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.

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...

Soaked in Pole Position

MELBOURNE, VICTORIA - 18th December 2009

After various gold-mining, paddle-steamer boating and gliding escapades up in the bush, it was back down to Melbourne on Wednesday to catch a bit of the city-life action. Yesterday (Thursday) saw me head into Melbourne's city centre (or "CBD" as they call it here) for the first time and take in a few of the city's tourist traps.

Things began when I jumped off the train at Flinders Street Station, which boasts a striking outer facade featuring a copper dome and frontage that more than matches the much heralded forecourt of St Pancras in London. The golden sandstone of the station is set off beautifully by the red limestone of St Paul's Cathedral that sits diagonally opposite the main passenger entrance/exit. Sadly, both these buildings are now adjacent to Federation Square - an ultramodern development featuring a congregating are flanked by various buildings whose architecture is described (in the LPG) as "a riotous explosion of steel, glass and abstract geometry". I'm not particularly critical when it comes to buildings - it's usually a case of "Roof? Check. Walls? Check. Job done" - but Federation Square I could not stand. If it was the centrepiece of a Star Wars Convention, it'd probably be quite fitting... but putting it smack opposite one of Melbourne's finest turn-of-the-century pieces of architecture is, frankly, akin to constructing a giant mobile phone mast and planting in the middle of Christ Church's Tom Quad.

Thankfully, Fed Square is pretty much a one off, and moving around the city's various precincts provides a nice blend of everything from historic arcades, shopping havens (of absolutely no interest to me), sporting stadia (the Sports Precinct features the MCG, the Rod Laver Tennis Arena, and 1956 Olympic Park), theatres and parkland. The Victoria State Parliament is one of the most stand-out buildings around, though this is for its sheer scale rather than its uniqueness - there are no shortage of Parliament-type buildings around the world that follow the same classical formula of stone structure, Greek order columns, pediment on top...

However, one of the more poignant features of Melbourne is its Shrine of Remembrance, constructed atop of a hill directly south of centre of town in such a way that anyone looking south down Swanston Street/St. Kilda's Road will see the Shrine towering above the road below (as illustrated in the postcard, right, from the 1960s). The Shrine was constructed in the early 1930s as a memorial for Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers lost in the Great War - particularly in Gallipoli, but has subsequently developed to commemorate those lost in the Second World War, and subsequent conflicts involving Australian servicemen from Vietnam to Iraq. What makes it unique, however, versus its contemporaries around the world, is not so much its impressive architecture as the town planning that has gone into its location - Melbourne has been developed so as to make this Shrine the focal point of the city; a status augmented by the tree-lined approach and surrounding parkland where each tree commemorates a particular battalion.

Anyway, the weather had left much to be desired all day - we'd gone from a 38 degree scorcher on Wednesday to a full day of English overcast skies and light drizzle. I was right at home with the drizzle, but somewhere south of the Shrine the rain started to pick leaving me more than a little damp. However, I'd already set my mental GPS on to Albert Park - the large expanse of land featuring a rather large lake in the middle (that hosted the rowing regattas in the 1956 Olympics) and, of much greater interest to me, the streets around the lake that make up the racetrack for Melbourne's annual Formula 1 Grand Prix.

In what turned out to be a slightly ill-advised decision, I decided to start walking around the circuit (all 6km of it), all the while having to picture the circuit from TV or PlayStation games to try and figure out where I was. Much like Monaco, the road used in Melbourne is just public road the rest of the year, and without all the barriers and gravel traps and grandstands surrounding the roads it's like a different world. Nevertheless, I was suitably excited seeing Turn 3 - the site of this spectacular Martin Brundle crash in 1996:



More exciting still was the start-finish straight, which apparently becomes a big car park! I managed to snag a couple of photos from the grid (the painted starting grid boxes still visible from last March) looking down to the first corner, and even managed to wander up to the podium above the pit lane and pretended (read: imagined) spraying a load of champagne around. (Photos of this, and everything else, will all appear in a few days time...)

At this stage I was almost exactly half way around the circuit, on the other side of the lake and therefore as far away as I could possibly be from Flinders Street and my return train journey. So it is no surprise that it was then that it proceeded to absolutely piss it down with rain for the next hour or so as I trudged 5km round the rest of the track and up to the station on the bank of the Yarra River. And sure enough, arriving at the Yarra, out came the Sun. Sod's law.

The Aussie Way

MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA - 4th December 2009

G'day from the Land Down Under!

I feel it would have been wrong of me to open the Australian chapter of this blog with anything other than the most stereotypical Antipodean one-liner in existence. It turns out "G'day" is not half as prevalent a greeting (at least in Melbourne) as popular culture makes out.

I landed here in Melbourne early doors yesterday morning, but it's been an action-packed 24 hours, during which I've managed to get signed up for some Saturday League cricket, choke in a darts tournament with A$100 for the taking, and wear a tidy "Welcome to Australia" bouncer from the 1xt XI's opening bowler squarely in the rib cage - and that's not even including a solid 12 hours of sleep!

Things began happening from the moment my cousins picked me up from the airport. It turns out my cousin, Trevor - who I was meeting for the first time - loves his cricket and plays every weekend. Hearing I dabbled in the sport myself, I was soon scheduling an Australian debut this weekend and a spot of training for the evening!

On the topic of cousins, an explanatory word or two is probably useful. My "cousins" out here in Australia are actually 2nd cousins - they are a wing of my family consisting of my (maternal) grandmother's eldest sister's children and further descendants. Yes, I have a lot of cousins.

Anyway, I'm staying here in Vermont in Eastern Melbourne for a few days at Trevor's brother's place along with his mother - my Mum's first cousin - who I've met in England a few times over the years. Her and I had a bit of a wander around in the morning, and did a spot of cooking for lunch (I made an old uni-favourite in the form of my 5-minute special fried rice), before I abruptly crashed out for a couple of hours as another night with a complete lack of sleep caught up with me.

Thanks to that tidy kip, I was fresh as a daisy for the evening's training session down at Koonung Heights. Great bunch of lads - like any good cricket club, training is followed by dinner and drinks in the pavilion, although not before I managed to nab myself a wicket with my third ball (bowled middle stump) and have a cheeky bat (borrowing Trevor's gear).

Anyone lucky enough to witness a Dean Rodrigues "batting masterclass" will know that I use the term "batting" is used in its most liberal sense... more accurate alternatives would include "tail-end slogging", "swinging wildly", or just "ducking". However, still riding the wave of my last innings - an 18-ball 28 that included launching the biggest 6 ever seen at Bexhill CC (and getting bowled middle stump next ball), I strolled out into the net confident enough. Of course, we all know Australians aren't massively keen on over-confident Poms, so after a few balls warming up I was greeted to Koonung's 1st XI opening bowler pinging down some rather fast cherries. Took him a few balls to warm up too, but it was as the clouds came over that I misjudged an outswinging short ball that, rather than bouncing high and wide down the leg side, cut into my body and kept lower than expected. Unfortunately, I'd already committed to a half-hearted duck, and got nailed. Sweet.

Anyway, the post training clubhouse gathering had a bit of spice, in the form of the inaugural Koonung Heights CC Darts Championship. 20 players signed up to the head-to-head knockout tournament, with highest score over 9 darts going through to the next round. With everyone paying A$5 entry, the winner-takes-all A$100 had everyone interested... but I was quietly confident being pretty much the only person there who'd played much before. That confidence only grew after the first round, when my 164 winning score left me #1 seed for round 2. Unfortunately, my cousin Trevor - my defeated opponent in round 1, progressed through as one of 2 highest scoring losers, but seeding meant he was once again my opponent... and now out of vengeance. After he opened up with a solid 60, I choked, and ended up getting whooped. He got whooped the next round, and my first round 164 remained the highest 9 dart score by anyone all the way through. So close, yet so, so far.