Dunedin, land of videos

Our hostel in Dunedin, Elm Lodge, had loads of videos to keep gusts company in the evenings, and we made the most of this.

First up was Bridget Jones's Diary, a very funny British comedy which puts Love Actually to shame. We laughed out loud quite a few times and it's a good adaptation of a funny book. Four stars.

Next, an old one we'd not seen before: Oliver Stone's Wall Street. This film is so very 1980s. It was interesting to see it finally, but I don't think it's aged well. Two stars.

Finally, last night we watched the excellent Fargo. We've seen this a few times but we still thoroughly enjoyed it. Both Frances McDormand and William H Macy are just great in it. Five stars.

(As Anne will tell you, we didn't just watch movies and scoff chocolate in Dunedin.)

Dunedin, land of chocolate

On Thursday we drove from Te Anau to Dunedin in the rain. We've generally had great weather on the famously wet West Coast, so it's funny that we should hit rain as we head east again.

The drive was notably for the fact that the milometer (kilometer-ometer?) in the Orca went round to 50,000km on the way. As you can imagine, that got a big "Oooh" from both of us.

Dunedin is very hilly. I gather that Dunedin is the Celtic name for Edinburgh, and there are Robert Burns pubs and other Scotch stuff around. It's principally a university town though, so lots of studenty bars around.

It's also where Cadburys have their NZ factory, and we went on a factory tour on Friday morning. It was a little pricey, but we got a few free samples and also spent an extra $10 in the discount choccy shop afterwards (half of that on drinking chocolate - mmmm).

Now, our choccy bar du choice on our NZ hikes has been the Cadburys Moro. This is basically the Cadburys version of the Mars Bar, but in my opinion the slightly more chewy nougat makes your Moro a superior snack to your Mars. I never thought I'd belittle the Mars, but there you go - I've said it. We've not tried the peanut Moro yet (I assume, a Snickers). The lady doing the tour assured us that Moros preceded Mars bars. Maybe in NZ they did, but I'm not so sure. If anyone wishes to research this I'd appreciate knowing.

Beardy weirdy
As many of you know, I've had fun with my hair whilst travelling, mainly by shaving it all off. In the last few weeks I've been compensating for this a little by growing a "beard". I hesitate to call it a beard-proper since I'm not actually physically able to grow a proper one. My beard is patchy and thin, though my hair clippers have enabled me to keep it short and neat rather than long and messy (which looks much worse with a patchy beard).

On the Cadburys tour we had to wear white hair nets on our heads when in the factory. Imagine my joy when I was also asked to wear a "snood" over my "facial hair". I was so proud that the lady had noticed my beard, as it barely even shows up on photos. I wore my snood with pride and even took it away with me afterwards.

I have facial hair. And someone other than Anne noticed!

Anne's bad reading habits
Anne's been reading loads of books while travelling. What she's also enjoyed reading, however, are woman's gossip mags. These are often left in hostels and when Anne spies one she jumps on it (and then reads it). The bad thing is I find myself reading them too. Even worse, I get drawn in.

The other day I was reading over Anne's shoulder and said, "I don't know why Victoria Beckham doesn't move to Spain to be with David. She has no career to speak of in the UK and it could save their marriage."

Anne stared at me, shocked. I immediately felt VERY embarrassed. Not only was I reading the worthless rag, I was becoming interested and offering advice to a celebrity. Please, kill me now!

Milford Sound Adventure

On Tuesday morning we drove from Queenstown to Te Anau. Anne, who is no longer in her mid-twenties but in her late-twenties, was bemoaning her lost youth. The weather was glorious, and the lady at Te Anau YHA told us that it was the first nice day they'd had in five months!

We were there as a base for our day trip to Milford Sound the next day. SO, Wednesday morning we were up bright and early for the two hour drive through the mountains. Literally through one of the mountains as there's a small dark tunnel cut through. It's quite scarey driving through it!

Once at the fiord (they call it a sound but, in fact, it's a fiord and not a sound at all!) we took a walk to a nearby waterfall, and then checked onto our boat for a cruise. We cruised for nearly two hours in this Lord of the Rings scenery. We weren't dodging arrows from Orcs on the banks, but we could have been. It was a really good cruise. And the weather was fantastic, unusually for the region.

As we boarded a girl took our photo, with a view to selling it to us for a lot on the cruise. Anne and I never buy these photos, so both arranged to look sideways as she took the photo for a joke. "Perfect" the girl said as we laughed and laughed. The photos were developed on the boat, and before the end of the cruise everyone's photos were laid out for us to peruse. They were The Worst Photos You Have Ever Seen. Dark shadows obscured some people, and on ours you couldn't even see our eyes, so the effect of our naughty joke was lost. The silly girl obviously wasn't used to the sunny weather. Why they showed us the terrible photos I have no idea. They should have binned them and told us the camera was broken. Monkeys.

On the way back to Te Anau later that day we had a few stop-offs for walks and sights. At one point I got in a grump and we had a row. This culminated in Anne telling me to calm down whilst driving. "I AM CALM", I screamed. Oh dear.

Book 'em Danno!

An update on my reading material of late. I read Joseph Heller's Catch 22, which seemed to take me an age to get through. Whilst it was interesting and funny the disjointed style of writing stopped it from being a page-turner. My fifth year English teacher tried to get me to read this at school as she thought I'd appreciate the humour. I gave up after a chapter or so, so I'm glad to have finally read it.

I then read a biography of Peter Sellers - Peter Evans's The Mask Behind the Mask. It was a bit crap in places, but for the most part made an interesting read. Having read a few volumes of Spike Milligan's memoirs I guess I'll do Harry Secombe next. Or Michael Bentine (sp?).

Movie 'em Danno! Erm.
Saw Love Actually in Queenstown. It was OK. Anne liked it more than I did. Some of the stories were pretty good but I thought there were a few that didn't work so well, including Hugh Grant as PM. Why was he still single if his standards were so low that he'd fall for potty-mouth Tiffany? The first scene when the singer finally gets the words right made me laugh out loud. Brilliantly timed. Richard Curtis knows how to write comedy, and there were a few other laugh out loud bits, but Andrew Lincoln's creepy stalking of that stick-thin bland girl was just horrid. Given that one of the stories is about a shameless Christmas cash-in, it was odd that at times the movie seems to be just that. I guess they were being ironic. I'm still going to give it three and a half stars because I liked seeing London on screen. I miss it!

At Te Anau we watched The Mexican on video. I quite liked Brad Pitt's hapless criminal, and James Gandolfini's kidnapper was quite good, but I thought Julia Roberts was a bit rubbish. Given its cast, it seemed to lack something. Two and a half star.

This one's late: I forgot to note that we saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at Greymouth. I'd not seen this in years and found it very disappointing. I knew it was the worst of the three but it's just not that good. It has an odd mix of slapstick and horror, and the woman in it (is that Speilberg's wife?) is just terrible. She just screams the whole time. Still, it has some good set pieces. Two and a half stars.

Movies, movies, movies

We watched two videos in Franz Josef. The first was The Recruit starring the ubiquitous Colin Farrel and also Al Pacino. The video box said that there were so many twists you never knew who to trust. That just makes me think the whole way through, "I bet he's a baddie" whenever someone looks not to be the baddie. Inevitably one of the guesses is right. And it's not that clever a film. It is entertaining though and just what we needed when we were exhausted from glacier hiking. Three stars.

The second movie was The Gangs of New York, Martin Scorcese's overblown "epic". I'm giving it two and a half stars, though it could easily have been three and half stars if it had been 40 minutes shorter. The best thing about this was the simpleton American lady we watched it with. She came in 30 minutes into the film and kept commenting all the way through the film. I don't like this, but this harmless lady made me laugh.
"Ooh, is he gonna kill him?"
"Does he want him to join their gang?"
"Isn't it violent! Yuck!"
"Was America really like this?"
"Is he a tittle-tattle?" (I am not making this up.)

In Wanaka, the lovely hostel had an equally lovely video room, so we took advantage of it. We first watched Once Were Warriors, a Kiwi film about a Maori family with an abusive father (Jango Fett). It wasn't an amazing film, but was good enough and it was good to see a Kiwi film while we're here. Three stars.

The following day we watched the German film, Run Lola Run. We'd both missed this at the flicks, and I'm glad we finally saw it because it was really good. Quite short, but very funny, flash and simple. Lots of good music, twists and touches. Four and a half stars.

We went to a cool cinema in Wanaka. Our guide book told us to check it out whether it was showing a good film or not. The chairs were sofas and arm chairs, and there was an old Morris Minor in there you could sit in. The film was projected onto a sheet, and they served good home-made ice-cream. Fortunately the film was good to. It won the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year. It was another German film: Nowhere in Africa. It's about a family of German Jews who escape Germany before the war (the Second World one) and go to live in Kenya. Very interesting. Four stars.

It's Anne's birthday on Monday, and she's decided we're going to see Love Actually tonight. We've not read any reviews or heard anything about it, which is probably best as it might be awful!

Goodbye Hoth

The glacier hike really was a highlight of our trip so far. As Anne said, she loved the equipment. Whenever I made an hilarious joke or got confused between my life and the first act of The Empire Strikes Back she eyed her ice-pick thoughtfully. She's made noises about getting herself one, even though she's not bothered about going glacier hiking again.

We lazed about exhausted on Monday. We watched two movies on video, which was very luxurious. Reviews later.

Fox Glacier minutes
We left Franz Josef on Tuesday morning, and were soon in the Fox Glacier village. We weren't there long, but did stop off at nearby Lake Matherson. This lake is famous for being dark and still, enabling a great reflection of the mountains. We did an hour walk around the lake but there was a little wind and that meant the surface of the lake wasn't flat enough for a reflection. Doh!

Haast end of nowhere
We only drove for two hours on Tuesday, and stopped for the night in Haast. There's not a lot there and the YHA hostel was woeful. Really poor. We used to like the YHAs, but we've had some dodgy YHA hostels of late and are going for more of the independent ones with a bit of character.

We treated ourselves to a whitebait pattie for lunch and spent the rest of the day reading.

Wanaka
Wednesday we were up early to drive to Wanaka. We wanted to be fresh for this drive as we'd heard the Haast Pass through the mountains was very pretty. It was. There's some great views and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

We arrived in Wanaka to find that the hostel we'd booked into, The Purple Cow, is really very nice. Every room has en-suite facilities and there are lots of nice touches. Very refreshing. Almost wish we were staying longer but we're off to Queenstown on Friday.

We didn't loiter in the hostel as we were keen to get to Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World, just out of town. There's a 3-D maze there (it's on two levels) and also an illusion section. Part of that was some rooms built at a 15 degree angle, so you can roll snooker balls "uphill" and sit on a chair and roll up the room. Very impressive.

In the maze you're supposed to get to each of the four corners. Anne beat me to the first two corners and gloated a lot. I beat Anne to the third corner and was waiting there for her for at least ten minutes. She was baffled and I watched her confused face. I laughed at her a little when she finally arrived, but she was in a bit of a mood and in no state to admit defeat. I also beat her to the fourth corner. Thus, it was a draw on towers, but I won on timing overall. Anne doesn't accept this. Even as I write this blog she's standing behind me getting angry and saying, "Just leave it!" and poking me in the back. Sore loser.

Photos, finally

At last I've found an internet cafe that will let me upload photos. I've added a couple of photos from our quiz in Sydney to the Big Adventure Photos 5 folder, and started a sixth folder for our NZ photos.

New Zealand book

I've just read a book by British MP Austin Mitchell about New Zealand. Apparently he was a "pundit" over here before becoming an MP over there. It's a follow up on a book he wrote about NZ thirty years ago, and it's called Pavlova Paradise Revisited. (I wasn't aware that pavlovas were a Kiwi thing.) It's a good introduction to the country and the changes over the last thirty years. It's critical, but from the stance of a man who clearly loves the country. I've decided not to bother reading a history of the country, since it looks to me like this country doesn't have much history of interest. That's not a criticism as such, it's just such a new country and doesn't really have the interesting start that the colonisation of Australia does. I'll just pick bits up along the way. The North Island may have some good museums with displays that might change my mind.

We're just here for the scenery really!

The Wet Coast

On Thursday morning we left Nelson in The Orca and started our journey down the west coast. I call our rental car The Orca after Quint's boat in Jaws, as when we picked the car up and tried to put our backpacks in, I said, "We're going to need a bigger boot".

We've had great weather so far in New Zealand, better than we expected. The West Coast of the South Island, however, is notoriously wet, getting much more rain per year than the East Coast over the mountains. Something to do with winds from the Antarctic being stopped by the mountains I gather. Sure enough, it was soon raining on us. Quite heavily.

The rain cleared for our first stop. Anne had spied "New Zealand's longest swingbridge" on our route at Buller Gorge, so we pulled over and paid $5 to cross it and do a short walk. A "swingbridge" is a bridge like the one at the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was a pleasant diversion, but $5 was a bit much to ask. It's well placed for the long drive between Nelson and Greymouth (our destination) as it's about halfway and people will be up for a break.

Nearer Greymouth we stopped off at the coast to see some rocks. They're called Pancake Rocks as they look (a bit) like a stack of pancakes. Again, nothing amazing, but nice enough, and the rough sea was pretty spectacular. The West Coast scenery seems to be rugged rather than pretty. Given that we aim to be on a glacier at the weekend we can hardly complain if it's not sunny and hot!

Greymouth lived up to its name. There's not much I can say about it. Tourists come here to pass through rather than stay. You can get trains or buses from Christchurch here, and it's a convenient stop-over for journeys down the coast.

Thankfully the hostel we're in is worth writing home about. It's called "Noah's Ark" and each room has an animal theme. We're in the Leopard Room. The curtains and quilt has a leopardskin pattern, there's a leopard wall frieze, a painting of a leopard on the wall and there are model leopards around. We've looked in other rooms such as the Pig Room, Sheep Room, Bear Room and Puppy Room. The Cow Room looks to be the best.

We went to a local pub for a $3 all you can eat BBQ last night. (Basically sausages and salad.) We washed that down with a pitcher of beer, and then were drinking beer again today BEFORE LUNCH! Get us! We went on a brewery tour, which was interesting, and that ended with the chance to taste each of the beers they brew there. Before lunch we'd had about two pints each. Hic!

So Greymouth nothing special but we've done good things here.

Use the source, Neo

We've just watched The Matrix Revolutions at the cinema.

I said when I reviewed the second film that the third film might change my opinion of the second, by making it make sense. Well, the third film made the second look good, but not for the right reasons.

I'd read some bad reviews of the film, and a friend had also told me it was bad. It's probably good to see this film with low expectations, because then it doesn't seem so bad. As a sci-fi action film it had its moments, but it's not worthy of The Matrix name. What's happened? The first film is just great, and the sequels are mediocre (albeit with some great action). The use of CG has become tiring and the Neo-Smith fight in this film was just a cartoon.

So many silly characters were introduced in the sequels and they did nothing. The Frenchman? The Trainman? Sod off!

Trinity and Morphues hardly did anything in this film. And why doesn't Zion have an EMP? And why didn't they power down when they knew the ship would use its EMP? And why did the fighting vehicles offer the humans no shielding whatsoever?? Idiots.

The Warchowskis talk of The Matrix as coming from a comic book they'd imagined. The sequels would have worked better as a comic book, or an animated series at most.

Nice to see Sydney at the end though!

Two and a half stars.

Yesterday we watched Enemy at the Gates on video in the hostel. I'd wanted to see this snipers-in-Stalingrad movie and thought it was pretty good. Funny to see the Russians and Germans with English accents. Better than faux-foreign accents I suppose! Three and a half stars.

Huffin', puffin' and a chuffin' muffin

First, I've put a link to a map of NZ to the left of the blog. Now you can see where we are.

From Kaikoura we drove to Picton. Again, the weather was great, and again the scenery was too. Picton's further north than Wellington (the capital, on the North Island). We'd not realised this as our map shows the island separately. The ferry leaves Picton to go to Wellington, but we weren't there for that. We're doing a loop of the South Island before we touch the North. We were in Picton to do a walk on the Queen Charlotte Track. This is a 71km walking track (Kiwis call it "tramping". It's "walking".) The walk takes three or four days, and boat companies will take your luggage between your accommodation for you. Not a hard walk and some of the accommodation's very nice. However, we were only doing a day walk. Aren't we lazy?

We both slept very badly the night before our walk. We both had bad tummies! We blamed the free apple crumble and ice cream the hostel had given us. Grrr! We didn't feel too bad on Saturday morning, so we got up early and go a ferry to Ship Cove to start the walk. Captain Cook landed at Ship Cove a few times, and there's a monument to this at the cove. We walked for miles in glorious views of Queen Charlotte's Sound.

(By the way, we'd been wondering what the difference between a Sound and a Fiord is. We found this on the net. Don't say you never learn anything on this blog.

A fiord is a glaciated valley - typically narrow and steep-sided - that has been flooded by the sea after the glacierÂ’s retreat. A sound, on the other hand, is a river valley flooded by the sea following a rise in sea levels or depression of the land, or a combination of both.)

An hour or so after we set off we reached Resolution Bay. A few people had advised us to stop there at the B&B for a coffee and muffin. The muffins are "world famous" apparently. The woman running the placewas chattingg to friends, so her 10-12 year old daughter served us. I had the weakest coffee I'd had in a long time and the muffin was a pathetic, dry tiny mess. I was not impressed. This muffin had been the carrot drawing me on to Resolution Bay. I'd have preferred a carrot. It was SO disappointing.

Thankfully the walk was marvelous. We saw lots of wekas - small flightless birds which my friend Simon says "p*ss on kiwis". I didn't see them do that, but then there weren't any kiwis around.

The ferry picked us up about six hours after it had dropped us off. We were shattered, especially having had very little sleep the night before. We fancy doing a four day walk sometime, and that track seems like an easy one to do.

Anne's tummy took a turn for the worse on Sunday, and we abandoned a local walk we'd planned. She slept a lot of the day and was very sad.

On Monday, we left Picton to head west to Nelson. On the way we stopped at Havelock - "Greenshell mussel capital of the world". There we splashed out on a (greenshell) mussel lunch! Anne had been feeling better, though I wonder now if she was only saying that so I didn't deny her the mussels she'd been looking forward to. A few hours after lunch she was ill again!

Kill Bill
We watched Kill Bill: Volume One at the flicks in Christchurch. The film was apparently cut in two so that Quentin Tarantino didn't have to cut anything out of it. I'd argue that there was a good ten minutes that could have been happily cut out of the first volume. The second film, I've heard, slows things down a bit - I hope so.

I thought the idea to split the films was stupid, but I was ready for the first one to end when it did, so wouldn't have fancied another 90 minutes. QT seems to be trying to get away from his forte - cool dialogue. He's done this byputtingo cool dialogue into this film, and no good dialogue either. Shame.

I've seen a fair few martial arts films, and this film has some very classy fights in it. The final fight just goes on far too long. Lots of it is good. Some really nice touches. Much of it seems like the sort of thing TV's Mat C and I used to make on video at school though. Either Mat and I were undiscovered geniuses, or QT is a school kid messing about to make himself and his mates laugh.

The violence has been criticised, but it's all comic book stuff. The only bit I winced about was when a man got his head slammed in a door.

Like the second Matrix film, it's hard to review this half-film, but at the moment I'd say three stars.

We also watched Elizabeth on video in Picton. I'd not seen this and fancied it. I quite enjoyed it. Three stars.

Driven to extremes

We picked up our new rental car on Wednesday morning. As Anne said, I won the argument and we're touring the South Island by car, rather than being sociable and getting the "Magic Bus", a backpackers' touring bus. I've bought a converter enabling me to plug my CD player into the cassette deck, which means we can travel through lovely countryside listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

We first drove to Hanmer Springs. We wouldn't have been able to go there on the bus! (Well, it would have been harder.) This is a thermal springs resort set in alpine scenery. We sat in hot sulfurous pools and looked at the snow-capped mountains for a few hours. It was bloody lovely. We were too dozy to move after that.

When you're feeling dozy it's a good idea to drive for ninety minutes, so this I now did. We drove the scenic route to Kaikoura, our first overnight stop. Known as a place to go whale watching, we'd decided not to do this (having done it in Australia). Instead, this morning we went for a long walk around the peninsula. The views are just great. There are big snow-capped mountains, rolling hills, lush meadows, sheep and cows too. I felt like a Von Trapp.

The view from the kitchen and lounge in our hostel is just amazing (click the link there). We're right on the bay, and the mountains are across the water. A bonus is that the weather's been great since we left Christchurch. The view here is often obscured by clouds, we hear. Not at the moment - clear blue skies all the way!

So far, I like New Zealand.

Where Simon played the trumpet

It was odd visiting my friend Simon's old house and school. We learnt that his school, Christ's College - though apparently Christ never actually went there, is the most prestigious school in New Zealand. Wow! Simon - I'm looking at you in a whole new light. I'm starting to realise what a step down it must have been for you to come to Monk's Walk in Welwyn Garden City for your A Levels. For those who don't know it, Monk's Walk is a home counties equivalent of Grange Hill.

You must have found us ruffians a bit common when you first arrived. Once you got to know us (by bribing us with cassettes and the like) I'm sure you realised that we're all the same underneath.

(On the plus side, at least we pronounced our vowels correctly.)

Like we flied and went to heaven

After a final night out in Sydney with Andrew and Shae, we woke early on Saturday and got a shuttle bus to the airport. Anne was all sad about leaving Australia. I tend to be ready to leave once we're done somewhere, which can be a handy trait. Even on a two week holiday I'm ready to go home at the end, even when I've had a great holiday. Besides, I was excited about New Zealand.

Anne's sadness was soon forgotten when we got to the gate to board the plane. We waited until almost everyone else had boarded, and then approached the gate. (Why do people rush and push? Their seats are already allocated!)

The lady made us stand aside, and asked another lady if they had "any of the good seats" left. Yay!, we thought. We were upgraded to Business Class!!! I've never been upgraded before. I don't know why we were upgraded. Maybe it's because Anne's a doctor, or maybe it's because we'd both signed up for BA's Executive Club (frequent Flyer scheme). The seats were huge and technologically-advanced. Large TV screens came out of the arm rest. We had more movies to choose from than Economy. The food was very good. Anne couldn't reach the seat in front of her with her feet! It was bliss.

I've only ever seen Business Class before when walking through to Economy. The people there tended not to look at us plebs, preferring to pretend we didn't exist. As it was, I didn't even see any of the plebs in Economy, since we boarded after them and disembarked before them. A curtain helpfully shielded us from them during the flight. The sad thing was the flight only lasted about three hours. I'd have liked the plane to circle a bit.

We tried hard to look like we belonged there, but I really doubt that people who regularly travel in Business Class take photos of each other in the big chairs.

How will we ever fly Economy again? I don't think I can.

Movies and books
As Anne has said, we watched Japanese Story in Sydney. It's received a lot of press coverage down under, and was pretty good. It's about a geologist (Toni Colette) reluctantly showing a Japanese businessman around the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The film changes part way through, which makes it very difficult to say much without giving too much away. Anne enjoyed it more than I did, though I'd still give it three and a half stars. The scenery was great, and it was good to see this area we visited three months or so ago on the screen.

On the flight I watched American Pie: The Wedding (or American Wedding). The first sequel was better than expected (though not as good as the first film) but this one was pretty poor. Most of the "humour" comes from Stiffler, who seems to have degenerated into a mentally-deranged idiot. Two stars.

The last two books I read in Australia were quite apt. The first was a history/analysis of the country, Australia by Phillip Knightly. It was good to read a book like this having been immersed in the culture for eight months. The second was Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James, about his childhood in the Sydney suburbs in the 40s and 50s. Very funny and this time (the second time) I read it I recognised the places.

Australia, done, tick

Today's our last day in Sydney, and our last day in Australia too. It's sad.

We've been here now for almost nine months. Blimey. Strange to think back to a night in February 2002, when Anne first suggested we abandon our plans to work in the US and go travelling instead. We were having a Valentine's meal in Tiger Tiger in Haymarket, London. We were pretty drunk. I don't think Anne really thought it through. All the wine I'd imbibed had put me in a good mood and I jumped on Anne's suggestion with enthusiasm. The next morning Anne woke up thinking, "What have I done? There goes our savings! Get me an Alka-Seltzer." Meanwhile I was busy mastering my boomerang technique. And drinking an Alka-Seltzer.

There's a lot to like about Australia, and we'll miss it. We had a great night last night returning to our local pub quiz. Along with our friend Richard we teamed up with Sim, a manager of the pub against whom we used to play every week. We won the quiz, for old times' sake, thanks largely to Sim knowing the terms for the "going" in horse racing (they're different than the UK ones).

Strange to think of all those things that we'd not heard of, or rarely heard about, before we arrived yet have been unable to avoid for the last nine months:

Phar Lap, Bodyline Cricket, Tim Tams (mmmm), "Shows", Gondwanaland, AFL, John Howard, The Movie Show on SBS (I'll miss it so), The Sydney Morning Herald, Sunrise breakfast show, terrible Aussie TV, Rose Byrne, extremely harsh immigration policies and unfair treatment of refugees, Ernie Dingo, The Age, John Farnham, Delta Goodrem (and Delta Goodrum), Tim Tams (did I mention those already?), Jimoin(!), bad bad Aussie sketch shows, Kath & Kim, CNNNN, small goods, Rene Rivkin, Manchester (meaning bedding and towels).

All these things we're leaving behind. Still, at least we'll probably never know which of Shannon, Cosima and Guy will become the first Australian Idol.

Anne and Stephen's Big Junkie Adventure

Yesterday, whilst walking into town via Kings Cross (the dodgy red light area), we came across a man who collapsed in front of us. Two English girls were there too, and another man called an ambulence. We tried to help him and get him into the recovery position, but our efforts were hampered a little by him having a syringe in his hand and us not fancying getting stabbed by it. The two English girls were great and when he started to come round they tried to get him talking. He'd turned blue!

Eventually an ambulence came and removed him. It was all a bit horrible. Anne and I went for a (cheap) Italian meal in Kings Cross in the evening and saw the same guy sleeping it off on a bench.

Probably a side of Sydney we'd rather not see, but then we can only afford to live in areas where that sort of thing's rife.

Moral: Don't do drugs kids.

A carpenter shows the way

I'm in a bad mood this morning. Anne mentioned the other day that my bed keeps collapsing, and it's been happening more and more. It disturbed my sleep a lot last night, and the lady who runs the place didn't care when I complained.

I ended up finding a hammer and nails in the laundry and having a go at repairing it myself. It was a little strange doing DIY in a rented room like that, but I think (I hope) I've done the job.

And Anne complains i never make my bed.

Anne and I were goin to go to the Modern Art Gallery this morning, before going swimming after lunch. I suggested she go to the gallery on her own, as I was ratty and I'm not good at looking at Modern Art without snorting with disgust at the best of times.

Anne and Stephen's big Christmas Card competition

Lots and lots of people have emailed asking for an address to which they can send us a Christmas card. Well, for the benefit of both of them here's where to send your cards:

Anne Glazier and Stephen Kent-Taylor
(Guests arriving 24 December 03)
On The Beach Backpackers Lodge
46 Buffalo Beach Road
Whitianga
New Zealand

It's important that you put the date we'll be arriving.

Please - no large expensive gifts, since we'll only have to carry them!

So come on - send us a Christmas card. There'll be a prize for the best one. Maybe. As you may be able to tell from the address, we'll be staying rather near a beach. That'll be an odd Christmas.

The land in which time lags by twenty years

Anne and I have noticed that a lot of things in Australia are a bit backwards. The West Australians seem to be the most backwards, and seem proud of the fact - resenting the rest of Australia for being so advanced, and resenting the federal taxes they pay. (That said, we didn't go to Tassie, which may be even more backwards!)

Oz is certainly 20 years behind the UK in Government, since they seem to have an imitation Thatcher Government here. Having said that, John Howard doesn't have the strong personality of Margaret Thatcher - he's a bit of a non-entity. The "Liberal" government got in in 1996 mainly, it seems, due to its strong stance on immigration - a hot topic here. At the time, Pauline Hanson's One Nation party was polarising opinion here, and Howard capitaised on that.

Despite many Aussies being open minded, intelligent and very friendly, society as a whole seems to be quite racist, and many Aussies resent non-white immigrants. The "White Australia" policy is no more, but its spirit lives on.

The Aboriginal issue is a difficult one. When asked, most Aussies will tell you that the Aboriginals have been hard done by and have suffered greatly. However, in day to day life they're seen as a problem. Many Aboriginals are begging on the street, drunk and in the paper for crime and domestic violence. It's a horrible state of affairs - the race seems to have been almost destroyed by the policies of 150 years of European governments. There's a crisis for parents who have no knowledge of how to deal with kids because they themselves were removed from their parents as kids. Most Aboriginals aren't violent, swearing drunks, of course, but it's the minority who are visible. There are plenty of campaigning Aboriginals who are trying to implement solutions and reduce the crime rates. It gets more and more depressing to read about - there are Aboriginal kids suffering from diseases which only exist in third world countries, and should be easily curable. The life expectancy of an Aboriginal is well below that of a non-Aboriginal in Australia.

Political correctness seems to be lagging a bit here too. An Aboriginal campaigner recently succeeded in getting the word "Ni**er" removed from the name of two creeks here. This is 2003!! Can you believe it's taken this long? And that it's taken a campaign?? The same guy has been trying to get the name of a brand of cheese change from "Coon"! He's failed so far, and a newspaper article I read said his campaign was "political correctness gone mad". This country is bizarre. Anne and I are constantly shocked to see this cheese in the supermarket. (Admittedly, Coon was the surname of the guy who started the company, but I can't imagine that this would be allowed to continue in the UK.)

Greeks are called "Wogs" here. It seems to be an affectionate term, and the Greeks don't seem to mind. That took us a while to get used to.

All that said, I haven't heard about race riots here, which we have in the UK every now and then.

Yet more movies

In Manly we hired a second video - Chicago. This had won so many Oscars that we thought we'd give it a try. It was OK, but I reckon it was too much of a stage show still. It hardly seemed like it had been adapted for the screen. Most of the song and dance numbers took place with a black background and might as well have been on a stage. I suppose that's inevitable, since they were mostly due to the characters imagining they were on a stage. Didn't think much of the songs either. The cast were good though, and it was reasonably entertaining. Two and a half stars.

On Sunday we went to the flicks to see Intolerable Cruelty, the new Coen Brothers film. It was really good! It's the nearest the Coens have come to a mainstream film, but still had lots of Coen-quirks in it. Catherine Zeta-Jones was good as the gold-digging woman, but George Clooney was just excellent in every scene he was in. Four and a half stars!

On Sunday night we settled in front of the telly to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark (or, as Aussie TV called it, Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark - idiots). I don't really think this needs much of a review, as everyone knows it (five stars!) but I'll just say how sad I was to be watching it on a tiny screen with ads every 15 minutes when I know that everyone else in the world will be watching it on shiny new DVD with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Sob.