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Melbourne: Sun stops play. Slumdog Millionaire.
Posted by daveb on February 9th, 2009
Joining the roads in Melbourne shocked us a little bit. It’s the biggest city in Australia that we’ve been to yet (4 million people) and we were unprepared for the weight of traffic and the number of lanes it filled. Add trams trundling along and across with navigating the roads for the first time and you’ve got a heady mix headed for momentarily high blood-pressure!
Melbourne is oft quoted as being Australia’s secret city: the locals fiercely defend their claim that it’s much better than Sydney. “Sure, Sydney’s a beautiful tourist city, but I really wouldn’t want to live there… Melbourne’s a much more liveable option”, they say.
Big thanks to Mark, a family friend of Squiffy, who is hosting us slap-bang in the central suburb of Fitzroy. Rather unbrilliantly–and unexpectedly–the apartment is not fitted with air-conditioning and we’re arriving just at the commencement of the hundred year record-breaking heatwave. Melbourne is supposed to be the country’s city with the most temperate climate. It’s often said that all four seasons can be experienced in a single day and, as such, neither air-conditioning nor central-heating is usually fitted. As is becoming quite monotonous for us now, we’re arriving just as the local weatherman predicts freak heat in the mid-forties until further notice.
Instead of spending our first day meandering around the city on foot, we took refuge in the nearby cinema. The air-conditioning in two of it’s screening rooms had packed up, which fed into our criteria of what film to watch: Slumdog Millionaire.
Now I’ve watched some great movies in my time, but I can’t think that I’ve seen a more powerful film. Ever. It didn’t just move me — it rocked me sideways. Perhaps it’s because I’ve only created the opportunity to go to the pictures three times in the last eighteen months. Or, more likely, perhaps it’s because I’ve travelled through India recently and personally struggled with the dog-eat-dog mentality, every man for himself regardless of cost.
Squiffy, myself and much of the audience were totally gripped throughout: I had an almost constant lump in my throat that might have converted to tears at any given moment. Some say the movie is based on a true story. Others say the whole thing has been completely fabricated. No matter: I just thank goodness the for the light-hearted Bollywood-style choreographed-dance as the ending credits rolled, giving the audience (Squiffy and I included) five minutes to remain quietly seated, allowing our minds some much-needed time to process the events which we had just witnessed. Rarely, we both felt compelled to applaud, but equally couldn’t quite find the inner strength to be the first to break the silence. Instead and after the screen went blank, we took our broken–but somewhat mended–heads and hearts to the downstairs coffee bar to continue to sit in silence amongst the remaining cinema-going refugees.
Truly I can’t think of a better written, directed, photographed, scored and acted movie in the last decade. In a single swipe, Slumdog Millionaire has joined The Shawshank Redemption
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Torquay: Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park winner of worst caravan park/campsite award
Posted by daveb on February 6th, 2009
I’m awarding Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park as the winner of Escape the City’s hastily created “Worst Caravan Park/Campsite Award”.
Every country has it’s bad caravan park and campsites; France and Italy have more than their fair share. On the whole, the campsites in Australia have been above par: cleaner than average bathrooms, reasonable camp kitchens, outdoor barbeque areas and perhaps even an air-conditioned TV room for saps like us to escape the heat. It was all going so well until we checked-in to Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park.
The photograph of the overflowing rubbish bin is not a stock photograph taken from an anonymous source on the Internet. It’s a photograph I took of the actual kitchen bin at the Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park camp kitchen at about nine o’clock in the morning. Why is the bin like this? Simple: there’s a total fire ban in the state meaning that nobody can cook on gas at their pitch and only a single, undersized and under provisioned camp kitchen to share between the 140 pitches at this monster site (there’s actually over 600 pitches(!), but many of these will have their own kitchens). There’s a single consumer-style free-standing fridge/freezer to share too, so fat chance of getting any food in there either. The other facilities fare little better: there are a number of toilet/shower blocks around the site to distribute the high foot-traffic. It’s just a shame that they’re so dirty. Why? There are no bins, meaning that empty soap-wrappers and shampoo bottles litter the shower cubicles. And when were the grimy tiled floors last cleaned [properly]? The cushions on the sofas in the TV room were strewn across the floor when I walked past. This room had been made even less inviting by the wall-to-wall line of noisy coin-operated games machines. The first pitch in which we were allocated was already had a car parked in it; no doubt because my neighbour’s pitch wasn’t big enough to house it along with his tent. I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Ok, just one more. I showed my kitchen bin photograph to the man at reception and elicited a “that’s disgusting!” response, just before he returned to his day job.
I can’t argue with the location of the site–it’s close to the beach–but alone that’s just not good enough, given the high asking price and the mismanagement. The reception clerks seemed nice enough, but just shrugged when I asked them–given the total fire ban (including camping gas stoves)–whether they honestly expected hundreds of people to happily share one cooker in the cramped camp kitchen. “I guess the last owner was a bit greedy”, was the best they could muster when pushed. So the last owner was greedy, but what’s the current owner doing about it? “There have been plans for a new camp kitchen now for a while. It’ll probably take four years or so…”
Yes folks, this is purely selfish profiteering at it’s very best. The poster at reception indicates that the site does not give refunds; seems I’m not the first person to be fooled by the glitzy exterior. I’m spreading the word: Torquay Foreshore Caravan Park sucks — there are two others nearby, so try those instead.
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Adelaide to Melbourne: The Great Ocean Road
Posted by Squiffy on February 5th, 2009
From the Fleurieu we took the coast road south-east, towards Melbourne. On arriving in the small town of Millicent, we found a lovely owner run camp site where, for the usual cost of pitching our tent, we were able to hire a caravan. Whilst not very glamourous (it was a brown and orange left over from the 70s) it did have a comfy bed and Wi-Fi, enabling us to get down to the serious business of applying for the ‘The Best Job in the World’. I’m sure many of you are aware by now of Queensland Tourism’s marketing stunt, in which they are advertising a job as the caretaker on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, paying £75 000 for 6 months and providing a 3 bedroom house and many fantastic experiences: For those who are not, see www.islandreefjob.com
Despite the huge number of applicants, we thought we’d try our luck, and devised a script for the 60 second application video. I filmed Dave using our point-and-shoot camera many, many times over due to him having trouble remembering or presenting the words. My favourite out-take was when he was 3/4 of the way through a good cut but messed it up claiming he would ‘love to be the caretaker on the Islands of the Great Barrier Weef’, Jonathon Ross stylie. I also enjoyed the fact that he was wearing my Australia Day deely boppers – very cute. Not sure that we made a winning video but it kept us amused for hours.
As we passed from South Australia into Victoria, Port Fairy, with it’s lovely wharf and boats, was our stop for lunch. Being Australia Day, there were many festivities and activities taking place, and I noticed that the Celebration Cake cutting was scheduled for 2:30pm. Never one to turn down free cake, I headed to the town square at 2:25pm, only to find the locals dispersed and the cake all gone. How is it so, I questioned a remaining onlooker. It seems we had neglected to advance our watches by half an hour as we crossed the border. Damn, too late for cake :o(
Never mind, the vistas along the Great Ocean Road made it all worthwhile. The coast is famous for its limestone rock formations, carved out by the wind and the sea. Whilst all are spectacular, the most infamous of them all are the Twelve Apostles, which we viewed at sunset to catch the changing shadows.
Our last day along the coast road was at Torquay, where we stopped to surf one of Victoria’s most famous spots. In the prevailing conditions,Torquay Beach had perfect waves for us beginners and we had a really good couple of hours in the water, escaping the still 40 degree heat. We’d love to show you pictures of us coolly riding in the waves, but unfortunately, nobody was there to take photos ;o)
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Fleurieu Peninsula: Nude beach olympics cancelled
Posted by daveb on February 4th, 2009
We’re on our way to Melbourne, it’s over seven-hundred kilometres away on the main road and we’ve chosen to travel on the longer, but hopefully more picturesque, coastal roads.
First stop, Tourist Information to find out on which day the Nude Beach Olympics at Adelaide’s Maslin beach are being held. My guidebook only says “around Australia Day” (26th January). Bad news dear readers, for the second year in a row the Nude Beach Olympics has been cancelled! When asked the reason why, the sort-of helpful Tourist Information clerk barked “Couldn’t get enough , I suppose.” As such, I’m unable to bring you any high quality journalism nor photographs from the event. We drove on an telephoned a couple of diving schools to enquire about submerging ourselves at the ex-HMAS Hobart shipwreck dive site a little further down the coast. More bad news: as a fairly inexperienced diver, I am not allowed to go to the site this early on in my career — boo, hiss!
Instead, we spend the day driving the Fleurieu Peninsula which provided some really beautiful hillscapes; an enjoyable sight in contrast with the quite flat coastal roads of [link]Western Australia and the Nullarbor. For a treat, Squiffy sanctioned the purchase of an evening meal in a quite upmarket pub before we settled into our air bed in our car boot, overlooking the ocean. I’ve always wanted a place with sea views!
PS: I would also like to publically apologise to Squiffy for ordering the vindaloo at the posh pub last night. In the future, I promise not to eat fiery curry just before imprisoning you in a confined space for the rest of the evening.
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Adelaide: Hugging koalas. Kangaroo nuts.
Posted by daveb on February 3rd, 2009
We headed out towards Gorge Wildlife Park to do what seems only right in Australia: to hug a Koala.
Factoid 1: Koalas are not bears. Calling them as such is an insult. Factoid 2: They are indescribably cute and if the park hadn’t offered Koala hugs in a controlled manner, I’ve no doubt that most people would jump the wire fence to have a go anyway. We gather that one Koala does all the hugging per session, leaving the others to sleep in their trees and complain about the loud children. It seems that our Koala was quite content to hug all manner of annoying kids (and us, of course), just so long as the park ranger kept feeding her her favourite eucalyptus leaves. “Gimme the leaves! Gimme the leaves! Those sweet, sweet leaves! Gimme, gimme!”
After the hugging was done we legged-it back towards the main road to watch the Tour Down Under–complete with one of my heroes, Lance Armstrong
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Adelaide: Haigh’s Chocolates and Glenelg
Posted by daveb on February 2nd, 2009
The day started with a tour of Haigh’s Chocolate factory. Haigh’s is not a well known brand outside of Australia, but within the country it’s a bit of an institution. From the buzz in the waiting room, it was clear that people were excited to be here. Unfortunately for us, the tour was very rushed indeed. I can’t fault our guide though, I peeked at her office whiteboard and am sure that she did the best job that she could given number she had to lead that day. What followed was a tour that seemed almost more assembly line than the factory assembly lines itself! It was interesting to contrast the operation with that of Nestle’s Callier factory in Broc to see how a smaller outfit produces essentially the same product in smaller quantities. Interesting to note that many of Haigh’s chocolates are hand-wrapped. If anyone thinks that working in a chocolate factory is a dream job, then think again. Bless ’em, some of the staff looked rightly bored stiff as they shaped dollop after dollop of almond cluster choccies. Whilst a bit more restrictive that the unsupervised, unmonitored, unlimited tasting room in Callier, the Haigh’s tasting experience was nonetheless a worthy one. (Note that photography is not allowed inside the factory, so unfortunately I don’t have a lot to show you in the gallery.)
We left the premises wielding a discounted slab of hazelnut milk chocolate and headed towards Glenelg, Adelaide’s nearest beach to scoff our chocolate picnic. We finished the day with a trip to the local cinema to see Baz Luhrmann’s Australia with Nicole Kidman. I gather that the film has received some very mixed reviews. I must say that we both thoroughly enjoyed the three-hour movie and didn’t find that it dragged at all. If you haven’t seen it and you’ve got a vague interest in seeing a bit of the outback without getting out of your chair, then I’d recommend it to you.
We’ve really enjoyed our stay in Adelaide. Some people say the city is boring. I disagree and I don’t think that it’s just because we drove for four days across the Nullarbor nothingness to get here. True, the skyline is a bit drab, but I love the parks, there are loads of places to eat to suit all budgets and the people are super friendly and really helpful to lost tourists. It’s got a fabulous beach and is only a little over an hour from a spectacular wine region. It’s a city on a human scale, which is what I like and I’m adding it to my “where might I live” list. So there.
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Adelaide: Picnic in the park and the Barossa Valley
Posted by daveb on January 30th, 2009
After a near constant four day drive crossing the Nullarbor from Kalgoorlie, we arrived at Adelaide. Named the city within a park for good reason: the compact central business district is flanked by parkland on all sides. We spent the first day familiarising ourselves with the city before treating each other to a posh picnic in the Botanic Gardens — after all we had been living on tinned food for the last few days!
The next day, we headed into the Barossa Valley; Australia’s premier wine region. As I had previously driven The Squifter around the Champagne region in France so she could undertake the tastings, this time it was my turn to enjoy the tipple. In addition to the biggies–Wolf Blass and Jacob’s Creek–we also stopped-in at a couple of much smaller operations to sample their wares. One tip to anyone following in our footsteps and coming to the region: don’t try to photograph the Jacob’s Creek signpost with the vineyard in the background. You’ll have to walk along a 110km/hour road to get a good spot, theirs no pavement and the trucks come awfully close to side-swiping you. I survived, but I wouldn’t do it again! There’s a professionally composed photograph in the visitors centre — take a picture of that instead!
One thing that made us giggle was the relative lack of fanfare that accompanied the tastings. In France, the server would indicate that you should “note the tones of the white fruit and enjoy with Filet Mignon and Grey Poupon*”. Whereas in Australia you’re much more likely to get “look mate, it’s a bloody good wine. Have it with friends or a pizza.” Much more our style!
* In truth, no French chateaux would ever endorse Grey Poupon mustard — it’s a US brand made with a rabbi (seriously, in a way). I just threw that in to see who is paying attention.
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Eyre Highway: Crossing the Nullarbor
Posted by daveb on January 29th, 2009
We left Kalgoorlie and pointed Don, our car, towards Adelaide in the adjoining state of South Australia; over two thousand kilometres away. It took us four days to get to Adelaide and I’ll spare you four fairly uninteresting journal entries by writing one fairly uninteresting one instead. As in Western Australia, the roads here are long, straight and allow for great speeds. Unlike in Western Australia, there were relatively few dead kangaroos on the roadside and much more traffic — we passed at least a couple of cars each hour!
Surprisingly, there are people living out here. Every now and again (and I mean only now and again) we spotted houses from the road and there were a number of gravel track turn-offs with modified oil can letterboxes indicating some form of human presence. The handy Nullarbor tourist map highlights each township and roadhouse along the way, listing the top tourist picks at each one. Our favourite was Yalata which, as listed in the brochure, has two tourist attractions: the “lookout for camels, wombats and kangaroos” road sign and a second one informing of the “Eastern End of Treeless Plain”.
Squiffy hit her boredom threshold on day one and slept most of the way when she wasn’t behind the wheel. On the other hand, I found the drive quite invigorating. At most points the roads were nearly completely flat and straight. The asphalt disappeared on the horizon at its vanishing point. In absence of the same quantity of road kill that we saw along the western coast, we could travel more quickly without the same level of worry about bruising our car and reducing local wildlife numbers. Seldom does one get such a long time to think, without distraction. In hindsight, I just wish that my brain could have pondered something more useful than “bloody ‘ell, this is a long road”.
Notable moments included:
- The somewhat regular Royal Flying Doctor Service “Emergency Airstrip” signs at the side of the road, indicating that we might have to share the tarmac with a landing plane.
- The Nullarbor Plain (translates as “No Trees” in Aborigine) is the focal point of this trip as it’s about halfway between Perth and Adelaide. A driver has already travelled a long, long way to get to it and has a long, long way to go after crossing it. The whole journey between the two cities is commonly referred to as “crossing the Nullarbor”.
- The density of stars in the night sky from the camp site of the roadhouse in the middle of the Plain.
We’ve deemed it too much effort to put up our tent for single-night stays. Instead, we sleep in the car. Usually on the air bed in the boot, but if we really can’t be bothered with moving all of our kit to the front two seats, we’ll recline the front passenger seat and sleep as we can (see pics). We spent two nights like this at noisy roadhouses in which, even though they’re in the middle of nowhere, invariably have a disproportionate amount of noisy drunks in their camp site. Avoiding a third night of similar disturbance, we headed for the solitude of a sheep station that also offers “heritage accommodation” and stayed in the shearers quarters.
Cruise control is a wonderful thing.
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Kalgoorlie: Our third time in a brothel
Posted by daveb on January 28th, 2009
Kalgoorlie is the gold mining capital of Western Australia. Being over six hundred kilometres from Perth and with a population of over thirty thousand, it rises out of the desert in the same way that Las Vegas just appears out of nowhere in Nevada. I gather from speaking to people that it used to be a really gritty town, but nowadays has been made-over to draw in more tourists. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you too much more about the town itself because I’ve spent much of the three days here lying in the camp site’s TV room–a reconstruction of a council house sitting room–with my left leg in an elevated position in an attempt to reduce the swelling of my balloon-shaped foot.
I did manage to hobble my way from the car to the viewing platform to see the ‘Super Pit’, a kilometre-squared gold mine — in fact, the largest gold-producing square kilometre in the world. From the photos it’s difficult to appreciate the scale of this thing, but believe me when I tell you that it’s a big hole. In the second picture of the Super Pit, I’ve zoomed in as far as I could to show you a cluster of three drilling vehicles. These drilling trucks are the size of vehicle-based cranes that we have in the UK; now go back to the previous zoomed-out picture and notice those cranes in the top-left of the shot.
Any children reading this blog should now go and read a book or play on their computer as they will find the rest of this entry very boring adult stuff. (Yes, Kane that means you!) And Mums: you’re continuing at your own risk too…
It (almost) goes without saying that where there’s gold, there’s men–away from their families–mining it. And where there’s men away from their families, there’ll be beer in the bars, racing with cars, and… ahem… brothels. Not only are the working brothels in Kalgoorlie (and the rest of Western Australia) legitimate businesses, but here they also run daytime tours for other curious adults who want to understand a bit more about their history and trade. Naturally, Claire begged me to take her on the tour so in we walked together. Long time readers may remember that this is not the first time that we’ve found ourselves inside such a place: there was the ancient house in Pompeii, and who could forget our ill-chosen venue for the coffee stop in Switzerland?
After being greeted at the very professional receptionist’s desk, we were ushered into the waiting room just behind where we introduced ourselves to the other guests: a mature Canadian couple who had one of the house’s two dogs hiding beside their chairs, and mature-ish Australian man. It was a very neutrally decorated room and could have been a small time doctor’s waiting room if it weren’t for the large pair of rubber boobs and double-ended marital aid (Claire wouldn’t let me use the word “dildo”) beside the Australian man’s chair and the French maid outfit just to my left. The madam of the house, Madam Carmel, entered the room. A very, very normal looking lady in her early fifties opened her mouth and the most eloquent high-society English accent filled the room.
Over the next hour and a half, Madam Carmel took us to the ‘starting stalls’ (where the punters and the capitalists agree their deals) and each of the bedrooms, recounting stories from times gone past. Including the one where a punter died whilst on the job, the room in which one mature lady serviced seventy gentlemen in one day and–who could forget–the one where a lady came for a tour of the brothel and, due to lack of numbers, was asked to return the following day. After politely agreeing, she returned to her car moments later ploughed her vehicle straight through the front of the building and kept repeatedly reversing and ramming the structure under the police managed to prise her out of her vehicle over thirty minutes later.
The photo gallery follows and children and embarrassed Mums should probably look away now… For those wishing to continue to the gallery, we’ve decided to run a caption competition for the last picture (number thirteen) — leave your entry in the comments section. And remember, our Mums might be reading this.
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Kalgoorlie: Outback hospital visit
Posted by daveb on January 27th, 2009
After returning to Perth/Fremantle and getting our car serviced again, we took off east towards Kalgoorlie, the gold-mining town in the desert famed for producing most of the world’s gold from within it’s kilometre-squared “Super Pit” mine. More on that tomorrow, once we’ve had a look around.
It’s been a six days since we left Exmouth, which is where I acquired a nasty bite on one of my left toes. I presume that it happened underwater, but can’t be sure. The pharmacist in Freo advised me to just down a handful of Ibuprofens every few hours and monitor it, to check if the venom spreads. After arriving in Kalgoorlie, 600 kms from Perth, now I can tell that it’s infected: my whole left foot has turned fuchsia.
Happily, Kalgoorlie has a hospital and so we spent our first evening in the town eating pizza in the waiting room and having my toe cut open, swabbed and puss removed between the male nurse’s forefinger and thumb. It was and still is bloody painful, thanks for asking.
I’m on antibiotics now and so hope that the swelling appeases within the next day or two, to let me explore what looks like a really cool town.
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