Well if I was writing this email in pen and ink, there would be a lot of tear stains on it and if I could I would electronically attach a box of Kleenex for you all, as I'm sure you'll need it when you hear that this is going to be the last Travel Log ... for this trip anyway ... because as of 9.55am yesterday morning, we touched down at Heathrow airport a bit browner, some degree wiser, a lot poorer and most importantly, able to say ... WE ARE THE WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!
But before I come along to vivid descriptions of exactly how distraught the Aussies looked at approximately 10.17pm (Sydney time) on Saturday November 22nd, there are a couple of weeks activites to briefly recount to you.
Brisbane
Met up successfully with Sarah & Jim (Uni friends of mine) and did indeed, as I had hoped, witness a first hand try-fest at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane as England trounced Uruguay. After the game, we went down to the river that runs through Brisbane, imaginatively named the Brisbane River (genius!), to watch the Welsh ever so nearly pull off the shock of all shocks when they nearly beat the All Blacks. Now I will say that although I was supporting the Welsh, and I really was, I wasn't that gutted when the All Blacks came through because it meant that England would not meet them till the final (or so I thought).
From Brisbane we headed north to ...
The Whitsunday Islands
Spent 6 awesome days on a chartered yacht (expertly skippered by Jim and ably assisted by (in decreasing order of usefulness) Sarah, Tessa and me) going around the beautiful Whitsunday Islands. We even managed to catch all four quarter finals when we spent two nights moored at the Hamilton Island Marina. Whitehaven Beach was truly spectacular even though I'd seen a million postcards of it, it was still one of the most amazing natural sights we've seen on this trip! We also did some snorkelling although this did mean compromising our otherwise impeccable fashion standards by donning "stinger suits" for the prevention of the death by jellyfish, which is a realistic risk in these parts - photos to follow!
After 6 exhausting but brilliant days, we parted company with Jim and Sarah and headed south to ...
Sydney
... the last destination for our trip. We promptly turned up on the doorstep of Kirsten (another useful PwC colleague now seconded to Oz) and her long suffering housemate, Reena who have a very nice pad in Bondi Beach from which you can (just about) see the sea!
It was great to see Kirst and for those of you that know her, you'll be sad (or relieved) to hear that she is still sounding as Scottish as ever.
Anyway, apart from drinking a lot, eating a lot and meeting up with friends a lot (the pastimes that seemed to have followed us all around Australia), we managed to do some exercise:
i) the scenic Bondi to Coogee cliff walk (there and back!), during which we were lucky enough to sea the annual "Sculpture By The Sea" exhibition which I thought should have been more honestly called the "Crap On The Cliffs" exhibition, but that's just an Art Atheist's point of view.
ii) an extremely strenuous 3-day wine tour in the Hunter Valley and through the Blue Mountains.
iii) an exhausting 2 days of shopping in Paddington, and
iv) an intense couple of days body surfing at Bondi Beach (on pretty much the only two rain free days we had while we were in Sydney).
Other than this, we spent pretty much the rest of the time preparing for, watching and recovering from (as appropriate) various rugby matches.
The Semi Finals
We watched the first semi down at The Rocks by Sydney harbour where they had cordoned off a road and had a big screen up. It was a beautiful evening weather wise although the result did mean that there were a LOT of very smug Aussies running around which was quite annoying but there was some compensation by way of a healthy sprinkling of extremely morose Kiwis.
We planned to watch England's semi the following day on the steps of the Opera House, where they also had a big screen but unfortunately as we arrived, the heavens opened and showed no signs of closing again, so we retired to The Rocks to find a suitable beveragery. Anyway, we got some drinks and noticed that the rain outside had indeed stopped for a moment so we took our beers out onto the street and had literally just taken a pew by the barriers when 4 guys walked past wearing Welsh and Irish rugby tops. Anyway, as they walked past, they asked us where we were planning to watch the game that evening. We said we were just going to watch it at the pub. They then said "Well do you want our tickets?". We assumed they were having a laugh so were a bit suss and anyway, expected we couldn't afford them. They assured us they were legit and that far from wanting any payment they were willing to give us them for free. Well, for want of looking a gift horse in the mouth, the four of us (Me, Tess, Reena & Bruce) accepted and jumped in a cab down to the Telstra Stadium - still with a healthy does of scepticism about the validity of said tickets ... on my behalf anyway. We hence spent the entire journey examining the tickets for signs of counterfeiting. This examination revealed that we had 3 Category A tickets @ $300 each and one @ $450. That's a total of $1,350 - about 600 quid!
We arrived at the stadium half an hour before kick off and after getting a photo of me with Rory Underwood outside the toilets (random) we approached the ticket barriers somewhat sheepishly. As I reached out to have my ticket scanned, the tension was palpable. The machine considered the ticket for what seemed like an age before finally giving an approving beep and opening the barrier. Hey presto we were in!
The tickets were all in separate parts of the stadium so we each picked a ticket and headed off to find our places.
I had picked well! My seat was only 20 rows from the front in the bottom tier, just behind the goal that England attacked in the second half - however, unlike Tessa's seat, mine was not undercover, which was disappointing as the rain had started again. One interesting thing that happened was that when I took my seat, the guy next to me looked at me in surprise and said "Oh, where's Tony?". I looked suitably blank/innocent and recounted the tail of the Irish/Welshmen. He looked at me in astonishment and said "That's weird cos he only bought that ticket off me for $300 this afternoon!".
If this incident has done anything, it is to restore my faith in human nature - particularly that of our Celtic brethren!
Anyway, the game wasn't that much of a spectacle, which wasn't a surprise given the weather conditions, but the atmosphere was amazing and Johnny did his stuff leaving a pleasing number of garlic sniffers crying into their Stella Artois. Always good to see!
In the beer tent afterwards, when the euphoria of the victory had died down, the pneumonia set in and Bruce and I, who had been in the uncovered seats, began to shiver. We were both absolutely soaked and both only had our england tops on. As a result, the night was called to an end fairly early (midnight) and we got the train home.
The Final
Our preparations for the final were not ideal, it has to be said. A quiet Friday night out, turned into a fairly massive Friday night out. This can be blamed on the following:
- Bruce's mates who had come over just for the final so were keen to make the most of their time in Sydney
- Miss Tory Viney who's tactic for approaching the Kiwi rugby team, who were in the same pub as us, was to drink as much as possible so that she would be presenting herself to them in the best possible light - can't wait to see the photos Tory!
- The appearance late on of our old friend Mr Red Bull - always a sign of trouble!
Anyway, the result of this night of revelry was that I spent Saturday morning paying homage to the holy toilet - if you know what I mean - and so was not at all keen to be dragged over to Manly to have lunch. After several dodgy moments on the bus and the ferry - oh by the way, the rain from the previous week's semi final had returned on the Thursday and was still going strong - we arrived in Manly. We met up with Kate Romer (an old family friend of Tessa's who she hadn't seen for about 8 years) for lunch and by the end of it I was feeling much better and we were both back on the wine/beers by 2pm.
We said our goodbyes to Kate at about 4pm and headed back to Circular Quay to take our places on the Opera House steps for the pre-match build up. To our amazement, the rain stopped and the sun came out ... but it was alas a brief respite and as kick off approached the rain started again and the ponchos came out!
Well, I'm sure you all watched the match so know full well that the Poms stuffed the Aussies 20-17 with a last minute Johnny Wilkinson drop goal. The atmosphere at the Opera House was amazing and the moment that the final whistle blew can be described as truly one of the most amazing moments of my life. There were loads of television cameras at the Opera House and we had our photos taken on many occasions so rated our chances of making it into one of the local papers. Anyway, the rest of the evening was a bit of a blur but there were definitely fireworks and definitely a lot of very sick looking Aussies! Nice!
Now I feel that I need to further elaborate on exactly how good it felt. I'm sure you can imagine that the feeling of beating Australia, in Australia in the world cup of the game in which they were reigning world champions was a good one, but to give you a fuller appreciation of just how f**king good it felt, I need to briefly describe to you the journalistic anomally that is popularly known as the Australian Press.
Basically they are the most bigotted, arrogant, anti-English, chip-on-their shoulder, self absorbed, ignorant group of people I have ever come across in my entire life and although it's hard to be objective, I'm sure the English press is not this bad! What made it all the funnier was that over the course of the tournament, their opinion of the Wallabies changed from "no hopers" to "the most exciting team in the world today" while England were just a one man team who should have lost to Samoa, Wales and France and so were lucky to have got to the final.
Two articles in particular I feel need to be highlighted here. In the 21st November edition of the Sydney Morning Herald (the day before the final), 6 Australian journalists were asked to name their World XV. Aha, I thought, a chance to see the Aussies admit that they aren't the best in the world. So imagine my surprise as I perused the various selections that had been made that
- 3 of the journalists had more Aussies than English in their teams
- 3 hadn't chosen Johnny Wilkinson at Fly half, and
- the most Kiwis any of them had was 3
Unbelievable!
The second article that I would like to mention was in the 23rd November edition of The Daily Telegraph (the Aussie version obviously) which had a post match analysis of the final which gave Wendell Sailor, possibly the worst player in the tournament, 7 out of 10 for his performance in the final. They clearly have absolutely no idea!
Since I have been back, I have had a chance to see some of the British press coverage and was relieved to see that it wasn't just me who thought that "Big Dell" was a pile of shite - The Sunday Times gave him 2/10 - now that's more like it!
Anyway, enough of that. One other reason that I was perusing the British Press, and particularly The Sunday Times, was that on page 8 of November 23rd's edition, there is a picture of Miss Morris holding two pints of beer aloft under the headline "Night Barmy Army Drank Sydney Dry" - classy chick! Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your view, her left arm obscured my face but the trade mark cap and sticky out ears are there to be seen! The rest of our little group was there as well including Kirsten and Reena. Thanks to everyone who emailed us to let us know about the photo by the way!
Our last two days in Sydney were spent mainly in the recovery position but the time eventually came for us to start the long journey home.
We left Sydney at 3.40pm local time and arrived at Heathrow a grand total of 32 hours later at 9.55am yesterday morning.
We did bizarrely end up on the same flight as Liz (friend from uni) and her boyfriend David who were also in Sydney and whom we had failed to meet up with so that was quite weird!
In summary ...
So what's it like being back? Well, it's nice in as much as it's always nice to come home but we could definitely have stayed out in Sydney longer. Having said that, winning the world cup was a great way to cap off a great holiday and our financial situation is such that coming home was a necessity.
We've had the most amazing time ever, which I hope has come across in our emails and photos. From the filth and heat of India, to the beauty of Nepal, the cleanliness and drunkeness of Singapore, the beauty of Malaysia, the beaches of Thailand, the amazing ancient history of Cambodia, the equally amazing recent history of Vietnam, the hecticness of Hong Kong and the sheer variety of Australia, it's truly been a trip of a lifetime.
We've seen amazing things and met brilliant people - and all while spending less than we would have if we'd stayed in the UK (and that's a fact!).
I can't recommend strongly enough doing what we've done - no matter who you are and what stage of life you are in. Life is indeed too short and there is so much out there to see and the sooner you start, the more you'll see!
We're very much looking forward to seeing our friends and also to keeping in contact with those lucky devils who are still out there. We've got one more set of photos to get developed (about 30 films) so will be making more updates to the website (www.geocities.com/julesandtessa) when they're ready.
I'd like to also take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Sarah in Singapore, Philly & Simon in Hong Kong, Mick & Lou in Melbourne and Kirsten & Reena in Sydney for letting us stay in their respective houses - we definitely owe you!
Finally, a massive thankyou to everyone who has emailed us over the last 7 months. It really has been great to be kept in touch with what's going on with you guys wherever you are and for those of you not in the UK, beware because we may be turning up on your doorstep sooner than you think!
So as we gaze out of the window at rainy London, it is with a lot of great memories and a list as long as my arm of places we are going to next, that we sign off for the final time.
Love Jules & Tessa xxx
P.S. Neither of us have mobiles as yet, but we're staying at Tessa's parents' house in Teddington for the foreseeable future and can be contacted on 020 8977 6032
Kirst & Reena - thanks a million for letting us stay!
Bruiser - Keep having fun and keep in touch.
Sarah & Jim - Sounds like your diving trip was amazing. Thanks again for sorting out the Whitsundays trip and see you soon.
Kate R - great to see/meet you, definitely give us a call next time you're in the UK.
Craig - see you Monday (boo hoo boo hoo)
Weener / Halton - how are the surprise welcome back party plans coming along
Liz - I'll email that photo of David's cousin when I get it developed