Why Are We Waiting.....?

Meanwhile, in Auckland, things have stalled somewhat.

The last week has been spent in industrious pursuit of employment, with my days consumed by a mix of glacial bureaucracy, futile filling-out of forms, elusive recruitment consultants (and their feeble, feeble excuses), queuing, more queuing and boo-hooing.

Yes, the job hunt has started alongside a wade through the mire of household chores that inevitably accompanies a move to a new country, including a chat with an Indian call centre, a suburban bus trip to a place with a name right out of a Carry On film and several pointless interviews where several pointless recruitment consultants asked questions straight out of "Interviewing For Dummies" eg "Now, what would you say your strengths and weaknesses are?"

A right grilling, I can tell you.

Had one interview so far with the Radio Bureau where, curiously, the woman knew nothing about me, or what I was looking for, despite having the email I sent her printed out in front of her throughout the meeting. Thanks for that, duck. I could have spent that time being fobbed off by Madison Recruitment. For instance:"Yes, she's just picked up the phone"; "Yes, she's just stepped out" ; "Yes, she's just accidentally been taken hostage by rogue Shia cleric, Muqtada al Sadr. Can she give you a call back tomorrow?"

Anyway, I've about done all I can do now. I just have to wait for the offers to come rolling in.

From OZ to NZ

Sorry have been quiet for a bit. I've been swapping countries. I'm now in a place where "Bread Pat" is the actor out of Seven and "Jungle Bills" is a Christmas carol.

Yes, I am now in New Zealand. Home of the Maoris, Crowded House and Russell Crowe. The first English speaking country to see the new day, the first country to give women the vote and last country I'll probably visit on my worldwide jaunt.

I arrived in Auckland a week ago, but lets rewind to the last few days in Oz.


G'bye Mate

After 1770 I arrived in Brisbane with the express intention of visiting Moreton Island after Lou's recommendation. Clearly my intentions were not sufficiently express as I'd left it too late to phone and the tours were all full. My fault, but a lack of signal in 1770 and a lack of accommodation in Brisbane meant my attention was elsewhere for a few days.

Speaking of accommodation, Cloud 9 in Brisbane, where I ended up staying, was a last minute choice, and I certainly paid the price for it when, really, I would have preferred them to pay me to stay there. Grubby, sweaty pits for rooms, toilets in darkness and a "DVD lounge" comprising a chair with no back and a sofa with clouds of yellow stuffing billowing from holes in the PVC. Both chairs were pointed at the TV in a rather perfuctory effort. The room looked like it had previously been used as an arena for fighting pitbulls.

Brisbane itself was like Leicester. Generic, unimpressive and utterly acceptable: one main high street with regulation McD's, HMV and Dick Smiths (Oz equiv of Dixons). So no Moreton Island trip meant no point in hanging around a town whose chief accolade was that it wasn't particularly awful.

Actually, since you ask, though not mentioned on this blog, I did visit Canberra before Christmas and although it attracts much criticism for being "dead" and "boring" and "dead boring", let me tell you, it was far more interesting than Adelaide and Brisbane put together.

I returned to Sydney two and bit days early and stayed in Claire's flat which, after the hoo-hah of wondering whether you would be sharing your room with a bunch of hard-drinking Geordies or drink-hardened Glaswegians, came as a relief.

When I put things down, they stayed put down. No one woke me up unzipping their rucksack into its 49,3287 constituent parts, and no one came into the room at 4am, turned on the light, and treated everyone to a lesson in how to take your jeans off whilst drunk.

Then it was back to the Pink House for a few days to be reunited with the my giant red suitcase, and triple the amount of pants and socks at my disposal.

On the Monday I was off. Goodbye Australia. Hello New Zealand.


Wizard of NZ

I arrived in Auckland about 6pm and grabbed the shuttle bus which dropped me at the door of the Browm Kiwi, my hostel, all being well, for the next couple of months.

Initially I was apprehensive as choosing somewhere to be your home for 10 weeks without actually seeing it is a risk. But luckily Chris's recommendation was spot on; the Brown Kiwi is clean, quaint, quiet and well-resourced and most of all friendly. It's almost a cross between a backpackers and a B&B, with it's huge kitchen table around which the "family" gather.

Its receptionist, despite talking of his "ex-wife", is clearly no stranger to the music of George Michael, and has a keen wit. He's like a cross between John Inman and Pete Waterman, and fires off one-liners for his own edification. When I commented the NZ money contains the Queens face, he replied with lightning speed "Oh, we all love a Queen in Auckland, darling".

Despite people's warning of the soullessnees and dinge of Auckland, I've warmed to it quite quickly. Not the best place for a tourist destination, but it seems fine for a base for a couple of months.

And so all that remains is for me to go through the ritual rigmarole of getting a job. The emails have been sent, the phone calls made, the agencies contacted. All I have to do now is wait. And if it's anything like Sydney, I should have a job by this time 2012......

Vicious Cycle ....Or Who Am I Eddie Kidding?

From Airlie Beach it was another 11 hour bus journey to the town of 1770, allegedly the only town in the world with numbers for a name.

It's typical of Aussies to spend little effort in naming anything when they could be barbecueing a possum or something . Hence The Snowy Mountains, The Great Sandy Desert and inevitably 1770.

"What shall we call this place? Well, what year is it? 1770? Right that'll do.....Right, now to pick up some supplies from Fly-Infested Shithole"

In fairness 1770 is so called as it was the original landing point of Captain James Cook, expert cartographer and "discoverer" of Australia who, in 1770, set in place a chain of events culminating in the creation of Home and Away and Rolf Harris. Thanks for that, Jim. Thanks.

Chris recommended 1770 as a kind of antidote to Airlie. It's a quiet town with a strong sense of community and no mobile phone signal, and with only 120 beds in the whole town, booking ahead is essential. I was already in at Cool Banana. A great hostel, brightly decorated and clean, it showed the Pink House in a new light. Or rather a new dinge. They get extra marks for hammocks. Hammocks rock. Literally. Obviously.

A free morning tour revealed an idyllic town with no drugs, no crime and no McDonalds. Land here goes for millions of dollars, yet prospective residents are still only allowed to build Deliverance-esque shacks. It's commonplace to see stainless steel Porsches next to wooden porches.

Our tour guide for this activity was a man whose name I didn't catch, but who had clearly wandered off in a purple haze during a Grateful Dead gig in 1970 and woke up in 1770. Like, wow, man. He resembled a cross between Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider and a Mexican bandit, and spoke with a thick South Afreeeekaan accent.

The real reason I was here was for Scooteroo: a kind of cross between a daytrip, theme park ride and a quick burn with the Queensland chapter of The Hell's Angels. Once again hosted by Johannesburg's answer to Carlos Santana, Scooteroo gives backpackers the opportunity to get out on the open road, riding in a convoy of 100cc scooters, all of which look as if they have been decorated by the band Iron Maiden on a particularly interminable Sunday.

Alarmingly, it all seemed rather too relaxed with the thick gutteral Afrikaans tones of "Bob Harley" reassuring us "eef you kann rade a pushbake, you kann rade a scootah". We gathered in a huge parking lot and selected our bikes from a neat square of rowed up machine, each of them tipped slightly on to their kickstand. And, after the briefest of demonstration, "this is the throttle. This is the brake. Any questions?", we set off on an experimental and wobbly lap of the carpark.

At first I was veering wildly from side to side, every attempt to correct and adjust sending me careering. "Oh no" I thought "Supposing it turns out I'm shit at it". Potentially embarrassing. By the time I had reached the drive way I was met by the Durban Warrior's Oriental wife.

"Everyfink OK?" she said
"I think there's something wrong with the bike. It keeps veering left and right" I replied
"Oh that normal . Bye" she said and ushered me on to the main road

Great. Soon, though, I had the hang of it and was razzing round the narrow roads of 1770 with 30 other backpackers on what looked and sounded like Devil's Hairdriers. It was a 60km round trip finishing at a beach to take in the Sunset.

After I took stock of my trip:

* Flies in the face - 24

* Times I hit 80km an hour - 1

* Unscratchable itches inside helmet - 34

* Re-overtaking people who had overtaken you 30 seconds previously - 9

* Kangaroos seen - 11

* Kangaroos hit - 0

* Times I pretended I was Street Hawk - 1

The bikes rowed up during a break.

Me with the town's local bike........

Like, wow, man.......

Some More Whitsundays Photos

Whitehaven Beach

Sexy, svelte and sore......

The cabin was beneath the sea level. It may not look it, but those ladders were vertical.

Sail Of The Century

Arrival in Airlie

I arrived in Airlie Beach about 8pm after a rather taxing 11 hour bus journey. I don't know of you've ever had to take a tinkle on a moving bus, but I would liken it to trying to a water a plant nailed to a Catherine Wheel.

Occasionally your stream and the bowl coincide in space and time like some rare planetary alignment, but more often than not your left reeling and clanging off the cubicle walls as the bus accelerates round a bend or stops suddenly at traffic lights.

Rest-stops are a a godsend on such journeys, where beefy housewives dressed in chequered tabards serve up pasties and pastries from a heat-lamped cabinet. Not classy, but most welcome.

Airlie itself is simply a street comprising marinas, travel agents selling scuba, skydiving and sailing courses, mingled with hostels pumping beats on to the streets. The real attraction here is The Whitsundays, a semi-tropical arc of islands scattered off the East Coast of Queensland and alongside the Great Barrier Reef. Really, people come here to leave; visits are relatively fleeting as most backpackers kick their heels waiting for the day their boat sets sail.

Sailing The Seven Seas

My boat trip was 2 days and 2 nights aboard the Atlantic Clipper (a 34 metre sailing ship) for a cruise around the sandy crescents and inlets of the Whitsundays. I set sail on the Tuesday and initially wondered whether I had done the right thing: the weather had been terrible, like Cairns, and the introductory welcome from the ship's crew, as we tootled out of Airlie Marina, was a bit Club 18-30 for my liking with its emphasis on whooping and cheering and, then, when the Captain claiming "I can't hear you" whooping and cheering a little bit louder.

However, it turned out it was fairly laissez-faire affair, and so spent my time talking to other passengers. I did actually get quite lucky with my shipmates this time. Whereas my Coober Pedy trip had been somewhat blighted a gaggle of insular German teenagers and my Red Centre tour rendered awkward by a group whose first language was not English, the boat had just the right mix of people.

Aside, that is, from a group of dour "it girls" from Chelsea or somewhere, who were so posh their lips didn't meet when they spoke (thus the word "really" was pronounced as "reewry" and "lovely" as "wuvreh") and who spent the trip pouting, appropriately, like fishes, speaking to no one and applying suncream to their chubby little thighs. Should have tipped them in.

The Little Mermaid

By the second day we were in Whitehaven Beach, widely considered one of the best beaches in Australia due to its white, sugar-like silicate sand.

After wrestling with a wetsuit for the best part of 10 minutes where , much to everyone's hilarity, I tried to put my leg in the arm, the arm in the leg and, once I had that sorted out, realised it was back-to-front, I waded out into the ocean.

The water was a kind of milky-pearl blue. And very shallow; we wandered out a good hundred metres yet the water was only at waist height. There, we had piggy back fights, tried to form human pyramids and legged each other over. Jolly good fun.

After lunch we were dinghied out to another inlet for snorkelling. I had never tried snorkelling before and had never been a particularly good swimmer, my last aquatic achievement being my Green badge for 25m in 1986. But I ignored my common sense and elected to believe it would be "an easy thing to do".

I was almost right. I waded out past the incredibly sharp stones with my wetsuit, goggles, snorkel and float and within moments was on the set of Finding Nemo, with electric blue fishes darting in and out of my field of vision, and big brain-shaped coral formations lying beneath me.

I also came across what can only be described as a violently purple lady's part which opened like a flower as I neared it. Later, I found out it was a clam.

For the duration of my subnmarine adventure, my only accompaniment was the sound of my own breath and the sploosh of my kicking legs. Fantastic.

Jaws

Back at the boat in the evening we were treated to a display by a visiting dolphin, who later came to be bothered by two reef sharks, Jaws's much smaller cousins. The dolphin didn't seem too concerned by the maritime equivalent of group of chavs hanging around under a streetlight, and continued about its business of chasing fish. Still, a great sight.

The next morning the sea had begun broiling and the trip turned into a huge who-can-keep-their-breakfast-down competition. Most people had come up on to the top deck in order to get a fix on the horizon and the ships bow was now pitching wildly into the air before plunging into the waves. I didn't feel too bad. The same couldn't be said of one Irish girl who was the first to openly spew into the bin.

Back on the mainland we all said our goodbyes. Later that night in bed I could still feel myself swaying as if trying to gain my balance on the boat, a sensation still with me the next day.

I will always be a land-lubber I fear, but the trip was ace.

Cairns

When I stepped off the plane in Cairns, I was taken aback by the sweaty, fetid fug of humidity. Clearly, if Alice was desert heat, Cairns was to be jungle heat.

It wasn't until the next day when the sun was up, I realised Cairns is nestled in between a series of towering rainforest-covered slopes. But then again, it is in the Tropics. Like Lilt, it really is Totally Tropical.

And to prove it was raining. Oh boy, was it raining. Rain that would make your head bleed. Rain that would make Noah go "...oh no, not again" before nipping down Focus Do-It-All for some supplies.

Cloud here isn't so much low as at street level, and because Cairns is a doing place rather than a seeing place, travel agents peer out from amongst gaudy posters for diving courses, wondering when the torrential downpour will end.

And amongst the deluge, my camera decided to give up the ghost, so I spent the afternoon rushing round Cairns trying to find the one Sony accredited dealer on the edge of town. One discounted $30 fixing fee later, and back at the hostel I found that though it worked in the shop, the camera was broken again, my day had been wasted and it was too late to book any activity for the following day. Not that it would have been particularly pleasant in this end of the world weather.

A balls-up frankly. But never mind. Greyhound bus to Airlie tomorrow where I am hoping the weather will stay fine.

Rock On!

A 4.20am start for my Ayres Rock tour meant early to bed. But if you're not tired at 9 o' clock, you're not tired.

Again I spent the first few hours of the journey asleep and when I woke we were still 4 hours from our destination. The temperature was already up in the high 30s and was threatening to prevent us from doing any walking. Unfortunately it didn't prevent tour guide Tom from playing the atrocious Australian equivalent of Chas 'N Dave and insisting everyone do the actions under threat of being dumped in the outback.

Lyrics thus:

"Give me a home among the gum trees,
with lots of plum trees,
a sheep or two, a ka-kangaroo.
A clothes line out the back, verandah out the front,
and an old rocking chaaaaair....... "



Each animal had an appropriate hand action. I certainly knew which hand action was most appropriate. I sat with my arms resolutely folded like a child who had not won the Knight Rider keyring during pass the parcel.

The Red Centre, as it's known, comprises three natural features: Uluru (Ayres Rock), Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon, which many professed to be their favourite, although for me was the least impressive on account of our truncated tour and resemblance to the Peak District if it was painted pillar box red.

Another hellishly long drive and were approaching Uluru. And it is at its most impressive on approach; appearing seemingly from nowhere, ominously dominating the skyline, eerie and foreboding, and standing out in sharp relief against the flatness of the surrounding land.

Over to the observation area to watch the setting sun cast its purple hues against the rock, and then back to camp for kangaroo steak.

That night I camped out under the stars. Using a swag (a cross between a sleeping bag and a huge bulletproof vest) and my rucksack as a pillow, I gazed up at a trillion pin points of light showering down. I listened to some suitably epic Sigur Ros track and lay counting shooting stars. I counted 7 before I fell asleep. A real moment.

I was up at 4.30 am next morning to catch the Uluru sunset. We made our way round the base of the rock as the sun turned it to glowing ochre. I really hadnt appreciate how rough and craggy it was. I assumed it was smooth and rounded but it is riddled with holes punched messily into the side and shattered scree litters the floor.

Final visit of the day was the most impressive. Kata Tjuta looks like a boxing glove slices up by a pizza cutter. Or an alien city fashioned from bright red Playdoh. A walk between the giant rock bollocks revealed a truly otherworldy landscape of blood red sand and giant magenta meatballs.

And amongst it a sight only myself and Riccardo (from Milan) saw. A lone kangaroo stood stock still staring us down. I spotted it first and nudged the blabbering Riccardo into silence, but upon aiming our cameras it bolted across our path and headed off down the escarpment.

From there a wearisome 5 hour journey back to Alice. A total of 1300km which added to the 1600km from Coober Pedy made nearly 3000km in 4 days. And I haven't even started on my Greyhound bus ticket yet.

Just didgeridon't....

Kata Tjuta....

Look closely, you can see Skippy....

A Town Called Alice

We arrived in Alice about 6pm. The hostel, Annie's Place, sister to the one I dumped in Adelaide, is the best I've stayed at so far. En suite, swimming pool, restaurant with $5 meals and only $19 a night.

The next day I had a wander into Alice itself. There's not much there and it's very redolent of a mid-West US town with its low rise shopping arcade, small mall and Pizza Hut.

But the Aborigines are ever present in Alice; the majority, and the dominant presence on the streets. What I find interesting, all race cliches aside, is that they really don't appeared to have changed in 40,000 years. Today we have anti-lock brakes, blue tooth headsets and Youtube videos of people falling off skateboards. Yet wander into Alice and you'll see seven Aborigines sat in a semicircle under the shade of a tree, gazing at the sky and casually wafting the flies away.

I can't work out whether they steadfastly refuse to participate in the 21st Century as a protest to their horrendous treatment at the hand of the invading white man, or that they are simply forever out of step with modern living. Or both. Or neither.

One thing is for certain. They ooze history. You can see it in their gait and the shape of their skulls. They are living history. Perhaps I shouldn't be viewing them as curios or exhibits; thye are after all people. But they are a fascinating people, and it seems such a shame that when you look into their eyes all you see is defeat.

Going Underground?

Frankly, I was ready to see the back of Adelaide. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but when in years to come I deign to recall those few days, I will forever have the mental picture of me trapped in a kind of human rotisserie, turning slowly over the flame until I emitted a pleasant sizzling sound.

A 5.30 am start, then, for my journey to Coober Pedy, remote underground mining town and location for such sci-fi classics as Mad Max and, more recently, Pitch Black starring human lintel, Vin Diesel (despite this it is actually a great film).

Our ultimate destination was Alice Springs over 1000 miles away, and so the journey was to be split up into two days of bum-numbing cross-continental driving.

We were picked up in a minibus at 6.00am by the relentlessly cheery Steve, whose perma-tan was matched only by his perma-grin, like he’d a had a huge lungful of nitrous oxide before he’d set off.

The first few hours were spent asleep while Steve gunned the Groovy Grape tour bus out of Adelaide and into the desert. Yes, that’s right, Groovy Grape. Jesus – it sounds like some programme some Christian youth workers have put together to keep the chavs off the street and the alcopops on a Friday night: “Hey kids, come down to the Groovy Grape on Friday night. There’ll be shandy, Twister and someone has brought in a copy of Goonies on VHS”

When we’d all woken up the landscape had started to change; the vegetation was sparser, the trees shorter, the sand….well….sandier. Soon we were passing giant salt flats previously inland seas before Australia broke away from Asia and became warmer. And when we called in at a petrol station the thermometer read 43c in the shade. The bloke at the counter reckoned it was 48c in the centre of the car park. His wife disagreed, she guessed at 52c. I settled for an average at 50c.

We arrived at Coober Pedy at around 7.00 and immediately set up camp in a hollowed out cave rammed with metal bunk beds, before heading out on to the mounds of pink earth which dominated the town skyline.

Coober Pedy is home to 80% of the world’s opal production and so the town resembles a cross between a Martian building site and a Wild West watering hole. Rusting cranes sit atop salmon coloured dunes, homes are carved into the cliffs (Coober Pedy is Aboriginal for White Man’s Burrow), whilst huge sun-weathered men in fluorescent tabards brush dust from themselves in the glow of the setting sun.

Coober Pedy was great. Its remoteness, harsh environment and unearthly atmosphere created a real alien feel. But I must take issue with the literature billing it as “underground”. “Come and visit the underground pub” says the bumph. However, piling earth on top of something at ground level does not constitute “underground” in my book. As one member of our group pointed out “that means the ground floor of my house is underground as it’s buried beneath my first floor”

The temp reads 43c in the shade

England 4, Germaine 2

Just wandering around the Adelaide Women's Literary Festival (hey, there's not a lot to do around here), and just bumped into Germaine Greer, author of the The Female Eunuch.

She didn't say anything vaguely feminist and did appear to be wearing a bra. Disappointing.

You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine....

I'm in Adelaide now. It's a bit like Nottingham if it was located on the surface of Mercury.

Yesterday it was 36c and today it's 37. By the weekend it will be in the 40s. Swap for centigrade for $ and that's the amount I'm spending on water to stop myself shrivelling like a sultana.

Adelaide is pleasant enough but isn't really a tourist city compared to, say, Sydney or Melbourne or Canberra for that matter. It's a grid of churches and shopping arcades dropped in the desert and tarted up with trams and trees. There's also a nice Henley-on-Thames-type river thing going on the Northern edge.

There's nothing wrong with it and it must be jolly nice to live here, but with three days to kill (unless the sun kills me first), I can't help feeling two would have been plenty.

And did I mention it's hot? Oh lordy, lordy. I've found myself dodging left and right into patches of shade cast by lampposts, traffic lights and sparrows. The sun is beating down so hard is knocking people off their bikes and punching holes in parasols.

On top of this, my first hostel had no aircon. After wandering around all day in what felt like a giant 850 Watt microwave on "high", I was about to go "ding". Thus when I got back to my room expecting the cool, meatlocker freeziness of the aircon, I found my room to be exactly the same temperature as outside.

Now when it comes to the cold, I'm well hard. I could stand in the freezer section of Somerfield in just my Optimus Prime boxers and feel nothing. But heat I'm not so good at. So after a good 30 minutes of sweating into my duvet set, I set out in search of alternative accommodation.

Not a good idea at 9.30 at night. Especially when the city was fully booked for the Adelaide literary festival, but I had to try. First I tried the Medina but they were full and sent me to the Rendezvous. All they had left was the Penthouse Suite at $750. I was sorely tempted but I am not Simon Cowell.

Finally I found a motel which looked like the kind of place a human resources manager takes his secretary for an hour at lunchtime, but nevertheless it satisfied my criteria in that the receptionist assured me the room did not feel like an iron foundry and did have aircon.

I trudged back to my old hostel picked up all my bags and trudged back to the motel. By the time I arrived for the second time I was hallucinating arctic tundra, igloos and the planet Pluto, but whilst my room did have aircon, it was only in its mini-hallway and not in the bedroom which meant I spent my evening in a chair in the hallway drying off and craning to see the TV.

This morning I switched again to the YHA Hostel which seems fine. I even received one night's rebate from my first hostel. I was straight up with them and explained the problem and they were understanding. "Where are you off to next?" asked the receptionist as I was leaving.

"Coober Pedy - the Outback mining town" I replied.

"Oh" he said "It was 46C there yesterday"

Shit.

The sun beats down in Adelaide. Your Cornetto doesn't last long in this weather.

Bridge over the River Torrens

Farewell Melbourne

So what a great little city Melbourne is. And what a pity I have to move on.

Sunny of disposition, simply laid out, easy on the eye and easy on the wallet; the longer I stayed, the more I wanted to stay.

On the great Melbourne vs Sydney debate, I nail my colours to Melbourne's mast. Admittedly, though Melbourne lacks Sydney's multitude of beaches (Melbourne's only beach is a thin and gritty affair), and similarly any world-beating landmarks like the Opera House or Bridge, its agreeability, brightness and lightness beats the uptight arrogance of Sydney anyday.

The Great Ocean: Rode

Friday was the day of my Great Ocean Road trip, and given I was due for a 6am start I decided to go to bed nice and early.

An empty gesture, it turned out, as I was woken up at 1.30 am by two exceedingly late (or early?) check-ins, who preceded to turn on the light and spend the next ten minutes ensuring their duvet covers were at right angles to the pillow and the pillow cases tessellated.

I was woken again at 4am by the Frenchman singing in his sleep. He’s no better when he’s unconscious. And then again at 5.30 by a tram, sounding like a Sherman tank charging through a junk yard. In a thunderstorm.

So bleary-eyed I was picked up 6.55 by the tour bus and met Trevor – driver and guide for the day. Trevor was about 53, very tall, very thin with a pocked-mark face and a world-weariness about him. “Long day ahead” he said puffing out his cheeks and furrowing his brow. He wasn’t wrong.

After an hour of picking people up, some sat nonchalantly eating their breakfast when they should have been at the pick-up point, we set off towards the Great Ocean Road, a 120km southern coastal road, constructed by soldiers returning from WWI.

Throughout the trip Trevor, all microphoned up, delivered an informative yet strangely morbid commentary:

“See this? There were terrible bushfires here a few years ago. One family tried to take refuge in their water tank….Boiled. To. Death”

“See this ridge? This is named after a woman who drove her car off this ravine. Poor bitch”

“A couple of years ago a man in that house went mad and killed his entire family. Stupid bugger”

…but Trevor was good value and didn’t suffer fools gladly, shushing an annoying group of giggling Swedish schoolgirls talking all over his commentary.

The tour wend its way along The Great Ocean Road, round numerous inlets, beaches and outcrops, but our ultimate destination was The 12 Apostles - a series of million-year-old giant rock totems hammered into the coastline in parallel, like huge igneous fenceposts.

We arrived there after an 8 hour drive and made straight for the helicopter ride as for an extra $60 we could see the Apostles from the air. 10 minutes later I was being weighed for the trip.

My tummy did a little fart of fear when I saw one chopper launch off at an impossibly-stupid angle before erratically veering left and right like it was trying to evade an Afghan stinger missile. I was reassured, however, when one of the ground crew pointed out “Don’t worry. There are no passengers that. The boss is bored and has taken a chopper out for a spin” . 5 minutes after that I was strapped in the front seat next to the driver. “The stick and the rudder are live” he said “Don’t touch them, otherwise we will crash. And that WILL hurt”.

The trip was perfect, however. Great steep turns allowed us to swoop down on the rocks. The skies were deep blue clear. It was like being suspended in a little bubble of happiness. But, alas, after 12 minutes we returned to Earth.

And then began the long journey home. A good day, but a very long day – nearly 11 hours in the car. Trevor himself admitted he didn’t agree with the route and would have preferred to belt down the motorway for 2 hours to the 12 Apostles and then spend more time there, rather than the windy, carsick inducing Ocean Road.

But a good start to my grand Australian tour.

The chopper: An EC-300. Or something.

12 Apostles from the air.

...and then from the viewing platform

Melbourne

I'm in Melbourne now. And I like it

Understated, quaint and.....well....just more pleasant. Where Sydney is a bustling metropolis, Melbourne feels more provincial, more steeped in cafe culture, more friendly.

And it's cheap. Much cheaper, in fact, than it's New South Wales rival. Here the same money buys me a good Geoff Capes-sized portion of pasta as opposed to the petri-dish of microwaved slop found on The Cross

I am staying in a hostel called The Nunnery, formerly a convent, now a home to backpacker-based vice and inequity. The staff appears jolly pleased with the number of puns they've managed to wring out of this: the chief receptionist is called Mother Superior, the hostel's cat is called Brother Francis and backpackers must abide by the 10 Commandments, including "cleanliness is next to Godliness". Judging by the state of some rooms, then, we are lucky that Satan himself hasn't tried to book a room for the night

The first person I bumped into was bear-like Quebecois and my former Pink House bunkbed buddy, Etienne, who I last saw in my room at 4.30 that morning. "What the fuck are you doing here?" I asked slack-jawed. "No. What the fuck are YOU doing here?" he asked with equal incredulity. I can't believe we shared a room for the best part of 6 months (and a bed - not like that, though) and didn't even discuss our respective future travel plans

My room is home to two Aussies and a French bloke called Quentin, who upon finding I could play guitar, and convinced of his own singing ability, made me thrash out Coldplay songs whilst he crooned at excessive volume

At times his voice did a carry a Chris Martin-esque oaky tone, but more frequently sounded like Arthur "Good Moaning" Bostrom from 'Allo 'Allo

After extricating myself from the Gallic jamming session, I made my way over the Eureka Skytower, because I am a sucker for observation decks. Easily one of the best towers I’ve visited, the windows were floor to ceiling and tinted to give a clear view of the city and small, cushioned footstools were liberally scattered around allowing visitors to take in the panoramic view.

For an extra $12, tourists could ride The Edge. Not, as some might hope, the opportunity to saddle up U2’s guitarist and ride him into the sunset, but rather frosted-glass box-like contraption which steadily extends out from the skyscraper, until suspended 287 feet over the ground, at which point the frosted glass instantly clears, leaving you to peer down through the glass floor at the ground. It makes you feel a bit funny in your willy. Not in a rude way. In a “where’s the handrail?” way.

The older trams are like the troop transport from Empire Strikes Back. They are very, very noisy and look likely to fall apart at any point.

View from the Eureka Tower....

"The Edge" from the side. It's a 287 feet drop straight down. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take photographs whilst in it. Tight bastards

Feel The Burn

Around this time last year I seem to remember writing a blog entry about how, after a typically British approach to sunbathing, I'd turned a particularly agonising and bloody shade of magenta.

And, if your recall, I had simultaneously been bombarded by a squadron of mosquitoes, who had treated the crack of my arse like an X-Wing fighter treated the trench on the Death Star. And we all know what happened there.

Fast-forward one year and a few days into my stay, once again, I've already frazzled my shoulder and forehead into streaky bacon and, similarly, and true to form, the mozzies have turned my legs into crimson bubble wrap. Needless to say, word of the day is "ouch".

The place is still quiet. Highlights so far include last night's worst-ever pub quiz performance, enlivened only by a moment where, when teams were invited to tell a joke, Chris took to the mic to tell one of the single most inappropriate jokes I think I've ever heard, eliciting a stunned silence from the assembled throng. Brave man.

Then it was back to the Pink House with our tail between our legs for beers in the back courtyard, just time to hear Richie theorise that Raj's penis must look like "a Twix".

It is time to move on I think. I will remember the Pink House fondly, but onwards and upwards. Or given that it's Melbourne next, onwards and downwards.

Return To Oz

The World's Favourite Scareline

Sorry for the radio silence this soon into the adventure. Truth be told: right now it's quiet. I'd describe myself as dormant and frequently horizontal. I'm just taking it easy. I'm a Cadbury's Caramel.

I am now back in Australia. And for a while I wondered whether I would make it. Chiefly due to my flight over here which was the worst in living memory. For the first four hours I was shunted, buffeted, dropped and rammed from every angle. No, not an impromptu liaison with Scott, the festive Qantas air steward, but rather due to cutting the corner of Tropical Cyclone Nicholas.

I was on the pot when it really kicked in. I had been holding it in for about 20 minutes as the continuous seatbelt sign had been confining people to their seat. And when, in a brief respite, the light had gone off I had bolted for the toilet door, and then bolted the toilet door. However, halfway through seeing that man about that dog, it kicked in.

I thought sitting down might solve the problem, but when 2 minutes later I had been dislodged from the pot and was scrabbling around on the floor, trying to cast a flailing arm into the sink for leverage, I knew we were in for some rough stuff.

But, as weather systems such as this take their energy from the sea, once over land it went from carrier bag in a wind tunnel to ski-ing down silk. We even flew straight over Ayres Rock. Got a great view but, alas, not a great photo.


Pink House Revisited

Arrived back the Pink House at about 9.00 and knocked on the window as I didn't know the security code. First thing I saw was dear Richie, whose "O"-shaped expression of surprise looked like a slightly baffled chimp thinking about a new kind of question mark. Clearly, he forgot I was coming.

Anyway, within a second the door had opened and there was a queue of hugs. First from Richie, then from Etienne and Brian, and I found Chris and Miranda in the back courtyard.

It's like I've never been away, but the atmos is different - a post-Xmas lull. Nearly everyone has got jobs in an attempt to counter their festive spend, meaning people are in bed by 11.30. And new draconian rules on noise enforced by a new and regular council visits mean the Pink House is...well....a bit quiet at the moment.

Nevertheless, good to be back.

Gung Hay Fat Choi

After wandering round Little India, and with it being Chinese New Year, I thought I'd head down to Singapore's Chinatown to see what the crack was.

I'd missed the celebrations by a few days but there was still a buzz about the place. Teams of brightly dressed Chinamen in full dragon get-up were tootling around in flatbed trucks as if they were ready to be deployed at a moment's notice, like crack commandos.

Throughout the day they would appear from nowhere and do a merry dance in front of the many restaurants to bring them luck throughout the year. Not so lucky for some people sat out front trying to eat their won-tons in peace. Bloody hell those drums are loud.

Speaking of restaurants, I thought whilst I was there I should probably sample some local cuisine. In my head, I was thinking beef in black bean or maybe some chow mein. Closer inspection of the menus revealed I was wide of the mark. It's interesting to note differing Eastern and Western notions of what is considered appetising.

Thus scanning the many restaurants' offerings, I had a choice of dishes like pig's intestines with cucumber, cow's spleen and fishhead curry and my favourite, sweet and sour frog. I am not joking.

Don't think the Capital Chinese Restaurant in Uttoxeter has this on the menu.

Time Waits For No Man. Unless You Live In Singapore

My God the people here are fearsome dawdlers. I thought the industrious Oriental work ethic may have imbued them with a sense of urgency, but more likely the Indian trait of lazing about in the sun has surged to the fore.

They teeter and meander along pavements, gawp slack-jawed and generally list left and right until they perfectly block my path. Similarly, though the shop service here is efficient, so many times now I have found myself stuck behind some family at the counter all studying the backlit menu with squinting incomprehension as if it's been written in binary translated into Welsh, before then changing and rechanging their minds about what they want.

Oh for Christ's sake it's KFC. Just choose a family bucket and have done with it. I wasn't in KFC, by the way. Ahem.

As an aside they have an interesting way of cleaning the toilets here. Each cubicle contains a small drain in the floor, and instead of scrubbing away with the Cillit Bang, they boot open the door and scattergun the entire cubicle with a jetwash, like some crazed SWAT team operative. First time I used the cubicle straight afterwards and saw the walls and seat dripping, I assumed someone had been really desperate and not quite made it.

Finally, this is a typical sight in Singapore, Oriental script sitting alongside Hindi.

The Climbdown - Sorry Singapore

Well, as I suspected my erstwhile rant concerning the rather ersatz and empty nature of Singapore has proved to be a little harsh.

Essentially, I am a collosal wimp: deny me a night's sleep and waft me with heat straight from Satan's bumhole and I would easily win The Eurovision Grump Contest.

Anyway, it turns out Singapore is fine. Not somewhere where you'd spend a lengthy stay, but it does have it's charm.

Went for a walk around the surrounding area and discovered the skyline: ubiquitous harbour front skyscrapers - looked great at night.







I also found the Raffles Hotel, which is like something straight out of Passage To India, with its off-white verandas and immaculately presented Sikhs waiting to open the doors on the sedans of dignatories (if you look really closely you can see him)

Also went to Orchard Road, the main shopping district, but it could have been absolutely anywhere - malls jammed with Nike, Armani and Panasonic. Wandered round Borders and immediately thought "Why have I done this? Totally pointless". Orchard Road's principal distinction, then, it is that is the most indistinctive place in the world. A bit like a few other places.

Next day was better. Went over to Sentosa Island via futuristic monorail. Sentosa Island is an outcrop of rock and sand now redeveloped with purpose-built beaches and sail-shaped hotels. I'd gone over for the Carlsberg Sky Tower, an observation deck operating on a rather phallic giant-doughnut-gliding-up-and-down-a-pole system. Once the doughnut is at the top of the pole it....ahem....gently twists round to give you a better view whilst everyone gasps with excitement.

Ithankyou

Singa Poor Show

First of all it's worth pointing out that I'm a right grumpy bastard the first few days of travelling. And this sojourn is no exception. Harumph and indeed harumph. Are there two Rs in harrumph?

It may be that the mild rant you are about to read is tempered by jetlag and heat, but even from an objective standpoint, Singapore has yet to really impress. Sorry.

How to describe it. Well imagine this. Go on, imagine it:

Take a Chinatown, any from your average British city and plop it next to any Little India say Brick Lane or Rusholm, ensuring there is a degree of overlap and that, for example, some places sell chicken biryani AND sweet and sour pork.

Now have some Chinese blokes on rickety cycles weave in and out of some Indian blokes sat on the street with one leg tucked under them. Now flank this with some Japanese-style neon highrises and liberally scatter Western iconography (pictures of Beckham and Nokia Mobiles) across the architectural bric-a-brac.

That's Singapore. Sounds interesting admittedly, but it all feels begged, borrowed or stolen. I suspect you can find better examples of everything on show here in it's original indigenous location.

I just thought it would have more of a sense of itself. Never mind.

My judgement is clouded however. My coma-inducing jetlag has pinned me to my bed, and the greenhouse humidity is fostering a walking-through-warm-treacle malaise. This after coming from a Midlands Winter where, the weather girl warned if it got much worse robins would actually freeze to the branch and polar bears would be seen on the streets of Walsall.

Things will get better I hope. Otherwise Singapore can consider itself slinged. No, slung.

Oh forget it.