Shelia's diaries part 1
Trip Start
Jul 20, 2007
1
38
43
Trip End
Ongoing
Millaa Millaa,
Australia
Sunday, June 8, 2008
- "no, we don't need a visa."
- "So, you don't have a visa for Australia," he skillfully rephrased his question.
- "Our queens on their banknotes!" I exclaimed before Kerry put on her best Hayecinth Bucket (from Keeping up Appearances) voice and added "we're English don't you know."
- "everyone needs a visa for Australia"
- "shit."
After a manic half an hour on the Internet spending $40 on what is supposed to be a free visa we made it onto the plane with 10minutes to spare. Landing in Australia was a culture shock. Gone were the mesmerizing smells and infectious energy of Asia. In its place was a strange and welcome feeling of anonymity and a look of shock as we tried to absorb the price of everything. I felt like I'd been slapped around the face with a piece of gammon. $3 for a bottle of water, $13 for a half hour train journey, $22 for a bed in a hostel dorm. Other strange occurrences included watching a woman taking a dog for a walk, then seeing a dog wearing a nappy. Is this normal? What is normality? To make sense of it all we needed a native. We found Shelia. Shelia is a curvaceous 18year old with a lovely rear end and an insatiable appetite for fuel. I curse her fat arse when I reverse her into telegraph poles but other than that she's been a perfect traveling companion.
Our first Aussie experience was watching the State of Origin rugby league match in a huge beer garden. The English equivalent of this event would be Northerners vs Southerners at football so you can imagine the atmosphere and intensity of 1000 Aussies cheering on the state of their birthplace. Less impressive was how the Aussies drink their beer. Proper lightweights. Rather than a pint you get a schooner - 2 gulps and its gone. I felt daft, standing around drinking beer in a glass that closely resembles a shot glass. Its like when your Mum will only give you a small glass of Coca Cola because she's worried about it being detrimental to your health, but you know better. Ignoring the pub, for my birthday we bought 2 crates of the cheapest beer. After 6 hours most of the beer was gone but I still felt sober. I'd been conned again. They were mid strength beers, half the alcohol content. I thought Aussies were supposed to be big drinkers?
Cairns was a little disappointing and I'm amazed at its popularity with backpackers. Blocks of suburban monotony interspersed with the sort of cheesy pub most people grow bored of before they turn 18. Shelia took us on the road and pretty much everywhere else in the surrounding North Queensland area has been amazing. Endless miles of inviting deserted beachs standing next to thick tropical rainforest tastefully made accessible for tourism. Ellis Beach and Port Douglas appear to have been copied from a dreamers image of a tropical beach holiday, and the Atherton Tablelands provided some of the most spectacularly lush and diverse scenery - rolling green hills, picturesque waterfalls and an abundance of wildlife. It reminded me of the Pennines except, rather than sheep, they have wallabies.
At first glance Wallabies look like a miniture version of their marsupial friends the Kangaroo. On closer inspection quite a few of them did resemble Splinter the rat of Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles. We camped in Granite gorge surrounded by literally hundreds of wallabies who were completely unafraid of us. We spent the best part of 2hours feeding the animals and even fed a Joey whose head was peering out from its mothers pouch. This was the Australia we had wanted to see.
To get a better taste of rural Australia I did some Wwoofing on a cattle farm with our friend Ben the Penguin from England. Wwoofing is a fantastic concept - backpackers work for a few hours a day in return for accommodation and food. The family we stayed with was as rural as they come. For most of their lives they had lived on a 900,000 acre cattle station and often went months without seeing any other people (I'm not exactly sure how big that is but I think its about the size of Yorkshire). To say they were stuck in their ways would be understatement. At first I thought they were incredibly narrow minded, but their isolation had created some of the views they held. They were incredibly persistently racist but would then argue "we're not racist, we hate every c*** equally." People pissed them off and after 5days of staying their we still hadn't managed to get a conversation out of the lady of the house. We once asked if they ever wanted a feeling of anonymity, living in such a small place where everyone knows everyones business. "Go stand in the middle of that field, no f***ing c*** knows you there."
Each month they slaughtered a cow to live off. Breakfast, lunch and dinner consisted of bread or potato's and one or two of the following - steak, roast beef, steak, corned beef, minced beef, steak. I asked one of them if he ever ate fruit, he told me to f*** off. Fancy some peas? F*** off you pommy c***. I'm making this sound like a negative experience which it wasn't. The food was amazing (although my stomach doesn't agree), and it was as much of a cultural experience as when we lived in a Cambodian village - the diversity of this world continuing to amaze and fascinate me. When we left they gave us a crate of home-brew and as much fruit as we could fit in Shelia.
Reasons why England's great #2 - The English Pub
I may be being presumptuous but Australia has a lot of pubs that mimic the English pub. I can't stand fancy bars -pretentious bollocks that go out of fashion as quickly as their clientele's clothes. Being in Australia has enabled us to go to some proper drinking establishments after 8months of Asia's bars which all appeared to be designed by a drunken Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen. The English pub looks inviting whether its empty or full, has functional seating, sells draught beer not just bottles and alcho-pops, doesn't play shit music at such a volume you have to shout to order a drink, and looks as traditionally English as anything I can think off. Amazing. If this was our only gift to the world I would be happy. As it is we have people like Noel Edmunds, Jeremy Beadle, and Ray Mears who frequent these places wearing their incredible jumpers, so I'm even happier.
Pictures to come soon.
