Tour- Australia — Nico B. Young

We left Tokyo and flew straight to Brisbane, Australia.

Once there, we boarded buses, and drove a few hours to the small beachside town of Kingscliff.

We had 7 days off in Kingscliff.

It was a hard comedown from the frenzied pace of my time in Japan.

I went to the beach and started making sculptures in the sand.

A big J.

Recreating a doorstep design I saw in Osaka.

Fish and Chips, Passionfruit, and Lemon & Paeroa

There was a small strip of restaurants by the hotel. I ran into someone from the band or crew each time I went there.

Hanging out with Mason and Sammy in Mason's room.

They are probably talking about guitars.

The first show of the Australian tour was at the Byron Bay Bluesfest.

Only one of the three semi-trucks full of gear was flown over from Japan.

I wandered the festival grounds during the day.

It was interesting to see how festivals worked backstage. The crew for each band would set up their instruments on these wheeled platforms, and when it was their time to go on, they simply rolled the gear onstage.

A good family friend, Kyle, happened to be at the festival as a guitar tech for Joe Bonamassa. It was nice to see someone from home.

Marcus King

They played a short set, just the hits, for the festival audience.

Beers after load out

Then we flew from Brisbane to Perth, all the way on the other side of Australia.

They call Burger King "Hungry Jacks" in Aus.

Our hotel in Perth was surprisingly the fanciest one we'd stayed in. I ordered room service for the first time.

Perth is called the most remote city in the world. It's the only major city in Western Australia, whose main industry is mining.

Most of the fancy people staying at this hotel on business trips are in the mining business. The hotel art was all aerial photography of Australian mining operations.

It was nice to be in a city again, after spending the week in a sleepy beach town.

Public sculpture representing five different stages of whiteman colonizing Western Australia.

I noticed an effort to preserve historic building facades while rebuilding huge sleek modern buildings on their footprint.

I kept seeing these copper-tinted stains on the ground. It fit very well with my image of Australia as a red-dirt island.

The stains were rust, from Perth's iron-rich water supply.

Sprinklers cast rusty shadows on walls everywhere.

One of Perth's main historic tourist attractions is the Perth Mint.

Inside, they have exhibits related to the Australian gold rush.

Including this one-ton solid gold Queen Elizabeth coin.

In the old smelter room, a young museum employee gave a demonstration of melting and casting a gold bar.

I was impressed that they actually melted the gold in a furnace and poured it in front of us.

Apparently they use the same gold bar for decades, repeatedly melting and casting it again everyday.

And then I saw Queen Elizabeth.

Kangaroo nutsack bottle openers.

My hotel room overlooked the Perth hospital. There were helicopters flying there all day, rescuing people from the vast outback, since it's the only major hospital for a huge part of the country.

Another indication I was very far away from home- all the utility poles were made of curvy trunks from Eucalyptus trees.

Skate plaza designed to pay homage to Western Australia's rich mining history. All the obstacles were made of stone.

The show in Perth was in a big public park, where they had erected this temporary band stand and seating over a pond. It was taken down after the show.

Sound check

Noticed some re-used roadcases.

The temporary backstage area set up for the show.

I walked around the park and saw this double-helix staircase observation tower.

I sat in the audience while the opening bands did soundcheck, and Jackson came and sat down next to me. We had a nice conversation. This was the most time we spent one-on-one for the whole tour.

Jackson performed in his Better Call Saul t shirt

A huge team of workers arrived right as the show ended to take down the band stand and seating.

From Perth, we flew down to Melbourne.

I appreciated this chic toiletry assortment in my hotel room.

The bathtub had a TV inset into the wall.

Another example of the historic facade-ism.

Historic building contained entirely within the atrium of this new mall.

I woke up to the shocking text that the show later that day had been postponed, due to Jackson having lost his voice.

I hit up my friend Rex, and got to spend the day with him instead.

Rex and I had been online friends for years, with a few mutual friends from a short time he lived in LA. We'd met for the first time a few months before, when he came to visit LA.

He took me to his house in an outer suburb of Melbourne called Reservoir

He lived there with his girlfriend Jade and a few friends.

It was a beautiful house. They'd built up a thriving vegetable garden over the pandemic.

We had a beer on his roof and watched the sunset.

Then Jade made an amazing dinner with vegetables from the garden. It was the most memorable meal of my whole trip.

Their housemate was out of town, so they encouraged me to stay the night.

I woke up before them and spent some time admiring all the details of their house.

Their housemate had a nice woodshop in the garage. Different lumber than I'm used to seeing on this side of the world.

Having morning coffee.

Their housemate made a lot of furniture around the house.

One thing I had never seen before were these light switches on the doortrim. It made so much sense to route electrical wire through the trim.

We went out for breakfast and they walked me to the train, I hurried back to the hotel to make the flight with the rest of the crew.

We left Melbourne without a show, and headed to Sydney, unsure what would happen with Jackson.

We stayed right on the harbor.

The opera house was really amazing to see up close.

I had never known that its white surface was clad in ceramic tiles.

The next day we got the text that the Sydney show was also postponed. I couldn't imagine the logistical nightmare going on behind the scenes. I felt so lucky to be completely insulated from it.

I wasn't into Sydney as much as Melbourne, but there were some really charming old neighborhoods.

I was surprised by how European some streets felt.

Went to this hipster café/bar

The huge concert hall where the show was supposed to be happening that night.

I got all around the city on the public bikes

Saw utes everywhere.

I loved this public sculpture of a boulder crushing a car. I thought it was a shame, though, that someone had graffitied a face on it.

I looked up the piece later and found that, actually, the face had been part of the original work.

A 2004 sculpture/performance by the American artist Jimmie Durham. Bizarre!

The only young person I knew in Sydney was Niamh. She had lived in LA and was actually Rex's ex.

I reached out and she invited me to a party that night at her sister's flat. We went out to drinks before with her sister-in-law Meg.

It was a pretty intimate party, so I stuck out as an American.

I ended up at a McDonalds with some people from the party later.

With the second show postponed, I sensed the band members were getting a bit restless, and unsure if the tour should even continue.

I went out for lunch with Greg Leisz and Jason Crosby.

I got a kangaroo burger.

The Aussie tour managers who had been dealing with the shitshow of the postponed shows rented a room in the hotel to play an Aussie-Rules Football game. It was their hometeam playing, so they were screaming and hollering at each play.