TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

POTTYED AUSTRALIA

So what is my second favourite country in the world? The answer is Australia. I had been in love with the place since I was 10 and saw some TV programmes about it. It was so big and you seemed to be able to get away from people and have some space to yourself. I don’t think I realised how much space and how far away. I arrived there for my first visit in 2003, well over 40 years after falling in love with the country. It was a work-based visit. It started in late March and my first piece of writing took place on 1 April; note the date.

Well, here we are in Australia and already we are finding out about life in this vast country. One of the amazing things about Australia is the wild life.

Earlier today we came across one of the many indigenous creatures, the wallibat. It is a cross between the wallaby and the wombat. Like many of Australia’s indigenous wildlife, it is a marsupial. It carries its young in a small purse that it wears around its waist. The young grow very quickly and as they do they will slightly alter their position in the purse. When they have moved they never go back to the same position again. The purses are, therefore, known as somewhere for your small changes.

The adults are very intelligent, often writing letters to their young telling them what will happen next. However, the young tend to throw these out of the purses, as they believe this is not a place for notes. If they don’t throw the notes away, they will eat them. Early pioneers who came across these animals, the young is called a wall (it rhymes with doll), would collect these notes and try to understand them. You could often hear them cry out, “Have you got the dinkum notes”, to which the reply was usually “No, the wall ate them”. Over time, these pioneers would call any place you put your notes, a wallet.

The young walls can move surprisingly quickly. In fact, if you go into the archives at your local library, you may be able to read about a serious accident which happened when two of them collided in the middle of an Australian town early one evening. They had both been sent to buy some frozen milk, known as wall’s Ice Cream, before the shop shut at 7.30pm. Both had been playing on the way and then had to rush into town. It was 7.29pm and they were both approaching the shop which was on a cross roads. One came from the north, the other from the east and neither was looking where they were going.

It is thought they were each travelling at about 75mph when they hit and the resultant impact was enormous and actually felt all around the world. Both walls were tossed high into the air before crashing down again. One landed in a field, still wet from heavy rain the previous day, and started a fearful moan. The field was not unlike those of Flanders and according to de swan that was floating nearby, you could hear the wall ohing in the mud for hours and hours.

The other landed back in the middle of the road leaving a large dent in the ground. The depression was still around some three years later. If you want to read more, try googling 1929 Wall Street Crash, where you will find much written about the crash and the subsequent depression.

This picture shows the cover of one such book written by a man called Galbraith. He apparently studied the wallibats quite a lot. He was also particularly interested in their unique methods of disposing of their own waste and another of his books, called The Effluent Society, related his findings.

He also designed, or at least championed, a method to avoid such crashes in the future. He felt that there was a danger area on one side of every wallibat and if contact could be avoided in that area, such crashes might not happen in the future. He called this their MPC or marginal propensity to crash.

MPC=dC/dY where dC is the distance covered by the running wallibat and dY is the distance away from the other speeding wombat before they yelled. He actually rounded up all the wallibats he could find and drew a blue line down their left hand side to represent this margin.

The female of the species are known as wallies, while the males, not surprisingly, are known as bats. Strangely, over time, although they are not in any way human, these two sexes have been known as walliewomen and batsmen. The male frightens off any rivals by producing a very strong and unpleasant smell from its tail. However, during the short mating season, the smell is given off from the stomach or centre portion of the animal. At this time of year the male is said to be promoted from a tail odour batsmen to a middle odour batsman.

The main source of food is any discarded tins which people have thrown away. Certain of the male wallibats have distinctive, little claws, which allow them to get the food out of these tins and those that have these claws are known as the opening batsmen. The animals store their food in their “pitch”, the name given to the place where they make their homes, and some of the males stand guard over the food during the night. These are, of course, the night watchmen batsmen who, in normal life, are the infertile, tail odour batsmen. If a predator approaches they can then turn suddenly and let off this unpleasant smell which among other things can cause severe and almost immediate diarrhoea. This is where we get the phrase turn tail and runs.

Australia is also a leader in many things. Australians were surfing long before the internet came along; to them www stood for wonderful wet water. Their surfing is a strange pastime where you swim out to sea carrying a shaped plank of wood, looking not unlike a dolphin or similar shark food, wait for a big wave, jump on your plank and wait again until you fall off. By then, the wave has carried you back to where you were some time ago. Finding this out, you immediately swim back to where you were before you came back to where you’d been and then aim to return to where you’d been before you had to go to where you were before you’d been to where you’d been before you were there. They will do this for hours on end.

There is a rumour that everything in Australia is upside down. This isn’t true, which to me anyway, proves the world is flat, but, a bit like a roll of material, it continues in a never-ending pattern, repeating itself over and over again. This is how you can fly from New Zealand, on the right hand side of my flat world, to Chile, on the left. It is in fact a repeat of the earlier Chile. This is well-known in England where a common form of greeting is “Chile again isn’t it?”. There are some experts who study the mountains and tors which appear over and over again and these people are known as tortologists.

In fact most things in Australia are the right way up, although they have a lot of rain at the top of country and droughts at the bottom. Of course if the world was round all the water at the top would run down to the bottom, which further proves my theory. It is very difficult to say what is the best thing from Australia. Many people have said Kylie Minogue’s bottom. I would agree but what is top and the best.

Let's leave April 1 and continue this “interesting” look at my time in Australia. As an Englishman, it probably wasn’t surprising that my first destination on my first visit to Australia was Bondi Beach. It is, probably, the most famous beach in Australia and, so I was led to believe, the surfing capital of the New South Wales coast. I decided, therefore, to acquaint myself with that most typical all-Australian pastime; surfing. There seemed to be two types; body boarding, where you lie on a small board, and, what I will call long board surfing, in which you stand on a longer board.

In either case the basic idea is to ‘catch a wave’ just as it turns and use the energy of the water to propel yourself in toward the shore. The immediate decision was which one to try first. Now I don’t know about you but me and my body have become pretty close over the years and it didn’t seem fair to try something like this without it, so body boarding was the choice and off I went to the surf hire hut to get myself the necessary equipment and, possibly, the necessary body, although I was secretly hoping that I could use mine as there is quite a lot of it.

”Hi’, I said, ‘how’s it going’.’ I’ve noticed this is a popular starting phrase in Australia, or at least in New South Wales, so I felt that, if this guy was connected to surfing he was almost certainly a true blue Australian, so I best conform. I must admit that apart from a young jogger who used the phrase to me and I was able to tell her “great but not as quick as you” (or possibly as bouncy), I’m not totally sure what the answer should be. How is what going and where is it going anyway?

But, I digress, as I frequently do, back to the guy at the surf hut. I told him that I wanted to body board and asked what do I need. ‘Oh’, he said ‘you need a boogie board’. Now, this was a bit of a surprise; here was me and my body wanting something to surf the waves on and this guy was offering me a boogie board. At this stage I decided to be a bit careful. I mean the Aussies do use a lot of slang. Food is tucker, women are sheilas’, barbecues are barbies and so I was a little concerned where my boogie was and whether it really needed a board on which to surf. Also, I didn’t want to get embarrassed if he only offered me one that was three inches long. Apparently the boogie board is the same as the body board and he gave me one (42 inches long, so I’m glad I was wrong) and off I went to boogie.

‘But wait,’ he said, ‘you need flippers.’ He explained that having webbed feet would help me propel my way gracefully, though horizontally, in to the shore. But first, of course, I had to propel myself slightly less than gracefully, and vertically, out from the shore. ‘Walk backwards,’ the guy said, ‘because you can’t walk forward in webbed feet.’ Ho, ho, ho, I thought. Winding this little pom up are we? I mean have you ever seen a duck walking backwards. Precisely.

‘Once in the water it’s quite simple’, he shouted after me. He said I should wait for the right wave, leap on my board, flip my flippers, (probably wobble my boogie) and off I’d go. Fine. Firstly, which is the right wave? None of them have labels, so how do you choose? Oh, and how do you stand upright long enough to find the right one when the others keep trying to smash you to pieces and, let me tell you, they can hurt your little boogie if you have it in the wrong position. Going backwards didn’t seem quite so stupid now.

Anyway, after a while I seemed to be getting the hang of it. In fact I was almost as good as the six-year old next to me, although, just between you and me, I will admit I had no idea which was the right wave or, if I should be in front of the white bit or on the turning bit. Still it was fun and I was getting quite attached to my little boogie, as I always have been. However, others seemed to be able to boogie further than me and I put this down to the weight difference. So I tried waiting longer, no sorry, bad joke. I suppose it is only natural that a lighter person can ride the waves longer. Don’t say no because it made me feel a lot better.

Having mastered boogie or body boarding, I wondered if I should try the long board surfing. This is where I became less than enthusiastic because nature has endowed me with a non-floating body and, despite many years of trying, I have never really been able to swim. Someone once offered me a pint of beer if I could swim the width of a swimming pool and I did, but obviously, as Australians, you can see this was an emergency.

By the way, I think I now know why this is called long board surfing. The answer comes back to this choose the right wave thing. Unlike the old boogieing bit, this time you swim out to about shark level and then wait for the right wave. This takes a long time and so you can get quite bored waiting; therefore long bored surfing. But, back to the surfing bit. I knew, because I had looked this up, that you can have dumpers and rippers and quite a few other bodily functions especially if you happen to see a shark. However the man at the kiosk, I never did check if he had all his limbs, said there were nets out there so I was safe. However as I believe sharks have teeth I wasn’t so sure.

Surfing is obviously easier than body boarding as they can teach you it. I mean has anyone ever taught you to stand up and walk in a straight line after 6 vodkas. Of course not, but I bet they taught you algebra. However, they teach you to surf on the sand. This is a little bit like learning to ski on the bedroom carpet. You think you know it all, it feels good but the carpet just isn’t snow and the only damage you can have is a nasty carpet burn and who needs to be on the piste for that. Another thing is that sand isn’t water. Who cares if you get water in your speedos but with sand, well, it can outperform the carpet burns feeling. Still that’s how it goes. OK. I’m into this thing with my boogie in a big way.

I noticed, in my short time in Australia, how very health conscious everybody was. It was, therefore, a bit of a surprise when I learned that 60% of Australians were overweight, especially as it seems that everything you eat is always about 98% fat free or more. I even bought a bottle of water yesterday and, until I placed it in my hand, it was virtually fat free too.

Maybe, though, now is the time for those nice nutritionists to check out if eating fat makes you fat. I mean I eat sprouts and I haven’t sprouted anything, I eat mince and I don’t and I even had one of those cocktails at the Bondi Hotel and that didn’t happen for me either. True I couldn’t find a cowgirl but………

So, with all this healthy eating and stuff, it was no surprise when, after a few days in Bondi, people started telling me I needed to look out for the famous Bondi Icebergs. You’ve probably guessed from the earlier comments that I’m basically a red meat, roast dinner type of person, but some people like their fruit and salad, so it seemed a good idea to check this out. I will admit, that it did seem strange, in a place with so many buildings, that someone could find a green space in which they could grow these icebergs but, off I went in search of the lettuce.

Talking of green spaces, I was most impressed that, in a country which was apparently suffering a drought, the grass everywhere in Bondi seemed so green and lush in colour. Then, one Sunday night, I noticed that they water these areas with huge sprays of water. Great fountains of water could be seen cascading over the grass area which goes down to the beach.

But back to the Iceberg search, though for the full effect of this piece remember the watering bit. Initially, none of the shops I looked in had anything, but then I had a strange piece of luck. I was sitting in a cafe and muttering about my fruitless search, well saladless search, when somebody at the next table overheard me and said she worked with them. This was just the break I needed or I thought it was. It is possible that I’m getting a little deaf in my old age, maybe I had too much water in my ears from my “successful” bodyboarding, but I’m sure she said she was a leaf guard. Obviously growing Iceberg lettuces in Bondi results in some salad rustling so some-one has to look after the fields and guard the leaves.

She then told me that she would show me where to go to find them and said that Sunday was the best day. I could fully understand this. In the UK, the tradition is for a good roast dinner on Sunday but in a hot country like Australia, obviously a good salad is a far better proposition. However, at this point I began to think there may be some confusion, as she next told me to meet her over by the open-air swimming pool.

Clarification took some time but eventually I learned that the Bondi Icebergs, far from being a load of lettuces, are in fact people who swim in the open air pool every week of the winter, or what you Australians laughingly call a winter. To be honest, if they are really that enthusiastic about being an iceberg, they should try this in Estonia or even off Clacton pier. In the temperatures we get there, your enthusiasm gets a lot smaller for things like that. Actually swim in the open air in Estonia in the winter and everything gets a lot smaller. You think twice about it I can tell you and it’s not something you do willy-nilly, although that may be the result.

The following Sunday I found myself in the Icebergs Club, watching the swimming. They have something like 900 swimming members and they are expected to swim every week through the winter unless they have a note from their mother; A$50 being the preferred one. The races take place all morning and everything is brilliantly organized. They even have a club for younger members called the Icecubes. This could be quite infectious. I suppose a club for the more mellow members would be the Iceflows and for those who find the water too cold the Icescreams.

Everyone who swims has a standard time that they set at the start of the season and the races are all handicapped. It was fascinating to watch. After the races finish, around noon, everyone has a drink and stays till the evening, when they have live music. Unlike all the members, we couldn’t make just one drink last that long so we went away and came back again later.

Those who could still stand, were happily dancing away through till midnight. Everyone was so friendly, there were no Icesheets, and in fact they wanted us to take part in the races which we tried to decline. However, with the slight language difference, my girlfriend, of Polish extraction, she should have been a dentist, misheard the request. She thought she was being asked to have the visitor’s seat not swim in the visitor’s heat. Oh well maybe next year.

Once midnight arrives, those that realize it, begin to make their way home. Those that don’t, make their way home too, if they know where home is. I really am surprised that with all that has been drunk the guys don’t just fall down on their backs on the grass just outside the club. But, then again, how could they when those hoses are spraying water everywhere? Oh, the weird thing is that when you go out in daylight across the grass you can’t see the hoses. Funny that, isn’t it

The first day we arrived in Bondi, and still suffering from jet lag, we got up at 6.30am (well it was still 9.00pm to my little body) and went down on the beach. I know from my love of the sea in England that early morning is a very romantic time as you set out along the beach and almost always see another set of footprints before yours but nobody in sight. Who is this very early bird who has beaten you? On holidays with my parents when I was young I would persuade my father to get up earlier and earlier to try and be the first but always someone else had been there.

However on Bondi, it wasn’t a case of someone else, it was like the whole Roman army. I was going to say, as the sand analogy seemed rather appropriate, the US army, but most of the joggers I saw seemed to know why they were there, what they were doing, where they were going and although obviously friendly, didn’t keep bumping into each other. True, some of the larger ladies did have weapons of mass destruction, but they weren’t hidden and looked more likely to inflict injury on the owner, certainly in the event of a brisk run. But there were, literally, hundreds of people running, jogging, power-walking, walking or just wobbling, well you have to look don’t you, along the beach.

Then, at various times, they would stop and bend and stretch, or in some cases just crease, various parts of their anatomy in some strange ritual. Some were doing hand stands, yoga, press ups (well there’s always a couple of show-offs aren't there), while others would just stretch a hamstring (oh I know all this technical stuff) or tighten their abdominals. People would touch their toes while some strained to look over their abdominals, tightened or not, and see if their toes were still there. By the way if you can’t touch your toes, how do you wash them or is this another reason for being in the water at Bondi? Who knows, but after all this, it was back to the jogging or whatever.

So we joined in and power walked along the whole length of Bondi Beach and back again. All I can say is thank goodness I kept up with myself because it probably wasn’t a pretty sight from behind. I must admit that it actually felt good (the power-walking not my behind, although depending on who you are, you’re welcome to try) so we then did it again with a few short sprints in between.

However, the thing that worried me a little bit was, who were all these people and what did they do for a living? You see, there were still quite a few left around all day. Are they all retired and if so then this exercise lark does keep you looking quite young or do they all have night-shift jobs? I never did work it out. Maybe living in Bondi is just one long holiday, after all the beach is so famous.

And talking of being famous, when we arrived, we were told to look out for the Packers. Well I must admit they were everywhere and from all over the world. Somebody told me that one of them lives in a house at Bondi but the ones I saw all seemed to be staying in hostels. I can see why it is so difficult for them to leave Bondi. You see, if you have looked very closely at a backpacker, you will notice that carrying all their belongings on their back for so long means that, when they walk, they all tend to lean backwards. If you take the packs off then it still happens, force of habit I suppose. However this means that though they can walk downhill OK, unlike you and me they are actually vertical when doing this, going uphill is virtually impossible. They just topple backwards. Now you can’t leave Bondi without going uphill, hence the reason they all stay and possibly why there are so many people on the beach all day.

The other thing I was told about was the area at the north end of the beach. I thought I was told it was for the exercisers and I assumed it was a sort of rest area for drinks as the guy who told us said it had bars and everything. I guess this is the only piece of vandalism I saw in Bondi. It probably was a nice rest area, certainly they did try to cater for backpackers. There were some benches conveniently inclined at about 45 degrees so they could sit down while standing up if you see what I mean. But a lot had been destroyed.

There was a small table there but the chairs around it had gone and all that was left were the frames. Still some guy had his feet on the table and kept pretending the chair was still there or at least hoping it would appear as he raised himself up and down. Each time he lowered, he would wince slightly as he realised the seat had still not come back. There were a few more guys who kept pulling themselves up on what was obviously the bar area hoping that a barmaid would appear and serve them drinks. In a way it was quite sad to watch, as there were some other people who were lying on the benches and kept trying to get up but they couldn’t.

I suppose all this fitness is what makes Australia the envy of the sporting world and their tactics are often copied, although not sometimes so obviously. While I was there in 2003, they had two different captains for the one day and test teams at cricket. I can now reveal that until March 2003, England copied this, although it was well-disguised secret. Shortly after the invasion of Baghdad we changed our one-day captain. Now the secret was out; it was a different Hussein captaining the one-day side but too politically sensitive to admit. I also think that this was why we couldn’t win anything at the time as he could never remember where his weapons of mass destruction were, if he had any. I mean you may try, but you can’t lose Shane Warne can you? Sooner or later he’ll send you a text.

By the way we also had two captains in earlier days. Barbara and Len Hutton, Daisy and Peter May, Glenn and Brian Close and Alex and Jackie Stewart all took turns to lead England. And not many people know this, unless you looked closely when he went on the field, but Mike Gatting was actually two people anyway. Still is, I believe.

After this time in Bondi, we decided to explore the outback as people had done over 200 years before. So, like them, we hired a campervan and set off. Actually, this was our only bad experience in all the time in Australia, as the people showing us the van, didn’t close the roof correctly. So when we were but 15 kms down the road, it popped up. To be fair they did say it was a pop-up van, but we had to have help to close it. We were then unable to open it again so with little ventilation it used to get very hot at nights. Also, as my girlfriend was obviously also travelling with me, we both got really hot at night, in the ambient temperature sense I can assure you.

Anyhow, I phoned the van company, and they said, ‘OK, we'll repair it. Bring it to Brisbane’. We were in Dubbo at the time so I thought I would just pop up (I told you it was a pop-up didn’t I?) the road and have this done, joking of course, but I’m not sure they were. The outcome was that we spent the whole three weeks in this closed van unable to get it up, the roof that is, I can assure you again. Then, when we got back home, we found that they had deducted the A$1,000 insurance bond from my girlfriend’s account, despite signing the van back with no damage. So thank you, Network Car Hire and I hope your business booms and thanks to the guy in Brisbane who owns the van.

But let’s forget the bad experience and go back to our expedition. We planned to go inland from Sidney via Dubbo, across to Cobar, up to Bourke and thence into Queensland and eventually find the coast and make our way back. Our trip ended up as a guided tour but, sadly, our guides were the myriad number of flies that seemed to inhabit the outback regions at that time of year. It was almost impossible, if you stopped moving, not to have a fly, and his best 20 mates, land on some part of your anatomy.

They really seemed to like to be with us though and they would join in everything we did. We stopped to eat and so did the flies. So we ate them too, it was impossible not too. We showered and so did they. We walked and so did they, all up our arms, our backs, everywhere. We sat and so did they, all up our arms, our backs, everywhere. They may even have copied other things we did but at that stage, at least, there were no flies on me.

We also saw a lot of dead kangaroos. Now I am not sure if this is a good thing, are you being over-run by them, or a bad thing, are you running over them. They could certainly do with some road safety training. I just hoped, or maybe hopped, that none of them were relations of Skippy because I used to like that programme when I was younger. It was amazing how he could understand Sonny and even more amazing Ranger Matt could understand him. ‘What’s that Skippy? Sonny, Mark and Clancey have been kidnapped by a cattle rustler and taken to a deserted hut five kms away. Show me the way Skippy”. Just by saying ‘tclk, tclk tclk tclk’, he was understood. Of course now I know, in real life, that 200 metres down the road and he would have been knocked down by a road train so what was the point. How come we bought Neighbours after this? Oh and what about The Magic Boomerang or The Terrible Ten or Seaspray or Barrier Reef; how you Aussies hated us. And why didn’t Gary Gray, or Rodney Pearlman or Ken James or Joanne Mirams ever make a pop song. Jason and Kylie did and look what happened to them. OK, I see your point but what happened to the others anyway. Oh nostalgia and memories. The past will always pop-up won’t it, well I said it was a pop-up didn’t I.

Eventually I saw live kangaroos, one morning when we had to go out very early and were on the road by 8.00am and they kept running, or jumping, across the road in front of us. I think they may be alcoholic because I was told that there was a roo bar on the front of the campervan and I think they wanted to be served.

The first part of our journey up the interior (sounds a bit rude to me but still) was a bit scary. I mean you could drive for miles and never see another car. It was, in fact, only the thought that some stray kangaroo would find us, hop off and say tclk tclk tclk to someone and a rescue truck would be sent, that stopped me going into panic mode about breaking down. The roads are so straight and even if they do bend a bit, it’s all so gentle. No wonder Sir Jack Brabham had that problem at Monte Carlo in 1970; all those corners were far too much for him. I think he also did the same thing in Portugal in 1960, blaming the tram lines. Lack of experience round corners, Jack, if you ask me. I think it is significant that the Australian national car is a Holden because that’s all you seem to do with the steering wheel, no turning like in Europe.

The second part of our journey, after our bit through Queensland, saw us coming back down the coast. One of the first places we reached in New South Wales was Byron Bay. Now if anyone has ever thrown the magic boomerang, it was here. Time has stood still. This is hippie land. Psychedelically painted VW vans, crowded camp sites, guitar playing campers and the sound of the sea. Long hair, flowing skirts, ‘Jesus’ sandals, oh the memories popped up again, well I ……, yes I did.

But where were Donovan, Matthews Southern Comfort, Twiggy and Mary Quant. Some things do disappear but the spirit lives on. For a child of the sixties who never grew up, this was like going back in time. St Ives was reborn and I was so happy. Even the fact that by staying a few days longer, we missed Russell Crowe’s wedding (who the hell is he anyway) didn’t bother me. I was back in Ten Town with Gary Gray. Now there’s a name to conjure with.

Actually it looks like his parents might have done just that. ‘Let’s jumble up the letters of our surname love and see what we get’. Wait, I’ve invented a new drinking game for our cultural visits. Um, let’s think. Leadman Mandela sounds about right. Ooh, maybe you should be given one spare letter. Then I could have an American President called Shrub Bush. Have to be a dense shrub and a thick bush though (can I say that). Or perhaps lose one letter so I could have Liar Blair. No, no that’s tautology isn’t it? Only my opinion Tony. This was 2003.

Back to the top

Break