Been home over a week now, so it’s all over.  Grey days and early nights… but it snowed today, so that’s pretty special.  Actually proper fluffy snow that stuck, at least for a few hours.  I’m still going through outstanding stuff from the trip, although I’ve balanced the accounts (favourable exchange rates and rock bottom interest rate on our mortgage were quite helpful!).  Pleasantly surprised going through the transactions to see exactly how much they come out at in pounds sterling.

Anyway, this is risking getting REALLY tedious so I’m going to stop for the moment and come back when I have our itinerary to hand and am not hungry….

Well, it’s finally time for us to go home, so here we are on Hong Kong airport… this is my second attempt at this, the first one got lost by the admittedly free but nevertheless annoyingly slow connection here at gate 24 - so I’ll be saving it regularly!

I will complete the blog eventually, in retrospect (or at least I intend to!) and will e-mail everyone to let you know when this happens.

I think we’re both ready to go home now, although that doesn’t take anything away from the fantastic time we’ve just had.  Going from NZ in our campervan (hereafter referred to as Bessie) where we travelled sometimes up to 400km without seeing a filling station, to Hong Kong with a squillion people all living in about two square miles was a bit of a shock, but we got over it and are now ready for the drop in temperature when we get back to Blighty - even though we only have to make it from the airport into a car!  Winter in Hong Kong is a pleasant 19-24 Celsius, although I’ve never seen so much haze on a sunny day as yesterday - we knocked the harbour boat tour on the head as frankly, we wouldn’t have been able to see far past the bow.

Well, my 15 free minutes are well over, so I’d better let another bleary-eyed traveller get their Internet fix.  More later…

Been in New Zealand now for two weeks - amazing place. But before we get to that, there’s new information to add into the melting pot on the Vegemite vs Marmite debate. In NZ you can get Vegemite (exactly the same as the Aussie stuff) but you can also get Marmite - which is different from the UK stuff. So it’s a more complicated decision to make. In an effort to sort this out once and for all, I recently purchased a small jar of Kiwi Marmite, a supermarket own brand white toaster loaf and some individual serving size butter portions (although they call them “serves” over her, not “servings”) - so I’ll keep you posted.

This just got bizarre - the guy next to me just started talking on Skype in Spanish, with a Mexican accent if I’m not mistaken, and he sounds a little bit too much like Speedy Gonzales - so I’m trying not to laugh. Better move that text off the screen… I’ll need to type some more before that happens though!

New Zealand started off with a cheap night in the airport hotel and the last chance to fill our boots with an inclusive buffet breakfast before going self-catering in the camper van, which we picked up the next day. We’ve called her “Bessie” (well, Allison suggested that as it has Doctor Who connotations for me - and she doesn’t go quite as fast as the third Doctor’s souped-up classic of choice). She’s a 1998 short wheelbase Ford Transit with a large box on the back, basically. The logo and stripes of the company she used to belong to have been removed and painted over, as clearly she wasn’t good enough for them (most rental campers you see look pretty much new and are suitably expensive). But, with under 430,000km on the clock, and just serviced, who are we to complain?

Appearances aside, everything works - well almost. Fridge is fine (but it only gets cold enough to freeze anything in the ice compartment when you’re on mains power, it seems) with only one major quirk - if you go around a right-hand turn or small roundabout with anything like a bottle of pop in it (the 1.5l ones won’t fit in the door, so they have to go on the shelf - and can roll against the door), the door swings open and vomits some of the contents. This can be inconvenient at 100km/h on State Highway 1 (although it’s more likely to happen on a right hand bend, as I said before), as can the fact that the door to the shower room/toilet/wash basin room (for those of you not familiar with campers or caravans, yes that’s one room, and it’s smaller that any toilet you’ve ever been in) also flies open (on left hand turns, this time). The quick-witted among you may already have realised that the two doors are on opposite sides of the van - so the problem is neatly solved by wedging the large suitcase (which also contains the smaller suitcase) in between the two doors. If we remember, that is.

There are a couple of other minor annoyances - like the fly-screen being missing from one part of the screen door, but it’s pretty cool really. It’s also got a brand new CD/radio with input socket (which we’ve been using with the iPod when there’s either no radio, or it’s rubbish). If I’d known in advance I could have brought some MP3 CDs with me. It’s got a remote as well, so you can sit at the table at the back, set the fade so it only comes out of the rear speakers (assuming you want to be nice to your fellow campsite guests) and chill out to some tunes while at the desk/table/couch/bed (yes, it’s all the same thing, plus storage lockers underneath).

There’s something brilliant about being able to pull over anywhere at all (we did this earlier today by the sea near the Abel Tasman national park), sit either at the table behind your tinted glass or on your camp chairs outside in the sun, and have a cup of tea and a biscuit.  Or a meal, for that matter.

That’s it for now, next time I’ll talk about re-enacting the Lord of the Rings movies.  The lucky ones among you may even at some point get to see photographs of trees that were in the movies, and maybe even the grass that’s a different colour because that’s where the track Gandalf rode up used to be.  You think I’m joking, don’t you??

… so we’re off to New Zealand later today.

Due to popular demand, here’s a post.  Doesn’t say much exciting, does it?  It’s possible that I MAY get some time to add more stuff once we’re in NZ, especially as we’ll be driving around in a camper van and so won’t have any deadlines - and probably will want the odd break from the fantastic scenery, the quest for the One Ring, etc.

I’m actually quite disappointed with myself that I didn’t type anything while we were staying at Allison’s Aunt Elaine’s - I think I got distracted by installing various service packs on her notebook, conditioning the battery and other much more interesting stuff.  Installing a new digital set-top box and configuring it and her existing 3-in-1 remote control (which wasn’t quite set up properly before, so she didn’t use it much) didn’t take long, but the documentation and training did…  Unfortunately the home grown telly content’s still pretty poor, with only the BBC and the odd quality US show (complete with frequent ads of course) breaking the mould.  The news often cracked me up with its dodgy editing of sound bites and flipping directly from death and maiming to the fluffy bunny story at the end.

In a nutshell, Sydney’s an amazing city.  Weather could have been better (it’s nice now, just as we’re leaving).  I’m beginning to understand the appeal of the beach lifestyle (shock horror) and have purchased my own pair of thongs (a pair?!?) which I can almost comfortably walk in.  The Blue Mountains, while not actually mountains (it’s a canyon - so it looks like mountains if you’re at the bottom of the valley) are indeed blue, with one amazing view after another followed by the world’s steepest railway back up to the top (or second steepest - pretty damn steep anyway).

Japanese tourists - what’s with the V sign on every photo (the victory one, not the insult)?  And why do you need a photo of you in front of the toilet, the tour bus, the road, the shop, and at motel breakfast (this actually happened).  I had to take a photo of Japanese taking photos of themselves, as it’s been such a feature of the holiday.

We’ve been driving Auntie Elaine’s lovely Ford Festiva automatic around a bit, and there’s the oddest roundabout near where she lives where it changes from lights to a roundabout - not unusual, you might think - rush hour the lights take effect, off-peak goes back to a roundabout?  Not quite - it can change from one to the other every minute or so.  In fact, out of about 5 times we crossed the roundabout, it changed from one mode to the other on approach or while we were on the roundabout 4 times.  I even got honked at (quite politely, I must add) while apparently hesitating at said roundabout - in fact I was trying not to switch the wipers on (indicators are always on the right stalk in Oz) while simultaneously trying not to use my left foot on the nonexistent clutch pedal.

We’re doing quite well running our Aussie currency down - I’m down to my last 10 cents, mainly thanks to Allison printing something off and just going for the print button rather than checking how many pages it was - so as usual the second page had just one word on it.  If she hadn’t done that I’d have cents - enough to buy me, err… a couple of jelly snakes or something.

Chocolate’s dead expensive over here - no idea why, we’ve just been avoiding it as you can get a small fresh fruit salad with muesli yogurt for the same price as a large Snickers, so no-brainer.  Apart from the Cold Rock cafe, where they make up a McFlurry-style (only ten times better) ice cream with your choice of flavour and mini choc bar, chopped and mashed up by hand in front of you on a cold plate.  Unfortunately the third time (ahem!) we had one, the poor girl doing it clearly hadn’t developed her arm muscles enough as my mini Mars bar was only in two pieces…

Speaking of ice cream, one of the major brands over here is called “Peter’s” - so in keeping with the European tradition (crisps called “Lays”, etc) some of them have amusing names.  Well, one of them - “Peter’s Trumpet”, which is a Cornetto-style affair.  I probably found it funnier than it actually is, but it reminded me of a shared folder on Pete’s computer which showed over the network as “Dump on Peter”.  Techies among you should appreciate that.

Sent home about 7kg of stuff yesterday - programme from the Rocky Horror Show, Australia guides, spare socks, sandals that make me bleed (I’ll break them in later, they weren’t cheap), “Mr Apostrophe” card, cuddly toy, fondue set.  Cost $80 for the sea trip - about three months, they said.  That seems a lot, until you convert it.  Same thing happened when Allison bought some sunglasses as her current ones are scratched and falling apart - she found two pairs she liked but couldn’t decide.  One pair looked cool and were darker than the second pair, which were better but lighter.  Added the prices up and converted to - ooh, 32 quid.  Bought both.

Likewise, 100km train journey into Sydney at peak time cost $8.60 - less than 4GBP.  It’s about four times the distance from Telford to Birmingham, and under half the price.  The commuters still find something to complain about here, but there’s no need to really.

Also went to fill up Auntie Elaine’s car - over half tank of unleaded, $20 - that’s under 10GBP.  It’s about a dollar a litre, so that’s 46p-ish.  No wonder the ute (utility vehicle = pick-up truck) in front of us was running on unleaded - at that price, why not?

That’s it for now, let’s hope Qantas get the veggie meal right this time (the chicken salad had gristly bits in last time, perhaps a knuckle I think - didn’t inspire me to go back to meat) as there’s nothing I like better than being served a meal at 20,000 feet, and before everyone else as they do the weirdos first.

Catch you later…

Ok, here we are on our second day in Sydney, finally got into a net cafe (cheapest yet actually - $2/hour, overnight lockins available, etc).  In a comment on a previous post, PeterB accused me of possibly faking the whole thing from under the stairs and demanded photos… ok, well I only have 7GB so far, but I’m sure I could manage to share one or two of the better ones.  Actually, I think I took about 1GB’s worth of the Sydney Opera House today - half before then sun came out, so I had to do them all again.

The problem is this - I need about a whole day to catch up with the blog… and if you’d travelled more than half way around the world to visit places, would you want to spend all day on a computer just like you can do at home?  Some of you clearly need not answer that.

Also, we’ve got this super-whizzy ticket that lets us travel on buses, trains, ferries and the tourist round-trip thing - and if we’re not travelling somewhere, we’re wasting it!  So I’m off now to the farthest suburb it allows for no apparent reason.

It’s official, there’s far too much going on in Melbourne for its own good, and certainly too much for old-timers like me and Allison.  Just gone midnight on Saturday night, Allison’s gone to bed and I’m in a handy 24 hour Internet café / convenience store just down the road from our hotel.  At least I can spend some time catching up on this blog, as I’ve been pretty pathetic so far.  I’m going to crack on as before, with a basic outline, and add the details later, so check back to read those in a bit.  Or don’t bother - up to you, obviously!

Great Ocean Road - think you’ve seen the sea, cliffs and rocks? Think again. You ain’t seen nothin’. Think you’ve seen flies? I don’t think so.  What’s so interesting in my ear anyway?

We have bought way too much cheese from the market (Shropshire Blue was available but we went local). It’s yours if you can get here. . .

Ok, well it’s becoming clear that this blog is going to take a fair bit of time to complete, at the rate I’m currently writing it!  So I’m going to enter in brief details for each day so far, then (hopefully) fill in more later.  So here goes… don’t forget to click on “newer posts” at the bottom of the page to see the other stuff (which is actually older posts, but still… I’ll see about fixing that as well, perhaps).

Went to Waterfall Gully where I spotted a koala in a tree (pretty high up though) and enjoyed some flies.  Later, at Cleland Wildlife park, hand-fed kangaroos and watched a Tasmanian Devil eat half a guinea pig - all of it.

Finished up with a burrito from BURP (mexican chain restaurant, apparently).

It seems Heinz Beans are different also. Is nothing sacred? At least you can get ‘English Recipe’ ones as well. I always thought they weren’t the best beans, anyway. Branston’s are pretty good.

As you can tell, we didn’t get up to much on this day, which was cool though. We bummed around Hahndorf, did some laundry (which just wet the washing a bit, really - the powder didn’t dissolve much, must have got something wrong!), and had a dead cheap Chinese meal, where we got confused and ordered a carafe of wine, thinking it was 0.5 litres, when actually it was a whole litre. Cost $10.50, which is about 4 pounds something, and went down very well.

Aussie Cadbury’s Dairy Milk tastes like Galaxy. Nooooo!! That’s just wrong. What next? Heinz Beans?

It’s cloudy here in Hahndorf today, so we’re having a day of Internet catch-up and laundry. I appear to have packed twice as many socks as pants, and have given up searching the suitcase for the correctly marked day of the week socks.  After all, it’s tomorrow half of the time here anyway.

While Internet has been available most places we’ve been, it’s variable in cost - $5/hour (UK#2.15) where I am now is pretty reasonable, plus it’s a proper PC with admin rights, so I can upload some photos if I get a chance.  If I had my own machine of course, I could get wireless for free in most of the hotels we’ve been in - although the nice people at our current motel let me sit behind the desk at reception and use theirs!Airport kiosks and hotel lobbies tend to have coin-op units with a crummy trackball, and running Linux so you can’t use familiar keyboard shortcuts.  Aussies use US keyboards, which isn’t a problem apart from the Enter key being smaller normal, so you end up hitting “\” a lot.  I now realise why the throttle controls on X-Wing were ”[", "]“, and “\” - they’re in a row on the US keyboard, whereas the backslash is bottom left in the UK.

Wow, this is thrilling, isn’t it?  I think I need to cut to the chase a bit more!!  I’m going to fill in the history now, so don’t think you’ve read it all before, scroll down…..

Train to Adelaide only 1 hour late (total time 23 hours), but this was covered by time zone change. Found best beer in town - and it’s German! Allow me to explain. We arrived on the Ghan (short for Afghan, which was the nationality of the camel handlers who originally transported people and freight along that route) in the afternoon with no idea of where we were staying. We planned for 6 nights in Adelaide but were not able to book anything before we left the UK as it was too early (!), so tried on the net from Alice, but found that the entire city appeared full up for Wednesday and Thursday nights. Anyway, leaving it up to the experts at Tourist Information usually works a treat, so we arrived at the city centre office, complete with luggage (nearing 60kg of it - we really need to learn to travel light).

Turns out there’s some classical vioinist called André Rieu playing a concert on Wednesday - and that’s why the city is full. So, helped by world class tourist info agent Amy Telford (who had actually heard of the UK town on account of it being her namesake, apparently no relation to Thomas though) we managed to get a room 45 minutes bus ride out of town in picturesque Hahndorf.

On the rush hour commuter bus out of Adelaide we came across a third instance of a very positive Australian trait - if you look lost, they’ll offer help. Of course, in the UK you need to ask for it - if offered help you would immediately suspect something dodgy (which is what happened the first time we were offered help from a hairy local while standing at an intersection with a map in Perth, “No , we’re fine thanks.” <aside> “Weirdo”).

So we got to the correct bus stop (number 55 - do we have numbers on bus stops in the UK? If not, we should have) thanks to friendly locals. It’s great to see some greenery, and roads that aren’t just straight… and as Hahndorf is a German village (”Germany Town”? “Little Germany”?), of course there are pubs in the Bavarian style. So we stopped for a beer. Of course, if the pub had been a British or Irish style pub, forget it… but Germany’s a foreign country too, so it’s still a valid holiday thing to do.

We’d tried a few Aussie beers, top ones so far being Beez Neez (it’s a microbrewery so only really available in Perth I think) and James Squires’ Golden Ale (which I had on the plane and in Perth, both to good effect). Other than that, they’ve been pretty disappointing so far to be honest. Victoria Bitter - well, it’s not bitter, but it’s okay. Toohey’s New - boring. Hofbräu (Oktoberfest seasonal version) however, imported from the Fatherland, went down a treat. After noticing Allison’s odd behaviour after less than 250ml of this stuff, I checked the alcohol content - 6.2%. Lovely. She decided to have a light Aussie beer after that to avoid falling over - yep, tasted like, well, kangaroo’s pee, probably.

Germany 1, Australia 0.

Don’t have time to write much now, but we just returned from a camping safari to Uluru (that’s Ayers Rock in old money) and are about to take the train to Adelaide.  This takes 23 hours.

The other item of note to mention is that the Todd River here in Alice Springs is flowing - this may not sound unusual, but apparently if you’ve seen it flow three times it means you’re a local.  Apparently, prior to this week it hasn’t flowed since 2002 (or something like that anyway - the bus driver may have been exaggerating).

See you in Adelaide, where there’s an annoying medical conference on, and at the moment it looks like we have to leave town on Tuesday and Wednesday, unless we want to sleep rough (i.e. dorms in the YHA, which is Allison’s idea of rough!).

King’s Canyon (again no sunrise, sigh) - pretty amazing.  Better than Uluru, with only slightly more flies.

Very long journey back, including an impromptu performance from Dinky the singing dingo.  He doesn’t really sing, just howls, but he “plays” the piano all by himself.  Do a Google search, it’s all true.  Martin Clunes featured him in a documentary, apparently.

Back to Alice Springs, dinner at Bo’s Saloon - www.bossaloon.com.au - checked the time and picked most likely candidates to be online on Saturday morning back home, and texted.  Trevor and Peter both saw us waving and had the DJ put requests and shouts out for us… which we didn’t hear as we were in the restaurant bit.  It’s the thought that counts though!

Nice 4am wake-up call in tent, then Uluru at dawn.  Cloudy.  Not all lost, sun rose above clouds about 8am.

Walked round, saw large rock.  Saw more parts of large rock.  Took some flies around for a trip with us.

Got culturally centred at the cultural centre, then packed up and on to next campsite.

No sunset to speak of but incredible electric storms for most of the evening and into the night - fortunately some distance away.  Got video of lightning strike (took a while).

06:05 pick up by tour bus to set off into the bush.  About 20 or so people on the tour (bus was full), 2 other Brits, two Aussies, three Norwegians, couple of Belgians, a handful of Dutch and the rest Germans.

Very hot and sunny… couple of stops on the way to the camp at Yalara (town near Uluru) then visit the Olgas.

Just arrived at Alice Springs. F@*k me it’s hot. Just about made it onto the bus alive. May need to use hotel pool. . . as long as it’s …

Just spent the night in Denmark - no, the one in Western Australia.  A bit more of a proper town than Pemberton, but still pretty sleepy.  Despite it being slightly inconvenient for travellers who arrive just as everything’s closing, I still think they’ve got it right down here in terms of not having late opening everywhere.  Let’s face it, you don’t actually NEED 24 hour supermarkets, do you?  How about you just plan ahead a little bit and get your shopping slightly before you get hungry?  As long as it’s possible to get there before or after work (i.e. opening hours aren’t 9-5 Mon-Fri), who cares?

Of course, the bottleshop (drive-through off licence) is open later!  Having seen Australian television (including Neighbours, well ahead of you lot, ha ha) I understand why they drink so much.  Seriously though, if you thought alcoholism / binge drinking was a problem in the UK, it’s nothing compared to Australia.  One thing I can say though is that Australian boozers tend to be more likely to be friendly/happy drunk, rather than aggressive.  They’re still bloody loud though.

Case in point: last night in our reasonably-priced motel room, the couple next door, despite sitting next to each other on the verandah (presumably smoking) still managed to shout their entire conversation.  This continued after they went inside, with her yelling at him from the bathroom to avoid having to wait until she finished to answer his question.  After the radio incident two nights previously in Pemberton, I was ready for it and had the iPod to hand - although it wasn’t required in this case as they started to slow down their conversation shortly before midnight, evidently giving me a long enough gap to get to sleep.

I’m going to try and catch up with the blog backlog now, then we’re travelling pretty much all day to get back up to Perth for the flight to Alice Springs tomorrow.  Although the car trip is like travelling from London to Inverness, somehow it doesn’t seem as far, possibly because it’s in kilometres, and also because I expect to see only about seven other vehicles on the way.

Packed up and left Pemberton after a tasty breakfast of Coco Pops in the packet (the little selection packs are designed for you to pour milk into and eat out of - don’t know if this is the case in the UK, it’s been years since I’ve had one).  The Nutri-Grain (which is nothing at all like British Nutri-Grain - go figure) didn’t want to play, so I ate it dry out of a cup instead (this is thrilling, isn’t it?).

I’ll add more to this later, my hour in the café is up…

Colleague and chum (when I’m not throwing vodka at him) Peter Barfield had the bright idea of sorting out this blog site for me

Got to Pemberton - getting pretty much Hicksville now, but the shop is open until 7pm!  Checked into motel, they do a smorgasbord on Saturdays so we tried it out.  Vegetarians unsurprisingly not well catered for, plenty of stuff though still, made up for it with the puddings!

We haven’t been able to think of anything more original than “David and Allison’s Excellent Adventure”, which marginally won over the even more original “David and Allison’s Bogus Journey”.  Short of swapping the names around and / or making it an “Excellent Journey” or “Bogus Adventure”, we’ll be awarding a prize of a cuddly koala (we tried to get a cuddly quokka, but they’re not available it seems) to the best suggestion.  Or we might just say thanks.

Test update by text and twitter. . .

Crikey, it worked! This is what happens when Peter Barfield gets involved…

Just to get this going, here’s the first update I e-mailed around to people last week:

G’day all (you’re all BCC:ed BTW, so you can’t figure out how few friends
I have)

One week in, we’ve survived the humidity in Singapore, and are currently
in Perth, WA (that’s Western Australia to those of you not in the know),
where it’s a bit more like home temperature in the summer, only with more
sun and a bit more wind (third windiest city in the world, apparently).

Bullet points of interest(?) or note:

- It’s pretty much the same temperature in Singapore day or night - just
above or below 30 Celsius. It’s so humid our wedding anniversary cards
wilted in the hotel room and wouldn’t stay standing up.

- If you find somewhere to eat in Singapore that’s full of locals (who are
easily identified by sight), the food will be a) cheap and b) quality.

- If you find somewhere to eat in Australia that’s full of locals (who are
easily identified by sound), the food will be a) meaty and b) lardy (a bit
like Australians, in fact - and that’s only the Sheilas).

- Australian air stewards are not camp, and do not mince. You would not
mess with them. Very useful if you need to be thrown into a dinghy.

- Sign on restaurant door - “no thongs”. The mind boggles - how would they
know? Do they check every woman’s underwear on the way in?!?

- “Thongs” is Australian for “flip-flops”.  “Pair of thongs please, extra
large!”

- Australians use UK clothing sizes, but US shoe sizes.  Make your mind up.

- Australian power sockets look like the scary mask from the “Scream”
movie. Well, after a Toohey’s or seven, anyway.

- “Rice Krispies” are called “Rice Bubbles” over here. Makes sense, as
“Krispies” isn’t even a proper word.

- Everything from Kellogg’s and Cadbury’s is subtly different, as if made
in a different factory on the other side of the world. Odd that.

- Vegemite is crap - far too tangy. Marmite’s far better. Haven’t tried a
Vegemite sandwich though, yet. Perhaps I need to go to Brussels, where I
understand tall muscular Australians hand them out for free.

That’s it for the moment, more rambling musings later, perhaps.

If you don’t want to listen to any more of my drivel, just reply saying “I
don’t want to listen to any more of your drivel”, and I won’t bother you
further.

David & Allison

Took the Boranup drive (forest scenic route) and visited the Jewel Cave, then the Cape Leuwin Lighthouse.  Closest we got to the South Pole.

Watched a girlie chick flick on our tiny TV and DVD player!

Well almost.  Didn’t actually see any, but as they’re wild and only pop in when they feel like it, I suppose they  must not have felt like it.  Cool centre though.

Drove down to Busselton and walked the jetty - nearly 2km long (that’s over a mile in old money), nearly blew off into the sea, wouldn’t be allowed in UK as had no handrail on the one side, and we can’t be trusted not to fall into the ocean.

Got to Margaret River (that’s a town, wine connoisseurs may have heard of it) and used the old Tourist Info tactic to book two nights in a more expensive, but very nice (with lots of different lights) room, with our first DVD player of the trip, and a free DVD library (and the smallest TV - go figure).

Not a bonfire in sight!  Probably not appropriate for Aussies to celebrate a failed coup in a foreign land centuries before their country existed (as we know it).  Took “Roly” the rented Corolla from Perth to Bunbury, enjoying the view of fried chicken restaurants on the way down, and flicking the wipers on every time we wanted to indicate a turn.  Quick visit to the difficult to find (not) tourist info, spent night in Fawlty Towers motel.  No sign of Basil, rats, or for that matter Germans.

Day trip by boat to Rottnest, cycle hire, incredible scenery, beaches, and quokkas!  Handed out sick bags on boat - a little bit rough on the open sea!

Trip on train to “Freo” to enjoy seaside winds, street performers and fish and chips.  Allison bought a hat (eventually).

Spent all day travelling, basically.  Hulk movie on plane, pretty cool.  Flight QF72 didn’t suffer explosive decompression in the luggage hold this time, fortunately.

Had fun (?!) on Perth airport waiting for pre-booked hotel shuttle bus.  Turns out they had assumed we’d be at the domestic terminal… why??!  More details to come…

More details to come…

More details to come…

Arrived at Singapore just before dark.  Got a nice time update on my phone - that doesn’t work in the UK or Oz, just nice to know you’ve got the right time, it’s very complicated with all the daylight saving (ish).

Had lovely walk through airport, then left building to catch hotel shuttle bus, and it hit - temperature AND humidity all in one go.  I’m surprised I didn’t faint on the spot.  Fortunately we made it the five metres to the air-conditioned bus before any lasting harm was done.

Packed up (perhaps a little too much!), affairs in order, said goodbye to Miffy, handed over house to Mike and Nicci.  Nicci’s preparing to take advantage of Pizza delivery from Domino’s already (to be fair, it was one of the first things I did when moving into a proper town for the first time!).

Drove down to Heathrow with Mike and Nicci, Mike drove the car back, bless him.

Caught Strictly Come Dancing on a TV in Terminal 4 - Sky+ is set, so we’ll save the rest for cold February nights with no money when we get back home!

Never actually flown from or to Heathrow before - first time I went there was on a day trip with Nana on a coach from Shrewsbury, just to sit in the viewing gallery and watch planes come and go. It was well cool, saw Concorde and everything.  We also used a tiny travel salt cellar on our tomatoes.  Weird what you remember, isn’t it (this must have been the late seventies, say 1977 perhaps)?

Our seats were the very back row - 75D and 75E, fact fans.  For plane geeks, our Quantas 747-400 was a converted cargo plane, apparently you don’t normally get that many rows of seats…  We had a pillow, Top Cat - style eye mask, crummy headphones with the stupid double-jack so you can’t use your own, blanket and a pair of socks!  So worth the money already, especially when we (shock horror) got our veggie dinner before everyone else (this rarely happens, it’s usually last).  I don’t know why, there’s just something about being served a meal on a moving mode of transport - it makes me oddly elated and excitable.  What was even better about it was that we had not only two full meals over the duration of the flight, but also a banana and a goodie bag of sweets and chocolate, including polos!   I wisely scoffed my Twirl immediately, whereas Allison’s melted horribly and had to be put in the minibar in Singapore to recover later.

The in-flight movies I chose were “Iron Man” (excellent, the only one they had with subtitles which is a good job as you can’t hear anything through the crappy headphones) and “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” which was both informative and hilarious (and could be understood without subtitles, fortunately, as there weren’t any).  It’s a Morgan “Super Size Me” Spurlock docu-comedy (?!) with a serious subject.  The opening gaming console martial arts - style fight between Morgan and Osama was so hilarious I watched it three times, and again on the flight from Singapore to Perth.  Special moves of note were “Redneck Power” and “Moustache Ride” from Morgan, and “Turban Tongue” and “Rain of Terror” from Osama.  Hilarious.