Tasmania

Well, first we had more Mr Bump troubles. Kept conking out. Were not sure if he would make it onto the ferry. New exhaust bits and more tinkering around sorted him out. Grrr!

Tasmania is beautiful. Lots of small windy roads. Very green. A bit English. Lots of woods and wilderness and big trees and small mammals. Curried scallop pies. Stuff like that...

Hobart: amazing views from Mt Wellington overlooking the city! Cascade Brewery...mmmm!

East Coast: had one non-rainy day; went to Freycinet National Park and walked to Wineglass Bay, looked great! Went fairy penguin spotting in the evening: sat in some bushes and flashed our torch to lure the little penguins out!

Western Tasmania: went walking in the hills and national parks and got pretty cold and wet! Brilliant scenery though, and loads of possums and wombats come out at dark, which makes driving in the dark pretty entertaining. Petted some kangaroos and wallbies in a zoo and saw some Tasmanian devils (they weren't scary)

Cradle Mountain: we climbed it! Had a miraculously clear sunny day and took over 7hours to climb up and down it, with some precarious climbing over rocks to get to the summit. Could see at least 70 kms away and could see clouds floating past down below!

Launceston: Boag's Brewery. Like Cascade, but with cheese.

Penguin: yes, we went to a village called Penguin. There's penguins everywhere, though mostly just painted on bins or big penguin statues. The shops were all called 'Penguin Supermarket' 'Penguin Chemist' 'Penguin Meals On Wheels' etc, which made you think that these shops were for penguins only.

Met and stayed with Val and Dick, Rory's long lost relatives (Val is Rory's mum's cousin). They kindly let us stay for a while and were great hosts and guides to the local area. Also met their son, Mike, and his family and their millions of pets!

Sydney to Melbourne along the coast

Lots of scenic lookouts over lovely coastline and all that.

Got attacked by a posse of seagulls.

Climbed a big hill, took 5 hours but the view at the summit was obscured by bloomin' trees aaargh!

Jervis Bay: lovely white beaches, dead sunny weather, went snorkelling - was freezing, saw what we thought might be a large cuttlefish lurking around and got scared.

Visited plenty of wineries on the way. Well it'd be rude not too.

Sydney Opera House

Went to see a posh classical concert in the amazing opera house. Drank a bottle of fizzy red wine before and got cheap seats on the very back row. After half-time (or as they call it in the trade, the 'interval') we sneaked right to the front and nobody caught us!

Mudgee & Wine

Mudgee = a small town over the mountains from Sydney that grows loads of wine nearby. Wine grows on trees around here.

Caz had some research work to do out here (no, really she did). We also did plenty of wine research, mostly on a bicycle! Unfortunately you have to wear daft hats on a bicycle over here. The yin of drink is balanced by the yang of healthy exercise. Yes

It's been a while...

OK, we've been bad and haven't updated for over 2 months. I blame facebook!
Briefly, since Sydney we have been to Tasmania and back, then bombed up the east coast of Oz and we're now in Cairns with only 4 weeks or something left in Oz. There's a bit to catch up on, I've made a start and I'll try to put a few more updates and pictures on in the next few days.... no really, I will!

V Festival

Went to the first V Festival over here - its a bit of a trial run - only one day and not such a great line-up as the festivals back home. Still, we saw bands like Groove Armada (well we saw some pretty pictures on a huge screen a hundred metres away) and a load of Aussie bands that we can't remember.


Jarvis Cocker was there, now a solo artist after Pulp ended. He was great, it was brilliant to see the gangly geeky goofball in the flesh, prancing around the stage as he does, especially for Rory the Pulp fan.

Pet Shop Boys were the headline act on one of the stages, a bit strange we thought, cos they're a bit out of date , who would want to see them these days? The answer dawned on us when we stood in the crowd watching, when we realised that the crowd was mostly male...ah, see?!

Wake up Mr Bump

So we restored his dignity with some lovely shiny new number plates, only for him to decide not to start. After a few attempted jump starts it was clear the battery was dead. And do you know what the worst thing is?! The little pipe that connects to the squirters that wash the windscreen is broken too. Could it get any worse?

Anyway Rory's (ahem..) mechanical skills were good enough to replace the battery and now Mr Bump's working again. We'll just have to wash the windscreen with a bottle for now...

Hunter Valley

A weekend away in the huge Hunter Valley wine-making area, with Andrew from Rory's work and his girlfriend Michelle. Poor Mr Bump had to stay at home so we had to go by toot-toot tour bus instead.



Got of to a flying start on the first day by thoroughly exploiting the free wine-tasting at a whole bunch of wineries. In between we raided a cheese place for lunch, had a little tour of a winery and rounded it off with a visit to the Blue Tongue Brewery to settle everything down with a nice beer.

A slow start on Sunday soon kicked into gear with a session of hitting golf balls into a lake in a bid to win prizes. Sadly Caz's muscles are still recovering from this 'exercise'. After a quick cheese stop we went to a posh winery that looked like a James Bond baddie's evil lair with a cheesy guitarist on the porch. Before his first sip of wine Rory rolled down a hill and smashed a wine glass in the posh wine-tasting bar. Can't take him anywhere

Living in Sydney

Right then, in case you've been wondering where we are... we've been in Sydney since new year, where we've found decent jobs and a wee flat-type place to stay in. We've having a great time and been up to all kinds of stuff which you can see below...

We're planning to hang around here for a while yet, so we can save up enough to visit Tasmania and then travel up the east coast to round off our Aussie travels......

Mr Bump loses his honour

Stop the press, Mr Bump's number plates have been stolen! Some scurvy scum has nicked off with the plates and buggered up our plans for the weekend. Thankfully, its fairly easy to get some new ones, except that our car's registed in Western Australia, so we have to get stuff sent from over there, grrr! Here's Rory giving the number plates a wistful look when we were at Uluru in November.

Last Sunday (probably while the plates were being unscrewed) we joined a mass walk (trespass?) over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to celebrate its 75th birthday. It was like when everyone crosses Tower Bridge in the London marathon (the skies were grey enough) but with no running involved. Look at those crazy crazy hats... it was wild!

Harbour Bridge trivia: 17 people died in its construction, but only 2 from falling off the bridge. This is surprising cos they didn't have any safety gear and just cavorted around on the bridge with only a trilby hat and pipe for protection. Most died from things falling on them. Two people also survived falling from the bridge. The design of the bridge was more or less copied from one in America.
Caroline saw Take That perform in Martin Place on a breakfast TV show, a lifelong ambition fulfilled!







Dennis, the IT guy from my work, has now got a dream job at the Lowenbrau brewhouse, so we had to celebrate with a rigorous quality control tasting session, 1 litre at a time.

Oh and one last thing - go and see the movie Hot Fuzz, you won't regret it.

Mr Bump's Resurrection

After Mr Bump had been naughty with his gears in Melbourne we decided to park him under a tree on a hill in Sydney so he could reflect on his bad behaviour. He got covered in leaves, twigs and bird poo and lost 2 of his hubcaps, but we're now best mates again. Miraculously, after almost 2 months, he started first time and last weekend we took him up to the Blue Mountains where he was on his best behaviour.

We had a nice cool break from the city and we saw lots of cliffs waterfalls, trees, pretty views etc. And loads of red parrots in the woods.

The Big Ships

Queen Mary 2, the biggest cruise liner in the world, came to Sydney and had to dock at the navy dockyards cos it was too big to go anywhere else. The Queen Elizabeth 2 arrived a bit later on - here they are meeting up in the harbour seen from Rory's office.

There was some great fireworks in the harbour later that night too!

Crickeet in Oz

Ashes series: Adelaide was a farce / the dumb adverts on TV drove me close to manic depression / MCG: watched England lose on day 3, so couldn't see day 4 / Monty was great!


One day series: watched England nearly grab defeat from the jaws of victory in their first win against NZ in a pub with random friendly English folk in the city. Then we lost the plot, don't remember much...


Went to England v Oz at MCG: everyone thought England were gonna get whipped again, but from absolutely nowhere we ended up giving Australia a beating for once. We were dead lucky to have bought tickets to a match that England actually won! Highlights: Gilchrist clean bowled first ball of the innings / massive snake in the crowd (see picture) / man next to me lending me his hat. Lowlights: they only served light beer, no matter how much you drink, all you get is a headache!


Then England beat NZ and got to the finals! Watched the final with Aussie workmate Andrew who at first wanted England to win ''just to make the finals interesting''. As we got closer to victory he was spitting feathers and being made to eat his words. Winning the final at last gave us something to cling to from a disappointing cricket summer and it was good to see the Aussies humbled once again!

Australia Day

A good excuse for a long weekend, I suppose, and certainly much better than St Georges Day.
Saw millions of boats bombing around in the harbour, some big guns firing, lots of bbqs all over the place, street music and bands at the rocks, walked over the harbour bridge and saw helicopters and a tall ships race, Triple J radio broadcast from Hyde Park

... Then went to see Kasabian at Enmore Theatre who were brillliant!

Rory's birthday

Got a monster monster chocolate cake from my new boss. Went to the James Squire brewery for proper beer and met Caroline & Sarah. Had posh dinner with Caz in Darling Harbour and they gave me a (free) cake - look at the joy on my face!

Rory's got another random job...

I've got a fairly varied work history: waiter (2 nights), local radio breakfast show co-host (less like Radio One, more like Radio No-One) barman, chef, work in an off-licence at uni, human resources, chef, more chef-ing, data entry, some more chef-ing, human resources, fence fixer/farm hand/trainee goat herder, courgette picker etc. So my latest job fits fairly well with my haphazard career path that has more meanders in it than the River Tees. And probably just as many ox-bow lakes. (year 9 geography anyone?)

Somehow I found a job working for the Trinidad and Tobago Consulate in Sydney, processing and issuing visas for the Circket World Cup in the Caribbean that starts in a couple of weeks. Better still, I'm working on the 57th floor of the tallest office tower in Sydney. The views are awesome: I can see the harbour bridge down below, all of the city centre laid out like Legoland, all the harbour, out to sea and the Bule Mountains in the distance. The people at work (half from Trinidad, half Aussies) are dead friendly and the offices are reet posh, ah tell thee. There's a capuccino machine in the kitchen, the fridge has beer in it and there are 5 spirits optics above the sink. Sadly we're not allowed to help ourselves to the booze, but we're never short of biscuits, Tim-Tams (like Penguins, but much better) and cakes. Speaking of which, it was my birthday on my 3rd day in the job and my boss Dr Byam (the Consul General) bought a monster chocolate cake which I think tops the Thomas the Tank Engine cake that I got for my 5th birthday (sorry mum!). Perhaps the only downside of the job was when we had a fire alarm and we had to walk down 57 flights of steps.