16 months in Oz
After 5 years of working with my parents in our shop “ 3-6 Flip”, in September 2012 I left my hometown of Saint Malo to head off to Perth (Western Australia).
I stayed there for 4 months and then Stephano ( an Italian ) , Jelloul ( a Parisian ) and I took the road to Melbourne. A difficult 4000km journey across the desert, full of marsupials and roadhouse stops . In 40 degrees , no air conditioning and all in a Mad Max movie setting, we conquered the world’s longest straight.
January 2013 was kind of a dark period, 500 quid in my pocket, no work, no return ticket to France. The search for a job became a necessity …
Despite a sprained ankle from skate boarding I found a job as a dishwasher in a Jewish retirement home and spent five days at an electro festival lost in the bush of Victoria ( Maitreya Festival).
Melbourne is a great city but everything costs an arm and a leg, so to kill time instead of my bank account I had to find something to do .
With my ankle a mess, I forgot about skating for a moment and began to put pen to paper in a 5 m² room without windows, lots of Radiohead, Bashung and a little too much of Jim Beam …
One morning I wake up, look in the mirror and say to myself “Fuck, I’ve got to get outta here …”
Booked a ticket to Cairns, take off …
Cairns is in northern Queensland with a tropical climate.
I spent a week in a hostel where I meet a Belgian guy called François and Antonio a Spanish Belgian. The guys offered for me to go on a trip in their van for 2-3 weeks … A few seconds of reflection … Lets go!
2 hilarious and completely out of the ordinary weeks in Queensland … On the program, long walks in tropical forests, refreshing showers under freshwater waterfalls, nights under the stars, the desert island Whitsunday … all together with a rather salacious Belgian humour …
We then continued to drive, walk and hang around at the beach before ending up in Nimbin in New South Wales. So Nimbin is as follows:
“Nimbin was a rural village until 1973, when, during the festival of Aquarius, a large gathering of students, anti-globalizationists, hippies and revellers went there. The event drew the attention of the authorities and police who saw that the hippies consumed marijuana. Many participants in the festival were therefore set up to form communities with some united around a philosophy but most with no particular ideology. Since then, the sector has attracted many writers, artists, musicians, actors, environmentalists, permaculture enthusiasts, small farmers and other utopians in search of a new society. ”
To criticise, I would say that times have changed in Nimbin. There is no Hippie spirit to be seen … The musicians must have left, the places you can buy weed from, like at the corner of a street and in art galleries, can be counted on one hand … However the town is full of shops which offer all kinds of crap in the image of cannabis.
We head towards Byron Bay and are not disappointed… the beaches are beautiful. We spend our days walking and chilling in front of surfers… I want to give a small dedication to the beautiful shop “unplugged”. We spend our last night in a rest area and then head towards Surfers Paradise.
To be brief, it’s pretty ugly … There is a ton of concrete next to the beach … We leave for Brisbane! It’s been over 6 months that I’ve been here now. I work various small jobs like removal man, bartender, pizza delivery …
The rest of my day is made up of skateboarding, yoga, guitar, percussions, juggling and painting …
What’s next… We will see. Tell me where are you going? we could go together …
Antoine Ermessent
