A happy-go-lucky English rambler dude goes to New Zealand for a year. Here he interfaces with some of those he left behind and details his nefarious activities. Or summat.
Recently clicked on MP3s - 7th June 2005 The Lucksmiths - Warmer Corners
Jens Lekman - When i said i wanted to be your dog
The Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting
Teenage Fanclub - Man Made
Laura Veirs - Carbon Glacier
The Decemberists - Picaresque
The Eels - Blinking Lights
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Hello, Good Evening & Welcome to a painfully overdue description of what i've been up to for the last yonk or two.
Sorry it’s been so ridiculously long since i’ve been in touch, via this website, and not to mention via email and phone… It’s stupid I know, but the longer I left it, and the more I had to talk about, the more daunting the idea of a major write up of what i’ve been doing became, and so the more I put it off, and hence I carried on doing more stuff I in the meantime, and again the more daunting getting in touch with people became. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I feel particularly crap, as I’ve had numerous nice emails from people lately, and I’ve given no love back in return – well, I can assure you, the love is about to commence flowing once more (In the form of me banging on about what animals I’ve seen lately, and amateurish photography).
The savage nature of Australian wildlife is evident, even in the middle of town
Things have moved on quite a bit recently, and i'm currently writing to you from my small but perfectly formed flat in Clifton Hill. It's a fairly sleepy suburb of Melbourne, but is still near enough to the city centre, and the more happening areas like Collingwood, Richmond and Fitzroy to stop you getting bored, or having to ride the train for longer than 10 minutes to get to where it’s at.
While not being the throbbing heart of Melbourne life, Clifton Hill does have it's own little attractions, Cafe Quince looks like a nice place, but I still have to work out how to pronounce it, let alone try their Long Blacks - is it 'Kin-say' like the Spanish for fifteen, or 'Kwince' like the obscure fruit? Who knows, i'll just have to pop in later, and pay up for my coffee and pronunciation advice. [Subsequent research has discovered that it’s pronounced Kwince, and that they sell very nice Russian Caravan tea, if you’re into that sort of thing]
We've also got the mighty Yarra Bend park at the end of my road. It's a massive area of wild looking Australian bush, full of sweet smelling Eucalyptus trees, hundreds of whopping great Fruit bats and, according to the signs there, snakes too... happily something i've managed to avoid treading on thus far in Australia. It's ideal for running in too, which is handy, as i'm hoping to take part in the Canberra half marathon in 6 weeks time, barring any training incidents involving brown snakes.
Finding my little niche in Melbourne was definitely easier said than done, I must have visited 10 places before finally settling for my current home. They ranged from dingy warehouses, sharing with - people from Nottingham - eeeuww!- to swank pads with balconies, located next to the possibly the coolest street in Melbourne (Brunswick Street) where i'd have been living with unbearable TV exec tosspots, who 'needed' a cleaner to prevent arguments over whose turn it was to clean the bath.
It was definitely worth the wait though, as Allison my flatmate is possibly Australia's easiest going person (And she's got some fairly tough competition for that title too). Despite a patchy CD collection (Good: Human League. Bad: Snap. Ugly: Londonbeat) she has earned my endless gratitude, after having a broadband internet connection installed, at a discount rate, thanks to her employer Optus. Hurrah!
The weather has sorted itself out again now (if i wasn't in the shade, my laptop would be in danger of melting), but for the two days after i arrived, it rained solidly, setting new records for rainfall, and the coldest temperatures ever on record in Melbourne in February. Annoyingly i couldn't get down to Bell's beach to check, but more than one person has suggested that it was the 50 year storm featured at the end of Point Break.
After loitering around for a week or so when I arrived here (in early February), spending far too much money in the numerous and wonderful Brunswick street bars, I hit the road with Swiss Alex, and headed down the Great Ocean road (Passing a fairly placid Bell's Beach) to check out the 12 Apostles and the Grampian mountains, before he carried on to Adelaide, and I headed off to Canberra. It was great to get out into a bit of the real Australia, and we saw some incredible Aboriginal cave paintings, as well as plenty of classic Aussie fauna along the way - sleepy Koalas perched in trees in the Otway NP, Emus galloping along next to the road, and best of all, more Kangaroos and Possums than you could shake a boomerang at in our campsite in the Grampians. Two slightly less welcome visitors were the enormous Huntsmen spiders i discovered underneath my tent in the morning. Apparently they're harmless, but you wouldn't have guessed that from looking at them, hence they were treated with a great deal of respect, and were sent on their way using an extremely long stick.
Kangaroos are considered vermin in Switzerland, and are shot on sight. Luckily I managed to save this one before Alex got to it with his Swiss Army machete
Since then i've had various little trips here and there but have mainly been based in Melbourne, plugging away at the flat and job hunting, which seemed to take forever, and which is actually still ongoing as far as the job part goes. Humph.
As well as the Great Ocean Road trip, i've been over to visit Michael my old NZ flatmate in Canberra, a city seemingly based around a series of concentric roundabouts, which is as confusing as you'd think it is. Everyone who i've spoken to who's been to Canberra moaned that it's boring and you get lost all the time, and i attempted to avoid spouting those same old cliches when I went there. But, on my first trip into town driving towards the town centre, i managed to end up on a highway to Adelaide (i think), and then after finally getting into the town centre to have a look around, i completely failed to find my way back to the multi storey car park where i'd parked, and had to phone Michael to look up my location in his A-Z, and talk me back to the car. The inevitable also happened on the drive back to Michael's place too...
Having said all that, Canberra seemed like an very amiable sort of place, with lots of impressive monuments, museums, galleries and with plenty of Bush nearby. There was at least one good bar too.
After Canberra we headed down to Sydney for a week, staying at the lovely, but slightly vacuous, Coogee beach in a hostel which was chock full of young, English backpackers with nothing more on their agenda than getting pissed, eating McDonalds and playing half an hours football on the beach in the afternoon. Cue lots of 'real' traveller grumblings from me, but, thinking about it, at their age i was working in a McDonalds and busy failing degrees (because of being pissed), so in fact they've probably got life the right way around.
Sydney didn't really seem like my kind of town, it was a bit too fast moving, and pretentious in a London-y kind of way, especially when compared to Melbourne. But, the weather was constantly perfect, and never being far from a gorgeous beach, filled with gorgeous people (who have often just been stung by, a gorgeous bluebottle jellyfish) does have its attractions too.
Despite living on a continent where sunshine is available 365 days a year, my rambling urges managed to lead me to a place where it was possible to have a snowball fight in the middle of summer - Mount Kosciuszko - Australia's highest mountain at 2,228m. I was part of a multi-national team, including an local Australian guide (Michael), a highly experienced Scottish climber (Jo) and a highly entertaining American expert-in-everything (Ralph). We were attempting to summit via the notoriously treacherous 'chair lift' route, many woolly hats and improperly attached skis have been lost while climbing the mountain via this route, so we all had to keep out wits about us and bags tightly zipped up.
Thankfully we all got to the top in one piece, and managed not to drop anything on the way up. Shockingly we still had to walk several kilometres to the actual summit, but the views out into the surrounding mountains of the 'Great Dividing Range' were well worth the tiresome physical effort we had to put in to get to the top. [Judging from the levels of sarcasm in the previous two paragraphs, you may guess that i'd have preferred to walk all the way up. And, if i hadn't twice forgotten key items of rambling equipment, and had to go back to our chalet for them, we might actually have had time to do that too...Dur. As it was, we still managed a fairly high speed, all action ramble to the top, and then along some cloud swirled ridges to a high mountain lake, for a brie and soda bread lunch. Marvellous!]
The highest spot on the continent!
I've done plenty of other stuff since i've been here, but it mainly involves pubs, so i won't go into too much detail. Suffice to say, Melbourne knows how to do pubs properly. Particularly around Brunswick Street and Smith Street virtually every single pub (or usually Hotel over here) i've been to would be my favourite if it was in Leicester. I'm not 100% sure what makes them so good, but scruffy and homely decor, relaxed lighting, tasty beer & food all go some way to making them wonderful. Not to mention the scruffy, homely, relaxed and tasty clientele inside them too.
Current hot tips include, The Lambs go Bar (Bad pun good pub, Collingwood), The Terminus (Richmond), The G.B. Hotel (Richmond), The Union Club Hotel (Collingwood), Bar Open (Fitzroy), The Cape (Fitzroy) and the Gin Palace (CBD).
Sadly, Brunswick street is plagued with lazy, good for nothing, free loading dogs
Right, I suppose it's time to go and get on with things, so i'll finish here for now, but hopefully for me this post has been like having a big poo for someone with a bad case of constipation. In that i've got the big awkward one out of the way now, and hopefully lots of normal sized posts will follow on a regular basis. And for you, i hope it hasn't been too shit. And on that bombshell, i'm off to the bathroom.
10:52 pm
