Where In The World Is Evan?

I’ve been back in Australia for a couple of weeks now and generally struggling to find my feet in a society that I no longer feel really a part of. I guess over time you romanticise the things you’ve left behind, which can only lead to disappointment when you get back. Imagine my surprise when the first thing I see in the newspaper upon my arrival are the race riots in Sydney. So my new year’s celebrations for ’06 needed to be a positive reaffirmation of all of the joy and happiness I’d experienced in the last year.

Upon my return to Melbourne I started living on the couch of a friend, in a share house near my old university. James and I get along very well, as we have many similar interests, so it’s been a lot of fun to get to know his extended group of friends. The family of one of them, Andy, has a farm property just outside of Melbourne. For the last few years he’s been holding a private rave on the top of a large hill—dozens of people, professional sound equipment, and a non-stop line of DJs playing sets all night.

Being the hight of summer the weather at night is often perfect for an outdoor party, however, on New Year’s Eve it got a little extreme. With the daytime temperature rising above 45° C, the humidity at almost zero and a strong southerly wind it was like standing in front of a giant hair dryer. By the time I arrived at the site I was already feeling sick from dehydration and not in the best of party moods. Good thing I had come prepared with a multi stage plan.

Stage one had already begun in the car on the way there when I’d dropped a tab of acid. This probably did nothing to help my dehydration induced nausea but it certainly helped me stop caring. About two hours later as the party was in full swing I took some e and drank as much water as I could handle—stage two was underway.

Candy flipping (i.e. acid and ecstasy) is something that I’d not had the opportunity to try before, so I was rather expectant of a damn good night.

As the psychedelic trance lifted me up on my drug high and into a dancing frenzy the ever present hair dryer of god stripped me of every drop of moisture in my body. I very soon abandoned the beer I’d been drinking and went to straight water.

It’s rather amusing to consider that with everyone at the party so fucked up on drugs we actually missed the count down to the new year, and instead had a half hearted attempt a couple of minutes later. What clued us in was when we could see fireworks erupting over the city, way off on the edge of the horizon.

After the relative anti-climax of the countdown I proceeded to stage three and shortly afterwards stage four—another of each. For the next couple of hours I danced and partied in a truly euphoric state before the inevitable started to happen… the slow unpleasant come down.

As I sat on the ground chain smoking cigarettes and contemplating my predicament the solution just presented itself. A rather noisy and obnoxious girl sitting next to me was conspicuously dealing drugs. Unfortunately, however, she’d sold out of anything descent and had nothing but ephedrine left. Not being the most popular of drugs it was going dirt cheap, so I grabbed a pair and shot off into stage five.

Like most recreational drug users I don’t have the best judgement while under the influence. So in retrospect it’s not at all surprising that after all the speed in the pills I’d taken earlier the ephedrine just left me a hyper stimulated, twitchy mess.

Hours later, as the sun rose up from behind the surrounding hills, the harsh light of day roused the sleeping flies and the scene quickly changed for the worse. When two police officers appeared on top of the hill things started to get interesting. With the clarity of sobriety I can’t imagine how tragic we all looked, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. People were laying asleep on everything from cars, to cushions, to bare dirt. The ones that were still up, however, looked all the worse for it. Bleary red eyes and an amphetamine twitch coupled with the sudden confusion of the police presence.

Apparently they’d received a noise complaint about three hours earlier, but because of our location among a group of hills the sound carried for kilometres making it almost impossible to locate the source. These poor bastards had been driving around for hours searching for the party only to find the gate locked and to be forced to hike up the hill on foot. After giving Andy a noise caution they happily departed, sparing not even a glance at all the unconscious people.

With the temperature quickly rising again I said my goodbyes and got a lift back home with a friend who’d actually slept. I all it was a damn good night

Check out the photos here.