Aussie Aussie Aussie Out Out Out
Hello again. Sorry for the delay in updating the site. We've been a little busy - there's been lots of footie to watch (a subject we'll come back to), friends to visit and places to see.
A quick refresher shows me we last spoke while in Maroochydore after a visit to Australia Zoo. Well from there we headed up north to Rainbow Beach and booked a 4WD tour to Fraser Island. After a quick talk about the dangers of driving on sand and how to stay "dingo safe" we were thrown together with seven others and left to fend for ourselves for the next three days with only alcohol, a bodyboard and a copious supply of red meat to keep us alive [and halloumi for those who don't do meat]. So we swam in some surprisingly cold lakes, cleaned our teeth with sand, ate crisp sarnies, played in the staining mud, sang round camp fires and surfed the dunes, all while failing to spot a single dingo but making sure we had more fun than the other two groups that left the hostel with us. A final mad dash for the last ferry home by a certain crazy dutchman ended a memorable trip in style - you'd better meet the gang...
Left to right: Katryn, Katja (kneeling), Vicky, Adam, Jen (kneeling), Dave, Rich, Geert, Col.
After all that excitement it was time to relax a little, and that meant a comfy bed and home cooked food. Time to visit Tyson and Jenna (fron Fernie, check back if you've forgtten). The little darlings drove up to get us at Maroochydore, despite a pair of well earned hangovers, and we spent the next week in the comfort of suburban Brisbane. Just in case you have forgotten, this is Tyson doing a grand job on the barbie...
and Jenna being arty...
We spent the next week in style thanks to the loan of a car and a decent DVD selection. Tyson's dad was thoughtful enough to show us the local wildlife (my words, definitely not Jen's)...
We played touch footie in the park, watched the State of Origin match 2 with most of Tyson's family (Queensland destroyed NSW - go the Maroons) and took a trip down to Surfer's Paradise with Jenna while Tyson had to work.(NB for Calgary Dave - they live in the granny flat attached to Tyson's parents house and both work in the family business, which makes taking a sicky slightly trickier. Not that you'd do something like that of course.) And with a trip into the city to see a live footie game (Brisbane Broncos v. St. George Dragons) a good aussie time was had by all.
Cue today's rant, feel free to ignore the next paragraph, you won't be missing anything constructive...
Now about all this footie. As an englishman, footie is footie. That is to say football. But to a Queenslander, for some unknown reason, footie is actually rugby league, and to a Victorian, footie is aussie rules football. I have no idea what it means to anybody from Sydney, but what footie certainly doesn't mean is anything to do with "soccer". Now, seeing as Australia managed to qualify for the World Cup it was initially quite nice to be able to see plenty of games on the telly and go out and watch them at night on the big screens (they weren't so happy when Brasil beat them, a spectacle I got to watch in Federation Square - Melbourne, and it certainly wasn't as close as they'd like to think it was). However, it did mean that I had to put up with the aussie pundits telling me how everything the Socceroos did was historic - the historic first goal, the historic first win (it was only Japan! They're crap!) - and everything England did was disappointing. I don't need to go half way round the world to listen to the media complain about an english football team. And if one more stupid aussie screamed for a penalty when somebody was tackled in the centre circle or talked about how many goals each team had "kicked" I was going to scream. Thankfully, due to a last sixteen game with Italy and a classic last second dubious penalty all I could do was laugh. And laugh and laugh and then laugh some more. Right until we lost on penalties. Again. Oh well, I'll be cheering for Italy in the final. OK, rant over.
After sponging off Tyson and Jenna for a week, we decided to head for Melbourne to sponge off Mark and Trish (they were in Fernie as well). We all stayed at Mark's place and the first thing we did was visit the Good Food And Wine Show and sampled far too much of the local tipple. This is the four of us at the Crown Casino, the only casino in Melbourne. None of us are quite sure what we were doing here - we should probably have sampled a bit more of the local food...
While Trish worked during the week Mark chauffered us around the city to see the sights. So we looked around Melbourne - it's a big city like many others but there are some nice parks, there are some great coffee shops selling fantastic cakes in St. Kilda and Lygon Street especially, and the sun decided to put in an appearance while we strolled along St. Kilda beach which briefly made us forget how damn cold it was. They're having 30+ degrees in Germany and Melbourne is struggling for double figures. Here's a deceptive picture of the botanic gardens (sunny - yes, hot - you wish)...
We spent almost two weeks in Melbourne, including 3 days when we nipped out, hired a car and drove along the Great Ocean Road. While getting blown about by the wind and getting soaked by the rain we managed to see some lovely scenery like Apollo Bay (with rainbow)...
and some equally impressive rock formations like the Twelve Apostles (no you can't see all twelve)...
and we even saw a whale at Warrnambool.
Anyway, back in Melbourne we managed to track down Anton who has moved over here from the UK with girlfriend Lou to do a postdoc at the university. We spent a day at the Victoria Market and an evening annoying their neighbours while we continually proved our inability to master the didgeridoo. Despite the fact that Anton had skipped the country without organising an AGM for the Chemistry Cricket Team of which he was captain, and thus deny me the batting trophy that I'd blocked long and hard for all season, I still let him beat me at pool (in my defence, there was a mad bloke waiting to play the winner). I'll add a picture of Lou if they send me one - the one I have isn't too flattering, and I'll save you all from the video of the didgeridoo session...
It was time to move on. We took the bus to Adelaide and then took the next bus out again and headed to Coober Pedy to see the opal mines. Coober Pedy looks something like this. Most houses have an underground living area that everyone retreats to in the summer when the temperatures hit 40+ degrees for a month or two...
It was a lot warmer than Melbourne and Adelaide, despite the cloud, and underground living was hardly necessary. Still, when in Rome....
Radeka's hostel had dorm rooms underground and a TV for watching penalty defeats :-) and :-(
Took a tour to see the sights - the underground church, the underground potteries, lots of mine shafts, the Breakaways (more rocks, it's not all flat) and a really long fence...
That'll be the dog fence. Not to be confused with the rabbit fence in Western Australia, this one keeps the dogs (dingoes) out of the sheep stations on this side of the fence and runs for about 5300 km from Surfer's Paradise to somewhere down on the south coast. As educational as ever. And the real reason I wanted to come to Coober Pedy (because I'm not obsessed by opals like Jen is) was to play golf. I'd read about their course with no grass and wasn't to be disappointed...
You have to take your own piece of artificial turf with you (just visible below the sign) which you're allowed to use on the "fairways" but not in the "rough" - i.e. inside or outside the roughly scratched markings. And it's always a good idea to rake the greens before putting. I imagine Burghfield looks much the same after all the sun you've been having over there in blighty.
Our adventures down under are almost at an end, it was time to catch the bus up to Alice Springs to have a look at Ayer's Rock.
We met Gem and Ali during a stop for breakfast and eventually worked out that we'd previously met on the bus from Dougies to Cairns a month or so earlier. As we were all staying in the same hostel, and all agreed that the prices for tours were extortionate, we decided to hire a car between the four of us and headed off for an overnight trip...
Armed, as ever, with plenty of meat for the barbie and a box of goon (and vegetables for Jen) we set off early for the 450 km drive to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (or Ayer's Rock and The Olgas in old money). First stop was The Olgas, which despite being generally ignored due to the hype that surrounds Ayer's Rock, are just as impressive - a collection of 30+ huge rocks surrounded by a whole load of nothing. From a distance they look like this...
and from closer they look like this...
Unfortunately, they're always going to be playing second fiddle to the one rock everybody has come to see. That is the world's second largest monolith (it's not even the biggest!), and sure enough with sunset approaching the viewing area filled with other like minded tourists all waiting for this....
To do that....
You can tell when you've seen everything there is to see because of the mass exodus of tour buses. We headed off for Yulanda (that's Ayer's Rock Resort to us tourists) and our genuine outback experience - sleeping under the stars in Swagbags. For some reason the other three weren't quite as excited by the idea as I was, possibly due to the promise of overnight temperatures barely above freezing. Luckily a full hostel meant I wouldn't be sleeping outside alone, and as it turned out they were remarkably warm and comfortable...
Another early morning to see this...
become that...
and time for the climb up, all except for Ali who was suffering with a bad ankle, before heading back to Alice (The Olgas picture above was taken from the top of Ayer's Rock). On the way home we got to see our one and only wild dingo, and in Alice we got to watch the deciding State of Origin game which ended in a late win for Queensland - I imagine there were a few hangovers the next day in Brisbane.
And that's pretty much that. We took The Ghan...
back to Adelaide where I'm currently writing this update. We fly to Sydney tomorrow morning and then on to Singapore tomorrow afternoon. Time to practice the little Malay and Thai we learnt from a lovely girl called Ling Sea in Maroochydore.
So thats all folks, I think Col has just about covered our Ozzie adventures despite his penchant for including sporting references every now and then. It should all get a bit more adventurous from now on as we stumble over the language barrier and enter south east asia.
See you in Singapore
xx
A quick refresher shows me we last spoke while in Maroochydore after a visit to Australia Zoo. Well from there we headed up north to Rainbow Beach and booked a 4WD tour to Fraser Island. After a quick talk about the dangers of driving on sand and how to stay "dingo safe" we were thrown together with seven others and left to fend for ourselves for the next three days with only alcohol, a bodyboard and a copious supply of red meat to keep us alive [and halloumi for those who don't do meat]. So we swam in some surprisingly cold lakes, cleaned our teeth with sand, ate crisp sarnies, played in the staining mud, sang round camp fires and surfed the dunes, all while failing to spot a single dingo but making sure we had more fun than the other two groups that left the hostel with us. A final mad dash for the last ferry home by a certain crazy dutchman ended a memorable trip in style - you'd better meet the gang...
Left to right: Katryn, Katja (kneeling), Vicky, Adam, Jen (kneeling), Dave, Rich, Geert, Col.
After all that excitement it was time to relax a little, and that meant a comfy bed and home cooked food. Time to visit Tyson and Jenna (fron Fernie, check back if you've forgtten). The little darlings drove up to get us at Maroochydore, despite a pair of well earned hangovers, and we spent the next week in the comfort of suburban Brisbane. Just in case you have forgotten, this is Tyson doing a grand job on the barbie...
and Jenna being arty...
We spent the next week in style thanks to the loan of a car and a decent DVD selection. Tyson's dad was thoughtful enough to show us the local wildlife (my words, definitely not Jen's)...
We played touch footie in the park, watched the State of Origin match 2 with most of Tyson's family (Queensland destroyed NSW - go the Maroons) and took a trip down to Surfer's Paradise with Jenna while Tyson had to work.(NB for Calgary Dave - they live in the granny flat attached to Tyson's parents house and both work in the family business, which makes taking a sicky slightly trickier. Not that you'd do something like that of course.) And with a trip into the city to see a live footie game (Brisbane Broncos v. St. George Dragons) a good aussie time was had by all.
Cue today's rant, feel free to ignore the next paragraph, you won't be missing anything constructive...
Now about all this footie. As an englishman, footie is footie. That is to say football. But to a Queenslander, for some unknown reason, footie is actually rugby league, and to a Victorian, footie is aussie rules football. I have no idea what it means to anybody from Sydney, but what footie certainly doesn't mean is anything to do with "soccer". Now, seeing as Australia managed to qualify for the World Cup it was initially quite nice to be able to see plenty of games on the telly and go out and watch them at night on the big screens (they weren't so happy when Brasil beat them, a spectacle I got to watch in Federation Square - Melbourne, and it certainly wasn't as close as they'd like to think it was). However, it did mean that I had to put up with the aussie pundits telling me how everything the Socceroos did was historic - the historic first goal, the historic first win (it was only Japan! They're crap!) - and everything England did was disappointing. I don't need to go half way round the world to listen to the media complain about an english football team. And if one more stupid aussie screamed for a penalty when somebody was tackled in the centre circle or talked about how many goals each team had "kicked" I was going to scream. Thankfully, due to a last sixteen game with Italy and a classic last second dubious penalty all I could do was laugh. And laugh and laugh and then laugh some more. Right until we lost on penalties. Again. Oh well, I'll be cheering for Italy in the final. OK, rant over.
After sponging off Tyson and Jenna for a week, we decided to head for Melbourne to sponge off Mark and Trish (they were in Fernie as well). We all stayed at Mark's place and the first thing we did was visit the Good Food And Wine Show and sampled far too much of the local tipple. This is the four of us at the Crown Casino, the only casino in Melbourne. None of us are quite sure what we were doing here - we should probably have sampled a bit more of the local food...
While Trish worked during the week Mark chauffered us around the city to see the sights. So we looked around Melbourne - it's a big city like many others but there are some nice parks, there are some great coffee shops selling fantastic cakes in St. Kilda and Lygon Street especially, and the sun decided to put in an appearance while we strolled along St. Kilda beach which briefly made us forget how damn cold it was. They're having 30+ degrees in Germany and Melbourne is struggling for double figures. Here's a deceptive picture of the botanic gardens (sunny - yes, hot - you wish)...
We spent almost two weeks in Melbourne, including 3 days when we nipped out, hired a car and drove along the Great Ocean Road. While getting blown about by the wind and getting soaked by the rain we managed to see some lovely scenery like Apollo Bay (with rainbow)...
and some equally impressive rock formations like the Twelve Apostles (no you can't see all twelve)...
and we even saw a whale at Warrnambool.
Anyway, back in Melbourne we managed to track down Anton who has moved over here from the UK with girlfriend Lou to do a postdoc at the university. We spent a day at the Victoria Market and an evening annoying their neighbours while we continually proved our inability to master the didgeridoo. Despite the fact that Anton had skipped the country without organising an AGM for the Chemistry Cricket Team of which he was captain, and thus deny me the batting trophy that I'd blocked long and hard for all season, I still let him beat me at pool (in my defence, there was a mad bloke waiting to play the winner). I'll add a picture of Lou if they send me one - the one I have isn't too flattering, and I'll save you all from the video of the didgeridoo session...
It was time to move on. We took the bus to Adelaide and then took the next bus out again and headed to Coober Pedy to see the opal mines. Coober Pedy looks something like this. Most houses have an underground living area that everyone retreats to in the summer when the temperatures hit 40+ degrees for a month or two...
It was a lot warmer than Melbourne and Adelaide, despite the cloud, and underground living was hardly necessary. Still, when in Rome....
Radeka's hostel had dorm rooms underground and a TV for watching penalty defeats :-) and :-(
Took a tour to see the sights - the underground church, the underground potteries, lots of mine shafts, the Breakaways (more rocks, it's not all flat) and a really long fence...
That'll be the dog fence. Not to be confused with the rabbit fence in Western Australia, this one keeps the dogs (dingoes) out of the sheep stations on this side of the fence and runs for about 5300 km from Surfer's Paradise to somewhere down on the south coast. As educational as ever. And the real reason I wanted to come to Coober Pedy (because I'm not obsessed by opals like Jen is) was to play golf. I'd read about their course with no grass and wasn't to be disappointed...
You have to take your own piece of artificial turf with you (just visible below the sign) which you're allowed to use on the "fairways" but not in the "rough" - i.e. inside or outside the roughly scratched markings. And it's always a good idea to rake the greens before putting. I imagine Burghfield looks much the same after all the sun you've been having over there in blighty.
Our adventures down under are almost at an end, it was time to catch the bus up to Alice Springs to have a look at Ayer's Rock.
We met Gem and Ali during a stop for breakfast and eventually worked out that we'd previously met on the bus from Dougies to Cairns a month or so earlier. As we were all staying in the same hostel, and all agreed that the prices for tours were extortionate, we decided to hire a car between the four of us and headed off for an overnight trip...
Armed, as ever, with plenty of meat for the barbie and a box of goon (and vegetables for Jen) we set off early for the 450 km drive to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (or Ayer's Rock and The Olgas in old money). First stop was The Olgas, which despite being generally ignored due to the hype that surrounds Ayer's Rock, are just as impressive - a collection of 30+ huge rocks surrounded by a whole load of nothing. From a distance they look like this...
and from closer they look like this...
Unfortunately, they're always going to be playing second fiddle to the one rock everybody has come to see. That is the world's second largest monolith (it's not even the biggest!), and sure enough with sunset approaching the viewing area filled with other like minded tourists all waiting for this....
To do that....
You can tell when you've seen everything there is to see because of the mass exodus of tour buses. We headed off for Yulanda (that's Ayer's Rock Resort to us tourists) and our genuine outback experience - sleeping under the stars in Swagbags. For some reason the other three weren't quite as excited by the idea as I was, possibly due to the promise of overnight temperatures barely above freezing. Luckily a full hostel meant I wouldn't be sleeping outside alone, and as it turned out they were remarkably warm and comfortable...
Another early morning to see this...
become that...
and time for the climb up, all except for Ali who was suffering with a bad ankle, before heading back to Alice (The Olgas picture above was taken from the top of Ayer's Rock). On the way home we got to see our one and only wild dingo, and in Alice we got to watch the deciding State of Origin game which ended in a late win for Queensland - I imagine there were a few hangovers the next day in Brisbane.
And that's pretty much that. We took The Ghan...
back to Adelaide where I'm currently writing this update. We fly to Sydney tomorrow morning and then on to Singapore tomorrow afternoon. Time to practice the little Malay and Thai we learnt from a lovely girl called Ling Sea in Maroochydore.
So thats all folks, I think Col has just about covered our Ozzie adventures despite his penchant for including sporting references every now and then. It should all get a bit more adventurous from now on as we stumble over the language barrier and enter south east asia.
See you in Singapore
xx
posted by Jen & Col at
9:56 am
4 Comments:
So this is where the real travelling starts, eh? No apres-ski, BBQs, mattresses or total confidence in what one is eating.
Bizarre how BIG Ayers Rock looks, even in a tiny blog photo.
Looking fwd to your Asian Adventures.
By
Tom, at 9:20 pm
Hmmm, looks like we're getting as many adverts as comments these days. Come on people, let us know you're still reading...
By
Jen & Col, at 8:07 pm
er.. sorry sis.. i'm still reading! (but just not commenting as often as i should..) will rectify that immediatly. fantastic stories, very entertaining as usual. luv dianne
By
Anonymous, at 3:20 pm
I'm sure someone as dedicated as you wouldn't dream of doing such a thing Dave...
By
Jen & Col, at 5:23 pm
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