29th October,
2013 – “The roommates”
After 24 hours of travelling (with approximately 2 hours of sleep
each), we arrived at Pirates Backpackers Hostel. We were a little surprised to
find the place deserted, but then again, it was 03.30am. A friendly German
(who’s name has escaped me) showed us to our room (an 8-bed dormitory), where
we were unpleasantly surprised to find three fella’s already fast asleep. The
friendly German seemed completely oblivious to the sleeping gentlemen;
proceeding to switch on the light and projecting his booming voice in their
direction. One lay motionless, brown toes protruding from the light blue bed
covers. Another stirred, but didn’t seem to show any great concern. The last
man, closest to the door, sat up and drank some water. He stared vacantly
around at us all and mumbled something about not having to put things in
lockers, however by this point it was a little too late, as Mackie had already
opened his locker and proceeded to ram his rucksack headfirst into the tight opening,
creating a volume of significantly over 100dB. If the people next door had been
asleep, they definitely weren’t any longer. Some of us suppressed laughter at
the crashing sound, others were too tired to give much of a shit. The sitting
man continued to stare vacantly around in the dark for a while. We went to
sleep.
So in the morning, we fed the three guys all of our apologies for
the commotion. Nobody seemed too bothered.
Roommate No. 1 happened to be a Dutchman called…
BOSS.
Yep, BOSS. Like Hugo BOSS, minus the Hugo. Boss had been travelling
for quite some time, and after his $3,000 car exploded on a roadtrip from
Adelaide in the South, he ended up in Freo. After 5 minutes of chatting to Boss, he was noted to
be a really friendly guy, full of comical stories about exploding automobiles,
drinking a fuck-ton of beer on an extremely regular basis, and accidentally
securing a job by singing in the street to his (now) manager. BOSS also informs
me that the bed in which I currently reside was previously inhabited by a
sex-crazed Scotsman who had successfully “fucked 6 chicks in 5 nights” prior to
my arrival. Thanks for the heads-up, BOSS.
Roommate No. 2 was a tanned Italian called Marco. Marco works a
construction job and loves the Aussie way of life. Our apologies for the
03.30am wake-up call were met with a slurred “I don’t geve a fuck.” After some
small talk, Marco lay down and fell asleep and I haven’t seen much of him
since.
The final roommate is Alan, who’s come from New Zealand. He looks
well into his mid-forties, and in the words of Marco, “I-a don’t like to judge,
but ah, he’s weird.”
There was no denying it, Alan was weird as shit. A true merchant of
doom, every statement seemed to drag down the mood of the group (although a
glance out the window at the glorious sunshine always brought it back up fairly
quickly). Alan is looking for work here and has no plans to leave anytime soon.
Great. My guess is mid-life crisis; divorce, redundancy, diagnosis of terminal
illness…either that or he’s on the run from the law.
So the day was spent wandering around getting our bearings, sorting
out some of the boring stuff, and eating overpriced cheeseburgers. Fremantle is
an awesome place, full of art galleries, murals, buskers, and most importantly
beaches. Apparently there’s a lot of crack-heads too, but I didn’t see any
today. I also didn’t envision so many flies when dreaming of Freo at home, but hey,
you can’t have everything. The evening was filled with the sounds of a
hostel-party which we didn’t attend as we were all too tired. Someone was
murdering Kings of Leon on an acoustic guitar. We played table football briefly
and sent a couple of emails on the overpriced dial-up internet. I brushed my
teeth. Kings of Leon were being murdered again, this time with a chorus of
“Someone Like You, wooooaah”. We tried to go to sleep but were all too
jet-lagged and gave up after around 6 hours of trying. The next day was going
to be hell, but at least we didn’t have to do very much.
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