Paperjam

Letter from Australia No 1

Travel // Vanessa // 10th May 2003

I'm beginning to get really jealous of my friend who is at this moment in time drinking cocktails underneath a palm tree on a white sandy beach in Thailand where the sun is shining and people are happy. Why I didn't go there is a question that will haunt me for all of time.

Then I keep telling myself, my time will come. But until then I'm stuck in Sydney, where the weather is as unpredictable as England, doing a mind-numbing job picking staples out of folders and stuffing envelopes with letters for snotty doctors who treat a lowly worker such as myself like shit.

Even waitressing would have been more stimulating, but no, they don't want travellers and unless you have five years' experience and a certificate to prove that you can wash dishes, cut sandwiches and pour coffee, no-where will have you. Just not good enough you see. Jobs here are for the uneducated, so if you've finished school, you're over-qualified for most of the jobs going.

So I had to take a job as a receptionist, answering phones to doctors who expect you to answer their random queries about courses and exams. Heaven forbid if you tell them you can't help them or have to transfer them to someone who can help! The tuts and sighs are enough to tempt you to hurl a few insults and obscenities in their direction . But then where would I be? My sole purpose for living at the moment is to de-staple folders and franking letters for a postman who can't be bothered to wait for you and without it I'd be nothing...

My free time is just about as exhilarating as my working life here in Sydney...a place which travellers of the past swear is one of the best places on earth. They were obviously lying through their rotten teeth when they said people here are friendly and the city`buzzing'. There is definitely no buzz and I find myself wanting to cook, clean and catch up on watching all those videos that I missed out on before travelling to Oz, because I was saving up to come here.

The people are miserable and i'd rather be stuffing envelopes and loading and unloading the office dishwasher rather than sample what Sydney has to offer.

You must remember that I decided to come here when the sun was taking a holiday to the other side of the planet, so I might as well be in London for the rain, wind and general pissiness of the season. I dared to laugh when I saw shops stocking up on clothes for the winter season...who's going to wear a woolly hat and scarf, full length winter coat and roll neck jumpers in Australia? Plenty of people, that's who, and now i'm finding myself looking like a Michelin man at work because i'm wearing so many layers, freezing my fat arse off in reception because no one in Australia has any heating. Yes, freezing has a totally different meaning in Oz...it's woollies time when the temperature drops to 18 degrees, but because everywhere insists on air conditioning, you need your winter thermals indoors, not outdoors.

Even a visit to the world famous Opera House - a dirty white monstrosity which looks like Lisa Simpson's hair and boasts being fitted out in your granny's stylish brown furniture rejects - failed to inject any excitement in me. I had actually travelled to the other side of the world to see it and live for a few months (and only a few months thank god), in a miniature London - except that London actually has things to go and look at. It's full of British backpackers (like me), who are just out of school or uni (unlike me), intent on getting pissed every night (again, unlike me, but that's because I have no friends).

Maybe I'm just turning into a sour faced, bitter old married - or maybe Sydney is just like a massively hyped film...the trailers show you the best bit and when you leave the film, you haven't actually seen anything new and once you leave the cinema, you've forgotten you saw it at all.