Wherever you are in the world - chillin' out at a new age encampment between Brisbane for Sydney, for example (which I was), as far away from reality as I could get at that moment, there are things that happen that grab me by the balls and remind me that I am still part of that world that I am trying to get around, like these events in New York a week ago. With these events in mind it is difficult to get my little world in perspective. So for the purposes of this email I have decided to ignore perspective and the real world, and concentrate on the insignificant happenings of the past 6 weeks..... welcome to my world........
Since last time when I was in Bali I have flown to Darwin, toured round the national parks there, gone down to Alice Springs, tripped out to Uluru (Ayres Rock)and The Olgas. Then flown to Cairns at the north end of the east coast and travelled down the east coast stopping off at a variety of (mainly) interesting places en route. Finally I have reached Sydney.
Note : Written with due apologies to any Aussies who may be reading this.
Firstly I should say that Oz is a confusing place e.g.
- the Adelaide river is nowhere near Adelaide
- the Victoria highway does not go to Victoria
- Saltwater crocodiles live in freshwater (this is important when it comes to swimming in fresh water as the Salties may eat you! (or me!))
Up Top (The Good Bits)
- The main highlight of my time in Oz is obvious..... Stuffing Germany 5-1 in their own backyard. I met several Germans after that and mysteriously all claimed to have no interest in football. Odd that !!
- Kakadu National Park (NP) near Darwin - fantastic scenery and waterfalls - although the water was COLD (very).
- Uluru - the climb up was very steep and so windy that halfway up I wished they had closed it - I thought I was gonna be blown off but fortunately there was a heavyweight chain to hang on to (and I did - with both hands). An amazing place, great sunset and sunrise although it would have been better if we hadn't had to stand with a few hundred people sipping champagne to watch it (we had one warm beer between about 10 of us....) The Olgas are worth a mention - they are similar to Uluru but from certain angles they look like Homer Simpson lying down - Yes Really!
- Diving off Cairns with a rather large Green Turtle (although it was brown in colour). I swam along next to it for a few minutes. Amazing complany, it was very friendly waving it's flipper at me as we swam along together although, to be honest, it didn't say that much.
- Seeing kangaroos, dingos, koalas, camels and a duck billed platypus all in the wild (though not at the same time). The dbp was a bit tricky as we had to wait 1.5 hours for it and then only saw it for 5 seconds - but hey I saw one ! PS It was unimpressive ! The koala was better - got to within 2m of it as it munched it's way through loads of leaves ....... OK so that wasn't that exciting either...... my tiny travelling companions thought it was cute though !
- Humpback Whale watching in Hervey Bay - didn't see many of them but the ones we did see were on form as the enormous mammel jumped high out of the water just so we could take photos of them jumping high out of the water.....
- Whitsunday Islands - 3 days on a racing yacht (not that we raced) more of a cruise really, to the fantastic white sands of Whitehaven beach (reckoned to be one of the top 10 beaches in the world - and we didn't even take a bucket and spade; Damn !)
- Driving a 4x4 on the largest sand island in the world and getting stuck loads of times (everyone else had to push but I was OK - I was driving - nuff said).
- Surfing - Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.
- Learning to play the didgeredoo - Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.
- The 'occasional' Party nights with loadsa beer - Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.
Down Under (The Bad Bits)
- 'Occasional' Hangovers every morning after the 'occasional' party nights out.
- The cost of it all - it may be cheaper than UK but it's about 4 times the price of SE Asia from whence I came so it seems really expensive.
- The aboriginals many of whom are displaced and apparently without hope or motivation. Most of the ones I saw just sat around all day doing nothing.
(Not to be mistaken for fellow travellers who may act in a simiar manner!)
- The whole country is culturally devoid (almost).
- The endless number of small and lifeless towns with near negative populations that are strewn about the country. I think some of them may have stopped breathing!
- There are no Australians here (cos they are all working in pubs in London). Everyone is English and surely half the point in getting away in the first place was to meet some different people. In some places 'a local' is an English person who has been in Australia for more than a month.
- The rest of the travellers on the east coast are teenage girls. OK OK ...... so there are some advantages in that ........ but I shall restrain myself and say no more ... not even ...Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.
There is loads more i could say but you would get really bored and I would run out of internet time....
Tomorrow I'm off to New Zealand for about 6 weeks, and then to some south pacific islands - and they really will be the middle of nowhere...
Bye for now
Luv Pete
Wednesday 19 September 2001
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
