Earning A Crust

It is six months ago this week that we first blinked at the southern sun and wondered whose bloody stupid idea it was to come here.

In some ways it seems like five minutes ago and in others like we have been living here for ages. We have gone through the trial and error routines of finding a favourite beach, favourite pub and the bus routes that get us where we want to go. We have also become part of the system with driving licences, medical insurance, a lease on the house and parking tickets.

We have bought a car, bless it, which has gone further and faster than I ever dreamt possible and got a decent job each. So, with a bit of luck to help us out along the way, the ledger looks OK.

So far, since putting ourselves at the disposal of the South Australian economy, we have been pretty lucky and things have worked out fairly well. Mandy has been in great demand as a nurse and I, after work as a removal man and ticket collector, have found a comfy swivelling chair from which to earn a living.

After moving around from ward to ward, being the new girl on the Intensive Care Unit means being assigned all the rotten shifts. While they do it with a broad smile and a pat on her back, Mandy knows this is an inevitable part of the process. Although the money is good, very good, working from Good Friday through to Easter Monday, immediately followed by three night shifts, is a prospect which would make most nurses shudder.

On the other hand, I have been pretty lucky in landing a job with the city council. I am based in lovely offices in the heart of the city, working with 800 people who are largely as helpful, open and friendly as you could wish for.

On top of that, my terms of employment include a table tennis table, subsidised massages (lovely), and, when I take my books back late, no library fines.

So far, Maltese Eric has consistently cleaned me up at ping pong, but I am getting better. This week though I am taking on an Aussie from Transport Planning with the high stakes of a few beers on the outcome. The hairs on my neck are rising at the prospect of beating him. Beating an Aussie at anything is an exciting prospect.

As if that wasn’t enough, we have the most agreeable routine of morning tea, which, depending on your perspective, is either one of the great institutions of local government or another excuse for council employees to stand around gossiping.

It works like this. Every week, two people on our floor of 50 or so take it in turns to put on nibbles and coffee for everyone else. For thirty minutes the city stops and we all tuck in. It is very sociable and a chance for the talented and imaginative among the staff to show off a little. This week was my turn to put on the show along with a very friendly lady from town planning.

Well!…..I wouldn’t mind popping round to her house for my dinner. She came up with the most fantastic home made cookies, and dozens of them. My mouth is watering just typing this. I simply do not have the words to do credit to her efforts. Wow.

Fortunately for those of us less blessed in the kitchen, Adelaide has a produce market beyond compare. I will tell you more another day, but for now, I was able to saunter up to one of the many dedicated cheese stalls and put myself in their capable hands.

After explaining my situation to the more than helpful staff, I spent the next 20 minutes tasting a variety of South Australian cheeses and walked back to work with something for every taste and enough for the appetites of a couple of dozen hairy building assessors.

If you like your food and wine, this really is the town for you.

Have a good week
W&M

Hmmm, I can smell.....

Adelaide is a small city, but it is perfectly formed. It is also a city full of surprises, if like us, you wander round with your eyes closed most of the time.

After living in this house for four months, we only recently discovered that the original Penfolds vineyard is only two miles from our front door, (Penfolds is Australia’s most famous label). And last Sunday was our well overdue first visit to sponge some free booze, otherwise known as ‘tasting’.

Looking back over this diary, there is recurring theme of wine, wine and more wine. Despite what you may think about my reasons for this, it really is what South Australia is most proud of. With seven wine regions in the state and most of the best wines in Australia coming from around here, the locals are pretty clued up about their wine; it’s just something they grow up with.

To be fair, SA really does have something to be proud of too. For example, one of Penfold’s wines (Grange for those of you in the know) was named best red wine in the world by some fancy magazine or other. Needless to say that wasn’t up for tasting, costing as it does £250 and upwards a bottle.

And people like to talk about their wine too. If you have wine with dinner, people want to know which wine. A night in with a DVD and a bottle of wine is not acceptable. It must be a night in with a DVD and a specified label and a report is expected. So you see, getting away from wine in Adelaide is impossible. Even if you wanted to.

Anyway, the clever money is on drinking the wine here as the kindest thing that can be said about the beer is that it’s cold.

All of which leaves us at a bit of a disadvantage. ‘Nice’ is about the limit of my tasting notes and to fit in around here that needs to change, so the time has come for us to sign up for a wine tasting course. Partly for interest, but mostly to save Mandy from herself.

The tasting room at Penfolds is rather well appointed and they do a very good service considering it’s free and there is no obligation to purchase anything. Set in an old pressing room full of dusty bottles, straw and various antiques with a suave and well informed barman filling the glasses, it is very well done.

In no time at all though, the posh surroundings and expensive wine had gone straight to Mandy’s head and before you could say ‘plummy finish’ she was transformed in to a gargling, glass swirling font of adjectives.

As one ‘nice’ wine was followed by another, everyone in the room was treated to Mandy’s opinion which started with ‘smoky’ warmed up to ‘caramelly’, before the splendid ‘liquorice bouquet’ and reaching a memorable crescendo with ‘grassy’.

The slick barman caught this last one and my translation of his pained expression was that he considered Mandy had been inhaling her grass rather than drinking it.

Keeping Mandy away from the free grog is easy when it comes to Aussie Rules Football though. Offer her the chance of standing on the hill (Aussie jargon, hill = terrace), within six feet of the brutal action and you are in grave danger of having your hand chewed off.

So it was an enthusiastic Mandy who accompanied me to watch the Redlegs with 4,000 other oddballs. It’s a shame, but the season is falling apart and even though they fought hard for ¾ of the match, in the last quarter they were totally outplayed.

I have no idea why North Adelaide looked so good, I still have no idea why one team is better than another and not the faintest grasp of the laws. But I know when to cheer and when to shut up and that is the international law of life on the terrace.

As for Mandy, she doesn’t care about who wins. As long they do it with a bit of grappling and near her. She’s very easy to please.

Take care,
M&W

Make Mine a Gold One

The good news from Australia is that the two Tasmanian miners have been rescued after two weeks trapped in a tiny cage under several thousand tonnes of rock.
(I work in that lot somewhere)

They were dragged out early in the morning live on breakfast TV and the breathless wait for them to emerge from the lift reminded me of waiting for the Marie Rose to rise from the Solent. In fact, I reckon the miners were deeper than the Marie Rose.

The rescue of Todd and Brant was almost certainly the most interesting event to happen in Beaconsfield for many a long year and the locals weren’t going to wait all day to start the party. By the time the two dishevelled heroes emerged everyone else had already settled in to a long day in the pub.

This was 7.00am, but most people looked very comfortable with a beer for breakfast, reinforcing the general feeling throughout Australia that there is not much to do in Beaconsfield if you are not looking for gold. Until 1878, the town was known as Brandy Creek but the vicar of the time renamed it in the hope of creating a more desirable image. Judging by the TV pictures, it really doesn’t matter what name you give a rose.

While this news was greeted with delight across the country and with yet another beer in Beaconsfield, everyone remembered their mate who was not so lucky when the mine collapsed and four hours after seeing their first daylight for a fortnight, the (by now ex) miners were at the funeral.

Meanwhile, the TV companies have not been quite so dignified. The day before the rescue and shortly after interviewing the manager of the mine, the best known reporter in Australia died suddenly from a heart attack. He was a household name and seemingly quite a journalist who had seen the rough end of many conflicts over the last 30 years.

By the next day, the tributes were already being overshadowed by the inevitable but still unseemly bidding war for the story. The chief executive of one channel had even flown over to buy a drink for everyone in the local pub, with cameras everywhere of course. All this overshadows the probability that the mine will close in the near future. The cost of the rescue has put an already marginal mine beyond any measure of viability and there is no guarantee of work further than the end of June.

With one drama in Tazzie nearly resolved and another bubbling away, Adelaide has been getting over it’s own little excitement of the exploding café with nobody any the wiser as to the reasons behind it. A colleague and I have picked up the job of trying to work out what the city council can do for the businesses affected by the blast. It’s all PR of course but it still needs doing and short of helping with some plastering there’s not a lot we can offer.

Fortunately, most of the owners are philosophical about not having a shop anymore. The building was a dump and they are all insured so we pat them on the back, wish them luck and wander off for a quiet coffee to discuss our next mission.

So while Adelaide returns to it’s happy and sleepy equilibrium, winter’s grip is getting tighter and the lazy evenings of drinks after work on sun drenched boulevards seem so long ago. The conversation is less about where to go tonight and more about what is on TV. And in this house, that means only one thing.

Bloody Home and Away!

Just in case any of you do watch Home and Away, you will NEVER guess who killed Josh West. While it’s a big surprise, it was a big disappointment too. There were at least four people I would rather have seen written out of the programme. I don’t know how far behind you are, so I do hope I haven’t ruined anything by telling you Josh gets bumped off.

It has seemed like a slow couple of weeks for us since getting back from holiday, I think we are still stuck on Kangaroo Island time which means pretty slow. Back to work blues are an international thing which are usually only solved by one thing….time to look for the next break. How does diving on the barrier reef sound?

Hope all is well
M&W

Little Islands & Big Bangs

Although this may seem like one big holiday to many people, it really is a lot harder than we manage to make it look. So, exhausted after a long hot summer, we obviously deserved a holiday and headed off to Kangaroo Island, about 100 miles and a short ferry ride south of Adelaide.

It really is a remarkable place, largely untouched bushland and forest with white sandy beaches, spectacular cliffs and an ocean of pure turquoise. It’s pretty big but with a tiny population so finding only your footprints on the sand of one of the many coves is not unusual.

Similar in many ways to Cornwall, it is a quirky place where everybody waves to each other on the deserted roads and the happy hour at the pub lasts thirty minutes. There is also a graveyard for former lighthouse keepers where one chap who passed away in 1858 has two headstones at opposite corners. He must have found the spiral staircase a challenge.

It also has bitterly cold winds, white knuckle ride dirt roads and every single snake on the island is dangerously venomous. We bumped into a few and fortunately they gave us the benefit of the doubt, even when we nearly trod on them.

Kangaroo Island is renowned for being probably the best place to see much of Australia’s animal life in an environment identical to that which the whalers who first landed on the island would have seen.

Being out of season, we almost had the island to ourselves and had a fantastic time walking along beaches full of seals, climbing over the strangest rock formations and tripping over wallabies, koalas and penguins while parrots and eagles filled the skies. It really is a great place.

As is the way though, it was soon over and it was time to go home again, and very strange it was too, to be heading back to Adelaide to continue the holiday.

On our arrival back in sedate old Adelaide though, we found that an explosion had rocked the centre of the city, wrecking a café, a sports shop and the preferred wine bar of the local politicians. Sadly the owner of the café lost his life in the blast and so can’t explain what he was doing there at 3.00am with 50 litres of kerosene. So the mystery and speculation continues, all of which leaves the whole city a little shocked. These things just don’t happen in Adelaide, it’s not that kind of place.

Away from our little local dramas, the whole country is hooked on the story of two miners trapped 900m below the surface. As I write this, they have been down there 12 days following an earthquake which caused a collapse in their gold mine.

While the rescue teams are getting close to them, it is very slow going and the conditions sound appalling as they scratch at rock five times tougher than set concrete.

There is obviously a lot of public sympathy for these blokes, but it’s not for them being stuck in a tiny hole licking water off the rock; Aussies expect their diggers to put up with the odd hardship. Everyone is more concerned with their battle with the nutritionists who are deciding what they should be eating.

Each and every day they request McDonalds, pizza and beer and each and every day they are given carrot soup and vitamin tablets which is pushed through the little serving hatch they have managed to drill through. We have a new public enemy number one; the bloke denying these heroes a Big Mac. Anyway, hopefully they will be out tomorrow.

On the home front, Mandy is now rat and mouse breeder in chief at the local wildlife park. While she enjoys it, she would rather be working with the wombats, partly because they have more personality but mostly because all the rats and mice end up in with the snakes.

And finally, this week sees the end of an institution in Australian as This Is Your Life is taken off the air. There is nobody left over here to do.

Until next time, hope all is well.

M&W

The Tale of the Fat Koala

This week has been one of close encounters with Australia’s unique brand of wildlife. That, and my first visit to our shiny new IKEA, but that’s still a bit too painful to talk about.

For a city that most people have heard of, Adelaide is very small. It is wedged in-between the sea and the hills, so it is difficult to see it getting much bigger. While the sea is a shark filled shimmering vision of deep blue, the hills are a rolling green carpet of eucalyptus trees with mountain bike tracks cutting through the dense forest, making superb riding and offering an eye to eye experience of some very strange animals.

It’s no big news that this country sits on a far out branch of the evolutionary tree, apparently Australia broke away from the larger land mass and went it’s own sweet way relatively early in the earth’s history.

The net result of this is that Aussie critters a little bit lower down in the big scheme of things, let’s say spiders, snakes and particularly crocs, are as hard as coffin nails, while those fluffy things alleged to be in the tall branches of Mother Nature’s big tree are mostly big pansies.

From what I can see, these animals have had the luxury of evolving without a major carnivorous threat. So most tasty mammals just got complacent. Take the koala, it sleeps where it fancies, doesn’t bother hiding and nothing eats it.

The same goes for possums. There cannot be a fluffier, cuter and fatter animal anywhere. Where else would you get such a tubby, juicy, slow moving meal on legs which fears nothing?

I nearly rode into one last week as it took a breather on the pavement. Skidding to a halt and cursing loudly, (well, I was on the way home from the pub), it gave me a dismissive stare, didn’t move a muscle and made me cycle round it.

Kangaroos are slightly different; they have no predators apart from people like me who think they taste great. I reckon this makes them half of the world’s only legally edible national emblem. Apart from the leek.

Anyway, back to koalas. It seems that the biggest danger they face is from themselves and I saw something last week which I am sure I will never see again, in front of my eyes, deep in the forest, a koala fell out of a tree. And it wasn’t a small tree, in fact it was a bloody big gum tree and it fell all the way from the top.

Three of us were riding through the forest and had stopped for a break. I can only imagine that the koala had spied a juicy looking clump of leaves at the end of a branch which was never designed for a bottom that big. Hence the crack which we heard and the sight of the koala hanging onto plummeting foliage. And then a hefty thump. And then nothing…..

The second of my notable Aussie wildlife encounters of the week involved the other edible half of the Australian flag, the emu. A uniquely menacing bird.

There is a long list of things which scare me, and right at the top is the emu. Unlike Mandy, who, as you will see has a special bond with them. The photo was taken from quite a distance on full zoom. As for me, I hate them!

The unsettling thing about an emu is that they always look as if they are on the verge of starting a fight. That, along with their sinister unblinking gaze, razor sharp claws and an over exposure to Rod Hull as a child has long ago chased out any warm feelings I might have for them.

Back to the point, I was riding along a narrow track and rounded a corner to find not one but seven of the evil looking so & sos guarding the middle of the track, (all much larger than Mandy’s friend), their murderous eyes fixed on me as I slid to a frozen halt.

I was leading the way and my sudden braking caused some cursing from the blokes who crashed to a halt behind me.

They reliably informed me that the poor birds were more frightened than me….without bothering to check quite how scared I was. And if that was a mob of frightened emus, please never show me a punchy one!

But it didn’t end here, we came across the same mob (bit of jargon for you there – a mob of emus) another half a dozen times, always appearing inconveniently in my path as if the birds and I were two pieces in some giant game of chess and they were perpetually one step ahead of me.

It was with some relief when I made it to an emu free pub shortly afterwards.

I am going on a bit, so enough for this episode. We are taking a long weekend on Kangaroo Island from Friday, a place which is supposed to be unique even by Aussie standards, there is a link on the right of the page. Hopefully we’ll be able to report on a good time next week. I may also be able to talk about IKEA by then.

As for the koala…after a minute of silence, a bewildered and embarrassed head emerged from the forest floor. Shortly afterwards the tubby little chap tottered to it’s feet, wobbled a bit and climbed back up the tree to a round of applause. Having a fat bottom has it’s advantages.

W&M

Here Comes The Sun...Maybe

The sound of a million raindrops on the tin roof woke me up and for a moment I forgot I was in Australia. After all, it was Good Friday and surely it only rains on Bank Holidays in England?

Apparently not. After weeks of glorious sunshine, winter made it’s first appearance and wiped the sun tanned smile off the face of the city. But this rain came as something of a surprise as it totally escaped the attention of our weather forecasters who were happily predicting lovely sunshine followed by even more sunshine.

Forget the rain though, you could sneak a troupe of dancing elephants and a brass band under the radar of the forecasters here. Jeez I hope we don’t get a hurricane here, they’ll never see it coming.

The term forecasting is management speak for educated guesswork and in true Aussie style, simple and blunt, they take the educated out of it. Then they hand the job to a series of out of work clairvoyants and palm readers who take turns being weather person for the day.

The result of this is the same forecast every day, ‘fine’ and a guess at the temperature which bears more resemblance to the number on the lottery bonus ball than what’s happening outside.

I know this sort of inaccuracy is nothing new and that it’s not always spot on in England, but these failed mystics are seen as a nightly comedy show which nobody believes, in fact they are so widely ridiculed that you wonder why they bother wasting the air time. Easter Monday was going to be ‘fine’, as it happened the rain woke me up at 4am and was still teeming down at bedtime.

Meanwhile, the footy season continues and the local team, Norwood, show signs of being a frustrating bunch of hunks. After a winning start to the season, the mighty Redlegs have since scraped a win in a game they should have had wrapped up by half time and then threw it away this weekend, losing dramatically to the last kick of the game after leading by a long street. It’s just like watching City.

But the results are neither here nor there, watching the game is one very sociable way to spend a Saturday afternoon. All the grounds have a barbecue going and a fridge full of beer. So, we join a couple of thousand oddballs, standing on a grassy knoll, swigging beer, groaning and hurling abuse as the Redlegs throw away another huge lead.

And so far, nobody seems to have noticed we haven’t got a clue about the rules. It’s like crashing a trainspotters convention.

To take the edge off the growing tension at the footy, we took a trip to the Barossa Valley to try some wines out. It’s only an hour’s drive north of the city and is truly beautiful, row after row of vines nestled in the nooks of rolling green hills, all making the finest wine region in Australia.

For you trivia types, it is also the home of Jacobs Creek, which really is a little stream named after William Jacob who built a house next to it in 1839 after deciding it was a decent spot to farm. While the little cottage is still there, so is the slick HQ of the Jacobs Creek empire, a little out of place amongst it’s more modest competition.

We didn’t stop there though, what’s the point? Their wine is no stranger.

We did, however, stop at several other places and put away a fair bit of their finest. All jolly nice and a thoroughly recommended day out.

However, after years of fooling myself and trying to fool others, I have to finally admit that I can’t tell the difference between one cabernet sauvignon and another. Or a merlot and a shiraz.

I’m pretty confident on distinguishing a red from a white though. The white is cold, right?

As for local news, Adelaide finally hits the big time this week when our very own IKEA opens. Everyone is very excited, with the understandable exception of the city’s current furniture shops who are in a state of collective panic. Every break on Home and Away advertises a new sale.

And as for me, I managed to catch supper on Sunday. I don’t think much of gutting, cleaning and filleting the poor little things, but they sure tasted good. And spending the day standing in the surf on a hot day pulling your dinner out of the sea takes some beating.

Hope it’s all going well.

No Indian Summer Here

Already the resolution to write here weekly is under pressure, my apologies to anyone who has been waiting in limbo for this episode.

Following Greek, Italian and Chinese festivals, as well as broader food and wine events in most of the city suburbs, it was the turn of the Indian community to put on the show last weekend.

Now while all this food and drink is of course very welcome, festival fatigue is a real danger and I have been suffering from a culinary apathy of late.

However, I had been particularly looking forward to this one, and with good reason. Surely my quest for decent curry must be at an end.

Alas, it continues.

For somebody who’s desert island diet is three parts curry to one part smelly cheese, the quality of Indian food in this town is frankly nothing short of a scandal, and a growing blot on my gastronomic landscape.

With an air of what I can only describe as insouciance, a series of waiters have conspired to leave me longing for Rusholme.

I have been thinking long and hard about how to best describe this uninspiring, primordial swill advertised as curry. I would say mediocre, but it’s not that good. I was tempted by gristly lava, but it’s not that hot.....spices being too left field for the “curry” chefs of Adelaide.

Eventually I concluded there was only accurate way to describe it.

Brown.

At a recent unfulfilling Indian experience, we were served by a girl from Leeds. She at least, and alone among the purveyors of “curry” in this town, had the good grace to look embarrassed at the slop she placed in front of us.

But enough of that. Now that all the festivals, motor races, athletics and cricket are out of the way, there is room on TV for the winter sports, which in South Australia means Aussie Rules Football, or just plain footy.

This week was the start of the new season and if you thought there was a lot of soccer on TV in the UK, think again. There were eight games on TV at the weekend, each of them lasting a little shy of 3 hours.

No signs of overkill though, it seems that too much of a good thing IS a good thing and by Wednesday, the withdrawal signs are already on show.

It’s a pretty unique game which only seems to resemble a Wild West brawl between enormous numbers of huge blokes on a massive pitch with a ball which they largely ignore while landing tasty looking blows on each other and wearing vests designed for the girls to swoon over vast biceps.

Despite the name of the game, there are very few rules and it’s brilliant to watch live. We live about 100m from the local oval (bit of jargon for you there, oval = Aussie sports ground) and are now Norwood Redlegs supporters. It’s a bit like supporting a non league football team with 4,000 other misfits.

You’ll be pleased to hear we won the first match of the season against local rivals Glenelg, the seaside team. After being behind the whole game, we came back to snatch a brave victory in the last five minutes.

Tomorrow the mighty Redlegs take on Sturt, another big match apparently but, more importantly, the venue, the Unley Oval, is close to another alleged Indian restaurant of repute.

We’ll see!

M&W

The Party Is Over

It’s official, in Australia the party is over. The Commonwealth Games finished this weekend and despite being reported as the second most obese nation, the Aussies still picked up about 700 gold medals. With such a small population, it seems that if you are not chewing on a gristly KFC you must be stood on a podium in Melbourne.

In Adelaide all the car races, comedy festivals and concerts have all packed up and autumn has arrived, a couple of leaves have fallen off the tree in the garden and the temperature has dropped to 27C, (82F). Brrrrr!

But the nights are drawing in, we don’t get dusk or dawn so much, more like lights on and lights off with no dimmer switch. When the clocks change next week, (we postponed it a week so as not to confuse the Commonwealth Games schedules), it will go dark at 6.00pm.

Anyway, all this going dark early stuff means we need to make the most of the evenings while we have them, particularly by the beaches which all face west and have the most glorious sunsets. I swear you see steam as the sun drops into the sea. And there are a few bars to help you enjoy the experience after a paddle along the front.

Despite all this, Adelaide still has something of an inferiority complex and everyone you meet has one question, which is one of the first that they ask, ‘why Adelaide?’
.
Deep down they all think you are a little odd and possibly to be avoided. While they stop short of taking your temperature, they certainly keep a watchful eye on you.

I had a meeting with two people from the Chamber of Commerce today and that question was all they wanted to talk about. They soon had the look in their eyes and it turned out to be a short meeting!

There is nothing wrong with Adelaide, sure, it’s not the most glamorous place in Australia, but all it’s missing is a harbour and a harbour bridge. The opera house in Sydney looks like a public convenience when you get up close. It’s the tiles.

The thing is that all the younger locals feel it is their duty to leave the place and live somewhere more in keeping with their youth and ambition. While they all leave to sit in a traffic jam in Sydney or wait for a tram in the Melbourne rain, the city laments the loss of all this young talent while smiling quietly and congratulating themselves on living in a place where you can walk the streets without being run over by a skateboard.

At least that’s what they say about us in Melbourne. But Melbourne has quite a high opinion of itself. At least that’s what they say in Adelaide.

On the home front, Mandy has tried to get into the gardening, after ensuring I had weeded the whole place and cleared the garden of spiders. So far though, all that her green fingers have reared is a mosquito haven. She insisted the huge flowerpot full of water was a good home for the lilies and snails. So, after a crash course in which lotions, sprays and candles work and which don’t, we a have got over their initial onslaught. But at a price. Can anyone tell me what part mozzies play in Mother Nature’s big plan?

Apart from that, we trundle along. A little less like one big holiday, a little more like normal life. Electricity bills, remembering the day for the bins, car tax and weeding the garden…..it’s not so different.

‘Til next time
M&W

Yes, that is a flying tram

In Adelaide this week, an event which will please a number of you. Rain.

And just when I had begun think there were only two kinds of weather. Hot and bloody hot. Still it didn't last long.

South Australia is renowned as the driest state in the country and the raindrops are few and far between. But just to demonstrate that things are very much the same over here in so many ways, it was a bank holiday weekend when the clouds chose to burst.

This bank holiday was for a horse race and, despite 60% of Aussies supporting a republic, we will also have one for the Queen's birthday. As every state has a couple of unique public holidays, it can give an insight into regional priorities. So, in South Australia we take a day for the Adelaide Cup horse race while in the Northern Territory they celebrate both a Picnic Day and Booroola Show Day.

Although what celebrating Easter Tuesday says about Tasmania eludes me. Mind you, they say a lot about Tasmania, much of which I'd rather not repeat.

At home, as I've been practicing for a few weeks, we felt it was time to try our first public barbie this week and invited round the family who volunteered to help us get settled when we arrived.

Apart from a pleasant evening, we got a demonstration of Aussie values in action. Erin who is 14, had run up a $900 (£400) bill on her mobile. In a month! So, she wasn't flavour of the month but as a family they were joking about it. Then she mentioned that champion swimmer and national hero Ian Thorpe was gay. I will save you the details, but I can assure you she will not be mentioning that particular rumour in her father's presence again. But he's OK about the phone bill.

As for the barbie, despite looking very hungry early on, they didn't eat much.

In case it passed you by, the Commonwealth Games started this week in Melbourne. The Queen showed up to the opening ceremony but didn't look very happy about it, probably because she was sat next to John Howard. However, Philip seemed very chirpy, largely due to an African runner coming in native costume. A skirt and a hat. Those pictures made the papers and put a smile on the Duke's face.

People from Melbourne are far too cool to be excited about something like this so all we hear is 'grumble, grumble, republic, moan, moan, too easy' etc. Then the Scots beat their best girl in the pool, the English spank them in the velodrome and all of a sudden the whole nation swings 100% behind their lawn bowls team.

Meanwhile in Adelaide, all the arty type festivals are drawing to a close now, which means it's the season for closing the streets and racing huge cars around the city. So as the theatre and comedy crowd drift away for a mochachino, a new bloke is in town, clad in overtight jeans, a big belly, elaborate facial hair and a hot dog in each ham sized fist. The uniform of the Aussie petrol head.

All that aside, Mandy has just started work on the intensive care unit, something new for her and a new challenge in terms of the skills she will need.

As for me I found a book about the diary of J. McDouall Stuart, intrepid Australian adventurer of the 1850's, maybe seeking a parallel. Anyway, contrast this with my previous entries in this online diary.....

’Still no rain, horses suffering, I fear we may lose 2 tonight, mosquitos unbearable, natives scouted our camp again in the night. Shall have to leave provisions behind if the horses do not make it, our fate is with providence’.

That puts a different slant on waiting for a bus.

Keep well.
Will & Mandy

The Festival State

No big spider sightings this week, so a picture of Xmas day instead. Nice and topical.

It’s Saturday afternoon in the garden and pretty warm. I’ve had a blast in the hills on my bike and followed it up with a wander round the National Wine Centre, conveniently located 10 minutes walk from my house. There are loads of how to make wine exhibits, but more interesting is the cheap local wine tasting.

At the moment there is a festival of festivals. We have a fringe festival which lasts for 3 weeks. Lots and lots of great shows, the quality of busker has gone through the roof and one part of town seems to be drunk pretty much 24/7.

This more beer and kebab-centric scene is now rubbing shoulders with the real festival. A little more wine and canapés, as the ballet dancers and divas roll into town. To mark this, we had the most spectacular opening ceremony, choreographed by the people who did the winter Olympics. This consisted of grand pianos and ballerinas whizzing overhead on wires suspended over the river. All of which depicted an odd narrative about a man who lived in a house which didn’t exist and burned everything he found.

Adelaide is only a small city, so where they will fit the huge music festival which starts next weekend is beyond me.

While all this is going on, parts of the city are turning into race track as huge concrete blocks and huge banks of seating are put up for four days of motor racing through the streets. They used to have a Grand Prix here and are still quite bitter about losing it to Melbourne. So they push the boat out for this one.

As if this wasn’t enough, every weekend has at least two food and wine festivals going on in various suburbs. These are simple affairs. You get a glass of wine and a plate of food. Eat one, drink the other, then go and fill up again. Repeat until you can’t.

However, I am told that nothing happens here from April until Xmas. Apart from the test match here starting on 1st December. But that’s for another day.

On another note, Mandy has landed some voluntary work at a local wildlife park. This involves a lot of sweeping up, window cleaning and clearing up animal poo. On the up side she feeds echidnas and wombats, ducklings and kookaburras and has parrots stand on her head. She’s loving it and it is hard work getting her to do a shift at the hospital.

All over the news is the shattered image of Australia as a nation of bronzed hunks, they are apparently increasingly tubby. which has led to a toilet manufacturer redesigning their products take a bit more weight. This presumably explains the shame of losing to New Zealand in the sheep shearing world cup final and could easily explain the one metre lobster found in Tasmania this week.

As for me, work at Adelaide City Council is plodding along. It’s a decent place to work and very different to Salford. The city has the plan of getting a lot more companies operating in the city. My part in this master plan is to look after a few initiatives which might help this. Currently this means trying to convince Greek and Italian chaps to spend some money on their city centre office buildings.
They are somewhat reluctant, but my negotiating skills are coming on well.

Thanks for the comments that have been posted, even to Keith Mitchell for his pithy effort. It’s good to hear from you. Keep well.

Mandy & Will

Thanks Jonny

Firstly thanks to my good friend Jonny who suggested a blog as the solution for the poor correspondent. If you want to see how these things should be done, visit http://heathweek.blogspot.com/

My resolution is to make a new post every week.

To set the scene, Mandy & I landed in Adelaide on November 24th and it seems like yesterday. Since then we've both been lucky and found some work, Mandy at the hospital, me at the city council. We have paid some tax, moved house, had the hottest Xmas day ever, been bitten by the biggest ant I've ever seen and got a new housemate, (above left). She's harmless, apparently.

While Adelaide is not the most exciting city in the world, or Australia, or arguably in the state of South Australia, it is hard to be bored here.

The city is squeezed between hills full of vineyards and a sea full of great white sharks. Most of the space inbetween is made up of coffee shops, Chinese restaurants and sporting venues. This is a place with priorities.

The city is very simple, it has been the same since 1836 or so. There is a grid of streets heading north-south and east-west. No bends. It is a mile by a mile and surrounded by one huge park. Outside that anything goes. The park is full of cricket pitches, archery targets, gum trees, kookaburras, BMX parks and students getting off with eachother.

Nothing is very far from anything else and you can stand in the middle of one the east-west streets and see the mountains at one end, turn round and see the sea. Then walk 20 yards for a latte.

I have heard Australia described as an outdoor nation and this is beyond dispute. This largely because the TV is so awful. Midsommer Murders tops the rankings along with The Bill, but DI Burnside is still in it. Add that to Aussie Wheel of Fortune and even the old and infirm throw down their zimmers and reach for a tennis racquet.

Which brings me nicely on to sport. There cannot be a better time for an Englishman to be here, holding the Ashes, with that drop goal still fresh in the memory and on the cusp of showing them what a proper foot team looks like at a world cup. (Well 2 out of 3 ain’t bad). There was a noticeable hush in the office the morning after Andy Murray beat Hewitt recently too.

Always one to share my good fortune, I have offered to lend my Ashes 2005 DVD around the office more than once.

Parish notices.

Water appears to be going anti clockwise down the plughole. Can anyone confirm it goes the other way in your half?

Finally, welcome to Lucy Jane Shaftoe, born 28th February, sister of Ella, daughter of Paul and the eternally patient Helen. Nice one.

Looking forward to episode 2…..any questions or feedback, please drop us a line on will5062@hotmail.com.

Cheers, keep well.