So 2021 didn’t exactly start in style for me. Sat by myself at a hostel in the middle of nowhere just outside of bundaberg. Drinking bundy rum and coke mixed together in a plastic water bottle wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life.
But I like to look at the positives, and hey at least it gave me a funny story to tell. Especially when you add the details of how I got there into the mix.
So it started of pretty normal. I was walking around town planning to go check out the botanic gardens and then work out how the hell I was going to get to the hostel I had booked for the night. I had been unorganised as usual and the hostel where I had been staying in town was fully booked. I wasn’t too worried I mean who needs to have somewhere to sleep on New Year’s Eve right? I’ll just leave my stuff there, go out for the night and I’m sure it will all work out. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But when I saw that it was going to rain all night, sensible me kicked in and I decided to try and find a place to stay. Problem was though sensible me while half asleep at about 3am managed to book somewhere out of town that wasn’t exactly going to be easy to get to when I don’t drive. Turns out sensible me can actually be pretty stupid sometimes.
So anyway I’m walking across a bridge on the way to the botanic gardens and some random guy starts talking to me. He said he thought I was someone else and then went on to ask if he could walk with me and chat for a bit. Me being me, and always open to chatting to random people said yeah of course, why not. If I’ve ever spoke to you about my travels, or if you’ve read some of my other posts. You will probably already know that a lot of my stories tend to involve me meeting some random guy.
After walking and talking for a bit I told him how I had booked a hostel for the night at the last minute without realising it was out of town, and he offered to give me a lift out there. But there was a bit of a catch.
The car that he was offering to drive me in was left at some Aussie chicks house. It wouldn’t start and she really wanted it out of her garden. He said that if I go with him and sort the car then he would give me a lift. Yeah sure why not. I could use a lift and didn’t exactly have any other options. So let’s just go with it. So I get to the chicks house with him, and pretty quickly realise she is a little on the crazy side and is not too happy about his car still being in her garden. Also it turns out the reason he can’t start the car is because he doesn’t have the key.
So I ended up sat in a car with a random guy I’d just met, as he tried to Hotwire it so he could give me a lift. While a crazy ausie chick kept shouting at him that she wanted the car gone. To which he kept pointing out he was fucking trying. All the while just to add a little extra humour to the situation he was getting pecked at by her pet duck. You couldn’t make it up.
Anyway eventually he managed to start the car and give me a lift. He did offer to come pick me up later if I had no one to hang out with for new year. But I decided it was probably for the best to leave it at nice to meet you and thanks for the lift. Although it turned out it probably wasn’t, as I managed to miss when everyone from the hostel went in to town and so ended up finishing 2020 and starting 2021 drinking a bottle of Bundy rum alone in Bundy.
I’m sat here finally writing a post about this one year later after an equally eventful but much better start to 2022. Still in the same place, but as a very different person to the one who was just passing through bundaberg with no real clue where she was heading. Never expecting to be here one year later and for probably the first time since I started travelling 4 years ago, feeling happy about where I am and not thinking about where I’m going to go next.