Burning Up the Strip

We had planned to spend a second night in Arrowtown, just so that I could sneer at consumer capitalism ... and have a meal at the restaurant. But the next day was cold and wet and we decided to spend a couple of days in Invercargill instead. This was somewhat perverse geographical choice since it meant we would later have to retrace our steps to get back to Fiordland which we had planned to visit next. On the other hand, setting out for a region with an annual rainfall of over 6 metres when it is already pouring down needs tourists made of sterner stuff than we can manage.

Invercargill is an odd place. We camped in town on what turned out to be the agricultural show ground. The 'facilities' were planned for the days when hundreds of rough tough farmers would be wanting a quick sluice after leading the love of their life (usually a cow, sometimes a sheep) around the ring. Big breeze block barns with concrete floors is what you need, no frills. Also there was a railway track going down one side and a prison formed another boundary. In the road outside young lads revved up their engines at night. Big city life, eh?

It was the first town that warranted the name since Christchurch. The population must have been over 25000 and it had several long streets, crossed in grid fashion by shorter ones in the shopping area alone. (Street names include, Tweed, Spey, Clyde, Teviot, Ettrick, ... you can probably guess which country supplied the founders of the town.) There is a museum, gardens, a cinema (we went to see 'Ray') and, surely a true sign of sophistication, a full size model of an elephant made entirely of corrugated iron. It was also our first experience of a rather unlikely throwback to England. At the better schools, adolescent boys are still forced to wear grey flannel shorts, a form of ritual humiliation which I had hoped was extinct. Wearing shorts in NZ generally is common and lots of kids would wear them anyway, it's the grey flannel which looks so odd. Girls from similar schools, as in the UK, wear calf length tartan skirts. In Invercargill, with its strong Scottish roots, tartan seems more appropriate than it does in England.

It doesn't take a long time to 'do' the most southerly city in NZ (and in the world, unless Tierra del Fuego has a competitor town). Eleanor visited the museum and saw the tuatara. Another unique NZ special, they are lizard-like reptiles but more closely related to dinosaurs than western lizards are. One of the specimens is 127 years old. The age is due to the tuataras' ability to cut its repiration rate to under ten heart beats a minute and become comatose for long periods. It would be invidious to suggest that skipping hours or days on end until something happened would be a useful skill to have in Invercargill.

Given it is so remote (go south and the next land is Antarctica and after that somewhere in W Africa probably), one of the surprising high spots of the town is an excellent restaurant called 'The Fat Indian' which serves excellent and unusual Indian meals. It appears to be run entirely by two lads in their early twenties. I longed to ask, but they were a bit too busy, how a couple of young Indians ended up in Invercargill. I'm sure the answer would be dreadfully mundane but I love the thought that one day, one of them just thought "Why don't we leave Uttar Pradesh and go somewhere really exciting, like Invercargill?"

I don't have a picture of the Fat Indian, there was another restaurant which we didn't go to called the Cabbage Tree, cabbage trees are a sort of palm and are found everywhere. What they have to do with cabbage I don't know. Equally common is NZ flax which has in common with the cabbage tree that it looks nothing like its namesake. So here are pictures of both.


Just to add to the images, this is what you get if you gou to the south of the town and look out (OK there is a bit more land to the south but it is empty)

For the young locals, excitement comes on weekend evenings. Kids customise their cars, add big exhausts and burn up main street. They sort of race but since there are traffic lights at the end of every block, and they are all very law abiding, it is mostly a matter of gunning the engine and doing 0 - 25 mph in a few seconds before getting stopped at the lights. The less expert practice outside the camp site and we can confirm that some of the engines are very loud.

It feels like one of those small American towns which have featured in so many movies about juvenile rites of passage. You would say (especially if, like me, you've just been reading about T H Huxley) that it's a form of sexual display with souped up cars replacing peacock feathers. Except we almost never saw a girl. It rather reminded me of of the kakapo, a flightless NZ parrot whose numbers have dropped almost to zero. Apart from predators the kakapo's problem appears to be that the male's display is positively offputting to the females who waddle off as quickly as possible. Young men of Invercargill, be warned or the love of your life may have to be a cow or sheep.

Ups and Downs

After a couple of nights at Lake Takapoe we visited Mt Cook. There's not a lot to say really, Mt Cook is a big mountain. Extract almost any adjectives from the list in the last blog and apply to any geographical features.


Most of the area at the foot is owned by the grey, forbidding, ugly and expensive Hermitage Hotel. The only independent business is the Old Mountaineers Cafe which has wonderful pictures of the early days of NZ mountaineering. It also tells the story of the first ascent of Cook which is illuminating.

In the early years of the 20th Century a group of British climbers decided it was time to make the first ascent in the name of Queen and Empire. A party was assembled and the long trip made to NZ. Since they had to come by boat, and even now Mt Cook is fairly inaccessible, it must have taken months but in due course a camp was set up ready for the assault. The day before the climb three local Kiwi lads slipped up to the top without telling anyone, left a flag and descended quietly. Mt Cook is claimed for New Zealand not the British Empire. One very small nail extracted from the Imperial edifice in a very New Zealandish sort of way. I can imagine a shy, modest but satisfied smile spreading across the two islands.

Mt Cook also marks the end of the Tasmin Glacier which gets very little press compared with its partners, the Franz Josef and the Fox. Probably this is because it ends in what looks like an explosion in a gravel pit. Not pretty blue green ice caves, just a massive wall of gravel beneath which are hundreds of feet of ice. And just to completely blow Tasman's chances of becoming a major tourist site, the melt water fails to form a pretty blue lake but instead looks like industrial effluent.

We climbed up to see it anyway on an exceptionally hot day and, because it was so close, forgot to take water. When we arrived, tired and thirsty but pleased with ourselves, we found a group of Japanese old age pensioners just pouring away the last of their unwanted drinking water as they set off back down to the car park. Rather a Mt Cook sort of experience.

We spent the night in Omarama. It mention this just as a warning to anyone visiting NZ. The camp site was very clean and tidy but the 'town' is best forgotten. If it wants a name for itself (as most small towns seem to: 'Town of Trees' - in a country with billions of them; 'Town of Lights' - so now they have electricity), I'd suggest 'Town whose name is almost a palindrome'. Assuming of course that 'Hot Sweaty Armpit' is already taken.

The logical next stop would be Queenstown but as we approached, a plethora of signs (and the Lonely Planet Guide) made it clear that this was a town for sailing, kayaking, rafting, jet skiing, water skiing, para-gliding, wind surfing, heli-gliding, jet boating and everything else suitable for lithe, tanned and, especially, young bodies. And worse was to come. It's a big centre for bungy jumping. To slightly modify P G Wodehouse, "There is enough pain and suffering in the world without attaching elastic bands to your feet and falling off bridges". So we went to Arrowtown instead.

As you enter it, Arrowtown looks like everything Queenstown is not. Rather superior bungalows in big well kept gardens, all full of roses, dahlia and every sort of European as well as NZ flower. There were lots of aliums so you knew it was posh. Tree lined streets gave shade and everything was calm and orderly. Not a para-glider in sight but instead, at the Arrowtown Bowling Club, elderly white attired ladies and gentlemen (you wouldn't dream of just calling them 'women and men') played bowls with restrained passion. The click of wood on wood, followed I imagined by a G+T in the club house.

And that is what three quarters of the town is like. The last quarter is 'historic main street'. The original town was built in the 19th Century and must have originally looked like a small version of the towns you see in westerns. The single street wouldn't have been wide enough for a gun fight (fortunately Kiwi's don't do that sort of thing) and many of the painted wooden buildings seems slightly smaller than you would expect but, still, here they are: the old post office, the post master's house, the stables, the village store with their logos intact. Except that the livery stable sells designer clothes, the village store has posh jewellery and the post master's house is 'one of the best two restaurants in New Zealand'.

When we last visited, fifteen years ago, being one of the best two restaurants in NZ was no great accolade. If you had a chip fryer and a fridge of frozen mutton chops you were in with a chance. Now food is big to the extent that the opinion about the restaurant was that of the New York Times food critic! They came to Arrowtown!

Despite sneering at the unreality of it all, we did stay and have a coffee. And then discovered there was a cinema showing 'Cosami' which is an excellent Italian movie so we stayed. The Cinema was as unreal as the rest of the town but was so 'life-style' that it reached a new level. First it has only seven rows of seats, six seats per row. The seat are big enough for two people and you sink into them. You can stretch your legs out full length. There is silent air conditioning but, just in case, there is an intermission when you can buy a glass of chilled wine with a choice of New Zealand cheeses to nibble or a superior organic ice-cream.

Walking back through the dark, silent streets to our camp-site we passed a house with a sign that read "Arrowtown Stress Management Consultancy". I kid you not.

on the road again

I meandered off my topic in the last blog, also you may have noticed that the ducks obviously weren't in Sydney, I meant to write 'Christchurch'. And now back to Christchurch and on the road again.

The land around Christchurch is flat and in winter the wind comes from the South, i.e. from the Antarctic Ocean and then Antarctica. It can, I'm told, be chilly. One solution to protect stock is shelter hedges. These can be one, two, three or even all sides of a field and are based mostly on local pine - though some look much more like Leylandia. They are an impressive feature near Christchurch, you can be driving along for hundreds of yards next to a thirty foot high fir hedge, trimmed flat to topiary standard and 10-15 feet deep at base. Gates are 'carved' into them and look like the entrance to some strange estate.

Further out as the land becomes more rolling there is more natural shelter but wind brakes are often planted of poplar and silver birch. In this part of NZ there are so many imported trees you could easily be in Europe. In fact Eleanor pointed out that as the fields become more rolling, the lines of poplar give a Tuscan look.

We passed through a few small hamlets. In NZ you often just get four or five houses, maybe a shop, at the side of the road and it counts as a village on the map. The real status sign is a board showing the place's history. One example went, roughly,

• 1880 - Col. Smith buys land
  
• 1885 - Col. Smith begins farming
  
• 1890 - Bakery built
  
• 1892 - Bakery burned down
  
• 1895 - Bakery rebuilt
  

I chose that as the most exciting period in the town's history. After 1895 not much happened. Though we couldn't see any sign of the bakery. May be it fell down and nobody noticed.

The only town of any size we passed through that day was Fairlie (pop about 200 I'd guess). Fairlie is cursed by it's name: there's the 'Fairlie Good Butcher' and the 'Fairlie Good Bakery' and after that imagination failed them. If they were big enough to have a doctor you could have 'Fairlie Treated' or 'Un-Fairlie Treated' for a firm of lawyers. How about builders called 'Fairlie and Squarely'?

On the edge of town was an ostrich farm ('Fairlie Unlikely to Succeed') but beyond that the view was (last time, I promise) fairlie impressive

Following the road through Burke's pass took us to the unreasonably beautiful Lake Takapoe (and my photos really don't do it justice)

At this point something needs to be made clear. New Zealand is a country of ocean, beachs, rivers, glaciers, fiords, waterfalls, mountains and lakes. They are all beautiful/amazing/breath taking/stunning/fabulous/incredible. In addition mountains are either snow capped, cloud shrouded or both (occasionally they may be majestic, awe-inspiring, somber or forbidding). Lakes will always be 'fringed' with mountains down which 'magnificent' waterfalls cascade. Waterfalls always 'cascade' and never just 'fall'. This a requirement of the all powerful Department of Conservation. Unfortunately while it is easy to sneer at the cliches it is difficult to avoid them. If your knowledge of NZ landscape is based on documentaries and the Lord of the Rings films, well, the reality is better. So from now onwards when I say 'waterfall' think 'magnificent waterfall cascading majestically into the crystal clear blue waters of the stunning Lake XXX which is fringed with awe-inspiring snow capped mountains carpeted with natural pine' (sorry, I forgot to say earlier, some mountains can be carpeted).

We parked out van at Lake Tekapoe for a couple of nights. We spent one morning climbing Mt St. John which is next to the lake. Not a hard climb but the temperature was about 35^o. Here am I looking like some "stout Cortez" who's landed on the wrong continent (emphasis on 'stout' here) while Eleanor strides across the bush having just turned her back on the other view of Takapoe.


On the second night we went on a star viewing trip. Takapoe is one of the clearest sites in NZ. This is the only time in my life that it's been almost impossible to see Orion because it is blanketed out by all the stars you don't see in the UK. The Milky Way was, well, like milk. The Megallenic Clouds were so big and bright you thought they were clouds till you looked through binoculars. Using a big telescope we saw the rings of Saturn and amazing clusters of stars.

In the Nothern Hemisphere finding North at night is easy if you can see the stars. We were taught how to do it in the South. You find these, they point to that, two of which almost point to something else and halfway between that and the star you first thought of is south! I have a simpler method: go north till you cross the equator. Find the pole star. Go in the opposite direction.

I've just realised the logical flaw in my method. Method 2: get a couple of friends to give you an ephemeris of the southern sky. From the time, date and where Orion is you can read off south (thanks to Barbara and Steve - we might have been stuck here forever). Failing that ring Patrick Moore.

Our tour ended with astronomy as it should be done. While other people were clamouring for a second look through the telescope, Eleanor and I lay side by side on a big blanket and watched the stars above us. That you can't do with Patrick Moore (thank goodness!).

Daphne the Duck is Dead

We were sitting in the Departure Lounge at Sydney airport having spent all but three of our Australian dollars. Just enough to buy a Sunday paper. The Australian is OK, and good on foreign news. In general Australians tend to be outward looking, they have to be, and coverage of SE Asia in particular is good. So we read about the likely impact of George Bush's second term, the landslide victory of the Thai Prime Minister, rumblings from Pyongyang, the state of the Hong Kong dollar, progress towards reform in China. But what about New Zealand? Culturally Oz's nearest neigbour and our next destination. After a lot of searching we found one reference to NZ.

In preparation for a big golf tournament in Christchurch, a cull had been made of ducks living on the course. An accidental victim had been Daphne, a duck beloved of local school children. Everyone was very sad. That is the news from New Zealand.

The emotional relationship between Australia and NZ is a complex one. It sometimes seems as if Oz is the big brother; noisey, brash and generally making fun of his much smaller sibling. NZ is the small quiet child who takes teasing in good part, either because he really believes he is a silly kid or maybe because, secretly, he feels he's smarter. There is in a great deal of NZ life an understatedness which sometimes seems likes shyness, sometimes modesty, sometimes just a wish to be left alone.

One example came within 20 minutes of picking up our camper van. We tried to follow the map to the campsite but got lost and stopped at a petrol station to ask the way. The assistant said not a word in reply but reached under the desk and silently handed us a photocopied map with the route from there to the campsite marked in high lighter. We apologised for bothering him. "Happens about four times a day" he said without discernable emotion.

The suburb in which we camped that night was like a slightly scruffy part of Folkstone or Bexhill-on-Sea. Streets of mostly brick, occasionally wood, bungalows. In England you'd call them retirement cottages. Each set in a small square of garden, each with a lawn, each with a border of chrysanthemums, dahlias, roses and red hot pokers. Alliums are only at the posher houses, they've only just started to reach NZ. The current national flower appears to be the red-hot poker. It appears everywhere, in gardens and bush, as does pampas grass. It is really difficult to tell what is native NZ and what is imported. However, here is a yellowy red-hot poker.

Christchurch is on a very flat plain which isn't typical of NZ. Most of the country reminds us of Scotland. Outside the mountains themselves (which are twice as tall as the Scottish ones), farmland is very like the borders. Rolling hills, soft, green and rounded, always with a wall of mountains somewhere towards the horizon.

As we set off we saw the first stock: a field of alpaca. In the course of one day we saw sheep (of course, more sheep than people etc), cattle (about as many as people), deer (next in numbers after cattle and mostly the big American sort, some smaller but one signpost said 'Elk Farm'). Rather less expected other than the alpaca were llamas and ostriches. New Zealanders will farm anything if they get the chance. At least the big animals have done less damage than the smaller ones, rabbits (fur and meat) and possums (fur!) were both a bad mistake.

When the rabbits escaped and became a pest an 'ecological' solution was attempted. Stoats, weasels and ferrets were imported to control them. Unfortunately nobody told the rodents they shouldn't eat eggs and NZ's bird population was devastated. One recent attempt at solution has been to de-vermin islands in the hope bird populations can be strengthened there. There seems little prospect of a wide scale re-colonisation by birds however and some woodland seems ominously quiet.

The possums have destroyed large areas of forest (as have escaped deer). Dogs and cats haven't helped. Cats look decidedly shifty and nervous - at least the three we have seen in ten days do - as if they fear their days may be numbered. Rats escape from cargo boats, we've even seen hedgehogs. A farmer we met said a hedgehog had made it's home under her chickens' nest box. It took some time to discover why the hens didn't seem to be laying so well.

Before this gets too depressing, I'll leave you for now with some wildlife that isn't upsetting anyone. A couple of sealions that didn't want to share a beach with us and a not very good picture of of dolphins playing catch.

The blue Blue Mountains of NSW

From the Snowy Mountains to the Blue Mountains isn't too far. We stopped in Bathurst on the way, an inland city with a University. Eat your heart out Goulburn, this is a different league. It even had a great restaurant, "The Crowded Man" if you are ever passing. Unfortunately our dinner was interrupted by a tropical storm (we had been sitting outside), fortunately we were between courses so just grabbed our bottle of wine and scuttled inside.

The Blue Mountains proper start a bit nearer to Sydney. We stayed in Katoomba, the heart of the region and depending on your point of view, the centre of the tackiest tourest trap in Australia or one of the most beautiful places in the world. Both are true. You can reach Katoomba on the Sydney suburban line train in about an hour so it is very touristy (with museums of handbags, plates and teddy bears among the less sophisticated cultural offerings). I felt sorry for Faulconbridge, a small town near by whose sole claim to fame is that its name is thirteen letters long, no letter is repeated and every vowel is present. Even having a museum of handbags seems a step up from that. And where did the 'u' come from?

About 100 yards from our motel window was Echo Point. The plateau on which Katoomba stands ends in a precipice going straight down 200-300 metres into a vast bowl of sub-tropical forest. In the distance are other mountains, some isolated peaks poking through the vegetation, others, very blue and very distant, forming a wall around the forest. There are waterfalls every half mile or so falling into the forest. At dusk the sky is red on one side, across the bowl clouds drift. Turn around and you can see the tourist tat but why bother!

We walked down into the forest the next day. It's quite tame if you keep to the signed tracks. Until recently, most years some ill equiped hiker would wander off and get lost. Even helicopter mounted heat-seeking sensors don't work through forest canopy and that was that until years later when the remains would be found. But mobile phones have changed all that, if you get lost just dial 000.

Our track was easy to follow but steep. There are steps down and up but there are about 1000 each way. One option is the direct 1000 Stair Route - straight up/down. We aren't macho enough for that and meandered down slowly through "Ferny Bower" and "Fairy Dell" (Australians have a weakness for whimsey). Ferny Bower had a notice listing wildlife we might see. It included ten types of snake though none I remembered from the list at Sydney Zoo, still the Death Adder didn't sound exactly warm and cuddly. As it happened the most impressive creatures we saw were a couple of soot black cockatoos. When we first saw them it was hard to pick out where wings, tails etc started. They were more like a pair of black holes in a pine tree. When they did fly off they showed solid scarlet under their wings. Think of Dracula spreading his cape. There were also lizards and lyrebirds but we're used to them.


It was our last night before returning to Sydney and we had a meal in an excellent fish restaurant in Katoomba with window seats facing a small side street opposite. A beaten up old Holden screeched to halt in the side street. Two identical men got out. Black tee-shirts, black baggies, black hair. As wide as they were tall. And they were tall. They looked tough. The suspension on the car rose a foot when they got out. I thought of a line from Woody Allen, "I know these people, well not exactly people." They banged on a door. If they were collecting rent I'd recommend paying. An old van drew up. A similar figure emerged but with a grey ponytail. El capo. He supervised as black bags are taken from van to house, then a large black crate like object big enough to hold a body. They talked briefly and drove off. We were feeling brave and thought we'd investigate. Perhaps a crime had been committed. Down these mean streets a man must walk .... We crossed the road and into the side street. It was the collection point for a charity shop. The underworld heavies had left a black sofa and its cushions.

So back to Sydney for a peaceful couple of days, relaxing and visiting a friend from Bristol, Peter Aplin. Peter and his wife recently returned to Australia after he had spent about thirty years at Bristol University. It was a wonderful chance to ask all the questions we'd accumulated. Also Peter had worked on SILLIAC which was Oz's first big computer (Sydney ILLIAC) and Eleanor was probably rather bored as we talked about computers and how things work. A few bits of my long lost physics came back.

He mentioned that his brother-in-law had been researching the family tree and found a convict ancestor. This is the prize all Australians seek these days. Normally you find someone who was transported for poaching a rabbit to feed his starving family, stealing a silk handkerchief for his sweetheart or a was a political prisoner (i.e. Irish). Even Australian academics are a bit doubtful about this. At the risk of facing universal outrage, at least one has pointed out that a) British juries were notoriously independent and tended to find defendents not guilty if they thought the punishment would be disproportionate to the offence, and b) the records shows most transportees were guilty of major crimes. So what happened to the descendent of murderers, highway robbers and burglars? I have a theory: they all got jobs at Tourist Information Offices.

With that, it's time for NZ. Last thoughts on Australia? Just send the immigration papers, if they'd have us after that last comment I'd sign up any day. But maybe NZ will be even better.

ee by gum

Kosciuszko National Park (I spelt it wrong last time) is in the Snowy Mountains. It is largely a skiing area in the Aussie winter but at the moment it is walking and looking at mountains, lakes and gum (eucalyptus) tree country.


Some of the lakes are man-made as the Snowy Mountain Project in the late '40s built dams and provided hydro-electric power. I mention the project only because it was the work of a unique Australian politician, Prime Minister Chiffley. In general, politicians are recorded on Australia's list of venemous creatures, below the Taipan snake but above the red backed spider. Every paper and TV news item seems to be full of political scandals (or at least rumours of scandals). Chiffley is the only Prime Minister you ever hear spoken of in positive terms. One politician, in a newspaper article, said "Though I disagree with all his politics, he was a great man". Which is saying a lot in a country where Blair and Brown would be seen as indecently fond of each other.

But back to the gum trees. You can't move twenty yards in Oz without falling over one, having one fall on you or being bitten by something living in one. There are hundreds of varieties. Here are some with wild flowers mixed in. Bush fires burn the trees and vegetation. These ones survived the fire (the bark was burnt and covered with soot however) and the yellow flowers are one of the first things to start filling in the gaps.

It doesn't do justice to the effect - imagine the trunks blacker and the flowers yellower. You may be able to see how the bark peels off the tree. This is a cunning plot by eucalypts. Australian wild life has adapted an old saying, here it's "If it moves catch it and eat it; if it doesn't, eat it anyway". Assorted insects burrow into eucalypt bark and lay their eggs. The eggs hatch and just when lots of wriggly things are getting hungry for fresh young tree flesh, the bark peels off leaving the wrigglies homeless - and surrounded by lizards and birds looking for their lunch.

I guess it's a bit like having an exfoliating scrub. It does mean that the whole of Oz is covered with a layer of bark.


Throughout the mountains, there are signs warning you about animals, wombat, emu, kangaroo, brumbies (wild horses). There are also two different signs warning you about horse riders. One shows the usual androgynous figure on a horse. In the other, the rider is a very well developed woman. Whether different precautions are appropriate I couldn't say. But we hadn't seen anything apart from a rabbit and some unidentifiable road kill until we came to the edge of the mountains.

The last town we visited in the Park was Talbingo, home of Miles Franklin who wrote "My Beautiful Career" (worth reading if you haven't seen the film). It is a beautiful setting with a lake surrounded by a golden plain and the Snowy Mountains in the background. As we were leaving we saw the usual sign.

Then we saw a movement in the grass and pulled over. No emus (we never saw one) but lots of 'roos


About five or six family groups, each with about five to seven animals had gathered in grass land near a pool (and conveniently near a rest area). It was wonderful. I might have got a bit closer but one of the males was giving me a very funny look: "One step closer to my wife and I'll have you ....". A kick from a 5ft tall kangeroo can leave you short of a few yards of intestine. So quietly away.


A good point to stop for now. Oh, I nearly forgot, Thredbo. An out of season skiing resort. Unexciting even by the low standards of small town Australia. I wonder if it was someone rather than the place that left Amanda viewing it in such a golden light?

Towards Shangri-La?

And so as the sun pours down like honey on Kangaroo Valley it is time to say good bye. We have admired your wood turning, tasted your marinated aubergine and fallen into your river. Next stop Kosciusko National Park (pronounced "cossy-us-ko" in Australian but probably not in the original Polish). Amanda had painted such a glowing portrait of the park and Thredbo in particular that we felt obliged to go. Imagine living our lives without visiting Thredbo.

It's over there at the end of the bridge over ... we a field but that's because it hasn't rained much recently. Not since they built the bridge in fact.

From K-Vs lush English greenery we went up into thicker eucalypt bush then down again. Next stop Moss Vale: Gene Pitney is singing at the Wool Shed, and it looks as though it is just a shed. It's a lot more than 24 hours from Tulsa.

We stop on the outskirts of Goulburn "The Fastest Growing Inland City in NSW". Can you sense the desperation: 95% of Australians live on the coast so you aren't exactly going for the biggest challenge around, and only "fastest growing" with a current population of 42,000 isn't as hard as being "largest". Not sure what makes you a 'city' in Australia, judging by the sign it is having a McDonalds, a KFC and two Thai restaurants. Also historic abbattoir and tannery.  We decide to miss it.

Next we miss Canberra. Even the guide book was struggling ("can have pleasant weather in spring and autumn"). Canberra is a compromise: both Sydney and Melbourne wanted to be national capital so neither got it though Sydney got agreement that it be within 100 miles of Sydney and in NSW. It also has it's own port, miles away south of Sydney.

Next we missed a very big lake. Can't remember the name (Prince George?) About the biggest lake in NSW, an oval, 8 miles wide and 10 tall. We didn't mean to miss it. I was navigating and getting more and more nervous. Maybe we'd taken a wrong turn (there is only about one turn off every fifty miles) but everything looked right. Then we saw a viewpoint for the lake, so relief but still no lake. It had turned into a grassy plain. About 60 square miles of water just gone. "So it goes" as they say on Tralfamadore.

Then a series of tiny towns. You have to admire the confidence of Australians, however small the town they always have four lanes down main street even if the road in is just one lane wide. "One day", they think, "this will be a great city, like Goulburn. When the second Thai restaurant opens." But maybe not here:

Still, you can dream:

The other feature common to small towns it that there are women walking forcefully away from them. Actually not just women, the Tumut Rural News (main story "Tumut girl gets Uni place at second attempt") reports that a Sikh doctor lasted only a week before escaping back to India. A local worthy said "They came over for dinner on the second night and he was saying things like 'How can anyone live here?' and 'How do you stay sane?'. I should have seen the danger signs."

We lasted one night in Cooma. Cooma was OK. What do you say? It had shops, a couple of cafes and a shop that sold complicated equipment for doing unnatural things to farm animals. A perfectly normal town. But then we only had to stay one night. After a week you feel differently.

In Kangaroo Valley and in the Kangaroo River

Thanks to Jim for suggestions about adding pictures. I'll see what I can do.

Coming to Wollongong we had mostly followed the main highway. The main detour had been a frivolous decision to visit Clifton, NSW and compare it to Clifton, Bristol. We drove the ten miles only to find, about 1/2 mile from our destination, that the Clifton road had fallen into the sea. There's one difference. We thought it might be possible to skirt the village and come by another road which led us to the small town of, I think, Helensburgh. Helensburgh was very much a dormitory town. The houses were new, the gardens well cultivated. It had a slight "Desperate Housewives" feel to it. The lollipop lady was clearly surprised that anyone should be driving down the road - I think we made her day as we conveniently slowed down to give her a chance to grab her lollipop and guide a child across the road. And then we got completely lost because there is one area in which road signs aren't very good: how to get from A to B. Or in this case how to get from A to anywhere with a population of more than 10. Eventually, driving more or less at random, we came upon

It's hard to imagine that the people of Helensburgh include many Hindus but if they do they have a full size temple with all the extras (it was unfortunately closed for the afternoon). There are quite a lot of Buddhist temples around as well, some very large. The Rough Guide always focusses on how good is the food they offer. Maybe they could extend their guide to cover the quality of wine used in the Christian churches and whether the wafers are organic.

We did eventually get to Clifton. It was almost a ghost town. We ate sarnies sitting on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Even a three house hamlet in NSW has something to admire even if it is only the same magnificent view as every other tiny village. Something like ...

After Wollongong we began to move inland. We went up the Macquarrie Pass, missed both the 'official' lookout point and the walk to see the waterfalls. The rest of the week has taught us that there are lookout points everywhere - indeed just stop your car anywhere and get out - and waterfalls are two a penny. If, like me, you aren't a great fan of temperatures in the 35-40 degree range, you also learn what a wonderful invention cars with good air conditioning are. I started to view the car as a sort of reverse sauna. You drive in cool and comfort, sometimes even shivering a bit. You stop. You get out. You turn into a pool of grease, bubbling slightly at the edges. You ooze back in the car and reconstitute your normal body. You feel physically and morally improved. You drive on, at one with the universe.

We visited sub-equatorial rain forest next. It was hot and humid as you might expect and contained amazing trees, lyre birds, butterflies as big as plates and yet more waterfalls. Well, waterfalls are quite pretty. And sitting next to one on a hot day is heavenly.

Our stopping place for the night was Kangaroo Valley but as always, what you see as you travel is as interesting as arriving. To reach the valley you have first to climb up through country which looks ever more English as you get higher. There are always eucalypts but as you get higher there are fewer palms and ferns. You begin to see fields of lush grass, mostly with sleek looking horses. Then as you descend on the other side the eucalyptus returns and there are signs of recent storms with great trees uprooted. Further down in the valley you are in an approximation to English farm land. Big fields with cows reach toward a rim of mountains. There are hedges and small stands of trees rather than forest. A stream ripples beside the road as you come to the village of Kangaroo Valley.

It is a rather alternativey, sub-trendy, wood turning, ayurvedic medicine, focaccia bread and marinated aubergine sort of place. Hopeless if you want to buy a screwdriver or an alarm clock but great for dried flowers, patchouli oil or any one of 17 different types of olive. Also there are five cafes in about twenty yards. We stop at one where the walls are papered with old ads from women's magazines - most of which we can remember from our childhood, and worryingly some from adulthood. We realise how lucky we are to have left them behind and drink our smoothies.

Always on the look out for a new experience, we hire a cabin at the holiday camp. The camp is run by Amanda who looks about 14 but is in fact a student at Uni. She's from Albury in the West of the State, studying Eco Tourism at the local university. She's been to Sydney but didn't like it. She seems very child-like and entirely enthusiastic about eco-tourism. This particular camp is very un-eco which she hasn't really noticed until we point it out. Possible not a straight A student but very likable. She is particularly enthusiastic about the town of Thredbo. To Amanda it is the shining city on a hill (well she says "It's really cool." and it turns out to be at the bottom of a valley but you get the drift). She cannot imagine how anyone could come to Australia and not visit Thredbo so we promise we will.

There is a terrific storm in the night. A dog howls with such anguish that Eleanor is convinced a dingo is eating it but in the morning we are told it just ran off because of the storm. They would say that wouldn't they? But whatever the curious incident of the dog in night indicated (note to all pedants: I am aware that the original curious incident is that the dog didn't bark) we decide to follow Amanda's other suggestion and take a canoe down the Kangaroo River. We are given basic advice from the canoe man and pushed off with the helpful maxim that a married couple in a canoe come back as two singles.

The early stages are a little erratic, not helped by the local wild life. The crows here go "ha ha ha" differently from those of Perth. Imagine someone who thinks you are beneath contempt saying that in a very sarcastic drawl and you've got it. And the kookaburras are laughing their heads off. We feel a bit cowed but off we go into the rapids.

As you will know if you saw "Deliverance" or "River Wild", the secret of successful white water canoing are: a) don't upset local inbred psychopaths and b) don't offer lifts to murderous armed robbers. Apart from that we know that you head for the V-shaped bit of water in rapids and paddle hard. What more do you need to know? Do I look scared? Does Eleanor look scared?


We whizz through, and the next one. Then we get confused about steering and a water dragon (a two foot long lizard) gets a nasty shock as the branch he's longing on is hit by the canoe. The crows go "ha ha ha", the kookaburras are hysterical. And we are stuck, the river rushes around us. Will we capsize? Is this the end for the gallant explorers? In a leap your intrepid blogger is out of the boat and seizing the prow drags the canoe free. Did I mention the water is less that 2ft deep? Eleanor thought I was quite brave, brave-ish at least, quite brave-ish, sort of. The sense of whiplash quick reflexes is slightly lessened by the fact that I had time to pass my camera to Eleanor, take off my shoes and socks and stow them safely before getting out of the boat.

We go through several more sets of rapids. Some we run, sometimes I get out and push/pull. At one embarassing point we get stuck and a couple of middle aged campers who are dangling their feet in the river from a rock insist on pulling us free. They are the only people we see in 2.5 hours - they just had to be there when we got stuck on a sand bank.

But mostly it is a beautiful and peaceful experience to glide down the river. We see lots of water dragons (the word has been passed around - they all hurry to avoid us). They are not pretty creatures but they have the pleasing property of looking just right. If you go into a toy shop you will find rubbler models of lizards. They look just like water dragons but a bit smaller. Conversely water dragons look as if they are made of rubber and tend to stand immobile for long periods unless they are run over by a canoe.

We also see herons, a cormorant and a kingfisher and things we can't identify (including a big moorhen thingy). Plus brown ducks but they are just brown ducks and don't really count. And the kingfisher is just another kookaburra. Australian kingfishers look remarkably like their English counterparts with blue feathers above and a peachy pink below. And, to their eternal credit, they don't laugh like their larger and more vulgar cousins.

We end the trip paddling between the remains of gum trees where the river was widened by dam building, we float to shore and pull the the canoe onto a sandy river beach and wait for our lift back. And we are still happily married.

Head out on the highway looking for .... Wollongong

Pictures are still a problem - even when I can find somewhere to put them on the web it costs a fortune to upload them in internet cafes. When I get back I'll do a slide show. For now back to words.

We hired a car and set of to explore. There are lots of big tourist sites, and we saw some, but we wanted to get a feel of what NSW is like to live in.

The first hour was just driving through suburbs heading south. Dame Edna fans will be sorry to hear we didn't see Moonie Ponds or any gladioli. Maybe it's not gladdi season. Almost every house did have big blue or white aliums however. I think this will be seen by future generations as a mistake. They are already beginning to colonise the bush and are all over NSW. No corrugated iron shack is so humble and no farmer's bungalow (with mock grecian columns) so grand as to be without the blue menace.

Driving is easy and roads are well sign posted. Eleanor's favourite sign was "Do not overtake if it is unsafe to do so", true but do you have to be told it? My favourite came later as we were ascending a steep pass in the outside lane. The road was narrow and winding, the drop precipitate and unprotected. A sign said, "Beware of large trucks reversing around corners on the wrong side of the road". I bewared as much as I could. Another feature, all along main highways, are signs telling you who to ring if you see a wounded animal. We never saw one for wounded people. Maybe you just pretend to be a wombat.

There are also lots of advertising hoardings. Macdonalds and KFC in particular. A couple of more quirky ones appealed to me, "Walk in skip hire" which could be useful if you had room in your pocket for a skip, but my all time favourite has to be, "Christmas presents for all occasions".

We encountered a more problematic sign in a small national park we passed through. Australia has thousands of national parks. Some as small as Wales. This one consisted almost solely of thorny scrub and notices saying "No jumping or diving within the park". Why would you dive into thorn bushes? Eventually we found a beautiful seaside lagoon where Eleanor went swimming. And at the end of the lagoon were rocks from which people were jumping and diving into the water. Sensibly there were no signs prohibiting such activities.

The park introduced us to another feature of Aussie life which was repeated thoughout our trip. 99.99% of Australians are welcoming, friendly people who will do anything to help a visitor. The remaining 0.01% work in tourist information offices. Trusting, hopeful visitor: "Do you have a map of this region?" "We've just got a road map of Wagga Womble" (three houses, a McDonalds and a sheep). "Which is the main road to Wollongong?" (there are only two possibilities). "Not sure really." On the other hand you can buy tea towels with aboriginal designs on them or biros shaped like boomerangs. You might be able to get a digeridoo - but don't expect any help on which end to blow

In Wollongong we stayed at a motel run by Sybil Fawlty: "We would remind you that this is not just a business; it is also our home and we ask visitors to respect it". She had both accent and intonation just right. So no throwing the fridge out the window then.

"What's a good Aussie beer?" I asked the barmaid.
"I don't drink beer", she replied.
"Well what does your boy friend drink?".
"Whatever's cheapest."
"Just give us a couple of beers then".
She gave us two Mexican beers with slices of lime in the bottle neck.

The next morning we strolled down towards the sea to be met by the most self possessed beggar I have ever encountered. He was about 16, wearing baggies, tee-shirt and baseball cap. He had obviously just returned from surfing. "Could you lend me a couple of dollars to ring my mother?". He might have done better had he not been carrying an obviously well stuffed wallet in his hand. Young people today etc.

I think I'm turning into a whingeing pom but I liked Wollongong. It has great locally caught fresh fish which are excellent eaten with a big bag of chips. Eating in Wollongong is snootily dismissed by the Rough Guide so yaboo to them.

Tomorrow we visit rain forests, go white water canoing, get wet (several times) and hear of the fabled delights of Thredbo. Watch this space.

Return of the Quokka

Right, to hurry on in approved Western Australian style, day 2, up at 5 am swam harbour, wrote short paper on Wittgenstein, trapped and ate a kangaroo for breakfast. No we didn't, this is decadent softee Sydney. Got up eventually, had a leisurely coffee, strolled (very slowly) to find an internet cafe and write up last weeks blog. I'm about a week behind with blogging so I'll try and speed up. Eleanor takes historical accuracy seriously but she's not writing the blog so the what follows is more, shall we say, impressionistic.

We strolled from Kings Cross to Hyde Park. How English it all sounds. En route we saw the sleazier side of Kings Cross - a lot of scope for the descendents of Sz Man King (pay attention at the back, Sz Man King founded the temple in H-K).

Walking across a very green and pleasant Hyde Park, en route to a light lunch on the grass under the trees, we visited the ANZAC memorial. I'm told that ANZAC day is very important here, not least because the traumatic experience of WWI made the Aussies really question for the first time their relationship with 'the Motherland' and start to think about being Australians first with their own priorities. The memorial is a small building, approached via steps. The room you enter lists the battles Australian forces have been in, from the Somme, Ypres, Vimey Ridge and of course the bloodbaths of Gallipoli and the Dardenelles, through WWII where they also fought closer to home and could feel they were defending their own families and country, and to Vietnam where feelings are more ambivalent.

But the main feature is a low circular wall from which you look down into a crypt-like room below. This is dominated by a art deco influenced but generally classical style bronze. It shows, life size, a small group of figures carrying a dead soldier. From above you look straight down onto the young naked body. He is carried on a shield with his broken sword beneath him. There is no attempt to suggest a particularly Australian corpse. He could be an ancient Greek or a figure from any age. His body is twisted - no dignity or peace in his death.

The bearers are all women, mothers have lost sons, sisters of lost brothers, wives without husbands. The obviously masculine body also reminds you of the children that won't be conceived and the generation lost.

Finally, you are looking down. Most memorials you look up. Even with some of the most determinedly anti-heroic statues in London, you look up at figures who, in their resolution and grimmness, look noble and even heroic. This is just a dead boy whose life was wasted in a cause he probably never understood.

As you can tell, it moved me and I'm not generally a war memorial type.

No more seriousness, we'll go to the zoo. Sydney Zoo means another ferry ride, followed by a bete noir of Eleanor's, a cable car ride. She keeps her cool despite the two small girls we shared the car with discussing what might happen if the motor stuck or the cable broke. Little did they realise that they were in much greater danger of being thrown to the crocodiles or worse.

Actually it was a bad time for visiting the zoo as every sensible creature was hiding from the heat. But they had quokkas. Those of you who have been thinking of anti-defamation action ('a quokka is not a rat') are vindicated. And those who have removed quokka from your Xmas card list should reinstate them. They are wallabies (don't ask me the difference between wallabies and kangaroos) and as I watch one I realise they aren't at all ratty and have quite sweet (but thin) fur on their tails. How could that delicately moulded face have ever looked rodent like?

There was also the Koala Experience, which I resisted. Koalas always look sad and now I know why. People can't resist patting them. To such an extent that New S Wales has made patting them an offence except on properly licensed koala patting stations. That faraway look in their eyes says "If I was a grizzly I'd bite your head off, a polar bear and I'd crush you with one blow, a panda and I'd be cosseted and fed fine bamboo. But I'm just a pretty koala with an acceleration of 0 - 4km/hour in three hours and I can't even run away. If that snotty child touches me with those sticky fingers I'll snarl and .... oh what the hell, I'm already black and blue with bruises under my fur. Here we go again. Ow."

Only one other thought from the zoo. All the major animals are sponsored by local firms. McDonalds sponsored the gorillas.

Given the range of jobs of my relatives and their partners, to say nothing of friends I won't tell you who sponsored the reptiles. What do you think would be an appropiate profession to associate with foul smelling Komodo dragons, all things slimey and "11 of the 15 most venomous snakes in the world"? Did the reptiles have a right of veto? Even taipans have feelings you know (mostly about who they are going to bite next).

Sydney at last

First an apology, if you tried clicking on the comment 'pencil' it didn't work. Well blogs are very complicated things and I got it wrong. Thirty years in computing wasted. I still don't read the instructions. In future click on any new entry and you should be able to leave a comment. Thanks to Alison for pointing out the problem and to Glyn for the interesting news about the coffee pot!

We arrived in Sydney on the evening before Australia Day. More time zone changes so while it seemed early evening to us, the Sydney-siders were going to bed. Which they do at about 10pm. We have had no problem with jet lag but what we can't get used to is the odd hours Australians keep. They get up at about 5am go swimming/surfing/walking, then go to work during the hot part of the day and by about 9.30pm most of them are ready for bed with only a few hardy souls still in restaurants and clubs. We just had time for a plate of pasta in a very pleasant Italian place before every thing closed. The waiter, an elderly grey haired man with a strong Italian accent, was very attentive. I thought he fancied Eleanor. Eleanor thought he fancied me. Well, this is Sydney! By chance we passed him in the street the next day and he said "hello", or rather being a good Australian, he said "how's it going?", so he remembered at least one of us.

I haven't yet got used to being greeted with "how's it going?" or the more formal "how are things with you today, mate?", or conversations ending with "be seeing you". What are the correct responses?

Wednesday morning we set off to see a bit of Australia Day. Apparently it has only become a big event in the last few years and seems to be very much a celebration of Australia and what it means to be an Australian. There is lots of emphasis on cultural diversity. The more radically minded aboriginal people call it "Survival Day" and take only a nominal part in the events. "Survival" may be over optimistic. A country which celebrates the absorption of people from everywhere else in the world still can't find a way of letting it's original occupiers live their sort of life.

Leaving our hotel we crossed the road to a small coffee shop which served really excellent coffee with croissants. I'm not a great coffee drinker but even I could taste the difference. A few yards frurther down the street finding our way became a bit more difficult. We were based in an area called King's Cross which contains an amazing mixture of housing and is far from the grid like structure of most Australian cities. There are modern villas set back among dark leaved ferns and palms, tiny maisonettes with maybe two rooms, old clapper board family houses, modern breeze block monstrosities, appartment blocks with art deco lettering, small hotels, cafes and restaurants of all sorts. Almost all older houses have deep verandahs so you can get out of the sun during the hotter part of the day. There are trees (the ubiquitous eucalyptus or palms mostly) along almost every street and every front garden has some sort of greenery. A bit too late in the year for most flowers. Not a gladdie in sight.
Click here for picture

We stopped at a corner shop to buy fresh nectarines, water and some more factor 30+ sun block (you just don't get lower strength). Completely lost we walked down an alley way at random and there was our first view of the bridge and opera house

in a vast harbour full of boats and surrounded with greenery. The thing which struck us most in the first couple of days was just how green everything is and how beautiful the harbour looks.

We spent most of the morning sitting on a spit of land, under a big eucalyptus, watching the boats, soaking up sun and atmosphere. It was only 35 degrees (note that 'only') and Sydney had turned out in full.


We visited Manley in the afternoon. To visualise Sydney imagine a coast line going N to S, cut out a irregular star shape from the land with one arm just reaching the sea. Central Sydney is at the west of the star, Manley on a small isthmus to the NE. When you get there by ferry there are beaches looking back across the harbour and about 1/4 mile away along a rather tacky pedestrian area (it reminded me of Weston-super-Mare but with sun and better looking people), is a fabulous silver sand beach facing Pacific rollers and packed with surfers. That bit isn't much like Weston at all. Didn't do much in Manley - I just wanted to get in a cheap crack about Weston. Could also add that Sydney ferries are much less efficient than H-K ones but who cares. Just sit back and enjoy.

In the evening to the firework display. Big screens in the harbours so we could be uplifted with stories about "new Australians", every race and colour represented. By the end everyone was getting a bit restless, admirable as it all was we wanted fireworks not a twenty minute life history from someone who had 'made it'. Fireworks were great as expected. At the end the first verse of "Advance Australia Fair was sung in a quavering voice by a pretty blond, blue eyed, eight year old (ethnic diversity has it's limits). The whole crowd stood and joined in but at the end of the first verse a 'real' singer took over from the little girl and the singing was noticably less. Confirming the comment in the Sydney Morning Herald that hardly anyone knows the second verse. So do you know the second verse of "God save the Queen"?

aaaargh the wicked librarian is throwing me off ..... back soon.

The Exotic East

Here is how to spend a fun three hours. Stuff 450 people into a tin can; make them sit on seats slightly narrower than they are; ensure their knees bang on the seat in front; provide an inadequate number of toilets; make the whole thing vibrate noisily; everyone has to breathe only the air exhaled by everyone else; only show one dreadful movie (but as a redeeming feature make it so bad that it doesn't matter that you can't hear the sound track); serve dreadful food at what feels like the wrong time of day.

So where is the fun? Easy, fly from Perth to Sydney on a clear day so you can see the ground below (if it isn't below there won't be much fun!).

As we left Perth, bush fires had been burning for a while. We couldn't see fires but the land was a complex pattern of browns. Near Perth the countryside is farm land on a similar scale to England with small fields clearly defined from the air. It looked like one of those Paul Klee pictures built up of slighly different shades of the same colour.

As you get further from Perth you can see that in the distance the brown becomes mottled with reddish and yellows where the real outback starts. Nearer in, Western Australia is full of dried up rivers which upset the straight line effect. As the rivers dry, circular shapes are left as the final pools dry up. It looks like a trail of bubbles crossing the land.

Next the scale of farming gets bigger. There are much bigger, oddly shaped pastures with stone outcrops. Rather than a burned grass look this is parched golden. There are darker dots which are probably small groups of gum trees but you can't tell properly any more. At one point we pass over a massive rocky area which from above looked as if it has been intricately carved into patterns of parallel lines which form a giant abstract, aboriginal picture.

About a third of the way into the flight you cross the coast into the Great Australian Bight. Initially their are tiny circular islands looking very similar to the earlier pools but this time inverted as land on water. And the water is just the colour it is in the travel ads. Sometimes it looks as though someone has added a massive "loo blue" block to the Pacific. After a bit, no more islands so watch the car chase on the movie.

We hit land again for the last third of the flight, initially repeating roughly what we saw before but as the East coast approaches the colour changes and we realize the Western Australians must be right. A patterns of greens this varied and lush must signify decadance and softness. Even from the air as the pastures get smaller and greener I'm feeling myself being seduced.

And so to Sydney, my next entry will tell you just how soft and effete a city it is.

Simon

Is anyone out there?

Hi everyone, or not as the case may be. I'm suffering from existential doubt. I know three people are reading this blog but is anyone else? If you go to www.bloggers.com you will find links to millions of blog sites. Most seem to be adolescent girls talking about lurve and bands; the rest are mainly adolescent boys talking about girls and computers (and with 'hands on' experience of the latter only). Maximum readership about one person per blog. Am I similarly wittering on to no one when my time could be better spent sitting in the sun? I've left the 'allow comments' flag set for this entry so if you're reading, you could click on the comment icon and say hello. I'd like to know you exist. Also gossip is welcome. Is Dee's daugher back from her travels? Did Ilona make it to the wedding in Washington? How is life in Clifton Wood Crescent? etc

Next a technical matter. One of my three regular readers has noted that having learned to use photos, there are some in one entry then no more. This is a technical problem. The photos are there in the camera but I have to find somewhere that lets me upload them to the net. All I need is a computer with a spare USB port but they don't seem to exist outside of Sydney. Hoping to find one when we get back there and then I'll update some of the entries.

You may rightly deduce from this that lots has happened since the last entry so I'll end this and do a proper blog.

Perth, Australia

I've specified the country because, when we were listing our itinerary, one friend asked "Perth?" I'm not sure if they thought we might be going to Scotland or just wondering why one would go to Perth. Well, Perth Australia is a very nice place - though hot!

Actually I'm not sure that I shouldn't say "Perth, Western Australia". There is a certain amount of bickering between the tough, hard working, essentially decent, Western Australians and the soft, effete East (i.e. Sydney) where they sit around drinking coffee and being decadent. As a letter writer in The Australian put it "a bunch of politically correct pommo homo como vego bastards". Shouldn't that be "commo"? But I digress.

We stayed with old friends Judith and Ultan and their daughter Aislinn.

Aislinn is "practising to be five", which she will be any day now. So Happy Birthday Aislinn.

We had a relaxing time, sitting in the shade beside the pool which is lined with tropical vegetation. Where we get sparrows, starlings and seagulls, they have cukkaburras (sorry about the spelling) and assorted varieties of parrot.

There is also a lizard (called Coco according to Aislinn). And crows. The crows wake you up in the morning going "ah, ah, ah" which does no justice at all to their call. The first "ah" is a sort of small sound, suggesting "oh well I didn't expect it would work", the second is a "maybe it can be fixed" sort of "ah" and the last is "there you are, I've done it" sort of sound.

The next day we took a trip down the Swann River from Perth to Fremantle ("Freo"). The tour guide hadn't quite got to terms with political correctness: whoever he mentioned (Vlahming?) probably wasn't "the first man to visit the Swan River" - local aboriginal people had been there a while.

Actually the rainbow serpent carved out the river, resting a various spots which became holy places for the local tribes. This caused problems when there were plans to build a casino on what turned out to be one such site. White people didn't know it was a sacred site (it is known only to the local tribe and you don't tell outsiders). This led to a belief among some that aboriginals 'invent' sacred sites in the hope of getting compensation from developers. If true, what a heinous crime! People on the very edge of existence, living in appalling conditions, at way below the poverty line manage to screw some cash out of multi-millionaire property developers who are forced to pass the cost onto their equally wealthy clients. No doubt the entrepreneurs are crying into their champagne. (End of rant.)

Apart from history, the tour guide really specialised in how much various houses cost and who lived in them. Looking at the most expensive, my first thought was that, if it meant living in such a monstrosity, I'd prefer to be poor. Money doesn't buy good taste.

Judith and Ultan had arranged an assortment of outings for us and we had a great time, though as always it is the small things that strike you. We went to an outdoor movie. It was more civilised than the US version: no cars with steamed up windows! It is beautiful to sit out on a warm night watching a film but what really struck me was looking up at the stars and seeing Orion. The wrong way up.

We spent a day at Rottnest Island with Rosemary another friend of J & U from England. It reminded me of Tresco, another small island with wonderful beaches.

Except Tresco doesn't have "quokkas". Opinion is divided about quokkas, to their supporters they are like small kangaroos, about 1ft tall. To their detractors they are just big rats who have learned to look cute from a distance. My heart says kangaroo, my head notes a pointy snout and a hairless tail.

This one was squatting outside the tea room. He didn't look a happy bunny (rat/kangaroo). You are not supposed to feed quokkas but it doesn't take much scavanging to come up with melting ice cream, fried fish, muffins, rotting fruit and a feeling that civilisation has its discontents - and currently they were in this quokka's belly. Hope it's feeling better now!

Had a wonderful fish meal to celebrate the end of our stay and the next day it's time to fly to Sydney. On the last day I was invited into Aislinn's Wendy house. "You can stand up without hitting your head", she told me, correctly. As I straightened up, she added, "You're getting cobwebs in your hair. There might be red back spiders." But I'm still alive so I guess there weren't.

Lots more I could write but I still haven't reached Sydney. So off to the decadent east for the next instalment.

Lost in cybertime

I am adrift in cybertime, my blog talks about Hong Kong when really I'm in Sydney several thousand miles, several days and three hours (changing time zones) away.

First leave Hong Kong - though we're sorry to go. We did lots of things I didn't bore you with but here are a couple of sights I remember, both while wandering around the back streets surronding Nathan Road.

First, down a little alleyway a small group had errected a makesift awning and were performing Cantonese opera. Two very respectable looking ladies were singing and waving fans and a red handkerchief in approriately theatrical gestures. The 'orchestra' were two men on fiddle like instruments with a long necks and bowls the size of a grapefruit; there was a drummer and an elderly man playing a zither like instrument, tapping the wires with sticks. The zither player would have looked at home at a vicarage tea party in the home counties: well shined shoes, grey flannel trousers and a tweed sports jacket. The drummer was, well, like drummers everywhere. You could see he was dying to hurl himself into a frenetic rock solo but had to limit himself to the occasional 'dong' on a temple bell or dramatic 'bong' on a hand drum. Eventually a smartly dressed elderly gentleman passed. After making a donation he walked on to the 'stage' to inspect the sheet music and discuss technical issues (as far as we could judge) with the singers. It all had the air of a scholary recital, but performed in an alley with an audience of about five including a crazy tramp who waved his arms and did dance steps on an adjacent stretch of pavement. We made a small donation and were welcomed with open arms; we were offered the best seats in the house (two small stools) but life is too short to listen to a whole Cantonese opera.

Finally for H-K, the oddest shop we saw. Again down a back street. A small shop selling armour. Not Chinese, not 'antique' but shiny new, Knights of the Round Table suits. The window had the sort of outfit that Prince Hal might have worn ( maybe my dating is out by a couple of hundred years, 100 years war? whatever). Is there a big jousting scene in Hong Kong?

And so to the airport and an overnight flight to Perth. Still Quantas, still the same movies and the same food.

From the Star Ferry

I don't really know what I'm doing here, blogs that is, not Hong Kong. I'm going to try and includes some thumbnails linking to pictures. So, I twist this, press that, type in something else and we have picture of Man Mo temple.












From Kowloon you can take the Star Ferry to Hong Kong Island.

Crossing to the Island

Star Ferry is a venerable institution in a community which apparently loves the new above all things. The boats are about 50 years old, two decks with very basic seating and holding, I'd guess, 350 people. So why hasn't Hong Kong replaced them with some hi-tech alternative? Well, they work and efficiency means a lot here. I estimated that a boat load can embark (no pushing or queue jumping, all very orderly), the boat can cross the harbour with just enough time for several hundred Chinese to use their mobiles ("I'm on the ferry, Dear, be home soon") and the the passengers can then disembark (equally well behaved) in about five minutes. About the time it takes ten people to get on a bus in England.

Getting off the ferry on H-K Island is a shock. The percentage of Western faces goes up by a factor of ten. And they aren't the scruffy tourists you see looking for bargains in Kowloon. These are, almost without exception, men in dark suits which probably cost more than our entire trip. This is where money and power live.

Immediately ahead is the HSBC head quarters, designed by Norman Foster. It is surrounded by many other 30-40 storey buildings, some more beautiful, but none which shouts its message quite so clearly. It is like a glass safe bound in steel bands. It says "power" and "wealth" and "permanence". The only remnant of its predecessor are two bronze lions and its one concession to Chinese sensibilities is that it is built on pillars to allow the 'dragon energy' to flow into the sea unhindered (Feng Sui is big here). Of course, a cynic might say that it is on pillars because most big building are built that way in Hong Kong to resist earth quakes.

You can walk under it and look up, a vast space stretches above you giving a sense of reverse vertigo as if you could fall up into it. You have looked into the belly of the beast.

Moving up the hill you come to Hollywood Road which contours slowly upward crossed by incredibly steep roads going up and down. The main shops are either art galleries featuring modern Chinese art or antique shops. No price tags on display. What would you pay for a life size, twelfth century silver Buddha? About a quarter of the antiques shops display Tibetan art, very chic at the moment, the rest Chinese. Of course to the Chinese Goverment, Tibet is part of China. Pity the Tibetans don't agree but how generous of them to allow so many of their most sacred possessions to furnish the homes of rich bankers.

The Man Mo temple marks a break all this. From here on the shops are more traditionally Chinese, selling things which we often don't recognise and sometimes which we wish we didn't.

The temple itself was founded by Sz Man King in the mid 19th century. He seems to have been an early entrepreneur of the hospitality management industry, i.e. he owned brothels, opium dens and illegal gambling houses. The temple however is now very respectable with the great and good very keen to be on its management committee. It does good works, runs it own schools for poor kids, has soup kitchens etc. Entering it is a disorienting experience. It isn't large and consists of three adjacent rooms, the size of a class room for 30 students maybe. The incense smoke hits you like a wall but as you peer through it the scene is unlike any English church. One side is taken up with assorted parcels and packages (content unknown), the other has vast piles of incense sticks. Prices are indicated (in both English and Chinese of course) and there is an honesty box. Visitors buy a big bundle, light them from any of the many candles (this is a major fire hazard) and poke them into bowls of sand. As soon a you leave, a temple official pulls them out and douses them in a bucket of water. After all, you've gained good karma from your pious intention and if they were all left burning the temperature would be unbearable. In addition, every inch of roof space is taken up with hanging incense coils which burn for hours - these are allowed to remain, each with a small message label attached.

Facing you are the statues of the Gods and 'saints'. China is very pragmatic on religion. The statues include local holy men, immortals from Taoism, Buddhist arhats and boddhisatvas and Gods (in this case those of literature and war, seen as a natural pairing). Probably Confucious is there too.

Religious practices are also eclectic. In one room a young woman kneels in the Chritian position of prayer with palms together talking earnestly to a statue. In the next and old lady sits cross legged on a cushion in front of her chosen figure. It is all very individual. There wouldn't be room for 'services' with more than ten people anyway and besides, what are streets for?

From the temple on, the shops change. Slightly down the hill is Cat St. The origin of the name is unknown but none of the proposed explanations suggest it is a place to take a maiden aunt. Think "cat house", "cat burglar", "alley cat". It is where "antique" meets "tatty junk". You can buy old coins, some of which may be genuine, picture post cards of old Hong Kong, plastic Mickey Mouses, plaster models of Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Lee posters, ....

Slightly further down Hollywood Rd, and conveniently placed for the temple, are a coffin seller with stacks of shiney wood samples and a shop selling funery goods. These are designed to be burnt (they are mostly paper) and become real in Heaven, providing for the departed's next life. First, there is a four foot long paper model of a yacht. It has a Blue Peter look to it and isn't exactly professionally finished, but in heaven it could, no doubt, win the Americas' Cup. Parked at the side of the road (nice touch) is a paper sports car. A gust of wind would take it a hundred yards but the absence of a paper engine would seem to limit its usefulness even in Heaven. But if you aren't sure what to buy you can always give money. Great bundles of celestial banknotes can be bought for a few dollars. The exchange rate with heaven seems a bit one sided!

And if that all seems very quaint and odd, imagine explaining to a Chinese person why we give flowers.

Back again down the hill, and into a side street for a posh meal in a restaurant favoured by those with expense accounts (and those who fancy the much much cheaper fixed price lunch). The restaurant is decorated with elegant black wood and primitve antiques in glass fronted cabinets. For about £15 the two of us get soup ("Delightful Vegetable") , four small cold dishes: bamboo shouts with flavoured oil, a sort of coarse duck patee, marinaded aubergine and tofu with 1000 year old egg. The last isn't very nice but then I don't like tofu. 1000 year old egg on the other hand is quite nice, a bit like hardboiled egg yolk in aspic (you probably don't want to know about the colour or taste). A tiny cake filled with pork and spinach is brought as an extra, courtesy of the new chef. For the main course I have "Pomfret fish" and I have no idea what it is except it has scales and tastes like fish. Eleanor has pork served with a delicately honey flavoured sweet and sour sauce. If you are ever in Lam Fong Fai, I'd suggest the pork, a pomfret is a just pomfret ... whatever that is.

And so back to Kowloon. It would be nice to rest for an hour or so to digest the meal but the Start Ferry only gives you five minutes. Efficiency can be a bore sometimes.

Staying at the Sally Ann

Our hotel is at the less fashionable end of Nathan Rd, the 'Golden Mile' is more the cut price clothes, pirated paperbacks, Chinese medicines and assorted naffness mile and a bit by the time you reach Booth Lodge. It's still just at the respectable end and the Sally Ann even has (discreetly, on the next block) a charity shop. A charity shop, in a city where people don't even throw away the head and feet when cooking chicken, is an oddity. I didn't go in because I thought it would make me homesick.

At least two other non-profit making organisations have their own hotels. The YMCA is the posh one. It shares a block with two other hotels in prime position on the sea front. Next to it is the Penininsula which is posher than posh. If you aren't sure whether you can afford to stay there, don't bother - you can't. Beyond that and more down market is the Sheraton. We couldn't even afford the YMCA.

About half way to Booth Lodge is B-P International House, a great chrome and glass palace owned by the Boy Scouts, strictly speaking the "Baden-Powell Boy Scouts". An atrium the size of a football pitch is dominated at one end by a 10ft high portrait of B-P gazing benignly across the lobby to a life size bronze sculpture depicting an adult scout leading two small children by the hand. The scale and decor seem so out of keeping with the idea of scouting as to make the whole thing seem ridiculous.

The Baden-Powell Boy Scouts is not the same as the Boy Scout Association. There was a dividing of the way in the scout fraternity over woggles or the words of the last verse of "She'll be coming round the mountain" or something similar leading to rancour and misuse of the scouts' two fingered salute.

The Salvation Army on the other hand is cosy, you even get breakfast. The favourite with Chinese guests seems to be vermicelli type pasta with a slice of pork luncheon meat on top and some lettuce. I couldn't take it first thing in the morning but at least it's a step up from one traditional Chinese breakfast: gruel made from fish heads. As I say, they don't waste much here.

At the Peak

I'm writing this sitting in a coffee bar on the Peak (the highest spot in Hong Kong}. It is dark and there is a fabulous view of the lights around HK harbour. It is about as beautiful as a city can look at night.

The trip to HK was uneventful (which is a Good Thing on flights as far as I'm concerned). Are plane seats getting narrower or am I getting wider? I used to feel I knew how a sardine felt, now I think they have it easy, at least they have enough room for their knees. I thought including Enduring Love among the in-flight films was an inspired choice (it starts with someone falling to a very nasty death from a hot air balloon).

About dawn we looked out to see a sight like the landscape of Titan: an orange sky illuminating an endless rocky, partly snow covered, mountain range. Mongolia maybe (we were somewhere SE of Ulan Bator). The landscape changed slowly from snow to just rock as we got further soth. Occasionally you could see small towns.

And eventually after 11.5 hours we arrived in HK and got the bus to the hotel. It was, by HK standards, a winter's day but, despite that, all air conditioning (and there is a lot) was on the perma-frost setting. We turned it off and thawed out the room.

The hotel is owned by the Salvation Army (no, it's not a shelter for down and outs) which means no alcohol in the mini-bar but otherwise it's fine.


More later, "good customers use the net for only fifteen minutes at a time" it says here ...

Simon