Fri 7th Sept
The first day saw a walk around the South Bank where I encountered my first bit of Aussie wildlife... an Ibis I think?!
and then had a paddle at the manmade Streets Beach:
Followed by a meal at The Pig and Whistle for Debs!
... and then bed. Here's our lovely room:
Sat 8th Sept
Today we went for a walk around the Botanic Gardens. Then Debbie left to go back to work and this afternoon I've been walking around art galleries and watching some bands down at the South Bank as part of Brisbane Festival. There was an amazing light show!
The rest of the photos for my first day in Brisbane can hopefully be found here:
Sun 9th Sept
Went fo a trip to Australia Zoo today. 6am get up was NOT kind to me! I fell asleep twice (at the zoo... couldn't even wait for the bus journey home!).
I was a bit apprehensive as usually I hate zoos because they make me miserable. This zoo however was lovely. A really clean and happy place makes for clean and happy animals it seems. I took loads of photos but only uploaded a few (due to crappy technology!). I really enjoyed the journey there too. the Greyhound drivers here are really informative. He had us trying to spot wild kangaroos on the runway of the local airstrip (which they have to chase off with a helicopter before the planes take off) and told us all about the history of the Glass House Mountains. I only felt he was maybe going into a bit too much detail when he pointed out a fig tree that he fell out of as a child and proceeded to tell us the story of his hospitalisation!!
At the zoo, it was the bird show that had me most impressed. I think I may now want to be a bird handler! Haha, watch this space! It was a busy day and Nina (a German girl from my hostel) and I got to stroke koalas, kangaroos (so soft and fluffy) and even a baby alligator. We even got to feed an elephant (whose snot stank by the way! It was a quick trip to the nearest sink after that one!). I liked the fact that the one I fed was called Bimbo.
Here are the photos:
Tues 18th Sept
The lack of decent technology available to me has made me somewhat reluctant to update my blog. However, the rain today has convinced me otherwise! So what if it took me nearly 5 hours on and off yesterday to sort out my photos? Its now taken me nearly 2 hours just to get to this point but it beats going out in the downpour!
I'm currently sat in Will's house doing battle with my lap top and trying not to think about the fact that I'm hungry but don't want to walk to the shop.
So, since visiting the zoo, I spent the rest of my time in Brisbane reading and people watching. Nice not to have anything to do really. I walked around the Parklands, avoiding the marauding lizards (only narrowly at times) and spent time dipping my toes into the water at the 'beach' whilst finding out all sorts of interesting things about Australia from Bill Bryson and his aptly named book. Over the week, I bcame much more accustomed to life in a hostel and, in the dorm, I met a lot of Koreans and a nice Kiwi who told me he was here working because 'The money's crap back home!' (This unfortunately mirrored what another Kiwi had told me in the bar the night before. Good-o! Not coming home rich then!). I was almost sad to leave when the time came to fly to Melbourne to see Will.
Anyway, I'm here in Melbourne now. Staying in Brunswick (which I am told is like Melbourne's equivalent of Brixton or Camden) and getting into the swing of being out drinking every night.
Over the weekend we hit the Great Ocean Road (between Will and I, even navigating out of Melbourne was a task in itself!). It was really nice to get out and see a bit of the countryside. Here in Victoria, you could almost be forgiven for thinking you were in England. Looking across open fields, it's so lush and green... but the giveaways that you're not out in the moors somewhere would be the subtly different plant life and then of course, the odd bright yellow roadsign with a menacing silhouette of a kangaroo emblazoned across it.
Thinking how weird it was that everything looked so similar to the UK, we then took a drive down a forest road into Beech Forest. Now that was like a different world. Full of giant Myrtle Beech trees, the forest covers a vast area and, as the track winds deeper into its belly, it's like entering a slightly more sanitised version of a Ray Mears documentary. Massive tree ferns border the roads and strips of bark from the Beeches festoon themselves over anything and everything. This, coupled with the limited, dappled light from way above, gives an eerie atmosphere not unlike the beginning of a Scooby Doo mystery where the gang invariably find themselves lost in a similar setting!
The next day the weather was more than a little bit unsettled and we did the more ocean focused part of our trip with a drive to the 12 Apostles. These are rocky outcrops eroded from the cliffs by the relentless battering of the sea. Apparently, it's so rough that they are eroded by about 2cm every year and in 2005 one gave up the battle and fell into the ocean. I took some good shots here, which ironically were probably helped by the slightly tempestuous back drop! (I'd still have preferred blue skies though!)
We returned to the ice palace (my nickname for Will's home) late on the Sunday. With Will back at work, I have been left to explore the city on my own this week. My thoughts of Melbourne so far... 'It's another big city'. I have already been chastised by Will for even uttering these words and another, totally different 'city', I am told, will become very apparent if I just 'look around the right corners'. Needless to say, the rain is making this a bit difficult as, quite frankly, I dont want to look around any corners at the moment. I walked into the centre yesterday, which took me an hour, and then followed the Lonely Planet's walking tour (well, my own version of it anyway - we all know what I'm like with a map!). I must have had my head thoroughly in the clouds or down in my shoes as I failed to notice any of the street art that everyone raves about! I didn't really notice much to be honest but I will head out later on, now the rain has stopped to see if I can see any of this 'alternative city'.
Here are my adventures so far in visual format:
Later on, I did see a bit more of the essence of Melbourne. I took a few snaps of the street art and was plied with free food and coffee of an arabic nature on Fed Square when I stumbled upon National Saudi day. I discovered that the laneways that everyone raves about are somewhat reminiscent of the older shopping centres in Leeds, including decorative ironwork and oversized clocks. I spent a lovely, if somewhat drunk, final evening in a roof top bar and then left for Sydney the next day full of excitement for what my next adventure would bring.
A visit to Sydney...
I arrived in Sydney after a pretty uneventful flight and found my way to Circular Quay where I met Mark (my ever so lovely friend who had offered me a bed in his swanky pad for a few nights). After a brief discussion of exactly how long it had been since we saw each other (no decision reached - at least 10 years), I dumped my belongings at his work and headed out to explore my new 'hood. Circular Quay is easily reached via a double decker commuter train that passes the airport en route to the city and is where the two iconic landmarks of Sydney reside, namely the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. When you come out of the station at Circular Quay, you can straight away see the ferry terminals and the busy bustle of the more touristy side of Sydney but it is a short walk along a restaurant clad promenade opposite 'the rocks' and Harbour Bridge before you finally turn the corner and are confronted with the Opera House in all its glory. Maybe it's because the sun was shining, maybe it's because I had just seen an old friend for the first time in years or maybe I was just simply in a good mood but, as it dawned on me where I was and exactly what I was looking at, a smile crept onto my face that I don't think left the whole time I was in Sydney!
I'll let the photos tell the story but I had a lot of fun and decided Sydney was my favourite city in Oz so far.
The link needs a password I hope and it's: amyloupass.
Mellowing at Mellaluka...
After having my fill of cities in Australia Queensland Clermont
Debbie came to pick me up from the airport in a manner
somewhat reminiscent of a ‘blue arsed fly’. She had been sent by the family to
pick up last minute resources for the family trip to ‘Twin Hills’ (what Twin
Hills was, I wasn’t quite sure but they seemed to need an awful lot of ‘stuff’
for it!). So after stepping off the plane into the furnace that is central
Queensland, my first experience was of the inside of several shops that were
all spread out in the kind of way that industrial estates are in England. We
then embarked on our long journey back after calling in at the butchers to
collect the meat that they’d left ‘in a white Esky outside the backdoor’ for us
because we were too late to pop in and collect it in person. I thought this was
great. Such a trusting neighbourhood! Time and time again I catch myself saying
‘That wouldn’t happen in England
Darkness had fallen by the time we arrived at the station
but the kids rushed out to meet us (barefoot much to their parents annoyance)
and I met the family along with Emma the Sweedish ‘station hand’ for want of a
better description. Soon we had the car unloaded and were tucking into some
roast beef and veg before having an early night in preparation for the eagerly
awaited ‘Twin Hills’.
We woke up in our quarters at around 5am and, once packed, we headed over to help the family
pack. This was a task and a half. It would seem packing for camping as done in
the outback, and definitely by the Cobbs, is more like moving house. Stuff was
being thrown into boxes left right and centre. We then had to cart all of this
stuff (including 2 fridges!!!!), and then horse equipment too, into 2 huge
horse trailers. Needless to say, we set off way later than expected.
Our trip was only slightly marred by myself and Debbie, who
were in the smaller 4 Wheel Drive open back vehicle (now they say Aussie’s call
them Yutes but I haven’t heard that word once yet), getting a flat and having
to call back Sam in the horse vehicle to help us change the tyre. Could’ve been
simple but, for reasons I won’t go into, this actually involved digging up the
road surface with a ridiculously large and heavy metal tool, some bolt cutters
and 4 people at least 1 hours worth of combined labour to achieve! I tell you
what, it really makes you appreciate how isolated your are when stuff like that
goes down! But achieve it we did and we were eventually at Twin Hills and I was
soon to have the experience of a lifetime (this is after we unloaded and then
put together a tent in blistering heat without any instructions!)
I won’t say too much about Twin Hills because the photos
below should say it all but I will say I was so glad to experience it and the
sense of community in organising such an event (in the middle of nowhere) is
immense. It was a simply awesome experience.
Here's the album:
Here's the album:
After leaving Twin Hills, I spent the rest of my time
helping out as much as I could (which, with no experience except for cooking
and cleaning, wasn’t much). I mainly did gardening (which in jeans and a long
sleeved shirt at 38 degrees C wasn’t the most fun. Luckily we had a storm one
night which then dropped the temperature to a more respectable 18 degrees C for
a couple of days!), housework (I liked the baking best - everyday, because
everyone has such an early start there’s a break called ‘smoko’ around
9-9.30am. It’s basically a tea break but it means you need a lot of cakes!), a
bit of feeding the animals (although, with my recent experience with a cow
making a mess of me, anything bigger than Pepper the Jack Russell, left me a
bit unnerved and I avoided this as best I could!) and then finally the infamous
‘barking’ (removing bark from fence posts to prevent them burning so badly in bush
fires). The last thing on this list was my least favourite task to start with
and probably my favourite by the end. We had to remove the bark from posts in
one paddock… the only thing was, if you stood in the middle of one of the edges
of the paddock, you couldn’t see either end of it. It was massive! Yes they
have bigger and this one was small in comparison but, when you’re not even half
way there and you count over 150 posts, it’s a little disheartening. The worst
thing about it was the spiders. Obviously the bark provides a nice cosy hangout
for them to have their babies. The end result is, when you pull off the bark, a
million ‘tiny’ (probably about 2/3 the size of your thumb) spiders fly out at
you from every angle and the worst is yet to come… you know the mother is there
still hiding somewhere! She’ll be about the size of your palm and can move VERY
quickly! I spent my first day doing this job from about as far away as I could
get but by the end I didn’t care anymore. It became my favourite job because at
least you could derive a sense of achievement from it and by the time we left,
Emma and I had worked our way quite far up the 3rd side. Happy days!
It was also lovely because it was so quiet out there. We had to ride out there
on the quad bike and then, when you’re there, there really is nothing else
apart from the occasional inquisitive kangaroo or, more annoyingly, the odd
wasp or fly (which seem so very loud when there is absolutely no other noise to
distract you).
With those jobs done, my favourite and probably least
favourite activity for all sorts of different reasons was probably helping
round the cattle up (or mustering on horseback). This was hard work because I’d
only been on the back of a horse a few days earlier and still hadn’t quite got the
hang of it. Then we had to trot through seemlingly miles of bush. I had to
learn to ride the bush way… keep up by doing what you can or get left behind!
Man I was sore afterwards. It was an awesome experience though. Rounding the up
was a challenge (kind of like when you meet someone in the street and you do
that little dance where neither of you can work out which way to go) and riding
through paddocks at the head of a large (well I thought so, it was quite small
by normal standards apparently) herd of cattle was amazing.
So, all in all, it was a busy time on Mellaluka. Towards the
end I helped out more in the school room. This was entirely different to UK 7am
to do their chores (feeding animals mainly) and then had sport at 7.30am . Spellings, times tables and a bit of
independent writing was the name of the game before smoko at 9am (this is different in every family though)
and then maths and english generally up until lunch time. This is when the kids
go ‘on-air’. They dial into a lesson where the teacher sits at the other end of
the phone line and operates a computer program as her blackboard. In this way,
the kids can interact with the teacher and each other. If the want to speak
they have to say their name first so Tom might say, ‘Tom with a comment. I
don’t understand question 3,’ and then the teacher would explain. It works OK
but then as a teacher it’s painfully evident how difficult it is to pick up on
those children who are off task and then get them moving again. A quiet child
is either flying through the work or just sitting on his backside staring out
of the window! This doesn’t become apparent until the end of the lesson as the
teacher is obviously busy answering children who do have questions and, when
you can’t see the children, things go unnoticed. That said, I still think they
could do more and my overall impression of ‘on-air’ teachers isn’t a good one
shall we say. The kids then have an hour for lunch and come back in the
afternoon to do their other subjects such as science, history, art etc. These,
along with the English and maths, are all taught on a worksheet basis and the
lesson is scripted for the home-school teacher, the kids just have to then fill
in the blanks. It’s pretty soul destroying. Especially when you don’t
understand why it’s been done the way it has or worse still, you don’t
understand parts of the lesson at all! I had a lovely art session at my end of
the time on the station though where I got the chance to ad-lib! Fabulous!
Here's the link for the album. If it needs a password, it's: amyloupass
Here's the link for the album. If it needs a password, it's: amyloupass
After my time at Mellaluka, I went to Balcomba, another
cattle station, for just under 2 weeks where I had the chance to work with
another family in their school room. They had a totally different set up so it was interesting to see. Balcomba is closer to Rockhampton which is on the coast and therefore much
less remote. It was very beautiful (I was surprised how happy I was to see
hills again - Mellaluka was very flat) and I was lucky to stay there with the
kangaroos at the bottom of the garden and the rainbow lorikeets in the tree
outside the school room. I also got the chance to spend the weekend in Rocky
and hit the shopping centre. A very surreal experience after weeks of
isolation! At the end of my time on the stations I found myself very sad to
leave the bush. It would be tough to top it, the sense of vast open space, the
sheer volume of wildlife in that space and just the silence (except for the
wildlife of course) is something I will never forget. I got up at 5am on my last day. The land was completely
enveloped in mist, the birds soared above, spider webs twinkled in the new
light as the sun rose and, as the misty haze began to burn away, I thought
myself very lucky indeed to have been there. But I was now on to new
adventures… in FIJI
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