:: Friday, January 24, 2003 ::

Australia

In an attempt to catch up with the ludicrously out-of-date diary, we present a flash-in-the-pan expose of our time in Australia. The idea was to break it up into digestible chunks (a bit like those overpriced tear-open packets of 'gourmet' Whiskas), limiting our description of each place to 100 words or less. But as with most theories, this one fell apart pretty quickly, but it should prove a bit less waffly than usual nonetheless. The diary begins after our first few days in Sydney, when we had flown up to Cairns and firmly ensconced ourselves in the machinery of the Australian East-coast Backpacker Factory. Bearing in mind that we were shepherded around in the kind of tour buses where they give the driver a microphone (and any Ozzie with a microphone suddenly metamorphoses into a stand-up comedian) I have included a smattering of the Ozzie 'wit' to which we were subjected. Time-wise, this starts around the beginning of December 2002. All the photos for this section of the trip can be seen by clicking here.

Cape Tribulation

Deserted corner of tropical northern Queensland, so named because it was an accident blackspot for Captain Cook's ship. We stayed in a 'farmstay' wheelchair-accessible cabin with a sit-down shower, boardwalked through the rainforest, saw manta rays feeding in shallow waters along the beach (waters are out-of-bounds due to risk of croc or stinger (jellyfish) attacks). We decided against supplementing our dinner rations with jackfruit (from the farm) when we discovered an enormous huntsman spider guarding the fruit. Journey to and from the Cape was broken up with, northbound, an aboriginal guided walk through the Mossman gorge (complete with ochre body painting and staggering didgeridoo playing), and southbound a trip to an exotic fruit farm and a 'croc-hunting' boat ride (which yielded one 'fearsome' baby croc cowering in the shadows). Days earlier, a German tourist had drunkenly ignored 'No Swimming' signs and been 'taken' by a croc. Nicht so wunderbar.


Lamest Ozzie joke: Aboriginal bus driver George told us there were 'tics so big in Cape Trib they've got dogs hangin' off them'! Note also the gratuitous Ozzie abbreviation of Tribulation.

Cairns

Aaaaaaaargh! Tossa del Mar on the Ozzie East Coast. Groups of pissed-up teenage Brits painting the town with pavement pizzas. The 'Woolshed' bar there is legendary. It is said that if you can't pull there, you can't pull anywhere. Being above such trivilialities we spent our time at the hostel's swimming pool drinking the (often free) beers from landlord Mark and working on our tans. One night we used our 'genuine' ISIC student cards to see Red Dragon on the cheap at the local cinema (a real treat after five cinema-free months). Then we boarded 'Noah's Ark' for a bargain day's SCUBA-diving on the Great Barrier Reef. 'Noah' himself sported a proud shaved-under mullet and had the words 'Rock 'N' Roll' tattoed in large gothic script across his shoulder blades. What a legend. Saw some lovely fish and stunning coral, including enormous clams with slam shut when rubbed. However, the reef has suffered from years of over-touristing and is not as impressive as other diving sites.


Lamest Ozzie joke: During his briefing on the diving boat, 'Noah' explained that the boat was fitted with a marine toilet, which ejects straight into the water. He asked us to refrain from number 2s when the boat was moored. 'After all,' he cheerfully reminded us, 'the only fish we don't want to see when diving is the brown trout'.

Magnetic Island

From Cairns, the Greyhound bus whisked us down the coast to Townsville (contender for the most lazily-named place on Earth). From here it was a short ferry ride to Magnetic Island (so named because Captain Cook's compass allegedly behaved strangely when passing it). We installed ourselves at the dual-be-swimming-pool-ed Butlins-esque 'Arkies Backpacker Resort' and divided our time between swimming, mountain biking up a vertical hill to visit a ruined WWII fort and narrowly missing the boobie prize at Arkies' quiz night. Although we failed to see any of the koalas which famously breed in the surrounding forests, we did meet Sharon (from the 'Essex/London border') who became our firm friend and patiently accompanied us all down the coast.


Lamest Ozzie joke: The humour of the 'compere' who led the quiz at Arkies was too lame to even bear repeating.

Whitsunday Islands

So-called because El Capitano Cook thought he arrived here on Whitsunday (in fact he screwed up and it was the day before). We booked ourselves on an 83-foot maxi racing yacht called the British Defender, darling, and took off from Airlie Beach (actually a town on the mainland) with a crew of four and 24 paying tourists (English, Ozzies, Swedes, Germans, Dutch etc) for the islands. When on the boat we had to 'muck in' with hoisting and grinding (sounds like an R Kelly song) the sails. When in the water we had to wear full-body 'stinger suits' to protect against box-jellyfish and irigandjis. We stopped at Whitehaven Beach, whose squeaky white silicon sand melting like marble into the ludicrously pure blue waters make it perhaps the most stunning beach in the world. On days one and three we hooked up with a dive boat and took off to areas of the 'outer reef' where yet more breathtaking coral and rainbow fish awaited us. We also snorkelled around giant turtles and swordfish. Our gastronomic needs were amply catered for by vowel-mangling Kiwi crewmember 'Brindun' (who was fond of 'nupping upsteers to scrub the dick'). Overall, the experience of spending three days in the company of great people, eating great food and drinking great beer (albeit mostly at an angle of about 80 degrees to the water's surface) was exhilarating and well worth the slightly inflated price we paid for it.


Lamest Ozzie joke: Unintentional Kiwi joke actually. When somebody asked 'Brindun' where the bin was, he replied 'What do you mean? He's stinding jist over there!' 'Brindun' was of course referring to fellow crewmember Ben.

Fraser Island

We spent a night in Hervey Bay (inexplicably pronounced 'Harvey' Bay), then moved to the provincial backwater of Rainbow Beach. Following an orientation meeting with the group we were travelling to Fraser Island with, Barney celebrated his birthday in style by going out for dinner with his two ladyfriends (Chox and Sharon), and getting his hair dyed blond and blue, which gave the rest of the group something of a shock the next morning. The trip to Fraser Island began at 7am the next morning when we loaded up a large 4WD vehicle with camping gear, food and booze for 11 greedy tourists (mainly Dutch, English, Canadian and American this time, with an average age of around 19). Those of us old enough to drive took it in turns to drive through the sand-only roads of UNESCO World-Heritage listed Fraser Island. Indeed, the 'extreme' off-roading was half the fun of the trip, although there were enough fast-flowing creeks, beautiful rainforests, native animals (we all became 'dingo-aware very quickly) and stunning lakes bordered by sand-dunes to make the experience an unforgettable one. Barney even achieved small notoriety, adopting a Pepsi-Max style penchant for 'extreeeeme' adventure, to the extent that two 20 year drama school girls even wrote a song about me. Needless to say, Claire put my swelling ego back down a peg or two after we got back, but it was sweet while it lasted...


Lamest Ozzie joke: Don't be ridiculous. This was Fraser Island. There were no Ozzies, just pommies!


At this point we headed even further down the coast to Byron Bay, where as you know we had a fantastic Christmas in the company of our mates from yesteryear Carl and Anna, as well as their charming chums Jo, Cat and Emma. On New Year's Eve, we all ended up at Mrs Macquaries Point (no apostrophe of course) which is a vantage point along Sydney Harbour where we drank ourselves silly for 10 hours before watching the stunning fireworks over the Harbour Bridge in the company of more Pommie tourists than you can throw a cricket ball at (including the notorious, and hugely unfunny, Barmy Army). We had bought a tent off another backpacker in Byron Bay, so we were camping by this point in a campsite in Sydney's suburbs. The place was a cross between Gangster's Paradise and Pikey Hell, so we felt right at home.

Melbourne

We eventually went our separate ways: Anna and Carl to the backpacker car market to sell their van (which they did in four hours instead of the average four days, and promptly b**gered off to South East Asia on the profits), Jo, Cat and Emma to the Blue Mountains, and Claire and I to Melbourne (via the stunning seaside pikey town of Narooma). The highlight of our trip to Melbourne was seeing Tanya Brooman, our old mate from our time at Gaia. Tanya's been travelling for well over a year and has stopped in melbourne to earn money for the next stage of her travels. Not only did she show us around Melbourne on the cheap, but she took us to a little suburban cul-de-sac called Pin Oak Court, better known to the outside world as Ramsay Street. This was akin to a personal epiphany for lifetime devotees of Neighbours such as us, and one could tell that the people who actually lived there were somewhat used to it, going about there business as carloads of Pommie tourists (all old enough to know better) disgorged at the end of the road and giggled their way along the street shamelessly photographing themselves outside each and every house. We were no exceptions, and you can see the pix in the gallery. After just two days in Melbourne we boarded a flight to Launceston (irritatingly pronounced Lon-sess-ton by the locals) in Tasmania.

Tasmania

The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, one of the main characters in the excellent novel English Passengers had a theory that the Garden of Eden must have been located on Tasmania. I believe he was right. After hiring a car at Launceston airport, we chucked our camping gear in the back, and made like madmen across open ground. In an eight-day 1,700km whistlestop tour, we saw virtually the whole island (those bits accessible by road, anyway - much of the southwestern forests are still unmapped). The variety of countryside in this island the size of Ireland, but with less than 500,000 inhabitants is incredible - from English-style rolling hills with sheep grazing on them to rainforest, to rugged coastline and back in the space of a couple of hours' driving. Much of the island is national parks (some of them World Heritage listed) and there is very little to do except hiking and cycling. As we didn't have bikes we chose to hike, and on most days we walked 10km+ along very well marked trails through the 'bush'. It was here that we saw the greatest diversity of wildlife too. From pademelons (small marsupials) hopping around outside our tent, to possums fighting at the water's edge to kangaroos and wallabies grazing along the footpaths, and even lizards and a snake or two crossed our path. We also hiked up to 'King Billy', one of the oldest and biggest trees in the world - truly staggering. At night we pulled up at campsites (free bushcamps wherever possible) and cooked our tins of beans on an open fire with the sound of the sea just metres from our tent. We spent a day in Hobart, which has the amenities of a capital city, with the small town charm of a place like Cambridge, and the stunning mount Wellington in the background. We spent a day too in Port Arthur, the original and famously harsh convict colony founded on an inescapable peninsula. This is Tasmania's number one tourist destination, and was also the site of a tourist massacre in 1996, when a gunman memorably stormed into the cafe area and shot 35 people in cold blood. The cafe has now been converted into a memorial garden, and is perhaps the most shocking part of the visit. Some of the best hikes we did centred around the enormous Cradle Mountain- Lake St Clair National Park. Indeed there is a walk which goes from one end of the park to the other (6 days / 80km) but we'll leave that for another visit. The photos will do only a small amount of justice to Tasmania's beauty (some are uploaded already, the rest we will add shortly). Suffice to say the landscapes, clean air and flora and fauna of 'Tassie' have left a greater impression on us than any other place we have visited, and have stoked our already great enthusiasm for New Zealand. Plus the Tasmanians do a mean line in beetroot chutney - this perhaps even kept us alive when we had run out of any other nutritionally valubale foodstuffs and couldn't afford any replacements! [We have recently arrived in Christchurch, where we are staying with cheeky Cambridge chappy Steve Macklin. We will shortly be hiring a car and heading off for yet more adventures, but more of that in due course...]


Overall Lamest Ozzie joke: Q: What's the difference between the English cricket team and an arsonist? A: An arsonist would never lose his last five matches.


:: Barney 5:03 AM [+] ::
...

Singapore

Insert chronologically just before Hong Kong!

We left KL early in the morning on a huge bus with armchairs (I kid you not), bound for Singapore. I (Claire) was particularly excited as I was looking forward to seeing some work collegues from repro houses and printers I'd worked with there. Some who I'd met the year before on my business trip, and some who I'd whinged at for over a year for favour upon favour, but had yet to meet.


We arrived in the evening and set about finding a place to stay. After finding our bearings, we headed in the direction of the Raffles hotel. I know what you're thinking, but no such luck I'm afraid! We knew there were three hostels next to each other just around the corner from Raffles, but when we got there, we found that each of the differently named doorways lead directly into the same hostel. Turns out they'd merged into one, so there was no choice for us to make. The hostel didn't really live up to Singapore's spotlessly clean reputation I have to say, but it was about a quarter of the price of the next best option, so there we stayed.


In the morning we called everyone we knew there and set our itinerary for the next few days. Within about an hour, we found ourselves (well I did) in the familiar surroundings of the Lorong Bakar Batu Industrial Estate! Wilfred and Lyn from Master Image (my trusty repro experts) were more than welcoming and after downloading all of our photos onto CD for us, they took us out for a slap-up lunch on Orchard Road. After making arrangements to pick us up again later for dinner, we were left to shop for a few hours along the road that should be a shopper's dream, but is more like a nightmare if I'm honest! It's that all-too-frequent scenario where you have to go back to the first shop you went in after searching all the others all the way to the other end of the street to get what you want. Sound familiar girls... Lyn Kirby...? Well, to do that on Orchard Road, you need to get a taxi back to the beginning! There's no quickly popping back to make your purchase, oh no!


That evening, absolutely knackered, we dined in our first 'posh' restaurant since leaving Londinium. We were taken to a Chinese Herbal restaurant where Wilf and Lyn proceeded to order for us. Among the smorgasboard of delights were scorpions (sting removed) baked in some sort of fishy bread stuff, which I politely declined. Barney, on true form, tried everything on the menu and we left extremely content and a bit too tipsy for the polite company we were keeping. It was our first bottle (or three) of wine since we'd left home, which we did feel we had to explain! After dinner, we were chauffer driven around Singapore and shown all the sights, taken on a boat trip along the river to the Merlion (Singapore's iconic statue), and taken to charming Clarke Quay, where we sat outside watching the boats and the street performers and drank beer. What's that rhyme... Beer before wine, you'll feel fine - wine then beer, you'll feel queer - Ooops! We thanked Wilfred and Lyn for their hospitality, and after they insisted on coming back to pick us up in a couple of days, in the middle of their Monday morning at work, just to take us to the airport (well, we would have had to change trains once you know!), we said goodnight and fell into a drunken sleep.


The next day it was off to Suntec City to meet Jo and Al (the couple we travelled Malaysia with). Al's Dad was in Singapore on business and had his own swish apartment so after yet more shopping (well, what else do you do in Singapore?), we went around there for a huge home cooked spag bol and yet more bottles of wine. The apartment foyer had a huge Christmas tree with fake presents galore! That and the walk to get there along the aforementioned and infamously long Orchard Road, was our first real taste of Christmas. The decorations which line the main streets in Singapore are amazing. They really go to town with flashing lights and fibre optic baubles the size of footballs which adorn ALL of the trees. There must have been thousands of them (see website for pics). Anyway, only after dinner did we find out about the olympic sized swimming pool complete with urinating cherubs and waterfalls that was part of the apartment complex. Alas, by then it was too late and we were too pished for swimming, so we took to the bottle again at a table outside and stared longingly at the moonlit pool whilst swigging back yet more wine!


Another drunken sleep paved the way to our last day in Singapore, and this time we met up with Ada from TWP (a large printing company over there). This was the poor girl I'd moaned and whinged at for over a year to get better prices, quicker printing, free shrinkwrapping and every other favour there is to be obtained in the printing/publishing world. I'm surprised the poor girl wanted to meet me at all! In any case, we finally found her outside Raffles (she recognised us from the website - gulp!) and off we went for another lunch. This time, we were treated to an ultra-trendy Japanese restaurant down by the durian fruit shaped new opera house and concert hall building. Showing true Singaporean generosity, she ordered us almost the entire menu so we could try everything and then wouldn't take any money. It was a bad move on her part because we then insisted we pay for her to come to the zoo and the night safari with us! Ha ha! Singapore zoo is amazing. It's one of the best in the world and set in its tropical surroundings, it doesn't feel like a zoo at all. I think it was possibly the highlight of Barney's stay in Singapore, as he got to see his favourite animal (the Capybara) in real life for the first time! We rushed around the zoo, as we got there a bit late, and then found time to stuff in yet more food in the form of a 'jungle burger' before the night safari began. Just as we decided to walk around rather than take the slightly tacky guided train ride option, a terrific thunder and lightning storm broke out. Watching lions, giraffes and white bengali tigers through the brightest and loudest lightning and thunder storm I've ever seen was an awesome experience. Not sure the otters enjoyed it as much though, as they were all standing together in a group, whimpering with fear!


You'd think that was enough excitement for one day, but no! Ada decided to complete our tour of Singapore with a cocktail in an exclusive bar on the top floor of the highest hotel. The cocktails were to die for and the views were magnificent. I must say, a lot of people give Singapore a bad rap, but my advice is, if you want to get the best from this particular destination, be prepared to spend a little more than you do elsewhere on your travels and you'll have a fantastic time. We did, and we're so grateful to everyone there for their kindness and generosity. We can't thank you all enough! Incidentally, our chauffer (Wilfred) turned up outside our hostel bang on time on Monday morning and delivered us to the airport in style. Just brilliant!

:: Barney 2:59 AM [+] ::
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