The latest from our traveller in the Antipodes

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Arrived into Hamilton Island on Monday 19th Dec where we took a $50 half hour ferry one way to Airlie Beach on the mainland. To travel to any other Whitsunday island costs half the price but to and from the only island with an airport they sting you for every penny. After hearing so much about the beauty of the Whitsundays it was a little disappointing that Airlie Beach reminded me of Faliraki. A typical holiday resort full of tourists drinking from 10 in the morning. Don’t get me wrong I love Faliraki, so much so that I worked four summers there in my early twenties. I love Ibiza too which I visited for the first time this summer only to go back 5 weeks later because I loved it so much. It’s not that I don’t like these places it’s just that I was expecting something else. I expected to be stunned by its beauty, by white sands and clear blue waters. Palm trees and an eternal sunset. Not a row of dilapidated bars and a swimming pool by the ocean because you can’t swim in the sea due to all the ‘stingers’, or jellyfish as we know them. They do leave bottles of vinegar for you on the shore of the beach though if you do decide to go for a swim and get stung… Or you can just rely on a drunk backpacker to stumble past and piss on you if needs be.

 

Anyway we stayed at Base hostel for one night. Rooms and facilities were nice enough and we were due to stay again on Friday but the staff were so unhelpful and unfriendly we cancelled the booking. It’s the first place I’ve been to in Australia where you feel like a burden to those that are serving you. Now it feels like England! We went out for a meal that night to a restaurant called Sorrento, overlooking the harbour. Tommy asked the waiter whether the prawns in the pasta came whole as he was considering ordering it. “I don’t know mate, they’re just f*****g prawns” The service in this town is outstanding. Backpackers serving backpackers. I want to leave. They are worse than students. All stoned with no common sense. The worst is the eternal backpacker who believes his way of life is far better than everyones elses and never wants ‘roots’. You can guarantee he will have a small chin beard, will be attempting to grow dreadlocks, have a white cotton long sleeve shirt undone to the chest and carry a guitar on which he will play Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child Of Mine long into the night! Three things you can 100% guarantee you will see in any town abroad; an Irish bar, someone in a Celtic top and a w****r with a guitar.

 

Tuesday morning I woke to find Tommy had been up all night with food poisoning. Bloody prawns! After a trip to the pharmacy we headed back down to the harbour, gave a cursed look in the direction of Sorrento restaurant and waited to board our boat. We were joining the Emperors Wings sailing boat for a 3 day 3 night scuba diving trip around the Whitsunday islands and out to the outer barrier reef. Initially I was dubious. The twin room we had booked turned out to be a small double top bunk bed in a shared cabin with 3 ‘cheery’ swiss. Did I mind sharing a bed with a sweaty Scotsman with the runs? Well you don’t really have much choice. Then why ask the question?!

 

The trip was actually really great. On the way to the outer reef we did a small stop off at Whitehaven beach which is renowned as the most beautiful of all the 72 islands. It was very pretty but not amazing, nor the best beach I’ve ever been on. I think Ibiza has comparatively beautiful beaches and water. The way the beach curves out into the bay at low tide creating a shallow lagoon filled with baby sharks however was quite special. Over the 3 days Tommy and I did 8 dives each, just beginner dives but up to 12 metres in depth where we saw turtles, huge shoals of giant parrot fish (my highlight), nemo’s, cuttlefish and an array of other fish and coral and starfish and sea stuff. Swimming along the outer edges of the ‘stepping stones’ which lay on the very edge of the outer reef was spectacular. The strong currents swept you along the reef and the coral cliffs disappeared below you into the dark blue depths. The weather on the surface was incredibly choppy and unstable but the feeling of serenity and calm under the water was wonderful. I have always been afraid of staring into the depths of the ocean if I have ever been unable to see the bottom. Here I felt no fear. Steady breathing, a sense of calm. On the final dive of the second day as I stood on the back deck in my wetsuit, tanks strapped to my back, flippers and mask in hand about to board the small diving boat to carry us further into the reef our instructor asked “Is anyone afraid of sharks?” Any answer to this question was irrelevant at this stage but instead of fear I felt a nervous excitement. The small boat took us out to another part of the reef and we somersaulted back into the water. Quickly we deflated our jackets and descended to the ocean floor equalising every metre or so. We sat on the bottom, 12 metres down, instructed to stay as still as we could while our instructor tried to attract sharks by bashing a small inflated bag. Slow steady breathing. Boom boom boom. Don’t move. Boom boom boom. I could hear the jaws theme in my head. Boom boom boom. Quiet. Really was amazing seeing a white tip reef shark emerge from the darkness, investigate from a distance then swim back into the dark. Even more amazing how calm and natural it felt down there. Brilliant. I have decided that before I go home I will obtain my Padi diving qualification. Is something I could and will do a lot more of. The 3 hour journey back from the outer reef to the islands was probably the choppiest I’ve ever experienced on a boat. The captain loved it. The half a dozen people at the back being sick didn’t. You could sit on the front of the catamaran as we sailed rising and falling into the huge waves splashing over the boat. It was like an extreme rollercoater ride. Great fun for those with good sea legs. So overall it was a great trip, the food was good, accommodation tight but what can you expect on a boat. Perhaps it just shouldn’t be advertised as a twin room. The crew were helpful and enthusiastic. And it didn’t surprise me one bit when on the 2nd night one of the diving instructors pulled out a guitar! I was however surprised not to find an Irish bar embedded in the outer reef or a turtle in a Celtic top. A trip I can highly recommend if you ever visit this side of Australia. www.whitsundaydive.com.au

 

On Friday we returned to Airlie Beach where got a ferry to Long Island resort. The only island with a hostel on it. We stayed here for one night and was great value for the price. It is a resort right on the beach with relatively good facilities, a couple of pools, a spa, tennis courts, an awful gym. Why have a room full of broken machines and call it a gym? Stupid. It is a 3 star resort but could be much nicer with a little care and attention. Although for $76 you can’t really complain. And with wallabies freely roaming the island as you lay in a hammock overlooking the beach its quite a nice experience. In the morning after a good night’s sleep and a quick check of my fantasy football teams and Facebook, we boarded the ferry back to Hamilton Island airport, $60 this time bastards! Now I’m sitting on the flight to Sydney where I will spend 9 nights over Christmas and New Year. So tomorrow we will be enjoying a bbq on bondi beach. Life is tough… Big love

 

The latest from our traveller in the Antipodes

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Melbourne

I had been told by several people that upon arriving in Australia I would wish I was back in New Zealand. For the first few days in Melbourne this was certainly the case. From bungee jumping, white water sledging and skydiving amid New Zealand’s beautiful scenery to casinos, dog racing and bingo in Melbourne’s city suburbs. Tommy and I were depressed. Melbourne is a big city like any other and after traipsing through the urban jungle for a day we longed to be back in the serene beauty of NZ. We started looking at flights to other areas of Australia, Fraser Island’s nature reserve, Adelaide for cage diving with great white sharks. We were chasing the adrenaline rushes we craved from Queenstown that bingo could not quite replicate but it was all too expensive and too far away. So we decided to stick it out, and with the hospitality of Tommy’s distant family as our hosts I’m glad we did.

Whenever I’ve been away for longer than a month it has always taken me around 3 weeks to adjust and settle in. And during these first few weeks I have had a bit of a crisis of faith in what I’m doing. In Melbourne I’ve endured this crisis. What am I doing? Why am I here? I miss the routine of my life, the very routine that I longed to escape throughout the planning of this trip. I miss my girlfriend. I should be at home. I expect these feelings, and while of course I will continue to miss my girlfriend, I know that the other feelings will pass. I remind myself how lucky I am to be here. I can see how this trip is going to be a ‘one of a lifetime’. I need a good slap in the face. Tommy is happy to oblige…

What I have enjoyed most about Melbourne is that we got to experience life through the eyes of a real Ozzy family. There is a stereotypical view that Australian’s love to drink beer, surf and gamble. And the reason for this stereotype is because Australian’s do in fact love to drink beer, surf and gamble. Any excuse for a beer and a bet and many pubs and bars have TAB betting centres within them. Our host Ralph took us to the casino on Tuesday and to the dogs on Wednesday. It was actually at my request we went to the bingo on the Wednesday evening but the fact that they don’t sell alcohol in bingo clubs in Australia meant Ralph wasn’t interested and his daughter took us instead. This was almost the adrenaline buzz we were looking for as the speed of the callers made it more like extreme bingo. And at 50 dollars for a ‘cheap’ session it was almost as expensive as some of the activities we did in New Zealand! I got down to one number three times but didn’t win. Still, it was interesting to compare it with my club back home and comforting to see that bingo attracts the same characters and conversations on the other side of the world.

On Thursday we took a trip to St Kildas beach. A nice place 2 hours by train on the other side of Melbourne. I have learnt that Australian cities are big places. I think Melbourne covers the largest area of all Australian cities. And if ever you’re told that somewhere is just around the corner it differs in meaning to that of back home. Round the corner in Didcot is up the road and round the corner. Round the corner in Melbourne could be from Didcot to London. That evening we visited the Eureka tower and viewed Melbourne city from above, on the famous skydeck. The highest in the southern hemisphere. Great views! Friday we took a 3 hour train and bus journey ‘round the corner’ to Torquay on the coast. We decided to stay the night in Torquay Holiday Park as a friend of the family was teaching us how to surf the next morning. The small oven masquerading as an economy caravan taught us a valuable lesson; always check the accommodation before handing over your cash. At least we were situated close to the main road so the roaring traffic took our minds off the unbearable heat. The dilapidated park made me feel as though I’d transported through time and space back to the English coast in the 80’s. All we needed was Paperboy in the games room and I would have been back to my childhood. Still the facilities were clean and showers hot so we laughed it off rather than grumble. In the morning we arose at 8am to meet Matt and rent our surfboards and wetsuits and hit the beach. Surfing was great. The conditions were apparently not ideal with too many waves but we gave it our best shot and I managed to stand on the board a number of times for a few seconds. Hard work though getting back out to catch another wave. At least I can say I’m now officially a surfer and am looking forward to trying it again in Sydney. Before we got a lift back to Melbourne we stopped off for something to eat and of course a beer and a bet.

That evening we went to Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch a game of Big Bash 20/20 cricket. The stadium is great. The attendance was 24,000 but with a capacity of 105,000 the stadium looked empty. We sat towards the front in the lively section of the crowd. Highly entertaining. With 20/20 cricket they are trying to appeal to a new audience. It’s more like baseball with music playing, beach balls in the crowd, Mexican waves and chants of ‘you’re a w****r’ if you didn’t down your pint walking back from the bar. I couldn’t understand though why they had a different beer selection in the evening games compared to the afternoon. The maximum strength beer you can have in the evening is 3.5% but in the afternoon its 4.6%. And you can drink cider and spirits during both. Bizarre. I would have thought it should be the other way round, or perhaps not as during the second innings once the beers were kicking in someone was arrested roughly every ten minutes in our section of the crowd. With a century off 50 balls and all the entertainment within the crowd it was a good game. After the game we went to a local pub and a friend of Tommy’s 2nd cousin put $500 behind the bar. When I asked why he just said ‘Australian hospitality mate’. I said I’d buy him a pint if he ever comes over to England.

Sunday we shared a Xmas get together in the park just round the corner (20 minute drive away). All friends and family. Ralph dressed as Santa making each child cry that sat on his knee. Beer flowed. There was an abundance of homemade food and of course we played cricket. It never once felt like I was imposing or unwelcome. After passing out for a few hours around 4pm we decided to take it easy for rest of the evening as we had to catch a flight to the Whitsundays in the morning at 8.30am. A trip to the cinema kept us out of trouble and was a good end to a good day. Just as we made it home a storm broke over Melbourne. Lightning lit up the sky and the smell of rain on a warm day took me to a happy place.

Eileen (Tommy’s mother’s cousin) and Ralph, their daughter Angela and her husband. Tommy’s 2nd cousin John, all their friends Timmy, Willow, Dave, Matt and co. Everyone made me feel very welcome and made Melbourne an enjoyable experience. We had good weather for the most part although I still can’t get used to Christmas songs playing in the sunshine!

 

The latest from our traveller in the Antipodes

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So here I am sitting on the plane halfway through the flight from Queenstown NZ to Melbourne OZ. Its been a pretty action packed week since we left Christchurch on Monday! Tommy arrived from Scotland on the Sunday and we had a chilled out day and night before setting off early Monday morning. We decided to drive down the East coast and visit the lakes en route to Queenstown so our first port of call was Lake Tekapo. The drive was relatively unexciting until we started heading inland where the scenery took a turn for the more dramatic. It is strange driving through New Zealand because there are hardly any other cars on the roads once you leave the city. Even the small towns seem empty. Quite a surreal experience and makes the drive even on the least attractive roads enjoyable. Lake Tekapo is a very beautiful area, the Lake is a bright blue due to the glacier that feeds it and once we arrived we endured a quick dip in the local hot baths before a fantastic stone grill dinner in one of the local restaurants. I say one of the local restaurants but the town centre is merely a small row of shops and eateries on the lake front. Looks like a tourist resort but again was a little like a ghost town. There were no boats on the lake and no activities as apparently the wind between the mountains can cause huge tidal waves that can flip a boat over without warning. Also at a temperature of around 8 degrees the water is not too inviting. We found a small hostel and bedded down for the night to get an early start for the next leg to Mount Cook and Lake Pukaki.

Mount Cook is supposed to be awe-inspiring. Unfortunately we chose to visit on a day with weather more befitting of Scotland in winter than New Zealand in summer. Low clouds and rain didn’t deter us however from a two and a half hour hike to Hookers Glacier. Although I wish it had! Most of the glacier had melted plus the low cloud obscured Mount Cook entirely!! Still, good exercise and an opportunity for a few pictures of a little ice bobbing around in a lake. After the disappointment of Mount Cook we headed back past the bright blue waters of Pukaki Lake on to Lake Wanaka. This is more like it. There are actually people in Lake Wanaka. A supermarket! There are activities! A proper little tourist trap but beautiful nonetheless. We got ourselves a hostel for the night, sharing a room with Benjamin who had run out money travelling NZ and was now looking for work. Our 3 bed room was adjacent to another 3 bed room and we all shared a living room, kitchen and bathroom. Good facilities! The following morning we went wakeboarding on the lake. Definitely one of the highlights. The water was perfectly calm, if a little cold, and during the hour we had in the boat and board my confidence grew and I owned the lake. Loved it. Up out the water first time, every time. Shooting across the wake. Good stuff. Kills your legs though! After wakeboarding we headed to Queenstown and our first bungee…

 

Arrived in Queenstown, picked a hostel. Dumped our stuff. And went for the Shotover Canyon Swing. Its a 60m freefall followed by a 200m swing at 150kph. You are strapped by your waist so you can do all sorts of twists, flips and dives off the platform. I did two jumps, the first was a Gainer, which is basically a running backflip off the edge. Scary stuff and very un-graceful with my hands with arms flapping wildly whilst screaming manically. The 2nd jump was even scarier. A Pin Drop. Hands behind back and just pop of the ledge sideways. Feels horrible as you plummet off the edge but man what a rush! Thursday we did white water river sledging. Basically surfing a raging river on a boogie board. Crazy stuff! Being encouraged to leap off your board into a whirlpool that sucks you under the water for up to 14 seconds and spits you out some way down the river just doesn’t seem that safe to me but great fun nonetheless. I think the health and safety laws are a little more relaxed in New Zealand. Again being encouraged to clamber up some rocks with flippers on to cliff jump was probably more dangerous than the river itself. Similarly on Friday when we did a 15,000ft skydive. The only training we had was to be shown a picture of a banana and told to make that shape once thrown out the plane. Wait for two taps on the shoulder then make a shape like a banana with outstretched arms. Sorted. A skydive is an incredibly surreal experience although Tommy and I were both very calm until the door to the plane opened and you had to shuffle to the edge, hanging out the side strapped to your instructor, trying to act like a banana, it all seems so wrong. Once out the plane you have 60 seconds of freefall. Seeing and feeling the ground coming towards you at that height and at that speed just doesn’t seem real. The wind in my ears was roaring, my eyes watering behind my goggles. Intense. Once the chute opens you can enjoy the views as you float to the ground. Clear blue skies and snow capped mountains. Definitely an experience. Whether it was all the excitement or lack of oxygen at 15,000ft I don’t know but after we both felt terrible and passed out for a couple hours before waking up with what felt like a hangover. So we did what anyone else would do in this situation and join a bar crawl, dancing a lot and befriend a 7 foot Canadian, a wee Irishman with an accent similar to Brad Pitt in Snatch and a little Korean fella who liked falling asleep in bars.

 

Saturday we took it easy and lay by the lake in Queenstown for most of the day. We attempted to go to a gym but after 15 mins I wasn’t sure if I was going to be sick or pass out. Later that evening we met up with the guys from Friday night who had joined up with several more people from their hostel to have drinks and play frisbee in the park. What a great night. We had an Irishman with a fiddle supplying the music, there were Australians, Kiwis, Swedish, German, Russian, Scottish, English, Irish, Korean, Canadian, American, Danish. People passing would join in drinking and chatting, telling stories of their travels and home countries then move on. Was great great fun. Favourite night so far and if that’s what backpacking is all about I want more of the same please in OZ.

 

Sunday Tommy and I decided to drive to Milford Sounds. Apprently Rudyard Kipling described it as the 8th wonder of the world. It is fantastic scenery in Fiordlands, where the ice has carved huge ‘alleys’ through the mountains in South New Zealand’s beautiful natural wonder. The scenery and the drive is quite spectacular although an 8 hour round trip with a stinking hangover and a moody scotsman isn’t really the best conditions for a trip. Another of our ‘things to do’ in NZ ticked off however.

 

Today we checked out early and decided to try NZ’s highest bungee and the world’s biggest swing, both over the Nevis river. These were probably the most frightening things we did, especially for our wallets. The 150m bungee starts with a mini cable car ride across the canyon in a small cage onto a bigger cable car suspended over the middle of the canyon. The ride in the cage was frightening enough and the speed at which they attached people to the bungee rope before throwing them out of the cable car wasn’t the most reassuring. All in all its a thrilling and terrifying experience. The swing is a little less frantic but just as frightening. The swing starts from another cable car hanging over the canyon which you get to across a long suspension bridge. The actual swing I can’t remember. I started off hanging upside down facing the abyss before me when I heard velcro unfastening. At this point I was let go. My brain must have switched off through fear as those first few seconds are a blur. Truly terrifying stuff. I have videos on facebook for these! Apparently the velcro wasn’t anything important. Scared me to death though!

To see a video of the jump, click http://www.ididit.co.nz/ididit/profile/12176?action=viewvideo&id=174517

So that’s it for NZ. Australia’s up next. I don’t know if I’ve gone into too much detail or not enough but at least the flight has flown (no pun intended) by as I’ve relived the last week. My budget has well and truly been blown but what amazing experiences and spectacular scenery. Queenstown is a very touristy busy place and despite the lack of New Zealanders in the town it is friendly and fun packed. The surrounding areas may look like Wales or Ireland or Scotland but it’s a very different experience and one I wouldn’t mind revisiting one winter season.

Residents get the chance to win their 2012/13 council tax and help save thousands

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Residents in South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse are being encouraged to sign up to receive their council tax bill by email to help save money, and those who do so will be entered in a draw to have their entire 2012/13 council tax paid for them.

It costs more than £64,000 each year forSouth Oxfordshireand Vale of White Horse District Councils to print and send out council tax bills and leaflets.  To save money the two councils are aiming to get as many people as possible signed up to receive their council tax bill by email before February next year.

When people sign up to receive bills by email, a system known as e-billing, it saves money through the reduced need for paper, printing and postage.

To encourage people to sign up for e-billing the councils have agreed to pay the entire 2012/13 council tax bill for two residents (one from each district) drawn randomly from the e-billing list, including the portions of the bill allocated to other service providers such as the police, county and town councils.

To enter the draw, council tax payers simply need to sign up to receive their bills by email by Tuesday 31 January.

Please note that e-billing is only suitable for those paying council tax by direct debit, credit or debit card.

Anyone who has already signed up will automatically be entered into the draw.

Council tax payers who wish to sign up for e-billing, and therefore be entered into the draw should go to either www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk or www.southoxon.gov.uk depending on which council they pay council tax to.

Cllr David Dodds, cabinet member for finance at South Oxfordshire District Council, said: “This is a fantastic chance for two council tax payers to win the opportunity to have their entire 2012/13 bill paid for them.  We are very keen to reduce the amount of money we spend each year on printing and postage, so hopefully anyone who hasn’t already done so should sign up.”

CllrMatthew Barber, cabinet member for finance at the Vale of White Horse District Council, said: “If every council tax payer who has access to email signs up to e-billing then we could put the money that we spend on sending out bills and council tax leaflets to much better use.”

Cow Lane bridge gets makeover

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A busy pedestrian underpass in Didcot has been transformed thanks to the work of the South and Vale Community Safety Partnership and Thames Valley Probation.

The graffiti on the walls of Cow Lane bridge had led to several complaints from members of the public. Five people, supervised by the probation service as part of their community orders, transformed the walls by painting over the graffiti. This was a way for them to ‘pay back’ the community for crimes they had committed.

The work took two days and the materials, costing £300, were provided by the community safety partnership.

Councillor Dorothy Brown, South Oxfordshire District Council’s cabinet member for community safety, said: “The walls of the bridge were covered in unsightly graffiti, and by working together the community safety partnership and probation service have been able to make a positive difference to the area.”

Erica Swift, Thames Valley Probation’s Community Payback manager for Oxfordshire, said: “We were very pleased to be asked to help out with this work in Didcot. Offenders sentenced to unpaid work in the community work on projects which improve community safety and this was a perfect example of how effective that can be.”

A quick straw poll of passers by revealed that more than half felt safer after the work had been carried out and over 80 per cent felt the work had improved the appearance of the area.