The Ville Called Town

The morning after the Townsville concert, I woke up - okay that isn't strictly true, I didn't go to bed, so I should say when the sun rose after the Townsville concert - I realized that this was it, I was on my own. I had spent the first couple of days in Cairns alone, but as I'd been staying in a hostel, in one place, it wasn't quite the solitude as I was facing now. I was just about to point my car in the direction of 'south' with no real idea of what I might find until nearly 1500 kilometres later in Brisbane.

I am getting a bit ahead of myself here: let's rewind briefly to the previous morning. Just as we were about to leave the hotel in Cairns, I noticed a local paper in the lobby, so picked it up to have a scan through for a review of the previous night. There was one, glowing just as it should have been… however I couldn't help but notice that the headline read "First Show Takes Fans to the Limit." Chuckling indulgently to myself, I wondered what on earth those crazy INXS fans were up to now and read on… they'd flown in from London to Kuranda for the gig, it seemed. How craz -- hold on a moment, something about that sounded just a touch familiar. (May I point out at this juncture that, unlike in North America, Australian newspapers don't feel the need to specify that London is in England, as opposed to, say, Kazakhstan.) Reassuring myself that I hadn't flown from London specifically to Kuranda, therefore it was entirely different and not at all bonkers, we set off for Townsville (see? I flew in to go to Townsville too… )

I had high hopes for Townsville, for two reasons (well, two reasons plus INXS were going to be there.) One, I love the name. During my snorkelling trip on the Barrier Reef, the guide (a Brit) had pointed out that if a creature or plant looks like something, you'll generally find that that is its name - the Box Jellyfish or the Stone Fish, for example. Nowhere is this gloriously Australian literalness more evident than in "Townsville" - do they have, I wondered, "Road Street" or "Trees Forest"? The second reason I was keen on Townsville came about on a train from Euston to Milton Keynes a few months ago. Please don't ask me what I was doing on a train from Euston to Milton Keynes, because then I will have to admit that I was on my way to a Take That concert (which was entirely brilliant, by the way.) My sister, her friend, and I were discussing my impending Australia trip, rather loudly it seemed, because all of a sudden a girl popped her head over our row of seats and asked which one of us was going to Australia. Slightly apprehensively, I raised my hand which probably wasn't necessary. Immediately, she grinned and handed me a piece of paper with her email address on it - she came from Townsville, it transpired, and if I had any questions or needed help while I was in the area, I was to email her. So you can understand why I was keen to see a place that raised such a ridiculously, randomly nice person. And had a slightly ridiculous name.

The drive there threw up another surprise about Australia. I had imagined this road trip to be not unlike a North American road trip, in that I would spend most of my time on the vast highways that streak across the country at speed. The kind of highways that are so much an entity unto themselves that you observe the landscape and communities that you pass from a distance - almost as though there is an invisible protective tube around the road, outside of which Technicolor two dimensional images play just for the distraction of the driver. In order to actually experience the area through which you are passing, you have to exit the highway and enter the scenery - a bit like in Mary Poppins when they jump into Bert's drawings. In Australia however, you are right in and amongst the supercalafragilisticness of all the surroundings have to offer the entire time. The Bruce Highway in Northern Queensland isn't what I'd term a highway at all, but a road - two lanes, often bumpy and potholed, riddled with roundabouts and little towns; often you get stuck behind a tractor without a straight enough stretch to overtake for tens of kilometres - and this is the main, indeed the only, road going south through the State. The tropical, rainforest feeling of Cairns melts away pretty quickly and the vegetation around the road is the sort of desperate, only-just green that suggests it is nothing more than a brief drought away from drying up entirely. My Australian friend pointed out to us the scorched remains of banana plantations following a bush fire last summer, and, as we passed through the little town of Ingram, tarpaulins where roofs should be were testament to a recent, devastating, cyclone. Tough place.

The Townsville concert, as I have already said, was incredible. Years as an INXS fan: 23. Flight to Australia: 10600 miles and much, much money. Reading about myself in a Cairns newspaper: slightly mortifying. Finally catching my first drumstick: priceless. Actually, that's a lie - I didn't catch it at all. I probably couldn't catch a drum kit if it was thrown at me, so the stick was given to me by the brilliant Tony, the bloke in charge of protecting INXS from, err, people like me. Oddly enough, he also - equally deliberately - gave a drum stick to one of the Melbourne Girls - probably the only Jon fan in that crowd to rival me. When she and I realized this, hours and many vodkas later that night, we became a little frightened. How exactly, does Tony look out over a sea of 5000 faces and know exactly who to specifically hand the drum sticks to? We think he's magic.

I might have danced around with my drum stick for the rest of the night. I may have used it like a magic wand to futilely command slightly disconcerted people in the casino to dance. It is possible that I threatened the girl who tried to wrench it off me that I'd brain her with it if she didn't let go ("… and in other news this evening, the police have revealed that the murder weapon was inscribed with the name J Farriss…") It is not beyond the realms of possibility that at 8am the following morning, when my friend and I emerged from the lifts in the hotel - admittedly looking somewhat the worse for wear following an ill advised ice fight in the wee hours - I was still clutching my drum stick leading the receptionist to stare with a look that was definitely primarily disapproving, but unquestionably tinged with curiosity.

So, armed with a stonking hangover and a drum stick, I headed south.