Omblebumphf = viel Spass Comprendé? D’accord

I’m still in Perth baby, and can I let you in on a tiny weeny widdly little secret? It’s actually getting a little bit chilly around the edges here (chilly is of course being applied relatively), I had to sleep with the sheets all the way up for the first time in AGES the other night. Things aren’t helped by the fact that I am sitting under what appears to be a direct wind tunnel from the Antarctic (super powered air-con), I’m expecting Pingu to come flying through any moment now. Yes, I’m still working, though not at the ALS, that was so last week daaarling, I’ve crossed over to the dark side (i.e. something of a profit making organisation – how can I tell this? By the extremely well stocked stationery/ary cupboard, I’ve died and gone to sticky label/biro heaven) and am at Western Power this week doing stuff that I have absolutely no idea how to do nor does anyone else to show me, so as you can imagine my days are a little short of being unproductive. Am still living at la casa Guv’s as am yet to grasp the concept that the perfect house is not going to show up on my doorstep, but that I have to show up on it’s doorstep. Outrageous. This week’s activities have included cinema (Last King of Schötland: awesome, but hook hanging is invading my happy thoughts), swimming in the biggest pool in the world, not sleeping enough, eating more than enough, Frisbee (as if I wouldn’t), wine, mozzie related scratching, kickboxing (sooooo much fun), crazy dancing and Google translating everything so international relations/insults may flourish and continue (enschüldigüng weil ich so spät bin aber mein Hamster ist gestorben). And it’s still not even time for my lunchbreak. Madness. Boring pictures later. Just had lunch which was lovely until I got invaded by about 4000 tramps and when I tried to seek refuge in the office canteen it turned out not to exist. Das stenke.

Livin’ it Westside style

(Go West) where the skies are blue
(Go West this is what we’re gonna do Go Weeeessst)
(Together) we will love the beach (Forever)

Who’da thought that the Pet Shop Boys would have hit the nail right on the head with those immortal words of genius! And thanks to them I now don’t have to write much on this blog posting because that pretty much covers what’s been going on for me for the past few weeks. What? You want more details? Oh ok then, I’ll indulge you, but just this once. Fact fans, Perth is the most isolated city in the whole entire wide world, being as it is closer to Singapore than to Sydney and once out of the suburbs surrounded by, yes you guessed it, a great deal of nothingness. On arrival in Perth I decided to play musical beds in search of a hostel that was able to maintain an acceptable ratio between number of guests and number of pans in the kitchen (my lowest common denominator = food of course) and am now getting far too settled at the Guv’s place with our chess club (geek is thy name) and some very international drinking rules – apparently Finish for ‘cheers’ is ‘gepissed’. Santé indeed. Have spent a few days on the beaches, which are lovely white sand sparkling Indian Ocean type thingy’s and are perfect for body surfing, volleyball and yes oh yes oh yes oh yes, FRISBEE spielen!

Alas all is not well in paradise for it comes at a price and I’m sure you will all be delighted to know that I have got myself a job. Sounds very posh, this week I am PA to the CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service. Of course this means that I do absolutely nothing other than take phone messages; yesterday that happened 4 times and I’m sure someone has invented a machine to perform this task, but I’ve never been one to turn down easy (if boring) money. Although I did get trapped in reception when I tried to leave last night, all the doors security locked around me and I had to bang and knock manically on the window for a few minutes until someone came and directed me towards the ‘press to open door’ button which in my defence was cleverly disguised by the label with those same words on. Oh deary dear, not even my Frisbee can save me now… Pictures are 1) just chilling at Scarborough Beach, 2) sculptures on Cottesloe beach and 3) enjoying the 'Sunday Session' l-r Allan, Fredd, Jen, Jan & Sarah - why oh why does it have to be on a Sunday??? - more photo's are available should you follow the link cleverly titled 'more Oz photo's' on your right. Peruse at your leisure.

A whole lot of nothing

你好 ( Ni hao - I have it on 'good' authority that this means hello in Chinese). Acha tikka. Mes amis I have a wonderful show for you all today. Just you wait and see. Well first up is the beautiful scenescape of Adelaide. Adelaide is apparently a city. Though on reflection after walking about for a few minutes it's very small and offers no place to hide! So it was with happy inevitability that European touring group be re-formed for eine speile mit dem karten (arschloch und ring of fire - that incidently was NOT fixed by a Mr Daniel Reading, makes a big difference) order zwei. (sorry, once I've started in this pseudo german/french/english/hindi/chinese it's really hard to stop). We went round the Art Gallery for an educational tour and accidently mistook some art for a cleaning woman to much amusement - breaking the cardinal 'no happiness joy or laughter in an art gallery' rule, watched someone eat a plastic bag and paper themself to the wall. It's art daaaarling. Of course. Now this display of bonbon ---> surely that's art.

Once fully cultured up it's time to do something else. Like dance like there's no tomorrow. Alas with the recent invention of time, tomorrow arrived. Why why why why why? (sure all the rum was gone, but that was more to do with gravity than anything else, blame Isaac Newton not my slippery hands...). This was however remedied by the geographical invention of the beach and it's excellence as a frisbee pitch. And a sunburn haven. Youch. Spent the next few days living cheaply around the city, having appointments in the botanic gardens with teachers (no rendezvous to be heard of, what are we? french savages, tch), coveting all 26kgs of the second largest nugget of gold in the world (see left), squidging Bernie's belly in the evening (now that is a reference only a few will get, if you are not one of them then put the thought out of your mind forever, in fact do that even if you do know what I mean, permanent emotional scarring a risk). Sadly one can't eat cheap curry forever - had a great time in the market searching each stall for the cheapest carrots, then the cheapest potatoes, etc, not wanting to have to hand over more than 20 cents a piece. Thought we were going to be bamboozled by the ubiquitous 1.99 per kg onions, but at last le francais pulled through and spotted 1.49! Oh what joy. (oh and link to more photo's of G.O.R. is added to post below)

Then it was time to leave the land of the East behind on the Indian-Pacific railway. So to the train station I went. Obviously it was the wrong station. An hours walk later and the train was waiting (almost literally) just for me. Whoops. One of the greatest train journeys ever (apparently) across the Nullarbor Plain along the longest stretch of straight railway in the world (some 5million kms of it I think). These photos are a rough representation of what I saw over the past 38 hours - yes that long, I've come to the opinion that such train journeys are great only for certain people, and is it just a coincidence that all these people travel 'gold class'? I don't think so. Or actually for a true representation of my time read sporadically about Britney's current trauma (I. couldn't. Care. Less) and what the stars might wear to the Oscars (it was an old magazine) and maybe close your eyes for about 10 hours a piece to pass the time (viva le france for that 'help') whilst viewing what although isn't a lot is actually quite interesting for it's nothingness. And it really is red in the middle. And hot. And not a lot else...



This is the straight bit of railway.


Very straight.






I got a ruler out to confirm this situation (learning not to trust Australian superlatives) and can thus declare that 30cms of it is in fact as straight as indeed a ruler.






This is the view a little bit further on, around the 1,374km marker.




Still going...




A town in the middle of nowhere. Population 7. I kid you not. Ramsbury c'tait un metropole.




A little bit further on. Are we there yet?




The train resting in Kalgourlie-Boulder. Only another 498km's to go!





And a little more of my favourite scenery. Nothing.




It's all about the journey not the destination. Ah-hem, my arse (begs to differ).





But I have A.R.R.I.V.E.D. in Perth at last. Later than deutsche vier who was still in Adelaide when I left but I had what we call it in India, 'an experience'. Long live straight railways.

Cosmopolitan Ocean Greatness Generally

So where was I? To find the answer to that riddle you must first consider this: what city in Australia begins with the letter M, ends in an E and has the letters 'elbourn' located in any order in between. And there you have it. Here's a picture of it in all it's cosmopolitan glory. Now at this point I really have to apologise for not having much to say about it because it was a nice place and I had lots of fun and did many sightseeing things (all free, yay! and deeply educational, including a visit to the land of neighbours "everybody needs good neighbours" - and sorry Em but I didn't get the slip Boyd your phone number!). Chilled out in the best botanical garden in the whole entire world (another australian superlative that could well be overridden in minutes), forgot to go to the beach (how?), ate lovely food from the market, and came up with an additional lyric for Alanis "isn't it ironic" (won a free Great Ocean Road trip in pub quiz about 5 minutes after having booked and paid for said great ocean road trip, grrrr). I can sufficiently say now tht Melbourne is nice (and not very helpful at getting over an addiction to coffee).

Have now just arrived in Adelaide after spending 3 days touring the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians. I'd love to regale you as to what it was like but my glasses are broken so it was all a bit blurry (this is what I looked like. Loving the hair)... Nah it was really good, unfortunately in about 400 million days of sunshine we managed to get the one day of cloud and drizzle (hello England) so viewing was slightly restricted for the first day, but even so I now have about a million 'arty cloudy' photos. If you want more and better pics then follow the route en francais here (I am not responsible for the content of this website, blame it on the choclatiens!) We saw lots of rocks and stuff, plus the lighthouse from classic TV round the twist programme ("have you ever, ever felt like this, strange things happen, are you going round the twist?" - repeat 500 times and you have an idea how annoying my head is right now, and I'm hoping that those in the know will also get this stuck in their heads as some kind of payback). By the way 'we' is the international european touring squad that I joined and as a result have developed a brilliant trans-europe language, unfortunately now it means that no-one can understand me...

Running out of time so quick quicketty quick. Mountains were good - if not in fact mountains, saw first koalas which was awesome - they are very cute if not a little on the dozy side, celebrated by eating a caramelo koala (little chocolates, not an actual koala coated in caramel, the fur would probably get stuck in the teeth). Was nice. Now slowly heading off to the beach for another session with the frisbee (this time not in a gravel coated car-park, whoops), and if we're really lucky, and teacher lets us (we have done all our lines), a tennis ball too. For now though let me just say auf revoir et bis spater por favor fukel schnell!

We're going back to Brunie?! Please no!!! Ahhh, Burny not Brunie, well where's that then???

Ok, there's definitely a price to pay for cheap internet. I've written this already 3 times and it keeps on disappearing, so apologies if this is not as good as it should be but I'm losing my patience (and my iPod is in for repairs so not even Take That can save me now).

Anyways, spent the past week on Bruny Island (not Burnie, a very uninspiring industrial port on the north coast of Tas), which lets be honest doesn't feature heavily on many people's itinerary for worldwide travel being as it is just a little island more remote and with a more isolated community than that of 'mainland' Tassie (allow me to provide some perspective, the farm-boy hick that I had a brief conversation with when in the snowies - who also expressed a liking and enjoyment for rodeos - told me that it was a lovely place but the 'people are pretty interesting', all relative I guess). But I had a great time. In lieu of the promised heatwave we picked blackberries by the beach until red in the face (literally) and enjoyed much picnic type fun. As dark fell we went to the rookery to watch the nightly throng of fairy penguins who ritually stagger up the beach from the depths to moult, mate and sleep (ah the joys of the simple life). Sooooooo cute. Though not easy to photograph - I took reassurance when the ranger told me that the only people he ever saw get good shots turned out to be a film crew who also shot sections of the Planet Earth episode in the Antarctic!

The next day it was my turn to be waddling along away from the beach as it was time to take in a bushwalk, or five. I think the views were pretty nice, but i was busy concentrating on the groundin front of me as apparently tiger/brownsnakes are not that amenable to being trodden on. I was skipping as I came back to the beach and ran in the sea to cool off, and boy was it cool. Some might say icy, but I'm not one to judge. Got to do something I really wanted to by driving the km's along the empty beach at Cloudy Bay to our million dollar campsite (free) with awesome views. Although the worrying smoke that had filled the air all day suddenly burst into billowing clouds and flames leapt out from the forest - BUSHFIRE!!!! To add to the 'excitement' several thunderstorms raged overhead as the sun was setting, very very dramatic (needless to say my camera was out of batteries after the penguin blitz). Sadly the price to pay for remoteness is a sacrifice to access and firecrews were unable to contain the blaze which some think will last for months until they burn themselves out.

With that in mind it was essential to make the most of the rainforest there was, and surprise surprise, take a 'nature' walk through one. It seemed that the large majority of 'nature' present at that particular time consisted of hungry leeches eagerly wriggling about my ankles thirsty for my blood. Yum. Then went to Cape Bruny to survey the lighthouse and more splendid views. I didn't see them because a haze of smoke reduced visability to nothing more than a cloud, shame. Though you can see them here. After another walk it was definitely time to stay in a real campsite and indulge in the luxuries of shower, kitchen and oh oooh ooh a laundry!

That pretty much brings me up to present, I'm now in what might actually be considered a cosmopolitan city (I think I told an amusing anecdote about that in one of the posts that got deleted and I can't be bothered to re-write it, but with a little application of imagination I'm sure you can embellish an equally if not more amusing cosmopolitan city related anecdote - do share it with the world if you do) and am deciding between fuelling my addiction to iced coffees or going cold turkey, is proving troublesome.

Tasmaniac

In 'the land under down under', as confirmed by location on the map. Hello. Feels like have been here for a year (insert less than nice words about credit card people here). First stop Hobart. Pictured here from halfway up Mt Wellington, and before you chastise me for only going halfway up allow me to make my defence on this matter. I. Just. Couldn't. Be. Bothered. And Converse don't make good walking shoes (yes mama, I know I have a perfectly good pair of shoes at home, but that's a long way away and I now momentarily admit I was wrong). Hung around here for a while (Hobart, not the mountain) trying to go cold turkey off ice coffees (not easy or at all successful, addicted I am). Got a campervan with Pierre and Anja to form 'Team Europe' travel around this magical and it has to be said slightly bizarrely populated island. Perhaps should have thought things through as Pierre turned out to have, erm, how to put it nicely, slightly missed a few stages in the evolution game (needless to say he doesn't have this site address, libel at will). Though did get to use my french (consisting of the phrases 'chocolat, frambroise, vanille', 'gwep' or however wasp is spelt in european, 'ou et la toilette' and 'du soleil'). Much better on the German front (just don't mention the war), I can now swear auf deutsche with perfect pronounciation! Years of language tuition at school put to good use I say.

Anyways, what did Team Europe do I hear you cry... Well we went to prison for crimes we didn't commit/a tour around the leftovers of Port Arthur which is where the really bad people got sent to do slave labour (Oz stereotype #56). Each visitor got matched up with a prisoner's story to follow round, my dude stole a lamb and got deported for life, though good on him tried to escape (note use of word 'tried' to denote failure). Watched the cricket that night - ENGLAND WON!!!! Ha! Stick that Australia! Next stop was Freycinet NP, which has apparently the 3rd best beach in the world (see above), but this is contestable. Have noticed that everywhere is Australia is the best this or highest that or oldest whatever (age being pretty limited to around 200 years or so), can't blame them for trying I suppose. Camped out in a car park near some fisherdudes who caught this cute little fellow! Bit more driving and sleeping by beaches and stuff (distressing life this) also went to Cradle Mountain - did have a picture but have inadvertantly deleted it and can't be arsed to reupload it - which we inadvertantly ended up climbing (probably should have paid the $2 for a map instead of just taking a picture of it) but was pretty damn awesome I think. Did lots and lots of other stuff but can't for the life of me remember what. Ah well. Oh and happy days, here's some evidence that not all Australian wildlife is of the genus 'splattus roadkillus'! Have also seen a teeny tiny snake, possibly a worm, and a possum and a moving rock (wombat - so cute, but deathly stupid).


Am heading off to a small island a little bit south of Tas tomorrow (with Team Europe slimmed down to just Team World War - ach I've gone and mentioned it now), so does that make it the land down under down under under down under? It's a puzzler... And in continuance of my Australian education, here's the national anthem to learn. By heart preferable. Though prob not really necessary given that England just won another cricket match (actually I won't say that because that match was ages away and have probably played again and lost by now so just sillyness, ah well too late now). If anyone was wondering, the reason why there's usually a bit of waffly rubbish at the bottom of all my posts, it's because I'm filling in time while the pictures upload, if this waffle isn't for you just stop reading about halfway through, actually if waffle isn't for you, this isn't the site for you. Ah well. YAY, is done. Have also put pictures on blog below for your viewing pleasure. I'll hop along now.

STREWTH!!! (Oz stereotype #3, thus far unfounded - it's not in predictive text!)

G'day how you going? (application of local lingo #1 = successful thus far). Sorry but no pictures of me at the moment because the cable thingy has somehow moved from being in my bag to not being in my bag and thus out of reach (not any more - UPDATED!). Many apologies photo fans. Though on that topic if it's photo's you're after allow me to refer you to my slightly geeky family photo competition site at www.snappercomp.blogspot.com - and this is where I ask my fanbase, that's you, to work for me by posting many a positive comment about MY piccies, I'm not condoning making disparaging remarks about works by other competitors, but should you make any then I'm not one stop the right to freedom of expression and suchlike.

Should you be a bizarre creature who has other things to do than indulge my lifestyle, then I'll just give a brief update as to my most recent of goings on. Left the 'cloudy mountains' behind and shuttled off down to the capital heartland of Cranberry, which really is in the middle of NOWHERE, but a lovely city it was. Even though my tour guide had absconded to the beach (grrrr) and the only other offer was of a slightly intimidating drunk (shocker) irish fellow who's advances and offers of a 'chaperone' I hastily turned down. Crowning glory moment would be taking a tour of the government building and chatting to the friendly security guards therein. Marvellous, learnt more in 45mins than ever did during public law semester at uni (though that could say more about my ability to handle the morning after a 'few' drinks than anything else...). 26th January saw the celebration of my (well European in general I think but that's not nearly self-serving enough for me) arrival in Australia with some big fireworks display over the lake which was pretty good (minus the crowd rousing clip of commentary from the Ashes, grrrr - though I can report that England beat Oz in the beach cricket match televised last night, and you're only as good as your last game so that speaks for itself).

Headed up to the (not very snowy) Snowy Mountains for a few days camping in los great outdoors. Tent still slightly suffering at the hands of it's better poled compadre's but rallied through the winds admirably (only jumped in the air a few times, aargh). I climbed to the top of Australia (the lumpy hill like thing in the middle of picture) and ate an apple. Which was nice. Then I took a day horse riding but was not allowed to wear cool akubra hat (Oz stereotype #27 - alive and well) for health and safety reasons, but a delicious lunch avec wine made up for that - luckily wasn't caught by police for riding a horse whilst under the influence (was only one glass, but hey, this is me), but then again this was a place where they have drive-thru liquor shops, read into that what you will... Bid farewell to the land of local radio which unashamedly played redneck country and western music ('the fellow wore a nice hat' my particular favourite lyric). Went to beach which was awesome in the white sand blue sea kind of way. In general lots of pretty scenery. Back to Squidney to fly to Tassie which is where I am currently stationed waiting for the bank to pull through for me, should they ever do so. Disparaging comments about Mastercard wholesomely welcomed.

Geography fans will be pleased to note that I have updated my map - (Baghdad where are you). Trivia fans: a koala bears fingerprints are virtually indistinguishable from a humans. The bank robbery? It was that fellow in the corner, yep the one munching on eucalyptus between naps. I'm going up a mountain now (wish they were flatter but what can you do)...