This blog is no longer active as Mullarky is no longer travelling. Just sort of living.
Monday, 15 February 2016
Friday, 7 August 2015
Painted City
If you're a follower on instagram you may be aware that I like to snap pictures of street art in Melbourne. I've never lived anywhere before where street art is such a valued and celebrated part of the artistic culture of the place. Melbourne loves street art. In this area particularly (around Fitzroy) businesses actually go out of their way to have their buildings decorated as a kind of advertising: a woman with long flowing locks (naked) on the side of a hairdresser's building; a humanoid cat (again, naked) where once there was a cattery. Those are however two unusual examples because the art doesn't generally feature naked women/felines, but even in those cases, there's nothing graphic.
I've begun to collect images of some of my favourite pieces of art. Though I don't know who created most of them, there are two artists I'm familiar with - Kaffeine and Lucy Lucy - and I'll start with a gorgeous collaboration they did near here a few months ago.
This is another piece by Kaffeine discovered in the CBD. You can see how much she loves animals, and I personally love her style. We had the opportunity to meet her at her Berry Street charity book launch and we offered her the big white wall in our apartment! (If we are lucky enough to have her paint it, I will certainly share pictures.)
These two are from the CBD and Fitzroy respectively, and quite different in scale. The ballerina is just on a wall beside a cafe, not much bigger than your hand. My picture of the skeleton is quite old and I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was about knee-high and seems to be made of paper pasted onto the wall. It's so great to be doing something boring, like walking through the CBD, and just find yourself surprised by a bit of guerilla metropolitan decorating.
This is a selection of wall-size murals around Fitzroy and Collingwood. I couldn't do justice to the top image at the time of day I was photographing it, but there is an outline of a bird's skull and beak over the woman's face, and it is painted up the side of a multi-level building; quite a sight to behold. The next two were both found while wandering around industrial Collingwood. It's a quiet area with a lot of warehouses that doubles as a giant art gallery.
I've begun to collect images of some of my favourite pieces of art. Though I don't know who created most of them, there are two artists I'm familiar with - Kaffeine and Lucy Lucy - and I'll start with a gorgeous collaboration they did near here a few months ago.
This was all one continuous piece but it was hard to fit into one photo, so here's a collection of mine and Lachy's instagram photos of it. I'm not usually stuck in between the cow and the girl. In fact, this mural didn't last long before it was painted over by a piece I don't like at all and which hasn't been painted over since. I don't know what the ethics of painting over someone else's work is, but I'm sure it's the nature of the job and street artists know their work is temporary.
These two are from the CBD and Fitzroy respectively, and quite different in scale. The ballerina is just on a wall beside a cafe, not much bigger than your hand. My picture of the skeleton is quite old and I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was about knee-high and seems to be made of paper pasted onto the wall. It's so great to be doing something boring, like walking through the CBD, and just find yourself surprised by a bit of guerilla metropolitan decorating.
This is a selection of wall-size murals around Fitzroy and Collingwood. I couldn't do justice to the top image at the time of day I was photographing it, but there is an outline of a bird's skull and beak over the woman's face, and it is painted up the side of a multi-level building; quite a sight to behold. The next two were both found while wandering around industrial Collingwood. It's a quiet area with a lot of warehouses that doubles as a giant art gallery.
These images just give you an idea of how some areas of Melbourne are saturated with art; there's nothing like walking down a laneway lit up at night in an immersive haze of colour. The last image is of a building in Fitzroy which I believe to be the studio of a few artists.
I'm a country girl at heart, but as cities go, this one is pretty beautiful.
Friday, 26 June 2015
Road Trip Recap
A couple of months ago Lachy suggested we take a road trip, just drive inwards and take a look at the outback. We've done a few forays into the mountains and along the coast, but never actually considered driving in before. We decided to go in search of some desert. Looking at Google Maps in the vague direction we were considering, we recognised one of the place names as being near a wildlife sanctuary we wanted to visit, just over the NSW border. That became the one fixed point for our five-day road trip. We were also joined by our good friend Patrick who also wanted to see more of his homeland.
We set off on a Saturday morning, not exactly early after breakfast with friends, general slow-going accompanying my hangover, and loading up one car only to move everything over into another (a 4WD we were fortunate enough to be able to borrow). We had only driven as far north as Castlemaine (the 'Maine) by lunchtime and we'd already stopped at a market for donuts. We had a couple of pastries each from Hot & Crusty, pulled out our brand new printed and bound road map (foreseeing a lack of phone signal in our futures) and tried to decide where we were aiming to be by nightfall. We knew we'd need to be in Mildura by the end of Day Two to get out to the sanctuary early the next morning, so we were aiming to get about halfway.
In the end no decision was made until I was driving us down one of the longest, straightest, emptiest roads of my life and Lachy found a national park with a campsite not too far away. He called up Parks Victoria as the webpage suggested and they had never even heard of this park. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of actually camping because I thought we'd brought the tent as an emergency backup. I don't know what else I was expecting but I'd been so busy handing in assignments etc that I hadn't even considered where we were actually going to sleep once we hit the road.
Our tarmac road turned into a dirt one and we then followed a road sign ominously announcing 'CEMETERY' to our campground. We never actually saw the cemetery, but we did startle a mob of kangaroos as we drove into Terrick Terrick National Park. We hadn't seen another car in so long it was a bit of a shock to find someone else parked there. They turned out to be day visitors who jumped into the car and drove off almost as soon as we'd arrived.
It was only a very small park but we had the run of it. What I thought was a grassy hill shading the campsite turned out to be in fact a very large moss-covered rock. We proceeded to scramble up it and from the summit we could see to the horizon in every direction. Nothing but trees on one side, farmland on the other. As we made our way back down again Patrick called out to draw my attention to something - a rock wallaby, grazing right in front of us. We all sat down to watch it and enjoy the quiet. I realised that my ears were ringing, and that they probably did every day, but I was so rarely in a place so quiet that I could hear it. The ringing died away as the evening drew on. I can hear trams passing and car alarms blaring all through the night from my apartment - I wonder how often my ears get treated to true silence.
We cleared away twigs and stones and pitched our tent in the campsite. We hadn't had the forethought to pack camping mats so we unloaded all our blankets and sleeping bags into the tent to deal with later. In the meantime we set to cooking ourselves a one-pot dinner with the groceries we'd bought at Bendigo on the way in. Potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and pasta all boiled together with stock cubes, and served with bread. It's amazing what you find delicious when you are out camping! We lay around, chatted and roasted marshmallows in the dark, and I started reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed with my headtorch. A beautiful place to start reading a book as adventurous as that!
We managed to arrange the blankets and all three of us into the two-man tent in such a way that we weren't too cold and uncomfortable and (amazingly) we slept. I thought we'd be up with the dawn but it was my phone alarm that woke us at 7am, and Lachy and I hiked up to the top of the stone-hill again to see the sun rising and do a bit of yoga. Well, I did Warrior 3 for about two seconds, and Lachy did a few push-ups. We boiled some water and had some hot chocolate and coffee. It was so quiet that when a crow flew past I heard every beat of its wings like it was the size of a hippogriff.
We drove north-west, stopping in Kerang for brunch and reaching Mildura by about 4pm. We were so exhausted from the night before that as soon as we'd found a motel to check in to we were pretty much straight into our beds reading and using our computers, taking showers and washing our dishes from the night before (there was no running water in the campsite). We mustered enough energy to drive down the road to pick up takeaway pizzas and bring them home, and were pretty much unconscious once they'd been eaten.
We got up early and restocked on groceries before heading to Wentworth, New South Wales (about half an hour away). I called ahead to the sanctuary to let them know we were coming but alas! Rain was coming in, which would turn the dirt roads to rivers and leave us stranded there for the next few days. We only had five days set aside for travelling, though, so decided not to risk it. Instead we pulled out the map again and made a contingency plan. To the south-west were both the Big Desert and the Little Desert national parks, so we'd just drive straight into them and find somewhere to camp. We stopped in Murrayville to eat our lunch of bread and hummus and enquire in one of the shops as to where we could get some chopped wood - it had been raining since we'd left that morning and wouldn't be easy to make a fire that night. We were given the phone number of a guy 'who chops wood' but decided to just buy some coals from the supermarket and figure it out.
We drove first down a wide dirt road that crossed the Big Desert, but had to turn back once we reached a sign saying it was a dry weather road only, even in a 4WD. Still, we took a break to admire the desert, though covered in scrub and not the dry dunes I had in mind, not like anything I'd seen before. We found a sealed road through the desert and finally a campsite too. Miraculously we managed to get a fire going in the rain and shoved another pot full of food into the flames to cook. While the boys kept the fire alive, I rearranged the contents of the car so that we could all sleep in the back, and it was only once I'd spent half an hour playing tetris that we realised there was no way all three of us tall young people were going to be able to sleep in there unless we had our feet or heads sticking out. We ate our dinner in the concrete hut at the campsite and repacked the car so everything was in the boot, then headed south in search of a motel.
The first big town we came to was Bordertown, South Australia, but Lachy mentioned that he thought someone once told him that Bordertown was a dodgy place, and that combined with the Old West name didn't put us in a great frame of mind once we arrived. We convinced ourselves that we'd be beaten up by truckers if we stayed in one of the motels, and when Lachy and I finally did get out to find there were no rooms available and ran back into the car yelling 'drive!' we gave Paddy quite a scare.
So our unfounded fears led us to Nhill, where we spent the night in the Zero Inn run by a lovely woman with a huge cat named Pizza who at first sight I thought was a wallaby. After that we set off to drive south through the Little Desert, which fortunately has a sealed road right through but unfortunately really is very Little indeed. We did however see lots of kangaroos and hear some pretty cool birds. We drove on, listening to the soundtrack from Mad Max: Fury Road until we saw something odd in the distance. 'Is that a rock?' I asked.
Mitre Rock stands out against the landscape of farmland and on this particular day it towered up into the low clouds. We pulled up in the car park, puzzled for a minute over the signs directing us to the 'Exodus Area' and the 'Priest & Deacon Area', then climbed to the top of it. On the path were droppings so fresh that we concluded they must have come from a rock wallaby watching us from around a corner that very moment. On the way back down the cloud lifted enough for us to see a small lake right next to where we'd parked.
We continued on until we reached the Grampians, where Lachy took the wheel to navigate us along the cliff-hugging road to Halls Gap. We stopped at the Broken Falls Lookout to... well, take a look, paused briefly in the town of Halls Gap to admire the scenery/kangaroos and conclude that we'd have to come back for a hiking trip, then drove out the other side of the mountain range. At this point I saw about six emus in a field grazing alongside sheep, and I hope that they were wild, but quite possibly they were part of a farm - at any rate they were the first emus I've seen outside of a zoo. We decided we could make it to the Great Ocean Road before dark, and we found ourselves driving through the Great Otway rainforest at dusk.
We stopped in Lorne for yet more groceries and then drove east to Aireys Inlet, where Patrick has a house. We ate a curry, drank wine and watched Crocodile Dundee on video (no, really) before falling asleep. In the morning I took a walk down to the beach and finished Wild before we packed up and drove back to Melbourne. In all, the trip was around 1700km, taking in desert, mountains, rainforest and ocean, briefly passing through New South Wales and South Australia. The variety in the landscape just in that short trip was so incredible - we've already started planning the sequel. A 20,000km figure-eight of Australia. Well, probably not, but at least to Alice Springs.
We set off on a Saturday morning, not exactly early after breakfast with friends, general slow-going accompanying my hangover, and loading up one car only to move everything over into another (a 4WD we were fortunate enough to be able to borrow). We had only driven as far north as Castlemaine (the 'Maine) by lunchtime and we'd already stopped at a market for donuts. We had a couple of pastries each from Hot & Crusty, pulled out our brand new printed and bound road map (foreseeing a lack of phone signal in our futures) and tried to decide where we were aiming to be by nightfall. We knew we'd need to be in Mildura by the end of Day Two to get out to the sanctuary early the next morning, so we were aiming to get about halfway.
In the end no decision was made until I was driving us down one of the longest, straightest, emptiest roads of my life and Lachy found a national park with a campsite not too far away. He called up Parks Victoria as the webpage suggested and they had never even heard of this park. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of actually camping because I thought we'd brought the tent as an emergency backup. I don't know what else I was expecting but I'd been so busy handing in assignments etc that I hadn't even considered where we were actually going to sleep once we hit the road.
Our tarmac road turned into a dirt one and we then followed a road sign ominously announcing 'CEMETERY' to our campground. We never actually saw the cemetery, but we did startle a mob of kangaroos as we drove into Terrick Terrick National Park. We hadn't seen another car in so long it was a bit of a shock to find someone else parked there. They turned out to be day visitors who jumped into the car and drove off almost as soon as we'd arrived.
It was only a very small park but we had the run of it. What I thought was a grassy hill shading the campsite turned out to be in fact a very large moss-covered rock. We proceeded to scramble up it and from the summit we could see to the horizon in every direction. Nothing but trees on one side, farmland on the other. As we made our way back down again Patrick called out to draw my attention to something - a rock wallaby, grazing right in front of us. We all sat down to watch it and enjoy the quiet. I realised that my ears were ringing, and that they probably did every day, but I was so rarely in a place so quiet that I could hear it. The ringing died away as the evening drew on. I can hear trams passing and car alarms blaring all through the night from my apartment - I wonder how often my ears get treated to true silence.
We cleared away twigs and stones and pitched our tent in the campsite. We hadn't had the forethought to pack camping mats so we unloaded all our blankets and sleeping bags into the tent to deal with later. In the meantime we set to cooking ourselves a one-pot dinner with the groceries we'd bought at Bendigo on the way in. Potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and pasta all boiled together with stock cubes, and served with bread. It's amazing what you find delicious when you are out camping! We lay around, chatted and roasted marshmallows in the dark, and I started reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed with my headtorch. A beautiful place to start reading a book as adventurous as that!
We managed to arrange the blankets and all three of us into the two-man tent in such a way that we weren't too cold and uncomfortable and (amazingly) we slept. I thought we'd be up with the dawn but it was my phone alarm that woke us at 7am, and Lachy and I hiked up to the top of the stone-hill again to see the sun rising and do a bit of yoga. Well, I did Warrior 3 for about two seconds, and Lachy did a few push-ups. We boiled some water and had some hot chocolate and coffee. It was so quiet that when a crow flew past I heard every beat of its wings like it was the size of a hippogriff.
 |
| The wallaby |
We got up early and restocked on groceries before heading to Wentworth, New South Wales (about half an hour away). I called ahead to the sanctuary to let them know we were coming but alas! Rain was coming in, which would turn the dirt roads to rivers and leave us stranded there for the next few days. We only had five days set aside for travelling, though, so decided not to risk it. Instead we pulled out the map again and made a contingency plan. To the south-west were both the Big Desert and the Little Desert national parks, so we'd just drive straight into them and find somewhere to camp. We stopped in Murrayville to eat our lunch of bread and hummus and enquire in one of the shops as to where we could get some chopped wood - it had been raining since we'd left that morning and wouldn't be easy to make a fire that night. We were given the phone number of a guy 'who chops wood' but decided to just buy some coals from the supermarket and figure it out.
 |
| Heading into the desert |
 |
| Dinner. |
So our unfounded fears led us to Nhill, where we spent the night in the Zero Inn run by a lovely woman with a huge cat named Pizza who at first sight I thought was a wallaby. After that we set off to drive south through the Little Desert, which fortunately has a sealed road right through but unfortunately really is very Little indeed. We did however see lots of kangaroos and hear some pretty cool birds. We drove on, listening to the soundtrack from Mad Max: Fury Road until we saw something odd in the distance. 'Is that a rock?' I asked.
 |
| Mitre Rock |
 |
| Lachy and Paddy having a photoshoot |
 |
| Broken Falls |
 |
| The ocean! |
 |
| The team |
Sunday, 7 June 2015
Vivid Sydney
So at the end of May we went to Sydney for the weekend. Lachy came straight out of work on Friday to the airport and on Monday morning I went straight in once we'd landed. The reason we went was actually to see a talk by Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, which turned out to be a Vivid Sydney event, which turned out to be a pretty cool festival with a lot of lights and also Matthew Weiner.
On the Saturday we actually had to get some work done in the morning (me proofreading, Lachy writing, and fellow Screenie* Jo was working on her treatment) before we could get going so we scouted out a cafe that served breakfast. Joe Black is around the corner from the Travelodge we were staying in in Surry Hills, which not only serves breakfast, coffee and milkshakes, but has WiFi and lovely staff. They let us sit there all morning (we did order a LOT of drinks) and after Lachy and I left the manager actually let Jo keep working there after he had closed, without telling her that the cafe was shut until he really needed to leave.
We wandered around the harbour, took in the opera house at closer quarters than last time, sat down for a late lunch (there was a lot of eating on this trip) and then Lachy and I took a passenger ferry out to Darling Harbour and back. If you want to see Sydney Harbour, I think this is the best way. It was something like $12 return, you stop at several harbours to pick up/set down passengers and you get to zoom across the water with the wind in your hair (if you're sitting outside, which you should be). One of the main things about Vivid Sydney is that the city gets lit up all sorts of fun colours at night, which meant that we got to see the opera house looking like this:
And that is just a still - the projections on the opera house were constantly changing. Sydney looked pretty cool all lit up, and we took the ferry out at dusk so we got to see the whole transformation from day to night from the water. There was a tourist ferry which would have done essentially the same thing, possibly with some canapes, and that was $25.
In the evening we went out drinking in Surry Hills and then some dodgier parts of Sydney with Jo, another fellow Screenie Jen and her friend Cat. We had some great Mexican food at a bar that also served coffee tequila and which I can't remember the name of.
After a slightly slower start on Sunday morning we had some brekkie at a much busier Joe Black and then headed down to the harbour again, this time heading for Manly. It's a half-hour ferry that takes you right to the mouth of Sydney Harbour and the nice little town of Manly. We took a bus up to North Head Sanctuary and wandered around up there for a bit. From one of the viewpoints at the top of the cliff we could see whale watching boats and next to them... WHALES! We could see them rolling out of the water and blowing water out of their blowholes and soon there was a whole crowd watching behind us. They were too far away to know for sure but a sign on the path suggested they were probably Humpbacks.
When we got back to the city there was time for a jaunt around the Museum of Contemporary Art and a quick trip to Dymocks before the talk, and then we sat down in the Town Hall ready to be blown away by Matthew Weiner. Which we were, but we didn't realise how funny he would be!
We had dinner at Vapiano with some friends, took one last trip down to the harbour to enjoy the lights some more and headed back for an early night before our very early flight.
I have to say though, living in a planned city (Melbourne) you really get spoiled for easy navigation and public transport. But Sydney! I love it. It's green and fresh and sprawling. It looks like a city has emerged out of a forest. It's beautiful.
*Screenie n. student of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts, class of 2016
On the Saturday we actually had to get some work done in the morning (me proofreading, Lachy writing, and fellow Screenie* Jo was working on her treatment) before we could get going so we scouted out a cafe that served breakfast. Joe Black is around the corner from the Travelodge we were staying in in Surry Hills, which not only serves breakfast, coffee and milkshakes, but has WiFi and lovely staff. They let us sit there all morning (we did order a LOT of drinks) and after Lachy and I left the manager actually let Jo keep working there after he had closed, without telling her that the cafe was shut until he really needed to leave.
We wandered around the harbour, took in the opera house at closer quarters than last time, sat down for a late lunch (there was a lot of eating on this trip) and then Lachy and I took a passenger ferry out to Darling Harbour and back. If you want to see Sydney Harbour, I think this is the best way. It was something like $12 return, you stop at several harbours to pick up/set down passengers and you get to zoom across the water with the wind in your hair (if you're sitting outside, which you should be). One of the main things about Vivid Sydney is that the city gets lit up all sorts of fun colours at night, which meant that we got to see the opera house looking like this:
And that is just a still - the projections on the opera house were constantly changing. Sydney looked pretty cool all lit up, and we took the ferry out at dusk so we got to see the whole transformation from day to night from the water. There was a tourist ferry which would have done essentially the same thing, possibly with some canapes, and that was $25.
In the evening we went out drinking in Surry Hills and then some dodgier parts of Sydney with Jo, another fellow Screenie Jen and her friend Cat. We had some great Mexican food at a bar that also served coffee tequila and which I can't remember the name of.
After a slightly slower start on Sunday morning we had some brekkie at a much busier Joe Black and then headed down to the harbour again, this time heading for Manly. It's a half-hour ferry that takes you right to the mouth of Sydney Harbour and the nice little town of Manly. We took a bus up to North Head Sanctuary and wandered around up there for a bit. From one of the viewpoints at the top of the cliff we could see whale watching boats and next to them... WHALES! We could see them rolling out of the water and blowing water out of their blowholes and soon there was a whole crowd watching behind us. They were too far away to know for sure but a sign on the path suggested they were probably Humpbacks.
When we got back to the city there was time for a jaunt around the Museum of Contemporary Art and a quick trip to Dymocks before the talk, and then we sat down in the Town Hall ready to be blown away by Matthew Weiner. Which we were, but we didn't realise how funny he would be!
We had dinner at Vapiano with some friends, took one last trip down to the harbour to enjoy the lights some more and headed back for an early night before our very early flight.
I have to say though, living in a planned city (Melbourne) you really get spoiled for easy navigation and public transport. But Sydney! I love it. It's green and fresh and sprawling. It looks like a city has emerged out of a forest. It's beautiful.
*Screenie n. student of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts, class of 2016
Friday, 29 May 2015
Things I didn't know were Things in Australia (Part Two)
A few weeks ago I shared a small list I'd been compiling of Things I had noticed that were Things here in Australia which aren't necessarily Things in the UK, last time I checked. Well, I guessed there would be a few more to add and I've finally finished putting together another small list of Things. So, without further ado...
Moth Explosions
Unfortunately this is exactly what it sounds like. A couple of months ago, I noticed there was a moth in the kitchen. Well, moths do exist, I thought to myself, and promptly forgot about it. The next day there were several more moths. That's odd, I thought, and I pointed it out to Lachy. 'Ah,' he said. 'Sometimes you get little explosions of moths in the pantry or wherever' (not verbatim). I noticed that a bag of almonds appeared to be moving. Moths were crawling around inside it. I threw it out. Fast forward two months or so and I'm eating my breakfast. Innocently I scoop up a spoonful of Weet-Bix (UK readers, you may recognise this bastardisation of Weetabix, but they are the same thing) and notice a little wriggly maggot-like thing on the table. By the end of the day the kitchen is flooded with moths. We find them in the rice. In the tea bags. Even in the cocoa powder. We throw everything out and buy plastic containers for all our new food. The last of the moth carcasses has only recently been swept away. THIS IS A THING.
Personalised Licence Plates
Look, my parents have personalised licence plates, so I'm not speaking as an impartial observer. But Australians really love their personalised licence plates. It's not just a fun thing you spot once in a while driving down the motorway. It's like a TECHNO or a DEALR or a 4D M4N is speeding past you every minute. Of course there are also innocent ones that are just people's names, but those are the ones you remember.
Jodhpur Boots
So this could just as easily be an Alex-being-behind-on-fashion thing than an Alex-in-a-foreign-land thing. Disclaimer.
You know these shoes?
I grew up wearing these because I got a pair that cost about £20 when I was nine years old and called them 'riding boots'. Alternatively, 'jodhpur boots'. Right? Because you wear them with jodhpurs while you're out tearing up the turf on your elderly pony? Here, everybody's wearing them. And they aren't getting on a horse any time soon (as far as I know). I'm sitting in Avalon Airport right now and a lady at the table next to me is wearing them. I was so confused the first time I saw a person wearing these in the city. I look at them and I see work boots. I can't get over it. Seriously. They're like super trendy.
Poached Eggs
I think this is a symptom of Melbourne's cafe culture, which I guess makes it a Melbourne Thing rather than an Australian Thing. Breakfast is a big deal in this city. Brunch, even bigger. Every menu has poached eggs on toast. You can get your eggs poached in twenty different places on Smith St (where we live). I never had a poached egg before I moved here. I didn't know what it entailed and I thought it sounded really fancy. Like they've been poached from the estate of a gentry family. Whatever. Now I eat poached eggs on toast like once a week. Poaching! It's going to catch on.
(Disclaimer: it's probably already caught on.)
Milk Crates
Again I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a Melbourne Thing. I just read a very funny article which describes Melbourne as 'the milk crate capital of the world'.
These crates are all over the city. Orange, yellow, green, blue, grey, black, etc. People use them for everything. Seats, bed frames, tables. Cafes use them. They love them. Guess what I've never seen in one of these crates? Milk. And stealing one is like a rite of passage. I found one on a street corner. No business in sight. So I took it. We found two more at a tram stop. We use them as a table for a potted plant, and as DVD storage.
That's it for the latest instalment of Things that are Things. More will appear in due course but probably slower than this as I smoothly assimilate into Australian culture...
Moth Explosions
Unfortunately this is exactly what it sounds like. A couple of months ago, I noticed there was a moth in the kitchen. Well, moths do exist, I thought to myself, and promptly forgot about it. The next day there were several more moths. That's odd, I thought, and I pointed it out to Lachy. 'Ah,' he said. 'Sometimes you get little explosions of moths in the pantry or wherever' (not verbatim). I noticed that a bag of almonds appeared to be moving. Moths were crawling around inside it. I threw it out. Fast forward two months or so and I'm eating my breakfast. Innocently I scoop up a spoonful of Weet-Bix (UK readers, you may recognise this bastardisation of Weetabix, but they are the same thing) and notice a little wriggly maggot-like thing on the table. By the end of the day the kitchen is flooded with moths. We find them in the rice. In the tea bags. Even in the cocoa powder. We throw everything out and buy plastic containers for all our new food. The last of the moth carcasses has only recently been swept away. THIS IS A THING.
Personalised Licence Plates
Look, my parents have personalised licence plates, so I'm not speaking as an impartial observer. But Australians really love their personalised licence plates. It's not just a fun thing you spot once in a while driving down the motorway. It's like a TECHNO or a DEALR or a 4D M4N is speeding past you every minute. Of course there are also innocent ones that are just people's names, but those are the ones you remember.
Jodhpur Boots
So this could just as easily be an Alex-being-behind-on-fashion thing than an Alex-in-a-foreign-land thing. Disclaimer.
You know these shoes?
I grew up wearing these because I got a pair that cost about £20 when I was nine years old and called them 'riding boots'. Alternatively, 'jodhpur boots'. Right? Because you wear them with jodhpurs while you're out tearing up the turf on your elderly pony? Here, everybody's wearing them. And they aren't getting on a horse any time soon (as far as I know). I'm sitting in Avalon Airport right now and a lady at the table next to me is wearing them. I was so confused the first time I saw a person wearing these in the city. I look at them and I see work boots. I can't get over it. Seriously. They're like super trendy.
Poached Eggs
I think this is a symptom of Melbourne's cafe culture, which I guess makes it a Melbourne Thing rather than an Australian Thing. Breakfast is a big deal in this city. Brunch, even bigger. Every menu has poached eggs on toast. You can get your eggs poached in twenty different places on Smith St (where we live). I never had a poached egg before I moved here. I didn't know what it entailed and I thought it sounded really fancy. Like they've been poached from the estate of a gentry family. Whatever. Now I eat poached eggs on toast like once a week. Poaching! It's going to catch on.
(Disclaimer: it's probably already caught on.)
Milk Crates
Again I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a Melbourne Thing. I just read a very funny article which describes Melbourne as 'the milk crate capital of the world'.
These crates are all over the city. Orange, yellow, green, blue, grey, black, etc. People use them for everything. Seats, bed frames, tables. Cafes use them. They love them. Guess what I've never seen in one of these crates? Milk. And stealing one is like a rite of passage. I found one on a street corner. No business in sight. So I took it. We found two more at a tram stop. We use them as a table for a potted plant, and as DVD storage.
That's it for the latest instalment of Things that are Things. More will appear in due course but probably slower than this as I smoothly assimilate into Australian culture...
Saturday, 9 May 2015
Things I didn't know were Things in Australia
You may think 'Australia, one-time part of the British Empire, basically Britain with sunshine and surfing'. Actually you're thinking of Gibraltar (except for the surfing). It's a fair mistake. Culture shock is a real and very serious issue for Brits moving to Oz. Here are a few Things you will encounter down under that you may not have realised are Things.
U-Turns
We all know the voice of the sat-nav woman politely asking us to 'Where possible, make a U-turn'. So you find a quiet road and perform a delicate three- or five- or seven-point turn in privacy before getting back on the road. When using the roads in Australia, be on your guard at all times. Drivers have a tendency to suddenly wheel around without warning and change direction. Even on the busiest of streets, drivers insist on their right to suddenly pull a U-ie. I saw a police car do it. Just a few days ago I was nearly knocked off my bike by a minivan which suddenly decided to go the other way. Then I locked up my bike and walked to the post office and was nearly knocked over in the road by another such incident. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
Rounding
Australia has moved on from the Great British Pound. As a matter of fact its notes are made of plastic, but that's an issue for another time. Australia uses dollars and cents, but doesn't have 1 or 2 cent coins. However, you can still buy things that cost $2.98. The person at the cash register might tell you that you owe $3. It gets rounded up. Okay. Well, I can kind of understand not wanting those annoying tiny coins around. But why price something $2.98? Clearly to build up dollars upon dollars of extra profit from unsuspecting tourists. Then again, if it were priced $2.96, it would be rounded down, so you'd be gaining a cent. But the real issue here is why they don't just price things in multiples of 5.
Magpies
These birds are not the cute black-and-white thieves that we know and love in the UK. I think they're very cool, but I seem to be alone in this opinion. Magpies here are black and white but they are also BIG, like seagull big (the males at least). Their song sounds like a robot trying to do an impression of a bird which is a pretty bloody cool thing to hear. However, they have been known to swoop people when they're guarding their nests. The Queensland government recommends painting large eyes on the back of your broad-brimmed hat to deter magpies. So. There's that.
The Ocean
I don't mean to generalise (can't you tell from the rest of this post?) but it sure seems like Australians love the ocean. I mean, almost the entire population lives within spitting distance of the sea. And it's not just sun and surf. Yesterday it was about ten degrees, miserably rainy and very windy, and the waves at Point Lonsdale were huge. A day to snuggle up by the fire with a good book. OR, a day to whack on a wetsuit and jump into the waves as they crash against the beach wall? Yeah? Of course. (See my video on instagram.) I don't really know what to say except on a similar day in the United Kingdom NO ONE would be getting in that water. Also, almost everyone seems to be an excellent swimmer and have a lifesaving qualification. When they say 'let's go swimming in the sea', they actually mean swimming, not just paddling. Those of us who lagged behind the class in breaststroke in weekly school swimming lessons best stick to splashing in the shallows.
Seinfeld
I actually hadn't even heard of this show before I met Lachy (the Australian responsible for this culture shock) but I'm not going to blame the UK for my sheltered existence. Everyone was obsessed with Friends in the UK, but no one ever mentioned Seinfeld to me, which is similar in being an American sitcom featuring friends. EVERYONE here loves Seinfeld. Watch it all before you come out here if you want to assimilate. I still haven't. People say to me 'you know that Seinfeld episode where Elaine...' and I'm all, 'No. You know that FRIENDS episode where Joey...'
So, that's a little intro to Things you can now be prepared for when moving to Australia. Expect a part two at some point because seriously Australia is not just sunny Britain.
U-Turns
We all know the voice of the sat-nav woman politely asking us to 'Where possible, make a U-turn'. So you find a quiet road and perform a delicate three- or five- or seven-point turn in privacy before getting back on the road. When using the roads in Australia, be on your guard at all times. Drivers have a tendency to suddenly wheel around without warning and change direction. Even on the busiest of streets, drivers insist on their right to suddenly pull a U-ie. I saw a police car do it. Just a few days ago I was nearly knocked off my bike by a minivan which suddenly decided to go the other way. Then I locked up my bike and walked to the post office and was nearly knocked over in the road by another such incident. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
Rounding
Australia has moved on from the Great British Pound. As a matter of fact its notes are made of plastic, but that's an issue for another time. Australia uses dollars and cents, but doesn't have 1 or 2 cent coins. However, you can still buy things that cost $2.98. The person at the cash register might tell you that you owe $3. It gets rounded up. Okay. Well, I can kind of understand not wanting those annoying tiny coins around. But why price something $2.98? Clearly to build up dollars upon dollars of extra profit from unsuspecting tourists. Then again, if it were priced $2.96, it would be rounded down, so you'd be gaining a cent. But the real issue here is why they don't just price things in multiples of 5.
Magpies
These birds are not the cute black-and-white thieves that we know and love in the UK. I think they're very cool, but I seem to be alone in this opinion. Magpies here are black and white but they are also BIG, like seagull big (the males at least). Their song sounds like a robot trying to do an impression of a bird which is a pretty bloody cool thing to hear. However, they have been known to swoop people when they're guarding their nests. The Queensland government recommends painting large eyes on the back of your broad-brimmed hat to deter magpies. So. There's that.
The Ocean
I don't mean to generalise (can't you tell from the rest of this post?) but it sure seems like Australians love the ocean. I mean, almost the entire population lives within spitting distance of the sea. And it's not just sun and surf. Yesterday it was about ten degrees, miserably rainy and very windy, and the waves at Point Lonsdale were huge. A day to snuggle up by the fire with a good book. OR, a day to whack on a wetsuit and jump into the waves as they crash against the beach wall? Yeah? Of course. (See my video on instagram.) I don't really know what to say except on a similar day in the United Kingdom NO ONE would be getting in that water. Also, almost everyone seems to be an excellent swimmer and have a lifesaving qualification. When they say 'let's go swimming in the sea', they actually mean swimming, not just paddling. Those of us who lagged behind the class in breaststroke in weekly school swimming lessons best stick to splashing in the shallows.
Seinfeld
I actually hadn't even heard of this show before I met Lachy (the Australian responsible for this culture shock) but I'm not going to blame the UK for my sheltered existence. Everyone was obsessed with Friends in the UK, but no one ever mentioned Seinfeld to me, which is similar in being an American sitcom featuring friends. EVERYONE here loves Seinfeld. Watch it all before you come out here if you want to assimilate. I still haven't. People say to me 'you know that Seinfeld episode where Elaine...' and I'm all, 'No. You know that FRIENDS episode where Joey...'
So, that's a little intro to Things you can now be prepared for when moving to Australia. Expect a part two at some point because seriously Australia is not just sunny Britain.
Friday, 24 April 2015
Sydney, in about... ten minutes
Last week Lachy and I flew up to Sydney on a Monday evening and back to Melbourne on Tuesday. We had a day's training for our new jobs, and the office just happened to be within spitting distance of Sydney Harbour! (If you're a really good spitter, anyway.)
It was a busy day but around 5.15 we ran out of the office and down to the harbour to see whether any of the iconic sights were nearby. We had ten minutes before we needed to be on a train heading to the airport, but luck was on our side.
I'll be going back to Sydney at the end of the month for slightly longer so hopefully this time I might be able to get a bit closer than postcard-distance to the city sights!
It was a busy day but around 5.15 we ran out of the office and down to the harbour to see whether any of the iconic sights were nearby. We had ten minutes before we needed to be on a train heading to the airport, but luck was on our side.
I'll be going back to Sydney at the end of the month for slightly longer so hopefully this time I might be able to get a bit closer than postcard-distance to the city sights!
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