Here we go again

On 6 April 2010 I said that would be my last posting. Well, I lied, because today we're been to see Jolene in Flight Centre and booked to go back next year. Last time Trevor was in England I lent him my Spinal Tap DVD, and I need to get it back.... So on 11 March we will fly Singapore Airlines to Adelaide, with an overnight in Singapore, for a few days mooching about. Then a flight to Canberra where, after a night's stay, we'll pick up a hire car and drive to Bateman's Bay (NSW)where Glenda and Trevor live. We'll be there a couple of weeks, renting an apartment across the road from their house. After that, we'll drive to Sydney, drop off the car, and stay a couple of days. We had thought we'd take in the Blue Mountains but in view of the fires we're giving that a miss. We fly home from Sydney, again via Singapore, arriving back home on 9 April. There a still a few bits and pieces to sort out, but that's the bones of it. I'll be posting whenever I can find some Wi-Fi, and have told Trevor I want to go surfing again. More exciting news in due course.

This will be my last posting. I thought I would entertain you with some thoughts about Oz.

The universal greeting is “How’re you going?” to which the correct response is “Good, mate, how’re you?” and not “How kind of you to enquire. In fact, I went after breakfast”.

All their coffees are called something different. The most common are the long black, which we would call an Americano, and the flat white, which has no British equivalent – basically a white coffee, but not all frothed up.

Yoghurt is pronounced yoe-gurt

Universal response to any request is “No worries”

Driving is pretty much the same as here, except that ‘no entry’ signs are followed by a sign saying ‘WRONG WAY – GO BACK’ which is rather nice.

Speed limits are enforced with fierce penalties and are strictly observed, so far as I could see. I was told that many cars are fitted with a speed governor, because keeping down to 110 km/hr on empty freeways is pretty difficult.

Courgettes are called zucchini

Distances are vast. You can drive two hours from Bateman’s Bay, NSW, to Canberra, in what is a fairly well-populated part of the country, and encounter just two small towns along the way. In WA, the largest State, there is a population of 1.4 million, of whom 1 million live in Perth/Fremantle. The remaining 400,000 live in an area half the size of all Europe; clearly there is a lot of space between the people.

Thongs are flip flops, not uncomfortable pants

The major cities seem full of young people – through immigration Australia has added nearly 50% of its population in the last two generations. This bodes well for its future, by which I mean there will be someone to pay the pensions of the oldies, which is important, I think..

Fire is a constant worry, especially in NSW and Victoria, the most populous States. The Australian terrain, and the plants and trees that live there, have evolved to depend on regular fires, usually started by lightning, for regeneration. Pretty well every summer homes are destroyed and lives lost through fires, which can advance at devastating speed. We saw camp site notices prohibiting fires in all circumstances, which kind of defeats the object of camping, I should have thought.

The Aussies are, in my experience anyway, open and friendly. They will always stop and have a chat – if they hear an English accent you can rely on hearing about their geographic connection/ancestry/trip to England or whatever.

Despite the harshness of the interior, the large number of species that can kill you (whilst this can be exaggerated, there are certainly a large number of creatures which can seriously spoil your day), and the possibility of having your house burned down every summer, Australia is a beautiful country, blessed with, for the most part, good weather. It is not surprising that so many people go to live there. If the opportunity arises, we will go back, certainly to Bateman’s Bay, which is a gorgeous area. If we don’t, we’ve got many happy memories to bore people with.

Finally, I had so many complaints because people could not access the photos I put on my Facebook page, I have opened a Flickr account. The photos can now be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobzinoz

This week we have two Wednesdays. We left Sydney, flew for thirteen hours, and landed in San Francisco five hours before we took off. How is this possible? Someone should look into this.

Anyway, it’s back to winter coats: on arrival, it’s cold and wet here. Staying at the Chancellor, on recommendation of friends; it’s a fine old boutique hotel, and in a good position in the city.

SF is not, I suspect, a typical US city. It is quite European in many ways: there are trams, and 3 cable car routes, not too much traffic, steep hills, haphazard little streets, and above all the views of the bay and the bridges. For my money the Bay Bridge is every bit as grand as the Golden Gate, for all the latter’s iconic status. We did the usual touristy things: up to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, for the views; Pier 39 for the tat; and cruise around the bay, taking in the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

Apparently, of all the prisoners who ever escaped from Alcatraz ,only five were not recaptured, and they probably drowned; although the island is only 2,000 yards from shore, the waters are very cold, the currents strong, and there are sometimes sharks.

The customer service ethic is very strong here, and people are very keen to please you. They have the original Levi’s store just round the corner from where we’re staying. I needed some new jeans so we popped in. The staff couldn’t have been more helpful, and one in particular was very keen to let me know his name was Bill. When we got to checkout, the cashier said “…and were you helped by anyone? Yes? I don’t suppose you caught their name?”

Finally, from the USA, the last word on the great thong debate. We think it’s a G string, Aussies a flip flop; here, as you would expect, they go both ways (see pic).

Tomorrow, we fly home.

PS. Sorry about the lack of more photos – wifi here is very flaky, and doesn’t last long enough for the upload. Will deal with this when I get home

Had to buy an umbrella! For the first time since we left home on 1 March it’s raining.

We walked down to Circular Quay, to the Museum of Contemporary Art where there was an installation by Olafur Eliasson, who did the weather project at Tate Modern, which we enjoyed. This was very good too; doubly so as we were able to claim concessionary prices as old codgers.

After lunch we caught the ferry to Manly. Manly is a suburb of Sydney, noted for its surf beach. It gets its name from the fact that a governor of NSW “admired the manly bearing” of the local Aborigines. Possibly he was a naval man. Not much to do there, given the rain, so we mooched around a bit and caught the ferry back.

In the evening we went to George and Natalie’s in the suburb if Lewisham. They’ve done a lot of renovation to the house and garden of which they’re justly proud (“come and see my basil!”). They’ve done it all really well, and have ‘before and after’ photos, including pics of Natalie covered in paint, and wriggling in the ceiling space. He had promised us a barbie, and wasn’t going to let the rain stand in the way, rigging up a huge canopy over the patio. We were joined by Natalie’s mum and dad, and after baby Amelia (7 weeks) had been put to bed, sat down to a feast (including kangaroo – much more sustainable in Aussie conditions than beef). This was our last night in Australia, and it couldn’t have been nicer: lights in the garden, rain pouring down…..

Last word on Australia: two countries divided by a common language. We were half-watching some crappy morning TV programme in the hotel, and the big story concerned a restaurant in Brisbane who was surcharging customers who came in wearing thongs. Why would you go out to eat in your pants? Turns out, over here when they talk about thongs they mean flip flops. When we were in Perth I had seen a sign outside a pub saying no thongs or workboots, which makes sense now. I know in Wales or somewhere they’ve had to stop people going in Tesco in their pyjamas, but pub-goers in thongs and workboots…..? I would pay a lot to see that.

On to San Francisco in the morning.

We’re in Sydney now, staying at a hotel next to Darling Harbour. Around the harbour itself is a huge complex, completed in 1988 to mark the bi-centenary of the first convicts arriving from Britain, and the creation of the NSW Colony. The complex comprises exhibition centre, conference centre, aquarium, a Chinese garden,museums, restaurants, bars, and entertainments of all sorts. There are loads of people around, and if you’re there as the sun goes down, and the lights come on and reflect in the water, it all looks quite magical, especially if as now there’s a full moon as well.

Sydney is a modern, bustly, multicultural city, though unlike, say, Perth, a good deal of the old has been preserved. One such area is The Rocks, which we reached by walking the length of George St. This is a bit like walking down Oxford St and finding yourself in the Lanes in Brighton. After a nice lunch we walked down to Circular Quay, where the boats come in, and the around the harbour, by way of the Botanic Gardens, to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a lookout point for the best view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Mrs Macquarie was the wife of the Colony’s first governor, and apparently this is where she liked to have a bit of a sit down when on one of her strolls. The picture shows Mrs A and the view from this very spot.

It was quite warm and muggy, so we treated ourselves to a ferry ride back to Darling Harbour where we visited the aquarium. There are some really bizarre creatures in here – the pig-nosed turtle, the Australian pineapple fish, the pot-bellied seahorse, to name but a few – as well as the stuff you would expect, and all are very well showcased and described. There was also a tank containing a duck billed platypus, but like the kangaroos of Pebbly Beach, he was nowhere to be seen. The finale was the oceanarium, full of horrible looking sharks and huge rays. Simon’s friend George’s wife Natalie’s dad was CFO at the aquarium on the day when the glass sides fractured and the fish and the visitors mingled rather more intimately than they had expected. That must have been a day to remember. For the visitors anyway; fish can’t remember anything.

Tomorrow we're getting the ferry to Manly, and in the evening a barbie at George's, and a peek at the new baby. More anon.

Today we climbed a mountain. Actually we didn’t. Trevor and grandson Owen climbed Mount Pigeon House, so called because it’s got a flat bit on the top that looks like a pigeon coop. Pat and Glenda and I climbed up a good deal of the way, then went back down to the bottom to wait. There, a pair of goannas (a big lizard shaped a bit like a crocodile, but harmless) were posing for photographs (see pic above). There is a public loo there as well, employing a method of sanitation called the “long drop”. I could describe this more fully but this is probably not the place.

Mount Pigeon House is reached via a long, long dirt road, which, being dry, is very dusty. In some stretches the depth of dust on the track made driving a bit like driving through snow. Naturally cars kick up a great deal of dust and any car following has to keep a respectful distance. This didn’t trouble us going there, but coming back we were behind a car, and at one point visibility was such that we had to stop and wait for the dust to clear. Naturally, some fool in an SUV roared past us and kicked up a huge dust storm, so we had to wait even longer. What an arse.

Time was getting on and we hadn’t had any lunch, so we went to Ulladulla for a bite to eat. This is a lovely little fishing town, (see pic) with a perfect harbour, with kiddies’ playground and various little eateries.

This really has been a good week; this is a beautiful part of the world and the folks who live here really are very lucky.

Tomorrow, we are going to Canberra airport for a short flight to Sydney, for the next part of our adventure

Re the last posting, something seems to be awry. Will try again tomorrow!