Basically, since I arrived in Australia in mid December it has been hit by some of the worst rain in years (sound familiar to anyone who spent the English summer of 2007 re-arranging bbqs). Don't worry though, I haven't let it spoil my fun.I arrived to be met of the plane by Dec, who reassured me that the weather would definitely pick up for the New Year, when we were planning a jaunt up the east coast.
I spent my first few weeks in a hostel in Kings Cross. For anyone who hasn't been to Kings Cross I found this priceless little description of the area in the Lonely Planet. It read: ‘The Cross is a bizarre cocktail of strip joints, prostitution, crime and drugs shaken and stirred’. Don't worry though mum, it's not the filth haven that this would suggest...well it is, but it's pretty safe and friendly too. To be honest I've felt more intimidated walking to the fish and chip shop in Mickleover than I have in the 2 months since I arrived in Australia. They have their equivalent to chavs, known as bogans (think the Timmins family in Neighbours) but they don't seem anywhere near as ubiquitous or darn right hostile as our own homegrown variety.
So, after a week of recovering from South America and trying to get used to not having to say 'obrigado' all the time, I was ready for Christmas. The thing that struck me most about Christmas Oz style was how you could actually not realise it was Christmas. They have decorations and carols, but don't feel the need to ram it down your throat in every direction from mid-October, like is the convention at home now.
After a rather heavy Christmas Eve party on the roof of our hostel (from where you can see the Opera house) Dec and I had to be up early on Christmas morning to meet Ben from the airport. I can safely say that from that point on it was like no Christmas day I have ever
experienced before. We cracked on with our first beer at 8.20am and by 11 we were downing Jagermeister/Red Bull combos...you can see where this is going can't you. Luckily we managed to sober up in time for lunch; what I could only describe as a seafood bbq banquet extravaganza consisting of salmon, crayfish, tiger prawns and crab. The rest of the day was something of a blur, but I do remember watching the sunrise over the harbour on Boxing Day morning. I think we did big J.C. proud though!
The week between Christmas Day and New Years Eve consisted mainly of sight seeing, sun bathing and celebr
ating at every available opportunity. New Years Eve was spent at Sydney’s botanical gardens, leading to what was billed as the most expensive firework display ever over the opera house and the harbour bridge.
Ben, knowing you are an avid reader of ‘I’m glad it’s me and not you!’ I thought I’d use this opportunity to confess to something. On the day we went to Manley beach do you remember your iPod suddenly stopped working for a few days? Well I know the real reason why. On our return I had a large amount of sand in my bag, and not wanting to tip it onto the hostel floor I thought the best place to dispose of it would be the toilet. Sadly I had forgotten your iPod was in the bag and, well you can imagine what happened after that. At the time I considered owning up and taking a barrage of verbal abuse, but decided to do the manly thing and keep quiet and hope that it corrected itself. Luckily for me, within 2 days it was working fine…no on
e was more relieved than me about that. So there it is folks, iPod’s may have a rubbish battery life, they may jam, freeze, stall, crash and generally break a lot of the time, but they are definitely toilet proof.
Then on January 2 we picked up a rental car and headed up the coast. We realised our decision to hire a car was a big mistake after just 3 hours, when after driving just 200 km we had to refill what had been a full tank upon leaving Sydney….F16 fighters are more economical than that piece of scrap metal posing as an automobile!
It was also at this point that the weather turned on us. Just hours after leaving the sunshine we drove straight into a storm, which pretty much lasted for the next 3 days. A quick stop in Byron Bay, in which we had to sleep in the car, as all the campsites were flooded, was followed by a brief stop over in an equally soggy Brisbane. Upon reaching Noosa the sun came out for a day, so we headed straight to the beach. Would you believe it, but we ended up sitting next to a bloke with a Derby County towel. He was from Chaddesden and had been in Australia for 3 weeks, and this, his final day in the country, was the first on which it hadn’t rained…gutted.
The only positive to come out of the weather was the fact that a canoe trip we had booked had to be cancelled. I say this was lucky because upon reaching Gagaju (Hicksville might have been a more appropriate title), our departure point, we discovered that the 3 day trip we were booked into would hav
e seen us head off into the Everglades on our own. If this had happened then I would think we might still be there now, if we hadn’t been eaten by Crocodiles first. Instead we took a nice quiet day trip, in which we nearly capsized, to the second oldest pub in Queensland (we did ask where the oldest pub was, but no-one seemed to know) for a lovely pub lunch and a few beers.
Hervey Bay (pronounced Harvey Bay, a bit like Derby in that respect) was our next port of call, from where we would visit Fraser Island. Obviously our 3 days spent on the Island coincided with constant rain, but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits (pardon the pun) and proceeded to thrash around the island in a 4x4, although the moment Ben nearly overturned the vehicle did momentarily take the smile off all of our faces. The sun did briefly appear for the high point of the trip though, a visit to Lake McKenzie, a fantastic deep blue lagoon on the island, hemmed in by a brilliant white beach.
In order to reach our next destination, Whitsunday’s, we had a rather long drive, so in order to break it up we decided to stop off at the amusingly titled Town of 1770. Our stay was only meant to be one evening, but it turned into 5 days after the road that would have taken us their was closed due to flooding. This also turned out to be a stroke of good fortune in one sense; as if we had driven the several hundred kilometers to Whitsunday’s then I think we may have had to take out a mortgage en-route in order to pay for the petrol.
This extended stay gave us the opportunity to take a tour around the town on miniature Harley Davidson’s, as well as work on our surfing skills. You’ll all be glad to know that I can now regularly stand up on a surfboard…even when it isn’t on the sand, and once I even managed to ride across a breaking wave. Woopeydoo!
The last few nights in 1770 saw Dec and I move out of the youth hostel and into the car….. after all we were paying a small fortune for it so we thought we might as well get as much value out of it as possible. Our savings were nearly lost after a small bump in the car left us without a rear tail light, meaning we spent the last few days of our trip scouring some of Brisbane’s finest scrap yards looking for the tail light to a 2001 Ford Falcon estate (or wagon as they like to call it). You’ll be glad to know that we eventually found the replacement part, thus avoiding the $500 excess that we would have had to pay on the insurance.
And so it was that our east coast jaunt ended after 3 weeks. We retuned to Sydney considerably wetter and poorer than when we left, but still had a good craic along the way.
The weekend after our return the country ground to a halt again, this time to celebrate Australia Day. Pretty much Christmas day all over the again, the day also involved drinking lots of beer, but rather than remembering Jesus and handing out presents, they seem to spend the day worshipping cricket instead….I absolutely loved it. Dec and I both did England proud on the day I now like to think of as Cricketfest, with him dropping countless dollies and me bowling an endless supply of wides, no-balls and dead balls. We are both now expecting to be put on standby for England’s current tour of New Zealand in case anyone drops out or falls off a pedalo.
I retuned to Sydney desperate for a job, so quickly started putting myself about (not in Kings Cross can I just say) in the hope someone might feel sorry for me and employ me. After nearly 2 weeks of trying I finally got a job on a construction site as a labourer….I know, its hilarious isn’t it. I like to think of myself as the muscles behind the operation, so as you can imagine very little seems to get done.
Right I think that’s me done for this time. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that in the next blog I might have what I could only describe as a groundbreaking experience to reveal.
A few Observations:
Tomato ketchup sachets over here are brilliant. Rather than using the rubbish tear and squeeze method that most of the world seems to be using, they have a far superior method. Using what I could only describe as a double barreled plastic holder, which, when pinched allows you to fire sauce all over your food in exactly the spot you were aiming for, without getting it all over yourself in the process. Why the rest of the world hasn’t cottoned onto this I’ll never know. I’ll make sure I get a photo of this fantastic invention for next time.
The pedestrian system in Sydney is one of the most frustrating and poorly orgnaised I have ever seen. You can be waiting at a crossing for what seems like hours, whilst the lights try to decide who should be given access to their desired root next. I would think I have probably spent at least 6 weeks of my 2 months in Australia just waiting to cross roads.
Aussies love public service signs. My favourites so far are these 2 gems:
On most motorways you on the other side of the road you can often see:
‘Go Back. You’re going the wrong way!'
Plus I saw a sign outside a church that read: ‘Our church isn’t full of hypocrites. There’s always room for more’.
BBQs really can be found all over Australia, which is quite lucky, as if they weren’t then I would have eaten a lot more cheese and ham sandwiches.
Oh, and this ones for you dad. How many men do you think it takes to stop traffic? Well, in Brisbane, as the following photo shows, it takes 3; 2 to hold stop signs and 1 more to make sure that the 2 are holding the stop signs correctly.
Right, that's me done. I'd better go to work now, after all I have taken the morning off in order to watch the football (or sort my visa out as my boss thinks). See you later.
Vinny/Ian
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