The Truth at Last - What Really Happened Misadventures of the Bible but Much More Amusing and a Shorter and Easier Read
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Cover A poignant, insightful and very funny travel blog from the era of the 70s and DRIFTING CONTINENTAL 80s when Australians set off with their backpacks to see the world. Ken Brandon takes the reader across multiple continents in search of a decent meal and a good night’s sleep. CONTINENTALCONTINENTAL A straightforward objective but travelling companions, language difficulties, a shoestring budget and gastrointestinal problems always seem to present challenges. DRIFTINGDRIFTING All of the wanderings, pestilence and The truth at last - what really happened misadventures of the Bible but much more amusing and a shorter and easier read. Highly recommended. on those trips Trevor Danos KEN BRANDON CONTINENTAL DRIFTING The truth at last - what really happened on those trips CONTINENTAL DRIFTING The truth at last - what really happened on those trips BY KEN BRANDON When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road. -William Least Heat-Moon Contents Prologue 01 Introduction 04 Dedication Section 1. Into Africa 06 1. Up the Down Nile (December 1979) 07 2. Innocents Abroad (January 1980) 45 3. This Month in the Central African Republic 63 To my wife Debbie for her forbearance while (May 1980) I chased this dream over the years. And further to Debbie who gave me the greatest Section 2. Out of Africa, into Asia 115 gift anyone could receive, my darling 4. A Passage to Afghanistan (October 1977) 116 daughters, Kate and Amy, my raisons d’être, the only truly unselfish love I’ve ever known. Section 3. America Latina 145 5. Tijuana or Not (June 1975) 146 6. Capital Punishment, if only there was a 155 Screw Loose (July 1975) 7. Bordering on the Ridiculous (August 1975) 174 8. Machu Picchu Inc. (August 1975) 185 Section 4. Incontinence 206 9. The Final Spill - An Afterthought or two or 207 more. (Other places, other times) Acknowledgements 225 About the Author 226 everything look more presentable and therefore saleable. I always contrived to dust myself into a corner of the store where sat, almost neglected, a formica- covered desk featuring a map of the world. This piece of furniture was probably the only item I dusted properly. I had to; otherwise how else would I have learnt every capital city, all the major bodies of water and anything else about the world which would fail to get me a job in later life should I live that long. PROLOGUE Novels didn’t really appear in our house. In fact, I came from a family that basically could, but didn’t read. I’m not really sure how we spent our leisure time. Sport and outdoors mucking around was always on the agenda and, living close to Bondi Beach, my holidays and weekends were spent indulging in whatever the beach had to offer. Now let’s get one thing straight before we start. If you think this is a travel Television arrived, courtesy of the furniture store, when I was seven, but edition, then think again. True, all the action takes place on foreign shores but there was very little to capture the imagination of a child of my age. I certainly one doubts that the reader will learn much about these distant places through don’t remember listening to the radio. That was something adults did; this was the reading. a memory of that time. By the time I’d left school, I’d probably read about half a dozen novels, preferring to read the Classic Comic version of David Copperfield, So, let’s travel back in time to before it all started. for instance, and various cribs of prescribed novels for my matriculation studies. In 1970, having studied arts for a year and law for nearly two, the big lesson So, getting back to the point re my working day. I found myself with about I’d learnt was that I needed to be somewhere else. Sure, I’d learnt other things three hours to kill every day. I read prodigiously, started doing crosswords and but nothing really curriculum based.Financially I was struggling, earning the wrote poetry. Hardly the stuff that would make me a lawyer. princely sum of $18.90 per week after tax, working as a law clerk. Suffice it to say that I was not residing in the lap of luxury. My brief stint at studying law was These were heady days all right. The Australian economy was booming somewhat of a watershed for me. I was working for a suburban solicitor who, and the stock market was a place where people gathered all through the day. every day, would provide me with the day’s work of documents for registration, There were fights, literally pushing and shoving, to get into the viewing gallery. exchanges and settlements, and off to the CBD I’d go to take care of business. It was wonderful entertainment. The subsequently infamous Poseidon mining These activities would fill my day and I’d return around five to knock off for the shares exploded from about $0.80, peaking at $382 within a couple of months. day and go to uni, an exciting existence I can tell you. Within a brief space of time There existed a delightful camaraderie amongst the punters and dreamers of I worked out how to cut my time in half by finding short cuts and consequently fortunes. had time on my hands; not necessarily a good thing. That’s when the trouble Everyone wanted in on the act. Owning shares seemed to be a licence began. to print money. I took a gamble. How could I lose? I bought 5000 shares in Among other things, I started wandering into book stores. Although at International Mining, on a tip, for ten cents each. I figured by the time I had to that stage I was poorly read, I possessed a pretty good general knowledge and pay for them, I could sell them and pocket a nice profit. Two weeks later they was aware of the “great books”. The only books I’d read as a child were those on had dropped to five and the broker was ringing asking for his money; $500 was glossy “Golden Books” on history, geography, natural science and the like. In almost half a year’s wages. Here was another reason to get out of the country. fact, my knowledge of world geography was quite extensive. I remember being at King’s Cross with a couple of friends having a late- My father owned a furniture store, the family business begun by his father night coffee as was our wont, bemoaning the probability that I was going to soon after arriving in Australia from England in the early 1900s. Every Saturday debtors’ court. (Maybe I’d receive reverse-Transportation and end up in England morning, from age ten to about thirteen, my job was to do the dusting to make for seven years). We talked a while and headed to Taylor Square where one could 1 Continental Drifting Continental Drifting 2 buy the first edition of the morning tabloid around midnight. I purchased the paper and, it was in the next hour or so that my life took a, not unpredictable, turn. It was my watershed moment. At that time, I was, indeed, a stranger in a strange land when it came to the law. I never felt really at ease donning a suit every morning and entering the world of respectability. The shares had shot from their measly five cents to 18 cents overnight in London. Two days later I sold a quarter of them for 38 cents, paid off the broker, handed in my notice and INTRODUCTION purchased a one-way ticket to London. I never attended another lecture. Both I, and the legal profession, breathed a massive sigh of relief. I boarded the plane in early October, two days after selling the last 1500 shares for $4.50, a tidy little profit. The trip didn’t last long, just over two months; I was a babe in the woods. But the seeds were well and truly sown. Some would grow to become I don’t know what came over me (I had a notion to send it to a lab for the grapes of wrath but overall, the vintage would prove fruitful. I returned to analysis, but what the hell!) - I had a sudden need for disclosure. And having Australia and completed an honours degree in psychology followed by a diploma access to a computer made this a lethal cocktail. I’d spent probably over five of teaching. These degrees would normally take five years; I managed to stretch years on foreign shores and now I wanted a piece of posterity. So, in the early ’80 them into eight by taking three year’s leave of absence to work and travel. I I sat down and documented my ride. Almost forty year later, I took it from the drove taxis, became an ambulance officer, worked as a trolley boy in a hospital draw, blew the dust of time from it and voilà, here ‘tis. where I spent an inordinate and morbid amount of time observing autopsies and I’d read volumes of travel books and very few of them seemed to capture learning about the body human, and engaged in many other jobs over the next the essence of the travel I knew. So why was that? It wasn’t as if my mode of decade before finally gaining employment as a teacher.