Exhaustion must've taken a hold on me during my last blog entry. I omitted the end of Sunday night -- something that still haunts me.
As we exited the club, we headed up Campbell's Parade (I know; kinda weird that they call a street a "parade" but I digress) towards our place. Campbell's Parade winds along Bondi Beach and roughly 50-75 shops, restaurants, etc. line the street. This is the main artery along the beach.
Several times earlier in the week, I saw the same homeless guy making his way up and down the street. As far as I could tell, he didn't harass anyone -- at least I never encountered any issues with him, nor did I witness him talking to anyone else. He stood slightly taller than me, but he obviously had some sort of spinal issue as his head rested at a crazy angle, almost directly on his shoulders, which made him slightly shorter than me if you're measuring the top of his head. I estimated that he was in his 50s, and based upon his skin's condition, my guess is that among other problems, he was also an alcoholic. At one point, Christian had mentioned that a few years ago, Sydney rushed to privatize its social services and mental institutions, which had been deemed unprofitable, were closed, thereby releasing tons of people onto the streets that had no capacity to live in the streets.
Anyway, back to Sunday night. We were laughing and recapping the evening's events as we made our way down Campbell's Parade's sidewalk. Virtually all of the shops were closed, a decent sprinkle sprayed the street and the orange city street lights illuminated our path. After walking about a block, we noticed a car stopped on the street, with a police car in front of the car and another police car behind it. We laughed at the absurdity of 13 police officers handling the arrest of one person.
We kept heading home, and made another 100 yards or so before we came upon three guys who all seemed to be goofing off -- mainly they were pushing one another around. As we got closer, we noticed that two of the guys were the Aussie equivalent of US rednecks (though "meatheads" would be a more apt description in my opinion). The guys were almost identical -- both stood around 6'2" and a 'roid induced 230 pounds or so. They had short cropped blonde hair, black "Affliction"-like shirts, jeans, and gold chains. To our chagrin, the third guy was the homeless guy that I had seen earlier in the week.
Meathead #1 had his arm on the homeless guy in a seemingly protective fashion. From my vantage point, he seemed to be keeping Meathead #2 from fighting the homeless guy. Meathead #2 kept talking shit to the homeless guy and ran up to him like he was going to punch him. The homeless guy cowered in fear and put his hands up in a defensive position. Meathead #1 kept pushing Meathead #2 back.
We continued to walk closer to the scene. Both meatheads were drunk and loud. We walked about 10 yards away from them, and Christian and I both stared at the meatheads. They tried to start shit with us as we walked by. Neither Christian (he's about 6'3", but crazy skinny) nor I said anything to them as we passed, but we kept watching them. Once we were about 20 yards away, their attention fell from us and fixated back on the homeless guy. We took a few more paces and then we stopped to see what was going to happen. We were now standing about 30 yards from the scene.
This time, neither meathead was interested in "protecting" the homeless guy. Instead, they took turns pushing him. I looked angrily at Christian, and he shook his head -- he said (probably accurately) -- that they'll kill us if we get involved. We watched the pushing for what seemed like 10 minutes, but in reality was closer to 2 minutes. After the meatheads finished the pushing and yelling, it looked like things had finally ended. Both of them turned from the homeless guy and started walking the opposite direction from the homeless guy (and away from us, too). Right before I turned to continue my way home, one of the meatheads turned around, faced the homeless guy, ran right up to him and executed a roundhouse kick to the homeless guy's face. It made a smacking sound that I could hear. The homeless guy took two steps back, and doubled-over. Both meatheads shrieked in glee and ran off.
I froze for a second -- it took me a minute to process what I had just witnessed. Once things clicked, I sprinted the 30 yards to the homeless guy. His face was covered in blood. It oozed from his temples and ran down both cheeks and his nose. I told him that I would get help for him. He shook his head and in a think Aussie accent, he said that he was fine. I told him that he had blood running all over his face, and he had no choice -- he needed help. He kept shaking his head and begged me to leave him alone. I yelled at Christian and our Belgium friend and motioned them to come to us. Once they made it to us, I told them to wait with the homeless guy while I ran back to the cops that we had seen 100 yards earlier.
I sprinted the 100 yards (wasn't the easiest in boots and a now a sizable rain) back to the cops. At this point, there was one police cruiser left from the earlier arrest. I walked up to the cruiser, and related the story. To my excruciating frustration, they wasted 10 minutes asking me where I was staying (I didn't remember the address) and what my local phone number is (I don't have one) -- WTF?? I'm trying to get help while the assholes that did this were getting away. Hurry the f$ck up!! They finally agreed to "have a look." They said that they would meet me up at the incident location.
I jogged back to my friends and arrived prior to the cops. To my dismay, the homeless guy was gone. The homeless guy had refused help and left. The cops showed up about five minutes after I did, and proceeded to interrogate Christian and me. Christian got pissed and asked why they were asking US so many questions. The cops responded that we were the lone witnesses and they wanted to get as much information as possible. Christian provided the general location where the homless guy had stumbled, and after a brutally long amount of time, the cops finally left and said they would look for the homless guy.
We continued home, and I kept replaying what had happened. Each time I pictured it, the more angry I became at myself. I felt like we should have done something sooner. To compound my anger was the number of people who had passed the scene and did nothing. The street was far from crowded, but it wasn't exactly empty, either. I kept thinking about that incident in NYC where a guy literally bled to death on a sidewalk while tons of people walked by; doing nothing...
The story has somewhat of a happy ending, however. The next day, I walked down Campbell's Parade to get some food, and the same homeless guy was back on the street, slowly walking down the street. I went up to him and looked him in the face. He didn't seem to recognize me, and muttered something unitelligble to me, but I was able to see that his face was cleaned up and it looked like he had received some sort of treatment. He didn't have bandages, but it looked like someone had at least cleaned the wounds. Needless to say I was happy that he wasn't killed...
In the end, just another crazy traveling story.
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