Oz

Ben writes -

We left Christchurch and flew Quantas to Sydney where we connected for our domestic flight to Adelaide. Incidentally Quantas is a great airline - almost as good as American was bad. Lots of good quality food and drink and good legroom. After a few weeks in NZ and now Oz we were getting used to things working better and everything being easier. It felt a bit like we were cheating after the relative hardships in S. America but we were not complaining.

This leg of the trip was going to be nice because we would get the opportunity to catch up with some old friends who live and work in Australia and family too, as Tig's Mum and Dad were going to come out and see us in Sydney later.

We were met at Adelaide airport by Natalie, Tig's friend from her days at the FSA, as she had invited us to stay with her while we were in South Australia. Some of the Aussies we had met on our travels previously had queried Adelaide as a destination 'What d'you want to go there for?' but our first impressions were very positive as the airport was brand spanking new. Nat's house in the suburb of West Beach was quintessentially Australian, with a great pool and a really large open area for barbies and only a five minute walk to a massive beautiful beach which had great sand, very few people and a few man eating sharks. Nat told us a few hair curling stories about this so we didn't go in for a swim . We were reminded of my sister's warnings to us in Peru 'Don't swim anywhere in Australia if you want to live.' Really, she can be a little melodromatic at times.

Nat had kindly made herself availiable to show us around for a few days so on the first day we stopped off at the neighbouring suburb of Glenelg where they have some nice restaurants and a monument to the earliest settlers. The next day we drove down to Victor Harbour about 100kms south of Adelaide down the coast. It reminded me a little of an English seaside town with the promenade and stands selling fish and chips. The weather was very different obviously. Nat showed us some of the new building that is happening down there at the moment - loads of new beachfront constuction and retirement homes since the Oz property market went throught the roof a few years ago. They have so much land it is incredible but as you get further from the main cities less and less people are interested in living there. Victor Harbour was one place that suddenly became in demand as people's idea of what was too far away from town shifted down the coast a few miles.

On the way there we visited a wildlife park with all the lovely fluffy animals you would expect plus a few more interesting nasty ones. Tiggy was popular with a few of the Kangaroos and we got to pat one of the koalas. You have to be careful or they will wee on you.

Australia has 20 of the 23 most poisionous snakes in the world and we got to see most of them on our trip. We saw a few crocks here too. Just look at those snappers! The big male was real mean. He definately wanted to eat his handler.

On the way back we drove through the Mclaren Vale which is a large wine producing area. It was beautiful there but there was sadly no time for sampling the local produce as we needed to get back to the house to experiance our first aussie barbeque - it was a real sizzler.

The Adelaide fringe festival was on while we were there, so we went down to that for a day. It is the second biggest festival of it's kind in the world (behind Edinburgh) so it was pretty spectacular. We saw this amazing Italian wire act with hundreds of performers that was staged at night over the Torrens River in the middle of the city.

We visited the German town Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills and enjoyed some strudel (Aussie cakes are really excellent by the way - everywhere we went they were very impressive). The hills were beautiful too. We saw some wild koalas up there sleeping in an old gum tree. They don't really do an awful lot if the truth be told. But they looked happy.

We visited the Barrossa Valley for a spot of wine tasting - absolutely fabulous. We just drove around the valley and were given loads of wine to sample. The atmosphere in the tasting rooms was completely relaxed and unpretentious - very unfrench you could say. The quality at all levels was very good. No wonder the Aussies are cleaning up in the mid price market and no one is bothering to buy French table wines. We tryed some cracking sparkling reds - which was a type of wine I hadn't seen much of before. We bought some to bring home but of course very little made it out of the state let alone the country. Any tips? Well Grant Burge does a good Merlot and all the wines we tried by small winemaker Murray Street were fantastic - but could be difficult to find in the UK.

We said goodbye to Natalie and flew to Sydney. We had originally planned to drive there via Melboune but that was unrealistic - we had just run out of time. The vehicle hire could have been problematic as well.

The first thing we needed to do in Sydney was sort out our visas for China, Mongolia and Russia for later on in our trip. We had been let down by Trailfinders who had first said they would sort this out for us when we arrived in Australia and then said 'Oh we don't do that for UK passport holders'. Swines. Each visa would likely take a few days so we had a problem. The best we could do was take them round to each consulate in turn and pay for express processing where possible. When we told our cab driver we needed to go to the Russian embassy he first asked me if I was Russian and then proceeded to lay into the Russians - 'don't trust them'. He was a Polish immigrant - hence the animosity. He did tell me how to drink a shot of Vodka in one though:

'Don't drink with a Russian as with them it is always competition. If you must drink shot of Vodka do it like this - deep breath out, then deep breath in as you drink, then deep breath out.' So now you know.

Incidentally he was not the only one who thought I was Russian - all the Russians in the consulate spoke to me in Russian first and even Christina the nice Cypriot lady in the hostel asked me if I was Russian before laying in to them after Tiggy told her of our Visa problems. The Russians aren't too popular in Cyprus either then it seems - 'Gangsters, bad people.'

We met Paula on the steps of the opera house and went out for a for a drink. She has been living in Sydney for a few years and was on great form. We were able to visit her home neighbourhood of Manly on the ferry from Circular Quay. Great beach again. Paula has a perfect journey to work - that ferry trip takes some beating as a commute. Sometimes they will divert the route for a few minutes if they see a pod of dolphins - that doesn't happen on the Northern Line.

The next day we met Tig's Mum and Dad for our trip around the Blue Mountains. It was great to see them and we all had a look around town and the opera house before heading off and picking up the van.

Our van was a luxury winnebago and we wasted no time in leaving Sydney: destination Blue Mountains. As it turned out we were heading in totally the wrong direction. It was absolutely the navigator's fault and as that was me we will gloss over that one. Luckily, we still managed to arrive in Katoomba before nightfall and got the van parked. The caravan site had it's own resident Cocatoo, which was a bonus. He was a bit cheeky.

The Blue Mountains are so called because the thousands of Eucaliptus trees there give off a oily haze so from a distance and with the sun behind them the whole mountain range appears blue. It is very special.

The caravan park was just over the road from 'Scenic World' which had it's own railway and cablecar as access down into the valley where we could see all the amazing wildlife of the area. There were some fantastic ancient trees down there in the forest as well as the remains of an old mining post.

We were able to wander around these on a system of walkways that they had set up. There were great views of the 'Three Sisters' from down there which are these beautiful rock formations with cultural Significance for the aboriginal people.

Going back up the Scenic Railway to the top of the valley was an experiance - it is the steepest in the world so is more like a rollercoaster than anything, plenty of people were screaming. We also saw saw some lovely formal gardens in Loura which also had spectacular views over the valley.

We planned to move on up to the Hunter Valley next and enroute we visited the Jenolan Caves wich were massive - this bit was called the dragon's head.

Unfortunately we rather underestimated the amount of time it would take to get up to the Hunter Valley and we found ourselves out in rural New South Wales for the night. This was a world away from the bright ligts of Sydney - proper bush country. A bloke we met there who gave us directions was like an extra from Deliverance. So we stopped for the night at Wiseman's Ferry and camped on the banks of the MacDonald River. The ferry was a low tech push me pull you affair which was fun.

We made it to the Hunter Valley and set about a bit of wine tasting. It turned out that we had miscalculated our timings as to when we had to return the van so we got a whole extra day in the valley. Excellent!

Our drive back to Sydney was not without incident. We were in a hurry to get off so managed to scrape the roof of the van on a low carport at the exit of the caravan park. It seems we all missed the sign saying 'caravans follow other route'. The air conditioner got a bit dinged but the guys at the caravan park came running out to let our tyres down so we could free ourselves and then pumped us up again.

When we got back to Sydney we had to rush to pick up our visas from the Russian Consulate. Luckily all had gone well so we now had the visas we needed for our train journey. The rest of the day was spent getting some sun on Bondi Beach - not too shabby!

We said goodbye to Derek and Elaine the next day. They were heading off to Singapore on their way home which was our next stop after Australia. It had been great to see them and we had a great few days together. It would not be all that long until we saw them back in the UK.

We flew up to Byron Bay and enjoyed a couple more sunny days there before getting the bus up to Brisbane where our friend Sophie met us. She had kindly offered to let us stay with her while we were in Brisvegas.

Sophie and Clive have just had a little baby. Her name is Charlotte and she is beautiful.

Tigs and me got the ferry out to Tangalooma on Morton Island - a massive sand island similar to better known Fraser Island but a little smaller. It was really peaceful there. At one point we found hundreds of starfish washed up on the shore so we did them a favour and threw them back in.

We went out with Sophie the next day to the Sunshine coast at Moololahbah and were able to also visit the lunatic Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo. The Zoo had more cuddly and nasty creatures to enjoy but we sadly failed to meet the great man himself.

Then off to the airport to catch our flight for Singapore. Good on ya Oz.