Had a lay in this morning before taking the 12.30 Greyhound bus from Canberra to Sydney. Arrived in Sydney and spent about an hour looking for my hostel. Turns out I had to get a train to it - it's halfway between the city and Bondi beach in the 'Backpacker' region, so there's loads of cheap bars, clubs and accomodation here.
I ate out at a fairly posh restaurant (by myself :( ) and had rump steak and mash for $10! I thought Sydney would be the most expensive place yet, but apparently not.
Anyways, this evening has so far been spent talking to various people in the hostel courtyard. Met two european guys and a Japanese girl, who are all working here. They all just went to bed and the whole place is clearing up, so I took the chance to get onto one of the few computers here.
I haven't really seen anything in Sydney yet, so tomorrow will be spent wandering around, taking in the sights. Might head down to Bondi or Manly beach on Saturday if it's warm enough (not making that mistake again!) and then there's a free concert all day Sunday by the harbour. I'm probably gonna go to that with one or two of the girls from the Oz tour last week; apparently they're arranging something.
I'm here at least a week earlier than originally planned, so I'm gonna get as far north as I can, see the blue mountains and just see what else I can generally fill my time with while I'm still in Oz. Might even make it as far as Cairns and back, but we shall see.
I'm gonna go and grab some more food now.
Speak soon,
Matt
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
The last week or so.
True to my word, this won't be long.
Melbourne was wet and cold, but still probably my favourite of the big cities I've been to so far. I did literally next to nothing on the Saturday - completely missed all the Anzac day stuff, went and explored a bit in its aftermath, had a few coffees in local cafes, but just generally spent the day in the hostel either asleep or reading or writing the massive blog post below this one.
The day after was my last day there, so I was determined to make something of it. What better than a trip to the beach? Well erm... possibly not taking a trip to the beach. I'll let myself explain:
Anyway, I spent two hours (like I say, I was determined) at the beach, didn't get any sun whatsoever, caught the 20 minute tram back and went and dried off in the hostel.
Once again, Chinatown proved a useful place to fill up. I found a Singaporean (is that the right word?) restaurant tucked away in a back street and it was filled with Singaporeans, which I took as a good sign. Got a very nice (and phenomenally spicy) meal for $10, two free cups of hot brown water and a thoroughly patronising talk from the waitress about how westerners can't handle spicy food. I guess she does have a point though, I was sweating quite a bit.
I spent the evening around the river and federation square, taking in the Melbourne night life with a slightly more sober outlook than I had done previously.
Next morning was an ealy start. My coach left at 8.30 and wouldn't arrive in Canberra until 6 in the evening. So Monday was boring. Nice meal in the evening though, courtesy of Penny. I'm staying with some old family friends while I'm in Canberra, which has proven good for both the budget and the stomach.
The last two days have been spent in Parlaiment House (very big and white-housey), the city centre shopping mall (free coffee courtesy of Ben's friends who work at Gloria's Coffee house), the war memorial (fascinating place and far too big to take in in one day), the national gallery of Australia (like the Tate Modern without the same budget), Tidbinbilla national park (mountainy place just west of Canberra - me and Penny saw two wild Platypusses), some nice restaurant somewhere for Ben's going away meal with his mates, which was cool. Good food too. Oh and the theatre to see Dylan Moran stand-up, which wasn't quite as good as I'd have expected, but still very good.
Anyways, that's all. Not really any photos to show unless you like photos of military aircraft, in which case check my Flickr over the next few days (yes Dad, there was a Lancaster there...)
Ciao for now,
Matt
Melbourne was wet and cold, but still probably my favourite of the big cities I've been to so far. I did literally next to nothing on the Saturday - completely missed all the Anzac day stuff, went and explored a bit in its aftermath, had a few coffees in local cafes, but just generally spent the day in the hostel either asleep or reading or writing the massive blog post below this one.
The day after was my last day there, so I was determined to make something of it. What better than a trip to the beach? Well erm... possibly not taking a trip to the beach. I'll let myself explain:
Anyway, I spent two hours (like I say, I was determined) at the beach, didn't get any sun whatsoever, caught the 20 minute tram back and went and dried off in the hostel.
Once again, Chinatown proved a useful place to fill up. I found a Singaporean (is that the right word?) restaurant tucked away in a back street and it was filled with Singaporeans, which I took as a good sign. Got a very nice (and phenomenally spicy) meal for $10, two free cups of hot brown water and a thoroughly patronising talk from the waitress about how westerners can't handle spicy food. I guess she does have a point though, I was sweating quite a bit.
I spent the evening around the river and federation square, taking in the Melbourne night life with a slightly more sober outlook than I had done previously.
Next morning was an ealy start. My coach left at 8.30 and wouldn't arrive in Canberra until 6 in the evening. So Monday was boring. Nice meal in the evening though, courtesy of Penny. I'm staying with some old family friends while I'm in Canberra, which has proven good for both the budget and the stomach.
The last two days have been spent in Parlaiment House (very big and white-housey), the city centre shopping mall (free coffee courtesy of Ben's friends who work at Gloria's Coffee house), the war memorial (fascinating place and far too big to take in in one day), the national gallery of Australia (like the Tate Modern without the same budget), Tidbinbilla national park (mountainy place just west of Canberra - me and Penny saw two wild Platypusses), some nice restaurant somewhere for Ben's going away meal with his mates, which was cool. Good food too. Oh and the theatre to see Dylan Moran stand-up, which wasn't quite as good as I'd have expected, but still very good.
Anyways, that's all. Not really any photos to show unless you like photos of military aircraft, in which case check my Flickr over the next few days (yes Dad, there was a Lancaster there...)
Ciao for now,
Matt
Friday, 24 April 2009
The Oz Experience
EDIT: This post is actually finished now. Enjoy.
Right, I've got a lot of catching up to do... get ready for a big one.
Wednesday morning I was up bright and early for my bus. I was on an Oz Experience tour with 15 others (mostly female :D), which would take 3 days to get from Adelaide to Melbourne with an overnight stop in the Grampians and a second near the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road. The first 4 or so hours of driving were fairly uneventful and consisted of the 16 of us getting to know each other, sleeping, reading, listening to aboriginal music and stopping in tiny little towns to buy food and drink. Eventually the Grampians were in sight and we were warned of some 'light trekking'. Okay, so maybe it wasn't a sheer cliff face, but it certainly wasn't light. Good fun though and definitely worth the effort once we reached the top. We climbed Hollow Mountain and Mt Zero, I think. Amazing views from the top overlooking the plains. We could see areas of controlled burning everywhere in the distance.
From there, we drove up to a place who's name I've completely forgotten, but we got there for sunset and it had some amazing viewing points and big rocks you could climb out onto and hang over 300m drops. We picked up a few more people from another Oz tour and they came with us to the night's accomodation. They'd be travelling with us for the next two days too. One new guy, Tony, sat next to me on the bus and it turns out he's just quit from being a tourist info guy in Sydney. So he's turned out to be a very useful person to know, and I now have a pretty decent idea of what to expect from there, and where the good places to go are :)
The night's accomodation was a series of small house-like buildings in the middle of a forest clearing in the mountains. Dinner was spag bol, and was cooked (extremely thoroughly!) by half of the group. The other half (including me) washed up afterwards. I ended up scrubbing the charred remains at the bottom of the spaghetti saucepan. Thank you very much, Kirstine! The food that survived was very nice though. The rest of the evening was spent talking and generally getting to know each other better.
6am start the next morning in order to catch the sunrise from 'The Pinnacle'. We left at 6.30 and it was an hour and a half trek to the top. And my word, it wasn't half stunning at the top! I'll let the photos do the talking...
After another 45 mins or so coming back down from The Pinnacle, we were to head off towards the coast. It was a few hours to Warrnambool, where we'd join the Great Ocean Road. So naturally, everyone used the time to catch up on some much needed sleep. Reaching Warnambool, the weather was taking a turn for the worse. Not awful by any means, but overcast and gloomy aren't really ideal conditions for seeing one of the most beautiful coastlines on the planet.
Most of the day was spent driving and stopping in little seaside towns for coffee and toilets, until we reached the Twelve Opostles. These are a series of massive limestone sticky-outy things just off the coast and had we had better weather, they'd have looked stunning against the sunset. We didn't even get a hint of a sunset though, unfortunately.
So back to the bus it was, and we had a 10 minute drive down the road to Princetown - our host town for the night. Simply by turning up, we tripled the local population of eleven. Princetown consists of a small hostel (where we stayed), a pub and a shop. That's about it. So no big night out on the town for us... we stayed in had dinner and watched a film instead. The meal was great - sausages, burgers, mash potato and peas. And even better, it was made for us (and therefore not burnt. Well not much anyway...). Dinner was spent learning phrases (please don't ask what they were) in some of the many languages spoken around the table. Somehow the German word Fleischflanzel cropped up and has become a running joke ever since. It means 'burger' apparently. After dinner, we had the daunting task of choosing a film to watch. The hostel has a film rental system with a good 200 or so films to choose from. Though perhaps 'good' isn't the best word for it. Not being a fan of chick-flicks, I could see half a dozen decent titles on the shelf, but amazingly one of these was actually chosen! Gone in 60 seconds. Not bad...
So I spent the night watching a film in a room where girls outnumbered guys about 4 to 1. Not a bad way to spend a night, I'm sure you'll agree. Of the dozen or so that watched the film from the beginning, only 4 remained at the end. Lightweights!
And so all too quickly came our last day together. Most of it would be spent driving the last of the Great Ocean Road and then heading through the evening traffic into Melbourne. There were still some highlights to come though. Early on, we stopped by the road side, walked a little way into the trees by the road and very quickly were met with our first sighting of koalas. I've been told not to call them koala bears, because apparently they're not bears. Anyway, they were basically balls of fluff high up in the trees. We saw 4 or 5 in total and I got a few pictures (you might have to squint to see the koalas though).
Next stop was to see the official starting point of the Great Ocean Road, so we took the obligatory pictures of the archway. And then beyond this was Bells Beach - a surfer's paradise apparently. Not today though, it had just started pissing down with rain as we pulled up in the car park, but we valiantly got out, walked down to the phsycadelically painted toilet block, and walked back up to the van where the girls (Lou especially!) had a not-so-subtle perv over a surfer getting changed by his car.
The rain had cleared by the time we reached Otways rainforest up in the mountains. It has the highest metal walkway in Australia and you do get some pretty good views from it. We were set the challenge of finding as many black snails as possible; they're a native species of Australia, only found in the Otways and they're carnivorous. Emily and Kirstine took the challenge somewhat too seriously, racing down the paths to be the first to spot them. We found about ten in total and the two girls valiantly declared a draw to their game. Anything else would have ended in tears I think. Oh yeah, there were dinosaurs in the rainforest too... probably should have mentioned that.
And once again it was back on the bus for the last time (unless I'm forgetting things, which is extremely likely... I can think of about 3 or 4 places I've missed and I've forgotten where abouts they came in the trip - Included would be some cool waterfalls and a chocolate factory. My memory is still as useless out here as it is at home. Anyway, where was I?). We were about 2 hours from Melbourne and the last of the driving would be on boring highways with lots of traffic. We passed the time with (extremely loud) renditions of all our national anthems, which all the melbournite passers by thoroughly enjoyed. Having exhausted all but Vanessa's energy levels, we agreed to meet up later that night to go out for the night.
So 9 o clock was the agreed meeting time and Flinder Street station was the agreed meeting place. The three of us staying in Nomads (me, Emily and Kirstine) went for dinner at a little outdoor pizza place and ordered far too much Hawaiian pizza. Then onto Flinder Street to see who else would show up. In the end it was only Vanessa, but the others had decent excuses, so we'll let them off.
Anyway, we got very lost in the suburbs, watched a very drunk man dance with the local chav population in a sleazy pub in south Melbourne, got the tram back to where we'd started off and went to a club in federation square. It will suffice to say (because no doubt my parents are reading this very carefully) that we all had a good night and drank very responsibly. Vanessa definitely didn't cause a fight between two guys at the end of the night. Definitely not.
We got back to Nomads at a very respectible hour and went our separate ways. I haven't seen anyone from the Oz tour since, but they're heading in similar directions to me, so I'm sure this won't be the last time.
From now on, my blogs are gonna be shorter than this - not only because it's expensive to be on the internet for this long, but it's bloody boring too!
Time now for the photos though: (CLICK ON THEM!)
Not entirely sure why it cuts my photos in half... Daniel???
Clockwise: Me, Emily, Vanessa, Kirstine
The lovely cramped bus
Those photos are not even close to chronological order, so don't try and work out where/when each place is. I don't even know myself...
Goodbye for now,
Much love,
Matthew
Right, I've got a lot of catching up to do... get ready for a big one.
Wednesday morning I was up bright and early for my bus. I was on an Oz Experience tour with 15 others (mostly female :D), which would take 3 days to get from Adelaide to Melbourne with an overnight stop in the Grampians and a second near the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road. The first 4 or so hours of driving were fairly uneventful and consisted of the 16 of us getting to know each other, sleeping, reading, listening to aboriginal music and stopping in tiny little towns to buy food and drink. Eventually the Grampians were in sight and we were warned of some 'light trekking'. Okay, so maybe it wasn't a sheer cliff face, but it certainly wasn't light. Good fun though and definitely worth the effort once we reached the top. We climbed Hollow Mountain and Mt Zero, I think. Amazing views from the top overlooking the plains. We could see areas of controlled burning everywhere in the distance.
From there, we drove up to a place who's name I've completely forgotten, but we got there for sunset and it had some amazing viewing points and big rocks you could climb out onto and hang over 300m drops. We picked up a few more people from another Oz tour and they came with us to the night's accomodation. They'd be travelling with us for the next two days too. One new guy, Tony, sat next to me on the bus and it turns out he's just quit from being a tourist info guy in Sydney. So he's turned out to be a very useful person to know, and I now have a pretty decent idea of what to expect from there, and where the good places to go are :)
The night's accomodation was a series of small house-like buildings in the middle of a forest clearing in the mountains. Dinner was spag bol, and was cooked (extremely thoroughly!) by half of the group. The other half (including me) washed up afterwards. I ended up scrubbing the charred remains at the bottom of the spaghetti saucepan. Thank you very much, Kirstine! The food that survived was very nice though. The rest of the evening was spent talking and generally getting to know each other better.
6am start the next morning in order to catch the sunrise from 'The Pinnacle'. We left at 6.30 and it was an hour and a half trek to the top. And my word, it wasn't half stunning at the top! I'll let the photos do the talking...
After another 45 mins or so coming back down from The Pinnacle, we were to head off towards the coast. It was a few hours to Warrnambool, where we'd join the Great Ocean Road. So naturally, everyone used the time to catch up on some much needed sleep. Reaching Warnambool, the weather was taking a turn for the worse. Not awful by any means, but overcast and gloomy aren't really ideal conditions for seeing one of the most beautiful coastlines on the planet.
Most of the day was spent driving and stopping in little seaside towns for coffee and toilets, until we reached the Twelve Opostles. These are a series of massive limestone sticky-outy things just off the coast and had we had better weather, they'd have looked stunning against the sunset. We didn't even get a hint of a sunset though, unfortunately.
So back to the bus it was, and we had a 10 minute drive down the road to Princetown - our host town for the night. Simply by turning up, we tripled the local population of eleven. Princetown consists of a small hostel (where we stayed), a pub and a shop. That's about it. So no big night out on the town for us... we stayed in had dinner and watched a film instead. The meal was great - sausages, burgers, mash potato and peas. And even better, it was made for us (and therefore not burnt. Well not much anyway...). Dinner was spent learning phrases (please don't ask what they were) in some of the many languages spoken around the table. Somehow the German word Fleischflanzel cropped up and has become a running joke ever since. It means 'burger' apparently. After dinner, we had the daunting task of choosing a film to watch. The hostel has a film rental system with a good 200 or so films to choose from. Though perhaps 'good' isn't the best word for it. Not being a fan of chick-flicks, I could see half a dozen decent titles on the shelf, but amazingly one of these was actually chosen! Gone in 60 seconds. Not bad...
So I spent the night watching a film in a room where girls outnumbered guys about 4 to 1. Not a bad way to spend a night, I'm sure you'll agree. Of the dozen or so that watched the film from the beginning, only 4 remained at the end. Lightweights!
And so all too quickly came our last day together. Most of it would be spent driving the last of the Great Ocean Road and then heading through the evening traffic into Melbourne. There were still some highlights to come though. Early on, we stopped by the road side, walked a little way into the trees by the road and very quickly were met with our first sighting of koalas. I've been told not to call them koala bears, because apparently they're not bears. Anyway, they were basically balls of fluff high up in the trees. We saw 4 or 5 in total and I got a few pictures (you might have to squint to see the koalas though).
Next stop was to see the official starting point of the Great Ocean Road, so we took the obligatory pictures of the archway. And then beyond this was Bells Beach - a surfer's paradise apparently. Not today though, it had just started pissing down with rain as we pulled up in the car park, but we valiantly got out, walked down to the phsycadelically painted toilet block, and walked back up to the van where the girls (Lou especially!) had a not-so-subtle perv over a surfer getting changed by his car.
The rain had cleared by the time we reached Otways rainforest up in the mountains. It has the highest metal walkway in Australia and you do get some pretty good views from it. We were set the challenge of finding as many black snails as possible; they're a native species of Australia, only found in the Otways and they're carnivorous. Emily and Kirstine took the challenge somewhat too seriously, racing down the paths to be the first to spot them. We found about ten in total and the two girls valiantly declared a draw to their game. Anything else would have ended in tears I think. Oh yeah, there were dinosaurs in the rainforest too... probably should have mentioned that.
And once again it was back on the bus for the last time (unless I'm forgetting things, which is extremely likely... I can think of about 3 or 4 places I've missed and I've forgotten where abouts they came in the trip - Included would be some cool waterfalls and a chocolate factory. My memory is still as useless out here as it is at home. Anyway, where was I?). We were about 2 hours from Melbourne and the last of the driving would be on boring highways with lots of traffic. We passed the time with (extremely loud) renditions of all our national anthems, which all the melbournite passers by thoroughly enjoyed. Having exhausted all but Vanessa's energy levels, we agreed to meet up later that night to go out for the night.
So 9 o clock was the agreed meeting time and Flinder Street station was the agreed meeting place. The three of us staying in Nomads (me, Emily and Kirstine) went for dinner at a little outdoor pizza place and ordered far too much Hawaiian pizza. Then onto Flinder Street to see who else would show up. In the end it was only Vanessa, but the others had decent excuses, so we'll let them off.
Anyway, we got very lost in the suburbs, watched a very drunk man dance with the local chav population in a sleazy pub in south Melbourne, got the tram back to where we'd started off and went to a club in federation square. It will suffice to say (because no doubt my parents are reading this very carefully) that we all had a good night and drank very responsibly. Vanessa definitely didn't cause a fight between two guys at the end of the night. Definitely not.
We got back to Nomads at a very respectible hour and went our separate ways. I haven't seen anyone from the Oz tour since, but they're heading in similar directions to me, so I'm sure this won't be the last time.
From now on, my blogs are gonna be shorter than this - not only because it's expensive to be on the internet for this long, but it's bloody boring too!
Time now for the photos though: (CLICK ON THEM!)
Not entirely sure why it cuts my photos in half... Daniel???
Clockwise: Me, Emily, Vanessa, Kirstine
The lovely cramped bus
Those photos are not even close to chronological order, so don't try and work out where/when each place is. I don't even know myself...
Goodbye for now,
Much love,
Matthew
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Adelaide
My flight to Adelaide was the best so far. Actual nice food, nice sunset out the window for the first half hour or so and three whole rows of seats (both sides) to myself, right at the back of the plane.
Adeaide itself is less spacious. I've been here a day now and it feels like I've done everything there is to do already. It's mostly a bit of a run-down and dead town with a few half decent pedestrianised shopping streets and not much besides. I did however, stumble upon a bit of a hidden gem in the city's Central Market and China Town. There's a huge fresh food and merchandise market, where I found a really nice Fill-Up-This-Plate-And-Bowl-With-As-Much-Food-As-You-Possibly-Can-For-Only-$6.80 (less than 4 quid!) Chinese restaurant. I took full advantage of that offer...
After eating, I wandered round the market looking for nothing in particular. Having found exactly that, I decided it was time to head out of the city. Glenelg Beach is 20 mins away on a rather nice air-conditioned tram. While still technically in Adelaide, it's like a completely different town altogether. Really nice sandy beach, loads of coffee shops and restaurants along the shore and a massive road running away from the beach full of surfing shops, clothes shops and bars. Much nicer than Adelaide city centre, by any means.
I stayed for sunset (about 6pm) and finally had a chance to use all the camera stuff I'd taken. So I was happy for the rest of the evening. :)
I'm now sitting back in the YHA Youth Hostel at 8.50, contemplating going to bed. I've gotta be up at half 5 tomorrow, to catch a 6.20 bus to Melbourne. It'll take at least 3 days (depending if I wanna stop off for more than 1 night anywhere) and the first night will be spent in the Grampians. So I'm very much looking forward to that. The second night will be in Warrnambool (I think I spelt that right), on the Great Ocean Drive. Again, I'm pretty excited to see that too. Then onto Melbourne for a few nights and somehow I'll get to Canberra from there.
Anyway, once again, onto the photos. And to those who doubted me, this is why I bought all that stuff for my camera:
Click on them to see the full width.
Adeaide itself is less spacious. I've been here a day now and it feels like I've done everything there is to do already. It's mostly a bit of a run-down and dead town with a few half decent pedestrianised shopping streets and not much besides. I did however, stumble upon a bit of a hidden gem in the city's Central Market and China Town. There's a huge fresh food and merchandise market, where I found a really nice Fill-Up-This-Plate-And-Bowl-With-As-Much-Food-As-You-Possibly-Can-For-Only-$6.80 (less than 4 quid!) Chinese restaurant. I took full advantage of that offer...
After eating, I wandered round the market looking for nothing in particular. Having found exactly that, I decided it was time to head out of the city. Glenelg Beach is 20 mins away on a rather nice air-conditioned tram. While still technically in Adelaide, it's like a completely different town altogether. Really nice sandy beach, loads of coffee shops and restaurants along the shore and a massive road running away from the beach full of surfing shops, clothes shops and bars. Much nicer than Adelaide city centre, by any means.
I stayed for sunset (about 6pm) and finally had a chance to use all the camera stuff I'd taken. So I was happy for the rest of the evening. :)
I'm now sitting back in the YHA Youth Hostel at 8.50, contemplating going to bed. I've gotta be up at half 5 tomorrow, to catch a 6.20 bus to Melbourne. It'll take at least 3 days (depending if I wanna stop off for more than 1 night anywhere) and the first night will be spent in the Grampians. So I'm very much looking forward to that. The second night will be in Warrnambool (I think I spelt that right), on the Great Ocean Drive. Again, I'm pretty excited to see that too. Then onto Melbourne for a few nights and somehow I'll get to Canberra from there.
Anyway, once again, onto the photos. And to those who doubted me, this is why I bought all that stuff for my camera:
Click on them to see the full width.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Prisons & Blues & Roots
I spent the day before yesterday being a tourist around Perth and Fremantle. Spent the morning walking around Kings Park in Perth, which is like a huge nature reserve to the west of the city. Then I took the river boat down to Fremantle, which took about an hour - I even saw a dolphin! Fremantle is a fairly small nautical town with lots of shops for surfers and loads of little cafés dotted around the place.
I'd been recommended the tour of the old British Convict Prison there, so I went and did that while Adam went and had a coffee nearby because he wasn't feeling too well. The prison was fascinating to see, even if the tour did have a bit too much 'oooh look, this room is haunted' and 'if you come here at night you can hear so-and-so's footsteps in the coridoors'.
Yesterday was pretty special though. Again in Fremantle, me and Adam went to the Blues & Roots festival along with 40,000 others. It was a huge show with 3 stages and a lot of very good music. We met a few of Adam's friends and work collegues and spent the day with them. Highlights for me would include Blue King Brown, LABJACD (Aussie hip-hop), Easy Star All-Stars (by far my favourite of the day), Zappa plays Zappa and The Special Beat. Me and Rus (Adam's mate) got to go backstage with The Special Beat and get a song list signed and have a chat with the band. They're all from in and around London and were just like, well... normal people. We spent most of the time talking about football.
I couldn't really have asked for a better welcome to Australia than that, to be honest.
Today's gonna be a lazy day. Might go for a bike ride once it's cooled down a bit (it's very slightly hotter than the UK here; ~30degC at the moment) and then go to a local sports bar to watch Everton vs Man U.
Hope all's well back home.
Matt
Kings Park:
Fremantle Prison:
Blues & Roots festival:
I'd been recommended the tour of the old British Convict Prison there, so I went and did that while Adam went and had a coffee nearby because he wasn't feeling too well. The prison was fascinating to see, even if the tour did have a bit too much 'oooh look, this room is haunted' and 'if you come here at night you can hear so-and-so's footsteps in the coridoors'.
Yesterday was pretty special though. Again in Fremantle, me and Adam went to the Blues & Roots festival along with 40,000 others. It was a huge show with 3 stages and a lot of very good music. We met a few of Adam's friends and work collegues and spent the day with them. Highlights for me would include Blue King Brown, LABJACD (Aussie hip-hop), Easy Star All-Stars (by far my favourite of the day), Zappa plays Zappa and The Special Beat. Me and Rus (Adam's mate) got to go backstage with The Special Beat and get a song list signed and have a chat with the band. They're all from in and around London and were just like, well... normal people. We spent most of the time talking about football.
I couldn't really have asked for a better welcome to Australia than that, to be honest.
Today's gonna be a lazy day. Might go for a bike ride once it's cooled down a bit (it's very slightly hotter than the UK here; ~30degC at the moment) and then go to a local sports bar to watch Everton vs Man U.
Hope all's well back home.
Matt
Kings Park:
Fremantle Prison:
Blues & Roots festival:
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Days 1 and 2
I arrived in Perth late last night to find Adam waiting to pick me up. I'm staying with Adam, Sarah and Matilda (2nd cousins/cousins once removed/something like that...) while I'm here, in their rather nice house. I get my own room with my own double bed... I could get used to this!
I've spent today trying to fend off the jet lag in coffee shops around the city centre. Most of the afternoon was spent wandering the city, which is a beautiful place; very clean and friendly with loads of pedestrian only areas and thousands of cycle lanes. There's bikes everywhere! I got a few photos of the skyline and the famous Bell Tower while I was out and they're at the bottom of the page if you wanna see them.
The weather's been in the late 20's all day and it's brilliant! I am by far the most pale person out here though. Hopefully that'll start to change soon.
Anyways, dinner's about to happen here, so I'd best be off. Going to prison tomorrow apparently... :S
I've spent today trying to fend off the jet lag in coffee shops around the city centre. Most of the afternoon was spent wandering the city, which is a beautiful place; very clean and friendly with loads of pedestrian only areas and thousands of cycle lanes. There's bikes everywhere! I got a few photos of the skyline and the famous Bell Tower while I was out and they're at the bottom of the page if you wanna see them.
The weather's been in the late 20's all day and it's brilliant! I am by far the most pale person out here though. Hopefully that'll start to change soon.
Anyways, dinner's about to happen here, so I'd best be off. Going to prison tomorrow apparently... :S
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