Down Under: Conclusions

AUCKLAND AIRPORT, NORTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 31st January 2010

2 months ago I was in Singapore, having kicked off my world tour with 7 weeks in India and getting ready to head Down Under. Anyone following The Daily Rod can probably appreciciate that it has been one hell of a 2 months - pound for pound the busiest, most action-packed time period of my life and, almost certainly, the most expensive. As this chapter of my travels draws to a close though, a few Antipodean reflections and conclusions are surely in order.

1. Driving


Visualizar Gap Year - New Zealand em um mapa maior

As the blue lines in the above map illustrate, I did one hell of a lot of driving in New Zealand. A recent blog covered various aspects of my driving experiences, in particular relation to Kiwis' inabilty to maintain decent speeds around corners, but there are other more general oddities to be beheld when cruising around their streets. Most strange is a law that bans parking on the wrong side of the street - that is parking your car facing forwards on the right side of the road (i.e. against the direction of traffic). Admittedly with so few people and so few cars, lack of parking space isn't a massive issue, but the rationale of "this law was introduced to prevent many accidents that take place" is pretty galling - a better idea would be to teach drivers to use their mirrors/eyes/generally look where they're going and save yourself a lot of hassle. The fact that the above quote was from an official note that was placed on my windscreen in Fox Glacier - a town with a population of about 100, on a street with about 10 cars parked on it, says more than enough about the resources being wasted in instigating such a stupid system.

Then, there's the traffic lights, which change straight from red to green - no amber stage in the middle. This isn't unique here in Australiasia - it's fairly prevalent in lots of places - but it sucks. Firstly, it invariably causes congestion as a result of the inevitable lags that come from drivers being slow to react to the sudden change from one to another without warning - fewer cars pass through the junction before the lights change, leaving more cars stuck behind, more traffic jams, and generally more annoyed drivers. Secondly, it is terrible for people who are desperately trying to figure out where they are going on a map in the brief period while the lights change - at least in England you have the second or two of warning while the amber glows to get ready to go - over here you just look up, see green, and have no idea if you've been holding everyone up for 30 seconds or 3. And invariably some numpty will get over-excited and drop the clutch and stall... more hold ups.

2. Weighing in on the age-old Sydney vs Melbourne debate

Sydney and Melbourne have been arguing with each other over who has the better city for the entirity of Australian history. For me, it's no contest. Sydney has the better climate, one of the most beautiful harbours anywhere in the world (in my experience, only Monte Carlo can challenge its glamour), and draws the headlines and the eyes of the world with its New Year fireworks bonanza... but I'd choose Melbourne any day of the week (with the possible exception of New Year´s Eve).

If you were to personify the two, Sydney would have bleached blonde hair, wear a tank top and designer sunglasses and spend the day prancing around on the beach looking like a prettyboy. Melbourne would probably wear jeans and a shirt but wouldn´t really care anyway - he'd ooze the sort of educated, cultured classiness whose sophistication absconds the need to show off particular assets.

It real terms, Melbourne doesn't have the big showpiece attractions like Sydney´s Harbour Bridge and Opera House - both jaw-dropping bits of architecture. What it does have, however, is a cultural buzz through an abundance of art and sport, and a real eclectic multicultural vibe that you can simply feel in the air, and that just does not exist in the same way in its New South Wales rival. Sydney is without doubt a cool city... but cool as a holiday destination. Melbourne is just cool. Period.

3. Getting screwed by currency

There's nothing that can be done about it, but I've got live with choosing to travel at the worst possible time as a Britisher - particularly in Australia. Sterling has tanked, while the Aussie dollar is running at all time highs, resulting in an exchange rate of A$1.70 or so to the pound. Talk to Aussies and they'll tell you about coming over to the UK and being battered by a 2.5:1 rate... so basically things in Australia have got about 60% more expensive for me for absolutely no reason bar British economic collapse. Things in NZ have been marginally better, but not by much - about a year or so ago it was almost NZ$3 to the pound - my stay saw me getting something around NZ$2.10. I guess it all depends which way you look at it - on one side you should be watching every penny when you're burning cash like a anarchist terrorist with a wodge of greenback... but on the flipside a few extra quid doesn't make all that much difference when you're spending money left right and centre anyway!

4. Young countries

Coming from England, it takes some time to get used to just how young the modern countries of Australia and New Zealand are. My first year bedroom in Oxford predates the discovery of Australia by Captain Cook by a good 3 centuries or so, and there is no limit of irrelevant bits of paraphenalia you could find in your average English town that would match the century or so age of New Zealand as a country. "History" as a concept is very different - over here you actually get a sense of history changing around you while you are there... which isn't that ridiculous considering every year is not that much of an addition to the respective ages of the nations. But what's really weird is that when you arrive, you smirk when seeing a "historic" building built in 1900... but after 2 months, you feel yourself thinking "wow - that's old!".


5. Rushing around

As I've regularly re-iterated, the last month has been ridiculously hectic and, although I have achieved an unbelieveable amount and got so many amazing memories from such a variety of places spread by such vast distances, there is a price to pay. Since completing "The Last Nizam" (an excellent read for anyone with the slightest interest in India's princely history) on that terrible night in Sydney Airport, I've been reading Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries" - frankly compulsory for anyone heading to South America. One line stood out as soon as I read it though - "we couldn't get to know the city well because we were there only for a few days and were pressed for time with the many things we had to sort out". Travels have made me aware of a skill I didn't know I had, but one that has come in useful - the ability to thoroughly absorb all facets of a town or city in the process of a good few hours walk. However, if Che and Alberto couldn't get to know a city well in a few days, it says something for what I've been forced to sideline when, with the exception of Christchurch, I've spent no longer than 18 hours in any town since Brisbane.


There are probably a whole host of other random things I wanted to say at some stage over the last 2 months that I've totally forgotten and cannot remember now... but this it pretty much good night and good luck to a fantastic couple of countries, neither of whom I had enough time to cover properly, and both of whom I will be visiting again as soon as I am able.

The Other Antipodeans

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 15th January 2010

I know a thing or two about crappy nights of sleep - aside from this trip's countless overnight buses or waking up on New Year's Day under a table in Sydney, I've had to sleep in the open desert in the middle of a sandstorm; woken up in the middle of a dancefloor on Hat Rin Beach during the Full Moon Party, and it'll be a long time before the night I slept in the middle of the GAB quad is forgotten (even if it was in my bed, complete with bedside table, right). It says something, therefore, when I say that the night I slept in Sydney airport comfortably ranks as the worst night of sleep I've ever had. Unlike the long, broad, bench-like chairs you find it pretty much every other international airport, Sydney has crappy little self contained chairs with horrible little plastic armrests between them - meaning you certainly can't sleep (or indeed sit) comfortably upright, but damnably can't lie down on your side either. They also have the audacity to charge $5 to get from the domestic to the international terminal. Long story short, not impressed.

One positive Sydney does have is an awesome duty free that includes an Apple store (and thus free internet for all), and was the scene of my tidy purchase of a Lumix DMC-FZ35 new digital camera. It's awesome.

Qantas flight QF43 was also awesome, featuring a fantastic meal of braised and herbed chicken with cous cous, and Qantas' state-of-the-art High Definition on demand entertainment system. Shame it was not even a 3 hour flight.

New Zealand immigration is like Fort Knox - their biosecurity gateway makes Australia's notoriously tight customs regulations seem liberal. Clear of food, camping/farm equipment or swine flu though, I was clear to enter.

Necessity (again, I'd hastened to book anywhere in advance) resulted in a cash splurge on a nice B&B joint that included airport pick-up, but despite being a bit of a mission from Auckland's city centre (45 mins by bus), I enjoyed a nice warm evening and clear sunset while wandering around the various waterfront piers and busy streets. Viaduct Pier in particular looked wonderful...if I wasn't on my own and/or operating on a budget! Instead, I settled for a good old Singapore-style food court and some delicious seafood fried noodles.

The over-abundance of fast food chains is as prevalent here in NZ as it was back in Oz, but it was nice to see McDonalds reunited with its old sparring partner Burger King over here after the latter's whole "Hungry Jack's" local branding nonsense in Australia. Nicer still, however, was the dreamy wafting waves of scrumptiously intoxicating cookie dough that were drifting down Queen Street, emanating from Mrs Higgins Oven Fresh Cookie Shop. Anyone who's read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince can safely assume that after inhaling this they'd know the smell of their Amortentia potion...

My extra spending afforded me an amazingly comfortable bed, so this morning's early start was not enjoyed. However, I'm now all set to head over to Mount Maunganui over in the Bay of Plenty (on the north coast) and meet up with Joe - of Judd School maths teaching/1st XI cricket team scoring fame - and her husband Simon to check out a game of domestic twenty20 cricket. The juggernaut continues...

P.S. For those of you missing me, you can take comfort in knowing that now I'm in New Zealand, pretty much anywhere I go from here will bring me closer to home!

Maggy

TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND - 13th January 2010

As Ronan Keating so rightly said, "life is a roller coaster - you've just gotta ride it". It's not just ups and downs either - just like a roller coaster, when things start going downhill, they tend to accelerate. So, fresh on the back of having my camera nicked (the day I got back from the Whitsunday Cruise), I managed to spectacularly shoot myself in the foot in an attempt to be forward planning.

With 48 hours left in Australia, I'd planned to shoot up to tropical Townsville (at about 19.5°S, it's well inside the the Tropic of Capricorn and sits approximately as far from the Equator as Goa), not so much for the city as its illustrious and acclaimed neighbour - Magnetic Island. Named as such by Captain Cook on his 1770 Discovery expedition (and affectionately nicknamed "Maggy" by locals), the story went that the island possessed some strange force that sent Cook's compass off the kilt. Subsequent evidence that no such force exists suggests that the only thing off the kilt was Cook after a couple of pegs too many*.

He's not alone. For some unknown reason, I'd managed to convince myself that my 9.30am bus from Airlie Beach arrived in Townsville at 10.30 that night. Based on this assumption, and just minutes before leaving Airlie, I booked myself into an LPG-recommended joint next to the bus station to minimise hassle upon arriving that night, with the plan being to hit Magnetic Island for the day in the morning.

Whether it was the succession of 12 hour journeys up the coast that made me think the journey would be that long, or whether it was just plain stupidity (certainly the more likely), the crux of the story was that it actually took just 4 hours, arriving at 1.30pm.

This should have been good news, as it allowed me to head straight over to Maggy, relax for the afternoon, crash there overnight and spend the following day on the island before my late afternoon flight to Sydney. If only it were so simple. Because of my supposed late arrival, I had had to do a pre-arrival check for Globetrotters (the Townsville hostel) that meant my card had already been charged... and it was non-refundable.

Unimpressed, I wandered from the bus station a couple of blocks down the road to where my hostel was...and came face-to-face with a fenced off site with no semblance of a building left on it. A phone call confirmed what I was dreading - the bloody place had moved site and my LPG, published in 2004, had the old address. And the new address was anything but close to the bus station.

Long walk in savage tropical heat with massive backpack. Check in. Dump stuff on bed. Change t-shirt. Fill backpack with LPG and book to read on beach. Walk to Magnetic Island ferry terminal.

One final kick in the teeth, it transpired that ferries were return tickets valid for one month. Meaning that by not staying overnight on the island, I was going to get financially screwed if I wanted to come back again on the second day. Not happy.

The island itself is incredible, not so much for the fact that it is a jungle flanked with pristine beaches (regular readers would have gathered that Queensland essentially consists of thousands of miles of the above), but the fact that despite its formidable reputation as a tourist hotspot, the island is just oh so quiet. There is one road through it, linking the ferry terminal at Nelly Bay with the expansive Horseshoe Bay to the north, and the smaller Picnic Bay to the south (see right). Accessible only by foot are the other 20+ bays of various shapes and sizes scattered in every direction.

Arriving on Maggy at 4.30, I hopped on the shuttle bus to Horseshoe and took on a couple of recommended walking trails - the first to an inland creek that is supposedly full of birds, although apparently they all vanish on the second Tuesday in January in every 21st century year ending in '10. The second, as the sun set to the west, involved some serious physical work - a steep climb up a hundred or more rocky steps, over the top of the hill, and down a steeper, rockier descent the other side among hundreds, or even thousands of huge granite boulders. Eventually you reach the shore of Balding Bay; in my case you mistakenly take a ridiculously treacherous and quite possibly illegal off-track route and freestyle your way down the rocks after losing your way; and enjoy the sobering tranquility of having an entire beach, and indeed entire bay cove, all to one's self.

Long walk back to Horseshoe, and sitting alone by the bus stop listening to my iPod. If I were to describe it in one word? Passive.

Then, the rollercoaster turns. As down the beach walk two guys, one young, one middle age, the latter calls out "oi mate - come fishing with us!". Polite refusal, something about having a bus to catch, and "just get the next bus! You haven't got anything better to do!"

Two hours later, beers and wines were going down a treat with fresh chips, and Paddy, Pete and I had caught a tiger shark, some little fish, and had two lines snapped by big mamma barras too strong for the weak line. I'd sacked off the last bus, and was soon going so sack off the last ferry thanks to the offer of sleeping at Paddy/Pete's place. BASE bar was frequented, a few more drinks were had, and back at Pete's a controversial concoction of bacon, onions, tomato sauce and a large dose of curry powder was guzzled. Great evening.

Morning was early. 7.30am early. I called Globetrotters to let them know I wouldn't make check out time - and with the rollercoaster very much moving my way by now, the lady told me not to worry, just swing by later and pick up my stuff, and thanks for ringing!

Thoroughly pleased about the way things were working out, my Australian adventures had one final, and quite literal, high to come - Paddy, 20, born and raised on the island, took me back over to Balding Bay, but this time we climbed our way over the rocks that bend around the left edge of the bay forming the beginnings of a lagoon. At the apex stands one huge mass of granite - towering 10 metres above the ripply blue waters below, its front face flat and shear (see arrow, right). You'd be mad as a hatter to do it on your own accord - especially as a tourist - but fate's cards in the form of local hospitality were destined to provide the biggest adrenaline rush I've had since sky diving in 2007. Like a roller coaster, what goes up must come down... so it was 1, 2, 3, JARANIMO!!!...

(...*splash*)


* Strictly unofficial speculation

CSI: Airlie Beach

AIRLIE BEACH, QUEENSLAND - 11th January 2010

No point beating around the bush here. About 2 hours ago I had my digital camera stolen from my hostel room.

In the 5 minutes I was out of the room walking to the laundry room and back, or the 5 minutes I was out at the supermarket, a French girl staying in the same room was stupid enough to not just let in a complete stranger when he claimed he'd "left something behind", but leave him alone in the room. 20 minutes later, I'm making a sandwich and the girl comes asking if I've seen a man from our room, because her "camera is gone". With mine gone as well, it doesn't take much imagination to guess I was far from impressed.

Thankfully, the summer 2008 theft of my mobile phone with 4 weeks of travelling photos in Kho Pangan, Thailand - unofficially known as the "Curious Incident of the Berghaus Bag" - left its mark on me in terms of securing my photos, and everything up to and including Brisbane is safely backed up on my portable memory stick. Unfortunately, all my photos from Fraser Island - which were both plentiful and, arguably, the best photos from all of Australia (particularly of Lake Mackenzie) - as well as those from the Whitsundays are all lost... which is pretty gutting.

One other blessing is that as a result of doing four dives on the Wings II Whitsundays cruise, I got a free DVD with hundreds of photos from our time there, including many duplicates of ones on my camera. The police (who blatently agreed with my assessment of this girl's stupidity) said CCTV might give them a lead on this one, but even for a camera that has been lost twice before finding its way back to me (most notably at the Reading Festival in August, when these kids picked it up, snapped a load of photos of themselves, then returned it to Lost Property), I can't say I'm optimistic.

Silver linings are always around though, and in this case it means I can get the money from insurance and spend it on buying myself a fancy new SLR-esque camera in duty free before I leave to New Zealand in a few days time!

THE DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#9 - Trusting the French may be fine, but trusting those trusted by
the French will probably end badly.

Finding Nemo (or not)

AIRLIE BEACH, QUEENSLAND - 11th January 2010

The list of things I've got to try at least once in my life has got one item shorter, and the list of things that are gonna cost me a lot of money due to their adrenaline-inducing addictive nature has an addition. Scuba Diving? Check.


Fraser Island's team festivities culminated with an all-you-can-eat pizza bonanza back at Hervey Bay on the mainland, which formed the prelude to yet another overnight journey. Waking from an inertial state of slumber that certainly isn't conscious, but is too uncomfortable to be considered sleep, I had to admit that spending 5 nights in 8 days on a bus is far from ideal - not to mention just 3 nights on a bed a bed since leaving Melbourne 12 days back. However, with the age-old adage of "man up" drilled into me from years of Juddian conditioning, it was hop skip and jump out of the Premier Motor Coach when, 14 hours later, we arrived here in Airley Beach - the gateway to the Whitsundays.

To quote the LPG, "just about every outdoor-loving Australian dreams of rocking up the says and reef on a yacht in the Whitsundays". Thanks to a $1000 splurge of bookings back at Byron Bay, I'd already sorted mine, and just about managed to find my way to Abel Point Marina at 1pm all set 48-hour 2 night trip aboard the catamaran "Wings II".

Of the 24 of us on board, a big solid majority were intro divers - and I was far from alone in having doubts about whether I actually wanted to do it. However, just like most things that might involve a morsel of two of fun, I was pretty easily convinced by the dive instructors on board, and just a couple of hours after leaving the mainland we were docked at Blue Pearl Bay, loaded with scuba gear, and out doing our "skills". Confirming we all had the mental capacity to breathe through our mouths rather than our noses was easy enough, so it was straight down underwater and in amongst the schools of fish and vast masses coral that give the Great Barrier Reef the awe-inspiring fame it commands.

With pretty much the whole boat deciding to dive, and being in the last group out, we got to see a bit of a transition between the day fish and their nighttime counterparts, but before we knew it it was time to resurface - cue general elation over going diving!

Back in Byron Bay the travel agent - going by the name of Will Smith - had shown me a few Whitsunday tour operators, but any indecision over which to choose was settled when food was brought up. Wings provides a veritable feast, 3 times a day, for the duration of your trip, and the proof was indeed in the pudding - we arrived back at the boat to the wafting smell of barbecued chicken (there's a barbecue on board everything here), pasta bake, Ceasar salad, all sorts of veg, and all of that followed by apple strudel for dessert. Fantastic.

Beer o'clock followed while we watched a couple of Giant Trevallys circling the back of the boat (see right), but fatigue booze combining with the prospect of an early start (with rough seas) in the morning, I was out like a log by about midnight. Next thing I know its morning and we're in Manteray Bay - all set for another round of diving. This time I'm in group 1, so it's straight underwater in amongst some deeper and more complex reef, seeing sea clams and angel fish and some amazing coral.

Whenever the boat is docked for people to go diving, anyone else is free to go snorkeling to see what they can see. Cool as my early morning's dive was, it was trumped about half an hour later when I went snorkelling with a guy called Robbie. The sun was shining, the water was clear, and thanks to a great stroke of luck Robbie managed to spot a whopping great big turtle that we proceeded to follow for the next 15 minutes, taking turns to duck dive under and around him and give him a pat on the back (/shell). At one stage, his route in and around the bay took us through the middle of a school of millions of tiny fish - everywhere you looked there were these tiny creatures floating in the water, dodging out the way of the colossal mass of Mr. Turtle as he whiled away another of his days. If an underwater camera was ever needed, it was then.

We moved down the coast to Luncheon Bay where, sure enough, we had lunch - but the Subway sandwich-esque array of breads, fillings and salads was not before another scuba dive by "Nemo City". As Adam the dive instructor so rightly said, once you've seen one Nemo fish you've seen them all, but it was still a bit of a shame to not see any! Nemo was not found...

Water-based activities ceased post-lunch, as we took on the wind and ploughed through mega-choppy waters down to the little piece of paradise known as Whitehaven Beach. Ranked by both National Geographic and Lonely Planet as one of the best 2 beaches in the world, Whitehaven's sand is 98.7% silica, giving it the most phenomenal white colour and flour-like texture of anything I've ever seen. A lookout provides spectacular views like these...


While the beach itself isn't half bad either:

Cheesy photos, art in the sand, back the bid and beach football in the sunset all exhausted, we trekked back across the island to Tongue Point, back to our boat, and tucked into another salivatious dinner - BBQ sausages and steak with potato, tuna, and egg salads, with chocolate and/or caramel cakes for dessert.

Post-dinner we headed back north so that we'd be nearer to our final dive point this morning - and I was woken up at 6.45am with the news that we were all set for one last dive before heading back to land. 35mins or so 12 metres under the surface, seeing stingrays, batfish and loads of little guys - then back to the surface, back to the boat, and 2 hours sailing later, back to Airley Beach and dry land. Phwoar.

Fun and games on Fraser Island

HERVEY BAY, QUEENSLAND - 8th January 2009

While in Byron Bay I made a decision to properly organise my last 10 days in Australia in order to get the most out of them, and stage 1 of this was the self-guided safari tour on Fraser Island - the largest sand island in the world.

The way it works is pretty simple - a load of people book the tour with a particular hostel - in our case "Palace Adventures" - and are put into groups, who are then assigned a big 4x4 van, tents, cooking equipment, cool boxes, and basically everything you need to survive on your own for 3 days. You go shopping as a group, load up on food and bevs, and hop on the barge across from the mainland. From there, you're on your own... sort of.

With 30 of us in total, we were divided into 4 groups and, in general, stuck together for the duration of our trip. Furthermore, our prep talk back at Palace included a recommended route based on the tides - and tides play a more crucial role on vehicle transportation on Fraser Island than anywhere I've been with the notable exception of l'Île de Noirmoutier's Passage du Gois on the west coast of France. The reason? Fraser Island does not have roads. It has inland tracks that are at best bumpy, and at worst giant bogs of sandy muck that are wholly unnavigable to all but the best drivers or hardcore 4x4s. And, it has the Eastern Beach.

The Eastern Beach, a.k.a. "75 Mile Beach", is unlike any other stretch of sand you're likely to see wherever you go in Australia, or anywhere else. For one, it is 75 miles long. It never ends. You can see the horizon of sand straight ahead, but you'd have to repeat that process about about 20 times to get from end to end. Secondly, for the most part it's straight. Dead straight. The map of Fraser Island to the right doesn't lie - from Indian Head in the north-east right down to Eurong, the distance as the crow flies is identical to the distance as the 4x4 drives. Which leads nicely to the third, and most unique thing about the Eastern Beach: it is both a highway and a runway. For the four hour period that covers two hours before and after low tide, the sand of the beach is broad enough and compressed enough to allow 4x4s to cruise up and down it - and being both long and straight, it's by far the quickest way of getting anywhere. All normal highway rules apply, with one difference: you must give way to any landing aircraft...

Our trip took us first to Lake Wabby - a patch of inland freshwater that is gradually getting eaten up by an ever-expanding "sand blow" - an image that can be seen fairly well in the picture I found online to the left. Fraser Island is the primary victim from the theft of my digital camera, so this particular blog is going to be missing several of what were some of my best photos from Australia. For shame.

Like every other vehicle in this part of the world, the license plates on our 4x4s proudly declare themselves as being from "Queensland - Sunshine State". Apparently at least 300 days a year are sunny... so with sod's law being what it is were always gonna get a couple of those other 65. Light drizzle while we were swimming around in Lake Wabby wasn't too big a deal - one of the girls was soundly berated for complaining about getting wet while head deep in water. And, unlike the crappy English drizzle that forms such an integral part of our national psyche, this stuff is warm. You just lay back and imagine having a nice shower while floating in a bath!

A couple of hours later and we were setting up camp - erecting tipi-like tents, assembling BBQs, all sorts. Thanks to a tidy purchase of some high quality meat from a butcher on land, our BBQ lamb burgers and sausages were fantastic and nicely accompanied with fresh salad. Eating was followed by a solid group get-to-know-one-another session with beer and cheap wine flowing and my little iPod speaking pumping out some massive choons well into the early hours.

The inland tracks through the sandy rainforest that sprawls across the middle of the island are seriously slow progress - the you occasionally find yourself having to power the vehicle up on top of a 2 foot tree root, only to have it crash down into a 2 foot deep puddle of sandy muck on the other side, all the while descending a hill and a 30 degree gradient. Pro driving is needed, and for our group that was
Dan - a 26-year-old Swede who spent a couple of years actually working as a driver - and yours truly. Dan drove for the afternoon on day 1 and the final morning, while I had the whole of day 2; I think the best description of my stint would be "rain affected". And that would be one whopping great big understatement.

Our overnight camp had been set up to the southern end of the Eastern Beach near a famous freshwater stream called Eli Creek - famed for you ability to jump off a bridge and let the vast current of the water wash you all the way down to the sea along the sandy riverbed. However, when we arrived early morning after packing up camp, there was more than enough water thumping down from the skies to make anyone want to soak themselves in the creek - so instead we powered across it all the way up to the top of the island - the fantastic views out to the north from Indian Head, and the amazing gushing waters of the Champagne Pools. The latter was particularly unique - rocky outcrops enclose an area of sea water that - as the waves crash into the rocks as in the photo on the right - is filled with foamy, frothy bubbles à la champagne. The rocky enclosure means it is the only bit of sea around Fraser Island you are allowed to swim in - the open waters are infested with jellyfish, stingrays, sharks - and January is breeding season. The pools won't be forgotten by me for some time not just thanks to memories - they're left a lasting mark on most of my body thanks to an ill-advised decision to climb atop of the border rocks; the sea crashing down to my left, the wind and rain battering down from above. Covered in sea urchins, oysters and all sorts of damn sharp shells, the rocks are not a hospitable place to be, and I came off spectacularly worse for wear after getting wiped out my a colossal wave crashing behind me - feet, hands, arms, legs and back were all sliced and diced as I was sent crashing into the salty water, soon creating my own mini-pool of leaking red blood from every side of my body. It looked worse than it was, but by God did it sting later that day... all over.

Once the tide had gone back out over lunchtime, we bombed it back down the full length of the Eastern Beach - checking out (and generally fooling around in) the awesome iron shipwreck parked half way along the coast (don't let sunshine in the photo on the right fool you - for us it was grey skies and rain) before setting up camp in a cool little clearing just inland from the beach. More food, more drinks, more partying... a few cameo appearances from the native dingoes to keep everyone entertained - an all round classic right...

...and then it was the morning - packing up, and straight inland to Mackenzie Lake. This is the stuff dreams are made of - the pictures you see in brochures that look unreal. Blazing sunshine, white sand, clear blue fresh water. With good weather, it is a little piece of paradise surrounded by jungle in every direction - and was where all sorts of fun and games went down in the 4 hours or so we were there before departing back to the mainland. The photos on my camera were, annoyingly, rather good - but as a few of other people's have appeared on facebook, some idea can be guaged from the below.

Brizzy

FORTITUDE VALLEY, BRISBANE, QUEENSLAND - 5th January 2010

In spite of my last "feral"-fuelled post (which now adorned with some pretty pictures for you to look at), I'm not a massive fan of using local slang when I'm travelling - I can't help thinking that you sound like a bit of a pratt (imagine an American saying "let's have a butcher's"... it just doesn't work). In particular, I cannot bring myself to join the entire nation and the company itself by calling McDonald's "Macca's". Maccy D's is stupid, but Macca's? Really?

Anyway, up here in the Queensland you find the Aussie "strine" slang used a lot more than I did further south - with everyone's yakking on about "sheelas" (women) "chooks" (chicken) and "fair dinkum" the whole time you really feel like you're in the Australia of Steve Irwin and all the other stereotypes. Brisbane, of course, is "Brizzy".

My first taste of Brisbane was a half an hour walk at 11.30 at night from the Transit Centre in the CBD over here to Fortitude Valley ("the Valley"), where my hostel, "Bunk", resides in the heart of the city's "entertainment precinct". Having not slept on a bed since the 29th December, I was out like a log on the mattress, emerging at about 10.30 yesterday to take on the town.

Brisbane's transport system is excellent - like London you can buy a simple day travelcard for just $6 and get unlimited travel on the buses, metro or river ferries in the "Zone 1" (city centre) area. Interestingly, Brisbane has 23 zones - concentric circles spreading further and further out of the city all the way up and down the Queensland coast - confirming the words of a random motorcyclist I got talking to in Byron Bay: "everywhere you go in Queensland will have a train to Brisbane".


Once in the CBD, I did my usual walking tour covering as much of the town as possible, including the impressive Town Hall (above) that, unfortunately, closed on the 31st December for 3 years to undergo major renovation works. Before then, you could go right up to the top of the bell tower for free... . The old General Post Office that's still in use (right) is another impressive bit of architecture, but the thing that really stood out fore me is what is now quite possibly my favourite cathedral in the world.



St Stephen's Cathedral is by European standards pretty new, but by Australian standards is positively ancient. Indeed, the chapel to the side of the main cathedral is the first church in Queensland, built in 1850, although was superceded by the cathedral a couple of decades later when it became obvious that the growing city was going to need something far more substantial. Unsurprisingly, most of the inside is similar to any other Catholic church, but it is the way in which it has been done in St Stephen's that stood out for me. The stations of the cross, for example, are small, colourful oil paintings by an artist called Lawrence Dawes that veer away from the very traditional imagery of classical churches. The crucifix above the altar (which can be seen behind the nativity crib in the photo to the above-right) is also different - made of solid bronze, it is solely a horizontal bar - a move that literally gives the symbol an extra dimension that is not normally seen. Best of all is the baptismal font (below) in a modern new transcept behind the altar - a stream of holy water flows from it in a semi circle around the back of the church. It is truly serene.


The day also included a tour of Queensland's Parliament building, which happily follows a great many of the Westminster formalities that make us feel right at home - including maces, ridiculous clothing, and all sorts of Royal conventions. As is traditional in the Westminster system, the lower house (below) is green and the upper house is red - but Queensland has the distinction of being the only Parliament in Australia, and one of the few in the whole world (New Zealand being the only other to spring to mind) to operate a unicameral legislative system, following the abolition of the upper house in 1921 after the in-power Australian Labor Party filled it with members sympathetic to their view of it as undemocratic (or, alternatively, as limited their ability to pass whatever they wanted into law).


More walking around took be to The Gabba - Brisbane Cricket Ground - and onto a ferry trip across the Brisbane River a couple of times, and by the time I'd caught the bus back up to Fortitude Valley I was in time to snag a fairly decent sunset photo looking across Brisbane's most famous landmark - the Story Bridge, designed by the same man who designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge.


Incidentally, I decided against visiting the renowned Australia Zoo just north of Brizzy - Steve Irwin's turf is widely said to be the best zoo in the country, but having already seen many an animal and zoo already, it felt leaving this for my next trip (whenever that might be) would prevent zoos in Oz going the same way as temples in India and churches in Europe in terms of diminishing marginal utility... once you've seen one, you've seen them all!


P.S. I've finally managed to upload the photos to allow me to publish a post about the menagerie of animals at my cousin's place. Check it out here

Pro Backpacking

BYRON BAY, NEW SOUTH WALES - 3rd January 2010

"Feral" is a word that is not commonly used in the day-to-day vocabulary of an Englishman. In contrast, the Aussies love the word and talk of "feral shoppers" in malls on Boxing Day, "feral traffic" around Melbourne at rush hour, and "feral people" in the scummier suburbs of the city. After my experiences of the last 20 hours or so, I'd offer the following additions:

• Feral like Greyhound coach queues. My Greyhound from Melbourne to Sydney left half an hour late due to incompetent organisation (they decided to swap buses and bays for no reason), but as we arrived on time I figured it was a one off and ignored it. However, a quite remarkable feat was achieved outside Sydney's Central Station last night, as I arrived at 6.30pm for my 7pm coach to Byron Bay to find the best part of 300 backpackers sprawled around in every direction around 3 waiting Greyhound coaches. There were no signs on any coach (or indeed anywhere whatsoever), no announcements, and certainly no order to the queuing system. I've heard rumours that the word "queue" doesn't actually exist in Australia*, but what I faced here was, organisationally, more akin to a baggage reclaim in Bombay circa 1992 than the supposedly "highly developed" tourist industry of an economically advanced country. The Greyhound Method was to queuing for the first coach (no one told us about this - we figured it out by asking around), and once at the front of the queue checking if our name was on the driver's passenger manifest. If not, queue for the second bus. If not again, the third. And if you weren't on there (which was the case for several) you were, apparently, going to be on one of the 2 buses that were arriving at 7.30pm. Absolute shitshow.
  


• Feral like tourism in Byron Bay. The way Byron, right, is described by some travellers and even by the LPG ("congratulations, you've reached the promised land") leaves you wanting to place a tidy wager on it being the location of the Second Coming... and if size of audience is Jesus' criteria, it wouldn't be a bad shout. Early yesterday evening I had a quick browse around to try and book some accomodation overnight here, and soon discovered that there is, quite literally, not a single free bed in the town. At any price (bar one at $240). With absolutely no hope of a Sydney-style last minute accomodation get-out clause, I just booked myself a night Greyhound to Brisbane with accomodation less of an issue up there. But not everyone did the same, and arrival in Byron early this morning revealed wandering clumps of backpackers ambling from hostel to hostel desperately searching for a bed. Further walking revealed streets full of cars with passed out peeps in the back, and even the odd corpse kotching on a bench. I have no idea what the offical population of this place is supposed to be, but at this moment in time - with another 3 Greyhounds full arriving first thing tomorrow, I'd say that figure is off the mark by a factor of 10.
  


• Feral like the Cape Byron Walking Trail. The last 3 months has involved some pretty serious walking - the jungle-clad ascent to Matheran, 10km tour of Singapore with Billy, and rain-soaked mission around Albert Park being just a few. I always thought it'd take something special to top Kuala Lumpur though - non-stop walking for 10 hours on the back of no sleep is not ideal preparation for the cross-country gradients and sapping humidity of the Bukit Ninas Rainforest in the middle of the city. Then came this morning...
  
  
  About 20 minutes walk out of the main Byron Bay town centre begins a 4km trail through the Cape Byron Coastal Rainforest (see above) to the historic lighthouse at the summit, and back round via the Easternmost Point of Mainland Australia and the beaches on the northern shore of the cape. All well and good, except that as I set off on my way I was (almost inevitably) greeted by a phenomenal rainstorm and was dripping wet within about 2 minutes. Bags and clothes stored in a locker, the only option was to lose the t-shirt and pretend I was in the sea. All well and good, except that being in the sea doesn't involve stomping in soaking boots through soaking mulchy footpaths and up hundreds of muddy, mucky steps though the dense forest. Even a highly trained athlete like yours truly felt pretty shattered by the time I reached the top, but the Sun came out just as I came across a couple of chicas enjoying a spectacular lookout (see right). All well and good, but the emergence of the blazing Australian summer Sun, on the back of torrential rain, when you're surrounded by rainforest, produces thermal humidity like nothing I've experienced in India, Malaysia or anywhere. Between gorgeous relief from a periodic coastal breeze, your body is engulfed in an all-encompassing heat that is much like the wall of heat that used to greet passengers disembarking their aeroplanes in India before airconditioned walkways... but more potent. Oh, and I got bitten my a leech (for the second time on my travels - I forgot to mention it happening with Kyemala on the ascent to the summit of Anigundi Coffee Estate).

Feral as times may have been, taking the rough with the smooth is all part of the fun, and the latter in particular was a top class experience - and the soaking state of my clothing was rectified with half an hour of blazing beach sunshine. Things are gonna get a whole lot more feral for the next 10 days though - 5 more overnight bus trips are needed to cram in 3 days safari around Fraser Island and 3 days on a catamaran over the Great Barrier Reef. Photos are unlikely to appear for ages... sit tight!

* apparently they just call them "lines of people"

A big omission

KING'S CROSS, SYDNEY - 2nd January 2010

January 2010 looks set to be the most hectic month of my life - 9 days into it I've slept on a bed for a total of 2 nights thanks to a combination of an insane number of overnight bus journeys and my unfortunate tendency to turn up in places that are rammed beyond belief without any sort of bookings. One of the many side effects of this style of travelling is that certain things are forgotten in the old blog - not a problem in general, but definitely something that needs correcting (in the form of a backdated entry) when it involves one of the most amazing experiences of one's life.

Shortly after 11.30am on the 2nd January, I stood atop of Sydney Harbour Bridge, 130 metres above the water, basking in the only 5 minutes of sunshine seen by the city that whole day. The photo of me will appear as soon as I can figure out how to download it off their website (UPDATE: see below!)


The Harbour Bridge climb has only been going since 1998, but the day I went up was the busiest day in their 11-year history thanks to a shift to 5-minute spacing between groups going up. Our group of 12 did what is known as the "Discovery Climb", which takes you up to the very top of the top arch of the bridge via in interior arch - giving you a proper perspective of the quite ridiculous architectural feat the bridge represents. Built in the 1930s as, amongst other more practical reasons, a way of injecting a massive fiscal stimulus into an economy that was collapsing under the weight on the Great Depression, the bridge was built for either side simultaneously - two massive structures floating in mid-air over the water held in place by thousands of steel cables buried 25 metres under the ground on land either side. In under 2 years the two sides met in the middle, thus supporting each other's weight, and 75 odd years later the Bridge has been declared fit to stand for eternity (given proper maintenance).

The climb is just awesome. You're walking up the side of a huge chunk of metal, with the crisp blue water of the Harbour getting progressively further away below you every step you take towards the summit. The celebrated view looking down to the Opera House is indeed as fantastic as everyone suggests - equal to the feeling of standing on the tiny little gangway that adjoins the two sides of the bridge right in the middle - you are standing with nothing but an inch of steel mesh separating you from 6 lanes of highway traffic 90 metres below. Awesome.


Before doing the climb, I went for an early morning walk back to the Botanic Gardens to get the cheeky "Back the Bid" photo you see above, and after the walk managed to hop over to Bondi for a quick dip in what is widely (and quite fairly) acclaimed to be the the most over-rated beach in Australia. Overrated maybe, but I can still say I've been for a swim on Bondi Beach!

New Year - Sydney style

KING'S CROSS, SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES - 1st January 2010

Happy New Year! I can happily report that Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge fireworks display is indeed as spectacular as it is bigged up to be - at 12 minutes in length it involves a quite remarkable quantity of exploding metal, and the choreography around the Bridge and the Opera House is pretty awesome.

The hours leading up to midnight were fairly eventful, although not in the sort of way I would have chosen. My Greyhound coach arrived at Central Station on schedule at 11am, and I walked over to the Meriton where Neil, a friend from Pembroke, was booked in (as getting accommodation here over New Year is next-to-impossible, I'd happily taken up his offer of the floor). After several attempts to call his room with no one picking up, and knowing he'd lost his mobile, I left my bags in the luggage room at reception and - armed with the trusty LPG - went exploring around the central area of town - checked out the impressive architecture of the Town Hall and St. Andrew's Cathedral next door to it, as well as the Queen Victoria Building shopping mall - a place so lavish and historical it would do well to be in Knightsbridge or Mayfair in London. Working my way north, I took in the vast facade of the General Post Office at No.1 Martin Place - complete with gargoyles and the imposing statue of Queen Vic - and over at Macquarie Place the cannon and anchor from HMS Sirius, the leading ship of the First Fleet that arrived in Sydney on the 18th January 1788 to establish the first convict settlement.

It was about here that things got interesting. Firstly, the heavens had opened - it goes without saying that when you're walking around a city miles away from your things, and with nowhere to change even if you could get to your clothes, rain is about as welcome as Barack Obama at a KKK Convention. The weather was a side-issue, however, shadowing the more pressing matter that arose when I checked facebook on my mobile and discovered a message from Neil saying that he was now flying back to LA early morning on the 1st, and had therefore checked out... leaving me high and dry (but, ironically, rather wet)!

A few quick phonecalls were made, and soon I was on my way to King's Cross - the backpacker-dominated precinct to the east of the main city centre - where Becca, another Pembroke friend is crashing in an apartment with friends she's made travelling around Australia. Awkward introductions were made, stories of travelling traded, and a few hours later we were all marching off to Rushcutters Bay with a picnic of sandwiches, pasta, crisps and wine (of a particularly cheap, nasty variety), to get ourselves a nice spot to watch the fireworks.

Rushcutters Bay was an excellent find by one of Becca's friends - it's far enough from the main centre that it isn't rammed, and anyone looking at it on a map would assume that the view of the Bridge is blocked by the peninsulas in front of it - but in fact you have a perfect view of the Bridge and the whole city away to the left - allowing you to see all the fireworks at once. We had a preview at 9pm, with the inaugural "Children's fireworks display", but the real deal at midnight was, well, the real deal - as the video below illustrates!



From there it was out to Kings Cross' bars - a typically messy affair - and this morning was not particularly enjoyable. However, with time in Australia running out I forced some productivity out of myself, and went for a long walk around the Botanical Gardens, which provide the best view of the Opera House and Bridge at once, and all the way around the Bay to the Opera House itself. I'll be back again tomorrow to climb the Bridge!

On the way back, and in serious need of some food to settle my stomach, I strayed across a fairly nondescript portable van next to the naval docks at Woolloomooloo (another addition to the "places with ridiculous names" collection), which turns out to be a place of some legend. Harry's Cafe de Wheels have been serving their "Tiger" pies, complete with mash and peas, since 1945, and the walls of the van are adorned with photographs of all sorts of celebrity customers, ranging from Pamela Anderson to Frank Sinatra to Sir Richard Branson. The place is definitely worth a visit, but at the very least the history is worth a read.

Photos... well they'll turn up eventually.

The DAILY ROD's Top Travel Tips:
#10 - The dictum "Beer before wine? Fine. Wine before beer? Oh dear" exists for a reason.

Penguins and The G

FERNTREE GULLY, MELBOURNE - 29th December 2009

There's nothing quite like having contacts when it comes to sporting events. Given my family's long-standing ties to Australian cricket, coming to Melbourne over Christmas meant only one thing - getting into the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the annual Boxing Day Test Match. The MCG, or "the G" as it's known over here, is one of the most colossal sporting stadia on the planet - with an all-seated capacity of over 100,000, it is not just the largest cricket ground in the world, but the largest stadium of any kind in the whole Southern Hemisphere. To put it in some perspective, the cumulative capacity of both of London's international cricket grounds - Lord's and The Oval - is still less than half of that of the G. It is massive.


Anyway, getting tickets proved to be not much of a problem thanks to the business contacts of one of my cousins, who came home one day with a packet containing a wodge of MCG tickets for 4 of the 5 days of the Test - free of charge, no questions asked, and in the members' enclosure to boot. Perfect.

Going to the G on Boxing Day is as traditional to Melbornians as eating Christmas leftovers is in England - although for many the cricket is a sideshow to the real business of hitting the beers. I met up with a whole load of "Nungers" (from the cricket club) so we had a good little crowd, and phonecalls about where to meet were wholly unnecessary - these guys had met at the same spot every year going back to the 1980s! Unlike any ground I've been to in England, the G has designated standing areas alongside the gangways that run through the middle of the stands, so groups of people can stand in the middle of the crowd without having a seat, but equally without blocking anyone (as the seats behind are elevated) - our meeting point was one such area, right behind the bowler's arm.

This year's Boxing Day opposition were Pakistan, but a lot of us were disappointed that we weren't watching the West Indies who concluded their three Test series against the Aussies before Christmas and, despite eventually going down 2-0 in the series, provided some terrific excitement through various bouts of antagonism, some colossal batting from Chris Gayle, and most of all the aggression and speed of Kemar Roach, who made Aussie skipper and arguably best batsman of his generation Ricky Ponting look like a rabbit in headlights as he nailed him in the elbow and the chest in successive balls, eventually forcing him to retire hurt.* The whole thing was brewing nicely - off-the-field slagging matches in the media combined with on-the-field ones all added up to a spicy encounter... but sadly it was all over.


All in all, the first day wasn't the most fascinating of cricket matches - the Pakistanis bowling wasn't great, and the Australian batting wasn't particularly exciting. However, it did see Shane Watson choke yet again on the verge of his maiden Test century - after previously failing on a whole host of occasions to convert 50s to tons. Boxing Day's tragedy was probably the worst of the bunch - run out on 93 thanks to some dodgy calling by Simon Katich... who clearly felt bad about it so went and smacked the ball straight to point on 98. Unbelievable scenes.


I was back at the G again on Tuesday for the 4th day to see Watson finally get his century, but only after getting dropped on 99 - and I caught the very moment in photo above! It was an easy catch straight to point - just like Katich's in the first innings - but the muppet fielder managed to put it down... much to the chagrin of a large portion of the MCG crowd (after his histrionics against the Windies, Watson is not the most popular player in Australian history). However, in the intervening days we took advantage of the long-weekend public holidays to do a bit of sightseeing - Sunday saw a trip up into the Dandenong Ranges National Park was some spectacular lookouts back over Melbourne and away into the forest, while Monday featured a day trip down to Phillip Island.

The island is about 150km from Melbourne, accessible by a road bridge, and is home to beautiful beaches, a koala reserve full of koalas (see right), a seal island with a few thousand seals and, most famously, the Penguin Parade. The "Little Penguin" is one of 7 species of penguin in the world and the only one native to Australia (I think); as the name suggests they're tiny - just one foot tall and 1kg in weight when fully grown. Every night after the sun has set, after spending a few days fishing out at sea, several few hundred of the guys will swim up to this particular beach in the south-west corner of Phillip Island and, under the protection of darkness, emerge from the water on two legs and march across the sand en masse. Sitting in the public stands watching it, you appreciate why they move as a group - the walk up across the sand involves battling with raucous seagulls, so the little penguins group themselves much like a Spartan phalanx and plough through the middle of the assembled gaggle of gulls. Their destination is a huge network of penguin burrows in the grassy hills behind the each - each of the hundreds of penguins has their own burrow, and not only do they each know exactly which one is theirs, they equally remember the necessary route around the complex system of little penguin paths to navigate their way back home to their awaiting young. You can watch all the above ensue from the system of elevated boardwalks above the burrows, but as photography isn't allowed (as the flash blinds the penguins), the best thing I can offer is jacked from Google Images:



I'm off to Sydney tomorrow (30th) for some big-style New Year celebrations... which means blogging could well hit a wall for a while. Stay tuned...

* This is the same Kemar Roach who, back in April 2006, lined up for Foundation School in Barbados against the might of our Judd School touring side, and cleaned up half our batting lineup. However, he couldn't stop two half centuries, and I have no doubt that somewhere in England right now a certain J.J. Nimmo is telling one and all how he has succeeded where Ponting and his 11,000 Test runs failed...

The Great Ocean Road, Part 1

GEELONG, VICTORIA - 20th December 2009

My general style of travelling involves a level of advanced planning that is, essentially speaking, non-existent. True to that form, I arrived back down in Melbourne from Mooroopna on Wednesday with the vague plan of filling in the 4 free days I had before Christmas with a trip over the Bass Strait to Tasmania. Come Saturday, when I decided it was high time to book said sojourn, I discovered that the combination of leaving it to 24 hours before departure to make a booking and timing it with the big end-of-school holiday rush meant that Tasmania was both very expensive, and wholly unworkable time-wise in order to be back in Melbourne for Christmas.

The Tasmania plan itself had been a plan B - my original thoughts had been to head inland to Ayer's Rock - but that got shelved a couple of weeks back when it became apparent that getting there by any non-airborne means would take days each way, and airborne means would set me back close to A$500. Pre-Christmas plans, therefore, weren't in great shape... until along came Plan C (at the suggestion of my cousin David) - and more or less 24 hours after sitting down to book flights to Tasmania I was heading west on the M1 Freeway in a brand spanking new set of wheels that I'd picked up that morning (Sunday) from the local Hertz Car Rental. Compared to the Little Beast back in England - my 998cc VW Polo - the 1.8L Nissan Tiida I've got hold of is a veritable beast (and is basically identical to the white one pictured on the linked website). The only downside is that it's an automatic transmission - like the Americans, Australians don't seem to like driving cars properly - but it certainly packs a useful punch, albeit with dark magic taking place in the gearbox.

So my new plan was to take a 4 day trip down the Great Ocean Road - a winding 250km road carved along the coast to the south-west of Melbourne, taking in a succession of beautiful seaside towns and some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere on the planet, causing it to be variously described as "one of the top 10 trips of a lifetime" and "one of the top 10 drives in the world" by various travel magazines (that may or may not have conducted fully exhaustive studies on the matter). However, with the upcoming weather looking great and the real busy season only starting on Boxing Day, it was a good time to be heading for the coast - naturally with no bookings for accommodation, or indeed any sort of plan of action or information of any kind aside from my trusty Lonely Planet Guide. Incidentally, I only got hold of this particular Australia LPG by luck, thanks to the generosity of a fellow backpacker who was staying in the Prince of Wales hostel in Singapore - she'd just come from Australia and was heading westward back to the UK so wanted to offload a couple of kilos (it's a hefty volume)!

As the whole Ocean Road trip involves a lot of stuff (plus, when I get round to it, a lot of spectacular photos), and because my lack of a diary means that if I don't detail it here I won't detail it at all, there's gonna have to be a separate blog for each day... starting here!

DAY 1:

About 120km west of Melbourne along the Port Phillip Bay coast, I arrived at the city of Geelong (pronounced Jer-long), which is basically the gateway to the Great Ocean Road, which begins about 40km down the road. It was a pretty uneventful drive - the highlight was taking the "Citylink" Toll Road and paying $12.50 for the privilege of going on a half-mile long tunnel under Melbourne. The fact that I had unlimited use for 24 hours was a fat lot of good for me...

Geelong is, apparently, the second largest city in Victoria with a population approaching a quarter of a million, but its city centre really doesn't give an impression of its size. Approaching the town from the north allows you to take a scenic route off the highway and sweep into the town from the top of a hill to the north-west, offering a beautiful view of the town centre, pier and renovated sea front that symbolises the focal point for the community (see above). All streets lead up from the sea front, including Moorabool Street, home of the National Hotel Backpackers (or "The Nash" to those down with the lingo), where I checked in for the night. After wandering around a few sights of the town, including a pretty cool art gallery that featured an excellent exhibition of works by Adrian Feint, I befriended a couple of Scottish girls from the Nash who were getting their own rented car the next morning. As they had nothing to do in the evening, they joined me for a drive around the Bellarine Peninsula, which stretches out eastward from Geelong right across the Port Phillip Bay, almost-but-not-quite enclosing it (as will make sense if you look at a map).

The peninsula's coastal road takes you through the towns of Portarlington, with its eerie views of Melbourne's skyscrapers in the distances, seemingly floating on the water like hazy shadows; St Leonards, which is an infinitely nicer place than the East Sussex town for which it is presumably named; and Queenscliffe. The latter is on a tiny little peninsula of its own, and its little High Street boasts a grand old hotel with a rooftop bar offering panoramic views from the highest point anywhere on the Bellarine - a view that was begging for an arty sepia-toned photo like the one below! It was up there, surrounded by water in every direction and enjoying the warm evening sunshine, that our conversation turned to just how crazy it was to have Christmas in the summer... but there'll be more on that in later blogs!


A couple more stops on our evening drive took us to Point Lonsdale - the Bellarine's closest point to its sister Mornington Peninsula on the other side of the bay - and, as the sun set, to the wonderful 10km stretch of golden beach at Ocean Grove. Then it was back to the Nash, sampling some of their LPG-recommended noodles for dinner (they aren't lying when describing portions as "very generous"), and time to get some good shut-eye before the assault on the Great Ocean Road proper early the next morning.


P.S. A lack of editorial process may have resulted in my last blog featuring something along the lines of "BLAH, BLAH geometry BLAH". I was supposed to go back and fill in the blahs but apparently forgot to do so... but rest assured it has now been corrected.

Exploring the bush

MOOROOPNA, VICTORIA - 15th December 2009

Place names in Australia generally fall into one of two categories. One set - predominant in the big cities around the coast - are basically the names of British people, British places, or "New" British places. The second lot, however, feature some sort of rhyming or onomatopoeic blend of alliteration and assonance to create a word that seems pretty ridiculous to us "Poms" with our wonderfully formal linguistic sensibilities. Places like "Walla Walla" always brought a snigger when I was a lad, but now that I'm here exploring Northern Victoria I've been able to visit a whole load of them first hand!

First up was the "Rural City of Wangaratta". "City" doesn't mean anything in terms of size over here - just like England, a "city" is anywhere with a cathedral, but as a result of Australia's incredibly sparse population you have a whole load of "cities" with populations akin to a rather small English town. Wang is one such place - the LPG* puts it at 15,500 - although once upon a time it was one of many places around the area to attract thousands of migrants after the discovery of gold in the mid-nineteenth century (somewhat like Bendigo, where I was last Sunday). "Wang", incidentally, is local talk - people don't like any name longer than a couple of syllables, so Wangaratta is Wang, Shepparton is Shep, and Lancaster (a tiny village with a population of about 30) is Lanky!

The first thing that strikes you about Wang is how well preserved it is - your walk up and down the colonnaded streets of the town centre takes in rows of buildings from the turn of the century - few house the same businesses as when they were created (the Telegraph Exchange is now a bar), but the facades are intact over 100 years. The wooden structures flanking a broad central street evoke a feeling of being in America's Wild West, and it's a pretty accurate description given Wang's location in the heart of what is known as "Ned Kelly Country".

Ned Kelly is an Australian icon - according to the LPG he's "Australia's greatest folk hero...his life and death have been embraced as part of the national culture". But contrary to what being a national hero usually entails, Kelly was a serial criminal and a murderer, and was hanged at the age of 24 after his last stand and capture (after trying to derail a police train). His execution was notwithstanding some 30,000 petitions for clemency - and Kelly's Robin Hood-esque "steal from the rich" populism ensured his memory lived on long after his famous last words - "Such is life".


Kelly's last stand was in Glenrowan, a little village outside of Wang, and the hotel/inn where he was captured is now the centrepiece of a celebration of Kelly and his resistance to the powers-that-be - as well as having a massive 20ft statue of Kelly and his tin-lid helmet outside (see right). Though on the side, Glenrowan also features an excellent bakery and pie shop... which brings me back to Mooroopna...

At some stage mid-week, we took a lunchtime trip to Mooroopna Bakery to sample the officially "Best Pies in Australia". I'm happy to report that they (naturally I had more than one) were indeed very good, although I'll be holding judgement on whether they're the best in all of the land until I've sampled a few more (which will no doubt occur in time).

Back to roaming around, and Saturday saw us make a trip up to Echuca - which was presumably named by accident when a colonist sneezed. Known as "Australia's Paddle Steamer Capital", it's located on the mighty Murray River, which drains pretty much all of Australia west of the Great Dividing Range. The town came to prominence when the railway arrived, which saw it grow as a meeting point between water-based transport to inland Australia and the fast link to Melbourne by rail. However, with rail expanding inland the cargo diminished, resulting in Echuca shifting to a peaceful tourist destination. That it has very much achieved - the old esplanade has been left untouched from 100 years back (complete with a British Union flag rather than its modern Australian counterpart), and leads down to a bankside pier for boarding onto one of 6 paddle steamer boats that run tours up and down the Murray. Being basically flat land, the river is amazingly windy and incredibly broad, but quiet and peaceful banked by gum trees basking in water that comes at a massive premium anywhere else in the land. Moored either side of the river are a whole series of house-boats - modern, multi-storey deals that would be right at home in Monaco... with glorious 30 degree sunshine and the cool river breeze, I was quick to add one of them to the ever-growing list of things to buy if I make a billion quid...!

Finally, there was today's trip to Beechworth up in the "High Country" - the area of land found as you make your way up the Great Alpine Road towards Australia's "Alps". Beechworth is one of the most beautiful towns you'll ever visit - lush and green (something you rarely see here after 8 years of drought) and flanked by a valley and rising hill - itself separated from the town by a gorge carved by what was presumably a hefty river, but today is a somewhat pathetic stream. The scenic Gorge Road winds its way up through the valley and hill, providing a beautiful view back across the historic town - which holds the title of the "best preserved town in Australia". I'd been impressed with Wangaratta's level of preservation, but Beechworth is something else. Everything is original - you have no problems imagining yourself walking around 100 years back with gold rush workers running around all around you. After gold was discovered, some 36 tons of pure metal were found within just 10 years, and God-knows-how-much-more for the years that followed - so it's easy to imagine just how much money was flying around there once upon a time. Today it's much more quiet, but does feature a sweet shop that's straight out of Harry Potter. Every wall is every direction is covered with sweets and chocolates of every description - if I had more of a sweet tooth I'd probably have fainted with excitement. With my departure back to Melbourne tomorrow, I invested in some Cointreau truffles as a present for my cousin... they were sampled after dinner and they were indeed fantastic!

* Lonely Planet Guide

More galavanting

MOOROOPNA, VICTORIA - 9th December 2009

It's been a busy few days - they always are - and since Friday's trip to Werribee I've been all over the place doing all sorts of stuff. I'll begin, naturally enough, at the beginning - Saturday, and my debut and quite possibly only game of cricket for Koonung Heights IVth XI, against the "all-the-gear-but-no-idea" might of Park Orchard CC. We were on the back of an 18 game unbeaten streak while Park Orchard were, apparently, bottom of the table (or "the ladder", as they call it here).

Dunno if we won the toss or not, but we were fielding first in this 40/40 encounter, and I came on to bowl after about 20 overs, with Park's innings delicately poised on about 85/2. Over began dot, dot, but third ball I managed to lure out their attacking batsman with a bit of flight on a legspinner. Sure enough, the ball caught the edge and was taken behind by the keeper - our captain. I turned to appeal as the skipper began throwing the ball in the air, but the ball slipped out of his gloves sideways. Park Orchard's man who was acting umpire at the time decided that it could not be given out, on the basis that our keeper "wasn't in control of the ball" - an unfortunate, but fair enough decision as far as I was concerned. However, our skip took a slightly more volatile view, and proceeded to unleash a verbal tirade against their umpire that would have offended John McEnroe. Understandably, their man retorted, and for a few minutes things got pretty ugly out in the Victoria sun. Thankfully, all was forgotten when I got the same guy out caught (properly) the next over!

After 6 overs with the ball, I was all set for a good bosh with the bat as we set about chasing 190 to win off our 40 overs. We got off to a great start - we were 110/2 at the 20-over tea break - but sure enough the wheels soon well off. When I went in we were 139/5, and when walked out 3 balls later the score hadn't moved. All that had changed was that I now had the dubious honour of having scored ducks on 4 different continents...

Our inevitable demise from that stage wasn't met with too many tears, but things were put in perspective when a few 1st XI players glanced through our scorebook later with a look of shock. Turns out Park Orchard IVs had been fielding 2 1st XI bowlers, one of whom was described as "scary as shit" by various 1st teamers. So, in conclusion, we put up an excellent battle in a totally unfair contest...!

Anyway, with cricket all wrapped up I went home to meet a few more of my extended family: Chris (my second cousin) and 3 of his daughters (who, if we were being technical, would probably be third-cousins-once-removed or something). Plenty of "make the English boy say something stereotypically English" banter ensued - great fun for all concerned - and come Sunday we went on a big road trip to Bendigo, about 150km north-west of Melbourne - to drop them home again. Bendigo's famous for being a major mining town - there was a time when anyone who dug 2 metres underground would find gold nuggets. Unfortunately pretty much every inch of topsoil has been turned over, but you can still walk around the whole town underground through the mammoth network of mines. And what with gold prices skyrocketing at the moment, many mines are continuing to dig deeper.

A tidy bit of local fish and chips was consumed before we were back on the road back south, and another quickfire packing job was in order before Monday morning's departure up here to Mooroopna. This is the hometown for my extended family here in Australia - Beata (Mum's cousin) and her late husband - lived here after migrating from Bombay, and here is where the family home remains. Beata's amazing on the piano/organ, so I've been treated to a whole selection of performances with various choirs she plays for, including an excellent performance this morning with a group of old ladies known as the "Silver Belles". What's interesting, and takes some getting used to, is that they've got their own Christmas Carols over here that don't involve cold, dark or seeing amidst the winter's snow. The one that stood out was "Christmas in the Scrub", with sample lyrics:

At Christmas time the birds all sing,
The rabbits jump, the lizards crawl
At Christmas time the outback rings,
All for the birth of God.

For the birth of God, the wallabies hop!
For the birth of God, the cockatoos squawk!
For the birth of God, the platypus swims!
For the birth of God, the kookaburra laughs!
For the birth of God was such exciting news,
They'd never heard before.
They came from all the land,
To see this baby in the straw.

When you're used to robins in the snow and tidings of comfort and joy, it's Christmas on it's head!

So we're about 180km north-north-east of Melbourne, just next to the larger town of Shepparton, and are pretty much in the heart of Victoria's farmland region. Many a backpacker heads up to Shepparton from January to March in order to get involved in some fruit picking - it pays per how much you collect, so the stronger you are, the richer you are. Unfortunately my timing's just off and I'm too early for the season, but I'm taking advantage of my time here to check out a few of the cool historic towns in the surrounding area. But more of that will follow at a later stage...