Happy Christmas

Adelaide here, still fed up about the cricket but chuffed about the ever expanding Mandy. After months of sickness she is now glowing and looking as happy as an Aussie cricket fan and as fat as Humpty Dumpty.

Things are trotting along here, we moved into the new house last weekend. With the help of some handy Aussies and a happy Scot we shifted our accumulated junk into the little house in the woods. Mandy looked the other way as we nearly let the trailer run through the bedroom wall and dropped the fridge. Apart from that, it went like clockwork. So many thanks to Billy, Mike and Greg for their labours.

The neighbours were very welcoming, one couple inviting us round for tea, pressing home made marmalade on us and regaling us with tales of great bush fires of days gone by. Comforting stuff.

The next lot invited us round for sundowners to tell us about all the short cuts that the previous owner had taken. So we find we have precious little water in the tanks, a bio-waste system way past it service date and sprinkler systems which need ripping out and reinstalling.

Buying a house is a dirty business over here too!

Christmas here is pretty much the same as in the UK, with some fairly striking differences though. Everyone is out for Christmas drinks, but in the beer garden not by the fire. Big meals are essential, but it’s Greek salad and barbecued chicken rather than roast with all the trimmings. Santa wears the full kit and is seen everywhere, but his red face is down to the heat rather than the brandy. In most cases.

Mandy has landed the much sought after night shift over Christmas Eve/morning and she will undoubtedly be a happy little bunny on her return! It might take a while for the full spirit of Christmas to manifest itself around our place.

We’re flying to Melbourne on Christmas afternoon, one more dream coming true as we watch a Boxing Day test match. Even though the Ashes are long gone, it’s a 95,000 sell out. At a cricket match. How about that?

Moving on, all the scans look good for the little one and Mandy has found a few yoga classes for the pregnant, so she can compare notes and eat cake with the similarly afflicted. She is bearing up well though and seems to be enjoying it all.

So we’ll leave you with pictures of the big news….a view which at least means we can see the fires rolling across the valley, the little one looking pretty comfortable and the astonishing revelation that Aussies love beating the English!

So merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all, we’ll send news from Melbourne but please let us know how you are getting on.

Anyway, before I rabbit on all night, the lightning is getting as spectacular as it is scary. It’s time for a beer, fingers crossed that the rain keeps up.

Merry Christmas
M&W

Only A Game!?

Writing this note is a welcome distraction, the best thing on TV is ‘Australia’s Brainiest Radio Personality’, imagine how much fun that could be.

The TV is a significant reason for people talking about Australia as an outdoor country.

Another good reason for keeping clear of the TV has been the cricket. As Mandy keeps reminding me, it’s only a game and I appreciate her point of view. But at the same time I don’t believe her.

Call me narrow minded or shallow, but it’s much more than a game. Particularly when what is either the ‘Greatest Match Ever’ (Aussie press) or the most brainless, gutless and heart breaking defeat imaginable has happened right here in Adelaide.

The Aussies loved it of course and I have heard about little else since. They are quite ruthless sports supporters. They would much rather win a cricket match by an innings or a rugby match by 50 points than have to sit on the edge of their seat chewing their nails. They enjoy nothing more than watching one sided contests.

Of course on the other hand, us Brits generally prefer an evenly matched contest which keeps us interested all the way through. Unless of course it’s against Australia.

Despite the result, and more importantly, the nature of it, watching an Ashes match in Australia really was a dream come true. I have been looking forward to this for a long time and to sit back on the grassy bank, beer in hand under a cloudless sky at a beautiful and sold out Adelaide Oval was just perfect.

Even Mandy enjoyed it and while she didn’t have a beer of course, she was kept amused with plenty of ice cream and looking at Brett Lee through the binoculars. I think cricket is probably the perfect hobby for her at the moment. It seems she is getting bigger every day and sitting round for hours doing nothing but eating ice cream suits her very well.

During this time, Adelaide was fascinated by the antics of the Barmy Army. As I have mentioned, this place is often likened to the stately older lady of Australian cities and was hence a little anxious about an impending rowdy Anglo Saxon invasion.

The newspapers had filled the locals with stories of what over 5000 flag waving, chanting, beer guzzling Poms would do to the city. I was constantly asked about what the Barmy Army was all about, I think people were genuinely worried. I told them that it was an organisation similar in many ways to Al Qaeda and left it there.

Of course it was hyped out of all proportion, 5000 England fans wandered round with a big smile on their faces, sang, drank and made loads of friends. Their response to the worst defeat I can remember was to sing and drink more. The landlords of this city will miss them greatly.

As if the result wasn’t bad enough, I watched the game mostly through one eye having fallen off my bike up in the hills. I imagine it must have looked quite good as I ended up a fair way from the bike and among all the cuts and bruises, came out with 11 stitches around my eye and lip. One day I will learn that I am not still 21 and don’t bounce very well any more.

We move into our new house this week so it’s goodbye to the chic coffee culture of Norwood and hello to no mains water or sewers and bush fires. The upside is a lovely house on a hill with views of rolling gum forests and, if you lean over the fence a little, the sea too.

Talking of bush fires, the season is really taking off now. There are some huge ones burning in Victoria and the news yesterday showed Melbourne engulfed in smoke from fires over 200 miles away. Visibility was down to several metres and smoke alarms were going off in all the office buildings.

Whether it is fire, drought or heat (100F+ for the last few days), this country offers constant reminders that it is at the mercy of some very harsh elements. And if they don’t get you the sharks probably will!

This week there have been 10 sightings of large great whites within 400m of the beach. We’re off to beach ourselves now, but like everyone else, we won’t be going deeper than waist high!

Keep well.
M&W

Happy Birthday

Hi Gabi.....really sorry we missed your birthday. Hope you had a lovely day and that your mum, dad and sister were good to you.

Lots of love

Uncle Billy and Aunty Mandy

One

Yesterday was exactly one year since we arrived in Adelaide, blinking against the glaring sun and cloudless sky. I suppose time will tell if it’s been a good idea, whatever the verdict, it’s been eventful.

The baby would fit into the eventful category, 20 weeks now and all looking good. Mandy is just settling into it all after a couple of months of continuously throwing up.

The house we move into on 11th December is another feature. It is in a lovely spot, set in 1000m2 of trees overlooking a valley of eucalypt forest. And although it is tucked away in the hills, it is only five miles from the city centre and we can see the sea from the bottom of the garden.

On the other hand, there is no mains water, no sewers and it is in a very high risk bush fire area. Fire is a huge worry in this part of town and in preparation I have been on a fire prevention course this week. To be honest, it has made me feel worse. I was vaguely worried before, now I am terrified.

Bush fires here are particularly scary, even more so after a four year drought which has left the forests with several inches of bone dry floor cover. It doesn’t take much to set that off and when it goes, it really goes. We had a lightning storm last week, the next day 60 fires were burning across the state.

The street we live on burnt to the ground in 1983 in the worst fires recorded in Australia, the footage is bloody scary.

But lots of other people put up with it and a friend of Mandy’s lives on our street, she lost her house on Ash Wednesday but hasn’t moved. Like she says, fire is just a part of living in Australia.

As are snakes, the sort of snakes which have been biting lots of people round here in the past few weeks and are abundant in our new neighbourhood. These brown snakes have accounted for one bloke already this month and have put several others in hospital.

Even putting aside the little one and the house it has been an eye opening twelve months, and there has been no bigger eye opener than my father’s revelation of the highlight of his holiday over here.

Despite travelling through some of the most magnificent scenery I have seen, wrangling deadly snakes, patting koala bottoms, fine wine and the prettiest cricket ground in the world, his desert island moment was getting around a pie floater.

For the uninitiated among you, a pie floater is of the same cultural ilk as jellied eels. It is simply a (mechanically retrieved) meat pie in a bowl of mushy peas. But it can only be eaten at the pie cart, an enigmatic catering van like something from Hogwarts, staffed by a lady of comfortable dimensions who likes men with a healthy appetite.

But all this is a mere sideshow. The cricket has started and after all the anticipation, as you will all no doubt be aware, Australia are giving us a bath. I’m sure it sticks in your throat a bit, but Jeez it’s hard work copping the flak over here; the whole country is full square behind not just beating England, but rubbing our noses in the dirt.

It is hard to explain the gusto with which every opportunity to ‘bag the Poms’ is seized by a nation drooling unattractively for revenge. After day one of the first test, people I had never spoken to went out of their way to smirk at our woeful bowling and lack of ‘ticker’ in not picking Monty.

Every TV presenter passes some comment about our gutless (upto today) efforts, all wearing an irritatingly smug grin. Even multinational firms like Ford are pushing a promotion called ‘Tonk A Pom’, I think the idea is that you get a ball with an English face on it, then hit it as hard and as far as you can. If you can bear to look, click here.

Every other ad consists of a grinning baggy green cap cut with footage of Brett Lee shattering English stumps. The beer ads are priceless though. The number one beer, VB, which is a cold and tasteless bottle of tat, has declared this series ‘The Battle of the Tashes’ (clever play on words for an Aussie) and has launched a whole series of promotions based on cricketers sporting lush facial hair.

Fronting this promotion up are Ian Botham, (representing one of the finest English tashes of recent years) and David Boon, a legend over here for his luxuriant mo and his record of 53 tinnies of XXXX on a flight from Sydney to London in 1989. He wasn’t a bad batsman either.

As well as blanket TV advertising, VB are pushing their dubious wares via a pair of talking ‘Boony & Beefy’ figures, mine arrived today after I sent off the tokens earned by drinking some VB. The things I do for cheap novelty.

The plan is that you put the cricket on TV, put the figures next to the set and watch the game with Boony and Beefy making comments every now and then. These are sent via radio signal and generally made up from witty banter such as;

Beefy: “Chuck us a VB Boony”

Boony: “ No way, you’ll only drop it”

Ha bloody ha.

Apart from that Boony pipes up every 10 minutes with, “It’s a hot one, time for a VB I reckon”. Subtle huh?

Anyway, with pinpricks from every direction and a deflating start to the series, in the words of another Englishman spitting into the wind, I would love it if we beat them!

I’ll tell you more about the important stuff next time..

Cheers
M&W

Quick

I don’t know where to start. I’m miles behind on the news from here and it’s all happening. How will I ever catch up?

Brevity is the only solution. I’ll get everything out of the way and up to date as quickly as possible. Then we’ll be bang up to date in sleepy Adelaide, considered a small town by the fancy eastern cities. A small town which today hosts U2 in a 60,000 sell out, is the venue for a massive classic car rally and what is left of the England cricket team is in town living it up prior to the game against SA today.

Quiet place. Ha!

All this is without the international show jumping event last weekend in the parks of the city which clashed with the Christmas pageant, another road closing extravaganza. After a very very slow winter, it’s all happening here now.

Anyway, last time I left any notes here we had just got back from the Flinders mountains with my folks. What a great place, but good hosts that we were, it was just the tip of this iceberg.

At a car race in the Barossa valley my dad was hailed a ‘legend’ by one competitor and signed autographs for others. His single seater exploits and articles in the UK had reached this far flung corner of the former empire. He had been in the country three days and was recognised!

To be honest, the old feller was a little bit ‘To The Manor Born’. Every gum tree he looked in contained a dozing koala, every stone he turned over revealed a scorpion and when he mentioned that it would be a treat to see a big monitor in the desert, sure enough, one walked across our path 20 minutes later!

Uncanny does not begin to cover it.

While father likes nothing more than discovering the local wildlife, my mother lives in mortal fear of it finding her. And on Kangaroo Island it would not leave her alone. On more than one occasion, as we took a hike through the bush, a large kangaroo bounced into our path only a few yards away, stopped and fixed my mum with an icy stare.

Not her cup of tea at all. In fact it’s fair to say that she didn’t fully relax on Kangaroo Island. It’s also fair to say that she never really took to anything furry, no matter how cute. Whether this was a harmless but curious kangaroo, hungry wallabies and possums we fed at the villa, koalas up a tree or the potteroos scurrying around her feet.

A long way to come to indulge a lifelong phobia. Can you believe that when we lived in Stockport she made me empty the mouse trap every morning before she would come downstairs. I was three years old.

I know my dad loved it all. Wine, lizards, bike rides, rugged scenery and calling everyone ‘mate’. I’m still not sure what my mum will think of it all. She seemed at her happiest in the back garden with her book and a cup of tea. While it wasn’t PG, she made do.

Apart from all that, it was Melbourne Cup a week or so ago. The biggest horse race of the year and traditionally one which ‘stops the nation’. Companies leave the phones off the hook, lock the door and open the beer. At Adelaide City Council we just went to the nearest pub to join everyone else for the annual ritual of an afternoon beer before tearing up the betting slips.

Well that’s nearly it. Showing the folks around South Australia, sheltering my mum from the furrier inhabitants while helping my dad find the reptilian ones left us exhausted, goodness knows how they felt on getting home.

We barely had enough energy to buy a house, but the koala in the garden on our second viewing closed the deal for Mandy. It is in the hills overlooking the city and slap bang in the middle of a high risk bush fire zone. Extremely high risk. It is only 20 years since the road we have bought on burned to the ground in the worst bush fires in living memory. It also has no mains water. But the views are cool We move in on 11th December.

Hopefully we should be settled by April when we are expecting a little one.

Now we’re up to date.

Cheers
M&W

Oldies

It has been a while since our last post. And even though I work for the council, it has been a busy few weeks.

I hope all is well with you as the winter closes in.

One of the reasons for my slack attitude to this page is that my parents arrived in Australia. I think Belgium was their previous record distance from home, but here they were blinking in the spring sun, wondering what day it was and, in the case of my mum, looking anxiously around for rogue roos.

So these past three weeks have been spent scouring South Australia for something new to do. I like to think we broke new ground, I don’t think anyone has spent three weeks on holiday in South Australia voluntarily before this.

Perhaps they are easily pleased, or maybe everyone else is missing out on a seriously cool place.

I prefer the latter.

To be fair, there are some fantastic places here. I reckon the trip will take a few posts to describe their travels through this mostly underrated part of the country.
A few beers after collecting them from the airport, we drove north to the Flinders Ranges, a cool six hour drive to some pretty bleak, depressingly dry but awesome scenery with views further than you can ever imagine.

We eventually ended up at a place called Wilpena Pound, via pies at Two Wells, coffee at Port Pirie, more pies at Quorn, petrol at Hawker and a comfort stop or two in the middle of nowhere.

Wilpena Pound is a strange place, it is a geological wonder of rugged peaks, sheer rock faces and weird flora all making a huge moutainous ring surrounded by not much but endless flat and arid land as far as you can ever dream of. A unique place.

However, instead of intrepid and bearded climbing types it is a place which retirees flock to in their camper vans, to sit in deck chairs under a tree, look at a billion stars and listen to Jeremy and Don, the only band prepared to travel this far for a gig.

Bless them. Amped up in the desert with an adoring audience of old folk gagging for a sing along as they dined.

We arrived a little late for dinner to discover the remains of the buffet; a hundred wrinklies can pass through a roast beef buffet like a swarm of locusts through a Biblical wheat field.

While dad and I were trying to salvage a helping from the remains of the bread and butter pudding and trifle, my mother, unknown to us, was waltzing around the floor with Tony the crooner. One glass of wine is normally more than enough for her, but carried away with the desert air, she had got through two glasses and was now throwing herself around the floor with poor Tony from County Down a mere passenger.

This was a slick band and they worked their captive and ageing audience beautifully. Jeremy and his Yamaha organ led the way with cheeky jokes, Colin with the banjo was a heavily bearded yet understated team player, Don was the versatile virtuoso who could move effortlessly between the drums and, to the delight of the crowd, the washboard…how they loved that!

As for the other bloke in the band, I can’t remember his name, but he was a real diamond. On more than one occasion he nearly took the singer’s eye out with some elaborate trombone slides and, as the excitement of ‘My Friend the Wind’ (!!!) swept him away, he kicked over his glass of wine and had to put down his trombone and run off to get a cloth.

And as he creaked to all fours to mop up the wine, Don and Jeremy played manfully on like the consummate professionals they have been for 40 years. Meanwhile, Tony found a new freedom in his floor show, hunting down cheery fossils to dance with instead of keeping an anxious eye on the brass section.

After that, I insisted we cooked on the barbecue for the next couple of nights. But yet the haunting refrain of a hundred oldies singing to ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ drifted across the desert night to serenade us and our kangaroo kebabs.

The Flinders Mountains are an amazing place. If you are not stuck behind a convoy of grandparents spending the inheritance then you must be surrounded by animals of all shapes and sizes in abundance.

Great mobs of roos and emus line the dirt tracks while huge monitor lizards bask, almost daring the soaring eagles to have a go. One on hike, my dad and I found eight different species of lizard within an hour and a scorpion under every rock we turned over. It’s a very cool place.

Anyway, I reckon that’s enough for now. There’s more soon, but first it’s the Melbourne Cup, ‘the race that stops a nation’. That’s tomorrow, (Tuesday), and I haven’t picked my horse yet. That will be my job for the morning.

Then it’s less than three weeks until the first test match….

Cheers
M&W

Spring

This is definitely the life. I am sat in the garden on a bright and lazy bank holiday afternoon. That’s me in the picture, laptop at the ready and just wondering whether 4.00 is too early for a cold one.

You’re right, it’s never too early on a day like this.

I am particularly content today as I have just got back from a new mountain bike park up in the hills. This park is a series of specially designed narrow, bumpy, challenging and downright scary trails through tight forest and bush; it has been built by the government, 10 minutes outside the city and it is brilliant.

It doesn’t open until December, so technically we were trespassing, but that just makes it more fun and even taking the crashes into account, I am still grinning.

Yesterday wasn’t so great though. I got up early to fetch the car only to find my bike had a puncture. I fixed that and rode to the car, which wouldn’t start so I rode home. Eventually we got it going and I loaded up the boot to go fishing. I caught nothing, it rained as soon as I arrived on the beach, without an anorak, and when I tailed home with nothing for supper I found Mandy in her ritual pre night shift bad mood. Not a great day.

Anyway, after a couple of false starts, I reckon spring is really here, every day is a little bit longer and warmer. Although the mosquitoes have also returned, so has the scent of jasmine, lavender and the citrus smell of the lemon gums. It really is a beautiful time of year.

The blossom is also most fetching and pretty spectacular, this picture is of a bottle brush tree, obviously! There are loads of these trees, all of which have looked pretty drab ever since we got here, then overnight, have turned into a riot of colour with squabbling birds on every branch.

Talking of squabbling, the politicians here are having fun at the moment; they are a refreshing bunch. That does not mean they are honest and likeable, far from it, but the forthright manner of the general Australian does make them a little more entertaining than pretty much anyone I can think of in the UK,

It all kicked off this week with the former leader of the opposition, a man not widely noted for his tact, launching his book. Now I don’t know a lot about Australian politics, but I think it is fair to say he is pretty bitter about the word ‘former’ in his job description.

Taking a swipe at just about everyone, he denounced the PM, John Howard, for creating a generation of "nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags" and bemoaning the death of the larrikin.

The larrikin is something Australians are pretty proud of. He, for the larrikin is always a bloke, is generally a bit of a risk taker, an adventurer, someone who fights the odds, a battler, a true blue Aussie. Someone a bit like Steve Irwin or maybe Paul Hogan. But, I am informed, not Rolf Harris.

Meanwhile, in a further, but apparently unrelated attack on the prime minister, Mrs Whitlam, the wife of a much revered former PM, has got stuck into the Mr Howard’s wife for holding his hand in public. This seems a bit harsh on Mrs Howard who looks like a nice sort and, to my knowledge has not used the office of Mrs Prime Minister to write books or charge enormous fees for public speaking engagements.

On the other hand, Mrs Whitlam does not look the sort to be holding hands with anyone, in public or otherwise.

But all this is small potatoes compared to the national debate this week about the meat content in the pies here.

Apparently there is some.

Not enough, however, to satisfy the food standard people who, after over 200 years of letting pretty much anything go in the pies, have got the gristle industry firmly in their sights.

This has not been well received by many commentators here who feel that real meat has no place inside a crust and over regulation of the pie industry is at the top of a slippery slope.

While it is fun to listen to, these people queue for things called Footy Pies and Pie Floaters.

Keep well
M&W

6495

I woke up on Monday feeling less than brand new. My legs did not want to move and my head was a bit thick; the combined effects of the annual Adelaide ‘fun’ run and ensuing hospitality.

The run is a 12km affair from the middle of the city to the beach and attracts all sorts, from Commonwealth Games athletes to 95 year olds who are happy to walk it with their great grandchildren. In all 30,000 people took part and it was great fun.

It was a hot day, even at 8.00am, as we all jostled around the start and stumbled along the main boulevard of the city. It took a while for the numbers to thin out and there were plenty of trips, oaths and collisions along the way. All very entertaining.

I have always felt that running is a bit dull if you are not chasing a ball around and I worried that the distance might drag a bit; but far from it. With the crowds cheering us on and bands playing along the pavements all the way to the beach the time seemed to fly by and I felt I was running pretty quickly.

All of which was a total illusion. The clock said I had achieved what might charitably be called a leisurely pace as I trotted in at 61 minutes and 26 seconds. I was a bit disappointed not to get under an hour but still pretty pleased with myself as the 2091st fastest person in the race. This pride lasted until about 5 minutes after I arrived at work when my boss merrily pointed out that his 71 year old uncle had gone round in 55 minutes.

There’s always next year though, and he’ll be 72 then so maybe I’ll get a bit closer!

The inevitable barbecue followed as a group of people from the gym sat in the sun complaining about their aches and pains and how they would run a better time next year. It was only supposed to be for a couple of hours but, I suppose predictably, took all day and a couple of cases of beer.

After all this strenuous work, I thought a spot of fishing would put some balance back into life and took my newly acquired rod to the jetty.

It goes without saying that I caught nothing, but that’s really not the point. Standing on the pier with fishing tackle gained me entry to a select club; a club where ancient Greek blokes reeling in undersized fish acknowledged me with an almost imperceptible nod. I was one of them for a couple of hours.

Membership of this club also gained me a private audience with the mad bloke on the pier who was pulling out ever larger crabs while telling me ever taller stories. I let his monologue wash over me as a pod of dolphins played a little out to sea, a pouch of pelicans swooped low over the jetty and I waited in vain for a bite.

We’re going to have another go at fishing today, this time with Mandy to provide the sound effects!

Meanwhile, good news at last on the curry front. It seems there is a decent Indian restaurant in Adelaide, in fact it’s pretty bloody good. It is also liberally decorated with cricket bats signed by teams from the last 30 years, apparently it is a tradition for the players to adjourn here during the test match.

Of course all this makes it a pretty expensive night out as well, but it didn’t seem to matter so much as the door to a future of decent curry opened and another one slammed shut on the world of bland, brown slop.

Cheers
M&W

Khaki

It seems like ages since we posted any news here, it has been a busy few weeks and there is a lot to tell.

Of course you won’t need telling about the tragic death of Steve Irwin, on hearing the news we all expected a punch line to follow, it was all a bit unbelievable and shocking. I’m sure it was the same over there.

Much though this past week has become Australia’s Princess Di moment, there remains a vocal minority which considers his daredevil antics as little more than exploitation of animals for financial gain. This lobby saw him as a mere lion tamer who picked on very big crocodiles.

On the other hand, most of the money he did earn apparently went to buying up vast areas of outback, setting up animal rescue centres and plenty of other conservation projects. A TV crew stopped a man in the street for his reaction; “I reckon Australia has lost a bloody good bloke today”, he said. I think that about sums it up.

While we are on the subject of Australia’s wildlife, the last couple of months have seen the annual influx of calving whales to the beaches an hour or so south of the city. How cool is that?

They come in July and August and lollop around in the sheltered bays taking respite from the cold Antarctic waters where they spend the rest of the year.

These beaches were the centre of Australian whaling for 200 years but now thrive on the hordes of people jostling to get a clear view through their binoculars.

And a pretty spectacular view it is too. Some of the whales are only 50 yards offshore and, if you haven’t seen a whale before, believe me, they are huge. I thought the big black shapes just below the surface were reefs until their noisy blowholes revealed them to be 60 feet long whales. They are massive! As are the calves, the homely whale museum at Victor Harbour reckons these baby whales are 20 feet long and weigh a tonne when born.

So we joined the crowd on the beach with woolly hats and thermos flasks, (springtime and deep winter can’t decide who’s turn it is at the moment), to watch these gentle giants lie pretty motionless and mostly submerged in what must be a state of some exhaustion.

However magnificent these animals are, half an hour watching the apparently lifeless lumps through binoculars does drag a bit and works up an appetite.

Thanks to Mandy, I was fortunate enough to return the very next day to see the whales again when there were no crowds. She had left her bag in the restaurant and not realised until we got home. Many thanks to the honest soul who handed it over the counter. This meant a road trip to collect the bag for Jonny McGarty (back from the desert) and I.

We took the scenic route, or alternatively we got lost, as Jonny helpfully and repeatedly pointed out. We drove through winding lanes deep in the Adelaide hills, meandering through avenues of enormous gum trees in full blossom with what seemed like a thousand technicolour parrots squabbling at every corner. It really is a beautiful time of year and wild parrots beat the socks off pigeons.

Carried away by the sun setting on the rolling, eucalypt carpeted hills, we pulled into what looked a charming country pub only to find some wobbly locals who must have been sat at the same barstools for at least a few days. For a Monday teatime, there were some spectacular drunks. Our favourite was trying to tell his wife that he had only just arrived and, honest darling, had been working all day, apparently he couldn’t stand up because he was so tired. I could live in the country, no worries.

But before I harbour too many dreams of my own barstool in the hills, I have to complete the City to Bay race. This annual fun run does exactly what is says in the tin; it starts in the city and ends up in the sea 12km away.

In the spirit of trying anything once while over here I have put my name down. Unfortunately, wild horses could not convince Mandy to enter. Training has been going fairly well, I haven’t got any blisters, or been chased by any dogs or run over on the poorly lit streets.

Sunday is the big day, so fingers crossed I can make it less than an hour. Adelaide is 40m above sea level and I guess the sea is at sea level, so I keep telling myself it’s all down hill.

Hope you’re all keeping well.
M&W

Bigger

Any speculators out there may be tempted to acquire the big lobster pictured on the last entry. This classic piece of anti culture has just gone up for sale and is expected to attract massive interest from eccentrics with more money than sense.

For $750,000 you can be the proud owner of the world’s most imposing crustacean and a tacky restaurant to boot.

There is a story that the original drawings for the lobster specified the dimensions in feet. However, the people who built it worked in metric, so the town has a lobster 18m high which appears in a million photo albums.

Unfortunately there is no record of the conversation between the builder and the owner.

In the spirit of all things large, I spent a few days in Melbourne recently. Unfortunately I had to leave Mandy behind and take on sights and lights all alone. She took it reasonably well and we were talking again within a couple of hours.

Melbourne is busy. It is a big city and it feels like one. After 9 months in Adelaide, the trip to Melbourne made me feel like a country bumpkin. The speed and bustle of the place was quite a surprise and shattered any illusions I still harboured about Adelaide being a real city.

But it is a great place, like Manchester but with loads more trams. The city is a crowded mix of Victorian grandeur, towering skyscrapers and extravagant design which would probably look ghastly anywhere else in the world. But in Melbourne, it just seems to fit in and makes for a relaxed but exciting blend.

In fact, I get the feeling that you could try anything in Melbourne and it would just work, the city is cool enough to accommodate most things.

It is also the sporting heartbeat of Australia, home to one of the one of the great horse races, one of the most prestigious tennis tournaments, the Australian Grand Prix, the Boxing day test match (I’ve still got a couple of spare tickets) and, most importantly here, the spiritual home of Aussie football.

The centrepiece is the100,000 seat Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), an awesome stadium which is full for the really big footy matches and will be bursting at the seams on Boxing Day.

I also reckon that the houses here don’t have kitchens.

How else could you explain the sheer number and variety of restaurants, all of which were full at both Monday lunchtime and evening. This is probably because they are very good and offer something for everyone. One evening, when I found myself wondering what I felt like for dinner, the solution appeared, as if by magic, on a blackboard in front of my very eyes.

Not only was the cheese smelly and the wine excellent (I think), but as a measure of the establishment, there were hooks under the bar for coats.

Now this might seem a little thing, but it is a mark of commitment to the pleasure of the customer and in a pub which offers hooks under the bar, there is no need to worry about the quality of the beer.

The other significant event this week was the first barbecue of the season; although it is still mid winter. The weather has been great recently and as one of the mountain bike gang is moving interstate, we thought a few beers and some kangaroo would be a good send off.

His company might be missed, but his cooking skills will not be. Kangaroo is generally best served rare, but not that rare. He was quickly relieved of the tongs and told to sit on the deckchair with his beer and enjoy his leaving do. It might be most fun he has for a while. He is going to Canberra!

For the vegetarians out there, you might be pleased to know that the tomatoes are growing well although the peppers and basil show no signs of playing ball just yet.

Finally Mandy has landed some more work on the burns ward which is more fun for her, and as Australian Pop Idol has just started, she is a very happy bunny at the moment.

Hope all is well
M&W

Big

Last weekend was time for a break from the bright lights and hard labour of the big city; all this sunshine, flexi time and coffee does begin to wear you down after a while.

We are very conscious that since arriving here we have spent a lot of time trying to settle in and shopping in IKEA while neglecting the country beyond the city limits. So we were looking forward to heading down the road to a little seaside town called Robe, perched 200 miles south east of Adelaide on the Limestone Coast.

Robe is a very pretty and well kept place where proudly maintained Victorian buildings provide a roof over the heads of fancy restaurants and artist’s studios. Meanwhile a sheltered harbour offers haven to a small fleet of (seemingly) fabulously wealthy lobster fishermen while the Southern Ocean bashes away at the cliffs outside.

It reminds me of Cornish fishing villages with the sort of prices which would give you an acute pain in the pocket if you weren’t lucky enough to be boarding at a friend’s holiday shack.

Did I say shack?

I meant luxury escape pad 50 yards from the beach.

With all due respect to the very helpful people at the tourist office in Robe, one of the beauties of the place is that there is very little to do apart from walk along the cliffs and argue over which wine to have with dinner. So we slobbed around, read books, paddled in the sea and argued over which wine to have with dinner.

We took our time on the drive down to Robe, partly because I was ferreting around trying to catch the lizard Mandy is holding in the picture but also to stop for an Australian icon, the giant lobster.

Those of you who have been around Australia might be familiar with some of the ‘family’ of giant objects scattered around the country. These include giant pineapples, koalas, sheep, Ned Kellys and, strangely, a boxing crocodile.

Apart from the necessary eccentricity of their patrons, the only thing these objects share in common is that they are in little towns on the way to somewhere else, and they represent an attempt to lure people into the over priced cafes and petrol stations attached to them.

Of course they have developed a cult status as well with people collecting pictures of themselves at each one, so it was no surprise to find a group of snap happy Japanese guys appear as if by magic, just like the shopkeeper.

We passed another South Australian 'big landmark' on the way, but this one doesn’t seem to make the official list on the link above; the giant olive of Tailem Bend.

And frankly, I’m not surprised, in fact Mandy may be the only person in the country to have had her picture taken next to it. It is placed in the grounds of an olive oil factory in a long forgotten part of the town, the sort of place you only find if you are lost.

And getting lost in a place the size of Tailem Bend is not an easy trick to pull off.

Of course I can manage it though.

Anyway, the lobster was not a let down, it really is quite big, and it fulfilled its mission as we filled the car up and bought a pile of unnecessary chocolate.

While getting away to Robe was just the ticket, it was also poor timing as it meant leaving all our new plants and seeds which we had sowed. After the tree planting of a couple of weeks ago I had become strangely inspired and bought a boot load of native Australian bush plants and tomato, beetroot, red pepper (or capsicum as we must learn to call them) and jalapeno seeds.

The master plan is to have half a garden of authentic bushland full of contented birds, lizards and spiders while the other half is a lush crop of home grown veggies to go with the barbies which will be starting again soon.

The news so far is that the seeds have shown no signs of interest and the plants have not attracted any interesting birds or spiders yet. Watch this space though, despite Mandy’s lack of confidence, I reckon I’ll sprout green fingers yet.

Keep well
M&W

Brown

I would hate to tempt fate, but it looks like spring is nearly here. There is pink blossom in the garden, the daffodils are emerging and, after quite an absence, sunglasses weather is here again.

It has not been a cold winter when compared to the north of England, there have been no frosty car windscreens, no snow and no biting wind. Indeed, outdoors it has been bright, fresh and thoroughly pleasant.

On the other hand, indoors has been brass monkeys; we have often left the back door open to let some warm air in and Mandy has taken to warming the bed up with her hairdryer. Reminiscent of a couple houses I lived in while at university.

Our house is a lovely traditional bluestone cottage built in about 1910. It is spacious, affordable, in a great suburb, with its own wine cellar, and bloody freezing in the winter while unbearably hot in the summer.

Not to worry though, the worst of the cold is over and the first barbie is on the radar.

While the warm weather cheered us up no end, it is still a bit cold for the snakes around here. Thank goodness, my mum would say, as I found myself learning to catch and handle a brown snake somewhere in the hills, at least an hour from medical attention.

If you haven’t come across the brown snake before, this website, among others lists it as the second most venomous snake in the world. This is a contentious subject as the snake has to land a bite first. So a shy snake with massively toxic venom, such as a brown snake, is less dangerous than a thoroughly ill tempered bugger which packs a lesser punch but is more than happy to use it.

Anyway, I think it sounds cool to say that the snake in the picture is potentially the second deadliest in the world. Sorry mum.

I was lucky enough to get this invitation to a snake handling lesson following my trip to the venom farm a few weeks ago and what a brilliant day it was. The chap teaching myself and a guy from a wildlife park has a part time business clearing snakes from houses and offices and has had many years experience in handling them; he is a no nonsense pro who makes Steve Irwin look like a show pony. What a bloke to learn from.

We spent the morning at his friend’s house, somewhere in the hills surrounding Adelaide, practicing our techniques with a rubber snake until he thought we were ready to take on the real thing. In between learning the ropes we played with her pet pythons and ate home made pumpkin soup. Not bad.

Eventually, deemed ready to do battle with the snake, we went to see a farmer who figured that one more snake on his land probably wouldn’t make much difference, and found a nice flat piece of pastureland.

We had taken a snake with us, one which Mike had recently caught in a house somewhere in the suburbs. It was a beautiful animal, about a metre long, slender and healthy. Our mission was to pick it up from the grass and, in stages, manage it in such a way that its fangs didn’t get near us, then hold it’s head between thumb and forefinger and eventually place it safely in a porous bag to be placed out of harm’s way. These things are both fiddly and scary with only two hands and one very dangerous animal.

Fortunately the weather was wet and a little cold, not ideal for a snake’s reflexes, but perfect for a clumsy and nervous chap like me who did not need a writhing, agitated and frightened snake to deal with. While it is generally a shy animal, it is always important to remember that an angry brown snake does bite.

My heart was cracking my ribs as I tried to be assertive about grabbing it for the first time but eventually I got the hang of it, albeit with a very dopey snake.

Obviously snakes are not at their best in the cold weather and complacency could easily set in while practicing handling the poor thing. However, it only needed to sun to peep from behind the clouds for a couple of minutes to wake it up and remind us just what a quick and, at that point, irritated animal it was. What a buzz that was! We have a follow up lesson in mid summer when the snakes will be a little more lively, I can’t wait.

After a whole day with the snake, I was feeling quite fond of it and it was great to find a decent place to release it near an old tree by a creek. Just as we let it go to enjoy a life eating frogs, the sun came out and the dopey practice snake woke up again, sniffed its freedom and disappeared effortlessly into the rotten trunk; a graceful and beautiful animal. God help the frogs this summer.

Have a good week.

M&W

Green

There are lots of things to like about Adelaide, from the parks to the markets and the hills to the sea. I still don’t think much of the curry, but one thing that I really enjoy is the city’s little attempts to look like a big place.

This occurred to me during the week as I came across our own little LA, a series of handprints from Formula 1 drivers placed haphazardly on garden walls and shop fronts. A kind of metropolitan fossil find…dinosaur bones from a time when Adelaide had something for the rest of the world to look at. There is no explanation attached, no apparent reason, they are just there. They are not a tourist attraction, but perhaps should be. I got a small kick from knowing I have bigger hands than Damon Hill.

Another of my favourite South Australian institutions is that of Thinker In Residence. Each year we invite an eminent academic to come and live amongst us and then tell us where it is all going wrong. It is a highly sought after position, partly because much of their time here is spent as drinker in residence, touring the abundant vineyards, and partly because being a salaried smart arse is a job to kill for.

The ‘Thinker’ for the year is generally selected to address the burning issue of the day for our perpetually worried state. This year an American professor is telling us about environmental sustainability which, after bidding for the world cup (!), is the hottest potato in town.

To be fair he is very clever and a brilliant speaker, I attended a lecture which suggested that his time in the wineries was not entirely wasted. He is here because Adelaide has a massive environmental impact for a little place, it’s the size of London with a tenth of the population.

Apparently we have what is called a significant footprint. Depending on your spin it means big gardens for everyone or an unsustainable metropolis. When you add the size of the average car, the way we drain the River Murray and fill the shark infested sea with pollutants, we become the biggest environmental terrorists per capita in the world. Something must be done and he has some very practical ideas.

Next year’s resident boffin has just been announced as an eminent Canadian child psychologist. As I mention, the choice of Thinker reflects the worries of our state and this can only be a reaction to our paranoia about childhood obesity.

The tabloid TV which this country so adores runs a story a day on tubby kids. So, forget the Home & Away propaganda of skinny, tanned, well adjusted, surf dudes; real Aussie kids are probably chewing through a Chico Roll, the deep fried food of choice. Everyone assumes it is full of chicken, but nobody is brave to check for sure.

That the country is getting fatter is not really a surprise; the restaurants have no concept of portion control. I have rarely been able to finish my plate when eating out; too much is just enough being the motto of the South Australian restaurateur. Meanwhile, bananas at nearly £5 a kilo make the healthier option a little out of reach.

Anyway, getting back to greener matters, it was National Tree Day last Sunday and we took our trowels down to the park to join in a mass planting of drab looking shrubs. These sorry looking sprigs are of great importance as native species which offer food and cover for native wildlife and strike a blow back against 200 years of introducing weeds and tougher plants which wipe out the more frail local flora.

While Mandy and I had a good time getting our hands dirty, I’m not sure this was the relaxing weekend in Adelaide that I had promised Jonny McGarty. For those of you who don’t know him, Jonny has been beavering away in the tropical north of Queensland at a mine engineering firm. He recently resigned to take a job in the desert, 400 miles from the nearest town, a place which redefines the benchmark for the middle of nowhere. After a year in the fruitless pursuit of intelligent life in Queensland he had hoped that the relative sophistication of Adelaide might give him one last bit of cheer before heading off to find copper in the harsh outback. I don’t think his plans included wallowing in the mud. Still, he’s from Wigan and knows how to put a brave face on things.

Keep well
M&W

Bananas

Apart from digging huge quantities of copper, gold, and uranium from the scorched earth, Australia is mostly an agricultural country and the fruit and vegetables are fantastic. Much of it is also only available in season as very little fruit is imported. So right now we have no mangos but loads of big, juicy, and very tasty mandarins to go with the dozens of lemons which are weighing down the branches of the tree in our garden.

I mention this because, while taking a leisurely breakfast at a smart cafe this weekend, I was surprised to see slices of banana decorating my porridge. I have nothing against bananas in my porridge, quite the opposite; I was taken aback because this was my first banana for three months and normally I am near the front of the queue at the greengrocers.

In April, cyclone Larry crashed into northern Queensland and, by the time it blew out again, took the livelihoods of the banana farmers with it. The pictures of trees ripped out of the ground were pretty dramatic and over 80,000 houses had no power for a week.

Apparently the trees will grow back relatively quickly and the government have looked suitably concerned, which, while reassuring for the farmers, still leaves the country in the grip of a banana squeeze.

So, along with big gaps on the shelves at the greengrocers, there are signs in cafes which say ‘No Banana Milkshakes’ and if you fancy a banana and cinnamon muffin with your breakfast latte…forget it.

While a few bananas are still on sale, the laws of supply and demand dictate that the price is around £1 per banana. And those available are not the prettiest of fruit. At the moment you have to be a big fan of small black bananas to get your fix.

The obvious solution would be to import a few tonnes of bananas, but this is Australia and they are particularly wary of inadvertently introducing more virulent pests and diseases at the same time.

Australia is rightly very worried about importing new variables into its ecological mix. The place is a unique and fragile environment which has evolved largely in isolation and is vulnerable to imported species, be they cats, toads, ants, weeds or viruses.

But that’s a long story and the exploits of the feral camels will have to wait for another day.

Meanwhile, in the absence of reasonably priced, yellow bananas, Mandy has just about completed her apprenticeship at the wildlife park. After six months of sweeping up leaves and dusting out cobwebs in mortal fear of snakes and spiders, she has been offered a role working with koalas. This is a much sought after job which involves picking up droppings and fetching truck loads of eucalyptus leaves. It is the pinnacle of the volunteer’s career path.

Inbetween stooping to pick up marsupial pooh, she will continue as rat breeder in chief, a role very popular with the snake population of the wildlife park. This makes her lots of friends, as the picture shows…I reckon the smile is a little forced.

As for me, the highlight of my week was a narrow victory at the ping pong table over a very disappointed town planner. There really is nothing more satisfying than beating an Aussie at absolutely anything. I guess everyone must have a hobby.

Keep well
M&W

Just A Sliver

Since the news last week that our tennis tournament had been stolen by sneaky Queensland, the media have been keeping an eye out for any similar behaviour. Sure enough, this week we find that our northern neighbours are stealing nurses from South Australia. Not in late night body snatches from the hospital canteen, but through the underhand trick of offering a lot more money.

Queensland is the home of all year sunshine, surfing, rain forests, and now, increasingly affluent nurses. Quite an attractive sort of place which I thought might appeal to Mandy.

I asked her if she wanted to head north to work to escape the inclement weather, earn a bit more money and, of course, to watch some tennis. But, despite even these lures, she wouldn’t hear of it, declaring that Adelaide wasn’t such a bad place. She also added that people from Queensland tended to come from close families, or something like that.

She has got a point and, just to demonstrate this, we celebrated Christmas lunch with our diving club at a very well situated restaurant up in the hills. On a good day it is possible to look across the eucalypt covered hilltops to the sea while enjoying the fabulous food they dish up.

However, this was Christmas so the view was limited to a very large rain cloud while we opened our presents and pulled the crackers. It all seemed very traditional until my kangaroo steak arrived.

Why we had Christmas in the middle of July remains a mystery, but a rather tasty one in the case of my steak and one which rounded off a great weekend during which I came face to face with the world’s most venomous snakes.

Mandy had a week of night shifts, which never makes her brightest little ray of sunshine, so I was happy to make a dash for the Barossa Valley to keep a date with a company which milks snakes for their venom.

I have to underline that I was very lucky to get this invitation. It was the fruit of repeatedly mithering a nice chap who happens to know the owner of the business and who spends his weekends clearing houses of dangerous reptiles; for fun as well as the money.

So it was with a skip in my step that I followed the chief snake wrangler into one of the sheds situated among the pruned vines of the rolling Barossa hills.

I have to admit that my bounce disappeared pretty quickly as a cage door was opened and, three feet from my face, a large cobra sprung to it’s full height with it’s hood fully spread. My first instinct was to jump backwards with a little yelp; not quite the image that image I was hoping to portray!

From this point on, poise recovery and adopting a cool exterior were my key targets. This meant that as each cage was opened, I had to put my face as close as possible to huge African vipers, rattlesnakes, more cobras and Australia’s finest specimens, which are generally more toxic than any other snake you are likely to come across.

The only inmates we were not allowed anywhere near were the coastal taipans. These are pretty much the most venomous snake in the world and they look like it too; they are lithe and menacing with deeply intense eyes. A beautiful, but deadly animal. There were 160 of these snakes in the space of an average living room, somebody somewhere wanted a lot of taipan venom!

I asked why they kept so many, (10 of every other species seemed sufficient), and was told that a special customer required it. It all seemed a bit suspicious to me. OK it is probably the health service which needs those quantities to treat unfortunate fruit pickers, but maybe, just maybe, it was an evil criminal mastermind of Bond film magnitude and I have uncovered a conspiracy which threatens the world.


Anyway, it was an absolute privilege to spend a few hours with the people who run this place (each of the 600 snakes is hand milked) and to get so close to such fantastic animals.

The only way to improve on this was to drop into a small winery along the way and sample a few of their finest drops. Perfect.

I slept well that night, although it was in the cinema. Mandy didn’t mind too much as she could gaze with starry eyes at Johnny Depp while I happily snored the film away.

Hope all is well
M&W

Anyone for Tennis?

Adelaide revolves around its lunch; more so than anywhere else in my limited experience. I am a small and insignificant part of the machine but, much to Mandy’s irritation, am still expected to attend a pleasing number of luncheons for various speeches and launches.
A day in the city has three phases; the mornings pass by at a gentle pace of slow and steady achievement while the afternoons are spent in quiet contemplation of the lunchtime wine. In between times though, the city bursts alive like a roman candle over the buffet table, everybody desperate to give and gain a day’s opinion into two short hours.

Most of these lunches are great fun as well as being very interesting. Take my lunch this week at a talk by a professor of zoology about how to balance the town planning needs of Adelaide with the requirements of sustainable biodiversity. Get me!!! It was held in an intimate wine cellar and the buffet was first rate with an excellent shiraz, so I was told.

Apart from being a fascinating topic, this lunch witnessed Adelaide’s first case of graph rage as a member of the audience frothed over in frustration (and possibly MacLaren Vale shiraz) about the integrity of the axes on a chart showing the impact of introduced mammals on native species. Most amusing it was too as he could not be silenced on the matter. When he was eventually convinced to take his seat again, it was with a promise to see the speaker later.

You see, lunch is very serious here. Alas Mandy can only hear about them second hand, I like to keep her informed on the standard of food at these places.

On the subject of threatened species, many people in Adelaide will tell you that the city is itself in danger of fast becoming an irrelevant backwater. There may be grain of truth in this too. While it will never have the size or profile of Sydney or Melbourne, people worry that it is becoming the poor relation to cities like Brisbane and Perth.

These cities are booming on the back of massive mining exports and are leaving Adelaide behind, despite the huge mineral deposits in South Australia and the billions of dollars being invested in even bigger holes in the desert.

I have a theory that the city is suffering in comparison because of its attitude as much as anything. This town has something of a split personality. Part of it talks about being a growing and dynamic city while there is a comfortable body of opinion quietly undermining this vision in preference for a nice quiet life of long lunches and sipping wine on their balconies overlooking the parks. In short, it doesn’t walk the walk.

It was announced today that Adelaide’s international tennis tournament will move to Brisbane despite being held here since 1890. It is a significant and popular tournament which acts as the warm up for the Australian Open in January. It is also something of a curiosity in that Tim Henman won it once.

The city is outraged, in an understated and reserved sort of way. Meanwhile the tournament will be held at a shiny new tennis complex in Brisbane and I am left wondering why Queensland has the ambition to spend $70m on a national tennis centre and Adelaide does not.

This is not the first time Adelaide has lost a major event to a more ambitious neighbour. For eleven years from 1985 the city hosted the Australian Grand Prix through the streets and parks until Melbourne showed the kind of initiative often lacking here and spirited the race away.
As a pretty poor substitute, the city still hosts a big motor race each year but is not an international event. The only people really interested in racing big Australian saloons are big Australian saloon drivers who love their country and western music.

Meanwhile the rest of the country sees Adelaide as quiet and rather sleepy. This is a little unfair on a great place, but the city really needs to be fighting harder for its share of the cake, whether it is sporting events, business headquarters or exhibitions. It all seems a little half hearted to me.

On a brighter note though, the city’s national Aussie Rules team are by far the best team in the country and, as I write, are on TV handing out a spanking to Sydney which will be very satisfying for everyone here.

Cheers
M&W