Excess baggage fees. Krispy Kremes. Thirty-eight minutes of sleep. Ian from Perth’s 11th He Reaches London documents the band’s recent east-coast tour.

Perth

October 28, 2008

We spent the last two days doing a month’s worth of organisation. We just hired four road cases for $396 for five days and one of them is pressed into my back as Mark picks me up in his station wagon. It smells like chicken shit, because he now fertilizes his garden. We drive to the airport with the back window completely obstructed with musical gear, a scenario that will follow us on every road in every city.

We arrive at the airport and Jayden is late as usual. We line up to check in with a furious Qantas employee that takes one look at our 28 pieces of excess luggage and tells us to, “Fuck off.”

We move to another check-in desk where a supporter of local music waives the $400 excess fee; an act of kindness not seen in any other city. We share a pre-tour ale in the departure lounge, attempt pubescent shake faces and comment on the well-placed stack of the Air Disasters book in the airport bookshop.

We fly to the opposite point of Australia, Jeremy sleeps, Jayden and Mark talk and sleep, Luke and I just talk about the world from take off to landing. Mark gets up and makes fun of Jeremy’s heritage.

Brisbane

October 29, 2008

We hire a van and spend 30 minutes getting the logistics sorted, like a Jenga puzzle meant for fathers and warehouse employees. We fuck it up in the rain and drive blindly through the streets of Brisbane without a road map because the teenage surf king at Europcar lied to us about one being in the car. We buy one and begin to navigate. Jeremy, despite sleeping the entire flight, is still mentally impaired because he is in the middle of his final week of university. But somehow he is left in charge of navigations. We see a store called “Chicken Magic” and it brings the house down. We drive across the main bridge and give Brisbane a rousing round of applause. We find ourselves in a place called “Kangaroo Point” before the map is taken from Jeremy. We had been driving in the wrong direction for 30 minutes and Mark, who is driving, loses his cool. “FOR FUCK’S SAKE, LOOK AT THE FUCKING GRID YOU FUCKING IDIOTS … GIVE ME THE MAP YOU FUCKING SILVER NODES!” he shouts at the navigation department.

Jayden takes over navigations and guides us to Simon from To The North’s house with a sterling effort of map reading, earning him the nickname “Javigator”. It’s like 2am when we arrive in this humble Brisbane street and we load the gear into the house we were so kindly offered. Simon stands at the top of the stairs in his underwear as I trip and fall into his arms, LOLs ensue. We attempt to sleep, Mark and I share a mattress and joke about all the sexual things we could do to each other, it rains and then the real Queensland night presents itself. Animals. Fucking animals of such kind that kids from the city had never even heard of. Try going to sleep in a jungle, that’s what suburban Brisbane is like at night. Sounds I couldn’t describe, songs by birds that probably just fly around looking for new visitors to their state and sing just to ruin their sleep. Animals are still really fucking annoying.

After 12 minutes sleep and two guys and two girls who reside in the house stepping over our living corpses (I still don’t know who sleeps with who), I wake to see Danny Tiatto from the Queensland Roar leaping over a Perth Glory player. For the AFL version of this, imagine waking up and seeing Jeff Farmer taking a pack mark over any player in your team.

“We see people outside the show tearing off 11th posters to keep as souvenirs, until we realise they are only doing it to cover a pile of fresh vomit deposited around the corner.”

The day begins, Mark gets a massage and I talk with the residents of the home before getting a further three minutes of sleep on the front porch. The day passes and we pack and leave for the show at the Red Room at the University of Queensland. The manager informs us that they had no idea we were playing and there’s not a single poster within the venue to prove it. Art Vandelay play first, The Paper And The Plane second and To The North third and all were at a tremendous level. Would love to play the same line-up when we return. We play okay, speak to plenty of guys and girls and totally have our hearts melted by the guys that had flown down from Rockhampton to see us.

I spend the rest of the evening wearing a sombrero and driving the To The North van around Brisbane dropping the bastards off at various locations around the CBD. Back at the house, we speak of our Danny Tiatto dreams and retire to bed for nine minutes of sleep before waking to leave for the airport. We thank the residents of Simon’s house for their kindness by making a shitload of noise as we leave for another plane that would ferry us to Sydney.

Brisbane airport is responsible for the greatest moment of the tour when Mark, Jeremy and I get a photo with Ice Cube while the biggest dunce on earth tries to process our baggage. He has to call for the manager who insists we weigh and pay for every item, as well as attach “CAUTION HEAVY” tags on everything. You best watch out baggage man, that stick bag weighs three kgs! So we get slugged for every piece of excess, only another $400 that we didn't need. We grow tired of his bullshit and approach Ice Cube. We ask his bodyguard for a photo to which the Cube replies, “Photos or photo?”

“Just one photo, sir.”

“A’ight. One photo”

Cube is totally pissed and throws in an eastside sign when clearly we are from the westside. It’s the kind of ignorance that we’ve come to expect from the likes of the Cube.

Sydney

October 31, 2008

Hire another van and finally figure out how to use it. Find it surprisingly easy to find our way to Jeremy's girlfriend’s house in Paddington. Tina is waiting out the front and Jeremy sneaks off to smooch her in the kitchen or something while we unpack. The house is ridiculous for the likes of us — three stories of dreams and a backyard you could do nine consecutive cartwheels in before you flip over the edge and shatter your skull in the laneway below. We get lunch in the Cross, before getting our nap on for a few minutes, then head to the show at the Sandringham hotel. The righteous dudes from Sleepmakeswaves help us load in shortly before they get their Halloween corpse paint done. We go as sleep-deprived assholes.

Call The Medic, Call The Nurse welcome us to Sydney with a good set. Slimey Things play and their drummer doesn’t turn up with a drum kit so that’s fucking cool. Sleepmakeswaves play and are fucking brilliant. We have our set shortened by like 30 minutes and have to cut out three or four songs because the sound girl is awesome – she has to go home in time to watch City Homicide. I mean it's not like we travelled from the most isolated city in the world. No big deal, you fucking dolt.

We return home for 16 minutes of sleep and wake up to book our flights on the internet. Jeremy books his flight for a month later by mistake. He eventually sorts it out and gets onto a flight 30 minutes after us. We farewell the glorious Tina Lessnau and mush to the airport. We eat Krispy Kremes at the departure lounge, see Ian Thorpe and his gigantic floppy ass, You Am I, Powderfinger and Lee Whannell. We hardly give a hoot considering we got personal with Ice Cube the day before.

Melbourne

November 1, 2008

Get some more Krispy Kremes on landing and attempt to navigate to my sister's house in Fitzroy, fucking Sydney Road. Takes us a good hour- and-a-half of bad directions and crucial errors at vital intersections. When we finally get “home”, our longtime friend Ester Borcich is waiting to greet us at Greeves Sreet and we wander to Atomica Cafe to get a coffee from their brilliantly friendly staff (level-nine sarcasm) before returning home to greet my sister. We’ve bought a large amount of food, so Jeremy and Mark have a salad contest. Jeremy makes some douchebag bean focal salad with not enough oil and Mark makes this Greek salad that he botches with a large amount of soy sauce.

“Maybe we should be taking a hint when no one advertises us or even admits we were ever on the bill?”

The show is at the Old Bar, which is literally right around the corner, so we stay sharing ales and tales until we ferry our gear 133 metres to the show. Liam from the Old Bar is like the best guy that's ever lived. It turns out the Old Bar is the only venue (out of the four) that bothers to put up our show posters within the venue. Bad Cop Bad Cop play first and they are fantastic. They’re followed by Liam's band 14 Nights At Sea, who are the surprise band of the tour, and True Radical Miracle who dominate proceedings. We have the best time playing Melbourne again to familiar faces including Shellfish Meat, who shows off some mid-show tech skills. We see people outside the show tearing off 11th posters to keep as souvenirs, until we realise they are only doing it to cover a pile of fresh vomit deposited around the corner.

We stumble home to embrace another 12-minute sleep session, wake up late and mush to the airport feeling pretty good about things. On the way to the airport, I get told off by Jayden for singing 16 Horsepower's version of ‘Single Girl’ and am accused of bringing down band morale by doing so. When we arrive at the airport and get slugged another $300 for excess baggage, it also turns out Jeremy had left his iPod on the plane from Sydney to Melbourne, so our new album is out there somewhere guys.

We feel terrible in the airport's dining area before someone suggests Kripsy Kreme. We promise we will only have one each, so we get a dozen between four of us. We eat them like kings and almost puke because of it. We amble to the information screen to check how boarding is going to which we receive a flashing “FLIGHT CLOSED”. Try running 300 meters after just consuming three cinnamon delights when you are already hungover. I sprint with a lemon-filled delight until I feel like vomiting. I throw it side-handed into a bin in front of a fat father and his son and I watch them weep. Fucking sensational. We make it and celebrate with high fives until we realise Jeremy has left our entire box of CDs at security. Pack it up Jeremy, you're having a nightmare.

Adelaide

November 2, 2008

Jeremy cuts his forehead open on the boot of the van and hits the deck. But he recovers quickly like the fighting Aquinas we have come to expect. Drive up some cricket highway to our magical friends Damian and Laura, who reside on a mountain with a roaming guardian named Milo. We play Guitar Hero as they cook the kind of pasta only refined South Australian can conjure up. It puts us to sleep and we dream about Patrick Swayze and his impending death. We wake up and drive to the show at the Electric Light Hotel, a venue highlighted by signage. Turns out they don’t even know we are playing, but the bar manager scrambles staff so the show will go on. Maybe we should be taking a hint when no one advertises us or even admits we were ever on the bill?

Kudos to Derringers Music, who deliver our hired gear at an insanely low price. Skeletons play first and it’s their second last show ever which is indeed a shame because they sound excellent. Thunderclaw follow and are also great. I toss a toy skeleton across the road to signal the end of the tour, decapitating our mascot in the process.

We return to Laura and Damian's abode and speak about the world, the horrors in art, the things that keep art alive, youth and how it should be spent. We talk about every cent and every dollar wasted being in a band in the pursuit of creation and performance and whether or not its return could be measured. We eventually conclude that everything financial is irrelevant because in the end, all we will have to remember are milestones and things that existed at one point but never will again.

Mark and I leave for Melbourne the next day, Jayden, Jeremy and Luke return to Perth. We get charged another $350 for excess baggage.

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