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Published: April 15th 2010
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Oh Joy! Now there are some of you out there who will know only too well how happy I am that the dreaded black shoes have finally bitten the dust (all shout hurrah!). And what is more, John has given in and said that he would consider wearing flipflops. Now for those of you that don’t know, he has been violently opposed to such footwear, snarling at the mere suggestion that he gets a pair of what the Australians call ‘thongs’ all the time we were travelling around Asia - which is a great shame, because I bought a pair of really good croc flipflops for less than £3 and they’ve been great. So here I am in Australia, the land of the thong, trying desperately to find a pair of acceptable manly flipflops for my dearest.
I think we’ve mentioned several times just how unexpectedly expensive we’ve found this fair country - maybe to repeat ourselves, I’ll point out that the exchange rate is currently AU$1 = 62p - this is virtually double what it was a couple of years ago (ie AU$1 = 32p). Everything has been jolly costly, and I have been trying not to mentally convert
every time we buy something, because it was getting close to causing heart failure!! (not quite, but you get the picture!).
So how much would a pair of plastic beach shoes cost? The cheapest pair I’ve found is AU$26, the closest acceptable ones AU$29 (and then upwards toward stratospheric) - and in my wildest dreams, there’s no way I’m paying nearly £20 for something that John is going to moan about and trash as soon as he gets half a chance! He still doesn’t believe me when I say they are actually very comfortable when you give them a chance - but he has seen the evidence with his own eyes as nearly everyone here wears them most of the time. So close, but oh so far!
Now surprisingly, Tom, we haven’t seen many people wearing cowboy boots ...!
You can probably tell that we’re travelling yet again, and therefore don’t have a lot to say - I’ve done the airport shops in both Cairns and Sydney, and have spent quite a while looking at the latest paperback books (AU$25 - you work it out!), the Australian Merino wool shawls made in India, didgeridoos (or didgeridon’ts, haw haw) and the cutest baby Ugg boots (so close Andy and Claire, but then, so far!!). I drooled over the opals so much I was asked to leave the shop and take my saliva with me - oh, they really are stunning ... and so very, very expensive!!
Well, blow me down, no sooner have I written this, that I go off on a wander and find some Australian flipflops at the bargain price of AU$11.75 - I say Australian because the bases has dotted Aboriginal paintings on them! How cute! No need to say that John is over the moon...!!!
So at 23:10 local time we finally land in Auckland and go through the quarantine checks, which weren’t as painful as in Australia. Luckily we realised that the salami that we’d put in the case qualified as contraband, and John was in the middle of trying to find it in the case when the dog handler and dog came along to help. Apparently the dogs love finding meat, and ours managed it in double quick time!
We then had to get our passes stamped by a woman who first of all told us it was ‘our last chance to be honest about what we were bringing in’ (confrontational or what?!), she then commented on the amount of luggage we had and pinned John down with a beady eye and asked why I was pushing the trolley not him (because I’m always in charge of the trolley actually!) and she then finished up by asking if we had a tint. We looked blank, so she asked even louder if we had a tint. Bit personal, I thought as I was about to answer that my hair might have a little chemical enhancement, but John’s is 100% natural, when we realised she meant a tent. Welcome to New Zealand!
We finally got to our hotel after midnight, absolutely exhausted, but did have time to admire the spectacular view from our room before we collapsed in a heap.
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Steve
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For goodness sakes don't tell any sheep jokes and watch out for any comments that use the word 'six'. BTW: Direct currency conversion is an inaccurate estimation of price differences between the UK and Australia. All it does is convert coin value and you loose a little. You've not mentioned how much cheaper fuel was here did you? £1.20 average per litre ULP (average for Ipswich) = AUD$1.99 AUD$1.29 average per litre UPL (average Cairns QLD) = £0.77 Remember that most of our goods are imported and transport costs per capita are much higher than the overpoputated higher sales market that the UK is . Road transport costs to the various CBD and country towns in Austrlia is much higher than those in the UK owning to the huge distances. The SOE is somewhat different, so stop being a whinging pom :P (that's a tongue-in-cheek emot) Cheers Steve