A Short Note + The Melbourne Identity

As most are you are aware, I have long since left the backpacker's trail and have been home in the UK for at least 6 weeks now.

It's 8th June as I write this and I am well and truly back to reality. I have a new job, I'm up to my ears in debt and - for the moment - I am living with my parents in Essex.

Next month I will be 30 years of age.

I work in West London so I commute a total of 4 hours every day. Once at work I sit and stare at a computer screen. At lunch I eat cheese and marmite sandwiches that I have made at home the night before.

At night I sleep alone with only the faintest of memories of distant lands to keep me warm.

Hear those violins?

On the other hand, with the country in the depths of a recession it's churlish to complain about having a job isn't it?! Life's not so bad. I still work in music and have a career (of sorts) that I've been lucky enough to fall back on after pissing about the world for 6 months. Plus the commute isn't so awful. I always get a seat, the shouty nutter woman with the glasses and the blue anorak doesn't seem to get the train much these days and I get a load of reading done.

Recently I'd recommend...

Andrew Collins 'That's Me In The Corner'
William Goldman 'The Big Picture'
Bill Bryson 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid'

I failed miserably in my quest to keep on bloggin' when on the road. I had just gotten so far behind, and once in America had little access to cheap internet. So basically, I threw in the towel.

This entry is my attempt to get back in the saddle. If anyone's still listening, I hope enjoy the rest of the tale. Even if you do already sort of know the ending.

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Melbourne - 13 Feb 2009




Booking ahead. There's a thing. If you do it, then you feel safe. You've got somewhere to stay. But what happens if you want to change your plans? Maybe you meet a good bunch of folk on a plane, train or automobile and decide to tag along with them at their digs? Difficult if you've already pre-booked a bunk at Mrs. Miggin's Saucy Saloon on the other side of town. And when you get there it almost always looks grottier than it did on screen at Hostelworld.com.

For Melbourne, I decided to wing it. I pre-booked nothing and arrived at 10pm with just a 20kg backpack and a dream.

Bit of a mistake as it turned out. Melbourne's quite a popular place, and after an hour of trawling round the city poking my head in at least 10 different hostels I still hadn't found anywhere to stay and was beginning to panic. Finally I found a bed at Melbourne City Backpackers and paid nearly $30 to share a room with 9 other people. I winced as I handed over the notes, and tried to concentrate on the fact that out of those 9 people I might make some new friends. Maybe even a pal for life! As the great Craig Finn once put it; you gotta stay positive.

But you can see it coming readers, can't you?

Yes, you guessed it - the night of Fri 13th Feb ended up being one of the most uncomfortable, frustrating and teeth-clenchingly infuriating nights of my life. At 4am, having been deep in dreamland for a good hour or two, I was awoken to the sound of the room being invaded by two large, pissed and heavily tattoed 18 year old cockheads whom spent most of the night shouting at each other, play fighting in their pants, glugging wine, giving each other 'wedgies', dangling their goolies over the heads of fellow sleeping room mates (and taking photos of each other doing it) whilst all the while smoking ridiculously strong weed in our non-ventilated room. It wasn't just tomfoolery, it was pretty agressive. They would wake up sleeping couples in the room who were too intimidated to tell them to fuck off, steal bottles of beer from the few travellers who were actually managing to kip through the racket and occasionally shout out in thick slurred Dublin accents 'This is our fooooking room, alroight?!! Blaaa haa rruuggrrrgh" or something. I'm not sure if they thought I was asleep or not, but I was doing my best to pretend so. I'm not a fan of confrontation at the best of times, and the last thing I needed was this.

By 5am, despite having consumed a good bong's worth of secondary weed smoke, I realised that any attempt at sleep on my part was futile. What's worse I really needed a piss. I HAD to go to the toilet, even if it meant engaging with these idiots. I got up and left the room with haste, ignoring the goons and wearing my best "I'm really quite cross" face. As you'd imagine, this isn't a face that often fools anyone, but in this instance it actually seemed to work! By the time I returned, the lights were off and everyone was in their bunks!

Ha! I rule.

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The next morning I had to get out. There was no way I could stay in that place another night, so I checked out and tried my luck at the marginally better Discovery hostel (8 bunks per room instead of 10!). I dumped my bag, tried not to think about the fact I was alone on Valentine's Day and spent the rest of the day exploring Melbourne, which is by far my favourite city in Australia. Less showy than Sydney but with more soul. Cool cafes, quirky stores, decent bars, record shops and graffitti too. Go to Brunswick Street in Fitzroy and visit Polyester Books, my favourite bookshop in the world. You'll love it. Go now. Go.

Here's some graffiti. S'nice...





In the evening I'd arranged to have a drink on Chapel street with my mates Eve and Lucy that I'd first met in Laos. They'd just arrived in Oz that day after spending weeks in Thailand and were struggling to cope with the culture shock of having to pay $9 for a beer instead of 60 baht. However both were on top form and after a couple of overpriced beverages they convinced me that I should join them and their friend Erin (hair like Tina Turner, but not really) on a Great Ocean Road trip the next morning.

And so it was. We set off at 10am and had a corking couple of days with 5 of us (including Erin's sister Jess) on one of the world's great drives. We saw incredible ocean views, visited a lighthouse, talked to a kookabura, gawped at koalas in the wild, went camping, drunk Rose, DJ'd in the car and finally on the last day when bored and hungover invented a new game which involved throwing a pair of socks at someone's head in an attempt to knock their hat off. This might not sound much like fun to you, believe me it is.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of us playing SockHat, but here's some others of interest...



























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On 17th Feb I returned to Melbourne and booked myself in at a new hostel called Urban Central. This was more expensive and a lot smarter than my previous Melbourne digs, plus as the rooms only contained 4 bunks per dorm I figured I ran a much greater chance of sharing a room with some nice folk instead of gits.

WRONG AGAIN!

As I opened the door of my nice tiny little dorm room, who was sat on the bed grinding up a load of weed for his first joint of the evening in our WINDOWLESS room?! Yep, one of the same two Irish lads from two nights previous!!!! UNBELIEVABLE!!! Turns out him and his mate had been kicked out of City Backpackers for fighting and had just checked into Urban Central that day!! What the hell are the chances of that?!! A completely different hostel right over the other side of town, and I end up sharing a room with them AGAIN!! Total nightmare!

This time round, the kid - let's call him Billy - was relatively sober and didn't actually remember me at all from the other night. I didn't feel it neceassary to remind him, so shook his hand and made polite conversation. I couldn't understand most of what he was saying though, because he had a broken jaw from another fight up the coast a few weeks earlier.

His mate was nowhere to be seen, but turned up in the middle of the night and made himself comfortable in the bunk below me, despite him not actually being booked into our dorm. At 4am the actual occupier of the bottom bunk turned up blind drunk on Bundaberg rum and couldn't understand why there was a tattoed Irishman in his bed. So he had to go through the rigmoral of getting the night staff up to kick him out of the dorm. Two nights sleep ruined by the same two punks. Oh Melbourne, why do you taunt me so!?

An interesting post-script to this story - when I was in Fiji (about 2 months after Melbourne, we'll get to it, don't worry) I had made friends with an Irish girl called Sinead and a Scottish girl called Jen. Both excellent fun people. One day over lunch I was sharing this anecdote about my bad luck, when Sinead piped up...

S: "Broken jaw?! One of them wasn't called Billy, was he?"
M: "Yes! How did you...?"
S: "I know him. I used to live with him in Sydney"
M: "You whaaaat?...!!!!...###!!"

True story.

---

Listening to...

Fleetwood Mac 'Everywhere'
Foo Fighters 'Headwires'
Simon and Garfunkel 'Bridge...'
2 Def Lepard songs I'd rather forget
Oasis 'Stay Young'
Pearl Jam 'Better Man'
Ben E.King 'Stand By Me'
Other assorted power ballads.
Pot luck CD comps made fro Erin and Jess Collins' dad.

NOTE: My spellcheck is not working. Excuse the odd mistake won't you? Thanks ever so.

Return to Sydney

8 - 12 Feb 2009
After a difficult goodbye at Brisbane airport with CB (we arranged to meet in Melbourne in a few days, but let's not get ahead of ourselves), I caught a flight to Sydney to stay once again with my friends Luke and Freya. It's been said before, but it's worth saying again - these two are quite frankly outstandingly brilliant people and they were kind enough to allow me to make their couch my home for 5 days.

I had a really well-needed quiet week, mostly staying in and saving $$$, catching up on blogging, watching DVDs and occasionally venturing outside for Vietnamese rice paper rolls, the odd gig or a movie. I also ran the length of Bondi Beach a couple of times and attempted some snorkeling but the water was freezing. As it happens this was 2 days before a surfer lost his arm and very nearly his life in a shark attack on Bondi. First one in 80 years apparently. Who knew?!

Boozing was kept to a minimum this week, save for one night out where I met up with Warren and Luke, two characters familiar to regular readers of this blog as they appeared in Bangkok, Viang Vieng, Koh Pha Ngan and Sydney before. Warren's hair had finally gotten under control and Luke had found himself a job, which is a good thing as I think he was about to start selling his body on the street to pay for his daily $5 steak and chips at Scruffy Murphy's.

We got drunk on jugs of headache-enducing Toohey's New and Warren told me he has a Thai girlfriend who cannot understand his thick Northern Irish accent so they communicate by him typing out what he wants to say on into a text message and passing her the mobile phone. This made me laugh out loud.

On my last day in Sydney I forced Luke to take me to Harry's Cafe de Wheels in the ridiculously named area of Woolloomooloo. A famous van that has been selling pies and (what we would call) mushy pees for about 60 years down by the harbour. Apparently it's Angus Young's favourite thing about Sydney and you can't say fairer than that. The pie was delicious.

Here's the other things I saw and heard throughout the week...

Films:
Milk - 7.5/10
Before Sunrise - 8.5/10
Before Sunset - 8/10
The Life and Death Of Peter Sellers - 6.5/10

Tunes:
Nina Simone 'Don't You Pay Them No Mind'
Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet 'What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks' (the Balcony Scene, Part 1) - IT WAS ON FREYA'S iPOD, OK?! IT JUST CAME ON!

Art:
Art Gallery Of New South Wales - saw some beautiful 18th and 19th century Aussie landscape stuff, some cool surrealism (James Gleeson) and a intriguing piece called Cadence #1 by an artist called Robert Owen, which I liked not just because the artist shares the same name as Liverpool's King of the Mods.

Gigs/festies:
Laneway festival @ Circular Quays
Spiral Stairs (ex-Pavement) doing Two States was excellent (Pavement reunion soon please). Jay Reatard were (was?) disappointing despite the presence of Flying V's and big hair. The Temper Trap left me cold by overstretching themselves with a poor Bruce cover.

Wolfmother @ Oxford Arts Factory - new line up, billed as White Feather for some reason. Killer riffs, laughable stage wear, great new tunes and 'Woman' thrown out second in the set. You can be snooty about the 'mother but if you liked playing Zep and Sabbath riffs and you could be in a band this fun, you would. Even if the singer is looking more and more like Carrot Top these days.

TV:
Peep Show - Season 5
Underbelly - Season 2

And this...

Rednecked in Byron and Right Back to Bris.

Thu 29 Jan - Mon 2 Feb 2009
To cap off my last few days in Queensland, Cassie and I hit Dreamworld on the gold coast to pet kangaroos and shit ourselves on rollercoasters (not literally)

















After that we headed down with Joel and Tess for a long weekend at Byron Bay.





Byron is a pretty chilled out place. Plenty of backpackers, a few crusties and street musicians and not much to do except swim, eat and drink. So that's all we did - no complaints here!

I made an effort to keep up with my Australian friends in the rough Byron surf (Cassie and Joel are former 'life savers' who both swim like fish) but got smashed around and dragged under by the waves so much until I conceded my skills in the water haven't progressed much further than the level of the Junior Penguins swimming club of Clements Hall that I used to attend when I was 11.

Over 5 days at Byron we hit the beach, danced on tables whilst watching girls with flags painted on their breasts at a place called Cheeky Monkeys, walked to the Most Easterly Point of Mainland Australia (a lighthouse, essentially, but a nice one), and I got a sun burnt neck.











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Back to Brisbane on Tue 3 Feb for a final 3 days exploring the city and one final big night out in town with CB.

It was on this last night out that we randomly bumped into Ross one of the geordie fellas from my very first night of travelling in Bangkok. With so many backpackers following such a similar route around the globe, bumping into people at various points is not uncommon. We chatted for a bit, reminisced about the whiskey buckets in the Kho San Road and talked about where we'd been and how much money we'd pissed up the wall in Australia. It was only a brief chat, and fairly inconsequential except that afterwards it prompted me to reflect on everything that had happened over the previous 3 months and how my life had changed in such a short space of time.

On 1st Nov 2008, as a novice backpacker still wet behind the ears and very much the perenial singleton, I would never have fathomed that I'd be sat in a bar in Brisbane 3 months later with a beautiful Australian girlfriend. But this was where I found myself. And I couldn't have been happier.

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NB There are buckets available in the corner if you need them.

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Films:
Doubt - a real let down for me. Less a film, more an acting competition between Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
Footloose - rolling out the classics for the uninitiated. Can't believe they are remaking this with the plastic looking spod from High School Musical.
Step Up - these modern day dance movies just don't have the chops of the 80s ones. Where was the no handed backflip? And is it too much to ask for a chicken race on tractors?!
24 Hour Party People - still brilliant.
Sex and Death 101 - the worst film ever made.

Bands, tunes, albums & ting:
The Presets
The John Butler Trio
Sneaky Sound System
The Kin
Megadeth
David Gray 'White Ladder'

Gigs:
An Horse at the Brisbane Zoo
Juzzie Smith blowing on his harp at the Byron market

Grub:
$2 spag bol from Cheeky Monkeys

Booze:
Hahn Super Dry
Pure Blonde
Bundaberg Rum (not pronounced "Boondaberg")
Jim Beam and coke in a can.
Passion Pop (a bit like Poire Superiour the 99p sparkling wine I used to buy from Asda in Warrington when I was a student. Needs must).

Mo' Brisbane, mo' bloggin'

Yes, yes I know this is getting silly. A month since my last blog. Plus I am still writing about stuff that happened TWO months ago! Very poor.

BUT. Seeing as my blogging audience is the size of a football team (not even a squad) I don't think there will be many complaints. I'm just going to keep writing this thing for my own personal joy of putting pen to paper. Or finger to plastic key. Anyway, you get the idea.

For the sake of some fresh perspective, the date as I write this is 20th March 2009. I am sitting in the internet room of Base backpackers in Auckland, New Zealand. Not only is my Australia trip over but so too is my New Zealand trip. Tomorrow I fly to the islands of Fiji in the South Pacific which, according to the news reports I have been reading, may or may not be hit by a tsunami anytime soon. So that'll be 'citing.

I have just eaten a surprisingly good pizza in the next door kebab shop and watched about 10 minutes of the wretched American Idol, where some old scrumpet was crucifying MJ's The Way You Make Me Feel as I winced and choked on a mouthful of pepperoni and stringy mozerella.

I am fairly content. I have a book to finish called 'Niave. Super' by Erlend Loe which I am enjoying immensely (thank you Jemma Ballo) and I may drink one beer before the night is over. Just the one beer mind. Money is running low. Very low. My good friends Cathy Credit Card and Oliver Overdraft will have to be called upon in about a week. But that's ok. You only do this once, right?

So how have I spent nearly all my b-b-bread. And what have I spent it on? Let's look through the keyhole...

Brisbane (21 Jan - 28 Jan)
Within hours of arriving back in Brisbane from Fraser Island (or from Hervey Bay more precisely) I was elated to find out that my gig-ticket-blagging skills were still in tip top shape in the Southern Hemisphere when I managed to get on the guestlist to see Neil Young play the Brisbane Entertainment Centre (supported by the greatest live band in the world My Morning Jacket). I thought it might be a tricky gig to get into. Impossible even - sold out show, $150 a ticket, etc. But a couple of crafty emails later (thanks Jamie Sampson, you are a gent), me and Cass were sat watching old Shakey himself storm through Cinnamon Girl with all five members of My Morning Jacket sat next to us. A beautiful thing. The old toad turned in a stonker and MMJ's support set was short and sweet but astounding as ever. Who can resist it when they play this live...



What made the evening even more fun was that after the gig we were stopped by a journalist and photographer from the Queensland Sunday Mail who took a photo of us for the weekend's paper. Just the Events supplement, but still...we must have tickled his fancy. At first I hadn't a clue what was going on, but Cassie seemed to trust them and handed over our names as the middle aged journo in the linen suit and open neck shirt adjusted my hat to a jaunty angle and the photographer snapped away. I protested that the tipped trilby made me look a little camp, but for some reason the journo disagreed and maintained that it was "very James bond". I can't remember any of the Bonds wearing a straw trilby from a Phuket market stall. Not even Bob Holness.

Sure enough, they printed the pic in that weekend's edition of the paper. I haven't scanned it in yet, probably because it's not a great photo of me and I am excruciatingly vain. But if you ever want to see it just pop round to my house when I am back and I'll give you a copy. I've got about 300 of them.

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On 22 Jan I checked into Bunk backpackers in a cool area of Brisbane called Fortitude Valley and had a pint with a builder named Tony. This was not a particularly exciting day.

In the evening I went for a few spur-of-the-moment drinks at the Down Under bar near the Palace backpackers in the city. The bar was and IS dire (standard backpacker fare, but with added Grease Megamix) but the evening turned out to be rather wonderful. And you can't ask why because I wouldn't tell you anyway, so on your bike.

Checked out of the backpackers at 3am due to the worst snoring in the history of mankind and went to stay at the Burges.

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23 Jan - The only thing I remember from this day (or night should I say) is going to a Brisbane club called The Alex, affectionately known to locals as The Pit. For any Southend-based readers, The Pit could be compared to TOTS (or Talks as they call it now, I think) at the height of it's wretchedness but with more boozy lads and worse music. However I do remember having an enjoyably long conversation about Machine Head, Megadeth and Slayer with Cassie's brother Joel, which went some way to compensate for the surroundings.

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Skip to 26 Jan - AUSTRALIA DAY! I'd never heard of Australia day before, but apparently it's something of a big deal. Everyone basically wears corked hats and celebrates being, yep you guessed it, Australian. I got in the spirit and donned an Australian flag towel and ate kangaroo steaks all day whilst listening to Triple J's Hottest 100 countdown of the year (ask an Aussie) and sipping sangria in the pool. Tough one.









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27 Jan - I went to the local shopping mall in Bris and nearly bought a t-shirt featuring a picture of Erika Eleniak from the original series of Baywatch on the front. Then realised it was a bit childish so decided against it and purchased a Spider Man T-shirt and a Chewbacca t-shirt instead.

On the drive back from the mall we spotted a man power-walking down the street in blue dungarees. I was informed by Cass that he is a bit of a local character with OCD who feels compelled to strut 3 hours from the suburb of Cleveland to Brisbane city every day in the same clothes. If he doesn't do it then his family will turn into jelly and planes will fall out of the sky onto his head or something. Apparently there's been documentaries about him and everything. Huh.

In the evening, accompanied by Cassie and a visiting Luke Bevs from Sydney I went to watch Ryan Adams and the Cardinals play an sublime gig at the Brisbane Tivoli. Kudos to Bevo for the ticket shout too. And double kudos to Neil Casal - 'Freeway to the Canyon' is my new favourite song in the world (currently tied with Jackson Browne's 'Late For The Sky').

I also thought a lot on this day about how much I miss Red Leicester cheese.

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28 Jan - Visited Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) which was excellent. Trying to visit a gallery in each of the big cities I visit and this was a goodie. Saw a load of stuff that inspired me, none of which I can remember the name of now. Which is helpful. I really should take more notes.

One of the best second hand record shops I have ever been to is in Brisbane. Again, the name escapes me, but it's round the back of Queen Street mall. Australian second hand record shops are about 10 years behind UK ones, and I mean that in the best possible way. As well as buckloads of dusty 7" and 12" vinyl, this shop was selling the following things...

8-track cassette tapes
A Degrassi Junior High book.
Jake The Snake Roberts and Ultimate Warrior decorative cloth wall hangings.
Original VHS copies of Teenwolf and Rocky IV (ex-rental, large case)
Betamax versions of The Wizard Of Oz and The Dark Chrystal

See what I mean? I never wanted to leave!

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Watching:
The Wrestler - do I really need to tell you how good this is? 8.5/10
Gran Torino - 7.5/10
True Lies - 7/10
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - 6/10
Control - 8/10
Step Brothers - I only watched half of this. It was...not great. I love John C.Reily though so I will give it an even 5/10
Summer Heights High - I am so late on this but it is utter TV gold. Puck you miss. 8.5/10

Gigs:
The Cardinals at Brisbane Tivoli - 8.5/10
Neil Young w/My Morning Jacket at Brisbane Entertainment Centre - 8.5/10

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Catch the Sun

Brisbane, Byron, Fraser Island (13 - 20 Jan)
Flew to a very warm Brisbane on 13 Jan and got picked up by Cassie at the airport. Yep, Cassie Burge of big-white-framed sunglasses fame from Koh Pha Ngan and Phuket adventures (don't you read my other blog entries?!). After having an incredibly brilliant time in Thailand together before Christmas we had decided that when I got to Australia we should meet up in her home town and do a few road trips including one down to Byron Bay ("the best place in the world" according to the Cass Dog). As it happened, because of the weather in Cairns I was arriving in Brisbane two weeks earlier than expected. But that was all cool with her and more than cool with me. It would the understatement of the year to say it was a joy to see her.

We drove to the city and stayed at a very basic rickety old-fashioned backpackers called Palace (were they being sarcastic?) with spooky corridors straight out of The Shining.

Next day we took a roadtrip down the coast to Byron with Cassie's friends Elena and Chelsea to see a band called Symbiosis. Upon arrival we found out that Symbiosis had cancelled and been replaced with a goodtime folk band called Round Mountain Girls, which was much more my scene anyway so we had a hoe-down. I had a bit of a sore throat so drunk whiskey and dry all night instead of my usual beer, but then woke up the next morning with tonsillitis.

Back to Brisbane and visited the doctors to get some medication. $65 dollars to see the doctor but he did throw in some tourism advice about Brisbane so I can't begrudge him receiving his cashmoney.

A non-drinking BBQ night at the Burge residence followed. Cassie's dad Ken, mum Chris, uncle Sam, aunt Ines, brother Joel and brother's girlfriend Tess all welcomed me into the fold and the steak went down a treat.

---

The next day I met up with Perrin and Andy (two fellas I'd met briefly in Cairns) to embark upon a 3 day trip to Fraser Island (the world's largest sand island, donchaknow?). We cut it a little fine getting the coach and arrived 2 minutes before it was due to leave, incurring the wrath of the coach driver who told us off like schoolboys. "Where the bloody hell have you BEEN?!". I've noticed that on the whole Aussie blokes are friendly and eager to help us foreigners, but get something wrong or wind them up and they'll bite your head off.

After a night at Hervey Bay we headed off to Fraser early the next morning, a group of 10 people in a 4x4. Aside from myself, the team was made up of this motley crew...

PERRIN (South African, looked liked a cross between Jack from Lost and my friend Jonny's brother Charlie)
ANDY (Englishman with a knowledge of random 80s movie quotes that surpasses that of myself and even my brother. Monster Squad anyone? The Peanut Butter Solution??)
MAGNUS (Swedish copper)
MALIN (erm, Magnus's girlfriend)
ANDERS (singer in a Swedish hardcore punk band)
JOHAN (Swedish ex-truck driver and Anders's older brother)
CRAIG (outrageously camp English student and part-time airport worker)
JESS (English gap year student, tan of epic proportions)
LAURA (English, friend of Jess, both banned from a high profile chain of hostels in Australia but wouldn't tell us why)

The weather wasn't great, but driving for miles along a deserted beach was awesome, as was the view from Indian Head, the Mahino shipwreck, Lake MacKenzie, watching wild dingoes sniff around our campfire and looking up at the stars at night (even more than in The Red Centre). Here's some pics...



























Driving through the jungle got a little hairy in places. We nearly saw another 4x4 overturn at one point and then when we got on the beach we actually DID see a wrecked vehicle from our same tour company that had just crashed a couple of hours earlier. Thankfully no one was injured (or so we were told).



Luckily our group managed to keep our vehicle together. Although my dad will be disappointed to find out that I didn't have a go at driving. There were too many alpha males, so I took a backseat.

Even though Fraser Island was fun, after 3 days the sand just became too annoying. I don't like sand at the best of times, and on Fraser it's everywhere. It sticks to you, it gets in your food, you sleep in it. It did my head in. I'd had a good time, but had no complaints about heading back to Hervey bay for a night of pizza, a shower and a change of clothes.

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Rain

Cairns (10 - 12 Jan)
When I arrived in Cairns it was bucketing it down. I didn't know it was monsoon season in Queensland, and I certainly didn't know a cyclone had just been hurtling down the coast. I still managed to do a boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef, but I had to cut out trips to Cape Tribulation and Port Douglas which was a real shame.

The Barrier Reef boat trip was cool but hardly the experience it could have been on a beautiful sunny day. The water was choppy, the winds were blowing, the trip to the reef was vomit-inducing and when we had to get in the water we were all in full 'stinger suits' from head to toe to protect us from the extremely dangerous jellyfish that are in the sea at this time of year. I looked like human condom (and no, I don't have any photos of this).

I was also gutted that I couldn't do the two scuba dives I had paid for because of my crap sinuses. As always I was blocked up in my left nostril which meant I couldn't re-adjust my airways by making my ears pop as you go deeper underwater. According to the instructors, if you weren't able to do this then your head would explode or something. So I stuck to the snorkeling instead. I'd never really been able to get the hang of snorkeling in the past, but the water at the reef was very warm, and I was able to breath deeply and avoid panicking. Because of the weather, the visibility wasn't as good as it could have been, but we still saw loads of incredible fish, giant clams and stingrays. It was unlike anything I'd ever done before and I'd love to be able to do it again in the hot season.

On my second day in Cairns I checked out the weather warnings online and realised that the entire Oz Experience bus trip I had booked down to Brisbane was going to be a waste of time. It was going to be storms and floods the whole way down the Queensland coast. Everyone I spoke to was chasing the sun and trying to get down to either Brisbane or Byron Bay. So I resigned myself to the fact that Townsville, Airlie Beach, Magnetic Island and the Whitsundays would have to be put off on this trip. I booked a cheap flight to Brisbane and left the next day.

Watched:
Frost Nixon - 8.5/10
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 7.5/10

Red or Dead

The Red Centre (5 Jan - 9 Jan)



I flew into Ayers Rock airport on 5 Jan and upon leaving the plane was met with a blanket of intense heat and acres of stunning orangey nothingness. This was the Australia I'd imagined. The "real" Australia. The Australia that most of the Aussies I've met on this trip have never explored. Not that I blame them really. It's expensive out in the middle of nowhere. A few days vacation at the ludicrously overpriced Yulara (aka Ayers Rock resort) would probably cost about the same as a 2 week tour of Vietnam. So I can't criticise Antipodeans for saving The Red Centre for their retirement days. To a Brit like me however, the place was magical.



Only bad thing about the outback - the flies. Oh my god, the flies. They are everywhere. Constantly. On your face, in your ears, in your mouth, on your food, in your pants. And they love sunscreen too. Slap on a bit of Factor 30 and they can't get enough of you. I invested in a fly net for my face straight away which made me look like a tit but I didn't care. It beat slapping my face every 5 seconds and waving my hands around like some kind of simpleton.



I stayed at the Outback Pioneer Inn on my first night and BBQ'd my own kangaroo, crocodile and emu meat. I'm not even good at doing beefburgers on the BBQ back home, how the hell was I supposed to know how long to cook a crocodile for?! Still I had a bash and I think it turned out ok.

Contrary to popular opinion croc doesn't particularly taste like chicken. To my, admittedly warped, taste buds it is more like a tough old bit of chewy pork. But the kangaroo was very tasty (beef, essentially) and the emu sausages did the job too. Over dinner I tried making conversation with one man who was German and didn't understand a word I was saying. The evening's entertainment was an old codger singing Waltzing Matilda and a song which went 'G'Day! G'Day! Everyone say G'Day!" or some other fresh hell. I went to bed early.

Unless you are booked on a tour to see the big rock and/or other such orangey bits, it's boring as hell at the Ayers Rock resort. After a very dull day at the resort I finally managed to book myself on a 2 day tour that included most of the things I wanted to do for a reasonable price. Uluru, Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), camping under the stars, plus a sunset and a sunrise were all on the agenda. The tour would have included King's Canyon but for reasons to tedious to go into now I had to miss out that part and join the tour halfway through. It was a shame to miss King's Canyon, but it couldn't be helped and I took comfort in the fact that not every box was ticked and I've kept a little something back for a future visit.

When the minibus picked me up at 7.30am on the morning of 7 Jan, Beej the tour guide greeted me with the immortal words "G'Day Matty. I hope you can breath some life into this bunch of miserable bastards". A little harsh certainly, but not entirely off the mark. Some of the tour group did end up being mind-numbingly dull and made no effort to interact, but there were some great people too.

There was Adebayo (a recording engineer from Washington D.C. who looked a little like Andre 3000 and who's dad was one of the founding members of the Black Panthers), David (a softly spoken German who looked not unlike a young Luke Bevans) and also a man who's name was Dougnut. Yes Dougnut.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Dougnut (he didn't say much) and I have no photographic evidence that he existed, so you just have to believe me. However here's a pic of David and Adebayo (not to scale)...



The walk around Kata Tjuta was the greatest I've ever done. It was spellbinding. It felt like walking on Mars. Check it out...









The sunset and the sunrise at Uluru were, to be honest, less impressive and over quite quickly. However I captured some good shots...





The real treat was camping (at 4am there were more stars in the sky than I'd ever seen) and also the base walk around Uluru. When you get that close to the thing and sun is shining on it, it's mind boggling. Totally beautiful.







The only bad thing about the base walk was that a couple of us got, well, a bit lost. Yep, Adebayo and I were caught up in a conversation about family, politics and the merits of The Wire and as a result were not paying as much attention to our route. After a while you see it all starts to look the same. We somehow managed to walk one full lap (10km) round the rock, past our group's meeting point and halfway round the rock again. We were an hour late, the mid-morning sun was burning, we had only a tiny bit of water left and no mobile phone reception. Frankly we started to panic. All of our stuff was on the minibus, and if Beej and the group couldn't find us then they would have no option but to return to Alice Springs without us. We would have been stranded, in no uncertain terms, utterly stuffed. We didn't know whether to keep going round Uluru in the same direction or go back the other way. In the end we decided to hit the road and flag down another bus who put word out on the radio to look out for our minibus. The driver also kindly agreed to take us to the Cultural Centre in the hope that we'd see Beej driving round on the way.

Mercifully we found our minibus and flashed it down. Beej - a true blue Aussie bloke who pulls no punches and speaks his mind - was NOT happy. We had already seen him berate German David for being 10 minutes late for the bus the day before, and now here we were over an hour late. He didn't say a word but his silence spoke volumes. Luckily for us we got on well with Beej. He liked me and Adebayo and thought David was a rude little dick, so his attitude towards our idiocy was more muted. After we apologised profusely and got on the bus there followed a good hour of silent driving before he turned around and uttered, "So going for another lap there were you Matty?".

A few 'firsts' for the Red Centre included seeing my first big Aussie lizard, my first kangaroo, emu and dingo (strange that I've eaten 2 out of 4 of those beasts before seeing them alive with my own eyes), drinking my first Goon bag (cheap Aussie white wine - a headache in a box!) and almost enjoying a Keith Urban song.

I also rode and ate camel. Not the same one though, obviously. THAT would be sick.



After the tour finished I spent two days in Alice Springs, and I personally found the place to have a bit of an intense and unpleasant vibe. In my limited experience of the place I found some of the local white people's attitudes to Aborigines uncomfortable and vice versa. Plenty of trouble goes on at night apparently. To quote Beej, if someone comes up to you and asks you for a light your best option is to "punch them in the face and then run like hell".

As Bill Bryson wrote in his book Down Under, Alice Springs could really be called "Anywhere, Australia", nothing much exciting to speak of there so I booked my accommodation in Cairns and flew out the next day.