“I was hoping to come round on Christmas Day”, Frank said. His face a collage of hope and trepidation. “Maybe on Christmas night. I know he’ll be there. I could sleep on the couch. I just want to play with the kids and the toys I got them. …… I know it’s awkward but it’s Christmas”.
Mobile phone calls on trams are never private, but Frank was doing his best. He looked out towards the Christmas Tree on Federation Square and it’s incongruous snow and reindeers seemed to catch in his voice. “You know I love them and they love me. But it’s up you. I know you’ve moved on”.
Across the aisle, the three Irish girls were tired and emotional. They had landed a job in the same City centre café and were fulfilling the stereotype of all backpackers by getting pissed in the afternoon. By their accents I could tell that they came from different parts of Ireland and had probably met on a beach in Queensland while getting drunk on sun and cheap ecstasy tablets. Friendships are made and lost with the speed of sunsets on the great year out. They laughed and joked about English boys they had met on their travels and about the scary Italian chap who liked to stand naked on the balcony of their St Kilda backpackers lodge.
They talked about Christmas and how great it was to spend it in the heat. “I’m heading to Sydney for Christmas” Deirdre said as though she was talking about the weather. To Grainne however, it was like lightning had struck. “I thought you were spending it with me in Melbourne” she said and the mood changed like a blanket dipped in ice had been thrown across it.
The next 10 minutes was a tennis match of half-hearted explanations and manufactured hurt. “But I told you I was going to be in Melbourne.” “You said you have loads of friends here so I assumed you wouldn’t miss me. You’re always talking about how many friends you have.” Grainne wasn’t going to let it go however. She summoned up some tears and thrust her chest out for one last valedictory speech. “I know we only met two months ago but we’ve done so much cool stuff together and I really felt that we’d become best friends. And you want to spend Christmas with your best friend”.
Deirdre surveyed the tears and emotional blackmail and decided she wasn’t going to pay up. “My best friends are in Ireland. You’re just people I’ve met traveling.”
With that, she opened a Pandora’s box that could never be closed again. They sat in silence, save for the occasional whimper from Grainne. Traveling by its nature is transient and the friendships made follow suit. Like shooting stars they fizzle brightly before dying. Email addresses and phone numbers are exchanged but everybody knows it’s a game. No one will ever make contact. You share buses, white water rafts, helicopter rides and your last bottle of VB in a Byron Bay bar at 4am. But the friendships you make are born of the moment, fuelled by the intensity of your hyper ventilated life. When you return to the dull drip of normality, those friendships seem incongruous and other worldly.
This is the great unspoken rule of traveling to which all backpackers buy in. Except Grainne it seems. She was determined to maximise the guilt. “I’m going to be on my own now on Christmas Day”.
“No you’re not”, said Deirdre, “You pick up more strays than the dog pound. And most of them look like they should be in the dog pound too”. Her initial embarrassment had turned to indignation at the idea that somebody she’d met only two months ago would be trying to make her guilty about where she spends Christmas.
Christmas Day in the Southern Hemisphere is different because of the weather, but in most other respects it is the same. Nobody wants to spend it alone, even the independent backpackers. The brave souls who wander the Milford Track or Cradle Mountain will still try and find a kindred spirit to share a beer and a BBQ on Christmas Day and mythologise about previous December days back home when the snow glistened on every tree top and happy strangers called out “Merry Christmas” while struggling home under the weight of cheerily wrapped parcels. In Sydney, the council provides penned off sections of Bondi Beach so that young Europeans can mix with their own nationality and get happily drunk without having to worry about the English ruining the party. They’ll call home and tactfully ignore the fact that they’ve traveled half way round the world to spend Christmas in a cage with hundreds of their countrymen.
Grainne will no doubt be sorted out. Frank was not so lucky. He held the phone to his ear and listened patiently to the list of reasons why his Christmas would not be a merry one. His eyes glazed up and he struggled to control his voice. “But it’s Christmas”, he said, like a small boy who wanted to stay up late for the Toy Show. And a small boy is what he had become, unable to cope with the realities of adult situations. He hung up without saying goodbye and turned to look at the gathering dusk.
There are thousands of tourists in Australia at this time of year and they will spend Christmas with fellow travelers and short term acquaintances. They have chosen to come here, to spend Christmas away from their families. They’ll go to the beach on the 25th and maybe have a swim, if they can stay sober long enough. But for many people who live here, the choice of whether or not they spend Christmas with the people they love is not theirs to make.
I hope Frank gets to spend some time with his kids this Christmas and that those drunken Irish girls realise that there are far more important things to cry about than which temporary friend you share your turkey with.
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