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.

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!

Sherbrooke Falls

Sherbrooke sounds like an invented place name for an American drama about teens growing up in a small wholesome town. In fact it's a tiny village about 50 minutes outside of Melbourne, in the Dandenong Ranges. On Easter Saturday we drove out there to get out of the city for a while. It actually took us about two hours to get there because of car troubles (after a taxi drove into us the night before) but Google Maps assures me it is only 45 minutes when traffic is light.

It's pretty cool that there is dense rainforest less than an hour's drive out of the city. Aside from my time in the Kimberley it's one of the few occasions I've really felt that I am actually in a foreign country. Cities are pretty much cities wherever you go (I'm generalising...) but walking through Sherbrooke Forest is really nothing like walking through a wood in Cumbria. The majority of trees there are Mountain Ash, the tallest flowering plant in the world. They are so tall it's dizzying to look up at the treetops and they have beautiful grey-white bark. At this point, they're probably my favourite trees in Australia, except maybe snow gums.

Our aim was to walk from the picnic ground in Sherbrooke to Sherbrooke Falls, which we came across in a flyer the tourist information centre in Healesville gave us earlier this year. That turned out to take us about 15 minutes, and since there hadn't been much rainfall the falls themselves weren't really there, so I haven't got a picture. The gully was full of debris, though, with some huge fallen tree trunks, so the falls must be something to behold when the water's really going. We spent the rest of our morning wandering around the forest along the other paths. Heard lots of cockatoos but didn't actually see any, saw a pair of rosellas and a kookaburra which perched on a splintered trunk right above us.

In sum, the walk to Sherbrooke Falls is fairly short (and busy on a Saturday) but there are plenty of tracks around Sherbrooke Forest to keep you occupied. It's a popular place to see lyrebirds, though we didn't catch any this time. If you want to feel like you're a million miles from the CBD, it's really close by and still feels like another world.

White Night

I thought I'd write a little post on my latest living-abroad experience - Melbourne's White Night on the 21st of February. A few people told me it was no big deal/horrendous/not to bother but I liked the sound of it. Art and entertainment all over the city, 7am-7pm. What's not to like about that? I read an article somewhere in preparation that said to embrace being a tourist, so that's what I've done. I also suspect that having such low expectations helped me have a damn good night.

So, we drank wine while we played board games in preparation, and then had some Red Bull for energy of course, and unfortunately as the evening went on I did drink them both at the same time (but not from the same cup; I'm not a heathen). However, by midnight, when we went out (having been advised by the aforementioned article not to venture out between the peak times of 9pm and 11.30pm) I was only feeling the effects of the Red Bull. I know this is probably not the general consensus, but I think you can enjoy the event an awful lot more sober.

The first stop between our flat and the city centre where stuff was going on was the Royal Exhibition Building, where we watched a light show symbolising the four elements projected onto the building's façade with some cool sounds too. I only had my phone camera so these images are from Instagram.

We wandered down Swanston St, starting from the State Library which had a loooong queue outside so we went on to the Wheeler Centre, where the Emerging Writers' Festival was running an event called Magazine in a Night. Lachy and I both wrote something and put it in the submissions box, so we'll see if we make it into the final magazine! We moved on and discovered a travelling organ in the street; not something you get to see too often.

We discovered the dance stage where a dance troupe were leading the audience through some steps and had fun taking part in that for a while; then we visited the City Library where there was some interactive art that you walked around on with black lights to reveal a pattern criss-crossing over it (it was about integration I think). Around 2am the queue for the State Library was shorter so we joined it, but it was moving so slowly once we got inside that we jumped ship and went to the library's Bohemian Melbourne exhibition, which was really interesting.

After that we headed to Hamer Hall, where a show called Ghostly Machines was running. For a long time nothing happened and then there was all this sound and light and all these machines moving in sync over the stage and I couldn't tell you what it was about but it looked spectacular. Also it seemed that they were just using the actual machinery they use for light/sound/acoustics in all their shows, but in a creative way, which was cool.

At the NGV we walked into a room with a projection of some cool alien landscape which turned out to be a microscopic camera focused on a jar full of chemicals which the artist was adding to, so we could see all these cool tiny reactions projected on the wall, but I couldn't get a decent photo of it.

On the way home we dropped by Sticky Institute, Melbourne's only dedicated zine shop, where there was a 12-hour zine reading taking place. The guy we stayed to listen to was wearing a bird mask and reading from his zine by candlelight; he also played a song from the zine called 'Island of the Dead' - they were the only lyrics and he sang them progressively louder over one chord on his guitar. I didn't get his name but I will be going back there to find his zine - I'm sure they'll know who I'm talking about! 

We hit the hay around 5am and the following day White Night felt like a very trippy dream. Will definitely be going back next year.

Volunteering at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary

We were back in the UK over Christmas, which was definitely more of a social visit than travels worth documenting on this blog, but a week after we returned to Melbourne Lachy and I had made plans to head out again. You may remember that a year ago we visited Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary, a wildlife sanctuary run by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. On the 7th of January we were due to head back out there, but a monsoon up in the north-east meant we ended up spending almost another week at home before it was possible to fly out and get picked up.

Last time, as part of a big group, we'd flown direct to Broome and then in a charter plane out to the sanctuary. Easy. This time there were no direct flights, so we flew out to Perth, then Broome, took a Greyhound bus to Derby, then flew out with Operations Manager Dan Swan (Swanie) in a tiny Cessna plane. And there were a few nights spent in hotels in between (some with broken air conditioning...) when transport wasn't possible 'til the next day. It goes to show what I've become used to that the trip still felt like a breeze compared with the living nightmare of a UK-AUS flight.

Camels on Cable Beach (Broome) - the first time I'd seen them up close!

Since we'd been out the year before, we knew what to expect in terms of accommodation, so we were well prepared - except on one front. There hadn't been much rain when we came out the previous year, and this time round one road we had used now passed through a fast-flowing river. The rain seemed to have brought the flies out. I don't remember being troubled by mosquitoes last January, but this time we were eaten alive. I'm terrified of spiders, but I got used to having them in the shower with me - the mozzies on the other hand nearly drove me to an early grave.

Usually they have volunteers there in the dry season because the sanctuary is so busy with the Wilderness Camp tourists and all the wildlife surveys that are being conducted, so we were kind of out-of-season volunteers. The main task we were set to was the herbarium. Eight boxes of pressed plants to be alphabetised, catalogued and mounted (fortunately they had already been identified by experts!). We also went out on a trip collecting plants from the escarpment next to the camp and did some detective work to identify them ourselves, which was oddly satisfying. We helped out with odd jobs around the camp, like fixing stairs and making railings.

Plants!

Living in the city I've become more interested in birds than I ever was in the UK, which I put down to the fact that they're pretty much the only wildlife I get to see day to day. So I was pretty excited to find out that there's a Mornington Bird List - a list of all the birds around the camp with check-boxes - because if there's one thing I love, it's ticking things off lists. Probably the most exciting bird we spotted was a brolga, but I didn't have my camera at the time. They are huge, crane-like birds that usually wander around in pairs, but this one was alone. I had to do a double-take when I spotted it because I thought I'd seen a flamingo or something in the bush.

We also saw dingoes this time since they hang out a lot near the hut we were staying in. Hearing them howling in the night was so eerie and awe-inspiring. By day, they looked more like big-eared, scraggly dogs, but it was still an impressive sight. One morning I heard something like a door slamming, which was vaguely concerning since our hut was in the middle of nowhere, and I went downstairs to have a look. A red shape went bouncing away from the bathroom and then stopped to have a look at me. It was a wallaroo, and not the only one that we saw hanging around the hut early in the morning.

the guilty wallaroo

One of the coolest things we got to help with was setting up camera traps on the escarpment. These are really tough cameras that can survive in all weathers and are triggered by heat. We collected them up again just before we left and, though the images weren't of great value to science, we were amazed by what they had captured! We had only seen two goannas on our trip so far but we captured no fewer than three different species of them with the cameras, as well as a few selfies taken by a wallaroo and a couple of echidnas.

the explorer

We intended to do lots of walking while we were there, but the time flew by so fast that when we left we'd still only been on one walk, at a pretty poorly chosen time of day (it was HOT). It was a very valuable experience for the two of us in terms of food - we had to bring all our food with us on the plane, so we had to plan carefully. We got a bit sick of rice and pasta, but since we got back we've been much better about planning our food shopping for meals, and not running down to Woolworths three times a day. We also got to know a group of amazing people living in a close-knit and friendly community out on what is essentially an island of civilisation in the bush.

There won't be much travel this year what with our wedding coming up and lots of things to be saving for, but it isn't really travel when it's in the same country, right? Even if the country is the size of the United States? So we can go back again in the dry season without feeling guilty? Yeah? All right then. 

Al's Adventure: Part Eight (the finale)

Meet Al

Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.

Part Eight

Here we are, the final leg of my trip. It's hard to believe that three months have gone by so fast, yet my hair is in dire need of cutting. I've spent twelve days here in New Zealand, and I couldn't have asked for a better place to finish my travels. I've been staying in Queenstown, on the South Island, but not in the classic backpacker style. I've done things in a less conventional sense. My mum's friend Tessa has been hosting me, in her big house above Lake Wakatipu; I seriously got lucky, check out the view.

So what really struck me about what I saw of New Zealand was that every day seemed to be in a totally different kind of environment. The first couple I spent on the hills and beaches around Queenstown, just getting to know the place. It's all so bloody picturesque, you're just constantly having to be like "whaaaat? That's not a postcard, it's the view from my bedroom window." And I got a weird sort of comfort knowing these hills are where the Lord of the Rings was filmed, that I was in Middle Earth. The hill right behind my house was used for all sorts of scenes from the Two Towers, can you believe.

I'd been told by a few people that I couldn't miss the Shotover jet, a superfast jetboat that flies down a canyon river. Everyone's been on it, judging by their wall of fame: Will and Kate, Peter Jackson and half the cast of LOTR, even Ugly Betty... Everyone piles in, the driver introduces himself and what follows is like the fastest fecking half hour of your life. He flies down the river, turning towards boulders and cliff faces at the last minute to scare folk - but heeee knows what he's doing. Also, a lot of 360 turns. Ooh boy, I should go to theme parks more often.

One of the biggest highlights of the trip was Milford Sound. It's not actually a sound, it's a fjord, but who really even knows the difference eh? I won't ramble on about how amazing it is, but let me just say that's it's become one of my favourite places in the world. It's like a set of prehistoric mountains were just flooded by bright blue sea, and penguins and seals came to live there. The drive over as well: mirror lakes, valley floors, ancient rainforests, snow-capped mountains, avalanche debris everywhere, it had it all. We even got to pull over to fill our bottles with glacial stream water - but then some turdburger threw his cigarette stub in and pissed off the bus driver.

It turns out New Zealand is pretty hard to traverse unless you have a car, but thankfully Tessa took it upon herself to show me around. We went out to the edge of civilisation, like the place you can only go in a 4x4, and guess what it was called... Paradise. Yep, I've officially been to paradise. Awful lot of sheep. We also took a ride out to Wanaka and Lake Hawea, and I can say it's the best lake I've ever seen. And I come from the Lake District. It looked like a solid blue platform you could walk on; yet another place you'll have to believe me when I say how amazing it is.

I saw a couple of gold-mining towns, one of which has a fancy little cinema with chandeliers and padded walls. I saw the new Hobbit film there, and there was a video beforehand where the cast thanked New Zealand for having them; the kiwis loved it until Cate Blanchett joked that it wasn't as good as Australia and people got riled up and booed. I sponsored a native tree to be planted at a bird sanctuary to ease my carbon-footprint guilt, I rode a steamboat to see a New Zealand farm and watch sheepdogs herding sheep (like I can't get that at home, eh?), and Tessa took me to the desert to a winery on Mt Difficulty so I could murmur in appreciation of wines I can't fully appreciate. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the wine, it's just my pallet ain't refined.

And so ends my trip. If you've been following this blog then I'll give you a sticker for making it to the end. I've had the most amazing time, seen countless incredible sites, and been hosted by the most generous people. I even managed to make it round the world without eating any meat (apart from the occasional bit of fish when the situation demanded it, and a piece of chicken I was told was fish and then didn't want to waste it after I found out...); and I really do love meat, I'm just aware of its impact on the environment so I thought I'd test myself. I'd also like to thank my grandma for making this trip possible; I'd like to think she'd be happy with how I spent her inheritance because she was a cool lady. Or maybe she wanted me to invest in future technologies and nobody told me. If that's the case, sorry grandma.

Thanks for reading, and thank you Alex for having me on your blog! Now to get home for Christmas and then try and decide what the hell kind of life I want. Because I know I can't be a Billy Joel impersonator, just not feasible.

Al's Adventure: Part Seven

Meet Al

Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.

Part Seven

Let's talk about Australia, as I do like visiting the colonies. Alex (whose blog this is) and Lachy (her fiancé/my brother from another mother) met me at the airport, holding a sign with my name on to make me feel special. We drove back to their kickass studio apartment in one of the hippest parts of Melbourne - that's right, I said hippest - where I was given a quick tour before bed.

So the situation was this: I'd hang in Melbourne with these guys for three weeks, and we'd nip out and do all sorts of activities. So I don't bore you all, I'll list the highlights of my stay.

1. We drove down to the coast to stay at Point Lonsdale (Bonus: we had his brother's dog Biv with us). We drove along the Great Ocean Road, threw stones for Biv on the beach, visited the ACTUAL lighthouse from Round the Twist, and made homemade pizzas before watching Doctor Who.

2. We took in some culture in Melbourne. I saw baby penguins being fed at the SeaLife centre, I saw the skin of the famous racing horse Phar Lap and went underneath an indoor forest at the Melbourne Museum, we saw Interstellar at the third largest cinema screen in the world, I went swimming at an open-air local pool, and ate a ton of food from quirky local restaurants (like Trippy Taco and Po Boy. Also Nandos. Although It hasn't reached the dizzying heights of quality like it has in Britain - they don't even do halloumi.)

3. We visited Healesville Animal Sanctuary so I could get my fill of Australian wildlife. Kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, dingos, echidnas, Tasmanian devils, possums, kookaburras, lyre birds, I done seen 'em all. They even have an animal hospital there to look after anything that gets injured in the bush fires. Speaking of which, this country has fire danger levels ranging from low to high to code red. Yep, code red. That's when the whole country just explodes. So yeah, it's taken me this long to realise that wombats and echidnas are two of the greatest animals on earth. Also, dingos are fluffy as hell.

4. We drove up to the Australian Alps (honestly. I'm not lying.) to stay on top of Mt Buller. This was one of the most picturesque places I saw, just endless gumtree-covered mountains stretching off into the distance - and they look blue due to the eucalyptus, little fact for ya there. There's a town of second, or third, homes on the summit, but because we went in the Australian a summer it was a complete ghost town. Very cool. On the peak there's a metal pyramid, where rangers keep an eye out for bush fires (of which you could tell there had been a fair few). While we were here, we took a walk in the humid forest below, following the river, and saw two poisonous snakes and the biggest spider any of us had ever seen. It's like Australia was putting on its best performance for me. We finished off with a balcony barbecue, a dip in the jacuzzi, [Alex note: only Lachy and Al were in the jacuzzi, with beer and nachos.] and the four of us (including Alex and Lachy's friend Tatiana) playing dungeons and dragons. Go team.

5. We went to Equitana, a big horse festival at the Melbourne showgrounds, where we saw all sorts of horseback events -including cutting, where the rider has to separate a cow from a herd and prevent it from rejoining said herd. At one point I found myself at the cowgirl riding school demonstration, and the woman on her horse said "Anyone else a D-cup?" Woahh, hello. Some people put their hands up. "Well I wear two bras, cos these bad boys will knock you out if you're not careful." Then I noticed I was surrounded by women, all murmuring in agreement. It sounds great, but then I realised I was a bit of an outsider - I don't even like horse riding, let alone have breasts.

6. A bit more "culture". We went laser-questing, bowling, served ice cream at a charity event, attended a 'psychadelic' 21st birthday party in fancy dress (two words: free bar), went to an open air cinema by the beach to watch David Bowie in Labyrinth, I saw penguins climbing on the rocks of St Kilda to feed their babies, and I ate vegetarian schnitzel. Oh yes. We also played a feck load of Mario Kart, I'm counting it as culture because I played it with Aussies.

7. One of the weirder things we did was attempt an Escape Room. The idea is you're locked in a room, and you have a time limit to solve the puzzles to escape. When the timer runs out you're just let out, so the only real worry is feeling stupid because you can't solve anything. The theme was called 'endless dream', and we were trapped in this little room full of clocks, locked boxes, a painting of a brain, and some tough-ass puzzles. We asked for like five hints, but we made it out in the end. There's thinking outside of the box and then there's THAT. Still, the five of us left as more cohesive, oiled machine of friendship or something.

8. We visited an old timey town called Sovereign Hill. Who knew Europeans settled in Australia much the same as they did in America, with wild west towns built around gold mining? We panned for gold, tried old-fashioned bowling (you have to set the pins yourself, not worth it mate), took a horse drawn carriage ride, wandered round a gold mine, mimed a shoot-out in the street, drank ginger beer at the saloon, and saw gold being smelted. Interesting fact, the gold bar they use is 19 years old and gets smelted and cooled 10 times a day. Madness. It were a grand day out, I even got one of the old fashioned police blokes to arrest me whilst he told me how sexy ankles were (in character, I hope).

9. Yoghurt, blueberry jam, buttermilk cookie pieces, and protein clusters - that was an ice cream flavour. If there's an ice cream metaphor for Melbourne, it's that. They were both amazing. So there we are. There was plenty of other stuff too, mainly food, drink, films and good times. Oh, and vlogging: I made three guest appearances on Alex and Lachy's book-themed Youtube blog where I pulled a load of book reviews out of my arse on camera. That sounds horrible, I just mean I made them up on the spot.


Saying goodbye to a country where I heard the phrases "far out" and "rad" used in conversation without a hint of irony, I set off to the airport with a taxi driver who asked whether the UK and the US are linked, and if you can drive between them. I had no words. I can't thank Lachy and Alex enough for having me so long, and for sacrificing their privacy for me. I only hope I acted as a catalyst for flipping great times to occur. Final stop: New Zealand.