Brisbane to Los Angeles - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 96

stops in Sydney and Melbourne, loading and unloading cargo, before it departs to New Zealand. Meaning
that our miserable, sleepless, thirteen-hour overnight train ride up to Brisbane was in fact completely unne-
cessary. I must tell you, there is a unique flavor of frustration one feels when one backtracks over bitterly
earned surface miles.
Upon berthing in Sydney, we attempt to leave the port and spend the afternoon downtown, hoping to see
some things we missed during our last, brief stay. This is no simple task. Escaping the port itself involves
walking through interstitial zones that are jumbles of concrete, chain-link, and abandoned dock equipment.
These days, cities spend millions of dollars to tailor the experience of travelers coming into and out of air-
ports. No such efforts are expended on behalf of container ship passengers. Our transition from transport
to destination is unsanitized and unsocialized. We're never routed through a duty-free shop. Even after we
leave the port (flashing the laminated crew IDs provided by the Matisse so we won't be arrested for tres-
passing inside the container yard), it's not clear to us how we should get into the city. We're alone on an
empty road in an industrial wasteland.
Eventually, we spot a bus depot in the distance. It turns out this is where Sydney's city buses begin their
day—with the drivers arriving for work, fueling up, and heading out on their routes. There's no actual bus
stop here, so we just wave our arms and shout as one of the big buses pulls out of the gate. The driver slows
hesitantly, opens the door, ascertains that we're not trying to hijack him, and then lets us aboard without
making us pay the fare.
Returning to the ship after a few pleasant hours in downtown Sydney isn't any easier. Our taxi driver
has no clue where the port is. “Somewhere near the water?” we suggest. He gets lost multiple times before
accidentally stumbling upon it.
By the time the Matisse has chugged down the Australian coast, and made it in and out of Melbourne's
port, we're able to identify and differentiate several types of commercial marine vessel. There are the low-
slung tankers that hold oil or chemicals. The tall, flat-sided Ro-Ros that allow wheeled vehicles to roll on
and roll off through the giant doors set in their hulls. The small, freelance freighters with their own deck-
mounted cranes. And of course the container ships, arrayed in long queues that stretch clear across the har-
bor—the equivalent of airplanes circling above a landing strip. Some of these appear to be following the
same cargo circuit as us, and we find them tied up and waiting each time we arrive at a new pier.
We can also recognize, from hundreds of yards away, the various shipping company logos painted on
the containers. Hapag-Lloyd uses an eye-catching orange. Hamburg Süd favors a deep brick red. Maersk
employs a utilitarian all-caps, sans serif typeface.
I can't even guess at how many individual containers we've seen at this point. There are two thousand
aboard our own ship, another couple of thousand aboard each ship we pass, and what seems like millions,
stacked in endless rows, crowding the docks whenever we approach shore. Once you become attuned to
the ubiquity of containers, you spot them in the backs of department store parking lots, along the sides of
train tracks, and everywhere else. They are the empty husks discarded by global commerce.
IT'S three days at sea from Melbourne to Auckland, and the crew is anticipating heavy weather. “Be ready
for three days of hell,” says Lucian with a cackle. He says he wouldn't be surprised if we lose some con-
tainers. When the ship rolls steeply, they can wrench free a dozen at a time and topple into the ocean with
mushroom-cloud splashes. Apparently, the most sought-after freighter captains are the ones best able to
read weather systems and chart a course through calm seas—thus preventing these occasional container
losses and, more important, saving fuel that would otherwise be spent battling head-winds and powerful
waves.