Day 302 – 30 May 2010 & Day 302 – 30 May 2010: The longest day

Today is my last day in Melbourne. My flight is not until late in the day, so I go for lunch with Ceri and Dani to The Curry Club, an Indian restaurant serving a buffet. Buffets are usually pretty rubbish because if they were any good you wouldn't want to stop eating, but this one is fair dinkum and I leave with a heavy stomach.

Afterwards, I take Louie for one last walk to work off lunch, before Ceri and I visit the pub for a couple of pints and play some pool.

And then I face a thirteen and a half hour flight to LA, during which I begin to regret having curry for lunch, but am not put off eating dinner and then the same day's breakfast before going quietly crazy as I still hate flying. When I land, it is still only six o'clock in the evening.

I am staying at a hostel near the airport. It's cheap and cheerful, but it has a pool and a bar and restaurant which gives out free snacks and a free beer on arrival. The accommodation is like sharing a cheap motel room with strangers. It is not in a part of LA that you would really want to stay in, it must be said.

For dinner, I have soup & bread as an inclusive starter, mozzarella sticks, spaghetti meatballs and a very stiff JD & Coke, costing me all of $21 US, which is about how much the JD would have cost in some places in Oz.
Oz Pictures 

Days 282 to 301 – 10 to 29 May 2010: Melbourne dog sitter and a tribute of undue haste

It is said that Melbourne is the most English / European of Australian cities, and I have to say that staying in the Richmond on the east side of the city reminded me of a hip suburb of London, but with better restaurants. St Kilda, the beach suburb which I cycled to one afternoon, was a little like Blackpool, with its ageing theme park and long open beaches, though there are less sail boats in Blackpool if memory serves me right.

On arriving at Ceri and Dani's place yesterday, I was greeted by a growling Jack Russell called Louie. I responded by making smooching sounds and holding my hand out to his nose. Therein he is my little excitable and somewhat acrobatic little friend. For the whole of my stay, on weekdays when Ceri and Dani had left for work, he would sneak into my bedroom and crawl into bed with me. Not content just to be on the bed, he would dig himself under the duvet, curling himself up against me.

One of my main activities while I am in Melbourne is to take Louie out to the local parks to frantically chase and then be chased by other dogs, no matter what the size. He had nothing to fear from the big dogs as there was no way they could catch him. I did see him matched for pace by a whippet greyhound once, but thankfully it was quite a wimpish one, and it had to be rescued and comforted by its owner.

My other main activity was sampling the local cider with Ceri in a number of the cities bars, though mainly the one around the corner from the house.

Early on in my stay, I found myself on a rally in favour of legalising gay marriage, complete with a broad shouldered miming Lady GaGa impersonator and a shouty student union leader to get the crowd warmed up for the march through the city streets.

Lady GaGa is someone who has only really become famous during my travels, so I am not familiar with her music, but the impersonator is not even miming to one of her songs, but to a speech she recorded in favour of gay rights. And he was miming like he didn't know the words. It was deeply bizarre, and possibly the worst drag act I've ever seen, though there is no shortage of competition for that coveted post.

Having told Ceri about the tale of the kangaroo tail, which was our meal on one of the first nights the UK to Oz group was in Australia, she tells me that Aussies use better cuts of kangaroo meat to feed their dogs. However, I am determined to sample a proper kangaroo steak, so Ceri cooked one for me one night. I have to say that I enjoyed it even more than the Wagyu steak (also known as Kobe beef, the beer fed cattle) that we had in one of Richmond's restaurants, though she would probably disagree with my assessment.

One of the highlights of my stay was going with Ceri and Dani to a house auction, where the house is sold to the highest bidder on the street outside the property. In England, only houses that have been repossessed tend to get auctioned, so they are usually at the lower end of the property ladder. Here though the opposite applies and it is the properties in the most desirable locations that tend to get auctioned. And Melbourne is about as expensive as Sydney nowadays. This house, a small two bedroomed property with a tiny seating area outside the back, looks like an ageing pre-fab home from the outside, though comfortable enough inside. Ceri and Dani think it needs a new kitchen and they don't bid, though there is no shortage of bidders in the crowd. It sells for A$690k (about £425k).

Another highlight is a visit to the MCG, a stadium famous around the cricket playing world which also has a museum of sport. However, the museum is as much about Aussie Rules Football (AFL) as it is about cricket, though the cricket part of it does have the ball that was used in the original Ashes test match.

It also has a 3D cinematic tribute to the career of Shane Warne presented by...Shane Warne. Great cricketer though he was, such a semi-permanent display is surely only fit for those that are at least nearly dead. Especially if the person concerned is still prone to getting headlines on the wrong side of the newspaper in reports that involve xxxx-ing out several words of text messages that he's sent. I shouldn't have been surprised though, as the outside of the stadium is circled by statues of several Aussie cricketers and AFL players of the not too distant past (and Don Bradman, perhaps the only one whose tribute was not erected with undue haste)..

The stadium is quite imposing though, with a capacity of 100k, and the tour takes us around the dressing rooms, the team pavilions, the training facilities, and around various halls and rooms reserved for club members. They are able to play both AFL and cricket on the ground because the cricket strip is in a tray and can be removed for the AFL games.

I enjoyed my time in Melbourne, though it was a relatively uneventful few weeks compared to the previous nine months. Staying with my friends, and Melbourne having a familiar ambience, it's almost like a very long weekend at home. But I need to figure out how I am going to get home from here.

Day 281 – 09 May 2010: Australians take another British Crown

If you need to get to Sydney from Melbourne, then fly. Most Australians do. I say this even though I hate flying. Flying is more comfortable (as long as you are not having a panic attack), much quicker and, on top of this, cheaper. The train is wobbly and slow, not unlike the train ride we had taken through Java in Indonesia, though that train at least had much more entertaining company by way of train jumping merchants selling everything from ginger beer to batteries, and aisle dancing she-male entertainers singing 'a-wallah-wallah-wah, ah-wallah-wallah-wah'. None of that on this train though. The only people on it are retirees. Sorry if that seems ageist, but my mood was tarnished by this experience, not only because for the first time that I can think of I became train sick, but also because of my fellow passengers.

Though I selected to go first class for this trip as it wasn't that much more expensive, and the carriage quite sparsely populated, my queasy state wasn't helped by the never ending conversation between two biddies sat behind me. Though they had never met before, they both seemed to be trying out for the Olympic endurance conversation team, and they had plenty of nothing to say to eachother, telling not very interesting tales about people one of them knew but the other didn't. One of the voices was more dominant and carriage penetrating than her opposite number, but the quieter rival had a special weapon of being able to make long slow 'oooh yeeesss' sounds, thankfully not in the ecstatic sense as this would really have sent me over the edge, but in the nodding your head slowly sense. She had exquisite timing, as she was able to make these sounds just as the louder one was beginning the sentence she was already agreeing with. Class act, I tip her to dip in for the Gold by a nodding head length...

After six of the eleven hours of the journey had passed, I had to change seats and the rest of the journey was more peaceful, if still a little queasy.

For long journeys like this, the passengers are invited to check in their luggage which gets put into a secure baggage carriage. When we finally arrive at Melbourne, a baggage handler lays out the suitcases in a neat line, while a queue forms at the top of this line. I can see my suitcase at the front, but I assume that the queue is there because there will be some sort of checking process where the luggage is matched against our tickets. I am wrong. When the handler nods his head to signal that he has finished, the orderly queue melts into a slow scramble of people picking out their bags. Have elderly Australians got some misplaced and bizarre nostalgia for communist bloc disciplines? Actually, I don't think that's it. I suspect that it is that us Brits have always thought of ourselves as the world's best queuers, but the Aussies want to beat us at everything nowadays.

I realise it is me who may appear to be the old git.

Ceri is on hand to collect me at the train station. We get to their place in Richmond at about 7:30 in the evening and drink a couple of the bottles I had left there in March after my wine tasting adventures in the Clare Valley.

My travels are at a point of hiatus, as I will be taking this opportunity to stay still for a couple of weeks.

Day 280 – 08 May 2010: God's City and unwanted shark facts

the shark net

a fare dodging passenger

City of God?

Janaya recommended a visit to Manly, a des res peninsula suburb of Sydney on the north lip of the mouth of Sydney Harbour. I knew that it was known for its beaches, but I had decided that I wasn't going to go swimming so didn't bring a change of clothes. The ferry from Circular Quay is full with tourists, and it provides an opportunity to experience Sydney Harbour at its best. The sun is out, the sea birds are perching on the extremities of the boats and from this vantage point, Sydney really does look like a city made by gods.

My wisdom of my decision not to bring swim trunks was reinforced when I saw shark safety nets in the water at the beach at Manly Cove. However, I quickly regret my decision when I realise that I could have rented a kayak to paddle around the aquatic wildlife reserves on the ocean side of Manly.

The Manly Cove beach is small and not much to get excited about, but there is an aquarium on the north end of the beach. Although this is a slight return for me, having visited a similar one in Singapore on Sentosa Island, I pay it a visit realising that the shark nets on the Cove beach are probably there due to the aquarium. Like most modern aquariums, it has an underwater walk through tunnel, and its key attraction is sharks. To the uninitiated, these could be White Sharks, being over three metres long and with menacingly sharp and jagged rows of teeth. However, they are Grey Nurse Sharks which have slightly smaller jaws and have two dorsal fins and, though they don't look much less frightening than the White Shark, they are thought of as placid and relatively harmless to humans.

For me, perhaps the highlight of the aquarium are the giant manta rays, floating along like flapping flying saucers.

It is here in the aquarium that I learn that the shark responsible for the most attacks on humans is the Bull Shark and that they have the highest levels of testosterone of any living being. Though I knew they were potentially dangerous at the time, I am glad I didn't have quite this much information about them when I went diving with them in Thailand.

Leaving the Ocean World Aquarium, I stop for lunch at one of the many seafood restaurants and order a tuna steak, only the second time I have seen it on the menu in Australia. This one is seared with cajun spices and is a good bit of fish, but not quite as good as the raw tuna dish I had at Fishheads at Byron. Also, it doesn't need the cajun spice.

The main Manly beach across the narrow middle of the peninsula to the ocean side, but I take a walk onwards to the north head. The beach at this end is in a rocky cove and the reef here must be teeming with fish as there are schools of scuba divers and countless snorkelers swimming out from the beach, right around to the head.

Above the beachhead, a walking trail begins taking me through bush land and provides some spectacular views over the open Tasman Sea. Eventually I come across the Northern Head National Park information centre, which occupies a building in a former military artillery school. This was most in use during the Vietnam War, and it doesn't look as if it is wholly out of use, though when I peak into one a room in a cabin, I spot a TV which must date from the seventies.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to do the whole walk around Northern Head, but I do get around to the west side overlooking Sydney Harbour, with the legion of sailing boats, speed boats and a tall ship navigating the harbour making me feel very glad to be alive.

When I left Sydney in March, I left a skinny lass from Leeds anxious about facing life in a city of strangers about as far from home as she could be. The Jen I meet at Circular Quay in the evening is strutting confidently towards me with a smile on her face.

She got a job not long after everyone had left her in Sydney and, though she was robbed of her most valuable belongings not long after finding lodgings, she has quickly discovered her capacity for independence. She is also wearing tight jeans, highlighting her quite delightful posterior. Jen is a faithful sort though, and she is faithfully committed to not fancying me. I had intended to treat her to a meal, but she announces that we are going to Bondi to meet up with John and Tracy from our UK to Oz trip, and who are soon departing for home. Also, Jen is now the employed one, so she offers to buy me a meal when we get to Bondi.

Our first stop in Bondi is the Cock 'n' Bull at The Grand Hotel, from which I was ejected by bouncers on St Patrick's night for looking a bit sleepy. We stay there for a while before receiving a call from Tracy to say that they are at a pub nearer the beach and another bus ride away. By the time we meet up with them, we have had a few and we only stay for a couple of drinks.

When we get back to Circular Quay, it is quite late and Jen is going onto one of her housemates' leaving party. She fulfils her promise to buy me a meal though.....at Hungry Jack's (aka Burger King in the rest of the world). Feeling a little tipsy and having said my farewells to Jen, I have to admit that I struggled to hold back a tear as I walked back to the hostel.

Tomorrow, I will be catching the train to Melbourne to stay for a while with my friends Ceri and Dani. I have known Ceri for over twenty years, but I go to bed tonight feeling very alone. When the UK to Oz trip ended in Sydney in March, it was a little anti-climatic as the group faded away in steps rather parted with one great party. Or at least I missed the party having gone to the toilet just before those who remained departed the hostel to go on a pub crawl. Having spent the following month and a half with Caz and Mary, it is only now, having said goodbye to Jen, that I feel as if that chapter has finally closed.

Day 279 – 07 May 2010: Back to Sydney

In the morning, Janaya walks me around the area around the farmhouse. I refer to it as a farm because she does, but it has no animals and the only thing grown on it is dense woodland, which Janaya wants to chop down and sell for timber once her dad passes down this part of the farm to her. It's a beautiful spot, with ponds scattered around the landscape from which the morning mist rises so densely that I mistook one in the distance for a bonfire.

We meet up with Maureen, the accountant who Janaya works for. One of their clients is a rock band that are apparently quite successful in Oz and are playing at a festival in Newcastle, which is not far north of Sydney. Janaya and Maureen are meeting up with them and have free tickets for the festival, while I will catch the train from there to Sydney. It's another four hour drive, but Maureen rents a car for the journey, so it is rather more comfortable than yesterday's drive in Janaya's 1984 Toyota Sudan with its blue vinyl interior.

We interrupt our journey on the way to stop at a remote pie shop on the main road, which Maureen tells me has a reputation for the best pies around. It is certainly busy and has a broad variety, with ostrich or kangaroo being options, but I plump for a crocodile pie. And it tastes like...yes, chicken, although with a bit of a fishy texture.

When we arrive at Newcastle, it is time for me to say farewell to Janaya and she drops me at the train station. The train is comfortable and not too crowded, despite the fact that it is rush hour, and lasts under three hours.

I arrive in Sydney just after 8 o'clock and, not quite remembering my way around, I get to Sydney Harbour Hostel an hour later. Although it is a sizeable hostel, it does get fully booked and, given the time of night and the fact that I hadn't booked, I am relieved that they have a bed for me, otherwise tonight could have been very expensive.

Day 278 – 06 May 2010: Brisbane, there must be something in the ice cream

Going for a walk around Brisbane this morning, the high rises certainly look less appealing in the daylight. However, there is a walkway over the river, and cities never look all bad from a river.

In fact there is an older city hidden among the towering offices and apartments. These are mainly the Victorian age government buildings, though some of these are now in commercial use, like a plush hotel that's opposite the State Parliament and a casino next door.

We decide to do a a tour of the parliament. Though this provides me, and Rohan & Janaya for that matter, some historical insight into Queensland, the tour is rushed. It is only us three plus another girl on the tour, but the guide doesn't even give us time to read the information placards that line the hallways. I think they are more used to taking rowdy school children on these tours.

The security seems pretty lax. When I entered the building going through the metal detector, it beeps, but the security guard tells me it is probably just that I have a metal strip in my shoes and she waves me through. The guide tells us we are allowed to take pictures as long as there are no people in the pictures, 'especially children'. This means that we can't take pictures in the commons chamber, as it is full of children merrily taking pictures of each other sitting on the parliamentary benches. So, it would have been quite easy to carry a weapon in here, but if I was a pedophile with a fetish for children pretending to have legislative powers, then I would have been nabbed. This leads to me reflect that what was the rule of law has been substituted by the rule of stupid rules.

We do get to take pictures of the second chamber, the Queensland version of the House of Lords. There are no children here and, the legislative chamber having been abolished in 1922, no legislators either. It looks more like a dining hall in a stately home with immaculately polished tables and elegantly embroidered sofas on the viewing balcony.

Emerging from the tour and walking back to the centre of the city, every other person we pass is eating a chocolate ice cream bar. We discover a line of people outside the Victorian era Town Hall being handed Magnum bars by women dressed in Lara Croft garb and some men in black militia uniforms. There is also a giant bunny going along the queue collecting money for charity.

After another huge lunch at Rohan's mum's, we set off back south to collect Janaya's car at Rod's, after which Janaya and I will travel down to her father's farm in Coff's Harbour, about a third of the way to Sydney, where I will be heading off to tomorrow.

We stop on the way at Wellington Point to the southeast of Brisbane. Exposed to the open sea, this is a kite surfers haven, but is also popular with dog walkers who go out to a small island that can be reached via a sand isthmus that is walkable at low tide.

It will take four hours to drive to Coff's Harbour, and I am a little concerned that Janaya is too tired to drive all that way. However, with a V energy drink and with only a quick stop for fish'n'chips, she drives the whole way, even taking me on a quick driving tour of Coff's when we get there despite the fact that I am now exhausted and can't see anything she is commentating on as it is 10:30 at night.

By the time we have got to the farm, Janaya's dad has laid a bed out for me in the living room. Although the officiousness that has permeated some of Australian culture has taken me aback, it is a big and beautiful country and I have to say that the people are disarmingly hospitable, excepting the odd pub bouncer in Sydney.

Day 277 – 05 May 2010: cruising up the Gold Coast to Brisbane and another droning food review

It has been a bit of a cliché to say that Australia is like a cross of the US and the UK, though the only place that really reminds me of the UK that I have seen so far is Melbourne. The Gold Coast of Queensland is much like south east Florida, with its high rise condominiums (or 'units' as they call them here) overlooking its beaches, right down to having some very familiar place names like Miami and Palm Beach. Though the apartments are newer, and the surf higher, there is little here that matches the glamour of the latter location in Florida. Well, I was born there for a start...

One of the quirkiest spots of the Gold Coast is an eco village powered entirely by solar power. Unlike most Australian homes, which are generally built to specification of their first owners, the houses here have a uniform facade. The large local population of kangaroos probably keep the populace entertained though.

We stop at lunch time at Anita and Dave's place. Their house, a large two floor family home with a pool and an outdoor lounge area, was built for them after they bought the land. Though of course Australia has a lot more land to build on than the UK, this approach to creating new homes certainly creates more attractive communities than the mass built estates of 'executive homes' / future slums that developers build at home.

There is also a rich array of bird life here and Anita keeps a little bird house hanging by the upstairs porch lounge, where Rainbow Lorikeets happily feed, birds of such vibrant colour that I would only have imagined them existing in the minds of children before I arrived in Oz. Happily, Anita feeds them bird seed, and not sausage meat, so there's no need for wing wrapping straight jackets. Also, she sensibly keeps the feeder over the edge of the porch balcony, so there waste goes down to the lawn below, and not onto the garden furniture as at Rod's place.

We enter Brisbane after dark and the skyline is quite striking at night, with its lit up high rises and bridges and the light glistening off the ripples of the river as boat ferry people across it.

We are staying at Rohan's mothers apartment, sorry, 'unit', and Rohan is treating her to a meal as it is her birthday tomorrow. Before leaving the unit, we share a bottle of Cava and Merryl, Rohan's mother, brings out a bottle of whisky which she found while clearing out her deceased father's house. It looks possibly dangerous to drink, being of indeterminate age. I suppose it could be valuable, having never been opened, or it could merely just be poisonous.

We take a 'city cat', one of the electrically powered quiet and quick catamaran ferries which serve as public transport over the river. This takes us to the south bank where the metropolitan types hang out and the restaurants are priced to match their tastes. We go to an Indian restaurant and are able to sit outside.

I have heard many British people say that Indian curries in Australia suffer in comparison to what they get at home. However, one thing that I will say in their favour is that they are not as rich and heavy as in the UK, and are more sensibly proportioned so you don't come out feeling like you've stuffed an elephant down your throat. And this is not something I would generally say about going out to eat in Australia.

At home, I would probably not order a vindaloo as they are too hot. However, here they offer a 'medium' version, which in my mind negates its vindalooness. In any case, I order a 'hot' one, cooked with barramundi, guessing, correctly as it turns out, that even the hot one will not compare with the bite of an English vindaloo.

Generally, unless it's prawn, I tend to think that fish doesn't work with the strong flavours of Indian curry, but I remember the meaty texture of the Barramundi burger I had in my travels through the Northern Territories, and thought it might well be the exception. I was wrong though. Or right the first time. The curry is tasty enough, though it is different to that curry flavour of home. What that difference is, well go and ask somebody who has passed the herb and spice tasting test on Master Chef.

'roo  at the eco village green

Surfer's Paradise in the distance

Brisbane

Day 276 – 04 May 2010: historical Australia

I had to get up in the night to go to the toilet and found Rohan and Janaya lying on the floor in the living room. Initially, I thought that maybe I had taken the only spare room with a bed in it, but when I get up in the morning, they have shifted themselves to another room.

After milling about for a few hours, Rod emerges looking very much like he had a late night. Yesterday I had gone to bed prompted by Rohan saying he was tired and was probably going to get an early night himself. However, today he doesn't emerge from bed until 2pm.

Eventually, after Rohan cooks us several tonnes of bacon, sausage, eggs and toast, Rohan & Janaya and I take a nice tranquil walk through a woodland by a river with small waterfalls that fill rock pools. It would be a nice place to go for a swim in natural spring water, but it has been raining all night and all day, so is not so enticing today. A few hundred metres up the trail is a former mill site, which was briefly in operation in the early 1950s and is now labelled 'historic' because around here that counts as being a very long time ago.

We go back to Rod's for a taco dinner and for a good night's sleep. I am up for finishing off the wine leftover from the previous night, but the others don't want to touch it.

Day 275 – 03 May 2010: The Special Meat

In the morning, it is clear that Anita and Dave's eldest son Kurt wants to spend more time with his surfing uncle, so he joins Rohan, Janaya and me to look for a good surf spot south of Byron, while Dave and Anita go to Clark's Beach at Byron Bay. 
 

We stop at the Byron Bay lighthouse, which stands on headland that is the most easterly point of Australia and which overlooks the bay to the north. A posse of hang gliders hovers around the headland, which looks both exciting and silly at the same time, as the wind is so strong that they are largely hung still in the air. They could turn the other way I suppose, but they would probably end up in Sydney.

However, the swell today is much diminished in comparison to previous days, and we go back to Clark's Beach as at least there is The Pass. However, even here it's a boring day for the surf leaping dolphins as it's a long boarders day, i.e. low and slow. In fact, I consider having a go on Rohan's spare board, but it isn't a long one and so I would be even more likely to make a complete tit of myself, so I don't. Meanwhile, Rohan complains that his new lighter and shorter board is like trying to surf on a toothpick on these waves.

For its beautiful beaches, exciting surf and the laid back quality of the hostels and restaurants, Byron has been my favourite place that I have visited in Australia so far, though Sydney is the only other place I stayed for any length of time.

After Anita, Dave and kids leave to go home a couple of hours drive south of Byron, R&J take me northwards up the coast, stopping at their friend Rod's place near Currumbin, where we will stay tonight. Rod is another hospitable Australian who has no problem being foisted a complete stranger into his home without any notice. This seems strange to me. I just keep expecting to get told to p*** off.

Rod works as a construction sit foreman, and has recently finished building his home himself. The design is simple, being a rectangular wooden block, but it is well built with quality materials and fixtures and has a sizeable porch space. Situated up a narrow lane, it feels like a perfect hidden bachelor pad, though this being smalltown / rural Australia, it is big enough for a family with four bedrooms and a large lounge and kitchen.

The house is surrounded by trees and birdlife. Rod has taken to feeding the birds with large chunks of sausage meat. A Magpie seems to have won the battle for birdland dominance, but I quickly become concerned that the meat is having an effect not unlike that of the 'special meat' from the UK horror comedy TV show 'The League of Gentlemen', which had a rather sinister effect on the people of the Royston Vasey. The magpie will approach any person coming onto the porch and squawk plaintively and continuously. Sitting down at the porch table, it jumps up and stands inches from my face inviting me to look down its throat over and over again. I think Rod may have created a monster.

I go to bed fairly early leaving the others to polish bottles of wine and beer.

Goana on the steps onto the beach

waiting for the special meat

Day 274 – 02 May 2010: Aussie hospitality with heart-attacks an optional extra

I spend the first few hours of the morning watching the bush turkeys and a goana walk around the outdoor restaurant seating at the Arts Factory. The bush turkeys are, as you would expect of a turkey, quite bottom heavy, but can surprisingly fly, or they must at least be able to climb, because I keep seeing them mysteriously perched up tall trees.

I have arranged to meet Janaya, the former Aussie bar lady at my local in Reading, and she arrives in Byron just before lunchtime, and takes me to the market, which is held in a field not far from the hostel. It's a little like the Nimbin Mardi Gras, in that there's a lot of hemp produce and stalls selling falafels, one of which constitutes my breakfast.

It is a bank holiday in Oz this weekend, and Janaya is camping with her quasi-sister in-law's family at Broken Heads campsite just south of Byron. Janaya's and her boyfriend Rohan left England to go travelling for a few months before returning to Australia. Or at least that is what they had planned. In fact they only arrived back in Oz a couple of months ago, about a year after they had left the UK, having been to France, Italy and, less congruously, Madagascar, where they got robbed.

Rohan, who works as a plumber at mine sites helping to set up the miner's 'dongas', is not due to arrive at the campsite until the evening, but his sister Anita and brother in law Dave, plus other extended members of their family, show me some typical Aussie hospitality and make me feel immediately welcome. There is part of me that will always be a reserved Englishman, cautious whenever I meet new people, but I warm particularly to Dave, Rohan's brother-in-law, when he slaps a freshly barbecued steak the size of head on a plate in front of me. As I contemplate the challenge in front of me, Dave asks me if anything is wrong. I tell him I haven't eaten this much meat over the course of the past six months, and cut it in half and pass the other part to Janaya, who instantly decides to end the diet she's been on.

The campsite is filled to the brim and quite a few of the children running about are connected to the family, though I have trouble identifying who belongs to who. There is also a man here who is camping alone and has joined our group. He tells everyone he has been coming to the campsite for this weekend for the past few years. It appears that half the people in the campsite are here after re-booking their place at this time last year.

Curly, as he introduces himself, is a very interesting person to listen to for a half hour or so, but after this time he has told us his life story and has nothing else to say and isn't much of a listener either. He is very proud of his home, of which he shows us a picture from his wallet. It is a houseboat which he has built on a lake that he also created himself, having been refused local government permission to build a house on his land. I have to admit that I admired this novel and creative approach to planning permission. He proudly proclaims that he is a rebel, always fighting the system. I could tell that he was without him needing to say this, as he is dressed in all the hippy garb, the uniform of the rebel in these parts.

Rohan appears in the evening. I hadn't immediately recognised him as he hadn't shaved since before he left England more than a year previously. His hair is a now sunkissed blond, but his beard, which reaches down to the bottom of his chest, is a wispy rich ginger hue and the moustache swings out into a bushy curl. Seeing as he works at the mines, I keep expecting to see him do a knee slapping, arm swinging jig shouting out 'It's GOLD, yee-haw I struck Gaawwlld!, I'm RICH I tell ya, RICH!!'

With the sun well set, the kids start nagging Rohan to help them light a fire on the beach, Dave not being as good at lighting fires as he is at barbecues. Curly talks a good fire, but seems to be much better at designing them than actually building them, unless they are ones you can roll between your fingers. He confesses that he hadn't actually built his houseboat either, but it is his design he says.

Later, with the kids having been sent to bed, the men in the group all gather around the campfire finishing off any leftover wine. One of the guys, Rob, used to be in the police but is now a union official. It seems Oz union officials don't necessarily share the politics of their UK counterparts, as he spends some time lamenting what the Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government has done to the national balance sheet.

Meanwhile, Janaya and Rohan have landed themselves one of the campsites cabins after one of the kids got ill leading to one of the families going home. As it happens, with the campsite over flowing, two cars have parked in the space Rohan had reserved anyway. Feeling a bit of a sore thumb, I offer to sleep in the back of Rohan's van, but they insist I take advantage of one of the cabins beds.

Day 273 – 01 May 2010: Back in the kayak in Byron Bay, and then some Grateful Dead throwbacks in Nimbin

The waves as I go out for another attempt to kayak among the dolphins this morning are not quite so exhilarating as they were yesterday. The kayak trip is only marginally more successful in terms of spotting dolphins, as we do see a number leaping through the waves along the surfers, which only makes me want to be on a surf board. Not that I would get very far on these waves though. None of them come close to the kayaks though, the guides labelling this pod the snobby nosed dolphins.

My partner in the kayak today is not a guide, but a rather panicky plump girl who keeps trying to steer the kayak from the front. On the way back onto the beach, I tell her that we will probably get rolled over, which she doesn't like the sound of. When the inevitable dunking occurs, I am laughing out loud until I realise the screams coming from her are not screams of delight, but are cries for help as she manages to appear to be sinking despite the fact that we are wearing life jackets. I have to extend my paddle out to her to drag her back onto the beach.

I have decided that I will catch up with both Caz and Mary as well as Rhiannon and Gaz from the UK to Oz trip in Nimbin today, taking a pre-arranged Mardi-Gras bus there from The Arts Factory hostel just after lunch time.

I step on the bus to sound of a blaring Red Hot Chili Peppers track on the bus speakers, which is connected to a 1980s cassette stereo. I suspect I am the oldest passenger on the bus by at least a decade or more, but the driver at least is on the rusty side of me – hence the cassette player. He tells us that he has an obligation to inform us that marijuana is illegal and that we WILL get stopped by police with sniffer dogs on the way into Nimbin, which is an hour or two away, as that is what happened with his first load of passengers he took in this morning. Therefore, if any of us have any then we are likely to be delayed by people getting arrested, so he requests that if anybody is carrying any supplies then they need to be disposed of before we depart. Finally, our driver continues, if anybody is carrying any marijuana on the bus journey back to Byron this evening, then he will try to take a different route.

In the event, we don't get stopped by the police, which is perhaps for the best as one callow looking American lad of about eighteen confesses to possessing 'a couple of Js'.

The festival is a bit of a curiosity. It is like a little corner of Glastonbury Festival, with the occasional person painted all in green, and people selling hemp clothing or others happily dressed up in day-glo. The odd thing is that, although there are bands playing, spectators are thin on the ground. What are normally the trimmings of festivals are this one's focal points. This may be because the main stage area is the only place where you are supposed to have a ticket (though I later find it pretty easy to sneak in). It may also be because nobody has ever heard of any of the bands playing. Meanwhile there are thousands of people milling about the stalls and shops that line the town's streets or, so Caz and Mary tell me when I meet up with them, just staying around the campsite just a short walk from the town centre.

I can't honestly say I was particularly looking forward to Nimbin, as I seem to have punk rock blood in me, not hippy blood. However, it has it's charms, a bit like a carnival.

There are policemen about but I only saw one arrest. It couldn't have been because he was stoned and in possession of hash, though he almost certainly was, because at least 90% of the people here were too. I didn't see the whole incident, so couldn't really come to a definitive conclusion, but it was rather suspicious that the only person I saw the police arrest here was also the only black person I saw in Nimbin.

Generally though, the police were friendly, and some of their number were dressed in rather shabby uniforms, though I suspect these were the semi-official festival stewards and possible long-term residents of Nimbin. The humourless police in the UK would probably have arrested them for impersonating an officer. Not that a sense of humour is really something that I now associate with officialdom in Australia.

Rhiannon is in her element, being a bit of a day-glo hippy chick herself. With Gaz, who over the past nine months has made numerous disastrous attempts at adopting a hippyish fashion sense in homage, Rhi has been here all week having volunteered to help set up the festival in exchange for free tickets that it appears hardly any of the visitors have bought anyway. We spend a few hours catching up and eating pizza in the stage arena where hardly anybody has been, except for when they had the Hemp Olympics in the afternoon, which I missed. Apparently, this featured competitions for joint rolling, best looking joint, longest joint etc. and climaxed with the rolling of a very large spliff indeed featuring contributions from festival goers amounting to about $10,000 worth of marijuana, which was then paraded through the town.

As I have never really taken to marijuana - it makes me sleepy at best, or paranoid at worst – I get a little bored of people monging out, and I am quite glad when it is time to catch the bus back to Byron. Though it is not very late, the bus having left Nimbin not long after eight o'clock, the ride back is a very quiet and subdued one. There is certainly nobody wanting Red Hot Chili Peppers booming out of the stereo.

Day 272 – 30 April 2010: Kayak surfing in Byron Bay

Today I say farewell to Mary and Caz. After being a threesome since mid-March, we are probably ready to go our separate ways for now, but I will miss winding up ‘Sister’ Mary and also Caz’s random moments of hysteria. They are going to Nimbin Mardi Gras, a festival / rally in favour of legalizing cannabis set in the hippy hangout of Nimbin, the capital of the ‘alternative lifestyle’ in Oz. They will then be going on a sailing trip around the Whitsundays, which I am slightly jealous about.

Meanwhile, I move hostel to the Arts Factory, which has been recommended to me as a hostel with a difference, a place where you can take part in painting classes or learn to play the didgeridoo and its attached facilities include a lounge sofa cinema and a recording studio. Not that any of these are come free with the accommodation though. There is also a pool with a jacuzzi, a café and an outdoor bar restaurant and a number of benches and hammocks to lounge about in. There are tepees to sleep in too, but all the spaces are booked when I arrive and I think I would prefer a room anyway, as the tepees are by the restaurant or the camp ground where hundreds of ragged tents are pegged and I don’t think I would get much sleep.

I go for a walk after leaving my luggage at the hostel and, passing through to the south side of town, I spot a van with a trailer of kayaks. This is Byron Bay Sea Kayaks and they advertise themselves as offering a dolphin spotting sea kayaking experience. Although I have already been swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura and seen more at the Bay of Islands while in New Zealand, I am quite keen to see if they will come up close to the kayaks, which may be the best way to interact with them. However, to be honest, I like the look of the waves today and think it will be good fun out there, so I pay my money.

Our trip departs from Clark’s Beach, which is at the south end of Byron. It is the only western facing beach on Australia’s east coast, which may be something of an explanation as to why this is where Byron Bay’s best surf is. The kayaks are two berth and I am sharing mine with Mary Beth, a Canadian and one of our guides. We are the last of the rafts to go out and, with the sizeable swell I watch with a mixture of amusement and impatience as one by one each of the preceding kayaks is capsized and pushed northwards by the tide. I am quite glad to have Mary Beth steering at the stern, as we smugly leap over the waves without incident, except for the banging down once we are over the peak of each one.

The dolphins tend to congregate near ‘The Pass’, the surfing hot spot by the headland that punctuates the end of Clark’s Beach. The surfing today looks spectacular, but we spend a long time hanging around waiting for dolphins come to us, the guides explaining that if we go searching for them they will just swim away. Some people see some diving through the waves in the distance, or at least some of the guides see them in the distance. What I see could be dolphins, or they could be surfers bobbing up and down the swell. There are a couple of tortoises that come swimming near us though, poking their little heads up out of the water.

On the way back to shore, Mary-Beth tells me that we will definitely be going into the water because there is no way the kayaks will stay upright with these size of waves going onto the beach. We catch a nice big one and do manage to surf it for a while by leaning sharply backwards while M-B uses her paddle as the oar trying to keep us straight, but eventually we are rolled over and receive our dunking. This was probably the highlight of the day for me.

Because we haven’t quite had the dolphin spotting experience, I am invited to come back again for the next morning’s trip for no extra charge.

I spend the evening in the Arts Factory bar watching an ageing blues band play to a gradually diminishing and increasingly disinterested post happy hour audience.

a fellow guest at the Arts Factory

and a nonchalant iguana

Byron Bay Train Station...

Day 271 – 29 April 2010: Why NZ is better than Oz, part 32, or...not? To Byron Bay

At check-in, my luggage is still 5kg over the 20kg limit. After transferring some books to my carry on, the assistant lets me check-in with 22kg, another example of a more common sense application of rules that Kiwis seem to apply. If I wasn’t meeting friends over there, I am not sure if I would be looking forward to going back to Australia. I will certainly miss New Zealand, my favourite country so far.

I am still nervous about flying, and am a little hungover from last night, though I learned from my flight to NZ that this wasn’t the best condition for me to be in advance of flying. Though it turns out to be eventless, I am sweaty palmed throughout the flight.

My plan had been to meet up with Janaya, formerly a bar girl at my local pub in Reading. However, I have been unable to get hold of her, so I decide to follow Mary and Caz to Byron Bay, which I wanted to visit anyway.

Still somewhat geographically ignorant of Australia, I had assumed that Byron Bay was on the Gold Coast. For some reason, it is denied the status, being just a wee bit south of it. I have decided that this is a good thing because the leaflets for Gold Coast attractions at the airport information desk are mostly focused on party hardy yoof, which is not what I am looking for right now.

Going through immigration, I am politely pulled aside for a one on one interview with a senior officer who asks me questions about what I have been doing in the countries I have visited over the past nine months. He says that he has a list of countries which bring up a red flag where travellers coming to Australia are concerned, and I have been through most of them.

We go to the Backpackers Inn on the Beach at Byron Bay. I have grown weary of hostel living because, well, I seem too old, but this place has a relaxed feel to it and the beach is just a few steps through greenery away. It also offers free body board hire, so I take one onto the beach, though don’t make use of it. We are on Belongil Beach, the northern beach of Byron, but it is not the best one for waves. It does, however, have a wide selection of young and beautiful bodies on display, and it is not too busy either. I am not sure I belong here though.

I meet up again with Caz and Mary to go to dinner at Fishheads Restaurant by the main beach. I have been told that this is a fantastic fish restaurant, but it turns out to do a nice thick and juicy steak too, as this is what I order. I did have a tuna dish for starter though, and I guess it’s a kind of sushi as it is raw, though not flavoured with wasabi or any Japanese flavourings. It is also quite possibly the best tuna I have ever tasted. Though the food is quite expensive – Caz and Mary order Fish & Chips, at Aus $25 the cheapest thing on the menu – but it’s also a BYO wine, so it works out to be good value for the quality.

Our waitress is an attractive young American female and, when the bill arrives with a space to leave comments, I leave her my phone number, feeling unrealistically optimistic after having a few glasses of wine.

Day 234 – 23 March 2010: I want to hold your hand to Christchurch

We have to get up early to get to the airport and I give Jen a quick kiss goodbye while she is still in bed.

My nerves about flying are not helped by a slight hangover. Ideally, I would have done an evening flight as the darkness and ability to drink myself jolly seem to help for my flight from Bali to Darwin.

However, my nervousness is soon superseded by irritation. At check-in, we are told that according to immigration controls we are not allowed to enter New Zealand without a return flight booked. I had not even considered when I would be coming back, having calculated that I could probably only afford a few weeks there. However, with Mary having already booked her flight, Caz and I have to rush off to the internet to book the return flight, and we both gets seats on the same flight back to Oz via the Gold Coast that Mary has booked. This means I will be spending six weeks in NZ.

When we get back to check in at a different desk, we are told that we need to print out the tickets for the return flight, even though our bookings are with the same airline (Jet Star). However, as the internet available to us is only a booth with no printing, the check-out clerk agrees to use their system to print them out. Our troubles are not finished yet though, as he then claims that Mary’s Aussie visa has expired and therefore he can’t let her on the flight. We all got ninety day visas when we entered Australia, so we know this can’t be right and eventually his computer corrects him. We are then told that we will need to provide proof adequate funds when we enter NZ, though he doesn’t push this point by asking for this proof himself.

It then turns out that my suitcase is overweight, even though I had weighed it at three kg under the twenty kg limit at the hostel. Bloody Australian Post Office! I also have my guitar with me. By this time I am quite wound up and despite the sign above the check-in saying that there is a 20kg limit per item, the check-in man insists that it is per person. I argue the point knowing it will be to no avail and I bin some insect repellent and put some books in my carry on to get the total weight under.

The flight is quite turbulent, especially as we descend towards Christchurch. I put this down to two huge fatties on board, one male and one female who are sat at diagonally opposite ends of the plane. I had seen the man sit down when we boarded and I noticed when we disembark that he had been moved to the opposite row so that he had a whole row of seats to himself. This doesn’t make me feel any less resentful about the fuss over one or two kilos in my luggage at check-in. Still, it is a good thing he wasn’t sat in his original seat as then the two fatties would have been on the same side of the plane and it might have landed lopsided at Christchurch....

The immigration controls process is quite quick and we are not even asked for any proof of having adequate money for our stay. However, customs is a funnel point as our tents have to be taken out and checked for soil and plant remnants. The customs lady asks us if the ‘pigs’ are in our tent bags for checking. It takes Mary some time to process a translation of the Kiwi accent. We don’t actually leave the airport until some two hours after we have landed.

At Christchurch, we check into the ‘Foley Towers’ hostel, a five minute walk to the centre of the city. This is a more mature hostel in a garden setting with small two or three bed rooms with white brushed wood exteriors. It also has a clothing exchange bin, and we do some collective ‘shopping’.

Going into the ‘city’ for dinner, Christchurch strikes me as being very similar to a large but fairly quiet English market town. We have our meal at ‘The Last Train to India’, which has a lot of dishes I have never heard of. I have a rich spicy prawn curry served to us by the wifely waitress, who I think is also the owner.

I notice on the walk back to the hostel that there are a number of Irish bars in the centre, and for future reference I make a mental note of ‘The Bog’ from which emanates the lively sound of traditional Irish jig music.