Please click here to be taken to the latest batch of images. This is now PART TWO

http://www.lazyblueskies.com/wp/wpg2-2?g2_itemId=19077

Well that’s it for the continent that is Australia. Three months, 16,106 kms, 38 different placed to sleep and we are so out of there. It is difficult to describe the experience really but you know that noise a mechanic makes when you ask him what is wrong with your car? I jest not. If you were to ask me about Australia firstly I would look at you blankly and then sort of screw my cheeks up like someone had just made a bad smell, followed by making a sort of sucky noise. Did we enjoy it it? Yes. Was it worth the visit? Sort of. Would we go again? Probably not. Don’t get me wrong there are lots of incredible things to see and do, but, it just, well it’s just a bit over rated really. A bit tacky, a bit up itself and well, just not that great. To be honest it was like Britney Spear’s beaver, we all wanted to see it, we even paid to see it, and well, when we saw it, we just sort of wished that we hadn’t.  Sorry if that upsets Oz lovers and Britney Beaver fans.

I will say though that not all Aussies have that intensely annoying flick at the end of every sentence like everything is a question. Not everyone says ‘G’daymatehowyougoinggoodbonzahaveanothertinny’ in one breath. Their customer service isn’t great and  everything just seems to be too much effort or too much of a laugh to be bothered with. The weather for almost the whole 3 months was pretty poor, most days lucky to get above 20c and almost the entire East coast is just, well its just a bit, disappointing really. Key names like Bondi Beach, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay etc are just, well, just totally over rated and either dirty or just, tacky. I know I really sound as though I’m coming down hard on Australia here but travel is all about experience and diversity and, well, to be honest, it just isn’t that impressive. 

The West coast however was a different matter. But even so, France has more to offer and beats Australia hands down. Even key names like Margaret River were just a small town with nothing really to say for itself and bizarrely a tiny stream that classes as The River. Anyhoo.

Our car, bless her, our ford Falcon Station wagon mustered an incredible performance which saw us wonderfully through over 16,000kms before going phuttt on the home straight with just 200km to go and slowing to a speed only matched by Elton John driving through a School Pick Up Zone. A really simple problem that went rather annoyingly and badly wrong when a completely incompetent mechanic was let loose with a spanner, a crowbar and lots of surly ill will. Cut a long story short, he was an idiot, I told him so, and with all the planning and forethought of a ship wreck victim I told him he was an idiot, he yelled at me, I yelled at him, I called him a very rude word, he then told me to take my car off the ramp, and rolled it into the road in the middle of Hicksville Town, Interbred City…..and truth be known, there she still sits. All $2600 just sitting at the side of the road with a cost of just $30 to get her running. Was it worth calling the little nasty round like a weeble man a very rude $2600 word…Yes and I only wish that I had punched him in his burger filled bottom as well. (I am no longer permitted to use the word fat on this website for fear of being duffed up by a lady Belgium kick boxer who can be quite scary)

So let us talk no more about Australia apart from the Whale Watching Sydney people who took us out on a 50 knot + Rigid Inflatable with 3 x 300 HP outboards to see some Whales. Again a long story short but there were tears, nasty bruises, no Whales, a situation whereby we almost called the Coastguard and to be honest, 100% honest, I truly thought we were going to die. It was the most scary experience of not just the whole trip so far but possibly the most scary in my entire short life! When I was thrown clear of my seat and landed on the seat next to me at 28 knots and being airborn I thought that was it. So if this posting seems a bit down on the normal fun and hijix, it is. But then Australia is now behind us.

(I nearly had a heart attack when I saw this….!)

Karen’s aunty Sandy joined us for a two week blast up and down the East coast just before we left to take in all the sights which was a really nice thing to do. When people read these travel commentaries we always hear how people would love to experience it, and she certainly did. We saw the most amount of rain that Oz has seen in 17 years, 25,000 were forced from their homes in 4 days thanks to the floods, more Shark attacks have been reported this year than in the last 17 years put together which just puts you off going anywhere near the water.

The best part was when we went to Fraser Island. We decided that rather than taking a self drive 4×4 tour (4 people have died doing it so far this year), or rather than packing in with 18 smelly students into one jeep that we would opt to Flashpack, and so we did. We took the Executive Hummer Tour. There were just the 3 of us and our personal driver. Tea, picnics, Champagne and Strawberries on our own little lake. But the best bit was this. The main route along the beach was closed due to the Utes (4×4) coming from a huge fishing competition so we could not get to the Wreck. So our driver got on the phone and within 20 minutes this landed right on the beach smack bang in front of our Hummer and up we went for free. Special thanks to www.hummerexperience.com and www.airfraserisland.com for the great day.

Finally I got to meet up with a long lost friend (ex Orange) none other than the wonderful and ever stunning Stephanie Raggett, who is now married to Steve and has two beautiful daughters called Mikayla and Caitain and a beserkly wonderful Spaniel called Mikey. These huge Fruit Bats live at the bottom of her garden so of course I had to go and see them.

Well there is loads more to tell about Australia but in truth, I just would rather move onto new stuff and get back to the REAL photography and the REAL travel, so here goes. Fifteen Swine Flu cameras and two body searches later we arrived in the transit hub that is Singapore, home to some 4.5 million people on an island a little under 20km by 25km (think Isle of Wight). The first thing that grabs you is the shear and utter heat when you step off the aircraft. 32c may not sound like much but when you factor in a humidity up in the high 60’s and 70% then you begin to understand. For those of you who have not experienced this sort of heat before there is a very simple thing that you can do to replicate it back in the UK. Walk into a swimming pool wearing a suit and winter coat, stay there for 5 minutes. Or alternatively, bend over your oven wearing glasses and open the door quickly. Talk about sweating, jessh, I mean you sweat here more than Gary Glitter sweats at a 5th Grade School Sports Day.

Singapore itself is incredible. It is an example that Project Management does actually work. It is clean, there is no graffiti, there is little or no crime, the lawns are cut, the lights work, you feel safe. It is just a massive machine geared up for the sole purposes of shopping. 24-7 you can shop. I don’t just mean for the odd bits and bobs, no I mean full on Oxford Street Christmas shopping 24-7-365. Buy a car at 3am not a problem. There are shops after shops selling potions and lotions, we even frequented an Adult Store by accident (I thought it was a camera shop), well I can tell you the stuff we saw in there! Apparently their highest seller of the week was none other than Anal Ease Cream. Their other top seller was a huge and really heavy tube of Viagra. I picked it up and spilled a bit on my back, I’ve had a stiff neck for 3 days now - I thank you.

The one thing that takes some getting used to is the change from air con to the temperature back on the street. It sort of kicks you in a way only comparable with interfering with the working parts of a particularly well endowed Donkey. It really throws you. The smells that surround you as you travel from the Indian quarter to the Chinese quarter and through to the MacDonalds quarter are quite astounding. The smells and tasted don’t just touch you, they fully assault you in a way I have only experienced before in Sri Lanka. Peppers, spices, dried anchovies, beer, curry, pizza, fresh fruit, poo, it’s all there. The people smile, the children hide behind their parents legs to get a better look at the strange looking white people and it is just generally what travel is all about. We took a cruise down the river, a trip up in the biggest London Eye style wheel thing in the world and even an open top bus ride around the City. Then the next day we high tailed in over the boarder and up in Malaysia to really kick off our travel again.

Melaka was our first stop and it did not disappoint one bit.  These images are of a water fountain and as per my moto ‘No Photoshop, they are shot free hand with no edits other than a crop. We stayed in the old China Town and immediately got straight into some food. This was served on a metal griddle plate, sizzling like an ex wife’s spit. They cook these dishes in under 30 seconds and you sit there poking it with a chop stick not sure about what it is or what it is going to do to your insides, but then, you are travelling to experience, experience, experience. In I went……out I came 3 seconds later with a face the same colour as a sunburned tomato and breath that could burn the mono-brow off a 15 year old Goth at 100 paces. Then the food sweats hit and the runny nose starts. Trust me, a runny nose is about acceptable, but nothing else is permitted to be runny!

The part that you will not know about unless you have done this sort of travel before is the complete depth of patience that you must develop as a traveller. Now I am not the most patient person on the face of this planet but I am learning, slowly. What I mean by this is, you rely quite heavily on a book called The Lonely Planet Guide To ……etc. Well it doesn’t always work. For example, if you were say in London and you wanted to get to the South of France, you would go to the tourist info office and be told how to get there. 1) Fly 2) Train 3) Drive 4) Bus 5) Walk. Well the same goes here but you get 50 different versions from 10 people (even the tourist info haven’t got a clue half the time). So you sit in a queue for an hour at the train station clutching a ticket and watching the numbers slowly ticking by until it is your turn, desperately trying not to think about needing some downtime after the anal Armageddon that is stirring in your lower tummy (is tummy an acceptable word for a hetro-sexual 39 year old male to say?). Finally, you get served by the bloke who gave you the ticket 60 minutes ago, and in until 9 seconds tells you that ‘All The Trains Are Full Sir for a Week Good Day’. So you try the bus station.

This I hope will cause a further wry smile on travellers faces as it recalls a memory. Bus transit stations. These places are just incredible. The heat, the smell, the acrid diesel fumes, the revving, the beeping, the shouting, the fear, the old men with cracked faces and no teeth who smile and wave at you, the people pulling at your clothes and yelling destinations that you have never heard of let alone can pronounce, the beggars with no heads, the man holding a large dead fish under his arm wrapped in an old newspaper, the uncertainty of if you make a wrong call you will end up getting on the wrong bus, the worry that you could be mugged or dipped at any point, then, out of the blue, someone thrusts a map into your hand and points at the correct bus counter (1-100 in most main hubs) and incredibly, the man knows where you are going. Finally you board the bus and sit there sweating like a Chicken in Ethiopia that has just finished the 100metre lunchtime dash.

As I write this we have managed to secure a train ride from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia all the way up to Bangkok in Thailand. When I asked the toothless wonder that was the customer service helpful agent (I know this because his name badge told me so), when I asked him how long the journey was he looked at the broken clock on the wall and said Friday 11am! The day was Tuesday and the time was 11am. So, Malaysia is streaming passed our carriage windows and we are surrounded by beltingly wonderful smells of food and people who are talking a dialect that I can neither speak nor understand. But if they see you looking at them whilst they eat, you are then on the receiving end of a handful of something wrapped in a banana leave that looks remarkably like something a cat would leave for you on the kitchen floor if you left it locked up for too long. You tentatively touch it with your tongue which immediately recoils at a speed only matched by someone whispering into your ear ‘ITS A LADYBOY’. Thankfully I am a happily almost married man so this fate will not befall me. Unlike our friend Jo…..how was the Chick-with-a-dick ha ha ha Big hands, Adams apple, huge bulge in G-string should’ve known really.

  Imagine waking up and the dude saying, ‘You came here and we took wong eye out’ ha ha

So there we go. We are fully back on the road back packing again and will be updating a bit more often with less words and much better quality images. I’ve been struggling to produce good work in Oz but here, my God here the images are back to leaping into the camera and I am so excited about what we will be doing. Thanks again to everyone who always supplies us with great comments and feedback on what we are doing. Oh by the way, the wedding plans are coming along so we will be in touch with most of you personally before too much longer to let you know our plans and dates. Clearly, as I have no family left it will be really important to me to have my special friends and Karen’s are there so keep a close eye on the emails/voicemails. We are looking at having a much smaller venue with fewer people but in an incredible location so there are a few logistics to sort out that we will explain soon. Possibly involving a helicopter, a ferry, a short flight and a rather rusty bicycle, oh and a Lama!

Best regards to you all and enjoy the images, normal service will be resumed next time.

Chris and Blondie xx

Categories: LBS News
No Comments »

Please click here to be take to the latest batch of images (Files 86-98 are all new)

http://www.lazyblueskies.com/wp/wpg2-2?g2_itemId=9542&g2_page=9

PART ONE

For those of you who think this camping malarkey is akin to a Swiss Carry On Camping movie with lots of young, nubile blondes running around the place in tiny bikinis that resemble a piece of cheese wire with huge heaving buxom inflated chests, and a general persona of a film that should have a working title of Farmyard Back-Door Adventures I have news for you. It is not like that one bit. The closest that you get to anything Swiss is driving past IKEA on the freeway. But, a few days ago there were a few Swiss chicks on the campground and as you can imagine old Romeo here caught their eye. One small problem, in less than 4 seconds it was all over, I didn’t see them walking towards me one morning as I was brushing my teeth outside the tent. Foaming at the mouth like a drunken rabid dog, I shoved the toothbrush too far down my throat and sort of half balked a sound remarkably like Gollum himself choking on a large Halibut and then half coughed foaming toothpaste through both nostrils whilst releasing a truly quite impressive and hugely thunderous burp right into the path of the two hot Swiss chicks who squealed and ran off in the opposite direction. Nice one.

Some of the funny things you get here are the road side gas stations that sell stuff. Yes, you can just walk in and buy what ever magazine you want, and I do mean whatever you want.  For sure you get your FHM, Maxim, GQ, Esquire and a various assortment of chicks mags but then they have the Zoo and Nuts stuff too, which is cool. But then they have mags like Picture and let me tell you, you get quite a a shock when you open them up. The only thing missing is a pop up 3D working model of the female bits. Essentially, they just don’t wear clothes, nothing, nada, you see, well you, er, how do I put this, you see it, well you sort of glimpse it, but not much. So, I was furious, cheated, robbed and I was in serious do-do with The General for purchasing a Grot Mag or Art Pamphlet as I defended, or at least attempted to. Despite my insistence that it was a simple error, I was treated like a pariah and banished from the tent. To make matters worse, quite simply much worse, I was tried and treated like a criminal and I had not even purchased a hard mag! However, I did briefly notice as I merely glanced upon on the front covers some quite interesting articles on the subject of Hot New Facials and a potentially very enlightening nature article on Great Snarling Badgers.

So we have now driven over 13,000 kms in a little over 9 weeks and have managed to get from one side of Australia to the other. This map will give you an idea of the route that we have taken and just how big the place is.  Once again, this is going to be a long story, sorry. I am still having problems with my Canon gear and photo edit suite so excuse the lower quality 

Spiders in Oz, let me tell you about Spiders. Well they are here alright. Any house, park, garden, where ever you look in Oz is full of the 8 legged little killers. Seriously, Funnel Webs, Red Backs and Huntsmen abound where ever you look. Take a stick and go into the back garden and there, hidden inside a white web (that looks like a small funnel) is a little black spider with a red strip down its back. Poke it with a stick and out it comes, poke it again and it leaps at you, poke it three times and it takes the stick off you, whacks you over the head and then chases you down the path with it. Oh and the other small piece of advice is never, I repeat never, use a bush loo (long drop) on a high wind day. Without drawing you a complex diagram let us just say you feel like Horatio Hole-Blower.

Skipping back a few weeks we crossed what is called The Nulabor Plain. This is essentially a vast expanse of land, and when I say land, that is all there is, just land and runs between Adelaide on the bottom South South East side of Oz and Perth on the West Coast some 2500kms in a wobbly line away. 99% of visitors to Oz don’t bother with this crossing as it is just too far to drive. Perth to Adelaide is like driving from Buckingham Palace in London to MOSCOW!!! Several people tried to talk us out if it, but we wanted to do it, so we did. Three whole days of 900km, 800km and 800km and we stood at the desk of the Tourist Info Finish Line and were handed a bumper sticker and a certificate each (certifiably bonkers said one Ozzy bloke who wondered past our car seeing the sticker). Well we did it and the stuff we saw was quite incredible. From nothing in any direction, to huge Eagles sitting on the road, to massive Kangaroos sitting outside our tent and the straightest road in the southern hemisphere all 149 kms of it, like a runway.

One thing that left me a bit stunned about Australia is that as a Brit you tend to carry yourself just a bit over the rest. You hold your head a bit higher and say United Kingdom with a certain sense of pride when you are asked where you come from. You place your passport on the counter rather than slapping it down. But, not here. Not in Australia. Personally, I really don’t think we have the right to. This came as a real surprise to me so I am going to write as I find and it is just my opinion. What I discovered, unearthed, or realised is just what Great Britain did to Australia that in my opinion makes us not quite so great. Here goes and do read this bit because it will surprise you.

First skip back a few years to 1601. Some Dutch stoners had just discovered Western Oz by crashing into it after a few years of sailing around in circles off the coast of Indonesia in a haze of narcotic smoke and eating strange little cakes that helped them see Goblins. They arrived and promptly set up on the beach with a nice chilled BBQ and a couple of tinnies and, well, that’s about it. Great Britain on the other hand acted entirely differently 5500kms away on the East Coast. So badly did they act infact, I actually feel ashamed to be British for the first time in my life. Football hooliganism makes you look away in disgust, losing at any British sport in the semi-finals is a national institution. But what we did here makes you feel true shame.

Okay so this is a bit long but well worth the read, so it is the 17th April 1770 and Zachary Hicks up in the rigging on board ‘The Endeavour’ yells “LAND HOOO” down to Captain James Cook just down the coast from Sydney Harbour. Into a small rowing boat they drop and put to shore where they are met by two dark skinned, curly haired blokes carrying spears and wearing little but an animal skin across their choppers. Cook’s people pull a musket on the guys in seconds and fire warning shots above their head. They run off but return later. The same thing happens again over the next few days until the strange looking men return with friends. The British explorers then incredibly unfurls a Union Jack and sticks it in the sand yelling, ‘I claim this land in the name of King George III (before the Dutch stoners or the Froggies get their hands on it)’. The name of this place they claimed, Botany Bay because of the wonderful wildlife and plant life. They then set up home quicker than an asylum seeker in England and send for their families.

Skip forward a few years to 1788 and 11 ships arrive from England (10,505 miles away) carrying 751 criminals and 250 soldiers. They don’t like Botany Bay so cruise up to a place called Eora and rename it Sydney Harbour. An Aboriginal man called Bennelong meets them and befriends the funny looking sailors. He lives on a little bit of land called Bennelong Point (the site of the Sydney Opera House). The Brits give the Aboriginals the following trade for their lands, alcoholism, smallpox, and despair. The Aboriginals, not being used to alcohol, western culture and violence soon are in disarray and before long are a broken people. Their spears are no match for muskets so they fight but are out numbered. This bit upsets me. The order was then issued by The British Government to search for land and off they went, killing and raping as they went. Any dissent showed by Aboriginals was to be met with deadly force.

Britain, Great Britain then instructed the criminals to clear the land for them and essentially for every 10 bits of land they cleared, they could keep one. The Aboriginal’s named these strange people Squatters because they squatted on the land! And so it went on, field after field, mile after mile, state after state, slowly the Aboriginal Territories were destroyed and land stolen from the people, the Aboriginals were turned into workers on their own land in return for a pittance and the right to remain on there.  One entire area was traded for a box of blankets. Skip forward a few years, add the Gold Rush, skip forward a bit more to 1914 and War. Britain calls Australian men and women to arms and Australia goes to war and fight hard they do, they fight like dogs for their country.

Finally, in 1941 despite what ‘Great Britain’ had done to Australia over the last 200 years and the harm to its people, both Aboriginal and war fighter, when it comes down to it and Japan is about to attack the North of Australia, Britain, Great Britain, stated it ‘cannot spare any troops’ and Oz is on its own. Incredibly it was none other than the Good Old US of A that stepped in and saved the day. It really is quite an eye opener to what Britain used to do, and still does, but then what do I know!

PART TWO

Salami. The Salami that you get at some of the roadside food stalls is quite incredible. Stopping at one a few days ago the guy warned us that his Old Mamas recipe could be quite volatile. What he neglected to mention was the small fact that his old mum used thermo-nuclear atom splitting in her culinary processes. Three bites into the fiery death stick and my left eyebrow spontaneously combusted as I exhaled in  manner that could only be reproduced if I were to rent some Oxyacetylene welding equipment and blow torch my eyebrow off. The stench as Karen called it did not leave my body for 3 whole days.

One funny thing we did see was, and you will have to cast your mind back to 1979 for this one and none other than SKYLAB? The NASA Skylab was in trouble as was circling the earth for a few weeks hysterically out of control and about to crash with potentially devastating consequences where ever it landed. Each time it whizzed over London everyone held their breath until it shot over head at 18,000 mph, and then continued the ‘SKYLAB Disco Party’ (now called a BBQ), then it headed off to New York, where everyone held their breath before saying, ‘thank fluff for that’, and so on it went whizzing around the planet like an Apocalyptic Wheel Of Fortune until it finally crashed to earth, ready for this, yes you’ve guessed it, at a place called Baladonia on none other than, The Nulabor Crossing, killing no-one. Australia incredibly then fined the USA $400 for littering.

The travel, the journey, our incredible adventure is still going strong after some three years off and on of being on the road but this brings me neatly to a subject that I keep meaning to touch on and now seems like a perfect time to do so. I am not a clever man. I am a just a guy, just a bloke, a bit special in some ways and a bit special needs in others. I am not lucky. I am not unlucky. I am just a guy who found himself in a difficult situation and had to make a choice. and it now seems that a lot of people are heading towards a similar situation. I speak of course of the ‘Big R’ aka ‘the shove’ aka ‘R.E.D.U.N.D.A.N.C.Y’ (my suggestion is that if you sing it like Dolly Parton sung DIVORCE) it doesn’t seem quite so bad. What I want to say/share is this.

When I got made redundant 3 and a half years ago I sat there at the bottom of many a bottle of Jack Daniels wondering just where the hell my life was going and what I was going to do, and all seemed lost, truly and utterly lost. But it was a gift. It was a fresh start. Yeah for sure I miss my old colleagues but I enjoyed the tax free money more than I missed the work. Many people we speak to at the moment are staring down the double barrel of the noisy end of the BIG R gun at the moment and it must be terribly upsetting. In my experience it is not the end of the world, it is a beginning, but it is what you do with that beginning that makes you/remakes you.

Like I said, I am not clever, in actual fact I am quite stupid when I am in some circles. Here is an example, a few days ago we were with a super intelligent person who had spent days writing some stuff for a published article on the Global Recession. The title of the works was something like ‘The Global Credit Crisis Leading Sub Social Economic Ramifications Across Structured Business Groups Within The Wider Political Arena’, after much thought, head scratching and staring out of the window at a seagull I suggested a better title and promptly almost wet myself laughing. My suggestion? ‘The Credit Crunch - More Than  Just A Breakfast Cereal’…….The person in question just looked at me. I rest my case.

So, what I am trying to say is this. I did not get here by luck, nor having anyone do it for me, I did it by taking The Big R on the chin, crying like a child for days, being drunk for about a month, then realising that I was at a corner, a big corner with a big opportunity and I dived in with my eyes shut, my breath held and managed to float, Christ knows how but I did. Above all, if you can, remember these words. No-one, as in no person has ever said these words on their death bed, ‘Damn I wish I had spent more time at work!’…..unless of course you are Jennifer Aniston’s Bra fitter!

So, a bit about what we have done in Australia. So after landing in Sydney and flying to Perth, collecting our trusty station wagon, driving up the West coast to Ningaloo Reef, then all the way back down the West to to the bottom, taking a left turn and basically driving from one corner of Australia to the other, stopping or staying at 34 different places we eventually landed in Melbourne. Yes, home of Neighbours. No, we didn’t. We stayed with the ever lovely Anna and Brent (plus pooch Dennis the Sha Pay). We also met up and kited with a very old friend from France back in the good old days of Blondeair, none other that Matt ‘Super Donkey’ Von Der Muln. The weather was shocking so we got into the car one morning and drove with one focus in mind - finding the sun once again. The first signpost sadly displayed the figures 895km to Sydney at a max of 100kmh. Fuel, wee, coffee, wee, fuel, coffee, wee, wee and so on for the next 1058km until we were North of Sydney. Out of the car, pitch the tent, pump the mattress, sleep, back in the car and drive again until the figures on the dashboard said ‘You have driven just over 2000kms (1200 miles) in 3 days. Was it worth it? Was Byron Bay worth the drive? Was Surfer’s Paradise worth the hours it the car? Was it worth it to sit by the pool in the sun again? Answers = Yes to the last and 100% No to the first and second.

I don’t mean to be a snob but it just sucks. It is like Spain will be in 2020. It’s super posh, it’s hot, it’s by the beach, you can cuddle a seal, ride a dolphin, horseback ride a Doodong (seacow), stroke a drugged tiger, play hopskotch with a humpback whale, you can bungy jump from a hot air balloon, fly upside down in a helicopter, you can get a BJ in a limo at 3 o’clock in the afternoon whilst going through MacDoogals drive through, you can do almost anything that you want apart from sit by yourself on the beach and wonder at nature. Well saying that, you do actually wonder at nature here quite a lot, you wonder where the fluff it went. A real shame but then I guess it is all about diversity and for some, it floats their boat.

By the way we have finally managed to find a word for what we do, as in all this penmanship and photography. It isn’t really travel writing nor is it a blog so we have come up with ‘TRAVEL COMENATARY’.

Oh here is a quick suggestion. Bigger is not necessarily better. Namely, in Oz they have a real penchants as they do in the United States for making everything available in bigger sizes. ‘YOU WANNA DRINK?’ they yell at you, ‘Er yes please’ you reply meekly. And do you ever get one. I asked for OJ. Good old Orange juice and what I got was not 500mls, nope, not even a litre, nor 2. I got 3 litres of freshly squeezed OJ with bits, that contained ‘A GARENTEED 30 ORANGES’ yelled the big bird from behind the counter. Well it was a hot day and I was thirsty so I began to drink, and drink, and drink. About 1700mls into my experiment my tummy rumbled and gurgled. Unbeknownst (that is such a good word) unbeknownst to be high dosage vitamin C can have quite a catastrophic effect on the human body. NEVER again shall I drink OJ in such quantities. 

The Great Ocean Road. It is so impressive that it needs the royalty of having just it’s own name in a sentence. It is more a statement than a name. It runs from Adelaide to Melbourne, or Melbourne to Adelaide dependant on which side of the car you want the view on. Feeling like a white van man you drive about 700 meters and then leap out of your car to view another breath taking vista before jumping back in to repeat it over and over again. The days that we drove it, there was one heck of a storm blowing so we were lucky enough to catch King Wave aka Rogue Waves aka huge white lumpy things that were 2 or 3 times the size of most sets. Sadly, due to the fact that my trusty Canon 40D is absolutely and completely shagged, more shagged in fact than Brad Pitt at an Anne Summer’s ‘Try Before You Buy’ Lambrini Party for 30 something divorcees. So, I’m back to missing shots and a jamming camera. BUY NIKON (and it hurts me to say that), unless you live in New Zealand, then BUY CANON.

You can see from the images that these waves are just stunning to watch and yet still a few people each week are washed to their deaths by ‘paddling in the rock pools’. Mother Earth is quite a thing to marvel at, and marvel we did at this superbly diverse coastline. Like watching a scene from a Benny Hill TV show the Japanese tourists bus in, screech to a halt, run off, run around, buy icecreams, bow lots, bow some more, smile, with 200 camera flashes per second going off just as if Britney Spears and Paris Hilton had both just arrived to do a ‘No Holes Barred’ out of Limo ‘Beavers-At-The-Ready’ photo-shoot. Then, just as fast as they arrive, vroom and they are gone again 700 meters down the road to the next stop.

Wild Koalas and friendly Kangaroos is something that I just didn’t expect to find here. You kind of just expect them to all live in Zoos or in sanctuary’s, but no, oh no. 4am and that noise outside your tent is, yes a hungry and nosey Kangaroo. Drive down a country lane and there is a sign saying ‘Koalas’, hop out of your car and look up, and there, sitting in the tree are a whole, er, flock or Koala Bears just looking at you. Some are asleep, some are eating and some just sit there looking at you as you shout ‘Hello Mr Koala Bear’ up into the branches. Apparently Koala Bears are one of the least intelligent animals on the planet with up to 20% of its brain activity dedicated to eating/digesting poisonous eucalyptus leaves. Which leaves very little in reserve so they sleep which takes up another 10% to not fall out of the tree. To put that into perspective, Albert Einstein was reported to have used 20% of his brain capacity.Jo Public uses (on average) only 12% of their brains true potential. Koala’s use 30% on just surviving, so have nothing left for anything else…….I know what that feels like!!! So, in theory, Koala’s are 30 times more stupid than me/us. But, could you fall asleep in a tree on a windy day and not fall out of it?!! Huh, Koala’s ROCK!!  

So we headed from Melbourne all the way up to Brisbane, as in 3 days of solid driving and 2100kms later we arrived at the legendary Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. Admittedly it is a tad Las Vegas and manages to scream both Puerto Banus and Skegness all in the same breath. An interesting fact is that allegedly the bikini was invented here so chicks walk up and down the shopping malls wearing things like this, ‘No I wasn’t looking darling I was just, er, um, er, well’…..and so on.

Head to the beach and lots of serious looking surfers are riding the waves. However, this was an actual announcement that was tannoyed out across the entire beach to several hundred people, ‘SQWEEK - WILL THE MAN ON THE IN FLATABLE GREEN CROCODILE PLEASE GET OUT OF THE SURF AREA AND RETURN TO THE BEACH’………with a half inflated bright green crocodile tucked under my arm I endured the walk of shame back along the beach whilst being laughed at by loads of people…..keeping it real, keeping it hard core. A bonus point for noticing the sign in the back round!

Okay well that is it for this time folks. Remember to buy Nikon and not Canon if you want good customer service.(apart from New Zealand Canon who are fabulous but the rest are utter baboons in my opinion). Finally here is a thought to leave you with. We were at Sydney International airport a few days ago at the arrivals gate waiting for Karen’s Aunty Sandra to come and join us for 2 weeks on the road. As we stood there waiting and watching hundreds of people walk around the corner and seeing such wonderful reunions and emotions of people meeting and greeting each other from all over the world, I started thinking. If I had the power, the ability, the skill, to be able to make anyone of my choice walk around the corner who would it be? Obviously I would want my Mum back just for 2 minutes so say Good Bye again and have one more hug, but who would you choose to have walk around the corner, what situation would you like to have over again to resolve, fix, or change all in a maximum of 2 minutes. What would you do different, what would you say and who would you say it to. If you could Play it again Sam what would you do? and I leave you on that nice gentle thought. Thanks for taking the time to read this and look at the images

Big Hugs

Chris and Karen

(Sydney Australia 2009)

Categories: LBS News
No Comments »

Click here to be taken to the latest batch of images. Please note that images go onto Pages 8 and 9 as well. There are about 14 new files so do enjoy. File 71 is the place to start. Thanks Chris.

http://www.lazyblueskies.com/wp/wpg2-2?g2_itemId=9542&g2_page=7

PART ONE

‘MARK, MARK, MARK’ the guy yelled at me from the little Orange rubber boat that was bouncing through the surf with BP Lifeguard emblazoned on the sides. Of course I duly ignored the fellow as I’m not called Mark until, he started waving that was. Being typically British and not one to want to offend anyone I duly waved back at the nice chap and carried on my waist deep paddle in the warm Western Australia waters of Perth’s City beach. However, the chappie did seem a bit concerned that I did not recognise him and persisted on waving and calling me Mark, now pointing at the water in front of me. I could not really hear what he was saying as there was a wailing siren noise coming from the beach. And that’s when it hit me! It wasn’t ‘MARK’, I wasn’t some long lost friend of his, and yes, there was no one else left in the water apart from, yes you’ve guessed it - me. He was in fact yelling ‘SHARK - SHARK - SHARK’ and the siren I now discover is the Great White, Bull Shark or Tiger Shark alarm. New Board Shorts please.

Okay so, look Australia is a big place and we have been here 4 weeks so it’s a big story this time but possibly the best yet. So it’s in Two parts. Let me skip back about 4 weeks to when we arrived in Sydney, Australia from Fiji. By the way it is pronounced ‘OAR-STRAY-YAH’ in true Uncle Albert style. It is everything that you can imagine that Australia (Oz from now on as it’s easier to type) is. They all say ‘G’day mate, G’day Cobber, How-Ya-Goin’ and so on. We arrived in Sydney right on the weekend of Mardi Gras so the City was full of men ‘who like men’ and women ‘who like women’. Sad to say that there were no Jennifer Aniston lookalikes getting it on with Anna Kournikova lookalikes rather a group of short Oz men snogging all over the place and the closest we saw of any ‘hot action’ was a couple of big and I mean BIG women who looked about as happy and gay as Kirsty Alley at an ‘All-You-Can-Eat’ Sea-food buffet.

However, as a result of it all being so busy we managed to wangle a deal at a place a few doors down the street from the Prime Minister of Oz’s house! Kind of attune to staying at No 17 Downing Street, London. We ventured into Sydney a few times and even had a wonder and a wander at the Opera House. It is actually quite a lot smaller than you think but still impressive nonetheless. Interesting fact - the guy that designed it had a falling out with the builders and has never actually seen it with his own eyes.

So, we headed off on a flight to Western Australia (WA). Now people who describe Oz and it’s sheer size fail to really mention just how big the place is. Yes, we all know it’s big, but what they miss out is just how big. It is bigger than the United States. England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, plus Italy, Spain, France, Portugal ALL FIT into WA alone and the entirety of Europe also fits into all of Oz easily. Okay, let me put that into perspective here. Get on an aircraft in London at the same time we board in Sydney and both fly for 5 hours. We arrive in Perth WA, you would arrive in either Egypt or Cyprus! Yes that is a distance of something like 4500kms. To give you a better idea we saw a map of someone who drove around the coast of Oz (missing off a few bits) it took the 365 days and they covered 45,500kms!! Staggeringly big but I will come onto distances a bit later.

We were met from the airport by Jo Ciastula from Animal and Airush kiteboarding who very kindly showed us around and made us feel at home. Bizarrely, Jo’s house is next to a Bournemouth Crescent in Perth. We hung out in Perth for a week doing the tourist thing and even went to Perth Zoo where Karen shouted at the Kangaroos to ‘Get up and do stuff’. We even used Public Peasant Carriers aka buses! The images were really fun to get as the Aussie rules are so chilled that they just leave the cages open and let you wonder around yourself. The Zoo was deserted so we just spent an afternoon poking sticks at big Lions and generally having fun.

Jo sold us his car, a Ford Falcon 4.0i Auto, sort of like a Granada Estate car, so we were mobile within a week and were heading North up the west coast with the windows down and Tom Jones ‘Delihla’ blaring out of the stereo as we hurtled North at about 120 kmh with a brick balanced on the throttle to act like cruise control whilst driving with my knees. When I opened up our International Drivers Permits the instructions stated, ‘Tear Along The Dotted Line’ so that is exactly what we did and some 2000kms later we arrive at a place called Exmouth.

  Jo Ciastula - Animal & Airush Kiteboarding

Along the way we did spot our first Aborigine, who was drunk, very drunk. He was so drunk infact that he was standing in the middle of the road waving a fish at us. We smiled and waved and drove on by with the windows up and doors locked. Now for people who have driven this road this will bring a wry smile to their faces but for those of you that haven’t I shall explain. This road is called The 1 or Highway 1 and it just goes from the bottom left to the top left of Oz and it’s about 4500kms long (that would take about 10 days to drive at a good pace). Well it is just mile after mile of bush, red road, heat haze, more bush, heat haze and so on. Thundering along this road to break the monotony are what they call ROAD TRAINS. These thing are lorries but are no ordinary lorries. They are an incredible 37 metres long and normally come in 4 bits, cab, and three trailers. That is like having a 100 foot long lorry, most UK ones are about 45 foot. To overtake these thundering monstrosities who travel at 110 kmh requires balls and about 2 miles of clear road, something of which there is plenty of. But when you reach the cab there is a huge buffet of wind that at 120kmh scares the bejemus out of you as one dipped wheel on the off road and you are spinning like Amy Winehouse at a Glaxo Smith-Klyne drugs conference.

We named this highway ‘ROAD KILL ROAD’ as there are hundreds, possibly thousands of dead kangaroos all over the place. At the start of our journey North I said to Blondie that we would play a game and keep scores on who saw what first. It went like this, dead kangaroo on the left, dead kangaroo on the left, dead kangaroo on the right, dead kangaroo on the left all in about half a km. So I started to count and got to 194 dead kangaroos before I had to start again when, as luck should have it, Blondie yelled, ‘DEAD COW’ right at the point I was over taking a land train. Struggling to get hold of the car like Grace Kelly on a summers trip to the South coast of France I damn nearly pooped the old britches.

Sure enough, there was a very bloated and very dead cow at the side of Road Kill Road. So we started again but only just got into the 50’s before she yelled, ‘DEAD GOAT’ and so it continued km after km. To give you a clue, in a 1km section of road I counted 14 dead kangaroos in various states of decomp from fresh to, not so fresh..the stench in 43c of heat is quite incredible. A sad fact that so many Roo’s get hit and die every night that it is just too big a task to do anything about. From Dusk til Dawn they leap out in front of cars, lorries and buses. Our rule is that we do not drive at these times no matter what. This Kangaroo is only asleep and was not harmed in the capturing of this image.

Oh and cattle grids, these are so funny. Essentially, think driving through the New Forest or the Lake District and there is a cattle grid, well you would normally slow to 30kmh but oh no, not here, not unless you want a 37 metre long Road Train 3 inches from your bumper yelling ‘You Clupping Cupid Hommy Punt’….I’m not too sure what he meant but I don’t think he’d be inviting me round for tea. So, you shut your eyes and hit them at full whack. 120 kmh not a touch more or a touch less. WHAMMO, BURRRRR and it’s all over. 120kmh over a cattle grid! Ducking wheel trims with a closure speed of 250khm in the opposites direction is all part of the game on Road Kill Road.

To relieve the boredom I undertook a brief bit of medical science to bring into alignment a counteraction of the smell of the rotting dead things by, and I’m quite proud of this little experiment, hitting the smell with another smell. Like bouncing noise off noise to reduce the noise, I set out, single-handedly I might add on my project. PROJECT URANUS was born. Or actually more’s to the point PROJECT SORE ANUS as it should be known. The plan as you can tell was simple, the method lacked quite a lot of thought, and, well planning as well actually. Long on keenness but short on intellect. After purchasing a large jar of ‘Old Aunty May’s Best Pickled Onions’ and leaving them in the hot car for a day and a half, then the prior evening woffing down almost a bottle and a half of 14.5% WA Shiraz my plan began to unfold, after a breakfast of Veggiemite and Hard Boiled Eggs on toast, I was ready. LET THE EXPERIMENT BEGIN I yelled at Blondie who was just shaking her head (which was soon hanging out of the window like a dog on a hot summers day on the way to the beach gasping for breath).

Suffice to say, PROJECT URANUS was a complete and utter failure of quite shuddering magnitude and such dismal proportions the likes of which have not been seen since the Irish Space Program. Toilet stops are approximately 175 kms apart and we almost had to invoke the Bumper Dumper rule. (Grab hold of the cars bumper in a layby and well, you can imagine the rest) Sad to say that Project Uranus has been canned for social, political and health reasons.

We did have quite a scary driving moment the other day when a flock and I do mean a flock of about 50 White parrots (of which there are thousands flying wild here in WA ranging from small to full on ‘Pretty Polly sized Pirate sized ones) suddenly took off across the road at us as we were passing at 110kmh. Like a scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcocks ‘The Birds’ there were birds everywhere. I am glad to announce that despite the screaming (from me) and the swerve across the road that Mr Schummacher himself would have been proud of, we missed them all. I now know that that they were all male birds, and I know this because I definitely saw a Cockortwo amongst them. Seriously though, it was quite a scare.

Australia, sorry, Oar-stray-yah is really quite impressive by it’s sheer nothingness and immense size. It isn’t like New Zealand that sort of leaps down your throat the moment you get on the road and demands that you fall in love with it immediately, rather OZ sort of creeps up on you in a way that you don’t expect. I think that because we have chosen the west coast over the tourism conveyer belt that is the east coast, we are seeing a different side to Oz. The people are really quite friendly and genuinely want to talk to you. Try that next time you are walking to the office along the embankment and you will either have an umbrella thrust in your right eye or be arrested for being a freak. It really is quite nice. I mean the Boggan people, sort of like Chavs are a lot nicer are all really keen to say hello and give advice where they can and they seem really genuine. By the way, what is the name for a posh Chav? A Chav with money?

PART TWO

The coastline started to change to shear ruggedness and reefs once we got up to Exmouth and headed south down through places like Coral Bay, Monkey Mia, Eagle Bluff, Carnarvon and even further as we headed back along the coast roads to Perth once again. The Ningaloo Reef area is alleged to be far better than The Great Barrier Reef and I can sort of see why. It is beautiful. You simply walk into the water off the beach, pop a snorkel in your mouth and pull on your dive mask and fins and away you go. On one such snorkel we got straight into two blue spotted Stingrays, followed by a sleepy Turtle and then a huge Cowtail Stingray, all within about 5 minutes. We hit the reef at a time when there was quite a swell on and the wind was about 30-40 knots so at least I got to have a kite as well as a ‘drift snorkel’. (Walk up the beach, swim out and drift down the coast back to the car). I did try to get my PADI dive qualification but sadly I wasn’t able to get a medical done in time so I’ll have to wait until Vietnam to do it.

One thing that I have struggled with is some of the water quality has been a bit cloudy so please excuse some of the images being not quite so sharp but they are nonetheless cast to our memories forever, such as Giant Manta-Rays.

Sleeping in a tent when its 40 knots outside is really quite something. The tent simply blows flat and you lay there for a few moments with the room against your chin before it pops back up again, damn those $69.99 tents, but it seemed like such a bargain at the time. Now we are further south we were also shocked at the temperature ranges in Oz. We sat in a blistering 43c on day and then at night a bit further south shivered as the temperature dropped into single figures at night, brrrr.

We were advised to go to a sporting goods store a little further south with an instruction to ask for some dude called Doug Hunt, I can only assume it was a joke as the guy behind the counter wet himself and sniggered something about Duck Hunt, so I called him a c*** as a joke but that was where the joke stopped and he asked me to leave the shop very, very quickly. Still, one thing that was very funny was VB. Now this is a beer here in Oz and it’s kind of a bit of a tourist thing. Apparently no one in their right mind ever drinks VB, which stands for Victoria Brewery or something. I went to a bottle store and asked for a case of VB and the girl laughed at me. Unperturbed I asked again and still she chuckled until she said,’You aren’t from round here are you?’ ‘No, the UK’ I responded gleefully. She then said, ‘You do know that no Aussie’s drink VB and they nick name it……..ready for this………..PG RATING WARNING……….LOOK AWAY IF EASILY OFFENED………..they call it……Vaginal Backwash!!!!!! Ewwwwwww. Lesson One, Day One, Never Ever order a ‘Case of Vaginal Backwash’ from a cute chick in a bottle store.

Again heading south we stopped briefly at the tourist honey pot that is Monkey Mia. Essentially Dolphins come to the beach 4-5 times a day and you pay $6 to stand there and see them being fed, if it is your first ever sighting of  Dolphin then its great but if you are used to them more ‘in the wild’ then the only thing missing is Flipper jumping through a hoop. We hated it and got out at first light. There is however an incredible place just down the road 160km long road) that offers the delight known as Eagle Bluff. This is a cliff path that allows you to look down and see just what is in the water. This will give you a clue of what is in the water just yards from the beach, any beach!! I won’t bore you with the names of places and what else we did but suffice to say, we drive, we pitch the tent, we do a little sight seeing, a little snorkelling, then we cook, the we go to bed at about 9pm and then we get up and drive again, most days 300 km or so.

Okay, so I’m always quoting actual conversations here with little or no embellishment. This was an actual conversation with a Park Ranger fellow. It went something like this. I said, ‘Okay, so, with the exception of the Crocodiles both salt and fresh water, The Death Adder, The Python, The Brown Snake, The King Brown, The Tigersnake, The Ducate Snake, The Taipan Snake, The Sea Snake (55 varieties, 53 deadly), The Desert Scorpion, The Kangaroo Tick, The Red Back Spiders, The Funnel Web Spiders, The Huntsman Spider, The Great White Sharks, The Bull Sharks (more deadly than the GW), The Tiger Sharks, The Great Stingray (Steve Irwin’s Arch Nemesis and ultimate killer), The Stone Fish, The Scorpion Fish, The Lion Fish, The Blue Ringed Octopus (absolutely f*****g deadly-just stops your heart), The Box Jellyfish, The Portugese Man-o-war, The Outback Emu (okay not a vicious killer but hit one dead on at 3am doing 120kmh and you aren’t walking away), Same goes for the Kangaroos’, I said to the Ranger. ‘So with the exception of all of that lot, Australia is a pretty same place to be’. He said, and I quote, ‘The safest place in all of Australia is about 6 feet away from watersedge’. And that is why they say this joke, ‘Q: What do you call a person in the water in Australia? A: A Tourist!

One thing that we learned at Ocean Park (great images of sharks feeding) was that, get this One fish, called the Lion Fish is so fierce it even has, and I still can’t believe this, it even comes fully equipped with an Anal Spike! Why or the love of God would a fish have to worry about such things? I mean it’s not like one day he was swimming along, just popping to the edge of the reef for a quick dip and then suddenly he gets bottom burgled in the butt cleft by a large gay Halibut. (Halibut is such a good word)

A quick mention on the images of Freemantle Prison. We took a tour, possibly the best tour that I have ever been on around the Prison that closed its doors, well opened them actually for the last time in 1991. The guides were ex-warders and gave stunning and jaw dropping stories about escapes and some of the ‘nasty’s’ the Prison held. The images are in B&W which is something that I don’t normally like doing but it just sort of makes it work. Even the Execution chamber was on the viewing list. 

Okay, different topic briefly. Superstition, or make believe, whatever you want to call it but I have always been a bit weird with stuff like that. Now don’t worry, I’m not going all weird on you here and start chanting but something happened the other day and I just want to share it with you. It’s nothing mediumistic or clairvoyant just sort of thing that happens sometimes when my senses seem, just sharper, sort of tuned in. We were driving along and I suddenly started singing a George Benson song called 20-20 Vision, saying that someone needs to release a song now with 20-20 in the title to be assured massive success in the year 2020. Kind of like Prince in 1999. Within about 3 or 4 minutes we pulled off the road to tank gas. As we walked in the gas station we paused at the CD collection and the first CD we picked up was…….George Benson’s Greatest Hits, nothing strange in that you say……well we pulled back onto the Highway, drove up to 110kmh and turned the radio up. Guess what was playing? Guess which song was playing out of all the millions of records ever released? Yes, you’ve got it….Aggadoo! No seriously, George Benson 20-20 Vision was playing! Dooo-dooooo-do-dooooo-dooooo-doooo (Cue the Twilight zone music). Now this sort of thing is 99% of the time indicative that within a few days I’m going to have bad luck. Call it De-Ja-Vu (French for ‘Been/Seen Before’) or some sort of precognition, but I just always know that a bad day is on the way.

Sure enough, 2 days later, whilst cruising at 96khm, sadly in a 80kmh zone in the middle of the desert, there, coming in the opposite direction were THE FEDS. Boom, the flashy lights go on and he pulls a handbrake turn and is on me in seconds. Now I see his light go on and chuck the Falcon straight into a layby and stomp on the breaks. He doesn’t even get a chance to put the Woo-Woo’s on and he’s got me, so short in fact was my first ever Police chase that the dude nearly slammed into the back of me, when he had finished his J turn. Nice man let off the ‘Bumbling English Mad Professor Haired Twit’……..on we drive, WHALLOP, a bird disintegrates off our bonnet into a thousand feathers (now that sort of stuff really upsets me), so on we drive to a famous kite beach. I drive onto the beach, the waves are great, it’s 25-28 knots X on from the left with a sweet right hander. I drive straight onto the beach and see a sign that says……..’NO CARS’……and it’s too late, we are toast, estate car on sand, we are going down like the Titanic, we are going down like Divine Brown at the latest Hugh Grant movie premier. Then, sure as it all starts, it’s over and life returns to normal. until I get the next one.

We stopped for a while at a Kangaroo sanctuary which as you can see was just incredible and then again at a Koala Bear sanctuary which was just the cutest and lovely place. As you can imagine, we had to go one step further to bring you the best images, so how about this, a Joey in its mums pouch!

And finally, as we got almost to the SW tip we stopped at Margaret River (a huge disappointment - its just a few shops and a murky river). The images from Bussleton Beach contain one or two of my most favourite images that I have ever captured, see if you can guess which they are. We went to a beach called Hamlin Beach where sadly a week or so ago about 100 Whales beached themselves and a huge rescue operation swung into effect. Only 4 Whales made it to freedom and as a result the beach has been closed due to Shark sightings in the bay. Unperturbed I waded into the shallow waters for what was possibly the most scariest experience of my entire life……..I did a close up shoot with not one, not two, not even three, but four huge Black Stingrays. These things were swimming up to me and then bumping into my legs before swimming over my feet. It’s all on camera but was possibly and fundamentally one of the best things that I have ever done. I was shaking for hours afterwards and now, days later, still shiver at the thought of my 2 hours in the water with these mammoths of the sea.

Okay, that’s it for this one. There are lots of images as Australia is quite incredible for photography, so sit back, enjoy the images and more news next time on a new friend of the site called ‘The Sea Sheppard Organisation’. Sorry it was such a huge one but we’ve done just so much and covered 5000km in 4 weeks!

Big hugs to you all

Love from

Chris and Blondie (253 days on the road and counting)

Categories: LBS News
No Comments »