April 26, 2002
06:16 AM dublin time
we spent two nights on 'the prom' [wilson's promontry - australian mainland's most southerly national park] in a deluxe version of the victorian bushcamp - hot showers ahoy!
on the first night we bickered through the trial erection of our new tarp which somehow held fast through the steady down-pours of the second evening. the rain had kindly held off for our one day whirlwind tour of some of the park's bushwalks; squeaky beach walk beneath the tea trees before breakfast, kangaroo and emu spottings around the tiny airstrip, the wonderfully named 'lilly-pilly gully' rain forrest nature walk and finally a little more beach action at whisky bay with the dramatically strewn boulders.
no koala spottings, though we did have a visit from a wombat on the first night - come looking for food, complete with baby-on-back.
we left the prom and headed north to spend a miserable night in a caravan park in the pouring rain. our resolve to get north to sunshine strengthened further and we dashed towards sydney stopping just one more night to feed the incredibly tame kangaroos at pebbly beach, regretably giving canberra [and it's blogging inhabitants] the cold shoulder.
we made it to sydney at the same time as some wonderful unseasonably warm autumn weather and have spent the last three days zipping through the sights in flurries of camera clicks and spending the rest of the time on the beach [bondi, of course].
sydney has a great public transport system - including some ferries if you fancy a slower more senic sort of transport. we took one out along the southern bay yesterday, in very fine company - mr. mel gibson was sitting four rows in front of us! though aparantly celebrity spotting here isn't as common as all all that - we met up with an irish ex-work colleague paul and his girlfriend gillian who claimed not to have seen one in their year and a bit here. we feel privileged indeed.
so we're probably staying just one more night in sydney - it's a bit expensive - especially with the amount of photos i've taken of the blummin opera house - it's just too damn picturesque. and four days is more than enough time to spend in a city we keep comparing unfavourably to melbourne. they say one should visit sydney and live in melbourne and i think i'd have to agree. sydney has the sights and views, but melbourne has the charm.
[link]April 19, 2002
02:33 AM dublin time
internet is definitely going to be harder to find during our australian travelling, so we're seizing the opportunity whenever we can, which in this case is at phillip island - about an hour's drive south of melbourne where we arrived at sunset last night to see the excedingly doty little penguins come ashore to nest for the evening.
before that we were mainly 'bush camping' on the great ocean road and in the grampians - west of melbourne [though bush camping might be too literal a phrase for our van-sleeping version]. there are bush camps dotted around most of australia's national parks [where most of the interesting scenery and wildlife is], consisting of clearings in the bush, accessible by road of varying degrees of drivability. facilities are basic, but include picnic tables, a fire-place for the ubiquitous campfire singalongs, sometimes drinking water, usually a set of obnoxious 'pit toilets' [more revolting, though probably environmentally friendlier than anything i came across in asia] and if you're lucky, a handful of kangaroos, sniffling around for unattended supplies.
so we've been mainly getting used to van life, enjoying the scenery and adjusting to the distances you need to cover to get between the places of interest. we've been officially 'on the road' for six days now and have already covered about 1,200 kilometers. let's hope the van holds up.
[link]April 11, 2002
05:22 PM dublin time
sorry, yeah, i was in the middle of a story there but we got totally distracted for a while what with having to sort out and equip a van for travelling for the next four months and all [it's underway but we haven't actually left yet, more on that later].
anyway, i went and got a tattoo.
a lovely little one on the small of my back. it's a maori symbol called 'koru' which looks like a spiral cut out of a circle and is based on a fern unfurling, representing 'new growth and harmony' [?]. but i just thought it looked nice.
but picture and thousand words and all that, so here you go...
April 04, 2002
03:39 AM dublin time
he looked far too normal to be a tattooist. he could practically be described as cleancut - smooth chinned, short cropped blonde hair, light metal rimmed glasses.
a suggestion of tattooed upper arms peeked from below his plain white t-shirt and pale blue short sleeved shirt, but the impeccably pressed dark denim jeans and polished doc marten shoes [not even boots] gave an altogether different impression.
the one concession towards a more extreme tattoo artist fashion statement was a matching pair of enormous black graduated-cylindrical spools in his ear lobes. these barely managed to break the notion that i was about to be tattooed by a shining eyed, rosy cheeked recent high school graduate.
[link]03:15 AM dublin time
one of the other activities we did in queenstown was riverboarding. think whitewater rafting, but remove the boat and equip each person with an individual body board, wetsuit and flippers. the basic result is one of swimming [well, being washed] down a rather fast river over bubbling rapids, all the while clutching a polystyrene board for dear life.
the key to staying alive and enjoying yourself was to just [literally] go with the flow! a river is pretty much tireless and will push you whichever way it wants. fighting it will just tire you out and make you vulnerable. our guide would try to direct us to the best part of the river to be in just before a bunch of rapids, but after that it was a matter of staying on top of the water. if a whirlpool caught you, let it turn you round and even if you get dragged under by a stopper, just relax, the river will spit you out after a couple of [seemingly endless] seconds. all the time the following lyrics kept running through my head;
"...upside down, boy you turn me, inside out and round and round..."by the end of our time in the water i was utterly exhausted and felt a little like a drowned rat. my arms were knackered from hanging onto the board and both calf muscles threatened to cramp is another single kick was required. but it was totally worth it - so much fun - exhilarating and challenging. everytime i went over a set of rapids my heart was pumping and my body surged with adrenalin. somehow managing not to drown was just an added bonus! [link]
