SOUND TRAVELS.

 

I've decided to write some Travel posts.  It is fitting, however, to start with something I wrote almost nineteen years ago.  It appeared in The Courier-Mail, in Queensland on March 28, 1994.  At the time I was recovering in hospital from an emergency appendectomy.  I was forty-one.  Strangely my father also had an emergency appendectomy at the age of forty-one.

At any rate, afterwards, I left hospital more dead than alive.  Prior to discharging me one week after the operation, the surgeon who had removed my appendix said there could be nothing wrong with me as I had no temperature or swelling.  I felt worse than when I'd entered hospital and had to be given anti nausea medication to keep food down.  The day nurse had decided I was a hypochondriac and passed her diagnosis on to him.  This was her opinion because, at the time, I was on an anti-depressant.  I will add that I had lowered the dose gradually from three tablets to a half a tablet a day over the course of a year.

At home the following day the swelling finally showed itself.  I called in a locum who advised me what to expect and prescribed antibiotics.  She suggested I get in the shower and when I did, what followed wasn't pretty.  It took three months for me to even begin to feel well again.

The surgeon apologised.  I had developed a huge post-operative abscess and was too unwell to even think about suing him.  The only thing that cheered me up was having my travel story printed in the newspaper.  It follows and it's all true.

"IN OUR CASE SOUND TRAVELS."

 

In the Outback there is a silence so profound it almost possesses a voice, as if mere humans are called upon to listen to something they don't have the means to hear.

I was seven when I discovered this eerie quality of the red centre.  My enjoyment of it must have drawn the attention of some mischievous spirit which decided to stir up noise on my future travels.  It became a curse.

It began in earnest when I arrived in London six years ago, alone and almost terminally jet-lagged.  After an interminable trip in a bus from the airport to my hotel, I begged the staff for any room that was ready.

Seeing my glazed look they offered me a pit near the goods entry driveway on the ground floor.  I took it and fell into bed.

It was 7.30am.  Time for jackhammers to wake up.  One did, about 15 metres
from my window.  I don't know how I did it, but I fell asleep anyway.

That must have made the gremlin really mad.  It would get me another time.

Back home with my husband and son in Perth, I decided to join my parents on a trip to Sydney.  We flew on the midnight "red-eye" flight and arrived ready to fall into our hotel beds, again at the witching hour of 7.30am.  The gremlin breathed at our necks.  it didn't know the meaning of moderation, or even subtle torture.

Jackhammers wake everywhere at that time.  My head had hit the pillow when a harangue from hell started in what seemed like the wall of the next room.  We phoned reception and were told that the hotel was under renovation.  The jackhammer was four floors below.  We were moved further up, to a penthouse suite.

We caught up on our sleep that night, but the fun began early the next day.  Dressed in my nightie, I threw open the curtains, safe in the knowledge only birds could see me.  Right in front of me stood two men on a scaffold.

"Morning", they said, "Can we start work now?"  Did we have a choice?

They began to hammer away at the exterior of the building.  Not another room could  be found anywhere in Sydney, so we went out a lot.

I returned to Perth a nervous wreck.  It was then that construction began on a mini-mansion next door.  One weekend, to escape the endless noise, my husband, son and I drove down to Albany.  We booked into a good motel.  We joked there would be no jackhammers there, but then, we'd arrived in the dark.

Saturday morning, a bulldozer began to demolish the building next door.  We stayed, thinking they wouldn't work on Sunday.  They did.

When we decided to move to Queensland, we made a trip up to Cairns for a vacation first.  You know the scene: nice hotel, etc.  But it's night that's dangerous in the tropics.

I called him Albert.  I find it helps to give a name to something you're swearing at.  He croaked.  There were plenty of cane toads under the surrounds of the hotel pool, but Albert was the Pavarotti of all cane toads and he was right under our window.

We begged the hotel to do away with him.  They laughed.  After three nights of this, however, Albert must have croaked for good.  Not a sound by evening.

That night a very loud drunk started singing in the hotel restaurant.  He continued late into the night in the outside bar, straight across the pool from our room.  I think Albert's spirit had possessed him.  He was singing over and over, "Ayo, ayo, daylight comes and I want to go home".

I began to feel like singing along with him.

End of excerpt of "In Our Case Sound Travels".  Read on for the rest of the post.

 

It's strange reading this back after all these years.  In fact I'd like to correct some of the punctuation and grammar but I've left it as the paper did.

As for the 'drunk' who sang the same song endlessly, I believe he must have had Tourette's Syndrome.  He may not even have been drunk.  He had started singing loudly in the restaurant during our dinner and continued as he moved to the bar and sang into the early hours of the morning.

The sound curse stopped after that last episode thank heavens.  I'd  traveled prior to this time and afterwards.  My next posts will be about those times, but it seemed only fitting to start with this one.  It may be hard to believe all this happened.  It certainly was for me. 



END.