South-East Asia
Sydney
Brisbane
Childers
Darwin
Melbourne
New Zealand
Hawaii
Vancouver
Many thanks for your emails, keep them coming if you have time as they keep me most amused.
Well, we arrived in Brisbane last week after coming up the coast from Sydney via some very trendy surfing places, characterised by big waves and big idiots with big mouths. Got rather sunburnt and now look like a prune.
Surfing was good and I can now, quote, "ride a swell like a good'un", apparently. Although I'm not really sure whether that's a good thing or not to tell you the truth. These places were full of people smoking bizarre plants and wearing exactly the same thing as they were smoking. In fact most of them weren't wearing anything at all and instead wanted to educate us all about the joys of tantric sex.
But I'm not sure that "joy" is a particulary good word to describe this activity.
This was only outdone by a shop in which you could be photographed with a special camera in order to show your aura. This was all very new age. Only surpassed by a street entertainer whose act went dramatically awry when instead of catching a twelve-inch knife that he was juggling with, he launched it at great speed into a group of schoolchildren.
Which was the funniest thing I've seen for a long time.
We eventually arrived in Brisbane, albeit 3 hours late after the bus decided to break down in the middle of nowhere. It is a very nice place although our hostel is overrun by Irish people. We haven't done much since getting here except enjoying the beautiful hot weather and being overrun by Irish people. Today we decided to venture into the Bush. We didn't venture very far though after spotting a very big and incredibly venimous (possibly, I don't actually know, obviously) snake at close proximity. It started spitting and hissing and chasing us and we ran all the way back to the sanctuary of the hostel overrun by Irish people.
Her Majesty the Queen is here now, much to the obvious displeasure of Aussies we meet. I opened a bank account yesterday and when the clerk discovered that I was British he mentioned the fact that the "Queen of
England" was here and very nearly didn't let me open an account, seemingly holding me personally responsible for all atrocities against Aborigines commited over the last 150 years. It's not as if I was holding him responsible for "I should be so lucky", is it. We had the last laugh however when he looked at Cecile's passport and entered her name into the computer as Miss Ile Et Vilaine (which is in fact her county in France.)
The Queen was almost assasinated yesterday by a knife-weilding maniac in Sydney. (I think they should have stopped him after he'd practised on the schoolchildren) And today many people are unhappy because the Duke of Edinburgh went to a cheese factory and didn't wear a hat so they will to throw the whole lot away.
Australia is a very nice, laid-back country and, much as I'm sure they would disapprove, it is very like England. Apart from the weather of course. It was about 30 degrees today.
We now go further up the coast, over the Tropic of Capricorn, towards the Great Barrier Reef, in order to start earning some money working on a farm.
It should be fun.
Look forward to hearing from you soon.
Bye for now,
Ian