Back in London / Sunsets

Today I completed the arduous task of sorting through the 3-million or more photos from my trip and despite a considerable number of them being of the out of focus, poorly-lit, or incredibly unflattering "fat-head" variety, there remained a handful that are at least interesting to look at. Here are just a few photos of the sun dying over foreign lands.

Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Queensland, Australia


Forbidden City, Beijing

Unfortunately I don't own Photoshop, if anyone does and would like to fix the contrasts for me that'd be awesome!

Overnight Train back to Beijing

From Didgeridudes

Last night I caught the 12-hour train from Xi'an back to Beijing. Due to delays I waited around Xi'an station for two hours, crammed in with about a thousand other commuters all hoping to squeeze through the gates first and secure a good baggage slot aboard the 15-carriage train. On the way to Xi'an I paid 400 RMB for a soft sleeper (the carriage classes, from worst to best, are: hard seat; soft seat; hard sleeper; soft sleeper).

To save money on the return I paid 258 RMB for a hard sleeper, which had 6 bunks in the room instead of 4, oh and no TV, not that that particularly mattered since all programmes are in Chinese. I had severe stomach ache and was up all night, probably due to one of those "tasty dumplings" I bought from one of the street vendors I've visited. The carriage was packed with people and the trip back to Beijing was less comfortable than the trip to Xi'an.

Me on the zip cable shooting down from the Great Wall. I look quite 007... if you pretend my underpants aren't poking out of my jeans.

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda (Xi'an)




Xi'an at Night

Left, one of the many places likely to be responsible for my 'Beijing belly'.


A girl modeling for magazine photographers outside the hostel.

Xi'an - City Wall

The centre of Xi'an is surrounded by an imposing rectangular wall. It's pretty hard to miss at 12m tall, 15m thick and 12km in circumference. It was started in the Ming dynasty around 1370 and is the most complete city wall in China. After 3 lazy hours I managed to walk about half way round then thought better of it and headed into town for pork dumplings instead - not only were they tasty but at 1.5 Yuan each I could afford to be greedy (15 Yuan = £1). On the subject of dumplings, on Friday night the hostel put on a 'dumpling party' where we were taught how to make dumplings and after an hour got to enjoy the fruits of our labour. They were all a bit malformed, but they tasted great all the same.

Right - The courtyard of the hostel I'm staying at.

Xi'an - Army of Terracotta Warriors

** Geek warning**

I've always had a peripheral interest in archaeology. At sixth form I studied it for 6-weeks and only dropped it due to clashes with my geology classes (how cool do I sound?). So to visit the sight of what is the largest and one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century was pretty exciting. Xi'an is one of the four ancient capitals of China. Today Xi'an is a prosperous walled-city of some 8 million inhabitants and is home to the tomb of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who unified the country in 200 BC. His tomb has never been excavated and will one day provide an Indiana Jones style exploration of an underground city believed to be relatively intact. At the time of construction it would have been one of the largest cities in the world and was slavishly built by 700'000 people over four decades. It is the largest tomb on Earth, and the mausoleum at the heart of the city is believed to contain a model of China complete with Great Wall and lakes of mercury.

At first the site was so overwhelmingly huge that I didn't quite know where to begin, confronted with a life-size army of thousands silently standing guard. Incredibly, no two soldiers faces are alike and only a fraction (approximately 8000) have even been excavated. The majority have been left for future archaeologists because once removed from the earth the paint covering the soldiers reacts with the air and evaporates in less than 15-minutes and there is currently no known way of preventing this process. All together there are three pits at the site, the smallest, pit 3, contains 72 warriors and horses, pit 2 contains around 1300 warriors and horses, and pit 1 (the largest pit) contains 6000 in all, all standing in a rectangular battle array, facing east, crossbow and longbow men followed by soldiers (originally with spears, swords, and dagger-axes), followed by 35 chariots that were made of wood and have long since disappeared. The army was discovered by peasant farmers drilling a well in 1974 - one of whom was at the site when I visited, he was very old and frail and sat fanning himself at a little desk as a parade of people shuffled past him, staring. Apparently the peasants were paid 30 Yuan for the site - that's not a lot of Yuan in any time period.

I also got to visit the remains of the Banpo Neolithic Village, the earliest example of Neolithic Yangshao culture, dating back to 4500 BC. I still have a lot to see in Xi'an so I have decided to skip Shanghai to explore Xi'an in more depth. I've booked my sleeper train and I'm departing for Beijing on Monday night, but I'll upload plenty of photos of Xi'an before then.

Out and about on the streets of Xi'an.

This man in the street repeatedly headbutted two bricks for money. After a few attempts he tried it with one brick and was (thankfully) successful. He rallied round the audience for cash. I was there with two other backpackers and embarrassingly we dropped just 3 Yuan between us and were subsequently laughed at by the crowd.

A miniature looking at puppies for sale in a suitcase.

Below Left - After a quick double-take I realised that the mannequins here are actually real people. Right - Tiger dog! Grrrr.

The Temple of Heaven

Today I travelled by the train from Zhangzizhonglu in Dongcheng to Tiantandongmen station, Tiantan - literally 'Altar of Heaven', to visit the Temple of Heaven, an iconic temple that is the most perfect example of Ming architecture in the city. Of course to get to it would mean slipping past the hundreds of people in the park trying to sell me: 1) feathered 'ball things', I'd already bought one on Monday and spent an hour humiliating myself playing the game with locals outside the Drum Temple (I think they called the game kick and I'm bringing one back home from the east, move over football); 2) t-shirts, I learnt my lesson about buying t-shirts I can't understand two years ago in Kyoto when I found out after wearing it several times that the symbol meant 'heart of a woman'. After slipping past those I ran into something unexpected, hundreds of middle aged women ballroom dancing in the middle of the park, and dozens more exercising to dance music.

At the peak of the temple I found a small door named the 'Seventy-Year Old Door', apparently in 1779 when Emperor Qianlong was 70 years old he felt his health was deteriorating so the officials opened a small door for him that would shorten the distance of his walk to the ceremonies. But to ensure that his children wouldn't abuse the convenience he issued a decree saying that, "from now on only he among my offspring can enter and exit by this door who has reached the age of 70." None of the later emperors ever reached the age of 70 so he was the only one to ever use it. This has given me an idea for a 'Twenty-Eight Year Old Door' to stop Mike from stealing my stuff.

'

The 'Seventy - Year - Old Door'

Michael, how old are you? Make the tea Mike, make the tea.

Beijing Photo Album

Beijing "Food" Market

The Forbidden City

The Summer Palace

The Great Wall

Random...

Hutong

Ni Hao from Beijing!

After a three hour delay at Sydney Airport I didn't arrive in Beijing until 11pm. Trains were closed for the evening so I forced my way through the crowds to the front of the airport, skipped the cabs and stood in line for a 16Y bus ticket from a woman who would not stop screaming. The bus took me part of the way into the city. After some difficulties I managed to hail down a taxi to take me the rest of the way to the hotel. Due to a booking problem I was upgraded for the first night to a deluxe room on the 10th floor. Since it was dark and I was exhausted I didn’t see much of Beijing on Friday night. I woke up the next morning with sunlight bursting through the curtains and the amplified sound of Mandarin coming from a bus megaphone outside. I opened the curtains, perched on the windowpane and sipped at my morning tea as I tried to take in the expanse of Beijing, from the skyscrapers down to the traditional slate rooftops, finally down to the street level populated by hundreds of people on bicycles.

I left the hotel and shot out onto the streets of Beijing armed with a powerful arsenal of two words in mandarin, hello and thank you (I would later learn the words 'no thank you' - equally powerful). First on my travel itinerary was Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. I walked into the city feeling like a millionaire, I picked up a can of coke for 15 pence and caught the metro into the centre for around 7 pence. After an hour of getting my bearings and having proudly avoided being scammed by two arts students who wanted to 'practice their English' but were actually trying to lead me to an exhibition of overpriced art I walked into a small park that would lead me to the Forbidden City. As I walked through the park gate two girls started talking to me. At first they seemed very nice and interested in practicing their English and on our way to the Forbidden City we stopped by a tiny tea house. I had heard of Chinese Tea scams, the idea being to lead an unsuspecting tourist into an expensive tea house and ditch them with a staggering bill (I spoke to someone recently who had lost 4000Y that way – about £300) but even so it happened fast, one second we were happily chatting away and the next they ducked through a door in a tiny alleyway and I found myself sitting in a small wood-paneled room face-to-face with someone about to perform a tea ceremony. As the three of them chattered to each other in Mandarin I was alarmed to see tea being poured before me and I felt an immediate and uncomfortable sinking feeling. I looked up at the prices on the wall – 30Y per cup per person, so 3 x people, 10 x types of tea to taste, 100Y hire for the room, 10Y for each plate of fruit – I had to get out of there fast. I asked them to stop pouring tea but they were already pouring a second cup, my eyes rolled around the tiny room, the entrance was firmly closed - not good… Panicked I knocked on the door for the bill – it had already totaled 400Y in the space of two minutes. The second girl asked if I would pay for the three of us. I lied and said that I'd left the hotel with only a few hundred yuan. They squirmed as the woman doing the tea ceremony sat watching patiently. Next they said they would need to go visit their Grandmother to pick up some cash. Hell no I thought, so I asked one of them to stay. After that they just agreed to split the bill three ways and I made it out at relatively small cost to my wallet, but at huge cost to my pride.

I spent the next hour or so wandering around Tienanmen Square before entering the Forbidden City. The complex of temples stretched on for a mile and it was fantastic to see, but I spent much of my time annoyed at myself for walking straight into a tea scam. After 6 hours I finally gave in trying to see every square inch of the Forbidden City and decided to make my way back to the hotel.

The next morning I moved to the Peking Downtown Backpackers Hostel located in a winning location halfway along a lively hutong in the old part of the city. There are 360 hutong in total in Beijing and together they are home to many of the 17 million inhabitants of this vast city. Hutong are ancient and often crumbling alleyways that crisscross the city and are the bustling heart of Beijing. Later on Sunday I took two trains and a bus to reach the Summer Palace. Occasionally a local would start a conversation with me, though feeling wary of being scammed again I was a little hesitant to chat. But after a while I realised that outside the main tourist areas people were genuinely interested in just chatting. The Summer Palace was just jaw dropping, possibly the most beautiful place I've ever visited - a tower of palaces overlooking a serene lake crossed by a 17-arch bridge.

On Monday I spent the day walking a 10km stretch of the Great Wall of China that took me through 30 wall towers from Jinshanling to Simatai. At the end of the 4-hour walk I could either make my way on foot to the bus or take a zip cable down to the bottom. The other three backpackers I was trekking with decided to take the cable so I followed. They hooked a small harness around my legs and hooked that to the cable, then just like that pushed me off the cliff, 200ft to the bottom of the gorge! For the first 10 seconds I felt I had made a gross error in judgment, but it was a fantastic way over the lake. On Monday night six of us decided it was time to try Beijing's most famous dish – Peking duck! So we reserved a table at one of the city's top restaurants, the entrance of which was separated from the kitchen by a glass wall that allowed us to peer in at a line of chefs as they prepared the ducks. The starter consisted of broccoli and other mixed vegetables followed by a duck tongue soup that was served inside an orange. A chef then prepared the duck itself at a small wooden bench in front of our table, letting us observe his cutting technique. After that the duck's head was severed and cleaved in two, with the two halves arranged side-by-side on a separate dish so that we could enjoy the delicacy that is the duck's brain.

On Tuesday we hired bicycles and went to the Olympic Park to see the Bird's Nest Stadium. Riding through the small crowded streets of Beijing is a great way to see the city. You can read in a book that there are 1.3 billion people in China as many times as you like but until you're in the thick of it you cannot appreciate what that actually means, and it is pretty crazy.


The Forbidden City (and Chairman who?)


The Summer Palace. Just awesome.


Conquering the Great Wall was easier than jumping off that cliff.


The Birds Nest. Someone competing in the Coca-Cola bottle relay during the games.


Me being arrested by the Beijing Olympic mascots for illegally running on the sports track.

Leaving Australia

It feels strange to be leaving a place that for so long was just a vague idea based loosely somewhere in the future, long before it took form as a couple of plane tickets with hundreds of calendar boxes to cross off to the end of May. In January we choose not to book return flights because we weren't sure how we'd feel over here, whether we'd want to stay out here for 3, 6 months, a year even. But now feels like the right time to start travelling back home. I've booked my plane tickets and I'll be leaving Sydney on Friday 24^th at 11am - bound for Beijing. After a few days in Beijing where I'll get to explore the Great Wall and the Forbidden City among other things I'm catching the sleeper train that'll take me over a 3000km triangle of northern China, west to Xian, home of the Terracotta Warriors, then south west to Shanghai before returning north to Beijing to catch a flight to the UK on the 5^th November. I am flying Qantas so have your fingers crossed for me. Lee intends to leave Sydney 4 weeks from now with a 2-week stopover in New Zealand where he's planning to explore the south island in a camper van – very cool.

There were lots of things we wanted to do on this trip, some of them we did like scuba diving over the Great Barrier Reef, learning to surf, a beach crawl up to Cairns, and of course paying homage to the BIG PRAWN!! Other's we didn't do like Uluru, Alice Springs, and Melbourne. We're planning to come back next year on a holiday visa to see these but for now I had to make a choice between Uluru and China, though for me this wasn't a difficult decision to make. Of course we'd have been able to afford to do it all if we hadn’t lost $4000 on the car! But to do it all now would mean returning to my job at the State Government and working in Sydney until January and in many ways that would be excellent, our Aussie friends here are really great people who we'll miss a lot, and a lifestyle centred round barbecues, surfing, and beach walks can’t be bad, and for a long time in Sydney we forgot that we were just travelling, but at some point on our trip up to Cairns we remembered that we have lives back home albeit on pause and no matter how great things are over here there are a lot of things missing like our friends back home, family, our own beds. We're getting quite travel weary and living out of a backpack for the past 5-months is starting to take its toll (although the ranch party we attended over the weekend helped to alleviate much of our stress – tennis, swimming pools and hot tubs in the sun have a strange way of doing that).

Sydney seems to be inside something of a cyclone at the moment so I'm probably leaving at a good time. It's been an excellent adventure and I'm looking forward to China as well as returning home in November.

You stay classy England.

See you all soon!!

Hello from the Great Barrier Reef!!!

Cairns!! Tuesday October 14th, 2730 km north of Sydney

On Tuesday we arrived in Cairns, the end of the road for our Greyhound trip. We spent Tuesday night relaxing by the pool ready for our big adventure the following day. On Wednesday morning at 6am the hostel firm alarms went off and we stood outside the hostel with a hundred or so other bleary-eyed backpackers waiting for the firemen to give us the all clear. After that we quickly arranged our flights back to Sydney and headed down to Cairns harbour to catch the catamaran out to the outer reef. Ninety-minutes and a hundred or so sick bags later the catamaran pulled up alongside the pontoon. Lee and David went on a guided snorkeling adventure to a part of the the reef ominously known as 'scary point' - although it's only really frequented by reef sharks that are completely harmless. Whilst they were doing that I had an hour or so of tuition aboard the catamaran with my scuba diving instructor. I learnt how to communicate under water with different hand signals, how to breathe using the regulator mouthpiece under increasing water pressure and how to equalise the middle ear and sinuses during descent, and how to use the diving belt and buoyancy compensator - basically how to press a button to inflate and deflate the dry suit jacket. After that I walked down some steps into a partially submerged chamber beneath the pontoon deck before descending 50ft down a rope to the sea floor.

The reef was amazing and everything I hoped it would be. Once down on the floor I was able to chase brilliant green parrotfish that seemed to almost fly over the coral with wing-like fins. A 2m long humphead wrasse known as Wally came over to investigate us weird-looking creatures floating about clumsily with our tanks on our backs. Wally rubbed its head against my arm - a truly massive head that dwarfed my body! I also managed to find Nemo, this particularly timid clownfish was hiding near a giant clam that was about 4ft in diameter and felt velvety and smooth on the inside, as I touched it it suddenly sprang shut.

After some more fun aboard the semi submersible I did a bit of snorkeling over the reef. Once again chasing parrotfish I managed to stray quite far from the boat. The reef ended sharply as I floated out over a coral cliff that dropped below me into the depths. As I squinted through my mask I could just discern a large bulbous-looking shape in the darkness followed by what I thought to be tentacles dripping down around it. Having decided in my irrational state of mind that I was now being pursued by a giant jellyfish I turned around, slapped the parrotfish out of the way and swam like crazy back to the pontoon, grazing my knee over a piece of coral jutting out from the cliff.

Starfish anyone?

Lee and David in the semi-sub

The scuba tank below the pontoon deck

Greenhouse, Paul Greenhouse.

Cairns Harbour

Magnetic Island and the Bungalow Bay Koala Village

Friday 10^th October, Airlie Beach, Many Many Kms North of Sydney

After 17 hours of travelling up the coast we clambered out of the bus dazed, we'd finally reached Airlie Beach; gateway to the Whitsunday islands but since we lacked the $1500 needed to sail around the islands Airlie beach would be little more than a stopover for us. We walked down to the water for a paddle and found a large jellyfish warning board planted in the sand, and based on the board we agreed the species of jellyfish most likely to sting one of us is the Irukandji; a tiny box jellyfish 1cm across with a single transparent tentacle a metre in length – how do you see that coming?! Aside from general nausea and back ache the most interesting symptom associated with a sting from this little beast is "a dreadful feeling of anxiety". So for an anxiety-free paddle we went for a swim in the hostel pool instead. Still feeling tired from the bus ride I massively overestimated the depth of the pool and decided to dive-in, face-planting into the bottom of the pool and taking a layer of skin off the bridge of my nose. So after a slightly painful sojourn into the mouth of the Whitsundays we climbed aboard the Greyhound for our penultimate trip to Townsville to catch a ferry to Magnetic Island!

Above left - A tropical storm viewed from the shelter of the Greyhound.

Saturday 11^th October, Magnetic Island!

For four hours the Greyhound cruised up the Bruce Highway, a green and brown smudge of sugar cane plantations and dried up creek beds rushed past us. After 15-minutes of killing time at Townsville we boarded the ferry and made the 20-minute trip over choppy waters to Magnetic Island – a world-heritage listed island that is also home to Australia's largest colony of Koalas in the wild. Once there we took a bus along a winding cliff road to the Bungalow Bay Koala Village where we'd be staying for the next three nights. The Koala Village is based near a koala sanctuary where ill koalas are cared for before being reintroduced to the eucalyptus forest. The village is made up of 40 A-frame wooden huts that accommodate 3 people in each, all centred around a lagoon swimming pool and set in a clearing in the forest. Wildlife can be found everywhere. Stop to look around for a few minutes and the floor is alive with lizards, giant ants, geckos, possums, wallabies etc.

Later we celebrated David's 28^th birthday with a special meal. We didn't have access to a large supermarket so we had to make do with what we could rustle up at the local shop. The starter consisted of microwaved garlic bread which Lee and I then pan fried until it was crispy/soggy. This was followed by pasta with sun dried tomato pesto, and to finish a $5 cheesecake that had defrosted nicely in the lazy afternoon Aussie heat. Happy Birthday David!!

Magnetic Island (in the sun)

Sunday 12^th October, Moke-ing About

On our third day on the island we hired a Moke. In case you've never come across one before a Moke is basically a little jeep that's just perfect for exploring a small island. Ours came with a custom paint job of 'The Phantom'. We each took turns to do the 12km run from one end of the island to the other. The gears were a bit fiddly at first but after a few minutes of painful grinding we had it down. David had not driven a car since 1998 and since The Phantom doesn't even have doors there were more than a few "we're going to die" moments as he negotiated some hair-raising bends along the cliff top.

We did a 2km walk to the top of one of the islands two summits to an abandoned Second World War fortress. On the way we found a sign that read "Danger Death Adders". Anything with Death in the name is unlikely to be friendly but in the end we didn't run into any death adders, instead we stumbled upon a mother koala and her baby. The animal spectrum in Australia is truly wide, on the one hand the continent is home to something like 9 tenths of the world's most venomous animals and yet on the other hand it's home to animals so cute and defenceless that were it not for the almost timeless geographic separation of Australia from the rest of the world the latter would surely not have survived into the present.

There is only one 12km stretch of road across the island so we explored as many of the cul-de-sacs branching off the main street as we could, many ended in Indiana Jones-style paths complete with giant boulders, eroding stone steps and thick vines hanging down from the forest canopy - and yes, we did swing on them and they held our weight… just. When we picked up the Phantom they explained to us that the first 60km of fuel is free but no one ever goes over that anyway. Well, I'm quite proud to say that we did 105km.

Our next and final stop in Queensland will be at Cairns and will mark the peak of what has already been an awesome adventure covering nearly 3000km of the Australian coastline. Now all that is left is to do some scuba diving over the Great Barrier Reef!

Crikey Mate!! Australia Zoo!!

A week ago we realised that our Greyhound tickets grant us free admission to Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin - how could we not visit the home of Australia's son? So on our way to Noosa Heads we jumped off the Greyhound around 9am ready for a 7-hour tour of Australian Fauna. The first hurdle was stowing all of our stuff in the zoo lockers. Ordinarily this would be a case of dropping some extra cash and getting three lockers but since we'd gotten in for free we weren't quite ready to part with $15 each. It took 20 minutes of rotating and squeezing (with added profanities) to fit our luggage into one locker. Baggage free we wandered into the zoo and the first thing we came across was a large bronze memorial of Steve Irwin. We made our way through the reptile section first, where we each had an opportunity to handle a baby American alligator – something David didn't relish the idea of but did anyway - fair'd income to him as they say here. I still don’t know what that phrase means but I say it anyway, David says G'day to everyone he meets and that seems to go down pretty well, when in Rome.

After the reptiles we got to see a pair of tortoises that grow to be the largest in the world, two brothers that due to their bad eyesight occasionally mount each other, a disastrous situation as often one will roll over onto its back and if left alone will literally boil inside its carapace. Unfortunately the world's oldest tortoise kept in captivity, Harriet the giant Galapagos, died on the 26^th June 2006. It hatched in 1830 on one of the Galapagos Islands and was taken over to England by Charles Darwin in 1834 where it spent many cold years before moving to Australia in 1842. Not a bad innings at 172. We skipped the Asian Elephant pageant to make sure we had good seats at the Crocoseum where we got to see a lot of strange birds fly in from across the zoo as well as some obligatory crocodile feeding antics.

The peak of the zoo experience had to be the koalas. I wasted most of my digital camera memory filming koalas on the off chance that one might wake up and move. Over the day I managed to capture a few seconds of koala action - a koala munching on a Eucalyptus leaf. I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for one koala hanging lazily in a forked tree branch as a procession of people took turns to stroke it. I can only hope that the koalas are on rotation otherwise it will soon have a hand-shaped bald patch. koalas may be the cutest animals on Earth but a close second has to be the wombat as they are like living teddy bears. I captured plenty of footage of a wombat picnic as well as a wombat having its stomach scratched by a zoo handler. Unfortunately for you guys back home I only had a day bag with me and lacked the space to steal either a wombat or a koala to bring back to the UK.

On our way to 'kangaroo heaven' we past through the 'Crocodile Hunter Story', a few corridors packed with photos, drawings and poems dedicated to Steve Irwin and his family, as well as a tribute including several hundred khaki zoo shirts covered with thousands of messages from fans all of the world pegged across both sides of a long fence. If you ever visit Queensland make sure you visit the Australia Zoo, easily the best zoo we've visited.

Below - Some might think David was a little excited about visiting the zoo.

Above - Battle of the cutest animals, Koala or Wombat? It's just too close to call...

Tuesday 7^th – Thursday 9^th October, Noosa Heads, 1100km north of Sydney.

After 7-hours at Australia Zoo we caught a courtesy bus to Noosa Heads. Ninety-minutes and two episodes of Croc Files later we stepped off the bus at Noosa. The hostel consisted of two quaint 19^th century wooden buildings encircled with wide verandas that the rooms opened onto. We spent most of Tuesday on a 6km trek around the heavily wooded peninsula. As we moved round the coast the views of the bay opened up revealing more and more of the stunning landscape. Being in Noosa Heads is like taking a holiday from a holiday and it's no exaggeration to say that the beaches here make Bondi Beach look like Weston-super-Mare.

On our way round the coast we came across a metre-long monitor lizard, the kind we'd seen in the zoo the day before. Since this one wasn't shielded behind a glass wall I decided to go off the beaten track and follow it through the dense undergrowth, staying close behind as it crunched through the dead leaf litter and ducked under exposed roots. After satisfying a small childhood fantasy to be a wildlife film maker we moved on. After walking for a few minutes we came across a guy limping past with a slightly bloodied bandage wrapped around his foot; apparently he'd been bitten by a python! We looked down at our open-toed sandals and decided that it might be better to stick to the track from there on. So we followed the track to a cliff called Hell's Gate, on the way we stopped to climb down to a secluded beach to go for a swim in warm clear emerald-coloured water. At Alexandria Bay we plodded the soft wet sand enjoying the cool sea water that lapped at our feet until a group of backpackers warned us of a snake lying somewhere in the sand a few hundred metres ahead. We past an emergency telephone on the beach and scanned the sand, scrutinising every stick and sand pit we came across. The southern end of the beach was populated by nudists standing up to maximise their exposure to the sun. Trying not to stare at them as we examined the sand we narrowly missed stepping on the snake, which slipped off up a sand dune and vanished into the trees. Half an hour later we made it to the southern side of the peninsula and took in a fantastic view of the Sunshine Coast.

Thursday 9^th October, We're on the Night Bus!

We enjoyed a long sleep-in this morning to ready ourselves for climbing back aboard the Greyhound. We're riding the Night Bus later, ready to crash and burn from 4pm this afternoon until 9am tomorrow morning, rocking up the Sunshine Coast to the Whitsunday Islands some 2136km north of Sydney.

The Pacific Highway

The Prawn Supremacy

Continuing on our travels up the Pacific Highway we stopped off for a break at another awesome roadhouse (the Rock Roadhouse we saw earlier last week has nothing on this). On Friday the Greyhound pulled up at the Big Prawn. I immediately preferred the Big Prawn to the Rock Roadhouse, and not just for it's B-movie charm. Whereas the Rock is essentially a small version of Uluru there is no larger version of the Big Prawn to be found anywhere in the world. This is the definitive Prawn. We've heard rumours that there's a Giant Lobster out there, but for now the Big Prawn remains the king of the road

Friday, Byron Bay, 759km north of Sydney

We spent a few hours hill-walking to reach the lighthouse at the top of Cape Byron. The sun has been extreme the last few weeks and we're all several shades darker than we've ever been - Lee's sandals have left him with tan stigmata on the top of his feet. The vistas of the bay were stunning and totally worth the climb - these beaches are the real deal. Unfortunately the YHA was fully booked out so we had to slum it in a hostel called the Arts Factory. This place was hell on Earth and crammed with 18-30 party goers from England. In the evening we went to see a family jug band perform, it consisted of an old man on a banjo and his 8 kids most playing washboards and one who tap danced on top of the tables - proper hilly billy stuff.

Sunday, Coolangatta, 875km north of Sydney

Situated at the most southerly part of the Gold Coast where impossibly perfect white sandy beaches seem to stretch off to infinity. Nice place, though the YHA sucked - an enormous aboriginal guy and his son tried to fleece me for $10, which was weird.

Monday, Brisbane, Capital City of Queensland, 1011km north of Sydney.

Brisbane impressed us. Attractive and compact with large free open air swimming pools complete with fake beaches on the south bank of the city, all opposite the colourful city skyline. Very nice place.

Crocophile Dundee

Greyhound Stop 2: Bellingen, 748km north of Sydney

Wednesday, 9.30am. We checked out of the Newcastle YHA and ambled down to the bus station to catch the Greyhound to Urunga, half-way between Sydney and Brisbane. The trip took over 8 hours with the temperature outside bordering on 30 degrees. Fortunately the air conditioning was working well and the bus was only half-full so we could stretch our a little. On the way we made a pit stop at the 'Rock Roadhouse' a miniature Uluru / service station - elaborate roadside signs and petrol stations are an abundant feature in Australia.

At Urunga we switched to a minibus to take us the remaining 15km to Bellingen, a small town of roughly 2000 people nestled in the base of the Bellinger Valley. Bellingen is a town that wouldn't look completely out of place somewhere in the old west - the first transport we spotted in the town was horse-powered. The hostel itself is a quaint collection of small wood cabins connected by narrow paths, a place where wide verandas overlook distant mountains and rain forest, and hammocks creak in the breeze near tall palms.

On Thursday morning we hired canoes and paddled down the Bellinger river. Our guide Aussie Daniel pointed out to us huge rock dragons sunning themselves on the quiet river banks, enormous bee hives cemented in the tree tops, and majestic eagles swooping above with wingspans comparable to the length of our canoes. But we weren't paying much attention to Aussie Daniel as we were having far too much fun playing with the floating plastic crocodile head he'd planted in the water to scare us, but now his plan had backfired and the tour was in real jeopardy as we amused ourselves taking photos next to the head instead of listening to him. If our crocodile head antics weren't bad enough we spent the rest of our time racing up the river and trying to ground each other's canoes on the river banks by ramming them or worse still using our paddles to push each other into low hanging tree branches. Which was all fun and games until I came out from one crawling with tiny black spiders. I managed to flick most of them off but one got past me. There was only a moment to act but the distracting laughter from across the river slowed my reactions and the spider got in first. Ordinarily a spider bite wouldn't faze me but when you're in a country renowned for being home to the world's most poisonous creatures, added to the fact that you're paddling down a sub-tropical river only a few miles from a rain forest it's hard not to worry. The bite quickly hived up to about the size of my fingernail. I paddled over to Aussie Daniel to let him know. His response "aw well, that could be a bit of a problem, if it gets any bigger don't worry about it, if it gets really big then... aw well don't worry too much, but it could be a bit of a problem eh". A bit of a problem eh?! Fortunately it didn't get any bigger. After an hour of paddling the heat finally won out and we decided to heave the canoes out of the water and go for a swim in the river. After that we paddled back to the canoe cabin for a well earned lunch of succulent watermelons, juicy oranges and tasty croissants.

Later that day we borrowed three inner tubes and trekked a mile upstream to the rope swings. After half an hour of launching ourselves into the crisp cool water we eventually tired of being shown up by 12-year old kids doing back flips off the highest rope swings. So lazily we sagged down inside our inner tubes and floated effortlessly down stream until we came to the rapids. No one had explained that the "rapids" are about 3 inches deep. Not expecting the change in water depth we scraped our backsides over 20 or 30 meters of jagged rocks before reaching deeper water. At one point we got stuck as the water forced us forwards against rocks that skewered through the rings. Lee hit the rapids first and screamed as the rocks stabbed upwards, seriously reducing his likelihood of having children someday. David and I followed close behind, our tortured screams disturbed picnics up and down the river as we lurched forwards over the rocks.

After we survived castration falls we changed rooms to open air beds overlooking the Valley. Not our choice, but they were the only beds left due to some world music festival that's happening on Friday and the crazy demand for beds. We covered ourselves in mosquito repellent to avoid being stung. Lee managed to spray the highly toxic insect repellent directly at his face, making his already bruised lips (see surf board incident) sting even more.

Arrrghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Croco-head attack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Leaving Sydney / Hunter Valley Wine Tour

Lee was still at work on Wednesday and since I'd given David a quick tour of the city I felt it was about time I took him over to Bondi for an introduction to surfing in Australia. We parked up and surveyed the beach, a picture of warm golden sands, surfers shooting through deep blue curls and oiled bodies scattered under a high sun. Watching the local surfers I could sense David's feeling of trepidation. Anxiously he entered the board and wetsuit shop, surfboards and surfing paraphernalia hanging everywhere. We each handed over $30 at the counter, enough for 2 hours of surfing, and claimed our wetsuits. David stepped out of the cubicle cautiously, something was amiss. His wetsuit was baggy at the front and flopped down. The zip ran up the front, stopping three-quarters up his chest, the knee pads were on the back of his legs and the suit logo stretched uncomfortably across his back. Experienced surfers continued to pass in and out. Realising that his wetsuit was on backwards he backed up against the wall sheepishly. Fearing total humiliation David desperately tried to hide the zip with a sandal. I couldn’t stop laughing as he sidestepped along the wall and backed clumsily into the cubicle. I have never before seen anyone put on a wetsuit backwards - it was awesome. The surf itself wasn't anything special, it was high-tide and we had to work hard to reach the waves. After an hour of pretty poor surfing we decided to leave for the beach. As we stepped out of the water the ocean had one last surprise for us. From out of nowhere a huge stack of water dumped onto us, the wave rolled us into the sand like a gigantic pastry roller. We washed up on the beach dazed and spluttering.

On Saturday we checked into the 'Wake Up!' hostel before meeting up with a few of our friends for a goodbye yum cha lunch in China Town. After an hour of gorging ourselves stupid on great Chinese cuisine the three of us met up with Dave Kempers (a.k.a. Aussie Dave) outside the hostel before heading out to Alexandria to pick up the car. We decided to sign the car over to Dave in the hope that he might get some use out of it. We also hoped that he might sell it for us while we're travelling up the coast to Cairns. Aussie Dave started the ignition but nothing happened. Our first thought – the car's dead. But then I remembered that I'd been too lazy to refuel on the way back from Bondi. The four of us walked to the nearest petrol station to pick up a canister of fuel. Once back at the car we had a few difficulties funnelling the petrol into the tank. As Lee poured Aussie Dave used a big stick to keep the fuel cap open. Half way through the delicate operation Dave snapped the stick in half. He stood there with half the stick in his hand and the other half somewhere inside the fuel tank. Thankfully the car started. We drove it back to Central. The car felt good. The mechanic had repaired a few coolant leaks and the thermostat had levelled out half way. Sure, there was now a stick floating somewhere in the tank but other than that it was doing well. The last words the mechanic said were "a dealer should know better", but driving along in the sun I felt better about it - a new hope? Perhaps Aussie Dave could sell it on for us. Dave dropped us off at the hostel. We optimistically waved him off as he departed for his Gran's house on the other side of town. Thirty minutes later Dave called. Half the engine parts had exploded as he pulled into his driveway, R.I.P car that died before it even had a proper name.

Above - Outback mechanics at work

On Saturday night we attended our friend Richie's 27^th birthday party at a bar in Newtown. It was a good opportunity to say goodbye to everyone. Even though we're going to see them all again we know that our longest stretch of time in Sydney is over. We'll have to work in Sydney for at least a month at some point to recoup what we lost on the car and save for the flight to Alice Springs, New Zealand, and China.

Sunday, 1pm. We checked out of the hostel and caught the Greyhound at Central Station. Leaving Sydney behind marked the end of the largest chapter of our trip. The Greyhound trip will cover 2,730km of the east coast of Australia and will take us through New South Wales, Brisbane (the state capital of Queensland), the Gold Coast, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

Above - London Gentleman?

Greyhound Stop 1: Newcastle 159km north of Sydney

Sunday, 3:30pm - We arrived in Newcastle, home to one of Australia's greatest music scenes and the birthplace of the band Silverchair. We checked into a YHA near Newcastle beach and after stowing our things in the room headed to the beach for some surfing. Unlike the beaches at Sydney the smooth sand is broken up by piercing slabs of craggy rocks that make surfing fairly dangerous. After an hour of wiping out on big waves and dodging skull-splitting rocks we decided to take it easy and get an early night.

Monday, 9am – Excitedly we waited outside the hostel for the bus to take us on a wine and cheese/chutney tasting tour of the Hunter Valley. If you've ever seen the film 'Sideways' you'll have a good idea of the day we had. We visited six cellar doors in total. The bus took an hour to get to the Hunter Valley where pretty vineyards cut uniform strips into an undulating landscape. Thanks to an abnormally wet winter the hills were luscious and green. The trip out was not only serene but afforded us our first glance at a kangaroo. Unfortunately it was a dead kangaroo heaped on the roadside. Lee started talking about the kangaroo corpse in detail. This was a mistake. The four Dutch girls on the bus started asking him what he meant by the word 'corpse'. Then for some unknown reason he started rambling on about how we'd end up as corpses because we did dangerous activities… that we were dangerous men and that we lived dangerously… until we become corpses ourselves. Silence fell over their quizzical faces.

When I say that the wine tasting was like the film 'Sideways', I mean it was laughably similar. Every place we went to involved talking the talk in a bid to keep the wine coming. Red, White, Rose, Dessert, Fortified all flowed in equal measures. We must have sampled sixty or seventy grape-based drinks by the end of the day. It was 26 degrees outside and barely a cloud in sight. In one winery Lee's strategic flirting with a woman named Mandy helped us to taste half the stock, though arguably it was Lee who was played as he exchanged $25 for a bottle of Nebillio. It took some serious skills from all of us to talk wine when we know next to nothing on the subject, particularly when they drop colourful adjectives the way only a wine person can. By the end of the day the free wine and burning sun had taken it's toll on our game. Lee started describing a wine only to suddenly be at a loss for words. His hands groped at the air as his mind searched for something… anything to say. His dry mouth released the words "… yes, it's very… berry". I rambled on about how I'd drink one wine as a dessert wine, even though it's not a dessert wine and the woman who probably has 30 years or more experience stared back at me incredulous. Fortunately a English girl at the table next to me caught her attention by making the unfathomable social faux pas of helping herself to a glass of wine. Red faced and slightly inebriated we made our way back to the hostel after a successful tour of the Hunter Valley.

Tuesday morning.

Went surfing at 8.30am this morning. Despite the 10 foot waves lapping at the beach we stupidly wandered into the water. Lee was flipped over and his surfboard smashed into his lip. We left the water after 5-minutes and spent the rest of the day in the YHA. Lee's lip is still swollen.

Doo-little

Yesterday I showed David around the Sydney Botanical Gardens. Against the backdrop of the city skyline hundreds of the world's largest fruit bats (Grey Headed Flying Foxes) dangled upside down in the tree tops, a rainbow parakeet perched on my shoulder and white Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos hopped across the lawn to greet us, one cockatoo stole my can of coke, when I took it back it cried loudly and puffed out it's feathers in protest.




Below - A Flying Fox glides overhead.

Who's a thirsty Coca-Cola thieving boy then?

These photos are a little blurry when zoomed in, but I just received an early birthday present - a 7.2 mega pixel Cyber-shot camera (thanks Mum, Mike and Steve), so no more blurry phone pics for the rest of the trip. I'll also be able to record good quality video footage. We're catching the Grey Hound on Sunday morning and heading 2,000 miles up the coast to Cairns. We have a 5-week bus ticket and a lot of places to see before we reach the Great Barrier Reef at the end of October.

Q: How does a backpacker earn $100 in Sydney?

A: Earn $3000, spend it on a car that isn't roadworthy and sell it as scrap metal.

We just received the final mechanical report on the car and the news is not good. I have a piece of paper with a long list of fatal problems printed on it. It's a good thing we had it fully checked out as apparently it would have been very dangerous to drive over long distances. We've spoken to the dealer and not surprisingly he's refused to give us our money back. We did a little research into his licence and he doesn't seem to be registered with any of the main motor trading associations in New South Wales. So that's that. We have neither the time nor the money to pursue it any further and if we did or enjoyment of our trip would no doubt suffer. It's at times like this that it's important to review your strengths and plus points. In our case:

1) We still have 8 months left on our VISA
2) We have plenty of cash left (well not exactly plenty, $4000)
3) We're intelligent (stretching it)
4) We're resourceful (oh dear)
5) There's always our natural charm (eeek!)

Fortunately David is probably asleep in San Francisco right now and has no idea how badly we've messed up the road trip plan after just 4 months in Oz. David, if you read this before you catch the aeroplane tonight - we're sorry, pick you up at the airport at 7am in the Vampire (seemed fitting since it doesn't work well in direct sunlight and has sucked us dry). We're going to have an emergency meeting of the fellowship tomorrow night to discuss contingency plans. We're not sure yet what this will mean for the remainder of the trip. It may mean coming home a little sooner than we'd have liked or moving on to another city or country even. Whatever the decision we'll keep you posted.

Below- my favourite lines are at the bottom

6) Our sense of humour (priceless)

Mega 'Toe' Failure at Bondi

Sunday 14th, Bondi Beach. The Festival of the Winds was about to kick off but we had bigger things to do than fly a kite. The heavy rain had left the beach practically deserted and the sea ours for the taking. We wasted no time zipping into our winter-length wetsuits but even then the sea was still freezing and I felt a sharp twinge of pain as I entered the water. We paddled out for half an hour, making little progress in a no man's stretch of water that would neither spit us out onto the beach nor let us swim on to the waves just ahead. The rough sea and south-westerly wind constantly shifted the sea bed creating troughs and only the occasional peak to stand up on. Unlike Manly the sandbars were intermittent and seemed to have a mind of their own, choosing to appear and disappear at will. Occasionally someone would yell out that they’d found one, only to be disappointed moments later to find a 10 ft deep trench in it’s place.

Eventually our friend Burge alerted us to a sandbar he'd found. We paddled parallel to the shoreline for 5-minutes before swimming straight out to meet him. Once there we rested victoriously until we'd assessed the situation. Having spent half an hour trying to find a sandbar we weren’t about to waste our efforts on a dud wave. So we stuck it out, letting the first barrage roll over us, aware that with each one we ran the risk of losing the sandbar for good. After 10-minutes of fighting for a slither of sand we decided to go for it. A swell was gathering force on the horizon that we couldn't refuse. Already the wind had pushed us slightly past the optimum point for catching the wave. Exhausted from the swim I could only manage to raise one leg, so I shot forwards gracelessly in the ‘proposal position’ straight for Burge who now floated helplessly in no man's water knowing that after all that effort I’d ride straight over his head if I had to. Luckily for him the uneven sea bed sapped the power out of the surf and I went down on one knee... to the depths. I resurfaced to find I could no longer touch the floor with my feet. The sandbar was lost. Lee torpedoed past in proposal style straight into a wall of water that swallowed him whole.

I lifted myself up on my board and flipped onto my back. Initially only a few feet separated us but after ten minutes of recuperating I’d managed to drift almost out of sight on a powerful rip. I was reminded of an episode of Bondi Surf Patrol I’d seen on UK TV before I left, in which a lifeguard commented about a part of the coast they called the ‘English Channel’ - and now here I was, four months on and shamefully stuck in it myself. Lee waved at me with a smile as he swam out on his futile search for another sandbar. Kit was already out of the water and making his way to the car – if only we’d all had the same degree of insight. I paddled laboriously on for another 20-minutes until my back and chest ached. By the time I met up with the others the freezing sea had taken it's toll. I found Lee and Burge shivering and gibbering that their numb feet had fused into “mega-toes”. Realising that they'd lost their minds in the cold I made my own way back to the beach. Despite the handicap of their mega-toes they managed to drag themselves out of the sea without too much difficulty. I however had no energy. I battled on to the beach but the sea wasn’t quite ready to relinquish it's grip on me. I struggled to keep my head above water, occasionally slipping off my board as I tried out different swimming strokes to gain a few feet - in the end it was the 'backstroke whilst tugging the board' technique that proved most effective. Eventually the sea lost interest in my pitiful struggle and ejected me back onto dry land.

After warmth had returned to our bodies and our mega-toes felt like feet again we continued on up the beach, which was still empty apart from a small group of people shuffling towards us under the cover of umbrellas. As we got closer we realised that it was no ordinary huddle of people but a group of Japanese tourists. The umbrellas parted and from their handbags and purses they produced a pile of cameras. Pained, we readied ourselves to take a million photos, but they didn’t want us to take photos of them... they wanted to have their photos taken with us. Somehow we'd gone from mega-toe surfing failures to Bondi Beach postcard material (or maybe not). They took turns posing next to us whilst doing the hippie peace sign. I made the mistake of letting two of them stand on the board as I pretended to surf on land, which meant having to repeat the same pose three times. Sadly that's the longest amount of time I’ve stood up on a surfboard to date.

So with that we left the beach. Perhaps the surf had been awful that day, and maybe we’re pretty awful at surfing. But does that really matter? If a bunch of people from the far side of the world go home thinking they’ve met some genuine Bondi surfing heroes isn’t that what it’s all really about?! We think so.


Above photos taken the day before when it was actually sunny.

Teething Problems

On Monday we left work early at 4 pm to catch a train from Wynyard to Yagoona, 20 stops west of the city, to pick up the Thunder Tank. After paying the car dealer the outstanding balance we jumped into the car, eased the automatic gear box into drive and pulled smoothly onto the freeway bound for the city. It was a balmy evening so after a few minutes I hit the air-conditioning button. I pushed the button in twice to test it and on the second release it popped off the dashboard in comical fashion. Using my phone display as a torch I searched under the seats for some small plastic part that might belong to it. After a few minutes of looking I found the missing “part” - a wad of sellotape that had be jammed inside the button to stick it to the dashboard. Although slightly difficult to operate the air-conditioning still worked, we just needed to poke a finger inside the hole in the dashboard and root around for the rest of the button - a little like those apes you see on the discovery channel who dig out termites with sticks. The signpost ahead read 20km to the city so we exited the freeway to refuel. Once back on the road we realised that the petrol gauge still read empty despite the fact that we’d pumped $50 of petrol into the tank. Feeling a little sourer about the deal we turned the car round at the next junction and headed back to the forecourt to get the mechanic to fix the problem. On the return drive Lee noticed that the odometer wasn’t rolling over also, so we now had no idea how many miles the car had actually done or how much petrol was really swishing around in the tank. When we got back to the forecourt the cabin lights were off and the gate was padlocked. So the next day we took the first two hours off work to take the car to the dealer for urgent repairs. The mechanic struck the dashboard hard with the palm of his hand, then sat motionless staring intently at the lifeless dials and gauges, letting out a low unintelligible remark that sounded like 'narp'. ‘Swiss Tony’ hovered close behind assuring us that this was a well-known problem with early Holden’s and it wouldn't be difficult to fix. So we left the Tank in the very incapable hands of the mechanic (still staring straight ahead into the dead display of the dash) and caught the train back into the city for work.

Saturday

We would not see the car again until Saturday morning when we took it for a test drive to Bondi beach. The weather was fantastic, a soaring blue sky overhead and a temperature of 27 degrees (and it’s still just the start of spring). I drove the Tank down through the small picturesque streets of Surrey Hills to Oxford Street - which would lead us to Bondi beach. Unfortunately most Sydeysiders had had the same idea and the roads were pretty busy. The previously troublesome gauges all seemed to be in good working order (the refreshed odometer readout had rolled over another 20,000km). But there was still one gauge that gave us cause for concern… the engine thermostat, and it was rising steadily. After 20 minutes of stopping and starting the needle had climbed into the red end of the gauge. To prevent the engine from frying we pulled an emergency manoeuvre that has gotten me out of many close calls when driving my previous car, Sex Panther - we wound down all the windows and slammed the heaters to full, sucking the hot air out of the engine and forcing it into the passenger cabin. Slowly the needle fell out of the red, though the hot air did start to burn our bare sandal-clad feet. So it was a relief when we finally arrived at Bondi and were able to dip our feet in the cool sea water. We ate a small lunch outside a restaurant that backed up to a line of palm trees, before taking a relaxing stroll along the white sands of the cove. The Tank may be getting a little too hot at the moment so we've booked her into the garage on Wednesday, hopefully the repairs won’t be too expensive as we're still looking forward to a road trip launch on the 27th of this month.

Wagon Watch... The Search is Over.

This morning we woke up with one thing on our minds, and that was to continue our search for a wagon that’s up to the three-month challenge of carrying us around Australia. We spent much of work last week putting together a lengthy list of promising cars to see. So with the list tucked securely in my pocket we stepped out into the shroud of rain that’s been plaguing Sydney for the past week and headed over to Central Station with a day-tripper pass and a lot to see.

We decided first to check out the local car markets as these are good places to find backpackers selling their cars and camper vans onto other backpackers before catching a flight out of the country, and the largest and best-known of these is the Kings Cross Car Market. I’m the first to admit that I’m a little prone to exaggeration sometimes when describing the scale of our trip, but from what I had read and heard about Kings Cross I couldn’t help but imagine that we were about to enter the ‘Mos Isley Spaceport’ of Australian car markets, with travellers from all over the globe congregating in one spot to buy and sell vehicles for the single purpose of travelling freely around this enormous island continent. So with the wise words of Alec Guinness in mind we entered Kings Cross prepared for a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”. The car market exists on the lowest floor of a multi-storey car park, five levels below ground and is operated solely by travellers who pay a weekly rent to park in a bay there. Excitedly we slipped into the lift, pressed the button and descended into the dark bowels of the car park. A few seconds later the doors parted to reveal an underwhelming sight of vacant-looking travellers huddled around five or six cars, all of whom had probably seen too many nights down there. These people were cold and desperate. We tried to enter as inconspicuously as we could but the ping of the elevator doors closing behind us made our presence known loud and clear. We stood in the doorway for a few seconds as they stared at us like famished dogs outside a butcher’s shop window. But their attention soon shifted. From a distant corner of the car park came the thunderous sound and chocking smell of an ailing 25-year old camper engine being wrestled to life by a traveller who had probably not been born when that Juggernaut of the road first rolled onto tarmac.

We briefly eyed the cars as we walked by but they were overpriced or down to their last few months of rego (Australian M.O.T and insurance), or absolute rust boxes. After a quick circuit we ran into a wide-eyed Irishman brandishing a bottle of beer and listing off in great detail the specifications of every car in the market, but despite my best efforts to look interested my gaze shifted to the column behind him and the names and dates etched into the flaking plaster. I followed countless messages across walls and down other columns, written in many different languages by past travellers. A few dates from the seventies stuck out. How long had some of these travellers lived down here? Ironic, that after months of travelling under the hot desert sun that the fate of so many travellers is to end up as subterranean homesick car park dwellers. As I watched the Irishman run through his sales spiel with Lee the thought suddenly occurred to me, ‘are we peering into our own future?” With that thought we wasted no time in leaving the car market. Next stop was the western suburbs of Sydney followed by the Hume Highway - a main road lined either side with a lot of used car dealerships.

The journey into the western suburbs started out well. Despite the continuous downpour we were relatively dry and in good spirits. I had my shower proof on (secured tightly over my head in very un-cool fashion) and Lee had his umbrella. The first dealership seemed pretty good and offered us a 1994 Ford Falcon for $3000, though it had done over a quarter of a million kilometres and had a reasonable 6 months rego remaining – important if we want a quick sale and avoid living in a car park come January. Cars over here tend to have huge mileage so we weren’t fazed by the odometer reading either. So we agreed to come back later for a test drive and carried on to the next dealership where we found an eclectic mix of super-cheap vans, all had seen better days, and a fleet of expensive executive cars. Not a great selection but we pressed on.

Before we left the house in the morning we’d sketched out a rough route to follow between these two dealerships and the ones along the Hume highway. Unfortunately, in our tired state of mind we’d misread this as a 30-minute walk when it was actually a 30-minute drive. So we walked for nearly two hours sandwiched between the edge of a busy highway and a flooded foot path. An hour on and the wind and rain had finally succeeded in bending Lee’s umbrella over his head and drenching him completely, and my ageing converse trainers soaked up enough water that I could no longer feel my toes inside my sodden socks. The situation deteriorated to a new low when we approached the car dealership that owned most of the station wagons we'd planned to see. What we found was an empty showroom and a deserted forecourt, cracked and desolate apart from a rusty overturned shopping trolley. I turned to Lee unable to resist asking the question “Dude, where’s my car dealership?” So we kicked around the forecourt for a few minutes killing time until Lee suddenly let out a laugh so maniacal it scared us both. So we decided to cut our losses and return to the first dealer to test-drive the Falcon.

It would be an understatement to say we were feeling a little fed up as we walked the two mile stretch of highway to Bankstown to catch a train to Central. As we walked in silence, suffering the occasional soaking by a near-passing taxi, we happened upon one last dealership. We looked through the forecourt gates to see a Holden Commodore Station Wagon parked near the entrance. It was a newer shape model than the ones we had seen at other forecourts and as it sat glistening in the rain it spoke to us and said “buy me”. But the price was too high, at $3,750 before adding the cost of a one-year warranty it was more than a thousand dollars over our budget. But then something finally snapped inside us. Between walking for two hours in the pouring rain and the disappointment of our visit to Kings Cross we decided enough was enough and braved our way to the forecourt cabin. The car dealer emerged looking like a real Swiss Tony. We checked the car over, it looked good. The mileage was a hundred thousand kilometres less than the Falcon. We turned the ignition and brought the huge 4 litre V6 engine to a roar. If it wasn’t for the fact that I once owned a car named ‘The Beast’ (R.I.P Rover 100 that was in no way a metro), this would be a car truly deserving of that moniker. So Lee gingerly accepted the keys and after a five-minute test drive concluded that it felt good too. So we stepped into his cabin to negotiate, the stale odour of tobacco smoke hung thick in the air and his black pleather jacket squeaked whenever he leant forwards to speak. After 20-minutes of applying our Jedi mind tricks to the task he finally agreed to a reduced price of $3000 for the car, and a further $300 for a one-year roadside assistance warranty, a huge drop in price of $750. To top it off Lee asked if he would throw his umbrella into the deal too, and he did. So we paid him the deposit, shook hands and walked back into the rain feeling a little dryer than we had before.

We’ll be picking up the car on Monday evening. It’s still nameless and according to the blog name poll there is currently a tie between ‘Thunder Tank’ and ‘London Gentleman’, so let us know which name you prefer otherwise Lee may get his way and I’ll be forced to live in a wagon named ‘Black Beard’s Delight’ for the next three months.

Below Right - "Dude, where's my car dealership?"

Below - How many roads must a man walk down?

Below - Lee looking more pleased with the umbrella he got out of the deal than the car.



Below - "Buy me..."

Wagon Watch... The Search is On!

Oh yes we’re feeling it. The days are getting longer and the evenings warmer. The worst of winter is behind us and there are now just three working weeks between us and freedom. We’re visiting the car markets this weekend to begin the search for a wagon that’s up to the challenge. Normally that would mean a car that’s dependable, spacious and comfortable… but after hours of pouring over websites looking for a car that matches our budget we’ve nearly arrived at a decision over what to buy… and that is (drum roll) a Ford Falcon, a car that possesses none of the above qualities but embodies many of the characteristics shared by the intrepid explorers who hope to travel in her, in as much as it’s cheap, getting old, and almost certain to have a breakdown at some point during the trip. To compromise for the lack of in-car facilities we’re going to buy a two-man tent to attach to the car at night, immediately transforming it into a ‘mobile home’. For the third person who gets to sleep in the back of the car we’re going to fit the windows with netting to keep out the insects and bush wildlife when it's hot, no dingoes will be getting inside this car… unless dingoes can bite through netting - in which case we have no backup plan. But aside from the possibility that some months from now a search party will find a pack of satisfied looking dingoes living inside a deserted Ford Falcon the trip should be a great success. We’ll keep you posted on the progress of wagon watch as it unfolds.

Lee in the Lost World

Click here to see Lee's photos from Hamilton, New Zealand. So far I haven't spotted any Velociraptors in any of these photos, but that doesn't mean they weren't there... watching him from the sides. Clever girls.

The Black Hole Post

It's been over two weeks since our last post so if you’re still checking the blog and you’re wondering “why the blog-silence?” the main reason has been because of work. We got jobs, and not just regular back-packer jobs either but jobs with responsibility, and in my case I have two of them. Lee has been working hard under the demands of his marketing role and I’ve been busy working for the Australian Government by day and as an usher by night at the Theatre Royal, a large 1200 seat venue built into the base of a 60-storey skyscraper. So the blog may be a little inactive over the next few weeks but don’t fret, we’re still going to post as regularly as we can and all this work is in aide of buying the wagon a month early so we can leave Sydney at the end of September and begin the far more exciting 8’000km road-trip around Australia. It also looks like there will be three of us making our way around the continent together, which although great news does mean pushing our personal hygiene to new lows.

Our plan as it stands is to drive south via Canberra until we reach Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria (a.k.a the Garden State). We’ll then make our way west to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road and hopefully get in as much surfing as possible before we drive inland to Alice Springs and Uluru in the Red Centre. As soon as the interior gets too hot for us, which won’t take long since we’ll be nearing the peak of summer by that time and we'll need to leave before the car tyres melt, we’ll leave the red dust-swept roads of the Northern Territory behind and travel east to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef for some scuba diving. Finally we’ll journey south through Queensland stopping at Brisbane and the Gold Coast on our way back to Sydney in time to celebrate the start of the New Year. But we’re not quite there yet, so here’s a quick recap of what we’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks.

The most exciting thing to happen to either of us recently is that Lee spent last week in Hamilton, New Zealand. The closest I got to seeing New Zealand was standing in Blockbuster wondering whether or not to hire the Fellowship of the Ring and live vicariously through Lee's stories. He's currently writing a post about his time over there as well as picking out a few envy-inducing photos from his travels – both will be added to the site soon.

On Monday night we went to see ‘Hell Boy II: The Golden Army’ at a special (and I like to think highly secret) advanced screening in Bondi Junction, a screening made even cooler by the fact that the audience got to quiz the director, Guillermo Del Toro, via satellite link at the end of the film. Del Toro is probably best known for his work directing the fantastic ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’. Despite a few annoying and over-intellectualised questions we discovered some golden nuggets of information, like the fact that Del Toro did the voices himself for over 90% of the monsters you see in the film - an impressive feat considering the monster count! The film is excellent and I can’t recommend it enough. The clever use of animatronics (something of a lost art now) wherever possible to bring the weird creatures and awesome cog-driven machines to life reminded me a lot of films like ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘The Dark Crystal’ that I enjoyed so much when I was growing up, but there’s a powerful Lord of the Rings feel to the movie too that bodes well for his upcoming adaptation of the Hobbit.

I can't finish this post without mentioning how great it is to be living in Australia at a time when we’re beating them in the world’s most prestigious sporting event. Never before have the words ‘bloody Poms’ filled me with such a great feeling of national pride.

Lee’s New Zealand photos should appear on the site soon.

The Blue Mountains Photo Album

Click here to view our photos from the Blue Mountains.

Stranded in Scenic World

Today we travelled to the Blue Mountains National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site and an area of breathtaking sandstone plateaus, escarpments and gorges set amongst seemingly endless eucalyptus forest. We got off the train at the sleepy town of Katoomba, our gateway to the Mountains and Echo Point – the site of the Three Sisters cliffs. The train ride took over two hours and stopped at dozens of nowhere stations on its route through the sprawling suburbs of Sydney. One after another towns with names like MacDonald Town and Zig Zag came and went. When we finally arrived and clambered out of the packed train car we immediately felt hit by the cold and quickly put on an extra jumper and coat, at 4 degrees Katoomba was well over 10 degrees cooler than the city.

After familiarising ourselves with the town map we strolled along the main road for 2km to Echo Point, from there we would eventually make our descent down to the valley floor. The road was wide and lined either side with model-like white wooden houses topped with Australian flags and faced with creaky wooden porches and manicured lawns. As we turned off the road and into a car park we were suddenly met by an incredible and expansive view of mountains and forest that stretched out to the horizon. After taking a few photos we continued down a dusty foot path to the first Sister, the only one of the three that can be reached by foot. The path traced the cliff edge, meandering close to the cover of eucalyptus trees that looked alien to us with their brown papery layered bark that had peeled away exposing pale trunks. We descended a few hundred steps, at some points down near vertical metal ladders across the cliff face (not recommended for those with a fear of heights) until we reached a foot bridge that spanned the 1000m gorge to the Sisters. This was a truly surreal sight and one that was made all the more dreamlike by the white cockatoos perched in the trees above us squawking loudly.

After visiting the first Sister we made our descent down the remaining 1000 steps to the forest floor of the Jamison Valley. On the ground we felt as though we’d discovered a lost world far removed from the noise of Sydney. We located a route map and decided to follow a well-trodden trail to Scenic World where we could get a lift to the cliff top aboard the Scenic Cableway – Australia’s steepest aerial cable car. Happy with our plan for the day we made a start on the 5km trek along the valley floor. Unfortunately when we arrived we discovered that neither of us had actually brought any cash! The cable car was within metres but the $10 ticket price might as well have been a million dollars. This kind of diffusion of responsibility to plan and prepare has happened before but never to the extent that we've found ourselves hopelessly stranded in the shadow of a towering sandstone monolith somewhere inside 10’000 square kilometres of eucalyptus forest. We were stuck, all we could do was watch in apathy as the mammoth wheels at the mountain base began to turn, pulling happy families skyward, their smiling children safely aboard with arms waving down at us through the glass floor.

We stood there for an unknown quantity of time staring up at the cable car as it deposited its carefree cargo at the top of the cliff. With the temperature hovering just above zero we knew we had to get out of the valley before nightfall, but with only two hours of daylight remaining walking the 5 km back to the base of the Three Sisters and ascending the thousand steps to the top was out of the question. We would have to find another route back to Katoomba. It was then that we noticed a smaller sign beneath all the others, one that pointed to a route out of the valley on foot. This sign was obviously ignored by the majority of people visiting the forest floor, only the unfortunate 1% who found themselves stranded without money or food would ever know of its existence. This sign was an afterthought for fools. It even had an emergency telephone number on it and a warning about leaving plenty of time to safely ascend the valley wall. It pointed in the direction of an old disused coal house we had past a kilometre back, behind the coal house was another thousand step trail that would take us to the top. Resigned to a choice between either a 5km or 1km walk before an unavoidable 1000 step climb we chose the closer of the two and reluctantly set off for the coal house.

As expected the walk was exhausting. Half way up we stumbled upon an old bench, rotten and twisted it had clearly waited a long time to be sat upon again. It was fixed beneath an overhanging sandstone ledge. We committed the location to memory as a place to come back to in the advent of a sudden downpour, but secretly we both chalked it down a place to possibly survive the evening if our tiring legs finally gave out before the top. Another hour past and we both agreed that this was as close to the book ‘Into the Wild’ as we ever wanted to be, though by now our communication had devolved to a series of monosyllabic words, grunts and nods between stops. We decided to take a break at Victoria Viewpoint, a clearing that overlooked an enormous and truly majestic waterfall. Here we found a collection a rock slabs to rest on and an information point that explained how the slabs had been used as a barbecue at the turn of the 20^th century. Only in Australia could you stumble upon the archaeological remains of a barbecue in the middle of a national park.

We left Victoria Viewpoint and headed back into the forest, the eucalyptus leaves shimmered with the spray from the waterfall. We pressed on up the trail passing a large rock formation called Witches Leap, a giant ball of sandstone that had eroded in such a way that it now resembled a witch’s head. But by this point our luck had changed and we felt relieved to be able to make out the cliff top through the trees above us - we were going to make it out before nightfall. Once back in civilisation we made an emergency sandwich and refreshment stop before catching the two-hour train ride back to Sydney. The Blue Mountains photo album will be on the site soon.

Working 9 to 5 for the Wagon

Two weeks ago I checked my Australian bank account and found that I'd managed to achieve the impressive balance amount of $0. Standing there in the glow of that ATM screen, still clutching the extra-large meat feast pizza I'd unknowingly spent my last $20 on, it occurred to me how much money we’d gone through during the first month of parties, surfing and sightseeing, and how expensive living in Sydney is in general. It also occurred to me how fortunate it was that I’d started my new job the week before, so with just days until I would be credited my first payment we found ourselves still in a position to plan the remainder of our trip - albeit by the smallest of margins. Now that we have office work sorted for the next two months we've started saving up for the station wagon with the aim of launching Phase II of our trip as early as the first week of October - Lee has already started planning the road trip play list, think ACDC and Iron Maiden.

The weekend is looming and we’re getting excited about Saturday morning and trading the bustle of the city for the quiet stillness of Katoomba, a sleepy country town of some 9’000 inhabitants situated 50 miles outside of Sydney and nestled a kilometre up into the Blue Mountains (so called because of the bluish tinge caused by light scattering in the atmosphere). Top of our to-do list is to visit the Three Sisters rock formations: Meehni (922 m), Wimlah (918 m), and Gunnedoo (906 m), hopefully with the minimum of daredevil cliff-hanging antics - the "Mountain-Climbing Skills" album is unlikely to follow.

The "Water Skills" Album

So here’s the photographic evidence that Lee and I faced our fears on Manly beach last weekend. Most of these photos were taken after we'd given up trying to ride the colossal wave but there's a photo of a wave almost as unforgiving, captured here on it's death path towards Lee, as well as a photo that captures the exact moment I popped my hip during an awkward and visibly painful dismount off my banana-coloured surfboard.

Click here to view 'The “Water Skills” Album’.

Wipeout at Manly Beach

It was a clear but cold morning at Manly and the surf looked promising. This was our first time surfing without an instructor and we felt sure that we could tame the beast. A quick scan of the shoreline later and we headed over to the surf-hire hut to pick up our boards and wetsuits. At first Lee felt a little disgruntled after the shop assistant-dude picked out a large-size wetsuit for him to wear, but whatever irritation he felt soon disappeared when I zipped myself into the only bright blue wetsuit on the beach. Any initial fear that I resembled the Blue Power Ranger was soon put to rest after I tucked my bright yellow surfboard under my arm. Clearly I had become Banana Man. But we weren’t about to let the beach hut dude steal away our two hours of awesomeness. So with boards pinched under our arms and dragging behind us we stepped into the sea.

Immediately the sea felt colder and harder than we’d remembered. The waves ploughed into us with renewed energy. This wasn’t going to be easy but slowly and surely we advanced, wading from sand bar to sandbar, slipping from waist deep water to neck-deep water back to waist deep water. Soon we could see more-experienced surfers populating the swell ahead of us, all sitting upright and bobbing about on the now calm surface. The changing sand depths churned out by rolling waves alerted us that it was only a matter of time before the calm was broken again, but with no idea how long that would be we decided to sit up and rest.

As it happens we didn’t have to wait long. At first only a couple of gentle bulges broke away from the straight horizon to lift us up, the strong undercurrent stirring up the sand below and turning the colour of the waves ahead to a reddish brown - a suitable colour for the hellish wave that was gathering force beneath us. Bobbing there silently on the reddish swell we watched with horror as the next seemingly innocuous bulge mutated into a single wall of water over 6-feet in height and stretched out across the horizon, reducing the queue of surfers ahead of us to a foamy outline. With little time left we hastily paddled one-handed to rotate our boards to face the beach. Annoyingly, out of the corner of my eye I could see a ten-year old boy effortlessly cutting a masterful arc across the wave that was about to smash us to pieces. I looked over to my right to spot Lee’s position. His eyes were transfixed on the shoreline but no matter how fast he paddled he just seemed to be moving backwards, but then so was I. He caught my line of sight first but quickly shot a glance over my shoulder. From his pained expression I decided not to look myself. All there was left to do now was to keep on paddling. At this point I’d lost sight of Lee. With one abrupt lift the wave thrust me onto the white edge of the rip curl. Somehow I was still holding on. I looked around frantically to find Lee on the rip curl besides me, but I should’ve looked straight ahead. From out of nowhere an incredibly fast old man shot across my path. Fearing collision with the old man’s surfboard I bowed out of the wave right at its peak. A flash of foam later and I found myself tumbling around inside the wave, with every attempt I made to resurface for air met with an enormous clap of water. After what felt like minutes I managed to dig my feet into the fast-flowing sand and stand up. I opened my eyes to see Lee pointing behind me. All I heard was the word “Holy…” then suddenly I was rolling beneath the surface again.

Washed up on the beach and feeling crushed and cheated by the incredibly fast old man and the child surfing protégée we agreed to wade back into deeper water and try again to ride the colossal wave that had cast us off so easily. But the plan quickly fell apart. Wave after wave pummelled us. Lee lent his surfboard to someone else and decided to climb aboard mine while I was beneath a wave. As I stood up to search for my board - still tethered to my ankle - I was suddenly tugged under the water again as Lee paddled across the rip. Despite my frequent and gargled hollers he paddled on with the determination of a madman.

Once again we found ourselves washed up side-by-side on the beach. Back in the water and my final failed attempt to ride the colossus ended in me popping my hip after one wave tossed me off the board before another opposing wave threw me back onto it at an awkward angle. Lee’s final attempt led him to gracelessly slide off his board with a high-pitched shriek, but because he wouldn’t let go he slipped underneath the surfboard and hung there like an aquatic sloth, swallowing at least a litre of salt water in the process. Feeling tired and deflated we admitted temporary defeat and decided instead to take turns photographing each other riding smaller waves further along the beach. Now 6-hours later Lee is still coughing and snorting up salt and I need a heater to keep my hip warm.

The photo album demonstrating our “water skills” will be on the site soon.

Menergy!!

We saw this parody ad for the energy drink 'Powerthirst' on the Australian ABC network last night and thought it was pretty cool.

One Month On...

When we arrived in Australia about a month ago we didn’t have long to overcome our jet lag and see the sights before we had to take care of the domestic tasks associated with moving to another country, like opening up a bank account, getting a medicare card, acquiring a tax code number, not to mention finding a place that isn’t stacked to the rafters with Brits on bunk beds all grinning ear-to-ear through their collective misery. Add to that our preference for a house within walking distance of the city and the whole enterprise looked a little shaky.

But one month on and the plan seems to be unfolding well. We have both since ‘discovered’ the downside to a working holiday is that you have to... well, work. We’ve moved into a house with enough room to swing a cat, or at least manoeuvre a couple of heavily overloaded backpacks. We’re living within close walking distance of George Street, Australia’s premiere and busiest high street - like Oxford Street but crisscrossed with tram lines for an added element of danger. Chinatown is also just around the corner, it's entrance marked out with a gold-gilded tree stump believed to bring good fortune to the Chinese community. Although for us, having frequently visited it’s unbelievably cheap food court in our first week the only thing the sight of the golden tree-stump brings us are raging hunger pangs the likes of which Pavlov could barely have imagined. A further 15-minutes up George Street is Town Hall, a popular meeting place next to two other imposing Victorian buildings: the QVB and St Andrews Cathedral, all now flanked either side by skyscrapers. By local standards these are old buildings celebrated the way Roman or Neolithic monuments might be in the UK.

Between sightseeing and making our way through that list of domestic tasks we’ve had little time to commit to the really important things, namely surfing. But this Saturday will mark our re-emergence on the seafront scene. Surfboards in hand (well, dragging behind in tow) we’ll be taking our skills to either Bondi or Manly beach. Either way Sydney is about to witness something very special... or at least their emergency rescue patrol will.

Circular Quay

A Stroll into Darling Harbour

Waking up feeling rested and refreshed following a good 12-hours or so sleep, we decided to take a lazy Sunday afternoon stroll down to Darling Harbour. One of the best things about actually moving to another country is that you can avoid scribbling out an unrealistic to-do list of sights to see in a time frame that assumes bending time and space is not a problem. So having explored very little of the local area we were surprised to find that Darling Harbour sits directly behind China town, about a 10-minute walk from our new house. This is not a small harbour and I have no idea how it took us well over two weeks to stumble upon it. One thing I will say is that we tend to spend a lot of time peering up at the trees when walking for fear of being dropped upon by a Red Back or Huntsman spider, or any of the other 10-million or so species in Australia that can seemingly kill a man just by looking at him.

The proximity of things in Sydney is also something we’ve come to expect and love. It might take half-an-hour to cross the length of the CBD by foot, but unlike London the city layout isn’t nebulous, and the partial-grid system makes it pretty straightforward to navigate. There’s no extensive underground system either but it’s easy to get where you’re going aboard clean and spacious double-decker trains (there’s actually room to breathe during rush hour and strangers talk to one another without fear). Sydneysiders are friendly, approachable, and most importantly for us very obliging. It could be that we’re simply seeing them from the tourist’s point-of-view, but when you walk around Darling Harbour on a day like this it’s not that difficult to understand why they’re all so cheerful. Photos to be added soon...

First Night at Abercrombie Street

Today we moved into our new place in Abercrombie Street, just off Broadway and minutes from town. After three weeks of sharing an inflatable mattress in a room not much larger than the bed itself we have upgraded to having our own beds again. The luxury of having separate beds, not to mention mattresses that don’t require re-inflating every night, has put a smile on both our faces. Not that we’re ungrateful for the help we’ve been given with moving to Sydney, it’ll just be nice not lying in fear from now on whenever one of us decides to make the blind and dangerously uncoordinated night-crossing of the room to get to the bathroom at 2am.

After collecting up our things and putting on our backpacks, which now feel like someone has filled them with rocks when we weren’t looking, we made the 20-minute amble to Redfern station before getting off at Central. The walk was tough as the temperature here isn’t much lower than back home, which makes it even stranger to see Sydneysiders wrapped up in scarves and jumpers. Somehow forty minutes later, and following a discussion/argument about The Return of the King and why one of us should mirror Sam’s gesture and carry the other the remainder of the way, we arrived at the house. Although we’re moving in with another five travellers only three have actually moved in so far.

Unfortunately with all the moving we didn't have time to hit the beach this morning for our second attempt at surfing, but next Saturday we'll be back out there and ready to face the fear once again. Feeling pretty wiped out after getting home at 4am this morning from a Greenday cover band in the city and finally free of our backpacks we've decided to take it easy tonight and enjoy the comfort of a good bed.

Pancake Morning at Circular Quay

After enjoying the thoroughly awesome film Iron Man this morning we headed over to Circular Quay to take photos and have fun with perspective – a decision that led to the obligatory 'we’re eating the Opera House' photograph. After taking these tasty shots we followed our big appetites to pancakes-on-the-rocks, an eatery where you can order any pancake you desire. Since we’d already consumed the Opera House we weren’t about to shy away from a couple of long-stacks drizzled with maple syrup with a side of ice cream, whipped cream and butter. How wrong we were...

Big Saturday

On Saturday morning we went to Manly beach for our first surfing lesson. It was a gorgeous sunny day and this time an ambulance didn’t roll up as soon as we got to the seafront. We squeezed into our flattering wetsuits and walked along the beach with three other slightly more experienced friends of ours. Struggling to carry our 10-foot boards we walked as men, men with something to prove, but no real idea what. After a top-gun high-five moment and a quick tutorial in which Lee proved he can’t actually crouch with his feet flat on the ground - a major problem if you’re planning to stand up on a surfboard - we entered the water.

We didn’t get hit in the head by our own surfboards. We weren’t even stung by a jellyfish or attacked by a ravenous shark. We were however, let down by our meagre upper body strength as we paddled out to a sandbar we could stand up on to catch our first wave. Standing there exhausted, spitting out salt water as wave after wave slammed into us and knocking us under the surface, we waited for a calm moment to climb aboard our surfboards. As it was our first time the instructor lined our boards up to face the beach. Then we waited for our wave to come in. Feeling the fear we glanced over our shoulders to spot a four-footer heading straight for us. I know that doesn’t sound impressive, but from our point of view we’d found ourselves in a scene from the perfect storm. Clinging to our boards we had a few seconds to look at each other, powerless. As we peered up at the wave curling over us, an unforgiving monster that dragged us into it, I had time to utter the word righteous... then we heard the instructor call out to us to paddle as fast as we could, eyes fixed on the beach ahead we paddled with the combined strength of a small child. Lee pulled himself up, ready to jump to his feet. As he stood up he instantly knew something was very wrong. He looked over at me and I could see the terror in his eyes, he knew he was doomed, a dead man riding a wave that was about to leave him disgraced and flat on his back on the sand we’d spent 10 long minutes paddling from. Lee disappeared under the water, his surfboard marking his point of departure.

With my remaining strength waning I pulled myself up. With my profound ability to crouch with my feet flat (an ability shared by most human beings apart from Lee) I stood up. There I was, actually standing up and riding this thing, no doubt with a look of unbelievable concentration grazed across my face. But one ill-advised second later I decided to turn the surfboard and ride across the wave. The next second I was under the water and being rushed out towards the shore.

Over the next hour we both managed to more-or-less stand up and surf. Dignity intact we left the beach ready to return for more next weekend. Photos to be added soon!

The First Week in Photos

The First Week

We made it! We haven’t died, although we did pray for death a few times during the mammoth 30-hour journey. We spent the first 8’000 km sitting next to an angry drunk American woman who Lee made the mistake of starting a conversation with. We tried to sleep for the next 10’000 km over the Pacific Ocean but ended up catching up on every movie we hadn’t seen in the last 6-months whilst harassing the flight attendants for tea. Because we had rolled our watches back in L.A. and stayed ahead of sunrise as we flew over the Pacific, when we crossed the international dateline we jumped from the 10th to the 12th June. We may have experienced the 12th and 13th of June, but we spent those days dealing with so much jet lag and the uncomfortable situation of sharing a small inflatable mattress that it wasn’t until the weekend that we did anything.

At 7.30am on Saturday we headed out to Bondi beach to catch some early morning waves. Since we’re not exactly what you’d call experienced surfers, we were only trusted by the people we went with to use body boards (really small pretend surf boards for lying face down on, also known to local surfer-types as ‘speed bumps’). Unfortunately the weather was pretty bad. As we pulled in to the beach car park we were met with the sight of enormous waves crashing into the bay and a practically deserted beach. As Lee and I got out of the car and walked closer to the beach we could almost see the panic in the eyes of the lifeguards as they planted danger signs in the sand. By the time we got to the beach an ambulance had rolled up and the morning was over. I guess they saw us coming.

After the disappointment of the morning surf we spent Saturday evening at the SCG for our first Aussie Rules football match. In case you haven’t seen Australian Rules Football, it’s a kind of weird take on Football and American Football, but with an oval playing field and no offside rule. I’d go into it more but I really didn’t understand most of the rules. It’s a brutal game – it’s the only game I know of in which a player can run up another player’s back and get away with it. The teams playing were the Saints (from Melbourne), and the Swans (the local side). Lee decided to back the Saints and I went with the Swans. In your face Lee - the Swans won the game 101 – 66. A few jubilant fans thought they saw the Dalai Lama celebrating afterwards, but it was actually just your run-of-the-mill Tibetan monk. Still, not the kind of place you’d expect to find a Tibetan Monk.

So far we’re having a great time. The weather has been okay. As soon as we have a sunny day we’ll post some photos of Sydney. The only downside is that the tea here is not very nice, and it’s going to cost me $10 AUD to import a small box of PG tips each month.

Two Weeks to go...

Two weeks from today Lee and I will embark on our 23-hour flight to the other side of the world... a flight that will test our friendship to its limits, as well as get us started on our year-long trip around Australia, New Zealand and eventually South East Asia. Sydney here we come.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO LEAVE US A MESSAGE JUST POST A COMMENT BELOW!