This last week has been absolutely beautiful in Canberra, deep blue skies, perfect cool mornings and thirty degree days. A great time to take a balloon ride like these people over my place this morning.

Advance Australia Yeah

A long weekend courtesy of Australia Day, and, being the national capital, Canberra was putting on plenty of events and celebrations of the Pommies landing in Sydney Cove in 1788. On Australia Day’s Eve, there was a free concert on the lawns of Parliament House, broadcast live on Channel Ten. Mostly it was pap from Australian Idol (which also happened to be on Channel Ten…)

Friday was Straya Day proper, and I proceeded to sunbathe, watch the cricket (for what it was worth!), have a BBQ and then, once darkness had fallen, joined the people of Canberra who had come out of hiding for a fireworks display on the lake. Just a short stroll from home, the walk to the lake took me past Old Parliament House, which was looking sedate.


As well as the fireworks, there was also a “dump and burn” from a fighter jet, which lit the sky like a rocket and was as loud as a hundred galahs multiplied by a thousand cockatoos listening to Rolf Harris plays Metallica at full blast.













The next day took in a few more Aussie icons,
courtesy mostly of the National Museum of Australia, which I visited for the first time. It is around on the north western part of the lake, so I cycled in what turned out to be a strong headwind, taking in more decorations and signs of Australian-ness on the way.

Waltzing along...

First thing to say about the National Museum is what a funky building. Some people will think it looks ridiculous, but there are lots of 60s and 70s concrete constructions tucked away in Canberra and I like the way this breaks the mould. Outside, is the somewhat perplexing “Garden of Australian Dreams”. A garden of most Australian’s dreams is a green lawn but anyhow, this had a different take.


Here we are looking at the outside of the building with good old Lake Burley Griffin reflected.





The museum was good and as it is free and a nice bike ride around the lake, definitely worth a return visit. Some of it looked at the terrible things the Poms did when they arrived but this grew into a celebration of everything that it iconic about the New and the Old Australia. Here follows a series of things Australian…

The hats of the Surf Life-saving clubs across Australia:

A sign from the Northern Territory relating to the everpresent threat and renewing essence of fire. There was an interesting video clip on the Canberra bushfires of 2003 which was just so amazing to see the suburban streets turned into rivers of flames and flying embers.

These are aboriginal spearheads which have been found buried in the iron red earth across the sunburnt country:


This is the Melbourne Cup, a sign of a gambling and sports obsessed country, whose obsession with whacking the Poms knows no end!






And a couple more Aussie icons followed as I cycled along to nearby Black Mountain.

The Beach (?!?!)


And the bush…


Once a jolly swagman,
Neilio

Happy Australia Day!

The green and gold

Thirty-five degree heat and humidity is not great when you are rushing to make a flight at Canberra airport, which then lands late into Sydney leaving you little time to find your connecting flight which is not even down on the Departure screen which means you have to go to the check in desk again and disturb the ditzy Qantas girl from her chat and ask what gate your plane which leaves in ten minutes is departing before having to take shoes off to go through security and running, laces still untied to Gate number 9. All this on the sustenance of a few crackers and cheese as you haven’t had time to eat anything decent. And so it was I made it to the Gold Coast!

The journey wasn’t quite over at Coolangatta airport, where I picked up a nice hire car (Toyota Camry) and proceeded to drive with the handbrake still on for 5kms (what’s that burning smell?!) and had to pull over the once to check WHERE THE BLOODY HELL AM I?!! I actually wasn’t that far from my hotel, just a u-turn and set of lights away on the Gold Coast Highway. Now, what I needed was a lovely receptive hotel… what I got was a closed check in desk, a woman on the after hours phone who didn’t seem to have my booking, a key to a door which was nigh on impossible to open and an empty minibar (not even free biscuits with the tea) to settle my rumbling stomach!

So, the buffet breakfast in the morning should’ve been a blissful return to food heaven but in truth it wasn’t. Not terrible, just nowhere near everything I was hoping for and more. Look at me, whinging Pom! Let’s get on with the good things…


Well, Burleigh Heads has a typical Aussie strip of sand n surf, which I walked on first thing…can’t complain at that. I then drove to a delightful spot called Currimbin on a little sandy-Mangrovy-bushy creek. I was there for work, but it wasn’t a bad place to do it. I then managed to get lost again as houses don’t seem to have numbers and finding number 82 of 302 of a road which stretched for 5km is a tricky proposition. But I got a nice home made crème caramel for my efforts. Next up was the town of Nerang, which actually seems a nice little place, set away from the coast but at the foot of semi tropical rainforest and bush clad hills. I managed to squeeze in a little time to walk in one of the forests there. The glamorous life in the day of a researcher on the road ended with some fish and chips at a roadside diner before the journey back along names like Sunrise Boulevard to my hotel.

So more work took me up to a place called Southport in the morning and then onto Surfers Paradise…think of Miami down under – a strip of sparkling towers and apartments between an endless stretch of sand on one side and numerous inlets and waterways on the other. Due to the incredibly hard work that I had put in (and I always do of course), I was able to finish at about 3pm, so I had 3 hours or so, just me and the car I was starting to like more and more, to see the sights. So what do you do on the Gold Coast? Well, go to the beach, sunbathe and test the warmest waters I have been into so far in Australia wasn’t a bad start. This is the slightly surreal sight of the towers of Surfers which seem to get higher the closer they get to the beach, casting a shadow on sunbathers in the hot afternoons (how considerate).



After that, I trundled down the Gold Coast Highway to a more natural setting of Burleigh Heads National Park. Now you think of National Parks as big great open expanses of wilderness, but this is really just a headland between two beaches. It was a beautiful little walk though, through semi-tropical bush and with views both to the north and south. This is looking south towards Palm Beach, Coolangatta and south of the border, down New South Wales way.



There seemed to be lots of birds that looked like small turkeys rustling about in the park - nothing like a few rustles in the wilderness to give you a fright – as well as this lizard basking on a rock.

The trail looped back along the coast and to the south end of Burleigh Beach, where, seemingly, like dude, there is some radical tube from the like swell hitting the southerly current thing man on the north facing curve of the bay and the breaker has like you know churned on the westie.

And so, as people of all shapes and sizes and hair types rushed to hit the Friday evening waves, I drove the final few kilometres back to the airport to drop off the car, and back onto public transport for a bus and then train to Brisbane (a 2 hour journey all for about 5 quid). Arriving in Brizzy I could see the lights of the Gabba where England had just almost ever so slightly beaten the Aussies…but still lost. Oh well, Banana Benders, what do they know?!

Saturday in the city

So what can I tell you about Brisbane? It was named after somebody whose surname was Brisbane and the Brisbane River runs through it. Apparently, it will be the second biggest city in Australia (after Dubbo) by 2020. I think you can sense it’s a pretty new place, a work still in progress but progressing very well. Financed by the over-inflated price of bananas or something, there is plenty of recent glitzy construction and fancy riverside apartments. The CBD is pretty much like any other Australian city, same old shops and food courts and somewhere for me to buy a new phone after mine went a bit crazy and started vibrating on its own accord.

After some shopping I walked through the Botanic Gardens which included a mangrove boardwalk (those pesky mangrove boardwalks yet again!) and then crossed the river to South Bank. This is one of those recently developed glitzy areas I was telling you about. What they have done down here which is quite good though is made a little beach and swimming area, great for hot summer days like these.

In the afternoon I caught a bus out to Mount Coot Tha which overlooks the city and surroundings. You could see all the way to the coast and a long way south to the jagged mountain ranges which I also saw whilst travelling to exotic locations like Nerang in the Gold Coast.





As I had an hour or so up here, I wondered off to check out some waterfalls which were totally dry! Walking back to the lookout I noticed this huge spiders web and a rather sizeable spider on there. I had a feeling he was harmless for some reason but I guess any spider in Australia should be considered with caution, especially that size! I think he was a golden orb spider, similar to ones evident in Florida.

The same ticket (cost=£1.50) which took me up the mountain also took me along the Brisbane river and back. This opened up some of the views and the sun dipping on the horizon made for a really pleasant way to spend an hour or so.


It was a nice end to the day and whilst I can say Brisbane didn’t wow me the same as some other places, those banana benders haven’t done a bad job.

Snakes alive!

So I’d done the coast and the city, the only thing left was the Hinterland – an area of steep hills and semi-tropical forest, remnants of a huge ancient volcano centred around the northern edge of NSW. I’d hoped to do quite an active bushwalking tour of Springbrook National Park but that was booked out and instead I was on a more sedate tour with stops primarily aimed at making you part with your cash. Having said that, the tour guide, Davo, was a fountain of knowledge and the drive was beautiful.

The first stop was Tambourine Mountain…don’t get too excited - no stops at look outs or waterfalls but 45 minutes to spend ambling down Gallery walk. Ooh. Did have a complementary scone with rhubarb jam and improper non-westcountry cream though, meaning I was too full to spend money in Mrs Macs Olde Fashioned Fudge Shoppe. Descending Tambourine Mountain, the road went through a couple of green valleys before another climb up the McPherson Range in Lamington National Park. The road then zigzagged above the valleys and, between the trees, there were some staggering views both to the Great Dividing Range to the west and Lamington National Park to the south and east. This is a world heritage area, along with Springbrook National Park where no doubt a group of smelly backpackers were crossing streams, walking under waterfalls and climbing paths to rocky outcrops with panoramic views to everywhere.

Our road ended at O’Reillys, a jungle resort where you can “get away from it all”. Or experience lots of screaming kids, Japanese people feeding the Rosellas or queues to climb a ladder on the treetop walk. Enough of the negativity already! The treetop walk was actually rather good, although shorter than I expected. This was real jungle, I just expected Paul Burrell to appear from around the corner.


Like any tourist trap, walk five metres from the trail you’re expected to follow and you’re almost instantly teleported into another world. The screams of kids and clicks of Sony cameras were replaced by the clicks of bugs and the screams of birds living life to the full in the jungle. That wasn’t the only wildlife. There were also snakes. Yes, snakes (and not on planes). A red bellied black snake, not huge but probably packing enough venom to down me with the bat of an eyelid (do snakes have eyelids?). I would’ve taken a picture for y’all but as I nearly stood on him I scared him back into the undergrowth (I scared him?!).

On another track (which led eventually to beautiful waterfalls and lookouts, only 3 or 4 hours walk...not possible when you have 2 hours) I thought there was another snake lazing about in the leaves ahead of me, only to find out it was this lizard (a form of Lace Monitor maybe). He wasn’t that scary, quite cute really!

The next bit of wildlife was a man with a tanned face and frazzled white hair, lugging about a great big camera telling me about the beautiful waterfalls and overlooks he had been to and taking pictures of the fungi. I told him to have fun…guy. He didn’t laugh though he was rather jolly.

After a quick pie from O’Reillys food emporium (which I ate in front of the “Welcome to O’Reillys sign, annoying the hell out of people who wanted to take a picture of the sign!), I took a snoop around the resort, where I was able to sneak a few views of some of the mountains (At last, an overlook!).



I also saw up here quite a strange little thing – like the size of a rabbit but bouncing about like a kangaroo – I believe it might be called a red-necked pademelon.

So with that my allocated two hours was up, though I quickly picked up a Lamington NP guide from the deserted rangers office, and we headed back down the mountains, spotting a large batch of Pretty Face Wallabies on the way down. They have white faces and some black eyeliner markings. Back down in the valley we had a bit of wine tasting. Now Queensland is more renowned for its rum and delicious Bundaberg Ginger Beer than it’s wine, but one or two of them weren’t bad. Certainly made the journey back to Brisbane (via Nerang of all places) pass more quickly. Even Davo had worn himself out, but he proved a good bloke and helped make it an enjoyable day despite one or two disappointments. I’ll certainly remember it as my first confirmed snake spotting in Australia!! Crikey!

John Ketley time

I heard there was some stormy weather back in the UK. Well, you're not the only ones to get extreme weather. Today was 40.5 degrees C, the hottest Canberra day for 40 years!

In recent days my bike and I have got reacquainted. It’s not that we fell out, more we both didn’t have much time for each other. Whilst I was busy hopping around the country and across the Tasman my bike was busy becoming an avid collector of cobwebs and dust blown in all the way from Gundagai.

With the light evenings it has been perfect for a few short bike rides and on Friday night I took advantage of the fine weather and cycled to yet another part of Canberra Nature Park complete with all the usual trappings - gum trees, kangaroos and a panoramic look out. Mount Pleasant is a smaller mound just across the lake from where I live but seems a million miles away – red dirt tracks transporting you at once to the realms of Woop-Woop and beyond.

For some reason there were a lot of rabbits here. They’re not native but were a present from the Poms. So we give them rabbits to ruin their ecosystem and rabbit batsmen to bowl at. There were a couple of large roos spotted though, probably the biggest I have seen up close in the wild.

I also am pretty sure I had my first known encounter with a snake. As I reached the top of Mount Pleasant something dark, thin and wriggly slithered into a hole in the rocks. I didn’t linger to investigate further.

I reached the top of Mount Pleasant with the late evening sun casting beautiful light in every direction. Here are a few pictures I took whilst I was at the top.

And as the sun dipped below the hills I cycled back along Lake Burley Griffin, across the bridge, past deserted civil servant quarters and home.

the fellowship

Auckland, New Zealand

So after a hefty Christmas lunch and a boxing day watching England do the usual in the cricket, it was a wonderful 4am start for my journey to Sydney and onto Auckland. A cool dawn with mist rising from the hollows emerged as the coach trundled along the Hume highway and onto Sydney airport, which was reasonably quiet and left me with 3 hours to kill before my flight. Great news came 30 minutes before that flight when my name was called over the speaker and I was presented with an upgraded ticket to Business Class on the Emirates flight to Auckland. Oh mumma! Pressing the button to raise my footstool and being presented with a wine list and menu were specific highlights…

I arrived to a drizzly, cool and windy Auckland and proceeded onto Newmarket, where Jenn and Ollie have a lovely little place complete with Christmas decs, fake snow and one of the most welcoming sofa-beds known to man!

Thursday morning arrived still fresh and showery but it soon brightened as Ollie and I wandered across the Domain, a huge green expanse of land onto Parnell and down to the city and Viaduct Harbour, where I supped my first Kiwi beer for over three years. Later in the day we headed up to Mount Eden, which offers spectacular views of the city and its surrounds. Like most of the hills in Auckland, it is an extinct volcano, or what the Maori fellas call Pa.

Here is the old crater, which apparently some crazy people do roly-polies down even though you’re not supposed to, tut tut tut. I’m surprised the kiwis haven’t started rolling those human hamster ball type things down there!

On Friday, Ollie and I set off to explore some other parts of Auckland, including the Eastern suburbs which include plenty of bays and small beaches, dotted with boats and with continually good views across to Rangitoto Island, another extinct volcano which dominates the landscape. This is the view from Achilles Point, which was near Ladies Bay which was just down the road from Gentleman’s Bay.

The water in Auckland is such a delightful turquoise, I don’t quite know why but nowhere else except New Zealand seems to have such colourful waters.

After the slowest wait for a Starbucks ever, we crossed the harbour bridge and entered the charming northern suburb of Devonport. It’s not much like Devonport in Plymouth (there didn’t seem to be any hoodies or 14 year old pram pushers) though there is the odd naval ship docked there. An interesting thing about Devonport I’m sure you’ll agree is that there are another two Pa there – North Head and Mount Victoria.

North Head was great, with some interesting old military defences and views looking out past colourful lush plants to Devonport and back across the water to the city. The big pointy thing is called the Sky Tower by the way and people pay good money to jump off it.

After all this volcano climbing (OK, you can drive up them!) some refreshment was needed along with some good ol’ Kiwi fush und chups in a pub in Devonport.

To walk off the grub (OK, drive) we went up to Mount Victoria, which had equally good views…this one looking back out across North Head and out to the Hauraki Gulf.

As it was Friday, it was only right to go down to the good old British boozer at the end of the day, where we drunk some homebrew and toasted an end to another arduous week in the Southern Hemisphere!

the big day out

Saturday arrived with a heavy morning shower (seems to be common round here) but what followed was a gorgeous day of sunshine, sand and subtropical landscapes.

We headed south west out of the Auckland suburbs through a small village suburb of Titirangi and onto Waitakere Ranges Regional Park. These are the hills rising to the West of Auckland and the road, aptly called Scenic Drive, winds its way past lush ferns and palm trees (which seem to me more reminiscent of Vietnam than New Zealand). The first stop was the impressive and pleasing Arataki Visitor Centre, with a short little boardwalk offering some fine views of the jungle clad hills.


More overlooks followed and we stopped for lunch at one of these places called Pukematekeo, which had 360 degree views across to the west coast and back to Auckland and its volcanoes and harbours.



Scenic Drive eventually wound its way back down to a lower level dotted with small towns and vineyards before we turned off the main road and headed to the coast at a place called Muriwai. Here is where the wild Tasman Sea meets the volcanic sand and rugged cliffs of the west coast. It was a bit breezy but smashing, don’t you think. Here’s Jenn and I on some rock or something (probably was a bubbling lava pool once).

We weren’t the only ones at Muriwai, not only were there many Japanese tourists there were thousands of smelly gannets who nest on the nearby rocks. No matter how smelly, they had a nice home with dazzling waterside apartments.

Muriwai served up some delicious and large ice cream (mmm hokey pokey) and it was with full bellies and the satisfaction of being beside the seaside that we journeyed the short trip back to Auckland and settled in for the night.