Monkeyrockworld

I gave up. My working holiday visa has officially become just a holiday pass. After having stopped in every country town all the way from Brisbane to Townsville, I am sick. Tired. Depressed. Well honestly at this time I don’t even care that much anymore; it seems like everyone is haunting those towns like gold diggers looking for ore. Wherever we got, hordes of backpackers are living in the work hostels, killing the days off drowning in beer, and the receptionist always has the same answer for me: “You’ve gotta wait at least two or three weeks, of course you’ve gotta pay me the accommodation, and then off you go… MAYBE I’ll get you a job”.

Shopping at the farms hasn’t given much better results. Every farmer looks at you with a sorry eye, symphatising for your situation, and saying there’s a long list before you, and he’s sorry he can’t help, but you have to go to that caravan park first, pay, and then wait, and then, maybe, in two or three weeks… I usually say thanks, steer the wheels somewhere else and hit the next town. This whole farming thing is proved bullshit. Please someone who worked in a farm this year 2009, please contact me and tell me how you did it. They say it’s because of the bushfires, so many Australians lost their jobs that they are coming back to their hometowns to pick up the shitty farm jobs. And then yes, of course, Miss Recession, finally she arrived here as well. for my uttermost joy. Joyful pleasures!! Like eating rice, potatoes or pasta every bloody day, once a day. That’s my life now, a championship in saving the last cent to keep on feeding the petrol tank, the real mouth that needs to be fed to keep this adventure going. And it’s hard.

Australia is finally starting to be cooler, although always a very lonely place. I finally crossed the Tropic of Capricorn ovcerland, it was my first time. We already drove more than 6000 kilometres from Melbourne to here, and this country finally start to look more like home… a tropical home. No, its not for the people, they are the usual bunch of very nice but sorry folks, it’s the land that slowly changed in a vaster version of Indonesia, a Mississipi plain without the swamps. Beautiful, the way I like it. And I’m ready to face the outback soon, but first, we’ve gotta try a last resort in Cairns, Any hospitality job would do fopr two or three weeks, that’s what I need to get some cash to get to Perth easier, and then fly out. There’s no more reason to stay in a country that has no jobs, and overall, no real attractive for me, besides of course some lush scenery that describing as bhreathtakingly superb is just a limit. I live among trees, jungle and beaches every day, and I dont need much to live. It’s like getting back to some sorts of basics, while understanding that pushing close to an outstanding one year of travels (and no work) might be a turning stone for me, since I need a reality check, and also a real bloody check in the bank account too. Less than two more months to cross Australia, after that, I’ll pat myself on the shoulder, and after telling myself how good and brave I have been so far, I’ll definitely have to change a few things. Of course no, I won’t give up traveling, but I hope I’ll be able to do it in a new way, and especially, after a few months of another kind of regular life. I’m tired, my mind is tired, I’ve seen so many amazing things that now if I don’t do anything special every day, my life seems to have no sense. And this is quite bad for the soul of a traveling Monkey Motherfucker.

It’s quite cool though to live in a car, now. I’ll alway remember a song by the UK Subs from “Another Kind of Blues”, exactly titled “I live in a car”. It didn’t say a lot more than “I live in a car” for the whole lenght of it, but its powerful meaning tattooed my crazy teenage mind, and somehow the idea stayed there in a limbo for more than 10 years, and it finally became reality. I also remeber when I opened up with my first band Home Alone for the UK Subs in my hometown, and Charlie Harper, the singer, was there. He looked like the last piece of English white trash on the market, so old with those green and blue hair, but he still had the edge. The attitude. When I got off stage he approached me and he told me some words that, in their dumb simplicity, became another tattoo mark in my forehead:”Marco, don’t give up. You are the future”. I don’t know why I want to write this now, but certainly I know I tried to hold tight onto his idea. I don’t know if I’m the future or not, probably not, but I feel damn bloody excited and punkish when I get up in the morning with a pair of feet at each side of my head and I think smiling “Yeah, I’m living in a car”. Please kill me, now.