travel – Page 12 – gbpilgrim

June 30, 2015October 19, 2015

Winter warmers

There are plenty of ways to warm up during an Australian winter. Koala soup; scenic coal-fired electric blankets; just living practically anywhere apart from inland uplands, exposed southern promontories and frigid deserts. Only in the bleakest of places does a winter bite, the bleakest of places and Canberra.

Yet even within touching distance of the capital’s shivering legoland suburbs you can work up a sweat and work off a sweater. Climbing seven hundred metres or so, rising from the valley mists into a blue stratosphere, toward the crown of Mount Tennent. A steady grind with the sun on your back, the consequences clear in the comfort of short sleeves. And warmed all the more by vistas providing a positive effort:reward ratio so critical to the success of a good tramp.

Meanwhile, back, again, in Queensland the effort required for such warmth is negligible. Brisbane may experience a fog but it barely lingers. It is quite comfortable – actually very comfortable indeed – to sit beside the river and eat a slab of cake alfresco. This place has been a second home of late, but despite this being my fourth visit in the space of a month I still cannot acclimatise sufficiently like the locals to wear a scarf without feeling entirely fraudulent. Fare thee well Brisbane, you have been good for my core temperature and bank balance, but your City Cycles are terribly uncomfortable.

One more week of work to go, one more week to go. That was what I was telling myself walking over the craggy hills and gentle sands of Magnetic Island. But, being on that island, it was hard not to think that I was on holiday already. I believe it may be down to the palm trees by the beach, or the strip of outdoor cafes at Horseshoe Bay, or the one road linking a few small towns in which most other people are on some kind of temporary or permanent holiday. Even the presence of backpackers adds to the mood that the only thing for it is to swing in a hammock.

Possibly because Brisbane was not warm enough, work brought me north to Townsville, handily coinciding with a weekend in which to kill some time. So I grabbed the ferry across to the island and spent a wonderful day or two upon its shores. Saturday may have clouded over, but there was ample time to gently reacquaint myself with tropical forests and colourful birds, the briefest of sunsets and the longest of beers. Acclimatisation into that hammock holiday-minded state.

But it was the Sunday that was super, cloudless throughout, though with a morning freshness that made the walking all the more pleasurable. Commencing with a wake up coffee by the beach in Horseshoe Bay, it was over one hill to one fine beach, over another to the next, and onward and upward to lookouts galore. A substantially energetic loop walk that topped out around The Forts – a series of wartime installations plonked atop the forest in a tasteful rendition of Plymouth city centre style concrete. Obviously here because of the commanding views, but the koalas didn’t seem to care whether the Japanese were coming or not.

With the satisfaction and accomplishment of a walk complete, a late lunch of salt and pepper calamari beside the water will suffice thank you very much. Oh, and ice cream, of course. I am feeling like I am on holiday after all. So much so, that as Sunday dwindles and the prospect of Monday creeps up, I do not want to leave. The late sun glows and dips and fades and the stars and moon twinkle as blue turns to black. Yet still I am comfortable in shorts, and with another end of day beer in hand.

Happily Monday brought some drizzle and the transition back to work was reasonably comfortable in Townsville. But there was an abrupt decline in its standard as I re-located south, to Dubbo. On the plus side though this was not as bad as I expected, but then I expected little. The people were nice, I found a good coffee, and squeezed in a pleasant riverside walk. But I was ready to get out of there and, temporarily, get home.

And so, the climatic rollercoaster finally shifted into Sydney, for one night only and then onto Canberra. Sydney was putting on its sparkling look-at-me face, demonstrating a pretence at winter that is misaligned with the comfort of not needing a coat. I was even able to brave an ice cream, sadly. Canberra, meanwhile, had its morning shroud of cold and cloud, but cleared to its best fresh hue of blue. One more week, one more week of keeping warm, and then a northern summer will bless me again.

June 13, 2015October 19, 2015

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June

[Best read in David Attenborough style]: As the temperature cools in the southern part of the Australian land mass, the first signs of an incredible migration start to appear. Senior males of the species are spotted in pockets along the coast, struggling to grasp with the multiple tasks and devices which will propel them north. Reserves are gathered to a state of surplus, and a battle for alpha male superiority subtly ensues, a contest which will last across the season.

But here, it is the female that rules. Freshly groomed and adorned for the long journey, small numbers congregate. While not always harmonious, they band together for the greater good, bound by a common aim: maintaining survival, comfort, and subjugation over their once proud male partners. Hunting out and often gathering the food, directing the placement of shelters, maintaining the hygiene and lustre of their coats. In groups characterised by auburn dyed hair and expensive designer spectacles funded by generous tax breaks, these females underpin the mass migration that takes place.

And so, in June, across the more northerly coasts of this great continent, the grey nomads begin to cluster. They flock in their thousands to known waterholes. Sites like Carnarvon are almost overwhelmed by the influx, its banana-rich pastures transformed into shanty towns and its pharmacy inundated. The males continue to display in a parade of sandals, white socks and short shorts but, predictably, with little impact. After a while they retreat to seek out fish and engage in ablutions, but there is still competitiveness over the size and strength of their equipment. Some will settle here, and see another winter through with their mate. But others, with stronger torque and deeper reserves, will head on, north to the next great gathering place.

[Back to normal voice in your head]: My first significant encounter with a mass gathering of grey nomads was back down in southern Australia, in a pleasantly ambient March. It was apparent that Mudgee – a NSW country town standing out from many of the others thanks to pastoral affluence and providores – was an alluring spot for ripening baby boomers to hook up their motor homes. A caravan park beside the river, close to town, with excellent ablutions that may have won an award for hottest power showers in the west was always going to prove popular. And so it was that the mini street blocks dumped onto a meadow were crammed with a veritable mix of shiny white coaches and ramshackle fibros, often adorned with an auburn-topped lady in a folding chair reading through her expensive spectacles while a rangy male figure stumbled around trying to figure out how to empty the septic tank.

Campers, as so often, were an afterthought. Allocation to a small patch of grass that possibly classifies as a verge. Sited next to the river, but with the downsides of an adjacent public right of way and numerous biting insects. As ever, placed in the most open and prominent position so that all can look on in bemusement at the canvas contraptions that somehow you and your companion manage to be sleeping quite comfortably in. Swags were always a source of much fascination and eternal debate amongst the nomads, with lively discussions around one’s own ability to survive in such a thing and – on occasions lubricated by grape juice and a great Aussie irreverence – the possibility of sexual intercourse in such a structure [i].

Deflecting much of this attention and offering comradeship against the rows of Grand Adventurer 3000s and solar-panelled satellite dishes tuned into Today Tonight, one other person was braving the use of canvas in Mudgee. And quite amazingly it was one of the greyest of the grey nomads, a dear old lady cycling all over Australia towing her belongings, one of which was a stuffed dog [ii]. There is always someone or something to ruin your sweeping generalisations and lazy stereotypes, darn it. Anyway, being one of the few persons on site to actually need the kitchen facilities (I say kitchen, but think sink and a few tables under a picnic shelter), it was discovered over breakfast that she was in need of a cataract operation, possibly because she hadn’t invested in a pair of those expensive designer spectacles. And with a few delightfully cutting comments about the extravagance of $100,000 motor homes, she loaded up and wobbled on to the next stop down what I hope she knew was the main road.

We never did come across this cycling legend again, something I am pleased about in one sense because I had horror images of finding her happily peddling down the wrong way of the M5, the stuffed dog the only one alert to the situation, a terrified expression on its face. But it is quite possible – indeed highly likely – that you will encounter the same nomads, recognise the same Grand Adventurer 3000s, bump into the same old guy off to the ablutions for his dump, during the migration season.

Rob and Sue – well we think they were called Rob and Sue so that is how they became known – spotted us first. Apparently I had overtaken their car and trailer about ten times that day on the most boring stretch of road to cross the Nullarbor. I can’t say I noticed, because that boring stretch of road was so soporific that senses became dulled, and the caravans and trailers all took on a likeness and started talking to me and whispering sweet nothings as I hazily overtook them at 140kph, all entirely safely as pink elephants blew champagne bubbles through their trunks and out into the endless sky. But over a roast lamb fiesta in the quite delightful Fraser Range Station that night, they recognised us. I suspect a shiny blue Outback with a roof box and what were relatively young people inside (it’s all relative) were a more distinctive site. And as Rob recounted being overtaken ten times that day by some young hoons in a Subaru, my mind tried to recall whether any of those manoeuvres were in any way dodgy [iii].

Rob and Sue were quite lovely, in that quite lovely way where everything is quite lovely. Kind of like the quite lovely aunt and uncle who would have a quite lovely lovingly kept home and would happily let you stay for a lovely dinner and sleep in their quite lovely spare room. They were younger nomads; indeed there was a chance that Rob might still go back to work after their little test of the waters. They didn’t even have a proper motor home, just one of those plain trailers that somehow transforms itself into a suite at The Ritz. I’m sure they didn’t quite see themselves in the same mould as the wildebeestian hordes of socks and sandals and designer spectacles, and were glad to speak to some youth for a change [iv].

Anyway, the next day as the end of the Nullarbor beckoned, we passed Rob and Sue a few more times as part of that drive-rest-stop-drive tango, but now always with a friendly flash of lights and gesture to the pink elephants blowing bubbles in the sky. We marginally missed each other down in Cape Le Grand National Park near Esperance, a fact I discovered when we came from opposite directions to cross in the quite amazing Fitzgerald River National Park [v]. Later, I think they may have been a few vehicles in front of us at some lights in Denmark. And we fully expected to bump into each other once more, migrating north up the west coast of WA. So it was with some disappointment that Rob and Sue vanished into the great tarmac ribbon on red dirt, never to be seen or considered to possibly be stalking us again.

I reckon they were always a few days ahead, due to us lingering around in some backwater like Perth, finally drinking good coffee and wasting time in its breweries and beachside cafes. They were not there among the few souls braving the annoyingly icy waters of Shark Bay to see dolphins being fed; neither did they emerge from the masses crammed into the favelas of Carnarvon, a site which appeared to be only one step removed from a season finale of The Walking Dead; perhaps they weren’t brave enough to stop at the the very rustic setting of Quobba Station or enjoy the jackaroo appeal of Bullara Station, even though a few alternative, non-stereotypical nomads could.

[And so, back to Attenborough]: In the northwest corner of Western Australia, Exmouth is the next staging post for the nomads. Here though, they come up against some younger bucks who could represent a threat to their existence: outsiders from France and other wild lands with extravagant plaits and body features that are proudly displayed, yet to sag. Competing for prime locations next to the ocean from which to alternately strum guitars and read books, there is an uneasy peace between the two groups. As the fine weather holds, an air of acceptance persists and the species cohabit side by side, with Derek very friendly towards young Amelie much to the disapproving over-the-spectacles glare of Margaret.

[Cue crack of lighting and thunder rumble scene, signifying, uh-oh, trouble]: But an unseasonal low pressure storm approaches. Some hunker down, others retreat to the cheapest motel to make the most of the downtime and look at some research publications and transfer the content into an excel spreadsheet in order to save the world. Trouble and coffee brews.

As the rains continue, the wily nomads now sense their opportunity. Secretly unhitching the power and emptying septic tanks in the quiet of dawn, a convoy gathers on the one and only main road of Exmouth. Emboldened by their superior torque and sixteen speed automatic military-spec drive, the nomads traverse the flood plains to settle in drier and warmer climes. Basking in Broome in tinted designer spectacles, they leave behind a melee of Wicked campervans bedecked with misogyny and potentially fatal odours. The grand migration of the common grey nomad carries on unstoppable, and we leave them on their endless roaming and return south.

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[i] Important interpretative note: by ‘possibility’ I refer to consideration of the practicalities of such actions being feasible in such a structure, rather than a request to give it a try!

[ii] Now, I am no Lance Armstrong, but I would imagine that you would do everything possible to minimise weight when cycling across Australia. Apart from those important coke cans for transporting syringes of unicorn blood.

[iii] I mean, we could have been singing out loud to songs from Eurovision 2012 or something. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_9QaVC-NKw or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrIaxnjeJ58

[iv] If there is one thing to be said for surrounding yourself with grey nomads it is that wonderful feeling of being made to feel a youngster again. Having said that, typically we were the first to bed and departed the site the next morning before many of the older ones had stirred!

[v] If ever you have chance, go there.

12 Months Australia Driving Society & Culture

March 17, 2015June 1, 2015

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Great divides and sunny coasts

Wagga Wagga. Ballarat. Dubbo. Albury. Bendigo. Rockhampton. Geelong. Bunbury. Mount Gambier. These are the recurrent regional research towns, in which there is sufficient population to extract a small selection of locals to talk about everything from the design on a bottle of shampoo to the delight of doing tax. I have been to each and every one, mostly for business but sometimes for pleasure, and now and again for both. Until this past week though there had been a noticeable absentee from the list, and, as if hearing the crucial number in a game of bingo, the Queensland town of Toowoomba delivered a full house.

Toowoomba is a touch inland from Brisbane and, with a sizeable population over a hundred thousand, benefits from good road links, appreciated in the rush that I somehow managed to contrive one working afternoon and evening. It rather dramatically emerges atop the Great Dividing Range, perched on a plateau over this somewhat ill-defined chain of ridges and hills which meanders along the entire eastern fringe of Australia. Thus, the edge of one side of town is adorned with tabletop views as fingers of parkland and bush thrust into the lowland expanse of the Lockyer Valley, cut by hairpins of highway and – because we are in Queensland – no doubt teeming with spiders, snakes, and snag-stained singlets.

The emergence of the town is quite sudden; one minute you are chugging up a protracted series of bends through the bush and then, as soon as it levels, suburban concrete and commercial highways spread out west. I suspect it could almost be the modern equivalent of reaching Machu Picchu, with a city that is shielded from view until traversing a final mountain ridge. Once crested, the ancient civilisation of the Supercheap Autans fills intrepid travellers with awe, as the sun sets over the Darling Downs.

Away from its edges, the remainder of town could easily be Wagga or Ballarat or any other regular research regional resort. There is a city block with some familiar and some uniquely local stores, a typical amalgamation of elegant turn of century buildings and functional blocks. A giant mall draws shoppers from the older town centre while between the two a strategically placed drive-thru Maccas casts its magnet on the alloy wheels of ute-borne bogans and the iron fillings of schoolkids. Amongst this, one small alleyway has been transplanted from Melbourne, adorned with street art and beards making coffee. I stopped by there twice.

Leaving Toowoomba with a decent coffee and mushroom-focused breakfast, I had a free day to return to Brisbane and decided to take a different route back down. First stop was the small village of Hampton, from where I attained necessary booklets and maps from the tourist information centre. Nearby, Ravensbourne National Park, offered some scenic views of the fairly lush and productive countryside of the region, and the first of several mixed rainforest-bush-type ambles.

Heading down to the town of Esk, the road continues in the picturesque Brisbane Valley, fringing the immense Wivenhoe Lake. It was this massive body that bulged with too much water a few years back and released its content into the Brisbane River, causing flooding all the way down to the coast. This was responsible for awful scenes, in which Kevin Rudd – then deposed as PM – waded gleefully through shallow water in his boardies to deliver an empty box of mixed metaphors and cringe-worthy superlatives to despairing locals. Today things were more sedate, though the occasional flood marker and rough strip of tarmac indicated that flood damage is always a risk.

Above the floodplain, more ranges rise on a very winding and sometimes precipitous alternative route to Brisbane. Crossing through D’Aguilar National Park with a touch of je ne sais quoi and foux du fafa, the road takes in several beautiful viewpoints, patches of subtropical rainforest, and sleepy wood-bedecked villages. Of course I stopped at the viewpoints, and partook of a decent walk through forest near Mount Glorious. Ferns, palms, fig trees and fungus were signals of something a little moister and a touch exotic; a setting in which snakes probably hide to wait for ill-footed southerners, and ants are poised to nibble on fleshy toes. Mercifully, I made it out there alive, accompanied by the rumble of thunder and the sweat of ridiculous humidity.

Plunging down away from the rain, the national park ends and immediately Brisbane suburbia grips. There are parallels with the emergence of Toowoomba, as traffic clearways and junctions and shopping malls spring up, traversing The Gap and Ashgrove and a very different kind of Red Hill. The CBD appears, the Brisbane River crossed, and a reminiscent friendship blue sky laksa is taken for old times’ sake. Afterwards, more traffic and concrete and now lights stretch on north, before the city finally gives up, and the motorway allows a speeding up towards the Sunshine Coast.

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From experience I know it is not always sunny on the Sunshine Coast. A now somewhat distant Christmas in particular sticks in the mind. Recently, cyclonic remnants turned fields into mud and streets into streams. This weekend, however, the region was true to its name.

Indeed, it was rather warm. Not drastically higher in temperature than Canberra but with added humidity and night-time sweatiness. Mornings were a bit fresher, meaning that coffee and brunch was not out of the question. But building heat later in the day was more conducive to iced coffees and cold beers, and some relief beside the ocean. In this regard, Coolum Beach at least sounded the part. Certainly, the noticeable sea breeze was causing significant chop on the water and taking some of the perspiration away. Most soothing though was a wade through the ocean itself, as sand and water and feet met in perfect harmony for some brief entanglements of bliss.

The last thing I would want to do in this weather is run. Swimming would be okay I suppose, if you could cope with the oversized waves and not get dragged under by sharks or stung by jellyfish or hit by a wayward surfboard. Cycling might be fine too, if you can mainly stick to going down the nine hills plunging from Buderim, breeze flowing through Lycra, and refresh with an iced latte afterwards. But running doesn’t seem to come with any benefits. Nonetheless, thousands of people decided to engage in all this and more in the Mooloolaba Triathlon, taking place on a perfect, breezeless thirty degree Sunday.

It was hard work, conquering breakfast and then standing by the road, seeking shade, occasionally clapping and snapping and still questioning why on earth you would be doing this when there is a beautiful beach and ocean you could surely be having far more enjoyment out of. I guess there is admiration, but not a logical one because the endeavour seems so senseless. Strangely and surprisingly though I quite enjoyed watching some of the triathlon, and took satisfaction in encouraging all sorts of sweaty bodies towards the top of their final hill.

Needless to say, following all this frivolous activity I had a nap and then an iced coffee in the afternoon. A little bit of work accompanied the iced coffee but the iced coffee just about made that all okay. It also generated a bit of extra energy to do some exercise myself, though more of the sedate sunset walk type than the extreme ironman sweatfest. With daylight fading early, particularly as Queensland are backwards when it comes to moving clocks forward, the signs are of seasons changing. And indeed, on the shores of Mooloolaba, still gently wading through warm waters as the halo of twilight captured the skies, I felt as though this could be the last dose of real summer. It may soon drop below twenty-five degrees and Queenslanders will soon reach for the scarves. And for me, research days in the freezing fog of a Ballarat or Wagga winter are closer to realisation.

Australia Driving Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography

January 1, 2015June 1, 2015

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January

Ingrained in the deepest reaches of my mind sits recollection of a January. Far beyond yesterday’s shopping list is a picture of a crisp clear day on high moorland. Icy cracks and crevices, like fissures of diamond, bond the huge granite boulders thrust up from the core of the Earth. Shallow pools of water are sealed with glass, only splintered with a daring footstep as satisfying as a spoon piercing a Crème Brûlée. Encased in a padding of jumpers and scarves and jackets and gloves, the wind nonetheless manages to lash the face and penetrate the body. Feet lose feeling, yet the rest of the body is invigorated. And as rosiness returns in front of an open fire, like the cold the memories fade, lost again, floating around somewhere amongst the numerous pithy sentences that would undoubtedly make a great book if somehow I could wed them to a narrative.

On the other side of the world, below the equator and quite a bit east, the tilt of the Earth has conspired to produce utopian conditions for flies, ants and mosquitoes. All seem rather attracted to me. As a quest to receive more invites to fancy barbecues and opulent garden parties I may well advertise as a portable insect attractor. Like one of those electric zappers, but with the added bonus of being able to serve drinks, cook meats and deliver witty anecdotes and sarcastic put-downs disguised as sarcasm but quite possibly not. I may well call this emerging enterprise that has literally emerged in the last few minutes, Aussie Mozzie Boy. He takes the angst out of ants.

Here in January a heat hovers and the thought of wearing anything other than shorts ever again seems quite ludicrous. It actually becomes too hot, and the parade of once-sturdy Agapanthus begins to wither, much like a Scotsman on a Melbourne tennis court awarded a succession of daytime matches in the hope of providing another sporting spectacle; that of reddening skin and dehydrated muttering, and a pile of towels so soaked in sweat they could water the vines in the Yarra Valley for the remainder of the year.

The concept of being too hot seems alien, even though it is a frequent ill-informed complaint of an Englishman in an English summer. I once heard a particularly toasty day – the kind accompanied by a generous north-westerly transporting dust and ash and smoke and flies – described in charming vernacular as a “stinker”. And too bloody right mate. But this idea, that a hot sunny day can really suck, is perverse to an English soul. Now, if it was gloomy and dank and dreary and accompanied by drizzle at around three degrees Celsius, then I would expect that to qualify as a stinker, and I would have probably revelled in as much. Once. But now I am a soft-skinned insect allurer who may start to feel a little chilly in the legs at a garden party once the sun has set and the blood extraction procedure ramps up.

And so we note the theme of contrasts, which is not in the least bit surprising and not at all likely to be recurrent in the context of Australia and England. You say tamaaarhda, I say towmartoe, innit. Seasonality has produced an affectation of difference in January north and south, but what of that which ties us together? A new calendar, a new year; a clean slate, a fresh page; a resolve to set goals and stride into the year with purpose; and an inevitability that most of us will – at best – be only partially successful. Rated emerging or promising, but never strongly supported.

January is the month of resolutions, from revolutions to evolutions and aspirations about dedications to somehow become superlative. As if you weren’t pretty damn fine in the first place, you endeavour to eat less cake, drink less beer, replace a cigarette with some Lycra and set some vague but worthy ‘life goals’. Inspired but daunted you cope with such change by eating more chocolate, drinking more wine, slowly jogging past the dodgy youth to inhale some suspicious-smelling haze hovering overhead, and revel in the ambiguity of those vague aims for life which can be almost unendingly put off for another time. I say you, but I could easily mean I.

I have nothing against New Year’s resolutions and annual goals, despite being someone who displays a comfortable inadequacy over such gestures. I make them, but in a very hazy manner. Yeah, I intend this year to you know just go with the flow and take opportunities as they come and, yeah, maybe go on a trip somewhere, depending on what the work situation is like, and hinging on some other stuff and things that pan out.

My goals are, in business parlance, far from SMART. But how many of us, unless in the industry of setting crude financial objectives which involve fleecing $200 million out of customers’ superannuation funds by October 2015, are able to set genuine SMART goals? I always struggled with this goal-setting process in the corporate world. I think my main problem was that if I was to be honest and list my genuine goals for work it would be somewhat out of sync with that expected: This year, I would like to make enough money to live comfortably for doing as little work as possible and avoid any responsibility or decision-making unless it enhances my long-term objective of sitting by a pool being fanned with palm fronds by statuesque goddesses immodestly attired. What should of course be spouting out of my mouth in such situations is something about client-centric fulfilment, strategic interactive opportunities for streamlined co-delivery, and some gigantic revenue target to make the overseas shareholders one hundred times richer than they already are. This last one would be implicit across everything if not always overtly stated as such.

Anyway, this has little to do with January as most work goal-setting episodes tend to take place one month before you have to achieve them…so something like November. But we do have our personal resolutions to uphold, made in an alcohol-induced glow in the wee hours of the first day of the year and foolishly blurted out to bystanders in an attempt to make it look like you do have some appetite for self-improvement. Unfortunately, we also choose to do this in January.

In cooling, northern hemispheres, this is akin to climbing a very steep mountain in a blizzard while wearing flip flops and nursing a humungous hangover. Picture the eighth of January for example. The coloured lights of Christmas are but a distant blur and all that remains from the festivities are the dregs of Aunt Agatha’s sherry and a box of those Danish butter biscuits, destined to be re-gifted. You left for work and came home in the dark. In between, the darkness cheerily lifted to a dense drizzly grey. Despite looking innocuous this soaked your new jacket as you popped out from staring at spreadsheets to get a forlorn-looking cheese and onion sandwich from Tesco. Still damp in the evening, it takes you two hours to get home on a congested train because even the points don’t see the point anymore. And for dinner: half a lettuce and a rice cake, followed by a run in the graveyard. All because you made those resolutions.

So unless your aim is to get as depressed as quickly as possible and accumulate a colony of a new species of mould on your clothes, there is a high likelihood that, come February, you’ll be back chuffing away on 40 a day and eating KFC for breakfast. Because how else are you going to make it though this? In Australia, by contrast, again, there is at least some logic to attempting self-improvement in January. The weather is good, fresh fruit and salads are de rigueur, and practically everyone else you see is glowing in an unbelievably self-contented halo of white teeth and good skin. But here, the slippage into obesity and alcoholism that commenced with Christmas lingers through January and into the next month as a constant companion. It is a protracted holiday season, a period in which it is too hot to exercise with any conviction and the beer is too cold to avoid. Resolutions are easily swayed and as enthusiastically broken as the heads of the succulent tiger prawns drawn en masse from The Pacific.

So, in semi-conclusion, is January really the best time to start afresh, a clean slate for setting aspirations and committing to arduous goals? I’d say no, but you would be justified in hypothesising that I would say this for any month of any year. You’d also be justified in accusing me of downright hypocrisy if you take into account the context in which all the above words have been written. I’d call it poetic licence, but lacking much in the way of anything poetic.

So, in an attempt to address this deficiency let me transport you to the Australian high country. January is still in its infancy and here the skies are a deeper blue, the air more comfortable in which to linger. The clear waters of the Snowy River meander in shallow pools and trickling cascades, bridged by a chain of irregular stepping stones. The walk to Australia’s highest point is well-frequented, but the expanse of open moorland and unending skies projects an excess of space. Leftover Christmas food can still be embraced overlooking a small, still tarn. Winding up to the summit, like the coiling of a Swiss railway conquering a pass, countless ridges and folds of land concertina their way toward the horizon. At 2,288 metres, you reach the top of Australia, Mount Kosciuszko. A new year, commenced on a high.

The cynics amongst you (me included) might then say, “Well, it’s all downhill from here!” But to me, there is something innately appealing about climbing a mountain at the start of the year. The concept of the fresh start is realised through the open vistas, the pure air, and the blank canvas of the fairly indistinguishable landscape of the Australian high country. There is a goal, real and tangible, I daresay even SMART. And then there is the achievement of reaching that goal, and being rewarded for it solely by the beauty and solace of nature. In my eyes, a reward that beats that excuse for a performance related bonus you received at work last year.

So in January, forget cutting back on the cream cakes and fretting about what you are supposed to achieve in the forthcoming year. Just go climb a sun-kissed mountain or tackle an ice-racked tor. The rest of the year will then be a doddle.

For more mountainous inspiration in January or beyond, check out my gallery of various high points near and far

12 Months Australia Society & Culture Walking

February 25, 2014October 19, 2015

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Zzz…

…and so to bed, a closure of sorts on this long-winded journey that started off so awesome and finishes in a cocoon of fluffy pillows and cosy doonas. Among all the wonderful things seen, the delights tasted, the rants aired, it is sleep that has allowed them to happen, recharging the body and mind just enough to ensure that things can keep on keeping on. Sleep is, well, awesome, and as friends and family surround themselves with young ones, the perplexing question on everyone’s lips is just why wouldn’t you want to go to bed and sleep solidly for eight hours, pesky child?!

Sleep deprivation is, alas, a feature of the lives of many people I know, from eternally exhausted parents to work-bothered stress heads. Occasionally it pops up in my life, but usually as a result of my own endeavours, like sitting cramped on a plane for 24 hours and moving forward in time 11 hours and then stupidly expecting to sleep like a baby that actually sleeps [1].

Z_wilsprom

Or deciding to stay in a hostel room in a tiny place somewhere in Victoria and finding that the other bunks are occupied by three rather large Germans who have had a hearty dose of ale and chunks of pork and like to sleep on their back. Still, it was a beautiful early dawn ride to Wilsons Prom that morning when no-one else was yet up.

Luckily I am apt to overcome sleep deprivation and early starts with the most blessed event that can befall anyone: the afternoon nap. I think I first fell in love with afternoon naps when it happened to me as a teenager, taking me unawares as I struggled to read a boring book on a grey day in a comfy armchair. Initially it was a bit of a shock to find that I had unintentionally nodded off and drooled a little. But the feeling of contentment and rejuvenation that ebbed into my body earmarked the afternoon nap as something to occasionally strive for.

In 2013 I had a fair few afternoon naps, along with a fair few restless nights and early starts. This was primarily my own doing, attributed to the fact that I ended up staying in 121 different locations across the globe [2]. Such restlessness can induce restlessness…that feeling of being slightly unsettled going to sleep in an unfamiliar spot. Given many of the sleeps were also conducted in a canvas coffin in the middle of nowhere, prone to every possum rustle and pounding wave of the ocean and occasional snoring fit from elsewhere, solid sleep was not always high on the agenda. But then I discovered the calming properties of earplugs and got over it and probably made a bit or noise myself, mouth agape catching flies.

Still, the early starts were common as there is only so much an earplug can do against the cacophonous cackling of a choir of Kookaburras. The compensation from the termination of sleep was the sparkle of being alive and watching the natural world wake up from its shadowy slumber. Like down amongst the spotted gums of Croajingalong National Park, fringing the silver glass of an inlet as it is kissed by the laser red sun of dawn and enlivened by the rousing chimes of bellbirds. Awake is the new sleep.

A few more sleeps from this spot and I happened to be in Wilsons Prom again, this time without a hostel room of Germans, but struggling to sleep nonetheless. The day had been baking hot, an arid northerly wind blowing dust and flies and smoke and hairdryer vapours to the southern extremities of mainland Australia. Too hot to sleep until – finally in the small hours – the promised cool change, bringing a pitter-patter of rain which turns to a noisy deluge amplified on canvas. Fortunately the next sleep was Melbourne and a roof and a bed and appreciation of a roof and a bed which is so often taken for granted by us first world problem seekers.

There were a few other hot nights but many more cold ones, often surprising in their unpredictability. I expect somewhere called the Grampians to be a wee bit chilly, though in March I never expected it would be cold enough to cause me to hover over a few smouldering twigs, infiltrating smokiness into my hair and stubble and fleece and beanie, awaiting the first warmth from the sun to finally emerge from between the trees. Ironically, later that day it would swelter so much as to cause sweaty backs on a climb to one of the many spectacular overlooks, provoke comfort in a lukewarm home-made shower, and create extreme fondness for a double scooped ice cream back down in Halls Gap.

In this flim-flam wiff-waff Perryinthian volatility of hot and cold, it is perhaps not so much of a surprise that one of the best swag sleeps in the past year was conducted at a very agreeable and comfortable temperature. This in itself was not at all predictable given previous chilly nights despite (or maybe because of) being in the dry, arid South Australian outback. Perhaps it was the shelter of the Cypress pines and their earthy fragrance, or perhaps just the ease of getting to sleep after many miles of quite exemplary walking, but Aroona Valley in the Flinders Ranges provided a chance to not really sleep much like a baby. And with solid sleep, an early start is no problem to appreciate the grandeur of the emerging landscape as the day is welcomed.

Beyond the swag there have been air mattresses and sofas and fold up beds to enjoy, plus the occasional real bed. I’ve had a close on-off relationship with a certain air mattress for some time now, though this year saw us part company. A little part of me was a bit forlorn when I was kindly provided with my own room and own bed, complete with funky pictures of digger trucks and awesome earthmoving machines. Yet I can still sleep soundly despite stealing the bedroom of a two year old, for I always sleep soundly here. It may come thanks to the wine and fulfilling Mexican food, the equal liveliness and weariness of family life, the penchant for odd movies and cruising around Liberty City late at night. Or the grim up north Lancashire exterior quelled by the warming welcome inside.

And once more it comes back to that old chestnut roasting on an open fire of comfort and familiarity. Spending such sustained time on a fold up bed in Plymouth that my back no longer hurts. Reconnecting with my eternal homeland, nodding off to the sound of drunken crazies arguing over some munter down the street eating a kebab. Waking to the sound of seagulls and the incessant irritating loop of Bruno Mars and Olly Murs on Heart [3]. Hearing the distant trundle of the railway as it fights its way through millions of leaves and brambles; a trundle that gently lulls you to sleep again later following a majestic day walking the Cornish coast. This is quite possibly the most contented nap there is.

Finally, after all this sleeping around, I again find myself in my own bed, the one I bought at Harvey Norman in Fyshwick seven years ago, before I knew any better [4]. I remember having to catch a bus that dropped me off somewhere between a petrol station and porn shop, walking through some overgrown brown grass dotted with rubble and fast food trash. Making it to the store I then waited ages for any of the dubious sales staff to take any interest in me. I’m sure I purchased the fairly cheap mattress, thinking I was only going to be in Australia for a year. But it endures and it is mine and, as everyone always inevitably says after a bout of travel, ooh it’s always nice to be back in your own bed!

Back on that day, while waiting near the porn store for the hourly bus back to somewhere close to where I was staying, I killed some time by wandering into the p…p….petrol station. I p…p….purchased a map of New South Wales to kill some boredom. This was back in the dark old days of 2006, when maps were unfathomably large and fold out-y. But it was splendid to open it out and start looking at the roads and contours and the places by the sea that were still just names then. And it was daunting to see just how large the place was, where a two hour drive was a couple of fingers width on paper.

When the bed was delivered and assembled it not only became a place of sleep but one in which the mind would formulate plans and trips, making lists in my head and sometimes struggling to nod off with the breathless excitement of it all. I’d try to count sheep, read something dull, do a Sudoku. And then I decided, probably an unwise tactic, to list things off in my head in an A to Z fashion. Like places I have been in the USA, capital cities of the world, or legumes of the Central Asian plateau or some such. Sometimes I would drift off by Crystal River, other times I’d be wide-eyed in Zagreb. But it’s something that has endured for quite a while, until now.

So it would seem, with this particular alphabet closed, I truly can rest easy. Catch a few awesome ZZZs as a chapter closes. That is until I start to toy with the next idea and several others fall open. For now though, read this and sleep.

[1] What a misguided phrase. To sleep like a baby must mean spells of doziness for an hour with six interruptions during the night to eat, and a couple of nappy changes because you have pooped all over the place.

[2] I should point out, not 121 different beds, for many of these sleeps were carried out in a swag that just happened to find itself in a different part of Australia each night.

[3] Seriously, just buy her some frigging flowers and shut the hell up

[4] I quickly decided to deliberately avoid Harvey Norman, mainly because of its very tacky, cheap and incredibly shouty adverts in which they proclaim to be the bedding specialist, or plasma screen specialist or coffee specialist, offering interest free credit until 2023

Links

Croajingalong National Park: http://parkweb.vic.gov.au/explore/parks/croajingolong-national-park

Wilsons Promontory National Park: http://parkweb.vic.gov.au/explore/parks/wilsons-promontory-national-park

Grampians National Park: http://parkweb.vic.gov.au/explore/parks/grampians-national-park

Flinders Ranges National Park:

http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/Find_a_Park/Browse_by_region/Flinders_Ranges_and_Outback/Flinders_Ranges_National_Park

They haven’t got much better (or advanced): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ky9cFQbbM

Back in the bed buying days: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2006/08/artistic-bedroom-furniture-ironing.html

Something else to send you to sleep: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/

A to Z Australia Great Britain Society & Culture

December 29, 2013October 22, 2015

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One big year…

2013 – a year of 365 days, 12 months and approximately 52 weeks. A year with four different digits for the first time since 1987. A year in which I made it to ten countries via 12 airports and stayed overnight in…wait for it…121 different locations. A year in which I drove and drove something in excess of 25,000 kilometres, enduring 3 chipped or cracked windscreens and one tyre puncture. A year in which pointless statistics are endlessly available.

But, apart from such statistics, what are the highlights and where can stupidly made-up awards be, well, awarded?

Best stay: Aroona Valley, Flinders Ranges National Park

Anywhere with a pit toilet must be pretty special in so many other ways. Camping amongst the pines and earthy creeks lined with River Red Gums, wonderful walking trails on your doorstep, sunset and sunrise views over the crinkled geography of the Flinders Ranges, all make for a magically rustic stay. Plus the pit toilets were actually reasonably pleasant.

Best walk: far west Cornwall in September

Of all the places, of all the walks, of all the splendid days this was the best. Under warm blue skies, half of the fun came from the open top bus journey to and from the coast path between Porthcurno and Sennen Cove. At Porthcurno a cream tea and splendid outcrop overlooks over sapphire bays set me off to amble along cliff tops cloaked in purple and gold. A pause at Lands End provided ice cream and final propulsion onward to the charms of Sennen Cove and its sweeping golden sands. Hard to match, hard to beat.

Best food experience: camping fry ups

Again proof that the simple things are often the best, some combination of pork sausage, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, tomatoes and hash brown capped off with HP sauce. Best appreciated following a wearisome day of walks and served somewhere beside the sea off southern Australia.

Best drink experience: the first sip in Munich

Long haul flight dehydration is probably not best solved by a beer; however, Munich makes it hard to resist. Popping to some nearby gardens for air, tucked under the shady trees sits a charming beer garden, serving delicious cooling Weissbier and ridiculously salty but irresistible pretzels. A chance to sit and bask back in summer and embrace the slow realisation that you have made it across the globe.

The NBN award for worthy endeavours that are behind schedule: gbpilgrim.com

In a shameless cross-promotional opportunity, may I refer you to the tales and travails of gbpilgrim.com. Here I set myself the task of writing an alphabetical tour-de-force around the world within the year. But as you would see should you go there I made it to U. Seriously sidetracked, nonetheless I am nearing the end with 21 pieces of beachside / fireside reading this summer / winter.

The Johnson-Haddin award for being really annoying: the Australian fly

There are many parallels between the Australian cricket team and the swarms of flies that irritate their way across this huge country. In your face, buzzing away, seeming to scarper then coming back in a marauding fashion to head up your nose and down your throat. It is as if the flies peppering the body around Arkaroola are wearing small baggy greens and sprouting dodgy facial hair and a little too much attitude. They may be swatted for a while, but it’s a futile effort and they come back bigger and badder than ever.

Word of the year: ablutions

Ablution. It rolls off the tongue like sheets of wafer-thin toilet paper spilling onto the floor of a damp concrete floor. It sounds as appealing as a thong-clad grandpa shuffling into the toilets for his morning dump. It rolls around like the huge industrial drying machines that leave clothes damp and itchy. Up and down the country, ablutions are servicing the needs of the ageing population living in their deluxe caravans, and offering at least a wry smile for those paying over the odds to camp amongst the awnings and concrete pitches of a mobile shanty town.

Destination of the year: South Island, New Zealand

Sorry Australia, but New Zealand is simply spectacular at every turn. Nowhere more so than on the south island, where there is a surprising diversity beyond mountains and glacial rivers to a world of ancient forests, grassy meadows, jagged coast and pristine golden bays. All pleasingly accessible and navigable by car, by boat and, most of all, by foot. Somewhere you could happily return to again and again and again.

Australia Driving Europe Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Walking

December 17, 2013October 21, 2015

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E by gum

The Nullarbor is said to be so named because of an absence of trees, i.e. null arbor. The thing is, like other misconceptions that may feature on a jovial edition of QI and set off a high pitched wail, it’s really not so true. Sure, there are a few bits that are made up mostly of low scrub and saltbush, and some of it is very, very flat. But there are plenty of trees clustered and scattered across the thousand kilometres or so of its reach. Plus there is my own festive Christmas tree dangling in the front of the car, attempting to bring some light and joy to this escapade in monotony.

One of the little treats of heading east is that you gradually get to move your clock forward until eventually you get a reasonable sunrise and pleasant light evenings. Not so at Fraser Range, undoubtedly the nicest stop along the road but still subject to the same peculiar hours as Perth. Hello 4am sunshine, before vanishing into a strangely cool, cloudy day to plough through the rest of Western Australia.

At Eucla, close to the WA / SA border there is the concession of 45 minutes but you have come so far east that it makes little difference. And then, ten minutes down the road you suddenly jump forward 1 hour 45 minutes and should you wish to straddle the border it is quite possible to indulge in your own creation of Back to the Future.

Jumping into South Australia there is a sense that civilisation is returning, but it is still 500kms or so to Ceduna, which is itself a subjective interpretation of civilisation. I’m glad to push on another hour and make it instead to Streaky Bay, for a cooling motel room, a chance to endure cricket on TV and nice, long, light evenings to take in the jetty and glassy calm bay of this glassy calm town.

It seems the journey is one of milestones – crossing the border, finishing the Nullarbor, reaching the crossroads of Port Augusta and again seeing a kangaroo for the first time in ages. Bushland and hills return and the environment becomes a more familiar, comforting scene of generic southeast Australian. Stopping and appreciating this at Mambray Creek, in Mount Remarkable National Park, is a delight, even if it means being awoken by huge flocks of galahs clattering around the majestic River Red Gums in the morning.

Adelaide is another milestone and just a few hundred kilometres down the road. I reached the city by way of a small diversion into the northern Yorke Peninsula and a triumvirate of towns – Wallaroo, Moonta and Kadina – at the heart of the Copper Coast. Or ‘Little Cornwall’, a moniker derived from the miners who settled here many moons ago. You would think I would have learnt by now not to get my hopes up with such names, to avoid such disappointments as a ‘Devonshire’ Tea and a ‘Pork’ Pie. But I live in hope that certain culinary heritage items are preserved amongst this flat, agricultural landscape which – apart from the presence of a bit of sea – is nothing like Cornwall.

So it is really not that much of a surprise that despite the slightly cutesy high streets crying out for a charming tea room there is no sign of a cream tea in sight. The closest thing to a scone and jam and clotted cream is a shiny bun with a blob of jam and squirty cream in the middle. Salvation may lie in a traditional pasty, but this is about as traditional as sticking a possum on top of a Christmas tree and singing we wish you a merry Easter. For a start, a pasty tends to have much more meat in and a lot less finely diced carrot please.

Anyway, meanwhile, back in Australia, I reached Adelaide and was glad but slightly daunted by being in a big smoke again. Not that Adelaide is that big or smoky. Indeed, it is rather graceful and refined at its heart. There is decent coffee to have and the fabulous central markets to salivate in and the tram to Glenelg to catch and a short drive to be had to the hills, peppered with wineries and koalas and dinner and conversation waiting. Leaving is a bit sad but there is one final little hill stop in Hahndorf, making amends for a missed German style meat fest opportunity last time around, and a brief reminder of hot summer days in Munich.

After such a lunch it would be a decent idea to nap, but I had new milestones to reach and crossing into Victoria was on the agenda. Three more nights of swagging it, following an inland course close to the Murray River and over the highest hills in the country and down to Canberra. Still 1200km to go but feeling close to the end.

The first stop was among the gums and lakes of Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, a little to the south of Mildura. Here mighty trees rise from the waters, attracting a dense concentration of screeching cockatoos who mercifully quieten down after dusk. They perk up again in the morning, but by now mornings start at a much more reasonable hour.

The trees, water and birds combination continues along the length of the Murray, interspersed more frequently with pleasant towns. A reminder that in Victoria country life seems quite amiably civilised. Swan Hill even offered a giant Murray Cod, whilst Echuca evoked steamboat and latticework charm. The thing to do in Echuca is to hop on one of these and cruise upon the river. It made for a pleasant enough hour albeit a little dull.

The Murray rises in the Snowy Mountains and by time I reached Wangaratta I was on very much more familiar ground, stocking up on coffee and cake and heading for the hills. It’s a beautiful approach from Wodonga, following the shores of the Hume Dam with golden hills rising and small valleys drifting into New South Wales. The valleys tighten and become more heavily and lushly forested as they shelter beneath the higher ridges of the Main Range of Kosciusko National Park.

From this western approach it’s quite a twisty ascent over appealing sounding places like Siberia and Dead Horse Gap to a much starker and moodier side. Here a landscape of high moors and glacial hollows is scattered with ghostly snow gums and boggy pools. A world in which leftover snow still stubbornly sticks; a world a long way from Perth where I commenced this journey.

It was rather nice to get out of the car for a late afternoon walk immersed in this landscape, setting off from Charlotte Pass along the Main Range track, dipping down for a Snowy River crossing and up again to overlook Hedley Tarn and Blue Lake. From here it is really not that far as the crow flies to Canberra. Indeed, continuing along the track just a little further, crossing a couple more slushy white patches, you can look out over the ridges and folds of the ranges to the north and east. It is a vast view and I suspect if you had super Legolas vision you might just be able to make out Black Mountain Tower. So, so close.

In a somewhat romantic poetic notion it seems fitting that having traversed and explored huge tracts of this huge country over the past year that I finish it, well, not quite at the top but close enough. It feels like Australia is laid out before me and I can survey what I have crossed…from its white beaches to its desert plains, its golden hills to ragged red gorges, its shimmering cities to one pub towns. And yeah, It may well have the most annoying cricket team ever, and make poor attempts at Westcountry produce, and have strange time variations and a few super long dull roads but, other than that, it seems pretty good to me.

Australia Driving Green Bogey Photography

December 5, 2013October 21, 2015

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The gift that keeps on giving

God I love Esperance. So I muttered to myself on several occasions: driving along the spectacular coastal road; lounging on the white sands with a book; strolling with the sound of the Southern Ocean and lowering sun projecting against archipelago islands. God I love Esperance. Grabbing a good coffee by the foreshore; picking up a cake from the bakery; ambling in sandals and passing children on scooters waving to me like I am a long lost uncle.

Surrounded by such natural beauty the town itself is no pristine haven, but I like it like that. There is no false shiny veneer, little pretentious opulence, few signs of excess Noosafication or Byronessence. There is industry and shipping and an inevitable strip of furniture stores and warehouses and garages lining the entryways to town. Most of the houses look a little jaded, a touch, well, daggy. But I like it like that.

It’s a long way from anywhere else, a complete and fully-functioning oasis at the far end of the habitable coast, an embarrassment of riches before the Nullarbor. Such is the distance I had a stopover from Perth on the way. It was a place called Wave Rock, where there is a rather large rock springing up from baked wheat fields and dry lakes. Part of the rock has eroded into the shape of a wave. I rather liked it.

Here it was a return to my home…a return to my swag. I slept pretty dreadfully, but then a non-daylight saving sunrise of 4:30am doesn’t help. Stupid WA! Still, it was nice to be among gum trees and galahs again, to wander around and on top of this big rock, to view the endless horizons and big blue skies.

There was a familiarity at rejoining past roads travelled at Ravensthorpe, and a reminder of the bitterness that is country coffee. Still, the road was slightly different this time, now lined increasingly with bright orange bursts of colour known as WA Christmas Trees. Tis the season I suppose.

Should one be dreaming of a white Christmas then Esperance is not such a bad place to come. Indeed, one set of officials who measure such things have declared Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grand National Park to have the whitest sand in Australia (and yes, another set must have proclaimed Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay the same). I was content, on a few occasions, with some time at Twilight Beach, which appeared perfectly white enough to me.

However, arguably the most God I love Esperance moments came further along the coast at Observatory Beach, a more rugged and sweeping bay which on two evenings I had just to myself. I would say this is probably the best evening walk beach in the country, with fairly white sand (but no world record). I love the waves and dunes, the rocks and islands, and the sun filtering in and out of clouds as it sinks to the west.

Now, one of the considerations for making an assessment over the liveability of various places in Australia is the availability of good coffee. Esperance easily passes the test, whether from the mobile Coffee Cat or the scattering of small, chilled out cafes in the small, chilled out town centre. There are, in addition, decent cake options, some of which I have not tested so it may mean I need to come back. But Esperance is such a long way from anywhere just to visit like that. It makes it hard to leave.

With this in mind, I did see a sign advertised in the petrol station for someone to do four night shifts per week, between 10pm – 6am. How hard could that be? The sign was stuck in the counter window next to the hot sausage rolls. I was seriously tempted.

But I am heading on and the next decent coffee will probably arrive thousands of kilometres away in Adelaide. There is still a huge chunk of Western Australia to re-traverse, but, for me, Western Australia essentially ends here. It has been wonderful, surprising, insightful and colossal. And finishing it here in Esperance, with a final coffee beside the white sands and topaz seas, and the sound of an Australian wicket falling, it is a fairytale ending.

Australia Green Bogey Photography Walking

December 1, 2013October 22, 2015

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Plymouth – Bristol – Geneva – Perth – and so on…

For once, Devon did not farewell me with blue skies and fluffy white clouds and fluffier white sheep scattered on a carpet of rolling green. Darkness and wind and menacing cloudbursts accompanied the passage of dawn along the A38 and onto the M5. My final footsteps on English soil, for now, were along the sodden tarmac of Bristol airport, urging the cattle onto the plane and out of the rain and towards Geneva. In the tumult I dropped my passport – no, even scarier, passports – without knowing about it. Somewhere between aisle 2 and 3 I reckon, recovered by the air stewards and pronounced out loud. Call button pressed, gratitude expressed.

Geneva and its French environs were more bronze in grey lake cloud, a backdrop to stock up on cheese and cake and final family time. A bright and brisk Saturday morning was fine for some neutral ambling in the stylishly rustic Swiss countryside, dodging blade runners and cross country concrete skiers and tractors and little boys fleeing on scooters. Dinner was tartiflette, but then dinner usually is tartiflette!

The Sunday was a lazy Sunday French style, involving hours of food grazing and gorging on cheese in various states, matching with wines from different parts of the country and conversation from different parts of the planet. From very young cousins to the more senior-oriented, a splendid afternoon and a fine way to say goodbye, even if such times make that even harder.

Not quite the end for me and my exploring however as my very last day in Europe involved spending a lot of time on a bus which should have been a train to propel me to the visual feasts of Annecy. Wandering the lanes and streets as a grey cold gradually lifted, soaking up a very different ambience, a very different backdrop to where I would soon be heading. From Rue des Chateaus to Quiche aux lardons et fromage, past outdoor stalls selling musty old sausages and caravans of unpasteurised cheese, alongside riverside paths lined with shuttered houses and glowing red leaves, this was the time to soak it all up.

It was also the time to marvel in the landscape of this part of the world which is unlike any I would soon encounter. Escaping the town proved something of an uphill challenge but soon enough I entered the absolute golden delight of the Foret du Cret du Maure. Now sunny and warming up, strenuous work ensued in an effort to find an overview of Lac d’Annecy and not get lost. Thanks to my phone and maps I didn’t get lost, but apart from a few snatches through the trees, a lake view escaped me. Still, having really enjoyed the subtle, colourful transition from summer to winter over the past few months it was quite wonderful to end it in such a dense explosion of green and yellow and red and brown.

Back down at lake level the water was much more visible and, now in the latter part of these shortening days, glowing in the clear afternoon air. This is not a landscape I will see for a while, the lake as clear as a coral sea, the mountains snow-capped white as a pristine beach. An aspect warmly regarded with coats and scarves and hats strolling along a genteel, contented promenade…

…the local time is 5:30pm and the temperature is 35 degrees. So said someone several many hours later in a different hemisphere and season. Welcome to Perth, where the international terminal currently leaves much to be desired. Still, it is Australia and I can be welcomed in with my Australian passport that so nearly went astray. There is a new government but, apart from being significantly warmer, much appears the same as I left it. Taxi drivers still wittle on aimlessly about the toll road or monarchy or carbon tax, everything is still ridiculously expensive, and Perth is still some urban lifestyle paradise masquerading as a city.

And so to the beach, or to several beaches, or stretches of one long beach over the course of the next two weeks. With a coffee or book or a huge plate of calamari, accompanying a stroll along the waterline, never far from the mind and just fifteen minutes from the body in a car. Goodness me, these Perthites are blessed with their ocean frontage. What is great about it mind is that it is rarely built up; no graffitied Gold Coast hotels casting morning shadows, no regimented wooden loungers and parasols for hire and cheap fake watches for sale, and plenty of space for dunes and parkland between the sea and the expensive show off homes.

With baking days and arid winds it seems I have missed Spring completely. There is little sign of the much heralded wildflowers of WA on sight around the city’s parks and reserves; even Kings Park, which remains a delight whatever time of day and year, seems fairly subdued as it accepts its fate of another hot, dry summer. However, there are remnants of suburban Jacaranda lining the streets; having spent springs past in Canberra I had totally forgotten about Jacaranda, and how its elegant green leaves burst into purple flower, transforming quiet streets into a flurry of colour and giving them the smell of a new age essential oils and pointless candles shop.

Not every day has involved lolloping on the beach or sniffing trees, as I gradually reorient myself with the more mundane Australia – from work interludes to soulless shopping malls, from slower internet speeds to expensive, but lush, mangoes. A sign that I have been away a long time is in currency, where I say to myself…oh gosh…that Heston Blumenthal Christmas Pudding is twenty-five quid…blimey…oh wait twenty five dollars, that makes it, well, still quite expensive, but, you know, when shopping for essentials for a trip back across Australia you need a Heston Blumenthal Christmas Pudding with you, along with Marmite, Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Heinz English Recipe Baked Beans. Adjusted much?

And yes indeed part of my time has involved planning the next steps of this journey through life, at least the next few weeks or so. There is an excitement about returning east, tinged with melancholy of letting go of this isolated idyll of the west. Perth and I have become good friends this year and I feel like we will see each other again sometime in due course. And here I leave even better friends who introduced me to my good mate and nurtured and shared and entertained and sledged and made the whole Perth experience easy to fall in love with. So I prefer to think it’s not farewell old chap nor au revoir, but a very Australian see ya later.

Australia Europe Green Bogey Photography Walking

November 24, 2013October 22, 2015

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Sidetracked

Back towards the start of 2013 I decided I was going to write this piece regarding the word ‘solo’. Not a whole two thousand words dedicated to the tangy Australian lemon drink, but an exposition of the pros and cons of travelling and – to some extent – living on your own. The independence, the freedom, the ‘ah sod it I’ll do what I like’ luxury that means you don’t have to compromise with anyone over choice of cake. Offsetting this, the boredom, the lack of conversation, the absence felt by missing out on the subtle interpersonal politics of deciding on a cake that all parties can be happy with. A double-edged sword ripe for some no doubt articulate and witty analysis. But I got sidetracked.

Throughout 2013 I was going to write 26 pieces that were no doubt articulate and witty, based around a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Beery Fairytales with Golfing Elements from Home and across the Oceans, getting Lost on Petrol laden Journeys only to recover Awesome Momentum to finish by the end of the year. I gave myself 365 days to do this, only really because it sounded like a nice round number with a good ring to it. A personal challenge, a resolution of sorts that was far easier than the usual New Year goals of healthy eating and vigorous exercise. But I got sidetracked.

I got sidetracked by New Zealand for a trip across the ditch. A country that is so brilliant around every turn and corner that I could happily get sidetracked by it time and again. Surely as close a country can get to perfect, a sensual smorgasbord of landscapes and moods, wrapped up in an undeniable, welcoming charm. Here cloudless days in the land of the long white cloud peak as high as the mountains all around. Lookouts and scenic spots, grand walks and rest stops, a true traveller’s paradise where there is an overload of distraction, and time for just a fraction of written reflection.

I got sidetracked by Australia, a rather large obstacle in anyone’s books. From its golden surf swept coastline into its Great Dividing Range, from its shimmering cities into its one street country towns. Across wide brown fields and into the red, an expanse of emptiness from which rocky ancient wonder rises. Sidetracks to vineyards and bays and wooded vales. Diversions to ridge lines and creek beds and trails. Along B-roads and byways, from mud tracks to highways, ocean-side swag sites and huge mounds of termites. So much to traverse and get in the way.

I got sidetracked, just occasionally, by work and other chores. Life goes on and money goes around. Sometimes things that you really don’t want to do need doing. Often it turns out they weren’t so bad to do after all. Car cleaning means a clean car. Food shopping brings the added benefit of food. Tax returns can lead to tax refunds. Work itself can stimulate the senses and open up a series of interactions and conversations and relationships. And there is the satisfaction brought by the completion of a task, something which I may eventually feel when the 26^th article is published on this site.

I got sidetracked by a European summer which itself sidetracked me towards its winter. In Munich there were sunny meanders interrupted by shady spots and thirst-quenching beer. The Dolomites offered a natural jagged wonderland of routes and pathways, a spaghetti network of cable cars and trains, a confusing conglomerate of the Austro-German-Italian. A dollop of pretzel pizza strudel. Spain was easier going, but here a car countered any chance of settled discipline. And so mountain hairpins and coastal cruises restricted what writing could be achieved in between siestas.

I got sidetracked by family and friends, sharing barbecues and roasts, brewing up tea and buttering raisin toast. A culinary backdrop for some love and affection that tastes even sweeter with a biscuit selection. I had the business of new nieces to welcome and old ones to help welcome into a minefield of teen angst, quelled with a kick about in the park. There were countless timeless trips to playgrounds with all the youngsters [1], and walks in the woods a common escape with the older ones. Then there were the moments set aside for sad Saturday nights with X Factor, stuffing our faces with pizza, burping and twerking and perhaps some flirting then hurting that that singer went out who was a bit shouty but really ab-sol-ute-ly fan-tas-tic.

I got sidetracked by my beautiful southwest of England, in two prolonged spells of adoration. Spare sunny days were taken over with a bus and rail rover, a bag packed with camera and a sense of adventure. From the very end of the land distractions spread out on every rail line and country lane still serviced by bus. Around every corner of the coast path there was just a little bit more to see: another cove, another headland, another vista of purple heather in perfect weather plummeting down to the alluring azure of ocean. In every town there was just another side alley to head up, hopeful of stumbling into a nirvana of homemade pasties and fudge. On every day there was the diversion of a walk to the sea, a trip to the top of the hill, a visit to the bakery. Days that rightly meant writing was fleeting in between eating and falling in love all over again.

I got sidetracked by anything other than writing, in those spells of sublime sluggishness when you just can’t be bothered with doing anything that might require one iota of effort. When the Internet and apps are a prelude to naps, or an accompaniment to the cricket, slouched on the couch playing Words with Friends while England’s innings ends in a flurry of wickets. When Breaking Bad is so good and Grand Theft Auto is grander and Pointless is far from it. When Daenarys Stormborn is way more exciting than the thought of writing, so much more arousing than public housing and reliving through words your own dread that winter was coming, having no heating or dragons to warm things up.

I got sidetracked by arriving back in Perth and embracing its warm sunny disposition so much that every day feels like a holiday and it is hard to motivate to do anything other than loll. I had work and chores and sublime spells of sluggishness, suffering with a cricket background and Words with Friends malaise. But I also had the diverting allure of stunningly beautiful beaches down the road and the vibrant lilac burst of jacarandas along the way. There was the return to coffee breaks and barbecue steaks, sushi rolls and laksa bowls. A life in shorts so very inviting, that it’s hard to feel like writing, unless for time in air-conditioned refuge.

I got sidetracked by sidetracks so much that I figured sidetracks are actually not sidetracks at all. They are simply our own journeys, each of us a little bus network trundling through lanes and accelerating on dual carriageways and stopping for a while to pick up passengers and perhaps coming up against a dead end and forced to turn around. And so I merely got sidetracked by living life, busy seeing and doing, thinking and not thinking, pausing at bus stops and refilling on diesel. With hundreds of trips, thousands of interactions, millions of breaths, there is simply not enough time or no point to write it all down.

I got sidetracked but have still made it to number 19 out of 26, so far. That’s 73%, which I think you’ll find is a high enough mark for a first class honours degree. It doesn’t meet original targets but it’s far closer than anyone anywhere is doing in relation to carbon dioxide emission reduction targets [2]. And there could be more to come, depending on how much more I get sidetracked this year. It may take 366 days or 465, but I will get to Z and feel happy and proud and perhaps a bit relieved. A goal achieved, just a little later than planned. But then, how many buses run to time anyway?

[1] Along with CBeebies, parks and playgrounds truly are the saviour of parents everywhere

[2] I hold my hands up and acknowledge my own rather sizeable carbon footprint; however carbon offsets include not using as much electricity I might have if I had achieved 26 articles on this blog, dedicated use of public transport in the UK, and buying lots of cake instead of baking it myself.

Links

Solo drinking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=504OzK-VZjA

100% awesome: http://www.newzealand.com/au/

Z Factor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZuNGc1a0Ak

Words with jismslap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCkc5rcSOwo

Don’t let a bit of science get in the way: http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/

A to Z Australia Europe Great Britain Places Society & Culture

October 10, 2013October 22, 2015

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Hola amigos!

Wary that I may just drift into the comforts of life again in Plymouth and conscious of impending Halloween-related mania, I took a couple of weeks out of this (only slightly) working holiday. The first part involved meeting up and hanging out with friends once more, following which a trip overseas provided some peace and quiet and strangely rare solo time.

A whistle-stop visit to London offered another chance to reacquaint myself with old hang outs and deep connections. Now with young ones to entertain this principally involves visits to the parks of North London, typically on a rota system. It was pleasing to add a different park to the list, within the tranquil leafiness of Highgate Wood. The extra bonus here was that once slides and nets and steps and bars had been exhausted, a little lodge served up fine food to eat al fresco in the sunshine. Similarly, while by no means a new addition, Golders Hill Park delivered gelato to cool down on an astonishingly warm and sheltered park bench the next day.

London is quite a different place when you visit and are not subjected to a long daily commute for tedious work and returning home for a late dinner mired in tiredness. Indeed, I was quite happy to take an hour long bus journey, absorbing the sites on the top deck of the number 13 bus from Golders Green: Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage, Lords Cricket Ground, Regents Park, Baker Street, Oxford Street and, my stop, Piccadilly Circus. I was equally content to mill around to Covent Garden and Embankment and cross over to the South Bank for a little, killing time until a get-together in Clapham. I know for sure now that I am officially at a different stage in life to when I was living in London: waiting for a friend in a pub reading a paper and struggling to block my ears to the awful music that was far too loud. Confirmation of this comes through reminiscing on the tube home with two friends from university who I met half of my lifetime ago. But this is nothing to despair at.

More old friendships, albeit only for about one third of my lifetime, were enjoyed during a few days in Lytham up in the good old northwest of England near Blackpool. The weather for the first couple of days was better than when I visited in August, allowing opportunity to amble the prom and still try and figure out why so many people come here for their holidays. By midweek it was more typically grey with some rain and a few fleeting rays of sun. This coincided with my birthday, which was further official confirmation that I am of an older generation. Still, in Lytham such is the populace of wrinklies that I generally still feel quite young, and can do impetuous youthful things like play GTA V and watch the end of Breaking Bad like everyone else in the world during this period in history.

It was a grey, drizzly day leaving Lytham and I am very conscious that I will be in England when the calendar turns to November (or Jungfrau). With this in mind, and another way in which I can make myself feel young, I boarded a plane to Spain. Costa Blanca, Quesada, Dona Pepa Pig and a home from home from home sadly less visited. This was an opportunity to wear shorts again, to think a bit more like I was in Australia, albeit with worse coffee and inferior beaches and not as much untainted open space. It was also rather nice to have some time to myself – the first in quite a long time really.

I probably would have gone a bit stir-crazy if it wasn’t for the company of a mouse in the house and a hire car to get around. And so, a few excursions (without the mouse) took in mountain towns and humid clouds, coastal resorts and big rocks, and lovely fragrant forests and views.

The first trip out took me to a few Spanish mountain towns, all with higgledy piggledy streets and churches and squares. At Biar, a medieval castle looks out from the highest point perched upon a lump of rock. A fee of one Euro allows you entrance to the tower where you can get the slowest ever English commentary and walk three flights of stairs to the top. Overlooking the charming little town and fields and hills of rustic terraces, it’s one of the nicer spots in this area.

Down the road from here, Bocairent did not feature prominently in any of the guide books I had to hand. Mind you, a lot of this material seems out-of-date as roads have changed names or gone missing altogether. Still, I vaguely recall reading something on an airplane in Australia about this place, so it was worth a stop out of curiosity if nothing else. I gather there are lots of little caves around and, while it took a little finding, the old town was very much in the classic Spanish hillside variety.

From here I missed my intended turn off the main road but this was one of those fortunate mistakes. The next five kilometres or so, towards Ontinyent, thread through a wonderful limestone gorge, a great road to drive on and a worthwhile stop at some pools of blue called El Pou Clar. They would have sparkled like sapphires in the sun only the sun was getting less and less frequent. In fact, the remainder of the day was blighted by low cloud and a touch of rain on the drive back to Quesada, via Alcoy and Agost.

It was a much sunnier start on the second day out, which infuriatingly darkened some 100 kilometres further north around Calpe. Calpe appears to be a typical Costa resort, with a few high rise hotels, a promenade, clusters of apartments and alright kind of beaches. What sets it apart is a huge lump of rock which juts out into the sea at its northern end. It’s called the Penon De Ifach and it turns out you can climb the thing.

The climb is actually a lot easier than you might think looking at the precipitous lump from the bottom. There’s a bit of a tunnel to go through and some fairly consistent scrambling near the top, but apart from that I have to say it made a nice change to find somewhere in this part of Spain where you could actually go for a decent walk in natural surroundings. The very top though is undoubtedly Spanish, with rocks being daubed in graffiti and feral cats pestering and lending a not-so-lovely aroma to the scene. The views of course though are what make it so worthwhile, especially when the sun makes an appearance.

Despite darkness clinging to the tops of the mountainous interior I left Calpe and headed inland along the Guadalest Valley for the afternoon. Guadalest itself, sheltered by the highest peaks of the Sierra Aitana, remained dry and warm and at times sunny. Certainly warm enough for an ice cream, the Crema Catalana being of particularly fine quality.

Beyond Guadalest the winding roads empty and there is a great deal of scenery lurking under the clouds. What I find infuriating about this though is that there is rarely a place to stop, a viewpoint, a path, a forest, a trail. A lot of the land looks untouched and empty, barren and wild. Who owns it and looks after it I do not know. It just seems to be there, an intangible expanse of rocky scrub and forest.

It was not until I was back closer to the coast near Villajoyosa that some of the scenery could be accessed, albeit a man-made manifestation at the Embalse de Amadorio. The water colour of these reservoirs is always something to behold. It seems they are of significant allure to locals too, who come here to get amorous and leave cans of energy drink, tissues and empty durex boxes scattered around the car park. Maybe I blame locals too quickly, given we’re not actually too far from Benidorm.

Pleasingly my final significant trip out managed to bring me to some rare Spanish coastal wilderness and a decent trail leading to a fine viewpoint. It’s the kind of set up you begin to take for granted in Australia or, with its amazing coast path, the southwest of England. Over the hills from the strip of concrete that is La Manga and between here and the port of Cartagena, a small pocket of rugged coastline and fragrant forest testifies to what this area once was like. This is known as Monte de las Cenizas and one of the best things about it is that the park authorities have closed the gravel road up to this lookout. This means it is little visited, little defaced and there is a good three kilometre trail with only a gentle gradient to overcome. And at the end, a reward of distant coastal views and deep blue sea.

This was the little taster of a kind of Australia that I had hoped for in Spain. This, and the ability to be wearing shorts in October. For, thanks to British TV and the Internet I know that things are a-changing. Heatwaves and bushfires are already inflicting Australia (yet this may or may not be climate change, let’s just pretend it isn’t and then it will go away). And, more immediately, winds from the north east are seeping into Britain. Having resisted thus far, I may need to buy (or beg, borrow or steal) a coat. Or perhaps just dress up as a pumpkin.

Driving Europe Food & Drink Great Britain Green Bogey Walking

August 8, 2013October 22, 2015

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Hallo Italy!

Five hours on a train over the Bavarian Alps, across a thin but very precipitous sliver of Austria, and through the valleys and steep terraces of craggy northern Italy brought me to Bolzano. Or Bozen. Provincial capital of the Alto Adige. Or Sudtirol. You see, borders on a map may be crossed but language is shaped by the contours of the Alps – whether you are in them or out of them, what particular valley you may be in, or which side of the lake you butter your brezel in.

So just because we are in Italy does not mean that German is gone, nein nein nein. Which makes it a bit scheiser for the English-speaking, who are relegated to third in the language stakes and, if my experience is anything to go by, frequently caught out using a mix of all three. Par example (and yes, occasionally I also fall into French as default when any foreign language is involved): “Hallo, una gelato with two scoops, straciatella und caffe latte per favore. Danke.” Surprisingly though everything is understood and luscious ice cream is forthcoming.

As a result I’m not so sure whether you are going to read German or Italian place names in this blog entry. I’m tempted to try and use Italian because they are in Italy, but I am rather fond of Bozen which sounds so pleasingly like a cross between bozo and bogan. Does the name do it justice? Well, I would have said yes at first, as I trudged in searing heat through industrial areas by the river, seeking a funicular to whizz me into the hills, with busy highways and power lines and train tracks crammed into the valley. But I missed the centre at first, an old town with gracious buildings and narrow pedestrian streets, made narrower by market stalls and glass displays for expensive shoes and handbags. Veering toward the Italian, which is naturally less bogan.

Bozen has three mountain cable car and railway combos whizzing you up into the countryside, and the first I took after that uninspiring walk was up to Colle. The top was still in the tree line but (take note other self-proclaimed lookouts of this world) some smart Alec had built a large wooden tower for viewing pleasure, providing you enjoy steps. From here there were views over Bozen and other foothills leading to the more jagged teeth of the Dolomites. And at the bottom a sunny bar for a beer which was disappointingly less German than much else.

The Dolomites were my raison d’être for stopping here really, as I had been interested in visiting for a while…I think spurred on by some pictures in a travel supplement or maybe some footage of crazy climbs in the Giro d’Italia. Bozen was a good base, with its cable cars and other transport links, but the Dolomites were a little infuriating to photograph: wrong light so very glary for most of the day, then thundery clouds bubbling up in the afternoon and difficulty lingering in spots very early or very late because of transportation options. It really needs a week to get close and intimate, preferably in June. It is no wonder that the area is a popular spot for multi-day walks, hiking from refuge to pension along the ridges and plains, getting personal with the mountains.

Still, I had two full days and was very keen to make the most of them and the travel card I had bought. The first day I took another cable car from Bozen, impressively up and up over vineyard terraces and pine forests to the undulating plateau of the Renon. At the top a mountain tramway trundled through the undulating hills, past villages and chalets and through forests and fields. Plenty of walking tracks offered chance to meander and get slightly lost but find your way to another path providing balcony views of the glary Dolomites. With wild meadows and the scent of pine needles, it was nothing other than pretty and nourished enough appetite for lunch in a sunny garden sampling local cheese and bacon dumplings with salad.

It’s incredible to think of these Alpine environments being caked in metres of snow and freezing through several months of the year, and thus surprising how full of life they are. I guess it’s a shorter growing season and everything bursts forth rapidly and in generosity, a perfect manifestation of making hay while the sun shines. The steep hills of the region are decked out in rows and rows of vines, occasionally interspersed with orchards. Many look too steep to harvest by machine and I’m not quite sure how people actually make it to some of the farmsteads perched on their lofty terraces. It seems the cable car is the easiest way to view this hidden world, as I head back down into Bozen.

After a refresh of ice cream and purchasing some dinner time picnic snacks, a bus took me to somewhere in the general vicinity of the Jenesian cable car. Compared to the Renon, which was spacious and flash, this one was pure old school. Which means, by late afternoon, it is a searing glass house on a wire. It has a driver, who speaks to the top on his retro phone with a pleasing old-fashioned ringing bell, and seems happy to squash us in to see if we can all make it without passing out. The relief at the top is palpable, with shade and a beer garden obviously cashing in. In the distance the Dolomites still glare and clouds bubble up high, testament to the heat and humidity of August in Italy.

I was, as I say, keen to make the most of my travel card and, given it runs into the evening, I spent the last section of the day by taking the Renon cable car once more. This was a chance to try and get some good light for pictures and, well, stop on a bench in a forest and eat my bread rolls, cheese and salami sausages. I didn’t stay right until daylight faded, as it had been a long day and I wanted to catch the last bus to my pension, rather than walk up hill for twenty minutes. I had to conserve some energy for tomorrow.

So the second day was an opportunity to get closer to the toothy peaks of the Dolomites and indulge in some wilder, Alpine walking around the Alpe di Suisi. This, apparently, is the largest upland plateau of its type in Europe, whatever that means. I presume it means the biggest expanse of undulating meadows peppered with farmhouse chalets and wooded valleys, a sea of green lapping up to the sheer cliffs of encircling mountains. It looks and feels obviously Alpine with the characteristic and pleasing sound of cowbells a sure sign to the ears that this is genuine high country.

My travel card allowed me to take the sad bus to the town of Suisi. I say sad bus, but it was quite a happy, breezy ride up from the valley, SAD being the name of the local transportation system. This climbed about 600 metres or so from Bozen. From Suisi, a cable car ascended a further 500 metres to Compaccio, and then it was onto a good old fashioned and open to the breeze chairlift propelling me another 400 metres up. What follows from here is an easy, good-natured ramble through the meadows and down past a flower filled hostelry and rustic farmhouses to a wooded valley. Down? Down? Prices may be down, but I want to go up. Up to the Rifugio di Bolzani sitting at around 2,500 metres. Am I lost, or will I need to climb more than I hoped?

The answer was the latter and I have to say it was a bit of a struggle. Once or twice I thought about turning back, the views still wide and grand. Every step up and the view opened up further, but so did the frequency of stopping, ideally in a spot of shade from the sweltering sun. A salami sausage and snatch of pretzel gave fortitude and spurred on by the reward of eating more at the top, I made it.

It’s a bit strange to come up this far and find a fully functioning guest house and restaurant, looking out on the sawtooth ridges of the Dolomites. Washing hangs drying in the breeze and people are decked out with picnics at the outdoor tables. Inside, a team of young people busy themselves cooking and serving food. Curious as to how all this happens, I note a rather archaic looking single wire cable way that must bring up wheels of cheese and kegs of beer. Alas, it does not transport people back down.

That, for me, requires a weary descent of almost 1,500 metres as I plan to go back to Suisi to catch the sad bus. And so it’s down the entire climb that I made, happy that gravity is on my side but my feet and ankles and legs less content with the constant jarring and braking. Some respite takes place as I turn onto a path through a cool pine forest, but this at some point has to hit the river below and, when it does, it veers down in a torment of curving hairpins. The river and forest and beautiful, but after six hours or so, Suisi cannot come soon enough.

Perhaps with a week, at a cooler time of year, I could have taken things more leisurely. There are certainly many other places the SAD network can take you – on other cable cars and post buses into Switzerland for instance. There are great rides for bikes and cultural things to do too. Now being so distant in Australia I wonder why on earth I did not go away every other weekend when I lived in London. A Ryanair flight at 2am to an airport 3 hours out or Barcelona. Or the Wizz Air jet to Krakow. Or even a week in the Dolomites. Now, with time precious, I am falling into that Australian trap of trying to cover off Europe in a few days!

Still, it’s amazing that you can be out of the Dolomites and into another region within a couple of hours. En route to Milan, I stopped off in the city of Verona for six hours. Five Euros seventy for left luggage the price to pay to see another Italian city. Proper Italian, with weisbier and streusels far behind and nothing but average pizza and pasta in every piazza.

I spent most of the morning meandering the streets of Verona, centred around Piazza Baz and its arena. The arena is a bit like a poor man’s version of the Colosseum in Rome (I imagine), and far more modern. I suspect it will look quite a sight in the splendour of an evening performance of – inevitably – Romeo and Juliet, but in the day, with set construction and cranes and limited access, I found 6 Euros entry a bit of a rip-off. Nearby gelato was also expensive, but the raspberry flavour was worth every cent.

Verona is definitely a city for taking turns down random alley ways and stumbling across hidden piazzas and generally making it up as you go along. You will come across tourist trappings, such as the balcony where Juliet (who is, remember, a fictional character) was wooed by a horny young Montague. A nearby archway is bedecked in messages of love; inexplicably many of which are for One Direction. Such romantic prose as ‘Take me in any direction Harry’ or ‘I give you one erection One Direction’. How about you take long walk in one direction off very short pier?

Anyway, you will also pass statues of Dante and come across courtyards and church towers and those colourful terraces with window boxes and shutters in perfect harmony. Eventually you’ll likely come across the Adige River, whose level is possibly heightened by tears shed for someone in One Direction getting a girl (or boy) friend. I presume some of these waters also come down from those Dolomites; indeed perhaps the stream I crossed before that long climb eventually finds its way here.

After many days of mountain or city walking, legs and feet are starting to wear, but one final climb is worth it. Steps and steps lead up on the other side of the river to a castle and views over Verona, a city not without charm. An Italian city where they speak Italian, a chance to be anchored in one language and culture for just a while. For tomorrow brings a train through Switzerland, where Italian becomes German becomes French, all armed with pocket knives. Grazie, Danke, Merci.

Europe Food & Drink Green Bogey Photography Walking

December 15, 2012February 18, 2015

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Awesome!

Well what a jolly upbeat place to start, no doubt setting the scene for the boundless enthusiasm that lies ahead. So, in order to put an immediate dampener on things, let me tell you some problems with this word and its application in the world of travel. For far too long, far too many people, myself included, have liberally used a simple ‘awesome’ to reflect or describe an experience which, while probably very good, perhaps exhilarating, maybe fun depending on company, was technically not inspiring of our awe. Akin to Australian misogynists trolling their way through the hate media in 2012, overuse has diluted its impact. Awesome is no longer quite as awesome.

And who should we blame for such degradation of our language? Well, as every reasoned, fact-based opinion piece would purport, young people and social media of course! I suppose while we are thinking along such lines then we might also point the finger at any combination of immigrants, foreigners, boatpeople, sandpeople, wookies, orcs and trolls. Bloggers, who may fit in any or all of the above categories, are no doubt entirely culpable.

Of course, this is all assuming that we have to blame someone or something, which tends to be the way these days, rather than accept that things change for better or worse and that language is merely an extension of our natural evolution. Besides, I also think we could rule out young people in the blame game, simply because “awesome” sounds so 1990s. A bit like “cool’. Which naturally brings me on to New Zealand.

Nowhere, simply nowhere, have I heard the word “awesome” used to describe so many mundane things…

How were your fish and chips? Awesome, thanks. Cool [1]

How did you sleep last night? Not bad thanks. Awesome

What do you think of the Hobbit movie? Yeah absolutely awesome Peter Jacksons a legend bro

It may be because New Zealanders – who I truly believe are one of the nicest, warmest peoples on this planet – are naturally happy and optimistic souls (the counterargument, typically from boorish Aussies, would be that they are easily pleased). The irony of this is that New Zealand probably contains the most genuinely awesome sights and experiences per capita of anywhere in the world. Yes, experiencing a silent, dawn reflection on the glass water of Milford Sound probably is awesome; the extent to which your lamb chop is seasoned really shouldn’t be.

I am willing to cede that awesomeness is entirely subjective. Perhaps, indeed, a well seasoned lamb chop (which is important) could be awesome when one finds oneself ravenously craving salty meatiness. Thus in travel we will all come across different things that we find awesome. Not just incredible sights but experiences and emotions that pop up in the right place at the right time. The combination of physical place and emotional connection is often the most magical. One can trigger the other. For me, a physicality that is almost impossible to fathom and epic in scale is usually awesome [2]. It is something that is rightly awe-inspiring and as such generates an emotional reaction. Emotions ranging from bewilderment to wonderment. A sense of one’s own time and place in a grander narrative.

Awesome travel experiences should be impossible to fully convey through words and pictures. Which, with a sense of inevitability, I shall now attempt to do, reflecting on two very different environments. One is man-made, the other crafted by the hand of nature.

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When it comes to epic environments of a man-made scale I’d argue it would be hard to look beyond New York City and the landscape of Manhattan Island in particular. Everyone should visit and everyone should easily find an awesome moment. There is incredulity attached to the place, simply in how a muddy island has evolved over little more than two centuries to become, and I plagiarise, one hell of a town. A testament to human survival, endeavour, ingenuity and skill. A reflection too on human frailty, failings and fears. This may be how far we, as humanity, have come, both in good and bad ways.

Even from atop the very highest buildings the city is impossible to fathom (remember this being a key requisite of my definition of awesomeness). At my time of visit (2011), the Empire State Building represented the highest point in the city and the experience from the 86^th floor around dusk was incredible. Each city block a melding of concrete, steel and glass, bubbling upwards like the most majestic capitalist stalagmites. Each block ringed by a dotted artwork of moving yellow taxis, police cars, black and white suits, turning to streams of candescent red and yellow as darkness falls. This scene replicated and nuanced many times over, forming a feast for the eyes of gargantuan proportions.

There is more to this experience than the visual epic. The sound is at one singular and plural; a constant background hum punctuated by sirens wailing, drills whirring, concrete blocks piling, delivery vans unloading. For all I can make out, the mutterings of individual conversations and transactions rise up – “Get me a bagel schmuck”, “Siphon residual profits into offshore hedge fund now”, “Aw gee, that’s so awesome” – and meld together to form an indistinct, indecipherable story. Yet it is also a soundtrack that is – comparative to the streets below – soft and mellow, calming and reassuring, like a doctor with a good bedside manner, telling you it’s only a cold and will go away in a couple of days.

Without wishing to sound entirely blasphemous or indeed egotistical, it is possibly the closest you can physically feel to playing God. Here I am, overlooking the chaotic order the ant like humans have made. They seem to have done pretty well, but I’m not quite so sure where they are heading with all of this. Still, if it mostly keeps them out of trouble then I’ll let them get on with it, for now. I do wonder if their structures and movements and lights flickering on as darkness approaches are a brazen act of defiance to the nature I have created. But I’ll just make sure the sun goes down and comes up again, throw in some random weather and inevitable seasons. And let them see what they can do about that – ha!

I think it’s this realisation that you are both atop a pinnacle of human endeavour yet still at the mercy of the world around you that makes the top of the Empire State Building genuinely awesome. Coming at dusk accentuates this feeling, the changing colours reminding you that not even humankind can change the revolution of our planet and relationship to other bodies within the solar system (yet!). Despite what we have achieved, parading in such an obvious fashion below you, we cannot completely change the world. And that is a merciful thought. It adds to the relief at being so high, up away from the city, taking a breather from the millions below, yet remaining connected to them. And, gee, it’s a tonic for a great view.

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Great views abound in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales in Australia. Before I go any further here I should reiterate the guide book lines: they are not actually mountains and they are not really blue, unless Bernard Manning has been resurrected in the wattle to yell out random profanities. Don’t expect high alpine drama of ragged granite shards and snow-capped peaks here. And, despite its very real wilderness, don’t be thinking you’ll be entirely escaping the clutches of mankind, given the most common way to see the place is along the not-so-Great Western Highway, with typically nondescript towns and Sydney style traffic. However, what is really awesome is the fact that you can walk down the streets of several of these towns and come to a rather abrupt halt. Or you could, should you really want to, carry on and topple many hundreds of metres down to join millions of Eucalyptus trees sweeping their way through valleys, tucking up like broccoli textured blankets against sheer sandstone cliffs, sheltering crazy birds and possums and snakes and spiders. A world before we were here.

Even though it may seem about as far away from New York City as the former planet Pluto, there are parallels between the two, conveniently suggesting common threads exist in my take on awesomeness. Sandstone pinnacles thrust upwards like the Empire State Building. Down below, a tree-filled pattern of regular irregularity. Sounds drift up, only, this time, the sirens are the echoes of bellbirds and the cackles of kookaburras and cockatoos. You are once more God-like, and with a sense of befuddlement at the sheer comprehension of what is set out below.

Out there remains wilderness, all still remarkably close to a sprawling city of over four million people. The ‘mountains’ remain an effective barrier to the seemingly endless sprawl, with shoots of Sydney forced south and north to new suburbs promising ample land and countryside but without really being in Sydney at all. The suburbs are unwittingly following the route of a few cows that escaped around 200 years earlier in search of pasture; cows that eventually found their way around the mountains, unlike the intrepid explorers who thought they could just head west in a straight line, endlessly naming everything that got in their way after themselves. Can we deduce that cows are smarter than many 18^th century British colonial dandies? Surely not.

From the small towns that emerged once the explorers had stumbled across the mountains (only with the essential assistance of the local Aborigines) there are many vantage points to peer out into the void of the Grose Valley (to the north) and Jamison Valley (to the south) [3]. Some of these lookouts are grand, glamorous affairs, with safety rails and public toilets, information placards and tame rosellas. Echo Point in Katoomba is the most obvious yet still it offers a dramatically photogenic vista. You may find it awesome.

For the record, I find Sublime Point, further along to the east offers greater potential for an awesome experience. It’s harder to reach and thus you are more likely to experience it on your own, just you and the world for company. You are especially likely to have it to yourself at 6am in June, the wind piercing the bones and shaping bleary-eyed hallucinations of the valley mist into a soft, warming duvet. It is elemental, timeless and boundless. And as the first laser beams of sun hit the sandstone and the birdsong strikes upwards from within the mist, it is sublime, it is awesome.

[1] Everything that is awesome is also cool. Some things that are cool may not be awesome.

[2] Perhaps “epic” is in fact the modern day “awesome”, particularly since it requires fewer characters in a tweet.

[3] Further west there is the Megalong Valley, since tamed and given over to farming shortly after someone came up with its inspired choice of name.

Links

Speak like a New Zealander: http://www.statravel.com.au/new-zealand-language.htm

The Empire State Building: http://www.esbnyc.com/

Me and NYC: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/spreading-news.html

Bernard John Manning: http://www.bernardmanning.com/

Destination NSW – Blue Mountains: http://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/blue-mountains?gclid=CMzA4_uUmbQCFcohpQodCiYA-g

Crossing the Mountains: http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/history_nation/exploration/blue_mountains/index.html

Sublime times: http://neiliogb.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/sublime-points.html

A to Z Australia Photography Society & Culture USA & Canada

January 1, 2012February 19, 2015

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Big, big things

Encounters with the ‘big things’ around Australia. It’s amazing what can be achieved with concrete, plaster and a desperation to attract weary roadside travellers…