I'm not Jesus Christ...yet
Monday, 16 May 2005
our insane tour guide tells us as we start our journey down the Great Ocean Road for the weekend, "I'm just here to facilitate your development. You don't have to apologise to me..." I believe he was talking about some previous tourist who'd been driven to desperation by this guy's insane pseudo spiritual preaching/tour guiding. Yes, it was indeed the start of a weird weekend.
As we are about to move out of Melbourne we decided to make our last weekend a nice touristy mission down the Great Ocean Road (a nice road down the coast) and the Grampians (a big rugged mountain range) which are some of the major attraction in Victoria. We we went to Federation Square and booked our place on a 2 day backpacker's tour with a well known company. Nice and sensible we thought. We were largely wrong on reflection.
We were picked up at 6 in the morning by Richard the tour guide and he seemed quite normal but shortly after he started to act up. "Respect the tour, guys!" He started shouting at us for talking. He seemed to want to talk all the time over his mic. When he needed to pause for breath he played Enigma style dance/ethnic music. He told us that he normally lead spirtual guidance tours so we started to get the picture. Also, he REALLY REALLY wanted us to be on time. "Guys, I'm sorry but I've got a tour to run..." the implied end to this statement was something to the effect of "...so there's no room for any fun. RESPECT THE TOUR OR BE PUNISHED."
We went and saw all the sites but were kept to military timing at each one. It was off the bus, photo, listen to him spouting bullshit about it, back on the bus. My favourite piece of bullshit that he told us is that settlers saw aboriginies kicking an animal gut around and that was the origin of Aussie rules football. It's blatantly a slight home/deployiation of rugby....
In the journeys in between he submitted us to hypnotic sermons on his own cooky kind of religion that he'd made up that was, well, funny now but really quite scary at the time. There was a group of little Singaporians that he would slap around the head when they went to sleep and didn't listen to him. WHAP!WHAP! "Guys, how would you feel if I came to your country and didn't look at your scenery..."
He definately had some kind of messiah complex and kept illuding to the fact that he might have spent some time in prison. Catherine pointed out that his style of knowledge more than likely came from a prison library. We thought he was going to drop us off at some kind of killer hippy commune any minute. Luckliy he dropped us off at a winery then the pub. He did take us to see some nice places including dragging us up a mountain at 6 in the morning to see a sunrise which is not really my steez. I did not winge once.
Loon.
I'd like to finish of with Richard the Aussie Bush Messiah's top 5 quotes:
- "I'm not Jesus Christ...yet"
- "Be careful, there's a large marsupial in the tree that'll jump out, pin you against a tree, violently rape you then poo in your mouth."
- "Say hello to our god..." (it was the sunrise....)
- "Remember when you were a kind and you played with your poo in the bath...? No?"
- "When I run spiritual tours I don't do anything. People flock around me giving me hand massages and annointing my feet."
He did lend us his camera though. Nice man. Check the pictures where you can see his very own scary face. Rargh!
On May 24, 2005, Dad and Barb said:
G'day Dan and Catherine
Just wondering how you like Alice..... and I hope you have Ringo with you and that he's enjoying himself! Hope you've taken plenty of pictures..... I see you have done the traditional "Japanese Pose" under the sign on The Great Ocean Road...
It's cold, wet and miserable here but the forecast is for a good week-end.... yeah, yeah, heard it all before!!!! but if it is every man and his dog will be on the road.....
See ya
On May 30, 2005, Kev-La said:
I am Jesus!