Australia

Sydney
How yer goin’. We’re back in Straaylia.

We’ve been winding down seeing friends and family, and just trying to stay put for a while. We arrived in Sydney and were met at the airport by Mags’ sister Karen. We went straight to Ken’s place (Mags’ brother) and celebrated our arrival with a few bottles of crown lager. It was only 8 a.m but our body clocks were all over the place.

We spent a leisurely week at Kev and Jane’s place on the Port Hacking river doing not much at all; a quick swim in the morning was about all we managed. Their home is just like an, all in, holiday resort. You even get an early morning wake up call as Kev sets out for the bakery in the middle of the night. The new craze in chez Johnson is home brewing. Kev and his mate Gav brew up in Gav’s shed across the river. The brewing process naturally requires a few schooners to move things along, which seems to empty the keg alarmingly quickly. While we were there Kev was preparing for his 120th birthday party and decided to install a beer tap in the spare fridge. A fantastic labour saving device so he can now pour a beer without opening the fridge door – brilliant. We also moved the fridge to be conveniently located near to the deck for easy access. We did this while Jane was at work, and concocted a few “reasons” why it was a good idea to convince her. “No, it really does look good” was just about the best we could come up with. Not very persuasive, I admit. Anyway, Jane took one look at it on her return and we could just tell somehow that we weren’t going to win the argument.

Melbourne
After a restorative week of catching up and several long lunches we headed off for Melbourne to see our friends Helen and Barn, who are now living in Port Melbourne near where the ferry leaves for Tasmania every day. Melbourne is conveniently located close to two wine regions, Mornington Peninsula and the Yarra Valley. We thought it would be rude not to check them out so we all traipsed off for a quick tour and a crafty tasting or two. I think we all preferred the Yarra Valley of the two as we seemed to have better wine there, but that could just have been the particular wineries that we visited. Both regions specialise in Pinot Noir which is suited to the relatively cooler climate there. We had a very pleasant overnight stay in the Healsville hotel which has a superb restaurant attached, serving up the local produce with accompanying wine of course.

There seems to be massive 80’s revival here. Perhaps it’s the same at home. Disastrously, this even extends to Billy Joel whose songs seem to be played continuously on the radio. There was no escape. We popped into a bar at lunchtime to check on the Superbowl as, for once, the time difference was in our favour. (It’s on in the middle of the night at home). It was half time and, yes, Billy had that gig as well. At least this means that there’s less air time for Jimmy Barnes. I’ve only heard Khe Sanh once.

It’s amazing but nobody has mentioned the cricket to me (as if). Every time I open my mouth someone will have a few comments and some polite constructive criticism of the England team. I’m pretending to be Swiss with varying success. As it happened England were playing Australia in the first of the one day finals at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), or the “G” as it is now known locally. The ground has been completely rebuilt since we were last here and it really is a magnificent stadium. So it appears that Australians can build Stadiums after all. Perhaps we should hold the FA cup final there.

Well, we thought we’d go as the England team have obviously been missing my helpful suggestions from the boundary rope. Prior to the match, commentators thought it was more likely that George Bush would apologise for invading Iraq than England beat Australia but, low and behold, cobber, England did win. C’mon W, what about that apology?

We also discovered another activity that has been banned in the land of the “Not allowed” – the Mexican wave. The cricket authorities in their unparalleled wisdom had decided to forbid the pastime of all bored cricket fans around the world for safety reasons. In fairness to the ACB, some idiots had been apparently throwing heavy objects into the air as they threw their arms up and a few people have been injured. But anyway, as anybody could have predicted, banning the wave has only made it more popular. Also “not allowed” at the ground is proper alcohol, just mid strength beer, and some sickly alcopops (also mid strength). I scoured the bars in a vain attempt to purchase a glass of wine for Mags. At one I was advised that if I wanted a “drink for a lady”, that I should try one of the alcopops. Good to know that not all Australian stereotypes are dead yet.

Also new since we last visited and popular here is Wagyu beef, which is reared in the same way as Kobe beef, principally for export to Japan. We had a fantastic rib of Wagyu beef at Vue de Monde, one of Melbourne’s premier restaurants. It was served without a steak knife, which I initially though was odd, but there’s no need as the meat just melts in your mouth. Just superb, I just hope we start farming it back in the U.K.

As usual, the food is just fantastic in Oz. Melbourne is particularly blessed being so close to some of the best faming land in the country. There are two marvellous markets, Victoria and South Melbourne where small stall holders sell all the wonderful local produce, and to us, at incredibly low prices. People here just east like kings the whole time.

After all this food, we thought we’d better do some exercise as our next stop was Tasmania, and we were planning on doing a lot of hiking there. We set off for a seaside jaunt along the coastal path from Port Melbourne to Brighton, passing through St. Kilda. Somehow, we both managed to damage our Achilles tendons which was strange as neither of us had any problems before. The only reason we can think of is that we were wearing our hiking boots on a concrete path. So, next day, we could hardly walk which wasn’t the greatest preparation in the world.