Australia January-June 2004
First Impressions
Coming from New Zealand there wasn’t much of a culture shock. Our mood wasn’t the best after the short flight with a Quantas aircrew that, with one exception, ranged from sour to argumentative. Their losing the travel cot and the process for (not) finding it didn’t help either.
We’d picked a budget YHA in Dulwich Hill to stay in initially. It was a bit grubby and more geared to longer stay working holidays but the diverse range of characters inhabiting it would have made a great documentary. That I guess would have included us, the family with the baby sleeping in a suitcase.
The next couple of days were spent buying a car. The dealer successfully managed to maintain the reputation of used car dealers worldwide when after a few miles the tappets started rattling alarmingly. Having changed cars the day was capped off nicely with a parking ticket for parking against the flow of traffic.
Sydney
Things started looking up when we found a house to rent near Dee Why on the Northern beaches, a million miles away from the crowded inner-city suburbs. A few minutes to pristine beaches and plenty of open space. I think we were pretty lucky to find a house. The mainstream estate agents wouldn’t even consider renting us a property for less than 6 months but we found an accommodating independent agent and tipped the scales in our favour with an offer of upfront cash for the 3 months. A couple of days later we moved into the house with no furniture. We rented a fridge and washing machine, bought some sticks of furniture and a mattress from the charity shop, (big business over there), and settled into the Sydney lifestyle.
It was a short trip to Manly and a ride on the ferry straight into the heart of the city. The short trip was a commuters dream, although it did crash into the pier twice while we were there. The views of Opera House and Harbour Bridge from the ferry were fantastic and the trip was occasionally enlivened by the small racing boats coming perilously close to smashing on the ferry’s bows.
Being a vibrant outdoors city there was plenty of free entertainment – Opera in the Domain, Shakespeare on the beach and shows at the Olympic Park. Best of all was Australia Day. It started with Breakfast at the Beach in Dee Why – I was particularly looking forward to watching the thong-throwing competition but alas, it turns out thongs are flip-flops. Then we took the ferry across the harbour for the numerous free events in the heart of the city.
Having extolled the virtues of the city we didn’t actually spend much time there, it was just great being so close. It was like living near the beach in Newquay (but a lot warmer) with only a short, pleasurable trip into the centre f London.
Around Sydney there was also plenty to do; the Blue Mountains, the Jenolan caves, cruising on the Hawkesbury River and wine tasting in the Hunter Valley. We had our first encounter with Australian wildlife at the Karingurai National Park, a 5ft monitor lizard stalking around the barbecues. Never mind looking for scraps; it could have carried off a small child. That would have put a different slant on ‘a dingo stole my baby’.
The Same but Different
Even considering the number of people of British ancestry the values and culture seem surprisingly close. Much closer than to America, perhaps explained by the significant number of alien abductions reported there. There are plenty of reminders and relics of Britain. For a start most of the institutions seem to have been copied, there is a similarly mixed population, and they drive on the left. Even ancient steam trains shipped across with the pioneers are still about. Makes you feel like they’re still part of the Empire.
Politics is very similar but more bar-room style than in Britain. They are fairly blunt and don’t try to diguise insults in clever words. The issues are near identical – health education, transport and Iraq.
House buying, selling and investing is a similar national obsession with prices having skyrocketed to obscene levels, especially in Sydney. The chatter about which suburbs prices are going to rise in and the spectre of price falls is very reminiscent of home. Shopping in big malls, which have taken over from the high street in a lot of places, is a similarly popular pastime.
A contributor to the cultural similarity must be the TV which carries a lot of imported programming and franchised versions of Pop Idol, Big Brother and house renovation programmes. This also goes the other way of course with the Aussie soaps still going strong. We even went to Summer Bay, aka Palm Beach, just north of Sydney, to see Alf filming an episode of Home and Away.
The Australians also suffer from a blight of the weirdly compulsive reality TV programmes. We watched a few episodes of ‘My Restaurant Rules’ where couples in each of the big cities had to start a restaurant with brutal judgements leading to closures. As a treat we went to the Sydney restaurant. TV cameras were hovering around and the prominent sign on the door explained that anything said or done in the restaurant could appear on national television. As potentially interesting customers with two little children in tow we were interviewed complaining about the absence of a high chair. I think we went to the cutting room floor in favour of a little fat oriental gentleman who was eating in the restaurant at the same time as us having just had an implausible wedding to a tall, blonde East European.
The Aussies like a drink and a gamble. There are pubs to suit all tastes: trendy café bars, the ubiquitous Irish bar, the ‘skimpy from 1pm’ establishments and the drinker’s pubs where the smell of beer soaked into the woodwork and the carpets will never leave. Like the British Legion at home the Australian version are the RSL clubs – Returning Servicemen’s League. They’re very popular serving up cheap beer and food. To boost their income a club we went to was advertising funeral services on their beer mats – perhaps slightly morbid, but useful if you’d just popped out for a pint and happened to have a dead body at home. These drinking holes are complemented by the Australian version of the off-licence: drive-through liquor stores!
Sport is another national obsession, followed as avidly as any football team in England: Cricket, swimming, surfing, rugby in the East and Australian Rules Football in the South and the West.
So, lots the same, but then there are the differences: First off, the glorious climate. Perth and Sydney seem to be on an ideal latitude for pretty hot summers and mild winters but with just enough rain, which seems nicely concentrated in torrential bursts, to keep the cities reasonably green. The reliability of the weather, unlike England, means that you can actually plan to have a barbecue or play sport with a pretty good guarantee of sunshine. If the weather forecast says partly cloudy that normally means beautiful sunny day with the odd fluffy cloud. Unlike Ian Macaskill’s version in England which normally means bring a jumper and you might get wet. We did get used to it being warm though, the cold nights at the end of our holiday had us shivering. A lot of houses are not made of brick or insulated, which is probably fine for 8 months of the year but we missed being cosy inside when it was cold out. Even if it’s a bit chilly, and by that I still mean about 18OC, the advent of cheap airfares means it is no longer expensive to fly up the coast to where it is pretty much guaranteed to be warm. With a bit of spare time the same can be achieved with a couple of days driving.
The beaches are generally fantastic, clean with golden sand, so different to a lot of European beaches which might be superficially clean but have decades of small debris mixed in with the sand. It made a real change to be able to let the children play in the sand without the risk of them digging up something horrible. The wet sand also made a great drawing board. Many a beach in Australia got covered in the letters and numbers we were teaching Lucy. She did though learn her first 2 letters from using the lift – B for basement, G for ground.
Other than the big cities, especially Sydney, where the traffic can be intense, the roads are pretty much clear. The odd 55m long road-train can be unnerving but no worse than being buffeted by a juggernaught in Europe. Perhaps because the roads are less used the maintenance is a bit lacking in places and they can be very slippery when it does get wet.
Coming from Britain where, if you make any effort at all to look for it, the whole place is dripping with history and wonderful buildings. The colonial Australian heritage is much more limited – anything over 100 years old is considered historic. The aboriginal history stretches back much, much further with a wealth of spiritual culture and bush-craft but little in the way of physical relics.
I could point out other differences that might count against life in Australia, like some of the less pleasant wildlife but I’d be scraping around. For those Australians with a decent job living in reach of the beaches it is indeed the lucky country. Oddly then there seems to be a something of an inferiority complex with people looking to Europe for innovation and quality but on the other hand there’s a refreshing attitude supporting ‘made in Australia’ and keeping jobs for Australians.
Living the Life
My dreams of a pro-surfing career in Australia were short-lived. I had a few lessons and was standing up pretty quickly, albeit briefly, but actually getting the long-board out in the surf and then catching the right beginners wave is hard work. The basic problem was that I was starting to learn 25 years too late. One lesson was forgetting my ‘rasher’, a sort of lycra tee-shirt. On the fairly rough surfaced beginners board I can assure you than surfer’s nipple is a condition to be avoided. My career-ending injury came on my 5th lesson when, after a particularly spectacular wipe-out, the fin hit me on the head. 5 stitches from a doctor that my wife commented wasn’t exactly a seamstress shook my confidence and the waves never looked so benign afterwards. Lucy was very concerned with my injury but her intentions were more angled towards the chance of putting a plaster on and applying cream. For a while though, getting up at 6 to surf and retiring to a beachside café with coffee and pancakes by 9 was a fantastic feeling that really set me up for the rest of the day. I can’t quite see our beaches at Aldeburgh and Southwold holding the same appeal.
Lucy and Alice loved the beach. Burn time was about 10 mins though so we had to be careful to avoid them becoming, as the Aussies term them, frizzly critters. Hats for the children were also essential although, unlike the Australian children that are brought up wearing them Alice took hers off at every opportunity.
The waves were often a bit hairy to go swimming with them but a lot of the beaches had ocean pools which were perfect. When they were bored with these there was nearly always a modern children’s playground, covered by sails to protect from sun, right next to the beach. Conveniently barbecues, that other feature of Australian life, were often situated in or next to the playgrounds.
Anita took the opportunity of actually living in Sydney to join the nearby gym. This had the fringe benefit of the children going to the subsidised crèche for 2 hours every day. The gym thing appeals to me in theory, but in practice I got bored, (and knackered), going more than a few times. I did try a Body Combat Class. I was the only man in a class of about 40 women. I was ok at karate, admittedly over a decade ago, but it shouldn’t be too bad … or so I thought. The first 5 minutes I looked pretty good, the next 10 minutes my punches and kicks were getting progressively less coordinated, by 30 minutes I was a wreck but, being the token male, I was too ashamed to leave. For next half hour I was a shambling floppy mess. I had to lie down when I got home.
Anita also arranged for Lucy to go to kindergarten one day a week which was a blessed relief. It was also easy enough to find and join the local playgroups for another couple of mornings. The playgroups were also a great source of toys to supplement the meagre sack we had been carting around the world plus the occasional toy from a happy meal at McDonalds. A particular hit was the fairy outfit Lucy borrowed one day.
Other local services such as the library, with free internet access, and the free healthcare system made living in Sydney, even with children, no more challenging than moving to a different town in England. From the encounters we had with it, the health service seemed pretty good. For me it was twice, once with my rather bloody surfing wipe-out, on another I was admitted to A&E with some rather worrying aches in my arms and legs. They probably did a couple of thousand dollars worth of tests and didn’t even ask for my address! A few things health wise were a bit different. Applying sun lotion every day was a bit of a chore but necessary. Australians also worm their children. I remember trying to do this with our cats but for children it is fortunately achieved through a dosed piece of chocolate from the pharmacy.
Wildlife
Bill Bryson made a lot of mileage out of the Australian wildlife in his travel guide, enough to put off any squeamish tourist. On our first bush-walk I must admit that every tree root was a snake and every hole housed a ferocious spider. But after 5 months in different places we didn’t see single snake in the wild and none of the notorious spiders. Even shark attacks and sightings were rare enough to make the local news. I’m sure that beasties are about, and people had tales of being bitten by poisonous spiders but it certainly shouldn’t be enough to put anyone off travelling.
More annoying were the flies, they don’t just buzz around – they fly straight into you hoping, I guess, to hit a spot of moisture. The Australian wave – the mad flapping of the arm – was a frequent occurrence on our travels. Around Sydney there really weren’t too many, but in the desert and near rivers they did occasionally get bad. In the same way that ice-creams consumed an appreciable part of our total budget so I must have clocked up a day or so swatting flies over the course of the year. More disgusting yet were the cockroaches – a feature of any hot climate. They were incredibly hard to kill and somehow seemed to be able to survive being stamped on without much ill effect.
The house we rented on the hills above Dee Why, although fairly suburban, was surrounded by trees and there was wildlife about. The cookaburraghs could get very noisy. Reliably at 8pm every day the dog next door would go mad as a possum strolled along the top of our fence on his rounds. There were also plenty of industrious spiders able to build webs spanning 10ft in 1 night.
Our first look at Koalas was at a sanctuary in Brisbane where there were over a hundred of the cuddly fellows.
A lot of the wildlife only comes out at night. At Waratah Park – where ‘Skippy’ was filmed – we went on the evening walkabout with torches. During the afternoon we’d only seen a few kangaroos but at night we were almost tripping over the wildlife.
Further north there were lots of kangaroos and emus in the wild. On the long empty highways hitting a Kangaroo is a real hazard. Desiccated bodies litter the roadsides as a reminder. Apparently they like the moist grass which grows where excess water runs off the roads but have no road sense. An 85 kilo kangaroo bouncing along at windscreen height is going to do a lot of damage. We had a couple of near misses ourselves.
Off on our travels
To state the bleedin’ obvious, Australia’s a big place. That fact though seemed to have escaped a lot of the tourists who were constantly amazed at the distances involved. It used to be costly to fly around Australia but now Virgin Blue fly lots of routes and Quantas have belatedly launched a cut price airline meaning we could get around easily and cheaply. The safety briefing on one of the Virgin flights was a little unorthodox. “If this flight turns into a cruise your lifejackets are under your seat and there’s a light and a whistle for attracting the sharks.” Not everyone was laughing!
The Red Centre
Our first stop outside of Sydney and New South Wales was Alice Springs. In the centre of the country I was expecting a desert, but it is pretty much covered in bush. There were even big waterholes for swimming in. It felt like a scene from Walkabout – although Jenny Agguter wasn’t around unfortunately. Alice Springs itself was a thriving town, although quite why it was thriving I wasn’t sure. The desert park, and especially the nocturnal house was excellent but the place is 400km from Uluru, (Ayers Rock), which I guess is most people’s reason for the visit.
The rock itself, there’s no other way of describing it, is one of several but is nonetheless impressive. Thank god too for digital rather than film cameras. It’s only one rock but you feel compulsive about taking dozens of photos to capture every nuance of shadow, sunset and sunrise.
As a big blob on an otherwise flat landscape it was a must climb. Unlike me, other visitors were clever enough to avoid the worst of the sun. Mid-afternoon boiling temperatures and no shade made the climb hard work and who else would the find at the top but another couple of insane Brits. Just 3 of us on the rock was pretty good though. Thankfully there weren’t too many concessions to tourist safety on the climb but following a white dotted line to top didn’t really give much of the ‘explorer’ feel to the experience. The flies’ en-route were a pain. I couldn’t help wondering whether it the same group of flies that followed me all the way to the top and down again or whether they handed off like a relay team along the way. I was the only bit of salty moisture about so they plagued me mercilessly and non-stop. We’d bought mosquito net head-gear earlier but aside from not being too hot in the fashion stakes they were almost as annoying to wear as the flies were themselves.
Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef
From the centre we flew to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef for a couple of days diving and the best playground for young children we’d ever been to – huge with lots of opportunities to get wet.
Brisbane
Next stop was Brisbane. There’s a beach in town itself, a Koala and Kangaroo park nearby and a great coastline including a Seaworld with the best shark enclosure I’ve seen – basically lots of big sharks in a lagoon like pool with viewing from surrounding walkways and below the water line.
Adelaide
Adelaide was next. Perhaps not on every tourist agenda but it had a nice feel about it. We stayed with my Aunt and Uncle who I hadn’t seen in living memory which made it extra special. It was also the sight of our ‘small world’ experience meeting a work colleague from Stockholm walking down the high street.
Perth and Fremantle
The last main stop on our itinerary was Perth. If there was a place I could choose to live and work in the world this would be my pick. It has the climate California thinks it has, plenty of beaches a beautiful park and a nice mix of old and new.
As one of life’s experiences we hired a little camper van for a month to tour the west coast. We were on a fairly tight budget so it wasn’t exactly spacious particularly with 2 small children. The bed over the cab felt like a coffin and I was too tall to lie down straight. We also shared our bijou little van with a small rodent of some sort that would come out at night and start making his rounds, occasionally stopping to give something a chew. As long as it wasn’t our food stores or the gas cable that was fine by me but Anita was rather wound up by the little presents it left behind.
The van was great for being on the move on the sparsely populated west coast and the caravan parks and lay-bys we stayed in made a pleasant change from youth hostels. In some places it was completely black at night making for fantastic vistas of the night sky – I saw my first shooting star.
There were lots of highlights to our west coast trip. We went horse-riding in Kalbari at Big River Ranch – The name should have given it away with horses needing to almost swim to cross the big river. I went snorkelling with a Whale Shark at Coral Bay. At about 5m long it was the biggest fish I’ve ever been swimming with. To keep pace with the whale the boat dropped us in front, the whale swam past and we got picked up by the boat again for another drop. Further up the coast was the National Park near Exmouth. Turquoise Bay was one of my favourite beaches in the world with wonderful coral and lots of fish, and we had it to ourselves for most of the time.
At Yardie Creek we were reminded why we try not to take Alice and Lucy on guided tours. We were on a small boat with a dozen other people on a flora and fauna tour, the children’s incessant chatter punctuated by bouts of shouting and occasionally screaming and then crying when we tried to prevent them throwing themselves over the edge of the boat. The poor other buggers on board had each paid $25 for the pleasure of this and for us there was no escaping the embarrassment until the end of the tour. At least the worst of the screaming didn’t start until after we’d all seen the rare black footed rock wallaby which was the highlight of the trip.
Monkey Mia is another popular resort where the dolphins come right to the edge of the beach for a feed. As an extra bonus there was a 2-week-old baby dolphin. Further down the coast there were more rocks called the Pinnervantes. Strange pointy ones this time rather than big round ones.
In sharp contrast to the bush and patches of desert to the north of Perth, the south west is lush farming country covered in forests of enormous trees. We based ourselves around the towns of Pemberton and Walpole and I climbed the Diamond and Bicentennial trees. These climbs on iron spikes spiralling up the trees is not for the faint-hearted ascending to platforms 70m high and above the rest of the canopy. The reward is a sense of accomplishment, magnificent views and that rare feeling of isolation. At my feet was a brightly coloured bird not more than a couple of metres away gathering nectar. Alice and Lucy also got their chance to walk through the canopy at the Treetops walk which had massive ramps accessible to pushchairs and wheelchairs to create a walkway 40m high. As a relic from the height of the timber era a resurrected steam train ran through the heart of the forest. Thankfully Lucy’s “Fat Controller” remark was not overheard
So that was Australia. And the sunsets, did I mention them?
