A Busdriver Full of Information

James' awesome backyard

So I took the bus from Coolum Beach to Ballina.  I had to get up at 5:15 am to catch the first leg and then caught the next leg at Brisbane International Airport.  It was the second leg of my journey on Byron Easy Bus where I had a very informative ride.  It was just the bus driver and one other passenger who was sitting at the back.  I was sitting up front with the bus driver.  Greg was his name and he was full of interesting information.  He had lived in Texas for 6 years developing the first prepaid cellular phone cards and then transfering the same technology over to mastercard.  Now he drives a bus two days a week just for the fun of it and for spending money as he and his wife actually have an organic farming operation near Brunswick on the Gold Coast.  As we drove along he told me all sorts of interesting stuff like how when he was 19 his brother indirectly accidently shot him and he was dead for almost 5 minutes and then died for another couple of minutes a couple of times after the first.  He told me about the experience of being dead, of being back at the “source” and what it was like and how it felt.  He was so matter of fact with his perspective that you could really listen and realize that he wasn’t telling made up tales.  I was riveted.

The Last Dinner - left to right - Neil and Kate (British couchies), Fiona, Me, Gary and James

He told me he was originally from the Greek Island of Lesbos.  This is where the term lesbian originated.  Although his story does not replicate what I read on Wikipedia, it is true that people from this island refer to themselves as lesbians.  Even in 2008, three islanders sued a gay rights group for using the term lesbian to denote women who only love women.  They say that only people from Lesbos are lesbians and their sexual orientation has nothing to do with it.  As we entered the Gold Coast he told me that the area was one of the largest volcano calderas in the world.  Its base is obsidian which is a transformative rock and thus why so many people come to this area when their lives are in change.  Interesting trivia.  (By the way, I have checked on these nuggets of information and for the most part, he had his story correct).

Strange looking bird in the Park by James' place

Next we started chatting about marijuana and as always I say, “they should just legalize it.  Think of all the money the governments would make and they could stop spending money on pot drug busts, they would put some of the biker gangs out of work and they could control the potency.”  Generally everyone agrees with that logic.  Greg then told me that it was William Randolphe Hearst (owner of the newspaper business back in the 20s and 30s) that started the whole problem around marijuana being illegal.  He tells me before newsprint was made from hemp, but when Hearst took it over he pushed newsprint being made by trees since he owned a number of pulp mills and to limit the competition he encouraged the government to make cannibus illegal and started the whole ‘reefer madness’ campaign.  Thus why even now, when hemp is a great plant that can be turned into clothes and rope, it is limited in its use because of its association with pot.  (Even though the hemp now grown for these purposes does not really have any THC in it)  Even in WWII hemp was brought back into production for soldiers’ uniforms and for rope.  It wasn’t until the 1950s that it was made illegal again.

James and I chatting about fishing in the surf

All pretty interesting eh?  What a wealth of knowledge.  So it made my trip to Ballina and the Gold Coast quite profitable from a knowledge standpoint.