Welcome to Our World
Crossing Continents: a father and son take the road from Melbourne to London
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I re-join my young friend with the leg and the ghetto blaster. It's good to be back with all my bed bunk friends again, every one of them after such a near miss. Sleep wanders in around oneish when the noise stops. Or is that two? Sleep leaves me at close to five or was that four? And now there are phones ringing, and music playing and people talking quietly and babies crying loudly and wanting a feed and needing their mums and me wanting the toilet again. Oh no… In the welcoming dawn light my bed bunk friends laze about the ship for a few hours. Will is off somewhere preferring younger company to mine. There is a low but constant murmur of hundreds of voices, and occasional laughter from happy people. We look out to the sea and the coast; as the hills get bigger, small settlements can be discerned, and Larantuka port swings into view. Finally passengers drift off towards the car deck where this voyage to long remember will end. While waiting Will has found a couple of teens to share his time with. He tries to learn some words of Indonesian from them, jotting down translations inside the covers of our Lonely Planet but they speak too fast. He finds one young man wanting a lift but he unfortunately gets lost in the crowd as we're leaving. On a hand signal from a boyish crew member we thankfully drive off, directed this way and that by smiling, uniformed crew members far younger than Will. We bump our way up the gangplank door and crawl along the narrow jetty, maneuvering gently between our friends and other passengers also using the jetty and who part to let us through, to emerge wiser and somewhat sobered onto Larantuka's solid concrete dock. * * * I am affected not so much by a voyage from hell, but rather by the acceptance by our bed bunk friends who we shared the night with and the multitude of others doing likewise of this being just another day, just another ferry voyage, no more than an everyday event in fact. Peter Fleming saw it also. In his humbling and extraordinary News from Tartary he beautifully describes the equal equanimity of his fellow passengers while suffering great overcrowding and significant discomfort during a train journey in 1935; `To-day was to-day; no disaster threatened, no responsibility had to be incurred; to-day was to-day'. I am moved by the tolerance of my friends to a fire on board, mass panic, gross overcrowding, a putrid, flooded toilet, mind thumping noise and choking, smoke-filled air as the norm, as their lot in life. And I know that all of this was on a good day. I am confused at my reaction but can only think of what might have otherwise been with a less benign sea on another day, on a vastly different voyage. I look up to the sky so blue and to the vivid green of the trees close by and thank my lucky stars. All our lucky stars.
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About the Book
Yet I knew even then that this whole Melbourne to London thing was over the top. It was quite outrageous. Utterly preposterous. But I was a goner—totally, hopelessly bitten. Having an adventure is easy. Step 1—drive down one’s street. Step 2—keep driving. Step 3—stop at London! Welcome to Our World is about a comfortably settled David Gairns and his teenage son Will on one extraordinary drive from Melbourne, Australia to London, England through Asia in 2010. The spark that started it, their hopes, their dreams, their doubts and stresses are all here. It tells of Will’s girlfriend Lauren who just kept on popping up and of father and son bonding or not bonding at all, as so happens. It is about a real journey and a life journey, of acting the fool and finding a life. Of the highs and the lows and of the joy of being alive, of so many generous strangers who helped along the way. They hope you enjoy the drive, the experience, the journey and the adventures they encountered everywhere.
About the Author
David Gairns David is a man who used to think a big trip ended after a day's driving! He was born and educated in Australia and has been a construction manager, academic, company director and building consultant primarily involved in providing expert evidence. Father of Hamish and Will, David is married to Ros and they live in Melbourne. Welcome to Our World written with Will is his first book. In some ways coming late to writing is a blessing. It allowed David time to reflect on what’s important in telling a story about what was essentially a long drive. From the mud and confusion of writing it became crystal clear that his relationship with Will and others was what their journey was really about. As much as a long drive and all the extraordinary events that went with it, their time together was about how a father and son got on, their tolerance of each other. David’s writing reflects that focus. Will Gairns A trip to Europe? Or a week or two in Thailand, maybe? Not Will. There can't be many 18 year-olds who have captained a school cricket team, worked on farms during school holidays, driven solo across the Nullabor, lived and worked on a cattle station in the mid-west of Western Australia and driven Melbourne to London with his father. But that's Will. He has recently completed his carpentry apprenticeship, and was travelling in South and Central America at the time of writing.