Zoo at Home

FERNTREE GULLY, MELBOURNE - 30th December 2009

Just before I depart to Sydney, I thought I'd put some photos up of the collection of animals resident at Trevor and Tina's house (where I've been staying since coming back from the Great Ocean Road). They both love animals (and Tina is a veterinary nurse), and their house is home to the following:

Oscar (6) and Shayla (13/14) - collie dogs:



Moochie the cat:


Panda the rabbit:


and, the ruler of the roost, Newman the cockatoo:



Guest appearances are also made by Jasper (8 months), David's little cavoodle (cavalier-come-poodle) - seen here with 2 of his hundreds of toys:


Watching them all interact with one another is great entertainment, not least because the seniority, for want of a better word, between them seemingly contradicts what you'd expect! The cat, which you'd expect to chase the rabbit and the cockatoo, gets chased by everyone: Newman dive bombs her, and Panda the rabbit will square up to Moochie, stare at her, and then chase her around the garden! The rabbit also has a tendency to chase Newman - and hasn't been in the least bit perturbed after getting a good whack from the cocky a couple of weeks back - but has to run her little legs off when Jasper, David's dog, comes round to visit - Jasper likes nothing better than chasing Panda like a maniac... or indeed chasing anything like a maniac. Taking him, Shayla and Oscar to the park with an Aerobie Ring (right) provided the entertaining sight of Jasper hounding after the ring with Oscar, but veering away at the last minute instead of catching it in his mouth... and then come sprinting back just as quickly. Totally clueless, but infinite in energy!

Newman is the King - when the dogs start barking because of someone arriving at the door, he'll bark as well, but if the dogs get over-excited he'll turn around and shout "Shut up, Oscar!" at the dog! He dances - not quite as well as Frostie, but in a similar way - particularly to his favourite song: Lady Gaga's "Just Dance"; occasionally he'll just start talking complete jibberish to himself for about 10 minutes, wandering around shaking his head. His most classic moments come when he does something naughty (like hurling bits of wood and people's faces), because he'll sit there looking at you and produce this evil little chuckle laugh. Brilliant.

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...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

FERNTREE GULLY/VERMONT, MELBOURNE - 25th December 2009

Just a short note to say Merry Christmas to anyone and everyone who reads this blog and/or all of you who have been in touch one way or another. Hope you all have/have had awesome days, awesome food and awesome mornings-after-the-nights-before. In true Aussie style, we've celebrated with a BBQ on the sun deck out in the backyard (although admittedly there was a splattering of rain)!

I'd also like to say a sincere thanks to all of you who, over the last 3 months, have commented about the blog. As I said right back in the beginning, even if no one else reads it, it's a diary for me... but I'd be totally lying if I said I didn't really appreciate every message I've got from different people about different things, from all over the place. You know who you are - thanks, and keep reading!

Finally, Parts 3 and 4 of my Great Ocean Road adventure will appear in due course (uploading photos takes time), but when they do they'll be below this entry on the page... so remember to scroll right down!!!

Happy holidays!

The Great Ocean Road, Part 4

FERNTREE GULLY, MELBOURNE, VICTORIA - 23rd December 2009

The final day of my Great Ocean Road Adventure...

DAY 4

For the final time (for now), it was the old hostel routine - up and out by 10pm, sheets in the laundry bin, key at the desk, and back on the road. Having seen most of the fantastic limestone formations yesterday, I only made a brief stop off to check out the Bay of Islands - once again a whole load of stacks that for now stand proud but will soon be lying face-first on the ocean floor (see below). The rocks on view were actually the same ones I'd seen the previous evening from a quiet walking trail - off the beaten track - that runs off the GOR and along the top of the protruding headland adjacent to the cove and beach of the Bay of Martyrs. With all the coastal geography features on display - arches, stacks, a giant lagoon - the scene was quite ridiculously picturesque, as the second photo below hopefully does some justice to:



Anyway, it isn't long before the GOR makes its final turn inland, and officially comes to a close about 12km outside of the city of Wornambool - Victoria's largest regional city (I guess Geelong is too close to Melbourne to be considered regional). The woman whom I believe to be proprietor of my hostel in Port Campbell had had anything but a good word to say about the place - a view shared by pretty much everyone I asked - so it served the same function on my route as Luxembourg, "The Highway of Europe", serves for continental drivers - you drive on the highway straight through the middle of it!

The main reason for the rush through Warnambool was that further down the coast were better things - in particular the beautiful little seaside town of Port Fairy, situated at the meeting point of the Moyne River and the Southern Ocean. Originally settled in 1843 by a Northern Irishman by the name of James Atkinson, it spent its first 40 or so years of existence under the name "Belfast" (in yet another example of naming ingenuity by homesick settlers), but was renamed in 1887. Asking around further up the GOR, the town had been met with unanimous approval by anyone and everyone, and it is easy to see why as you walk along the broad, quiet, shaded streets from the quaint little High Street to the Moyne River, where an array of boats - modern and old - lay docked in the sapphire blue river water awaiting their no-doubt wealthy landlords. It's like combining the gentle, timeless tranquility of the English Cotswalds with the Great Gatsby-esque cultured sophistication of Long Island's North Shore in the 1920s - all in a modern setting in warm summer sunshine.


Walking down the river front eventually takes you to the causeway linking the mainland to Griffiths Island, which sits at the mouth of the Moyne and is exclusively home to a massive colony of some 30,000 migrating muttonbirds while they mate over the summer months. Over the winter, they embark on a quite ridiculous journey north up to the Arctic Circle, kotching in Bering Strait/Alaska region for a few months before making another 12,000km journey back again. Physical exertion of that level is a lot for a little bird, and the countless muttonbird carcasses littering the Griffiths Island shores are testimony to consequences of pure exhaustion.

Fresh King Prawns and chips were the order of the day for lunch, before hitting Port Fairy's East Beach and catching some rays. Across the river, which runs southward till it meets the sea, lies the long peninsula whose eastern flank is yet another golden sandy expanse for the locals to enjoy, just in case they didn't have enough already. Having a dip in one last place was compulsory, so I suitably froze my nuts off in the chilly water for a few minutes before retreating back to shore. It was soon back to the car, as advanced planning was needed to get back to Melbourne by the evening, but arrival back at the Tiida provided a nasty shock... in the form about half a million flies.

From where the Great Ocean Road leaves the coast and heads inland right up to Port Fairy, the roads are essentially long, open, and straight - resulting in cars traveling at a higher pace. As a result of a) the roads being surrounded by fields, and b) generally being in Australia, there were suitably millions of bugs getting squished on the windscreen, bonnet, radiator ducts or wing mirrors as I zoomed by. What I hadn't factored was that flies, being the disgusting little verminous creatures that they are, are instinctively attracted by the blood and guts on display, in addition to the heat emanating from the cooling engine. Unlike our European, or "normal" flies who don't land on things that are moving, Aussie flies are the king of the bugs, landing on anything, everything and sundry, whether moving or stationery, dead or alive, male, female or "other". And it goes without saying they're a bloody nuisance.

The result? My car was closer to black than white as a veritable gazillion of the pests worked their way all over the paint - and invariably half a dozen or so would get inside every time you open the door, resulting in a driving soundtrack of buzzing and squealing and the occasionally drumbeat slap from my left hand as "another one bites the dust". As I said, nuisance.

Just outside Port Fairy on the road back to Wornambool lies my last tourist stop - Tower Hill National Park and Game Reserve was Victoria's first ever national park, and is the site of a huge volcanic caldera that has blown massive hills both around it, encircling its interior lake, and within it, resulting in mountainous outcrop within the range. Without a massive amount of time to explore the whole park, I went for the toughest of the 4 recommended 45-minute walks - the Peak Experience Trail - which works its way up to the top of the central volcanic basalt mountain, but came fairly close to shitting myself about 50 metres in when, after setting of at a canter to make good time, I rounded a corner around a gum tree and came face-to-face with this chap:


I froze like a pillar of salt and, upon seeing the infant emu next to the mother, stood like a pillar of salt to ensure I didn't give off any "I'm gonna steal you baby" vibes. The emus weren't keen on moving, however, so I ended up running away backward, taking a cheeky couple of photos from behind trees, and then taking a large diversion sweep around their path to keep going up the hill. Up is a massive understatement - the climb is a good 100m up, and you're sweating like a fatman by the time you reach the ultimate peak to look out at the re-vegetated forest surrounding you, the enclosed lake surround that, and the Southern Ocean breaking on the coast a few kilometres due east. And once you're done with all that, there's a small matter of the trip back down - gravity's on your side, but when it's this steep that's really not a good thing!

A final treat summed up a great 4 days down the Great Ocean Road - sitting in the gum trees right above my parked car sat not one, not two, but three koalas - all sound asleep, and all happy as can be in their natural habitat. Seeing koalas in the wild is notoriously rare - several of my Australian cousins have never seen them at all outside of reserves - but I was lucky enough to see... well, loads!

The Great Ocean Road, Part 3

PORT CAMPBELL, THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD, VICTORIA - 22nd December 2009

Continued from Days 1 and 2...

DAY 3

With a fair whack of distance to travel today, I was up and out of my hostel in Lorne by about 9.15 and off south-eastward down the GOR. The first port of call wasn't far, however, as I'd decided I was not going to have peace until I saw a koala in the wild. Kennett River, between Lorne and Apollo Bay, has a "Koala Forest Trail" walk that seemed to offer as good an opportunity as any, so I stopped off there and began the hour-long ascent up from the seaside into the shaded abyss of the forest of gum trees. Trying to spot little furry animals in massive trees is not the easiest of tasks, and I had little success on my own. Thankfully, a few other groups of people were driving the path (lazy gits) and had an incredibly sharp eye for the creatures, so I just went to wherever I saw them stopping. Sure enough, between about 3 cars of people we came across about 7 or 8 koalas sitting, dozing in the gums, but the last one we saw was wide awake on a branch above the trail path, munching away on the eucalyptus leaves and generally posing for the cameras.


As a bit of an educational aside, koala bears are not actually bears in any shape or form - like kangaroos and lots of other indigenous Australian creatures, they are marsupials - their closest relatives are wombats. As a general rule, marsupials are incredibly energy-efficient creatures, needing just 20% of the food intake of an equivalent-sized placental mammal to survive (spanning everything in size from rats to whales). The need for this energy efficiency is obvious in Australia's dry, largely barren and desolate landscape. The koala, however, has taken this efficiency to an extreme, with the latest biological insight concluding that the reason it, unlike any other living creature, has a brain smaller than its skull ("a walnut of a brain rattling around in a fluid-filled cranium"), is that that its brain has been sacrificed in the name of energy efficiency. Brains need a lot of power - our human brain uses 20% of our energy, despite being only 2% of our mass - and koalas don't have energy to spare thanks to a diet solely consisting of gum tree (eucalyptus) leaves - a leaf so toxic that 20% of their energy is spent just detoxifying it (leave alone digesting it). As the LPG correctly notes, "there is no doubt that the koala is not the Einstein of the animal world". However, living up in the treetops with no predators of note, they can happily doze their time away, spending 75% of their day asleep.

Happy as Larry with a camera full of awesome wild koala snaps, I was soon back on the GOR, passing through Apollo Bay again before the road heads inland around the coastal peninsula of the Otway National Park. Without any CDs or an iTrip for the iPod, I was forced to use that ancient medium of radio to entertain my ears - and was pleasantly surprised by what was on offer. Having enjoyed the rock'n'roll of Vega 91.5 through Melbourne and the cheesy classics of Bay FM round the Bellarine Peninsula, this particular stretch of journey had 95.9 Mixx FM as its soundtrack - principally because the towering Mountain Ash trees lining the road prevented any reception from anywhere further afield than Apollo Bay!

About 30km further inland from the GOR is the Otway Fly - a massive system of raised walkways running through one of the few remaining preserves of Victoria's natural rainforest. The fly system is one of only 3 in the world - all of which are in Australia - and rises 25 metres (85 feet) off the forest floor allowing you to walk through the different layers of canopy for its 600 metre length. In the middle, rising up alongside the towering Mountain Ash eucalypts, is the 45 metre (150 feet) high viewing tower which takes you up to the top of the canopy by a spiral staircase (see right), and gently sways in the breeze as a result of its central pillar support structure. The trees are magnificent - it is hard to comprehend just how big they are when you look at them because it is equally hard to comprehend just how high you are off the ground, and for the same reason photographs, like the one below, simply cannot do justice to what you're actually experiencing. For all the uniqueness of the Fly, however, I wasn't massively impressed by the $22 entry fee - it was cool, but not that cool...


Out the other side of Otway National Park, the GOR once again meets up with the coastline, although now west of Cape Otway we were running along the factually accurate, if a shade melodramatic, "Shipwreck Coast" (in contrast to the touristy clichéd "Surf Coast" to the north-east of the Cape). The stretch of the coast contains the most photographed section of the GOR - either side of Port Campbell lie a series of spectacular rock formations including "the Twelve Apostles", "The Arch" and "London Bridge" - all formed as a result of the gradual erosion of the limestone sedimentary rock of the cliff face. The area is like coastal geography in action - I'm fairly sure it'd be like Christmas-coming-early for Miss Kateley or Larkin or the rest of the "geoggers" crowd - there are stacks and gorges and islets and all the other buzzwords, and over 10 years you can see the photographic change. The catalyst is the relentless force of the sea water coming up against limestone cliffs, which are eroded away over time leaving a protruding cliff with harder rock as the headland. The weaker rock around the edges will continue to be eroded behind the headland, forming caves on either side that are eventually eroded through to form an arch. Eventually, as the width of the arch is forced to increase, it will collapse, leaving behind an isolated "stack", which itself will gradually disappear or collapse. The Twelve Apostles, below, are such stacks, and now number just 6 (or 7, depending how you count them), after a 50m stack collapsed in 2005. It is unlikely that 12 were ever visible from any one point, put the name was catchier than the "Sow and Piglets" name that it succeeded...


Still within the broader Port Campbell National Park, but the other side of the Port Campbell township, "The Arch" is a natural archway carved out of the rock in the manner described above and, although resplendent now, will eventually collapse in on itself and leave behind an isolated stack like the Apostles further up the coast.


This, in fact, is exactly what happened in 1990 over at the equally impressive London Bridge - the photo below shows the gaping hole between the main headland and what is now an isolated arch, after the adjoining part of the "Bridge" collapsed. Apparently a couple of tourists ended up trapped on the newly isolated stack when the middle caved in, and needed to be rescued by helicopter... according to Wikipedia.


As you continue to head westward away from Port Campbell, you eventually reach the tiny village of Peterborough (population: 178), which has the dubious claim of being the centrepoint for shipwrecks on the Shipwreck Coast. With rocky outcrops all over the place and infamously choppy seas on the Bass Strait, not to mention a total lack of lighthouses back in the mid-nineteenth century, a good half a dozen vessels came to ground within a mile or so of Peterborough, including the Falls of Halladale, which sat aground off the Peterborough coast for months as a tourist attraction before eventually succombing to the might of the waves, and the SS Schomberg, which was designed with the sole purpose of eclipsing the record for the fastest journey from Liverpool to Melbourne, but came to a sticky end just a day's sail from its destination. A look across the water from the village tells a story - in among the expanse of water are a collection of random outcrops of rock - barely a few feet higher than the water level and almost certainly invisible in bad light.

En route through Port Campbell I'd stopped off for a bite, a swim in the sea, and to book some accommodation for the night, and so it was back to Port Campbell in the evening after seeing everything there was to see further up the road. My hostel sits on the best piece of real estate in the town - the front verandah sits right on the beach which is enclosed by large headlands on either side of it. While swimming at lunchtime, I'd noticed a path running up the side of the eastern headland from the edge of the beach, so I decided to build up an appetite for dinner by taking a stroll on what turned out to be called the "Port Campbell Experience Trail". Up on the trail, I got talking the a young family who were out for a post-dinner stroll - a couple with 4-year-old and 2-year-old boys. Turned out the Dad was the local police officer for the town, and the couple had moved to Port Campbell from Melbourne a couple of years back and loved it. As happens, we ended up having a long, winding chat about everything from my travel plans to the state of the world economy and the weakness of Pound Sterling, but they also pointed out some spectacular views looking eastward back up the GOR - from the end of the Port Campbell headland you can see right back up to the 12 Apostles - the stacks visible on the right hand side of the photo below. All the while, the sun was gradually working its way down to sea level, and the evening afterglow produced a stunning orange hue in the limestone cliffs, beautifully contrasting with the aquamarine blue of the ocean and the wild green of the shrubbery around us. It was one of those moments where you just wanted to keep looking, keep absorbing the image, capture the moment in time and never leave it. Instead, I have to make do with the photo!



The clouds in the sky were absolutely perfect, producing the most idyllic backdrop as we got back to Port Campbell's inlet beach, with the sun setting over another amazing day down the Great Ocean Road:

The Great Ocean Road, Part 2

LORNE, THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD, VICTORIA - 21st December 2009

Continuing from where I left off...

DAY 2

Free Sunday parking in Geelong expires at 9am on Monday morning, so I had to be up and out of the Nash bright and early which, all in all, worked out quite well as I headed south-east to the Surf Coast (as the stretch from the Bellarine Peninsula down to Cape Otway is known). The Great Ocean Road begins shortly after the seaside town of Torquay, which is home to some hefty waves and hundreds of surfers, but otherwise not a great deal for someone working on a budget - general consensus is that it's a bit of a pretty boys' town. However, the town's war memorial garden a top of a protruding section of rock, aptly named "Point Danger", provides a nice view looking both ways up and down the coast (the former seen in the photo below).


Heading out from Torquay puts you onto the Great Ocean Road (or "GOR"), although you don't see much of what the hype is about for a long way yet - it's about 40km from Torquay to the next town, Anglesea, and most of it is somewhat inland cutting through sections of the Great Otway National Park. Anglesea itself is a quiet little town, again with a beach full of boogie-boarders, but its most famous tourist attraction is almost certainly its golf course at the top of the town - in amongst the fareways live an army of kangaroos that hop around without a care in the world as golfers smack balls around them. Several tourist information centres had described it as being a place where you're guaranteed to see 'roos in the wild, and the LPG confidently declares that "there's always a posse of them along the Golf Links Road". It was typical, therefore, that even after driving around the course for about half an hour, I didn't see a single one. Disappointing.

As you continue further down the coast, you pass Bells Beach, renouned as having the best surf almost anywhere in Australia, and soon arrive at Airey's Inlet - a tiny little village with a population of 1000 that is home to one of the many big lighthouses that mark the major indented heads along the GOR's coastal route - which was historically the shipwreck capital of the British Empire. With ships going down like high catches to Adam Dowson, with the frequency of a Jamie Nimmo forward defensive, every major indented head along the whole southern coast was armed with a lighthouse that could project light 7km out to sea by the end of the 19th century. But back in the present, I was in need of a sharp bit of coffee, I stopped off at a cosy little family run cafe next to the lighthouse and ended up stuck in a conversation with an old Aussie chap who, while perfectly friendly, was pretty damn deaf and responding to most things by shouting "WHART?" at the top of his voice. And, being a man of a different generation, he had some fairly amusing views on the world, British culture (big fan), Australian culture (not a fan), and various other issues spanning the fallacy of global warming and state of Australian cricket.


Anyway, with nowhere booked for tonight either, I was quite keen on getting down to Lorne, which most people had told me was the place to crash, and getting somewhere sorted. As well as including the famous "Great Ocean Road" sign suitable posed above, the section from Airey's Inlet to Lorne is where the GOR begins to unveil its full flamboyant glory, running along the water's edge, rising and falling as it scales the geological barriers in its path, diving in and out of crumbling limestone cliff faces; all the while with the turquoise blue Southern Ocean over to you left, lapping the sands of the countless beaches along the way. Amazing driving conditions, and on top of that it turned out things really aren't as rammed - at least at my end of the market - as some people made out - first hostel I went to had plenty(ish) of space so it was happy days for me. Lorne is a beautiful little town, with a pier out to the sea overlooking the town's long stretch of beach. I had a pre-lunch swim in the sea, but then post-lunch decided to make the most of having a car at my disposal on an amazing stretch of road and cruised down to Apollo Bay - the next major town, a further 45km down the GOR.

I reached Apollo Bay at about 3.45pm - it would have been a lot sooner had I not been stuck for 39 of the 45 kilometres behind a nut who refused to make use of any of the 50 or so lay-bys provided with the explicit signposted orders: "Slow vehicles pull over in turnouts. Please consider vehicles behind you". This plonker had no consideration, and dawdled along a road with an 80km/h speed limit (50mph) at a mindnumbing 40km/h all the way into Apollo Bay where he finally pulled over to park. I'd be downright lying if I tried to claim that a fair few expletives hadn't been uttered in my Tiida, but all was forgotten as I lay out on the white sand in the evening sun, looking out to the beach stretching away for miles to the north west, while to the south-east the boats docked in Apollo Bay Marina idled elegantly, sails rattling in the brisk coastal breeze. After some time I decided to take on the water, which proved to be absolutely freezing, but I ended up out there for a good half an hour after overhearing a familiar Kentish accent - sure enough a couple of sisters from Canterbury were out visiting family for a few weeks and were equally freaked out by the weirdness of floating in the sea on the beach in the late afternoon sunshine 3 days before Christmas. All Brits in Australia seem to have at least this much in common!

Wanting to check out a couple of walking trails around Lorne before the sun set, I made sure I was up and out before 5 o'clock, giving me time to take a brief detour up to Mariners' Lookout, just outside Apollo Bay. Getting to the lookout involves a drive up a quite ridiculously steep section of road - parts must have been approaching 45 degree gradient - to a little below the top of the tallest of several large hills that enclose the Bay into its small coastal enclave. From there it's a 10 minute trek up to the summit, whom which you have a view that can only be described as breathtaking. To the north-west, you have the Great Ocean Road winding its way up, down and around the golden-orange limestone cliffs, stretching out for miles in front of you; to the south-east you have to township of Apollo Bay, its expanse of beach and the Apollo bay peninsula jutting out into the water - though from the height of the viewpoint you can see right over the top of the peninsula out to the ocean on the other side. And just top top off an idyllic scene, a sole horse was up at the top of the hill grazing - him and I alone, looking out into infinity. Naturally, I nabbed a snappy snap:


After spending about 10km on the way back stuck behind a Winnebago (camping van), I got a good half hour of enjoying the open road once Mr. Slow had finally turned left at Kennet River, though I detoured on arrival in Lorne to head up to the steep hills to the top of town, park the car, and trek for 20 minutes or so through Queens Park and its forests of gum trees up to Teddy's Lookout. The lookout offers yet another incredible viewpoint of the GOR winding its way out of Lorne, but here combining the rocky, rugged cliffs with the mouth St. George River, itself rolling down to the coast from the lush green forest inland, and merging with the sea 100 feet below us. I personally think the photo below is pretty good, but it still does scant justice to what was on display in reality.


The sightseeing wasn't over just yet - after descending back down to me car I headed inland further to Erskine Falls - located 8km inland from Lorne within the Great Otway National Park. Completely enclosed by dense forest, you'd never say you're in the same state as the dry, desolate landscapes I'd seen just a week ago up in the bush - the roar of water crashing down 100 feet or was barely visible as you approached it through the forest, so dense was the vegetation. That is not to say it was a puny waterfall - the viewing platform from the top gives you a tidy view right down to the bottom (though fit lads like yours truly who are prepared to climb all the way back up can also work their way right down to the bottom to look back up - and get corny photos like the one below) and gives you a pretty solid appreciation of the potentially behind the simple combination of water and gravity...


What was similar to the bush was the nutter 'roos, one of whom sat on the side of the road watching my car as it approached, and picked that exact moment to jump across the road. Luckily I was slowing down as soon as I saw him (I wanted a photo), so all harm was averted. But you do wonder about the intelligence of some creatures...

Anyway, in terms of all-round enjoyment, this was without doubt one of the best days of my life, and good days tend to begin and end with good food. A nice bit of seafood marinara pasta, loaded with fresh prawns, mussels, scallops and fish saw me nicely settled for dinner, and a rowdy mix of Swiss Germans, Quebecois Canadanians, Queenslanders and various miscellaneous others provided entertainment of sorts over a few beers back at the hostel well into the early hours.


P.S. I've also uploaded a couple of photos to "Part 1"...

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.

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.

Dean's Aeroplane Curse strikes again

Back in October when this blog was still in its nascent form, my first post after leaving England mentioned how my British Airways aircraft had had to abort its return journey to London one hour after takeoff after the fire alarms went off.

Clearly I have some sort of jinx over airplanes because today's news featured interviews with terrified passengers who "feared for their lives" after one of the engines of Qantas flight QF10 caught fire 45 minutes after takeoff from Singapore. Sure enough, that's the same Qantas QF10 from Singapore to Melbourne that I was on a couple of weeks back...

Qantas has notified Australia's air safety authorities after a Boeing 747, with 354 passengers aboard, had to return to Singapore's Changi Airport after passengers saw flames lick out of one of the engines.

The plane was flying at 31,000 feet at the time, about 45 minutes into the flight. Dylan Brady, 38, was on board when the plane ''convulsed and lost power''.

''[My business partner and I] both thought something had fallen off the bottom, or the landing gear had come undone,'' he said. ''Then we saw this orange light and we both looked out the window to see fire coming out of the back of the jet. It was pretty scary.''

It logically follows that people planning on flying from Sydney to Auckland should be aware that I'm flying on the 14th January, and should plan to leave before then...

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

Floating in the Sky

TOCUMWAL, NEW SOUTH WALES - 13th December 2009

An old family friend of my cousin, John, is a big gliding enthusiast and owns a third share of a glider out at an airfield fairly near to Mooroopna (about 100km is pretty close by Aussie standards). With me being a big fan adrenaline-based activities such as these, it had been arranged as long ago as last June for him to take me for an airborne spin.

SportAviation, John's flying club, is run by a friendly couple at an airstrip in Tocumwal, just over the Murray river that divides Victoria and New South Wales. The airstrip was originally built by the Americans in the Second World War as one of the bases for an assault on the Japanese should they invade northern Australia. Subsequently, it got converted for civil use, and has vastly shortened runways now that B-12 Bombers aren't coming by on a regular basis.

Gliders, obviously, cannot take off by themselves, and so are dragged airborne by a small plane with a line running off the back of it. I took the liberty of videoing our takeoff from the back seat, which you can watch below:



When the glider pilot is happy with the altitude reached, he disconnects the cable and frees the glider into his control - usually at about 2000-3000 feet. The aim of the game is to locate "thermals" - vents of hot air rising the lift the glider higher and higher allowing perpetual flight; a good thermal can send you all the way up to 10,000 feet in a few minutes. Usually they come in vertical cylinders, meaning you have to bank go round and round in a circle in order to sustain the lift for an extended period of time. If you're lucky though, you'll get a "road", where the thermal moves laterally allowing you to continue rising while flying in a straight line.

Unfortunately for us, it was a clear, sunny day without any sort of cloud in the sky. Unlike normal aviation, clear days like these are terrible, as it means thermals are dispersed and hard to find, but the air is still turbulent due to the general heat. Sure enough, we struggled to find a decent bit of lift for a good 10 minutes, before we strayed across a small one that gave us a bit of lift. Its diameter was damn small, meaning we had to back at about 60 degrees to stay in its current... and I can tell you first hand there are few things that'll make your stomach twist more than being strapped into a seat at a few thousand feet with the blazing heat of the Sun beating down on you through the glass, all the while performing incredibly tight circles at banking of 60 degrees, with your gradual circulating ascent punctuated by periodic shudders as the glider drifted in and our of the thermal. If you don't like roller coasters or swinging ships, gliding on a day like this is to be avoided!

We eventually got up to a little shy of 4000 feet before enjoying a nice relaxing cruise over 15 minutes or so back down to land, but I was reliably informed that it had been "really hard work" - something my insides could testify to! But it was still an amazing experience - not just because of spectacular panoramic views of the Australian bush spreading out to infinity in every direction (see below). The thing that really struck me was the phenomenal force existent in simple air. As John described it (slightly paraphrased), "down on the ground we don't really see anything... occasionally we see a tornado go by and think 'wow - that's a bit strong'... but it's only when you floating in a glider that you really understand that that power is everywhere". I just finished reading "Chaos" by James Gleick, and part of its story relates to how smooth flowing air currents can suddenly deteriorate into a state of total chaos with seemingly no pattern or rules to it: turbulence. No one really understands it, but its existence is a small part of an infinitude of reasons why our actual ability to model the atmosphere (and thus forecast weather in any sort of long-term manner) is useless. Going gliding is as good an interactive example of this in practice as you could want.



Anyway once we were all back in the hangar/office and relaxing with a couple of ice cold suds*, the proprietor of SportAviation got us to pose for a photo in front of our machine - "Golf Victor Yankee" - so that it could be recorded on website's blog, and sure enough the entry for the day has John and myself grinning away (see below).



* bottles of beer

The Daily Rod's Top Travel Tips:
#7 - There are always ways to prove the assumption that you're totally immune to motion sickness incorrect.

A classic vid from The 7pm Project

There's a comedy-come-news programme on TV every night here called The 7PM Project, and tonight it featured a brilliant video of a 3 year old kid. He can't speak English, but he can play the guitar bloody well... resulting in a brilliant video of him jamming to Jason Mraz's classic "I'm Yours". If you haven't heard Mraz's version before, I recommend you listen to it first to truly appreciate what follows. Much like Charlie Bit My Finger or Frostie Shaking His Tail Feather, it's one of those videos that's just gotta be shared:

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...