Steve Takes Timeout

Chungking Mansions

2006-06-17T23:23:00.000Z

This is what Lonely Planet has to say about Chungking Mansions: “You may be put off by the undercurrent of sleaze and peculiar odours - cooking fat, incense and shit – but don’t seek sanctuary in the lifts; they’re like steel coffins on cables…. Be grateful for the stray cats as they keep the rats in check”. We had bought the Lonely Planet. We had read this review. We had (presumably) thought it sounded horrible. To this day I have no explanation as to why we ended up staying there.

As the crowded shuttle bus from the airport made its way into Tsim Sha Tsui it stopped to let off happy tourists and locals along the way. By the time it finally reached Chungking Mansions, Mia and I were the only souls left on board. As the bus pulled up outside our stop the driver turned to us and muttered something unintelligible to us in what appeared to be a friendly but concerned manner, then he smiled, waved goodbye and opened the doors. We could see the iron security gates covering the tall archway to Chungking Mansions, but it was not obvious whether the gates were there to keep undesirables out or to keep the inhabitants in. The entranceway was obstructed by a very large gang of seedy looking people, some Chinese, some North African immigrants. As we got off the bus our backpacks and fresh airport luggage tags drew them towards us like a huge bucket of fish guts thrown into shark infested waters. Indeed, judging from the smell emanating from the entrance hall I suspect that Chungking Mansions was no stranger to hurled buckets of fish guts. The people clamouring around us were trying to drag us into their hostels within the tower block but we firmly but politely told them that we already had a reservation so didn’t require their services. We made it inside and headed towards the “steel coffin on a cable” for Block A which would take us up to “Li’s Place”.

After a 5 minute wait for the elevator the doors creaked open and about 30 people levered themselves out from a space the size of a small lavatory. We squeezed ourselves in making sure that our backpacks were against the wall and away from any pickpocket’s light fingers, and the lift started an uneasy ascent to the seventh floor. Mr Li told us that they were full (despite my reservation) but instead he had got us a room in his cousin’s hostel and a man would show us to the new place. This meant taking the elevator back down to the ground floor, a short walk through fish guts avenue and then another thrilling elevator ride in the H Block lift. I swear to god, while the guy was waiting for the lift to come he held his hands together in prayer! I found it very difficult to warm to this guy because he was far too friendly. All the time he was telling us how lucky we were and that we had a great room - “super-deluxe” in fact. I didn’t mention it, but I suspected that my definition of a super deluxe room would be vastly different to his. He had that over-the-top kind of friendliness that people only give you when they’re either about to rip you off or when they’ve just slept with your girlfriend. As Mia had only just met the guy I had to assume this was going to be a very expensive elevator ride.

This is the view out of our window. I'll leave you to judge whether the room met our super deluxe expectations or not.

The next day we checked into the YMCA - 3 times the price, but worth 10 times more at least!

Flight to Hong Kong

2006-06-17T18:12:00.000Z

8:30am - Sydney airport:
Our flight to Hong Kong was looking good to leave on time at 10:20am, and Mia and myself were ready to check in. But there was one small but significant problem

8:30am - A dark filing cabinet in Flightcentre Sydney City.
Mia’s plane ticket looked at its watch anxiously.

The woman behind the check in desk was adamant that as Mia had a paper ticket we couldn’t leave without it. The problem was that the branch of FlightCentre didn’t open till 10am which would only give us 20 minutes to get back to the airport, pass security and board the plane. The 24 hour emergency helpline was pretty useless and the guy on the other end of the phone seemed reluctant to concede that we would miss the flight and rebook us on the next one. With about 10 minutes to go we finally managed to contact the office and they rebooked us on the afternoon flight. Then they sent the tickets round in a taxi, and by 2pm we were on our way to Hong Kong.

Sydney Again

2006-06-11T18:10:00.000Z

I flew back to Sydney to meet up with Mia who was about to fly home to Finland. It amazes me that Mia lived in Sydney for 9 months and hadn’t done any tourist things apart from looking at the bridge and the opera house. But before we did any sightseeing this time Mia had 9 months worth of packing and goodbyes to do before she left. How much crap can you accumulate in 9 months?? One big rucksack, one medium sized rucksack, 5 green bags, 2 handbags, 1 plastic bag and a cowboy hat. We trawled round the city collecting her belongings from various friend’s houses, nurses quarters, pawn shops and homeless shelters, then brought it all back to our small hostel room on the bus. The next 3 days were spent reducing her baggage to a size and weight that wouldn’t cause the aeroplane to crash.

After that we went to Taronga Zoo and did the Bondi to Coogee walk, and also sorted out our next adventure in Hong Kong…

Matt's Stag - Naked in Brisbane

2006-06-10T20:59:00.000Z

After Darwin I flew to Brisbane for Matt’s stag night. As everyone knows the main aim of any stag night is to try and give the groom-to-be as much shit as possible so that they realise that married life is infinitely better than spending the rest of their life hanging out with their male friends. So it was inevitable that someone would end up naked and humiliated, but I wasn’t quite prepared for it being me.

Unfortunately the only flights that leave Darwin for Brisbane go at about 1am, and as I was flying out on the day of his stag do it meant that I faced the prospect of going out drinking that evening having only had 2 hours sleep. To compensate I booked a single room in Bunk in Fortitude Valley and decided to go to bed for some serious power napping as soon as I got there. When I tried to check in at 6am I was told that the room wouldn’t be ready till midday and I had to amuse myself having an exceedingly long breakfast and writing emails until I could check in. I slept from about 1 till 5 then woke up to find several drunken answerphone messages from Matt’s friends telling me to get out of bed and join them in a pool bar in Queens Street. We had a few games of pool and then headed off to Matt’s place to have a barbecue and to throw some things off the balcony at passers by.

For the stag the evening passed relatively uneventfully. He neither vomited, nor was humiliated, and nor was made to get up on stage during a live sex show and violate a Spanish stripper with a vibrator in his mouth (so Ed, it was nothing like yours mate)... We ended the evening watching the first round England-Paraguay world cup match in the Storey bridge hotel then made our (very) drunken way back to our respective residences.

As I had to fly to Sydney the next day I made sure that I drank plenty of water before bed as I didn’t want to be too hungover the next day. At about 4am I woke up and was dying to take a piss – in fact I was so pant-wettingly dying to take a piss that I didn’t have time to find the light switch, my clothes or even a key, so I propped the door open with my shoes and wrapped a towel round me and ran to the bathroom.

Relieved, I was just about to flush the toilet when I heard a banging noise in the corridor.
Wouldn’t it be bad if that was my door closing? I thought.
Then I felt the full force of the ‘Oh-Shit Second’ when you suddenly realise that something truly bad has happened. Sure enough, on returning to my room I discovered that my shoes had been pushed aside by the weight of the door and the door was now firmly closed and locked. It was 4 am and I was drunk and naked in a hostel corridor, with only a very small travel towel to protect my modesty.

My first instinct was to find somewhere to curl up and go to sleep but the corridor was pretty spartan and was just a maze of locked doors. My second instinct – admittedly a far superior one – was to check whether there was anyone around who could let me back into my room. I walked down the stairs to reception and I could make out some noises coming from behind the closed doors. Lots of noises. Not quiet noises of receptionists tapping on keyboards or stapling bits of paper, but loud ‘duff-duff’ noises of drunken football fans having fun in the hostel bar. For Bunk is a party hostel and is home to more Irish people than Ireland itself. On the plus side its size meant reception was 24 hours, but first I would have to get there without someone forcibly removing my towel and whipping me with it. I gingerly pushed open the door to reception and surveyed the scene. I think that’s when I got my first wolf whistle. There were about 10 people sitting on the sofas staring at me. I looked towards the reception desk but there was no-one behind it, but then I spied a girl I thought had been working there earlier who was now chatting to a couple of other people just across the room. I walked up to her and cleared my throat. She turned round and looked at my towel.
“Excuse me, I appear to have locked myself out of my room, have you got a spare key?”.
That’s what I tried to say. What actually came out was more like
“nufff-ee ‘ve nocked sef me ruum. Syu got hay sperek-hee?”
She looked at me closely whilst reaching for the can of mace in her handbag.
Shit, she doesn’t work here, I thought. Look and see if she’s wearing a name tag… fuck, now she thinks I’m looking at her tits! And now I’ve gone red in the face! And I’m naked and I stink of booze!

I tried once more with the sentence about the spare key, this time doing the international hand signal for key and mentioning my room number. This seemingly had more meaning and she moved to the reception desk and started tapping on the computer. I smiled sweetly and tried to make a joke about some shit or other. I can’t remember exactly what - hopefully I didn’t break into some Peter Kay routine or anything. Within a few minutes she had coded me a new key-card and I bolted up the stairs to hide my shame under the duvet. It was then, and only then, when I was safely tucked up in bed on my own and in the dark, that I could begin to see the funny side.

Great British Sand Art

2006-06-09T14:29:00.000Z

Whilst the Aboriginals express themselves through the wonderful medium of rock art, me and Katharine (yes, that is how you spell it) decided that we'd display our artistic talents by sculpting things in sand on Mindil Beach in Darwin. And what more sublime subject is there than the “sand arse”?

So on the left you have “Crack Lady” (© Me 2006)
And on the right you have “Surfer Dood” sic (© Katharine, 2006)

Not content with that we decided to follow up with a collaboration in the form of a piece of installation art:

"Crocydylus Silicus" (© Me + Katharine, 2006)

Note the contrast between the medium and the subject:
Sand: soft, smooth, comfortable to sit on;
Crocodile: hard, rough, extremely dangerous to sit on.

I think we were both a bit surprised at how good it turned out, and as crocodiles on the beach in Darwin are not uncommon we were half hoping that the police might turn up and try to shoot it.

Aboriginal Rock Art

2006-06-05T13:40:00.000Z

Aboriginals used to communicate the Dreamtime Stories (myths about how the landscape was created) by painting the scenes from the legends on sheltered rock formations. These tales invariably involve giant snakes having their eggs stolen by enormous emus, followed by the maddened snakes pursuing the thieves across the land angrily crashing into mountains to create rivers and valleys. It is worth noticing that the quality of the art improves greatly as you go North – the paintings on the sides of Uluru in the centre are jumbled daubs, but as you get into the Northern Territory the art becomes more representational and more worthy of postcards and photographs. Why should this be? Most likely because in the desert the Aboriginals had to spend the majority of their time scratching for food in the dry earth, whereas in the moist tropical north they could find all the food they needed in the morning, then spend the afternoon at leisure painting men with large penises on their neighbours living room walls.

Deeply buried in Kakadu national Park we unearthed previously undiscovered school reports from what appears to be an aboriginal art teacher sometime in the dim and distant past….

Name: Didjbarrka
Subject: Rock Art (Aboriginal)
Form: 3a
Didjbarrka has worked hard this term and has showed steady improvement. He is keen to contribute and often willing to help clean up the cave after class. Well done Didjbarrka!

Name: Wadjularbinna
Subject: Rock Art (Aboriginal)
Form: 3a
What Wadjularbinna lacks in ability he makes up in enthusiasm, particularly when finger painting. Although I sometimes struggle to work out what he has drawn, his attitude has been exemplary and he sets a fine example to other class members.

Name: Bangana
Subject: Rock Art (Aboriginal)
Form: 5c
Bangana has been disruptive in class this year and has been disciplined several times for painting over the work of his other classmates. There are plenty of other rocks he could be using, but he seeks to gain attention by defacing the work of others. Does Bananga have concentration problems at home? I think it might be a good idea if we all met up and had a chat.

Name: Morri Morri
Subject: Rock Art (Aboriginal, Remedial)
Form: 5c
Could do better.

Port Hedland

2006-05-23T08:32:00.000Z

Nothing exciting happened at Port Hedland - nothing exciting ever does. The only thing that came close was some Swedish people making us lunch and mistaking a courgette for a cucumber and eating it in their sandwiches. We didn't tell them until afterwards because they were loving it so much.

Funny nation the Swedes.

Karijini National Park

2006-05-22T10:56:00.000Z

We left the coast behind and headed inland to Karijini National Park - a series of red rock mountains covered in bright green spinifex bushes. We collected some firewood in the evening for a camp fire and I sat on the roof of the truck to make sure it didn't fall off as we drove back. I think ropes might have been a better idea as there was nothing to make sure I didn't fall of as we bumped along the dirt track. At the end I got off battered and bruised and covered in little bits of wood.

The next day we went to Hancock Gorge for a bit of a trek. We'd been to many West Coast gorges before on this trip but I haven't been putting them in the blog because they all look the same after a while. The blog entries could be compressed to "Walked for 40-60 minutes, saw gorge, went down into gorge, admired waterfall, swam in gorge, climbed back out of gorge". But Hancock Gorge is a little bit different in that you have to make a real effort to get there, so it's well worth a mention.

The best part is the spiderwalk, where you have to wedge your legs on either side of the canyon and shuffle along for about 30 metres- hoping that you don't slip and drown your digital camera in the water below. Nina wore a very short skirt. I haven't published the photo that I have of her in the interests of taste and decency, but if anyone wants to see it then let me know...

Although no-one got wet on the spiderwalk we all had to wade through water up to our waists in other sections anyway. At first I kept my boots dry by taking them off and carrying them, but eventually I just wore them and took the opportunity to give them a long needed wash. At the end of the gorge was "Kermit's Pool", a deep plunge pool that contained some of the coldest water known to man, where we swam (for 30 seconds)

That evening I created the eighth wonder of the modern world - a boot drying device engineered from eucalyptus branches and pure ingenuity. A beautiful cantilever arrangement of natural materials as sublime in form as it was in function. It took at least an hour to perfect and in the end could dry three pairs of shoes over the camp fire concurrently! Then Andreas came along and put his shoes out to dry on the back of a deck chair.

A deck chair I tell you! Typical German efficiency! Where's the explorer spirit in that? Your deck chair has no soul!!!

(By the way, Brigitte, I'm really sorry I burned your shoes).

Exmouth and Turquoise Bay

2006-05-21T10:45:00.000Z

More snorkelling for us in Exmouth, slightly further up the coast from Coral Bay, but still on Ningaloo Reef. The great thing about Ningaloo is that it's so close to the shore that you can actually swim off the beach and reach the coral, so no need for expensive boat trips to get you to the action. We travelled to Turquoise Bay for a whole day's relaxation on the beach. It struck me that I haven't done that in so long because I've been moving around so much so it was a really good day.

After lunch we made up an olympic style relay race involving speed-walking, swimming, running through water and finally running backwards wearing flippers. I chose to do the running through water (waist deep).
I'm a fucking idiot.
I couldn't feel my legs at the end and they refused to support me as I tried to run out of the water. I fell ignominiously on my face in the sand. Twice.

Coral Bay

2006-05-20T10:09:00.000Z

We arrived at Coral Bay in the evening having plenty of time to sink a great many beers before the bar closed. Mia hit me in the eye with a pool ball when we were playing pool. I think she did it on purpose as payback for all those Monkey Mia jokes the day before.

The next morning we had to get up to do a full day's snorkelling on Ningaloo Reef - Western Australia's equivalent to the Great Barrier Reef. Being WA it doesn't get even a quarter of the traffic that the Barrier Reef does, so you don't have to use spear guns to fight off Japanese tourists. After a really heavy night before the last thing I was feeling like was 8 hours bobbing up and down on a boat, but I dragged myself on board anyway. At least we'd get to see the fish feeding if I heaved over the side.
The main focus of the day was to swim with manta rays. The boat had a spotter plane flying overhead to locate the shadows of the huge beasts in the water and then direct the skipper to where they were. Once we'd located them one of the crew swam out to where they were and we followed behind, then tracked the manta ray as it swam and barrel-rolled around the ocean. We'd been told not to get infront of them as if they get spooked their natural reaction is to charge, using their 2 tonne weight and 5 metre wingspan to thump you out of the way. Easier said than done as the mantas kept on turning around every 30 seconds so that they were looking right at you. Pretty amazing stuff, and very good exercise as they can really shift.
After the mantas we went and snorkelled over the reef. The visibility wasn't great, but there were quite a few fish around -not least because the crew of the boat kept on throwing bread in the water. There was a cameraman on board who kept on snapping photos of people as they dived. Rory bought the photos on a cd and we all gave him some money to post us copies when he got home the next week. I could be wrong but I don't think any ever got sent to my home address in England. He was making jokes like "that's the easiest $100 I've ever made" and "never trust an Irishman" when we were handing over the money, which just makes things worse! The scoundrel!

Monkey Mia

2006-05-19T04:04:00.000Z

I'd been looking forward to getting to Monkey Mia for ages, but I wasn't too fussed about what we'd see there. Monkey Mia is a resort that sells itself as the place to see wild dolphins being fed from the beach - it's actually illegal to feed them most other places as it disrupts their natural feeding patterns. But I wasn't there for the dolphins. I was there because we were travelling with a Finnish girl called Mia - and going to a place called Monkey Mia opened up a whole world of cheesey comedy potential...

In the end everybody was far more impressed with the dolphins than my poor jokes. I'll concede that watching a dolphin eating a fish is marginally more exciting than watching an Englishman pointing at a sign and laughing by himself.

Stromatolites

2006-05-17T03:38:00.000Z

Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay National Park is home to some of the oldest and most unique creatures on the planet - cyanobacteria - which form large rock mounds underneath the sea just for tourists to go and look at. As the pools are so sheltered and salty most animals can't get there to disturb the delicate balance that keeps the cyanobacteria alive. So there are only a couple of places in the world today where you can see stromatolites and Western Australia has the best examples.

Scientists believe that the stromatolites might be the most ancient living things on the planet. Just as we were leaving, a tour bus from Casey Australia Tours pulled up and disproved this by unloading its cargo of doddery geriatric pensioners (who outdate the stromatolites by 20 years). What do you know? We got to see two types of living fossil in one day!

Lost in Perth

2006-05-16T02:57:00.000Z

One of the advantages of booking on a tour on the West Coast is that you get an experienced tour guide who knows the territory like the back of his hand and can safely navigate you through obstacles and hazards on the way.

An hour out of Perth and the tour guide was lost. For this was Nathan's first time doing a tour in Western Australia, and the only other time he'd been on this road was in the dark and travelling in the opposite direction. Although he hadn't said anything to us we could tell he was lost because we'd been round the same roundabout twice and were going down little minor roads instead of being on the big major highway that goes North up the coast. After a short while he confessed to us that he didnt know where he was and we pulled up sharply at the side of the road so he could call the office for some pointers. He got out of the truck and went and made a phone call at the front. Five minutes later he returned.
"Righty-ho guys, there's some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I know where we are. The bad news is that we're bogged..."
We'd stopped in the layby on some very soft sand and the wheels had dug in so that the truck was firmly stuck.
"Can everybody get out and give us a push?" Asked Nathan.
At first we all thought he was joking - the truck was absolutely huge and must have weighed 5 tonnes at least. But he wasn't so we all got out and took a good look at the wheels dug in up to their axles and began to dig with the spade.

A couple of locals stopped in their utes to help out with some towing power. Very kind of them - they didn't take the piss once and just got on with it - I would have ripped the shit out of Nathan for at least 10 minutes before I lifted a finger. On the second attempt we got free, and in 15 minutes had found our way back to the main highway and were on our way up to the Pinnacles.

The Pinnacles are thousands of yellow limestone peaks sticking out of the sand in Nambung National Park. They range in height from a few centimetres up to a couple of metres, and cover an area the size of several football fields. They look a bit like small standing stones that you might find in Britain, only these were formed naturally by erosion and the leeching of lime from crushed seashells into the ground.

To get there you have to drive down a sandy road. I shouted to Nathan not to get stuck a couple of times. He pretended not to hear me...

Perth and Fremantle

2006-05-14T02:55:00.000Z

When I arrived in Perth, Gemma, who I'd met on the Alice Springs trip was just about to leave and start work in the middle of nowhere in a bar. I toyed with the idea of getting a job somewhere too, though obviously not as a barmaid - I don't have the legs or the cleavage for it.

She had texted me to tell me the name of the hostel she was staying at in the gorgeous seaside suburb of Fremantle. She'd said that her hostel wasn't very nice but I hadn't read it properly and I thought she was suggesting somewhere good to stay so I checked in there. There were 2 things wrong with where we were staying: firstly it was the smelliest dorm room I've ever been in, and secondly there was a really unfriendly atmosphere (Gemma hadn't talked to anyone for 4 days, which was a personal record even for her). The smell was caused by a filthy travel towel hung up to dry on one of the dorm beds. The bad atmosphere was because the hostel was full of Australians.

Don't get me wrong, it's nothing to do with them being Australian - Australians on the whole are really friendly (much more so than than Europeans) and those who are travelling are a great laugh to hang around. But these people were not staying there on holiday but had ended up living there, either because they'd been kicked out by their wives, or their house had been repossessed to pay off their debts at the local tattooists, or because they were on the run after committing some horrific backpacker murders in the Wolf Creek area. When the hostel prices are $15 a night you can see why they flock there - accommodation for 6 quid? That's not a hostel, it's a night shelter.

And when Gemma went off to work leaving me there on my own I got scared and went to the YHA in the City instead.

The Indian Pacific

2006-05-11T01:02:00.000Z

Indian Pacific Train Stats -

Route: Sydney - Adelaide - Perth
Duration: 3 nights in either direction
Distance: 4352 kilometres

I was only going from Adelaide to Perth, so it was just a mere 2 nights, or 39 hours, but I really really wished I'd brought a sleeping bag and a pillow with me because they dont give you one. I also wished I'd brought a change of clothes but I'd checked in my big rucksack into the baggage car and couldn't get at it. 30 minutes into the journey I was wishing that I'd taken the plane.

The worst thing that can happen to you on any long, cramped and confined journey is having to sit next to a nutter for 39 hours. Fortunately I was sitting next to a lovely old woman - yes, she talked too much, wouldn't let me get a word in edgeways and her feet smelled when she took her shoes off, but she was all there mentally so I considered myself lucky. The people 6 or 7 rows in front of me weren't so fortunate as they had a class 1 certified lunatic circling around them. He was on definitely on something - I don't know what it was, day release from a mental hospital would be one possibility - and he kept walking up and down the corridor talking really loudly to everyone people: "Free showers! They've got free showers up the front. Hey mate, go have a shower - it's free...". He also decided that his seat was a different one to that on his ticket and every time the train manager showed him back to his seat and explained patiently what "28A" meant, he'd get up and walk back to the seat he thought he should be in. This was really annoying, particularly for the guy who was trying to sit in it.

After a while the rightful occupant of his adopted seat gave up, conceded his place and went and sat in the lounge car. This left the mad guy sitting next to a Japanese girl who braved 5 minutes conversation before collapsing in floods of tears. Then the passengers revolted and it all got personal. He seemed to think that the the train company, staff and all the passengers were racist because he was the only aboriginal in the carriage and we were all picking on him. No-one pointed out that we were only picking on him because he was the only arsehole in the carriage, but i doubt that piece of logic would have altered his opinion. Twenty minutes later the train made an unscheduled stop in the middle of nowhere to offload one passenger into the back of a waiting police car, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

One of the reasons I'd wanted to take the train was to see the Nullabor Plain, which is a 200,000 square km pancake flat, treeless area that runs 1200km between South and Western Australia (literally, null arbour = "no trees" in latin). It's an area so vast and so empty that you just cannot imagine. So why the hell did I want to see it? I guess it's because not many people do, especially not the whole 1200km of it anyway. When you look out the window at the start of the plain, it looks exactly the same as it does a day later when you look out again. It's like in cartoons where Fred Flintstone is driving along and he keeps passing the same looping scenery. I could have just bought a postcard I guess... probably would have been easier.

We made two stops - the "town" of Cook, population 5 and Kalgoorlie, population lots. Also, when instructed by the train driver, we all looked out the window and waved at Ziggy the Hermit's house - a guy who lives on his own in the middle of the plain because he can't stand crowds. It struck me that 500 people on a train staring through his living room window probably wasn't the most sensitive thing we could be doing to a guy who hates human contact, but if you will build your house next to the railway line and call yourself "Ziggy the Hermit" you're asking for it really aren't you?

Kalgoorlie was interesting - it's a rough mining town that produces most of Australia's gold and also most of Australia's dirty old miners. We stopped there for 4 hours and spent most of it in the pub, briefly having a look at some old hotels from the goldrush and a few still functioning brothels in Kalgoorlie's famous red light district. It's got a pretty busy nightlife and a surprising number of trendily dressed young people going out in the pubs and clubs. I was just expecting to see a couple of old farts round a camp fire with a banjo, but there's actually quite a few really stunning women. Either they're attracted by the vast quantities of gold, or they have a thing about rough men with long dusty beards and dubious personal hygiene. Hmmm... I wonder which one it is...

The beers we had in Kalgoorlie send me to sleep for the night and I woke up the next day with just a few hours to go before we got to Perth. They were pretty long hours though, as I was being lectured by an English couple on what I could expect to find in Western Australia. (Really??? They have kangaroos there? In Australia? Surely not!!!)

After 39 hours I arrived, smelly and tired in Perth.

Back in Adelaide

2006-05-08T00:24:00.000Z

When I got back to Adelaide Julia and Christine (German girls from the Great Ocean Road) had just got back from 2 weeks fruit picking. Fruit picking can be a cruel business as you get paid exploitatively and worked exhaustively. It also doesn't help if it rains all the time and you can't work, so Julia and Christine had come back from their 2 weeks having earned (after expenses) roughly $40. I told you jobs are for losers.

We hired a car for the day and went up into the Adelaide Hills. It rained.

Our first stop was the "World's Biggest Rocking Horse". It's pretty big, though if i were you I wouldn't buy my ticket out to Australia just to see it, even if you really, really love big rocking horses. There's probably better things to see in Australia. Like the big tree just down the road that some crazy family used to live in, or the big dam where you can whisper at one end and other people can hear it perfectly 200m away at the other. The Adelaide Hills are as mad as a chocolate frog.

The reason for all the madness might have something to do with the fact that one of Australia's biggest wine regions in based here - the Barrossa Valley, We stopped at Jacob's Creek for a bit of a tasting and some jokes about spitting or swallowing. Obviously being English I've already sunk many a bottle of $4.99 semillon chardonnay so I was just there to get a photo of the creek itself, but the Germans were expecting a fine wine experience so I could tell they were a bit disappointed when the barmaid served up some cheap plonk. Maybe we should have gone somewhere a bit more upmarket.

I drove them to Hahndorf to make up for it, which is a German town in the hills that I thought would make them feel more at home. This was a mistake. Apparently the town didn't look German, the Sauerkraut was horrible, and don't even get them started on the bread. In fact, don't ever get any German started on the subject of bread. When Basil Fawlty said "don't mention the war" he really should have extended the warning to also include baked goods. To Germans, bread should be a hard black rye brick and if it isn't then this causes them great physical pain. Any mention of the B-word and their eyes roll back into their sockets and they will go off on one about how good the bread is in Germany and how evil it is elsewhere.

Try it next time you meet a German - if you've got a spare couple of hours...

The Stuart Highway

2006-05-06T00:11:00.000Z

It had taken us 10 days to get from Adelaide to Alice on the dirt roads, but if you're in a hurry you can take the Stuart Highway and do it in just 2. I was getting a train from Adelaide to Perth so decided to do the 2 day road trip back along the bitumen, stopping off for the night in an underground bunkhouse in Coober Pedy.

There's only about 3 corners on the Stuart Highway and loads of people just end up falling asleep and driving off the road because it's so tedious. Either that or they deliberately drive off the road so the flying doc gives them a plane ride back to Adelaide hospital. We drove past such a car wreck where a woman was being cut out of her car that had rolled when she dozed into the gravel, woke up, vastly oversteered back onto the road and turned the thing over. When we rubbernecked our way past there was an ambulance and a police car in attendance and yes, of course Aaron was driving the police car!

We ran into him again that evening as well, when we were in Coober having a few beers in the underground hotel. The police presence was welcome too, as a French girl we were with (who looked like a slightly plump Liv Tyler) had just beaten a one-eyed miner at pool. I didn't want to stare too closely, but I think his glass eye was actually made of opal. When his mates all got on the table and started singing "you've lost that loving feeling" we decided it was time to leave.

Ice Cold In Alice

2006-05-04T23:36:00.000Z

After so long in the desert we arrived in Alice Springs and the Red Centre's take on civilisation. This consisted of hostels, soft beds with pillows, showers and places where you could buy ice cold beers. It was time to roll up the swags for the last time and get a good nights sleep and a long overdue bath.

After banishing our stinky walking boots to the balconies and scrubbing some of the red dust from our bodies we met up in Bojangles for dinner. Everyone goes to Bo's - to be honest there aren't that many other places to go in Alice Springs, so it's always lively and full of both freshly decked out backpackers and local country and western fans.

We'd seen some beautiful wild camels roaming majestically through the desert earlier in the day, so for dinner I ordered the camel pie. It was less dusty tasting than I was expecting and had an unusual texture and flavour not dissimilar to kidney. But I wasn't concentrating on the food because I spent the whole time trying to fit the gag "I've really got the hump..." into conversation (sadly unsuccessfully). After dinner we moved through to the bar area and got on the dancefloor to some country classics, including Cotton Eye Joe... I'll say no more.

And while we were dancing away, who did we bump into? Aaron, the policeman from Coober Pedy, who apparently gets everywhere as Alice is 800km away. Either Sonal is really good in bed or there aren't many women in the outback. Oh yes... there aren't many women in the outback... He was having a weekend away from work and had brought the other policeman from his patch with him, evidently tempting him into the journey with stories of a Toyota Landcruiser filled with backpacker girls who love The Village People.

And up steps Mary...

After Bo's closed Aaron suggested we go to the casino, so we climbed in a cab and went there. Gemma, being a country girl from Thame, was clearly a bit awestruck by the light bulb and carpet outside and in a drunken outburst found it necessary to tell the doorman her pockets only contained $2 and a button. When he wouldn't let her in because she was wearing flip-flops, she protested that she might have been about to wager a fortune at the blackjack tables. He reminded her that $2 and a button wasn't going to have a big impact on the company's revenue figures for that financial quarter, so we got back into the taxi and went home

4wd Adventures in the Outback

2006-04-24T10:16:00.000Z

Day 1. Adelaide - Flinders Ranges - Warren Gorge

At 7am I got picked up from my hostel in Adelaide by the Toyota Landcruiser that would be our transport for the next days. Some of the 9 other people I'd be travelling with were already in the back of the jeep and I did my usual thing of being introduced to everyone whilst not actually listening to any of their names. We carried on around Adelaide picking up other people from various backpackers and hostels in town, then we pulled up at a very posh looking hotel for our final pickup. I already knew who this was going to be, as I'd already met Sonal 2 weeks before and I knew she wouldn't be staying in a $20 a night hostel.

We'd met on a tram in Melbourne when she'd come up to me and asked where she could buy a ticket. She also asked how much it would cost, what she should do with the ticket once she'd bought it, and finally when we would get to Federation Square (the answer to this last question was "never" because we were on a tram to East Brunswick). We then chatted for a while and discovered that we were destined to meet again in the desert. It's a small world after all.

Sonal had also met Irish girl Mary on a tour of Kangaroo Island so she knew someone else in the bus besides me. In fact, talking to people we realised there were quite a few connections for such a small tour group - Gemma lives in Thame - just down the road from me; Terry is a London boy - "Only Fools and Horses" is one of my favourite TV shows; Anna, Ulrike and Barbara are German - a very good friend of mine is German too; Nicole is Swiss German - why, that practically is German! Michael is from Holland - my best friend when I was 5 was called Greg Holland! I could tell that with all these things in common we were all going on really well!

But then we had a small car accident...

We had stopped for breakfast at a roadhouse about 100km North of Adelaide and were picking up some fruit and veg for our meals for the next few days. The jeep was parked up by the store and people were loading the trailer up with the food. Then some ageing pensioner went to back out of his parking space but hit the accelerator instead of the brake and reversed straight into the side of the trailer, narrowly missing Michael and knocking Mary over on the other side as the trailer bounced into her. The trailer tyre went flat and there was a dent under the wheel arch. Michael sustained a grazed arm and Mary escaped just a bit shaken. The back of the pensioners car was pretty crunched but he was ok. And I was pissed off because I'd missed it as I'd been sent to buy ice from the store down the road.
With hindsight, my not being there probably saved Michael's life. If I'd not gone to get the ice, I could have been standing slightly to the right of him, possibly forcing him to stand slightly to the left, certainly placing him directly in the path of the oncoming vehicle. Then he would have been crushed to death between the trailer and the car.
So if you look at it this way, I'm a bit of a hero and should probably get a medal or something...

We all know accidents happen in 3's, and while Dusty, our tour guide, was busy changing the wheel Terry managed to break a complete stranger's spectacles in a bizarre incident involving a lamp post, a dog lead and a small puppy. We got back on the road and waited for accident number 3...

Accident number 3 never happened and we made it up to the Flinders Ranges where we made our first bushcamp. Dusty said we needed to pick up some firewood, so I reckoned we'd be stopping at a petrol station to buy some of those packs of logs you can get. I realise now that it was a very stupid thought. The reason it's called "the bush" is because the landscape has some very bushy attributes, and logs literally do grow on trees. We collected some old tinder dry eucalyptus branches and made a fire to keep us warm and to cook the evening's dinner on. Despite the days being warm it gets really cold at night in the desert, so we huddled round the fire and inhaled lots of healthy black smoke. While dinner was being prepared by Dusty we unrolled the "swags" that we would be sleeping in. Swags are canvas bedding rolls a bit like huge baggy sleeping bags with foam mattresses inside. They're windproof and waterproof and are a lot less hassle than tents. Inside you put your arctic sleeping bag, stick a woolly hat on, climb in and zip the swag up. They're pretty cosy and you soon get used to them, plus it makes for an authentic bush experience that you wouldn't get if you were cocooned in $300 worth of hitech tent. It was so quiet and peaceful that I slept really well. My only complaint was that my swag was a bit smelly, but that just added to the experience.

Day 2 - Flinders Ranges, Wilpena Pound, bush camp at Leigh Creek

We got up early at around 6:30 to pack up the camp. I had woken up in the night when there was a loud dragging noise next to my swag. I listened intently for a while and the noise came again, so I turned round and in the starlight I could make out that some of my stuff was not where I'd left it. I saw a dark object that seemed to be moving slightly about 6 feet away and I thought it might be a dingo or a possum come to get my shoes. After a while it still hadn't moved and there were no more sounds and I went back to sleep. In the morning I discovered that the object I'd been staring at was one of my boots, and the animal who had dragged my stuff was Barbara getting up to go to the toilet in the darkness. I wasn't scared really, honest!

That day we saw some aboriginal cave paintings at Yourambulla Caves and climbed up Mount Ohlssen-Bagge, before watching the sun go down in Warren Gorge. The campsite at Wilpena Pound was our first true wilderness campsite - the night before we had had other people a couple of hundred yards away from us and there were pit toilets we could use to answer nature's call. This camping ground was miles away from anywhere and anyone and was just an area of flat land in the bush. Michael and I went to dig the toilet hole for the evening, choosing a very picturesque spot where you could marvel at the glory of the milky way while you have a dump. I christened it, and it was great, though our improvised toilet roll holder wasn't particularly well designed.

Around the camp fire that evening I raised the cheery topic of cannibalism. It had been on my mind for a while since we left civilisation, because the only supplies we had available were the things we'd brought with us. In the event of a survival situation we were miles from help, so I thought it prudent that we have a vague idea of who we should eat first if it came down to it. I put this to the group and we sat around in an uncomfortable silence for half an hour ago then we all went to bed.

Day 3 - Oodnadata track - Leigh Creek Coalfield, Lyndhurst Ochre Pits, Marree, William Creek

Another early start at 6am- they're all going to be early starts so I'm not going to mention it again! Our first stop was at Talc Alf's - a crazy old bearded loon who lives in a desert shack and makes a living by carving talc sculptures to sell to tourists. He does go on a bit too. I think he's a bit lonely! I saw that my friend Aimee had signed the visitor's book when she passed through the week before. I signed it too, making sure my comment was much better than hers...

We stopped off at Lyndhurst Ochre Quarry, a mining operation at Leigh Creek Coalfields and finally Lake Eyre. Lake Eyre is a huge salt lake that fills up with water only every 10 years or so. You can walk on the thick salt crust, but in some places there's thick black saltwater under the surface which often catches out 4wd's.

In the evening we stayed at William Creek, population 3. Terry and Sonal taught the bar staff in the pub how to dance to the Birdie Song which they had found hidden on the jukebox. That's what travelling's all about - it's an exchange of cultures...

Day 4 - Coober Pedy and the Painted Desert, bush camp at Arkaringa Hills

Unfortunately due to an accidental deletion I've sent my photos home and deleted the ones that I have here, so no more photos of the outback!

We travelled up to Coober Pedy, an Opal mining town between Adelaide and Alice. The most noteable thing about the place is that the residents build their own houses in caves under the ground so that they can escape the scorching days and freezing nights and have a constant temperature all year round. With the ground being rich in Opals very often the cost of the houses is paid for by the gemstones they find during the building process. The inhabitants are not explicitly allowed to mine within the town boundary itself, but they can keep any opals they find when performing home improvements. Hence planning permission requests for underground squash courts and cinemas are not uncommon...

We went "noodling" for opals in an area of waste ground where the rubble from the mining machines is dumped after it has been sorted. I'm still not a millionaire, but did find a piece of "potch" (low quality Opal) with a market value of... well nothing actually, but it's a great souvenir! Noodling (or "fossicking" is filthy work, and afterwards we were glad of the showers that we could use outside the Opal museum. I think this was the first shower we'd seen since day 1, so I guess we must have smelled pretty bad!

After spending the day in Coober Pedy we headed out into the Painted Desert for a bush camp at Arkaringa. Here I raised the cannibalism issue again, and explained to the group who I wanted to eat first and why. Initially there was not much response, but with the aid of a flip chart and a Powerpoint presentation I think I won them over to my way of thinking. Criteria for selecting human sacrifices were as follows:

Vegetarianism - vegetarians by definition do not eat meat, therefore should we run out of food they would not be able to benefit from the additional nutrition provided by a human sacrifice. They also have a healthier diet so would probably be less likely to yield bad meat.
Body size and composition - There's no point in eating the smallest member of the group as you'd still be hungry afterwards. Nor do you want to eat the fattest person because lean meat is far healthier.
Sex - I reckon girls would taste better than boys - I don't know why.
Usefulness - people with outback skills should be eaten last as they will contribute to our collective survival chances. With a 10 metre swimming certificate and experience of digging toilet holes, I would therefore be exempt from consumption.

On the basis of that I nominated Sonal to the the first person to be eaten, followed by Anna. The group was initially silent, but later on Michael came up to me and indicated that I had his full support and would happily help me make the kill should it come to it. I thanked him warmly, but internally noted that he was slightly too enthusiastic about the prospect of taking a spade to the back of Sonal's head, so I put him in in third place.

Day 5 - Hamilton, Pedirka, Dalhousie.

Rain had fallen in the area a few days previously so there were a few patches of mud about the place. On the road a tourist couple had got their shiny 4x4 stuck in a shallow puddle in the middle of the track. Dusty pulled over to the side, and I thought we were going to get out and give them assistance - the desert is such a harsh environment you very often have to step in to save peoples lives. Instead he shouted some abuse at them. "Hey matey, we've got to drive on these roads for the next 12 months after you've finished carving them up!". With that we drove off leaving them to dig their own way out.

We stopped for a morning coffee at Oodnadatta , where I learned an important lesson - don't ask for a "Soy Latte" in an Outback town. You can get white or black coffee, but you get some real funny looks if you're expecting anything exotic. The flies here were getting steadily more and more persistent and appeared in greater numbers the further North we were travelling and were trying to crawl into our mouths, eyes and ears with no regard for their own safety or our efforts to discourage them. We took refuge in an aboriginal museum and looked around a few exibits. My favourite was the display of pictures from the local school, which is so small that all the children are in the same class regardless of age. The kids had all written a bit about themselves and done a drawing of something that was important to them. Everyone put an explanation of their artwork like "This is my mummy and my sista" or "this is my dog, Jack". A chubby 11 year old boy called Robert had rather distinguished himself by stating "my picture is of a foxes head getting choped off". One to watch in the future I feel...

While we walked up and down the town the local policeman kept driving by in his van and waving at the girls. That evening when we arrived at Dalhousie Hot Springs he turned up at Dusty's 40th birthday party along with three cowboys from Hamilton Station. Three cowboys and one policeman? No, not a reunion of The Village People, but when combined with skinny dipping in some hot springs they form a sophisticated pulling machine and in the face of that the girls on our tour didn't stand a chance. Girls are so shallow....

We also bumped into the couple that Dusty had shouted abuse at earlier. They'd evidently been rescued by some more kindly samaritan and had now set up camp about 100m from us. They guy was giving some chat about sorting Dusty out later, but it was never going to happen, plus Aaron had parked his police van next to our truck and the girls kept on playing with his flashing lights. Sonal also got her hands on his truncheon...

Day 6 - Dalhousie - Mount Dare - Finke - bush camp at Kulgara

After the cowboys had woken up and had a few beers for 7am breakfast they headed off leaving some heartbroken girls to wave goodbye and pack up camp. One hour later we ran into them again at the Mount Dare Hotel where they were having a few beers for 10am morning tea, joined by a horse that they were feeding gin and tonic. You got to love those country boys.

We left them to their new friend and drove off to Finke, an aboriginal community where we weren't particularly welcome but that we had to stop at to get water. Finke is home to the finish post of the Finke Desert Race, http://www.finkedesertrace.com.au/ - a mad annual bash through the desert from Alice in rally cars, motorbikes and beach buggies. Dusty had competed a few times on his bike, and he drove us down part of the track in the 4x4. No wonder people die all the time in the Finke Desert Race!

We camped at Kulgera and that night drew the attention of a herd of cows who appeared to like hanging out at our toilet hole. Put me off beef I can tell you.

Day 7 - Stuart Highway, Lassiter Highway, Mount Conner, Yulara

A day on the bitumen up to Kata Tjuta national park, the home of Uluru (Ayer's Rock), and a rest for our spines from the jarring effects of corrugated unsealed roads.

Who did we run into in the petrol station? The couple from the stranded 4x4 of course. You get to realise that although the outback is huge, it's actually a very very small world indeed.

We drove past Uluru and out to the Olgas and did a 4 hour walk round them, before watching the sunset. They're made from the same stuff as uluru, but they're much more rounded and are lots of biggish rocks rather than one huge one. The photos are great. I wish I hadn't deleted them now. Seriously, you're really missing out...

That evening Sonal, Terry, Michael, Mary and Gemma and I went out to get drunk whilst the others got an early night. The evening spawned something that can only be described as the "Dusty Crusty" video, now also sadly deleted, but thinking about it, from Sonal's point of view it's probably for the best.

Day 8 - Uluru

Uluru is a location so revered amongst tourists that all tours spend an inordinate amount of time visiting it. It is a event so momentous in the tourist diary that it requires capitalisation - today was The Day of Uluru.

I wasn't expecting much from Uluru, it's just a big rock and I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. But it is a very nice big rock, and is quite good in the way that it just sits there in the middle of all the flatness and looks very rock-like. It's also quite knobbly when you get up close, so if you're a big knobbly rock fan then you're really going to love it. (Apologies if that gave you mental images of a nude Keith Richards). It's made from sedimentary sandstone tipped up on its end so that the layers of stone are at a 90 degree angle to the ground. People have estimated that Uluru actually goes down to a depth of 10km under the sand and dates back 500 million years. Other people have come up with the theory that it's a landing pad for aliens from outer space -a warning that while you're looking at Uluru don't be surprised if the guy next to you doesn't wear shoes and has a penchant for tie-dye.

I stood next to Sonal. She is a vegetarian.

So did we climb the rock? It's a sacred site and the Aboriginals ask you to honour their wishes and not to walk on it. Terry wanted to, but didn't want to do it on his own. Everyone else didn't want to climb out of respect. I thought it looked a bit steep and it was quite a long way, so we all stayed on the ground and just did the base walk. The gift shop was selling postcards with little tick boxes for you send to your loved ones saying either "I did it! I climbed Uluru" or "I respected the Aboriginal wishes and did not climb Uluru!". I thought of a potential third option which would be "I'm a twat and I bought this postcard!" with the little box pre-ticked.

That night we watched the sun go down on The Rock. Pretty damn cool - I'd give it an 8 out of 10. I also loved the fact that there is a "Sunset Car Park" where everyone has to crowd into to make sure that no-one gets a better photo than anyone else. The busy atmosphere also stops gang warfare breaking out amongst the Japanese Yakuza Paparazzi.

Day 9 - A bit more Uluru and Kings Canyon

Sunrise at Uluru doesn't sound so attractive when you have to get up really early in the freezing cold to see it. Just like the fried egg sandwiches we ate while the sun rose weren't as appealing once we realised that someone had to wash the burnt bits off the frying pan afterwards. (I can't believe people still fall for that "I'm allergic to washing up liquid" blag that I've been using all these years). But sunrise at Uluru is a compulsory part of any tour because if you miss it it's an awfully long way to go back when people tell you in years to come that it's one of the most magical experiences ever. It's good, but I'd say David Copperfield is more magical, or Gandalf, or that witch that kept on turning herself into different animals in that Disney cartoon. Magical is a word that should be used sparingly and I believe that the people who use it to describe an Uluru sunrise devalue it somewhat. Particularly if they're standing next to you and going "Oooh, isn't it magical, Rupert!". No dear, it's because you've been drinking champagne since 5am. And by the way, you appear to have lost your shoes.

Next up was King's Canyon - more sedimentary sandstone, but this one hasn't been upended so the layers are still horizontal and eroding away like crazy. This provides for towering cliffs, sheer vertical drops, precariously poised overhangs and great photos of you standing on rocks that it probably isn't safe to do so. You have noticed that these rectangular pics on the blog aren't my photos haven't you? They've come from the Heading Bush website - www.headingbush.com - and if I'm saying that their tour is the best around then surely they won't mind me infringing their copyright a little bit will they?

Day 10 - Palm Valley, Finke Gorge, Western MacDonnell Ranges and Alice Springs

Palm Valley has some of the finest collection of ancient angiosperms you'll see in Australia. I don't know what angiosperms are but it makes me laugh because I really haven't grown up since I was 12. It's only accessible by 4x4 and we dumped the trailer and did some pretty scary off-roading which was clearly the bit of the trip that Dusty enjoyed most: Powersliding the tail of the Landcruiser out on the sand, skimming by trees and edging past steep drops, scraping the tow bar and running boards on some priceless million year old rocks. Good fun indeed! And when you reach palm valley it's beautiful - there's something about palm trees in the desert that is amazing - one might say magical... no... maybe just mystical... There's so little water around then you get these trees that are so verdant and vibrant and they make a little bit of tropical paradise amongst the rocks and dust. And when you're ripping it up in a 4x4 it's even better!

We barbecued a few kangaroos for lunch and then pushed on down Finke Gorge to the Western MacDonnell Ranges and then into "civilisation" in Alice Springs for some cool beers....

Profile of Hostel Girl

2006-04-24T01:14:00.000Z

"Hey everyone, you're all really quiet today!"
puts music on
"I love this song!!!"
dances round using her sarong as a headscarf
"Yeah!!! Come one everyone!!! lets liven up!!!"
everyone becomes that little bit quieter

She's 24, from the home counties and has been working in the hostel behind reception and doing cleaning for 6 weeks.
She is responsible for putting up the laminated A4 computer printouts that say "We're not your mum, clean your dishes" up over the sinks in the kitchen.
She is also the self-appointed "fun co-ordinator", a secret role adopted as an outlet for the peaks of her bipolarism.
She is excessively friendly - almost aggressively so - and her hostel job means that she needs everyone to be demonstrably having a good time or else she won't feel happy herself. For she has been unhappy in hostels before and knows what it's like to be the quiet girl that nobody notices. But now she is working there and is surrounded by an extended step-family, she can fake the confidence to be the centre of attention and bask in the warmth of the party hostel she is going to create.

I just want to read my fucking book ok?

Welcome to Adelaide, population 1?

2006-04-23T09:44:00.000Z

For a city that has a total population of 1.2 million, Adeladians sure do keep a low profile. As I walked round the Rundle Street Mall at 9am on a Sunday morning there was an eerie silence and not a soul to be seen. All the shops and cafe's were all closed up behind security shutters and there was a icy wind blowing through the desolate streets. I felt uncomfortably like I was the only person left alive on the planet - and you know what happens to people in movies when they find themselves in that situation don't you? There's a low, guttoral growl behind them and they discover everyone's been turned into flesh eating zombies.

There was a low, guttoral growl behind me...

Fortunately I wasn't in an end-of-the-world scenario, it was just an aboriginal guy who wanted me to give him $2 or else he'd piss on me. Adelaide was so cold that I might have momentarily benefitted from the warming effects of tramps urine, but I still didn't give him the $2. It's a request you get quite often in Australia and I've never given anyone $2 and no-ones pissed on me yet. Tramp's piss is 90% alcohol so it's far too valuable a commodity for them to spray onto any backpacker willy-nilly (if you'll pardon the expression).

At about noon the first Adeladians came out of their houses and began to open up their shops, businesses and wallets. Lycra clad cyclists gathered in packs around cafes to display their shiny racing bikes and their large helmets over full English breakfasts. I went to the pub. There's not a lot else to do in Adelaide!

The Grampians

2006-04-22T12:58:00.000Z

After leaving the Great Ocean Road the night before we woke up in the Grampian mountains and went to see some kangaroos. Yeah, like I haven't seen them before! I decided to photograph the tourists instead. Here is a big herd of them in the wild.

The female in the foreground is Dutch, which you can tell by the brightly coloured top and green rucksack on both shoulders.
I tracked them to a place called an "Information Centre" which is where tour guides take people so that they can have 30 minutes peace and quiet and it also pads out the tour a little bit. At the Information Centre the tourists congregated outside in big groups before grazing in the gift shop. Then the Alpha male said it was time to go and they all went back to the minibus.

The rest of the day was spent driving through the national park, where a big forest fire had destroyed 60% of the vegetation 3 months earlier. However, eucalyptus is a hardy tree and it needs fire to clear away its competition and promote new growth, so the greenery was already starting to reappear. Then we went off to Adelaide.

The Great Ocean Road

2006-04-20T01:52:00.000Z

The Great Ocean Road is a stretch of stunning sandstone coastline that runs between Melbourne and Adelaide, and doing a 3 day tour between the two cities is a good way to move between them and see things along the way.

Our first stop was another of those Airwalk things where you get to walk on a metal gantry overlooking the rainforest canopy. If you've read my post on the one at Tahune in Tasmania you'll know I found it a truly miserable experience and a bit of a waste of time, but this one is really rather good. I can't put my finger on why - maybe the rain was slightly less drenching or the wind a little less breezy, but the views over the treetops were nothing short of spectacular.

I was entertained to find out that it's run by the same company that owns the one in Tahune, and the same lack of business acumen exists in Victoria as we found in Tasmania. In Tassie you can walk around without tickets because there is no-one anywhere to collect them. In Victoria you walk past an attendant who doesn't ínspect tickets but just clicks off the numbers on his little clicker machine (so the bosses can see how many people have sneaked in without paying and how much money they've lost at the end of each day). Genius.
And there is also the brave commercial decision to turn off the hot drinks machines for cleaning at 4pm, just before 25 very cold and wet people (the only people at the attraction) come in wanting to spend lots of money on tea and coffee. It's nice that ruthless capitalism and profit maximisation hasn't touched Australian tourism yet.

After stopping off to see some Koalas in the wild (you get sick of em you know!) we travelled to the coast to see sandstone caves, stacks and arches like the ones you remember from diagrams in geography textbooks at school. They all have great names like The Twelve Apostles, The Bay of Martyrs, London Bridge, and The Bay of Islands, and they're all standing majestically in the middle of wild foaming white waves that threaten to wash them away into the ocean at any moment. About a year ago one of the largest of the Twelve Apostles copped it and collapsed and disintegrated into a small pile of sand, much to the annoyance of postcard makers and photographers who had to begin revising their products.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4647857.stm)
My favourite collapsing story happened at London Bridge which originally had two arches joining it to the mainland and tourists were allowed to walk across the rocks to the end of the formation. One day in 1990 the first arch fell into the sea leaving a male and female tourist stranded and unable to walk back to safety. A helicopter rescue was mounted attracting national publicity. When the press sent out their helicopters to get photos of the unfolding drama it became apparent that the male tourist kept hiding his face from view and wasn't keen on getting his picture in the paper. Eventually the newshounds got a snap of the man's face it Australia discovered why he didn't want to be seen. He was a local politician and the woman he was on the rocks with was his mistress!

After 2 days on the Great Ocean Road we went North to the Grampian mountains.

And yet more comedy...

2006-04-19T01:39:00.000Z

For my last night in Melbourne after a $5 pizza dinner on Brunswick Street ($5 pizza!!!) I went with Sarah and Milan to see British standup Daniel Kitson. It was true intellectual comedy - when the audience laughs at jokes about "tautology"you know that either you're in a very highbrow audience or a very drunken one. Naturally, being one if the intelligentsia myself I found it hilarious, and the beers I'd had with the pizza sure helped me along too.

Got Milk?

2006-04-16T08:16:00.000Z

The most random things can happen to you when you go out to buy a pint of milk. A couple of years ago I popped to my local corner shop for a bottle and ended up coming home 3 hours later and $1000 poorer with a new guitar. Today I walked from Sarah's house in St Kilda down to her local shop and was stopped by a man and a woman in the street asking if I had a mobile phone. They asked me to call the police because they'd just seen a guy trying to throw a woman out of a first floor window, which is an unusual Easter Sunday tradition even for Australia. We looked up at the open window and could see no signs of life and there were no sounds coming from it either. Nor was there a dead woman on the pavement, so she must have still been inside.

I got my phone out and dialled 111.

Then I dialled 000 which is the correct number for the police in Australia.

After some really bad descriptions of the problem and our current location, the operator gave up on me and asked to be handed over to the person who had witnessed the event. I gave the phone to the girl who had approached me and she gave her first hand version of the attempted defenestration. The police said they were on their way so we hung up.

With hindsight, we must have hung up prematurely and cut them off in mid-sentence. When the operator said "we're on our way" what we were really hearing was a fragment of the statement "we're on our way... to the donut shop, and we'll be with you in half an hour". In that time the domestic moved from the first floor window down to the pavement - fortunately via the front door and not the 10 foot drop. The woman came running screaming out of the building with blood on her face and legs. The guy was following closely with blood on his fists and shirt. We stepped between the pair and the girl took refuge in the safety of the oncoming traffic on the main road. There was a tense standoff, but the guy calmed down when he saw my immense bulk and "crouching tiger hidden panda" karate readiness stance. Just as we diffused the situation and the guy was sauntering away, the police arrived. They'd probably been waiting round the corner watching from the comfort of the squad car and now it looked like it was safe to move in they stepped up to get all the glory.

I'd like to be able to tell you how the story ended, but i dont have that information. I was asked for a statement but didn't get the chance to give it because there were no officers in the Police Station who knew how to type on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and I was off to Adelaide on Thursday. Domestic violence often has an unhappy ending, but it didnt look like the girl had any intention of going back to him and she seemed keen to press charges. I can make up a happy ending if you like. He went to prison for a very long time, she fell in love with a rich prince, the police got three different types of donut, and I got my pint of milk and had a lovely cup of tea.

International Comedy Festival

2006-04-13T07:13:00.000Z

Acts from all around the world come to Melbourne every year to perform for three weeks in the International Comedy Festival. Today was Marie's birthday, so we went out for dinner in the Italian District and then, on the opening night of the festival we went to see a show. The act she chose was a guy called Andy Muirhead. This is how he advertises himself:

"If you had one word to describe yourself, what would it be? More to the point, if your friends had one word to describe you, would it be the same? Thought not. Join Andy (Raw Comedy National Finalist 2003, Comedy Zone 2005 and host of ABCTV's "Collectors") for a hilarious look at the way we see ourselves and the way the world sees us."

The show was in the Wee Room in the Town Hall, and "wee" was a very apt description for the venue. No, not because it was covered in wee from people pissing themselves laughing, but rather because it measured 20x5 metres and host to a grand total of about 30 seats. Everyone knows the worst thing you can do when going to stand up comedy is to get there late, so we turned up 10 minutes after the show had started and made our way down the cramped aisle to the front rows to the only seats remaining. At this point Andy Muirhead had plucked an American girl from the front row and had her on stage reading out his big intro. If we'd been 5 minutes earlier it probably would have been us, and for this I am grateful. Naturally while she was on stage we stole her seat and started to watch the show.

As stated in his advertising material, Muirhead is presenter on ABC's "Collectors", and his proudest moment was when his show attracted a higher audience than "Backyard Blitz" in the ratings. Nope, it didn't ring any bells with me either. Being a TV presenter, I think this was his first foray into standup and at times it showed. We all laughed, but in an audience of 30 we were laughing more than we would normally have to pad out the emptiness of the venue. Plus he seemed like a really nice bloke and we wanted to help him out. After 45 minutes or so he wound up his set and the audience started to leave. As we were at the front we were the last to file out and he came down and chatted to Marie and Rebecca, and myself. He asked me how I enjoyed the show and I lied that it was really great. Then I launched into one of my own tales from the epic adventure that has been my life. It was a damn good story if I do say so myself - I can't remember exactly what it was, but I remember being extremely funny and probably quite incisive with it. And what did he do while I was regailing him with my best material? He was looking around the room and not paying the slightest bit of attention! That cheeky bastard. I felt like shaking him and telling him to start making some notes for future performances. I'd listened to him drivel on for 45 minutes (laughing politely in all the right places) and now that I was giving him my best comedy gold it was falling on deaf ears!

Well he missed his chance. Don't come to me for tips when you're short of material Muirhead!

Wilson's Promontory

2006-04-11T08:46:00.000Z

I went on a day trip to Wilson's Promontory National Park to the South East of Melbourne. It's a really quiet place and not many tourists get to go there. The only clue to its existence is one brochure kept in a locked box in a safe in the vault under the Melbourne Tourist Information building. According to our tour guide it's Melbourne's best kept secret, but that's only true if your definition of "secret" extends to encompassing things that Oz Experience know about.

Luckily the day I went was the warmest I'd seen since I'd left Sydney about a month ago, and the sunshine hit me like medicine. The animals were clearly out enjoying it too and I saw my first snake!

It was a tiger snake, and is apparently the fourth most deadly in the world. It was probably only about 2 feet long, but as the old adage says, size doesn't matter (I hear that quite a lot).

Wilson's Promontory is a haven for all wildlife, and we also saw crimson rosellas, lorrikeets, kookaburras, a wombat, the obligatory kangaroos and also a small herd of dinosaurs that I managed to snap with the zoom on my camera (check out the brontosaurus on the right! Jurassic Park!).

I also interrupted a pair of kangaroos in a compromising position, the filthy animals!

The Pissaro Art Exhibition

2006-04-09T08:24:00.000Z

Everyone in Melbourne was really excited about the Pissaro Exhibition on at the Victoria Gallery of Art. So while they were all gawping at paintings we went to watch some organised violence at an Aussie Rules Football match at the Telstradome instead.

We'd had a rundown on the rules from an Aussie guy in Tasmania, but there was still a lot of grey areas we weren't sure about and we had to work out from watching the game. For example when was it acceptable to punch another player in the face? Where the hell are all the fit cheerleaders? Is it ok to shout obsenities from the crowd?
The answers, respectively are: all the time; there aren't any - the players wouldnt be able to concentrate; Only if you have "Obscenities" marked on your ticket and have brought your young children along to hear.

We watched the Hawthorn Hawks play the Collingwood Magpies. I spent the first quarter trying to take photos of people having fights, but they were all over so quickly and there weren't really that many so I gave up. This is the closest I came, but I believe it could well have been a bit of legitimate play:

At the start of the game we sat down with the famous Aussie "four and twenty" meat pies while we watched. At half time they were selling lattes in the bar area. Lattes indeed! It was all downhill from there. Number 43 decided he was going to hold hands with opposing Number 19 for the rest of the game. Number 19 didn't like this at first and would keep trying to run away. But then they both warmed to each other and walked happily around the field together until the final whistle blew. Seeing their Number 43 so contented holding on to a member of the opposite team, Collingwood lost it and threw their half time lead away to a crushing and humiliating full time defeat.

At least I think that's what happened anyway...

Hobart... again... and for the last time

2006-04-06T08:16:00.000Z

It was time to say goodbye to Hobart, as the next day we were flying out to Melbourne. Marina, our trusty Nissan had done us proud over the last 10 days and clocked up a grand total of 2,500 km when we dropped her off back at the rental place. That night we went out to drink a toast to the excellent adventures we'd had travelling round Tassie.

I think we might even have stayed out past 11pm too!...

The Tahune Airwalk and Hastings Caves and Thermal Spa

2006-04-05T07:58:00.000Z

The Tahune Airwalk is a bland visitor attraction where you walk on a metal walkway elevated into the treetops. It takes ages to get there down painful gravel roads, and isn’t that impressive when you get there. What’s more it pissed down with rain the whole time I was up there and I did it on my own because I’d lost Aimee and Marie in the giftshop. I would say that it’s a complete waste of money.
I would say it’s a total waste of money, but seeing as we sneaked in without paying, it actually constitutes pretty good value for money. I still didn't enjoy it though - I was having a "hard to please" day.

The next disappointment was the Thermal Spa at Hastings. It was fucking freezing! So cold in fact that we were the only ones stupid enough to go in. People looked at us like we were lunatics - although I'll concede they might have just been looking at me as I'd forgotten my swimming trunks and was going in wearing my boxer shorts.

Once we had chilled our body core temperatures down to suspended animation level in the (Hypo)Thermal Spa we went into the caves down the road.

Now these impressed me! A lot.

The caves are 40 million years old, which predates hard bodied life on earth, hence they contain no fossils. There are so many chambers and caverns all packed to the ceiling (and floor) with stalactites and stalagmites. I've never seen caves this impressive and so well maintained and preserved before, and it made the whole day worthwhile. The only downer was most of my photos were crap, but I guess you can't have everything!

Freycinet - Mount Amos and Wineglass Bay

2006-04-04T07:36:00.000Z

Driving up the East Coast we arrived in Freycinet National Park, a mountainous wooded peninsula with some stunning beaches. The first day there we walked up to the Wineglass Bay lookout and then down onto the beach. The second day we tackled another mountain.

Mount Amos isn’t as high as Cradle Mountain, and you can walk it in half the time, but we found it equally challenging because it’s so slippery. Instead of having big boulders to gain purchase on you have a slick rock surface at angles of up to 45 degrees, and the previous evening it had rained so the rocks were still wet in quite a few places. We went up on our hands and knees and came down on our arses (mainly accidentally).
I don’t think Aimee used her legs at all on the way down…

Friendly Beach from Mount Amos

Wineglass Bay from Mount Amos

Port Arthur and the Port Arthur Massacre

2006-04-03T07:24:00.000Z

Everyone knows Australia is where Britain used to send its convicts, but what did Australia do with its convicts? They sent them to Port Arthur in Tasmania. On a peninsula on the South East of Tasmania, and reachable only by an narrow isthmus some 100 yards across, it made a good place to incarcerate people without risk of them escaping. It has a dark past, with stories of torture, death and mental illness from solitary confinement being abundant. It has an even more dark present - 10 years ago this month a crazed gunman had opened fire and massacred 35 tourists as they were looking round the prison compound.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial/bryant/

It's chilling stuff, and oddly, given that so many tourists were murdered here, no-one from the UK I've spoken to remembers it getting any coverage in the media. I didn't know very much about it when we went there (unsurprisingly it isn't in the guide book) otherwise I might have thought twice about going on one of the nightly "ghost tours" that they operate around the grounds. We didn’t see any ghosts, but we did see lots of obnoxious children who weren’t scared at all, the little brats.

Back in Hobart

2006-04-02T07:20:00.000Z

Back at the Pickled Frog backpackers in Hobart for the night. We did our washing and checked our mobile phone messages. Didn’t do anything else…

Lake Saint Claire

2006-04-01T07:16:00.000Z

From Tully we drove round to Lake Saint Claire and began to look for accommodation. After flitting back and forth between the two accommodation choices in the town we settled on the hotel which was about a mile from the lake but offered backpacker rooms. We were expecting the rooms to be actually in the hotel, but were told as we checked in that they were in little sheds to one side. Ominously they told us we would to be staying in "B-Block". With their cramped, basic conditions and tin roofs they were more concentration camp than holiday camp, and if I was Jewish I don’t think I could have stayed there.

Four days earlier we’d been sunning ourselves in Hobart in 25 degree heat. Now it was just starting to snow. Worried that we might get stuck there and have to spend the next 6 months in a one pub town we asked the bar staff whether there was any possibility of us getting snowed in. They reassured us by saying that the snowploughs would come and dig us out if the roads got blocked, so that just left the question of who would dig our frozen, hypothermic bodies from our little tin huts if we didn’t make it through the night.

The next day, finding that none of our fingers or toes had dropped off, we cleared the snow from Marina’s windscreen and headed down to the lake. It was still snowing, but as we started to walk round it turned to sleet, then to driving rain. After 45 minutes Marie and I were walking up at the front and we stopped to wait for Aimee, who was dawdling behind and had dropped out of sight. We waited for 5 minutes but she didn’t turn up and we decided to go and look for her. Retracing our steps down the narrow path to the point where we had last seen her, there was no sign and we were slightly baffled. I thought she might be hiding behind a tree playing an April Fool’s joke but after 10 minutes of calling her name we still she hadn’t come out of the bushes laughing. We knew she hadn’t gone back the way we came as there were only three sets of footprints in the snow on the path, and they were ours from when we walked in. But then we found a footprint leading off the path past a tree and we worked out she must have wandered off into the bush. Just the other side of the tree was another path that formed part of the Overland Track – a 5 day walking route that skirted past the lake. Deciding not to meet up with Aimee 5 days later in Belgium or wherever the track finished we ran through the deep muddy puddles to catch up with her. Five minutes later we found her wandering back looking lost, but not as worried as we were looking. We resolved to buy her a set of "baby reins" so that she might never wander off on her own again.

My first paid work in Australia

2006-03-31T07:10:00.000Z

"Jobs are for losers" has been my motto ever since I decided that I wasn’t ready to look for work in Brisbane. But if you’re getting paid in free beer and free food then I would say that a little work still fits in with my job-avoidance philosophy.

The hotel in Tully had one computer that staff and guests could use to access the internet, but for some time it hadn’t been able to access secure sites – things like online banking, hotmail, amazon etc. I was talking to the barmaid, Sinead, the previous evening and I happened to mention my formidable IT experience and enviable skillset, so she said she’d sort me out with a load of beers if I took a look at it.

My private thoughts were that I’d have it working within 5 minutes by tweaking some settings in Internet Explorer, so I was rather keen to get my hands on a few bottles of Cascade, particularly after the 8 hour mountain climb earlier on in the day. But things didn’t prove that easy, and three hours later, after tweaking, downloading, registry hacking and finally banging the case of the computer, I’d got it from the stage where they couldn’t access secure sites to the stage where they couldn’t access the internet at all. It was at this point that I returned (now very drunk) to the room where the girls were in bed, turned on the light and said "pack your bags, we’re leaving!"

But we didn’t leave, and after a few deep breaths I went back to the problem and, from a backup I’d taken in a more sober moment, restored 95% the registry keys I’d deleted. Miraculously the internet was back in all it’s glory, including the secure sites. (It was some old VPN software that hadn’t been removed entirely and left some dodgy IPSEC settings if anyone’s interested…). I went back to the bar, declared it fixed, and then blinded them with some techno-babble as to the nature of the problem. Naturally everyone was thrilled and thought I was a god, so they wrote off our accommodation, food and bar tabs and I left with the warm glowing feeling that you can always compensate for a lack of ability if you’re a lucky son of a bitch.

Tully and Cradle Mountain

2006-03-30T06:58:00.000Z

Tully is perfectly placed to explore the mountains in the West of Tassie, and we stopped for 2 nights at the Tully Motel where they gave us a motel room for a hostel price. Sitting on the shores of Lake Rosebery it has great mountain views and a friendly atmosphere with a cosy bar area with a roaring log fire. Good thing too as it was freezing.

We got up early and sat down to breakfast at 7am. The manager came up to us and asked us what we were doing that day.
"We’re going to climb up Cradle Mountain" we answered.
"And what are you going to do with the rest of the day?" he said oddly. The climb was in the guide book as an 8 hour walk - I was pretty much planning on lying down with a few cold beers for the rest of the day. We told him that that we reckoned it was going to take us all day.
"What do you want to go to the top for?" he asked.
Cradle Mountain is the region’s most famous landmark. Climbing Cradle Mountain is a must-do activity. The guy clearly hadn’t heard of the Tasmanian Tourist Board’s official policy of being enthusiastic towards people coming to admire the beauty of their island. We told him that we’d heard the views were spectacular.
"You won’t see anything from up there, not today."
"Really?"
"It’s cloudy and you won’t see anything. You want to do a nice walk round Dove Lake instead."
I was dismayed. The Dove Lake walk takes about two hours and is totally flat. It’s the one that the tour groups and fat people do. Besides, it was sunny outside and looked like a pretty good day for a climb.
"Well, we’ll go up there anyway and check it out, and if it’s really cloudy we might do another walk." We said, not wanting to change our plans.
"And you’ve got up far too early, it’ll be cold and cloudy. You want to take a few hours, then go up there."
"Well, thanks for the advice." We said
He shrugged.
"You’re on your own." And with that he moved off to clear some plates from another table.

Yes, we were on our own. I certainly wouldn’t have invited him to come with us even if we had wanted company. I doubt he’d be a barrel of laughs on an 8 hour hike. Plus, had he not seen my choice of footwear? Walking boots! Clearly I was an experienced rambling-hiker! I also had chocolate bars and a compass, and you don’t get much more prepared for a mountain than that. Before he could come back and give us any more surly advice we got in the car and went to see it for ourselves.

The man at the parks information looked at his real time webcam that was pointing at Cradle Mountain. He could have looked out the window, but either he had neck mobility problems or he thought a webcam was more impressive.
"It’s cloudy." He told us. We looked over at the monitor and there was indeed a thin layer of cloud on the summit.
"Will it clear?" we asked. He rubbed his chin with his hand.
"Might do. It’s very changeable."
"So can we go up?"
"You can go and have a look. But if it starts raining come straight down."

With that we started the walk. Two and a bit hours later we reached the base from which you start the climb and the cloud had cleared and the sun was out, so we started the ascent.
Now Cradle Mountain is pretty steep. On the walking map they have marked the paths at the bottom of the mountain as "Narrow and Steep" where applicable, but they didn’t bother to do it with the climb to the summit which surprised Aimee and Marie. I was rather of the opinion that marking it was a bit unnecessary.

it’s called Cradle Mountain which should give a fairly good indication of the sort of terrain you’re going to encounter, and
When you look up to the summit from the base, you’re looking up at an angle of 45+ degrees so there’s definitely going to be a large proportion of "up" in the climb.

It’s made of loads of large dolomite boulders that you clamber over, and there’s no path, no steps and no handrails, and if you do fall you’re going to fall an awfully long way (because it’s so steep you see!). So really it is a climb and not just a walk like you get on most sanitised-for-tourists mountains. We all agreed that it’s probably the most dangerous thing we’ve done since we’ve been travelling.
But we made good progress and with a few minor hiccups we were at the summit in about 2 hours. The views were indeed spectacular. I made sure to take lots of photos to show the manager of the hostel when we returned that evening. It was also very warm and we had lost our hats, gloves and layers of clothing and were down to t-shirts. We hung around on the top for a bit then climbed down, which proved equally scary as climbing up. When back at the base we decided to go back a different way around the top of the hills surrounding the lakes (another 3 and a half hours). Great views, but by then we just wanted to get back to the car and get the hell out of there. What did we do with the rest of the day? I did some work in the hostel.

The Nut

2006-03-29T06:47:00.000Z

Right at the end of the tarmaced roads on the North West corner of Tassie is the town of Stanley, which is home to an unusual geological phenomenon called "The Nut". Ages ago a sticky lava flow oozed from the ground and filled up a crater in a volcano. As time passed, the surrounding volcano eroded away and left the solidified magma standing as an isolated plateau jutting out into the sea.
And it's great for climbing up!

We arrived in Stanley at around 7:30pm. It quickly became apparent that all the accommodation was booked up and we had nowhere to sleep. I would have been quite happy to sleep in the car, but for some strange reason Aimee and Marie didn’t relish the prospect of sleeping in a small vehicle with me and were keen to find proper beds. As there was no phone reception that far out in Tasmania (or indeed pretty much anywhere outside of Hobart) we looked around for a coin phone. At the main campsite I saw an old Scandanavian couple sitting outside their big trailer tent and asked them if they knew where a payphone was. They both looked confused as English wasn’t their first language. I made the international hand signal for telephone and the man looked worried. He gestured that he didn’t have one. I smiled and left him alone as it crossed my mind that he might have thought he was being the victim of a mugging attempt and that I was demanding he hand over his mobile. It was then that I saw the big red phonebox sitting right in front of him, and we moved off to place some calls. We were there for about an hour phoning round and it became clear that we’d have to drive to another town. During this time the Scandanavian couple had disappeared off to bed – either to call the police on their hidden satellite phone to report the failed robbery, or because they sensed that we were looking for a place to stay and had seen us eyeing up their nice cosy trailer tent.

Finally we found a caravan site down in Crayfish Creek – a 40km drive back the way we’d come – and the very nice owner said she’d hook us up with a nice little caravan at a very reasonable cost. We arrived at about 9:30 and cooked dinner on the gas burner, drank some cheap wine and went to bed. Sleeping there reminded me of the caravan holidays that we used to go on when I was a kid, only as a child, sleeping on a 5 foot bunk bed was a lot of fun. As an adult, you find that half of you is sleeping on the bed, and half of you is hanging over the end, which kind of sucks the fun out of it.

The next day we got up early to go back to Stanley and climb The Nut in daylight.

the view from the top

Penguin!

2006-03-28T02:27:00.000Z

We'd hired the car for 8 days and were planning to do a similar itinerary to the backpacker tours in Tasmania, only we were going to do it better, more thoroughly and with more style. I think we had the style thing covered purely because of our sublime 1986 Nissan Pintara - already the Tasmanian babes were eyeing me up at we cruised through Launceston. They don't get out much in Tasmania...

We got up early drove to Cataract Gorge which is pretty much in the centre of Launceston. This is something the tour groups also do, so just to beat their experience we walked a little further and a little faster and on average took 23% more photos.

Then we drove up towards the North Coast, stopping off at a lake for a picnic lunch. Due to an unfortunate misinterpretation of the scale of the map (my bad) we didnt get there until 3pm, but the lake was pretty nice and because only a fool would drive into the middle of nowhere we had it to ourselves. Then it was back on the road towards our destination for the evening - Stanley - but first a stop off at a small town called Penguin.

You'd think that with a name like Penguin you could see some penguins there wouldn't you? And you'd be right - they're everywhere, but they're all made out of plastic. The litter bins are penguins, the shop signs are penguins, even the old lady in the post office looked (and smelled) a bit like a penguin. But if you came to see real penguins you'd be disappointed and would have to drive 20km West to Burnie, where there is a smallish penguin colony that you can view from behind protective wooden fencing.
My theory is that there used to be a colony in Penguin but they got scared away by the 20 foot fibreglass model that the residents put on the beach to liven up the place. It's not really what you want to see when you're waddling home after a hard days swimming. You probably just want to flop down on the rocks and put your flippers up, regurgitate some fish fingers for the kids, maybe watch a documentary on killer whales or something. You don't want to be stared at by some outsized plastic relative as you come up the beach. The penguins probably thought the whole town had got a bit tacky and moved down their colony down to Burnie where the property prices were more competitive and the locals were less obsessive.

We were a bit penguined-out by the time we got to Burnie, so we couldnt be bothered to wait for the sun to go down in the hope of seeing them, so we pushed on to Table Cape Lookout to watch the sun go down, then drove to our overnight stop at Stanley.

Tassie

2006-03-25T00:58:00.000Z

After an alcoholic last night in Sydney I flew out to Hobart in Tasmania to check out the bits of Australia “down under down under”. In an area bigger than Ireland, Tasmania has a population of only 400,000, which makes it marginally less populous than a Sydney commuter train on a Monday morning. Hobart is the biggest “city” but in reality is just a small town. Everything’s closed on a Sunday (the day I arrived) including shops, cafes, restaurants and probably hospitals and fire stations too.
I’d met a girl called Aimee on the shuttle bus from the airport and we went down to the Tourist Information centre together to see what there was to do in Tasmania. There we met a girl from Manchester (Marie) and we wandered around Hobart for a bit trying to sort ourselves out. We all had similar travelling plans and timescales, so after a few background police checks for criminal convictions and mental instabilities we decided to rent a car and travel round together. I didn’t mention my sleep talking episode or my brief spell in the psychiatric dorm at the Big Hostel in Sydney, but evidently news of this hadn’t filtered down to the Tasmanian police.

The next day we hired “Marina” from a backstreet garage – a 1986 Nissan Pintara estate – a fine vehicle, hewn from a solid lump of iron back in the days where “airbags” were people who talked a lot and “crash protection” meant assuming the brace position just before impact. She was no-frills motoring at it’s best – 4 wheels, an engine and a steering wheel, all loosely held together with light welding and strong prayers. That day we drove her up to Launceston testing out her mighty engine on the open roads of the main highway, with a vague plan of a touring route scratched out on a piece of paper and in our heads.

We stopped at “Historic Ross” on the way up. Good toilets – I’d give them 8 out of 10. Town was a bit shite though.

The Blue Mountains

2006-03-24T03:50:00.000Z

“They aren’t blue, and they aren’t mountains”. That’s not what you want to hear when you’ve just paid good money for a day trip into the wilderness, but there was nothing in the terms and conditions that allowed for refunds in the event of inappropriately named geographical features. The “blue” refers to a hazy effect that can be generated by the oils released from the eucalyptus trees at certain times of year and under certain atmospheric conditions. This occurs roughly (and I quote) “once in a blue moon”. In our tour guide’s experience he’d seen the effect once in ten years. As for the “mountains” bit, they’re actually a couple of plateaus and a canyon. By that time my attention had wandered onto the subject of compensation and brutal litigation directed at the tour operator, so I’m afraid I missed the bit where he told us what formed them, but usually in these situations it’s a safe bet to assume that glaciers or rivers had something to do with it.

We walked down into the canyon in the drizzle and past the eucalyptus into a temperate rainforest area. I wore my walking boots, partly because it seemed like the right choice of footwear, but mainly because I was eager to make myself feel better about having lugged them round with me the last 3 months. At the bottom there was a shallow sluggish river that wound it’s way through the canyon and we walked beside it through the trees for a while. We saw loads of “yabbies” at the bottom, which are bright orange relatives of the crayfish that hang around in shallow waters looking for morsels of food. I don’t know what evolution was playing at when it came to designing the yabby, but if you’re made of delicious lobster meat, being luminous orange and hanging around in 2 inches of open water probably isn’t the best survival mechanism.

After about 4 hours of walking we emerged back at the top of the canyon and went off to do some sightseeing at the popular tourist viewpoints. The most famous sight is the “Three Sisters” which are a series of rock towers that remain standing at the side of the canyon. Unfortunately our view was obscured by low-lying cloud, and as I hadn’t purchased the “Cloud Penetrating Radar” option on my brand new digital camera all we could see was mist and fog. I took the shots anyway and resolved to buy a postcard and scan it onto my blog and pretend the views I saw were wonderful.
On the way back we stopped off to watch some kangaroos in their natural habitat – i.e. in a car park being chased by kids intent on feeding them sticks.

Bondi Beach

2006-03-23T03:46:00.000Z

A trip to Sydney wouldn’t be complete without taking in the beach at Bondi, the glamorous home of surfing. Every time I’ve attempted surfing I’ve ended up swallowing more waves than I’ve caught, then regurgitating them a few minutes later, so this time I was content to just take a swim. I’m sure the lifeguards appreciated not having to put their resuscitation skills into practice that afternoon. As you’d expect the beach has some pretty big waves which makes it ideal for all the bronzed surf dudes who hang out there religiously. It also makes it hazardous for the pasty land-loving backpackers who go there to say they’ve done it. Looking at the warning signs overlooking the beach, it’s got them all – danger: big waves; undertow; rips; discarded hypodermic needles – it also had a new one on me which was “shore dumps”. I deduced that this wasn’t a warning that people sometimes use the beach as a toilet (although who knows what people do when the sun goes down) but rather that when you surf a wave right into the shore you’re likely to get dumped head first on the beach as the sea ends and the sand begins. And if you do get on the wrong end of a “shore dump”, you’ll probably land on top of one of the hundreds of bluebottles – stinging jellyfish – that constantly get washed up on the shoreline. I got stung on my foot, not as I was gracefully guiding my surfboard back onto dry land, but when I trod on one trying to get it to pose for this photograph.

Manly Beach

2006-03-23T03:43:00.000Z

At the hostel I met up with Tasha (a friend who I’d met in New Zealand who was passing through on her way to the decadent East Coast) and we got the ferry over across Sydney harbour to Manly. The thought of a place called “Manly Beach” really cracked me up so I had to go there and flex my muscles on the golden sands. The locals showed their appreciation by not batting an eyelid. It’s quite a pretty little town and there’s a walk you can do up to some headland in a conservation area so we took a trip up there. We saw a big spider, and as the walk really wasn’t that exciting I’m going to pretend it’s really poisonous just to spice things up a little, but in all honesty it could be perfectly harmless, but I certainly wasn’t going to play with it! We timed our ferry trip so as the sun went down we’d be just going past the harbour bridge and the skyline. I got a couple of good photos, but was doing so under pressure as I was trying to avoid giving money to a very poor Elvis impersonator who was harassing the good people on the ferry.

Scary Hostellers

2006-03-21T01:53:00.000Z

Shortly after the sleep-talking incident I had to move rooms in the hostel. If I was a paranoid person I might have assumed I was being moved because of my unusual nocturnal conversations, but the two girls in the room also had to move in order to make way for a group of 4 who had booked the dorm in advance. But when I did move out, the girls went their separate way into a cosy twin room and it became apparent I had been moved into the psychiatric ward of the hostel.

Alarm bells started ringing when I arrived in the new room to find one of the occupants switching dorms. He was all too ready to explain to me that the reason he was moving was not a reallocation due to a prior booking, but he was trying escape from one rather scary inmate who was staying in the room. Clearly the guy moving out had been certified “sane” by the hostel authorities and now had permission to move to a lower security wing - and in his place I was being moved in after having recently identified myself as someone who required “further observation”. The room was on the lowest level of the hostel so if one of us crazies decided to throw ourselves out of the window (or throw someone else out the window) we weren’t too high up so we’d probably survive the fall. Just to make absolutely certain against messy defenestrations they’d also painted the windows shut. I think there may even have been toughened glass, but I didn’t test that out because being wrong would have meant paying a hefty glazier’s bill.

So when this guy moved out – looking pretty shabby and dishevelled – he recounted a chilling tale of what had happened the previous day. Wild eyed, he told me that the other guy had locked himself in the bathroom for 4 hours and hadn’t responded to efforts to rouse him (we had a separate bathroom in the room to keep us isolated from the other prisoners, and presumably so we could be “locked down” in the event of any trouble). Drug use was suspected. He described the scary guy to me and instantly I knew who he was – an unsavoury looking character I’d seen lurking in the shadows in the common room who had been wearing the same “Suicidal Tendencies” T-shirt since he arrived. Lets call him Jack Nicholson, as I never did learn his real name. Looking around his bed I noted several Marvel comic books, “The Lost Boys” on video and a pair of enormous black boots with a skull and cross bones on each toe-cap. I photographed the boots so that in the event of my bloodied corpse being found on the pavement, the police might be able to get clues to the identity of my murderer from my digital camera. The situation was not looking good. The person that was moving out hastily departed, leaving me with one final piece of advice: “You’re alright as long as there are other people in the room with you, just don’t get left alone with him”. The warning reminded me of a bad Hollywood horror movie. I was pretty sure I would see this guy again later, probably crumpled up at the foot of the stairwell after a mysterious unexplained fall.

Once he had left I was on my own in the room. Remembering the warning, I didn’t want to hang around, so threw my stuff under my bed, chucked all my valuables in a locker and secured them with a large padlock. Just when I was about to leave I heard a key scratching at the door and I felt a presence entering the room. I didn’t want to turn round but I was compelled to. Don’t show fear I thought to myself and I greeted Jack Nicholson who was making his way towards me.
“So there’s four of us in the room now.” he said, to no-one in particular.
“Yes, the other guy had to switch rooms.... I think some people had made a booking…” I replied lamely, figuring Jack Nicholson probably already had issues with abandonment and I didn’t wish to drop the other guy in it.
“Oh.” he grunted, before disappearing into the toilet to do some early morning spitting and loud urination. I took this as my cue to finish grabbing my stuff for the day and make a hasty exit, but he was back in the room before I could finish.
“I’m off to get me some brekky-jugs. Breakfast. Burgers for breakfast. I loves me burgers!” he jabbered.
I’ll bet you do, I thought. Burgers made with human flesh probably.
“OK, I’ll see you later” I said, hoping to God that I wouldn’t.
With that and a bit more spitting he left the room leaving me alone again.

That day I did the Sydney Opera House, walked across the Harbour Bridge, went to the aquarium, went up the Sydney Tower and did just about every tourist attraction the city had to offer. I didn’t return to my room until 11pm, and then I went straight to bed.

About midnight Jack Nicholson returned and turned on the light in the room. By this time the other 2 people in the dorm were also in bed, and Jack had a bit of a conversation with himself, repeated his spitting/loud urination routine and then turned in for the night without further incident. Sometime in the night he started talking in his sleep, which presumably was one of the many reasons that he had found himself moved into the isolation ward.

This is a genuine transcript of the conversation he had with the guy in the bed below me (we’ll call him Bob as I don’t know his name). Bob was unaware that Jack was asleep at the time and bless him was probably half asleep himself.

JACK (loudly): Excuse me!
BOB: Yes?
JACK (louder): Excuse me!
BOB (trying to sound cool): What’s going down?
JACK: What are them green things?
A pause
BOB (confused): What??
Another pause
JACK (singing): Puff the ma-gic dra-gon!
Silence

At this point I was rather hoping Jack would carry on with the singing and Bob would continue trying to make sense of it, but I think Bob twigged he didn’t need to participate in the conversation any longer. Sadly Jack turned over and fell silent so I never got to hear the second verse (which is my favourite and talks about Puff’s friend, Jackie Paper, who loved his dragon and would bring him gifts of strings and sealing wax and lots of fancy stuff). I think the sleep talking conclusively settled the drugs question though, as someone had clearly been “puffing the magic dragon” earlier on in the day…

My Name Is Davros...

2006-03-20T01:10:00.000Z

Last Friday I left Brisbane with a bulging backpack and flew down to Sydney. I checked into a hostel near the train station, into a 4-share room with ensuite, TV + video and aircon - pretty plush for a hostel, and at about $30 a night it's not too expensive. For some reason though I haven't been sleeping too well and have been waking up quite a lot in the night. Last night however, I was responsible for waking everyone else up.

I went to bed at about 11:30 after a few classes of cheap white wine. I wouldn't say I was drunk by any standard but I don't think I would have passed a breathalyzer test either. When I got into the room I had two new roommates, who were fashion students on a work placement from Canberra. We chatted for a few minutes before all going to bed and I dozed off pretty quickly. True to form I slept fitfully, and several times I woke up from some very odd dreams finding myself sighing in my sleep. Then about 4am I was having a dream - the details of which are a little sketchy in my mind, but I assure you it was bizarre - and I awoke, aware as I awoke that I was just finishing off announcing out loud: "My name is Davros!...".

What's worse, I was saying it at a pretty high volume and in the voice of a Dalek from Dr Who!

The last few syllables were still echoing coldly around the room when I realised what I was doing and was shocked back into consciousness. My first reaction was to cringe, then blush, then hide my head under the covers. I listened intently to find out whether the girls were still sleeping, but I couldn't hear any signs of deepened breathing that would indicate that my outburst had passed unnoticed.

How much of my dream had been broadcast in this way? I have no idea. Hopefully not too much because just before my Davros impression I was pretending to be Homer Simpson, and I can remember giggling and saying "I control all of the spheres!".

Don't ask me why, but for the five minutes of that dream I, Homer, did indeed control all of the spheres (and it was GREAT! I can highly recommend that you too control all the spheres should you ever get the chance).

So what must those two girls have thought? Here are my best theories:

That I am Greek, and Davros is my real name. In my dreams I reveal my true identity because I can't stand the deceit.
That I am a geek, who regularly dreams about Daleks, Cybermen and time travelling adventures.
That I am in fact the real Davros. My presence in Sydney is some evil scheme to take over the world by gaining control over all of the spheres. My wheelchair has been left amongst the luggage trolleys at the airport to avoid drawing attention to my presence here on earth.
That they are sharing a dorm with someone from "The Exorcist" - not having done the Davros impression it in the last 20 years, I'm the first to admit it's a little rusty and sounds more like someone from a horror movie than the leader of the Dalek race.

Anyway, I can't be certain what they think because they got up early and I skulked in bed till they'd left. I'm open to suggestions - answers on a postcard. And if anyone wants to hazard a guess about what the hell my dream meant I'd also like to know!

(Steve will be performing his Davros impression at the Big Hostel, Sydney from March 20th-24th. Showtimes from 2am-6am. No flash photography is permitted at this event).

Goodbye to NZ - things wot i learned.

2006-03-02T06:05:00.000Z

I've now left New Zealand and travelled back to Brisbane for some serious R+R and to get the rucksack creases out of my clothes. I feel I've learned a great deal on the trip and believe it is my duty to share that knowledge with you.

Clean clothes find their way to the bottom of your rucksack and dirty ones form a sedimentary layer on the top. There is therefore a 94% probability that any item you wish to find in your bag requires extensive archaeological excavation before it can be discovered and removed.
The most useless object in my backpack (other than my backpack itself for Point 2 above) was my walking boots. Unless you're Rannulph Fiennes, a good pair of trainers or walking shoes will do you proud and won't take up half the space in your bag and make it so heavy you get a permanent curvature of the spine. For most of the time your feet will be so swollen and distended from insect bites that you will be unable to wear boots anyway.
Always have 2 bottles of shower gel with you because you will leave one behind just as you leave civilisation. Left unattended in a shower cubicle your shower gel will have disappeared within 15 minutes. Having a bottle for long enough to finish it is cause for celebration.
Do not steal plain white towels from hostels. If you do, you'll feel like you're stealing it again every time you stay at a place that has similar towels. Even worse, another backpacker might steal it from you thinking it belongs to the hostel. Instead try to steal towels that have a distinctive pattern and that are preferably not white.
Following on from Point 5, your blue ultra-compact "trek-towel" is identical to the blue trek towels owned by everyone else in your hostel. There is a good chance that the one you are currently using it is not the same little blue trek towel that you started your journey with. Consequently you should take care to wash this towel regularly if you wish to avoid more intimate contact with your fellow travellers (or steal a proper one from a hostel).
You will from time to time encounter people who are travelling off daddy's credit card - Under no circumstances should you alienate them for this fact. Instead, if you get to know them you can look beneath the wealth and privilege and you will get to see their inner beauty. Then you can fleece the little fuckers for every cent they've got.
"So how long have you been travelling for?" is the most common question asked when meeting new people and therefore is also the most dull. Try to come up with something a bit more engaging than this as an opening topic. Personally I find bitching about people who are travelling off daddy's credit card both interesting and rewarding.
If you cook anything in a hostel kitchen where the primary ingredient is not "super-noodles" everyone will treat you with all the reverence and admiration normally reserved for celebrity chefs.
Jokes about broken limbs and cracked ribs are not not appropriate humour when rock climbing or trekking on a glacier.
When arriving at a new location, never admit you got off the bright green tour bus in the coach park. When on the bright green tour bus, if you're over 30 don't tell people your real age unless you are prepared to live with the nickname "grandad".

Queenstown

2006-02-23T05:11:00.000Z

Queenstown is set in the heart of Lord of the Rings country and it reminded me a lot of Mordor from the film. Mordor's where the evil Sauron lives, and where the little hobbit Frodo must travel to fulfill his destiny. The similarity with Queenstown is not only in the scenery, but in the fear it evokes - the closer you get to it, you know that the only way the story's going to end is with you jumping off a mountain.

It's where all the dangerous things come together - canyon swings, bungees, whitewater surfing, teapots filled with cocktails. It's a lot for a little hobbit to have to deal with.

Frodo didn't have a safety harness to protect him, but he did have a mate who was a wizard and I guess that kind of evens things out...

Bungy Jumping

2006-02-23T05:03:00.000Z

As I looked down to the canyon 43 metres below me my mouth went dry and my legs went weak. Down in the bottom of the valley the white water boiled and seethed - if the bungy broke and the fall didnt kill you the rapids downstream surely would.

It was a good job that I was only standing in the car park and I had no intention of jumping off. The most risky thing I was going to do was eat one of the dodgy burgers from the barbecue outside the gift shop.

We were at the site of the worlds first commercial bungy jump at the Kawarau bridge near Queenstown, and I was joined on the viewing platform by about 70 other people who couldn't jump because they'd developed back problems on the walk down from the car park. One by one the jumpers cast themselves off the bridge and bounced around for a bit on the end of a bit of elastic. The crowd gasped and wowed, the Japanese tourists screamed and giggled. I bought a postcard from the gift shop.

Three days later I did the 134 metre Nevis Highwire Bungy - the second highest commercial bungy site in the world.

It was quite scary.

What? You didn't think I was going to do one?????
The 43 metre one is for pussies...

6 seconds of freefall, a further 2.5 seconds to stop when the bungy kicks in...

Glacier Hiking

2006-02-21T08:40:00.000Z

At the very top of the mountains in the Southern Alps, Franz Joseph Glacier is fed by up to 40 metres of snow a year. Imagine how long it would take you to clear that off your drive!
There are 2 ways to get up there and go out on the ice - either the hard and cheap way by walking up from the bottom, or the expensive and easy way - being dropped off by a helicopter. We decided on the heli-hike as it promises to get you higher up the mountain than you would get by a full days hiking. What they didn't tell us however is that more often than not the helicopters don't leave the ground due to bad weather. With it snowing or raining 2 days out of 3 there isn't usually great visibility up there so the helicopters can't always fly. This surprised me as I thought that there would be nothing a New Zealand helicopter pilot likes more than the challenge of flying blindly into a cloud and not knowing whether his aircraft is going to be dashed to pieces on some jagged granite. In the 70's the New Zealanders pioneered a way of catching wild deer for breeding stock by chasing them over mountains with helicopters, going down to an altitude of 6 feet and getting a mate to dive on top of them! These guys are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
So we couldn't do the heli-hike, but opted for the full day trek, and it pissed down. It was the sort of rain where you get wet just by thinking about going outside, and no amount of waterproof clothing would keep us dry.

Our guide for the day was Conan - yes, Conan is his real name (pic left). But he resembled Action Man more than Conan the Barbarian, both in his actions and his appearance. At one point I thought I could see a switch in the back of his head that would make his eyes swivel.

It wouldn't have been a complete day without someone having a little accident. This is the ice cavern that Andrea fell into. She was ok though, but if she hadn't been at least we would have found out whether rescue helicopter pilots are brave enough to fly through clouds

Quad Biking

2006-02-21T08:39:00.000Z

We took some race prepared quad bikes out round a crazy mud and dirt track on the way into Westport. As usual in New Zealand you had to sign a disclaimer saying you realised that you might die, you weren't too bothered about the prospect and that you wouldn't come back as a ghost to haunt the offices of the quad bike company afterwards. You also agreed that if the bike got damaged it was your fault and you'd pay to get it fixed then take everyone in New Zealand out for beers. So it was highly amusing when Big Ben (left in the photo) rolled his quad on the first corner and it landed on top of him. Simultaneously some other people we knew were horseriding in the same area and one of the horses slipped and fell on a Scandanavian girl's leg. I'm pleased to say that neither the horse or the quad bike were damaged in the incident.

Oh, and Ben and the girl were fine too in case you were worried.

Nelson and Sea Kayaking

2006-02-20T06:31:00.000Z

Nelson on the South Island averages 2500 hours of sunshine per year - that's almost 7 hours a day, so you can almost guarantee good weather. It's also about 30 minutes away from the Abel Tasman national park, so a great place to get out and see some fantastic scenery. We took sea kayaks out from Kaiteriteri and paddled up to the park with some American girls and a guy with one leg. Strange but true. After kayaking North for about 5 hours we were left with about 2 hours to get back and we were all shattered. But Gloria, our guide brought out a sail and tied it to the paddles and we rafted our three kayaks together and sailed back.

An interesting bus journey

2006-02-16T09:13:00.001Z

I travelled down to Wellington from Auckland on an Inter-city bus. I knew that this probably wasn't the best plan as whenever I mentioned it to anyone they looked a bit concerned about the state of my mental health. The problem is that it's an 12 hour journey and the buses have no toilets. They are also packed so you're guaranteed to spend a good deal of time listening to the tinny rattling of MP3 players from the people sitting next to you. Most people choose to split their journey into smaller chunks and stop off places, but I'd already been to most of the places en route, and was keen to get down to the South Island.

You get to meet an interesting bunch of people on the bus - the most noticable of which was a Kiwi girl who also got on at Auckland and talked to the whole of the bus for a large part of the trip. I don't mean that she spoke to everyone individually at some point, but rather she addressed the whole of the bus every time she talked. On three separate occasions she got out of her seat excitedly to look out the window and announce "Hey, look at that car! That's awesome, I'm gonna get that car!". Fearful that we might be drawn into one to one conversation, each time we got off the bus for toilet breaks everybody tried to avoid eye contact with her in much the same way as one might avoid eye contact with a gorilla or a grizzly bear. She asked one unfortunate passenger if she could borrow his CD player and in an attempt to quiten her he obliged, but instead of shutting up she started to sing to us very badly and very loudly. The guy didn't get his CD player back until we arrived at her stop some 10 hours later.

I had an interesting assortment of people coming to sit next to me at various points of the journey:

A huge Maori guy who took up half of my seat and pretended to be asleep.
An intimidating looking German girl (where I pretended to be asleep).
An old man of unknown nationality (we both pretended to be asleep, but at his age I'm willing to concede that he might indeed have been asleep).
A talkative Canadian Girl called Krystyne (see my post on International Loudness Statistics), where I tried to pretend to be asleep but had to keep waking up to retrieve the filling from her sandwich that she kept dropping on my lap

Despite the lack of vowels in her name and her dyspraxic eating habits (I could tell from the state of her top that she was no stranger to mealtime accidents) she was very good company and we chatted for quite a while. She was also freakishly organised and had printed out most of the internet and was carrying it round in her bag. This came in very useful as I hadn't booked any accommodation for Wellington and I already knew the hostel I wanted to stay in was full and there were 50 backpackers on the bus also looking for somewhere to sleep. She managed to find me the number of a hostel opposite the bus station and I called them up on my ridiculously expensive UK mobile. When the receptionist apologised and said that they didn't have any beds I began to think about how heavy my backpack was and taxis to expensive hotels. But then I asked her if she was sure that they had nothing at all she said "No, apart from in a room with 20 beds". This sounded suspiciously like accommodation to me so I asked if I could have one of those. "Really?" she said incredulously. Evidently they don't get a particularly high demand for beds in the sardine suite, but my only other options were a cold pavement and hypothermia or an expensive hotel and ostracism from the backpacking community, so I decided to take it.

I didn't know anyone in Wellington and wasn't meeting Sarah till the following day, so Krystyne asked me if I wanted to go out with them. She was travelling with another Canadian girl, Michelle, and two German guys, Tim and Sebastian. So once I'd squeezed my rucksack into my luxury dormitory I went over to the hostel where they were staying. I went over to the supermarket and bought a cheap bottle of wine for $15 that I reckoned would be pretty drinkable. Here I learned another important backpacker lesson. Buy the cheapest wine you can - chances are it will be ok in New Zealand, and if it's not by the fourth glass you'll stop noticing the methylated spirit aftertaste. The prices start at $7 or $8 - if you're spending $15 on a bottle of wine you are the backpacker equivalent of Donald Trump. Let's face it, there's no point in spending $15 on a bottle of wine you're only going to end up drinking out of a teacup.

So we had a few drinks in their room then met a guy called Steve who was an English expat who was also in their dorm. Having a modicum of local knowledge he showed us to a decent bar where we could get cheap drinks and avoid getting beaten up. Pretty soon I was wasted - must have been because a couple of Kiwi's kept on trading my cigarettes for chugs on their box of wine. I really didnt want to suck on the soggy cardboard and tried to just give them cigarettes, but they insisted each time that trading was part of the Maori culture so I had to keep putting the box up to my lips.

When the bars shut, in another Donald Trump moment I got a cab back to my mammoth dorm and crashed out. No pretending to be asleep this time.

here's a great photo from near Rotorua that I didnt include in that post - it's of either the Blue or Green Lake - not sure which as they both looked pretty similar to me...

International Loudness Statistics...

2006-02-16T09:13:00.000Z

It's a commonly observed phenomenon that whenever people travel abroad their voices get louder. I've been doing a bit of scientific research regarding the different nationalities and their various volume levels and I can now present the following statistics:

Top 5 Noisiest Nations

5. Germans - 85 decibels - comparable to a truck engine at high speed. It's not so much the volume that is a danger to the ears but rather the harshness of their consonants.
4. English - 92 decibels - about as loud as a heavy metal gig. Considerably louder when drunk and/or watching team sports. In foreign countries can be heard to shout English words louder when conversing with natives who do not speak a word of it. This is because of the mistaken notion that all people understand English if spoken loud enough and accompanied by unintelligible hand signals.
3. Dutch - 95 decibels - marginally louder than the British, but are just as loud when they're sober as when they're drunk. Also boisterous when watching team sports and/or when fighting with the English. The Dutch really are a crazy bunch.
2. Americans - 107 decibels - like the sound of a Boeing 747 during takeoff. Rarely seen outside America, though those that have passports contravene several international laws pertaining to noise pollution. Fortunately the American tourist is a rarity in the antipodes as the US Department of Cartography has only mapped the globe as far as Hawaii.
1. Canadians - 115 decibels - About as loud and as piercing as pneumatic drill going through concrete. The genetic predisposition for loud conversation evolved as a mechanism for communicating with each other over vast Canadian plateaus and towering mountain ranges. Advanced study has shown that Canadians use a form of subsonic resonance that is similar to that used by whales. Never entice a Canadian to shout if you wish to avoid perforated ear drums.

Waitomo

2006-02-14T04:09:00.000Z

After leaving Rotorua we drove up to Waitomo via Taupo. We checked into a hostel in the middle of the "town" and made our way to the nearest, and only pub. Waitomo is the best place to do caving in New Zealand, and its big attraction is the glow-worm caves where you can see these creatures in large numbers in the huge caverns that are dotted around the area. The caves are pretty wet and most have large areas of open water that you can swim or float through, so it didnt take the kiwis long to come up with "blackwater rafting" - floating through the underground rivers on inflatable rubber rings. Kiri and Sarah decided that just floating was a little bit lame. They wanted some abseiling thrown in for a bit more danger - evidently the risk of drowning isn't sufficient and you need to add in the possibility of a long fall down to your watery death - so we booked on a trip to "Hagga's Honking Holes". We got rubbered up in thick wetsuits and had a crash course in abseiling from the guides, then descended into the caverns. It consists of three abseils down waterfalls, and one occasion when you get dropped down into a pool of water by one of the guides. Seeing that everyone else was more scared than me was a great comfort. I even managed to look happy in one of the pictures which is unusual as in normal photos I can rarely manage a smile...

It was a fantastic trip and nobody died, which is always a bonus. But of course now I'm a true extreme sportsman it was just a walk in the park to me...

Stranded Cars

2006-02-14T03:58:00.000Z

You've got to laugh at this - this was a classic Mercedes 280 in mint condition 5 weeks ago before the driver drove it on 90 mile beach during a storm. He tried to get away by driving up a riverbed (actually quite a sensible thing to do because the sand is packed down harder) but the river was swollen and the car sank. Now every time the tide comes in it sinks a little bit further.

Rotorua - day two

2006-02-13T23:41:00.000Z

Like I said, Rotorua isn't short of things to do. In the morning we went to Wai-O-Tapu thermal area, where you get to walk around surreal landscapes filled with bubbling volcanic action. The big attraction of this area is Lady Knox geyser, one of only a few geysers you can see spouting water up into the air on a regular basis. And it's very regular - going off at a convenient 10:15 every morning (except Christmas Day). If you're thinking this is suspiciously well organised then you'd be right. Nature is far too unreliable when it comes to pleasing expectant crowds of lucrative tourists, so the staff at Wai-O-Tapu give it a little helping hand. It was discovered a while ago that if you drop a bar of carbolic soap down the top of a geyser it goes off about 5 minutes later. Don't ask me why it does - this isn't "New Scientist". Also don't ask me why someone was wandering along in the forest and came across a hole in the ground and thought "That looks like a good soap dish...". But put the soap down they did, and sure enough five minutes later a great big stream of steamy water gushed out. The next thought they had was "this looks like a great place for a gift shop!" and so Wai-O-Tapu was born.

In the afternoon we went off to do some whitewater rafting down one of the category 5 rapids - category 6 rapids are only suitable for the highly experienced and insane, category 7 rapids are only suitable for corpses. The one we did featured a 7 metre waterfall (Okere Falls) which is the highest raftable waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere. Not bad seeing as none of us had done rafting before, and 66% of us had managed to fall out of a kayak just the day before.

Fortunately we didn't flip over like one in eight rafts do that go down the waterfall. I'm the guy in the middle with the brown shorts.
They were blue when we started.

I was told by one of the guides to lean back for the camera and do a "hang10" sign. I had no idea what a hang 10 sign was, but this is what I chose. I am aware that this means something quite rude in Spain, and for this I apologise.

After the rafting we seriously needed to relax so we went to the thermal spa. I was wrong about Lake Rotorua being the source of the eggy smell in the town. It comes from the thermal spa and anyone who bathes there.

Rotorua - day one

2006-02-10T03:37:00.000Z

A sign in the hostel read:

"Dormitories - $22
Singles - $30
Twins/Doubles - $50
Eggy Smell - Free!"

Welcome to Rotorua!

Rotorua is the tourist Mecca of the North Island, a bit like Queenstown is for the South Island. It's main attraction is the high levels of volcanic activity brewing just below the ground which results in countless bubbling pools, steaming multicoloured lakes, yellow sulphur clad rocks and a few geysers thrown in for good measure. But with all this volcanicity comes a drawback - the place stinks, and if you bathe in any of the hot pools you begin to stink too.

The New Zealanders call it "Roto-Vegas", which leads me to question whether the person who coined this phrase had ever been to Las Vegas. There arent any casinos in Rotorua, it isn't in the middle of the desert, and last time I went to Vegas I don't remember many outdoor activities or a pervading odour of egg (apart from near the $15 all you can eat buffets). The similarity is that it's a bit of a playground for tourists and it's relatively hard to find anyone who actually lives there. It's the sort of place that you can quite happily spend a few days and spend an awful lot of cash because it's so geared around tourism and there are so many great things to do that will lighten your wallets.

We travelled down with an English girl called Sarah who'd said that she'd be our friend when we'd met in the Bay of Islands . After establishing that all the hostels in town were full we checked into a modest but adequate cabin just outside the town and after a quick nights rest we embarked on our rigorous and exhaustive tourist activity programme.
First stop was a sheep show - well, it is New Zealand and there's an awful lot of sheep out here to show off. This involved a farm hand leading various different breeds of pedigree sheep onto the stage while a sheep shearer worried them with his clippers. Then later on when the sheep lost interest he turned on a small Japanese boy from the audience and worried him instead. Obviously the pedigree animals were for display purposes only and when it came to the shearing display a suitably woolly and confused specimen was produced from behind a door in the stage to have it's entire coat removed in about 30 seconds. Pretty impressive stuff, though I can safely say I won't be replying to any job adverts for farm hands or sheep shearers when i come to look for work in Australia. After the show we went out to feed the animals and noticed several recently shawn animals nakedly skulking about the paddocks - evidently the victims of previous performances.

Next up was a gondola ride to the top of the hill opposite Lake Rotorua, followed by several goes on the "Street Luge". Street Lugeing involves hurtling down on a narrow concrete track around sharply banked corners in a plastic trolley. There are two things that stop you from ending up in the ditch - the brakes on the front of the cart, and the fear arising from the almost total lack of safety equipment. You're given a bicycle helmet that protects the top of your head, but nothing to stop you from losing all the skin from your elbows, knees, hands and face should you come a cropper on a tight bend. You see people walking around Rotorua with some horrific facial injuries and they all greet each other with a knowing nod as if to say "aah, street luge!". Having spent the years 1981-1985 with scabby knees from falling over in the playground accidents, I wasn't keen on making contact with the concrete too closely this time and it was this fear that kept me safely on the road.

There's nothing more attractive to a backpacker than something that comes for free, and the cabins that we were staying in included free use of their kayaks at the side of the river. In the afternoon we took them out down the stream and onto Lake Rotorua. The stream was relatively sluggish and calm and navigating it was the easy bit, but when we broke onto the lake the winds had tossed up quite a swell and it became apparent that going out too far wouldn't be a good idea. Lake Rotorua is full of nasty green algae and is also a big contributor to the eggy smell that engulfs the town, so taking an early bath wasn't really on our activity list for that day. We did a hasty U-turn in front of some amused fishermen at the mouth of the river, but the lake gods must have already seen us and decided who amongst us was going for a dip. As we arrived back at the cabins and Sarah tried to get out of out of her kayak she ended up taking a swim. I almost followed, spending what was literally 10 seconds carefully balanced between the muddy bank and a slowly receding kayak, only supported by a few blades of grass clutched in my fingers and my face digging into the mud and duck shit. No more kayaking after that, but we couldnt rest because we had booked tickets to the local Maori Cultural show.

For $80 you can go see a display of the traditional dancing, music and haka from the Mitai tribe whose lands extend into Rotorua. You then get to walk up to their sacred spring, before enjoying an enormous banquet cooked by woodchips and hot stones in an underground oven. Needless to say the tourists love it, and there are a few more Maori millionaires than there used to be. It's a really good way of seeing their ancient traditions and lifestyle, and going back to my previous comment about backpackers loving free stuff it did cost us $80 but the dinner was all-you-can-eat!

Mount Rangitoto

2006-02-10T03:17:00.000Z

Mount Rangitoto is an imposing volcanic island that sprang up from the ground about 600years ago, covering a good few villages in burning soot in the process - at the very least preventing them from hanging their whites out on the washing line for a good few months. Fortunately it is now dormant, so Aucklanders don't need to worry that they'll have to dig their cars out from a pile of volcanic ash every morning and it provides them with a nice viewing platform from which to look over the city and the surrounding bays and harbours.

We got the ferry over from Devonport and climbed to the top. Apparently it's only 260 metres high. That's quite a disappointing statistic when you've put in the effort to walk all the way up there and are feeling quite pleased with yourself, but the views certainly made it worthwhile. I have photographic evidence of myself at the top looking like Sir Edmund Hillary did when he first ascended Everest, only I suspect if you zoom out you wouldn't find that Sir Edmund was wearing sandals.

Bay of Islands

2006-02-01T23:26:00.000Z

Kiwis will tell you that the sun burns more in New Zealand because the ozone layer is thinner over them than it is in Australia. They also complain it's hot when it's 23 degrees (they're very english like that), which kind of made me think they didn't know what they were talking about.

Needless to say after a day in the Bay of Islands I was sunburned and pretty damn hot.

The Bay of Islands is basically a really big bay with lots and lots of islands in it, the most famous of which is called the Hole in the Rock. When explorers discovered Australia and New Zealand they rapidly ran out of ideas for interesting names and went back to the map of England and started recycling city names from it. After they'd exhausted all the good place names they started to name things after themselves, followed by (in order) Kings and Queens, Lords, wives, daughters, friends, random acquaintances and finally family pets. But the lands are so vast that they just kept on finding new areas, so in the end they resorted to playing simple games of "Say-what-you-see". Hence The Bay of Islands makes complete sense in an uninteresting but informative way. Once they stepped off their boats and stopped slaughtering the indigenous people, the New Zealand explorers were delighted to discover that the Maori had already named their settlements, thus saving them from having to listen to Captain Cook announce "I-Spy with my little eye something beginning with B..." for the twentieth time that day.
Little did they know that when you translate the Maori place names into English they all come out meaning things like "Big River" or "Lots of Water". I guess that some problems are common to all cultures.

On Sunday night we arrived in Paihia (the most picturesque town in the Bay region) and we checked into a hostel called the "Pi Pi Patch". Kiri reassured me that the hostel was named after the fields of shellfish (pi pi) and not the yellowish stains on the dormitory mattresses.

Everyone on the backpacker circuit seems to be an 18 year old ex-public school girl on their gap year before university. Apart from me of course, who as you know is a 30 year old ex-public school boy having a premature mid-life crisis. I could have sworn I heard a "So What A-Level's Did You Get" conversation going on in the bar on Monday night but it could have just been an auditory hallucination brought on by the banging music, lack of sleep and my sunburn. At that point we decided to go off and find somewhere to go for dinner that the younger backpackers couldn't afford.

The next day we were up at 7am to go on a tour to Cape Rienga. After carefully waking up everyone in the dormitory who had snored that night, we were off on the Awesome Adventures coach to the Cape. The "Awesome" trip is like the standard trip, but geared around younger people.

The bus drivers dont wear a uniform or anything. Awesome!

The trip comprised a visit to an ancient Kauri forest (Big Trees), more sandboarding on a sand dune (Steep Hills) a trip along 90 Mile Beach (Long Beach), a quick dip in the sea (Deep Ocean) a walk to a spiritual Maori headland (Big Drop) and finally a quick stop at the pub on the way home (Dirty Toilets). I loved it, plus it wasn't sunny so my face didnt burn any more than it already had. Then it was back to the hostel to get shedded and wake up everyone in the dormitory again by stumbling in at 3am giggling like an 18 year old.

Backpacking's great!

Sandboarding at Cape Rienga

New Zealand

2006-02-01T22:46:00.000Z

I flew from Brisbane to Auckland on Friday - this time with New Zealand airlines and not with Malaysian. I'm pleased to report there were no incidents involving beef steaks on the 3 hour journey but there was a terrible in flight movie featuring Reece Witherspoon. Along with storms, crashes, terrorism and lightning strikes, sickly sweet romantic comedies are just one of the many perils of aviation you need to endure. In their pioneering flight of 1903 the Wright brothers probably would have stayed airbourne for more than 350 yards if Orville hadn't turned on "Miss Congeniality" just as they left the runway.

Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand with a population of just under a million. It's surrounded by little bays and beaches and overlooked by the volcanic island of Rangitoto which is it's most famous landmark.

On Saturday we went to Takepuna, which is a small suburb of Auckland with a good walking beach and some pretty scenery. I spent an unhealthy amount of time being amused by the name (which is pronounced like a Scotsman saying 'take a poo in a') particularly when we went to Takepuna cinema in the evening.
I've never done that before, but if you've got to go, you've got to go...

Moreton Island

2006-01-30T04:55:00.000Z

Before I left Brisbane I took a trip to Moreton Island on a 4wd tour to do some sandboarding and boogie boarding. Moreton is the third largest sand island in the world. If you hadn't guessed already a sand island is one that is made entirely out of sand, although the classification system actually allows them to have the odd rock or two as they don't interfere with the predominant sandy flavour of the environment. Neighbouring Fraser Island and Straddie take the prizes for biggest and second biggest respectively, but both are more heavily populated and Straddie cheats slightly and has some tarmac roads. Moreton is far more isolated than the others and less populated - there's probably less than 200 people on it at any one time, and there's at least 100km of beaches for those people to disappear into.

One of the bays on Moreton

Ships wrecked off the beach to create a safe swimming area.

To get there a 4wd is essential as like on all good sand islands the roads are entirely made out of sand. This makes for some comedy moments when "city folk" buy new jeeps and try and test out their off road capabilities. The daily ferry deposits you on the main beach and you're straight into the soft powdery stuff up to your axles if you don't know what you're doing. According to Matt, who has first hand experience, the locals then spend a good 30 minutes giving you helpful advice while the other ferry users queue behind you in the intense heat. I too have experience of getting car's stuck on beaches - having been an innocent passenger when a couple of friends recklessly endangered a Renault 19 on a beach in Cornwall, but that's another story.

Fortunately we had an experienced driver who took us out to the Moreton desert without incident and we stopped off on the dunes to do some sandboarding. I have to say that I had envisioned myself gliding gracefully down the slopes on a sleek surfboard-style contraption. I wasn't expecting a sandboard to be a lump of rectanglar plywood like you might find in any hardware store, but that's exactly what they are. They also make great shelves if you find you don't have a taste for the sport, so investing in one isn't such a bad move.

sandboarding in the desert

The dunes you go down are angled at 45 degrees and go on for about 100 metres. You lie down on the board face first and lift up the front of the board with your arms so you dont turn your mouth into a sand-shovel. Then someone pushes you and you fly off at 30 miles and hour (my guestimate - I'd left my radar gun in my other shorts) until the dune levels out and you have to make the long climb back up to the top again. You carry on like this until everyone is dehydrated, abraded and dessicated, then you get back in the van and go have a swim somewhere much cooler. And you'll never get a pebbly beach on a sand island, so you're guaranteed some soft stuff to lay your towel on.... which was nice....

The Big Day Out

2006-01-24T06:33:00.000Z

It's big, it lasts one day, and you have to go out to get there.

The Big Day Out is a one day festival that tours through Australia and New Zealand. On Sunday we went to catch the show at the Gold Coast.
http://www.bigdayout.com/

It was incredibly hot with beautiful but blistering sunshine all day, so we were all really glad that marshalls were spraying the crowd with water from hoses as we watched the bands. I was particularly glad that the marshalls spent most of their time spraying water over girls in bikinis (although this did nothing to help my personal cooling).

The internet cafe is about to close so I'll have to fill in the details of the bands on the blog later. I just wanted to get in the fact that we saw lots of girls in bikini's getting sprayed with water...

Monday, 20th January

2006-01-24T06:28:00.000Z

Researchers have concluded that the most depressing day in Britain each year is the Monday closest to the 24th January. It sums up a number of factors including winter blues, debts from christmas and broken new year's resolutions.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/21/back_monday/

You might be interested to know that on Monday 20th January I got up late, had brunch with a beautiful Australian girl, had a dip in the pool, then had a couple of beers in the sunshine at a very nice cafe. Just goes to show the 20th of January is equally depressing out here...

ps. here is the view from Matt and Sam's balcony:

Australia Zoo

2006-01-20T01:59:00.000Z

Australia Zoo is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Queensland, which is in part down to the fact that it is home to "Mr Crikey" himself - Steve "The Croc Botherer" Irwin. For those of you not familiar with him, Irwin has rapidly become something of a superstar around the world for wrestling animals that normal men would be running away from. It may be fair to describe him as not being the sharpest tool in the shed, but what he lacks in intellectual acuity he makes up in enthusiasm, courage and tireless self-marketing. In fact I suspect that he's probably a lot sharper than he appears, and that his moronic gawping is part of his carefully constructed stage persona intended to give him an air of neandertal ruggedness. After all nobody wants to hear him to give an extensive discourse on the crocodilian reproductive cycle, they want him to shout "Crikey, that's a big croc! Let's jump on him!" then leap on its back and lash it up with ropes.

So crowds in tens of thousands trek to Australia Zoo each day to watch the gladiatorial spectacle of men wrestling with crocodiles, tigers, snakes and parrots. And every day tens of thousands of people leave with a sense of wonder at the courage of the performers, but also leave a little disappointed that no one got eaten in front of their expectantly whirring camcorders.

On Wednesday I decided I was going to be one of those happy customers and would catch the train up to the zoo at Beerwah. I didn't want to see anyone lose an arm or anything serious (I'd forgotten my camcorder), but maybe just see them get a little nip from a croc to remind them what the true order of the food chain is. But when Wednesday came I overslept and the pool looked so inviting so i sat by that instead. I resolved to go the next day, so on Thursday I got up extra early and arrived at the railway station at the crack of 10:15. The man in the ticket office didn't have good news for me and told me that I'd left it too late. By the time i'd caught the next train, travelled to Beerwah, then transferred to the zoo it would be past 1:30 and by that time most of the star performers would already have been eaten. I gave up on the zoo for that day and amused myself in the Queensland Museum and the excellent art gallery next door. I'd go to the zoo on Friday I decided, and picked up a brochure from the tourist information to consolidate the fact.

Tourism starts early in Australia (the train that I needed to get left at 8:06am).
This tourist starts late.
There's clearly some incompatibility here that needs to be resolved but I'm not sure whether either party is going to budge. I made a token effort this morning to watch the time on the bedside clock tick past the hour i should be getting up, but neither my mind or my body was willing and i turned over and had another snooze.

Maybe this afternoon I'll sit by the pool and cut out the little crocodiles from the Australia Zoo brochure and make them eat a little cut-out Steve Irwin....

I've booked a two day 4WD tour of Moreton Island for Tuesday next week, which happens to start at 7am. I made sure that I booked one where they pick you up from your apartment, and I gave them instructions that if I'm not there waiting outside at 6:55 they may break down the door and drag me down to the Land Rover by force...

We'll see...

ps... this is a kangaroo that took a fancy to me at the Koala sanctuary, which you can tell by the provocative way she's sitting:

Dangerous Mammals

2006-01-17T13:23:00.000Z

Just about everything in Australia can kill you. It's home to 9 out of the 10 most venomous snakes in the world and to almost all of the deadliest spiders too. In the sea you can be eaten by sharks, poisoned by the blue ringed octopus, dragged out to sea by fearsome rip tides then stung to death by box jellyfish. Australia is also home to 8 out of the 10 most potent alcoholic drinks.

Knowing that it's such a risky place, it was with great trepidation that I made my way up the Brisbane river to meet one of Australia's most deadly mammals - the koala.

After sleeping for 20 hours a day, the koala wakes up to go on a wanton forest rampage, moving at lightning speeds of up to 3 feet per hour. His razor sharp teeth can cut through leaves like they were cutting through... well, leaves. His claws are strong enough to grip on to the branches of trees until he goes to sleep and falls off. They smell pretty bad too.

And I was going to get to cuddle one.

Fortunately animal handlers were on hand to make sure that the koala didn't go crazy and start eating children or anything. As you can see from the photo, when it was my turn for a cuddle the little bastard went straight for my nipples and gave me a full on "nipple gripple". He also wiped his bum on my nice white t-shirt.

We're going to a "bush tucker" restaurant this weekend.
Koala steaks all round...

Straddie Island

2006-01-16T02:07:00.000Z

I went off to Stradbroke Island this weekend with Matt, Sam and a couple of their friends Bek and Tracey. It's a pretty cool place with loads and loads of sandy beaches and some beautiful scenery.

After being crowned "Whitest Man on the Beach" in Barcelona back in 2004, I was keen to extend my title to the shorelines of Australia, so I quickly uncovered my dazzling chest for the admiration of both the native people and local wildlife. I could tell they were impressed. Small children were taking photographs and bikini clad women were crowding round to get a tan from the whiteness reflected from my suncreamed body. I'm not sure, but at this present moment I think I could be the whitest man in Australia - I'll keep you posted when I've had a chance to check out some more of the competition. Keep this under you hats, but there has to be a Guiness World Record for "torso reflectivity" and I could well be in with a shot. Where's Norris McWherter when you need him?

Straddie Island has had a bit of a bad press in the news recently as there was a terrible shark attack just off Amity Point on the 8th January.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1543729.htm
To be honest I was a bit concerned that my lack of suntan might prove to be an interesting curiosity to any passing sharks in the area. It's said that a shark can smell a drop of blood in the sea from several miles away - I wasnt sure about their abilities to detect Englishmen in the water at similar distances, but I wasn't taking any chances. I was on a state of high alert and my senses were bristling for any signs of danger. By thrashing my arms and legs wildly I successfully fought of off several underwater attacks from floating driftwood, pieces of seaweed and sand clouds stirred up by my own feet. When I got back to shore I was pleased to discover that i still had a full complement of limbs (I checked twice just to make sure I hadn't double counted anything) and so the next time I go to the shoe store I'm happy to say I will still be buying footwear in pairs instead of lonely singles.

For some cool pictures of Straddie, check out Matt and Sam's blog at http://samsharpe100.blogspot.com/2005/01/surfing-and-squid-on-straddie.html

Airline Food

2006-01-12T01:22:00.000Z

I arrived in Brisbane last night, slightly grubby and dazed after 29 hours of travelling. I counted that in that time I'd had 6 full meals. As a thin person this seemed a little excessive to me, but it got me thinking that maybe that's why you always end up seated next to fat people on planes. Maybe many years ago they were thin people too, but several hundred thousand air miles later their weight has spiralled up to the point where they sit half on their seat, and half on your armrest.

In general the meals were quite good, but I do have to warn you that if you ever go on Malaysian Airlines and the stewardess offers you beef steak then don't let her give it to you. Tell them you're a vegetarian or a Hindu - anything so that you get an option other than the steak.
The chicken is good. The chicken is tender. But some time in the past Gate Gourmet appears to have subcontracted out its entire beef steak operation to World of Leather. What I was presented with was not a steak, but rather an off-cut from a sofa. If the cast of "Lost" had been flying Malaysian Airlines when their plane crashed on the island they would have been severely short of food, but wouldn't have been short of material for making new shoes.

Not only was it tough, we only got a plastic knife and fork to cut it with - presumably this is to stop terrorists from storming the cabin armed with stainless steel cutlery. The truth is the aeroplane would have been more at risk from a band of terrorists swinging a sock full of steak dinners as they're not only hard and bulky, but they're also square and have vicious corners.