Day 226 – 15 March 2010: I forgot about the Absinthe

UK to OZ: the Review: Having completed the London to Sydney ‘UK to Oz’ trip. I feel I should have some comments to make. Hmm, where to start? Certainly not at the beginning.

Nobody really will know what they are letting themselves in for when they pack off in a truck for 32 weeks with thirty strangers. You will have fallings out, especially if you find yourself camping in a desolate landscape in -20°C. However, the people you at first find unappealing may turn out to be your friends by the end of the trip, and vice versa. There were many episodes where I found myself nearly coming to blows with somebody in the morning only to be chatting amiably with them by the afternoon as if nothing had happened, so the dynamic becomes a lot like a family, I suppose. Not that you have to keep in touch with afterwards though. However, there are many people I will keep in touch with because we have shared some of the best times we will probably ever experience like:

The cultural collision that is Istanbul, jumping off the top of a mountain with a parachute floating high a sapphire blue bay in Oludeniz, careering around on quad bikes through an alien landscape of pointing rock high rise peaks in Goreme, discovering the natural and historical beauties of Iran, and the welcoming friendliness of its people, being amiably escorted through Pakistan by guards armed with AK47s or mounted machine guns, negotiating the zoo of humanity in Indian cities and its ancient monuments and holy sites, riding elephants through jungles, getting dumped into white water rapids and hiking around the Himalayas in Nepal (and not quite bearing its restaurant service standards), going through the timewarp of rural Tibet and China, and contrasting it with the vibrancy and explosive growth of its major cities (and it’s new wealth ostentation with a still present under-current of political repression), not to mention performing an impromptu gig in a Beijing Train Station....finding that Laos and Vietnam are not relics of wars, but are now some of the most desirable locations to visit for tourists and backpackers. In Vietnam, some of the best food I had on the whole journey was served by wandering cooks on the beach. In Cambodia, the scars of atrocity are still on display, but its future looks much brighter. In Thailand, I dived with bull sharks in open water and experienced the questionable entertainments of Bangkok. And there was skidding around the bay on a jet ski in Langkawi in Malaysia. Malaysia was a kind of rediscovery of modernity and cleanliness, with the towers of KL and the prevalence of sit down toilets. Indonesians, meanwhile, are some of the most genuine and friendly people of all, while Australia features awesome remote landscapes, with a sunnily dispositioned populace who are generous with their hospitality too, though now they are some of the wealthiest people in the world, this should perhaps be no surprise. What was a bit of a surprise is how highly rule based Australia is, but more of that later. What I am saying in all this is that, you know, I kind of had fun, as it happens.

Back to today, and some relatively mundane excitements:

Having ended my night early yesterday, I should be feeling sprightly today, but that was forgetting the sips from cured OCD’er Andrew’s hip flask I had, so I abandon plans to walk around Sydney.

For lunch, I see if Sydney’s pizza fares any better than my Melbourne experience. In Australia, they do pizzas which they call ‘gourmet’ which basically means there are mountains of toppings on it. Note to Oz pizza makers: if you can’t make a decent margherita, then you can’t make pizza. This pizza is a 12 inch thin crust and there’s lots of rich cheese on it, but the saltiness of the pepperoni makes me feel like I’m eating a pizza from McDonalds. I go back to bed feeling ill, though for the cheesiness I give it 7.

Later I get up to collect tickets I’ve ordered for a Massive Attack gig outside the Opera House tomorrow.  As I walk past the open stage area, I find the band sound checking, as they are also playing tonight. By the time I come out with my tickets, the path next to the stage area has been fenced off, though I walk through a gap to get a better listen and take a sneaky video....

Dinner is in the hostel, where I cook pasta with Jen. It’s quite a homely feeling to be cooking in a modern kitchen for ourselves, and not another thirty people.

I am still not entirely sure what to do with myself, and where I will be going next.

Day 225 – 14 March 2010: London to Sydney overland (well just about). Done. Now what?

The end....of the beginning.

I am not feeling too healthy after my Tabasco beer experience.

Arriving in Sydney, we must look like a band of gypsies taking out our tents and laying them on the grass in the middle of the city to dry them out.

We say goodbye to Scouse Pete, his wife Pam, Big John and Tracy, and Mario and Jana, the Germans off to adventure on their own from here. The rest of us move into Sydney Harbour YHA, a busy modern hostel with all mod cons which is built on top of some ruins which date all the way back to, oh I don’t know, the last decade, and which are on display on the ground of the open central courtyard. On the top floor, there is open rooftop seating with a view over Sydney Harbour and the Opera House.

In my room, which I am sharing with Joost, Shay and Dan, the former two shave off the beards which they have been cultivating in South East Asia. They do it in stages to test the various looks they could adopt, before wisely deciding to finish the job.

We have a rooftop drinks party, with Lucinda, who rejoined the group in Melbourne, fulfilling her now unpaid role of organiser in chief. My night ends though when I come out of the toilet to find that everybody has left, presumably onto a pub.

Day 224 - 13 March 2010: Tabasco Beer

There are quite a few murky heads this morning including my own.

On the road again, we stop at a petrol station for a toilet break. Jen decides she really needs to get off the bus and wants a flat surface to rest her head on, so she lies down on the station forecourt.

We camp about 150km from Sydney in a town called, oh I don’t know, let’s call it Frank. Our campsite doubles as a part-time horse paddock and, though there are horses there now with us, the evidence of their presence rests in the wall-less stable.

It’s our last night together as a group, so we descend on the pub, where my pints are regularly spiked with Tabasco. For some reason I don’t mind this even after I am told.

Day 223 – 12 March 2010: After 223 days I no longer know nor care where I am

Another long driving day through ‘roo territory: one kangaroo hops speedily along the side of the bus for a while before mysteriously deciding to headbutt it. I think it survived but, with that sort of behaviour, probably not for long.

Scots Widow Helen is the first person we say goodbye to in Australia. We drop her in Sale, where she is seeing some friends. In a few days, we’ll all be saying goodbye, at least I think we will as I have no idea still where I am going after Sydney.

We stop for lunch somewhere I never did learn the name of, but it has a coastal national park, which is separated from the mainland by an intercoastal river. Near the bridge across the river to the beach park is an elaborate sand carving featuring an intertwined collage of sealife shapes. I walked along the vast near deserted beach towards a pump throwing up sand and seawater back into the ocean. Walking back through rich vegetation in sand dunes off the beach, I came across a number of items of human detritus such as used tampons and condoms.

It’s Joost’s birthday today and tonight’s bush camp turns into a party, and this means another round of underwear ripping. I can think of some circumstances where having my pants ripped off would be quite desirable, but none of those circumstances involve a burly Dutchman.

I try to go to bed, but Joost is not tolerating it, or at least I’m not tired enough to sleep through his boisterousness. I get back up, finally bedding down last at about 2a.m., after chatting to Jen for a couple of hours.

Day 222 – 11 March 2010: Critter filled campsite

It’s quite cold and my tent is damp when I get up for a 6a.m. breakfast, but I warm up by the fire.

We drive to Wilson’s Promontory, the southern most point of Australia. Before a days walking, we set up camp in a campsite brimming with Crimson Rosellas (or at least that’s what I think they are from searching on the internet), cartoonishly red and blue birds which are tame enough to rest on Big John’s arm as he feeds them crisps.

We go for a climbing walk up a gravel path passing a telegraph station to the peak of Mount Oberon, where we have a commanding but tranquil view over Oberon Bay, where the retreating sea has left lakes and marsh lands.

In the evening after dinner, Steve suggests we go for a walk to find some echidnas or wombats, as this is the time they come out. I stay behind. Some people come back saying they have seen a ‘wisdom’ of wombats, but they needn’t have bothered as soon wombats are crawling around our bus, one even wandering obliviously through the middle of our circle of seats.

photo courtesy of the Bennell

Day 221 – 10 March 2010: Australia, the home of ‘elf’n’safety

After spending most of the morning exploiting the opportunity to catch up with emails for a few hours, Ceri, Alice (another Brit who has been staying with Ceri but is coming to the end of her time in Oz) and I go for my first Aussie pizza at The Grand. It’s disappointing really, the base being a bit bready and the cheese not being cooked enough. 5/10 .

The local papers are full of stories about the local trams being unsafe, which may well explain the go-slow of the tram I take back to the campsite. It takes an hour and I nearly miss our bus.

We bush camp a few hours outside of Melbourne at an off road campsite in farming country. Jen and I for a run in the dark, which my croc shoes are not really made for. Out here in the countryside, the Milky Way fills the skies at night.

I went to sleep to the sound of some mellow blues guitar picking from a neighbouring camper van.

Day 220 – 09 March 2010: Melbourne and an odd feeling of homeliness

Arriving at the Melbourne campsite in late morning, I ‘upgrade’ for the first time on my journey, taking a tram to the centre of Melbourne and then to Richmond where Ceri, my oldest friend from home, now lives with Dani, her Aussie partner. I half feel that I have already finished my trip, because this is the first time I have stayed in a home since the first night of August last year. Dani is a bit of a cleanliness freak and, having been camping for half of the last thirty weeks, and all of the last three, I feel like I am dirtying the home just by being here.

I don’t know exactly what I will be doing when I arrive with the UK to Oz group arrive in Sydney, but I know I will be coming back to Melbourne at some point, so I don’t feel like exploring Melbourne in the brief time I am here at the moment. Instead, I spend the afternoon drinking cider with Ceri catching up on the last couple of years.

Day 219 – 08 March 2010: The Great Ocean Road, and we’ve reached Devon

When we camp at these random places, we tend to have breakfast at 6 and leave at 7. Today there are some displeased people being told to get up a half hour earlier than expected, as they hadn’t realised that the clocks moved forward by that much as we crossed into Victoria yesterday.

Today we drive along the Great Ocean Road, stopping at several places to observe the spectacular scenes from the disintegrating limestone cliffs and rock stacks of coastal Victoria. The Bay of Islands is like an archipelago of isolated platforms rising from the sea. There is a menacing elegance to these scenes, the ocean waves crashing and swelling up the rocks. Then there is what is now called ‘London Arch’, having been billed as ‘London Bridge’ until 1990 when the double archway became a single one as the narrow arch connecting them to the mainland collapsed into the sea.

Later there is a stop in Torquay and the weather is very Torquay like too. After seven months travelling through Hampshire, we have made it through Dorset to Devon in double quick time. In that time, everyone in Devon has converted to driving mopeds and the dialect has taken a funny turn.

The most mystical sight of our journey today is ‘The Twelve Apostles’, who have, alas, lost some of their brethren, the necks of some of the large Merlin’s head rock towers having given way to the power of the ocean. There must have been some hefty crashes along the way. Unfortunately, some of the remaining Apostles, of which there are eight, may not be long for this world either, although while they continue to defy gravity they are the sight to see on the Great Ocean Road journey.

There is a reason why this part of the coast is referred to as the Shipwreck Coast, and Loch Ard Gorge, another limestone stack feature, is named after a clipper ship that wrecked here in 1878, killing all but two of the fifty one people on board. There is also a cemetery on the walkway through the scrub where remains of some of those recovered from the wreck are buried.

However, the atmosphere of the brutal coast line is somewhat dissipated by the warning signs and fences that line the walk through the scrub land. Health and Safety has scarred the landscape. In the defence of such maintenance, it does allow rich vegetation to grow, supporting lots of wildlife like birds, voles and, not so welcome to these other animals nor to humans, tiger snakes. Having said that, the presence of these snakes provides a natural disincentive to trampling through the plant growth.

On the road again, we see an Echidna crossing the road, otherwise known as a spiny anteater, a hedgehog like creature with an elongated snout. Our guide Steve mentions that this is only the third one that he has ever seen that wasn’t already road pizza.

We bush camp near a petrol station just far enough from Melbourne to avoid being at a real campsite. A couple who did the UK to Oz trip before and who are now living in Melbourne come out to meet us, and they are induced into doing the cooking for us.

                                                                 Link: More Pics

Day 218 – 07 March 2010: A Lake of Sapphire

It will take two days to get to Melbourne. At lunch time we stop at Mt Gambier, the ‘Mount’ actually being a range of volcanic craters, one of which is now a saline lake, which changes colour with the seasons. Today it is the richest blue.

Tonight’s bush camp is by a scout station and, quelle surprise, it’s raining. There is a vast lake nearby, but this one is far from blue. In fact the ground around it is bouncy & wobbly, like we’ve landed on strange sponge like planet. The mud looks like it could swallow a person whole.