Due South

This is the plan. It's already changed 9,237 times. It will probably change again.

Fly to Christchurch, pick up car, then on to

Twizel
Mt Cook
Queenstown
Te Anau
Milford
Wanaka
Fox
Nelson
Blenheim
Kaikoura
Christchurch


And that's just South Island. We're looking at returning to the North Island proper when the weather starts improving as there's no use sitting on a beach in mucky weather trying to convince yourself it's actually warm enough to sunbathe like people do in Morecambe.

Our hire care represents the very pinnacle of automative engineering - A 2005 Diahatsu Sirion which I am renaming The Die Hard Sirloin - and activities planned along the way include snowboarding, writing my name in the snow, having an argument about one another's map reading skills, shivering a bit, meeting up with me old mate Chris, cruising around Milford (not, I am told, the home of MILFs), climbing the Fox Glacier (which will be mint) and the Franz Ferdinand Glacier.... and probably a lot of driving.

37 days encounting......

Surfer's Paradise

So, I am leaving Auckland. The flights, the hire car and the accommodation are booked. The date is set. All I have to do is now is sit through another 2 weeks of, well, nothing. And that's harder than you think......

I joined this company during a staff shortage. And because there was work to be done, accordingly, I did it. But since that day way back in April, the company has hired no less than 6 new people, meaning that for the last 4 weeks I've been content to dawdle, dally and lozzock about on the internet, whilst work is actually taken off me by eager new beavers (probably an unfortunate choice of words given I'm still the only man here).

The problem with this is twofold. First, if it weren't for George providing me with a few choice websites, I would have bludgeoned myself into oblivion with a hole-punch by now through sheer boredeom. In your own home, doing nothing makes you the king of your castle - revelling in your inactivity and celebrating the stationary with no expectations and therefore no reproachement or guilt.

But to do nothing when you reckon you probably should be doing something. That's different. It's disquieting and makes for an uneasy day. Which leads to my second point.

I can't prove it, and it may well be a kind of mild paranoia, but I think the fact that my days are emptier than John Leslie's Diary is breeding a kind of polite but palpable sense of resentment among people who actually have work to do.

I have indeed telegraphed my availability on a number of occasions, responding to the Kiwi's wanky buzzphrase "Phil, do you have capacity?" with the reply "Yes, I'm not busy right now", although I would have liked to reply "Yes, I am indeed capacious right now", yet work has not been forthcoming. In my defence, all I can say is: it's not my fault I'm not busy.

Anyway, I have two weeks of surfing youtube and Facebook left, and then will have to find 3 weeks of temp work before I leave Auckland on the 25th August. If anyone fancies sending me some interesting links to browse whilst I glance over my shoulder to see who can see my screen, before flicking back to an empty Excel spreadsheet and punching a few random buttons on the calculator to make it look like I'm working, please feel free.

Flat Out

Lou and I finally have a flat.

I'm sad to leave The Brown Kiwi: the cameraderie was endearing, the host hilarious, the experience memorable. But this trip is all about what happens after Auckland, and for that we need money. So with the Brown Kiwi's double room costing us the equivalent of a return ticket to Western Samoa evey week, despite Nils gracious discount, we decided to move out into cheaper digs.

Conversely, and fortunately, over here cheap accommodation does not mean having to live underneath a railway arch with an itenirant jazz musician called Keith. Rather, rental prices are around 40% cheaper than hostels, and $200 a week has secured us a room in an apartment 15 minutes from town with bed, dishwasher and TV. Three of my key requirements.

Admittedly, it wasn't the first place we looked at. A trawl through some accommodation websites revealed that we weren't in the most favourable of positions - a non-smoking couple requiring a flat for only 8 weeks - especially considering the online adverts were very specific about the type of housemate required, some stating: must be smoker, must like cats and, my favourite, must be quiet.

Our first viewing was a place just off Ponsonby road which could only be described as a cross between Northampton Polytechnic student accommodation and an inner-city "housing project" for single mothers with learning difficulties. There's something very disturbing about a "TV room" consisting of four walls of powdery, unpainted breezeblock, together with 3 plastic school chairs pointed at a flickering screen.

Our second viewing was of house in Grey Lynn, and whilst the accommodation was fine, Lou and I both agreed the woman who already lived there, Camilla Ribena-Faqhuar-Camembert-Bibblington-Breadbin, was annoyingly wiffy-waffy and would have probably required throttling at some point.

And so finally to our current location just off the Great North Road. Initially, the signs weren't good: bottom of a hill, bright tangerine-coloured building, above a garage. But upon opening the door we were pleasantly surprised: spacious, clean and apparently new. The couple who already live there seem fine, and as a result of pushing two single beds together, we now have a "double" bed the size of a tennis court.

I am avoiding the obvious joke about "Love All"

Or "New Balls Please"

Rolling In The Aisles

Brave New World

New World on College Hill is not only the second most expensive supermarket in all of New Zealand, but it’s also one of the worst ones I’ve ever wheeled a trolley around. No New World Sympathy from me.

With all the glamour of Kwik Save, but with the price of Waitrose, the narrow aisles are blocked by undead members of staff unloading their Toyota Yaris-sized cages of Campbell’s Soup, whilst the meat fridges look like an explosion in an abattoir. Portions of meat come in two sizes: breezeblock or the entire cow, whilst the bagpackers clearly have no grasp of physics or the inelastic properties of polythene, loading up your carrier as if they’re trying to break some world record. Or at least the eggs they’ve put at the bottom the fucking bag.

All this means, then, that for a 30-something male who steadfastly rejects the Jamie Oliver-isation of his dinnertime (spinach and radiccio torte with warm parmesan squash, anyone?), for me trips to the supermarket are a perfunctory affair. A blank-eyed wander round the aisles, automatically and nonchalantly selecting items from the pre-prepared list in my head, never altering it from week to week.

Yesterday’s shopping trip, however, proved to be a little different in that three slightly off-kilter things happened within the space of about 12 minutes; nearly enough to wake me from my shopping somnolence.


Dwarves, Duncan and Drink

First, I saw a colleague from work. Not ordinarily confusing, if it weren’t for the fact that she was 6 inches shorter than the day previously. I immediately wondered if she had perhaps fallen down a pothole or had her legs severed, but since there are few potholes in supermarkets these days, and she was definitely still wearing shoes, I discounted this possibility.

No, the reason, I later concluded, was that most of the women in my office wear very, very high heels, possibly because in the world of PR, they equate height with stature. And it was heartening to see that although, at work, stood next to me she seemed a giant among men, in reality she was just a dwarf on stilts. One day, I may consider going to work wearing Elton-John-Pinball-Wizard boots to prove the point.

Three minutes later, a second thing happened. I realised, as I waiting for Louise to finish choosing an onion or something, that I was staring at someone I hadn’t seen in 10 years – Duncan. er….thingamajig….er…. Duncan....er….whassname.

Duncan, myself and a whole host of other people from various Manchester Universities helped set up Storm Fm, a student radio station in 1997. And as I looked at him packing away his shopping, I immediately realised who it was. He momentarily glanced up and looked down again. Then realizing, too, he’d seen someone he recognized, looked up and down again as if trying to place me, before pointing and saying “Phil!”.

I responded by pointing and going “Duncan!”. We had a brief chat, exchanged numbers and generally, mutually puffed out our cheeks and shook our heads about what a huge co-incidence it was.

Last, 5 minutes later and still trying to get my head around the fact that I’d bumped into Duncan, Louise and I had almost finished packing our stuff at the till, when the cashier refused Lou some cider because she looked underage.

Being nearly 32, this was obviously a shock to Louise and she immediately produced her driving licence. Yet, for the cashier, this was still unacceptable – “NZ Driving Licence or Passport only, please”. Now, I’ve never been refused alcohol in New Zealand, which meant that despite the fact that I am younger than my girlfriend, I am able to buy beer and she’s not. And the fact that despite the number of Europeans here, European Driving Licences are not valid ID seems to be ridiculous.

The upside to this, however, is that I am going out with a girl who looks young enough to be refused alcohol. And that can only be a good thing.

Some Birthday Photos

Loulou checks the menu

Blurred photo from the window. That's the camera doing that - I'm not pissed

Always room for desert

My birthday cake(s)

My Birthday

If 21 is key of the door, then I don’t know what 31 is. The key to the Volvo perhaps. Or maybe the key on the Dulux Colour Swatch - if you’re currently deciding whether to paint the nursery with Cinnamon Sunrise or Domestic Violets.

So anyway, 31…….

Lou arrived last Friday which of course is fantastic for so many reasons, not least because I get to move into my own double room free from people snoring and farting. Actually, come to think of it, that was me. Anyway, last night Lou wanted to surprise me with a birthday dinner, but ashamedly I relentlessly badgered her until she let slip the location: the revolving restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower.

As I’ve stated in this blog before I’ll go up anything high. If it’s got an observation deck, then in my eyes, it’s a winner. Thinking about it now, I’ve been up the Tokyo TV Tower, the Fuji Observation Deck, The Tokyo Government Towers, AMP Tower in Sydney, Eureka Building in Melbourne, the Sentosa Tower and then the Swissotel in Singapore, The World Trade Centre, The Empire State Building and even the Space Needle in Seattle. If I ever visit Dubai any time soon, then let me tell you……

I’m sure a philosophy student from Liverpool John Moore’s might say that, as a shortarse, it’s indicative of some subconscious desire to lord it over other people. He might call it something like “Ivory Tower Syndrome”. But he’d be talking nonsense. So I’d probably knock his beret off for that comment.

I met Louise on Queens St and we wandered round to the Tower to collect our reserved tickets. Once in the lift, however, as I was staring down through the glass floor, it was obvious that Louise was not comfortable with the ground falling away beneath her and was now peeking through splayed fingers. The actual observation deck was pleasant if unspectacular, and whilst Louise gingerly remained at a safe distance from a glass floor revealing a 328 metre drop, I failed miserably to take any decent night shots, each successive image resembling more and more the daubings of a child let loose on black sugar paper with an army of crayons.

To the restaurant, then. And whereas Lou had been a bit fazed by the height issue, after sitting down at our table, I realised my middle-ear had a movement issue. After a few moments, I felt a little queasy and as I looked across the table at Lou, I could sense I was moving I just couldn’t tell how, or where I was moving to. Similarly, one thing they never tell you about a revolving restaurant that when you go the toilet, you come out 3 minutes and 18.4 degrees later only to think your girlfriend has buggered off, when in fact she hasn’t left her seat.

Soon, however, the feeling had passed. Enough for me to order beef filler with kumara mash (NZ Sweet Potato) and a triple chocolate icecream.

Last year I was on Bondi Beach for my birthday. This year I was up the Auckland Sky Tower. I’ve set the bar high for my 30s. I only hope I can keep this up.

Photos to follow............

The Breakfast Club

A while ago now, Pink House crew members Chris and Simon launched Lunch Club.

Whilst the moniker they bestowed upon it best conjures up images of captains of industry meeting at an Edwardian high-rise in Mayfair to discuss the Gold Standard and have a spot of tiffin, it was in fact an excuse to spend the hour between 1pm and 2pm stuffing their faces with home-made burritos. And most of the time, Chris and Simon were the only two members.

One year on and here in NZ I find myself one of the inaugural members of what I am calling Breakfast Club. Not a reference to the daft-haircut-sporting, none-more-80s film of the same name, but rather a meeting of like-minded people whose only thing in common is that they have to get up bloody early for work.

Initially Breakfast Club was just Bev and I, but its ranks are slowly swelling with new bleary-eyed additions of Nick from Seattle and Benjamin from France. There are also honorary mentions for Jens who, being German, is up and gone long before the rest of us, and Manu who, despite being German, stumbles into the kitchen at 7.55am looking like he’s been woken by binmen emptying the skip he lives in.

Breakfast Club has a fairly loose agenda. If you feel like joining, here are some of the regular activities:

* Wearily watching the kettle boil as you ask your fellow member if they heard some twat in the top bunk snoring last night

* Groggily reading instructions from a Weetabix Box (“Oh look I’m getting twice my RDA of nyacine”) and missing the bowl with your milk

* Staring blankly at the newspaper. Deliberately ignoring stories about Obama vs the Superdelegates because it’s too early, and instead settling on an article about a man who crossed the Attacama on a spacehopper

* Yawning while you hack your toast to splinters with the rock-hard butter you forgot to take out of the fridge last night

I suspect, however, that Breakfast Club is not exclusive to The Brown Kiwi

Ou-es Tu?

Of late, readers of this blog, of which I sincerely hope there are some, may have noted a recent drop off in the frequency of posting.

It pains me to report, then, that nothing really has happened. I am currently locked in a cycle of alarm clock, breakfast, front door, work, lunch, work, front door, TV, curry/spag bol/supernoodles, more TV and then bed as I wait for the cash to roll in and for lovely Louise to arrive.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a routine, but I am closer than I have been in two years to recreating my past life in London. This is both a blessing and a curse: although this rediscovered “routine” rewards me financially and also career-wise, I can’t help hearing the echoes of people who have returned permanently to Blighty, their travelling and perhaps their youth firmly behind them, moaning about how they’ve found “settling down” inherently depressing.

Still, regrettably, I can’t travel forever - I am not “The Littlest Hobo” – and so at some stage a return to orthodoxy and normalcy is as expected as it is inevitable.

I can’t complain at the moment, the hostel is as empty as my work email inbox, and my bank account is filling up faster than my internet browser’s history bar. Work alternates between a mad flurry of presentation writing and frantic bash-typing of emails, contrasted with extended lunch breaks, lengthy pisses and Youtube afternoons. Feast and famine. Bella Emberg and Kate Moss.

It’s not long now though, I think, until I’ll have something blogworthy. So hang on in there…..

Brown Love

The Brown Kiwi is smashing. I liked it as soon as I arrived, and it still continues to please.

The secret to its success lies in its positioning. It’s not a hostel where you’ll find football-shirted twunts called Darren from Leicester, with over-gelled hair and meaningless yin-yang tattoo, guzzling boxed wine and bellowing across the street at some slapper with a watchstrap for a skirt.

And it’s not a hostel where some blank-eyed receptionist, themselves a backpacker working to pay off rent, hands you a threadbare set of sheets and casually motions towards your room next to the bog.

In fact, it’s more like a shared house. But with lots of people. We already have our in-jokes. Our characters. Our catchphrases. Our nods and winks that indicate so much.

We’ve already started having our little adventures too. Last Wednesday was Mini-road trip day. Stefan from Heidelberg had just recently purchased a camper van to tour NZ , but it had already developed a rather ominous rattle. Frustratingly, it was a rattle which disappeared completely whenever he was in 10 metres range of anyone with any mechanical knowledge. Our trip, then, was designed to make the rattle come back so, should we actually be in earshot of anyone who knew anything about engineering, we could get an opinion.

So Stefan, Jens (also from Germany) and I set off with no particular destination in mind and made our way North. After about an hour we decided we really should be going “somewhere” and so, as I had the map, I selected what looked like the nearest geographical feature of interest: a 4 mile long peninsula stretching out Westward from Auckland.

Once at the tip, we disembarked into the Shakespear National Park encompassing a beach, a lookout point and a hill full of sheep. After a brisk 2 hour walk we returned to find there was indeed a problem with Stefan’s van. Not a rattle, but rather that he had left the lights on and flattened the battery. So much for German efficiency.

Luckily, this is the 21st Century and whilst Stefan didn’t have any jump leads, he did have a solar powered recharger. And so after a failed bump start, we duly wired up the recharger and played Ludo in the back of the van until we thought we could risk turning the key.

As the engine coughed into life, we all breathed a sigh of relief: I don’t think I could have handled another round of Ludo.

PR Does PR

Well, as some of you may have gathered, I am now gainfully employed. A random email to an old contact yielded a temporary two month position at PHD here in Auckland. Luckier than examining a four leaf clover and finding it contained a horseshoe attached to a rabbit’s foot.

The interview wasn’t so much an interview as “what’s your name?” and “when can you start?”, to which my response was obviously “how much” and “give it to me”.

On the face of it, the position seemed pretty similar to what I’d been doing in the UK, but a few days in and the gap between my expectations and the reality appears to be widening. This is definitely a more PR-based role. “Can’t stop, I’m off to take the editor of Cosmo to a macro-biotic spa and women’s retreat”. That kind of thing.

Not only does this make me the least experienced in the office by far, but also the least attractive on account of all 16 other (female) employees here looking like they’ve just stepped out of a Max Factor advert. I can only imagine how my UK high street attire is going down here: “This season, Phil is wearing a 100% Polyester T-Shirt from Matalan, featuring some logo or other. He is also wearing a pair of blue stone-washed jeans from Primark. In his spare time, Phil likes taking afternoon naps and eating Batchelor’s Supernoodles“

There is the possibility, however, that I may actually learn something new here. Maybe PR will be my true calling. Maybe I’ll take to it like a duck to Evian. Maybe I’ll be air-kissing Nigella Lawson in no time. Maybe.

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.