You may have heard recent reports of ghost sightings on various beaches
across the South East coast of Australia. I’d like to take this opportunity to
reassure you that it was in fact just me lying out in my factor 50 coat of
armour. After the stress of
organising a wedding, combined with various work handovers, our trip to Australia was a wonderful
opportunity to just lie in the sun and unwind.
But it wasn’t all sun, fun & factor 50, we had some serious road
tripping to do. The Great Ocean Road was looking for some people to cruise down
it and we were just the couple for the job. Unfortunately however, Europcar rental
didn’t get the memo and supplied us with a compact Hyundai rather than a more appropriate
sporty convertible number. Turns out the issue was related to our request for
the cheapest car available. Who knew convertibles weren’t part of the budget
range?
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| The stunning Great Ocean road scenery |
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| Here we are with some stereo-typically Australian animals and birds. |
But I’m getting ahead of myself with all this talk of cars. We actually
spent three days in Sydney before heading off on our five day road trip. So let
me stick with blogging convention of chronological order and reverse back to
the Sydney leg of our trip …
I have a theory (based on extensive research during the past 10 days combined with a 3 week trip, 4 years ago), that all Australian’s are really easy going and friendly because they live in such a great country. Like the nice man who checked us in at the Holiday Inn Darling Harbour when we arrived in Sydney. Despite the fact that we weren’t technically paying for our three nights accommodation (we were using my frequent traveller loyalty points), he still sent a bottle of sparkling wine and a plate of chocolate dipped strawberries up to our room to congratulate us on our honeymoon. But that wasn’t all. The temperature outside that day was in the blistering high 30’s so he was feeling particularly generous spirited and thought “hey, I like these Irish folk” so sent on up a second bottle of sparkling wine along with yet another plate of chocolate dipped strawberries a few hours later [1].
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| The cure to Al's insomnia ... |
So it was with a belly full of chocolatey strawberries that Al & I
got a water taxi from Darling Harbour to the Sydney Opera House for our guided
tour. It
was fascinating to see all areas of the opera house, including a short peek at
a rehearsal. We even managed to get our hands on last minute tickets to the opening night of
a show while we were there. It didn’t matter that the tickets were standing
room at the back only – it was an incredible opportunity to see a show in the Opera House. Incidentally, it turned out to be a good thing that our tickets
were standing only. We did cheekily sit in a couple of latecomer’s seats for
the first few minutes of the show, but sitting down had the effect of lulling
Al to sleep, if only until we were inevitably evicted by the true owners
of the seats. Having to stand for
the remainder of the show did help him stay awake and therefore aided him in
actually seeing the show, which is always a bonus. The show, by the way, was
not a hardcore opera but rather a short hip hop dance show (think diversity
from Britain’s got Talent) called Blaze.
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| Check out Lynda's homecooked pavlova ;-) |
Now as you might be able to tell, I am a big fan of Australia. I
can absolutely see why some 3.5 million people have emigrated to Australia in
my lifetime alone. However, no matter how much I adore the Australian
lifestyle, I would note that the dining out choices are either overpriced or unhealthy. Based on the sheer volume of
KFC’s, ‘Macca’s’ and Subways we drove past on our little roadtrip, I imagine
they must have the highest number of take out joints per capita of anywhere in
the Southern hemisphere. Perhaps demand for takeaways is so high because all the other
restaurants are prohibitively expensive. Either way, we were craving a simple, wholesome, homecooked meal. So it was really kind of my long lost cousin Ed to invite us over to his place for dinner while we were in town. His wife Lynda whipped up a delicious home-made lasagna with salad (yes, salad ... I never thought I'd see the day when I craved salad). Al is quite the lasagna connoisseur and he gave Lynda’s recipe a
serious thumbs up (he would have said more but he was too busy eating). Delicious homecooked meal aside, listening to their lifestyle made me green with envy[2].
They live just ten minutes from Manly beach along with their three beautiful
children. It was so
interesting seeing first hand how different their life is from back home. Take
the morning commute to work for instance. Ed likes to mix it up. Sometimes he
cycles to work and sometimes he gets the ferry from Manly to circular quay
after a morning swim in the ocean. I’d like to take a leaf out of his book but
a morning dip in Sandymount beach just doesn’t seem as inviting.
Our own day trip to Manly beach made me think about how life in
Australia is basically the opposite of life back home. Children of all ages
were thoroughly enjoying their Summer holidays, the heat wave and hanging out in the beach and surf. Back in Ireland, medical professionals continue to
recommend that parents give their children vitamin D supplements due to lack of
exposure to the sun.
Anyways, having both spent time in Sydney and Melbourne on previous trips to Oz,
Al & I decided to do something a bit different this time and drive between
the two cities, stopping in various coastal towns en route and culminating in
the aforementioned cruise down the Great Ocean Road (See route on Google Maps here). At the start of the second
day of our roadtrip, our Jervis Bay motel manager expressed concern about our
plan to drive along the Princes Highway to Narooma. Apparently the highway had
a few closures due to bush fires. Al was unperturbed. He pointed out that the
temperature had dropped significantly from the 40-something degrees of a few
days ago, and besides, “worst case
scenario, we have to take a detour”. In a rare un-opinionated moment, it
didn’t occur to me to disagree with his logic. It was my turn to drive so I
just hopped into the drivers side of the car and started adjusting the seat, mirror
and choice of music. I should note at this point that I am a nervous driver and
had never driven in a foreign country before.
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| Kudos to the Aussie fire brigade who do amazing work. Shame on arsonists. |
About 25 km into our
journey, I spotted two helicopters and quickly realised they were bush fire
helicopters. The giant buckets dropping water on the smoky forest below was what
tipped me off. Nothing gets past me. I turned to Al and said “Look. There must be a fire nearby”. His reply: “Don’t
worry, it’s all grand”.
I continued driving … right past a TV camera crew van parked on the side
of the road. Then, going over a hill, I saw a giant cloud of billowing smoke
rising ahead of me. “I really
think we’re about to drive through a fire”.
“Ah,
it’s grand, Sure the cars coming the other direction are fine. They’d close the
road if there was a problem.”
I continued (as, to Al’s delight, did S Club 7’s greatest hits on my
ipod). By this stage, the road was lined on either side with charred remains of
forest from a very recent fire and the road itself was becoming increasingly
smoky. I turned on my rear fog lights and continued until I reached a
cross-roads. Although our main road remained open, the roads on either side
were closed and lined with fire engines, water tankers and TV camera crew vans.
I did what any sensible person would do. I pulled the car over, got out and
took some photos for my blog. I then retired my driving for the day and Al
gallantly took over to drive the rest of the way to Narooma. When we finally
reached our destination and checked into our nightly dingy motel, we were asked
where we had come from that day. When we replied that we had driven from Jervis
Bay, the lady looked confused
“How
did you get here? I thought the Princes Highway was closed. None of my
suppliers have been able to get here the past few days”
I guess Al’s optimism paid off but we were lucky as the road had been
shut for the previous two days and it seems there was no other way through.
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| If only this were around when Al broke his arm a few years ago. |
So having narrowly avoided
a bush fire, our road trip was back on. And little did we know that it would
present us with such a good opportunity to trace the lineage of the Cunningham
family. Nearly every coastal town we stopped at en route to Melbourne had
multiple streets, motels, bridges and even a medical centre named after the
Cunningham family. I guess the Cunninghams were
a pretty big deal around Lakes Entrance and Geelong in particular.
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| Explain this Darwin ... |
And it was in Featherdale
National Park that I truly understood what I had married into. While Darwin
would maintain that we evolved from the ape, it seems that the Cunninghams
evolved from the lizard type creature pictured on the left.
Anyways, after c.1,800km of driving and having stayed in six different
motels in six days, we finally reached Melbourne in time for the Australian
Open tennis. There’s not much more to say about this other than it was awesome.
We saw Venus Williams, Novak Djokovic and Tomas Berdych all win their matches
easily. However the highlight from an atmosphere perspective was Australian Sam
Stosur’s match. Proving that a home crowd is not always an advantage, she lost
the match despite leading 2-5 in final set.
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| Domestic AA battery & champion cheerleading at the Australian open |
Our final Australian destination in our short 10 day trip was the quixotic seaside town of St Kilda. If you've been wondering where all the hippies and rastafarians went once the 70's ended, or where all the yuppies went after the 80's ended, they're hanging out with the kite surfers in this fantastic town which is brimming with atmosphere. This was my second visit to St Kilda / Port Melbourne. With its seaside location, plethora of water sports options, fun bars & restaurants, random street parties and laid back vibe, I daydream about one day living there.
But no matter how much my head wants to move to Australia, my heart belongs in Ireland with my wonderful new husband, true friends and family. I may criticise Ireland but at the end of the day I do reluctantly love home too. Although not enough to go back there just yet. Adventurous New Zealand beckons - first call South Island. Watch this space for tales of our wonderous adventures with the Kiwi's.
Sarah
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| Left: Al getting his hippie on in St Kilda. Right: Luna Park, St Kilda |
Sarah
[1] Note: We
chose to ignore the possibility that this act of generosity may actually have
been a clerical error of which we were the happy beneficiaries.
[2] Please
note I was not actually green, this is just a metaphor. I remained my pasty
white colour for the entire evening. Thanks are due again to my trusty factor
50, combined with my terrific Irish skin
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