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Black-tip Shark
On the prowl at the great barrier reefThere always seems to be surf somewhere on the Victorian coastline. Shark attacks are rare so you're pretty much safe - except that you normally have to contend with some monstrous waves coming in off the Southern Ocean. The recent Ripcurl-Pro surf contest at Bells Beach was blessed with chunky surf with 3 metre faces of water. That's all very well for Kelly Slater et al. but we are much happier at the sheltered spots favoured by mere mortals!
We have spent many a happy day riding down the face of waves, being dumped and thrown around and even occasionally fearing for our lives (well, it's half the fun of it). For the uninitiated, Sex Wax (produced by the strangely named Mr Zog) is wax that you put on your surfboard in order to give you more grip (rather than whatever it was that you were thinking).
So there's been plenty of surf and Sex Wax. However, the sun has been a diminishing commodity as Australia has slipped into Autumn (hence the increased Sudoku activity!). Melbourne suits the Autumn. It's a very leafy lowrise city and its avenues of red, yellow and orange leaves look stunning in the autumnal
sunsets. The highrise portion of Melbourne is contained in the Central Business District, which isn't huge but has all the bustle and life of any other big city.
There's always something going on here. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has been on and Cam (who cooks a mean chicken casarole these days!) managed to get us tickets to see the Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy. His observations were very astute. The first time that we got on a tram it did indeed appear that we were the only people actually paying for the service and everyone did indeed look at us as if to say "Bought tickets have you? What are you going to do next? Validate them?!"
It's true that Australians have relaxed attitudes to many things - it's their international hallmark really isn't it. However, the country is actually quite regulated. There's no drinking outside, your car isn't roadworthy if it doesn't have any washing fluid in it, you can't put any body part out of a car window and wo-betide anyone riding a bicycle without a helmet. There's a good reason for the last one - which is the very relaxed Australian attitude to lane discipline. In fact there are good reasons for each of their laws but it does smack of the Nanny State a little and it's not what you'd expect from the easy going Aussies.
Lane discipline was very much in absence in Albert Park on 2 April, as were the proper use of indicators and general road courtesy. We just missed the Commonwealth Games but we had arrived just in time for the Australian Grand Prix. Albert Park is right in the middle of town and the roar of the engines could be heard across the city. That's nothing compared to being right next to them though, which is potentially deafening! We walked over a bridge across the racetrack and the sensation was unbelievable. It was as if the cars were tearing through our bodies! We managed to find a viewing spot at the end of the pit straight where the sacking had been ripped down off the wire wall so that we could get the same view as the corporate types in the $2k seats nearby. That was a result for us - a much better result than Jenson Button had - his car exploded on the penultimate corner!
We were in Melbourne for a week of BBQs and shopping before heading up to Cairns with our lovely friend Slyvie, who had just arrived from London. Queensland is almost like a different country. Accents are broad, singlets are standard and the locals like a good yarn - it can take you half an hour just to buy a pint of milk. The climate is sub-tropical, the bush is crawling with nasties from Crocs to Mossies and the sea is teeming with the potentiall fatal Box Jellyfish. The rainforest at Cape Tribulation is ancient and beautiful. It contains an enormous percentage of the species of a lot of Australian plants and animals.
However, nearby is the Great Barrier Reef! The Barrier Reef is in fact a series of some 3,000 reefs stretching for 2,300 kms - they say that it's visible from space! We had heard that parts of the reef had been damaged by the troops of tourists that visit year round, but the sections that we visited were beautiful. There were huge walls and pinnacles of stunning multi-coloured coral. It was probably the best snorkelling that we'd seen on our trip, and that's up against some pretty stiff competition! Sharks, Rays, Turtles, Humphead Maori Wrasse, Giant Barracuda - you could see all these from the surface! Nevertheless, Suse tried her first dive and loved it. She's now hooked and planning more diving adventures. What a place to do your first dive! Sylvie hadn't really done much snorkelling before and jumping in with a black-tip shark didn't make it any easier but she soon got into the swing of it and was swimming around like a mermaid! The trip to the reef was so good that we did it all over again!
Back in Victoria we took a trip to Wilson's Promentary - affectionately known as the Prom. It's the Southernmost tip of mainland Australia and well renowned for its beauty. We had meant to go trekking there a year ago but half of the Prom had gone up in flames the day before our booking. A controlled burn had gone out of control and the park had to be shut. Large sections of the park are still damaged and will take up to a decade to regenerate so we'll have to leave our trek for another time - this year we just camped at Tidal Michael Schumacher
...made a bit of a mess of his Ferrari... River with Jezz, Pen, Rob, Sue-Anne and a load of their mates. There were also uninvited guests - huge porky wombats that came rampaging through the camp each night in search of a midnight snack. Suse had to forceably eject one from our neighbour's tent! Our outher companions were the strikingly red Crimson Rosella, troops of blue-tailed Wrens and Echidnas (basically walking welcome mats).
Over the weekend Jezz and Pen introduced us to Kub - an evil Viking game in which you throw sticks at your opponents' wooden blocks (the Kubs). It's kind of like a violent game of chess with the possibility of shin damage. As the beers flowed the Aussie sledging reached impressive heights. Sylvie kept up the European end with a cracking array of heckles.
Near to Tidal River is Squeaky Beach where the sand does indeed squeak with each footstep. We also managed to squeeze in a few games of footie (that's soccer - footie refers to Australian Rules Football here in Victoria) on the windswept beach at tidal river in which the overzealous and undertalented Tom managed to wipe out all three female players. That went down well.....
We met Jezz and Rainforest
The Daintree National Park at Cape Tribulation Pen's parents last year - which makes it all the more amazing that we were invited back to their houses again this year! We were treated to great hospitality by the Dyson and Crowe families. Lovely people.
Most of the surfing went on down near Torquay - well it is known as the surf coast! After getting drilled by some sizeable waves at Torquay beach we found some more sympathetic waves at Point Roadknight. Jezz and Tom managed to surf the same waves a few times, high-fiving while they were hanging ten...
We left Jezz and Pen (they do actually have to work sometimes...) and headed down the Great Ocean Road for a few days. The coastline is battered by the ocean and is a mass of coves, caves, stacks of rock and archways. The most famous feature is the 12 Apostles - a series of sandstone stacks, some of which have now been sacrificed to the sea. Similarly, the arch known as London Bridge had (like the song says) now sadly fallen down. The churning ocean does have its uses though. You could hear the joyous shrieks of Suse and Sylvie from miles away as they boogie-boarded Sucker
...fish at Apollo Bay.
Our last trip was to the Yarra Valley, where they make some of Victoria's better wines. Australian wines are pretty impressive (even Slyvie thought so and she normally only drinks the French stuff). Jezz is not uneducated in this area and has led us through the delights of the country. Marvellous they were too...
So it comes to our last destination - tomorrow we head to China, the world's most populous country and a nascent superpower. With our standard of Mandarin (non-existant) it promises to be an interesting end to our travels. We'll be back in London in mid-June (seems really weird saying that after all this time).
All this, of course, requires us to leave Australia and all our friends here. That's a very hard thing for us - particularly leaving such good friends as Jezz and Pen. They have put their lives on hold for us while we've been here, let us raid their fridge on a nightly basis and opened up their home for 6 weeks - filling it way beyond what is sure to be specified by Australian fire regulations. If everyone in the world we so true of heart then we would all have a lot less to worry about. Thanks guys
T&S
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Lou
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homesick
These photos are making me really home (sydney) sick, squeaky beach looks just like where my great aunt lives.... sorry to see you cut your beard off, tom. Planning a trip to Sydney in December if both of you happen to be there you're cordially invited for daikaris on my mums's balcony overlooking bondi beach rockies! Lou xx