Way Out West

So two weeks have gone by since my last post (on Melbourne), which can be explained by my waiting for Hannah to post something about her return to the UK from India, and the fact that the last two weeks have not been particularly exciting. Work was fine, and I had a good time going out with the new friends I've been making in Sydney, but as the weather on the weekend was total poop, I had a dearth of interesting things to write about. Sunday drizzle was escaped by going to the cinema for example, and, err... not much else.

But now, dear reader, I start to write this post while waiting for my return flight to Sydney from Perth, where I have spent the weekend with Mal (yes I know I only saw him two weeks ago!) and Krellis, a mate from uni who (I am ashamed to admit) I hadn't seen in about four years! Anyway K has recently moved to Perth, having spent much time out on boats prospecting for oil (or something like that) in various odd parts of the world. Against that background Perth is probably one of his least odd postings.

Mal and I arrived separately on Thursday night, but within about half an hour of each other, so K picked us up and we kicked back at his place in Subiaco with a few beers watching Peep Show and The Mighty Boosh. The beers were the awesome local Little Creatures brew, which I have sampled in Sydney but didn't realise was a Perth thing. In fact Little Creatures became something of a theme for the weekend, as did the song Future Sailors...! (digital deckhands)...! from the Boosh. Probably best not to ask.

With all of Friday free we decided to go out to Rottnest Island, about half an hour off shore. The ferry ride from the portside suburb of Fremantle (or Freo as the locals say) was fun and the sandy island scenery beautiful. Keen to do the done thing, we hired (rubbish) bikes and set off on a 10km loop round the south eastern part of the island, passing beautiful Indian Ocean beaches, salt lakes and forests, all with spectacular views.

The best thing about Rotto, however, were the Quokkas... these are like big marsupial rats, about the size of a cat. They look like beavers, until you see them move, when you realise that they have big flat feet like a kangaroo and move very much like a roo does. The quokkas are pretty much only found on Rottnest, so it was great fun to be able to get so close to them and take as many photos as we liked... with no natural predators on Rotto, they are completely unfazed by human attention.

We didn't see any quokkas until about an hour into our ride, and were as excited as kids in a candy store when we found a couple lazing around under some trees by the side of the road. A bit further on we saw a few more, and by the time we got back into 'the settlement' we were spotting them all over the place. At lunch, taken at a beachside cafe overlooking the sea and the view back to Perth, one cheeky quokka even ferreted around under our table looking to swipe scraps of our burgers and chips. Typical, you go out of your way to see a quokka, when all you had to do was wait for one to try to steal your lunch...

Friday night was fun, starting with some wine on the old couches sat on the verandah of K's massive house, which he shares with three others. There truly is a ridiculous amount of space available per head of population in Perth; capital city of Western Australia, it's the most isolated major city in the world so perhaps a sprawling city is not seen as a problem.

Saturday was spent drinking beer, principally, an agreeable pastime made even more so by the beautiful weather... even though it was the southern hemisphere's shortest day (June 21st) the sun felt hot with the mercury rising to about 22 degrees. So after breakfast out at a cafe overlooking the gorgeous Cottesloe beach and doing the house's weekly shop at Fremantle (sorry, Freo) markets, we had a cheeky pint at the Little Creatures brewery, by the dockside in Freo.

Later, with the vagaries of time zones meaning that if we wanted to watch the NZ v England rugby game in the pub (we did) we would have to start drinking again at 3:30 in the afternoon, we did exactly that at a great pub in Subiaco called the Vic. Perth seems to have some great pubs and it was hard to keep us out of them!

After the rugby (we lost, predictably) we caught the train back down to Freo and unsurprisingly had another beer before heading over the road for dinner at a pizzeria. On the way into the pub some girl asked me if I had been to Rotto on Friday. I replied that I had and she said "thought so, I recognised you. See ya!". Small town...!

After dinner we got down to the main business of the evening, over at another pub called the Norfolk Hotel. After a pint in the courtyard we headed downstairs to the basement, because we had tickets to see a band from Melbourne called Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Two weeks ago Mal had been raving on about them and when he realised that they were playing a gig in Perth he jumped at the chance to get tickets.

The venue was tiny but the acoustics weren't bad. The support act were the bizarrely titled Sex Panther, who none of us had ever heard of but are apparently well known in Perth. They were OK. ECSR were great, despite looking positively unnerved that the crowd were as close to the stage as they were (it really was a small venue!). They had obviously got over their nerves by the time the singer walked into the crowd, mid-song, and climbed up onto the counter we were propped up at, continuing to sing. K and I held onto our beers to avoid spillage.

Gig over, we made the midnight train back to Subiaco, but had to have a cheeky drink on the way home, with some nutters we had met on the train. We left this last bar when it closed at 1am, and headed back to K's, where we ended up watching another couple of Peep Shows, beer in hand, until everyone passed out on the sofa.

Given the prodigious amount of alcohol consumed on Saturday, I was surprised that Sunday morning even happened, let alone that K and his housemate Ben managed to get up and cook us all a fry-up for breakfast, which included kangaroo steak! Nice. Fortified with saturated fats, caffeine and orange juice, we eventually made it out in time for a wander around the beautiful Kings Park, where there are views out over the city and the massive wide expanse of the harbour-like Swan River. Weather was beautiful again. And with that we got in the car and headed to the airport.

The next time I see Mal and Krellis will probably be late September in Sydney, as we have made provisional plans to hook up around this time. That's three months away and I don't yet have any other travel plans for the interim. I'm keen to continue working in Sydney for the full six months that I can stay out here, but I need to make the most of my free time.

So I shall get planning. The 'red centre' - Alice Springs, Ayers Rock etc - interests me, so long as I can get a cheap-ish flight. So does the 'top end' - Darwin and Kakadu. And I haven't been to the Great Barrier Reef, or Fraser Island, or the Whitsundays. But maybe these could be better saved for another long overlanding trip - perhaps a drive from Perth all the way round the north coast to Brisbane, for example. Then I could see the Pilbara and the Kimberley (in the north of Western Australia) also. But then I look north east from Sydney and I see many exotic destinations that I had never even thought of visiting before I started working in Australia - New Caledonia is only a two hour flight away (a lot closer to Sydney than Perth is), and then there's Vanuatu, or Fiji, or Tonga, and so it goes on. Ooooh decisions decisions...

Robin

Back to Melbourne

After a busy week at work I was glad to sink a few beers on Friday but had to cut this short when I remembered that, due to the high cost of flights over the Queens Birthday long weekend, I had to get up early to fly to Melbourne the next day. Departing 7:15 in fact. Ugh. Anyway I made the plane with no dramas, and looked out over the scenery of the Great Dividing Range on a sunny Saturday morning. This didn't last unfortunately, and it was out into a damp and chilly winter day that I stepped just after 9am. So chilly in fact, that I even had to put my jumper on!

(OK, it was only about 13 degrees, not exactly cold by UK standards, but colder than Sydney at the moment - I must be going soft!)

Transport from Melbourne's airport is a bit rubbish (no airport train) but I managed to book an airport shuttle that stops literally right outside Mal's place in Elwood. So by mid-morning I was back with Mal and Sarah, no doubt harassing them out of bed earlier than they would have liked but they seemed pleased to see me. After a bit of a wander around the city in the day time we met up with Scaife to see an AFL game at the Telstra Dome - Essendon (the bombers) vs Hawthorn (the, erm, hawks)- both Melbourne teams. The roof was on, which kept the cold out while we supped our mid-strength beers and stood to watch the action (Essendon won by 51 points, fact fans).

Note to those outside Australia: AFL (Aussie Rules football) despite the name is basically a Melbourne sport. The number of professional teams in Melbourne alone is in the double figures, with a few others elsewhere in Victoria. Sydney by contrast has one team and I can't think of another one in NSW. With the exception of the NT and Tasmania (who have none) the other states have two teams each, and generally these are teams who have relocated from Melbourne. So seeing an AFL game at the MCG or the Telstra Dome is a definite Melbourne thing.

Sunday was a beautifully clear day, cold and crisp, and we set off early in a car Mal hired for the Yarra Valley. This is a famous wine-growing area with about 30 wineries you can visit. Happy that we couldn't possibly see them all in a day we first headed to the small town of Healesville, where there is an excellent 'animal sanctuary'. We probably spent longer there than we had intended, but then again it's not every day you see your first Tasmanian Devil. Disappointingly we failed to see any wombats, but were rewarded with encounters with lots of other marsupials, including three different species of kangaroo, a rare rock wallaby known as "the shadow" and lots of other weird Australian wildlife.

Time for lunch, and we headed to practically the first winery out of Healesville on the Maroondah Highway back to Melbourne. The Rochford winery was quite a commercial affair, and was busy with tourist buses and hen parties. So busy our lunch took an hour to come out - Mal, the designated driver, looked like he might explode. Scaife, having come along on his motorbike, looked happy just to be out in the sun on his bike in the beautiful countryside ("just like the south downs, apart from all the gum trees and wombts"). Sarah and I went off to try some wine, and I attempted to impress the wine snobs with my vast vinicultural knowledge garnered in the wineries of Mendoza. It worked long enough to let us have a taste of the 'reserve' selection anyway.

Refusing to buy at the first winery visited on principle, we only had time to hit one other before they all shut. So randomly we pitched up at a really small place, completely different to the Rochford, run by a husband & wife team practically as a hobby. They were very friendly and informative and we splashed some cash. They also let us try a drop of some unusual (for the Yarra Valley) Cabernet Franc that they had made "for a laugh", which actually tasted great. We bought two bottles. And then to our surprise they gave us the bottle that had just been opened for taasting - the reason being that if we didn't drink it, the husband & wife team would have to, and then they wouldn't be able to get out into the vines to do some planting in the morning! The three bottles we now had didn't last long - we managed to polish all three off over dinner out that evening (hic!)

Monday was grey and damp again, encouraging me to buy a new jumper (woo). And then it was back to the airport and back to Sydney. Just in time in fact for me to pack my bags again for a trip up to Brisbane after work on Tuesday for an 8am meeting on Wednesday. After a busy few days of traveling I will be glad to keep my feet on the ground this weekend!

Robin

Pam arrives and we hit the town...

So Pam arrived safe and sound 2 weeks ago, feeling whacked from working hard recently I think initially the sights, sounds and smells of Delhi were a little over awing, arriving late at night was good as it meant she could sleep soundly before we hit Delhi the next day.

On Saturday 24th we visited Khan Market, a favourite shopping centre with the expats, but not realising that we had to go upstairs we seemed to miss most of what the area has to offer. Never mind a quick auto rickshaw ride to Janpath marlet soon had us digging not so deep in our pockets to buy a few pairs of earings  and rummage through the bargain market stalls. Feeling flaked out we returned home, for a nap, before heading out on the town. 

Originally we were going to a bar called the Smoke House, but while on the way there Inder received a phone call and all our plans changed...we ended up going as VIP guests to Delhi's hottest night club 'F Bar' courtesy of a friend of his who happens to be one of India's biggest garment manufacturing exporters. Thank heavens fpr the VIP entry as the cover charge to get in, at 11pm is 3000 INR (about 35quid), not only that we also VIP entry to the club below, saving us another 2000 bucks (25 quid). Drinks were not cheap, but worth it having gained such exclusive access. Thank heavens Pam arrives with a wardrobe of lovely clothes for me to borrow - some how I knew that my backpacking clobber was not going to fit the bill!

The next day saw us nurse our heads as we tackled Old Delhi, wondering about the narrow stinky lanes (food, and urine mostly - nice), then onto India's biggest Mosque, Jama Masjid.  Here Pam donned a sarong (50 INR) and we paid the 'camera fee' (200INR) and took off our flip flops for a quick peak. The stones were hot to walk on, but the openness of the grounds meant the breeze and lack of traffic noise kept us cool and calm.  We exited, and found our flip flops where a guy tried to charge us 50 Rupees for 'looking after them.  Becoming used to the constant battle to prevent ourselves being fleeced of cash we flatly refused and made a getaway. It is bad enough that tourists get charged comparatively exorbitant amount to see the sights, without chancers trying to weedle more pennies from our pockets.....

Sunday night was quite where we ate home food, woth Pam getting to grips with eating here dahl, curry and chapatti with her right hand only!

On Monday we booked a car and driver to toke us to Agra and the Taj Mahal. The 250km journey took 4 1/2 hrs each way, but well worth the journey. Ticket price was 700 bucks for us goras (white people) while the Indians pay about 50. I know it's proportional to peoples earnings and in the case of the Taj I really didn't mind paying so much, but when we got to the Fatipur Sikri, a old ruin of Mugal temples, mosques and palaces the hawkers really were unbearable and Pam and I soon changed from smiling, polite tourists to curt and frowning ones.

That asside, the Taj Mahal really was awesome, with a cooling breeze sweeping over the grass and water feature out front. I can't describe it too much, as we have all seen the pictures and it is just the same and but more beautiful.  One funny thing was that of the hundreds of Indian holiday makers (school holidays), many of them  were more concerned with taking pictures of Pam and I than of the beautiful Taj Mahal.  I guess our fair skin and bright blonde hair was a spectacle to many!  We took a fair few pictures of the building and a couple of silly ones too - recognise the bench?

 

 

 

Another funny occurrence happened earlier in the day, when we sat down at 'Luckys' cafe (recommended by the Good Book, of course) brunch. We arrived at 10.30 am, ordered a thalii and a stuffed paratha, some juice and tea, had a look at the Taj from the rooftop, and then perused the 'guests comments book' while waiting for our food. We waited almost 2 hours, 2 HOURS I TELL YOU, for our meal to come, with Harry the proprietor popping out, dripping in sweat, every 10 minutes or so to assure us that it would be "5 minutes". At least the food was fresh, as we had seen the kitchen boy run out and buy the ingredients. At least the thali was worth waiting for, unlike the American couple who had waited almost as long for a plain omelette each!

A good day had by both, and a good nights sleep was definitely in order, in preparation for our next adventure...... 

 

(This one is at the Palace complex at Fatepur Sikri, where religious variety was truely the order of the day. The 'King' had 3 wives, one Muslim, one Hindu and one Christian.)

 

(Knots being tied and wishes being made inside a sacred building within the Mosque at Fatepur Sikri. (50 bucks for the string and some petals to scatter from a teacher around the corner...we saw Indians giving more like 5 Rupees for the same pleasure out the front of the mini temple like building. Doh! Anyway, if our wishes come true we have to return to untie the knots.....now, which one was mine?!)

Small laptop, big whales

I'd been thinking about buying a laptop for a while, certainly ever since Hannah left for India... I have been missing the convenience of having her laptop around, and the ability to use Skype to call her Indian mobile (without having to hang around the office at odd hours and weekends) was enough to encourage me to splash some of the cash I'd received from selling the van. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable to have over $2000 in cash sitting around anyway (I don't have an Aussie bank account) so it was an easy decision!

Given that I still plan to travel in India myself after my stint down under, I was keen to buy something very small. A MacBook Air would be nice... but I think I would have been paranoid about breaking it. Instead something called the "eee pc" caught my eye, and I had been waiting until the weekend for the new model to hit the shops. It doesn't have a CD drive, or even a hard disk (instead it uses flash memory) and it really is tiny - just a 9" screen. But it does everything a normal laptop does and weighs almost nothing. And cost less than $600 - sweeet.

Anyway although I had an invite out to a "supporters day" for an Aussie (well actually kiwi) friend's football team (i.e. drinking beer all afternoon while watching the team play) on Saturday, I didn't end up going due to the stinking headache I had that morning, which I put down to all the authentic Aussie beer I had drunk on Friday. This was probably the worst hangover I've had since leaving the UK - when travelling we didn't really go in for drinking to get drunk - but it's amazing how easy it is to slip back into the normal rhythm of the working week! Probably doesn't help that there is free beer in the office every Friday from 5pm... and neither did the invite out for a colleague's birthday drinks, after the free beer ran out. But at least I had a decent excuse for a lie-in.

Instead on Saturday afternoon I went for a wander around Balmain, which is very close to the CBD yet separated from it by the harbour (so requiring a long bus ride or a short scenic ferry ride). It was great to wander around away from the city centre (the perils of living about three doors away from your workplace) and it showed that Sydney really is a city of villages and so infinitely wanderable, in a similar way to London... just with a better climate, waterfront location, blah blah...

A big thing that happened this weekend was the start of the annual northwards migration of whales (of the humpback AND southern right varieties) along the coast near Sydney. It being early in the season, I noticed some 'deals' going on whale watching trips out into the ocean just beyond the harbour... but by the time I had thought about going on one they were all sold out. Bah. So I did the next best thing and got the ferry to Manly, then a bus up to the old Quarantine station, then walked the mile or so to North Head (at the northern side of the entrance to the harbour) to look out onto the ocean. To my amazement there was a small group of people with binoculars, looking towards a group of three tourist boats. Then I saw some tell-tale splashing around... there the whales were! I couldn't actually see them against the dull colour of the stormy autumn sky reflected in the ocean, but it made the Sunday afternoon wander worthwhile. The season 'hots up' as it were over the next few weeks so perhaps I'll get out on a boat at some point. A picture of the 'whales' here would be rubbish so instead here's a picture of the grey sky hanging heavily over the city, as seen from North Head (South Head is in the foreground)...

Next weekend is a long weekend (Monday being a public holiday for the Queen's birthday, bizarrely) making up for the May bank holidays we didn't get over here. So I've grabbed the opportunity to go visit Mal down in Melbourne. Flights were not cheap but what the hey. Off to the Yarra valley hopefully... and Mal's driving!

Robin