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Fremantle: Christmas Day 2008
Posted by daveb on January 13th, 2009
Fear not dear reader, your feelings of deja-vu relate to the fact that this blog trails reality by a week or two. Your Christmas Day 2008 celebrations were indeed carried-out last year…
After exchanging cards and presents from under our super whizzbang miniature Chinese-made LED Christmas tree, we set about today’s mission: to cook a traditional Christmas dinner for the first time. And I forgot to buy any gravy granules, so that’ll just have to be done the hard way…
When we did the big food shop the other day, we only had a choice between a whole turkey or a pre-cooked vacuum-packed breast — we plumped (ahem!) for the breast and picked up a pork loin to roast, so as not to feel like complete cheats. Aside from nearly slicing off my finger, underestimating the cooking time by a third and nearly not being able to open the bubbly, I’m pleased to report that we did really well and we were chuffed with our efforts. The food was delicious, save the packet-stuffing balls which were really quite terrible and my anaemic gravy which was similar in ingredients and flavour to wallpaper paste.
Still as a first attempt in a ‘foreign kitchen’, we gave ourselves a big slap on the back and went out for a drive along the Swan river. We were really lucky to see some black swans and even a dolphin!
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Cottesloe Beach: GMTV Television Appearance
Posted by daveb on January 12th, 2009
Flush with our recent successes of renting an apartment and buying a car, we rewarded ourselves by spending Christmas Eve on Cottesloe Beach. Our waterside relaxation didn’t last too long though, for little did I remember that the GMTV crew would be at the other end of the beach broadcasting live video messages from sunburnt Brits back home to Blighty for friends and family to see. The crowd was large and the competition was stiff. Armed with our story of having travelled seventeen months to get here, I made straight for the production manager to try to tip the balance of luck in our favour. After making my case, she promised nothing but hinted that if we were to stand somewhere near the bottom of the steps at such-and-such a time, we’d be in with a good chance. “Nine-month pregnant expectant mother over here!”, came the half-excited shriek of her assistant. Drat… better luck next time.
As it happened, Claire and I found ourselves in lucky footings as the crew parted the crowd to form a tunnel for the camera to walk through. We were on either side and so surely one of us would get our mugs on TV. As the photos in the gallery below show, I got a long-range bobbing-head-in-the-crowd shot, whilst Squiffy fought off women and children to almost fill the screen as the presenter was interviewing the I’m-mates-with-the-production-company stooge who was planted to her left moments before the camera began its walk.
For the first time in my life, I figured out why anyone would actually want to be a celebrity. They wouldn’t have to stand under the burning sun for an hour with all the other plebs just to send a Christmas message to their Mums. The things we do for showbusiness…
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Fremantle: Got home, now buy car
Posted by daveb on January 11th, 2009
Now that we’ve moved into our lovely swanky studio apartment, it’s time to turn our attention towards buying a car to take us more than ten thousand kilometres around Australia, to infinity and beyond. We’ve got to be careful what we buy. We want something ultra-reliable, well known by mechanics, spacious (enough to sleep in, when we can’t be bothered to pitch a tent or if the wildlife is too scary) and has the most brilliant air-conditioning. We’re setting ourselves a tight budget of less than AUD$4000 (under £2000) for the vehicle, to limit our downside loss should we have to force a quick sale in a few months time.
We’re both romantically taken with the notion of buying a 4×4, preferably a Toyota Land Cruiser (to remind us of our African safari) but after scouring the newspapers, websites, noticeboards of the hostels and, in particular, seeing an 470,000km example where the bodywork was just about clinging-on with bits of fishing wire, it became clear to us that we hadn’t the budget to purchase a decent vehicle nor the appetite to invite a serious–read: expensive–breakdown in the middle of the desert. And it didn’t have air-conditioning either! I’ve included a photo of the Land Cruiser we saw in the gallery below, just to show people what they look like — regardless of how funky it looks in the photo, believe me it had a rust problem that made Yoko, our old camper van, look like a concours winner.
We lowered our sights away from the world of 4×4’s and refocused towards a ‘family’ station wagon. Outside of the Land Cruiser world, two brands kept coming up that would meet our reliability/serviceability criteria: Ford and Holden (nee Vauxhall/GM). In this price range, it turned out that we would still be pushed to find something decent. There are no compulsory MOT’s over here and so private sales and auctions are fraught with danger. Plus every car we phoned-up about had sold that morning. The dealerships turned us away, telling us that balancing our criteria and budget was impossible — and no way would we get a warranty anywhere with our money…
And then we met Don. A seventy year-old lovable-rogue who kept rolling out the classics like “I’m not a mechanic, nor a fortune teller. I can’t say what’s what, it’s up to you to make up your own mind. I’m not forcing you to buy nothing.” And there was a station wagon on his yard. It was a Ford. 1993. It was big. And had ‘only’ done 270,000km on the clock. It was AUD$3000 and Don agreed to throw in a country-wide twelve month warranty, which should cover us against any really major works. Was this to be the car that would carry us through the outback and around Oz?
No, it was not. A test drive proved the car to be a most disconnected affair, the powerless engine and floppy accelerator pedal showed up this old codger for what he was. And the odometer didn’t move–gawd knows how many kilometres this car had done–rendering the warranty null and void. Returning the keys and our odometer concerns to Don, his boss Dennis appeared and suggested that we might like to give a more recent example a go: “I’m sure you’ll find it a totally different drive.”
And it was! Three years younger, 70,000 less kilometres on the tamper-proof electronic odometer, cleaner interior, tinted windows (very useful in the heat), a better warranty and a totally, totally different drive altogether. Not a perfect deal by any means: it cost another thousand dollars and the last owner had obviously hastily backed into his trailer too many times, spotting small dinks and dents on the rear door, but otherwise it was great. The engine (4.0L petrol) was clearly capable and the air-conditioning re-enacted a winter’s day in Sweden. I smiled at Claire, “this is the one.”
So meet Don (named after the salesman): our ’96 Ford Falcon barge, who will accompany us north, south, east and west throughout this massive land. We’re thrilled.
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Fremantle: A place to call our own. Temporarily.
Posted by daveb on January 10th, 2009
More or less straight after we arrived in Australia, we began looking for a place to stay for a couple of weeks over Christmas (don’t worry readers, you’re not going mad — this blog trails reality by a week or two, remember?). A short-term let should work out a good deal cheaper than staying at a hostel and will put an end to the queue for the cooker/shower/toilet/basin — if only temporarily.
So far we’ve not been too impressed with what we’ve seen: a small, shared city-pad in Perth with a slimy landlord (Squiffy’s words, not mine), a reasonable room in a massive house (with swimming pool) close to the beach but miles away from anything else and a twelve bedroom shared-kitchen/bathroom no-parents-to-clean-up-after-the-kids dive just north of Perth city complete with a drug dealer’s telephone number handily scribbled onto the gatepost. Oh, and three policemen finger-printing a car parked right outside the gate.
And then we found this place. A compact and bijou studio apartment a short bus ride from Fremantle town, close to shops and a beach. It’s brand new and the owner is a very likeable and reasonable fellow. Unlike the other accommodation that we looked at, the kitchen and bathroom are not shared and so we’d have the full run of the place to ourselves. This is the one for us, we thought, and happily exchanged our monies for a set of keys.
We immediately set about home-making — staying still in a place of our own for two weeks is a very rare opportunity for us. In fact, we’ve not had a private place of our own since this time last year, when we were in my family’s apartment in Spain.
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Fremantle: Old port town shines
Posted by daveb on January 9th, 2009
The closest coastal town to Perth is Fremantle, or “Freo” if you’re Australian (they’ll abbreviate and add o’s to the end of any word), and the two are commonly intertwined in tourist guidebooks; you don’t go to one without going to the other. Freo is a port town so there’s not much of a beach as such, but don’t let that put you off. Since the America’s Cup came to town in the Eighties, the place has been cleaned-up and it shines well. People say that it’s a touch more laid back than Perth, although I didn’t think that Perth was a hard city in any way. There’s so many cafes along one street, that it’s been named the Cappuccino Strip. We had a lot of fun eating fish and chips out of paper bags at the fishing boat harbour, supping beer at the Little Creature brewey and scouring the markets for festive bargains.
We like Freo, possibly even more than Perth so we’ve decided to up-sticks from the (sort of) “Big Smoke” and look for an apartment here for a couple of weeks over Crimbo.
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Aussie barbecue dog food steak
Posted by daveb on January 8th, 2009
I couldn’t help myself here. The Aussie’s take their barbecues very seriously indeed. Even the dog gets a steak!
“Bruce, throw another steak on tha barbie for ‘ere Rover. Ya mangral!”
(Sorry, told you I couldn’t help myself.)
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Perth: Day one Down Under
Posted by daveb on January 7th, 2009
G’day Bruce! We’ve arrived in Australia! Squiffy’s favourite country and my biggest waypoint since our world tour began! Hoorah!
We’re in Perth, Western Australia and I’m in the mood to share some eyebrow-raising factoids about the place with you. Western Australia (WA), one of Australia’s eight states is also easily the largest, covering a third of the country’s land mass. WA is the size of Western Europe and yet has a population of only 1.9 million people. 1.4 million of which live in, or around, its pint-sized capital Perth. Which means that there’s less than half a million people outside of the city in a land so vast that my pea-sized brain can’t yet quite grasp the reality that we face on our impending roadtrip.
Perth is oft-quoted as being the world’s most isolated capital city — it’s closer to Jakarta in Indonesia than Sydney, on the other side of Oz. From the central business district (town centre/downtown), you certainly don’t feel isolated at all. The place is positively buzzing with activity and appears to have everything one could need.
Claire (and her Dad) have been particularly keen for me to create fond memories of Australia, as this is a place that they’d both love to live. I must say: So far, so good. To me, Perth’s a bit like Cardiff (which I love) with a handful of skyscrapers, a much more picturesque river setting and perpetual blue skies.
After munching my way through my first beetroot sandwich (an antipodian institution, I gather), we spent a few days exploring the city. We visited the Perth Mint to learn about gold and see the yellow stuff being poured. Days later, a lovely evening was had singing Carols by Candle Light by the water in the shadow of the skyscrapers, along with five thousand other people.
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Australia: Planning the ultimate outback road trip
Posted by daveb on January 6th, 2009
At time of writing, we’re over seventeen months into our travels and, having cooled-off from India in Singapore and Malaysia, are just about ready to undertake another big overground journey. This time, we’re planning to buy a car — hopefully a big one too. Maybe even a Toyota Land Cruiser like the one in which we were driven around the northern Tanzania Safari circuit.
We’ve arrived in Perth, on the west coast, and will hang around for a couple of weeks to celebrate Christmas and see in the New Year. If the car-thing works out, in early January we’ll wave civilisation goodbye and hug the coast north to Exmouth to dive Ningaloo Reef — which many guidebooks rate as more impressive than the Great Barrier Reef. From there, we’ll head inland into the outback and in a southerly direction to visit the gold rush mining town of Kalgoorlie. Further south we’ll drive the Nullarbor Plain, which roughly translated means “no trees”. Crossing the 1,350km Nullarbor by car is considered the ultimate outback roadtrip and should be a good test of our endurance. We’ll hop onto the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide, for some awesome coastal roads with accompanying views. The total distance from Perth to Adelaide is 2,700km, so the journey will probably take us the best part of a morning… From Adelaide, we’ll likely curve it around to Sydney, via Melbourne. If we’ve enough energy reserves left (not to mention days on our visa), we’ll climb north to Cairns for more diving in the Great Barrier Reef. I’ve not yet managed to squeeze in a divertion to Uluru (Ayers Rock) on the itinerary, but am certain that we’ll pay a visit even if it is a fly-in/fly-out job — it really is in the middle of nowhere! Oh and, we want to skip over to Tasmania too. Is that asking a bit much?
Make no mistake that this is a big road trip. I reckon that we’ll cover 10-15,000km in three months or less. We’ll be moving fast. Choice of vehicle will be an important one: in some places in the outback, we’re told that days can pass before seeing another car. Our criteria will be reliability, parts availability/servicability, air-conditioning and resalability — in that order. And we want to buy it for a credit-crunch-busting AUD$4000 (under £2000) or less, which is quite a big ask!
We’ve shared our plans with the locals and and the common responses include:
- The heat up north is unbearable, easily topping 40 degrees.
- The persistent flies up north are unbearable (we’ve bought fly nets to hang over our hats).
- The distances and desolation are much greater than we think — our drive through the uninhabited Skeleton Coast in Namibia will have been useful practice.
- The outback effortlessly fries cars. We must check the cooling system often.
- We’re quite mad to attempt such a journey at all. Even more so at this time of year.
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Singapore: Cable cars and Karaoke
Posted by daveb on January 5th, 2009
We’ve now booked our flight to Australia, leaving from Singapore in a couple of days, so we made our way back from Kuala Lumpur to my saviour city. Carefully balancing our wallets, we enjoyed a cable car ride between Mount Faber and Sentosa Island, which is a bit wacky because it actually tunnels through a skyscraper to get between its destinations.
On our miniature budget there didn’t appear to be too much to do on Mount Faber apart from get back into our sky car and head towards all that is Sentosa — an island just off the coast of southern Singapore, which seems to have been manufactured into a Disney-esque pleasure resort. I treated Squiffy to a 4D cinema experience, which essentially involved watched a childish movie wearing 3D spectacles and occasionally gets rocked about, being sprayed with water or having our legs tickled under the seats. Manufactured and costly as it was, we both really enjoyed our the experience; more so because the group of Japanese twenty-somethings sat next us couldn’t contain their shrieks and screams.
After the movie, we decided that we should probably save our cash for more authentic travel experiences and–like the utter cheapskates that we are–sat on the free bus and looped the island circuit before returning to the mainland.
The next day, we discovered the once popular, now “so passe” (according to one local) Clarke Quay, complete with eponymous shopping centre which is where we discovered the joys of the KTV lounge — Karaoke in our language (alright, not our language at all, but you know what I mean). I hope by now that you’ve had a good belly-laugh at our Christmas song and New Year’s Eve atrocity. We had a lot of fun recording them and hope that your ears have stopped bleeding by now…
Thanks a lot Singapore. We’ve really enjoyed our stay here, albeit at some financial cost. You are the only place I know to with grand pianos in your hospitals and signs banishing the carriage of certain fruits on your public transport!
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Kuala Lumpur: Different drinks
Posted by daveb on January 4th, 2009
Aside from all the Asian people busying about, sometimes it’s sometimes easy to forget that you’re in a far away land with different customs, cultures and cuisine. That is, until you open a drinks menu…
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