Blog 20. Return from Australia. Singapore

Day 87

Thursday 6 April. Transit from Melbourne to Singapore. Sunny and 26ºC in Melbourne; humid and wet at 33ºC in Singapore.

We rose at 0400 for departure to Melbourne Airport at 0500.  Laura and Derek were kindly driving us there, but it can be a 90 minute journey and we were concerned that the motorway would be clogged up.  Indeed, the motorway was surprisingly busy on the way to Melbourne, but I suppose the M4 to Heathrow would have been just the same at that time.  As it happens, we completed the journey in about an hour, and said our sad farewells to Laura and Derek just after 0600.  I hate farewells, and we made it quick.

It seems to me that all airports operate slightly differently.  If you are a regular traveller you become familiar with the routine and think nothing of it.  If, however, you are infrequent flyers like us, then you can easily become completely lost.  Trailing our luggage, we roamed the airport looking for the baggage drop for Singapore Airlines like two lost waifs sent off to the country to escape the blitz.  Eventually, after the fourth circuit, we discovered that the airlines ‘hot desk’ for the check-ins and ours was not open yet, so we found a nice hard chair to sit on and waited.  Finally, at 0730, the desks opened and we were off: a very quick check-in for Business Class, through security, and down to the Business Class lounge for breakfast.  Very nice and civilised, despite the baby and two toddlers (who can afford to take children that age in Business Class?) who – you will be amazed to know – were no trouble at all.  The breakfast of cold poached egg with Hollandaise sauce, and  bacon the texture of shoe leather wasn’t brilliant, but it was free and eaten in quiet surroundings.  Breakfast, as I have often told Jane on many an occasion, is a non-sociable meal that should be taken in peace and tranquility, with the preserves and toast rack close to hand, a cup (not a mug) of the best hot Colombian within reach, and a copy of The Times set on a reading stand in front of one.  She ignores these requirements, of course – I think there is a rebellious streak in that girl.  What her poor father must have put up with.

Soon we were boarding the aircraft (a Boeing 777-300ER for the technically minded), and I must say that travelling Business Class is the way to go, even if it does cost a packet.   Seating was arranged 1:2:1 across the aircraft and Jane and I had large individual booths, one behind the other, with window seats.  You could convert the booth into a bed, but we didn’t bother.  A glass of champagne appeared immediately on boarding and we settled in rapidly.  I don’t know where the baby and toddlers went, but they weren’t with us; I rather suspect that they were in First Class (even more amazing).

As we took off I felt very sad about leaving Australia after so long, and Jane even shed a tear.  We were leaving a beautiful country and our dear friends who had been so good to us.  But there you are: all good things have to come to an end.  Of course, Laura and Derek could have been cracking the champagne as we left the runway!

Instead of the usual second-rate film that you used to get on aircraft, there was a huge selection of films or TV programmes to choose from, and you could pause or rewind as desired.  I watched three good films and a bit of Fawlty Towers, and the journey just whizzed by.  The food was also excellent.  There were five choices for the main course and I chose snapper fillets on noodles as the healthy option, but I could have had lamb, chicken, steak or vegetarian.  For wine, we could have champagne, three choices of other white wine and four choices of red (I had the Shiraz).  The staff were very good and looked most becoming in their sarongs.  What I particularly liked was the way that they made a point of learning and using your name (“Another champagne, Mr Shacklepin?”), and they didn’t just associate the name with the seat – they used it if they met you in the aisle, or when you were searching out the lavatory too.

The journey took seven hours in real time, but there was a two-hour time difference so it was only five hours on the clock and we arrived at about 1600 local time.  We are now only seven hours ahead of you in the UK. 

Immigration in Singapore was a breeze compared to the USA, and the airport was a delight to visit.   It didn’t take long before we were in a taxi heading for the Premier Inn; the fare was $SG18 (about £10), which I thought was very reasonable.  What we saw of Singapore en route was beautiful.

Premier Inn proved to be very like its namesake in UK (it is a spin-off of the same company), but the service was even better, and more like a hotel, for example a porter took our luggage and delivered it to our room, there was a fridge with complimentary water, and – of course – there was air conditioning.  The room was smallish and ‘Premier Inn standard’, with a double bed, a small desk and a couch that could be converted into a third bed;  it was perfectly adequate and excellent value for money at £218 for two nights in a big city.  I would like to report that we dashed out after dropping off our luggage, but the truth is we were so shattered and disoriented after being up since 0400 in Australia, and not at all hungry after the aircraft food, that we just lazed about in the room and went to bed early.   Also, it was raining in Singapore (though 33ºC), and that made a good excuse.

Day 88

Friday 7 April. Hot, humid and sunny. 34ºC.  In Singapore.

We had heard good reports about Singapore but, behold, the half was not unto us.  This place is truly and absolutely amazing.

After a good restful night, disturbed only by heavy thunder and lashing rain, we decided against the standard Premier Inn breakfast – after all we were in Singapore.   So we set off up the road to find a little café.  The heat hit us like a Turkish bath.  By golly, it was hot.  Surprisingly, a suitable venue was hard to find (copies of The Times seemed to be a bit thin on the ground), but we used the time usefully by taking in the diverse cultures of the city, passing through what I think was the Malaysian, then the Indonesian quarters.  We did find a little café eventually and after that we could start exploring Singapore properly.

Laura had described to us that Singapore was one of the few nations to learn from its British colonial background and keep the good bits instead of just ditching the lot.  And that is the impression we got.  The cars drive on the left, the plugs are 13A 3-pin, and the official language is English (though the national language is Malay).  What more can you ask?  Superficial though they may be, these pointers were symbolic of what was clearly a well-ordered society.

It is hard to describe Singapore and give it justice.  It is, without doubt, the most beautiful city I have ever visited: yes, even better than Sydney and Melbourne. It is a garden city.  There are flowers, shrubs and trees everywhere: walking through the streets is like walking through the Garden of Eden.  More often than not, the pavements themselves are tiles, not paving slabs, and they are all spotless: no litter, no dog-ends, no dog mess; everything is as neat as a new pin.  The highways are wide and mainly dual carriageways, but with four lanes on each side.  The buildings are a mix of old and new, but the overall impression is of magnificence and graceful beauty.  And get this:  no graffiti!  None at all.  I looked everywhere for it, but found none.

We realised that we had a lot to see, with so little time to do it in, so we headed first for the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which is an enormous three-tower complex with what can best be described as a surfboard on top of the three.  The ‘surfboard’ contains a viewing area and a roof garden.  At the base of the hotel is a huge shopping complex on four levels, with an ice rink at one end and a lake and canal at the other.  You can get a boat out on the latter, and be rowed to and fro as if on a gondola, if being paddled about in a shopping centre is to your taste.  All the shops are top names, of course: none of your WH Smith or even John Lewis.  Instead there is Prada, Gucci, Rolex, Jimmy Choo, Chanel and every other expensive name you can think of.

We wandered through this complex for a while, not least to just cool off, then we crossed a bridge to the adjacent Gardens by the Bay which had all sorts of gardens in them such as a Chinese Garden, a Colonial Garden and so on.  One feature was high steel ‘trees’ (called Supertrees) overgrown with foliage and you could walk along a suspended walkway high among them.  We did this, and I had no problems, but Jane did not like the wobbly walkway much and it was the fastest $S16 we ever spent.  The gardens were absolutely delightful, and we wandered round for quite some time, but storm clouds were looming and so we thought it sensible to head back indoors before the rain started.

The heat and humidity were overpowering and we felt the strong urge for a stiffener, so we headed back into the city looking for a watering hole.  On the way, from one of the high bridges, we were rewarded by the sight of QUEEN MARY 2 coming alongside about a mile away.  Not long now.

A number of potential drinking places appeared, but they were mostly serving late lunch and we weren’t hungry, what with the heat and the late breakfast.  I fancied an up-market hotel where we could do some people watching and sample a cocktail.  Raffles was the obvious candidate, but we saw a closer candidate in the form of the Fullerton Hotel, a grand building overlooking the lagoon, so we went for that.  It was a a fine establishment which, it turned out, had once been the General Post Office, but we couldn’t find the bar.  We wandered hither and thither past PLU having coffee or afternoon tea and eventually found a sign that said ‘Roof Bar, 8th Floor”.  So up we went in the lift to Floor 8, which we further explored, passing private rooms and laundry trolleys, but still never finding the bar.  No we didn’t ask.  By that time I had taken against the hotel, not least for its absence of security, so I decided we would try Raffles instead.

Back into the Turkish bath, and en route to Raffles we took in Singapore Cricket Club and its ground, the Pedang; the Victorian Memorial Hall; the art gallery; and a statue of Raffles who (of course) founded the colony as an East India Trading Company base under licence from the local Sultan.  We strolled into Raffles as if we owned the place and followed the signs for the Billiards Room, where the famous Singapore Sling is currently served.  The place was quite busy with tourists (I don’t put us in that category, naturally) and we thought they were just hanging around, before we realised that they were the queue for the bar.  I don’t queue, and I certainly don’t queue for bars, so we walked out.

The jury is out on whether we made the right decision in cancelling our booking for Raffles.  It was certainly very grand, but we were only staying for two days and the hotel seemed awfully ‘touristy’ – not necessarily in terms of clientele, but in terms of visitors.  And if we had stayed, would we have had to queue for a drink? Whatever, we saved just under £1,000 which I could use for new upholstery for the boat (or to deck out the memsahib in a new set of clothes, of course).

So, back to the hotel to peel our clothes off our backs and take a shower.  Before that, we did find a little place where I had a Tiger beer and we hoovered down a Nasi Goreng (very filling).  We had been walking for over six hours, mostly in the steamy heat, and I reckon that must be about 12 miles’ worth.  I needed that drink.

Jane wanted some photographs of Singapore at night, which involved walking all the way back to the ‘lagoon’ again, an aspiration which my feet and stomach greeted with incredulity.  But we could hardly sit in our room from 1800, so at sunset (about 1900) we set off, this time attired in nice dress, sandals (Jane) and smart shirt and trousers (me).  We still hankered for that cocktail, and drifted past a big hotel vowing to return, but then we discovered a road we hadn’t seen before, and followed it past bars, cafés and restaurants, to an escalator descending into the ground.  Crikey, there was a whole new world down there that we hadn’t noticed!  I think it was actually a Metro station, but in addition there was a vast network of shops, food bars and cafés down there,  extending for at least an acre, and all air-conditioned.  We followed the signs for what we thought was Marina Bay (where we were headed for) and eventually emerged into the warm soup again, completely lost.  There then followed a minor family contretemps regarding the soreness of feet, the uncomfortable humidity, and the unwillingness to rerun the afternoon’s experience in new clothes.  There was also a feeling of déja vu from walks in Geelong as we trudged through dusty areas, climbed over crash barriers, darted across roads and generally embarked on an outback expedition in unsuitable clothes.  Astonishingly, we found what we were looking for, and took some amazing pictures.  I must say, it was a beautiful sight at nighttime: the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, lit up, really did look like something out of Star Wars and the rest of the city was like fairy land.  Sydney and Melbourne had been pretty damned good, but this place was off the planet.

We dived down into the land of the troglodytes again and took, what I considered, to be the direct route underground to where we wanted to go.  There was yet another minor disagreement as to the right course, and we drifted around vaguely past more underground shops before emerging – well – somewhere near Raffles.  We found a convenient cocktail bar (tongues hanging out by this time) and dived in.  They didn’t do Singapore Sling, but they did do Bellinis, which we ordered and hoovered down like refugees from the desert.  When we paid ($S37) it was revealed that they were part of the ‘Happy Hour’ package so, as Jane put it, we could have had another.  Always wishing to fulfil Jane’s every wish, we headed for Raffles for that illusive Sling.

Raffles looked lovely floodlit, and I felt another minor pang of regret for not staying, until I discovered that the queue for the bar was still there (though, to be fair, other people were in it).  So off we set back to the hotel, this time smart, hot, and tired.  But we did enjoy the Bellinis.

Day 89

Saturday 8 April, and we rejoin QM2 today.  Overcast, heavy showers, 35ºC.  

We drifted up the road looking for somewhere for a light breakfast, Jane clutching her waterproof lest a heavy shower should disturb her beautifully coiffured hair.  I didn’t have the heart to tell that the humidity had done the job already without having to resort to precipitation.

This is sad.  In the whole of Singapore, the best place we could find for breakfast on Day 2 was a Starbucks.  In our defence, it was starting to rain and the heavy tropical storm threatened to ruin my carefully coiffured hair and immaculate appearance.  Actually, it was quite good for Starbucks, modest though it was.

At last, it was noon and time to check out and head for the end of Phase 3.  Verdict on Singapore?  Fantastic, but we had nowhere near long enough to make a proper assessment and we did not manage to see all the places that people recommended.  Apart from the time shortage, the atmosphere was very enervating and I thought we did well to do six hours in the heat.  Ambience and aesthetics, 10; skateboarders, NIL; grown men on electric children’s scooters, 2; litter, NIL; cleanliness, 9; dossers, NIL; beggars, NIL; dog mess, NIL; dogs, NIL; security and safety, 10; Graffiti Factor, 0%.

Our official joining time for QM2 was 1530, but we were hardly going to wander Singapore trailing two large cases each, so we took the view that the cruise terminal would, at least, be air-conditioned.  If we had to wait, then so be it; fair enough.  We arrived there at 1215.  What a contrast with Southampton!  There were no porters to take our luggage: just a heap of cases in a corner looking like cast offs from some sinister genocide operation.   We asked a bloke what to do and he just told us to add our bags to the heap.  This we did, wondering if we would ever see them again, before we entered the building.  We passed through the usual security checks and what a sight awaited us.  Imagine, if you will, an enormous aircraft hangar capable of taking – say – an Airbus 380 or two.  Imagine then filling this space with linked chairs like a vast departure lounge far exceeding anything in Heathrow or Gatwick.  Well that was the cruise terminal.  And it was packed.  Packed solid with seated people.  We were ushered to a designated area, each of us trailing what is euphemistically called ‘cabin baggage’, and sat to wait.  Time passed by and it was eventually revealed that the emigration computers had ‘gone down’ and that nothing was happening.  Shades of Cape Town all over again, I see.  More people kept arriving, and filled up more space; further batches arrived and were ushered upstairs; I presume even further batches would be ushered outside.  Finally, there were signs of movement, and anyone for Princess or Queen’s Grill was extracted.  I almost put my hand up accidentally:  see how the mighty have fallen.  But then, after two hours, and before our designated time, we were off: through check-in, smile for the photo (was told I was very handsome, but sadly it was by a bloke), and given our (Extremely Important Gold Club Member) embarkation cards.  Off we went through a door where we had to take off all our clothes and pose for emigration.  Actually, I made part of that last bit up, but it was surprising just how many hoops we had to jump though to get out of Singapore.  Finally, finally, we crossed the brow and entered the hallowed portals of QM2 once again.  It was like coming home.

We soon found our cabin, high up on Deck 13 and higher than the bridge.  There is no-one above us except the deck and the sky.   It was one of the new cabins added en bloc in the refit of June 2016 and very nice, though (of course) smaller than our Princess Grill cabin of the outward journey, though not uncomfortably so.  This time we are travelling ‘Britannia Club’, a sort of Premium Economy ticket that gives the anytime dinner time and designated seating of Princess Grill, without the privilege of eating in the Princess Grill itself.  As I write, we have not eaten yet so I cannot comment on the Britannia Club restaurant, but I know that at least it will have views of the sea, instead of the views of the zombie-like fitness fanatics marching around Deck 7 as was our fate on the outward trip.

Awaiting us in the cabin were two bottle of Blanc de Blanc on ice (as befits Important Gold People) and our luggage which, miraculously, had not been filched by the lesser elements of Singapore.  After unpacking, we poured our wine and ventured out onto the balcony to view the port.  This proved difficult, because the Caribbean candidate for Miss Universe 1951 (failed Heat 1) did not have the strength to open the sliding door.  Then she lost her embarkation card.  Then she lost her mobile phone.  I could see a paddy brewing, and I’m not talking about preparations for St Patrick’s Day.  Never before has a glass of ice-cold sparkling wine been needed so much.  I opened the door, and placed the elixir in her hand and, behold, she was turned into Wonder Woman (alas, minus lasso, which had still not been unpacked).  After the third glass she was burbling like a Three Badge Parrot and could open anything.  Truly, we had finally returned onboard the Love Boat (well, I hope so – though she might fall asleep on me yet).

The first hurdle was lifeboat drill at 1700 and after that we could relax.  Looking at Jane, the relaxation stage had clearly started early and she was already voicing the view that we should descend early to our Assembly Station to get the best seats.  I was not sure if she meant ‘best seats in the lifeboats’ or ‘best seats in the lounge’, but I thought I had better comply as Jane in her masterful mood is best not ignored.  I returned to the cabin from the balcony to find our lifejackets already laid out on the bed by Jane, and I grabbed one, only to be told, 
“That one is mine.  This is yours”.
“How can this be so?”, I asked, “we’ve just joined and they’re both the same”.
“No”, she said, “Mine is cleaner.  Yours has a greasy mark on it, as befits an engineer”.
I confess, I was initially lost for words.  With the ship sunk beneath us, sharks circling and hypothermia lurking, Jane would be concerned to present a pristine appearance in an immaculate lifejacket (something of an oxymoron in itself, by the way).  She was right about the mark,  but I protested loudly – as we marched along the cabin flat – that I was a Chartered Engineer, not a grease monkey:  I could explain the difference between entropy and enthalpy in a few terse sentences.  And at this point she assaulted me: physically pushed me along the cabin flat to the stairs.  What do you think of that?  After all I have done for her.  “No more Lucozade for you, deary”, I thought.  And I bags the first seat in the lifeboat.

At last, supper time came and we went down to the Britannia Club Restaurant for the first time.  It was jolly nice –  dare I say it, a better dining venue than Princess Grill: more distinguished and quieter, with wood panelled bulkheads, less traffic, and a table by the window looking out over the sea.  The restaurant is on Deck 2 which, you will know from previous blogs, is quite low down, close to the waterline so we will be somewhat closer to nature.  On the basis of just one meal, the food was just as good as Princess Grill, with six choices on the table d’hôte menu, and a similar number on the à la carte.  I am not sure why they offer both menus, but I’m not complaining.  Just for the record, I had Crab & Lobster Thermidor to start, followed by Pan-fried Cod in a mustard sauce.  We weren’t originally going to have any wine, but we felt that we should celebrate, so we ordered a bottle of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc to last us a few days.  That is several resolutions broken already – Australia has been a bad influence.

The ship was due to sail at 2000, but there were delays with the authorities and we did not, in fact, get away until about 2110 in the end.  I didn’t envy the Captain taking the ship out through what was a very busy and congested shipping channel in the dark, but we cleared everything with the usual air of panache.  The lights of Singapore remained in sight well into the evening and we were sorry that our visit had been so brief: another time perhaps?  Next port is Port Kelang tomorrow, the port for Kuala Lumpur which is 25 miles away.  We will not make the latter as it is too far, but we may try Port Kelang on the shuttle.  We will see.

We slept the sleep of the just in the large bed, completely dead to the world.

I will send this off now, as it completes Phase 3 – the transit of Singapore.

Blog 19. Australia Finale. Melbourne

Day 81

Friday 31 March. Cold at 12ºC.  Sunny.

We set off from Phillip Island after breakfast to return to Geelong for a day, before heading for a weekend in Melbourne.  The return journey did not seem as lengthy as the outward one, despite the fact that we stopped at yet another winery en route.  There, we took part in the shortest wine tasting on record, because the owner could only spare us five minutes as he had a large party arriving for lunch.  So it was look, smell, slurp, gulp, next one, then thank you.  Laura and Derek liked the wine despite the somewhat perfunctory reception, and they bought half a case.  The winery was miles from civilisation on an unmade dusty road, about two miles from the highway: a lovely building and restaurant with superb views of the sea.  How people got to hear of it, heaven only knows, but the restaurant has a good reputation for food.

The trip back on the ferry across The Rip to Queenscliff was enlivened by a women’s get-together in what passed as the restaurant onboard, eating an extended lunch and making one heck of a racket at the same time (as a lot of women can do: they all talk at once).  Apparently you can hire the ‘restaurant’ for such events and just stay onboard for trip after trip, eating and drinking away.  We all get our thrills in different ways; I must write to the North Shields Ferry Company and suggest they do something similar for their trips across the Tyne.

Finally, we were back in Headquarters in Geelong.  The house was like a fridge, a fact remarked upon by all concerned, yet Laura’s solution was to open the back door.  Jane sat in the kitchen with a fleece on, and I would have joined her if I had one.  I’ve said it before: they are a tough bunch these Australians, they still walk around in shorts and flip flops in the freezing cold.  In the end, we both decided to go for a walk and get some exercise in order to warm up, and that did help.  Odd contrast to earlier in the visit.

We spent the evening in a little Italian restaurant in Geelong where you could ‘bring your own’ .  It was a family run affair, and so very good, though it took an hour to deliver the main course and we were comfortably into our wine by that time.  The return to the happy fridge was highlighted by taking some of Derek’s port, which warmed us up very well.  The photograph of Jane drinking it through some spouted contraption, aimed at aerating the port as it was consumed, was duly posted.

And so to bed.  I don’t think I’ve slept with an icicle before; this was a first.

Day 82

Saturday 1 April.  Rabbits, and there are a lot of them in Australia. 21ºC, sunny intervals, cool breeze.

Mid morning we set off for our penultimate destination in Australia, Melbourne, and we were very much looking forward to it after seeing its competitor, Sydney.  It was an hour’s journey on the motorway, and rather tedious (as any motorway journey is).  I was struck again by the poor lane discipline on Australian roads, something I found a little strange given the stringent driving test standard in the country: everyone seems to just pick a lane and stick to it; there is none of this ‘keep to the left after overtaking’ like in the UK.  Consequently there is overtaking and undertaking, and it is quite unnerving. 

Our first sight of Melbourne was very impressive, because its skyline was visible from miles and miles away as a huge majestic conurbation.  When we got closer in, the majesty of the city came across even better.  We drove across Westgate Bridge, which is very popular for suicides who cannot face poverty after losing in Melbourne’s Crown Casino (typically five a month).  A few years ago, a father threw his four year old daughter from the bridge to get back at his wife, with whom he had had a row.  Pretty appalling.

Under the bridge, the Yarra River wound its way from a busy harbour, up through the heart of the city.  The buildings seemed higher than those in Sydney, but also the city centre roads were much wider.  As a result there was not the dark canyon effect so common with high-rise buildings, and there was much more natural light on the streets; the wind still howled like a banshee at street level, however, and I was reminded of Chicago.

Laura had used her timeshare contract to obtain a serviced apartment on Kavanagh Street in the central business district, and this proved to be a perfect location.  The apartment was an executive suite on the seventeenth floor and quite excellent.  It had two double bedrooms (one en suite), with a family bathroom and a small kitchen.  Large picture windows and a balcony gave fine views of the city.  After parking the car in the residents’ car park we set off to explore the Melbourne.

Our first port of call was the viewing platform of the Eureka Tower, 88 floors (282m) above ground level.  This gave us splendid views of the city all around, and we were able to appreciate the layout and many fine features.  It was quite breathtaking and we were fortunate to have a sunny period in which to do the viewing.  I liked the look of Melbourne, and I reckon it looked even better than Sydney, which is saying something.  It appeared very spacious, well laid out, and with some impressive old buildings and many parks.  There was the option, for an additional fee, to walk onto a glass-floored external platform, but we passed on that.  Curiously, given my acrophobia, I was not too bothered by the height, but I did feel slightly nauseous, and so did Jane; I think we must have been suffering vertigo, something I have never experienced before (fear, yes, nausea, no).  I did read that the top of the tower can move as much as 300mm (12″), and I reckon that was happening when we were up there.  I didn’t actually kiss the ground when we exited the lift on the ground floor, but it was a close thing.  Interestingly, local runners sometimes run to the top of the Eureka Tower for charity; I understand the record for 88 floors is seven and a half minutes.   This brings that dash to the upstairs loo during a commercial break on the television into perspective somewhat.

We pushed on to the riverside, where the city was celebrating a festival in style: brass bands, singers, individual players.  We wandered through this lively mix, seeking out somewhere to have lunch.  I thought perhaps a little riverside restaurant with French cuisine, but Laura said that there was a food court nearby, in the ground floor of the Crown Casino, and this offered good value for money.

A food court.  This sounded ominous.  I didn’t think I had ever eaten in a food court.  Surely it couldn’t be as bad as I thought it would be?  Yes, it could. We strolled though a heaving, noisy, bustling chamber, which had stalls on all sides offering all manner of international foods.  Plain Formica tables with plastic chairs were scattered around the centre of this maelstrom, and they would be the hub of The New Dining Experience.  I am not the best person for concealing personal feelings, and I confess that I viewed the area with the manner of a Regency buck touring an abattoir.  But the rest of the party were determined to eat there, and I tried hard to make the most of it.  We eventually ordered some Asian food: any two dishes, with noodles, supplied on a paper plate with a plastic fork to eat it with.  We secured a table and sat down to eat, buffeted by noise and movement all around like pebbles in a fast flowing stream.  People bumped into our chairs and shouted over the top of us; we were assaulted by clamour on all sides.  The food was actually very good, but frankly, the entire experience was absolutely awful.  As a process for taking on fuel it could be compared to a Replenishment at Sea in a Force 8 off Portland; as an enjoyable culinary experience it failed miserably.

And so for a stroll to see the rest of the city, heading for the main shopping street, and it was then that the detail of Melbourne was to be compared with the first impressions.  It was extremely busy and noisy, it being the Food, Wine, Art, Comedy and Just-About-Everything-Else Festival this weekend.  As in Adelaide a lifetime ago, we were assaulted by a cacophony of different types of music and a medley of conjurers and street artists, all performing at once.  The city was much more open and airy than central Sydney, with an eclectic mix of buildings, old and new, that broke up the skyline, let in more light, and was quite pleasing to the eye.  The roads were very wide, typically eight lanes plus two tram lines, and this enhanced the feeling of space.  Most roads were lined with plane trees, which also gave them a very relaxing and natural appearance.  Although Melbourne didn’t have the magnificent harbour and waterfront of Sydney, it did have the river, and the riverside had a wonderful buzz to it.  The buildings were quite imaginative.  There was a huge curved concert hall that looked like something built by the Todt Organisation as part of the Atlantic Wall; an art theatre with a tower like the RKO logo; an art complex that looked like camouflaged discarded shoe boxes; and some very fine Victorian architecture, all of which I marginally preferred to Sydney’s buildings (Opera House excepted).  Overall, architecturally and aesthetically, Melbourne came across better than both Sydney and Adelaide.

But oh dear, the graffiti.  It seemed to be everywhere: it was on bridge pillars, hoardings, buildings,  lamp-posts, electricity sub-stations, bollards, and road signs (and they are just the ones I can remember).  There was even an alley deliberately set aside for graffiti artists, and the vandals had disfigured that with obscenities too: graffiti on graffiti.  And this wasn’t in some run-down part of the city: it was in the Central Business District.  Even the head of office of the Bank of Australia, with its grand marble entrance, had graffiti on it.  It all felt a bit of a let down, like when you see a beautiful woman then discover that she has tattoos.  Why put up with that?  Why not clean it off, or, better still, shoot the graffiti artists as they crawl out of their holes at night?  It really did let down the whole city and it was worse than Tenerife (see Blog 1).

We did not really see all of the main shopping area of Melbourne, so I cannot give a fair comparison with the other Australian cities.  Laura only took us through the poorer quarters where the ragged people go and these areas were a bit scruffy, with lots of dog-ends outside buildings, where the pariahs are sent to pursue their dirty habits away from healthy people.

We went into our first Australian pub, a fine Victorian building called Young & Jackson, and had a very pleasant pint of Carlton Bitter (Carlton is THE Australian beer, by the way – they wouldn’t touch Fosters with a barge pole, and it isn’t on sale anyway).  The comfortable lounge was dominated by a huge oil painting of a naked girl, Chloe, painted in 1875 and the subject of much controversy at the time because of its perceived prurient influence.  The full-length painting showed some powerful use of colour and subtle brush strokes, illustrating a slim youthful form in the style of Raphael.  Derek and I were so impressed by this example of fine art that we felt bound to examine it in detail and be photographed next to it.

In the evening, Laura took us to ‘a little place where she had lunch once’ that was a Hare Krishna eatery called Crossways.  We set off through the streets which, if anything, were even busier and noisier than during the day.  Smart theatre and concert patrons in evening wear shared the streets with pop fans, eccentrics, students and tramps; rap music competed with classical; jazz with hip hop.  Think Oxford Street, pre Christmas at night time, with lots of noise and no Christmas lights.  We battled our way against the stream, tripping over down-and-outs and push chairs, until suddenly Laura dived left into an ordinary doorway between two shops and started to climb the narrow stairs.  I started humming ‘Fernando’s Hideaway’ for some reason, and did wonder if we would have to knock on a door and say that Joe had sent us.  But no, we went straight in to an ordinary first floor room, quite narrow, that ran from the front to the back of the building.

Crossways, run by the Hare Krishna movement, was like a cross between a Salvation Army refuge and a Youth Hostel.  Round or long pine refectory tables, with folding plastic chairs, were scattered through the room and were occupied by a wide range of patrons: students; men in vests with tattoos and hairy armpits; Orientals; an old woman in a lamé top with a rucksack, cleaning out her ear with her little finger; and a thin, angular, old man wearing a floppy bee-keeper’s hat and wrapped in a sheet.  A bit like Simpsons on The Strand, then.  At one end of the room was the serving counter.  There was one (vegetarian) ‘choice’ only, and this changed each day.  The main course came with a pudding and a drink, all for $AUS 8.  Tonight, the Dish of the Day was vegetarian curry, and the pudding appeared to be that old naval favourite, figgy duff and custard.  We trooped up to the counter, paid our money, and were duly handed our plate of curry and rice, with the duff added to the tray.  We were expected to clear our table when finished, emptying the leftovers into a slop bucket and piling the dirty plates and cutlery in suitable receptacles.  A bit like the Cadets’ Messdeck in HMS SKEGNESS, only the deck didn’t move or leak, and we didn’t have to wash up.  

We sought a suitable table and managed to secure three seats on one, with Derek sitting nearby on another.  There were no napkins or tablecloths, but the cutlery was – at least – in stainless steel.  For a drink, I chose a milky yoghurt called lassi, the first time I have ever drunk a dog food.

It was a cheeky little repast that offered much in the way of unintended entertainment and people watching, but not a great deal in anything else, unless you count the extremely cheap price.  I’m sorry to say that the curry was not terribly good.  As we left, we were required to ring a ship’s-type bell as a Krishna way of saying thank you.  And ‘thank you’ for a unique experience (never to be repeated).

Return to the flat was the reverse of the outward journey and just as noisy.  I was struck by the incongruity of siting an open-air rap venue right next to the classical concert hall: it just didn’t seem right or appropriate.  As we sat in the flat on the seventeenth floor, the thump, thump, thump of disco music was entirely audible until late into the evening, but fortunately it did stop when it was cocoa time.  As I have said previously, these Aussies really know how to party.

Day 83

Sunday 2 April.  Sunny intervals and cool.  16ºC and cold at night.  We put our clocks back overnight in preparation for the Australian winter, so this makes us nine hours ahead of you now.  Of course, we forgot to alter anything until Jane woke up at 0630 thinking it was 0730.  Discovery that she had another hour in bed gave her immense satisfaction.  We had intended to go to Communion in St Paul’s Cathedral at 0800 (there is a great deal to confess), but the flesh was unwilling and the spirit was weak.

Today, we set off for the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, taking a tram from the centre of town.  We could have walked, but Jane wanted to ride in an Australian tram and it was easy to fulfil this simple pleasure.  On the way, we passed a bloke transporting a suitcase and tent on a skateboard, and an old man in an invalid scooter with a built-in hifi playing at full volume.  And I thought London was full of eccentrics.

The flower show was very – erm – flowery and Jane enjoyed herself immensely.  I recovered consciousness after five hours to find myself holding an enormous bag of horticulturally related goodies, next to a woman with a big smile on her face.  At least she didn’t buy any plants.

A late lunch seemed to be the order of the day and Laura suggested that we go to China Town for some dumplings at a little place that she knew.  After yesterday, I was becoming a little dubious of Laura’s choice of eating establishments, but Jane was hissing at me to be pleasant and agreeable, so I smiled feebly and we set off, me dragging the heavy bag forlornly behind me.  We passed under a large decorated Chinese arch at the entrance to China Town, bearing a message in Chinese that said, 

“Welcome White Imperialist Barbarians.  Enjoy Australia While It Is Still Yours”.  (My Mandarin is a little shaky, but I think that was the gist of it)

In China Town, the favoured dumpling place was shut, and the next alternative had a queue out the door.  We cast our eyes around a range of establishments that looked to me like opium dens, bordellos, or bars where you would go in to ask for a glass of Chablis then wake up in Shanghai.  We drifted forlornly and indecisively back up the street and the sign ‘Food Court’ caught my eye.  Oh no.
Right on cue, Derek said, 
“Heh! We could always go to the Food Court!”.
“Go for it!”, I said in a feeble voice.
In we went, and it was actually fairly empty and quiet and I would have considered eating there, as my feet were killing me.   However, the emptiness was because every stall was shut.  It was Sunday.  

Finally, we ended up in the ‘Elephant and Wheelbarrow’, an older drinking establishment very like a London pub.  Jane had a bruschetta that comprised onions, tomatoes, goats cheese, pesto and a pint of olive oil on what appeared to be a toasted piece of thin cardboard; Derek and I had beefburger and chips; Laura had chicken panini.  Jane left the cardboard, but ate my chips when I wasn’t looking.

I thought that a return trip on a tram would have been nice but, no, Laura felt that we should see Fitzroy Gardens and Cook’s House.  The latter was the house of Captain James Cook’s parents from Great Ayton in Yorkshire, which had been bought by Australia and shipped over in the 1930s, making it, effectively, the oldest building in the country.  En route, we took in a large conservatory full of begonias and gloxinias.  How lovely.  At last, tired and weary, and still dragging the large bag of horticultural products, we staggered back across the bridge, ran the gauntlet of street performers, and made it back to the flat, where we collapsed.  We still had to go out later for supper though.  Dumplings anyone?

Reluctantly, we dragged our weary legs out of the flat for supper and, to my relief, we weren’t going back to China Town on the other side of the city; instead we were going to a riverside restaurant called Left Bank, which was quite close.  The thumping music from the festival could be heard from hundreds of yards away and, as we approached the river, I said, “Can we pick somewhere quiet?”, whereupon we entered our destination to find a screeching saxophone and throbbing drum duo blasting away at full volume.  By hand signals we asked for a table that was warm and quiet, and got the first, but not the last.  The place was very busy and we were actually on a veranda overlooking the river, but with a heater going full power, which was lovely.  Unfortunately, conversation was impossible and all we could do was smile inanely at each other and wave occasionally.  “This”, I thought, “is like eating dinner in the engine room of a tramp steamer at full power, with half the main bearings wiped”.  It was such a shame, because the service, the wine and the food were very good, bordering on excellent.  Even the music was good, I have to concede; it was just far too loud and inappropriate for a restaurant setting.  Jane liked the music too, and she boogied and wiggled her bottom all the way back to the flat (memo to self: see if you can get a CD of that music for a private listening).

Off back to Geelong tomorrow, and final preparations for departure on Thursday.  Thoughts on Melbourne?   Very difficult, as I tend to give more weighting to the marks on graffiti than is probably rational.  Appearance and architecture, 9; arts and culture, 9;  parks, 8; graffiti factor, 80%;  dossers, 30; dog-end factor, 60%; skateboarders, 2; grown-up men on children’s scooters, 1; shopping, 7; refinement and placidity, 5.  Overall view: I liked Melbourne, but it felt like the place was being abandoned to the Morlocks.  Which city won out of Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne?  Let me think about it.

Day 84

Monday 3 April.  Bright and sunny, 21ºC, cold at night.  We took breakfast out, returning to yesterday’s restaurant, which was a bit quieter than last night.  The girls were going off to the art gallery after breakfast, but the boys were deemed too philistine to appreciate finer culture and sent back to the flat.  Also, there was some suspicion as to our artistic motives after Saturday’s episode with Chloe.

Finally, at noon we said goodbye to Melbourne and set off back to Geelong.  The final phase was about to begin.

Jane needed to fill up with probiotics, pills, powders and other mysterious potions recommended by our daughter-in-law for the return journey, so we walked down to the local shopping precinct and enlisted the help of a friendly pharmacist.  I reckon we bought enough stuff to last until next Christmas, and it cost quite a packet, but nothing is too expensive to keep Jane well.  I just hope it will all fit into the aircraft to Singapore.  

We also thought we would obtain an external thermometer so that Jane could monitor the temperature on the return journey (she has a passing interest in the weather), but the best place to buy that was a DIY store, which was some distance away on the Melbourne Road (which sounded ominous; just how far up the Melbourne Road?).  Action the iPhone Maps app, which told us the direction to walk in, and off we set.

I have mentioned previously how the Australian infrastructure is not geared up for urban walking.  Our journey reinforced that comment.  The route took us down a very busy four-lane bypass that had no footway, so we stumbled through the dust, past factories, tyre repairers, garage forecourts, metal shops, fabricators and incredulous manual workers.  We clambered over crash barriers, bits of car bumper, abandoned cars and discarded lorry tyres.  With the traffic whizzing by, it was a bit like walking along the A303 on a Bank Holiday: not terribly nice.  But we did make many motorists’ day, judging by the stares that we got.  The DIY store was Bunnings, the Australian chain that is taking over Homebase.  It was very good, with helpful staff and a good range of stuff.  The layout was a bit like B&Q, so the latter will have quite a challenger in due course.

Sarah, Laura and Derek’s daughter, cooked the supper tonight: Gyoza (Japanese fried dumpling),  Pho (Vietnamese soup), and Humming Bird cake.  It was all excellent.  The soup, in particular, was something I had never had before: a complex beef stock with fish sauce and noodles into which you added, from the table, bean sprouts, greens, coriander, mint, chilli, lemon or lime juice as you wished.  It ended up looking like a mangrove swamp, but it tasted delicious and was very filling.  The Humming Bird cake was one of Sarah’s mother-in-law’s recipes and proved to be a moist, chunky version of carrot cake.  It wasn’t fattening at all because it contained one of my ‘five a day’.

Sarah asked Arthur if her Humming Bird Cake was as good as his mother’s, and I was able to save him by interjecting, “Careful, it’s a trap”.   However, having avoided that hazard, he then blundered on to remark (presumably as a professional chef) that, yes the cake was a pretty easy one to make.  And people say that I keep putting my foot in it.  Arthur has a record of displaying the Death Wish, for – on his honeymoon – he managed to lose his wedding ring.  He and Sarah went swimming on the first day, and she advised him to take off the ring before entering the sea; advice which he duly ignored.  He then lost the ring in the surf and Sarah was apoplectic.  Arthur went to report the loss to the local police station and outlined the circumstances, and the police officer raised a sardonic eyebrow and said, “So I suppose you’d like me to give you a cell for the night”.  Fortunately, I think Sarah forgave him (though I must warn him that she will never let him forget it).

As a digestif, the port came out and we were indoctrinated into yet another Australian tradition.  This consisted of taking a biscuit the shape and size of a bourbon, but covered in chocolate and called a Tim Tam, nibbling off a corner on opposing sides of one diagonal, placing one end in the port, and sucking through the other bitten-off end.  Result, a port infused biscuit and a chocolate flavoured port.  We then ate the biscuit.  It tasted lovely, but I am not sure I would want to make a habit of it, lest my liver and/or heart give out.  Never mind the potions, I hope we fit into the aircraft to Singapore.

Day 85

Tuesday 4 April.  Sunny and pleasant.  22ºC. Well, it is the penultimate day and our thoughts were beginning to leave Australia and to think of packing for Phase 3.  But we could hardly sit in all day, so we set off to walk into Geelong for the last time to say goodbye to the familiar places.  We took a slightly different route this time, which avoided most of the industrial estates, and made the town centre in an hour and a half.  

I started off my initial comments on the subject of Geelong with the harbour frontage, and I am pleased to report that I have not changed my opinion.  It looked lovely in the bright sunlight and, this time, there was a small cruise ship at anchor in the bay, with tenders shuttling to and fro.  It is a pity more ships do not stop in Geelong: the city would be worth the visit and it would do the city a lot of good.

We had lunch outside at our old favourite, The Sailors’ Rest, then sought out the shopping area to change some money into Singapore Dollars.  Jane needed a belt to hold up her jeans (why else?) which were still very slack after her illness.  It is a measure of the fickleness of my wife (I will not say, ‘…and of women in general’, nay, nay) that, having moaned for years about putting on weight and having clothes that are too tight, she now moans that her clothes are too big for her.  Of course, there may be an ulterior motive here, in that the comments may be a precursor to putting in a bid for new clothes.  I feel a belt, taken up a notch or two, will be much cheaper and perfectly adequate.

Now here is a curious feature of the Australian retail system.  If you buy something that costs, say, $AUS 39.98 with a credit or debit card, then the process is exactly the same as in UK.  If, however, you pay for the goods with cash, then (in the example I have given) you will get no change.  The invoice lists the change (2 cents in this case) as ’roundup’.  This is because the Australians no longer have coins less than 5 cents.  It is a funny system, for I am suspicious about what happens to the ’roundup’.  Moral of the story: don’t pay cash.

I bought Jane the inevitable ice cream, and we walked back along the coastal walk as the sun was setting.  Another 12 miles in total I reckon, though my legs felt like it had been 20.  If only all this exercise was doing me some good.  To make up for all the energy lost, I tucked in to Derek’s homemade paella for supper, cooked in an enormous dish on a massive gas ring on the patio.  It was delicious.

Day 86

Wednesday 5 April.  Bright and sunny, 24ºC.  With the writing very much on the wall, we spent the day packing, washing, ironing, swearing, dumping various superfluous items, reading and sun bathing.  In the evening, Laura, Derek, Sarah and Arthur took us out for dinner for a farewell feast.  Saying goodbye is so difficult and we cannot believe that our time in Australia is over.  The whole thing has been absolutely lovely and the best holiday ever.  Of course, there is Phase 3 (Singapore) and Phase 4 (The Happy Return) still to come.

Verdict on Australia?  Fantastic.  Lovely people, very friendly.  Excellent wines. Surprising, but generally hot, weather.  Unexpectedly very like the USA in many aspects.  Liked the birds, especially the penguins.  Very little litter or dog mess.  Lots of men with pony tails on skateboards and scooters, who have yet to grow up.  Pity about the graffiti in Victoria.  Flies could be a nuisance.  Beware the Yellow Peril.   And Laura and Derek have been absolutely splendid and such good and tolerant friends (would you put up with me and my whistling for six weeks?).  Would we come again?  You bet, but not unless we win the lottery.

I will conclude this Australia phase now and send it off.  We are off tomorrow, Thursday 6 April, at 0500 to get to the airport and catch our plane to Singapore, of which more anon.

Blog 18. Australia. Phillip Island

BLOG 18

Day 78

Tuesday 28 March.  Sunny and 22ºC.  Slightly cooler today, but still pleasant.  We had kangaroo steaks and sausages last night for supper, by the way.  The meat is leaner than steak with a slightly stronger flavour, though not as strong as venison.  It is best eaten rare (according to Derek) because it can be very tough if well done.  We enjoyed it, and it gave us a spring in our step today.

Today, we are off, first, to a Koala Park to see the – er – koalas.  When we saw these creatures in Ballarat they were in a sort of zoo and were in captivity; here on Phillip Island the koalas are free in a large nature reserve, so our visit turned into a game of I-spy and hunt-the-koala.  Actually it was very interesting, as there were boardwalks high in the treetops so that you could see the koalas close to.  Koalas are to be found only in the eastern parts of Australia and, as marsupials, they carry their young in a pouch.  Unlike kangaroos however, their pouches are on their backs, not their fronts.  When born, the joey is absolutely tiny: about the size of a man’s thumbnail, and it grows from that size while in the pouch and suckling.  I think I mentioned earlier that they survive on five types of eucalyptus leaves, grazing or snacking for about four hours a day and conserving energy (i.e. sleeping) for the remaining 20 hours.  We found about eight koalas in all, some quite close so we got some good photographs.  All in all, it was a worthwhile visit.

And so on to Churchill Island, an islet linked to Phillip Island by a low bridge and causeway, and now owned by the Australian National Trust.  There was an ancient homestead on the island, with several demonstrations such as milking, sheep shearing, whip cracking and sheepdogs.  It was very pleasant in the sunshine, with the sea all around and we managed to see the sheep shearing demonstration right through.  It was most impressive, not least because the sheep was quite large (estimated 100 kg) and seemed very unwieldy to control.  The record for shearing a complete sheep is, apparently 45 seconds though two to three minutes is more the norm.  As to whip cracking, well, I can get that any night of the week.

We took a break after that as we were off to see the ‘Penguin Parade’ at 1900.  

Well, at 1830 we duly mustered for The Penguin Parade aka The Great Australian Con Trick.  This event took place at a beach near The Nobbies (see Blog 17) and it soon became apparent, as we drove there, that the entire island was going too.  Bearing in mind that this natural phenomenon takes place every single night of the year at sunset, that is quite some revenue coming in at $AUS25 a pop.  There was a large modern exhibition building at the Penguin Centre and it was heaving with people, mainly Japanese bussed in from Melbourne.  There was the inevitable shop, and this was selling Penguin Everything: I noted Penguin Towels, Penguin Sweaters, Penguin Ponchos, Penguin Pens, Penguin Books and Penguin-in-your-favourite-football-team-strip.  There was even Penguin Face Cream (though why you would want to smell of fish was beyond me).  Of course, there were also the many forms of penguin cuddly toy, and more variations of penguin products too many to list without sending you to sleep.  Jane was persuaded not to buy our son (aged 38) a cuddly penguin in near-Sunderland football colours.  

We passed through this commercial mêlée with some haste and out onto an extensive boardwalk system that led over gently sloping cliffs down to a shore.  A ranger was holding a stuffed penguin to show the children, and Jane was in raptures.  Must have a photograph with the penguin, and stroke it (which she and Laura did).  Then she started burbling how lovely it was to hold a real penguin.  
“No dear, it’s dead”, I said. 
“But, it’s real”. 
“It’s stuffed”, I said, thinking that this was becoming more Pythonesque by the minute.  
“Well, yes”, says Jane, “but it is real. It feels lovely”.  
Can’t win.

At the shore, concrete tiered seating had been created, and this stretched from the low cliffs down to the beach.  Here we sat, with perhaps three hundred Japanese.  It was like the Sands of Iwo Jima down there.  And we sat, and we sat.  We gazed at the sand, the waves, the lighthouse and the rocks, then the waves, the sand, the rocks and the lighthouse.  The Japanese yabbered constantly and took pictures of themselves.  Photography was banned because the flash upsets the penguins, but the Japanese ignored all that (no speak English).  Derek and I reckoned that a good nudge with a cricket bat would improve their comprehension significantly.  The light faded and the wind grew cold. Twilight came and went, the stars came out, and the lighthouse started to flash.  The demarcation between sea and land became vague.  I half expected John Wayne to land in the surf with a battalion of Sea Bees.  Finally, Jane pointed to the sea: 
“Is that one?”. 
“No it’s a rock I think”.  
“How about that – it’s moving”. 
“I think that’s a seagull”.  
Silence, apart from the yabbering Japanese.   My left buttock grew numb and I changed sides.  My whole body was beginning to stiffen into rigor mortis.  Finally, finally, after sitting for an hour and a half, we could vaguely see tiny movement way off to the right, in the gloom, among the rocks.  Up came the tiny penguins, probably about 300 metres away to one side, barely visible in the dark and only distinguishable thanks to their white fronts.  They came absolutely nowhere near us and disappeared inland.  We sat a bit longer.  
“Is that it then?”  I said.  
Apparently it was.  The thing is – and this is pretty obvious when given close consideration – the Fairy Penguin is the smallest penguin in the world, standing typically only 8″ high: about the size of a herring gull.  It was always going to be hard to see one in the distance and the dark, or to distinguish it from an ordinary seabird.  Three hundred adults with a sprinkling of children had just sat for an hour and a half in the freezing cold to look at the sea and a lighthouse.

Of course, there was a bit more, for we could see the penguins outside their burrows from the boardwalk, and this we did: blundering around in the dark and accidentally treading on Japanese and boisterous children in the process.  Derek and I found a penguin that wasn’t moving much, but Derek reckoned that it was just that the battery had gone flat.  Jane, meanwhile, had entered the Inn of the Seventh Happiness, aided and abetted by her chum.  There was much “oohing” and “ahhing”.  At last, Derek and I managed to drag the girls away, screaming and kicking, so that we could have our supper.  I could only settle Jane with (false) promises of ice cream and possums.  As far as Derek and I were concerned, we had seen enough bleeding penguins for a lifetime and had consumed one bottle of red wine in our imaginations already; in our minds, we were about to start on a second.

Back at the ranch, we took a hasty, but filling, repast and consumed that promised two bottles of red wine.  All agreed that it had been an interesting exercise; all agreed that we had been there, done that, ignored the T-shirt.  That night, Jane slept with a smile on her face.  The real power of a man is the size of the smile of the woman lying next to him (I read that on the back of a matchbox).

Day 79

Wednesday 29 March. 26ºC, mostly sunshine and very pleasantly warm.  Crikey: only eight days before we leave Australia.

Today we visited Pyramid Rock, a headland halfway along the island’s southern shore between The Nobbies (west) and Cape Woolamai (east).   This proved to be a fine clifftop viewpoint with some majestic views of the basalt rocks and a seething cauldron of a sea.  Access along the cliffs was along a (now common) railed boardwalk, which eased my acrophobia somewhat.  It was a good, if wild, spot and we stood for some time just taking in the constantly changing seascape.  I tried out a composting toilet for the first time and found it a memorable experience, best not often repeated; it was alright for a man, I suppose, but I wouldn’t have like to use it as a woman: heaven knows what might come out of that black hole when you are sitting on it.

We moved on from there to the small Purple Hen winery for yet more wine tasting , and there encountered an owner who clearly had failed both the Customer Relations Course and the subsequent attempt to get her money back.  From the moment we walked in, it was made apparent that we were a nuisance, and when she had asked us (Brits) our views of Brexit it was even more apparent that we had given the wrong answer.  I did think, at one point, that I should have prepared myself a service brief on the topic so that I could give informed responses to her interrogation.  I was particularly taken by her views that older people should not be given the vote as they would not have to endure the consequences of their decision (define ‘older’); and by the fact that the majority of illegal immigrants in Australia were British.  Tips one, two and three when operating a business: be pleasant and welcoming;  keep off politics, especially the politics of another country; and don’t insult the tourists.  I feel it is to our credit as disinterested wine drinkers that we still bought some of her wine despite her attitude: a pétillant Blanc de Blanc and a Pinot Gris.  We passed on the red wine as we weren’t having fish and chips that night and could, in any case, buy cheaper vinegar elsewhere.

After Mrs Charm, we moved on to Rhyll, another town on the island just to see how the other half lived.  We did not quite make the town as we found a delightful seafront restaurant where we could stock up on calories, quaff a little wine, and generally soak up the atmosphere.  This proved to be an excellent find, and we sat outside on the veranda with some good food and an ice bucket containing a 2016 bottle of dry Stump Jump Riesling from the  D’arenberg Estate in the  Maclaren Vale of South Australia (pretentious? Moi?). 

A good snooze would have been in order after this jamboree, but Laura was keen to take us to another nature reserve that epitomised The Bush, so we set off there for a good ramble.  Wildlife was remarkably scarce and we saw nothing other than trees; I dare say that the animals had taken our advice and taken a siesta.  Halfway round, Jane needed to take a tinkle, but she was a little wary of venturing into the undergrowth for that purpose, lest she should tread on something poisonous.  My helpful suggestion that, if she heard a hiss while in mid process (as it were),  then she should move hastily away did not seem to provide the assurance intended.  Anyway, she got on with it reluctantly after we moved on, and I had the overpowering urge to sneak up behind her, and tickle her bottom with a leafy twig.  Fortunately, better counsel held sway and I managed to contain myself, as is evidenced by the fact that I am still alive to write this here today.

To complete the David Attenborough Experience, we finally visited a wetlands area on the coast.  Here we saw how different plants adapted to marshlands and coastal waters.  This visit was better than the previous one as it demonstrated how mangroves grow entirely in sea water, their roots filtering out the salt which is later excreted on the leaves and bark.  Again, we walked on well set-out boardwalks that took us right into the mangrove swamp.  We saw a couple of wallabies on the way back, and that made up for the lack of animals elsewhere.  Wallabies, by the way, are smaller than kangaroos, are almost black, and have nicer faces than their larger cousins.

Finally, back to the happy homestead for a sensible cup of tea and a snooze.  Well, Jane had the snooze, I stayed awake as I had the First Dogwatch.

Day 80

Thursday 30 March.  We awoke to rain and low temperatures, 12ºC.  I don’t think this is a spin off from the cyclone harassing Queensland at the moment, but rather the early signs of the Australian autumn.  Singapore beckons, I think.

Owing to the weather, we sat indoors and read books for most of the day.  We also found the heater and set that in operation.  Finally, by mid afternoon, the weather had settled and Jane and I set out for a stroll along the beach; we were suffering from cabin fever and desperately needed to get out.  The tide was nearly in this time, and the strip of beach was quite narrow.  Jane reckoned the tide was coming in, but I assured her – speaking as a seasoned mariner born in a seaside town – that the tide was ebbing (a term we sailors use when the tide is going out).  This was evidenced by the strand of damp hard sand at the waterline.  We duly set off westward, dodging the waves (we had kept our shoes on) and pausing every five seconds for Jane to pick up seashells and other assorted molluscs.  It was a fair old slog, as it is when you walk on sand, but quite pleasant in the fresh breeze and sunshine.  After a while, we did notice that the strand of beach was getting narrower, both in front and behind us, and it became apparent that the tide was ebbing in the wrong direction.  I explained this to Jane as being an exceptional phenomenon, unique to the Southern Hemisphere, that was caused by the resultant of lunar forces with the Coriolis acceleration concomitant with the Earth’s rotation, occurring whenever there were tidal flows of high Reynolds Number.  I think I got away with it as, by the time I had finished, she had found a dead seal to look at.

We managed to get a mile or two along the beach before our way was blocked by a freshwater creek and we had to turn back.  We could have taken off our shoes and waded, of course, but we weren’t wearing shorts and I did not want to get my only pair of trousers wet.  I remarked loudly, on our return journey, that the tide was now flooding – a term we sailors use when the tide is coming in.  Jane gave me a knowing ‘told-you-so’ look that meant that my lecture in fluid mechanics had washed over the top of her head.  Women: why are they always so right?

For supper on our last night, we returned to the RSL, where we ate a hearty meal among the pokies, small arms and Bofors guns.  Off tomorrow, back to Geelong.

Blog 17. Australia. Phillip Island

Day 74

Friday 24 March.  Sunny intervals.  24ºC. The journey to Phillip Island (which, contrary to my last blog, is not in Port Phillip Bay but on the open sea to the east) proved to be surprisingly long.  Instead of taking the very lengthy, circuitous, route around Port Phillip Bay through Melbourne, we took a short cut by using a ferry from Queenscliff across The Rip to Sorrento in the east (see Blog 12).  The ferry was a conventional RoRo, a sort of cut-down version of a UK cross channel ferry; certainly bigger than the Torpoint Ferry, as Port Phillip Bay can be very choppy and the journey takes forty five minutes.  Notwithstanding the short cut, the journey on the eastern side of the bay took about four hours making a total time of six hours from start to finish.  Quite a slog for Derek, but he seemed happy.  We did break the journey up with lunch and a visit to yet another winery for a wine tasting; I am getting quite good at the latter and can appreciate the merits of the clarity, the legs, the nose and the slurping (‘a good bullshitter’ was the phrase that should most frequently have been found in my confidential reports)

Phillip Island covers about twenty square miles (roughly the size of Guernsey) and is joined to the mainland by a bridge, so no more ferries to get there.  Almost all of the towns on the island are named after places on the Isle of Wight (Cowes, Rhyll, Ventnor), which gives it a homely feel.   We are staying at a time-share property in Cowes on a small holiday resort complex, a two-bedroomed terraced house looking onto a small internal courtyard containing a tennis court and swimming pool.  The accommodation is modern and well-appointed, with an open plan living area downstairs and the bedrooms upstairs, each with their own bathroom (joy).  It is certainly an improvement on the place at Halls Gap, though it might be a bit noisy with all the other units attached and close: we will see.  The maintenance of the property is, perhaps, a bit dicey.  There was a shriek and a crash as Jane demolished the lavatory roll holder shortly after we arrived, and the entire hot tap assembly fell apart as I was having a shower later: a tricky problem to solve with hot water pouring out and me without my multi-tool immediately to hand.  Otherwise, though, all right.

We opted out of eating in for the evening, not wishing to start the arrival with a major shopping expedition. Derek and Laura suggested eating at the local RSL (Returned Servicemen’s  League) – the equivalent of the British Legion – which offered good value for money.  I dare say that you can imagine my inner thoughts and it did cross my mind that this was moving from the sublime to the ridiculous after QM2; but that was an uncharitable thought and so we happily complied.  What a surprise! Their RSL was far superior to out British Legion.  It was in a modern, very slick-looking building, as good as a proper restaurant in terms of decor, both internally and externally.  It had a huge bar and dining area about the size of a ballroom, with a good range of food, all reasonably priced.  You ordered at a central counter, and the food was brought later.  Members (i.e. ex servicemen) got a cheaper price, but anyone could use the facilities: you just had to sign in and prove identity.  The only ‘let down’ to this fairly up-market establishment (apart from the raffle over the main broadcast) was the large section of the building set aside for pokies (see Blog 10) – it was like Las Vegas in there, people glued to the machines with glazed expressions. We went in to watch them play, like visitors to a zoo, and some didn’t seem very happy with us watching them; can’t imagine why…perhaps they thought that we brought bad luck.  There was no skill to the games that I could see, it was all (biased) luck.  And you didn’t put coins in the machines, you put in credit cards.  Scary and sad, I thought, and very odd to our eyes.

Well we learnt another expression today.  I was recounting to Laura about a road rage incident that we had seen yesterday, when some woman had shot out of a shop like a banshee and was screaming at a driver who was sounding his horn because of a car blocking his exit (“Go round!  Go round!  Ya want I kick yer car in!? Do yer? Go round it you…”).  
“Ah”, said Laura, “that would be one of the bogans”.  
“The Bogans”, I thought, “are they extra-terrestrials like the Vogons in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?  Or does she know the family?”   No. In Australia, a bogan is a person of the lower orders, whose behaviour does not quite come up to the standard expected of general society.  A yob, in other words.  So there you are, another word for the vocabulary.

Day 75

Saturday 26 March. Hot and sunny, 28ºC.  The usual gentle start, to the sound of cockatoos and kookaburras.  Cockatoos (the white parrots with the yellow crests on their heads – save you looking it up), by the way, make good pets and can mimic humans or telephone ring tones and other sounds.  Interestingly, though, their life span is similar to or greater than ours and so aviaries ask you not to take one as a pet unless you are either young, or have made arrangements to look after the bird after you die; quite a few cockatoos have to be cared for in animal sanctuaries because their owners have died.  Depressing thought.

After breakfast we drove in to Cowes town centre to seek out a second-hand bookshop that we had heard of.  Jane, Laura and I love these places; Derek somewhat less so.  Located in two containers (it’s that Mr Maersk again), the bookshop turned out to be veritable treasure trove for bibliophiles and we spent quite some time in there, leaving with a large bagful of books.  The temptation was to dive in to reading immediately, but that would have been a waste in the good weather, so Jane and I set off for a walk in the sunshine.  Our complex proved to be five minutes’ walk from the beach and we removed our shoes and wandered along the foreshore in the surf, in what has become the time-honoured manner.  It was most pleasant.  Eventually, we came to civilisation and we dried our feet to explore some of the town, though I suspect that the main aim was for Jane to have a gelato from a small Italian restaurant that she had spotted on the Esplanade.  The ice cream portions here are very generous, and Jane loves ice cream almost as much as penguins and wombats. 

Cowes proved to be a nice little holiday town, with the main street lined by variegated cypress trees that gave it a colourful shaded appearance.  Like most Australian small towns the street was wide and had the characteristic electric power lines on poles, such as you see in the USA.  There was a reasonable range of shops, but most buildings were restaurants, cafés and bars to support the vibrant tourist industry.  It was all very relaxing and warm as we strolled back to the resort complex for lunch.  

The afternoon had that sleepy tropical feel, so we acquiesced and crashed out for a couple of hours.  I awoke to the screams of children.  For a while I thought I had died and was in purgatory, being subjected to a final test by God while He decided where to put me; but no, it was real children and I was still on Earth.  There were children in the swimming pool thirty metres away, a child in the tennis court four metres away, and toddlers in the children’s playground located right next to the house one metre away.  All were screaming and yelling.  Bless them, I do love to hear their little voices being tested to the full.  I got up so that I could go downstairs and join the others outside, there to revel in so much happiness around me, smiling benignly at all and sundry. Marvellous stuff, Valium.

We had a barbecue using the communal hot plate in the evening, dining on kangaroo meat balls and beef burgers, washed down with Shiraz.  Very Australian.

Day 76

Sunday 26 March. Overcast 21ºC.  Not so nice today so we felt no guilt in tucking in to those new books.  Something has been eating me, and it wasn’t Jane.  I have insect bites on legs and arms, but no idea when I was attacked.  I have come off remarkably lightly in Australia with regard to mosquitoes so far, but it appears that his area must have more than most and they are silent but deadly.  Fortunately I still have that haemorrhoid cream.

As a matter of interest, Phillip Island, like Port Phillip Bay, is named after Admiral Arthur Phillip, who was the first Governor of New South Wales in the late eighteenth century when Australia started as a penal colony, and he founded the city of Sydney.  He appears to have been a very competent Governor, dealing fairly with both the Aborigines and the convicts, before retiring to Bath in 1805.  He died there in 1814, allegedly after falling from his wheelchair from a first floor window (not sure how he managed that).  He is buried in St Nicholas’ Church,  Bathampton and his ghost is said still to haunt Bennett Street in Bath.  Something from home linked to where we are now.

I see that you are putting your clocks forward about now, so summer must be coming; here in Australia we will be putting ours back for winter next week, and we will then be only nine hours ahead of you.  It still feels a long way a away.

The sun finally came out mid afternoon and so we set off for The Nobbies: a coastal rock formation on the western tip of the island, famous for – wait for it – penguins!  The Nobbies proved to be very scenic, a nature reserve that is closed off to humans at night when there is a significant migration of animals.  The Fairy Penguins (PC name, ‘Little Penguins’ – see Blog 15) are only about 8″ – 12″ in height and, each night, come ashore, climb the cliffs, and retire to their burrows at the cliff edge to be with their chicks.  The burrows are like a rabbit burrow, but at the Nobbies, small hutches have also been created in wood to help them along.  We saw the burrows, with penguins in them, as we walked along the boardwalks and we are due to attend one of the events, ‘the March of the Penguins’ later this week.  This is when you can witness the birds coming ashore at sunset, regular as clockwork.

There was a warning sign at the Nobbies concerning the Copperhead Snake, billed as “Phillip Island’s Shy Snake”, a member of an endangered species, highly poisonous, with no specific anti-venom available.  The notice urged us not to disturb the poor dear thing if we saw one, as the snake is shy and very rare.  Stuff that, I thought, I am an endangered species.  I don’t know who writes that snake’s publicity material,  but I must say he has done a good job with the positive spin.

We paused at a winery on the return from the Nobbies and did the Australian Sunday thing. The place was heaving, with a folk singer strumming in the corner and massed tables full of drinkers.  Clearly, these people were doing more than a tasting.  Inevitably, we ended up buying three bottles of wine at $25AUS apiece – an amount we would never spend in the UK; it must be holiday fever.  We bought a cheeky little Sangiovese and a very pleasant Pinot Noir.  I could become quite accomplished and pretentious with this wine tasting, you know, given a bit more practice.

Finally, back to Cowes to stock up on victuals and enjoy the evening sunshine by the gelato shop with an ice cream.  Excited by all those penguins, Jane entered a competition to see just how much chocolate ice cream she could spill down her shorts in the shortest time (I made that up), and then we were back to the happy homeland for supper.

Day 77

Monday 27 March.  Sunny and very windy, 30ºC to overcast 21ºC.  A Category 4 cyclone is marching majestically towards northern Queensland and we in Victoria, thousands of miles to the south, are due to catch the edge of it later today, with strong winds from the north, and heavy rain forecast.  Winds from the north here, of course, are hot and dry.  Another geographical fact that I haven’t mentioned, because it is obvious when you think about it, is that the sun here rises in the east and passes across the northern sky, not the southern sky as it does in the northern hemisphere. This is useful information if you are lost in the Great Australian Desert without a compass, and you want to head south for the coast and safety (tip: don’t aim for the sun).

At 1100 we set off to San Remo, across the bridge on the mainland, to watch the pelicans and sting rays being fed.  It was very hot and windy out there – absolutely lovely I thought – but quite dehydrating.  The feeding display is given by a woman from the local fish and chip shop, using scrap fish, every day at noon, and quite a few people had assemble to watch it.  It was reassuring to note that my nemesis, in the form of five school coaches, had managed to find me despite all my efforts at hide and seek.  The little monkeys.  Pass the pill bottle.

The increasing wind unfortunately churned up the sea and prevented the feeding of the sting rays, though we could still see them as dark shadows in the water.  Apparently the feeding woman usually feeds them by hand, holding the food under the sting ray because that is where its mouth is; she keeps well clear of the tail, however, and legs it rapidly if the fish turns because the sting will put you in hospital, or even kill you, if it hits you.  She did feed the pelicans.  The pelicans came onto the beach to be fed and they put up quite a display. They toss the fish around in their mouths to make sure that they swallow the food head first.  If they were to swallow it another way then the fins and barbs would jam in their throats and not slide down.  Australian pelicans are the biggest in the world and those we saw were bigger than a child and almost as big as the woman feeding them.

After this display we felt duty-bound to have fish and chips, and we ordered flake and chips for four in the restaurant.  When it came, it displayed a neat approach to protecting the environment and saving on waste by not being served on any plates.  Instead, all four fish came in one communal cardboard tray, and four portions of chips in another.  Most novel; we had to just pile in like a medieval banquet.  I broke my plastic fork on the fish, and spent some time looking for the napkins and finger bowls before discovering that there weren’t any.

As we left the restaurant the weather took on a change.  I have never seen such a rapid transformation.  Within five minutes the wind increased and veered to the (cold) south and clouds formed into a sullen grey mass. We headed for the car, pursued by a range of flying objects from twigs to empty drink bottles.  The threatened rain didn’t appear, but it certainly looked like it was going to.

En route back we called in to the Vietnam Veterans Museum.  It was something I wanted to do as a mark of respect, because the returning serviceman in Australia received just as disgusting a reception when they came home as their fellow US veterans.  Even the RSL (see Day 74 above) refused to recognise  them, claiming that Vietnam wasn’t a proper war.  About a quarter of the Australian servicemen fighting in Vietnam were conscripts, and they were chosen by ballot, based on their birthday.  So it was literally the luck of the draw whether they were called up or not.  Before Afghanistan, Vietnam was the longest military conflict ever embarked upon by Australia (1962-1975). Of 60,000 men who served in Vietnam, 521 died and 3,000 were wounded.  It was not until 1987 that Australia officially “welcomed home” the veterans of Vietnam; I saw a film of the ceremony and it was deeply moving.

As I write, it is dull and sullen outside, like a blustery day in autumn.  Thunder is  rumbling and spots of rain are beginning to splatter the windows.  Good to be indoors, on the whole.

Blog 16. Australia. Warrnambool and Port Campbell

Day 70

Monday 20 March. Overcast with showers and sunny intervals.  We are up early for departure from the Ponderosa (as I have taken to calling it) and our course south to the coast.

It was a long, long drive to Warrnambool from Halls Gap: three to four hours on long, mostly straight, mostly empty roads at 100 kph (60 mph).  It was a useful lesson in the size of this country, bearing in mind that we were driving over just a small part of the smallest state in Australia.  It must be pretty dreary driving from, say, Melbourne to Perth at the speed limit of 110 kph (66mph).  Eventually we made it to the coast and to blue sky, parking at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village at Warrnambool.  Warrnambool turned out to be a substantially sized town on the Great Australian Bight with a small harbour and a strong maritime heritage.  Hundreds of ships were wrecked in the adjacent bay before the early 20th century, some actually in the harbour, but there is no sign of it now.  The good burghers of the town sensibly built a pier to shelter vessels from the westerly winds, whereupon the harbour duly silted up because of the loss of the scouring effect of the current.  This just goes to show that even when you do your best to do the right thing, it can still not be good enough.  There is no commercial shipping there now, and at least three wrecks are buried under the caravan park located in what was once part of the bay.

The Maritime Museum and Village were not bad.  The museum was very modern and interactive, and mostly concentrated on the many wrecked sailing ships that adorned the nearby seas.  Outside was a themed maritime village in a similar manner to Sovereign Hill, comprising ship’s chandlers, sail loft, rigging shop etc, but it looked a bit more artificial and none of the shops was manned; it all had a rather empty feel.  On the plus side, we had the place virtually to ourselves without the usual marauding school parties, and the sun was shining.  Also, it boosted my morale enormously that I could still read the signal flags hoisted on the flagstaff:  

FOXTROT HOTEL MIKE VICTOR  –  OSCAR PAPA ECHO NOVEMBER 

(I’ll let you work it out) – all those months reading the daily signal hoist outside the Cadet’s Gunroom at Dartmouth not wasted.  I knew it would come in handy one day.
There was the inevitable shop, with the inevitable boomerangs and pirates’ swords, but I resisted them and, instead, bought Jane a nice leather handbag with a kangaroo on it (souvenir of Australia) that turned out to have been made in India (a souvenir of India then).

Our next stop was London Bridge.  Not really a bridge, but a narrow promontory with two natural arches underneath, projecting into the quite stormy, yet turquoise, sea.  Or rather it used to have two arches.  In 1990, with two people on the promontory taking in the view, the landward arch collapsed without warning into the sea, leaving the seaward section as an island.  By pure good fortune, the people were not on the bit that collapsed, but they ended up stranded, and I imagine there was some wailing and rending of cloth.  They had to be rescued by helicopter.  So what we saw of London Bridge was a sort of island with a big arch under it, now called London Arch.  Rather like Marsden Rock in South Shields (before the same thing happened to that).

Finally, we arrived in Port Campbell, farther east along the coast.  It is a small tourist village on a lovely tiny bay, with a nice, compact, sheltered beach.  On a hot summer’s day it would have been delightful, but when we arrived the breeze was coming in, uninterrupted, from Antarctica and that did add a bit of a chill to it all.  There wasn’t a lot there, other than the beach, hotels, motels and bars, and one over-priced supermarket.  Our residence for the night was a motel overlooking the harbour, the sort of place where – believe it or not – I have never stayed before.  The Reception was in a booth at the entrance to the car park and all the rooms, as I’m sure you know in motels, opened out onto the car park.  We had a rather nice room on the first floor.  It was quite large, with plenty of storage space for luggage, a table and chairs, a microwave oven, a kettle, and a toaster.  There was even a jacuzzi in the bathroom, which I thought was quite luxurious, though we were unlikely to use it (the memsahib doesn’t do communal bathing – it is not kulturny).   I don’t know what Laura paid for the motel, but I believe it was quite cheap.  

We all sat on the balcony outside for a pre-supper glass of wine only to discover that we didn’t have a corkscrew.  Now here’s an Australian thing: Derek then goes up to a stranger in the car park and asks if he has a corkscrew to lend him.  ‘No’, says the bloke, ‘but I’m going up to the town and I’ll see if I can get one’.  Back he comes, in due course, with a corkscrew that he has borrowed from a wine shop up the road, with the message to just drop it in when we’ve finished with it.  Derek gave the bloke a glass of wine, and returned the corkscrew through the letterbox of the wine shop later.  A fine example of friendly cooperation.

Finding a suitable venue for supper proved to be a challenge.  The nearest recommended place was a beach bar, which had bare Formica tables, was freezing cold (air conditioning again), was blasting with music, and unwelcoming.  Not a tablecloth in sight.  We walked out when no one acknowledged us after five minutes.  The next place, farther up the road, was at least warm and quiet, though it was still, essentially, a café (still no tablecloth or proper napkins – tut, tut).  We stayed, and I had pasta marinara (good, but the squid a bit tough), while Jane had leatherjacket (a white fish on the bone, not a beetle).  Derek had steak, and Laura had Asian chicken (I think the method of cooking was Asian, not the chicken).  It was a good meal overall, but the service was terrible.  We had to ask for the dessert menu (usually they are thrusting it at you), and when we had decided on our choice, no one came back to take the order despite us flapping our arms like semaphore students.  Crazy: they missed out on $AUS44 worth of food order there, not to mention possible coffees and digestifs.  They were nice enough staff, but fundamentally incompetent.  Of course, we couldn’t withhold the tip, because in Australia you never leave one anyway.  It was interesting to note, by the way, that the menu in this place was in Chinese as well as English, though it was very much Australian cuisine and Australian owned; as mentioned in Blog 11, there is a strong Chinese presence here (I presume tourists) and I imagine the restaurant owner could see a good market in targeting them.  I still think the Chinese are casing the joint as a precursor to moving in permanently.

I had to placate Jane with a Fry’s Turkish Delight from the local store on the way back (she can get quite truculent if deprived of her post-prandial sugar fix), and it came at a very steep price: $AUS3 for a bar, with $AUS5 for a Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut.  She got the Delight, but not the Nut.  Keep ’em wanting that’s what I say.

Day 71

Tuesday 21 March.  Torrential rain, 19ºC.  Second rule of booking holiday accommodation: don’t book a motel.  We were awakened at 0600 by thumps, bangs, loud foreign voices debating the philosophy of Wittgenstein in Serbo-Croat, car doors slamming, idling diesel engines, then the beep-beep-beep of reversing vans.  Apparently a significant section of the Australian manual workforce was going to work, having slept at the motel overnight.  Thoughtfully, they gave us another forty five minutes before coming back and repeating the process in reverse order.  Heaven knows where they had been – to buy a copy of The Times perhaps?  Jane was not at all happy, not having slept too well during the night anyway (all that Turkish Delight that wasn’t full of eastern promise, I expect).  Derek said afterwards that the early-morning noise was characteristic of motels: you come, you sleep, you go (to which I would add, ‘…and you sod the rest of them’).  It was a shame, because the room was comfortable and had a nice view.  So that was Port Campbell: never really got to see it properly or to appreciate its good points.

We set off off back to Base Camp, aka Laura and Derek’s holiday home at Lorne, at 0900 in the teaming rain.  I have alluded earlier to Laura’s very efficient, but very casual, style of navigation and now I can confirm an uncanny likeness to her erstwhile pen pal and former Beatle’s Fan Club Member, Jane, in terms of stubbornness in the face of plain facts.  
“Turn left out of the drive”, she says, “the road just continues round”.  
“It’s a car park, Laura”, says Derek. 
“No, no, it’s a continuous road”, says Laura.  
“OK”, says Derek, “but I still think it’s a carpark”.  
We traverse what is obviously a car park (painted car bays, parked vehicles, flower beds, people diving for cover), drive the wrong way through a one-way entrance, then back round the car park again, completing two full circles.  “Well it says on the map that it’s a road”, says Laura, still not believing it as we start to pull 2-g on the third pass.  We did get out eventually, but she was convinced to the end that there was another way through.  I’m glad that Jane and I aren’t the only ones.

Like yesterday, the journey seemed to take forever.  Driving alternately through tree-lined roads in the rain or along the cliff top in the fog and rain, reminded me of, first, the Lake District on a wet Spring Bank Holiday (minus wallabies), and then Devon South Hams on an August Bank Holiday.  I thought we would skip the sightseeing because of the weather, but, no, Laura was determined that we should see more spectacular cliffs despite the rain, so we donned waterproofs and went like lambs.   One such stop was Loch Ard Gorge, so called because of the clipper LOCH ARD, which was wrecked there in 1878 with the loss of all hands except for an apprentice and a female passenger.  It was a terrifying place, with sheer sandstone cliffs, an unforgiving sea, and two towering pillars at the mouth of a small cove with virtually no beach.  I did not like the look of it at all.  The apprentice apparently rescued the girl and managed to drag her to a nearby cave before climbing the cliffs and raising the alarm.  How he managed to do this is an absolute mystery as, not only are the cliffs near vertical, but the area above is virtually devoid of habitation. Curiously, it didn’t put the apprentice off the sea, for he went on to become a Master Mariner, dying in Southampton at the early age of 49.

Brunch was taken at 1100 in the seaside hamlet of Apollo Bay, with the rain coming down in sheets.  We found a little restaurant cum fish bar where they were just about to stop serving breakfast, but we managed to place our orders in time.  The food filled a little hole after two hours on the road, and we set off replete for the final phase of the journey eastward (another two hours).  An interesting feature of the Australian breakfast is the oft inclusion of spinach with the eggs and bacon.  I suppose it salves the conscience to have one ‘five a day’ as you order that heart-stopping greasy cholesterol-laden food.  I have loved spinach ever since I first saw Popeye: I harbour a secret belief that it will make me strong and win over Olive Oil in the cardigan, sitting next to me.  Can’t say it has worked often so far, but we can all dream.

The Great Ocean Road was pretty treacherous with all the rain, compounded by rockfalls from the high landward side, which left some quite large rocks (almost boulders) on the road.  It certainly was a long drive, but we finally hove into Lorne at 1300.  I suppose, if you think about it, we had driven the equivalent of a journey from Bristol to Leeds on two successive days in terms of time, though thankfully without the M6 and M42 traffic.  

I mentioned earlier (Blog 11) that in Australia it only rains briefly and heavily, then the sun comes out.  I was misinformed.  Today it has rained heavily, and non-stop since dawn.  I write this at Lorne, looking out of the picture window at the deluge and the sea, the latter invisible in the mist.  Never mind, we are dry and warm(ish) and the gardens need the water.  We are off back to Geelong tomorrow for a few days of well-earned rest before embarking on the final stages of Laura’s planned itinerary.

Day 72

Wednesday 22 March.  19ºC overcast with showers.  What a night!  It continued to tip it down in torrents overnight and our bedtime was further enlivened by a scuttling noise in the walls of our bedroom.  We woke Laura because we thought it might be a rat and she should know of a problem, but Laura said it was probably a possum that had worked its way into the structure of the house to get out of the rain; it is a common occurrence, apparently.  Notwithstanding our refugee, we slept well for the first time in days, but we did hear the possum working its way around the bedroom behind the panelling throughout the night, front to back, floor to ceiling.  Jane was frightened to get up to go to the lavatory in case she stepped on something furry and wet that had somehow managed to make its way through the wainscotting.  Only in Australia.

After a brief breakfast we packed and set off for the return to Headquarters in Geelong, there to regroup, take stock, do the laundry, and prepare for another phase of travel. It was an uneventful drive along the Great Ocean Road, and only took about ninety minutes.  At last, we were back at Laura and Derek’s place, which we had left nearly three weeks ago.  The weather was still overcast and cool, but at least the rain had stopped.

We spent the rest of the day emptying suitcases and washing laundry.  It’s nice to go travelling, but it’s oh so nice to come home.  But we are off again on Friday: the moss will not be gathering on these rolling stones.

I see that the temperatures at home are still quite low, despite BST coming into force on Saturday night.  I thought I saw a temperature of 15 degrees there a few days ago, but today Tring (for example) is 4 degrees.  What’s going on?  Get that place warmed up before we get back, do you hear?  I want to step off that ship in Southampton in blazing sunshine, with Jane sans cardigan and wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat as she looks upward, like Kate Winslet in Titanic.

Laura and Derek’s son-in-law Arthur, who is a professional chef, cooked dinner for us this evening and Derek provided a bottle of his vintage 20%-proof wine to complement the meal.  This was followed by a large glass of port from Derek’s port barrel (they take their wine very seriously here and Derek has a real cellar under the house, stocked neatly with wine like a French chateau).  As you can imagine, a convivial time was had by all and we all staggered to bed exhausted, but burbling nicely.

Day 73

Thursday 23 March.  Sunny intervals, 22ºC.  Pleasant in the sunshine. Rig of the day, negative cardigans.  

Oh my poor head.  I think it was the port that did it.  I woke at 0230 to find Jane already in the land of the conscious (not having been anywhere else) and the blare of a television set: Arthur had fallen asleep next door with the television still on.  I couldn’t wake him, nor prise the controls out of his hand, so Jane and I lay there in bed, heads thumping, listening to muffled rubbish from next door.  Australian TV is even worse than ours.  On the plus side, we did hear the news from UK of the terrorist attack on Parliament and managed to establish reassuring contact with our son locked down in his office in Westminster.  Eventually, two paracetamol cleared our heads and sent us off into a fitful sleep punctuated by garbled dialogue (“Ya gotta help me, Marshall..I’m hurt bad…”.  “Ya should a thought a that when ya killed my pa….”).  Arthur must have woken up at about 0630, because the noise finally stopped.  We slept on until 0930 and woke somewhat jaded.

Jane had her hair washed and cut at the local boutique (no end of excitement here) and I met her for a walk into downtown Geelong.  There was much head scratching when we stated the intention to walk into town: 
“You want to walk?” 
“Yes”. 
“Walk into town from here?” 
“Yes, what’s the best route?” 
“Hmmm.  Tricky.  Wonder how you’ll get across the bypass and the railway line”.  
Clearly, no-one had ever done this before.  As in America, there is not a lot of urban walking here and the infrastructure isn’t geared up for it.  Anyway, we were all for it.  We set off, passing through three industrial estates – no footpath, only dust, stepping over disused tyres, old boilers and scrap iron – under a railway line and over a busy bypass, past the prophylactic emporium, and finally made it to the coast.  There, we found a coastal path that took us into central Geelong.  

It was a pleasant walk, though with a brisk headwind and sadly disfigured extensively by graffiti, and we finally made it into town after ninety minutes of adventure.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, Geelong has a very pleasant water frontage: modern, arty, lots of cafés and restaurants, and we soon settled in for lunch at The Sailor’s Rest, previously a haven for mariners seeking comfortable shore accommodation and now a pleasant eatery.  We explored the city afterwards and found it to be very pleasant, with wide streets, fine buildings and lovely trees, but not very busy.  I am not sure where everyone was: at work or college I presume.

The return journey was the reverse of the outward adventure, but a bit more of a slog because we were full of swordfish, chips and beer (in my case).  We finally made it back at 1745, completely shattered.  I estimate we had covered ten miles in total.

Off to Phillip Island tomorrow for a week, an island in Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne where Laura has another time share flat.  More on that next blog.

Blog15. Australia. Halls Gap

Day 67

Friday 17 March and it is freezing.  Well, 15 degrees at any rate.  There is a bitter southerly wind blowing, though the sun is shining in a bright blue sky.  We are off to the Australian Grampians today, to stay at a place called Halls Gap, which sounds even colder than where we are now.

It was a longish drive, about three hours, and we saw more of Victoria on the way.  It slightly reminded me of rural France, with the road lined with trees, scrubby vegetation, and almost empty roads.  We passed through several towns, almost frontier-like in appearance, each with wooden lodge-type bungalows, raised above the ground and with a veranda, some quite well set up, others rather ramshackle such that you expect to see an Australian hillbilly sitting on a rocking chair on the front porch.  Apparently you can buy a house; that is to say, buy the house, and have it transported to where you want it after disconnecting mains service; they cut it in half so that it will fit onto a low loader, and then you are away.  

Water is a very scarce commodity here, and Victoria is permanently on water restrictions.  Several homesteads and houses that we have seen for sale are not on mains water, and some of those do not even have an artesian well.  All the houses have a large tank to collect rainwater, and some have it tanked in by road tanker – quite expensive.  All farms have large ponds, known as ‘dams’, for the cattle and these are filled during the rainy season that starts in June.  Apparently Australia has a reputation for being the driest continent in the world.

We stopped at one town, Carrisbrooke I think, to use the facilities and they were well signposted off the main road in a large park, very clean and well appointed.  In the middle of the grassy area was a sort of gazebo – almost like a shrine –  in which was sited a communal barbecue, or rather (see earlier) a communal hot plate, which doesn’t sound quite so impressive.  This would appear to be quite common in this area: parks with public barbecues for you to use, and the latter clean and well set-up too.

We stopped at Ararat, a slightly larger town than most, and picnicked in the park.  It was still pretty cold, with the wind cutting like a knife across the park lake, but Jane managed to find a sheltered spot in a little herb garden and we snuggled in there for our sandwiches.  Pity we hadn’t thought to bring a flask of hot tea!

Finally, we reached Halls Gap: a small but very popular tourist hamlet in the lee of the majestic Grampians, with camp sites, caravan parks and budget hotels spread out along the main road.  It vaguely reminded me of the Lake District – Ambleside perhaps.  Not much there, just enough to service the tourists and the holiday accommodation, but quite a nice place.  Our dwelling for the weekend is a basic wooden lodge on a busy caravan site, set four feet above the ground, somewhat rustic and careworn, but clean and adequate for a couple of days.  Sadly there is only one lavatory, and that without a lock on the door, so we will have to start practising whistling Dixie.

To make up for our somewhat plebeian accommodation, the evening produced a mob of kangaroos and their joeys bouncing across in front of the lodge, nibbling at the grass and generally just naturally grazing.  There must have been about a dozen of them.  To add to that, Derek put some scraps of meat from the barbecue on the newel post of the veranda, and we were treated to the kookaburras swooping down and eating them; it was almost like feeding from our hands.  The kookaburras commonly eat snakes and we watched as they beat the strips of meat on the railing to ‘kill’ them before eating.  Jane got some good snaps and a video of it all just before one of them defecated on her head; she always did want thicker hair.

Chatting on the veranda with a little snifter, Derek revealed that he had killed a large spider at the last place in Kyneton when we were there.  He hadn’t mentioned it at the time lest we become disturbed.  Of course it might not have been poisonous, he said (in Australia? Yeh, right).

The barbecued steak in the evening was excellent, and we washed it down with a bottle of chilled Mateus Rosé, acquired purely for sentimental reasons.  Actually, it wasn’t too bad – I don’t think I have drunk it for nigh on forty years.  Just to prove we hadn’t totally lost our taste for wine, we followed up with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.  Derek and I wanted the girls to dress up in mini skirts to complement the nostalgia, but we received very short thrift on that suggestion; I think that ship sailed a long time ago, taking most of my hair with it, and leaving behind a considerable amount of ballast.

Day 68

Saturday 18 March. Well, I think we have reached the point where the temperature in Australia going down has met the temperature in the UK going up. It was perishing this morning and Mrs Shacklepin was hanging on to me in bed like a drowning man grips a lifebuoy. Flannelette nightdresses were mentioned (wistfully, as hers is still in QM2). I’m not sure what was in that rosé last night, but the two of us ended up visiting the lavatory every three hours during the night for a tinkle, scuttling along through the freezing living room in the pitch black, and holding hands like Hansel and Gretel.

You couldn’t quite see your breath this morning, but I swear it was a close thing.  Paradoxically, the forecast for today is bright sunshine and 29ºC.  For now, it is long trousers and a sweater.  Definitely the Australian autumn, I think.  Asking around, it is apparent that my conception of a baking hot Australia is a myth.  In the winter here in Victoria, temperatures of minus 7ºC are not uncommon, and even Ballarat on the lowland can get as low as -5ºC.  Conversely, the visitor’s book here reports temperatures of 40ºC in December.  Quite a contrast.

After breakfast we headed for the local Aboriginal Culture Centre to learn a bit about the natives.  Australia has done a sharp about turn on treatment of the Aborigines, and there is now a concerted effort to honour the traditional tribes and cultures, almost to the point of flagellation.  Anyone with Aboriginal blood (as low as 10%) gets all manner of allowances and discounts, no matter what their income; the Aboriginal flag must be flown alongside the Australian flag; sacred sites, whether genuine or not, have to be honoured.  Australia has an enormous and irrational guilty conscience.  I came away from the Centre with a better appreciation of how badly the Aborigines were treated by the ‘European invaders’, but also wondering how things could have been done better. What would they have had us do, other than not have settled in Australia at all in the first place?  Not killing them arbitrarily and not stealing their lands, certainly; treating them properly after they had fought in both world wars, definitely; but there appears to be an objection by the Aborigines to having been educated and civilised, and at attempts by the settlers to integrate them into European society.  I found this odd: would they rather have been left to live in the bush eating beetles and living in tribes?  Overall I found the Cultural Centre to be unsettling.  I felt a sense of guilt as a European, but also felt that applying reparations 200 years after an event, and indulging in two separate cultures, was not the best way to go forward as a united nation.  As it is, the Aborigine has an unfortunate reputation for being high on petrol, unemployed and unemployable, and living with a permanent grudge.  Of course, that is not true for all of them.

Now here is an interesting fact: not all boomerangs return (just thought I would throw this in – the fact, not the boomerang).  I don’t just mean the ones that you threw incorrectly and they landed in the oggin, I mean that the majority of them (there are several types) are really just throwing clubs that the Aborigines use to kill prey.  The returning boomerangs are only used for sport and competition and are recognisable by having an angle of almost ninety degrees between the wings.  By the way, the correct way to throw them is overhand, with the flat surface against the palm, in the vertical plane; you don’t try to skim them like you would a flat stone.  I read all this in a thin pamphlet in the Culture Centre (price $AUS8) before I put it back on the shelf.  You could buy (returning) boomerangs too, but they were upwards of $AUS50 and I wasn’t convinced of the value of adding one to my portfolio. So there you are: you learned it here first.

You might think that political correctness would never touch bluff-speaking Australia but, alas, you would be wrong.  The disease has seeped down into the Southern Hemisphere and is every bit as rampant as at home, if not worse.  Two examples are that the Black Boy Bush has been renamed the Grass Tree, and the Fairy Penguin has been renamed the Little Penguin. 

After the Cultural Centre we were off to Bellfield Lake, a large man-made reservoir in the shadow of the mountains, again a bit like the Lake District though with the difference that the heat was intense and radiating off the rocks like a furnace.  We took a good walk – about 1½ km – across the dam and back and just revelled in the warmth and overwhelming scenery, which was beautiful.

We returned to the happy homestead for lunch and to divest ourselves of trousers, sweaters and socks: it was 32ºC, baking hot, and lovely: such a difference from this morning.  Then off to an olive oil farm and then a winery for a little dégustation, buying a bottle of very pleasant Riesling.  Decent, dry, Riesling tends to be hard to come by in UK, so getting a good one here is a bonus.  By this time it was 1700 and we felt we deserved a rest after all that olive oil and wine, so back we went to the Ponderosa to settle for the day on the veranda, watching the hopeful kookaburras and  the cockatoos, and looking out for kangaroos.  We were rewarded by the sight of a kangaroos with a joey in its pouch coming up to the front porch to feed.  Absolutely lovely and enchanting, and we took some good photographs.  There were about forty of them on the adjacent recreation ground too, munching away and fertilising the grass.  Good old Skippy.

Day 69

Sunday 19 March.  We were woken at 0700 by the sound of raucous shouting, long vehicles reversing and bouncing balls.  Rule 1 of choosing holiday accommodation: don’t pick a place next to a recreation ground.  The local junior football team was practising at a God-forsaken time on a Sunday morning.  At least it wasn’t quite as cold as yesterday, and it warmed up nicely to 28ºC later, but the rude awakening would put the memsahib in a grumpy mood for the rest of the day unless I trod carefully.

We decided to hit a couple of high viewpoints in the Grampian Mountains first thing: Reid’s Lookout and the adjacent Balconies, 1 km walk away.  The views were spectacular and I managed to get some good photographs once my knees had stopped knocking together.  There was almost a blue tinge to the distant atmosphere, as if it were smoke, but apparently it is caused by the gas or vapour emitted by the eucalyptus trees (hence, similarly, the Blue Mountains in New South Wales).  We were just in time at the Lookout as, shortly after we arrived, a complete bus load of tourists arrived and we beat a hasty path to the Balconies, about 1 km away along a dusty path; we reasoned that most of them would not venture to use their legs in the intense heat (and we were right).

What is it about some people?  There was an enormous woman at the Lookout, about my age but with long grey hair and wearing a bell tent and huge pantaloons that would provide cover for three troops of Boy Scouts.  She was holding what appeared to be a conference call with some friend or relative on her mobile phone, bellowing away so that we could hear both her and the friend quite clearly.  She was totally oblivious to the rest of the general public who were hoping to soak up the tranquility and scenery.  I hoped a high wind would get up under her pantaloons and blow her away off the mountain like Mary Poppins but, alas, no such luck.

Mackenzie Falls was the next visit: a spectacular waterfall cascading 570m over the rocks, and we felt duty-bound to climb all the way to the bottom, just to say that we had done it (Derek stayed at the top).  Several signs prohibited swimming but, sure as eggs are eggs, there were some people who apparent couldn’t read.  More disturbingly, there was one moron swimming in the pool above the falls.  Clearly he was practising for the Darwin Award.  The climb up was a bit of a challenge, but OK if you did it in stages.  Boys beat the girls by an easy twenty minutes, even if you disregard the fact that Derek had remained at the top.  On the way up I passed one bloke going down with a cigarette in his mouth – I always wondered how those bush fires got started.

After all this touristy stuff and the not inconsiderable exercise undertaken by descending, then ascending, 570m we felt the need for a nice sensible cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit.  So we returned to the Ponderosa through the torturous mountain roads and relaxed for the rest of the day.  The chocolate biscuits had fused into a molten mess long ago, but we munched away on three at a time anyway, with fingers and mouths covered in chocolate like refugees from a kindergarten.

Tomorrow we are off to Port Campbell, due south of here on the coast at the eastern edge of the Great Australian Bight.  The Bight is noted for the many shipwrecks that have occurred there over the centuries and we hope to visit a good Maritime Museum at Warrnambool on the way.  Signing off at 28ºC and clear blue skies – hope you have a good Sunday.

Blog 14. Australia. Kyneton and Daylesford

BLOG 14

Day 64

Tuesday 14 March. Bright sunshine, 30ºC.  A gentle start today (we are sleeping in a lot, partly because the curtains in the room are so thick that you can’t tell it’s daylight), then a drive into Kyneton to stroll around and explore the town.

It is hard to describe Kyneton – I did make a start in the last blog.  It is a workmanlike town, not hugely pretty, but with the odd nice Victorian building here and there and a reasonable range of shops.  It is clearly a market town for the surrounding farms and homesteads.  In some ways it is a bit like Melbury in terms of being unpretentious, but unlike home it has four or five restaurants of modest cuisine and the same number of coffee bars.  All the shops have verandas, so that as you walk along the pavement you are always in the shade.  The roads, as mentioned earlier, are four lanes wide so there is no congestion caused by parked cars, and all the major junctions are controlled by traffic lights mounted high above he road, like in America.  Here, the pedestrian crossings don’t warble or sing, like in Adelaide and Sydney (Blog 10), they click; so as you walk along past them there is this slow tick, like a clock, that turns into a clack-clack-clack-clack when it is safe to cross.  There are two medium-sized supermarkets, one of which is Woolworths: a name still going strong here, but here it is only a food store like Tesco.

All of the shop assistants here are very helpful.  I think I have mentioned this before, but I reiterate because it is becoming commonplace.  I went into a chemist for some corn plasters (as you do) and was immediately approached with an offer of help and advice.  They seem genuinely nice people.  If it sounds like I am having a love affair with the Australian people then there is a tiny element of that, but I am not blind to their faults, or rather, the way they differ from us in a slightly negative way.  They can be quite boorish at wine tastings, where they will think nothing of pushing in front of you at the counter when you are in the middle of the tasting.  Also, when you are in a car, they will never let you out of a junction: you have to push your way out, like in London.  Their sartorial presentation is also somewhat lacking, with nary a shoe, a cravat, a tie or even a pair of trousers in sight; but that is more a  custom or way of life rather than a fault.  Those are the only things I have found off-putting so far, however.

Having said that about Australian drivers, paradoxically they are very courteous to pedestrians.  If you are crossing a side street at a junction, say, and they are turning in from the main road, they will always stop for you and wave you across.  I asked about the Australian approach to driving lessons and it is far more stringent than ours.  Drivers can start to learn at sixteen and they have to pass the preliminary theory test before they go on the road, just like us.  Thereafter, there is the practical test as in UK, but after they pass they have to drive on a red ‘P’ probationary plate for a year, followed a green ‘P’ probationary plate for a further two years.  During that three-year probationary period they cannot drive a car above a certain engine size and there is an absolutely zero tolerance of any alcohol in the blood – even if it has come from, say, cough medicine or a sherry trifle.  Of course, they still have their boy racers with the bubbling exhausts:  usually they are driving a ute (note the vernacular, which now comes naturally).

We whiled away the late afternoon just reading in the shade outside, wallowing like hippopotami in the heat.  You find the Australians indoors with the air conditioning blasting away; we Brits are the only ones who still find it a novelty.  We have been very careful to cover up or ‘slip, slop, slap’, as they say, with the Factor 50 however, and I don’t think we are going brown.  I have had too many friends suffering from skin cancer to indulge in proper sunbathing these days, yet I saw a lot of it on the ship: people bright red lying out for another dose.  And not all were Brits.  It was horrifying.  How times change from those days when it was commonplace in the summer to peel off sunburnt skin.

Day 65

Wednesday 15 March and we were off to the small local town of Daylesford.  It is 25ºC, sunny intervals and windy, so still very pleasant.  Daylesford was a quaint sort of a place, perhaps about the size of Hungerford, and our first port of call was – you guessed it – the Botanic Gardens, located right on the summit of a steep hill.  These were very pleasant, but small and we soon whipped round and were ready for the next serial.  A visit to the nearby lake followed.  This area was like the Cotswold Water Park in terms of rentable properties around the lake, but much smaller (there was only one lake) and with some rather irritating flies.  The town is a spa town like Bath, and prices are hiked accordingly, but it looked to be a nice place to stay for a holiday: quite up market and well presented yet, paradoxically, with a disproportionate amount of graffiti.  Such a shame, and rather puzzling: why not clean it off?

The intention was to have lunch in the Convent Gallery, a converted building on the hill with origins and purpose that will be obvious.  Indeed, it was a very pleasant building that had been cleverly converted into an art gallery and café and we looked forward to the lunch.  As we sat down my nemesis, in the form of one baby and three small children, followed us in.  I don’t know how they do this.  There must be some sort of international bush telegraph that reports wherever I go. I didn’t comment on the arrival, but Jane was looking daggers at me lest I even think about drawing breath.  To compound this happy interlude, we were further joined by eight members of the Australian Women’s Shot-Put Team and the combined noise of all assembled in a hollow room with hard walls was a delight to experience.  Even Laura was moved to comment on the absence of tranquility.  After a reasonable, though expensive, lunch we thought we would ‘do’ the gallery to prove that we were cultured artistic people.  I sidled in, followed by the rest, pursued by a harassed woman calling out, “Excuse me madam, the entry fee is…”
She didn’t get any further because we were offski.  Culture is all very well, but we don’t pay for it.  

We drifted round the town, which has the reputation for being a popular place to live or stay for the Friends of Dorothy, and we took in a few shops, as you do.  There was a poster in one shop window advertising the ‘Chillout Festival 2017’ and adding, ‘There’s No Place like Daylesford, 20 Years of Queer Country Pride’ and ‘Poof Duff Presents Chillout Festival Official After Party’.  There’s nothing like the Australians for being right up front with something and proud of it; good for them I say.  There was a very good second-hand bookshop that we could have spent hours in (books are very expensive in Australia – typically $32AUS [about £20] for a paperback), but Derek was waiting in the car, patiently as ever, and we felt we ought to head back.  You can only pack so much excitement into one day.

Day 66

Thursday 16 March. Sunny intervals, showers, 23ºC.  A totally idle day unless you count doing the washing and ironing and generally preparing to move on.  This sounds awful, of course, but we are relaxing and relishing in the ability to just sit and read a book for as long as we want.  There is a lot to be said for that.

Just as a matter of interest I looked up the criteria for retiring in Australia (only curious, you don’t get rid of us that easily).  You can get a temporary retirement visa that lasts for four years, then renewable every two, subject to your health being OK.  Alternatively you can apply for a permanent retirement visa provided you can prove you have assets of $AUS 500,000 plus $AUS 250,000 for every dependant (to live in large urban conurbations – less to live rurally).  On top of this, the UK old age state pension payable in Australia does not get the annual increases, and you have to have health insurance.  So, all in all, retiring here is a non starter.  Besides, I know our son is looking forward to looking after us as we grow older, perhaps keeping us in a granny flat in the garden.

An interesting thing that came up in conversation was about cats.  We haven’t seen any since coming to Australia.  This is not because the Koreans have eaten them all, but because there is a curfew on them: all cats and dogs have to be microchipped and no cats are allowed out between dusk and dawn.  Dogs are also not allowed out off the lead except in designated areas, such as a dog beach. Anyone finding cats in the curfew period can request a special cage to catch them and the local council then identifies the cats and fines the owners several hundred dollars.  The purpose of the curfew is to protect the wildlife. 

One thing we did do today was cancel our booking at Raffles in Singapore in favour of a Premier Inn.  A bit sublime to the ridiculous, but it will save us about twelve hundred Singapore Dollars and Raffles was a bit of an extravagance that was conceived in Shiraz; it would have been lovely, but we were only spending two nights there and – besides – we could still go there for dinner if we wished.  We have downloaded our E-tickets for QM2, so the writing is on the wall for the return journey; our joining time is 1530 on 8 April, which could be a bit awkward, and clearly we are no longer Princess Grill Rich People.  Never mind, we are QM2 savvy now, and the return will still be excellent.

Off to a place called Halls Gap in the Grampians tomorrow, still in Victoria but yet another different viewpoint of Australia.

Blog 13. Australia. Ballarat

Day 59

Thursday 9 March and we are off to the former gold mining town of Ballarat, about two hours’ drive away.  We are staying at Sovereign Hill, a suburb of Ballarat and site of one of the old diggings, now converted into a theme township.  It was a fairly straightforward drive there, on long, very straight roads in increasing heat.  The temperature finally reached 30ºC when we arrived.

Sovereign Hill proved to be very impressive: a bit like a cross between Beamish in Co Durham, and Dodge City.  It is sited around the original workings and there are working shops, workshops, a saloon and a hotel.  Redcoats march through the streets, and ladies of the night have rows with preachers in the street as part of a playlet.  You can pan for gold in the stream if you feel so inclined, or ride in the stagecoach.  We had an Australian pie in the bakery (pies are big in the culinary department in Australia), and Jane had a Cornish pastie (I ask you: all this way and she asks for a pastie!).  There were some good exhibits and artisan manufactured items, particularly in the sheet metalwork shop (actually made on the spot, not in China) that were good value.  Then we repaired to the saloon where Derek and I had a pint of White Rabbit Ale, ice cold and most refreshing.

We stayed overnight at the adjacent hotel and it was very comfortable indeed, as well as being blessedly air-conditioned.  The hotel utilised a lot of the old mining town buildings, and we were in the the Governor’s Residence.  I was relieved that we weren’t in the barracks, sleeping four to a bunk room.

The evening proved to be excellent.  We dined in the restaurant of the United States Hotel, an ancient building with murals of the South Seas around the walls, then down to the theatre for an introductory video.  We then walked in the dark to the diggings where the way of life was explained to us: different areas – tents, mines, shops – would light up and ghostly voices would come from all directions, holding conversations, laughing or enacting vocally various operations.  It was as if the people were still there in spirit.  A long road train then turned up and we piled onboard to be taken to a different part of the town and another old theatre.  Here, an entire wall opened up to reveal a full size diorama that continued the story in the same way, this time explaining the circumstances that led to a mutiny and riot (the Eureka Stockade, if you want to Google it).  There were shouts and explosions and rain and fire, all very well done.  

The Eureka Stockade riot erupted because the government had imposed a ‘licence to dig’ in order to pay for extra police and law enforcement; this was necessary because the population had increased from a just few hundred, to hundreds of thousands.  Enforcement was not policed very sensitively and there were corrupt officials taking backhanders.  On top of this the government had to reinforce the police with the army.  Eventually the miners rebelled, built a stockade, hoisted a flag, burnt their licences and declared a sort of independent republic.  Obviously the government could never tolerate that and the army stormed the stockade, resulting in about twenty two deaths.  All was not in vain, because a better system of taxing was introduced after that.  I sensed a present-day republican slant to the story as they kept referring to ‘British soldiers’, a term that I found slightly odd given the time when it all happened (1854): surely everyone was British then.  There was also a tone of censure against the authorities and the army (those mutineers subsequently brought to trial were all acquitted), yet they were put in an impossible situation given the degree of lawlessness.

Finally we were transported back into the town, where we disembarked and walked back to the hotel.  All in all a very informative and entertaining evening.  And I didn’t mention the two large noisy school parties once.

Day 60

Friday 10 March, hazy sunshine and 31ºC.  Breakfast in the hotel was a self-service buffet.  The cooked breakfast was in little frying pans about four inches in diameter, comprising a small naked-looking sausage about two inches long, a tomato, and either a fried or poached egg; very novel.  You used a long platter to put it on, adding beans, mushrooms, bacon or spinach as you wished.  It tasted fine, but I have never had it served that way before.

After breakfast we visited the Gold Museum nearby, and this explained the process of gold mining as well as the history of the diggings and Ballarat.  The town originally was around the diggings, but it soon became apparent that a proper city would have to be built away from the many holes in the ground to house the many hotels, support services, and Stock Exchange that a mining town needs.  So the main part of Ballarat was built to one side, with considerable vision: long straight streets, six lanes wide in a grid system.  It was a very informative museum and I thought the visit worthwhile.  Yep, the school parties were there too.

We visited the city centre because Jane is a fan of the Australian ‘Dr Blake’ TV series, which is filmed there.  We didn’t recognise any of the scenes, and we didn’t meet Dr Blake, but Ballarat came across as a nice, open, airy town with some lovely architecture in the Victorian mould, many buildings having the (by now familiar) ground and first floor ornate verandas like New Orleans.

On to the Ballarat Animal Park, which was much superior to the small sanctuary that we visited early in our visit to Geelong.  In this park, the kangaroos were loose in the public areas and we just walked among them.  They would take food from your hand quite happily, and we have several shots of Jane making a new friend in this way. We wandered round and saw a Tasmanian Devil, a cassowary, lots of koalas, more wombats, alligators, and a vicious looking salt-water crocodile.  Jane particularly liked one of the alpacas until it tried to eat her Breton top (pity it wasn’t that blinking cardigan).  One kangaroo took a liking to me and stood right up to me, putting its hands on mine, and nuzzling my face (I’ve been out with worse), but it’s claws were quite sharp and I had to back away (if these blogs cease, it means I have died from septicaemia caused by kangaroo claws).  After all this excitement we dived into the cafeteria for a drink and I foolishly ordered a milk shake.  What is it with Australian milk shakes? It wasn’t quite as bad as the Bondi Beach effort, but it was a close thing.  I like my milk shakes thick and freezing, so that sucking the straw is like trying to draw a suction on the starboard sullage tank. Maybe I had better stick to McDonald’s in future.

So, onward to Kyneton, staying in a time-share resort in the bush (I don’t mean bush as in rhododendrons, I mean The Bush, the bundu).  We are staying in a sort of lodge in a forest, a bit like Centre Parcs in a way, though – it being Australia – it is all quite scrubby with very little greenery but lots of gum trees.  The lodge is clean and very comfortable, brick-built, single-storeyed, with two en-suite bedrooms and the usual facilities.  Tomorrow we will explore Kyneton and its environs, taking in the odd winery I dare say.  Kyneton, by the way, is in Victoria and sort of ‘up and to the left’ from Melbourne; I think Laura picked it because she wanted to show us other parts of the state, she has a time-share contract, and the property was available.

Day 61

Saturday 11 March.  Overcast with sunny intervals, 27ºC.  A gentle start today before driving in to Kyneton to look at some local markets.  Jane’s ability to spend ages looking at vegetables and budget clothing never ceases to amaze me.  The markets were a jolly affair – all the Australians seem to be that way – but the farmers’ produce was quite expensive (e.g. $AUS8 – about £6 – for a jar of peanut butter) so we just looked, smiled, then drove on to the supermarket for our victuals.  Kyneton is a small market town, nothing fancy but not shabby either.  Some of the residential pavements are just compressed gravel, but the main streets are properly paved.  Like everywhere else (it appears), the roads are very wide: typically six lanes, which makes traffic flow past parked cars easy.

A curious fact of this town, and indeed Ballarat yesterday, is that some of the street gutters are not like ours: instead of a short step-off onto the road like in the UK, the pavement just slopes sharply down at its edge into a shallow ditch or quite deep gutter, with a similar dip down from the road.  I imagine it is in order to cope with the heavy rain that you can get here. It can catch you unawares if you are unfamiliar with it, like us.

After this ‘victualling run-ashore’ we returned to the lodge for lunch and simply loafed all afternoon, reading and exploring the resort site, which has a lake and swimming pool among its amenities.  The trees are all gum trees of various sorts, all shedding their bark in the characteristic way.  You can see why the danger of bush fires is high: it all looks like a tinder box.  In the fire season (i.e. now) fires and barbecues are banned.  However, to overcome this, every three cottages has a shared gas barbecue in a covered area; the barbecue itself has an enclosed flame and so what you basically have is a very hot, stainless steel, square shallow ‘dish’, with a hole in the middle for drainage, that forms a hotplate.  After use, you are expected to scrape and rinse the hotplate clean for the next person.  The barbecues – or hotplates, as they really are –  are cleaned every day as well.  It is all very clean and well set-up.  Derek told me that the only drawback is if you try to griddle an egg, it tends to slide down the hole in the middle before it cooks.

There are some lovely birds here, as mentioned earlier.  The most fascinating bird song is that of the magpie lark.  The bird looks like a magpie, but its song is highly tuneful, a sort of a cross between The Magic Flute and The Clangers.  Absolutely lovely to hear.  I will try to get a recording that I can pass on.

Day 62

Sunday 12 March. Sunny intervals, 25ºC.  We are still at Kyneton, but heading for a couple of wineries today.  It would appear that visiting wineries is the standard occupation for Australians on a Sunday, just as we might go to the pub.  I think they go to the pub as well, of course.  However, many Australians seem genuinely interested in the wine tasting experience (as opposed to getting sloshed on free wine), and certainly Derek and Laura are far more knowledgeable on the subject than I am (mind you, that wouldn’t be hard: I just like what I like).

We found a small winery nearby, the Paramoor.  It was only 3½ acres on a small homestead run by a husband and wife team, and the tasting was inside a lovely old barn, very comfortable, with armchairs and a pleasant sitting area.  We enjoyed the wines, though I notice that, at these tastings, the wine is invariably quite expensive by UK supermarket standards.  You don’t get plonk.  The wines started at $AUS20 (about £12) a bottle and went up from there.  The hostess was a lovely lady and we enjoyed a very comfortable chat as well as the tasting.  In the end we bought six bottles and moved on to the next watering hole.

Hanging Rock Winery is located near – well – Hanging Rock, a location famous for a book called ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ in which some schoolgirls mysteriously disappear at Hanging Rock in the early 1900s.  It was just a novel, but the story has become legend in Australian literature such that many people believe the story to be true.  Anyway, this winery was a more commercial concern and there were several other parties already there, being served from a large counter by a harassed looking server.  We particularly liked the Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling at this tasting, though Laura and Derek are ‘red’ people, so we bought a selection, then we ate sandwiches on a bench outside in the hot sunshine.  Most pleasant.

I have learned yet another Australian term, which I pass on for your edification: yute.  I came across this in conversation and I thought at first that it was a type of tent like the yurt that Mongols live in.  But no, it soon became apparent that it was some form of transport; a vehicle.  Finally, I had to ask Laura.  A yute, or ute, is a Utility Vehicle: a pickup truck.  A new Utility Vehicle is a beaut ute.  So there you go.

As it was the day of rest, we decided to return to base and implement that policy.  I must say, I had a very good snooze and I think I may just have caught up on that sleep that I lost when HMS CAROUSEL had condenseritis in ’80. 

Day 63

Monday 13 March.  Mainly sunny, 28ºC.  Today is a public holiday and we are off to Ballarat, where there is a Begonia Festival being held in the Botanic Gardens.  Jane loves these things, of course, because anything with the words ‘botanic’ or ‘flowers’  (or, indeed, ‘penguins’) sends her off in raptures.  It all passes over my head, I’m afraid, but if the memsahib is happy then so am I.

By the way, Jane has received the culture results of her urine test from Adelaide, and there was no infection in her urinary tract after all.  So we still don’t know what it was that made her ill, though antibiotics seem to have fixed it, whatever it was.  

It was a fairly long trek to Ballarat – about 1½  hours – but Derek undertook it stoically, even when it became apparent that a lot more people than Jane like flowers and begonias.  The place was heaving.  Still, the entire event was free so that must be worth something.  The begonia display was restricted to just one hot house, which was packed with people taking photographs, meeting friends, and generally indulging in long conversations in large groups, thus blocking the way.  There wasn’t a lot of looking at the begonias.  We shuffled through, me muttering, and Jane reprimanding me for moaning, until suddenly we were out again.  That was it.  We did make an attempt to view the rest of the Botanic Gardens, but really it was virtually impossible so – to my relief – we gave it up as a bad job and went for a stroll round the large lake nearby instead.

The city centre for lunch seemed a good idea, so we strolled back to the car and set off on a circuitous route intended to take us to a cheap café for which Laura and some money-off vouchers.  This took us through several industrial estates, two U-turns, and three passes through central Ballarat.  I must say I was impressed with Derek’s phlegm throughout Laura’s laid-back navigation; I would have been spitting blood after the first U-turn.  In the end, I used my iPhone to find the target café, but when we arrived it was shut.  Laura was keen to try a second restaurant for which she had a voucher, but Derek had had enough by this time and we stopped at the first restaurant we could find, no discussion.  This proved to be a good find.  It was a small family Italian establishment that did a standard lunch and drink for $AUS16 and we had an excellent meal.  Jane, of course, had to finish with the ice cream so, what with begonias and ice cream, she was a very happy little girl.  One curious thing we discovered is that it is common in Australian to charge a surcharge on public holidays, so each meal cost an extra $AUS2.  Best not mention that in UK lest restaurateurs get ideas.  On the plus side, you do not tip here, so that saves quite a bit.

You may have noticed that I do not mention the weather quite so much now.  This is partly because Jane has come to accept the situation, and partly because it has stabilised.  We had a pre-conceived idea of Australian weather, thinking that it would be permanently sunny and very hot.  This is not the case at this time of year (their autumn) and, in Victoria in particular, it is quite temperate.  Most days it starts off cloudy but warm (low 20s), but then the sun breaks through and it reaches 25-28ºC.  This is ‘English summer hot’ but not usually oppressive.  It is very comfortable, and definitely shorts weather. The evenings can be quite cool however, and there are few occasions when we can sit out.

I think I will send this off now, following my policy of sending you a little and often.  I reckon it is 0715 on Monday morning in UK as I write, so you will have something to read with your boiled eggs and soldiers and Coopers Oxford Marmalade as the rain lashes the windows. 

Blog 12. Australia. Queenscliff and Lorne

Day 53

Friday 3 March. Sunny intervals, 24ºC, cool breeze.  Today was a somewhat lazy day, with a late start after a very long sleep.  After lunch we visited Geelong Library, an amazing modern building on five levels with clear views to the north and set in a very pleasant park.  The park is used as a focal point at Christmas, apparently, when everyone gathers round for carols by candlelight –  all in a 30 degree heat.  I cannot get used to the concept of Christmas in the heat, though Jane says it is no big deal: in the Caribbean, when she was a girl, they produced the full roast dinner with trimmings and sat around the Christmas tree, despite the heat.

Apropos absolutely nothing, by the way, I finally found the time to Google ‘Friends of Bill W’ and ‘Friends of Dorothy LGBT’ (Blog 8) since no-one came up with the answer (yes, it was a genuine question and no, I really didn’t know – I couldn’t access the Internet when we were onboard). Well! You learn something every day.

After the library, we hit the Art Gallery with a special exhibition of works by female abstract artists.  Some of the abstract stuff was – as ever – an acquired taste, but other pieces were actually quite appealing.  I preferred the traditional stuff, however.  Jane, Laura and I took a long walk along the (local) Barwon River, which was lovely, and fortunately we did not encounter any snakes, despite the warning notices.  A barbecue with some excellent wine completed the day.  Off to the air show tomorrow.

Day 54

Saturday 4 March.  Sunny and warm, 27ºC.  Let it be recorded in the log that today was the day that Jane stated it was too hot.

Up early to go to the Australian International Air Show, held at nearby Avalon.  Laura and Derek had obtained some complimentary tickets, which saved quite a bit of money.  We drove to the town of Lara and parked the car at the station in order to take advantage of the shuttle bus to and from the show.  I must say, it was extremely well organised.  Marshals guided us into the carpark, from the car to the ticket office, and from the ticket office onto the bus.  More marshals held up the traffic so that the buses had priority on the road system all the way to Avalon.  It was all very slick.  The air show was, of course, very good.  I liked the Constellation best, because I don’t think I’ve seen one for sixty years, and that was a Dinky toy.  What a beautiful aircraft: sleek, quiet and elegant.  Apparently its introduction was revolutionary at the time because it cut the flight time from Australia to London to four days, as opposed to seven days by flying boat.  Four days! I wonder if the passengers disembarked and stayed in a hotel overnight at the break points.

The air show was unusual in that Avalon remained a commercial airport throughout, and priority went to those flights; so between demonstrations and aerobatics, a Jetstar A320 would land or take off in the normal manner.  It seemed rather surreal in a way, like children stopping playing when the grown ups come in, and resuming play when they are gone.

We meandered around and looked at the aircraft, as you do, and ignoring the aviators posing in their overalls and badges and Foster Grants; but the main highlights were the aerobatics by military and civilian aircraft and we soon found a good spot on the grass where we pitched our rug, swatted the flies, and watched the show.  The only regret was that the UK was not represented at the show, though other nations were; a Typhoon would have been a good addition  and advertisement, but I suppose it was too far to come.  It was hot to start with and it soon grew hotter.  We managed about five hours altogether before it was agreed that we should move on before we were overdone. The return journey was as slick as the journey there, and we were soon back home in air conditioned bliss, sipping ice-cold cider.  Altogether a most satisfying day, not least because Mrs Shacklepin, at last, found the weather too hot.  Just wait until she gets in the Red Sea.

Day 55

Sunday 5 March. 24ºC. Sunny intervals. We are off to a winery or two for a little tasting, then to Queenscliff Fort for some history.

We set off mid morning to explore the peninsular that includes Geelong and forms the left (western) arm of Port Phillip Bay (about 50 miles north to south), with a narrow entrance, that is home to Geelong (west of bay) and Melbourne (north of bay).  We stopped at one winery (Jack Rabbit) and restaurant with an excellent view of the bay from the south, and tried a few wines.  They operated on the principle of paying a fee for the tasting, which was then discounted accordingly on any wine bought, and we thought that was better as there was then no moral pressure to buy anything.  The Blanc de Blanc was quite pleasant, but the rest were quite mediocre, yet priced at $AUS 30 a bottle (about £18).  We thought that the young man serving was a bit cheeky, when he said, “If you let me finish…” when Jane asked which wine was next.   Also, he spilled some red wine on the glass, which transferred itself to Jane’s skirt.  This was very  poor. So we moved on.

The next winery, Ballerine Estate, was much better, and I think we got extra measures when we told the bloke that Jack Rabbit had been poor.   Jane washed her skirt in the lavatory, so that it looked like she had wet herself (a fact that she did not appreciate when I told her).  These wines were much nicer and even I could tell that the quality had improved.  We bought a half case for Laura and Derek, and left happy.  I may add, by the way, that I spat out all the wines after these tastings so that I could appreciate each new one, stay sober, and advise Jane of her sartorial dampness.

On then to the town of Queenscliff.  Queenscliff stands on a long narrow promontory that forms the western point of the narrow mouth of Port Phillip Bay I mentioned earlier.  On the map it looks a bit like Spurn Head, at the mouth of the Humber, in England.  The entrance to the bay is called The Rip: an encouraging name to any mariner, yet the bar that all ships heading for Melbourne or Geelong have to cross.  Even on a calm day, there is white water across The Rip, and it is common for there to be a one metre height difference between the open sea (the Bass Strait) and the bay, rather like a waterfall.  Not an area to be taken lightly, methinks. 

Queenscliff was delightful.  It was small, but comprised many large Victorian houses with first floor verandas, like you see in New Orleans, which were originally hotels but are now either hotels or B&Bs.  We stopped for fish and chips at a fish bar and ate Gummy Shark (me) or Butter Fish (Jane), both of which were delicious. We were served by Pocahontas, and Shaggy from ‘Scooby-Doo’ with the beard and weird hair or, that is to say, two people who looked like them: the girl wore a headband and large ribbon that looked like a feather, and the boy had the wispy beard, wild hair and facial features of Shaggy.  I wanted to take a picture, playing the Pommie tourist card, but didn’t really think it was right in the end.    

At 1500 we went for a guided tour of Queenscliff Fort, a Victorian fort, still used by the Australian Army, which was built in about 1880 to guard Melbourne.  It was suddenly realised, at that time, that the state of Victoria had acquired a great deal of gold and wealth (Australian Gold Rush) and that there was no defence whatsoever against a foreign power coming in and taking it, or – for that matter – coming in and settling.  Hence, the very substantial fort, a little like the forts built to protect Portsmouth from the French only this one was concerned primarily with other powers, including the Russians.  The fort was active until 1946, it was then used as a Staff College, then as the Army Manning Agency until a few years ago, and is now used to house all armed forces personnel records.  Photo ID was needed to get in and the guided tour was excellent, taking us around gun emplacements, underground magazines, the Keep, and an interesting museum.  

The most interesting exhibit was the disappearing gun: an 8″ gun mounted on a hydro-pneumatic mounting that allowed the gun to rise over the embrasure in order to fire, then drop behind it in order to be loaded out of sight.  In the early 1980s the Australians restored the gun to working order and it was decided that it should be fired to celebrate Australia Day, or something similar.  Now you imagine trying to do that in UK: there would be 1,001 reasons why this could not be done, starting with Health and Safety.  But in Australia, they just went ahead.   Well, they fired it, all right, and the blast took out every window in the Staff College behind it, and several in the main town nearby.  There was one heck of a stink.  It seems that they had omitted to notice that, when the fort was originally built, there was a blast wall behind the gun to prevent such a problem – it had been removed in the intervening years.  I thought this was hilarious, a credit to Australian ‘can do’ spirit, and a win against bureaucracy.   I wouldn’t have wanted to be the engineer who certified a 100 year old gun as safe to fire, however.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle when it was discovered that I had lost my glasses, which had been hooked on the front of my shirt while I wore the ‘Joe Cool’ Ray Bans, and we scoured the car, the carpark and the local park before we found them with Pocahontas and Shaggy: someone had handed them in in the fish bar.  Phew! That would have cost a good £500 to replace.  I was given a lecture on looking after precious things by my most precious thing, I meekly accepted it (tactfully not mentioning her similar experience in Fremantle), and we moved on.

Afterwards we took a walk along Queenscliff Pier in bright, hot, sunshine yet stiff breeze, viewed the lifeboat station, then returned to the car.  I was surprised to read, on a nearby plaque, that lifeboats (like the RNLI) are no longer used because modern technology means “helicopters are more effective for sea rescue”.  Really?  Not always, surely? What about when the weather is so bad a helicopter cannot be used?  I must find out if that statement is policy for all of Australia, or just that area.

Back at the ranch we relaxed outside with an Indian takeaway, a glass of Shiraz, and a 30-year old port.  An odd mixture, I know, but somehow it all fitted together well.  The port, in particular, slipped down a treat; I usually avoid the drink because it gives me a terrible head the next day, but in this case I thought I would make an exception.  

Day 56

Monday 6 March.  No hangover. Mainly clear skies, 25ºC, cool breeze.  We are off to Lorne, where Laura and Derek have a seaside chalet, for a few days.  Lorne is south west of Geelong on the Southern Ocean and is a small coastal town dedicated almost entirely to tourism.  It is a popular weekend escape for the people of Melbourne (about two hours’ drive away) and the real estate is priced accordingly (prices from $AUS 1M).  On the way there we drove down the Great Ocean Road through familiarly named townships such as Torquay, where we stopped for enormous ice creams.  For the first time in Australia, I have found a road that twists and turns just like in England as it follows the coast south and west (the clue is in the road name).  The road was built by the unemployed after WW1 and cuts through the cliffs in several places.  It cannot have been an easy job.  The beach at Lorne is magnificent: long, with a beautiful turquoise sea, and fine cliffs; it rather reminded me of Bamburgh, though it was considerably warmer despite the cool southerly wind. 

Laura and Derek’s chalet is a large lodge of wooden construction, built on the side of a steep hill and overlooking the sea.  They bought it thirty years ago when land was relatively cheap; the land alone is probably worth millions now.  There are elevated balconies on all sides, and the building has huge picture windows so that you can sit outside wherever the weather suits you.  They rent it out when they are not using it, and it will sleep eight comfortably and ten at a push.  Inside is a large cathedral-like space with a vaulted ceiling, panelled in pine; a small kitchen; a utility room; and two bathrooms.  There is a billiard table for those so inclined, and a large storage space in the garage below.  All in all it is a perfect location and very comfortable in a basic, rustic kind of way.  The local birds are cockatoos, kookaburras, gang-gangs, galahs, honey eaters and crimson rosellas – all very exotic and quite noisy, but delightful; it is a bit like living in an aviary.  We settled in rapidly and just relaxed for the afternoon, gazing out at the ever changing seascape.

I have finally put my mind to writing a complaint to Cunard about the way they abandoned us in Adelaide.  Heaven knows if it will do any good, but at least I will have made my point and – if successful – I may save some other couple from a similar fate.  Watch this space.

Australia is entirely metric, like mainland Europe.  Distances are measured in kilometres, speeds in kilometres an hour, weights in kilograms, temperatures in Celsius and volumes in litres.  Driving, however, is on the left as reported earlier.  I haven’t quite worked out all the spelling yet: most is in English, but some words – for some unfathomable reason – are spelt in American English.  They also use the word ‘cheque’ (or is it ‘check’?) when we would say ‘bill’.  Overall, the whole country is a pleasant mixture of American and British, with the bias towards American.  There is nothing wrong with that; it is just another one of those curious things about how a relative fledgling of a country has evolved.

Day 57

Tuesday 7 March and we awoke to the roaring of the waves on the seashore and the cries of various parrots.  The weather is mixed today, with a stiff breeze from the east, sunny intervals, and a temperature of 21ºC.  It is rather like a cool English summer: quite temperate, but bearable with a sweater and long trousers.

We are off on a longer trek today, to Cape Otway lighthouse about 90 minutes’ journey from Lorne, to the south west.  The lighthouse is the oldest still standing in Australia, and Cape Otway is the first point of land for vessels approaching Tasmania and Melbourne.  The trip was along the torturous Great Ocean Road, a journey exacerbated by the driver ahead of us, who clearly was more used to the straight roads of New South Wales than the twisting road we were on.  Every bend necessitated a braking manoeuvre, and was taken at 10 miles an hour.  We could not get past because the road was ‘no overtaking’, and he refused to pull in to any of the many passing places put there to allow faster traffic to progress.  Clearly, it was his one ambition in life to lead a procession, and he was revelling in having achieved it.

Cape Otway and the area surrounding it is officially rain forest, and very woody it was too.  It certainly wasn’t tropical rain forest as the wind was blowing a hefty Force 5.  Some parts of the forest had clearly been the victim of a bush fire, which is very common – and very dangerous – in the area; however other parts looked like a mythical petrified forest, sometimes quite extensive.  Derek said it was caused by the koalas, which eat the eucalyptus leaves to such an extent that it deprives the tree of life.  Apparently it is quite a problem, and there is much debate as to whether the animals should be culled to preserve the trees and, indeed, themselves.  Interesting fact, by the way, koalas, which are not bears but marsupials, will only eat five particular species of eucalyptus leaves, not all of them. Picky little creatures.  The koalas take a long time to digest their food, and sleep accordingly most of the day curled up in a furry ball, high in the trees.

Bush fires are particularly dangerous because of the speed with which they move and the heat that they generate.  Derek, who has helped to put a few out in his time, says that if one is coming you should not linger, but evacuate the house quickly.  Burning embers can jump over a kilometre, so fire breaks are not much help.  Some people think they can just dive into their swimming pool, but those who have tried it get boiled alive and their bodies come out like lobsters. Similarly, you cannot hide in the cellar because the heat travels a considerable distance into the earth.  He had a friend whose house had been burned down by a bush fire, and the spare tractor engine in what had once been the barn, was just a heap of molten metal.  Mild steel melts at roughly 1,500ºC, so that will give you an idea of the temperatures experienced; apparently the eucalyptus burns particularly hot because of the oils within.

The Cape and lighthouse were in a wild and very exposed place, as – I suppose – most lighthouses are.  It was disconcerting to see a chalked notice outside the entrance saying, “The sun is out and so are the snakes.  Please keep to the paths and avoid the long grassy areas.  If you see one, do not approach, they are DANGEROUS and DEADLY”.  You don’t get that at Portland Bill.

There was an obsolete signalling station at the Cape too, and there were once sufficient children there to justify using one building as a small school (the children from the fecund lighthouse keepers who, presumably, had not much else to do after they had polished their lamps).  We took the usual trip up the lighthouse and looked around, hanging on to hats and spectacles, and listened to an interesting chat by one of the guides.  The lighthouse was once visible at 30 miles, but it is no longer in use now that GPS is used extensively.  However, it has been replaced by a small modern beacon, about six feet high, sited in front of the lighthouse with a range of 15 miles.  I found this puzzling.  Why abandon a perfectly good light and structure, with a greater range, for a new replica with half the range.  What is the financial case for that?

On the way back from Cape Otway, we stopped to take a walk through the rain forest and this was amazing.  It was like Kew Gardens raised to the power four.  Beautifully green tree ferns abounded, and huge tall trees such as mountain ash or eucalyptus thrust high into the sky, arrow straight.  There was very little light and it was surprisingly cool in there.  Incidentally, the eucalyptus tree is prolific in Australia and, apparently, there are over six hundred varieties in the continent. They are otherwise known as gum trees and one genus of that is – yes – the coolibah tree.  So there you are, we have sat under the shade of a coolibah tree.  Now to find a billabong.

It was another slightly tedious drive back along the coast road to Lorne, through some quite peculiar meteorological conditions: a very sullen nimbus cloud formation on one side, that looked as if a major downpour was imminent, yet dull sunshine and turquoise sea on the other.  I commented on this and Jane suggested I remove my sunglasses, dear.  Suddenly the world was bright and cheerful, and I heard an exasperated sigh from the back seat.  Where would I be without her?

Day 58

Wednesday 8 March is a much warmer day in contrast to yesterday: clear dark blue skies, a light breeze, and temperatures in the mid twenties.

We spent our time in the environs of Lorne today, taking the views from Teddy’s Lookout high on a bluff overlooking one of the river estuaries, then moving on to Erskine Falls, about five miles inland.  This waterfall is set well in the middle of the rainforest and drops about 220m: quite spectacular, though there was not a huge amount of water at this time of year.  The climb down to the bottom was worth it for the views; the climb up a healthy pastime, good for the heart.  Afterwards we returned to Lorne and took a stroll along the pier in the bright sunshine and took in the view.  We noticed a number of children in some kind of uniform fishing from the end and, when we asked, were told that sea angling was a school activity so they were in school time.  It strikes me that Australia is a good place to grow up.  Of course, the skateboarders never do.

One of the things that I have noticed is that most of the houses here have galvanised steel roofs, sometimes corrugated.  I don’t mean those rusty tin roofs that you get on the top of the bike sheds, but proper, thickly galvanised or painted roofs.  You rarely see a tiled or slated roof.  It is just one of those curious things.  It must be quite noisy when it rains, I imagine.

After a brief lunch we walked down to the beach and paddled in the sea as we walked along the foreshore to the town.  Jane actually stayed in and enjoyed it, and said she would have swum in it if she had her costume.  Amazing! The Bass Strait has joined the short list of approved oceans.  The stroll through the surf was lovely, though I got my shorts wet by being too adventurous. Afterwards we took a coffee in a beach café before strolling back to the house.  It has turned out to be the perfect day, not too hot and not too breezy; rather like a hot summers’ day in England.

Tomorrow we are off to the former gold mining city of Ballarat to stay at a theme village in the suburb of Sovereign Hill, where the gold diggings once were.  There is a tour, and a sound and light show in the evening telling one about the history, so it should be good.  I am going to send this off now as I have access to WiFi and it will give you something to read over the weekend. Forecast is very hot tomorrow: 30ºC.

Blog 11. Australia. Sydney

Day 48

Sunday 26 February. Sydney, Australia. 24ºC, mainly sunny.  We awoke to a grey, murky day but we resolved to put on a happy face (and a fleece) for the day and set off in search of breakfast.  The day outside proved to be better than the view from our top floor (tinted) window and it was actually quite warm enough to walk around in a short sleeved shirt and shorts without discomfort.  We had a good healthy breakfast in a small Chinese café up the road, then set off on yet another shopping expedition.  In order to keep weight down on the aircraft, we had deliberately left many cosmetics and creams behind, and these would now have to be purchased locally.  Also, someone omitted to pack spare shoes, so I have to buy a pair, along with another pair of chinos. Damn – I have revealed who it was.

Now here’s a funny thing about Australia.  A man cannot buy a pair of trousers of short or long length.  He can only buy Regular length.  If you are linearly challenged like me, this is a big problem. I am 34″ waist and 30″ inside leg, but the nearest size I can get is 34″ waist and 32″ inside leg; I would have to wear stilts to get away with that.  I first noticed this phenomenon in Adelaide, it occurred again in Geelong and here it is again in Sydney.  Even top, expensive, shops do not provide the range of sizes.  I asked ‘why’, today, and was told that short people just buy Regular, then have the trousers taken up.  That would never do.  The memsahib, bless her, has a horror of needle and thread and I am disinclined to dig out my old housewife from somewhere in my naval trunk in the garage so that I can do it.  Besides, why buy a new thing and then have to alter it?  Heaven knows what tall men do.  This is bizarre.

Sydney is huge.  I mean huge with skyscrapers.  I imagine New York is the same.  The buildings soar far, far into the sky – much taller than buildings in London.  Yet, unlike those in Adelaide, the streets are relatively narrow, about three or four lanes wide in total.  This combination makes for dark canyons where little sun penetrates.  Jane thinks this place is better than London, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that; I would set it almost on par with London, however, when you take into account the whole harbour and setting (see later).

We dropped the shopping and our fleeces back at the hotel and set off to explore.  We were quite close to the harbour, according to the map, but there was some debate as to which direction to walk in: I favoured downhill (as water flows); Jane favoured uphill.  The problem was solved when I pointed down the road to where the immense structure of the Sydney Harbour Bridge cut across the skyline.  I win. 

The harbour area is nothing short of fantastic.  At Circular Quay it is busy and bustling, with dozens of ferries of all kinds churning out and in, and private boats pottering to and fro, all to the backdrop of Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. Some ferries are catamarans, but others are conventional looking ships, but with bows, bridge and rudder at the front as well as at the the back, so it is hard to tell which way they are going.  Most unusual.  All of the ferries travel very fast indeed, with little concern for wash or speed limits (if any). 

Right in the middle of all this activity stood QUEEN ELIZABETH (QE) (the ship, not the monarch).  She was quite impressive but, of course, not as impressive as QM2 – well, I would say that wouldn’t I.  Actually, QM2 had been in the day before at the same time, and much publicity had been made of the two Cunarders being together, but QM2 is too big to fit into the usual cruise ship berth and so had to be berthed around the corner, elsewhere (this is why we were berthed on so many container ship jetties on the way south).

We had a good look at QE, then walked round to the harbour bridge to cross over to the other side,  to the delightfully named Kirribilly.  You can actually cross over the bridge on the top walk, i.e. over the curve, but we passed on that (besides, it was $AUS150 each); just walking over, next to the road was free and spectacular enough.  The bridge was completed in 1932 and designed and built in Middlesbrough. I always thought it was modelled on the Tyne Bridge, but apparently it was based on the Hell Gate Bridge in New York.  Sadly, the pedestrian footpath was enclosed in high fencing to prevent suicides, and there were security guards posted at frequent intervals for the same reason, but you could still see out and take pictures.  It took a fair while to cross, but offered spectacular views of Sydney Harbour.  

We had a paella lunch in the sunshine at Kirribilly, then walked back across the bridge to the Opera House to explore that area and the (inevitable) Botanic Gardens.  We had always thought that Sydney Opera House was large and white, but actually, it is cream coloured and slightly smaller than we had envisaged, though no less impressive.  We hung around to watch QE sail at 1800, then set off to find somewhere for a light supper.

If you hadn’t already gathered, the predicted thunderstorms never happened and the whole day turned out to be baking hot, which was a pleasant surprise.  By 1900, however, we had been walking for about eight hours and we were getting quite tired.  Jane wanted to stop at a little café to have a cup of tea and a bun to accompany her medication, but by this time, on a Sunday, the only places open were restaurants and bars serving an evening meal and we weren’t that hungry.  We walked and walked looking for the ideal place, but, in the end, we had to buy some cereal bars in a convenience store and take them back to the room.  What a day.

Day 49

Monday 27 February, and we are still in Sydney.  The day dawned with a 60% chance of rain but, yet again, we had blue skies and a lovely day at 24ºC.  After a fruit salad breakfast at our little Chinese café, we embarked in a little more shopping, but soon we gave up on shoes and chinos and decided to move over to the next bay, Darling Harbour, to see what that offered.  This was another delight, with many eateries, a marina, and a Daring Class destroyer, HMAS VAMPIRE (what more can you ask?).  The latter was part of the Maritime Museum, which I resolved to visit soon.  We took lunch overlooking the harbour, then strolled in the afternoon heat.  This is a lovely place.

We decided to take a harbour cruise, which would visit about ten places and take about two hours.  Sydney Harbour is enormous and comprises sixty six bays altogether, all suburban – hence, all those ferries that support commuter traffic.  We passed the RAN Naval Base at Garden Island, where there were several frigates, all of the USN pattern, and one aircraft carrier, HMAS CANBERRA.  Lovely place to be based.  There was quite a swell coming in from the sea across the harbour bar, The Heads: about one metre in height.  Apparently it is not uncommon for this swell to be five to seven metres in height, and that must be quite challenging for the ferries; as it was, we heaved and pitched quite a bit as we crossed the entrance.  The cruise was excellent, and good value for money at $AUS30 each, but we got a good dose of sun and wind in the process and by the time we disembarked we needed turning and were nearly done.  A shared pizza and glass of Sauvignon Blanc at a harbour café finished the day nicely, and we retired to the hotel at about 1800 – whacked out.

With all this walking, we should be losing weight, but I am not too sure that this is true for me.  For the moment, I can still fit into my shorts and trousers, so let us be grateful for small mercies.

It is interesting to note the high proportion of Orientals here: it appears to be very much an integrated community in Sydney, and I would say that most of the faces we have seen are Asian.  Jane and I actually conducted a straw poll of people who passed us over a ten minute period and came up with the figure of 60% Japanese, Korean or Chinese.  It is remarkable enough to be noticeable, if you follow me.  Beware the Yellow Peril, that’s what I say.  Most of the Australian women are very well turned out and smart, and the men generally have a fresh, healthy, look.  Quite a few people are distinctly tubby, however: probably fatter than UK. 

The Australians appear to be great ones for coffee, and very good coffee at that.  There are coffee bars and cafés everywhere, and if you ask for a black coffee – my favourite beverage – you get a medium sized cup of neat espresso.  Crikey, that is strong even for me; certainly one cup at breakfast is quite enough.  I might have to move over to tea at this rate.

Against all predictions, the weather is turning out to be lovely and Australia is now exceeding expectations in every way.  Nice people, nice place.

Day 50

Tuesday 28 February.  Sydney, Australia.  Sunny intervals, temperature 26C.  60% chance of rain again.  We had an early start today, because we wanted to take a city bus tour to Bondi Beach and pack several other things into the day.  It was a long slog to the railway station where the tour started, and en route we saw the (very slightly) more seedy side of Sydney.  I wonder why it is that railway stations are often in a tatty area of town, or the rail track gives you the worst view of a city.  Most curious.  Anyway, we piled onto the open top double decker, noting with some irritation how your Johnny Foreigner doesn’t do queuing, and – having looked at the sky – decided to sit inside.  Five minutes after we started, the heavens opened and the top deck crowd came down faster than they had gone up.  The tour was all right if sitting in a traffic queue at traffic lights every thirty seconds is to your taste.  There was little in the way of commentary, and what there was (in earphones provided) was virtually unintelligible.  Stop, start, stop, start we jerked our way grudgingly out of the city centre, through the Red Light district (alas, no scenery) and suburbia to Bondi Beach.  The rain stopped and the sun came out.  We disembarked.  Well, so this is it, eh?

Bondi Beach was very nice (‘nice’ that most English of English adjectives that praises without getting too carried away).   It is quite short at about half a mile; for some reason I thought it stretched on and on like Slapton Sands.  I’m afraid it rather reminded me of Torquay, or Plymouth Lido, on an extremely hot day.  It was not at all what I expected.  However, the sand was very fine and the sea turquoise, and Jane expressed the intention to dabble her toe in the water.  But first, we thought we would have a drink.

We sat in an outside café, which did not sell alcohol, and I ordered a chocolate milkshake for $AUS7 and Jane a fruit juice.  It must surely be the worst milkshake I have ever had.  It comprised a spoonful of Chocolate Nesquick topped up with half a pint of cold milk.  Jane’s juice was not much better, though I dare say it was healthier.  Things could only get better so, stretching my handkerchief across my head, with knots in the corners, I removed my shoes and – with Jane in the lead – I headed for the Pacific.  Well, you won’t believe this:  Jane pronounced the Pacific Ocean to be warm.  I couldn’t get her out of the water, it was so good.  She even said she would swim in it if she had the gear.  I was amazed.  Actually, there was quite an undertow and I am not too sure that I would feel entirely safe swimming there, what with that and the sharks (which can attack even if you are only knee deep).  Still, it was a good experience and it is always nice to see Jane happy.  I was also happy, because I had seen a lady with no vest on walking along the beach.  Two happy people.

But the English don’t do completely happy (total enjoyment is sinful, as is looking at ladies with no vest on), and it was soon time to come out and dry our feet.  We concluded that we had done Bondi.  Very nice.  No T shirt, thank you.  Time to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus back.  The return trip was, sadly, no better than the outward one.  We tore through affluent suburbia at a heck of a rate, screaming around corners and bouncing over speed bumps, with the commentary still inaudible.  I think the driver may have been behind schedule.   I will swear that the half shaft on that bus was on the way out.  And so back to the traffic jams of central Sydney.  By the way, if you haven’t already gathered, the traffic here is terrible: worse than London and on par with Dublin (the worst place I have ever driven in).  Thank God we are walking everywhere.

The next serial was the much promised Maritime Museum and that Daring Class destroyer.  Strangely, Jane went a bit distant when I mentioned the destroyer, and she didn’t express wholehearted support when I tried to enliven the experience with the promise of a crawl round an ‘O’ Class submarine either; the excitement just didn’t seem to be there, if you follow me.  Fortunately, a compromise emerged in the form of the Sydney Aquarium. I like an aquarium, but I have done one.  Many times. See one manta ray and you’ve seen them all.  So we agreed that I would do the Maritime Museum and the ships, and Jane would do the Aquarium.  I got a discount for being an old sea dog, and Jane got none.

HMAS VAMPIRE was a most enjoyable experience, and I ran my hand lovingly over familiar hatch coamings, radar displays and gun mountings, peered into the Marine Engineer Officer’s cabin, and scampered happily up and down the companionways.  Alas, the machinery spaces were not open to visitors, but I am sure everything there would have been entirely familiar.  The quick crawl around the submarine, HMAS ONSLOW, was almost as enjoyable, but, curiously,  not one of the volunteer guides onboard was a submariner: one was an old civilian member of aircraft ground crew from Ireland, and the other was an ex Australian Fleet Air Arm sonar operator.  Even I knew more about the submarine than they did.  Never mind.

I met Jane afterwards and her tour had not gone quite as well, but she still enjoyed it.  There were penguins.

It tipped it down with rain at this point, and we sheltered under a bridge.  Unlike England, it rains heavily here for about ten minutes, then stops and the sun comes out again. So the shower was soon over and, in steaming heat, we strolled around to the other side of the harbour and ordered a light supper in a Turkish restaurant.  I wanted just a half of lager as I hadn’t drunk since that awful milk shake, but the waitress suggested that, as it was Happy Hour, it would be cheaper to have a jug.  A jug?  Why not, if it’s cheap.  So I was given this enormous pitcher of lager: it looked like a small bucket.  The scene was like a rerun of that film, Ice Cold in Alex with John Mills as I poured the beer into the frosted glass and ran my finger down the side.  I must say that lager went down a treat.  The Mediterranean style meal – skewered chargrilled chicken with tzatziki – was superb.  Tasty food, and healthy too, if you disregard the bulk intake of beer that went with it.

Staggering slightly under the free-surface effect of all that lager, I tottered back to the hotel with the memsahib: sated, hot, tired, and sticky;  but content.  Another good day.

Day 51

Wednesday 1 March.  Overcast, with sunny intervals and showers. 25ºC.  It is our last day in Sydney and we will be sorry to go, but we think we have covered just about all we would want to see, and four days has proved to be about right.  We decided to spend the day just drifting around the city, mopping up any places not already visited.  

We found a splendid arcade inside the Victoria Building: a bit like the Burlington Arcade, but on three levels around the central atrium.  There was a huge clock hanging from the ceiling in the atrium, showing date and time in various parts of Australia, with a little ship sailing around it, and depicting scenes from different parts of Australia’s history.  Of course, we couldn’t afford a thing in any of the shops: it was all Gucci, Prada and bespoke jewellery, but we did enjoy the visit.  Inevitably, the mopping up process included a visit to the Botanic Gardens where Jane was in her one hundred and seventh heaven.  Fortunately, nasty spiders did not attack me and buzzing insects did not bite me, and we spent a pleasant hour in the hot sunshine.  We lunched al fresco at an Italian restaurant at Circular Quay, gazing at the latest cruise ship to be alongside and the constantly moving nautical scene. We returned to the hotel for a siesta, then found a Greek restaurant for supper.  Our last meal in Sydney.

Day 52

Thursday 2 March and we are up early for our return flight to Geelong.  Jane loves these early starts and really joins in the spirit of things when I leap out of bed and fling back the curtains and bedclothes, welcoming a new day.  This time, the alarm call was at 0515 and I think the spirit was struggling a bit, partly because the new day had yet to come.  The taxi, at 0600, cost $AUS60 and that puzzled us a bit as the day tariff was supposed to kick in after that time.  As it was, the journey on arriving had cost $AUS50 because, we discovered, Sydney Airport is privately owned and charges a tax of $AUS13.60 to all travellers, whether transiting by taxi, train or whatever. A bit of a rip off, in our opinion.

Although still a relative novelty to us, domestic air travel here is very common and mundane because of the size of the country.  You might as well be at a bus station.  Security screening is relatively quick and easy and there is no restriction on liquids in hand luggage for domestic flights.  They don’t herd you in phased clumps, like they do for Ryanair: you go to the departure gate, you get on the aircraft.  Simple.  The departure gate is also the arrivals gate, and the off-going passengers have to push their way past the on-coming passengers, or climb over their legs, to get into the terminal (Australians are great ones for sitting on the floor, for some reason). The unfortunate cabin crew have just ten minutes to clean up the cabin before the next batch of passengers sweep in.  Fortunately, it is allocated seating; apparently Jetstar used to offer a graded free-for-all system (gold members got a twenty yard start, silver a ten yard start etc), but this produced a complete melee and some altercations, so that was abandoned in favour of common sense.  

Watching all this going on was something of a novelty, for air travel to me always conjures up pictures in ‘Janet and John’ books of flying boats, Imperial Airways and BOAC; of air hostesses in blue uniforms and little hats; of gentlemen in suits and ties; and of ladies in pearl and twinset with court shoes.  Some of the passengers I was looking at didn’t even have shoes, let alone court shoes. Oh dear, and no First Class cabin.

The flight to Avalon (Geelong) was going tolerably well, though I missed my in-flight breakfast and warming cup of aviation coffee, both of which used to taste like nothing else on earth.  It all started to fall apart at the end when visibility closed in at Geelong and we were placed in a holding pattern somewhere over the state of Victoria.  The cloud base at Avalon was too low to land, so round and round we went in endless figures of eight in the sunshine, the pilot assuring us that we had plenty of fuel.  I later found out that there was talk of us diverting to Melbourne or Adelaide, or even returning to Sydney, which would have been a bit of a bummer, as Laura and Derek were waiting for us on the ground.  We circled for a total of two hours before, at last, things improved and we descended safely, two hours late on a one hour journey. Never mind, we were back and alive.

A warming cup of tea at Laura and Derek’s was followed to a visit to Clyde Park Winery at Moorabel Valley in the emerging sunshine,  where we sampled some wines.  Afterwards, we gazed over a lovely valley and huge tracts of Australia while eating a light lunch in the shade.  Most pleasant.

I confess to a Dog-Watch Zizz on return, as I had not slept well on our last night in Sydney.  Then, suitably refreshed and showered, I repaired to Laura’s sitting room, where the air conditioner was going full blast.  For once, happy to be cool. It was 26ºC outside and very comfortable. 

I think I will fire this off now, as it conveniently concludes the Sydney phase of the voyage and avoids too much for you to read.  If you print it off, then it will also provide useful kindling for starting that fire at the weekend.  The verdict on Sydney?  Excellent – possibly even better than Cape Town.  Shacklepin Graffiti Factor, 10%; litter, Nil (Yes, nil); dog turds, nil; skateboarders, 4; scooters, 2; strange men with hair in a bun held by a scrunchie, 5.  Bonza.