Melbourne and Sydney

Sunday 8th November 2009 Melbourne
Hot, brash, busy, colourful, confident, a mixture of old and new – Melbourne is more New York than Milton Keynes. And as if to emphasise its superiority over Adelaide, the weather has just taken a very good turn for the better. It is shirt-sleeve order here as opposed to jumpers back down the Great Ocean Road. Known as the city that can have ‘four seasons on one day’ the forecast is a run of hot days not seen for over a hundred years. Top temperature yesterday was 32C and at the local races over a hundred race-goers were treated for heat stress – it didn’t say how many were treated for loss of money stress! The roll is expected to continue to Wednesday with temperatures in the low 30s, and then drop to a ’cool’ 27C. The last time this happened was 1902. They must have known I was arriving Saturday and leaving Tuesday. There is a worry that the current drought will not ease.

The local paper is always good for a feel for the area, but I have now learned to avoid the Herald-Sun which is like our Sun but without Page 3! I tried the Australian Age today and this is a bit like the Independent but without any class! The awful massacre at the US base had been relegated to page 5 as page 1 was dominated by big pictures of Santa’s arrival in Melbourne. Priorities, priorities. There was a snippet about Britney Spiers fans walking out of her first Australian concert in Perth as she was only ‘lip synching’ her songs. Surely they must have……but then they did buy tickets to see her so they must be….words fail me! I’m just glad she’s the other side of the continent. Hidden away on the editorial page was the revelation that exercise can kill you! However, counter research shows that not exercising can also kill you. There are millions of molecules known as ‘free radicals’ that if released by exercise can do you in. and I always though Marie Antoinette had been guillotined because she was French royalty! There are now thousands of Australians in leotards spinning slowly around not knowing which way to go for fear of ending up dead. Credit goes to the editorial which ended with the most dangerous form of exercise of all – overeating! Australia is suffering from what most advanced and wealthy societies seem to suffer from and that is growing obesity amongst its population. Forget the muscle-rippling, tanned Aussie surfer with his bikini-clad, thong-wearing bronzed girlfriend. Welcome to muffin-top and whale-tale! It’s like being in the USA all over again.

Finally the cuddly koala comes in for a bit of a stuffing in that local conservationists are now cutting the ears off koalas – all in the name of conservation and science. Admittedly the koalas do have to be dead and are most likely road-kill, but it does make you squirm a bit doesn’t it. Luckily for the koalas they don’t live in Melbourne where the pedestrian crossing lights at junctions are set up to allow a very fit cheetah to cross before they turn green and the traffic races off. However, wherever they live koalas are not good at crossing the road. They may well look right and left and right again, they may well make sure there are no parked cars obstructing their view, but once they start ambling across they are more than likely to sit down for a rest half way across and even more likely if some eucalyptus leaves have perchance blown down into the road. When I first heard the phrase ‘koala road-kill’ I was stunned. I knew Australian drivers were bad, but how the hell did they manage to get their cars into those trees! But I digress. The Aussies showed their soft side when they mourned the death in August of Sam the Koala who had been rescued from some of Australia’s worst bush fires (known as Black Saturday) for generations. The vet dealing with Sam could not say whether his death was due to over-exercising, under-exercising or diet. But he could say that he was probably one of Victoria’s last genetically pure koala bears. What? Apparently in 1948 mainland koalas were declared EXTINCT in the state of Victoria as they had been decimated by fur traders and bush fires. More koalas had to be imported from areas that had not killed them all off! So the ones in the area I am now in were ‘reintroduced’ – or so they thought. The idea of cutting off the koala ears is to provide DNA samples to show that these are remnants of the original population. Not that it makes much difference to the koala just flattened by truck. So the locals are busy snipping and storing, the koalas continue to get run over, and the Government – well they apparently, don’t give a toss! That’s conservation and politics for you!

Started the day off by dropping the hire car back at Avis. Simple enough unless you have to perform your first (and probably only) Melbourne ‘hook’ turn. This is when you are turning right at a major junction and instead of getting into the right hand lane as is logical, you have to position yourself to the left of the junction and then when an opportunity appears swing quickly across the traffic and exit the junction. I am clearly not the only one confused by this and why it is not a requirement at all junctions I don’t know. Anyway, I did it and only knocked down three pedestrians, collided with a tram and forced a truck onto the pavement where it went through the plate glass window of Woolworths. A success then! In the car hire office two young Japanese tourists (sans les bicyclettes) were being asked why they had turned up at the office with the car keys but without the car! In the short time I was there the staff managed to deduce ( by speaking English very slowly in a loud voice – oy veh!) that the young men had picked up the keys from the office at the airport and then got a taxi into town expecting to pick up the car in town. The car meanwhile was still at the airport – or so everyone assumed. I left them to it and hopped on the Melbourne Circle Tram. This is the one in all the tourist promotions. It is an old styled tram and free. It circles the CBD – Central Business District - and you can hop on and off as you please. There is a price to pay though as you have to put up with a constant commentary on each street and building passed. This is ok on the first ride but from then on becomes irritating. I was heading for Federation Square where I was told the Tourist Information Office was. On my way into the Office I was stopped by a policeman – not again I thought, I can’t have been speeding. ‘Nice t-shirt, mate’ he said. I had on one of the t-shirts from Rhodes and it said ‘Hellas’ (Greece) in Greek lettering. I then remembered that Melbourne has the world’s third largest Greek speaking population. ‘Greek?’ I asked. ‘Yes, mate. Good on ya.’ And he let me through. Inside Kelly was very patient and helpful. She told me about the Melbourne City Baths for swimming, and booked me on the Neighbours Trivia Evening for Monday. She said it was great fun and that she and her work friends often went along but they had to put on an accent as it is frowned upon for Aussies to like Neighbours! How strange. I might even see Doctor Karl Kennedy or even Harold Bishop as these are frequent attenders at these nights. The next hour or so I spent wandering around the CBD, taking photos of some of the imposing buildings, and then returned to the hotel to do domestic stuff ie washing. The hotel charges $10 to wash and iron a shirt! To do a bag of washing would cost about £50. No way Jose! I did it myself in the guest’s laundry for the princely sum of $8. Winner!

Spent a couple of hours this afternoon touring Old Melbourne Gaol, attracted by the fact that it was there that the infamous Ned Kelly was incarcerated before they hanged him. Kelly said it was a must, and she should know. Voted ‘best kept gaol’ by Convict magazine in 1863 and again in 1875, what is left of the original goal has been a museum since the 1970s. It is a monument to both stupidity and enlightenment, and is a fascinating place to visit. They have kept it as much like the original as they can - dark, uninviting, cold (good in hot weather) – not a place you would want to be if you could avoid it. And of course the centre-piece is Ned Kelly, but back to him later. I suppose the foolishness starts with importing criminals into Australia in great numbers. Not many of the early convicts saw the light and went straight. Even when their sentences ended they continued to hover around the edges of society and invariably went back to crime. Add to this the pressures of poverty – few actually made it ‘rich’ even in the early days – and you have got a classic recipe for increased crime. The response of the authorities in Victorian times was to build more prisons – the gaol records children as young as 3 spending time there for ‘wandering’ and ‘vagrancy’. The Old Gaol was built between 1840 and 1860, and was ‘full’ even before it was finished, mostly with impoverished people. During the period 1840 to 1924 (when it was closed) a total of 135 people were hanged for a range of offences - mostly murder – including Ned Kelly, and a possible distant relative of mine, William O’Brien late of Ireland who on 24th October 1884 was despatched at the age of 50 for murder. I say possible because we have the same name, and distant because almost half of Ireland is called O’Brien. My claim goes no further than that. Each time someone was hanged a rather gruesome ritual took place. They were left dangling from the gallows for about half an hour before being taken down and an autopsy performed on them. I always thought autopsies were to ascertain the cause of death, but who am I to say unless they were going to write ‘natural causes’ on the death certificate! As part of the autopsy the head was removed from the body and at the same time a plaster cast was made of the head as a ‘death mask’. There is no information in the displays to say why they did this, unless it was to display that the person was actually dead without the medieval way of putting the actual head on a spike and sticking it in front of the building. I will find out. In each of the cells of the prison block there is some information. Often there is one of these death masks. On the wall there is likely to be a picture of the ‘deceased’ with the reasons for their demise. It is a little disconcerting to be alone in the cell with head of a hanged person even if it is plaster. I was glad they all had their eyes closed! Of course in true Australian tradition the first two people hanged at the new gaol – a sort of ‘opening night party’ - were two Aborigines who had killed a man who they say had killed the husband of one of their relatives. They apparently went to their execution sitting on their coffins in the back of a wagon, smoking their pipes and chatting away to each other. No doubt they thought it was very kind of these white men to make these canoes for them and transport them to the river.

Ned Kelly though is what everyone comes to see. He was destined for this sort of end as both his mother and father were petty criminals – in fact his mother was in the same gaol when he was executed. He served his criminal apprenticeship with another famous Australian ‘bushranger’, but his big mistake was shooting dead two police officers in an ambush. From then on he was a dead man. The police caught up with him at Glenrowan where he was holed up with his gang, including two of his brothers, and some 60 hostages. In the ensuing gun fight three hostage and Ned’s two brothers were killed. Ned was wearing his famous ‘armour’ but the police simply shot him in his unprotected legs, and that was that. After a relatively short trial he was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 11th November 1880 at the age of 28. The display has his death mask – and rather ironically a poster for films starring Mick Jagger and lately Orlando Bloom – and a replica of his armour. Tourists are invited to don the armour and stand in front of a picture of the Glenrowan Inn. I didn’t. Prisoners were head-shaved before execution so the death mask looks a bit like any bouncer you would see outside a UK night club. The fact that the eyes are closed gives it an air of gentility – sleepiness. However we must not forget he was a nasty piece of work. This is no Robin Hood. To some Australians he has gained a sort of folk hero status – standing out against authority and all that. They have been sucked in by the brashness, the daring, and somehow they link this with their emerging national identity – after all the police represented the authority of the British Crown. They see it also representing Aussie ‘mateship’. How sick can you get! It is bit like the Irish over-romanticising criminal activities. As children we were taught the words to ‘rebel’ songs one of which was about a Ned Kelly type of character called Jack Duggan known as ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. He is portrayed as robbing the rich and helping the poor, but he also stabs James McEvoy. A terror to Australia was ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. Eventually he gets caught but not before he ‘bravely’ shoots two of the police officers trying to arrest him. It’s a bit like the Wild West, and the way the USA romances that. As I stood at the actual gallows that Ned Kelly was hanged from, I could feel no romance, just the sordid but inevitable end for a man whose short life was spent taking from others. More madness in the gift shop with soft toy ‘Neds’ and plastic body armour for kids. It made me feel a bit sick really.
Each cell display, each death mask, was a tale of human misery, for the perpetrators and the victims. Tales of low life and degradation paint a picture of 19th century Melbourne I am sure the good burghers of present day Melbourne would happily assign to the history of somewhere else. But there it is. Gold at Ballarat some 120kms North, logging of forests, digging of roads – all these needed cheap labour and so they attracted those in most need or those who have had no choice and been transported anyway. The hopeless or those with no hope? Women who have murdered their husbands or children or both, serial killers (not a new phenomenon), robbers, muggers, rapists, highwaymen – all these types efficiently dispatched by the hangman. Occasionally there is a miscarriage of justice. A man is accused of the rape and murder of a twelve year old girl. He is found guilty largely on circumstantial evidence. Almost ninety years later DNA shows it could not have been him. He went to the gallows protesting his innocence. Hanging in Victoria only ended in 1975.

The display does dwell on the mechanics too. You can stand on the trapdoor – it is securely bolted the notice reassures us! You can see from the chart drawn up by the hangman what ‘drop’ would be needed to expertly dispatch you – for me at my weight and height it was 4ft. You can see the cat-o-nine-tails used to thrash prisoners as part of their sentence, and see the ‘triangle’ to which they were tied. The thrashings were carried out by other prisoners called ‘flagelators’ and left the recipient scarred for life. We are familiar with ‘not enough room to swing a cat’ which has no feline origins, and ‘rubbing salt in the wound’ as this is what they did afterwards to ward off infection – ooooh! There is a visceral element to all this I am sure, but each element is part of a greater human tragedy. The one positive element in it all is the emergence of organisations like the Salvation Army who located themselves in the prison to minister to the prisoners – nobody else would.

Popped to have a look at the City Baths where I am going tomorrow then back to the hotel for a swim-cum-bath in the world’s smallest hotel swimming pool. This one would definitely fit in Sal and Dave’s living room! Out for a meal in the evening to Greek Town, prompted by my big fat friendly Greek Police officer. Dolmades, feta and olives (just love Greek olives) and lamb souvlaki. Too stuffed for a pudding!


Monday 9th November Melbourne
It’s Monday. It’s Melbourne. It’s going to be at least 32C. It was a warm night and I did not sleep well and so am groggy when I do wake. The radio is tuned to Melbourne’s Gay Radio station – that one’s for you Mark! Yesterday the guest host was Darren Hayes of Savage Garden fame. Naive old me though that Sydney was THE gay capital of Australia but Melbourne has its own claim to fame. Can’t quite a see the BBC giving over a frequency to this. Another example of Australia’s diversity and confusion – just what image is it they want the world to see? The music is good, but the ‘chatter’ in between is as inane as any pop radio station in the UK. Of course they are very excited by the prospect of Britney coming to Melbourne. I was hoping to miss the circus but the morning paper says she sneaked in whilst I was asleep. There is not much in between here and Perth – she clearly missed out Adelaide (another blow for their ambitions), and she would not stop at Cape Otway to see the koalas! My Lonely Planet guide tells me Melbourne has a GLBTI which translates as a Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender-Intersex Scene. I will keep a look out for one of those then!

Off for an early swim in the Melbourne City Baths, my eyes peeled just in case. The baths are the traditional Victorian design and are perfect for what I want to do which is SWIM – no posing pouches for me mate! The baths were built to stop the local populace washing in the river Yarra, and have been recently refurbished with a gym etc added. Luckily there are not too many serious swimmers there and I settle into the medium lane which tells me quite clearly that I must do a return lap in less than 40 seconds or a huge net will sweep me out of the lane and drop me in with the ‘slowies’. Some of the swimmers are cheating by using flippers, or else Charles Darwin missed something vital – there were some suspicions that Ian Thorpe of Aussie Olympic fame had webbed feet! I managed to keep up with the other swimmers without it spoiling the pleasure. A lovely half hour.

Spurred on by the vision of Ned Kelly’s bald pate, I head for a barbers shop for a heads shave. Ten minutes later and I am mistaken for Grant Mitchell by some UK autograph hunters. I jump on a tram and head for Federation Square where I breakfast once again on glorious toasted muesli with poached fruit and yoghurt followed by poached eggs and bacon on a bread baton. I look up the Melbourne guide to GLBTI food to see if this breakfast is featured, but it isn’t. I can only find BLT. I decide over breakfast that I will spend my day on the City’s trams – cheap at around £3 for unlimited travel. Federation Square where I catch the next tram is awash with parties of school kids on ‘trips’ ie wandering around with clip boards whilst their teachers soak up the sun and drink iced coffee. They are all dressed in ‘summer’ uniforms which are just like the ones on Home and Away and Neighbours - well, of course they would be idiot, I tell myself! It is a bit bizarre though as all the staff are dressed like they are heading for beach, which of course they might be if the pupil questionnaires are long enough. I am sure I see a couple with surf boards sticking out of their back packs and decide to keep an eye on them in the cause of professional standards. My first tram heads for St Kilda Beach, and sure enough the ‘backpack’ two leap on as it departs shouting to the concerned pupils to make sure they are back at the meeting point by 11.30pm. A strange incident on the tram. Two young women get on. They are students as they have to show their passes at one point. As we near St Kilda one of them decides it is time to put on her bikini top. She already has on a strappy top and a bra underneath. She slips the bikini top over her head and continues her conversation with her friend. She then fastens it over her bra and ties it at the back. The next step is to undo the bra and slip it out of her top. She does all this without breaking stride in her conversation and without revealing any additional flesh. I want to applaud at the end. The spell is however broken by her friend who falls over when the tram suddenly lurches and she steps on my toe!

St Kilda is like a mini Brighton, nestling on the coast a few miles from Melbourne. The single main street is awash with cafes, souvenir shops, food outlets, and tourists. I hit the jackpot again with my second Greek t-shirt, and am feted by the man in the ice-cream shop who gives me an extra dollop on my Mango-Mango. The beach is busy with sunbathers and a few in the sea. I decide to risk a paddle and am forced to do a ‘hot coals’ dance across the burning sand. The sea is crawling (or rather slumping) with dead jellyfish. Why is it always jellyfish, dad! I am told by a person beating one with a stick that these are not the dreaded box jellyfish but are the blue lumpy sort of jellyfish - he was clearly a biologist from the Melbourne University for the Pathalogically Stupid. Other people were poking the dead lumps with whatever they could find. ‘They don’t like it if you do that.’ I said to two women as I passed. They continued poking it as I moved on. The water was lovely and cool and worth the risk of brushing against a lump – but as they only end up on the beach if they are already dead I didn’t think there was much of one outwitting me in a side-step.

An Aboriginal man is playing the digereedoo in the street. I stop to record it and he chats to me, trying to persuade me to buy a CD. I give him some money and move on.

I catch the next tram to the Docklands area. This is like any regenerated area – mainly restaurants, shops etc. I could be in London or Chicago. I do not stay long. Just enough time to have an ice cream and lose my Symi cap! Bugger!
Neighbours! Everybody loves good neighbours! Off to the Neighbours Trivia Evening in St Kilda along with a bus load of other tourists. Bus is driven by Northern Irish lad who plays videos on the bus and encourages the passengers to sing. Plays Kylie and Jason’s old hits. I am amazed that the youngsters on the bus know all the words then remember they are the same age as Tess and Dorrie who have got the albums. We disembark at a very dingy-looking pub and are shown to our tables. I am placed with a young couple from Chester, Tim and Tara. They are on honeymoon and have spent one night in the Singapore Raffles Hotel as part of their package – at the princely sum of £350! They have now to conserve the rest of their money so are travelling in a hired camper van. They say it is ok but it is hard to keep stuff dry and the van is a bit pokey. They show me a picture of the van – it is pokey! Makes me glad I am not doing that. The audience in the pub is primarily tourists from the UK and Ireland , plus the odd Aussie who has wandered in off the street. I am expecting the evening to be cheesy and fun and it is. The compere warms the audience up – anyone here from Ireland etc etc, then introduces two young Neighbours stars who I don’t know – regrettably Bouncer and Stiff are not here. But Dr Karl Kennedy is and he bounds on to the stage to raucous shouts and applause. They take questions from the audience – Are you a real Doctor? – and someone asks him who of the three women in his life is the best. Of course he chooses Susan, who he has married three times in the series over the last fifteen years – I have not seen it for yonks so do not know what is going on at all! Then the actors circulate the tables conversing and having photos taken. It is very relaxed. I have my picture taken with Dr Karl. He is very patient as my camera malfunctions at first – ‘You’ve come a long way for a photo’ he says. We do a trivia quiz which includes some neighbours questions. I answer Bouncer and Harold Bishop to all of them in the hope that some will be right. Then suddenly Dr Karl is on stage with his rock band singing – ‘I predict a riot’ gets the audience on their feet and the staff remove all the tables. He performs for the next half hour and gets a predictable reaction to ‘Your Sex is on Fire’. The audience is mainly women and of all ages. They are having a great time. At about 10,30pm Dr Karl finishes his set and Paul Robinson comes on to sing. I have an early flight in the morning so leave after two songs. The tram drops me right outside my hotel. A good evening.

As I prepare to leave for the airport I hear that it was 35C+ yesterday – and getting warmer! Everyone is worried there will be another ‘Black Saturday’ which happened last February when temperatures spared to 46C+ (wow!) and there were serious bushfires in the state of Victoria that killed 173 people! This morning Melbourne is waking up to another hot day and as I watch people make their way to work I am glad that I am leaving at this point. The trams are busy. I am very impressed with Melbourne’s public transport system, especially the trams. It is cheap, efficient and clean. You can get just about anywhere in the city and for some way beyond for about £3. Why, oh why can’t we get this bit sorted in the UK?
One last anecdote. On one of my tram trips yesterday I passed a ‘Silent Protest’ by Quakers in aid of the rights of indigenous Australians. They had placed themselves next to a piece of street art which was a replica purse about the size of a double bed, just laid on the pavement. The juxtaposition of the two things was comical. If I had been walking by I would have been tempted to ask them about it!


Tuesday 10th November Sydney

Hot, brash, busy, colourful, confident, a mixture of old and new – Sydney is more New York than Milton Keynes. Hang on! Haven’t I already written that about Melbourne? But it could equally apply to Sydney (or Sidniy, as the locals call it), Australia’s unofficial capital – the official on being Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory., which is like Milton Keynes! It is Australia’s largest city at 4.5million ‘Sydneysiders’ but is also the most diverse and the oldest. Sydney Harbour is one of the biggest in the world (the biggest natural harbour in the world is in GB at Portland, Dorset!) and is spectacular in many ways. Lots of little bays, twists and turns, and the awesome sights of the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera house. Sydney’s origins lie mainly in British and Irish convicts. This is not Botany Bay where Captain Cook first landed but the place where the first convict ships came in what is known as the First Fleet, under the leadership of Captain Arthur Phillip. As you would expect by now, the local Aborigine tribes were stripped of their rights to the land, locked up , driven away or just killed as the settlers took hold of the area. For the next 60 odd years Sydney (named after the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time) remained a bit of a hell hole clinging to the edge of this new continent. The first ‘settlers’ nearly starved to death as they did not know how to grow their food well enough. They drank themselves silly on rum – no change there – and it wasn’t until the 1850s when someone discovered gold in ‘them thar hills’ that Sydney became a place that attracted ‘real’ settlers. Almost overnight its population doubled and it was off! It is now awash with multiculturalism, diversity, complexities. It is not just about sunshine, sunglasses and Bondi Beach. But that’s what it says on the tin! We shall see.

First thing I find out is the locals do not have a good sense of scale. Getting from the airport to my hotel is easy enough, but once I settle in I have a bit of time to kill before I meet up with my cousin Fergus Collins who is taking me to his house for a meal. The concierge at the hotel tells me that I can walk from the hotel to the area of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in about half an hour, so I can be back to meet Fergus in plenty of time. Yeh! Half an hour if you are wearing seven league boots! It takes me an hour! The CBD is very built up, and hilly so you don’t see the Bridge and the Opera House until you are almost on top of them. I wind my way through the streets, noting places of interest for a possible visit tomorrow. I follow the map into the Botanical Gardens and through them to the edge of the harbour. Suddenly I catch a glimpse of the Bridge through the trees. It looks enormous. A little further on I start to see the curves of the Opera House which at this time of day – about 5.30pm – is partly in shadow. It is everything the pictures show and more. It is dominated by the sheer size of the Bridge, but in its own way dominates all that surrounds it. I know that its curves were inspired by a range of things including orange segments, snail shells, palm fronds and Mayan temples. The roof segments are covered with over a million Swedish tiles – IKEA did a storming trade that day! It is truly awesome. The closer you get the more you realise how huge the whole thing is! It takes half an hour just to get up the steps at the front! I am not intending to go inside so I just take photos from as many angles as I can. There are people everywhere – on the steps, hanging from the balconies, inside the glass fronted segments, photographing, leaping to be photographed – there is a ‘carnival’ atmosphere. And in the background if you look one way is the Harbour Bridge, and on the other the harbour itself. The view from the Harbour is said to be the best – that’s for tomorrow. The Bridge and the Opera House do complement. The Bridge is all dark steel, angular, strong, dominant. The Opera House is light, curved, with its own strength, but perhaps in away submissive? Far be it from me to fully understand the Architect’s motives but there is deficiently an element of male and female in the way the two relate to each other. I resolve to visit again tomorrow and to climb the Bridge.

I get a taxi back to the hotel to meet Fergus. ‘Gus ‘ or ‘Gussy’ came to Australia from Ireland fifteen years ago having met and married an Australian girl, Alex, in London. They have four boys – Charlie, Mikey, Teddy and Fergus jun. originally based in Brisbane they relocated to Sydney three years ago. Fergus is related to me on my mother’s side, and as a young man spent a fair amount of time in Manchester with mu parents. He is pleased I have taken the time to visit and we have a warm and wonderful evening - traditional Aussie ‘barbie’ – on his veranda chatting and reminiscing until it gets dark. Fergus is an export manager for a large retail outlet – mainly to do with the wine and beer trade – and travels worldwide to do his job. He spends serious amounts of time away from home, and only three weeks ago was in Ireland for the second time this year. He loves Australia and is about to take out citizenship. He doesn’t ever see himself returning to Ireland – but typically of all expatriate ‘paddies’ he still calls Ireland ‘home’. His family are lovely, and they really do have as good life here. All too soon the time passes and Alex drives me back to the hotel. It has been a really nice in interlude in my travels, and I look forward to seeing them again sometime – weddings and funerals most likely! Sydney was built on the efforts of ‘ex-pats’ like Fergus. Glad to see he is keeping up the tradition!


Wednesday 11th November Sydney Day 2

Hot! Fergus had recommended a ferry trip to Manly which would take me right across the far side of the Harbour to the harbour entrance. Nice beaches, nice cafes, and good views of the Bridge and Opera House to boot. I began with a meander through town, and a visit to the Queen Victoria Buildings (known to the locals as the QVB) which opened in 1898, only 3 years before Victoria passed on, so I don’t think she cut the ribbon. It is an incredibly ornate shopping centre, with pillars, balconies, stained glass windows, and massive copper covered domes – in fact just the sort of place the vast majority of Sydney residents would not have been allowed to go in! Nowadays of course if you’ve got the cash. It nearly didn’t make it as its style quickly went out of fashion, but in 1993 a Malaysian company came to the rescue and spent over $86million refurbishing it. It is amazing but don’t expect to emerge from a shopping experience there with both arms and legs! It was certainly bustling when I went in there. On the way in I paused when the City Hall clock struck 11 o’clock to signal the one minute’s silence. Apart from some servicemen selling poppies and a couple of other ‘civvies’ like me, no-one else stopped. I wonder if people go round with their heads in bags sometimes. A little further on the Remembrance Day parade had just finished. All over the news the PM, a ‘lovely’ guy called Kevin Rudd, was talking up Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan – so the timing was pertinent. They have lost 11 soldiers this year.

The Botanic Gardens cover most of the peninsula on which the Opera House sits. They are a horticulturalists dream. Exotic is not the word. Super exotic. They are placed over the very area that was first cleared by the First Fleet Settlers; cleared being the operative word. Remember the motto – ‘If it moves shoot it; if it doesn’t cut it down!’ The First Fleet numbered about 1000 people, of which 700 were convicts that the GB Government did not know what to do with so sent them to Oz. There was one civilian, and they thought they were on the ferry to Cardiff. (Bloody wide that Bristol Channel, boyo!) The rest were military sent to guard the convicts. What a happy bunch they must have been. The Aborigines did well to stay clear of them for a while, because when they did….well, you know the rest. The First Fleet Landed at what is now Circular Quay, where most of the Harbour Ferries leave from. I made my way through the Gardens to the Opera House and took some more photos.

The Manly ferry is a working ferry that will take tourists, so a bit like the Staten Island Ferry in New York it is fairly rough and ready. For $12 return you get a half hour ride across the whole harbour on the Ocean side of the Bridge, with scenic views of the Bridge and the Opera House and the isle and inlets between Circular Quay and Manly itself. There was a bit of scrum when we got on as everyone wants the best photo spots, but the cool breeze soon separates the photography boys from the girls, and before long good spots are available to anyone who wants one. The views are just picture book. The weather was good too so the light was just right. Lots of happy snapping went on. Manly itself is not up to much but unless you live there a day visit will suffice. There is a small beach next to where the ferry docks and the first thing I notice is the shark net around one section of the beach. There are a couple of hardy souls swimming outside the nets but most people are not. I must admit it did put me off. I did not have time to walk through to the main beach but the local guides all mention the shark nets, and the local paper did have an article about a recent shark attack on a man snorkelling in a local cove. He survived , but the shark had a good go at his leg. If it’s not crocs, it’s ‘stingers’; if it’s not ‘stingers’ its sharks! Oh well. I decided to miss out on a swim – the areas inside shark nets are described as a bit ‘soupy’ by the guide books – presumably because the wave action cannot operate properly because of the nets which are pretty substantial, rather than an idea of the combination of humans and water which the sharks prefer! I have a very nice lunch in the harbour café which overlooks the bay where I overhear a conversation about Mick Jagger and his time in Melbourne when making Ned Kelly. According to my informant Mick’s then girlfriend Marianne Faithful was ill in hospital so Mick left her and went off with another woman in a not very faithful fashion. ‘ And of course’ my informant continued ‘ today is the day Nid was hanged in Milbourne Jail’. That bit I can concur with. On that note I set off back on the ferry. I am due to climb the Harbour Bridge at 5pm so have no time to waste.

The Harbour Bridge! The Harbour Bridge! I did think about it for a bit before I booked to climb it. Heights and me don’t mix well, and especially if you can see down where you are climbing. But I steeled myself and reported to the Bridge Climb centre on time. The next three hours were a mixture of fear, anticipation, sensation, and elation. But I did it – and I have the pictures and the t-shirt to prove it! The organisation and the safety procedures are impressive. Nearly an hour is taken getting us ready for the climb. I am in a party of eleven with an additional climb leader. There is another Irishman, a married couple from Sydney, a mum and her son who are there because it is his birthday, and five people of various nationalities who are there because they are all on a ‘stag do’ – ironic because we all have to be breathalysed before they will let us go up on the bridge! We all pass. There is a ‘team building’ exercise which sounds a bit cheesy but part of it is to get us to know each other a little bit so that we look after each other on the climb. It works as it helps us to relax. We don all the equipment which includes headset so that the team leader can talk to us above the noise of the traffic below –and it is noisy! And then we are off.

We are on the ‘Exploration Climb’ which means we see a lot of the ‘inside’ workings and structures of the bridge before we head out to the top. Kelly, the group leader has taken mum and son and me as the first three because we said heights may be a problem. The first few bits are the worst as there are narrow walkways and gantries and some wooden planking to negotiate , some of which are directly above the water and some above the traffic. We are linked all the way to a safety wire a bit in the way climbers are linked to a safety rope. When the owner of the Bridge Walk had the original idea it took him ten years to actually get it going. One of the problems was insurance. No-one wanted to touch it. In the end he had to start his own insurance company! It has been going since 1998 and no one has fallen off. There have been medical emergencies – heart attacks, panic attacks, strokes – all of which have been dealt with successfully by the emergency services. Each team leader is in constant contact with base so getting help is relatively easy. Once you start climbing it you realise how big it is and the fact that it moves! It vibrates with the traffic, shakes with the wind, and expands and contracts according to the temperature. It has stayed there since March 1932 in all conditions, and is a credit to the engineers who designed it and the people who built it – and most of them were from Middlesborough. It is the third widest arch span in the world. The statistics are gob smacking. It was originally estimated at $4.5million but any of us who have had building work know that you can add at least 20% to that. In the end it came in at $10million and it took the city 60 years to pay off the debt. It nearly didn’t get built. The ferry companies lobbied hard against it. In the years before the bridge opened they were taking 40,000 people a day across the harbour. It took 52,800 tonnes of steel most of which was shipped from Middlesborough, and just six million rivets to hang it all together . At its apex it is 134 metres above mean sea level and I stood on that!

We wind our way through the structure, taking care not to bang our heads on the low beams which are luckily for me covered with yellow foam so I can spot then and so when I don’t spot them they don’t hurt as much! Eventually we are on the crest of the ‘coat-hanger’ and making our way to the top. Funnily enough once I am ‘outside’ I don’t feel bothered by the height at all. The view from the top is phenomenal. We have our photos taken at various points but the one most people are interested in is the one with the Opera House in the background. When we pause at the top to take in the view, the woman with her son reveals that her aunt – now in her 80s – crawled over the bridge arch on the night the bridge was opened with some friends. She was 18 and there were no guide rails or safety harnesses on that occasion. Wow! On our way back down we are treated to a magnificent sunset which we are not able to photograph as we have had to leave all such items behind – principally for safety reasons as anything dropped from the bridge could do serious damage below; but it also means the Bridge Climb company can make some additional dosh! We are all amazed at how quickly the sun disappears below the horizon, and it is pretty dark when we return. I am very pleased I have done the climb and having bought the obligatory t-shirt and some photos, head for the nearest pub to buy myself a celebratory drink.
Of all the hundreds of people who worked on the bridge, only 18 lost their lives in the ten years or so it took to build. Only three of them actually fell from the bridge. There is only one known survivor from a fall. A man named Kelly fell into the harbour and landed feet first. He suffered some broken ribs but legend has it his boots were found split open and level with his waist! And they gave him a god medal for it. The luck of the Irish!


Thursday 12th November. Sydney Day 3

I set off today to do one set of things and end up doing almost the opposite. My intention is to go to a place called Cremorne Point on the far side of the Harbour where I know there is a sea swimming pool that has good views of the Bridge and the Opera House. I am then planning to come back to the Aquarium, have lunch then head for Bondi Beach. It all goes wrong when I take advice from the hotel concierge. We find Cremorne Point easily enough on the map, but when I say can I get a bus there he looks blank so in the end I get a taxi. It costs me $25. When we get there I speak to a nearby bus driver about getting back, and he says the busses are complicated so it would be easier to get that ferry just behind you which runs every half hour and will get you to Circular Quay in five minutes. When I do get the ferry back it costs $5. Thank you concierge! When will I learn? The entrance pathway to the baths is closed for repair but a kindly woman walking her dog shows me a secret way which involves crawling behind hoardings and climbing over a fence. On the way she says that as it is Thursday the baths are likely to be closed for maintenance. They were! Thank you again concierge!

I did not rush back but sat to take in the view for a while then caught the ferry. On the way across I looked again at the Bridge and decide to shift my plans and do the Bridge Tower tour as this was already paid for. You can climb 200 steps to the viewing platform which gives close up views of the bridge and views of the harbour. It made up for the fact that we could not take cameras on the Bridge Climb. The exhibition inside gave the history of the building of the bridge in great detail. I came out with my admiration for the enterprise reinforced. At the top of the tower I chatted to a couple from Cambridge and as a result of this chat changed my plans again. Out went Bondi Beach and in came the ‘Bobby Charlton’ pool. I was telling them about my failed attempt to swim earlier and they said there was another open air sea pool on the far side of Mrs MacQuarie’s Point. It is actually called ‘The Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton’ pool after an Aussie Olympic swimmer. There are actually over a hundred public swimming pools in Sydney, but the Bobby Charlton pool is one of the biggest being full Olympic size ie 50metres long. The first reason I went against Bondi was sand – it gets everywhere, and not just in your sandwiches! The other reason was sharks. Now I like to relax when swimming but beach swimming in Australia is tantamount to offering yourself up for attack by something - even if there are shark nets about. I find it very hard to do the breaststroke or crawl and look over my shoulder at the same time. I care not that statistics say that the beasts are more likely to take an Aussie than a tourist. I’d rather not take the risk thanks. So off to Bobby Charlton I go.

On the way I experience a sudden desire to sit under a tree and have my lunch. I wonder if my time in Australia is starting to affect my psyche. I manage to resist the temptation and instead sit in the shadow of the Opera House ‘shells’ to eat my sarnie. Some lost Germans ask for directions and surprisingly enough I am able to help. They are looking for the box office which I have just passed. This is where I have another change of plan. When I spoke to Tess the night before she asked if I was going to see anything in the Opera House. This plus the Germans saw me booking to see ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ that evening at 7.30pm. That was the end of the plan for the Aquarium!

The Bobby Charlton baths are not in the prettiest of locations as they are set against the background of the naval dockyard but when I get there mid afternoon it is heaving! The Australians take their swimming seriously which is why they keep winning the Olympics. Like the Melbourne City Baths it has some very hostile times linked with each lane. With names like ‘Torpedo’, ‘Flash’, ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Speed of Light’ for each lane it is a little intimidating. I look in vain for ‘Floundering Pom’ and settle in the end for ‘Slow Freestyle’. Like Melbourne each lane has times allocated and a man with a long pole pokes those swimmers who are too slow. Despite this I settle in to a steady rhythm and start my first ten lengths – which given the size of the pool means twenty normal lengths. By the time I have done five lengths the other swimmers in my lane have disappeared presumably because they think I am dead and merely floating along, or like Marty in ‘Back to the Future’ they have gone so fast they are now swimming next Tuesday. I get out after ten lengths to rest and to put some sun screen on my back –see I do respond positively to pain! I decide to change lanes for the next ten lengths and head for one called ‘Flippers and anything else you need you saddo’. It is moderately busy and I complete my ten lengths without much problem. I allow myself a short time sunbathing but slap on a load of sunscreen. I have spoken before about the myth of Aussie muscularity and sun tans - a recent cartoon the local rag had re-designated ‘Slip, Slap,Slop’ as ‘Flip, Flop, Flab’- but here it was bodies on show, with serious swimming on the side. There was not a ‘comb-over’ in site. Speedos were the order of the day. Sunbathing was brief, as were the speedos. The person sitting next to me was trying to explain to his companion who was foreign why Australians call speedos ‘budgie smugglers’. That was a new one on me. It meant that for the few minutes I remained I looked at every male passer-by to determine whether they were smuggling budgies or parrots!
I allowed myself a short sojourn after my swim and enjoyed an iced coffee and an almond croissant – not bad for a lad from Gorton! – on the roof-top café. Now, iced coffee. If I haven’t mentioned it before then I apologise; if I have mentioned them before, then I make no apology for mentioning them again. I first discovered them in Kakadu about six million years ago! However small remote a retail outlet, garage or café they always fitted in a ‘cooler’ with cartons of iced coffee. The brand name in the Northern Territory was ‘Paul’s’. They were a lifesaver in the dry heat. I drank gallons of it. It will be one of my returning memories – stopping on a remote dust road somewhere in Kakadu and swigging iced coffee – admittedly by that time somewhat less iced than when I bought it – and just taking in the scenery.

I walked home through the Botanic Gardens again, and was amazed to see the number of fruit bats roosting in the trees. Dorrie, I thought you were in London! Coming down from the Bridge the previous evening I had seen what I thought was an owl but in fact it was one of these huge bats. They are a sight. They hang in their hundreds from the trees, and even fly about in the day. In the paper it said there were an estimated 28,000 bats in the colony and that they had already destroyed over a hundred trees. The Botanic Gardens are really suffering from their presence but they are protected creatures. Various ‘scaring’ methods including making noise so they can’t sleep are being used to discourage the roosting. They are clearly not working. I think of recommending the drunk who kept me awake on my first night in Sydney. H e placed himself almost beneath my window and spent a couple of hours yawling a mixture of classic Australian Frontier gibberish and alcoholic burbling. He eventually argued himself into unconsciousness, so I did get some sleep.
My journey to the Opera House in the evening was by taxi, and my driver was a mad Russian. He had come to Australia twenty years ago as a Physics and Maths graduate, but had ended up a taxi driver. ‘Not mach to show for tventy yeers’ he said. He said he had considered teaching but rejected it as he earned more from taxi driving, and besides he did not want to teach those who did not want to learn. In a moment of self realised irony he said he was not the best example of why education is important as he did not use his degree. He complained about Sydney saying it was a dangerous place as people sometimes got ‘bashed’ to death in the rougher areas, he said the beaches were full of ‘fornicators’ and ‘drug takers’ to the extent that each evening the authorities had to ‘drag’ the sand to collect unwanted items before their use the next day. My decision about Bondi – good one! We got stuck in the rush hour traffic and as Sydney taxis are on time for their meters it cost me double what it should have done.

When I had booked for the ‘Taming of the Shrew’ the woman at the box office had said that it was a production by the Bill Shakespeare Company and that it was a modern version of the play. Being originally by ‘Bill’ Shakespeare I thought fair enough, very ‘avante garde’ and very ‘Aussie’. When I picked up the play synopsis on my way in I noticed it was by the Bell Shakespeare Company! That accent agin! I then started reading the cast list and was noting that a lot of the parts were being played by female actors when it dawned on me that the entire cast were female, as was the director. Now no problem with this – in fact a little amused by the twist that all of Shakespeare’s plays had originally been performed by all male casts as was typical of the day. Tit for tat I thought. Next irony of course was the play itself. The story of the play is the subjugation of a strong willed woman to the will of her husband – very ironic indeed that an all female cast should be doing this of all his plays. Mine not to reason why.

For those of you who do not know the play here is a brief synopsis.

Peteruchio, a wizard from Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books, is betrothed to Katherina Jordinio – a shrewish woman with sizeable assets. Bianca, who has been married to Rollingstoneio longs to marry Bono, who has been in disguise to see the Pope. Verona, a friend of Bono’s, agrees to help him pretend to be a musician, so that he can get close to Bianca and woo her. Two of his other friends Bransonio and Vanmorrisonio pretend to be nice people in order to fool Katie and Bianca’s father into agreeing to her marriage. In an incredible denouement all the characters are revealed to be themselves, there is lots of cross-dressing and trouser-dropping, and visits to dubious stores, Brian Rixio is arrested and carted off to prison ,and nobody wants to marry anyone. In a final speech Katie professes her love for Muscleanio a Padua cage fighter and runs off to the jungle with him.
A great evening!

PS I have been reading my Lonely Planet book again and have just discovered that the ‘Bobby Charlton Baths’ is one of the main meeting places for Gay men in Sydney. Whoops! My observation of ‘budgie smuggling kit’ could have got me I in real trouble!


Friday 13th November The Blue Mountains

I wave farewell to Sydney apart from a brief visit to the airport tomorrow and set off in a hire car to spend my last full day in Australia in the Blue Mountains National Park, about a two hour drive West from Sydney. My route takes me over the Anzac Bridge so I do not see the Harbour area at all. Route 4 winds its way through Sydney suburbs, and I see signs for Newcastle and Liverpool. So many of the places, especially in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales are repetitions of English place names that at times it is like driving along roads in the UK. Eventually the road becomes the M4 and we speed off West. I have not eaten a meal since yesterday lunchtime so stop at MacDonalds for a ‘Big Brekkie Burger’ kindly served to me by a smiling Brittni. It is MacDonalds ‘Happy Day’ when all across Australia celebrities serve for free in MacDonalds restaurants in the name of charity, but unfortunately this Brittni is not lip synching.

Let’s get a couple of things straight. Not everything in Australia is what it seems. The duck-billed platypus is not a duck. The wallaby is not a kangaroo. The crocodile’s smile is not friendly. And the Blue Mountains are not mountains. In fact they are not really hills either. They are in fact a series of sandstone plateaux, older than the Grand Canyon, and just as spectacular in parts – that is if you can see them, but we will get to that later. It is yet another (yawn!) of Australia’s World Heritage sites with over a million hectares of rain-forest, blue-hazed valleys, canyons and heath-lands. It is the over 100 types of eucalyptus tree that give it its name because they exude an oil that mixes with the ever present moisture to create the ‘blue’ haze. The National Park’s slogan is ‘Easy to get to. Impossible to forget.’ My slogan is ‘Slow to get to. Impossible to see.’

I’m staying at a family-run hotel in the small town of Blackheath in the centre of the park. Mr and Mrs Bates are very friendly, but the old grandmother in the rocking chair on the porch does not say much. I decide to pass on the offer of a shower to shake off the dust of my journey. When I sign the guest book I notice the name Hedren as signing in but curiously not signing out. I dismiss this as the product of a tired mind and settle into my room. I notice a strange little creature crawling on the carpet. My first thought is cockroach, the second is funnel –web spider – Australia’s deadliest. It flips under the wardrobe so I get torch out of my bag and go hunting. It turns out to be a moth. As far as I know Australia does not have killer moths, so I relax. The Bates’ young son, a strapping lad by the name of Igor, who sports a rather fetching bolt through his neck, tells me that the nearest information centre is 3km away through the town at Dead Man’s Gulch or something similar. The ‘town’ is a crossroads with a few shops where I buy fruit and orange juice for my planned walk. It has been drizzling during my drive from Sydney so I kit myself out accordingly. The Information Centre is good and the ranger indicates a walk that is two to three hours long with spectacular views of the canyons, waterfalls etc. Not today folks! Despite the weather forecast in the Information Centre saying ‘fine’, the canyons and rainforest are full of low cloud, mist and rain. Where I park my car there is a ‘lookout’ over the canyon with a mind-boggling drop below – that is according to the information board. I cannot see a thing! Having been in similar position in the Lake District I tell myself that the area is as spectacular as it allegedly is for the very reason it has high rainfall, high precipitation, high humidity and lots of low cloud! The walk will take me along the edge of the canyon and I decide to go on it anyway. As soon as I set off it begins drizzling – you know the sort of rain that soaks you through – and I have to get out my Cape Otway rain mac! I just knew when I bought it I would need it. The walk through the rain-forest is pleasant enough but I am soon hot and sweaty. It is a good path but goes up and down the edges of the canyon with regularity. The Rangers have ‘stepped’ huge sections of the path, but for every down there is a corresponding up and vice versa. So it is a tiring walk. I am heading to a lookout that is approximately one and a half hours away. I traverse parts of the canyon floor, go above and below cascading waterfalls - I know this because I can hear the water! I still can’t see it. At one of the ‘lookouts’ I catch a glimpse of the waterfall. I imagine it is very spectacular on a clear day. After just over an hour I reach my initial destination. Had it been a better day I think I would have pressed on further but I am getting pretty wet and tired and so stop for lunch of my fruit which I share with a pied jackdaw. Another visitor, a sort of pheasant which looks a little like Archeopterix, declines my offer of a piece of orange and wanders off into the bushes. There are a few people about as you can drive to this lookout, but I have only passed one person on the path, a German youth looking for the box office for the Sydney Opera House! My return journey is relatively uneventful. Lots of bird noises but few sightings – one yellow crested parrot and two wren-like birds – so I got a bit lost in my thoughts as you tend to do in quiet situations. I rounded a corner to be confronted by two ghostly apparitions that turned out to be two more German youths wearing white plastic rain capes. Good job I was not an Aborigine – that would have really freaked me out! Back to the car park tired and wet – that too was now covered in low cloud as we are over 1000ft above sea level. The walk has taken me just over two hours and I must have climbed or descended a few hundred steps in that time. Why is it always steps, dad? A quick change and off through the mist for coffee and carrot cake in Blackheath itself.
Back at the hotel I notice a sign for ‘Murder Mystery Nights’. A smiling Mr Bates beams ‘You will imagine it’s real!’ Luckily it is not a Wednesday. I discover that behind the hotel is an Italian Trattoria and decide to have a meal there. It is generally a good decision. The ‘M’aitre D’ is an Irishman who has been in Australia for the last seventeen years. We exchange stories of Dublin and he says he would happily go ‘home’ tomorrow – but Australian wife and family to contend with. He tells me that the place will be quiet tonight but they are expecting a party of eight later. When that party arrives the men are all doubles for Rolf Harris! ‘Have you decided what you are going to eat yit?’ The waiter is a trainee. He fusses about everything. I say the starter of chilli mussels is nice. He says ‘I will lit chif know’. I like the subtle taste of the main course which is pan seared salmon with mashed potato and a fennel volante. ‘I will lit the chif know’. I dare to say the crème brulee is perfect. ‘ I will lit chif know’. I say I must use the toilet. ‘I will lit the chif know’. I am off to bed now. ‘I will lit the chif know’. I double lock my door!

So, goodbye Australia. Who knows when we will meet again. What have I learned about Australia in my four week sojourn here? That ‘ No worries’ is the same as OK. That ‘ Budgie smugglers’ are swimming trunks. That it is a huge country that even its resident population have hardly explored. That is a complex society and that Aussies are happy for Politicians to describe each other as ‘ fruit loops’. That Aussie males have an obsession with ‘six’ and with premature ejaculation – where else in the world would this be advertised on the radio? That it is still a young country that has not sorted out its identity. That Australian males love their ‘Utes’ more than their girlfriends. That the archetypal Aussie is not Crocodile Dundee but more likely Harold Bishop. That the real Crocodile Dundee is being done for tax evasion. That the Aussies like to think of themselves as free spirits. That Australia is no longer a ‘young’ country and has an ‘Ageing’ time bomb to deal with. That there is a huge alcohol problem that is feeding a crime and violence problem. That local radio is crap. That the Melbourne Cup is a horse race that the majority of Aussies take no notice of – despite the hype.

Weird and wonderful. I am glad I came. I am missing its quirks already!