You come across some characters when staying in backpacker hostels and I found myself sharing a dorm with some right headers. One, an early thirties Galwegian called Paddy who had been living in Perth for over a year, was on the bunk above me. He studied robotics in university and was working for an Australian company that manufactured car assembly machinery. In his spare time he told me, he was working on a computer program that he would allow him to cheat at online poker. Although his short stature, dorky profession and thick glasses gave the impression of a studious, quiet type, he was actually a funny, eccentric sort of a lad.

He was full of off-the-wall stories that generally only came to light when the drink was flowing. One such tale was of the time when he went to Belfast as a 17-year-old to try to enlist in the IRA. He didn't know anyone so he just wandered into a bar in West Belfast and started asking random punters if they could put him in touch with the local OC. Happily, he wasn't taken as some sort of security forces plant and he returned home unharmed after being informed that the war was all but over and his services would not be required. His decision to travel to Belfast came about, he told me, as a result of a short-lived romantic notion of the IRA's campaign that had long since past. But he enjoyed telling the story all the same.

Another one started off a bit more mundane but ended in far greater personal tragedy. He got his own place in Galway shortly after leaving college and immediately set about redecorating. Walls were painted, tiles were laid and a laminate floor was glued into place with some dodgey tin of industrial adhesive he got from a mate. He slept on the floor after his day's work but he would wake up, he told me, feeling increasingly groggy and short of breath. His brother dropped by to check on his progress and was impressed by the results. He was less impressed however, by the discoloured, disheveled mess Paddy had suddenly become. He was a shade of green, by all accounts, and a trip to the hospital was deemed necessary. He was sent home after extensive tests and a short stay with the sad news that he had permanently lost 30 per cent of his lung capacity. “Don't laugh at me! I've the lung capacity of a eight-year-old girl!” he lamented, throwing his hands in the air when he saw my unsympathetic reaction to his sorry tale..

Also sharing my room were the hostel's only two French representatives – Sylvan and Thebault. The pair were of such different personalities that it was amazing that they came from the same planet let alone the same city. While handsome, brooding Thibault was quiet and darkly intelligent, larger-than-life Sylvan was probably the most out-going person I've ever met.

A particular bug-bear of Sylvan's were the big, screeching crows that seem to infest much of Western Australia. They look quite like the Irish fellas but oddly, they sound nothing like each other. To all intents and purposes the Australian version has a different accent. It's difficult to wake up in the morning to anything other than their howling cries that sound like a mixture between someone dry retching and a bag of cats being stamped on. Unless of course, you shared a room with Sylvan. He hit the roof as soon as the first bird began to vomit its morning chorus off in the distance. He would be out of bet and barreling towards the window shouting, “Zee berds! They cannot shet ap!”

Sylvan's main hobby was smoking cannabis. Not unusual in itself, but he had an oddly artistic way of approaching the practice. Anytime we went to the super market he would pick up a piece of fruit and announce that he would smoke it. I didn't really know what he meant by this on the first occasion he started manically declaring his nefarious intentions towards an unsuspecting water melon but I soon found out. He bought it, took it back to the hostel and went to work with a big grin on his face. He cut a lattice of internal chambers into the fruit and then started rolling a half dozen joints. Next, he fitted them into strategically placed holes in the outer skin of the melon, sparked up and smoked them by sucking on one end of the fruit. Over the weeks that followed he would burst into the dorm with some other unfortunate victim from the fruit and veg isle quite regularly. I personally watched him smoke grape fruit, banana, mango, a large apple and, on one of his less inspired days, a bewildered carrot.

I was quickly finding out that sharing a room with a bunch of strangers is at times uncomfortable, sometimes unhygienic and occasionally dangerous, but rarely boring.