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Published: November 22nd 2006
Sydney Opera House
...and the sand in our camera'Who's running these airwaves, mate - me or you?' They say long-distance international travel blurs the distinctions between places, but there was no doubt that we'd arrived in Australia from the moment we stepped into the minibus at the airport - and into the middle of a massive radio row between a harrassed taxi controller and an equally harrassed driver that had us in stitches (eg 'You took their bags and drove off without them, mate!') despite our mighty jet lag. The row continued pretty much all the way to our hostal downtown, although during it our laughter gave way to repeated sharp intakes of breath as our driver, a talkative and completely deaf chap ('So you're both from Argentina then...?), piloted the bus as if he was completely blind into the bargain. Welcome, then, to Sydney.
That was three weeks ago, but our sense of 'reverse culture shock' after four months in South America has only just started to fade. It's been strange unlearning speaking to people in Spanish, even stranger to find that things here do what they say on the tin, run on time and pretty much just work, like they do back home. The downsides are
Sydney Opera House
one of the 150 Adele took...we'll mercifully save you from the rest that everything costs pretty much what it does back home, which is a big shock to the system - and, of course, that the place is full of bloody Australians.
Only joking: almost every Aussie we've met so far has been properly friendly, thoroughly obliging and determined to help us have a good time (although this may change now that the cricket is about to start). So much so that we decided pretty soon after arriving in Sydney that the six weeks we planned here was nothing like long enough, and attempted to extend our stay beyond Christmas and into the New Year. It turned out that we couldn't, owing to an 'intransigent travel company' (or as they'd say here, 'complete bunch of tossers') that we have a tour in China booked with, so we are now engaged in a high-speed charge up the east coast trying to fit in as much as we can in 40-odd days. So excuse us if what follows sounds a little breathless.
We ended up spending five days in Sydney, a proper world-class city that feels vibrant and eager to impress you compared to the likes of London. We gawped at the
The Blue Mountains
The brochures don't tell you it rains in Oz... Opera House (even more impressive in the flesh than it looks in pictures), hopped about on the harbour ferries, met up with former Autocar colleague Peter Robinson and his missus Erica, and generally got used to the pace of life compared to South America. We also spent a day at iconic Bondi Beach... in our fleeces and waterproofs, because it was absolutely chucking it down, despite the fact that Australia is supposed to in the middle of its worst drought in 1000 years. I guess that's what happens when you decide to buy a tent.
Our plan was simple enough: buy some cheap camping gear and head south to (supposedly sunnier) Melbourne and the nearby Great Ocean Road in the air-conditioned splendour of our borrowed Volvo estate (thank you v much, Messrs Todd Hallenbeck and John Rawlings). But, true to form, literally moments after we handed over the equivalent of 50 quid for tent, cooking gear and mats to a shifty-looking bloke called Jeff (who, in fairness, must have thought we were the most tight-arsed people ever to turn up his shop in an $80,000 car), the weather turned - to the extent that at our first destination, the
The Blue Mountains II
What a difference a day makes! Blue Mountains an hour outside of Sydney, we were too scared to use it and stayed indoors instead. Once the cloud that enveloped the mountains cleared the following morning, it was a beautiful, all jagged peaks and huge trees - but turned out this wasn’t the last we had seen of The Weather.
After the Blue Mountains we headed south in the direction of Melbourne - just in time to miss the Melbourne Cup, a Grand National-style horse race for which the entire country comes to a standstill and the Melbournians drink the bars dry, despite the fact that it lasts for about 30 seconds. Happily, we were on the motorway for those 30 seconds - 'happily' because by the time we arrived in Melbourne the following day, it was awash with post-race casualties who had clearly spent the remaining 23h 59m 30s of the previous day down the boozer. We liked Melbourne a lot despite staying in the smallest room of our travels so far - a one-bunk-bed-and-that’s-it affair that our hostal owners tastefully nicknamed ‘The Mandela Suite’, and celebrated my 35th birthday there in atypical fashion by having a picnic on the beach. Bet we won’t be
The Melbourne Cup
Ripper pair of Aussie Sheilas a little worse for wear doing that next year back in Blighty.
After Melbourne, we headed along the south eastern coastal road named, typically Australian tell-it-like-it-is style, the Great Ocean Road. Other examples of this fine art we have collected en route include the Snowy Mountains, the Sandy Desert, Mount Difficult, Big Hill, Art Gallery Road and Bloody Wet Lake. (Astonishingly, only the last of these is made up.) Anyway, as the name suggests, the Great Ocean Road is a 400-mile drive along stunning coastal scenery, including Bell’s Beach (the surfer’s paradise made famous by the Keanu Reeves ‘classic’
Point Break); the Twelve Apostles, a spectacular collection of rock needles that rise out of the sea; gum trees filled with koalas by the roadside, and lots of cool, laid-back little towns.. It was so idyllic that we decided it was time to debut the tent. And that’s when The Weather returned.
The skies began to bruise, but the owner of the first campsite we went to was adamant: ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to rain here.’ His prediction held true for all of the two minutes it took to drive to our pitch, whereupon a) it did indeed begin to rain and b)
12 Apostles
Definitely worth a night in a tent during a thunderstorm we discovered that Jeff had sold us his ‘shop demonstration’ tent WITH NO BLOODY PEGS. We scrounged about half the number we needed from the camp owners, flung the tent up (it had no instructions either, for that matter) and settled in for the night. We were awakened, about four hours later, by blinding lightning which subsided into mere torrential rain quite quickly, and before long we were getting occasional splashes of water in the face… quite amusing in retrospect, not all that funny at the time. The Weather continued the following night, albeit in mildly less severe form, after which - mercifully -we were able to take refuge at my Auntie Babs’ house in Mount Barker, just outside Adelaide.
And at this point our carefully laid plans began to unravel. We had intended to stay in Adelaide for two nights, then roar back to Melbourne and catch a flight to Tasmania, whip round the island in a week, then catch a flight up to Brisbane before continuing north. One day with Babs (an amazingly lively and upbeat lady who I last saw when I was 16) convinced us to put the tickets in the bin and stay in
Great Ocean Road
Better than working for a living... Mount Barker, where we were fed to within an inch of our lives, met two of my four Australia-based cousins (neither of whom I met before they emigrated in 1967) and took my cousin Bob’s 500bhp 1998 Holden Statesman for a spin (probably my highlight of our time away so far.) We also took a deep breath and bought a new camera; our old one has never been the same since ingesting a load of sand in Bolivia, and it was a real pain in the jacksee having to bang it on your knee to get it work. (People at popular beauty spots also look at you oddly when you do this.)
Re-energised, and probably a good deal cleaner (and fatter) than we have been for some weeks, we set off from Adelaide towards Brisbane - a 1000-mile trip that took us along the edge of The Outback to a town called Broken Hill (birthplace and stamping ground of Autocar’s Steve Cropley, fact fiends). Here, for the first time, our environment became what we would call characteristically Australian - heat in the mid-30s, rich red sand all around, and miles and miles of absolutely nothing anywhere. Compared to the
Koalas
Eat, sleep, look cute: Adele's reincarnation aspiration. She's got the first two sussed big cities, which were awash with backpackers and tourists, this was definitely the Road Less Well Travelled, and all the better for it. Living in the tent made a welcome change from months of crummy hostals, especially as Australian campsites often have free barbies on which to cook the obligatory snag or two. And after two and a half weeks, we finally saw our first kangaroos in Broken Hill, after which we couldn’t move for them - and indeed, spent many hours on the road living in fear of one of the stupid beasts running into the car.
The further east we got, the more the land became greener, the smaller the distance between the towns. We decided to break our journey in a national park fringed by mountains called the Warrumbungles, which gave us our best camping experience so far: a night spent alone in the middle of the park itself, during which we could watch kangaroos playing and, after lights out, hear them thumping past the tent. Unfortunately, one of them must have had a bit too much roughage that day: the ensuing noise convinced Adele that we were under attack from Hell's Angels or similar random
The Snooks
The Aussie branch of the Aherne clan led by bonza Auntie Babs nutjobs, and I was made to leave the safety of the tent to fetch our penknife from the car. God knows what I was meant to do with it had the worst of Adele’s imaginings materialized… open their beer bottles, maybe?
The following day we took a detour to another national park, Bald Rock, which contains - yes - a really big rock that’s the second-biggest monolith after Uluru/Ayer’s Rock in the country. Because it’s ‘only’ the second-biggest, nobody else was there, but it was an incredible place. After a knackering kilometre climb to the summit, we cooled off at a nearby waterfall and swimming hole which, like the rock itself, we had absolutely and completely to ourselves. Bliss.
And from there we headed to here - ‘here’ being Byron Bay, a surf town on the east coast that’s famed for its hippyish charm. This is not much in evidence, as the place has been invaded by ‘schoolies’ (‘bloody kids’ in English) and is doing a passable impression of Ayia Napa. So we’re staying 10 miles down the road at Lennox Head, a no-less-lovely beach that is much less full of complete gits. There is a swimmable mineral
The Outback
Loads of nothing; like Patagonia but with heat lake within sight of our tent and the beach - largely deserted except for a hard-as-nails gang of kite-surfers - is a stone’s throw away. Life is good, and it would be easy to get stuck here for a day or seven. However, the first Ashes test is starting a few miles up the road at The Gabba in Brisbane and blow me down if we don't just happen to be heading in that direction tomorrow. Must remember to mention this to Adele at some point - maybe she’ll think it’s a good way to celebrate her birthday this Saturday...
Rob and Adele xxx
Quote of the week
No 11: 'Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayte.' After being here a couple of weeks, we have managed to restrict saying this to one another to, ooooh, just the 30 or so times a day.
Idea of the week
The hidden menace of Australia is its flies - ever-present, persistent and seemingly bent on landing in your gob. As a result, newcomers spend much of their time doing the 'Australian wave' - flapping your hands about in front of your head in a rather camp and demented impression of the Queen. We've found the
Big Country
Thanks to our sponsors, Volvo and our nails XC70 solution, though: a wide-brimmed cowboy-type hat, ideally with something swinging from the brim to keep the little buggers away. A few
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John Parsons
non-member comment
Hi Guys
Well your blog continues to be one of the things keeping me sane as I sit at the keyboard, pounding away for a pittance for Mr Hessletine. Guess you know how that feels. Great pics and comment that males us feel we have been there. Great for dinner parties too - never knew there was a 'second biggest rock', but then I suppose there has to be really. Keep enjoying the waves of envy that keep flooding over us poor souls here - just wish you could do something about the cricket. Eventually you must end up somewhere I have been and then I can joyfully tell you what you missed...But what the heck, just go with the flow. Love, John and Pat