25 May 2008
We picked up the Dracula van after standing in line for a long time behind 3 fussy Germans, fueled up, panicked about our driving abilities (it’s been over 9 months now and all the driving either of us have done in that time was 30 minutes on a sand highway), and began our road trip. Within minutes we realised that the radio in Australia is a) very poor and b) virtually non-existent in large areas of the country, so we made it our priority to stop early en-route to purchase an i-trip (a little excessive for 4 days driving you may think, but we were covering over 1300km in that time, and we’ve got 5 weeks of driving in New Zealand to do very soon so we thought it was fully justified).
With the audio side of the trip sorted, we were soon able to concentrate on the visuals. The whole of the first day was spent driving down the Albany Highway from Perth to, funnily enough, Albany. The first few kilometres were simply industrial overspill from Perth - a West Australian Purley Way - but it didn’t take long before we were surrounded by fields and bush. As we had the camper, we were able to pull over for a quick picnic, but other than that, we didn’t stop for much on day one. In fact, we didn’t even make it all the way to Albany, in spite of our best efforts. We were caught somewhat off-guard by the early sunset and realised at 5.30 that we simply wouldn’t be able to drive much further as darkness was falling quickly. It is very inadvisable to drive in Oz after dark due to the hazards posed by kangaroos hopping into the road and, without a kangaroo bar, they can do some serious and very costly damage. So we pulled up in a ‘town’ (a petrol garage/restaurant, caravan park and local shop) called Mount Barker and cooked up our pasta on the gas burner we’d been provided with. After a very cold night (thank goodness for those sleeping bags) we dragged ourselves out of the van at the crack of dawn to get an early start to make up for the kilometres we hadn’t manage the day before.
We arrived in Albany less than an hour later and headed straight for ‘The Gap’ and ‘The Natural Bridge’. The coastline there is rugged, beautiful and very dangerous. Fortunately, we were there on a very calm day so the winds were not causing too many problems but, in the past, freak waves from this area have caused serious accidents. In the bay around 50 metres from these attractions lies a boulder that weighs a ton (literally) that has been washed onto the beach in the bay by a wave. The Gap is literally a gap in the sandstone rock of the area which the water flows in and out of at breakneck speeds and with immense force. The same could be said of the water under The Natural Bridge, which is a bridge formed naturally by the rock (don’t you just love Australian names).
We then went to the whale museum a little further around the coast; this is housed in an old, decommisioned whaling station and showing the importance of whaling in the Albany community in the past, the processes involved in whaling and the lives of those who were involved in whaling. It contains some horrific pictures showing the fate of the whales, you can board an old whaling ship, and you watch a 3D film about whales. There was some focus on the need for conservation, particularly, it seems, of sharks, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by their efforts in this area as there seemed to be more of an emphasis on what whaling was like. I think, maybe, they were just trying to present the history of the local area in a matter of fact way, but I couldn’t say with any absolute certainty what the main objective of the museum is. Nonetheless, it was fairly interesting.
We then began our drive along the south coast towards the forests of the south. We took the ‘touristic scenic drive’, which was scenic indeed. There were some beautiful coastal views and some excellent forest and countryside on the way from Albany to Denmark. We arrived in Denmark at lunchtime; the perfect time to arrive in a town whose bakery has won the ‘best pie in Australia’ award - and who are we to argue with that, so we made a beeline to the Denmark Bakery for a quiche Lorraine and a steak and gravy pie. And they were good. We sat and ate them under the gazebo by the very attractive river running through the bottom of the town. The river was teaming with birds who appeared to be waiting for us to throw them our leftovers (and surprisingly there were some, though we have been constantly advised not to feed the wildlife in Oz as it often does more harm than good, so the remaining quiche was fed to the bin instead). I frequently found myself wishing I’d taken more notice of dad’s bird knowledge as it would have been handy to be able to identify more of the many birds we saw on this trip around the south-west corner.
From Denmark, we continued west to just outside Walpole. Here, the forest really begins and it is home to the Tingle tree and the Karri trees that only grow in this tiny area of the world. Much of the ecosystem here is a hangover (can I use this term positively?) from the days when Australia was part of the super-continent, Gondwana, and it is incredibly rich for it, being home to many plant and animal species that simply don’t exist anywhere else in the world, or only exist in other areas which were formerly part of Gondwana (Antarctica, parts of Africa and South America, and New Zealand). In order to allow us to fully appreciate these trees, the Australians have contructed a treetop walkway (the 3rd of our trip), 40m above the ground, and 600m long. The views from the metal structure were, to use the word Rich used at least 100 times that day, absolutely stunning (and I’m not exaggerating - I did have to ask him to find a different adjective as I got sick of hearing it but he could only come up with ‘belissimo’). There was also a 450m pathway on the ground to allow you to get up close to the base of the trees, which are absolutely enormous, and largely hollow - I didn’t realise that a tree is only alive in the outside of its trunk and that the inside is dead, but these trees still manage to pump up to 200l of water a day through their trunks and into their branches and leaves.
From the walk, it was just a short hop into Walpole itself where we set up camp for the night. The campsite had a kitchen so we thought it would be easier to use this than to use our single gas hob, so we cooked there and met a fair few Aussie holidaymakers who we chatted with for the evening - this was great as, other than at work, we’ve actually had very little prolonged contact with Australians; most of Australia seems to just be full of backpackers.
We awoke the next morning to pouring rain and made our way to the banks of the Nornalup Inlet. From here we took a WOW Ecocruise, hosted by Gary Muir: conservationist, environmentalist, local man, community project leader etc. This guy knows everything there is to know about the local environment and ecosystems and is doing his utmost to ensure as many other people know about it too. He passes on a wealth of knowledge during the boat cruises he runs and he is very involved with the local primary school - he runs a project 2 days a weeks for the children there teaching them about how to care for their local area and how ensure that their fragile environment can be self-sustaining. He and his family also live their lives self-sufficiently, fishing responibly from local waterways, growing fruit and vegetables, maintaining the forests on their land is such a way that they are sustainable and using the wood for fires, furniture making etc. The ticket was $40 for the cruise but a large percentage of the money actually goes back into his projects. He also raised funds by completing the nearly 1000km Bibbulmun Track that runs from Albany to Perth in just 16 1/2 days - he would have done it in 14 but he was laid up for 2 days with a knee injury and had to wait 1/2 a day for the media as they didn’t expect him to get there so quickly! These funds all help to support the conservation work of the local area.
As you’ve probably guessed, I was impressed by this guy and the tour would have been excellent, were it not for the upper class twit and his wife who were on the boat with us. They immediately started asking ridiculous questions and Rich commented very quickly that the guy was like Alan Partridge. He even looked like him and, strangely enough, the wife also bore a cunning resemblance to Partridge’s assistant. The guide was telling us about the local snakes and their behaviour and Partridge turned to Rich and I and asked us if it was too much information for us. Then I had to ask one quiestion 4 times before I was able to get an answer as they kept interrupting as they were trying to show off how much they knew about trees, then the idiot asked the guide a quiestion about one of the tree species, got the right answer (surprise, surprise) and said ‘Ha, ha, ha, I was just testing. I knew you’d know the answer.’ Then what the f**k were you asking for you tw*t! I have never taken such a strong dislike to someone in such a short space of time.
The weather on the cruise was so truly horrific that, unfortunately, we weren’t able able to take the walk onto the Island of Black Snakes which the tour usually visits. We were unable to moor as the water was rushing in to the inlet so fast (apparently the guide had never seen it moving at such a speed) and the water level was way too high, so instead we just cruised around on the boat, listening to a wealth of information and eating homemade cake (all from local produce - delicious).
That afternoon we had some miles to cover as we wanted to get up to Bussleton to stay overnight. This is a samll town on the West coast that is home to the longest jetty in the Southern Hemisphere at nearly 2 km long stretching into the Indian Ocean. Apparently this, in itself, is a tourist attraction, though we couldn’t really see why when we were walking it the next morning. We had wanted to see the Ocean from the underwater observatory at the end of the jetty but this, unfortunately, was closed due to poor visibility (clearly someone just doesn’t want me to see any sealife on this trip!).
The rest of the day was spent driving back to Perth. We thought we were doing well for time so took the long road home and saw some lovely coastal views from Rockingham but, other than that, we regretted our decision as we were mostly just stuck in traffic for 3 hours all the way up from Madurah back to Perth and we arrived back at Peter and Jenny’s well after dark and only after Peter had come out in his car to find us as we’d got lost in the country lanes near to where they live (the perils of not having a map of the local area).
I forgot to mention much about Perth in my last entry. This is the sort of city that you cna imagine a city designer spent some time on. It seems to have the perfect balance of parks, waterways, housing and skyscrapers and is really a very attractive city. This is only improved further by the fact that it is immaculately kept. I don’t think I saw a single piece of litter the whole time we were there and the buildings are clearly all cleaned regularly and King’s Park and the Botanical Gardens were perfectly manicured. The people of Perth clearly take a lot of pride in their city. On Saturday morning, we dropped Dracula back to Wicked and we headed to the Science museum. What a great museum. It is almost entirely interactive and we only managed to cover about half of it in the hour we had before we went into the planetarium to watch a presentation about the local sky at night and the life of astronaut. This was well presented and very interesting, though it did make a me a bit queezy as the sky kept spinning around. We had to leave without finishing the rest of the exhibits as we needed to get back to Peter and Jenny’s to prepare ourselves for going back to Sydney - and to have more lovely food - we had recovered from this point from the feast we had had with them and their kids, Anna and Kevin who are about the same age as us, the night before.
They kindly dropped us at the airport on Sunday morning for our flight at stupid o’clock and we are now back in Sydney for the last time. There is no doubt we are both going to be very sad to leave Oz but we are looking forward to New Zealand tomorrow. We’re off out in a second to say our final goodbyes.
14 May 2008
After the amazing and vivid reds, greens and blues of the Red Centre, we had a day off to catch up on some sleep before our next very early morning. We were picked up from Annie’s Place (a decent hostel in Alice Springs) at 5.20 am (horrible) by our lovely guide, Natalie, who was managing to be bubbly and smiley even at that time in the morning. She told us that this tour was more of a road trip than a tour and to prepare ourselves for spending lots of time on the bus; we had to cover a distance of over 1500km in the next 3 days.
A short way into the first day we paused briefly for a mandatory photo at the troic of cancer as we passed out of the arid into the tropics; needless to say, the change in climate and terrain was not that instantly obvious, though as we made our way up the Northern Territory, the mercury made its way up the thermometer and today it is a hot and humid 31 in Darwin and it really does feel like the tropics (in fact, we’re only a couple of hundred kilometres from Indonesia here so we’re much closer to Asia than we are to most of the inhabited areas of Australia).
We then had a brief stop for breakfast at Ti Tree; a town with a population of just 80 - though I have to wonder how even that few people manage to live there as there is quite literally nothing there other than the petrol station and roadhouse which doubles as a gallery for indigenous art and, beautiful though Aboriginal art is, I’m not sure it could engage you day in, day out!
Shortly after, we visited Barrow Creek, an original telegraph station. Only its shell remains, along with the pub next to it. Although there is very little here, this place is steeped in history, both distant (by Aussie standards) and more recent. John Stuart took 3 attempts to travel through the Northern Territory to plot the ideal route for the telegraph wire that would run from South Australia to the UK, cutting communication time between the two countries from 3 months to 9 days. As a result, the highway that runs the 3000km from Adelaide to Darwin, is named the Stuart Highway. It is possible, however, that many of you may have heard of this place for a very different reason: the disappearance of Peter Falconio in 2001. This is the spot where the incident allegedly took place and, on seeing the place, we did all comment on the fact that it is no wonder his girlfriend’s version of events has been questioned - the bush in which she claims to have hidden is extremely sparse and it does seem a bit difficult to believe that she was able to hide away from a hunting dog there for 3 hours without being discovered by her captor - but who are we to question the Australian Justice System? The pub here is covered in signed money - apparently miners used to come up and work the mines in the North, stop here for a drink on their way back to the South, know that they would blow all their wages once they got home, so they would leave money pinned to the wall with their name on it so that they would definitely have enough to stop for a drink here on their way back up for their next few weeks work. Peter Falconio’s parents have left some money on the wall for him if he should ever pass through.
The next stop was the somewhat impressive Devil’s marbles which got their name not because it seems as though it must be some sort of miraculous work of the devil that these massive boulders balance so precariously on each other, but because people used to stop their with their cattle and other livestock when moving them through the country and the livestock used to die shortly after their arrival there. Initially this was thought to be the work of the devil, however, it was later established that it was actually because the livestock were eating poisonous plants at the site!
The rest of the day was spent in the bus to Banka Banka, the campground / cattle station / home to turkeys and numerous other creatures, which is owned by the man who owns more land than any other man in the world. Apparently he has one cattle paddock (that is one paddock; not even the whole cattle station) that is 500km squared - just inconceivable. We got the campfire going after dinner but most of us didn’t last long before we wanted to get to our tents to recover from one early morning and to prepare our bodies for the next.
So we awoke Monday morning for another day on the road. The stops were largely not all that memorable as they were mostly just at various roadhouses for toilet stops and snacks, though one of them was home to a couple of blue-tongue lizards and a snake that people were able to hold and photograph. The final stop of the day, however, was the most impressive for 2 reasons. The first reason Mataranka is special is that it is home to thermal springs which are 34C - just like getting into a luke warm bath, and we eased our aching bodies there for an hour. While we were in the water, the guide commented on how she’d seen a massive snake here before but has just seen it crawl under a rock. I asked if the snaked were in the water and she assured me that they weren’t. About 15 minutes later, Anya and Frank, who were also on our tour, called us all over to see the 4 metre long olive python they had just seen emerging from the water! It was so large you couldn’t fit the whole thing into one photo - I’m not exaggerating; it really was 4 metres long, and I think it must have been well-off for food too as it was really quite fat. I didn’t get too close.
The second night was spent at another more remote campsite and we just played a couple of games around the fire before heading to bed.
Day 3 involved the least travelling, though we were still on the road for hours in the afternoon, the morning was spent at the beautiful Katherine Gorge. We hiked up to a lookout to look down onto the river and were just about to descend to get into our canoes when our guide shouted ‘fucking hell, look at that crocodile; it’s fucking massive’. And she wasn’t winding us up! Having assured us that the river had been scanned for crocs and was considered to be croc free, there was an enormous croc in the water. We were told by the canoe hire booth that it would only be a fresh water crocodile, therefore we didn’t need to worry about it but that they can still give a nasty bite so if we were to see one while we were on the water we shouldn’t get too close (and I’d planned to go up and pet it on the head!) The canoeing took about 2 hours as we meandered through one section of the gorge and it was certainly a lovely way to spend a morning.
We then journeyed on to Edith falls where we stopped for a picnic lunch before we headed down to the water. This place really is idyllic. The water tumbles down from the rocks at one end of a large pool surrounded by lush greenery, then a river meanders off from the other end. I swam the distance of the pool over to the waterfall and the force of the water there was much stronger than the size of the fall suggested it would be. By this point, the weather had really hotted up so the cool water was exteremely refreshing.
We finally arrived in Darwin yesterday evening and we’re off to Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks in the morning for another 3 days. We’ve used our day off today to sort out wht we’ll be doing next as, unfortunately, my allergies haven’t cleared up sufficiently for me to go on the diving trip so our final destination in Australia is going to be Perth and its surrounds. We’ll be heading there on the morning of the 18th and will have a week there before we have to go back to Sydney for the final time. We’ll write again once we’re there as we won’t get the chance to do so before we leave Darwin. As ever, the photos are there for you to look at on the link.
26 February 2008
So, I’ve got your attention with that title! Well, that is just one of the many poetic phrases I now hear on an almost daily basis. Others include ‘You F@#%ing bitching f@#%ing c#*ting bitch’, ‘F@#% you!’, ‘Suck my cock!’, and ‘Kiss my arse!’ And that’s all before the bell goes. It’s not personal. Apparently!
I’m mostly working as a drama teacher but the role does vary from day to day. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to cover a class for the day. The testosterone in the class of 4 boys was clearly raging and 2 of the boys began to ask what you may call ‘inappropriate questions’. It began with ‘Miss, do you wear a bra?’, moved on swiftly to ‘But howcome your boobs are so big if you wear a bra?’ and descended from then on to ‘Were you attractive when you were younger?!’ Having answered all these one way or another, and refusing to be shocked, they then asked ‘Miss, do you finger yourself?’ I pointed out they’d gone too far. One of the boys then spent the rest of the afternoon with his eyes fixated firmly on my chest. He really couldn’t avert his gaze. I told him that I needed to speak to him and explained that his behaviour could be construed as sexual harassment and that he really ought to be careful in the future (using far less complex vocabulary than that, of course). He seemed suitably chastised and settled to do some work. A few minutes later he said ‘Miss, I know you said we wouldn’t speak about it any more because you’ve dealt with it but how is it harassment if I’m not touching - I thought it was only if you touched someone.’ Again, I duly gave an explanation. This was shortly followed by ‘Miss, I know we’re not meant to keep talking about it, but it’s just that we think you’re attractive’! I pointed out that, although it was very nice of him to say so, as he is half my age (he had found out earlier that day that I was not the 19 years old he thought I was), and as I’m his teacher and he’s my pupil, it really isn’t appropriate. Aaaah, bless. And so the day ended…
Not personal though!
Yesterday I got punched in the hands twice. Today I got punched in the arm and spat at. Also not personal. Apparently!
Actually, it genuinely isn’t personal. The principals of both schools generally receive the same torrent of abuse and questioning as us mere mortal class teachers. Some of these kids just have no idea of what’s appropriate and what’s not; others behave like that for effect. Of course, after a few days and the realisation that this is just the norm in schools for kids with emotional disturbances, behavioural difficulties and mild intellectual disbilities, all impact of these words has become completely lost on me and, therefore, those who are using them for effect are, in fact, having completely the opposite effect from the one they’re aiming for.
That said, I am enjoying the work, believe it or not! I have spent a lot of time in Croydon working with kids who struggle to control their emotions and this bunch are just a few rungs up the ladder. They are certainly challenging but most of them do have a much more endearing side and the breakthroughs, when they come, are all the more rewarding as a result. The staff at both schools are generally very supportive and I have met some great people who are also putting themselves voluntarily through the same daily routine.
And, I finish ridiculously early every day. The other day, one of the permanent staff saw me doing some work after school and said ‘Are you still here?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It’s only 3.20.’
‘But you’re only a casual.’
‘Yes,’ I said once again, ‘But it’s only twenty past three.’
He was genuinely surprised that I was still in the building 20 minutes after the bell had gone. Crazy.
Other than work, I don’t have very much to write about. We’ve had a few good nights out and it’s been great to see people as they’ve been passing through Sydney - Mel, who we met in India was here for a few short days and Emma Newton managed to get a trip here for a one night stop-over with work and it’s been great catching up with people. We’ve also had to say quite a few goodbyes over the past couple of weeks as nearly everyone we met here during our time in the hostels in Sydney in October and January have now, unfortunately, moved on to pastures new.
Oh, and I bought a keyboard - impulse buy when we popped into a music shop. I began to play the $22,000 digital grand in the showroom, but settled for a significantly cheaper Yamaha 5 octave keyboard! With all this extra time on my hands from coming home from work so early, I thought I could use it to spend my time a bit more constructively than watching the myriad of reality TV shows on Australian telly. I plan to have mastered the moonlight sonata by the time I leave Sydney - though there aren’t quite enough keys on the keyboard for me to play the whole piece acurately!
Well, we’re sorry we haven’t been updating things very regularly but, as you can see, we’re pretty much leading the same lives as we would if we were home - working by day, TV, DVDs and a few nights out in the evenings and at weekends - we’re just doing it on the other side of the world. Hope you’re all well. xxx
