Like a kangaroo

I feel like hoppin' up and down like a kangaroo

I feel like hoppin' up and down

The next stop on my trip after Uluru was Canberra. I had encountered the same response from every Australian I had told about my itinerary when I said Canberra was on it. They had invariably said “Why are you going there?”. I wasn’t sure why the Australians had such a low opinion of their own capital city but maybe I was about to find out. My trip from Uluru to Canberra involved a plane, a train and an automobile. The flight from Uluru to Sydney was quiet. I was sat on the aisle seat, the window seat of my row was occupied. The doors had been closed indicating everyone was on board and row across from me was empty. As the stewardess passed down the aisle I asked if I could move seats across to the other side. She said that I would need to wait until after take off as the weight distribution of the plane would be thrown off if I moved now. I wasn’t sure how much she thought I weighed but I was certain that even my large frame moving a few feet across the aisle would not be that significant compared to the weight of the 737 we were flying in. I moved after take off and stayed there for the landing too, hoping that my seat change didn’t throw the weight distribution off that much that the pilots crashed into the runway. We all survived the smooth landing and I was given some reassurance that my weight relative to a passenger jet was still within acceptable bounds. I had a window seat for the train ride from Sydney to Canberra so I didn’t have to worry about my weight unbalancing the train and from the train station I got a taxi, the driver not making any reference to my choice of seats for the journey.

View from Mount Ainslie

My Canberra hosts were Gavin and Rob, an English couple who had recently moved over to Canberra. They were friends of Greg, Gay Number 1 in New York. He had seen that I was planning on going to Canberra, had sent them a message and they had agreed to put me up for a few days. I had not met Rob before but I had met Gavin a couple of weeks previously in Brisbane. We had been out for dinner and had got on well in so far as the offer of a place to stay hadn’t been taken back after dinner. The taxi dropped me off outside Rob’s office, where he was waiting just inside reception for me. We chatted for a while as we waited for Gavin to finish work and come and pick us up. I gave Rob a very condensed highlights version of my travels so far, the same one I had given Gavin in Brisbane, to get them both on the same page. Once back at theirs I was shown to my room and told that a drink would be waiting once I had got myself settled in. My settling in consisted of putting my bag down and unzipping my suitcase so I was settled in fairly quickly and soon enjoying a welcome drink with my two hosts. We had dinner at a Thai place called Baan Latsamy to round off my first evening in the capital.

The next morning I was awake and up early. Rob and Gavin had told me to make myself at home so I headed for the kitchen in search of coffee. I found that everything I needed had been neatly laid out on the counter near the kettle – coffee, sugar, a mug and a spoon. They were clearly organised gays. Once everyone was up and ready I was given the itinerary for the day and asked if it met with my approval (which it did). We set off to our first stop – Mount Ainslie and the look out spot over the city so that I could get my bearings and a rough idea of the layout of the city. We parked up and headed to take in the views over the city. It was a great spot to see the whole of the city, which, was rather small. Rob did a great job of pointing out the various landmarks to me. He did such a good job that several other people who were up there also listened to him. A couple of Australians even asked him questions about what certain things were. He made a great tour guide.

Like a kangaroo 

From Mount Ainslie we went to Mount Stromlo, another spot with good views over the city but also a large number of burnt out telescopes, the remnants of a devastating fire 9 years before. We continued our space theme by heading out to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. On the way in was a model of the Voyager 2 rocket with a plaque announcing it was there to commemorate the “encounter with Uranus”. I got the giggles. Rob and Gavin came to see what I was laughing at. They both walked away shaking their heads. After a look round the exhibits we had a coffee and a sandwich sat out in the sun before heading off to the Namadgi National Park for a bit of a hike. On the way over we saw some exotic roadkill including a huge wombat and a kangaroo. Thankfully we got to see some live kangaroos on our hike. Gavin was great at spotting some of the smaller wildlife that dotted our route up to American Hat and back. It was a great hike and by the time we returned I was ready for a quick snooze before we got ready to head out for dinner and drinks.

After dinner at Wagamama (a lovely little reminder of being back home) sat outside in the warm evening air (not so much a reminder of being back home) we decided that as it was Saturday evening we should go try out the Canberra gay scene – all one bar of it. Gavin and Rob had also yet to experience it too so we were all virgins as far as the Canberra gay scene was concerned. We made our way to The Cube, which had apparently recently undergone a revamp. The bar was a decent size, with plenty of seating and a small dancefloor off to one side. The music was fairly loud (although I realise saying this might just make me old) and it was a little on the empty side although it wasn’t even 11pm yet. We got our drinks and then found a spot to sit and judge people. It was another reminder of what it had been like growing up in Sheffield where the gay scene had not been that much bigger. Everyone had to go to the same place – guys and girls, young and old. I suspected that the relatively small size of the gay scene and the city meant that most people would already know each other. It had been the same in Sheffield – you couldn’t start dating anyone without half the gay population knowing about it or pointing out who had already slept with them.

By the end of the evening we had reached a couple of conclusions about the Canberra gay scene. The first was that the bar was not as bad as we had all been expecting both in terms of fellow patrons, music and décor. The second was that no matter where you are there is a strong chance that there will be a group of young straight girls in a gay bar.  Finally we were pleased, for different reasons, we didn’t have to rely on the Canberra gay scene to meet future partners. Rob and Gavin already had each other and I was only in town for a weekend.

“I feel like hoppin' up and down like a kangaroo” 
Lyrics from Once a Year Day from the musical The Pajama Game