09.11.09
Bit 3 – The Mainland
Righto finally I get to the main bits of the trip. I’ve decided not to bother with a day by day account of it all as there’s going to be too much to write. And as you can see I’ve not had a vast amount of time to get writing.
I decided to split the thing up into Tasmania and the rest. Tas comes last as it was the main thing I wanted to do over in Aus.
But anyway, what happened after the MJC.
Photos of the whole post-MJC trip here (some will be linked to directly in the post as well).
Nice zoo type place where my first roo was seen. They had a few shows on and I managed to catch a couple with birds. The first was native parrots, the second, birds of prey. They did a decent job of showing different birds and their behaviours. The irritating bit was some of the kids running wild and trashing the show amphitheatre and not seeing their parents do a damn thing about it. Scum.
After the bird shows there was an aborigine who did a boomerang throwing show. He was quite an old bloke who turned out to be only half aborigine. The other half was, oddly enough, Scottish.
At the end of the visit I managed to stroke a roo but sadly not a koala as such a thing is banned in the state of Victoria. Harumph.
- Phillip Island
Home of lots of penguins and very very windy. I ate a picnic near to the bridge and met a few very greedy silvergulls including one particularly persistent pair of hangers-on. One was a bully fighting for everything, the other was a one-footed bird who just kept avoiding the first gull and being quieter about wanting food. He got fed. The bully didn’t.
Once on the island there were opportunities for photos of wind resisting and huge numbers of gulls.
The main tourist thing is the penguin viewing place. Sadly they milk this horribly. The prices were staggering so the decision was made – stuff that! A shame but there was no way those prices were worth it.
I’d heard a lot about this park. There’d been some bloody awful bush fires in Victoria back in Feb this year and “the Prom” hadn’t escaped the carnage. The scars were still clearly there both in the landscape and when talking to locals.
But it’s an extremely beautiful place. An ace place for walking and I managed to get me up a mountain. Ok it was a little one and the walk wasn’t too hard but it was still a mountain.
There were quite a few beaches of note. The one that stuck out was “Squeaky Beach”. When dry the sand squeaks when you walk on it. Very odd.
- Melbourne
Quite a nice city. The day me and Tan were there was the AFL Grand Final Day. Now this match happens at the Melbourne Cricket Ground so it was proper big for the locals. Walking around Federation Square in town there were people in team colours everywhere and then I noticed a vast telly screen. It was showing a panel discussion rather like “Football Focus” in the UK. It took me a while to realise that the people on this huge telly were actually sitting below it. The whole show was being shown live and the presenters and guests were sitting out in the square. It was really quite cold (so much that local shops and cafes had signs like this in their windows). The presenters really were working for their money.
There were lots of fans milling about and finding their seats to watch the game on the telly. Apparently the winning team were going to come to the square after the match too. So a big day of fun for one set of fans. The teams were St Kilda (local Melbournites) and Geelong (industrial city a short drive away) so no real travel problems stopping huge numbers coming into town.
We ended up watching the show from a bar at the port (waiting for the Tas ferry). It’s a fun experience watching the most passionately followed sport in the country in a pub full of obsessed supporters.
I should say that I still have no idea what the hell the rules of the sport are. But, for a brawl, it seems to take up an awful lot of space.
During my time in Aus there was a bit of a scandal about one player. Guy called Brendan Fevola got off his skull on booze at the big end of season awards thing (here and here). Apparently he has form. It was a huge news story at the time. Flintoff after the Ashes was nothing compared this bloke.
Away from sport I saw a fantastic museum called ACMI where I saw Mad Max’s car among other things and I ate burek at the Queen Victoria market (ace place).
- Geelong
Coming back from Tasmania, Geelong was the first stop before getting to the Great Ocean Road. We were there early and nothing was open. But the weather was clear but there were some very strange skies that morning.
They were big on bollards there too. There were rather a lot of them done up in odd styles, some were pirates or policemen. One notable group were bathing beauties. Not the nicest statues but certainly diverting.
It’s a very winding road along the coast. Very pretty and twisty and there are loads of accidents here. Most of these come from foreigners not remembering to drive on the left, or by those looking at the views rather than the road.
A way down the road you get to the 12 Apostles. Well 8. Actually 7. In fact I have no clue how many there are as some have collapsed. I was told one fell whilst I was in Australia.
This is also where I saw an echidna. Cute!
One of the unexpected highlights. I’d never heard of the Aussie Grampians but had a lovely time here.
Started with walks and climbs with magic views and scary sheer drops and continued with huge waterfalls and animals galore. One waterfall managed to flow without any sign of a pool at its bottom. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
At the town we saw a huge number of roos including a very large group of females with 2 males fighting for dominance. They’re very odd looking critters. Even more so when fighting. Two big fellows standing on their tails so they could kick each other. This went on for an age. The ladies just carried on munching the grass (all this happened on a cricket pitch).
The place was also the site of one of the more memorable events of the trip. I’d occasionally phoned R on the trip but the time difference was a major pain. A good time for her is around 8pm. This translated to 5am Aus time. At the hostel there was a public phone but it was on the corridor where all the rooms were. So I couldn’t really use this phone as I’d be waking everyone up with conversation that I’m sure they’d not really wanted to listen to anyway.
Luckily there was a public phone about 5 mins walk into town. So at 5am I was walking down a dark road in the very cold to find me the phone.
It wasn’t too far but I was damn cold. In fact it was near the cricket field with the roos on. But it dark enough for me not to be able to see them at this point.
In the middle of the phone call I turned around to see about a dozen kangaroos bounce past me down the road about 2m away from where I was standing. I was also battling the dawn chorus during the call. I’m used to this being sparrows and starlings and tits and the like. There’s a distinctly different feel to the chorus when the majority of the birds making the thing are parrots or some such.
The final bit of this early morning cake was when I got back to the hostel to discover that my key card didn’t open the front door. There was a key pad thing but no-one had mentioned this to me so I had no clue what the number was. It was about an hour before the reception opened up too. So I was banging on the door for a while. My toes were really very nippy by the time I was finally let in.
- Adelaide
Adelaide is a lovely city. Small enough to get around easily but big enough to have lots of things to do. And big enough for bits of it to feel slightly seedy.
Some great museums and galleries too.
The hostel was notable for a couple of things too. One was a german man shaving in the bathroom. He was making awfy orgasmic noises during the process. Very odd.
Second was I saw the man with possibly the acest job ever. As I left the hostel there was a tour bus parked up and the driver got out to let his passengers out. He was about 40 and dressed in full-on Ocker Aussie outdoorsy type clothes. His passengers were 18-30 year old women. All of them. He got a hug from all of them too. Nice job if you can get it.
- Sydney
I’d only picked Sydney to visit as I was in Aus anyway and I thought I shouldn’t really miss Sydney out. I sort of wish I had now. I wasn’t really that impressed.
I think my view may well have been different if I’d been with someone who knows the place rather than on my own. It’s too big to get a handle on in 36 hours or so.
Sure the bridge is a bridge and the Opera House looks like it does on every tourist info blurb re Aus you’ve ever seen (apart from it not actually being white). But once you’ve seen those then there’s nothing else there that really separates it from other big and rich cities.
A bay? Tick. Lots of museums? Tick. Lots of tourists? Tick.
Sydney was the first place I met English folk out and about. There were none in Adelaide, nor in Melbourne (except Dave at the MJC), nor in Tasmania. It was nice to go so far and seem far away. Sydney felt just too familiar even to the extent of me getting annoyed with 2 english women on the bus gossiping about one of their “friends”.
Not as god-awful, smelly, rude, expensive, obnoxious, self-satisfied, self-deluded, over-hyped and generally shitty as Paris though. But that’s hardly a recommendation. I really can’t see much of a reason to visit Sydney. It’s a city; if you like that sort of thing then go for it.
Oh yes and this bridge business. Ok so you copied the Tyne Bridge well done you. Now how about NOT charging $160 to climb the thing and then banning climbers from even taking a camera with them just so you can screw more cash out of them by charging for photos once they’re up there?
NB I really do like the Opera House. Was just a shame there wasn’t anything on that I wanted to see when I was there.
Australia then. Has some amazing bits and some cities. I know which bits I’d go to again. Actually if I ever do get that far again I doubt I’d go to the same places. I imagine I’d do the middle and the far north instead.
Top trip.