Creature Comforts

As Bear Grylls knows only too well, survival in the bush is pinned upon perfecting the art of improvisation.  I think we're doing quite well.

We have an alarm clock to wake us up:

This crow wakes us up at 6am sharp, whether we like it or not

We start the day with a cup of coffee, using milk that comes in a tube and sugar sachets 'acquired' from cafes frequented during the previous day:

Then we shower and get dressed, picking clothes from our capsule wardrobe:

Finally, I take a seat at my dressing table, and apply much needed makeup to hide the dark circles from yet another sleepless night:

However, if I haven't made it abundantly clear already, i'm not the world's biggest fan of camping (sorry Bear).  My attempt to pluck my eyebrows the other night (by wearing a head torch and using a tiny hand held mirror), failed.  Miserably.

Needless to say, I am THRILLED that we will be sleeping in a bed, in a warm, dry, wind proof motel for the next two nights, complete with shower, fridge and TV!

And yes, I am the first to admit that despite my best intentions when I set out writing this blog, I am sounding more and more like Carrie Bradshaw everyday.

The only gay in the prison

While camping in Fremantle, we decided to pay a visit to Fremantle prison, which housed some of Australia's most notorious criminals for over 100 years until it closed in '91.

First point to note - it's amazing how spacious and appealing even the most primitive of living conditions can seem (i.e. a cell with a bed, a bedside table, a desk and a sink) when you are camping in a 6ft x 4ft tent!

                                                                                              vs.

Secondly, I would never have imagined that a tour around the prison would end up being so amusing and embarrassing....

Meet Andrew...our prison tour guide:

Andrew not only looked just like Daffyd in Little Britain, he also possessed all the same mannerisms and even spoke like him too.  My favourite quote was when he was describing the media's response to a prison riot in the 1980s... "Oooh, they couldn't keep away... they were like seagulls eating chips.  They just couldn't get enough!"



Then, just our luck, Martin and I got selected for audience participation (in other words Daffyd didn't like the look of us).  My stomach sank.

Daffyd thought a little role play was needed and handed me a whip, with a big smile on his face.  I then had to give Martin 5 lashings, much to the amusement of Daffyd and the other 18 people on our tour.

Awkward?  Yes.  Was this made worse by Daffyd giving inappropriate sexual-inuendo related winks and nudges?  Yes.

Little Britain tour guide and lashings aside, it was actually a very fascinating trip.

One more step along the road I go....

With a lump in my throat, it was time to say goodbye to my Sydney life of flat whites, yoga, lazy days on Bronte beach and my new-found friends.  After packing and re-packing my tiny backpack numerous times to reduce my extensive wardrobe down to the bare essentials, we boarded a plane, bound for WA.  First stop: Perth.

Ariel view of Rottnest island... AKA Paradise

One of the top things to do from Perth is take a ferry to Rottnest Island.  However, it was only on the crossing that Martin decided to inform me that 'Rottnest' translates to 'Rat Nest' island...and that the place is crawling with large rodents.


Spending the day cycling up and down hills in 35 degree heat, dodging giant rats didn't exactly fill me with joy!

However, as soon as I laid eyes on the picture -perfect coastline, with miles of dazzling white sand and turquoise water, my fears were soon forgotten!

The cycling was 'OK' i.e. there were hills but no mountains, I didn't fall off the bike or vomit...so it was a marked improvement on my Mexican cycling disaster a few years ago!





As for the giant rats (Quokkas), they weren't half as scary as I was expecting... they had horrible fat, rat-like tails granted, but they turned out to be chilled out little fellas, that ambled along minding their own business.

Rottnest island = a must-visit destination, even for rodent haters like myself.

Singing in the rain...

We booked to go to the Good Vibrations festival back in September.  The thought of drinking beer in the sun, listening to Faithless, Erykah Badu and the Tings Tings while we lay sprawled out on the grass, was very appealing and something I looked forward to for months!

When the day I’d been waiting for finally arrived, the sky was a disappointing shade of grey, with thunderstorms due late afternoon. 

So, off we trundled, armed with our ponchos…and boy did we need them!

Check out the couple in the background...hilarious!

But we didn’t let the rain bring us down…in fact, jumping up and down to Faithless as we got continually drenched helped to keep us….refreshed!

Similarities between English & Australian music festivals:

• Rain. Rain. And more bloody rain.
• Lots of people walking around in plastic bags (ponchos)
• A strong smell of ganja in the air
• Very expensive Chinese food
• Men pissing anywhere and everywhere

Differences:

• Muscles and baseball caps worn backwards!  Australian men clearly spend as much time in the gym / taking steroids as Brits spend in the pub
• Tiger beer instead of Heineken…not quite right somehow
• Amazingly clean portaloos
• No crowd surfing
• Women don’t just strip down to their bras…they go topless

Singlet, muscles and baseball cap...meet the Aussie male festival goer

Adventures in the Outback

Having spent 5 months in Oz without bumping into Skippy or his pals and never being more than a stone-throw from the sea, we felt the need to venture into the bush…

So we planned an epic road trip, from Sydney to Adelaide, via Broken Hill - apparently a ‘must- visit’ destination... in the middle of nowhere.

While part of me looked forward to experiencing the ‘real Australia’, I also questioned whether miles upon miles of straight road and red soil would make for a damn boring trip!

It has to be said that it was a rollercoaster of highs and lows…

The highs

·     Being given a crate of beer AND an esky (cool box) by our friendly campsite neighbour in Nyngan

·     Going to Nyngan RSL for dinner – a cross between a school canteen and bingo hall

·     Beans on toast with garnish for breakfast

·     Strawberry picking with the hill billies in Huntley!

·     Drinking ice cream sodas in an original 50s diner in Broken Hill 

·     Driving at 150kms per hour on the open road in Bruce, our Mitsubishi Outlander

·     Spotting some amazing monster ‘road train’ trucks

·     Camping next to a crazy / scary Australian who had a trailer full of beautiful little puppies!

·     Visiting the pub used in the Castlemaine XXXX adverts

·     Hungry Jack’s pancakes – surprisingly good!

·     Martin having an argument with a motel manager who told me off for not filling out the Check-In form correctly, then storming out of his office!

 The lows…

·     Getting to Cobar and then having to take a 600KM detour because the main road to Broken Hill was closed ‘until further notice’ due to a burst dam! NOOOOOOOOOO.

·     Driving for 3 hours, feeling famished and walking into a pub that looked like it hadn’t had a customer for the last 2 years only to be told by the butch woman behind the bar that they’d stopped serving food 10 minutes ago

·     Showering with frogs and spiders in what you or me would call a shed, not a bathroom

Overall, it was a great trip… despite the detour and yes, we found Skippy and his not so fortunate friends...

The kangaroo count was as follows:

7 dead (full body)

1 dead (head only)

1 live and jumping!

Going Barmy with the Army!

I’ve never been a cricket fan, in fact, I don’t even have a clue what an ‘Over’ is.  So being in Australia at the same time as  The Ashes wasn’t a big deal to me.  

However, as Martin and our friend's Nick and Zena LOVE cricket, I inevitably got swept up in the celebrations when England, to my surprise, actually won!  What was supposed to be a few quiet Friday night drinks turned into a lock in at ‘Barmy Army HQ’.  

Before I knew it, I was arm in arm with die hard cricket fans, celebrating victory with pints of (Aussie) beer, doing ‘The Sprinkler’ and singing; ‘ We are the Army, the Barmy Army and we are mental…’ at the top of my lungs.

I still no nothing when it comes to the rules of cricket but I do know the lyrics to all the songs now!

Who needs the Harbour Bridge to celebrate New Year when Coogee Sparkles!

There's no doubt that the obvious place to spend New Year’s Eve in Sydney is at the Harbour Bridge but with Martin working at 7am the following morning, the battle to get a taxi home along with 1.5 million others lead us to abandon this plan and celebrate at home instead.

So, we invited our good friends Nick and Zena over to ours, I cooked up a retro buffet - hot dogs, chicken wings, and even  cheese and pineapple on sticks and we had a ball.

We knew there was a fireworks display taking place on our local beach but the name of the event (‘Coogee Sparkles’) really didn’t do it justice.  Our flat happened to be in prime position to watch the firework extravaganza that without doubt, gave the harbour bridge a run for its money.  It was brilliant!

Lots of bottles of Asahi beer later, we ran down to the beach and caught the ‘3, 2, 1’ bit of the countdown to see in the New Year.

Alcohol + sea + celebrating new year = only one thing: a midnight swim in the ocean, which was both cold and hilarious in equal measure.

Brimming with excitement, Martin and I then made a spontaneous trip to The Palace – a very tacky nightclub, where, still dripping wet, we danced the night away with lots of 18 year old backpackers.  What a great way to start 2011!

Celebrating Christmas the Aussie way...

It was a bit hit and miss as to whether I’d be spending Christmas in Australia, due to Britain’s inability to cope with any weather other than drizzle.  Snow and ice resulted in Heathrow airport being ground to a halt for 3 days and it honestly looked like my 10 day visit to the UK was going to be extended against my will.  Thankfully however, I was booked on to one of the only flights not cancelled or delayed on 22nd December.

As such, I got to celebrate Christmas Aussie-style afterall, which went something like this…

Waking up to bright blue sky and sunshine and going for a leisurely walk along the beach, where every other person wore a santa hat to complement their bikini or board shorts 

A BBQ at Martin’s brothers house.  There was steak for the men, while I opted for 'shrimps on the Barbie' for my xmas lunch!

An afternoon dip in the neighbour’s pool to cool off in the 30 degree heat

 So, it was certainly a different xmas this year… no Queen’s speech, no grandparents knocking back the sherry, no falling asleep on the sofa in front of one of the Back To The Future films having consumed far too much xmas pudding and red wine, but nevertheless, it was a damn fine day.

When a night is so bad, it's good!

Port Macquarie is a pretty little town half way between Byron Bay and Sydney.  Having read about the stunning beaches and Koala hospital in my 2002 Australian Lonely planet, it seemed like a good location to pitch our tent for a night.

However, what we hadn’t been prepared for was our hilarious Friday night out on the town!

We started off having dinner in a tapas restaurant, which has got to be next in line for Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares...

First was the live entertainment – a singer / guitarist who covered the most inappropriate songs for a Spanish restaurant including  - Eye of the Tiger and Gloria Gayners ‘I will survive’- all sung out of tune!

Guitarist in far right hand corner.  Take note of the very
 bright lights in the restaurant! 

The restaurant manager clapped extra loud at the end of every song, in the dazzling restaurant. The rose seller, huge portion sizes (e.g. bread and olives = a loaf of bread and a whole jar of olives), plus the makeshift bar in the corner of the room all added to the comedy.

Next was a visit to a local bar- A cross between a conservatory found in an old people’s home and Wetherspoons, with music.

Last stop was the Ritz cinema, which hadn’t received a lick of paint since 1982.  The refreshments counter still had Halloween decorations up – not sure if these were left over from Halloween (a month ago) or stay up permanently.

Martin insisted we reserved tickets – after all a 9.30pm showing on a Friday night was bound to be busy, wasn’t it?

Apparently not.

We retired to our piece of nylon and semi-inflated airbed feeling full and totally bemused by Port Macquarie.

Carry on camping....without me!

A trip to Oz wouldn’t be complete without embarking on the well-trodden backpacker route down the east coast. However, what we didn’t realize is that we picked Schoolies Week to do just that, the week that 13,000 17-18 year olds descend on the Gold coast to get obliterated after exams. Bad planning!

Our stay in Noosa was lovely though – Noosa was obviously a bit too low key for schoolies.  I made the sensible decision to book a camp site 4 miles out of Byron Bay for our next stop.  It appears schoolies have cars.  Four miles meant nothing to the flaming galahs and we were given a spot sandwiched between 2 large groups – dance lovers to the left and indie lovers to the right, it turns out.  

In their defence, they were probably much quieter than I’ve ever been after a few too many drinks (i.e. there was no singing!), but being woken at 3am to the sound of vomiting was not ideal.  Nor was seeing a girl throw up into a plastic bag while we ate our breakfast.

We left Byron Bay a little tired and journeyed down the coast stopping at Port Macquarie and Port Stephens along the way, which were schoolie-free.  On the 3^rd night we woke up to find very large brown beetles all over our tent.  

The horrible bugs we woke up to on our tent!

Needless to say 4 nights sleeping under a piece of nylon in Australia was more than enough camping for me!