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

En Route to Bali 1973 - Singapore/Jakarta

 

In 1973 Singapore didn’t allow people with long hair to enter. So my brother Damien and I were ceremoniously sheared among friends in Perth before our departure on an A.U.S. flight. AUS stood for Australian Union of Students and everyone on board was a student enjoying cheap student fares so you can imagine the party like atmosphere .

I passed the haircut inspection after having to turn a full 360 degrees twice to allow the customs officer to closely inspect my hair, but lingered to see how one of the more senior passengers (he was probably all of 30) with very long hair would get through. He had tucked all his hair up under a hat. He was asked to remove his hat and at that point he immediately started demanding in a very loud voice that he would like to speak to someone from the Australian embassy. He just kept repeating this over and over and eventually he was allowed to enter Singapore with no haircut!

This was my first visit to Asia. I was 19. Singapore had not yet gone through its economic boom time and the streets between Changi airport and the city were lined with poverty. People dressed in rags living by the side of the road; rickety market stalls lined the route, noisy dirty traffic flew past without any apparent order. It’s that assault on the senses that many Asian nations offer first time visitors that nothing can prepare you for. I remember staring open mouthed at the chaos unfolding by the side of the road as we made our way to the hotel.

That aside, the party atmosphere continued on at the student hotel most of us were booked in to. We roamed between various rooms where the alcohol and marijuana was flowing. One of the rooms belonged to the senior hippy guy who had bluffed his way through customs and who was now sitting on his bed naked and cross-legged rolling joints like an Indian holy man. There was a sudden moment of panic when we get a call to one of the rooms that the authorities were coming up to investigate. People scattered back to their own rooms and all the marijuana was quickly flushed down toilets, and windows opened to allow the smoke out.  Smoking and possession of marijuana in Singapore in those days was even more serious than having long hair! It turned out to be a prank - one of the students had just decided to freak everyone out with the fake phone call. It worked. It killed the mood completely.

Damien and I were planning to head to Bali in Indonesia. This involved flying to Jakarta to catch the train through Java and then a ferry to Bali. The flight to Jakarta was not a student flight. I was seated next to a seasoned traveller who had been to Jakarta many times and wasn’t impressed that his work had brought him back there. He called it a hell hole and said that if I thought Singapore was bad I hadn’t seen anything yet. How right he was. There are moments in your travelling life that you never forget. My first steps outside Jakarta airport was one such moment. It was absolute mayhem. A mass of people and traffic and noise in a chaos impossible to comprehend. As we stood trying to work out how to get a bemo (taxi) I noticed a man lying in the gutter – barely clothed and quite still. He could easily have been dead. And the traffic flooded past just inches from his head. No one appeared to notice. Or care. The opening lyrics to a Neil Young song played in my head: “old man lying by the side of the road…. don’t let it bring you down…. it’s only castles burning….”

By the time we reached our accommodation for the night all the women in the bemo were crying at what we’d seen. They guys I guess were crying on the inside. I know I was. Jakarta was extreme culture shock. I think we spent a couple of days there. It’s all a bit of a blur. It taught me so much in such a short time. I have never felt the desire to return.

Our next adventure was the train across Java en route to the island paradise of Bali.

Song #74 Happy Online

(Listen to a very raw version)

People say that I've got grey hair
I must say that I don’t care
Everyone strugglin’ to go on line
You might be a friend of mine

Tapping keys there across the world
Perhaps a lost and lonely girl
Who turns to the web to find her heart
With someone who’ll be apart
Far away

Everyone wants their own home page
Aiming to be the next web sage
I tried to find you but your site was down
You must have been out of town

Planning dreams to take me away
It’s time to go I just can’t stay
Email my friends to say goodbye
It’s time to go off line
I’m goin’ away

Then it happened - life fell apart
My friend dear life lost its spark
No urls ; no send, no reply
Just tropical heat and a whole lotta rain
In my eyes
Something had died
Someone has died

Gee it’s good to be back on line
Where real life can’t touch me and I feel fine
Say hi to my friends who have no face
They got no pain and they got no place

They can’t see that I got grey hair
And that’s why I say that I don’t care
They can’t see the tears in my eyes
I could be laughing and I could be wise
And I’m far away
Happy on line
It’s email time
Happy on line

(I don't mind 404. I don't mind server down. I'm happy online.)

(Copyright Michael Coghlan 1997)

Commentary: A song about life online and how much I enjoyed it. There is a kind of serious but flippant aspect to the first part of the song before it goes into a darker place. Flags the realisation that you can also go online to escape the hardships of the real world. As you can see this was written long before the advent of social media.

Song #73 All the Very Best

 

ALL THE VERY BEST

 (LISTEN)

Sing a song tell a joke

Close your eyes to the world

Throw your head back and sing

You spread your joy and laughter

It’s all part of your master plan

 

You play the fool drink a toast

Tell tales as a clown

Shut your eyes while your melody soars

You preach a message of peace through

 Miners, beggars, and whores

 

CHORUS

Yours is a voice from heaven

Sent to remind us that someone somewhere

Needs you

 

You bridge the gap

‘Tween now and the past

And share it with all your friends

To teach us all that singing our stories

Should never end

 

Such power in your voice

With the beauty of tune

Interspersed with a wicked grin

You left me waiting’ hopin’

That you’ll soon be back again

 

CHORUS

 

You roamed the world

Singing your songs

To the lucky and fortunate few

Who knew what to say

If we were asked ‘Vin who?’

 

It’s hard to accept

Your soul’s now silent

And that voice will soar no more

All the very best

Now you’re at rest

You left us wanting more

 

CHORUS

Copyright M Coghlan 2018

More on Vin Garbutt 

  

The Bad News Tsunami

 

Most of the postings on this blog of late are from the past. Lest I go drifting totally off into nostalgia it may be a good idea to write something about the present. Trouble is, the present has this giant dark cloud hanging over every aspect of existence. And that cloud of course is COVID.
We are besieged by a tsunami of bad news. "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences, they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.”
Like the young person referred to in the article above I am  “agonisingly well-informed” – a perfect phrase to describe ... people who have “no means of remedying the situation, like the captain of a sinking ship who knows exactly where the hole is in the hull but has no way of plugging it."
The relentless doom detailed in all media outlets over the last two years is crippling me. It’s not just COVID. It was also the Trump phenomenon and all it encompasses, the tormenting of refugees in off-shore detention centres, the assault on democracy from within its own boundaries, the reluctance to tackle climate change, species extinction … I could go on and list another dozen bleak issues about which I am agonisingly self-informed and at the same time feel helpless to remedy. 
Last week I took a few days away and journeyed around Western Victoria visiting a number of small towns with populations of less than a thousand people. I turned off all media and just drove, walked, took photographs and listened to music. It worked a treat. I felt better immediately. I need to distance myself from media more and more. I feel the damage its doing to my soul. I no longer feel light about life. Right now I don’t want to know about what’s going on beyond my bubble. I don’t want to know about case numbers, how many died, how many children got sick this week, the effects of long COVID.  It has gone past been interesting. It has gone past the point where I feel I should be informed. Being informed is simply debilitating.

My First Time Out of the Country

 I've been reading a book about someone else's travels and it prompted me to write about my first ever journey overseas - to New Zealand. It was 1972 and I was 18 years old.

 Leaving your homeland for the first time is exciting. I remember craning my neck backwards while watching the NSW coast recede into the distance through the window of the plane. The metaphorical umbilical cord had been cut and I was off to another land. Not too far mind – just ‘across the ditch’ to that other down under nation – New Zealand. I travelled with my friend Tony and as he had New Zealand cousins we went directly to their place in Hamilton and used that as home base for the next few weeks.

It’s interesting to look back now and note that we never for one minute contemplated any other mode of travel around NZ other than hitchhiking. We set off south together and reached Wellington in the early morn. Early enough to ‘buy’ some milk from people’s verandas in houses where they still slept. We were hungry and thirsty and no shops were open so we thought it was reasonable to help ourselves to milk from people’s verandas and leave some change to cover the cost of our theft! We clearly had a sense of what was the morally correct thing to do!

We agreed that if someone ever stopped to give us a ride but could only fit one of us in the car we would split up and meet at the next agreed destination. For the most part this worked well. But on one occasion in the South Island it left me stranded at Kaikoura. We had probably agreed to meet further down the coast at Christchurch but it got dark and I decided the public toilet at the Kaikoura train station was cosy enough and spent the night there. I’ve had hundreds of rides while hitchhiking over the years and most of them have drifted away into the past with no trace of recognition. I don’t know whether it was the fact that my first ride next morning rescued me from the toilet, or whether it was the fact that he was a priest, but a priest he was and I squeezed into his little Volkswagen for the next slow leg to Christchurch.

Our accommodation all over New Zealand was in youth hostels. It was great way to meet fellow travellers from all over, and they were cheap. You shared bunk bed style accommodation with many others, but for this privilege you had chore(s) to do each morning after breakfast. This might be cleaning the dormitories, toilets, kitchens, or sweeping up outside. It took about half an hour and there was no skipping it.

I dragged my guitar everywhere with me back then so I often got involved in sing-a-long music sessions at night. One night in Te Anau this American guy was joining in the singing but was really missing playing the guitar. He asked me if he could restring my left-handed guitar and play a few songs. I agreed and was glad I did. He was a great guitar player and everybody loved it. He happily put the strings back the other way when he was done – no mean feat. It takes a minimum of 20 minutes to do that so you really need to want to do it. That American guy was important for another reason that night. He was the first of many Americans I met while travelling who was really good at something – singing, writing, diving, skiing. Whatever it might be they had obviously dedicated a lot of time getting good at it, and were confident enough in themselves to demonstrate it or talk about it. It was in marked contrast to the Australian way where we tend to downplay our talents and prefer to blend into the crowd and not set ourselves apart as anything special – a cultural consequence of the Tall Poppy Syndrome perhaps. I thought the American way was more interesting, and more productive.

After we had been travelling for a while and had stayed in several hostels it was lovely one night – I think it was in Picton – to be recognised by one of the fellow guests. ‘You’re that Australian guy I’ve been hearing about who plays left-handed guitar and has been singing at lots of other hostels around New Zealand’ this woman said. ‘And people say you’re really good!’ Obviously there was more music and singing that night!

Somewhere in the South Island Tony and I split up again. I was standing on the edge of some town again and this small car stopped. The car was jam packed full of stuff. This woman was moving house and had everything she owned on board – including her cat! She said I could get in if I could fit me, my pack and guitar in somehow. She was quite happy for me to rearrange her stuff as needed. So I did -  got me and my stuff packed in and we set off. She really just wanted company, someone to talk to. It was an important point to understand when hitchhiking. Not everyone stopped just to help you out – though many did just that. Many picked you up because they wanted someone to talk to, help pass the time, keep them awake, and even occasionally the chance to take a break from driving.  

Our final hitchhiking stint in NZ was fantastic for me, but not so for Tony. Leaving Queenstown for our return journey to Hamilton a car pulled up and said they could take one of us. As it was Tony’s turn to take the first ride that came along he hopped in and I continued hitching. Not long after a Canadian couple who also only had room for one picked me up. A short while later we passed Tony by the side of the road – his ride had been a short one. My ride with the Canadian couple lasted for several days – up into the glacier country, across on the ferry back to the North Island, and eventually all the way back to Hamilton. Tony arrived back in Hamilton a day or so after me telling of miserably short rides, long waits, and an incredibly rough ferry crossing where he had spent much of the time vomiting. Life just isn’t fair sometimes!

Song #72 Don't Change Your Mind

 There was a long stretch in the 90s where I wrote very few songs, and I've just guessed the dates for many songs. But I know this one was written just before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 - so perhaps 2002.

DON’T CHANGE YOUR MIND

 

One day we’ll all be gone

Some day there’ll be a me-less dawn

Do you wonder – what will remain?

Of that crazy guy from down the road?

 

Who for 10 years was always there

Smoking, gutter bound

A child-man in his own time

Already a statue in my mind

 

Or the two guys with hip long hair

As twins they walk, heading somewhere

Each day the same routine

Who will remember them when they’re gone?

 

There’s a battle for terror in every Western land

Coalition of the willing looking for their man

Guns in central Asia pointed at the man

Who detonates bombs with a wave of his hand

 

Meanwhile down on the sand

Adelaide cruises on

Sunsets end our days

I come home and find you there

 

Whatever things may come

Home means peace with you

Safe harbour for another day

I hope you don’t wake and change your mind

 

Bombs explode while Baghdad boils

Some still say it’s a battle for oil

Papers freak us out; mayhem all around

Terror Australis – where are you bound?

 

One day we’ll all be gone

Please hold me and keep me near

In our safe harbour

Please don’t wake and change your mind

 

I hope you don’t wake and change

I hope you don’t wake and change

I hope you don’t wake and change  

Your mind

 

(M Coghlan circa 2000)

Commentary: written around the time the Coalition of the Willing (US, UK, Australia) believed Iraq was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and there was much chest-thumping and war mongering among Western allies. Clearly too I'm beginning to contemplate mortality. It's also a love song;  a song of thanks to Elizabeth.