We had an AMAZING buffet for dinner, seafood like you would not believe (snow crabs, cray fish, sushi, shrimp) but there was also beautiful salads and steak and roast pork. And the dessert buffet! We both ate waaaaaaay too much, eyes most definitely bigger than our bellies finally. And a nice bottle of champagne to go with it.
Feeling bagged full, we reckoned if we didnt go for a walk immediately, we would collapse into bed straight away, so changed into trainers and went across the road to Hyde Park. After a few moments, we went back to the room to pick up a camera as the place was full of bats. Not little ‘was that a bat, an owl, or just a seagull’ flying things, but proper, honest to goodness could be a Bat Signal bats. Loads of them. Google tells us that there are so many of them they were trying to cull them fairly recently.
Today (Boxing Day) we walked down to Circular Quay and then across the Harbour Bridge. Not up and over the bridge, just the standard pedestrian foot path. Some impressive sights to be seen there. Some excellent shots of the Opera House from the other side.
Later on, we decided to go out to Darling Harbour and see whats going on there – I had spotted it has a shopping centre open to 9pm, thats NINE AT NIGHT! We are so used to Perth closing at 5:30pm that shops open till 9pm are a huge novelty. (We have repeatedly mentioned The Fort being open till midnight on the run up to Christmas and how that would never happen in Perth)
On our way down a young guy ran across the road in front of us, slipped and cracked his head on the edge of the kerb. We tried to help him up, but he was totally spaced and just lay in a puddle in the gutter. After trying to make sure the passing cars didnt drive over him, we managed to get him moved, and spotted a lot of blood coming from the back of his head. Grabbed a passing bloke to phone an ambulance, and then the guys mother arrived (he had ran on ahead to get something when he fell). We managed to move him to in front of the Apple Store (The staff were closing up and checked he was OK rather than trying to move us along coz he might stain the glass 😉 ) He came round properly and was rather embarrassed about getting an ambulance, but he had bled a lot and didnt remember falling or being moved so must have been very concussed. So we waited till the ambulance arrived before leaving them.
So, we got our walk round the harbour after that bit of excitement, and it looks amazing. Gonna spend some time there during the day! Just had some FAB room service food, and looking to head to bed. Carpe Deium once again!
So, one of the recurring themes of our time in Australia is how god awful the weather is – especially combined with the crappy building quality.
We have spent so much of our time here in the pissing miserable wet, or cold to the bone that it really rankles. The thing is, of course, that we come from Scotland and are well used to a bit of cold and wet.
What causes the angst here is that we seem to be living amongst people who are in a constant state of bloody denial about the weather.
We had a new guy over from the UK for a few weeks – and when out walking for lunch, one of the Perth locals proceeded to tell him that it was sunny for 9 months of the year, and that you could go for months without a cloud in the sky. When I called this as BS, they insisted that last year was unusually wet – when I pointed out that this year has been exactly the same… they tried to blame global warming (which, of course, doesn’t exist the rest of the time).
So, in classic style, here we are in Sydney for christmas/new year. And it’s raining. of course it’s bloody raining. When we get back to the UK, I will make it my life’s mission to find ever advert showing Australia as this sunny paradise, and add some bloody rainclouds to it.
At least we are in Sydney – a proper global city with stuff to do in the rain, rather than stuck in the arse end of nowhere. (where, ironically, it’s 30 and sunny today).
It’s been a pretty eventful couple of months. I have handed in my notice at RMAP, and it is probably a surprise to nobody that we are moving back to the UK!!
We are not there yet, but at this point, it looks like there isn’t a job for me back in Scotland (only Oxford) and as the whole point of moving back home is to be with friends and family… ending up 400 miles south isn’t what we had in mind.
Anyway, it seems that there will be enough interesting stuff happening to do some more blogging again (unlike back in Dullsville Perth), so it’s time to kick off the blog again.
We landed in Sydney yesterday (xmas eve) and are now prepping up for Hogmanay out on the Harbour. This is real bucket list country – yesterday we wandered down to the harbour to see the iconic bridge, and of course, the sydney opera house. The feeling of standing beside such an iconic, recognised the world over building was something else – almost as big a rush as seeing the pyramids.
A magical evening of cocktails sitting in the elegant bar, as some guy played christmas music on the piano, and a nice long lie.
We hit the gym for an epic session (not bob), got ready and headed out – Sydney’s public transport was largely running, and the train out to Bondi Junction was reasonably busy – then the buses (standing room only) out to Bondi Beach.
So… it’s basically like Irvine, or burntisland. Very much like burntisland, in fact, with the same fine white sand. And the way people are huddled around windbreaks trying to keep warm. In the rain.
As with many of our experiences of Australia, the weather has played a large part in making it entirely average. You can see even more so here than usual that the tourism people here earn their money ten times over by carefully picking which footage is used in advertising.
Anyhoo, the rain is likely to last until Thursday, so we may have a single good day out of our eight day holiday to enjoy the beach.
At the moment, we are sitting relaxing in our gorgeous hotel room waiting to head down for dinner – which will hopefully be rather nice, especialy after the “bondi burger experience” of lunch. shudder.
It’s been some time.. and as usual, our blogging has been somewhat erratic.
Almost everything in our lives seems to be about water right now – whether that’s keeping water out of where we don’t want it, or keeping it in where we do want it..
The last major disaster was when the rain got a bit harder than usual (for anyone who still believes that Australia is warm and sunny most of the time, remember that this is a lie, and australia is very, very wet.)
We heard odd sounds from downstairs – either we were being burgled by some man sized frogs, or there was a lot of slopping and splashing going on… that would be the water peeing through the ceiling, soaking the spare PC, and a bunch of stuff on the table. In typical blog style, we made a video:
That behind us (but not fixed of course – our letting agent is waaaaay to slow to let a little something like WATER COMING THROUGH THE CEILING get them all flustered, oh no…) we move onto the latest nightmare.
I came home to an odd noise (there’s a pattern here). this time, it was a sort of muffled rushing sound.. y’know in a movie when the good guy presses his ear to a wall, to more clearly hear a distant rumbling – only for the distant sound to burst through the wall?
that didn’t happen – which is a shame, as my life would be a darn sight easier if it had! Turns out the agent didn’t think that the rushing sound (and the fact that our hot water remains stubbornly lukewarm, despite consuming more gas than essex) was enough evidence of a leak.
They wanted to wait until we could actually see water damage.
After much (angry) conversation, I decided another video was in order:
Of course, by this point, we have probably consumed around five THOUSAND litres of water – all of which has been dumped fairly directly into the foundations of the house here. I am sooo glad this isn’t my house – but my sympathies are with the owner. Can’t imagine he’ll be too happy to see that the agent wanted to actually see his property damaged before they would call a plumber..
So, we have now completed our move from Joondalup down to East Perth – which took a few trips of the Ute and 207.
In the end, we didn’t hire a ‘man with van’ for the bulky stuff, but instead, took the cover off the back of the Ute.
We decided to take the biggest load first, in the belief that if that went okay, everything was downhill from there on..
That didn’t look quite precarious enough though, so we added the two seater as well:
That went fairly well, and we drove off down the freeway chewing on some long grass stems, plucking away at the Banjo… (well, the guitar hero Wii Guitar at any rate…).
We spent the day out fishing with Ian and Jenni (the other ones) up at Exmouth – we had intended to head across to the Murion islands, but the weather was a bit rough (to put it mildly)
We pulled off to the sea just north of the big Navy VLF grid at Exmouth and started trolling – dragging rods through the water as the boat moved.
We caught a decent sized Mackerel – as my first experience of seeing a fish bigger than a trout being pulled from the water, I was quite surprised at the fight it put up – not that much of a shock really, considering that the next thing to happen was a spike to the head and it’s gills cut out. yowch.
After a while, Ian reckoned he had found a good area for bottom fishing – so we pulled up to a halt, and dropped some baited lines to the bottom – I got a bite instantly! two actually:
Jen then went on to catch another snapper herself – but by this point our camera was acting up.
It was a brilliant day – we saw a couple of giant turtles swimming past the boat, and had a great time. Once back on land we scaled the fish and Jenni cooked them on the Barbie – delicious.
Well, the old ute has done us proud – all the way from Perth to Exmouth with only some minor niggles.
We got prepped and ready at 5am – a truly awful time to be up and about, to be honest, as the sun wasn’t even up.
We got all of our prep finished, checked the straps on the Kayaks one last time and headed off.
The drive is just over 1500km (900 miles), so we took it in turns to drive (apart from Mark, who is still unable to drive like a self sufficient adult…). Even with the breaks and turns, driving for 14 hours straight is pretty tiring – something the local police know only too well:
it was worth it though – . we were treated to an amazing spectacle.
As we drove out onto the cape range, the sun was setting on the west – and as the sun was setting, the moon was rising into a sky that was absolutely alive with light – blues, purples.. it was pretty magical.
The pictures don’t catch the half of how amazing this looks, but hopefully give a bit of an idea:
About 12 hours in, everyone in the car (apart from Jen, naturally) started sniffing and asked ‘can you smell burning?’ We could, and it was – rubber burning.
We couldn’t see anything under the hood, but the problem became clear when we tried to turn into the next roadhouse for fuel – the power steering had failed! Thankfully, the car was fine to drive without it, just a little heavy.
Up on the cape, the roads are basically straight. well… ‘roads’ is a bit generous..
Still, despite the road conditions, despite the power steering, despite being driven for hundreds of miles… the ute delivered us in one piece to turqoise bay:
Bit of a gap – Alan and Penny went home, and Helen arrived.
Yesterday, we had the epic aussie road trip ™ and drove from Joondalup all the way north to Exmouth – around 1400km in one day. We set off about 5.40am with the first glimmers of dawn, and drove until 7.30pm, an hour after sunset – incredible.
We met up with the other Ian and Jenni (who arrived the day before yesterday), got some to tips on places to go and booted off into the blue – Today we settled into the Ningaloo Maine park – Jen and I holding hands underwater as we snorkelled over a coral reef teeming with life..
An amazing experience, and one that lasted for huge chunks of the day.
After that, we got showered/changed and went for a drive through the park after dark – looking to snag the perfect roo picture… (to follow – we are on super slow internet via phone just now!!)
That and downloading the apprentice to watch when we get back to Perth… we may even have to do a back to back 2 week session!
It’s been noticeably colder in the days since the weekend when Alan and Penny flew back. last couple of days it’s been a wall of cloud again – which hasn’t happened for a few weeks… then the weather erupted on us yesterday.
Driving rain, howling winds and bitterly, bitterly cold.
Perth is confusing – it always has been for us. I look at a temperature gauge, and it’s reading 20 degrees, yet I am cold to my marrow, more bitterly cold than I have any recollection of ever being in Scotland.
I can remember back when Jen and I first moved into Windmillhill Street in motherwell – back in 1992!! – we didn’t have any working heating, and the windows were single glazed. At the time, i thought they were the worst windows you could ever have… the temperatures were down in the -5 range, and you could see your breath in the air when you woke up in the morning… and it *still* feels warmer than a 20 degree day here.
I just don’t get it. Perhaps your mind see the brilliant sun and sets some sort of internal expectation, I don’t know..
Just that it’s back to being cold. really cold.
Helen flies out on Friday, and we are seriously looking forward to seeing her – but I am thinking that she won’t get much (if any) use out of the swimming pool. I tried it a couple of days ago, and had to get out because I was shivering so badly.
We are heading up to exmouth for a chunk of the stay though, so that should help a lot – it’s *much* warmer!
So we picked up Alan and Penny from the airport. It was great to see our friends again and we had a great time, which we shall blog about in due course….
The first bloggable thing happened less than an hour after they left the airport.
We loaded the suitcases into the back of the ute, and headed back to our place. We made a slight detour to pick up some rolls so we could start them off into the Aussie lifestyle and have a barbeque, with burgers.
As we wander from the carpark towards the bakery, a 4×4 swerves across the carpark towards us, the window rolls down, a head appears closely followed by the high class, typical Aussie welcome of
WHY DONT YOU FUCK OFF HOME!!!
Ian had made the cardinal error of wearing a Scotland Tshirt. That was it. So, roughly 45 minutes in the country, our friends get to experience the great Aussie welcome shouted at us.
Welcome tourists, leave your money in this bucket, then fuck off, we dont want you here.
Its been a while since we have posted, this is because we have been busy.
My parents arrived two weeks ago and we have been busy keeping them entertained since.
Its been *brilliant*, I have a sore throat from gabbing so much. I am tired from sitting up late talking. Its been playing merry hell with my diet and exercise plan, but its been so worth it.
The last two weekends have been busy – last week we took them to the east and got some of the best pizza evah, then oop norf to Lancelin, swam in the ocean, sat on the beach and had a glass of wine/bottle of beer and totally chilled.
This weekend we went down to The Beach House (TM) on Friday night and used it as a staging post for a trip all the way to the south coast to see a treetop walk, made wood fired pizza, and then went down to Busselton with probably the best beach I have ever seen – it was gorgeous, clear, calm, sparkling waters and a 2km jetty to walk along. On Friday night we did some star gazing on the beach, absolutely stunning.
We will do a longer post later in the week once we have caught up on some sleep, but this has been fantastic for us – we have been more sociable than we have been in 9 months. Its going to be hard when they leave, but at least we have reinforcements on the way 🙂 My folks leave on Wednesday, and Alan & Penny arrive next Monday 🙂
On Sundays theres not a whole hellish amount to be done here. Its not quite as bad as when we first arrived, the local wholesalers is open so we can get food which is good for a sudden MUST HAVE BBQ – GET BURGERS impulse. But what Sunday is good for is heading off to the beach.
So, we headed up to Lancelin. We had been there a couple of times, the sand is beautiful, the water is lovely, its all good. So, icebox packed with some fruit and, more importantly, wine and beer and cola we set off. Set up on the beach and chilled. Dad wandered off taking pictures (this is a recurring theme) and the rest of us had a swim 🙂
We dried off, dad rejoined us and we sat for a bit having a very civilized (but illegal) drink on the beach. Then it was time for another swim
We packed up and headed back down the road, but spotted a sign for Moore River on the way back. I had been told it was somewhere nice to see, so we veered off and headed that way instead. Well worth the detour, it was a really pretty place.
You can see the river doesnt actually flow into the ocean – theres not enough water! So, thats as far as it gets. I guess during the winter when the river is higher it will, but for now, you can stand on that sand bar and have a river on one side, and an ocean on the other.
They also have free to use gas barbies there. Someone was cooking sausages. Apparently the smell was making everyone else hungry. Certainly the idea that someone was cooking sausages was enough to make me hungry.
Jen had one wish for her birthday – a nice big bit of meat, done well.
But before that, we went to Outback jacks again. 😉
Had a great steak – and also had a problem with getting our order taken. Only a couple of days with folks from the ‘old country’ and our accents have thickened up again.
It’s quite interesting to listen to what Jen’s mum and dad say, watch the waiting staff look at them in complete and total bemusement, then repeat the order (which sounds exactly the same to us) and see the dawning recognition.
The giant croc on the roof made a pretty good attempt at sneaking up on us again…
Jen’s folks don’t reckon that our accents have changed, but i guess they must have changed a little – we don’t get looks of bemusement in the shops any more… alan and penny can be the next ones to judge!
Anyway, after an excellent meal out, we drove to East Perth near my office to go to the Royal. it’s a pretty special little spot, and a favourite with the work guys. I don’t have any good pics – need to get one next time. had a couple of relaxed drinks down by the marina, then headed off to the embankment in South Perth to let Bob get his camera out.
Big Bob and Mary Doll (did I get that right BJ? 😉 ) have now landed in the land down under. We watched them coming from quite a long way away:
We went to the airport to watch the flight come in – Perth being flat, you can see it from a loooong way off, but rather than post a picture of what is essentially a white dot on a blue sky background, here’s one of the plane on the ground instead:
Then we waited for over an hour in the entrance for them to appear from security. Jen and I debated whether Bob had insisted on hanging onto an apple from the plane, or attracted the anger and attention of security in some other way (smiling really annoys them). Still, eventually, they appeared, and much tearful hugging and welcomes ensued. nobody needs to see that, but we have the pictures. heh.
Yes, it’s true… the A380 is no longer my favourite plane to fly in. That honour now lies with the Nanchang CJ6A.
Back in December(whilst i was in Melbourne), I celebrated my 37th Birthday – and we kinda decided to make it a special one… So Jen treated me to something a little bit special – a flight in a fighter plane.
There’s a group called Fighter Combat International that operates from Jandakot airport south of Perth (just off the Kwinana Freeway)
They have a fleet of Chinese Nanchang fighters – prop driven planes that are used to train fighter pilots. We arrived at the hangar and signed in. Predictably, I was bouncing off the walls like a 6 year old amped out of my tits on tartrazine and sugar, the night before christmas.
First, I had to get changed into my flight suit:
Quite cool actually – that’s an XL, and it was pretty darn big on me. With the getting suitably dressed out of the way, it was time to sign my life away:
We had a safety briefing, most of which I missed on account of turning to the other guy flying today (who seemed rather neutral about the whole thing I have to say), going ‘This is SOOO cool’, and so on. There was a description of what we would do, and what not to do (touch any of the controls, projectile vomit, draw willies in the guest book. I may have made the last one up.).
The guys then gave us a couple of minutes to calm down before walking out to the plane… which was soooo Top Gun:
Once settled in, Chooky (yes, the guy’s callsign is ‘chicken’) showed me how to use the straps and intercom, how to slide the canopy back and so on. he also pointed out the various dual controls that I had not to touch, and strapped on the camera (there’s a DVD of me screaming like a girl still to come). That all seemed to go well:
once suitably immobilised, we trundled off down the runway, and took off in formation. You have no idea how cool this feels – almost as cool as it looks, I guess. What then followed is just an insane blur of adrenaline. I’ll try to put some structure to it rather than rambling, but I’m not promising anything.
We performed a set of formations around each other – flying in a close echelon formation. The planes are unbelievably close together – in formation, only a couple of metres apart:
After we had flown formations around each other, the two planes broke off into seperate chunks of airspace and went aerobatic. My pilot asked how adventurous I was – ‘pretty adventurous’ was my answer, so he threw a sharp turn with 2G, then 3G, then 3.5G… like the best damn rollercoaster you have ever been on, but it just kept getting better.
I was making ‘wooo haaaaah’ noises, so he kept going, pulling an amazing turn on the wing (I need to look up what that move was… basically, you fly ‘up’ a ramp, turn sharply on your wing (look right, and you are looking straight down)and slide back down the ramp..
again, I was making good noises, so he did a more extreme one – the barrel roll,where you go fully inverted, and pull about 4G as you pull out… insane.
A couple of full loops (up and over), then the most insane so far – a stall turn. You build up some speed, then go fully vertical until the engine approaches stall – at which point, you kick the tail and dive straight toward the ground (or in my case, the ocean).. it’s eerily quiet, as you are essentially motionless at the top, and the G forces you pull at the bottom… wow.
here’s a youtube video of what a stall turn looks like (this is a remote control plane):
The final ‘stunt’ was a half reverse cuban 8. it’s an odd enough name that it stuck – so I found another video from the same guy:
I had my camera in my pocket, and tried to capture one of the more gentle movements (I couldn’t actually lift my arms off of my legs at anything more than about 2.5G!!):
The view from up there was incredible – here’s looking back towards Perth (the skyscrapers are in the centre of the picture):
So after all the aerobatics, that was it, right? not on your life…
What comes next is probably the most insane experience I have ever had in my life.
The two planes got into radio contact again, lined up and pushed at each other at max speed ( a closing speed of about 680 kph). as soon as they passed each other, they turned 90 degrees, and instantly started dogfighting. One of the pilots is an RAAF instructor, the other is an aerobatic pilot who has competed in the Red Bull aerobatics tournament… and they dogfight, desperately banking, turning, climbing, diving trying to get into a guns position on the other guy.
My pilot (the RAAF guy) got the drop on the other pilot twice, each time, they broke off and started again.. until the other passenger called ‘knock it off’, and they broke off… he was getting sick, and wanted to level out.. so my pilot asked if I wanted to head for the reef, or do some more aerobatics… well, what do YOU think I did? 😀
once my stomach was well and truly spun around, We dropped to the hard deck for the flight (500 feet) and raced each other along a reef, looping and banking over the islands… then came back around to the airport and landed (again in formation).
The diet/exercise regime is doing very well – I clocked my lowest weight today since about ’97. I have got back down to 102.8Kg.
basically, this means that since landing in australia, I have shed 10lbs.
Notice that, as a child of the United Kingdom’s screwed up attitude to metrication, I swap between lbs and ounces, stones and kilograms without being able to work fluently or comfortably in either. I judge weights of people in stones and pounds, small (useful) stuff in grams and kilograms, but have a complete inability to switch between them (without asking google).
I have been forcing myself to work in metric only – why should I be disadvantaged because of backwards idiots who still cling to ‘imperial’ measurements? – but find it awkward.
Anyways, whether you call it 102.8Kg or 16 stone 3, it’s a darn sight less than I used to weigh (at my peak, I was 124 kg, 19 stone 7). I’m basically about 40lb down from there.
Jen is doing even better – she has lost sixty pounds as of today..
Part of this is eating better, and part is exercising more – today, a lot more:
Okay, ‘boat’ is a little grandiose for a a sit on top kayak, but they are ours. We got a couple of kayaks from Anaconda, the outdoor shop, strapped them to the top of the ute and hauled them back to the pool..
Cue an afternoon of splashing around in the pool, falling off the Kayak (a lot) and climbing back on again (badly), with much water up the nose, spluttering and general making up of new swear words…
but it’s all fun 🙂
I’ll admit that this is mostly a reason for a gratuitous beach shot, but basically, the answer to ‘why did you bother getting kayaks’ is prety much answered by this:
This is our new best friend. The best friend of the sunburnt muppet is PAXYL!
Our new best friend
It soothes, with its coolingness, and heals with its antiseptic, but most importantly it contains lignocaine. A sunburn treatment that contains anesthetic. Its relief in a small bottle. We are now covered top to toe in this stuff, it only takes a minute to dry in, then less than 5 minutes later the worst of the pain is gone, and its effective for 2 hours.
We set out to weed the garden, clean up the pool and put down the first dose of ‘death in a can’ to deal with the roaches and spiders. y’know, for those people that don’t like the things, that might be coming to visit us soon… 😉
well, we got finished faster than we expected – so what else could we do?
yep, one of the hazards of joondalup is the roving papparazzi, who will catch you unawares and post you on the interwebs..
After a strenuous (ahem) morning, we grabbed some lunch and headed off to the skip in our ute – the recycling here puts anything in the UK to shame.
Here’ s a novel idea – rather than throwing stuff in the skip, they look at it and decide if someone else could use it… so if you want plant pots, or old wooden chairs, or any other sort of tat, you can go along to the municipal tip and help yourself – it goes to landfill eventually if nobody wants it.. cool huh?
Anyway, we then headed to IKEA for some boxes and odds and ends, and settled down to another strenuous afternoon in the pool. This time it actually was strenuous, due to my swimming practice.
Meet ‘Subbie’. He’s a sub bug, and we have two of them – a blue and a purple. Basically, you pop a battery in them, and they have a little prop on the back – they go like stink, and are pretty erratic.
Subbie here is helping me to learn to swim – basically I drop them in the water, then chase them. simple, but very effective – today I was diving to the bottom and clearing out my snorkel like a pro.
Dinner was steak from the Barbie, and a nice ice cold drink.
That’s where things went horribly, horribly wrong.
We forgot one little thing, you see.
Sunscreen.
Half a tub of nivea after sun later, and it still hurts like being dragged along behind a truck, across some salty gravel. probably.
Jen’s in a worse state than me – I guess the only consolation here is that it’s the first serious sunburn incident since we got here.
