| Australia Arrival "Crikey!" As a certain Crock loving Australian might say. After a long period of constant travel, Joanne and I come to a firm & complete stop in Sydney. We started off our stay in the Sydney YHA which is very pleasant. We had a funny orientation evening where you could bid for discounted tours etc. You bought a discounted ticket for a Neighbours night where you can meet the cast. The YHA has a DVD lounge and I saw Lord of the Rings yet again. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't recognise many places that we'd been too (who could imagine that the battle field in the opening scene is the same nursery slopes of the ski field that we were on a few weeks ago) , but it certainly has the feel of New Zealand scenery. Our main priority was finding somewhere to live and sorting out mobile phones, getting a tax number, bank account, getting some clothes for work etc. It all went pretty smoothly. We were pretty lucky with our flat. After looking at a couple of places we saw in the newspaper, we weren't overly impressed with, we stopped at a letting agent that we happened to be passing and found that they had a lovely fully furnished flat right in the centre - just what we were looking for. It's just a few minutes walk from the centre of town (in Darlinghurst, just near Hyde Park) and has everything that we need. I was dead chuffed because I thought we'd get a grotty old flat or shared house out in the sticks - but we got a fantastic flat right in the centre. We didn’t say yes to the first flat we looked at, thank goodness. The only annoyance is that it's so BRIGHT in the mornings. It's light at about 4 or so in the morning. These ozzies really need to sort their time system out. A few of my initial observations on Sydney: Sydney observation 1: There are masses of Thai restaurants. Each one of them Thais to out do the other with a thai-ribble pun in the name - "Thai-tanic" and "Thai-riffic" are my favourite ones so far. Sydney observation 2 : There's a very touristy monorail that goes around one part of the center of the city. It seems to serve little useful purpose (as its stops are within easy walking distance) other than to look cool. It's a bit like stepping into the future, as imagined by somone at the Worlds Fair many decades ago. Every time I pass it I try to restrain myself from singing the Simpsons monorail song. Sydney observation 3: The people aren't quite as friendly here as in NZ. I was given a NZ 20 cents piece in a supermarket here, and when I pointed out it was the wrong currency the cashier said "It doesn't matter", and tried to fob me off saying that NZ currency is basically the same thing as Australian. I was NOT being given great customer service and told her to give me a coin in the right currency. Jo thought I was weird - its only worth about 8p - but its the principle of the thing. Sydney observation 4: There's a large population of Asian people here (and a big Chinatown area). One of my favourite sights is walking along the main street and passing the video arcade - there's bound to be a crazy teen dancing away on this arcade game where you have to dance on this mat in the correct sequence. They be loonies. We've been doing a wee bit of sight seeing too. One of our first stops was the Circular Quay area - down by the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. It was odd the first time I saw the view - it really felt l was in a film or some kind of Travel programme. Just nearby is the large & beautiful botanical gardens which offer superb views of the harbour. The first time we went thru the gardens we were freaked out by these flying foxes (a type of bat) which were literally dripping from the trees. In one area, there are simply hundreds hanging upside down from the tall trees - if you don’t look closely you could miss them though, or think that they were some sort of fruit. We visited the historical Rocks area of the city on the weekend, when there is a lovely market. It’s where the oldest part of the city is & where all those convict boats used to arrive. We passed tens of couples (and their white limos) posing by the harbourside for their wedding photos with the Opera house in the background. It was hilarious. We met up with Andy Mundy from Reuters who was on holiday and took in the views from the Granite pylons on Sydney harbour coathanger shaped bridge http//:www.pylonlookout.com.au . Its such a world famous landmark that it's hard to believe its only 70 years old. We bumped into Andy again in Paddy's Market when he was getting his portrait drawn. I embarrassed him by taking a photo of the work in progress. Unusually for street-side portrait artists, the picture was actually pretty good. We visited Bondi beach - I wasn't too impressed with what is one of the most famous beaches in the world. But I guess it only comes alive in the summer? We had a walk down the coast to Coogee. Jo: We caught the ferry over to Manly on the other side of the harbour and watched all the surfers. It felt like we were sitting in the title scene to ‘Home & Away’. Lots of the beaches around the harbour have nets on them to stop deadly sharks and jelly fish getting in, which is a bit scary. I also found out that the largest population of funnel web spiders is in North West Sydney. Added to this, they keep advertising a hideous movie called ‘Eight legged freaks’ on the TV about man-sized, man-eating spiders which all made me incredibly paranoid, even though we do live on the fourth floor. Then the other night while I was sleeping my hair brushed my chest and I thought a spider was walking over me, so I screamed in my sleep and gave us both quite a fright! WSPA Finding work was been a lot more difficult than we imagined. We registered with about 13 agencies when we got here, and in the first few weeks we had registration interviews with 4 of them, the rest either didn’t reply or if they did reply they said they had no vacancies and no wish to interview us! We had absolutely no idea how difficult it would be to get work here. 90% of people in OZ with Working Holiday Visas are in Sydney, so with 6% national unemployment, its no wonder. Also the government has made it more difficult for foreigners to work here. Most employers aren’t interested in taking people on for only 3 months (visa restriction). We have to pay into an obligatory pension fund and its more difficult to get any sort of tax refund these days. After a tough slog job hunting we both took on jobs fundraising for the charity WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals). We were working on the Streets of Sydney collecting people's details for monthly donations. Yep, we became those annoying people that try to stop you in the street to get you to sign up with a charity. My days mostly consisted of saying "Hi miss, have you heard of Wispa?" and having people ignore me. Very confronting work, but a learning curve nevertheless. It’s tough work but it also feels like we're doing something worthwhile and we get to go out and about. There is a LOT of loonies on the streets of Sydney though (some still with their hospital braclets on). I met this one crazy guy who said he was being paid to smuggle children out of Europe to Australia "because its about to become a war zone". He continued "the problem is getting them to go even when they dont want to" Aaarh what a nutter!!! Its hot out here. I've been continuing to work doing fundraising on the street - which is pretty hard going. Still it gets me out and about. The other day we were working near this lovely beach, and at lunch we sat down and looked at the surfers doing their thang. It was pretty windy and the waves were massive so they were doing all these tricks - I felt like I was in a Travel programme. Which I am in a way. I have had many a weird experience doing this job. One week I met a freak on every day that I worked: Monday: Woman on methadone who started crying, saying "I want to go out there working for WSPA and break the chains!" Which is lucky, as WSPA is currently looking to recruit suicidal junkies. Not vets, that would be silly. Tuesday: Drunk guy who said (right in my face so I could breathe in his filthy beer breath) "your problem is that you're overpaid, oversexed and over here". His problem was that he was drunk at 9am. Wednesday: Big guy, Heroin addict wearing surgical glove on one hand, and sporting a manky looking crow on his shoulder. Feeds crow raw meat. Thursday: Hippy, who says that all the dolphins are commiting suicide to enter a higher astral plane because the world ends in 2012. Friday: Scary Drunk guy stares at our petition against bear bile farming in China for a few minutes. Then writes: "I HAVE SEEN THE PICKCHURES - WHERES THE MONEY - GUNS" . Poignant. They've also got the Gay Games on in Sydney at the moment. The other day I was working for WSPA in the park, and had nothing but a continual stream of the internationally gay walk past. I've heard that Sydney is the Gayest city in the world - I thought it was San Francisco before, but there's certainly a lot of them about. Jo (on working for WSPA): I think me being a lass, I was just too sensitive for the job. I tell you dealing with the public is a scary thing after coming from a very inoffensive environment at Reuters and lots of nice friends in the UK - I am just not used to talking to smack heads and the like! I met all kinds of people, some very nice but for every one nice person, I met one cruel person and one nutter - so many people have horrible and loony ideas out there! Added to which, the sun is awfully strong over here with the massive hole in the ozone layer above us. So the sun just eats your skin, and loads of people have skin cancer. Other days it is really cold and windy. So after two weeks, I quit because I was physically and emotionally exhausted and got ill with a tummy bug. As luck would have it, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing with job offers when I was too ill to accept. But I started at a new job working in the mail-room/reception for Macmillan publishers. Unfortunately I was covering for a woman whose daughter was killed by the Bali bomb blast. One day everyone went to the funeral today and I had to break the news to a close friend about her death. Not nice I went to see 'The Secret Life of Charles Dickens' at the Theatre Royal with Mel. The show came over from London starring Simon Callow and was directed by Mark's uncle - Patrick Garland. Patrick originally arranged for Mark and I to see the show but I was ill so we rearranged, and then Mark got ill so he Mark couldn’t go, so Mel came instead. Then at the weekend, Mel and I went to Cronulla beach by the ocean. The beach was amazing and reminded us of San Diego. It has long white sand dunes and it takes 4 hours to walk its length. I had to slap loads of sun cream on again though, because it was 31 degrees. We met up with Tom Scruby again (last seen in New Zealand) and he's kipped on our floor a few nights. Jo's friend Lucy is also over visiting so we did some of the touristy things. We went to Toronga Zoo and the Aquarium too. We got some photos up close with the Koalas (they're so cute!). My parents arrived for a holiday in Oz so we saw a fair bit of them - they treated us so some nice meals. We ate in the Hard Rock Cafe right next to John Lennon's lyrics to 'Jealous Guy' which was pretty cool. They stayed at this swish hotel and I went over to use their pool. The girl at the reception said 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' And of course, I'd stopped her on the street to get her to join this charity. She must have thought it was pretty odd that I was in this nice hotel! East Coast We then spent a week with Mark’s parents in Bogangar on the Gold Coast, 2 hrs south of brisbane. We shared an apartment with them and we took day trips out and about. We went to a 20 acre fruit farm called Tropical Fruit world (formerly Avocadoland).. We tasted all sorts of things like orange advocados and chocolate fruit; found out that advocados are THE most nutritious fruit and it is recommended to eat 1-3 a day!!; i also hand-fed some kangaroos which was really cool. We also went to Byron Bay for the day, which is a really famous beach in NSW. It is full of hippies and alternative life-stylers. I think I was the only person in town wearing foot wear! We also visited an amazing rainforest on the base of the Mt Warning Volcano. The birds there were so noisy it sounded something like one of those sound tracks that you hear in the zoos. Some of them made noises like lazer guns going off which was a bit disconcerting! Then unfortunately Mark's dad had to go home early on urgent business. But my friend Lucy arrived the next day and we spent some time together with Mark's mum at Surfer's Paradise, before Mark's mum flew home. After Brisbane, we met up with Lucy's friend Rick from Sydney and travelled up to Fraser Island together. Fraser Island was an incredible place. Basically the ocean washed masses of sand out to sea over 800,000 years to form a 75 mile sand bar. The island is really wild and can only be accessed with 4WD. We went on a tour with the YHA (Youth Hostelling Association), and had a 25 seater bus with massive tractor like wheels. The island is covered in bush land, eucalyptus forests, rainforests and freshwater lakes. This meant that we only had a CB Radio in case anything went wrong. The sea surrounding the island is very rich in marine life, and is full of man-eating sharks, deadly jellyfish, dangerous rip currents etc. So even though the beaches are beautiful, you would be a fool to rush into the sea for a dip. On the island itself, there are loads of venomous snakes and spiders, to say nothing of the wild dingoes who have become very aggressive and have been know to drag off the odd child and eat them. But we were in safe hands! and there were some amazing sights such as Eli Creek - a freshwater stream that you can jump into like a water-slide and be taken down to the beach with the flow of the water. Unfortunately we had bad weather, so Mark and I didnt go in, but when we saw the eels in the stream and that one guy had been bitten by leeches, we were glad we hadn't! We also visited a cliff point where you could look down 30m into the ocean and we were lucky enough to see 8 turtles (two mating!), and a dolphin with a baby swimming below us. Other interesting sights included geological formations of coloured sands; a shipwrecked 1930s ocean-liner lying on the beach; walking accross a desert to freshwater lake; walking through amazing rainforest with freshwater streams (trying to avoid the huge flies, mosquitos, leeches etc...trying to not to squeel and frighten the rest of the group when large spider like insects landed on your chest...); visiting a freshwater lake with sand so white and pure that you could clean your jewellery in it!; listening to stories about the aborigines and vegetation.. the list is endless. So although we were unfortunate enough to have torrential rains, it was still a fascinating place. So after a lovely holiday it is nice to be back in Sydney again. I didn't realised how much we had got used to having our own bathroom, drawers, washing machine etc! I am currently working at Dupont and one of my colleagues is a volunteer in the fire brigade and has been telling me stories about bush fires in Sydney. As xmas & summer approaches, most of Sydney has a 'Total Fire Ban', which means that no fire works are allowed in the suburbs for new year's eve etc.. Last xmas there were massive bush fires around Sydney, and as if fighting the fires weren't enough they have to deal with all the angry snakes etc coming out of the bush, the wind causing fireballs, arsonists and evil people turning off the water hydrants when they are way down in the bush putting out the fire. New Year & whirlwind tour I finished working at WSPA and was working for a pharmecutical marketing company doing follow up phone calls to people on a trial medicine, to ask them a number of questions about how they're doing. Its pretty interesting stuff - you never know what the person who picks up the phone is going to be like. All the backpackers have arrived in sydney for xmas and it feels more like we are england sometimes! But it means that work has been even more scarce to come by. We had a quiet Xmas at home. We opened our pressies in the morning and then cooked a nice roast dinner. Xmas day wasnt too hot - thank god (22 and cloudy) Boxing Day was more of the same because the weather was still rubbish. But the next day we were back down on the beach soaking up the sun. New Years was very exciting. We (me, Jo and Mel) went over to Blues Point in North Sydney (http://www.sydneynewyearseve.com/harbour_vantage.htm) at 3:30 pm to stake out a good viewing spot. The 8 or so hours flew by (ish) but I was thrilled that we had such a good spot on the foreshore with fantastic view of the bridge and Operah house. We took a blanket, radio and snacks. There were people there in tents that had camped out the night before to get a good spot. We had an amazing view of the bridge and the opera house so it was worth it. The fireworks display may well have been the best I've ever seen. After spending 4 months in Sydney (and as lovely as our flat is), Jo and I had been thinking that it was time to move on. We have been trying to find someone to take over our lease for our flat (we had a 6 month lease), so that we can get on with our travels. We placed our ad in the paper on Wednesday, on Thursday someone confirmed with the landlord that they wanted to move into our flat, with us to move out on Saturday. As you can imagine, with just 2 days to get our exodus and travel plans prepared, it was a pretty manic period of getting everything sorted - but somehow we did it. Before finally leaving Sydney went on a trip with Melanie and her friend Hayden to the Blue Mountains (which we still hadn't gotten around to doing). It was a lovely little trip to finish off our stay in Sydney with, taking in the magnificent hazy forest views. It was absolutely gorgeous. Just two hours from Sydney – a massive wilderness area that looked to me like a green version of the Grand Canyon. They call it the Blue Mountains because the valley is filled with eucalyptus trees that emit eucalyptus oil and create a bluish mist. It covers over a million hectares of land, and convicts in Sydney used to think that china was on the other side of them. Just to give you an idea of how wild this place is, they found a species of tree here that has existed for 65 million years due to the lack of contact with man and subsequent lack of change in its environment. There have been a lot of bush fires in the BM recently and we visited a hotel/heritage building where the fire had come within a foot of its walls, and firefighters had had their backs to the hotel wall shooting water at the flames trying to protect it. They use massive water-carrying helicopters such as ‘Elvis’ that can suck up a tank of water the size of a house in 50 seconds! Unfortunately the suction is so strong; it can also suck up fish, bricks and divers! After the Blue Mountains and sad good-byes with Mel we took the bus down to Canberra. We traveled for three hours past nothing but dry fields – although I did see 8 wild kangaroos! We stayed with mark’s Australian friend (Julie Lovell) who he knew from university. She was very hospitable and made our time in Canberra much more enjoyable than it would otherwise have been. Julie was just starting a brand new job looking after a senator, and I'm sure the last thing she was expecting was to see an old friend from her days back at the radio station in Exeter. Bill Bryson described Canberra as not really being a city at all, but rather an extremely large park with a city hidden in it. It's not really a city best suited for walking around in, and we learnt this the hard way. We tried to walk the "Parliamentary Triangle"; from the grass on top of the roof on the new parliament house down to the old parliament house and the Aboriginal tent embassy. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is situated in a dodgy looking caravan on the lawn opposite the old parliament house. Canberra has an Embassy Town, but there is still a lot of tension between Australians and Aborigines and the Aborigines want their own sovereignty so they have been sat outside the Parliament house ‘making a mess’ on Canberra’s parliamentary lawn and squeaky clean image for the last 30 years. At this point we realise that we are mega sunburnt, and call in at the airconditioned national gallery before we call it a day. In the evening Julie drives us around "Embassy Town", to have a look at the interesting embassy buildings, and as we cruise by the American Embassy, a security van starts following us. After Canberra we spent another non-scenic 9 hours on a bus down to Melbourne. Melbourne, is similar to Sydney, but with lesss Opera Houses and more trams. It seems like a nice place, a little European, with one tram that does a circular route of the city for free - nice. We look at the interesting Immigration museum . which painted a rather rosy picture of Australian history, but we did learn about the ‘White Australia Policy’ which aimed to keep immigration into Australia restricted to whites only for about 50 years. The museum didn’t really mention much about the ‘Stolen Generation’ of aboriginal children who were taken away from their parents to be raised by the white community in an attempt to try and teach them to live in the white world. In contrast, we visited the old Melbourne gaol, which painted a very seedy picture of Melbourne’s olden days. Although there were a few mass murderers, a lot of the crimes were committed by people struggling to survive in desperate times. I had my picture taken wearing Ned Kelly’s armor and we learnt in great detail about how the prisoners were hung; had to cotton & steel face masks to conceal their identity and stop them talking to other prisoners; had to wear leather mits to prevent ‘self abuse’. In a mood for an Indian meal, we stop at 'Gaylords' indian restaurant, which I mention now for no particular reason. Being on a whirlwind tour of oz, we decided to do the Great Ocean Road in a day, which was a bit much. Australia is a massive place and nowhere is just down the road, so this meant 15 hours on a bus. Some nice rocks at the end of it though. But we did get to see Bell’s Beach where they filmed ‘Point Break’; the town of Torquay – home of Quiksilver and Ripcurl; and of course the 12 apostles. After Melbourne we flew to cairns. Our four-hour flight only cost us 60 pounds!!! Bargain!! We stayed with my dad’s friend Neil and his family who were lovely. We had three manic days. I really wish we had had longer now, but it was down to when we could get an international flight from oz. We hired a car and bombed around cairns for the first day. Cairns city is pretty dull and not that attractive, but luckily we weren’t staying in the town. We drove along beautiful coastline where the rainforest came right down to the beach. We visited Hartley's Crocodile Adventures www.crocodileadventures.com where we saw an amazing Crocodile attack show, and were attacked by some over friendly Lorikeet parrots in the aviary. We saw a 4m croc do a death roll and watched the crocs jumping out of the water to be fed. Cairns is really hot and sticky being so tropical – I could hear the buzz of the insects over the car engine! We spent the next two days snorkeling on the barrier reef, as this was the main reason we had come to cairns. The first day we went out to the outer reef (about 30 miles out to sea). Mark and I had a noodle (float thing) so we were able to swim around together. We saw giant clams 1m across, some big fish about 4ft long, we could hear parrot fish biting off bits of coral and pooing out sand!, and massive coral that were as big as trees and looked like an underground forest. The next dive wasn’t so good and we got bitten by sea lice and saw little jellyfish swimming by us, so I decided I had had enough for one day. Then when we got home we realised we had both been burnt to buggery by the cruel Australian sun!! Despite applying suncream every 30 mins, I had forgotten to do my bum and mark the backs of his legs! Ouch.. So the next day we covered up loads and stayed out of the sun. We went snorkelling again but this time wore ‘stinger suits’ used to protect you from blue bottle jellyfish that can kill you. When we asked the previous day about stinger suits, they said oh don’t worry we don’t get them out here – I haven’t seen one for a t least four months!!! So that was cairns…we said farewell to Australia and flew 9 hours to Bangkok; it took us 4.5 hours to get out of Australia!! |