Down Under

---

---

Its been a while since my last journal, well 4 months, but unlike my 5 months in Asia, its been a more sedate 4 months, I've been working most of the time, and lets face it, both Australia and New Zealand are hardly as exciting or different from home as Asia was. So going back about 4 months to late July, I was just leaving Bangkok, and SE Asia, from there, I flew to Singapore with a several hour stopover, before heading on to Sydney.

I flew from Singapore to Sydney on one of those new Airbus double decker planes. It was huge, and equipped with the latest in entertainment systems, including 100s of movies available on demand and TV shows music and games. The flight was relatively smooth, but on our final decent, the plane managed to drop quite suddenly which led to a couple of screams from passengers. The captain re-assured everyone, and although a bit bumpy the rest of the decent was absolutely fine.

Once through Australia's long winded immigration, customs and quarantine, in which I declared my muddy trainers I was wearing during the muddy bus fiasco in Laos less than a week before, and the quarantine officer took one look at them and said OK, I found my way to the backpacker travel stand in arrivals. I had a look through the various hostels, and was none the wiser on where I was gonna go, now that The Globe was supposedly closed, as I had been told. So I decided just to get the train over to Kings Cross. Unlike everywhere else I'd been this year, I spent 3 months in Sydney before so I could easily find my way around the city.

As I walked from the airport down to the platforms, I got my first feeling of how cold it was. Late July in Sydney is the coldest time of the year there, and I'd just come from 5 months in tropical or sub-tropical climates. I got on the battered Sydney train, and felt like I may as well be back in England, it was early rush hour, the train was packed, it was cold, covered in graffiti, and full of the same types of people you get at home.

I squeezed myself out at Kings Cross and headed up the escalators, past the police sniffer dogs, to the street. Once out I had a look along several streets for hostels of course it was 6:30 / 7 in the morning, so none of them were looking open. As I walked up Darlinghurst Road, I realised that The Globe, still had its big sign outside so I walked up to the front gate, there were signs of life inside, it looked like it was open. I rattled the cage to get someone's attention, a cleaner looked round the corner from The blue room, "We're closed til 8 mate!" he announced, "Come back then!"

So here I was stuck with an hour to kill outside in the cold on the main strip of Kings Cross. I went over and waited in the McDonalds across the road, watching all the various mad drunks that hang around The Cross all the time. The usual suspects, people shouting at each other in ridiculously strong aussie accents, people coming into McDonalds reeking of booze, etc. Not the best hour I've spent this year, but anyway. Once it reached 8 my wait was over and I went into the Globe to check in, and get some sleep in a real bed.

Sydney hadn't changed too much in the last 5 years, Kings Cross has been cleaned up a little but its still not the cleanest of places in the world. The city was pretty familiar and once I arrived I realised my planned 2 week stay in oz waiting to get my New Zealand working holiday visa, was gonna be extended as NZ immigration demanded I have a chest X-ray as I had been in Asia for the last 5 months and was in a high TB risk area.

So after a couple of days hanging out at the hostel, the new guy that runs the hostel these days asked me if I was looking for work, as they'd just had a guy call in looking for some labourers. I decided I may as well make some money whilst I was stuck waiting, so gave the guy a bell to find out what kind of work it was. The work was basically lugging bits of trees that the guy chopped down out to his truck ready to be taken away.

So bright and breezy I got up at 6 to catch a 6:45 train over to Lindfield on the north shore. The journey wasn't too bad but, it was freezing cold out and my warm clothes were limited. I waited outside Lindfield station for what would be the first of many mornings standing for half an hour waiting for Leon, the boss, to turn up. The first morning I was waiting by myself, but most mornings I was waiting with one of the other guys who were working with Leon too. First I was working with a Scottish guy for the first week, then for the rest of the time a Japanese guy from my hostel, who spoke only a little English, and Leon never managed to understand.

Most days we drove to different gardens in the northshore and loaded up his truck with bits of tree that Leon chopped down. One day we were stuck doing a rubber tree, which bleeds white sap so much it looks like some kind of gruesome tree murder spree is going on. Also the sap gets on your clothes and turns into a kind of rubbery substance, funny that with it being rubber tree!

I spent nearly 4 weeks on this job, Leon was a pretty good boss, he always paid us from 7:30 the time he was meant to pick us up, and regularly got cups of tea from the various home owners we were doing jobs for. Although as with all labouring jobs the language he speaks and the language I speak sometimes seemed worlds apart. One example we were digging a bed up by his drive, and he said' "I want a trench of at least 40cm wide by 30 deep!" The Japanese guy as usual relied on my understanding of the instructions and followed my lead. Well an hour later out Leon comes, "what have you dug there, that's not a trench that's a giant hole?" I figured at least meant the minimum, so to help us dig down it could be wider than 40cm but no of course he wanted it exactly 40cm wide, not 50 to 60 as the trench we had dug was.

Whilst working on that job I got to Know Shoichi, the Japanese guy quite well, even though sometimes our conversation became limited. I quickly got used to the fact that to be polite Shoichi always looked like he was understanding you, and then if there was a question at the end to be answered he'd not answer. There I would be talking away about something, then I'd ask him a question, and he'd look at me and smile, and say, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand!" Normally that would mean he hadn't understood a word I'd said.

I stayed in Sydney for a bit more than 4 weeks waiting for news of my New Zealand work visa. The Globe wasn't particularly busy most of the time I was there, when I arrived it was filled with 50 or more Brazilians who were there for this world youth day thing, where loads of young Catholics visit a big city that the pope is visiting too. Also amongst the various people that came through the Globe was a Chinese guy cycling around Australia, who'd pretty much managed to cover the country in a few months, he seemed to average nearly 200KM a day which is a lot of riding. I said did he not want to stop and visit stuff, and he said he enjoyed the cycling so much that's all he wanted to do with his time over there.

Also, on the bunk above me most of the time I was there, was a Korean guy that never spoke to anyone, but who seemed to set his alarm for 4 in the morning, get up and then go out for two hours, only to come back and go to bed before 10 in the morning. I asked a Korean girl, to ask him why he did that, and apparently he has insomnia, but why he needs to be woke up by an alarm if he has insomnia, I don't know.

I had a couple of friends to see in Australia, whilst I was there, Kerry and Max. Both of them I caught up with in Sydney, and then max, who lives in Melbourne these days I caught up with in Melbourne too. I went down to Melbourne for a few days towards the end of my 5 weeks in oz, I stayed in St Kilda for most of the time, although my first night was spent at All nations backpackers in the city, a place I stayed at the first time I went to Melbourne for my first night. Melbourne has changed quite a bit in the last few years they've really built up the south bank now, and they've completely replaced the old Spencer street train station with a swanky new station/shopping centre called Southern cross. I went out most evenings with Max and his friends, and in the days wandered around the town, including some parts I'd not been to before like Richmond, which has got a big Vietnamese area, and I got to have a really good cheap bowl of Pho, just like I was in Hanoi.

I also spent some time in St Kilda, which I think could be one of the best inner city neighbourhoods in the world. There's so much there, it beats most places, shame Melbourne's weather's not the best, but you can't have everything can you. After Melbourne I went back to Sydney for one day before catching my plane over to New Zealand.

On my last day I visited Kerry and her new family one more time, and then got the train back in the evening to the city. On the train journey I managed to prove if you suggest something enough to anyone they'll believe you, even if its obvious you're lying. As I was leaving Kerry's I had most of a long neck of beer left, so they said, take it on the train. I said, are you allowed to drink on the train, Kerry and her husband both said, not really, but no one will check, it'll be fine.

So Jason, her husband, drops me off at Hornsby station, and I see the train in the platform so I run onto the train as quickly as possible with my open beer in a plastic bag. Of course the carriage I run onto has about 5 transport police sat there having a chat. One of them stops me, and says, "excuse me mate is that beer open?" "No its closed" I tell him showing him the bottle in the bag which is clearly open. " Oh ok mate" he says and they let me go find a seat. That was a close one, so I sat down further up the carriage and put the beer down on the ground in the bag.

After a while they start walking up the carriage checking tickets, when they're checking me, one of the women with them, says, " Isn't that bottle of beer open?" One of the guys stops to look, and I replied "No" to the guy, as if, I dunno what she's on about, clearly showing them the bottle in the see thru bag open. And he just laughs and gives me an expression as if he doesn't know what she's on about either and they walked on. Now I don't know if they saw the bottle open and couldn't be bothered with it, or whether because I was telling them it wasn't open and showing it to them, they just believed me without looking properly, but it seemed to work a treat, and stopped me getting a potential fine, which was definitely good for my bank balance.

Once I got to kings Cross, I met up with some of the guys from the hostel for a couple of beers, and met some new people there too, including a Finnish guy that had just come from Auckland. As I'd been asking a few people for hostel recommendations in Auckland, I asked this guy, and his response was, "I don't know a good hostel to stay at, but I can tell you somewhere not to stay! Don't stay at Queen Street backpackers, its a real dump!"

After a couple of hours I went to bed about 12 not reckoning on my lack of sleep from the overnight bus journey the night before being my undoing. I'd set my alarm for 5/5.30ish to get up and catch a train over to the airport for my 9 o'clock flight, but I was so tired I managed to sleep through more than an hour and a half of the alarm before waking up just past 7 extremely late for my flight. I managed to get up dressed and finish off packing in about 15 minutes and at 7:30 I ran out of the hostel onto Darlinghurst Road, hailing a cab that was driving past. "Get me to the airport as quick as possible mate." He managed to get me to the airport in less than 20 mins so by the time I got out and paid him I had about an hour and 10 minutes left to my flight.

Apart from the panic at 7 in the morning and the 40 buck cab ride that could've been a 15 buck train journey arriving late wasn't really an issue as I still wasn't the last to check in, and once I'd gone through security I still had to wait half an hour before I could get on the plane.

I arrived in Auckland about middayish, and went through New Zealand's strict quarantine procedure pretty quickly, then still not knowing where I was gonna go and stay I went to the backpacker accommodation stand. I phoned up a couple of places which were either expensive or full, and finally I settled on phoning Queen Street backpackers, the place the Finnish guy told me not to stay at, and ended up staying there.

So once in Auckland I was pretty much on my last 100 pounds in my bank account, so I needed work as quick as possible. As it was I'd been paying for hostels over the last few weeks on my credit card, once my aussie cash that I'd earnt labouring had ran out. On the Saturday I managed to sort out the 3 things I needed before I could get work, applying for an IRD number (the NZ equivalent of a national insurance number), getting a cheap pay as you go mobile phone, and opening a New Zealand bank account to put my pay into. Then on the Monday I had to go out and find work. The first 3 days I spent all day going to temping agencies, doing tests, having interviews, etc. By the Thursday I had a few possible options of work but nothing concrete, then I had two interviews on the Friday, and got offered one of the jobs, at NZ's 3rd biggest Telco company, TelstraClear, part of Australia's big Telco firm Telstra.

The following Monday I started, and began 3 months of mundane, normal 9-5 working. Working in a New Zealand office was pretty similar to home, expect the two important differences are they give you free tea and coffee (no tea kitty arguments like we used to have all day at AT&T), and on Friday afternoons they let you drink beer in the office, which our boss paid for. Everything was pretty laidback and it was certainly less stressful than working in the UK. The other good thing about working at TelstraClear was the job was based across the harbour on the northshore, so every morning I had to get a bus out of the centre of town across the harbour bridge. This always reminds you that Auckland maybe quite a small city, but it has an amazing setting. Set on a huge harbour surrounded by extinct volcanoes, as the bus drives up onto the bridge, you can see back towards the city and its Sky Tower, with little steep green hills dotting the landscape. You can also see out across the Hauraki Gulf and the hundreds of volcanic islands that dot it, including the huge Rangitoto, the most recent volcano in the Auckland area. Rangitoto erupted from the sea about 600 years ago, and created the huge perfect volcanic cone that juts out of the sea just east of the northshore.

I've spent the last 3 months pretty much working on the northshore and living in central Auckland. I made a few weekend trips away around the north island, to make the most of my time over here. The first few weeks my dad and uncle were here visiting our relatives who live out in west Auckland, so I visited them most weekend days, including going out to Bethals beach, going for a walk in the Waitakeres, a range of small mountains on the western side of the city, and even going to a family party one Sunday.

One weekend in October, a group of four of us went on a trip down to Tongariro national park in the centre of the north island. The four of us sounded like the start of a new kind of joke.....

There was an Englishman, Irishman, Italian, and a French/Senegalese girl, and they went on a trip to......

Well kinda...

Anyway, I hired a car and late Friday night we drove the four hours down to Tongariro. At the start of the journey, Lenny, and nafissa (Irishman, and French/Senegalese girl) bought a box of beer for the 3 of us (Emilio, the Italian, doesn't drink anymore). I of course couldn't have any until I got to the other end, cos I was driving, but the other two started drinking as we were leaving Auckland, and as a result on the journey down we had approximately 7 different piss stops!! I wouldn't mind, but the first two were at service stations before we even left Auckland. And once out in the wilds Nafissa wanted a proper toilet each time, but had to deal with the side of the road because neither of them ever needed the loo when we passed a proper stop area with a toilet, then 20 mins down the road they'd both be saying, "Erhh, John can we stop soon, in fact can we stop now!!"

So after our interesting drive down we got to the hostel about midnight, and went to bed. On the Saturday we did most of the Tongariro crossing, which is supposed to be one of the best one day walks in the world. When we started out it was really cloudy and you couldn't see any of the mountains, but as we got further up the side of the mountain, the cloud cleared and we could see the two closest snow covered peaks right in front of us. Once we got to a certain point the path became completely snow, a little after this, Emilio and Nafissa turned back saying they couldn't walk in snow in trainers, and me and Lenny turned into children and started throwing snow balls, running in the snow, making snow angels, etc.

Also to try and water proof his trainers in the snow Lenny put on plastic shopping bags over his shoes, but he only had one, so he ended up spending most of the walk trudging through the snow with what looked like a plastic bag on one foot, and a trainer on the other. The two of us walked on to the far side of the flat snow covered crater and up to a ridge where we could see down the other side, then turned back to meet the others and the car.

On the Sunday we took a leisurely drive back to Auckland, ready to drop the car off before 5 near the airport. Over the weeks a few of us also took some day trips over to Rangitoto, the big volcanic cone out in the Hauraki gulf, and walked up to the top of it to see the views of the city and the harbour. I went to Waitomo, famous caves which are the home of loads of glow-worms. And more recently we went to Waiheke island to visit some vineyards, and sit out in the sun as the weather started to get better.

On the labour day weekend at the end of October I took an extra day off work so I could have a four day trip down to windy Wellington and visited Napier too on the way back up. In Wellington I stayed in a nice little hostel, which was like house, and it reminded me that I had planned to leave QSB weeks ago, but here it was nearly two months into my stay in Auckland, and I was still at the giant faceless backpackers in central Auckland.

The other bad thing about staying at QSB was that with the common room in effect being a giant cinema with a bar in the corner where you had to buy their drink, I found myself spending more and more of my time and money downstairs in a pub called the Right Track. Most of the long termers at the hostel were there all the time, and you walked past the outside as you walked up to the hostel entrance, so there was always people saying, "Why, don't you come in for a drink?"

But it wasn't the fact I was spending all my time in the pub, or that I didn't like the hostel, in the end what made me finally leave was the announcement that the rent was going up at QSB. A few of us said we'd try and find another hostel to stay at. A couple of them went out looking when I was at work, and it seemed to come down in the end to a hostel I'd looked at on my first day in Auckland, but that was full then, or staying at QSB. At this point we split up and two of us moved over to City Groove, whilst the majority remained at QSB, but not for long!

Slowly over the following weeks more and more QSB people moved over to City Groove, by the time I left there was about 7 of us over there. City Groove was a much nicer place to live long term, its only down side being a 10 minute walk including a hill from the bus stop in the centre of town, where as QSB was round the corner from the bus stop. It was more like a big shared house, had a back garden, was set on a small park, just more homely in general, and with the weather picking up as I moved in, even better cos you could sit out in the park in the sun at weekends.

I had about 6 weeks left in Auckland once I moved over to City Groove, and managed to fill the weekends with various things. Last weekend we decided to have a real charcoal barbeque, even though there wasn't a barbeque at the hostel. On the Saturday we went out looking for either some disposable barbeques or some charcoal. In warehouse (a cheap argos type shop) we found some disposable barbies but they would only allow you to cook two sausages at a time. I'm not sure why they were so small, but we couldn't use them. There was also some charcoal there, but we thought better of it as it was expensive, and there must be disposable barbies somewhere.

So next we went to Foodtown to buy some food, and find charcoal or barbeques. We found food, but no charcoal, in fact several people in Foodtown couldn't understand the concept of charcoal, they kept saying, "Coal!" After Foodtown we wandered back to the hostel with 40 bucks worth of food, but no charcoal or general heating based materials. On the way back we even tried a garage, and a Chinese supermarket, but no luck. So after much discussion back at the hostel, we ended up going all the way back to Warehouse to pick up two bags of charcoal.

Then once back with the charcoal, we had to build a barbeque in the back garden. We managed to find some bricks, and then set about trying to start it. Our first attempt was abysmal, I don't know why I thought it might work, but one of the guys just attempted to light the bag the charcoal was in, of course that just ended up in burning the bag for about 2 minutes and then it going out. So then we decided we need to put the coals on a higher platform so we could put paper underneath, and let air get through the fire. Once we started doing this and spent more than an hour slowly feeding the fire with cardboard and wood, the barbeque got going.

The next day we had another barbeque, but once again, without any firelighters or flammable liquid it took nearly two hours of continually feeding the fire, paper, cardboard, and small twigs.

So, I've finished my 3 months working in Auckland now, it had its good points and bad points, the main reason people come to New Zealand is for the scenery and mountains and not its cities so in some ways its a shame I had to spend so much of my time just in their big city, that doesn't even feel as big as Brum, although technically they have a similar population. The centre of Auckland is very small, perhaps because the whole city is so spread out, many people don't come into the city very regularly.

The whole country feels a bit more like a small town, which is good in some ways, everyone was incredibly friendly, and laid back. At work I continually got invited to various things, one colleague laid on a barbeque at his house one evening just so I could experience a real Kiwi barbeque. In shops and cafes, people seemed genuinely pleased to see you coming in and buying stuff, all very different from the general attitude back at home.

So I've just finished work, and I flew down to the South Island on saturday, for a week before, heading across the Pacific to California for christmas and New Year.

---