Sunday, bloody hot Sunday

G'day

No, I'm not in Tasmania yet but I wanted to write a quick post re this weekend when the temperature's got up to 40 degrees. Yes, it's very hot and I'm not sure how well Andy Murray's going to cope later today in the tennis final - but I'm going to watch him on the big screen in central Melbourne later so we'll see.

And yesterday, when it was cooler, I had a great time shopping, complaining to Vodafone people about how useless their service is, and wandering round the Tattoo Expo at Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building. Not that I have the slightest interest in getting a tattoo obviously (in fact some of the displays were enough to put me off pencils and crayons, never mind ink and needles - anyone for a painting done with your very own blood or an eyelid tattoo?) but I'd wanted to see inside this beautiful building for a while and this was my chance. Somehow I managed to not see the queue to buy tickets ($50 a person!) and wandered straight in with nobody stopping me so a good result all round, despite the scary people wandering round - you can definitely have too many tattoos and piercings.

Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building - built for an exhibition. Presumably a royal one. In Melbourne.

Interior shot without tattooed people (I didn't have my camera with me so these shots are both from the internet - hence the higher quality of photography than generally found on this blog)

And that's it for now - I'm off to sweat a bit more.

G'bye.

Australia (g') Day

G'day

So Wednesday 26 January was Australia Day - the day when Australians celebrate the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788 (this led to the establishment of Sydney). It's also the day when thousands of wannabe Aussies go through the citizenship ceremony, say "Bonza" and "Strewth" a few times and become fully fledged Australians. And (best of all) it's a public holiday meaning I had the chance to get out of Melbourne and visit the lovely Dandenongs hills, just of the city, in the company of two lovely, if slightly hungover, mates.

The drive to get there is through drab suburbs and past dodgy bars with Billy Joel tribute acts but all of a sudden you turn off the huge motorway and the concrete is replaced by massive eucalyptus trees, soaring above lush ferns that fill the hillsides. The towns here are small and strewn out along the single road running through the region.

First stop was Sherbrooke Forest where we had a wander along the trails, admiring the birdlife, looking out for wildlife (none seen - very disappointed, especially by the lack of wombats), and flicking leeches of my legs! Yes really.

Some birds (can't remember the names but they were tame enough to eat out of people's hands)

The Forest

Cliff in The Forest (the nearby 'waterfall' was very poor, both in terms of water and in terms of falling)

Then we had lunch at this lovely little bistro-type place which did great home-made cakes including sticky date pudding (aka sticky toffee pudding in the UK - who knew I would eat and like something with dates in?), right next to the Miss Marples Tea Room (who knew she had time to eat afternoon tea in between solving murders?).

Miss Marples - bakes cakes, catches criminals

After that it was a stroll round an eco-friendly sculptor's garden (with one particularly weird sculpture - see below) and then a drive up to a viewpoint for a view (well, almost, it was hazy) of the whole Melbourne area before heading back to one of the towns for scones - only to find that everywhere was closed and we would have to return home unsconed. The horror! Luckily I'd bought a pie earlier so found compensation in that (and the chips I bought to go with it).

Possums don't normally have water coming out of their ears

Melbourne's in there somewhere

One man and his pie - a match made in heaven

Next stop Tassie (flying there on the 5th Feb) - if I don't see a wombat there someone will pay!

G'bye for now.

Cliff

Two nations divided by a common language

G'day

Ok, so the quote above (from Oscar Wilde) was about the linguistic differences between Britain and the United States but it could just as easily apply to Britain and Australia. Take for example the following sentences:
"Look, despite the GFC making me a bit short of money I decided that it was time for a new doona so I headed to the shop's Manchester department. There'd been a cool change mid arvo so I didn't wear my thongs. When I got to the Manchester department the Gen Y assistant talked around the different doonas so much that I thought we'd end up having a blue. In the end I bought the least daggy one. If we had had a blue he wouldn't have stood a Buckley's."

While it's highly unlikley you'd ever hear the above said by anyone it does give a taste of just how different Australian English can be. Any Aussie would understand the whole thing but for the benefit of non-Aussie readers here's a breakdown of the vocab.

• Look - same meaning as in British English but, as previously mentioned, uttered at the start of every sentence whether there's something to actually look at or not.
• GFC - global financial crisis. The rest of the world had recessions but not Australia (the economy here remained very strong) so instead of calling the whole economic meltdown a recession they coined the term global financial crisis and then (obviously - they do it with everything else) reduced it to the initialism GFC.
• Doona - a duvet (etymological root unknown).
• Manchester - the bedding section of a shop, not the city in northwest England (though possibly that's where the expression comes from as 19th-century Manchester was the world's major cotton producer and so responsile for sheets, pillow cases etc).
• Cool change - after a really hot day the wind can suddenly swing round from a hot northerly to a much fresher southerly. The drop in temperature is called a cool change.
• Thongs - flip-flops
• Gen Y - everyone's heard of Generation X but now (at least in Oz) there's Generation Y too, bascially those annoying teens who use 'like' every third word in a sentence and act as if the world owes them something.
• Talk around - to talk about (used excessively and with seemingly no realisation of the fact that if you talk around something you're actually not talking about it at all - get your prepositions right Australia!)
• Having a blue - to have a fight
• Daggy - grotty, sleazy
• A Buckley's - no chance at all (after the escaped convict who, despite not having much chance of surviving in the wild, did survive - see last post - so I'm not sure how this expression works)

So as you can see there are quite a few things Aussies say that are unintelligible to the rest of us. And there are some things we think they say, but actually they don't:

• Ripper
• Bonza
• Fair dinkum (actually I've heard this said once)
• Can you tell what it is yet? (Rolf's most famous phrase is unknown to his compatriots)

And that's it for now - weather's got better so I'm going to make the most of it - but if you're interested in checking out some more Australianisms click on this link.

G'bye!

Cliff

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

G'day from a hideously hot and sticky Melbourne. It's 10 o'clock at night and 26 degrees with 90% humidity. Blurgh!

Anyway, in an effort to take my mind off the horrible weather I thought I'd tell you about my weekend by the coast.

For people who don't know Melbourne I'll explain a bit of geography. The city sits at the northern edge of a massive bay called Port Phillip Bay. Curving round each side of the bay, and with just a narrow gap at the bottom between them, are two peninsulas - the Bellarine to the west, and the Mornington to the east.

I was lucky enough to get invited to a friend's beach house down on the Bellarine last weekend (place called Point Lonsdale, just south of Queenscliff on the map) and had a fantastic time (thanks Will and family). Below are some photos of my jaunt.

Cliff takes to the water. Notice the lovely weather (33 degrees) and my sensibly protected arms (unfortunately the same can't be said for the feet which got a bit burnt)

Cliff on the water. Great fun until the wind changed direction and I had to summon up all my strength (so not much to draw on then) to get me back to the shore.

My first Huntsman Spider. In Will's house. Not dangerous (if you say so), just big and hairy.

Cliff and Point Lonsdale's Lighthouse. Notice how the weather had changed - temperature had dropped around 10 degrees. Behind me (but you can't really see it) is a cave in which an escaped convict spent some time in the early 1800s (allegedly - he did actually escape and spent 30 years living with local aborigines, but whether he actually came to this cave is debateable)

Rainbow over the bush behind the beach house.

So after a lovely time on the Bellarine Peninsula I caught the ferry across the Rip (the small gap at the bottom of the bay) to the Mornington Peninsula and headed for Sorrento, a very posh seaside resort (and a lot busier than Point Lonsdale)

Not having friends on the Mornington Peninsula I'd booked into a very nice hotel for the night as you can see. Not cheap though at around £130 for the night.

Sorrento lies on a narrow strip of land with bay beaches on one side (calmer water) and ocean beaches on the other (a lot wilder - good for surfing, bad for swimming). This is the view along the ocean beach with Point Lonsdale's lighthouse in the distance .

And finally (though it needs no introduction as it's so famous) is London Bridge. Apparently. No, I don't see it either but it's a vaguely interesting rock formation.

And that's it for now - more when I can concentrate properly (in other words, when this humidity's gone). G'bye!

Happy New Year - and best street name ever

G'day and happy new year all

Hope yours were fun. Melbourne on NYE was sweltering in 40 degrees but it's cooled down a bit since then (around 30 today).

There were fireworks coming off the CBD (city centre) skyscrapers for midnight which was quite impressive (would have been more impressive if I'd been standing further away to gain the full effect rather than right in the middle and having to spin round constantly to see them all). Screaming French young people next to me and a group of Indian guys recreating a Bollywood dance routine all added to the atmosphere. The non-wash-offable curry stain on my hand and shirt from earlier in the evening didn't (seriously, I don't know what was in that curry but it must have been something toxic because my hand was still stained nearly two days later - and yes, I had washed in the meantime).

Next day I decided to follow one of the walking tours of Melbourne in Lonely Planet's guide to the city. The plan was to explore the 'famous' 'laneways' (backstreets) of my current home which are a hotbed of street art and cool bars and restaurants - apparently. Unfortunately, having chosen New Year's Day to do this walk meant that not only were a lot of the cafes etc closed but even some of the laneways themselves (who knew you could close an entire road?). And the street art was pretty rubbish (but then I do prefer Goya and El Greco). Anyway, it was still fun seeing different bits of Melbourne.

And talking of different bits of Melbourne I'll finish by putting in a link to what I think must be the best name for a thoroughfare in the world. I hope the link works!

More soon but g'bye for now.

Cliff