The self-service immigration machine in place of a uniformed human caused me to pause. I spent 30 seconds looking around for information before marching forward with every confidence I was going the wrong way. 

’Just insert my passport and enter Australia? No, that would be too easy.’ 

It was too easy. I placed my worn out passport on the scanner, looked into the camera and the gates to one of the biggest playgrounds on Earth slid open. 

I walked through customs and into the arrival hall waiting for one of those uniformed humans to jump out with questions, search my bag, at least annoy me a bit with the realities of immigration laws but the army never arrived. 

It wasn’t just the ease of entry that made me feel detached from being in Australia, I’d taken a strange route to get there. I’d never imagined as a kid arriving in Australia via Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and America. 

The sun was aggressively spraying its shine in all directions, sweat began seeping from my skin and into my shirt. It only took the minute walk from the terminal’s entrance to the smoking area across the street to feel lightheaded. 

I was used to the overwhelming airless wet heat of high humidity but this was something new. A concentrated assault by the sun I’d never felt before. A dry, dusty and delirious burning of the senses. 

I threw my bag down at my feet and lit a cigarette, in the counterintuitive way that nicotine works its magic I began to feel better. The assault wasn’t letting up but any anxiety tucked away inside me gave way. 

I sucked in the smoke as I eyed the airport’s surroundings. The smoking area was a garden dividing the terminal and a concrete car park, the air traffic control tower stood just beyond the car park and a construction site encroached on the smoke garden with workers propped up against bins and fences, all in the same low energy state I had just been introduced to. 

Looking back at the glistening terminal I was still confused, ‘I didn’t get a stamp, I didn’t even get a passive aggressive stare.’ 

Here I was, finally in Australia. Ha. 

How much longer would this journey last? 

‘Will it ever end? Do I want it to? I don’t want it to last forever like this, but I don’t want it to end. Three years? Three years sounds perfect. How long has it been now? How long since I left North London for Washington DC with my post-it notes?’ 

It was 2015 now, January. 

‘It’s been two years.’ I thought, biting down on the filter of a fresh cigarette. 

I smoked enough to see me through the bus ride into town. 

I arrived in the Northbridge area and went searching for my bed. The assault of heat was still upon me but luckily I found the hostel without losing too much body fat. 

The hostel had the look of an abandoned convenience store from the street, large glass windows and no activity inside. 

After the check-in routine was done I headed upstairs to my dorm room and collapsed on a top bunk. I pulled the covers over me and closed my eyes. 

“JAVJXNKSIAUSBJSUS Mayteee…” came the screams of a mindless ape. 

Humans, I fucking hated humans. I still do. 

“AhsguaibsusaAhaytTjj ai’right…” came the reply call from another. 

’For fuck sake!’ I thought.

I opened an eye to confirm the disaster, just as I had gotten comfortable an ape had walked in and riled up another one of my new dormmates. 

There’s a difference between confidence, arrogance and bullshit confidence. 

Confidence is knowing your strengths and being comfortable with your weaknesses. 

Arrogance is only knowing your strengths and thinking falsely that’s all you are. 

Bullshit confidence is assuming an act of strength to mask your weaknesses. 

I had a bullshit confidence ape running around the small dorm room. 

I was in a haze between realities. 

Awake enough to be angry, too asleep to lift my body out of bed and throw something heavy in the ape’s direction. 

As I slipped in and out of the world the ape sounds finally ceased and I got some sleep. 

_

I woke up and went downstairs to get some free cereal. The guests of this hostel were a mix of bullshit confidence apes and disillusioned working holidayers. 

It didn’t surprise me, I was travelling the world for a long time for the fuck of it, everyone else was here to work in construction or in bars and restaurants and do their months on the farm. 

I was in Perth as a way to get to Canada. 

Sure, I wanted to see it, and I wanted to add it to my list but I wasn’t really there to be there like everyone else. 

I was in Perth to take a quick look before getting across the continent to Sydney and then fly from the bottom of the planet to the top and move in with my girlfriend who was waiting for me in Canada. 

I accepted the Perth hostel scene for what it was and spent my first two nights walking around the city and smoking in the hostel’s backyard. 

The backyard’s second hand BMXs were teasing me. Each smoking session they would be there, forcing me to confront an idea I had been working on for months. 

I wanted to do something special to get to Sydney. 

Riding a BMX to Sydney from Darwin had been my original plan, the stupidly expensive flight tickets to Darwin from Indonesia and less expensive ones to Perth threw out all those plans. 

BMX the Eyre Highway to South Australia and continue on to Sydney? 

It was tempting. I smoked and stared at the BMXs and started calculating. I spent the next few days running it over in my head. 

The obstacles were obvious. I’d have to buy a bike reliable enough to do the job, spare tires and extra parts, a tent and sleeping bag, kit out the bike to carry them and all the food and water I’d need to make it across the giant desert alive. The current season wouldn’t help either, the height of the Australian summer. 

I didn’t doubt I could do it, I would arrive in Sydney a shrivelled dry bag of skin and bone but I still thought the ride was possible. 

I had a few weeks in Perth before I would need to make a decision, so I left the first hostel and bounced around the Northbridge area for a bit looking for a place and people that could save Perth from being a lonely one. 

Regardless of the hostel, the same characters kept appearing, the faux shy European girls casually insinuating their sexual desires, long haired drugged up gangs, the working holiday newbies, the working holiday oldies. Each location split between Germans, French, Italians, other European countries and with a few Brits here and there. 

There were people I got along with but all in the same stunted way. It was clear we didn’t actually like each other very much, socially forced due to the setting to not only engage in small talk but actually half get to know and get along with each other. 

The weeks went by in flashes of mostly dull drinking sessions and long sun-drenched walks around perth. 

It was an irritating time. 

_ 

I began alternating between a hostel a few minutes walk from the Northbridge Piazza and a big blue house of a hostel nearer to the central business district. 

The Piazza hostel was a mellowed small second floor operation with a smoking area on the balcony always occupied by shirtless Europeans. 

The Blue House hostel was much larger, crowded with weirdos and had a car park sized lot for drinking and fuckery. 

|||||

I walked around the Blue House hostel with my skinny fat man body hanging out for the world to see. I wasn’t in any kind of shape to be going shirtless, I had little choice though, my wardrobe had been worn down to one shirt and a single pair of shorts. 

As uncomfortable as my shirtless skinny fat man act was, it was nothing compared to what I would be facing next. 

I felt the flip flop go over on itself and snap as I walked outside the hostel. It was a shot of depression mainlined into my arm, another problem added to the pile of problems. 

The pair of flip flops had become my only footwear and now they were dead. 

I already had a shitty mountain to sort through and now I would be doing it barefoot. 

I ventured out to McDonald’s and then to Western Union with the hard hot concrete of Perth burning and cutting the soles of my feet. 

I walked the streets of Perth barefoot for days, but for some reason I didn’t catch a single look of strangeness from anyone. The world had conspired to make this period of flip floplessness easier for me. 

After numerous failed trips around Perth to find affordable flip flops and many painful walks to buy food I was still sans flip flops. 

I was sitting in the concrete lot at the back of the Blue House hostel when the answer appeared. 

Next to me was a pair of dark blue flip flops laying there in the sun. I looked around the lot for witnesses, nobody was around. The universe was presenting me with a much needed break. 

I had to steal them. 

I casually lifted the flip flops up, examined the quality – dark blue Havaianas with no obvious functional defects – and eyed the backdoor across the lot. 

                          The Heist Plan

Pick up the flip flops 

Casually walk back into the hostel and into the toilet

       Stuff the flip flops inside my bag 

Walking out of the hostel and make it to the first turning down the street 

   Take flip flops out of my bag and place them on my feet 

Victory 

I looked back toward the hostel from the side street out of sight of the hostel’s probably not even watching eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, I had flip flops again! I was the happiest thief on the continent. 

I abandoned the Blue House hostel and returned to the Piazza hostel with my new flip flops, checked in and went straight for the smoking area where I started entertaining the idea that my heist may have been compromised. 

I thought of sirens and flashing blue lights, armed officers storming the building in search of The Perth Flip Flop Thief. The fun paranoia of a very simple but much needed theft. 

I was in the jungle, proud I could do what was necessary to survive. 

The next problem proved my flip flop heist a much needed piece of thievery, it would have been a lot harder to overcome barefoot. 

Western Union was again showing itself to be a demonic prick. My only way to access my cash had become a constant source of unwanted surprises. 

The payment was once again being held for SECURITY REASONS. Something that had continued to happen regularly and usually an issue resolved within hours, there was nothing usual about this one though. This one was going to be another fucking bitch. 

Having a debit card to take cash out whenever I wanted was a real luxury I missed.  

. 

I used my last coins for a bus ride to the airport. 

This wasn’t my first trip back to Perth International Airport. I’d already made a few trips back during my time in Perth, taking advantage of the public Wi-Fi, free water, air con and uncomfortable seats. 

I was clearly homeless, walking around an international airport, chugging the free water, bumming cigarettes off pilots and airport staff, stealing electricity from the outlet in the smoking area and getting some sleep wherever I could and yet I was left alone completely. 

In every interaction I had with people, they showed kindness instead of suspicion. Australian hospitality got me through it all. 

Through some combination of technological annoyance, I couldn’t contact my parents directly. It was time for my girlfriend to be introduced to my family in probably one of the worst ways possible. She messaged them… 

Hi, I’m Natalie, I’m Brad’s girlfriend. His Western Union payments aren’t going through and he needs you to call him. 

I have no idea what she really wrote but it must have been something similar. Soon after Natalie confirmed she had sent the message, they called. 

I explained what had happened since I last told them where I was, all the way up to the current issue I was having not being able to collect my cash and also that I was currently living in Perth International Airport. 

Finally in the afternoon I got a transfer of money from my parents. I counted it up and headed to the bus stop. 

“I’m not doing this again.” I said to myself. 

I had to get out, I needed to find my way to Sydney and then onward to Canada. I decided during those few weeks in Perth that riding a BMX across Australia would have to wait for another time. 

My heart was now set on another adventure, the Indian-Pacific. 

It would be a special way to end this part of the journey and leave both the southern and eastern hemispheres behind for a while, taking another one of the world’s great train journeys. 

I booked a seat on the Indian-Pacific and got away from Perth. 

I took a local train to the small coastal town of Fremantle to regain some peace and quiet and to run down the clock.