Yesterday I had lots of errands to run, including lodging my cheques from Jeff, obtaining a backpacker card thing to get cheaper travel rates, booking a bus to Dunsborough or whatever it's called (a place with a diving centre where I was offered a discount due to a longish story), buying a box to send a load of stuff home because my rucksack is too heavy and makes my back hurt for a couple of days after carrying it, buying a stocking to put my prezzies for myself in (holy crap, that's pretty sad and pathetic) and so forth. I started by asking in the hostel office about where there's a branch of the National Australia Bank nearby, and how one goes about getting one of those backpacker cards.
The chap in the office said that he's an agent for lots of tour companies and that it's actually cheaper to book that way than with the discounty cards, especially since I'd have to buy a discounty card. I'd heard good things about some of these organised tours, and figured it might be a worthwhile way of getting up to Exmouth, the usual place to visit the famously fabby Ningaloo Reef from, so I started looking into those. My plan was to set off south to Dunsborough or whatever it's called on Friday ("Boxing" Day), spend a few days there to do my wreck diver course, then head on via the very large trees you can climb up into and some other sights around the south-west coast to a town called Esperance, then up through the centre to Kalgoorlie, which is a mining town in the middle of the deserty goldfields, spend a few days there and then get a train the six hundred kilometres straight west back to Perth. Be back in Perth for the Saturday, go to the Games Guild, then get a bus north to Exmouth (a bit over a thousand kilometres), dive the reef there and make my way back south to Perth, stopping off in a town or two on the way to snorkel or surf, catch the Guild again and then fly out.
As an example, a discounted one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Exmouth is a hundred and fifty bucks. So all that travel would add up to a whole heap of dinero. So I figured a tour might be cheaper, easier and allow me to see more. And so it was that I ended up booking a nine-day tour for nine hundred and fifty dollars (which isn't bad at all when you consider it includes all food and accomodation and it'd be three hundred bucks just to Greyhound to Exmouth and back), which was a hundred dollars cheaper than the marked price. It leaves from Perth on Saturday morning (the 27th) and goes north, via the Pinnacles Desert and Coral Bay (another good place to see the reef, which Kevin had recommended highly) and lots of national parks and stuff, then loops back to Perth via the northern goldfields. Spiffy. It means I'll miss out on my wreck diver course (that wasn't gonna be cheap) and the big trees and stuff, but I will get to see and do lots of other things, and I'll be somewhere interesting for New Year's Eve too.
That meant I didn't need to faff about with all that discount card stuff too, which made life easier. I went to the bank to lodge my cheques, and it'll take about four working days to clear - what freakin' century is this? I don't know when four working days will be up, probably next Tuesday or Wednesday which is ages away, and at the moment I have eight dollars and no way to get any more cash. I got a nice big box at the post office, but still couldn't find a stocking anywhere. I did go to see a movie called Cabin Fever though, which is a good old-fashioned horror movie and certainly the most disgusting movie I've ever seen.
A couple of new arrivals in Room 6 with the long-termers of myself and Jen - more specifically a new arrival that's a couple. Why they booked into a dorm room when they're that energetically fond of each other I have no idea, and although I slept soundly through the night in blissful ignorance, Jen reported that they were At It most of the night as far as she could tell, whispering conversational nuggets like "a bit lower please dear... oooh yes, that's nice". Today she went into the room to get something and was greeted by the sight of the male's naked behind sticking into the air in order to facilitate his head being in the female's crotch area within the confines of the bunk. I can only hope they're out of juice, so to speak, and that Christmas Eve will be a silent, holy night.
I got my box posted today, weighing in at a little over twelve kilos. Apart from books and paperwork, I've packed off a fair amount of my clothing - I'm leaving myself with three pairs of trousers, five t-shirts, any shirts I have made of non-synthetic materials, and a full complement of socks and undies. This leaves loads of room in my rucksack and makes it plenty lighter than it was, which will be nice. Also it'll make packing less of a hellish chore.
I also checked my email, so I know a bit more about the Christmas I'm missing at home, and Sota said he can't make it surfing on Christmas Day so maybe the next day instead, so I'm at a loose end for tomorrow now. As the day wore on it sank in more and more, and eventually I went to the nearby bottle shop to buy a final gift from Santa - a two-litre cask of wine to drown my misery tomorrow. What a thoughtful old elf he is. It's warm and sticky, and although the street decorations did go up before Hallowe'en (a total non-event) as they should they just don't overblow Christmas the way normal people do, and the television isn't showing The Snowman or Mary Poppins or Scrooged or Die Hard or The Muppets' Christmas Carol and there's no houses here in the city centre so there's no trees with lights on, and the hostel isn't overflowing with tacky decorations, and I can't find a freakin' stocking! I ended up commandeering a red Santa-hat that's been lying on the communal bookshelf for ages and pressing it into stocking-duty, although its capacity is somewhat limited - but as long as there's a centrepiece that's the main thing. I've arranged it all deep under the lower bed of my bunk ready for the morrow.
Jen's leaving tomorrow to go up north to Darwin, so most of the folks I sort of know here have gone to the favoured local pub (distressingly called Fenians, although Australians don't seem to know what that means) but with eight bucks to my name and a desire to check my email sometime again maybe I'm not tagging along. I watched an ad-filled Diamonds Are Forever on television and now the hostel is almost totally empty as people go out drinkerisin'. I figure I'll retreat to my room (the energetic couple are playing pool in front of me at the moment) and read a book like the sad lonely old maid I am. Bah humbug.