Rocking All Over The World

The beachside car park was full with campervans, station wagons and 4WD’s, their doors open wide and their windows down. Sleeping bodies dozed in backseats and in crudely strung hammocks, sleeping off hangovers from the night before. The air was thick and heavy with sticky heat. Surrounded by tropical parklands and a tranquil sandy beach, a forlorn and restless queue stretched around the corner of the grimy shower block. Rubbish spilled from over-laden bins and piles of filthy washing up baked in the sunshine. No camping or sleeping overnight read the large blue signs attached to every lamppost - threats of financial hardship hanging from underneath. Police cars crawled through ever so slowly and wardens stalked the park in gangs. Welcome to Darwin’s underbelly; a loose community of nomadic backpackers living on the fringes of city life.
We lived like this for three weeks, Moritz, Benni and I - too poor to pay for hostels and with few prospects for work we took to our cars. By day we lazed in parklands, snatching sleep and vying for free showers. We caught fish from Nightcliff jetty and drank beers under the mango tree at Myilly Terrace. By night we joined the carnival of vehicles roaming Darwin’s roads, searching for parking spaces and deserted streets in which to sleep. Some nights we wandered all night, unable to find a place; harassed by wardens or drunken locals. On others whole communities formed on dusty backstreets, pitching tents and lighting fires. We had our favourite spot, a rubble car park on the outskirts of a building site, almost in the centre of town. Here on warm nights we parked our cars in the shadows and slept on foam mats, right on the car-park floor.
All over the city we recognised people; the French girls in the big yellow campervan, the creepy car with the skull hanging from the front, the fat Australian guy in his VW. We saw them in shopping centres and on the beach and walked past them in the street. We slept next door to each other and ran away together when trouble came. They felt familiar and comforting, these total strangers to whom we never spoke. Disconnected from society we shuffled around the edges and through the cracks, brought together through need rather than choice. Ghostly spectators watching from afar; living in the city and from the city but never really with the city.