TravelStream™ news feed for member simonpullen on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/simonpullen en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:47:07 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1236728400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1236728400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1236728400/tpod.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:47:07 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Scarborough, Western Australia, Australia

After the weekend in Fremantle we moved down to Perth to stay in a hostel for a week except we didn't actually. We still couldn't get good accommodation in Perth so we settled on a weekly deal to stay at YHA hostel at Scarborough Beach which was half an hour up the coast and around halfway between Fremantle and Perth.   The hostel was basic but the little village was handy as it had a supermarket, internet café, a beach and a bus stop. What more could a backpacker ask for. Yes it had a pub but we were very good (more like very broke) and never went to it.   Spent the week either lying on the beach and going into Perth to get things fixed. My backpack and connecting smaller day bag were brand new when I set out on my travels. Over the past ten months I gradually wore them first of all with flat spotting one of its wheels in Asia (yes I found a backpack with wheels, tip don't buy it they're useless). Then the zips on the bag started to wear out which was worrying. The zip that was used to enclose all the straps when flying was the first to go, various modes of transport in Asia chewed up the zip till it was missing about a half dozen teeth but this not a big deal I rarely had zip away my straps. The first real problem came with the zip on the front of my day bag went whilst in Melbourne the first time. It was only a small pocket in the front where I kept a few things but it meant I had to walk around for about six weeks with the pouch open and thus unusable. However the main problem happened in Perth where the zip somehow got damaged (more travelling) the seam came away from the bag. In other words my back pack was now useless. I had to bite the bullet and see A if I could afford to get it fixed and B buy a new bag. A quick check on my finances and I realised that I couldn't afford to buy a new bag so we set off in Perth to try and find a cobbler. Do you realise how hard it is to find cobbler in a city these days? Nearly spent the whole day before I found one and he fixed the small bag in two seconds with a pliers (and didn't charge me) but took one look at my backpack and cursed. The problem with is the seam has a type of over-flap with makes it impossible to get at the end of the zip. He said to leave it with him and he'd try and think of a way to fix it as he said he couldn't fix it with the machine. Thankfully when he came about the next day he said that a stopgap could be done, that of re sewing it by hand. Got the bag back an hour or two later and he thankfully didn't charge me too much. Now I hope I holds till I get home. It would be nice to unpack as I haven't done so since I lived in Sydney all the way back in early November.   We spent a couple of days on the beaches of Scarborough and Perth with mixed results. Scarborough beach was nice enough but instantly you could see it was perfect for surfing and not sunbathing and swimming as there was a constant wind creating the waves and kicking up a little sand. Also when I stepped into the water there were really strong tides and waves coming and a dangerous rip going out enough to make you have to readjust your footing and that was at ankle deep. It was still nice to walk down to the beach at sunset as it was only two minutes away and sit there quietly relaxing.   A few days later however visited the much nicer beach of Cottlesloe. Strangely the same beach exhibition I had seen on the Bondi to Coogee beach walk, was now being exhibited on this beach. The beach was really nice and although the water was still freezing, it was safe and good to cool down in. It was relaxing just lying on the beach doing not really much.   Whilst in Scarborough we met up with an Irish couple that were our Neighbours in Newtown and they were in Perth for the weekend. We ended up in an Irish bar of all things but left early as we had to catch the last bus back to Scarborough.   Didn't do much and headed back to Sydney to say goodbye to everyone before leaving Australia behind.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1236039360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1236039360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1236039360/tpod.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:31:11 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia

We had planned to spend a few days in Perth and then spend a day in Fremantle but plans are made for changing especially when there is no affordable accommodation. We ended up spending three nights in a horrible hostel in Fremantle or Freo as the locals call it.   I'm a bit lost for words to describe Freo and that's not a good thing, not a bad thing either mind you. It's just that to me there was little or nothing to set it apart from many other places I've visited.   Maybe the crumbling YHA hostel I stayed wasn't a great start. Our room was right beside the courtyard and therefore lacking in privacy as well. The one bonus was that we didn't book a dorm thankfully and it was the only place available for the weekend in both Fremantle and Perth.   A nice point about the town was that it had a fruit market with good, cheap fresh fruit. We got a bargain punnet of strawberries that were naturally ripened and not soaked in so much water that they begin to taste like melons.   The next day in Fremantle we visited the old Fremantle prison. It was originally a penal prison but was kept open until the 1990s. The tour took us through how it had changed through the years and was interesting enough but I still preferred Kilmainham Gaol. One amusing story from the latter prison was they used to play tennis in the mess yard until the prison officers that people were throwing tennis balls with things inside from outside the walls as a way of secretly getting things into the prison. The officers banned tennis and the prison threw their plastic tennis rackets onto the roof the prison where they can be seen today.      Another benefit to Fremantle is that of it's proximity to Rottnest Island. We had heard many people rave about how beautiful the island and of course we decided to visit it. You can hire bikes on the on island and cycle around stopping off at the various beaches to snorkel and swim. Because of laziness we decided to get the island day bus ticket which came to about the same price and hop on off with our snorkel gear in tow. But of course there was a fault in our cunning plan, that of the weather. The day we visited the island it was miserable. It was windy, cool and rained for half the day. The weather was so bad that on the bus, the bus driver was recommending to people not to get off the bus on the whole west side of the island as there was no point with the weather and wind. We finally got off the bus in a little cove on the other side of the island and attempted to sit on the beach. The weather was fine for about ten minutes until the heavens opened and everyone had to huddle under two big rocks for shelter to stay out of the rain. Thinking we had planned to spend the day on the beach I had only brought shorts and had wrap my towel around myself it was that cold to keep warm. We stopped off at another stop later for another hour and then returned to the port under one and decided that because of the weather that there wasn't much point in staying there. We were booked on a later ferry but I talked to the ticket attendant and he let us in to the warmth.   We were leaving for Perth the next day so we couldn't return in better weather and couldn't afford the expensive ferry to Rottnest to see if people were right in their praise.  
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1235779020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1235779020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1235779020/tpod.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:01:39 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

We returned to Melbourne to finish our tourist stint there. We moved back into our hostel that we stayed before as it was quiet, very clean, reasonable and the people that worked there were very friendly and helpful. The two downsides were that it didn't have a proper kitchen only a microwave and the manager was an eijit of the highest calibre. Talking to him was always a chore as he tried to ingratiate himself with you without having a proper conversation. He'd ask a question and not really listen for an answer. On this occasion we were bemused and confused by him. We got to the front desk we were recognised by the girl there (thinking we'd stayed there for far too long the first time). But when she told him we were back, he took me by surprise should I say. As usual he pretended to know me (he was the type of guy who would bluff rather look like he didn't know something). He went as I thought to motion to shake my hand and I returned the gesture by offering by hand to be greeted by his "brother's style" greeting of a fist that I slowly and painfully from the expression on my face, returned the very uncomfortable greeting. He then asked how I was in French to which I looked at him even more puzzled than before which to be honest must have been quite hard. Turns out that according to him I look a lot like a New Caledonian tennis coach that stayed there recently. I don't know, I was wise not to ask anymore.   Whilst we were there and figuring out where we would go to next we finished up with the last few tourist things we missed out on the first time around. We finally made our exciting visit to Neighbours one of the days. We hopped on a tram that took an hour to the suburban area in which it is filmed. The area was more rundown than we imagined with the surrounding streets in need of repaving and the houses were in need of a repainting for the most part as well. When we got we couldn't go down the street (it's actually a tiny little close or court as it's called) as it was blocked off due to them filming. We watched them shoot one scene for around half an hour before getting bored and leaving. We were glad we didn't spend fifty dollars on the tour to be honest but curious to see something that you grew up with.   Next up we visited the library to look at the famous Ned Kelly armour. Again it's not quite what you expect as all it is, is some crudely designed plate armour that is encased in a glass box. Still though interesting to look at it and read the exhibition in the room beside it. Whilst we were in the library we also took a look at a very interesting exhibition of books through the ages that they have there including a page from the Gutenberg bible.   We decided that wanted to check out Western Australia for a week or so and we booked flights to Perth leaving a few days after. Melbourne lacked the tourist sights but had a slower feel to it which was nice. What I hadn't mentioned before were all the back streets and arcades that you can walk through and stop for a coffee if that's what you do. It's bohemian but it's nice all the same. Anyway onto the next adventure.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1235086740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1235086740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1235086740/tpod.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:45:12 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Mildura, Victoria, Australia

And people thought Melbourne was hot well they haven't felt anything. One day in Mildura the temperature got up to forty seven degrees Celsius, we could barely move with the heat, and the other days weren't exactly cool either. This was also around the time of the bushfires near Melbourne and people contacted me to see if I was near. I was actually about five hours away from the nearest one as Mildura is on the border of Victoria and New South Wales.   When we arrived at our hostel we told they'd made a mistake with the bookings and I could either sleep in a top bunk bed with Marie Therese or I'd have to sleep on the floor at a discounted rate, great news. I spent the first few nights with my back broken until I gave up and slept on the floor. Didn't know if it was the sleeping or the work that broke my back probably both. And now seamlessly onto talking about what lovely jobs we had to do.   We started off working in a garlic factory topping and tailing very smelly garlic's for nine hours a day. To make twenty dollars an hour (ten Euro) you had to cut about four to five thousand garlic which was impossible and generally we only cut about five thousand in a whole shift. The heat in the factory was oppressive as there was no air conditioning and the place was covered in dust making it hard to breath. After a few days we realised how pointless it was working there and that we would actually lose money that week after taking just rent in consideration.   I spoke to the manager of the hostel and he agreed to try and find us new jobs. First up was a job for me picking water melons. Believe me its not as easy as it sounds. The job entailed three guys one of which was myself walking in rows amongst a watermelon field behind a tractor trailer and a conveyor belt out the side for us to throw the melon onto. When I say throw what usually happened was that if you were closest to the belt someone would shout at you and then throw you their melon that weighed around twenty kilos straight at you and you had to catch and put it on the belt. If you caught it incorrectly then you got a dead leg. Sounds not too bad if you're doing it for an hour but can get pretty tiring if you do it all day.   Because the weather was actually too hot and was cooking the melons in the fields the rest of the days we had to spend weeding other fields. I spent two days weeding or hoeing the long rows in the fields they have here. It was torture after my hands were in bits and my back was so bad I could barely walk. And then the farmer let me go because he said I wasn't working hard enough, I think I could show him the evidence that I was! He had a reputation for doing that so I wasn't surprised he let someone go the next day because he talked too much and a few more people in the next few weeks I was there.   Marie Therese had just started doing a job grape picking after one day I joined her at that. She was supposed to be working her grape row with a guy from the North but the manager said I should go along as he said knew that he wouldn't turn up even though he insisted he would. Sure enough at half five in the morning when we got up for work the next day, no amount of knocking on his door would wake him up.   And this was part of the problem with the hostel. The guy in question had for some reason been in Mildura for eight months not doing much apart from drinking. There was a group of Irish, English and Scottish guys who sat around every day and every night just drinking. The bar in the hostel was only open on Friday and Saturday but the rest of the nights they would buy their own booze in the off licence down the road and just sit drinking making lots of noise and listening to loud music. They weren't very popular which the rest of the people and the situation was so bad that when people found out that I was Irish they were puzzled as to why I wasn't drunk and at the bar. Unfortunately as was usually the case one of the drinkers and perhaps the biggest one was also the caretaker so no one could really say a word. These guys would regularly not turn up for their jobs but were still tolerated by the manager for some reason. Had an amusing situation just before we left Mildura of how the manager gave a lot of the drinkers one last chance of a job doing grape picking somewhere else. The only person who knew the directions to the farm was our drunken Northern friend and cue the amusing situation with the first morning one of them hammering on his door at six in the morning trying and to get him up and shouting through the door at him. After a few minutes he got up still looking quite drunk and they set out half an hour late only after having an argument of who was going to drive ( or rather if any of them should have).   Unfortunately one of the drinkers lived in our room. He was from Dublin and was nice enough but would come in every night drunk and make noise and sometimes even turn on the light. And that wasn't his major fault, on the first night he snored really loudly and told us that he only snores when he's drunk, little did we know at this stage that he'd be drunk every night and would snore loudly nearly all night long. What was nearly worse than the snoring though was the fact that he smacked his lips really loudly inbetween snores. He drove the German girl on the bunk underneath him crazy and she would kick his bed repeatedly to try and get him to stop. All in all it meant that we were exhausted every morning and not in the best of humours.   Back to the grape picking. The job was fine although the days were long and hot. We would get there just before sunrise at about five forty-five and work through till about three in the afternoon. The vines were bit bushy and unkempt and you had to constantly climb in underneath to get at the grapes. Suffice to say my arms were covered in scabs and scars by the end of it. And after filling about a hundred and fifty buckets a day, after a few days you began to get a little sick of it. I worked for nine days straight without a break until all the grapes were picked and was a bit fed up with it. Amusing things like watching the farmer's Italian mother drive up and down the rows of vines as two Italian guys from the hostel picked up the buckets onto the trailer. She would shout at them in Italian and you could have sworn you were in a different country.   We decided after much consideration that none of this pain was worth it. The major fact was that if we worked for the fourteen weeks needed for the second year visa and managed to get it then as we were only breaking even financially at best then we probably wouldn't have any money to stay in Australia. After rent I think I made sixty five dollars over those nine days and that's not taking into account food. Because of this we decided to enjoy the time (three months) and continue on with the round the world ticket we had already and would have had to give up if we'd stayed there.   Incidentally the town of Mildura was quite nice and well equipped with all the usual shops. As you walked along the pedestrian outdoor malls a tannoy would play fifties and sixties hits and you would you were in a small town in America.   We said our goodbyes to the people we'd met and left after three long weeks on a night bus that would take us back to Melbourne.  
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1233283320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1233283320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1233283320/tpod.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:50:20 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Arrived in Melbourne without a much needed map early the next morning and promptly got ourselves slightly lost. Well not lost but we were trying to get a tram to our accommodation and ended up walking with heavy bags (very heavy) for about fifteen minutes when we could have walked for two minutes caught one tram and then in turn caught the other one which we needed. Of course a tram map would have helped too and knowledge of how to buy a tram ticket in the city as all these things are tricky at seven in the morning but we got to our accommodation in the end.   We didn't do much in the way tourist sights in the first few days of Melbourne as we were still unsuccessfully trying to sort out fruit picking and still being told that there was none available but more on that later. One thing we did do was meet up with one of Marie Therese's friend from back home and she showed us the sights and sounds of the quiet Melbourne night life.   Actually one of the first things we did was bump into a guy I know from working in Sydney at the supermarket. I thought he'd already left Melbourne so hadn't looked him but it turned out that we were just in time for their leaving barbecue in front. I mean just in time, they were getting supplies in the supermarket and then walking to the park. And so we spent the afternoon cooking a barbecue on the great free barbecue they have in every park out here. We had a nice view of the park, botanic gardens and the Rod Laver Arena across the river.   The first proper tourist thing was decided we had to was the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road is a bit like the Ring of Kerry in terms of the fact that it's a popular scenic route along the coast which people find enjoyable to drive. As I don't have my full licence I couldn't drive it but Marie Therese enjoyed the experience. Anyway we rented a car and set off on a three day trip along the coast with me as the designated map reader.   We set off early that morning passing through the towns of Geelong and stocking up on provisions in Torquay before actually getting onto the Great Ocean Road. The good thing about having a car was that we could stop off at the various viewpoints and beaches along the way and do it at our own pace. We drove on and off along the winding road for most of the day and spent the night at Cape Otway around halfway along the road so we could be early up the next morning the beat the crowds to view the famous Twelve Apostles.   The Twelve Apostles are rock formations off the coast and look quite spectacular. When we got there early that morning it was slightly raining and blowing a gale. I had to delete a few photos of the rocks because of severe camera shake as my camera was getting blown about the place. Late that day we reached the little village of Port Fairy and spent the night there.   The next day we took the faster inland road back to Torquay at the start of the Great Ocean Road. We took our time and passed through a few farming towns on the way back before spending the night just outside Torquay at Point Addis. We wanted to be nearish to Melbourne as the car had to be back the next morning. As we were on a tight budget we didn't want to get any more petrol than was needed and we took it to extremes. On the way back from Port Fairy we stopped off at Warrnambool to get twenty dollars worth of petrol which we hoped would do us. Unfortunately the Toyota Yaris we rented was a little picky on what petrol it would take as it only accepted Ethanol E10 and nearly none of the stations had it on their pumps. We realised towards the afternoon that we probably needed another five dollars and started to search for a station on the way to Torquay and in Torquay. No such luck none of the stations had it and we were starting to worry but we had no choice but to hope that the petrol we had would get us there as we now didn't have enough to investigate and try and find a station somewhere.   And so the next morning we set out a little anxious on the motorway that would take us back into Melbourne. We passed various stations and still no luck and the car was starting to become sluggish to the point where Marie Therese was putting her foot to the floor to keep up with the other cars on motorway. When we saw the Melbourne skyline in the distance we felt better and as luck would have it I spotted a petrol station advertising Ethanol E10 up ahead. And then our luck began to run out. Just as Marie Therese was turning into the slip road the car decreased in speed rapidly slowing and no amount of pumping the pedal made any difference, she was empty. I calculated that if we could get over the little hill on the off ramp then we could make it downhill and into the station by freewheeling. Marie Therese had no faith and didn't think we'd make it and truth be told neither did I; I just didn't want to get out and push. But we made it over the hill and coasted it into the station perfectly. After all that stress we got the car back no problem.   We took the long tram trip out to St Kilda one of the days. The beach was a little manufactured as it has to be raked every morning due to erosion. The width of it is actually quite thin and it feels like you're nearly on top of the main road of St Kilda that runs right behind it. Due to the fact that it was a bit windy that day we just amused ourselves by walking along it and following their scale model of the solar system, we walked as far as Neptune but gave up on Pluto as it's not really a planet and the fact that it was about a kilometre away from the last planet.   A few days later we decided to go to the Australian Tennis Open which was just starting in Melbourne. As one of the big four tennis tournaments in the world I thought I really should go and see some world class tennis as it will probably be my only chance. We got tickets for two days, the first of which was the second day of the first round on the number one court. We saw a few matches that weren't really of great quality and were also quite one sided on the men's side we saw the sixth Gilles Simon and on the women's we saw the fourth seed Demeteva and Venus Williams who's probably the only one that would be known to the average fan. A few days later we went again as we had tickets to the main court, the Rod Laver Arena for the third round. Unfortunately the Australian Open is little like Wimbledon in that they live in hope that they will have a successful player so they put the hopefuls on the main courts which weren't very interesting for us. Despite that we got a chance to watch Rafael Nadal play but he didn't get out of third gear against his opponent who didn't even play badly he was just completely outclassed. Because of the Aussie matches which we weren't interested in, we had a wander about the outer courts and watched a few doubles games one with Marat Safin.   Soon after this we had to move out of our accommodation as with the Open being there wasn't any accommodation in the whole of Melbourne. With a tenuous relatives link we went to stay for a few days with Jane who is Marie Therese's sister in law's brothers girlfriend if you can understand all that. Jane was lovely and made the invaders feel at home as she was packing up getting ready to move to Ireland herself.   After a few days we got lucky with continuous fruit picking searches as we were on the waiting list of a working hostel in Mildura which is in north east Victoria. As luck would have our names was picked out of a hat and we were asked could we get there the next day. Again it seemed lucky as at the time Melbourne was going through a forty degree heat wave and all the trains were in chaos the previous few days with the tracks bending with heat. Because of this all the trains the next day were running for free and we saved about seventy dollars and we got to travel first class as when we rang to make the booking the guy said we might as well sit in first class as it was all free. About seven hours later after another bus journey from a station we arrived in Mildura and wondered if we were still feeling lucky.  
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1231467480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1231467480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1231467480/tpod.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:20:44 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Talk to an Aussie or a backpacker mention the word "Canberra" and you always get the same expression of someone wrinkling their lip and nose having smelt something bad and the question "Why would you want to go there". Despite this we decided that we should still see the capital of Australia in our time here, it wouldn't be right otherwise. Taking these words on board we had planned to only stay one night in the city before heading down to Melbourne. However our bus ticket that we had booked all the way back in Cairns and still going all the way to Melbourne was with Greyhound and maybe because of the fact that it was just after New Year  we weren't able to get a bus out of Canberra for three days so we had no choice but to stay there. Turns out it wasn't such a bad thing after all.   Canberra's maybe a bit mathematical and rigid to the naked eye as it was planned city built just over a hundred years ago. I say mathematical because if you look at map of it it's basically two large circles with concentric circles drifting further and further out until it is met with straight streets all the way. Also it must have been a construction worker's dream as it is full of concrete shells which to be honest most aren't really imaginatively designed or that well built as someone pointed out to us the all the drains on the buildings were done on the cheap and have since been completely replaced or modified so they actually work. Canberra also has the reputation of being how should I say it well just plain dull really.   In saying all this we actually found it grew on us immediately and really shouldn't have to bad reputation it has as it has plenty to do. It started when we arrived late the first night and were dropped at the bus station in the city centre. Having booked the bus at the last minute as we didn't know we were leaving Sydney we could only get a bus that was arriving late and also there was no space in the one Hostel in the whole of Canberra. We decided to go with the next cheapest option of a Travellers Lodge on the outskirts of the city even though this was still above our price range. So there we were wandering around a block in Canberra at half nine at night looking for the correct bus stop which according to the woman who ran the lodge was "easy". We finally found it or so we thought until the driver kindly told us that unfortunately we were at the bus stop for the bus that was going in the opposite direction. But he was kind enough to actually get off the bus show us where he thought the bus left from (even he didn't know) and gave us the correct things to say to the drivers in terms of where to stop. We were surprised by his friendlessness and wiliness to help as we did not find it that often in Australia sadly. After all that and because it was getting late, we decided to bite the bullet when we saw a taxi in the next street and jumped in.   The next morning we got up and walked the half an hour walk to Kevin Rudd's house better known as the Australian House of Parliament. The building itself is a modern affair with its front façade designed with two diagonal steel buttresses meeting at the top of building. The building is surrounded by mounds of grass some of it is incorporated into the building's roof as it sits on a hill with a view that stretches all the way done past the old parliament building which in true Canberran feel is directly as the crow flies in front of it further down the hill and you can see the lake below.   The building itself was informative and a lot of it was open to the public as well. We sat in the public gallery of the government chamber but no one was there at the time, the politicians were probably on holiday as usual. Unfortunately at this point Marie Therese's camera broke which put in a not so happy mood considering she only bought it seven months previously.   The next day we spent part of the day walking around the city including the Captain Cook jet that every ten minutes or so sprouts a fifty metre jet of water into the air and towards you if you're unlucky enough to be downwind. The rest of the day taken up with boring things such as trying to figure out what we were going to do and trying to find have decent non-booked accommodation in Melbourne.   On our last day in Canberra we took a tour of the Australian Institute of Sport where we were shown around the various facilities they have and how the scholarship athletes train and prepare for future international stardom. Left on the night bus to Melbourne that night due to arrive very early the next morning.      
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261290540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261290540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261290540/tpod.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:23:14 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

We arrived in Brisbane hoping to enjoy some down time in a hostel that we got a special rate for staying there for seven nights. However things didn't start great as when we arrived at our hostel we were told that our room was still occupied as the girl staying there previously had been too sick to move out that day. The manager offered us a room in their other hostel across town for the first night and we felt we didn't really have much choice.   The other hostel was basic to say the least but it didn't really matter in the end it was a bed for the night. That night we had a largely unsuccessful night out. We were due to meet the two people we'd met in Mission Beach but it never happened as they got lost and roamed the streets of Brisbane for hours. As for ourselves after sampling a few bars, we couldn't really find any we liked and Marie Therese was not best pleased (I'm the king of understatement) in trudging around Brisbane in newly acquired heels that were cutting her feet to pieces. The walk was so long and she moaned so loudly that I ended up giving her my shoes and myself walking in bare feet. We finally found a bar and I was happy as they going to show the Liverpool V Hull game that I wanted to see. To be a football fan out here you have to be quite committed as matches are always on at one, two or sometimes three in the morning and it takes dedication to wait up for them.   For the rest of the week we relaxed, walking around the streets of Brisbane taking it easy. One day we visited a museum where they had large dinosaurs are at least their skeletal remains, even one that said that food and drink was prohibited beside it obviously they were advising that to be on the safe side.   One thing we noticed about Brisbane and later on is that you'd hardly know its Christmas here. Granted the weather was hot and that's what you expect but street decorations and light are sparse or non-existent in places. Also I haven't been driven to pure murderous insanity by Christmas songs, I never once heard Slade all year and that seemed wrong, refreshing but still wrong.   One major plus was free internet at the hostel as these days it's hard to plan anything without it and it helped me catch up with my blogs .... At least to some extent. Halfway through the week we received an email from our hostel in Byron Bay where we had booked to spend Christmas. Finding a hostel and one that was in some way reasonable had been tricky but after days of searching back in September, October we settled on this newly opening hostel as we thought given that it was opening on December 1st that they might make a big effort for their first Christmas and it might be fun. And as they say no news is good news and I received an email saying that unfortunately due to a large storm in Byron Bay, the roof had been damaged and they were no longer able to honour our booking. That was it, no offer to help us out given the fact that it was ten days to Christmas and the only accommodation left was five star hotels at double or sometimes triple their normal price. To her credit Marie Therese spent hours trying to find somewhere for two days eventually we found an YHA travellers lodge about an hour south of Byron Bay in a town called Ballina. I go halfway round the world to end up in Ballina for Christmas. Typical.   In the epilogue if this was a book (sometimes feels like I've written enough), the same woman emailed about three days after the initial email a list of hostels and hotels in the area most of which were of course fully booked but luckily we found somewhere. And the next day whilst in the museum I received an voicemail telling me that they had found us accommodation in Byron Bay in a hostel that told us it was full about four days previously. Suffice say to we stuck to Ballina primarily because we had to pay a fifty percent non-refundable deposit and we felt the other hostel was a shambles which was a nice way of putting it. Forgot to mention the most amusing piece of all though, in the original email I was sent they attached two photos supposedly documenting the damage to the hostel. The photos were of a golf course that looked like it had been by a very heavy shower of hale or sleet. And when we mentioned the storm to other hostels they were strangely forgetful about the serious and I quote "one in a decade storm".  One in a decade storm? Well I think they were a shower of.......
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261550220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261550220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261550220/tpod.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:22:50 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Coolangatta, Queensland, Australia

Our next stop was the town of Coolangatta situated on the Gold Coast, the premier surfing and theme park area of the country. We skipped the more famous Surfers Paradise as everyone told us it was horrible. But when we left Coolangatta we weren't sure if we fared any better.   To be fair the town itself was fine, nice standard town with a standard beach with waves. Our major bugbear was unfortunately where we stayed. We booked into a former hotel that had been converted into a backpacker's hostel obviously with the idea of making themselves some more money by piling more of us in there. What we didn't know it was right above a very noisy local bar heavily frequented by many noisy locals which didn't add up to much sleep but more on that later.   Our first problem was our dorm mates. We stayed in a four bed dorm with an American couple and by this stage we were used to people and their ways including their messiness, loudness, packing in the middle of the night, load talking and drunkenness in the middle of the night but this was a little different. We finally got to sleep which was difficult given the noise downstairs and fact that our room was right beside the kitchen where everyone banged the door and had to sit outside to eat and chat as they were the only communal seats in the whole hostel. Of course this was right outside our window. Anyway as I said after we got to sleep we were awakened after awhile to hear the couple making "sounds" in the bunk bed beside us. Marie Therese being a girl who loves her sleep was so annoyed at this and having been woken up that she jumped down from the top bunk, woke me up by shouting at me that I was to let her know when those two were finished and stormed out of the room. Suffice to say we changed rooms the morning.   However our new room was right above the smoking area of the bar and we had to listen to people's load conversations all night so it was a relief we only booked two nights in Coolangatta and we were raring and definitely ready to leave.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261873320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261873320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261873320/tpod.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:22:20 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Ballina, New South Wales, Australia

Ah Christmas, a time where you huddle round an open fire as it rains outside (everyone knows it never snows on Christmas day). You fight with family about the stress of it all and finally sit down to a big meal of turkey and some drink themselves into a stupor quite happily. Not this year.   We arrived in Ballina at the local landmark one of the few cult like famous "big food" statues. Ballina has a giant prawn on top of a petrol station which hasn't really put it on the map. Why we ended up Ballina for Christmas has been explained earlier but upon seeing the town and our lodging we were happy enough as they were comfortable and the town was practical if nothing else.   Our first night there was our anniversary and we decided to spoil ourselves by going out to dinner. Given that the choice was a burger, Mexican or Chinese we chose Chinese and the meal was grand nothing special but equally nothing to complain about.   The next day being Christmas Eve we got a day bus ticket to Byron Bay to see what all the fuss was about. Byron Bay was not surprisingly a lot more built up than Ballina and we walked around the town and wandered down to the beach. Again we were surprised by the lack of street Christmas decorations in both Byron Bay and Ballina. Found one big Christmas tree in Byron Bay for which I had to get my photo taken with of course. After a few hours we got a bus to Lennox Head a beach in-between the two and spent a few hours there walking along it and sitting and relaxing watching the many kite surfers. For those not in know kite- surfing includes a surf board, waves and a big kite in windy conditions to be pulled around by. We watched about a dozen or so people including one dressed up as Santa Claus which unfortunately I don't have a photo of. I helped one catch his as well as when they return to the beach the kites have to be caught and dismantled which is no easy feat as their wing span is about eight feet.   Although we lotioned up as always in Australia we noticed later that day that we or should I say Marie Therese was a bit sun or wind burnt from Indian Heads. We had spent the previous day and our wander around Byron Bay looking for Santa hats to no avail to try and get in the Christmas mood. We finally found them at the last minute in Woolworths just down the road and they were the last two in the shop. Anyway it was fair to say that her face matched her Santa hat. She wasn't best pleased.   We woke the next morning Christmas day to nice sunshine. Had a leisurely Champagne and orange breakfast and relaxed talked to the other guests who ended up here in this strange town. Our Christmas dinner consisted of cold meats and salads which we ate with the other guests and the family that ran the lodge. Later we listened to a Swiss girl of all things play Irish music to us all as somehow years ago she developed a love of it and travels over to Galway every year to play in sessions. Just before I went to bed I made the phone call home to say goodnight and Happy Christmas to the family whilst standing outside in the street looking at the stars above. It was an understated Christmas neither the Barbie on the beach or the big turkey but still it was Christmas all the same.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261962780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261962780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simonpullen/1/1261962780/tpod.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:21:32 -0400 The Great Escape

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia

Arrived late into Coffs harbour after a long bus journey south making our way back to Sydney for New Year. Unfortunately we didn't get much done in Coffs Harbour as it decided to rain continually for the two days that we were there and in some strange ways it wasn't such a bad thing as were now given an excuse to be lazy as we were tired of the constant moving about and travelling for the last six weeks. We only ventured down the road really to look at a few shops and an exorbitantly priced dolphin encounter which we passed on.   Not much else to say really. The hostel was fine; we spent our time there watching a few films which they put on with free popcorn that pleased some people. Back to the familiarity of Sydney next.
]]>