Spati 

Germany

Thailand

Taiwan

Frank Bruno (well, a guy who looked like Frank Bruno, the boxer) stepped onto the bus and immediately lit up a joint. Ten guys struggled aboard behind him carrying enough beer to last a year or two. We were going away for one night. I knew then I’d made a big mistake. I should never have taken the trip on. As a tour leader, I’d had plenty of experience of keeping paralytic Aussies under control but, only ten minutes into the Bucks Party Weekend, I knew this was going to be very different. I had no control at all. As we stopped at traffic lights in High Street, Tooting, in busy mid-morning traffic, one of the guys stepped out in the street and casually pissed into the gutter. 

I was taking this rowdy bunch to Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. Their ultimate destination was a nightclub called The Zoo. Apparently, the bestman told me, it would be full of girls. He had read that in a recent nationwide survey by a major condom manufacturer, Bournemouth beach was voted the best place in England for al-fresco sex. We were all going to sleep on the bus—a double-decker that had been converted into a cozy travelling holiday home for 24. Luckily, there were only 13 of us (we needed the other 11 beds to store the beer). Besides Frank Bruno, who was an east Londoner (who ended every single sentence with, ‘yunnowoteyemean?’), the rest were Kiwis (who ended every sentence with ‘eh?’). I’d been warned about taking a bucks party weekend trip. The company I worked for had only ever attempted one before. It wasn’t very successful. Well, for the tour leader at least. The passengers had literally thrown him off the bus halfway through the weekend.

We’d only been on the road for half a minute and my lot were handing me a can of beer. My driver, Nial, would get offered a beer every ten minutes all the way to Bournemouth. The best man’s name was Tum (Tim in English). He was carrying a jug full of money. ‘Thus uz our kutty money for beer,’ he told me. There was enough money in the jug to buy beer for the entire population of Bournemouth.

I was sitting upstairs when I heard a loud bang and a horrible fizzing noise from below. I rushed downstairs just as another loud bang echoed up the stairs. I got below just as Frank Bruno was setting off… another firecracker. That is, letting off a firecracker inside the bus. He was attempting to shoot sky-rockets at other cars on the motorway. I went back upstairs. I wasn’t telling Frank to stop it. He was the size of a small house. And every bit as smart.

We’d only been on the road for an hour and the groom had passed out upstairs. ‘I’m just having a rest,’ he told me, before he collapsed in one of the bunks. We stopped at a pub for lunch. Two of the lads had to carry the groom in. Thirteen servings of cod and chips didn’t even put a dent in the kitty. Frank Bruno stepped back on board carrying a large hat-rack. He’d stolen it from the pub. ‘I fought it might come in ’andy,’ he said, as he set it up in the corner of the bus. It did. Everyone hung their jackets on it.

Half an hour later we stopped at another pub for a drink. They once again carried the groom in and plonked him on a bar stool. He immediately fell off and slumped at the feet of a group of menacing looking bikies playing pool. Lucky we had Frank Bruno with us or they would have beaten him to a pulp with a pool cue. The bikies were listening to heavy metal on the jukebox. The songs were about Satan and how torturing people was just a bit of harmless fun. Just before we left, Frank and I put Kylie Minogue singing ‘I should be so lucky’ on. By the time it came on we would have been safely up the motorway. 

We parked in a massive car park by the Bournemouth seashore. Tum and I ran across the road to a telephone box to order pizza for dinner: ‘Yes, that’s right… deliver the pizza to the double-decker bus… in the middle of the carpark!’

The smell of after-shave in the bus was overpowering. Well, at least it got rid of the pizza smell. The boys were getting ready to ‘pick-up’. We arrived at the nightclub to find a queue of people waiting to get in. They were mostly girls. ‘Foockin alright!’ Frank said, rubbing his hands together.

‘Sorry. No jeans allowed,’ grunted the bouncer. Ten of us were wearing jeans. We had no choice. We went to the other nightclub down the road, which had hardly any girls and lots of blokes wearing jeans. The groom promptly fell asleep in the corner, while the rest of the lads did their very best to spend the entire ‘beer kitty’.

I crawled back to the bus sometime after two. The groom hadn’t even made it to one of the bunks. Or the bus. He’d collapsed in the gutter naked. He would have been warm, though. He was totally wrapped in toilet paper. 

The lads had beer for breakfast. I passed it up. The three-hour journey back to London involved more drinking, smoking, dancing, fireworks and the inevitable brown-eyes at passing traffic. Just before noon, I dropped the lads off at Church in Kings Cross. No, don’t worry, they weren’t going to mass. They were going to The Church, which was a regular Sunday event that involved comedians, strippers and a lot of people throwing up.

They all staggered off the bus and waddled inside. Oh, except the groom. They carried him in. It was his buck’s party and he’d been conscious for about ten minutes of the whole thing.

Although I don’t consider myself a ‘great’ photographer here are some of my favourite shots from my travels (well, my most recent travels with a good digital camera at least because I can’t be bothered scanning all my old 35mm print photos).

Baucau, East Timor

Baucau, East Timor

Vientiane, Laos

Mürren, Switzerland (and my daughter Jasmine)

Bagan, Burma

Bedugul, Bali

Rangoon, Burma

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Hervey Bay, Queensland

Peterson, Minnesota, USA

Chicken fighting, Baucau, East Timor

Dili, East Timor

You can find Tony Wheeler talking about the 100 millionth guidebook here:

I wouldn’t bother entering, though – I’ve already entered and I’ve got the round the world trip for two in the bag!

Tossing odd things on Australia Day is also popular. Also in Tennant Creek they have the annual Australia Day gum boot and thong throwing competition (that’s a ‘flip-flop’ type thong, although throwing the other type of thong could be quite fun). While in Port Lincoln, South Australia they have a tuna-tossing competition (first held in 1961, it regularly attracts around 25,000 people). The specially frozen tuna (to aid grip and flight) weigh around nine kilos each and have a rope tied to them. 

So, for my Australia day this year I’m heading into the city to watch a parade and probably have a pie and maybe even toss a thong or two. Most years I do actually ‘celebrate Australia Day with a barbeque, oftentimes with lots of beer’, but a few years back I did do something else quite different on Australia day. I went busking at the Tamworth Country Music Festival for my book The Naked Man Festival. Although I didn’t do to well. No one took any notice of me until I put my then 11-month old daughter Jasmine into my guitar case. As soon my little girl was seated she started dancing and clapping along to my singing. Almost instantly, a crowd began to gather. They would walk past and ignore me as per usual, then suddenly spot Jasmine and stop dead in their tracks. Cameras and videos came out and, best of all, people started throwing money. One lady walked up and put two dollars in the case and said, ‘It’s for the baby, not you.’

 Here’s the video. Oh, and happy Aussie Day everyone.