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Saturday 27 October 2012

The pommies first Whinge


Well it’s been six weeks now since I touched down on the red earth that passes for Australian soil.  I’ve been waiting for a moment of pure Australian culture to write and so as I sit here digesting last night’s kangaroo steak under a 35 degree sun I felt the time was right.  The majority of my time in those first few days was spent scouring the job pages in the local paper and negotiating the maze that is Australia’s various government departments.  One of the big sticking points was proving who I was and trying to convince the bored office worker on the other side of the desk that I should be allowed to stay over here.  The taxation department proved to be the most difficult people, which, considering I wanted to give them money is a surprise.  For nearly four weeks letters went back and forth like a ping pong ball… all at my expense of course before they finally granted me permission for me to start paying them.  This brings me conveniently to a bit of a home truth about Australia, you pay for everything! The best example I can think of is the bank… every month I entrust them with my hard earned money and in return they charge me the princely sum of $4 for the privilege.  They give me no interest and charge me the equivalent of pulling my pants down should I slip up and accidentally use an ATM that isn’t owned by them.  But having got that off my chest I feel much better, if not a little lighter in the pockets. 

My bike did eventually turn up around 10 days after I did.  Customs and quarantine went on a money making exercise slicing the tape of the box and popping a sticker on it before stinging me $115 for their efforts.  I took the old girl for its first spin just a day later.  I live at the bottom of a rather lazy range of hills so I found the first road up and snaked my way up its gentle slopes.  20 minutes later and I was puffing like an old race horse and wondering if I’d just moved to the Alps or something, the faint outline of muscles under a new carpet of leg hair the only sign that I used to be good at this stuff!  The roads up in the hills are not there for scenery, they connect remote villages and pompous golf courses to each other so there are a few risks that come with riding in the bush.  Fire is a biggie here.  I’ve done several rides where the smoke is fanned by the strong winds and the risks only increase between now and summer which is just a month away now.  The other one for me is the local wildlife.  Back in England you could set your watch by the Spring lambing season safe in the knowledge that a rude awakening at the Eddie Soens was just days away.  But here… I think the picture will have to speak for itself.  I was off on my weekend pootle around Canning Damn when I stopped dead in my tracks to marvel at this beauty.  It is a monitor Lizard, around 3 feet long and according to Wikipedia, only slightly venomous.  It’s not uncommon for me to come across lizards on my rides; they bask in the sun like Brits on a foreign holiday, so far no snakes but more disappointingly no kangaroos.  I have however been attacked on my bike.  There I was minding my own business when like a pantomime attack the bugger swooped in from behind… a magpie, clawing and pecking at my helmet for a good few hundred metres. 

After the first couple of weeks of settling in I started to clock up a steady stream of interviews from an apprentice chef to Pest control but the common theme of never hearing anything back began to get a bit disheartening.  I was picking up a couple of days of labouring here and there to tide me over financially and spending the rest of my time job hunting.  Labouring is not something I’ve ever done before.  By 11am on day 1 my pipe cleaner arms were beginning to drop off but by this point I’d already traded my sidi cycling shoes for steel capped boots so I knuckled down and kept unloading the boxes of condoms and subway sauce.  In the mean time I had been called in for an interview for a sales job in the heart of Perth… finally a chance to work in the vibrant hub of the inner city.  I waited in the reception surrounded by more beautiful girls than a snoop dogg music video.  Just half an hour later and I’d been given the job; although what the job entailed I still had no idea.  I went in apprehensively on day one.  The 40 minute train ride was more Delhi than Perth as crowds of people crammed in to what would have been a great advert for deodorant.  The job was everything a salesman doesn’t tell you, on the outside glamorous, spending my day ogling the local girls but realistically selling merchandise to people who neither needed it nor could really afford it.  By 1PM on day two I had quit, I morally objected to the job and its ruthless rates of commission ensured I would have only scraped a living.  As it turned out I wouldn’t even have earned a living as the $160 worth of commission owed to me never materialised.  I knew by this point that I had to start living more like the immigrant I was.  In the UK migrants frequent a few places, firstly cheap shops… Lidl/Aldi do a roaring trade selling home favourites to various nationalities so I now spend most of my shopping budget in the local cheap and chinky (that’s not it’s real name, it’s just a food shop run by Chinese people at great prices).  Secondly and contrary to general British opinion: Migrants want to work.  My plan is to make money here so when the opportunity to work long unsociable hours (6am-4pm) for good money came around, I jumped at the chance.  Firstly there was the formality of taking a DNA test… or so I thought.  It turns out it was D&A, meaning drug and alcohol test, pee in a cup to you and I.  You would have thought this would come naturally to a cyclist but I’ve never been drug tested so it was novel.  By tea time (which is pronounced dinner over here) I had passed and was set for my new job as a concrete sheet loader man… it truly is as exciting as it sounds but at over $1000 (£645) per week I think I can live with it for a while.

I have been somewhat cut off from the outside world this last few weeks with precious little internet and just the local paper whose sports pages are packed out with AFL (Australian rules football, basically quidditch without brooms) for company.  Never the less the façade being played out in cycling at the moment has trickled down to me.  I won’t vent my frustrations here but it does seem as though cycling is in need of a root and branch clean up. At the age of 15 I was asked at a cycling camp who my hero was and I replied “Lance Armstrong”.   Lance for me brought cycling from an obscure hobby to a genuine interest and made it a big chunk of my life.  I took it for what it was, entertainment and fun. It’s difficult to know where cycling can go immediately… certainly a new poster boy is needed.  Personally I think the sport needs a new direction, people who want a return to the glory days need to take off their cotton cycling jersey and put down their 1976 cycling weekly.  But you should believe in the new generation, I’ve seen what the Dave Rayner riders dream of and they want to do it right, do it clean… see for yourself at www.daveraynerfund.com or even better grab a ticket to the Dinner and meet the guys!    

Cheers for now x


                                                             Motorised doping anyone???




                                           Hmmm…. Broccoflower, these aussies have been down here too long