It's all malarky

Or that’s what this internet cafe manager thinks of Apple Mac fans. I don’t mind agreeing. “Like bloody born again Christians, they are!” He’s pushing 55, and has one sort of squished eye from a car crash in ‘99. I like him. We’ve been puzzling how to get him more custom. The kids aren’t filling the place and nor are the tourists.

It might be the nasty mural that covers all the walls. On a yellow background is an Earth spinning with coloured ribbons radiating out, and between the ribbons are what I can only describe as “travel highlights”. I am sat in front of an inaccurate interpretation of the pyramids, my neighbouring computer user has a partial vista of Stonehenge in front of him. It’s pretty horrible.

If I were a brooding Counterstrike player, I think I’d go to the cafe with the blacked out backroom with cammo netting on the ceiling, not this place. It resembles a nursery, or a classroom for special needs.

Not that I suggested this to the manager.

Anyway, this is a half hearted update from Australia. We’ve had rain and flooding up the New South Wales coast. Small town Bellingen was entirely cut off, with all roads in and out submerged (pictured, left).

However, Australia has an excellent volunteer service called the State Emergency Services, and these brave souls don yellow vests and lift grannies out of submerged homes and search for missing people. Possibly due to this large community effort only one fatality occured.

At their best the Aussies are very community spirited, that’s when they aren’t making dubious laws to curb the motorbike gangs, the “bikies”.

I love it that newsreaders and journalists have unquestioningly accepted the term “bikie”.It’s just not a scary word, bikie, it sounds like something small and potentially cute.

I narrowly missed by a couple of hours, witnessing a bikie being offed by a rival gang at Sydney airport. About a week later, that bikie’s brother was then also shot. I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s like a low rent Sopranos, but where everyone looks like Vin Diesel with oiled pecs and 6-packs.

I’m headed to Byron to sample a little of the Blues and Roots festival this easter weekend, but will be in Sydney later this month. Any Sydney-siders I didn’t catch up with yet, shout and I’ll see you on the way back.