seemed to have a knack for this, with the editor submitting my story on the one-person town of Jerangle to some awards. It didn't win, but my job now included exploring and writing about the towns of the region to even reviewing some of the pubs for the monthly Snowy Times. Good times indeed for a young journo!

Ten Years On: To Mulach Street down from Garbutt

SO ten years ago when I started writing this blog I was living in a small town called Cooma. Anyone who has been to the NSW skifields of Perisher or Thredbo would undoubtedly have passed through here, although how many of those actually stopped and had a walk around is unknown.

They might as well have. Every Sunday afternoon you'd see cars backed up for miles on the main street as they tried to make it back to Canberra or Sydney or just about anywhere else in time for a good night's sleep before work the next day. See, even though Cooma is considered to be the "capital" of the Snowy Mountains and Monaro region, it wasn't close enough to the snow for people to use it as a base for their hurtling-down-a-mountain endeavours. They instead preferred to stay at lodges at the skifields themselves, or failing that, at the town of Jindabyne.

Cooma was also the headquarters of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a truly massive engineering and social achievement in the years after WWII. The Scheme featured over 30 nationalities - many from countries that had only just fighting each other - building seven hydro-electric power stations fed by the water formerly from the Snowy River being diverted back into the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers.

Given the governments of today can't even get a national broadband network together I doubt the Snowy could have been completed today.

So what was a young man born in the tropical city of Townsville doing there? I wasn't working for Snowy Hydro, never once went to the skifields to repeatedly bang my head against the snow. It was an odd place for a man at home in the heat to be.

Beautiful, sunny Cooma.

Rewind to 2001 and I'd already made the much larger move from Brisbane down to Canberra to study Sports Media at the University of Canberra. By March 2003 I'd managed to pack a fair bit in, starting a very short-lived relationship, having the radio station I worked at close down, getting kicked out of the place I was living in and crashing a mate's car. I was also sick of having to deal with Centrelink and annoyed at having been in school since 1986, so when one of the professors asked if anyone would be interested in a cadet position at the Cooma-Monaro Express I jumped at the chance. I borrowed a mate's car and headed down to a town where we'd passed through coming to and from the snow back in 1985, did the interview, got the gig and moved there in August 2003.

The ironic thing was that apparently I'd made a good impression while doing a two-week internship at the Canberra Times early in 2003. Had I not been so eager to have full-time work with full-time pay, it's highly likely I would have ended up working the sports pages there and getting a perfect start to my journalistic career.

But then, the rest of the story would have changed - and not necessarily for the better.