What time is it there?!

When I first thought about writing this it was quite topical, but since it took so long to get it done I’ll be brief!

By now you may, or may not, have seen the new Australian tourism TV commercial. It received much publicity here, mainly because it seemed to upset or offend almost every country it was exported to! The Americans didn’t like it much, the UK banned it from TV, the Canadians wre happy with the word ‘Bloody’, but didn’t like ‘Hell’, and in Singapore they just didn’t like any of it!

This was the cause of much amusement/derision from Aussie TV/Radio presenters, who couldn’t really understand what all the fuss was about (and you only have to listen to the politicians insulting each other in parliament to realise that this is pretty tame language as far as they are concerned). It was taken so seriously in fact that a reasonably senior politician was dispatched to London to try (successfully we believe) to overturn the TV ban.

The only problem is, that amidst all the outrage, the one thing they seem to have overlooked is that the advert is, in fact, CRAP!!

Before I go on I should point out that we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Australia, and met nothing but friendly people wherever we went. Also, as we all know, the British media are hardly angelic most of the time, but somehow the Aussie media still managed to irritate us.....

Oh, where shall we start..... First of all, our opinions are based largely on watching TV, so the newspapers may be significantly better (although I think the ownership is spread amongst just as few people).

Having already spent 4 or 5 weeks in the USA we thought we'd been subjected to the worst the TV advertising world could throw at us, but I think we were wrong. They seem to be able to fit far more adverts into a 60 minute show than you would think possible, and they have one really great trick... Imagine this, having already had 473 advert breaks in the show, you are nearing the very end and there is yet another ad break. Then, when you come back from the break, there is only ONE line of dialogue left before the credits!!!

Then there was the problem with Channel 9's sports coverage during the Commonwealth games. Basically, if there wasn't an Australian in it with a chance of a medal, then it seemed that an event wasn't really worth showing. So, Dean Macey won gold in the Decathlon and what did we get to see of the event? Well, of course we got to see the very end of the 1500m and then the Aussie guy getting his bronze medal!! It's great that they really get behind their teams (as opposed to the British media just trying to knock them down), but it all gets a bit much after a while. Even the Australians themselves were complaining about it by the end!

And finally....... We arrived in December in the days following the 'race' riots on Cronulla Beach in Sydney. The newspapers were full of the story, and ever since then 'Australian Society' (i.e. the media) has been grappling with how it really feels about what it likes to call 'Multi-Culturalism' (although nobody really seems to know what they mean by this phrase). In the first few days the articles in the paper seemed to be debating whether or not Australian Society was racist (and reaching many conclusions).

However, from our experience of many parts of the country the problem is not with the people (in general they just seem to get on with each other) but with the media itself. It sometimes seems as if the shows are actually being produced and edited by Alf Garnett himself. On one 'Watchdog' type show we saw three films in the same episode, there was one about botched cosmetic surgery in Thailand, another about cheap labour being brought in from abroad, and a third about dodgy fish from polluted Vietnamese rivers being passed off as Aussie Barramundi in local fishmongers. The underlying message of the whole show appeared to be "you can't trust the Asians". A few weeks later another show (a kind of 6:30pm local news show) managed to give several minutes airtime to a shopkeeper who was refusing to serve people who could not speak English as they "aren't trying hard enough" to learn the language.

In fact, a couple of 'phone-in show' radio DJ's have been accused of virtually inciting the riots with the content their programs in the week before. I'm not certain how this story ended, but at one point we saw a TV show which suggested that at least one of them was "on leave" pending further investigation. More details on this story here and here.

However, just so you know it isn't all bad, they also have another channel (SBS) which seems the complete opposite. It doesn't actually seem to produce a great deal of its own programming, but it shows hour long news programs in a dozen or more languages throughout the day (bought in from the national broadcasters in the other countries). So, if you wish, you can spend the morning watching the news from France, Spain, Germany and Russia (they also have radio channels). And of course, when you just have to have your fix of DIY, gardening or cookery shows then you can always return to the regular channels!

We arrived in Melbourne on the day before the opening ceremony and it already seemed busier than Australia Day in Sydney. By the next afternoon it seemed that even more people had crammed their way into town, and most of them were heading to the river to watch the opening ceremony on the big screens. We did briefly consider buying tickets to the ceremony, but since the cheapest tickets available were about £175 each it didn't take too long to decide on the riverbank option! (this may also explain why thousands of volunteers were given free tickets at the last minute to ensure a full stadium).

Now we may be judging unfairly as we couldn't see the screens that well, but the opening ceremony inside the stadium seemed to be 2 hours of complete nonsense involving a duck (for reasons which were never made clear). Those of you fortunate enough to have watched it on the BBC may well have received some explanation of what it was all supposed to mean, but the inane ramblings of the presenters that we had to endure gave no insight whatsoever. Down on the riverbank it was a completely different story, as tens of thousands of people (many no doubt feeling equally smug about being £175 better off!) got a great view of the events on the river itself and a superb front row seat for one of the best firework displays we have ever seen.

We spent the next two days at the rugby 7's competition, which was actually far more enjoyable than the non-rugby fans amongst you might expect. Apart from anything else we got to see the Australians wildly supporting New Zealand in the final (against England), so now we know that they dislike the Poms more than the Kiwis! In fact we were probably amongst the only people in the country who did see the final, as we have since discovered that the magnificent Channel 9 (with their "Wide World of Sport" slogan) seemed so taken aback by the lack of Aussie involvement in the match that they switched their TV coverage to a medal ceremony (Aussie bloke wins bronze) and , er, recorded highlights of lawn bowls! Oh yes, the Australian Media, its quite comical at times, but more about that later......

Getting tickets to the swimming or diving was virtually impossible as they had sold out months ago. So the only other event we actually went to was the night of athletics involving the 100M and Mens 5000M final. This was a great choice as although we had booked the cheapest seats available we somehow ended up sitting directly above the finish line!

Although we didn't attend any other events it didn't really matter, because there were numerous big screens around the city centre showing events throughout the day. There was also a music and arts festival on throughout the games, so every afternoon and evening there were live performances on 4 or 5 stages around the park.

Did anyone watch the closing ceremony? Was I the only one who thought that the closing musical performer was actually Donald Trump, rather than John Farnham? Maybe it's just those big screens again! From our point of view (sitting on the grass in the park) the ceremony seemed just as ridiculous as the opening. The only good points were, firstly the appearance of the Lord Mayor of Melbourne who (for reasons that we have yet to establish) seems to enjoy almost 'pop star' like popularity with the people, and secondly the part of the show put on by the Indians to promote the next games. In fact, maybe they could set a new standard for opening ceremonies, it still might not make any sense but everyone will probably be having so much fun that the ceremony could go on for longer than the games themselves!

On the day after the closing ceremony it still wasn't quite over. There have been volunteers from all around the country helping out around the city and we had been told that they were having a parade of their own through the city on Monday morning. It seemed as if all 15,000 of them had stayed around for the event and it must have taken 45 minutes for them all to pass by accompanied by some of the Australian athletes. It certainly looked like they had all had a great time, so if about 15,000 of you could make yourself available to work in central London in 2012 (for free of course!) then I'm sure everything will go well.....

The Dodgy Colours on this Site:
Sorry, it still looks a bit odd in Internet Explorer but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. So, if you're getting to much blue spreading across the screen you have two choices:

1) Ignore it, it's not that bad.....
2) Get Firefox! (It's much better anyway!!)

Missing RMail Updates?
I've noticed that there may have been a problem with the email updates from RMail. They may have made some changes around the same time as we had our 'problems' and since then I realised I'd had no emails. However, I re-subscribed and it seems to be OK now.

So, if you signed up for email updates through the RMail box over on the left and you haven't been getting the emails lately, then try siging up again and it should be OK.

New Website (sort of)
I've been hoping to put together a separate site with some information about the places we've stayed, the websites we have used to book hotels etc., and some other bits. I know this will probably be of little interest to many of you, but I've made a start just in case someone finds it useful when planning a trip...

I haven't had time to do it 'properly' yet (we're so busy!!), but I have found a quick method of listing the links. So, if you're interested, have a look at http://del.icio.us/markmat . Ignore the main body of the page because it only shows the most recently added links. Instead look over at the right hand side of the page and you'll see the links in several categories. At the moment the main lists are links to Accommodation and Booking Websites. There is also the beginnings of 'Accessories' (a.k.a. "Have we really used all that stuff we brought with us?"!).

Even if you're not interested in our links have a look at Del.icio.us, it's a really good way of having access to all your bookmarks from home when you are using the internet somewhere else..... like at work (come on, own up, you know who you are!!).

Believe it or not in this country of extreme temperatures it does actually snow .... well the number of ski hire shops suggest that this is not a joke played on the poms! Many Australians have never seen snow because the Snowy Mountains is an area of only 6500sqkms (about 0.01% of the country!) .... and is a long way for many of Australias inhabitants. We drove through the desolate ski villages and mountain passes whichwere beautiful. Lets not get carried away here, although Mount Kosciuszko is Australias highest peak it is no Everest. At 2228 metres it seems more like a well rounded hill as it does not have the traditional trade mark of a big pointy top like its worldwide counterparts. Nonetheless it was a very pretty area and afforded us some lovely views of the whole area known as the 'High Country' mmmmm? which we are sure with snow would look even prettier.

So finally we can say that we have made it to every state and territory in Australia, during this trip and our last visit which ticked off Queensland. This is probably more than your average Australian. Quite a few of the people we met said things like "Oh yeah, that's lovely and that too" or "I've heard it's great". Truth is they have never been there are more often than not have never been out of their state let alone the country. And with all that there is to see in Australia, leaving the country is not necessary, but at least leaving the area where you live and seeing a bit of what this enormous country has to offer is a MUST. Having said all that, we can't claim to have seen the whole of the UK either!

Canberra itself is Australia's answer to Milton Keynes ... built in the middle of nowhere. At least with this manufactured city, it provides the country with its political hub and puts two fingers up to the bickering Sydneysiders and Melburnians who have considered themselves in the past to be the capital city. (what does Milton Keynes give the UK .......? - remind us!)

Given all this build up - there isn't really much to see and asked whether it was worth the 600km trip ........ I'll get back to you on that. We did go round the New Parliament building which is very grand and pompous and goes some way to trying to explain how the whole Senate and House of Representatives systems work .... we are still not sure! The National War Memorial is also another enormous structure which emphasises all the land available here when we have the Cenotaph to do what they cover in about 5 acres! There were some pretty spectacular views from the tower .... you will have gathered by now that we like to view the places we go from some sort of tower ... apologies to anyone who suffers from vertigo.

Edited 5/4/06: Small change to wording following feedback from Aussie readers!

......... well, after several weeks on the road and more miles under our belts than we care to mention (probably not really doing our bit for the environment!) we have made it to Melbourne for a short break and to support the British and Fijian contingents at the Commonwealth Games (someone needs to keep the Aussies in check) ....and getting 2006's Formula 1 experience in. Since we started writing this note we have already been to the rugby 7's, so you'll probably know by now that our support only led to a silver and bronze medal (despite Nikky almost losing her voice shouting and cheering).

The Australians didn't win it either though, which explains why there was a strange absence of rugby coverage in the papers the next day!! In fact, it's fair to say that the media coverage is just a tad biased (the TV schedules in the paper have a disclaimer each day that says "coverage may vary subject to Australian results and performances"!!. If the Aussies don't think they will win a medal the media can quite happily pretend the event doesn't exist. The finals session of the rugby was attended by a record 50,000 people, and yet (because they hadn't expected much from their team) it hadn't even been mentioned in the paper that morning in the events guide!

We are in Melbourne until the 3rd of April now, so there may not be too much to update you on for a couple of weeks (although we are about to head off to Canberra for a couple of days) but we'd love to get e-mails from you all and hear all your news. We'll also promise to try to avoid publishing too many grand prix pictures for those of you who will be bored by it.....

New Zealand will follow soon and as this is one of my (Nikky's) highlights there are bound to be LOTS of pictures so prepare yourselves! Then it is off to Japan, which Mark may be looking forward to more than Nikky (as she is concerned that she will spend the whole time standing outside "gadget shops").

Anyway .... sit back and relax and we will be back on air soon.

Wow....... what a great city. We have arrived at the perfect time because there is so much going on and so much to see and do. Coupled with many hundreds of thousands more people in residence than normal and you have a real party atmosphere. We will keep the Commonwealth Games and Grand Prix stuff separate so that we won't bore the non die-hard fans amongst you, this bit is just about the city itself.

Historically there is a real 'rivalry' between Sydneysiders and Melburnians, with the residents of each city constantly running down the other (Think England v Scotland, it seems that serious to some people!). We can safely now put the record straight as we have been to both. We promise not to be biased to the city we have spent the longest in ...!

Melbourne is an eclectic mix of the old and the new with some superb old architecture nestled between steel and glass. One of the hearts of the place is Federation Square .... icon or eyesore .... you decide. The Yarra river runs through its heart and wandering along the south bank could have you mistaken that you are somewhere else in the world. One of its other advantages is that it is relatively small so you can walk around it with ease. It has one of the most comprehensive tram systems in the world and took me fondly back to my days in Amsterdam, although I don't remember any being decked out as an indian love carriage! It also has a free tourist shuttle which takes you to all the main destinations although it helps if the bus driver isn't on his first day and knows when to turn the tape on and off! It gets terribly confusing when you are hearing about things that are nearly half way round from where you are! It has such a fantastic atmosphere and is a place that we can certainly recommend to anyone as a holiday (or job) destination.

We have had a couple of experiences where we have realised that we are not as young as we used to be ....... 5am bed times just don't work when you are over thirty!!!!! But we are persevering on getting our stamina up!

Melbourne, you get 10 out of 10, thanks. Sydney 'v' Melbourne - our verdict ....... the latter. Apologies to anyone who disagrees.

.... and so it was time to leave the comforts of Adelaide again and commence our journey along 'The Great Ocean Road' to Melbourne. Something had been telling us that this 'great' road spanned the distance from Adelaide to Melbourne but we quickly realised that it is really only a very small part of yet another massive disctance between two cities. We decided to break the journey up with two stops. Our first day on the road, it rained consistently ... like being at home! Luckily we weren't anywhere near the coast at this stage so we didn't miss much. We stopped overnight in the town of Mount Gambier which is a small country town up a little bit of a hill. It was still torrential rain so we didn't get to see much of it that night. Anyway we settled ourselves into a motel and watched the first Formula 1 race of the season as the anoraks we are! It was great to hear the ITV commentary, as the Aussie commentators don't have a clue and it gave us a little taste of home along with the weather. We have decided that the Aussie TV people don't really know much about anything related to Formula 1 other than the sole aussie driver Mark Webber, so it is probably better that they drafted in the Engligh commentary ... more about Aussie media later on..........

We woke to the weather we have been used to and as we approached the coast and finally started on 'The Great Ocean Road'. The guide books say that this is one of the top 20 drives in the world and the views were specatcular. There are many turn off points which take you to sheer cliffs and thrashing ocean but one of the main highlights is 'The Twelve Apostles'. In fact there are only now 11 as one collapsed last year, although you cannot see them all at once so there may be less but you'd never know! The Australians seem convinced that by the power of the ocean, more will be created over time but they seem to ignore the fact that they will probably collapse faster than the sea can carve new ones. Despite this they are still proud to call it the twelve apostles .... although now we know different!

The road is littered with tiny coastal towns. Butlins hasn't quiet made it here but there were a few offereings which had 'yellow coat' potential, if the wind changed direction! We were lucky and found a little retreat in the forest with sulphur crested cockatoos joining us for breakfast. It was a really magical place, shame we only had the one night.

We felt (ok ... I felt) that I hadn't seen waterfalls or lighthouses for a while so I embarked on visits to both to curb my cravings! It was really nice to see some lush green plantlife after all the browny/redness we had encountered throughout much of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Unfortunately the lighthouse wasn't that spectacular but we have kept the photos in anyway because at the rate we are going we could go into calendar production and have enough photos to last several years!

All too quickly after it started, we headed away from the coast and towards Melbourne and our Great Ocean Road experience was just another memory. Shame there wasn't more of it .... next time I meet our 'Creator' I'll ask them to add a few hundred more kilometres on..........!

Back to South Australia and we decided that we should try another one of their world renowned wine areas, having done the Barossa on our last trip. We went with a group of friends of friends and had a fantastic day. We had arranged a cheese platter which basically involved us sitting around in wineries, tasting wines to acompany a cheese (and lots of others) and generally lounging about and taking in the atmosphere ...... if only all wine tasting sessions were like this. Normally it seems to be a case of tearing about from one place to the next and seeing how much vino you can consume, consequently but the 3rd or 4th one your taste buds have deserted you.

This was and excellent way to spend a Sunday afternoon - thanks guys, hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

We can hardly say that we have have covered this park extensively, we had all of about 3 hours and 1 night here but the little bits we did see proved that it was a little gem. It is only a short drive from Darwin so it made a good base for our last night in the 'top end' (as it is fondly known) before heading back 'down south''.

The north definitely seems to be termite country, what we now don't know about termites is, frankly, not worth knowing! And believe us, we have seen several thousand mounds. Anyway, we decided to visit some called 'magnetic' termite mounds. For those of you not familiar with the life cycles, habits and species of termites (if there are any budding David Attenboroughs amongst you we want to know!), here is a bit of detail about this type. In order to keep their nests at a constant temperature and avoid them overheating, they build their nests on a North / South axis so that only a small surface area is exposed to the sun in the heat of the day. Apparently this is because they do not have any underground tunnels in which to keep cool in during the day which the other species have. So the overall effect is very thin but still very tall nests ....blah blah blah ... I am sure we are boring you now but we must explain why you can see none of this clearly in the pictures! As previously said, it is the wet season up here which means everything grows at a phenomenal pace, including the grass around the termite mounds ....basically, taller than the mounds themselves. So those little grey patches you can see amoungs the grass are the mounds but really don't seem very impressive - sorry! Some of the other 'Cathedral' termite mounds are massive and easily double the height of Nikky and over 50 years old. What we were never privvy to was the rough number of inhabitants in these huge mud castles. Answers on a postcard please ......

Florence Falls
We know that you saw alot of pictures of these when we were in North America but we have not been anywhere that had nearly enough water to create a waterfall for a couple of months, so this was a pleasant surprise. Just a little one burried somewhere in the rainforest which was very pretty.

Buley Rockhole
Gosh, if only we had longer ....... these pools were just a series of little streams gently cascading over rocks and forming small pools which are not big enough to be inhabited by crocs but just the right size for sitting in and cooling off in humidity! We had a little paddle and it was here that we had our first encounter with other tourists ....yuk! There were lots of people just lounging about on the rocks. We dreaded to think what it would be like here in the busy season, would ruin the whole idyllic nature of the place we suspect.

Dinner in a campsite restuarant
....... now how high would your expectations be? Ours were pretty low but we had exhausted our food stocks prior to our imminent plane journey and we were getting dangerously close to our mileage limitation on the hire car so aimlessly driving about the countryside trying to find something to eat was out of the question. So off we trotted with fairly low expectations. Well what can you say but gourmet ...... we had locally caught Barramundi with chips and salad and it was all beautiful and presented just as any top noshing establishment would! ....

More Litchfield pictures here.

Just as we thought we had done all of our driving extravaganzas ... how wrong we were! Just a few hundred kms from Darwin is the Kakadu National Park and another of the World Herritage sites to tick off our list. We decided to go prepared for rough terrain and opted for a small 4WD, all of the real four wheel drive tracks around here are shut in the wet but we were hoping that we would at least be able to get around if it rained and we encountered any really BIG puddles! However, in the small print you are prohibited from really putting it through its paces ... although we did try!

The 'wet' is really wet, huge areas of wetlands which swarm with birdlife (although we missed the best of it) that for the rest of the year don't even qualify as a pond! It is amazing to try and imagine what it would actually look like in the 'dry' and I think we both probably failed miserably. The only way to really know would be to come back again ...... any excuse! The season also prevented us from reaching some of the parts that we would have liked to have seen but this gives us more excuses to return.

Our first experience was the Yellow Water Cruise, there is some debate as to why it is called this, there seemed to be two suggestions but nobody is sure, possibly something to do with local yellow flowers. We rose early and went on a boat trip through the billabongs and buffalo grass which for most of the year are dry. At one point the water depth indicator was almost up to 2 meters and at other points you could see the handrail protrouding from the water where the boat sets sail from in the 'dry'. We saw some interesting bird life and one solitary crocodile who didn't hang around long enough for a photo. Luckily we were in a substantial boat so he couldn't have us for breakfast!

A little later we braved the humidity and commenced a walk to Gubara Pools. This was only 3kms over fairly easy terrain ... water jumps aside! and gave our hiking boots their first real christening and tested their waterproofing to the max. We are pleased to report that both sets passed with flying colours. Wringing wet, we arrived at pure paradise. A secluded set of little waterfalls and pools set amongst lush forest and a perfect place for a picnic. Had there not been so many signs warning of crocodiles in the area, we may have gone for a quick dip but we both decided that we still have far more to see on our 'big trips' that we opted to stay safe and just dipped our hats in to help us keep cool on the trek back. We could have stayed there all day watching frogs and butterflies frolicing about but the mosquito's were a bit irritating and seemed unphased by the mosquito repellent that we were both wearing.

Then it was off to Nourlangie Rock which is an Aboriginal sacred site where history shows that their people have camped in the caves, many thousands of years ago. The main draw here are the rock paintings which are anything up to 50,000 years old, although no-one really knows! We did the best we could with our pictures but the angle of the sun and the walkways prevent anything spectacular and considering their age, some are quite faint. Wouldn't you be after 50,000 years? Anyway, we wouldn't describe them as particularly spectacular and they were no Picassos, but the fact that they are there at all is quite impressive!

More Kakadu pictures here.