Ozzy Weed

In the summer of 1998 I travelled the east coast of Australia with a friend from childhood, Gemma, and her mate from uni, Sarah. Obviously the trip was full of adventure and I have many superb memories, but most of these stem from one in particular. We passed through a place called Airlie Beach approximately two weeks into the eight week trip. We were only there for a couple of days; it’s where you can take a sail boat to the Whitsunday Islands, something we opted not to do on account of our budget. Despite not taking up the sailing we did take up the nightlife. After a particularly lively session the girls headed home whilst I went in search of some food. It turned out that because the club kicked out so late it was too late for fast food but not quite early enough for the bakers and I was starving. A guy started walking alongside me so I asked him where I could get some food. He responded in a mild ozzy accent, ‘Aww you won’t round here now mate, come back with me and I’ll cook ye somethin.’ I agreed and we caught a cab. It didn’t take long until we got back to his and it was a huge bloody great house with big white pillars at the front like a miniature White House or something out of the Fresh Prince, a very Americanised modern looking mansion with a big dome on the roof and lots of statues in the garden. As we went inside, I could see there was a girl asleep upstairs with the door open in one of the bedrooms looking over the atrium balcony, he told me that the pair were house sitting. We walked into the kitchen and he opened the blinds at the back and switched some outdoor lights on. The pool lit up into view surrounded by Roman style decorative pillars and carved buffs of male and female torso’s, it looked like a cross between Roman baths and a porno set. The guy rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands and began to prepare what was a bloody nice fresh linguini dish, I wolfed it, he didn’t eat, I also noticed that he was beginning to behave a little strangely as we sat on the sofa, a little shifty. In my youthful inexperienced naivety, it took for him to lean in for a kiss before I cottoned on. I jumped up and told him that was the best tea I’d had in ages but my friends would be worried that I wasn’t back yet, this was before we all had mobiles permanently on our person. He stood to attention, calm as a cucumber and told me, ‘No worries, I’ll call you a cab.’ The cab took no time at all and we went outside to meet it, the guy lent in the window and asked the driver to stick it on account. He then turned to me and said, ‘Good meeting you Adam, enjoy Australia,’ shaking my hand and thrusting the biggest bag of weed I’d ever seen into my hand as he did so. That bag lasted not only us, but everyone we met on our travels thereafter for the next six weeks. Thanks to that weed I got laid twice, ended up with a tattoo, learnt to play the didgeridoo, ate the freshest baking each town had to offer at dawn and nearly ended up on a two month fishing trip off the top of Australia.