Misadventures in Transportation

or How I learnt to read tea leaves and nearly didn't make it to Swancon 05 by Cat Sparks

The plan seemed simple. We'd leave the car in Deb's back yard and get a cab to the airport in the morning. "Shall we book one?" she suggested at some point during the evening. No one answered. It didn't seem like much of a major or necessary suggestion then. Next morning we all woke up, showered, had toast and admired the rain that had been bucketing down all night. And then we tried to ring a cab. No dice. And then we realised just how little time we had left ourselves to actually get to the airport and check in. The plane was due to leave in an hour. We were completely fucked.

We drove. It was very wet and the traffic was logjammed. We rang the airline. If you miss the plane you'll forefeit your tickets said the helpful voice on the end of the line. Rob dumped us at the Virgin check-in and burnt rubber to the long term car park. We checked in our bags (including Rob's) and checked our watches a lot. No way was he going to make it. Once the car was parked, he'd have to catch a bus to the terminal.

But the rain had also delayed our flight. By time Rob came tearing into the departure lounge, wet and bedraggled, we hadn't even begun to board, despite the Virgin check-in chick insisting that he'd missed the goddamn plane already.

Four and a half hours later we arrived in Perth where it was a stinking 42 degrees. We peeled off our cardigans and cabbed it to the Mountway Holiday Apartments which are cheap, un-airconditioned and located within spitting distance of the Emerald Hotel where the Con was being held. We wandered round Perth to collect supplies. Russell F, Robin P and Dave C met us at the apartment, Robin bearing a box of Daikaiju! books, having been dropped at the Mountview by his mysterious and yet-unglimpsed girlfriend Toula.

Thursday morning I leapt enthusiastically out of bed and decided to go for a long power walk around the Swan River. It's a well-designed track for bikes and pedestrians. In the nature reserve I met a kangaroo who appeared to be practicing yoga. On the far side of the bank I was followed along the sea wall by two dolphins diving and breathing in unison. Now how cute was that?

After my walk we had lunch with Russ at the curiously named Irish Sandwich shop (this does not mean that the bread is made with Guinness, but rather that the meals are served with potato chips and the cappuccinos are decorated with powdered chocolate shamrocks), then cabbed it out to Canning Vale where Russ's partner Liz had arranged for us to give a talk to a massive conglomeration of students about the business of being writers. The school itself was astonishingly modern, and the kids were even more astonishingly well behaved. And smart — only a few of them put up their hands when one of us asked who among them might consider choosing writing as a career. Somehow they'd sussed the fact that writers are poor. Plus, only one of us could put up our hand when one little girl asked if we'd ever been on TV.

At midday I picked up my six copies of Daikaiju! and wandered into the launch venue. Dave Luckett was already seated up one end of the table, all poised and ready to read. The rest of the table was very long, white and empty-looking. The audience rapidly began to fill the room.

"Er... looks like you're going first, Dave," I said. Dave, unruffled, gave me one of those looks. Rob and I sat down and tried not to look too stupid. Dave began to read from The Truth About Magic , and I relaxed a bit because Dave is one of those rare beasts: an author who can read his own work out loud in an audible and engaging manner. Soon myself and the whole room were engrossed in his book. So engrossed was I that I almost failed to notice Robin Pen's cheeky little face popping up at the back of the room. Twelve twenty. Robin poked out his tongue and made nya nya nya nya nya hand-waggly gestures in my direction. I crept around the edge of Dave, found a spot at the edge of the room and assumed the classic angry-housewife-with-rolling-pin position.

Dave finished reading and a trolley load of Mitchs and Daikaijus were wheeled in. Rob & Robin kicked off the Daikaiju! launch, followed by Jonathan Strahan, who managed to inject a bit of class into the proceedings. Finally it was Mitch's go. He said some classic book launch stuff such as "this year I actually read some of the stories I published." Surprisingly, we sold a fair few books in the rumble that followed the last speech. And I suspect I'll have to get myself a copy of Luckett's new novel so that I can find out what happens next.

I tagged along to lunch with Jonathan, Grant Stone, Terry Dowling and Shaun Tan, while Rob — lunchless — went to yet another panel ... on giant monsters probably. I forget the name of the place we went but the food was very tasty. We drank champagne and chatted, being five people that are not often in the same place at the same time. A cosy, laid-back interlude in an otherwise hectic weekend. Cheers guys.

Later that afternoon Grant Stone & his sound guy Wolfgang interviewed me for his Faster Than Light Radio Show, something he's been threatening to do for a couple of years. I think I made sense. I hope I made sense...

That evening began in the hotel bar. Some of us were going to the wedding and some of us weren't. The 'weren't' crowd stayed to play pool.

The wedding of Lee and Lyn Battersby was nice, and a whole load less tacky than I'd thought it would be. Somehow, it just worked out the way it was supposed to. Afterwards we returned to the bar. The 'weren't' crowd rushed off to dinner, too hungry to wait for those of us who felt it was polite to stick around a bit longer till Lee & Lyn came back from having their photos taken.

Rob, Russ, Liz and I ended up having dinner in the Con hotel. Meanwhile, the wedding chapel was transformed into the masquerade. There was a briefly freaky moment at dinner when Batman nemesis The Joker and two other heavily costumed people appeared at out table. The Joker turned out to be none other than a chalky-faced and completely unrecognisable Danny Oz sans beard! His companions were Tiki and Sharon.

So we went to the bus stop and we waited and waited and waited... Some buses said they went to Mt Lawley but didn't. Others said they went to some place called Morley. There were thousands of those ones, and Morley sounds suspiciously like a slurred, drunken rendition of Mt Lawley to me, but we didn't catch any of those either. Finally we rang Robin for instructions. Robin, darl, which one of these friggin' unlabelled buses goes near your place? "I dunno," says Robin. "I don't catch the bus."

It's cold. Let's get a friggin' cab, I say. Yep, says Deb, only suddenly there aren't any. Nor are there any more buses. The whole bloomin' street is empty, Omega Man style. It's then that we both realise that we are just plain allergic to transportation devices. No other explanation makes any sense.

When we finally do get a cab, the trip costs nine bucks. So there we were, freezing our tits off for nearly an hour when we were only nine bucks away from our destination...

The lounge room was full of the usual suspects. It was also a darn site cleaner than on our last visit, obviously due to the unseen hand of Toula who was once again, mysteriously, absent. I did get to glimpse a photo on Mitch's camera of Robin perched (fully clothed) on someone who was alleged to be Toula, but the image was small, and the texture of the female's skin indeterminate (as in, was it flesh or was it inflatable rubber?) We ate pizza and junk food until Robin threw us all out, the event that usually signifies the end of a satisfying holiday in Perth.

Next morning we packed an embarrassing quantity of acquired books and, naturally, DVDs (curse that Planet Video place), and were left with only a small box of Bill's unsold stock to bring home outside normal luggage. Rob discovered he had a sore throat, which subsequently became a runny nose and bad cough. Worst, indeed the only, cold he's had in ages. Sean reckons it's some weird genetic synchronicity. When he goes to Swancons, he always gets a cold, he says. He couldn't be there this year, so Rob had to get his cold. It's a father-and-son thing.

We managed to find the airport the next day (by taxi and way early) and return home without incident. The cats were extremely happy to see us, running straight into our arms like the little furry buggers never do.