Bali Tales 1973

I had been in Bali, or more precisely, Kuta, for just a few hours. I was approached by a French guy wanting to know if I wanted to buy some dope. My instinctive reaction was to say no. He said he was leaving Bali that night and had more dope than he could use and would give me a very fair price. I still said no!

But there was plenty of dope to be found and I think we spent a lot of time stoned there. I honestly don’t remember. But there is photographic evidence of something lifting the mood and providing bloodshot eyes in photos like this:

And this:

The blond woman in this photo was from Melbourne. Her name was Alison and we decided to enjoy a magic mushroom omelette together for breakfast. I have very few memories of what happened after that. I seem to remember lying on the beach with her and on a whim I decided to go off for a wander elsewhere – somewhere off the beach and into the jungle. I have no other memory of that day until she came to my losmen later that night. She was as red as a beetroot and really angry with me. She had fallen asleep on the beach and got very badly burnt. She said I had just left there on the beach. That was true but in that addled state I doubt whether I was able to join the dots and think that maybe I should stay with her or wake her up, or make sure she didn’t get burnt or something. Anyway – not very chivalrous on my part. I blame the mushrooms.

The Western looking guy on the bed behind me in the first photo above was an Australian guy called Michael. He was ostensibly in jail for possession of marijuana, but as you can see he was out and about and enjoying himself. He said he could basically do whatever he wanted as long as he let the police at the local station know where he was, and returned there each night to sleep. A nice cosy arrangement!

Years later back in Australia I was browsing through old photo albums with my friend, Narelle, and she was really surprised to see a photo of her friend Michael in my photo album. Turns out she’d known him in Sydney years earlier!

It was de rigeur at the time to hire a motorbike and go riding around the island. For me, and for many young travellers I suspect, it was the first time I had ridden a motorbike. You did have to show an international driving license and pay the hire fee but after that you were free to hoon off around the island. So we did.

My brother Damien and I. It was a mixed experience. Obviously ripping down the road in a foreign land with the wind flowing back your hair and all that was exhilarating. But not even that thrill of youthful freedom could hide the embarrassment as you passed through villages and ruined their rural silence. No matter how slow you went you were this noisy interruption to their peaceful existence.

The high/lowlight of this day out on the motorbikes was on the way home. No doubt feeling a lot more confident by now I was doing a fair speed on a long flat piece of road between villages then boom – a large unseen by me pothole jolted me back to earth. Almost literally. I wiggled and waggled across the road for some way trying to keep the bike upright and just managed to stay on the bike and on the road. Damien had been riding some way ahead of me and was waiting in the next village and getting worried. He had seen the pothole and I should have been there by now….  He was as relieved as I was to see I was still in one piece and we continued back to Kuta without further incident.

During my time in Bali I became friendly with a German guy called Peter. He taught something or rather at a university in Berlin and was a very jolly guy and I guess we smoked several joints together. One time we were sitting in a restaurant when a few other German travellers came in. He briefly chatted with them and I was amazed just how much his character and tone appeared to change when he spoke German. All of a sudden here was this very serious guy who was speaking quite assertively. When his focus returned to our table and he resumed speaking English the jolly happy-go-lucky Peter instantly returned. It was one of many instances over the years when I saw how the language people spoke influenced who they were.

I always felt sure that Peter and I would meet again one day but alas it wasn’t to be. It was many years later that I found myself in Berlin looking for him with nothing with his name to go by. My friends in Berlin said his surname was a strange one – Wucherpfennig. In English it loosely translates as ‘miser’. Nor was it a common surname but hours of searching phonebooks and lists of names of academics in Berlin universities yielded nothing.  

My chosen route home from Bali was via Timor and Darwin, and that turned into quite a tale of its own.... (to be continued)

 

En Route to Bali 1973 - Train Across Java

 

CC image courtesy Nikita Gavrilovs 

The train trip across Java from Jakarta to Surabaya   was incredibly hot and crowded with people. Even   though we all had seats people sat on the armrests,   stood in the aisles, sat or laid down in the aisles or   even somehow managed to lie up in the baggage   racks. There were people everywhere. Thankfully all   the train windows were left open so at least the flow   of air against your perspiring skin offered some   semblance of cooling.

We'd been warned before we started the journey that we wouldn't be able to buy any of the cold drinks that were served on route because they were probably not hygienic. We were to drink just hot tea or coffee or bottled soft drinks like Coca Cola which were never cold. However, at regular intervals people who made a living from selling food and drink on the train would come through the carriages with these trays of beautifully coloured cold drinks that had ice cubes in them and were clearly deliciously cold. Local passengers snapped up these drinks - they were dirt cheap – and guzzled them down while we just sort of sat there drooling with envy for the first several hours of the journey and stayed with the coffee, tea and Coca Cola routine. As the hours went by this became harder and harder and at one point one of our group decided they couldn't take it anymore. These drinks looked so inviting! Suddenly as one of these vendors with these enticing looking drinks came by he just blurted out ‘I'll have one of those’,  took it, drank it and we all watched in anticipation to see whether he would get sick on the spot or 5 minutes later but after a certain amount of time passed he still seemed to be fine so from then on we all helped ourselves to these drinks and no one got sick. Not on the train at least.

It was a 24 hour journey so we had to endure at least one night on the train. It was around Christmas time and in those days I always carried my guitar with me.  I don't know how it came about. I guess I must have played a few songs.  I don't remember whether it was my idea or whether someone asked me to play my guitar but late at night as the train was going clickety clack clickety clack through the warm tropical night across Java I played Silent Night.  It was one of the more remarkable things that had ever happened to me. Silent Night is one of those songs that everybody knows it seems almost everywhere and even if they don't the melody is so poignant and engaging and beautiful that it stops everything and it did indeed stop everything on the train that night.  For a few minutes as I was playing and singing Silent Night I was aware that 50 - 80 people or more were dead silent and were just listening to me singing and playing. Nineteen year old Michael on a train in Java singing Silent Night in the middle of a tropical night! Those who knew the melody or the words joined in.  It was a really special moment.

There is another indelible memory of this train journey across Java. As all the Indonesian people often walked up and down the train so we took to doing the same thing. It would help pass the time, stretch your legs, and you’d get some fresh air because the area between the carriages was not covered. It was just a very basic coupling joining one carriage to the next. There was a metal plate you could walk on with a couple of flimsy hose handles that would be considered unsafe and completely forbidden in Australia.  But in Indonesia back then it was allowed. It was nice and breezy there and a lot of people gathered at these intersections between the carriages.  The end of each carriage also had a ladder that allowed you to climb up on the roof and invariably there were people on those ladders between the carriages and clearly there were people going up onto the roof. Eventually I got my turn to climb up one of these ladders and to my amazement the carriage that I was riding on had about 20 people up there sitting, talking, some walking, some lying … most of the carriages had several people up there so not only were people in the aisles and on the seats and in the baggage racks they were on the roof as well! I stayed up there for a while and really enjoyed it. However some time later there was a bridge in the distance. Clearly it made sense to get off the roof while the train goes under the bridge and most people did. They climbed down from the roof. As I was climbing down the ladder between the carriages I decided to stay there and keep my head just above the roof level of the carriage to see what it was like as the train whooshed under the bridge.  There was a little boy - I'm guessing about 8 - 10 years old - who hadn't moved and was still sitting quite erect and cross legged on the top of the train and I was concerned because the bridge was coming closer and this little boy hadn't moved and I was trying to get the attention of other people to tell them the bridge was coming and that there was a boy still up there on the roof. They were clearly not worried and told me not to fuss.  As the train passed underneath the bridge I kept an eye above the level of the carriage to watch what this boy was doing - actually I don't think I did. I looked away right at the last minute. But without flinching he just sat there as the train whizzed under the bridge cool as a cucumber. It didn't decapitate him! In fact he was completely unhurt and the people around me laughed because they trusted that this boy knew what he was doing. One of them actually pointed to him and said “been before.” The boy was quite familiar with the train ride and the height of the bridge. He was just enjoying a game of chicken with the bridge. I'll never forget it