On Whales' Fin: Migrating South for the Summer

As the southern right whale swim south for the summer, so too did I migrate in this direction. Leaving Fremantle, my plan was to head to a small town called Donnybrook, which is known for its apples, and the filthy people that harvest them (me). I had heard of an ancient path leading from near Perth all the way to Donnybrook, called the Munda Biddi trail. The trail winds and bends its way through ancient forests of trees called Karri, Marri, Bullitch, and Jarrah, all of which have invaded the rest of the world, all of which I would call simply eucalyptus. In their native habitat though, these trees are quite appealing, and massive. The Munda Biddi caused my first, second, third, and fourth crashes of this bike trip. It was slow going through the forest, mostly due to the often poor surface of some of the wider sections of the trail, which were finger deep gravel. Lots of pushing a heavily loaded bike uphill there. But I perservered, braved the biting insects and ENORMOUS snakey snakes, and cutey pie kangaroos who move in such a ridiculous manner. I'm sure the feeling is mutual there.

So I arrived in Donnybrook. I made my first stop the cafe to have a cappucino, which are the same price as all coffee in this country, about $4.00 US. But one resigns oneself to such prices in Australia. Full of coffee and plans of picking fruit for the next several weeks making Gs, I headed to the local hostel, which here are called "backpackers". The hostel also serves as a labor placement agency, as it is mostly foreign, educated people in their 20s who do most of the agricultural labor in this country. It was around 9am, and I cruised down the hill, across the famous brook, and up the hill again to the agency. The first thing I saw from the road was people sleeping on the grass with bottles next to them. No tents, no blankets, just bottles and people scattered like fallen statues on a lawn. Luckily for all, there were none on the way up to the office, so I didn't have to use my expert bike handling skills to dodge any on the road. I went into the office, which was closed. So I wandered around the building, past the kitchen, past a swampy courtyard that smelled of doodoo, past some dorm rooms and out onto what seemed like the the front doorstep. There were some folks there watching videos on technology I couldn't work, and I asked them, "Excuse me, where is reception?" They ignored me, so I said it louder and more angrily. This worked, and they directed me past a TV room with people sleeping on bare hardwood, through a hall, and into reception. As I approached, I could hear a woman lamenting to a younger man about how the one police car in town last night was called in to the hostel for its third noise complaint in 3 days, and how none of the guests respected the place. Indeed, there did seem to be a general lack of respect among the guests. My approaching footsteps caught her attention, and she turned to me, smiled, and asked how she could help. I told her I was looking for work and would like to stay for a few nights. Despite my interest as a customer interested in paying $30 a night to sleep at her odd, smelly hostel, it seemed like my news made her sad. She replied that yes, they had rooms, but I shouldn't stay there. The work situation was bad because of the recent heat wave, and some people had been waiting in small, shitty, smelly Donnybrook for five weeks waiting for one of 20 positions, and the waitlist was currently at 40. She told me to go west, to the shaded lanes and rolling hills of Margaret River, Western Australia's wine country, as the grape harvest would soon be rolling. I gulped, thanked her for her honesty, wished her good luck, and wheeled the old machine out the door. West I did go, to Margaret River.

I did however, have an excellent stop just 10km south of where Sue's Road splits off from the bicycle unfriendly Bussell Hwy. It was getting towards sundown, and time to camp. This was farm country, with barbed wire encircling every field, making normal camping impossible. After doing so in Portuguese (Spanish), French, Italian (Spanish with an Italian accent), Slovenian (Slavic: Jaco's and my mix of Russian, Bulgarian, and bits of Serbian), Bosnian (if you consider that a language), Montenegrin (same, I'm playing it safe here for Balkan political reasons), Bulgarian (Slavic), Turkish, Azeri, Russo-Uzbek, Uighur, and Chinese, I asked a farmer-in fluent English-if I could camp on his land for a night. I must say, I was more nervous here than with most of the other times I've asked in these sometimes obscure languages. I figure the expectations of me were higher. Nerves quickly turned to having a beer with salted peanuts playing frisbee with nice doggies (Aussie kelpies), playing guitar and watching the sunset. I was treated to a most hospitable welcome by Russell and his daughter Zoe. After a nice coffee and fresh bread from Russell's bakery, I took off into the wind for the last 60km to Margaret River.

Soaring against the wind is hard for any eagle, and on a bike it is only slightly easier. I made it though, in the late afternoon, to the promised land of Margaret River where wineries outnumber workers. So I was told. The reality is quite different. There are at least 500 work/holiday visa people like me looking for work right now doing whatever in the wineries around this town of 4000. Most are following the 'harvest trail' which is a rough clockwise loop around the country. When it becomes any given season, the painted vans and ruined cars arrive in town, their grimy occupants spill out into the parks and hostels, and the search for a job begins.

There are professional roofers, researchers, fishermen, computer programmers, mental health workers, cooks, winemakers, accountants, and even bankers all competing against each other looking for work from 5am to 11am picking grapes, getting paid by the bucket. All three hostels in town are full, if you can afford them. If not, you sleep in the marri and karri forests around town, or in your car or van, if you have one. You can cook on your own stove, if you have one. If not, you can use the electric griddles at the Rotary Park, which are on from 8am to 8:30pm. You can bathe in the river, or take a shower at a hostel for $3.00. And every morning, you get up at 4.00am, job or not, to hike down to one of the agencies in town that supposedly arrange work, and the first thing they always ask you is if you have a car. My response is always, "no, but I have a bike and I can go really far on it," agency bot: sorry, you'll be asked to go over 15km to your job, and me: yeah, I can do that, easy, I rode my bike from Portugal to Hong Kong! agency bot, not programmed to understand sentences like this: sorry, priority is going to people with cars right now, but put your name on a list and we might text you later in the week if there's anything available.

Yet, the lists restart every day. I was told today by an agency that they didn't operate with lists like that, although I had signed one every day for the past 6 days, one for every day I've been in Margaret River, including the day before! This makes it so you have to go every day at 5am, and ask if there is work. It is the same pattern, with the same results. But people are getting jobs, one by one, as each winery begins to harvest its individual vineyards. This is my hope at least, that as the three month season progresses I will be swooped up in the wings of a great eagle, and carried straight to the vineyard, where I will watch the sun rise as I gorge myself on, I mean harvest, premium grapes.

It is a fantastic community of travelers here. There are mostly French and Italian, with a few Brazilians and a few Yanks and Canadians and some English and Irish. Last night a Frenchman cooked us fish with grilled tomatoes, garlic bread, and potatoes with rosemary. Tonight an Italian fisherman is cooking me to his dismay frozen Australian fish. Tomorrow I will cook Chinese food. And like this it continues. A guitar playing Dutchman just moved into our little community, and he said he made $50 playing in the street in Darwin during the mango season. A lucrative business prospect awaits.

Like this it will be here in Margaret River, for the next month or two, as the grapes ripen and are picked by my eager and austere hands. The grapes will then turn to wine, and the bottles may sink to the bottom of the ocean in a deep sea catastrophe in which no one is injured but a ship will be lost. There they may age or sleep or do whatever grapes do for centuries upon centuries until some ancestor of mine finds them and drinks them. I can only hope that an eye twitches in the strangest way, as their body recognizes the traces in the wine left by my hands. And they will be confused.

From the New World

I just ate xihongshi chaojidan, and I feel good. I've been living the incredible human achievement of the settled life, but that geyser's about to blow, and I'll soon be back on the old steel frame.

I arrived in the Western Australian city of Perth. I took a plane here. Planes move very quickly, much faster than bicycles alone, but bicycles in boxes move very quickly on planes. Bicycles in boxes quickly become bicycles out of boxes, with a few wrenches at the airport. That confused morning I made my way from the airport to my couchsurfing host's house in the coastal suburb of Fremantle, on the Indian Ocean, where I am now.

I came here with intentions of making money. I had not budgeted to come to Australia, in fact, I had not budgeted to travel further than Hong Kong, but due to some unplanned events, I had some cash left over. Here's what happened:

Jaco and I were just out for a bike ride in Tajikistan one day in August, eating almonds, apricots and dates on the summit of 4655m Akbaital Pass in the Pamir Mountains. Len Collingwood had just scalped his newest high altitude victim, and had departed down the other side when a converted military jeep cum 4WD RV with Austrian plates crested the pass. Its drivers whose names I regretfully forget gave us some water, and stopped for a chat. They had planned on driving through Tajikistan, and crossing into Kyrgyzstan to do a month of cruising around before crossing into China for a few months of exploring the country and Tibet. To drive a car in China, you need at least one permit, a state-employed guide with you at all times, and lots of money. It is virtually impossible to obtain these three things. But they did it, and informed us that their travel agency had told them that the border (Sary-Tash via Irkeshtam Pass) we were all planning on crossing would be closed in just four days for an indefinite amount of time due to ethnic violence in Kashgar at the beginning of the month. Now, Jaco and I had planned on doing a three week loop through Kyrgyzstan for several reasons. One is that there is a bird of prey festival in August, and we wanted to see that. Since the border with China would be closed however, do we take the risk to spend three weeks in Kyrgyzstan to find that we couldn't enter China on the date we wanted to? If we couldn't cross at that border, we would have to obtain a Kazakhstan visa, and ride through Kazakhstan and cross into China from there, which was much further north and would have to involve a side trip to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan to get the visa. Then who is to say that we could cross that border on the dates we would have wanted to?

We took the surer option, and rode straight to China, and consequentially only spent 1.5 days in Kyrgyzstan instead of the three planned weeks. Sorrow quickly faded into revelry as we ate our first pork dishes since Georgia when we arrived in Kashgar (exception: post-baseball pork belly from Italy on our first night in Azerbaijan). Not spending 3 weeks in Kyrgyzstan also saved us three weeks-worth of budget. This was ultimately how I was able to afford my Australian work/holiday visa and plane ticket here from Hong Kong.

So here I am. The first order of business when I arrived was to find a job and augment my personal wealth, which upon arrival rested confidently at $19.00 US. From all accounts, this would be easy. I guarded myself in the highest keep behind lots of alligator infested moats and huge walls with minions dumping hot oil on invading optimism. I could only think of my most recent job search, in Summer 2009 which took me from Berkeley to Eugene to Portland, lasted three months and was a rather demoralizing experience. But things would be different here, I was told by the intrepid ones that came before me: "You can find hospitality jobs in a second, or farmwork, or work with cattle and other beasts, tame and wild." So there I was, spending $10 on a pint of the last IPA I would have for a while, considering my options watching the World Sailing Championships, which happened to follow me here.

I headed to the Fremantle public markets. There was a stand called "Soulchef" selling "authentic Mexican salsa" and offering free samples. In a tactic to delay my hunger, I slithered over to Soulchef and stuck a chip in some sauce they called pico de gallo. More like pico de gallows. It was brown and viscous, not the way I knew pico de gallo to be: chunky. A rooster should be able to pick up the chopped tomatoes and onions with its beak. I inquired at the stand, and a Dutch guy ensured me it was authentic. I then asked if there was any work available, and he handed me the boss's card and said email a resume. So I did, got hired the next day, and started work a few days later with the promise of 40-50 hours a week at $19.97 base pay. I've held this job since, working weekends at the Swan Lounge Cafe pouring coffee and cutting things in the kitchen. We share the building, the Swan Hotel, with a bar and a venue in the basement. Thursdays are skimpy days in the bar, where the bartenders forget to put their clothes on or something. It's metal night in the basement, so the whole place thumps with the most righteous double kick drums. Sometimes there are cool shows on Fridays, but usually it's pretty quiet. Same for Saturdays. We used to be open Sundays, but now we're closed. Goodbye hours. I've had to say goodbye to most of my hours. The 40-50 hours promised turned to a spoken 30, though I've never worked more than 28 in a week. This week, my glorious last, I'm scheduled for a mammoth 5. So it's time to go.

And go I will, south, in search of eagles, once my bike is back in order. My bike was in serious disrepair after putting 16,000km on it and never switching the chain (glory be to this chain! Sram PC-90 if anyone cares). When one switches such a chain, it is necessary to switch all the gears fore and aft at the same time. I looked for the fore gears in Hong Kong to no avail, and after several days of searching for the oddly sized rings here, I was in despair. Enter Captain Walker.

Captain Drew Walker runs the one of the finest bike shops I have ever known in my 12+ years of cruising around on two wheels (Craig's Bike Shop in Grinnell, Iowa being the only shop worthy of comparison). The Captain helms a small room with a sliding door housed in the Fibonacci Centre, at 19 Blinco St., a small residential street. The Fibonacci Center is an artist space, with a very good café in front with very limited hours. The Captain carries the basics of bike maintenance for retail in his shop, and I wasn't expecting much help in the chainrings department. When I approached him (being at least the 5th bike shop I had asked about chainrings) about my problem he easily and swiftly directed me to a British website (www.chainreactioncycles.com) from which he ordered most of his parts. He listed my rings on his next order, and they arrived in a week. Wrong size! What could have been disaster became another episode of the humbling generosity that I am so eager to return the second I can. He lent me a spare set of his cranks and chainrings off of one of his bikes, for me to use during the week or more that it would take for the new rings to arrive. What a fine merchant. This is Community.

One of the finest things about traveling outside of the Western world is a sort of relaxed, anything goes mentality. In rural areas, lacking insurance and liability, if it works, do it, get paid. In the West, for reasons that make such heartbreaking sense, the simple and possible become impossible. Like not being able to take bikes on buses, or not being able to get passage across the Pacific on a freighter. I can't imagine many bike shops lending me spare parts for a week so I can still ride to work. The simplest things become complicated, and everyone suffers for it. Captain Walker triumphantly reverses this trend in his simple and efficient stall in the Fibonacci Center. And his business is thriving, which it should.

So my bike will be in order, and ride on I will. I am heading south to big old eucalyptus groves, and wine country. Also some big waves around Margaret River. This Californian tried surfing for the first time ever over the weekend, and laughed like a child the whole time. My ears are still full of water, and every now and then when I lean over water falls out of my nose. I also jumped off a 30 foot cliff into the river which was absolutely nuts, I am still suffering from a terrible case of the willies whenever I think about that.

I plan on leaving Sunday, unless I can find a decent place to watch the NFC championship game, which airs here on ESPN Australia or oneHD at 10.30am on Monday. And then I'll be off.