a

a

Anyway, I’m here, and it feels far more Christmassy here as, rather than the damp and grey we’ve been having in the UK, here it’s cold but dry. So yesterday I put on my scarf and went wandering around Union Square and the Village, until all of a sudden it started to snow and I became a little kid!! I couldn’t help it I just had to run around making angels on the ground….if there had actually been any snow that settled they might not have arrested me, which is why I am writing to you from the asylum. Still I’m looking forward to my next pills and talks with the nice man in a white coat…

a

a

Each time I turned over to another station I found Snow Patrol, Avril Lavigne or Snow Patrol playing, interspersed with those radio ‘personalities’ so beloved of local radio station in the UK. They have even turfed up a Police/Snow Patrol mash-up so they can get Snow Patrol on twice an hour. Occasionally, when they had decided that Snow Patrol had earned enough for their new houses, they would put on one of those derivative Talk Radio shows, where people with no brains rang in to say nothing very much while the host made suitably outraged/sympathetic/idiotic noises depending on what the topic was. How I missed BBC’s 6Music. Fortunately for me, my brother’s car has a very nice engine noise……

a

I drove the near 900km of the Hume Highway in my brother’s car, which he kindly donated to me while he’s away on his honeymoon….well I thought it was the kindness of his heart, but it turns out that while working for Holden (that’s GM in these parts) he gets a new car every 10 000kms, so my driving this will mean he gets back and can order himself a new one…. Anyway he’s got a Commodore, which is a big lazy thing that you point up the road, hit the cruise control button and watch the world go by. I was a bit annoyed with the Hume highway though, unlike the roads in the US across the midwest, this one actually has a few curves!

The Highway was actually built to connect up Melbourne and Sydney, although the two cities have never really seen eye to eye and you get this feeling from the highway itself. During the early part of the 20th Century, Melbourne was the seat of government for Australia. However Sydney, the oldest and, by then, biggest city, didn’t like this state of affairs, so they reached an uneasy compromise and built Canberra as the capital, a little way off the Hume Highway. So as I hit the highway and start driving it is all dual carriageway with a 110km/h speed limit (in the state of Victoria this is close to light speed!) until you hit the New South Wales border, when things get a lot more single carriageway like. There is a lot of building work going on and a promise that 90% will be dual carriageway by 2009, but it’s amazing that all the slower roads fall on the Melbourne side of Canberra….anyone would think they didn’t want those pesky Melbourne-ites visiting the place

Anyway the journey itself was fairly uneventful, wending my way through the bush, which was a vivid purple for large portions from the lavender farms along the way, for ten hours with occasional stops….one of which involved a close encounter with a huntsman spider! Most men are familiar with the weird sensation of not being able to go if there is someone else stood too close to you? Well I was quite happily, well going, when I looked up into the rafters of the shedlike dunny as my eye caught some movement and I was confronted with a scary beasty from the depths of the woods….very suddenly I simultaneously wanted to go and not go at the same time!

Apart from that, the next most scary thing was navigating Sydney’s notorious road system. I was driving up from the south-west and I wanted to get to Manly, on the coast in the northern part of Sydney. I was not sure whether to follow the route around the West of the city or the one that takes you under the airport and up the eastern side. As it happens the decision was made for me as the western route was a toll road and would only let you play if you had a tag on your car. The other route was also a toll route, but at last I could pay in good, old fashioned, plastic money with a see through bit. Anyway the traffic thickened dramatically as I reached the signs saying 40Km to Sydney (about 25 miles) and soon I was fighting my way through thick trafic with people diving in and out, while trying to follow the signs while keeping an eye on the speed limits that changed every few minutes which the Aussies enforce these with the religious zeal of a government paying for the work on the Hume Highway with a few more speeding tickets. By this point it was also getting dark so I was knackered and getting dazzled too…. After cutting up and getting cut up a few times I paid a toll and found myself streaming through a 3 lane tunnel under the airport, although the three lanes did become two very suddenly a few times and I wasn’t the only one to find myself in the wrong lane. A few more dubious cut-up manoveurs and I found myself on the Eastern Distribution (they must have got consultants in to think up that name!) where another toll was required. I then saw a sign ahead for the bridge or the tunnel….decisions, decisions. So, I am in Sydney, so I am going to go over the Bridge, one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks. So I turned off and promptly found myself in the tunnel. The tunnel emerged on into Northern Sydney and you suddenly go from a well lit, two lane tunnel, into a dark squllion lane mess, which invariably means I will be on the wrong side of for my turn off…..oh yes, there it goes!

Once you escape this you find yourself victim of one of the things that makes Sydney so spectacular, it’s geography. The whole place is based around a series of inlets and harbours, which means the land around it rises and falls, quite dramatically at points. One of these is occurs as you approach Manly, when you suddenly find yourself careering down a steep, twisty slope with three lanes of traffic for company. For added excitement, they then decide to make it two lanes, with no warning, just as you reach max speed at the bottom of the hill…. Finally though I made it to Manly, where I am staying. So you find me writing this, perched up on top of the hill overlooking the harbour, with Sydney’s CBD looming over the other side of the harbour….more to follow!

a

The parks are also pretty amazing, the vgetation always looks so ghostly as all the trees have a wizened, etherial quality and the paths wend their way through to, well, where ever really! In this case it was along old aboriginal tracks alongside a dried up creek, along a ridge watching the kangaroos watching us, then up a hill to an ancient, smoothed rock overlooking the sacred territory of the Australian Federal Airport Authourity (or Tullamarine Airport as it’s better known around here) to watch the ancient spirits of Virgin Blue and Jetstar rise up to the heavens…..

You do get a weird feeling from it though, Australia is about the last place on earth you will get yourself caught in an earthquake, it is about the oldest and most stable land on earth, it has literally been like this for eons. It’s near neighbour, New Zealand, is pretty much the opposite, with it’s volcanic activity throwing up new islands regularly and it’s Southern Alps all dramatic sharp edges and peaks. In contrast Australia is rounded and smoothed through millenia of weathering, the rocks have been carved into some weird an wonderful, organic shapes by the winds and rains. The animals, famously the most poisonous in the world, are that way as they have evolved in lockstep with their predators and prey so each has had to develop better poisons and resistances to survice….which I find quite an amazing thought, although not a thought I would like to actually meet face-to-face in the wild, I’m looking to get ancient and mystical too!

a

Anyway, things that have changed about Melbourne since I was last here two years ago. Well Spencer Street Station is now Southern Cross station and is fully accompanied by lots of wavey roof type architecture and a bloody huge outlet mall on stilts next door. There has also been a continuing property boom, but unlike London where almost all the blocks being put up are pretty bland and uniform, they do like they funky details here (basically they paint them some weird and wonderful colours). Beyond that, I have had the energy to consume coffee and that has been about it….it is hell getting up at a ‘reasonable’ hour, I don’t know how people do it!!

So, Mum arrived on Friday night, so I was joined by another jetlag victim to fall asleep at about 8pm and wonder why as this is about 11am back in the UK, which also means I have had someone to talk to as we both wake up at these aforementioned ‘reasnable’ hours, which really aren’t….have I mentioned that before? Anyway my bruvver, seeign as it was the weekend, but he still gets up at ‘reasonable’ hours, thought it would be fun to take us to the tulip festival in Silvan….now I know what you are thinking, but it was actually a good move as Melbourne was full of people with face paint and screaming ‘Go Cats’, which was not some marketing thing for feline feed, but turned out was a reference to the Geelong Cats being in the final of the AFL (imagine rugby played on a cricket field with fewer rules and more referees) championship. This seems to be a big deal around here, but nowhere else in Australia really….anyway, Silvan, tulips, I remember….yes, well if you were going to grow tulips, the natural place you would go to grow them would be the mountain range wouldn’t it? I mean that’s where the Dutch grow them isn’t it….and it was a slightly surreal experience - lots of people dressed up in Dutch costumes in the mountains, selling ‘rookwurst’ and ‘poffetjes’ amongst the tulips, while a trad jazz band plays, er trad jazz, to an audience almost exclusively of Indian and Chinese as all the ‘true blue’ Aussies were watching the footy (meaning AFL – yes that is another game not played with feet that people seem to think should be called ‘football’….)

After having marvelled at the selection of tulips and ways of serving sausage, we headed off back towards the city, via the reservoir, the levels of which seem to be a bit of an obsession around these parts after finding themseles in drought conditions almost as often as we are in the UK, but having the excuse of not getting much rain. After we headed down from the hills, past a seemingly never ending supply of quaint tea rooms, we headed home via the seafront suburbs of St Kilda and Brighton. I am always amazed at the architecture along the seafront there – some of it 1930s mock tudor and British art deco, some of it 60s concrete, a fair amount of it looking like Miami deco (although built recently) and some looking like office blocks….. We stopped for a cuppa on Brighton seafront, while getting blown around a bit by the wind, just like the real thing, before finding out that the ‘Go Cats’ thing had obviously worked well and they had won by a record breaking margin of some points to not anywhere near as many. They were also happy about Australia having won in the Rugby thing too (World Cup or something?) but could I find any coverage or anyone that knew anything about proper sports to ask? I was really miffed that nobody had a clue about the Premiership results until I got back to my brother’s house and I remembered that with the time difference we are atually in next week and the football had not kicked off yet. Manchester City vs Newcastle kicked off around 9pm, fantastic! I sat down, tuned in and promptly fell asleep…..these bloody ‘reasonable’ hours!!

a

The flight itself was pretty uneventful on the first leg to Hong Kong, but I got to play with the new on demand video thingy which was fun….unlike Shrek the Third. Finally, after my buttocks were about to go into terminal numbness, we landed in Hong Kong, which was nowhere near as fun/sary as it used to be. In the good old days, you flew in between mountains and even apartment blocks, now all that happens is you get a bit nervous as it looks like you are going to land on the water until the reclaimed land of the runway suddenly appears from the water beneath you. The airport was not as impressive as I hoped either, but it was suitably daft – we all had to get off the plane, walk bloody miles down a corridor, go through security again, walk bloody miles down another corridor, wait for an hour, then get back into the same seat on the same plane we had left….

Off we go again towards Melbourne and I settle into the flight with some inedible chicken (which was suprising as most airline food is at least edible these days!) and a relapse of numb bum. The lights were all turned down, but I was trying to stay awake so I might actually sleep on my first night in Oz. I still had to ondemand gadget to play with so I flicked through, selected ’300′ and sat back. A little while into the film I got a note pushed through between the seats from behind. The note said ‘EXCUSE ME. DO YOU HAVE TO WATCH THAT FILM. I HAVE CAUGHT A COUPLE OF GLIMPSES AND I AM SCARED MY 10 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER WILL. I WOULD APPRECIATE SOMETHING ELSE. THE LADY BEHIND.’ – yes it was in caps too! Now there is some t&a and some violence in there and I hadn’t realised there was a kid behind me….however, the tone was so Daily Mail, I was tempted to carry on watching at that point, but thought it churlish. However when I got towards the end of the flight I noticed what it was written on – the back of a leaflet claiming ‘The Gospel News for Eternal Salvation’!! Now not only was the woman being a pain in the arse and rude but essentially accusing me of being Satan (OK, maybe only a minor league demon, but that’s almost worse, I mean who really wants to be the Accrington Stanley of the underworld?) for watching a 15 rated film that even Quantas feel is fine to have on their media system! If they were really interested in converting me to their cause, the last thing you would want to do is piss someone off in this manner, it simply goes to prove that they have no real interest in spreading the word and every interest in sticking their noses in where it is not wanted. Unfortunately when we got to Melbourne I couldn’t find a bookshop to buy a copy of Dawkin’s ‘The God Delusion’ and give them as a little ‘thank you’….

Oh yeah to top it off, got to Melbourne, 3 or 4 planes arrived at the same time and they decided to only have enough staff to man one of the X-ray machines they insist you put all luggage through in customs – it was a complete scrum, there were a couple of fights….admittedly I was on the same plane as Shane Warne (An Australian cricketing legend who recently retired and is all over the papers here after lots of claims of adultery etc) and he wasn’t involed in any of them, mainly cos he had ’somehow’ managed to get to the front of the queue and by now had denied everything to the media, told the world how good it was to be home to see kids etc. say thanks to everyone, get into his car, get home, have a few beers, try to explain those ‘text messages’ to his missus, and make himself comfy in the spare room. Two hours after he had done all this I finally emerged into the Melbourne evening, 37 hours after setting off from home….

Anyway I am here now and oddly seem to be jetlagged as I went to bed and got up quite happily at the same time as my brother this morning….that never happens!!

a

It does put into perspective our complaints about how crap a summer we’ve had over here in the UK though doesn’t it….!

a