The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost (19 page)

Today Canberra professes to be a lively government town, boasting the sort of perfectly planned tree-lined neighborhoods that would make the Stepford wives proud. Canberra is so green and orderly and manicured, the streets nearly empty of human life, that it's almost eerie. As we drive along looking for our campsite, a lone woman waits at a pristine, oddly shaped bus stop. Instead of the usual rectangular shelter, this stop is a halfdome gleaming in the sun, looking like it might return to its mother ship at any moment. Twenty minutes later, when we realize
we're headed in the wrong direction and have to make a U-turn, we pass the woman again, still sitting perfectly postured in the same spot, the wind lightly blowing her magazine-perfect updo.

Despite the distressing proportion of trees to people, I'm determined to show Carly and Michal Canberra's exciting side, since I'm the one who insisted we come.

“First stop: the National Museum of Erotica,” I tell them. “The guidebook says it has a small collection of artwork, that it's low-key and not at all sleazy.”

We pull over on Northbourne Avenue and file up a narrow flight of stairs. At the top is a small room where dildos of every imaginable size, shape, and color are tacked to the walls. In one corner, a forlorn blow-up doll sits with her mouth in a perpetual expression of surprise. In another is a curled-edged poster featuring a bare-breasted woman on a horse. The artwork?

Behind a small counter, a balding man in a black sweater is hunched over a magazine. I ask him if we are in the National Museum of Erotica, and he responds affably that no such place exists and that we are in fact in Club X, which is, as we have all suspected since having to go through both a door and a black rubber curtain to get inside, a porn shop. Oh, and are we interested in buying the blow-up doll?

“Half price because she's got a small leak somewhere and deflates if you press on her too hard.”

“Blowhole!” Michal shouts at the plastic woman.

I have to admit Canberra only gets weirder. We head off to Questacon, the National Science and Technology Centre. After placing our heads in a fake guillotine and feeling the terrifying whoosh of air as the ax swings down, we decide to attend a short presentation on circus physics. It's led by an American in a floral Hawaiian shirt and plaid shorts, with crimped, stringy hair. He's demonstrating some principle that involves balancing
on a plank that rests atop a ball. His major effort at humor during this act is to call up a hefty bald man who is asked to don a pink tutu and be his assistant. The bald guy's kid hops up onstage, too.

The performer is rocking back and forth, telling us something about balance and weight or whatever, picking up speed as he goes, when,
wham,
he flies off the plank and hits the floor. Fifty pairs of little hands smack their cheeks,
Home Alone–
style.

“That's got to be part of the performance, right?” I whisper to Carly and Michal, who are sitting there dumbfounded as the performer bounces up like a spring.

“I don't think the blood's for the kiddies,” Michal observes. He's right. The guy is bleeding profusely from the ankle. It's soaking through his white cotton sock.

The kid onstage cries out, “You're bleeding!”

“It's all part of the act, children,” Circus Jack assures them. He yanks his sock up higher.

“I can still see it!” the kid yells.

A Greek chorus of other youngsters echoes the sentiment. The youngest kids are distressed, crying and pointing, while this nut job is back up on that damn plank, rocking like a maniac while the blood drips like an IV onto the floor.

“Time to go,” Carly declares.

“Well, that sure was something,” I say outside, trying to stay positive.

“Now can we get out of here?” she asks, triumphant.

“Fine, whatever. I guess I'll just miss the coin museum.” It's all I can come up with on the spot to make my case.

“I guess you will,” Carly says.

Although we are ready to leave Canberra, the city is not ready for us to go. Back at the car, someone (ahem, Michal) has left an interior light on, and the battery is dead. By the time a tow truck arrives with jumper cables, it's quite late, and we decide to spend the night at a nearby campsite. No one is manning the camp's
entrance, so we drive in undetected. We push off at four
A.M.
to avoid having to pay on the way out.

“For the record, I think we should leave what we owe. This is against the rules,” I huff to Carly and Michal.

“You're a real outlaw now, Rach,” Carly says. She grins at me in the rearview mirror.

Australia is full of little towns where, as in little towns everywhere, life has slowed to an amble. A recent wildfire has whipped through tiny Jervis Bay, leaving behind patches of singed trees. We stop in Corryong, where the coffee is stale and the large Australian woman running the café is reprimanding her bored-looking teenage daughter for forgetting “the fucking eggs.” The headline in the local newspaper is
2003'S MOST POPULAR DOG NAMES
. We pass through Tarangatta, a place whose welcome sign proudly announces their major accomplishment:
THE TOWN THAT MOVED IN THE 1950S.

We stop at a pizza place for dinner somewhere along the way. It's a family joint with red checkered tables and paper tablecloths being manhandled by ankle-biters with crayons. It's been a long, hot day without a decent cup of coffee, and we're famished. No sooner have we walked through the door than we discover it's open-mike night, and two seconds later, Michal is up on the stage with his guitar. He starts off with a relaxed melody, some wistful chords, while staring mournfully at his audience. He sighs heavily and pauses dramatically as the last few strummed notes recede into the acousticless dining room. And then, with far fewer but no less interested child eyes observing him than the bleeding American at Questacon, he proceeds to belt out “The Suicide Song.”

And on and on and on and
on.
I put my head in my hands, mortified, while Carly sings along.

Ned Kelly was an Irish-Australian bushranger (a term originally used to denote escaped convicts but which now identifies the Australian equivalent of Wild West outlaws, à la Jesse James), and he looms large in the Australian psyche. He's an iconic folk hero: self-educated, articulate, and a loyal family man. For some he's a mere criminal, and for others he's a Robin Hood–type figure of national pride.

In photos, he looks a bit like Heath Ledger, who played him in the 2003 movie version. It's all in the eyes. Ledger eerily captured their squinty intensity, though even right before Kelly's death, those eyes retained a certain Irish mirth, a “well, that's life, now somebody pass me a pint” attitude that the two nationalities share.

Today's Glenrowan, where we spend the next morning, would be entirely unfamiliar to Ned Kelly. Now the whole place revolves around Ned Kelly and the famous showdown that took place here, in the way that small towns with big histories sometimes evolve. It reminds me of Chittenango, New York, about twenty miles from my hometown, renowned for its yellow brick road (technically a sidewalk). The yellow brick road existed prior to
The Wizard of Oz
—supposedly, it was Frank Baum's muse—but it's been refurbished, and themed businesses have sprouted alongside it, like the Emerald City grill and Oz ice cream.

Glenrowan even has a Disneyland-like computerized robot
display of Ned Kelly's final stand, though this being Australia and not the U.S., everything is proportionately smaller and less glitzy. The best part of Glenrowan is the six-meter statue of Kelly. Underneath it, I make Carly pretend she's being held up while I peep mischievously up Kelly's iron-armor skirt. Michal snaps photos and wonders out loud whether one might successfully climb up Ned Kelly with a guitar and perform a tribute song or ten.

When we reach the music festival on day five, it is a mess of tents packed tight in a valley. We set up ours, Carly briskly designating where and how as Michal and I lazily stick the ends into the baked earth. It's so blazing hot by seven
A.M.
that you want to curl up and cry, and so confusingly cold by eight
P.M.
that you want to do the same. The flies stick to your face as if they've got nowhere else to be but right there on your sweaty upper lip or, in Carly's case, on her glistening silver nose ring. It's too hot to do much of anything but sit around and wait for the music to start. Michal makes himself a sandwich of bread and chips and declares, “It's not a cookie, but it's almost as good as a cookie.” We pour copious vodka and Cokes. In the afternoon, when we can't stand it anymore, we catch one of the packed buses into nearby Lorne, swim in the ocean for a few hours, then head back to camp with renewed supplies of dripping ice.

The festival is reminiscent of the Phish concerts I used to love so much in high school. Michael Franti comes onstage, talks about the war, and sings “you can bomb the world to pieces but you can't bomb it into peace.” He's got long dreads and bare feet. Xavier Rudd, an Australian singer, comes out with his didgeridoo, a wind instrument developed by Aboriginals. It's a hollow eucalyptus branch that he blows into to produce long, low notes. There are girls with patchwork dresses and long-haired boys with guitars, everyone smoking pot and feeling the love. We
throw our arms around each other, even Michal and I, and ring in 2004.

After a stretch along the picturesque Great Ocean Road, our last tourist stop on the way back to Sydney is Hanging Rock. A well-known Australian novel and, later, a film by Peter Weir tells the story of two girls and a teacher who disappeared here during their school Valentine's Day picnic in 1900. Carly and I rented it my first week in Sydney, and I had nightmares for days after. The film, with its supremely creepy choral-music soundtrack accompanying whispering young girls with ribbons, white dresses, and feathery hair, climaxes with a haunting image of the lost girls disappearing inside the rock. It summons them like a siren, and they simply climb higher and higher, gloveless because the afternoon sun is warm, holding hands.

There is no evidence that this is a true story, but many cling to its veracity. Something about the place supports this narrative; plus, there is the cryptic Aboriginal belief that the rock has “unfinished business” and thus is best avoided. It was formed six million years ago when lava squeezed through a narrow vent in the earth. From a distance, it's an unusually shaped rocky outcrop encased by a ring of trees and shrubbery. Up close, it is a maze of nooks and crannies. Carly dives into them, wiggling herself into crevices, while I have daymares about her disappearing. She gives the psychic energy of the place no credence, or assumes it is no match for her own will.

I'm feeling bolder these days, more and more confident in my new Australian surroundings, ready for my upcoming solo backpacking excursion—my first ever. Still, I walk gingerly atop the rocks, declining to insert my limbs into any small spaces. I don't wish to tempt fate or mess with things I don't understand, though it seems like I've been doing a lot of both lately.

I'll be traveling by bus on my three-week excursion up the east coast of Australia, one of those hop-on-hop-off deals, and I don't have any set plans other than arriving in Darwin by a certain date in order to catch my flight back to Sydney. Until then it's up to me. I haven't even booked hostels. “You don't know how long you'll want to stay someplace until you get there,” Carly instructs.

Not so long ago, this lack of planning would have seriously freaked me out, but I find I'm excited by the idea of roaming the countryside at will, seeing where I'll land.

My first stop is Newcastle, a huge coal exporter where hefty ships queue for hours en route to Sydney. I read that this is where the penal colony's most nefarious criminals were once sentenced to work in the mines. I had planned to spend my five-hour layover
trekking around the city, but the train's luggage hold closes at five
P.M.,
and it's just after that when I arrive. I thought I had made a valiant effort packing, since I was able to easily zip my backpack, as opposed to when I prepared for the Outback and, after having sneaked in some extra clothes when Carly left the room, had to sit on it until the contents sufficiently flattened. But now, when I hoist my gear onto my back, I make it only eight blocks before dropping like a sack on the nearest bench. So instead of sightseeing, I heave-ho back to the bus station to park myself on the room-sized brown rocks that dot the nearby shoreline and wait for the sun to set, always a worthy pursuit in Australia, where the sky is as changeable as the landscape. Tonight's is cloudy streaks on a pink-flamingo backdrop. Dinner is Nutella on crackers. Parked around me, teenagers blast music from open-windowed cars, well-dressed women stroll along the water, and sweating bodies jog with their dogs. Two passersby strike up conversations with me, both about the current freezing temperatures in New York once they hear I'm from there.

“I couldn't get out of bed in weather like that,” one guy says. He shakes his head sadly.

“Can't wear those in the snow,” the other announces proudly, pointing to my flip-flops.

Home is so far away, mentally and geographically, that I'm starting to feel like I'm not even from there anymore.