Goodbye Sydney, Australia, Southern Hemisphere

Our last couple of weeks in Sydney were a festival of eating and drinking, eating and drinking, and then saying goodbye. Hayley and Meg, our hostesses in Auckland a year ago at the start of our trip, were out in Sydney for a week for Hayley's birthday, so that was even more excuse for eating and drinking. (Yes, we're both in need of some stomach bugs in Asia to get back down to fighting weight.)

Unable to move after eating the skin of five pigs at Pilu


Not a bad spot for a cocktail eh? Enjoying a free meal at Cafe Sydney courtesy of Faye's friends in the south. Thanks!

Our second visit to Hannibal's for Lebanese cuisine and a couple of hookahs to share

If you like meat, and you're in Australia, go to Hurricane's in Bondi.

And that's it for Australia! Cheerio. I haven't been totally won over by the place, as you might have gathered in this blog, but here are some of the highlights:

Kangaroos in the wild (especially when they hop across the highway in front of you)

Scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef

Surfing, when there's a blue moon and I get it right

Tinkerbell, the comfiest van in the West

Travelling in an elderly Japanese van convoy from Darwin down to Perth with Rich, Rach, Jon and Louise - together with the 1978 Nissan E20, known as Team Ernie

Broome, especially the outdoor cinema and the colour of the sea after weeks of red dust

The Ningaloo Reef on the West Coast - amazing snorkelling just yards from the beach

Eating out in Sydney [burp]

(And I have to mention it - winning the first match in the one-day final series of the cricket, on our last night in Australia! If only I'd had more time to enjoy it.)

So that's that for this blog. Head over to brockersinasia.blogspot.com for more...

The Return Of The Red Dust

And the flies, oh my god the flies...

As neither of us are sure we'll be coming down this way again, we thought we'd better see Ayers Rock before we left Australia. Back in September, we had toyed with the idea of driving up to the Red Centre in the van, from the Nullarbor highway between Perth and Adelaide. But at that time, having spent over two months covered in dust, the cities of the south east were far more appealing than yet more desert and deserted highways.

So an organised trip from Sydney it was to be, and we'd had one particular tour (Wayoutback, in case you're going) recommended to us by several very reliable sources. This one involves three days exploring Ayers Rock (or should I say Uluru, to be politically correct), the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) and Kings Canyon (erm, Watarrka or something), and what makes this tour different, sleeping under the stars in swag bags having eaten around a camp fire. We knew from experience of outback Australia that even if, like me, you're not that interested in the constellations, the sheer number of stars in the night sky can't help but leave an impression.

Unfortunately, stupidly you might say, I sprained my ankle three days before going on the trip. I was starting to think that wave sports (surfing, bodyboarding) were not for me anyway. So I thought I'd try skimming, which you see lots of kids in Australia doing. It involves running along in the millimetre or so of water left when a wave pulls back from the beach, throwing down a thin wooden board, and jumping on it, sliding impressively far in a surfing stance. However I tried this with my 30-year-old, currently very well-fed frame and a thick foam bodyboard. It didn't work; my foot got stuck in the sand, and I went over on my ankle. Good thing it was in millimetre-deep water.

Still, it wasn't too bad - with some decent strapping and my hiking boots I was confident I could get round short walks. Luckily on the first day, around Uluru, there was the choice of a 4km and an 8km walk. And by the end of the third day it was pretty sore but I hadn't made it any worse, so I guess I was lucky.

Obligatory shot of Uluru. It definitely looks better from a bit of a distance, and with the sun on it. It was a bit cloudy at sunset so we didn't see it go bright red. Ah well.

As always Faye was impeccably prepared. The fly nets may have looked stupid but these flies are evil. They target every crevice on your face in crack teams of three or four at a time. Those after me had to settle for the sweat on my back. Mwa ha ha ha...

The camps were probably the best thing about the trip. This is the first chilled beer on the second night, and everyone knows how good a cold beer tastes after a day of walking in the sun.

Our guide was a pretty knowledgeable outback survival type, and he managed to find us this delicious witchetty grub in the roots of a (witchetty) tree. We weren't hardcore enough to try it raw...

But even so, four of us trusted the guide's claim that barbecued, they taste like nutty scrambled eggs. And boringly, he was right. It really wasn't that bad - although we each only had a pea-sized chunk.

Kings Canyon was possibly the most beautiful of the three areas we saw. Here's Faye alone in a waterhole, before loads of wrinkly Americans joined her.

The aforementioned canyon.

I'd definitely recommend Wayoutback myself - it was well-paced, the group was nicely varied (not just crusties or pisshead teenage backpackers), the guide was knowledgeable and friendly, and best of all, sleeping under the outback sky at night in just a glorified sleeping bag is superb. Ta for the tip Mum and Liz!

92 Flinders Street: front door key, wardrobe, private bathroom

After five months in a van, and eight months living out of a backpack, those three everyday things represented five-star luxury for us. Even getting up for work didn't seem too much of a chore. Yes, I did finally find employment, though in neither the IT nor the gay entertainment industry. In the end I decided to re-write my CV to emphasise the bar and restaurant jobs I had in France and Germany, and drop it into all the bars and restaurants along Crown Street. Crown Street is the hub of swanky inner suburb Surry Hills, was just round the corner from our house, and is rather less "eclectic" than Oxford Street.

All but one place said no, but luckily that one place was a posh brunch restaurant owned by apparently famous TV chef Bill Granger that specialised in scrambled eggs. I waited tables for breakfast and lunch, about four days a week. You can see it here, via the sorcery of the internet: http://www.bills.com.au/restaurants/surry.htm.
Assorted celebrities? Not an assortment, but I did serve Stan Collymore a Coke. Lucky for him I'm a Forest fan (YOU TREES!) and was never that keen on Gladiators. Friendly service? Of course, although through ever more gritted teeth as the summer of "cricket" progressed.
(NB - the irony of a super-pedant working for a place whose 5-letter name is lacking an apostrophe was not lost on me. But the eggs, but the eggs...)

Sadly, watching the ritual slaughter of English batsmen on TV took up quite a lot of my summertime in Sydney. I must be an optimist - I kept watching session after humiliating session, convinced that England would turn the corner. (Of course they did, only they waited until the Ashes were long gone and I'd left my job - what use is that?)

Mum and Stewart came out to Melbourne for Christmas and as we'd left booking flights too late, we decided to get back behind the wheel and drive the 900km down to Melbourne. We were confident that a speedy modern car could do the journey in half the time we'd taken in the van, i.e. one day not two, and we were just about right. And so far the rental company hasn't taken any money off our credit card for speeding fines, so it's all good.
Melbourne did its best to reinforce my general disappointment in Australia's weather (see below) - it hailed on Christmas Day. So I can't really say what it's like to spend Christmas in summertime. Ah well - I can still tell you that eating out all through Christmas is a good thing.

Most of the rest of the summer was taken up with more eating and drinking. Having voted for Sydney over Melbourne because of the beaches, I must have gone in the sea about three times over the whole summer. Most of that was because of the weather though, to be fair. Until mid-January the weather was barely better than an English summer, and without the two-week heatwave we always get back home. Seriously. As far as I can judge after 9 months, Australia's weather is hugely overrated, especially on the east coast.

No matter - with reliable backup from our housemates Matt and Elena, Faye and I managed to cover an incredible percentage of Sydney's restaurants, and the place doesn't lack for them. There are more details on Faye's blog of course, but the highlights were, in no particular order:
- Huge racks of ribs at Hurricane's in Bondi
- Lebanese food and apple tobacco from hookah pipes at Hannibal's
- Posh Chinese at Billy Kwong (owned by another apparently famous TV chef, Kylie Kwong)
- Cheap-as-chips-but-healthier curries at Home Indian Diner and North Indian Cuisine. Mm, beef vindaloo. Australia does a mint vindaloo. Not literally.
- Roast suckling pig with about a kilo of crackling at Pilu, a swanky place on Freshwater Beach, north of Manly.
- Scrambled eggs at bills, of course. For every five hours I worked I got a free meal, and more often than not that meant the scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. Oh yeaahh... Sounds ordinary but the eggs are made with loads of cream and the toast is about an inch and a half thick. And there's bacon.

Our bedroom


Our balcony


El and the view from her and Matt's room (above our balcony)


That's not even half a rack of ribs at Hurricane's. And that's a steak on my plate. Oh yes.


Dinner and fizzy wine with Mum and Stewart on the beach in St Kilda, Melbourne, on Christmas Eve.


The Boxing Day Test, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Boxing Day. Not all it's cracked up to be folks, when England are scoring at around two runs an over. We did see the fat one's 700th wicket though.


Reflecting on New Year's Eve at Circular Quay. D'oh


Midnight!


On the Manly ferry


Relaxing with a hookah


The piece in my hand is approximately 0.37% of the crackling I ate at Pilu.


One more Aussie blog entry to come, all about our fun- and fly-packed trip to the Red Centre. Then it's over to brockersinasia.blogspot.com for good.

I'm still here!

One or two people have questioned the lack of blog action since, well, a long time ago. I see that as a positive - at least there are people reading it (or trying to).

I'm building up to a big "farewell Australia" entry I swear, but in the meantime I've made a new blog. This one is for 2006 and for Down Under, so is no longer appropriate. So I give you... Disoriented in the Orient. With a little map showing where we think we're going in Asia.