in the afternoons and Tugga’s mood changes. There have been a couple of situations that could’ve turned nasty if Andreas and others hadn’t stepped in to calm things down. Enough about Tugga.
It’s Italy I love most: pizza, pasta, chianti, the history, the people – well, mostly the men – and the fashion. My God, the shops in Rome are stunning. I wish my savings would stretch to a Gucci handbag. The leather jackets and shoes are so stylish but also way beyond my budget.
It’s such a funny country in a way. Everywhere you see the crumbling ruins of their great empire. And then you see the modern Italians; beautifully dressed and groomed and so nonchalant – as if the past has nothing to do with them. Such a pity.
Pompeii was fascinating (especially the brothels with the stone penises everywhere – or should that be penii?) The camp site in the olive grove at Sorrento has been one of my favourites. The fireflies dance through the olive grove at night and the smells of cooking from the camp site kitchens and local homes made me want to stay for a whole summer. Maybe one day in the future? It was very romantic.
We kept stumbling over bodies in the dark as we searched for a quiet patch of grass to watch the moon and stars. It was a giggle. Skinny dipping in the pool was a hoot as well. Enough about the naughty nights (and there have been a few – it’s the Roman influence ha ha), I’m looking forward now to what Greece can offer. I’ll be happy if it’s half as good as Italy.
It was the line, We kept stumbling… in that entry that irked the diary holder. Who was with Judy on that hot summer’s night 30 years ago in the Italian olive grove? There was no doubt she had been promiscuous. The number of trysts recorded in the diary was a shock. It was so out of character for the young woman who left Waikato. The other companions had been identified by collating references across several weeks and countries. They were one-night- stands that seemed irrelevant.
But not the Andreas mentioned in Sorrento. He appeared regularly in the diary as a bed companion for Judy. Yet it was difficult to properly identify and locate him, and that was extremely frustrating.
The diary holder took a deep breath and held it for the count of five, then exhaled to the same beat and repeated the stress relief exercise another four times. It eased the tension. Patience and diligence had brought results so far and was the right strategy to carry forward. The diary was closed, wrapped again in silk and returned to the small wooden box where it had been buried for three decades.
Chapter 6
It was mid-evening on Sunday before Hackett found time to indulge in more thoughts about his former travelling companions. The television news cycle was already moving on from Tugga’s demise. The follow-up story was an interview with the bar manager in Aireys Inlet who confiscated Tugga’s keys. Davy Allpress added a new subtext to the standard road safety theme of don’t drink and drive – ‘you can’t help some idiots’.
Hackett made himself comfortable in the office chair with the Volendam picture and examined the faces in more detail. Not surprisingly, he struggled to match many of the names with the faces. It was 30 years since he had spoken to most of them. He had run into several at Antipodean parties and pubs in London over the following 16 months, before returning home with a new career focus. Even the people he met post-trip were hard to recall.
The Dutch costumes in the photograph weren’t the most flattering either. The bonnets and blooming dresses almost time-shifted the girls back to another century. They covered the standard day wear of brief shorts, loose tops and summer tans. The smiles on many of the guys were more subdued than in other trip photos. It might have been from hangovers – they’d been on a brewery tour the day before, followed by the Red-Light District – or it could have been the 19th century studio backdrop that made them act more conservative than usual. Certainly, three of the girls that Hackett had known intimately on the trip looked demure in village costumes, compared to nights rolling around naked on tent floors and other impromptu shagging venues. He recalled their names more easily: Judy, Denise and Helen.
Helen had been the first and the easiest to lay. It was the second night in Paris after a fun session at the bar a few hundred metres from the camp site. Hackett noted on day one that she was attached to the big fella’s group, but no one seemed to claim any proprietary rights to her – she was one of the gang.
Tugga, Drew and Gerry were casting eyes everywhere as well, sizing up who was willing to play on tour and when was the best time to strike. It was a different era and morality from Hackett’s present-day life in Melbourne. Most passengers were away from home, work, families and friends for the first time and everything was a new adventure to be embraced. A tour guide from another company succinctly summarised the mood one evening in the Zombie Bar in Florence. He outlined the fundamentals that he believed applied to most trips: ‘passengers hang up their coats, their brains and then their morals – for the duration.’ The mantra for passengers and road crew was, ‘What happens on tour, stays on tour’.
The moral ambiguity of sexual freedom while touring didn’t suit everyone. A few settled into monogamous arrangements while others continued to play the field. Helen and Hackett fell into that second category. In between shagging each other when the mood suited them, they enjoyed the company of other passengers. That was how Judy, Denise and two other girls from different tour buses had ended up sharing a tent, or Hackett’s spread-out sleeping bag, during the trip. It had been one of the most liberating times of Hackett’s life, details of which had only ever been shared with Ferdy after returning to civilisation in London. His friend had been blasé. Ferdy’s business venture had netted him £20,000 while Hackett spent £3000 living the Playboy lifestyle on a budget tour. Marianne had never budgeted anything in her life; her European visits were always five-star. Hackett, therefore, was cautious about sharing experiences from his first European adventure with his wife. He told her nothing.
Hackett looked more closely at the faces of Helen, Judy and Denise; his three Kiwi birds. Of the three, Judy was the stand-out: an attractive blonde with a fresh-faced country look and a megawatt smile. From a farming family, Judy was on the trip of her dreams. Hackett recalled that Judy fell in love with Europe via cultural documentaries and books as a teenager. Ancient castles, medieval abbeys and bustling cities were such a contrast to her rural life in New Zealand. She was determined to visit the most famous landmarks before marriage and children tied her to a farm existence in Waikato. Judy was supposed to travel with a girlfriend, but she’d cancelled just before the trip because of a family problem. Hackett remembered Judy saying after one intimate encounter that she was glad there was no one to report back to her boyfriend – or parents. Raven-haired Helen was originally from Rotorua. That’s where she met Tugga and the lads before moving to Sydney for better jobs and pay in the early ’80s; along with tens of thousands of her contemporaries. She was still a Kiwi at heart, Hackett remembered, but was already being influenced by the darker side of Sydney. She always talked about getting stoned. He was surprised to learn that she was bisexual as well and had made attempts to bed other girls on the trip without any apparent success. Denise was another sweet mid-20s girl from Waikato. Hackett didn’t consider Denise as cute as Judy, but she was a lot of fun and up for a bonk almost anywhere. God knows how I ever found time for those American girls on the Contiki trip in Venice!
Hackett looked at more faces and tried to match them with names. He would make a guess and then turn the picture over to see if he was correct. Not all the passengers put down their full names or home addresses. Many picked up tour nicknames for silly habits, stunts or mishaps. These trip monikers were more commonly used on the picture, although some had bracketed the nicknames with the ones assigned by their parents at birth. Tugga’s name was there. It merely said: Tugga Tancred, NZ.
Hackett
