When I get back to Australia I know I will get the question along the lines of “how are things in Britain these days then?” It’s a subtle way of probing what the actual bloody hell is going on with all that nonsensical Tory schoolboy jostling otherwise known as the British Exit from the European Union. And I guess I’ll answer something along the lines of “well, everyone is pretty much fed up of hearing about it all the time”. Because, you know, what better way to deal with impending doom than pretending it isn’t happening (see, for example, Climate Change).
Still, let’s not get all Project Fear with needless stuff like evidence and statistics and what not. Britain will be fine, because Britain is great and we can be great again because we are Britain, which is just great. So goes the leading argument for leaving. Which is bizarre when you think about it, because it relies on untainted optimism. SINCE WHEN HAVE THE BRITISH BEEN OPTIMISTIC?!!!
Anyway, it’s all great, because being great, I’m sure I will still be able to travel without much friction to Europe on my Great British passport which is changing colour because we can change its colour, wow! I can’t believe I was ever sceptical.
Yes, frictionless travel to Europe. People will continue to queue to get on the plane even though they have an assigned seat and the inbound flight hasn’t even landed yet. The size of hand luggage will continue to take the piss and be contorted into overhead lockers without any regard for anyone else. Buses will continue to transport people from the terminal to a plane twenty metres away, just to add an extra half hour on this seamless journey. And we’ll all get to France with Easyjet scratchcards and no intention at all to even consider speaking French. Nothing will change.
Ah, France. I got there eventually. Actually Switzerland, but then followed by a frictionless border crossing (okay, some speed bumps) to France. And, just for a change, Ville-la-Grand, where my brother and his family have recently moved. It’s a lovely spot, fringed by woodland and the park and bike paths and a slope to the markets and a decent walk to schools and the cheese shop also known as the supermarket. And from one supermarket you can even see Mont Blanc and other assorted mountains on a fine day. It’s grand.
The weather wasn’t very continental on the first day there. Bloody Europe, I should’ve stayed at home. With murk, drizzle and rainy spells it was much like Great Britain, but we still managed to head out for a couple of hours and not gaze sombrely out to sea from a car park eating soggy cheese and pickle sandwiches. While a downpour hammered on the car roof in the car park, it quickly passed, and we were able to amble around the pretty lakeside village of Nernier in the dry. C’est la vie.
The next day was a more promising affair, with clouds breaking and a touch more warmth back in the air. And so into the Alps, for a destination that was as much about a lunch opportunity as it was scenic nourishment. The Cascade du Rouget plunges down from the mountains, fed by snow melt and discarded Evian. Today, at the end of a long hot summer, it was a relative trickle but an impressive sight nonetheless. Liquid oozing at the mercy of gravity, the annual fondue went down pretty well too.
The nearby flowery towns of Sixt-Fer-a-Cheval and Samoens provided a touch of post-lunch ambling, ticking down time until the bakeries re-opened. They were relatively quiet on this weekday in September, a palpable air of towns that are winding down from the summer and slowly putting in place preparations for winter. Jigsaw wood piles, puffed up bodywarmers, freshly greased raclette machines. All the essentials of an Alpine winter.
But let’s not put away those Decathlon shorts and tops and sporty sandals just yet. For there are glorious end-of-summer days in which to revel. Blue skies and temperatures nudging the thirties and – finally – a taste of this legendary heatwave of 2018. Until I depart the EU and face the chilly murk of Bristol Airport of course. Great.
Time for countryside ambles across borders, the sun dappling through the trees of brookside meanders and lighting the fields around. Busy gardens glow amongst shuttered windows and wooden beams, while rows of vines and apple red orchards are bursting for harvest. Lingering lunches alfresco provide a pause to enjoy the fruits of the summer or, more typically, the cheesy potato-bacon-salad combos. And an urge to try to counteract the heftiness of fromage propels me to borrow a bike and cycle to Switzerland and back.
The final day in France – and very likely my last day in Europe before Britain decides it is better off without it – was surely a reminder that the motherland will always be inferior in the weather stakes. Attention turning to the BBC forecast, mutterings along the lines of 17 degrees and cloud looking “not too bad” for next week show how quickly I adjust; my expectations lower and tolerance of shorts wearing does too.
But an evening flight provides ample time to soak summer up while it lasts, so why not catch a train to Evian to do more than just drink expensive water? I came here last year, from across the lake in Lausanne, and was reasonably enamoured by its character and ambience. Today, a chance to take Mum and a useful local French speaker to enjoy its lakeside ambles and distant views of higher, craggier Alpine peaks.
Evian’s not the most exciting of places but possesses requisite continental charm. Of course, the plastic-polluting water bottle company is a dominant theme and I believe there are spas in which you can bathe in the minerals extracted from unicorn sweat filtered through kryptonite. The actual source of water is there for all – including many a local restaurant owner and German coach party – to top up bottles. And the free funicular is a little treat for Portillo fans and youth orchestras from Wessex alike.
Basking in such glorious weather it seems a shame to be departing. The mountains so clear that they literally beckon your name and urge you towards their valleys and peaks. But it turns out we have to leave, not because the alleged genius that is Boris says so, but because there is an Easyjet ticket which has my name on it. A ticket that also has a seat allocated, making the spectacle of hundreds of people queuing at the gate even before the plane is there even more preposterous. In an era of pure preposterousness, this takes the tea and biscuit.
The reward for all this toil, traipsing through a sunny late summer in England was ice cream in Salisbury. In a land in which tradition appears widely cherished, what better tradition to uphold?
In times of such frightfulness one is best advised to turn to a cup of tea and slice of cake. Sat in a sunny position next to an orchard, sheep mowing the grass and a garden centre just around the corner, there is enough here to soothe the feet, the stomach, and the eyes. I’ve had better cakes but hardly many better contexts in which to eat them.
That heatwave was turning into a thing of the past by the time I made it onto England’s shores, and things will be reassuringly back to normal soon. Its legacy will emerge through inflatable pools from Argos gathering cobwebs in sheds up and down the land, frozen Calippo slushes, and a chance for rose-tinted reminiscence of that famous summer before the storm (or sunny skies with fluffy white clouds and unicorns pooing golden trade deals) of Brexit. Plus blackberries, lots of blackberries.
Regardless of sunshine or headwinds there will always be tea and cake or in this case coffee and cake. You could be forgiven for thinking coffee might be overtaking tea in popularity in the UK given the rampant reproduction of godawful Costa Coffee shops every fifty metres, with their godawful massive mugs and godawful patrons thinking this thing they are drinking is the height of sophistication and really isn’t godawful. Give it a week and I’ll be with them. But today, an independent café in swanky South Kensington and coffee that was not at all deitybad.
One of the pleasures of returning to London goes beyond famous sights, cake, and hearing people speaking with like proper English accents innit. There are the familiarities of place and person, reconnecting with treasured friends, perusing past haunts and – especially fresh off the boat – attempting to retune into the current Britannic zeitgeist. Spending time with Caroline helped a great deal in this regard, and with many steps across London and the Zone 5 countryside, there was much to discover; a veritable bullseye of a weekend, tru dat.
Still, sheltered by untainted forest and rolling coastal hills, kissed by the radiance of the crystal ocean under clear skies, there is certain comfort to winter here. It is at one tranquil and vivacious, glowing in a freshness swept in by cold fronts and a seasonal lull in nature’s freneticism. The tried and trusted walk between Depot and Pebbly Beach proves to be at its very best.
The kangaroos and wallabies appear to be fans of this weather, out in force grazing on the luscious fringe of grassy dune and really, really hoping for a stray sandwich. While far from the explosion in #quokkaselfies on Rottnest Island in Western Australia, the placidity of these animals – along with the idyllic Australian coastal setting – have made #rooselfies a thing, sort of. Especially when there are tourists about.
I took one final coffee and stroll on the beach before embarking on the drive back south, which had a fair share of roadworks interspersed with spectacular scenery. Pausing around Ellis Beach, in this snatch of tropical palm-fringed cliché, it was again hard to fathom that I would be in a different world, in the same country, in a few hours. My poor shorts would be tucked away out of sight again.
In truth, the walk up the Yerrabri Track in Namadgi National Park was only part of a bigger equation. An equation whose solution was a delicious bird roll or two. N+J*OzNP(vt)+C0les=br. It’s a concept that has evolved from very preliminary experiments at the New Years’ Test in Sydney, refined to perhaps its ultimate manifestation on the top of Mount Kosciuszko. Replicated many times since, it is now a requisite of any encounter between Jill and I. Recently, each of us have tried to outdo one another in the bird roll stakes and today, on a rocky platform overlooking peak serenity of an abundant emptiness, I may have taken the lead. For now.
Fast-forward a few days and the work was done, proving less cumbersome and far more populated with coffee and cake than I could have hoped for. This left me alone with a car and a few belongings close to the Queensland-NSW border. A massive part of me wanted to make the journey home as quickly as possible, but then an equally massive part also yearned to stop in Warrumbungle National Park. Another significant consideration was a determination to miss the whole messy Newcastle-Central Coast-Sydney conglomeration. This along with the fact that, heading inland, I could go through Texas tipped the scales definitively south and west. Yeehaw.
I was even more glad of my foresight in buying some hot cross buns and a block of butter in Coonabarabran yesterday. What better way to use the camp stove for the last time, to set me on my way to Gilgandra, to Dubbo, to Wellington, to Molong, to Canowindra, to Cowra, to Boorowa, to Yass and – 550kms later – to Canberra.
Anyway, lest I offend several friends, family, prospective employers and the rest of their state, Queensland can be beautiful and at times might be equated with some form of perfection. However, the humidity is frequently disgusting and – on this occasion at least – the marooaaans easily trounced the blues in the rainfall stakes. Meanwhile, the growth of South East Queensland is rapidly turning the area into one very long Gold Coast-Brisbane-Sunshine Coast conglomeration where it seems obligatory to buy an oversized property and a Toyota Hilux. Here, the only koala left is a giant fake blue mascot sitting around watching far too many swimming events.
I think if miracles exist then we had one, for there was around one hour of dry, relatively sunny weather on that day which had seemed totally implausible earlier on. An hour that coincided with our allotted time in a canoe, gently zig-zagging with the meanders of the water towards Harry’s Hut. While the surrounds were a bit samey and somewhat nondescript (in a jungly, swampy wilderness kind of way), it was an hour of calm, of peace, of harmony with the environment. And above all, recognition of sheer bloody luck.
Just a hefty stone’s throw from the tip of Fraser Island, the soft sand delights the toes more than it does tyres. The rugged natural detritus of storms and tides offers a little intrigue and entertainment. The comings and goings of the ferry – and the potential for vehicles to get bogged down on Fraser – offer even more. Dark shadows intersperse with brilliant sunshine, grey waters become blue, brown sands less brown. Fatigue becomes contentment, and moments to remember form. Moments that are beautiful, even perfect. Damn you Queensland!
Up the road at Ebor Falls, situated within Guy Fawkes River National Park, we have reached a land of rugged gorges and wild rivers, decorated with millions of eucalypts and a million more golden everlasting daisies. Indeed, green becomes more golden with the drop in rainfall. The smells and sounds are more familiar: that earthy aridity mixed with the fresh minty essence of the gums; the friendly chirp of a pair of rosellas; the chatter of an old guy named Bert to his wife Sandra. “Well, isn’t that grand.” And indeed, it sure is. It sure is.
While memories can be magnified or maligned by multiple visits, there is something special about breaking new ground. A stop around South West Rocks and Hat Head National Park provided many highlights, one of them being that this was new territory for me, Dad and the car. We all quite liked the drive alongside the Macleay River, with its green watery pastures, tiny weatherboard towns and cowbirds. We all liked a lot less the potholes around the national park campground by the beach. We were fond of the lighthouse and its views, but not so keen to traverse a rough track to some mythical walking trail. Still, if we hadn’t switched to a different walk we might have missed the sun going down. Everything works out for the best in the end.
The beach is pitch black barring the beam of light circling upon the lighthouse. The sound of waves suggest ocean somewhere vaguely nearby, a roar magnified without any other disturbance at night. The sea breeze is cooling and evaporative, seemingly keeping the blood-sucking bugs at bay. The fine sand sustains a tripod and the sky offers an infinite, ever-expanding canvas. The photos may not have turned out brilliant, but the shared experience, the learning, the new adventure was. I daresay it was even better than Eastenders. And on that bombshell, bom, bom, bom, bom-bu-bu-bu-bum.
Contrast this with an hour later in Arrowtown, a cutesy (if a touch contrived) old gold rush village just out of Queenstown. Sheltered by hills, twenty-five degrees, sunshine out, there was no hesitation in showing my pants to the whole of the car park and changing into shorts. Likewise, both Dad and I had no hesitation in agreeing ice cream should be on the agenda. Such thoughts are obvious portents of the cloud rolling in, the wind rising, and drizzle emerging. But let that not stop us eating ice cream!
And so, in this hasty encounter with a small part of a bigger-than-you-think country packed with spectacle we finish up in Queenstown. Of all the places we visited this was undoubtedly the most frenetic, but it was no London, nor even Canberra. Firstly, you can forgive the masses of backpackers and Contiki coaches and adrenaline shots because Queenstown is beautiful. And – you know what – the people, the bustle, the mixture of ages and nationalities soaking up the holiday air creates a really nice vibe down by the lake. Particularly if this is accompanied by a ‘legendary’ Fergburger and a glowing evening as the sun slides west.
But, after our final, final night of sleep in New Zealand we set off down the mountain, seeing in the light the spectacle that we were to now say goodbye to again. With the delays, the exhaustion, the impending drag down the Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra, we were both keen to get back. And it was a shame to end this way, even if a bacon butty and coffee at the airport temporarily lifted spirits. But everyone expects a little adventure in New Zealand and we belatedly had ours. This along with much to remember, much to savour, much to linger in the mind for as long as the white cloud blessing this most amazing big little country.
The sunny start changed around The Divide as we headed into the clouds and prospects for a clear cruise on the sound were diminished. It was the kind of weather I expected, typical of this area which is famed for being the wettest spot in New Zealand
gbpilgrim 