Fraser Island

Fraser Island is a fantastic place. Pie and I spent two full days there. The island is 123km long, and is just one huge sandbank. Over the years, plants have grown there and the area is one of the most interesting environments you can go to. From west to east across the island, there are mangrove swamps, normal swamps, normal forest areas, tropical rainforests, crystal clear lakes, then white sandy beaches. Alongside the beach there are huge peaks of varying colours made out of hard dried sand. Then on the beach there are big black rocks, made out of sand.

The best thing about the island though is that you can hire 4 wheel drive vehicles and drive over the island. The inner tracks vary from hard sand roads which are very bumpy, to tracks made out of soft dry sand which it is very easy to get stuck in. And accordingly, about three seconds after I first tried driving on the island, I got stuck in some soft dry sand. Fortunately, there were some vehicles coming the other way containing large numbers of backpackers, mainly the scantily clad female variety, who were able to push the vehicle out of the hole, so it wasn't all bad. To give myself some credit for once, the area I got stuck in was one of the most difficult areas on the island, and I only got stuck because I saw the vehicles coming the other way and tried to pull in to a passing place.

Even better fun than the internal tracks though is driving along the eastern beach. It is called 75 mile beach, which should give you a clue that it's fairly long. You can pelt along the beach at 80kmph watching out for 'washouts', which is where the streams on the island empty into the sea, vehicles coming the other way, and the occasional plane landing on the beach.

We did of course check out the crystal clear lakes, and they were lovely and warm to swim in. The two negatives of the island were that it was extremely humid and the number of sandflies. Apparently sandflies don't bite, they just urinate on you, which causes a reaction.

More Small Towns and Big Things

On leaving Brisbane, we stopped in the Glass Mountains. We climbed Mount Beerbirrum, which is close to the small town of Beerbirrum. This is just east of the small town of Glass Mountains. The mountain range is quite pretty. There are nine mountains in the range, of which three or four look very difficult to climb. They appear to go to a point at the top, so they are for experienced mountaineers only. Beerbirrum was one of the easier ones, just a short walk up a very steep track.

Noosa was a pleasant town, or rather collection of towns. This is the upmarket beach area, where the rich people go, a complete contrast to the Gold Coast. Pie and I saw a lot of the area, as we got lost on a walk around the town and it took us three hours to get back to our riverside suite.

Following our trip to Fraser Island, we stopped off at Bundaberg, which is the home of rum in Australia. Sadly we saw no sign of that, despite being there on Australia Day. The streets were almost deserted. So we headed to Rockhampton ('Rocky'), the home of beef in Australia, and saw no cows. Nor did we have a steak. Next stop was Mackay. The Thai meal we had was great, but again there was not much happening on a Saturday night. We were the last people to leave the restaurant. At 9pm.

Our big things count is now seven. We looked at the map of Big Things around Australia which was displayed at the Big Banana, to get some ideas of where to go. This map also displayed the rules for your sizeable object qualifying as a Big Thing - it needs to be bigger than the real thing, and it needs to be artificial. This would appear to allow many more things to qualify than were displayed on the map, but we thought we’d stick with the official ones. Following the Big Banana and the Big Prawn from last week, we have now added the Big Hard Rock Guitar from Surfers Paradise, here pictured deliberately with a tree directly in front, to give an idea of scale.

Then there was the Big Pineapple. It was so important that we saw this, that we drove around the area three times to make sure we didn’t miss out. And it was worth it - the biggest and most ridiculous big thing so far, and what’s more - you can climb to the top! And learn about pineapples at the same time!

At the same site was the relatively disappointing Big Macadamia Nut.

Just outside Noosa there is the Big Shell.

And number seven was the impressively big Big Ned Kelly. If you could have climbed up to the top of Ned Kelly, learnt some things about Ned Kelly, or had a delicious glass of Ned Kelly juice, he might have surpassed the Big Pineapple, or even the Big Banana. But no, so the fibreglass Big Pineapple takes the plaudits.

Gold Coast

As we had rushed our journey to Brisbane to get to the cricket in time, we decided to make a day trip to the Gold Coast to see what we had missed on our way up.

The Gold Coast is the height of tackiness. For mile after mile, there are only cheap highrise holiday apartments, nightclubs, bars and casinos. The area is famous for having four theme parks. I’m not really a theme park person, but it didn’t take much persuading for me to agree to come to Sea World. You see, it’s not only a theme park, they also have some sea animals there. There would be shows involving intelligent tricks by dolphins and seals.

We started off by watching ‘The Quest for the Golden Seal’, an epic of a show of almost Shakespearean dialogue. The plot revolved around the main stars of the show trying to find a golden seal. The major star of the show was a sealion called Claude. He did a number of intelligent things, and never missed his cue.

Then we went on the rides. We opted first for the pirate ship. It simply went back and forth, like a big swing, and only went as far as 72 degrees from the vertical. From the bottom, it looked like a pretty tame ride. While I was on it, I remembered why I’m not a big theme park fan. When the ride had finished and I had managed to prise my hands from the safety rail, as well as returned my stomach to where it belonged, we went on the rollercoaster. No problems there.

Later, we did some more rides, saw some dolphins leaping out of the water, saw some sharks, some penguins and some polar bears, and had fully exhausted the park. Fortunately this happened five minutes before closing time.

We drove through Surfers Paradise to see if we were missing out on anything, and concluded that we weren’t so we headed back to Brisbane.

Brisbane

When we had been planning our trip originally, Brisbane did not get a lot of coverage. We had to go to Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, as that was where the test matches were while we were in the country. Then we had to go to Adelaide, as I had some good friends there. But Brisbane seemed not to have anything going for it - it was merely going to be a stop off point between Sydney and Cairns.

But then we realised that there would be a one-day international at the Gabba which could be fitted into our schedule. A quick phone call to Ticketmaster to check that there were tickets available and we were going to be staying in Brisbane for four nights.

I’m glad we made that decision. I really liked Brisbane - it had more going on than Perth and Adelaide, and the South Bank is a fantastic area. Imagine London’s South Bank, with pedestrian areas, theatres and cinemas, and funny-shaped bridges. Then add an artificial beach, with sand, a lagoon-shaped swimming pool with palm trees growing at its edge, and BBQs all around (by which I mean gas powered outdoor hotplates), and you will get some idea of what Brisbane’s South Bank is like. Pie and I wandered along the bank of the river on a balmy evening, then crossed over the Goodwill Bridge, from where there were views of the city. As with the other four major Australian cities, the skyline is made up of tall office blocks, but still very pleasant in the darkness. The square in the centre of the city contains metal structures which look like large footballs, which appealed to us too.

It is strange to say, as I am a person who doesn’t like being pestered or approached in the street, but Brisbane felt like a proper city because of the existence of Big Issue sellers, charity collectors, beggars etc. We had not seen that elsewhere in Australia, although I’m sure we must have just missed them.

The cricket obviously went as badly as the other five days of England-watching we have seen live on this holiday (although I suppose Perth was good at the time), so we decided on the following night to cheer ourselves up by watching Aussies trying to play football (they call it soccer over here). It was a big match too. It was the final match of the regular season, and Queensland Roar FC needed to win to get into the play-offs. A draw or a defeat and their opponents that evening, Sydney FC, would get through in their stead.

The big crowd of just over 30,000 were in the main disappointed after 25 minutes as Sydney got a deserved goal. The goal was caused by Pie, who decided to go to the bar to get the beers in. Yes, in Australia you can watch the football and have a beer at the same time. Admittedly, only mid-strength Aussie beer, but beer nonetheless. So Sydney took advantage of Pie not watching the game to score their goal. The Roar equalised just before half-time, but Sydney were in control after the break and Queensland could not score the goal they needed, despite the ref letting them have an extra man for the last ten minutes, when he sent off a Sydney player for not fouling the Queensland player at all in any way. Then he opted to show a Queensland player only a yellow card minutes afterwards, when he scythed down the goalkeeper in the box approximately 2 minutes after the keeper had caught the ball.

It was interesting to see a football match in a different country, and the Aussies are definitely getting into their soccer now. The league has been going in its present format for only eight years, and while the players are quite skilful, there is not the tactical nous or competitiveness among the players which you will see in England, even at Conference level.

On our final night in Brisbane, we were in a Chinese restaurant. There was only one other couple in there, so the woman started up a conversation with us. It quickly emerged that she’d had rather too many that evening, as she kept repeating how much she loved Cambridge, and how weird it was to meet somebody who had studied there (Pie) in Brisbane of all places. Good fun though, and that is what makes Brisbane a more real city than Perth or Adelaide.

The Last of the Big Five…

Our trip to the Gabba to see the one-day international between England and Australia at the best-named cricket ground in the world, now means that we have seen a match in all five main cricket grounds in Australia - the WACA in Perth, the 'G' in Melbourne, the SCG in Sydney, the Adelaide Oval and now the Gabba.

The Gabba was like a mini version of the MCG, which meant that again it didn’t feel like a cricket ground. There is no pavilion at the Gabba. The crowd spent most of the match throwing beach balls around and starting Mexican Waves, despite the fact that the match was finely poised for most of the time.

Obviously England lost again.

I think my favourite ground was the Adelaide Oval. The WACA had some charm too. Both the MCG and the Gabba are big, but fairly soulless, places.

Big Things

Australia is aware of the fact that driving huge distances can get a bit boring, so they decided to make journeys more interesting by making ‘big things’ out of concrete and putting them in particularly uninteresting places beside the road, to give motorists something to do.

The first ‘big thing’ we saw was the Big Banana just outside Coffs Harbour. This was the first ‘big thing’ in Australia, and is still the best. It advertised itself as the most photographed object in Australia, which is a bold claim in a country which has Uluru in it. Still, both Pie and I added our names to the people who have photographed it. The Big Banana has an advantage over some of the ‘big things’, in that you are able to walk through it, as well as ogle it from afar. The banana advertises an actual banana plantation, and the owners did not miss a trick as a whole banana-themed theme park has grown up around the plantation. Pie and I stopped for banana smoothies, but did not go for the chocolate covered bananas on sticks. We had a look in the banana gift shop, but did not buy anything. However, the banana guards for protecting bananas from getting squashed in your bag sounded like a very good idea to me.

After the excitement of the Big Banana, the Big Prawn was a relative disappointment. You can’t walk through it, and it is only there advertising a seafood restaurant. Obviously, we still stopped for a photograph…

Road Trip!

Pie and I have commenced our road from Sydney to Cairns. This has been good fun so far, with some fantastic views of coasts, seas, lakes and forests. We are now in Brisbane, where we are basing ourselves for a few days. Driving through the less well-inhabited areas of New South Wales and Queensland has meant we have seen even more one-horse towns than we saw in Western Australia.

Our stops so far have been:

Monday - lunch in Glenbrook; afternoon and evening in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. We took some good walks around the cliffs at Katoomba, with some fantastic views over the mountains, particularly of the Three Sisters rocks.

Tuesday - lunch in Windsor; evening in Forster. We stopped off at the Wyndham Estate winery on our way through the Hunter Valley to do some more wine tasting. Forster itself didn’t have a lot to do, but we met another English guy there and did our good deed by giving him a lift to Port Macqaurie.

Wednesday - lunch in Port Macquarie; night in Coffs Harbour. Port Macquarie was a pleasant town, with far more to do than Forster. Coffs was a fairly large town with a few things to do. Including the Big Banana!

Thursday - breakfast in Grafton; lunch in Byron Bay; evening in Brisbane. We have rushed the first part of our journey to get to Brisbane in time for the one-day international cricket at the Gabba. We will be visiting the Gold Coast on Sunday.

Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you…

We had heard rumours that Australia and New Zealand had their summer when the UK had its winter. We were expecting then that both countries would be hot and dry during this trip. As we arrived, Australia had a number of drought warnings, and there was a large bush fire raging in Victoria, around Melbourne.

We therefore deserve some kind of knighthood for helping out the Australian climate by bringing our UK rain with us. I can report that as soon as we arrived in Melbourne, the bush fire was put out by nearly a week of heavy rain. There are rumours that Christmas Day in Liverpool in the UK was warmer than Melbourne and that it didn’t rain there, which means we chose the wrong year to be away for Christmas. It rained in Western Australia when we were there. It rained in Sydney. There was a large thunderstorm when we were in Uluru. This is partly understandable, as that is a desert area and does experience occasional heavy showers. What was less understandable though was the English-style light drizzle which fell when we were walking around the base of the rock.

Even Adelaide suffered a few minutes of drizzle as we were being driven to the airport. And Auckland had the most English-style weather yet, during the wedding weekend.

Our luck must change soon…!

David and Kathryn's wedding

Despite the intermittent rain in Auckland, David and Kathryn’s wedding went without a hitch. The couple looked very happy during the whole day (as you’d hope they would!). The preparations had been extensively made, so much so that there was a list of the order that the group photographs would be made in. Thus the group from the UK knew that we were the last photograph…

There were eight of us who knew David and Kathryn from Holy Trinity Brompton church - me and Paul, Byron, Sean, Nathan, Kyra, Alison, and the special surprise guest, Leo. This did mean that we ended up with a cross-section broadly similar to that of HTB as a whole - two Englishmen, two Kiwis and four South Africans, to attend a wedding of two more Kiwis.

The food was fantastic - we all piled our plates up high with meat, seafood and some salad, and some of us went up for seconds. I’ll let David and Kathryn work out who that might have been (for once it wasn’t me…)!

The reception was in a great venue in One Tree Hill. We wandered outside during the drinks and canapés part of the evening to hear the melodious waft of bagpipes coming from the hills. On closer inspection, we saw a man playing his bagpipes to a large herd of cattle. Presumably his neighbours had complained about him practising at home, and he’d been forced to go out into the hills whenever he wanted to play.

The speeches were great, with Kathryn’s father in particular being good value. He undertook a merciless teasing campaign against David, but all seemed to be friends in the end…!

All in all, it was a great day. It was good to see a group of friends again after a couple of months, although it was slightly bizarre to have a whole group of us together in a completely different country.

Auckland

Paul and I took a weekend trip over to New Zealand - for our friends David and Kathryn’s wedding. This provoked a few confused reactions at the immigration desks in both Australia and New Zealand. “So, you’re going to Auckland for two days…?”

Auckland showed us the best example of UK-style weather we have seen yet on this trip - the skies were grey and there was intermittent rain for the whole of the time we were there. Just before we arrived at the airport, the skies cleared and gave us just a glimpse of what to expect from New Zealand when we return in February. Auckland appeared to be in a lovely location, with bays, seas and islands all around.

Unfortunately, as we were on such a short trip, we did not get a chance to look around these nice areas, and only had time to visit the city centre. This was a bit disappointing - many areas of the city were run down and in need of regeneration. The shopping streets though were bustling and did give an impression of a lively city. We stayed in one of the suburbs just south of the city, and this was a pleasant area. Much like Perth and Adelaide, the majority of the population live in the suburbs and these had their own shops and personalities. Unlike Perth though, the public transport system was not that extensive, and it felt like you could not live in Auckland without a car. I’ll be able to add more analysis on Auckland later, as we will be there a further two times.

There are some lovely areas in Auckland - one of these was the venue for the wedding reception, One Tree Hill.

Twenty20 cricket

As we had been unable to catch the Ashes test at the Adelaide Oval, we thought it would be nice to catch some kind of match whilst we were in Adelaide, and this turned out to be an inter-state Twenty20 match between the (South Australian) West End Redbacks and the Queensland (no sponsorship) Bulls.

One element the Australians have brought into the Twenty20 game this season is the use of nicknames on the backs of the players’ shirts instead of their actual names, presumably to make the whole experience a bit more trendy.

The Redbacks had tried very hard on their nicknames and had come up with some classics - Boof (Darren Lehman), Truck (Fred Kelly), Rhino (Ryan Harris) and Muss (Daniel Harris) to name a few, along with the more obvious Taity (Shaun Tait), Smithy (Mr Smith) and Cos (Mark Cosgrove). However, the Queenslanders had mainly gone for the more obvious choices with Rimmo and Simmo (Rimmington and Simpson) in their team. The notable exceptions were James ‘Catfish’ Hopes and Hannibal, whose actual name now escapes me.

The Redbacks’ victory in the nickname stakes was matched by their performance in the game, as they bowled out the Bulls to gain a fine victory.

Adelaide

We went to Adelaide for a few days to spend time with my friends Nathan and Julie. They live in a nice suburb in the hills around the city.

Adelaide city itself is very small - only about a mile square. The shopping centre and the museums, libraries and galleries are contained in this square mile, surrounded by parkland on every side. This makes Adelaide an attractive city. Very few people live in the city part; most people live in the suburbs, in a similar style to Perth. Our first stop when we arrived was the lookout point from where a statue of Colonel Light who designed the city points down towards his creation. His finger appears to be pointing directly towards the Adelaide Oval, the cricket ground, obviously as that is the spiritual centre of the city.

Adelaide appears to be a lovely city to live in, but not the liveliest of cities. As most of the people live outside the city, each suburb has its own centre and so there is not much reason for the locals to come into the middle. There are a lot of good cheap restaurants in the city centre, but also in the suburbs. We went to eat in Glenelg, the main beach area of the city. There is one tram service in Adelaide, which runs from the city centre to Glenelg, as that is the happening place to be.

Near to Nathan and Julie’s house is the Belair National Park, which we took the opportunity to visit. We were glad we did, as we could tick off another few Australian animals - we saw our first koala, some emus, and a galah bird. We were trying to work out who is famous for saying , “You great galah!”, but couldn’t, so answers on a postcard please.

Nathan and Julie also took us to see another native bird of Adelaide, the penguin, which inhabits an island just off Victor Harbour in the south. It was a scorchingly hot day when we were there and sadly all the penguins were hiding. Or it was an elaborate hoax.

We also managed to find time in our busy schedules to do some more wine tasting in the Maclaren Vale region. Apparently, the verdelho was very good, but I was sticking to the reds.

Kata Tjuta

Uluru is not the only large rock in the Northern Territories. A mere 50km away, there is a rock formation called Kata Tjuta (or the Olgas). This is another site which is sacred to the Anangu Aboriginal people and so there are few parts you can walk around, and like Uluru, they prefer it if you don’t climb them. We did a nice 8km walk around some of the rocks.

The highlight of the day, for me anyway, was our first confirmed sighting of a kangaroo. It stood still just long enough to be photographed before bounding into the bushes at a picturesque gorge between the rocks. I had seen some kangaroos in the Edwards winery in Margaret River, but they immediately jumped behind some trees before Paul and Pie saw them and so they didn’t seem to believe me… There was no denying this sighting!

During our time at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, we had an all you can eat buffet. This involved eating as many Australian animals as we could. We had smoked emu, crocodile stir fry, kangaroo and barramundi. Sadly there was no quokka on the menu.

Uluru

Ayers Rock (or Uluru to the Aboriginals) may just be a large rock, but what a rock!

We've seen it a sunset, sunrise, and walked all the way around the outside. We didn't climb up, because we're good boys. And the climb was shut.

Sydney

Sydney is a fantastic city. It's definitely the best place we've been to so far - apologies to Singapore, KL, Perth and Melbourne. It just has the feel of a big city, which Perth and Melbourne don't have. Apparently Melburnians like to think their city is a rival to Sydney, but they're deluding themselves. Sydney is a city on a different level to Melbourne. And it has an amazing harbour front.
We spent a few days in the city - we got to look at the Botanic Gardens in the end, where we saw a possum, some cockatoos and some bats. We went to Manly, which was so named because Captain Cook saw some particularly muscular Aboriginals when he sailed past and declared them 'manly'. It's quite close to the suburb of 'Hunky'. Pie and went for a walk around the bay there. We went to Bondi Beach, which was very busy. We went on another nice walk from there to Coogee.

And we spent two days at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Unlike the MCG, the SCG feels like a proper stadium - Matt spent the first day sitting behind a pillar, and the queues for drinks or food were huge. Most importantly, it took about 20 minutes to exit the stadium at the close of play - nobody had thought that people might actually want to attend (and leave) the stadium when they built it. I far preferred it as a ground to the MCG - it even had two pavilions.

Obviously, the highlights of Sydney are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge - and deservedly so. We went for drinks in the bar below the Opera House and walked over the bridge. I think I'm going to come back here one day!