Australia Archives
April 28, 2004 - Wednesday
Happy Unbirthday
Everything's upside down! The ceiling is on the floor. The blue sky below the street. Soda bottles fall out of vending machines and spin counter clockwise! Room six is mislabelled as nine, and so on. Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere....
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April 30, 2004 - Friday
Cover Me Stupid
With no other real problems except the Aborigines hanging out furtively on street corners, Western Australia (if not the rest of it) is deeply concerned about the prevalence of "cover bands" among the local musicians. Why isn't there more original...
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May 02, 2004 - Sunday
No Rules
Why for the love of tree-kangaroo am I still in Perth? Is it really that nice? Well let's not upset anyone and move on to the real issue. The day tour down to the Valley of the Giants that I...
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Not for Arachnophobes
What a shame to post links instead of content. But look at this! Simple diagrams of the world's main subway systems to the same scale. http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/index.html I think LA wins for size, and Chicago for orderliness. And nice try, Brussels,...
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A Curious Beverage
The Sail & Anchor brewpub in Fremantle had something I could not pass up an attempt at: Chilli Beer. I ordered one last night, waiting for the game to start. The barmaid asked if I'd ever had it before and...
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May 03, 2004 - Monday
Found Email
Using public computers all the time and sometimes hitting control-v before control-c, interesting things can pop up. This time I found half an email written by an English guy who seems to be doing exactly the same thing I am,...
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Nullsomn
By the time I'm done, I'll be having nightmares about trains. Turns out a sensible timetable for a jaunt up the west coast and back is two weeks. Sorry, whale sharks, but you'll have to wait for my return, maybe...
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May 07, 2004 - Friday
On the Lam
Forty-six hours on the Indian-Pacific train and I have seven hours in Adelaide before boarding "The Legendary Ghan" to Alice Springs. Not much time for a major city but then again many skip it entirely. That's a shame because it...
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May 08, 2004 - Saturday
A Rail of a Time
What is it about train travel that's so appealing? Or just appealing to me? I think I can trace it back to the décor of the Red Kangaroo Lounge where I'm sitting to write this. The aesthetics are best described...
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May 09, 2004 - Sunday
Brief Break
Due to scheduling difficulties, I'm off on a 3 day camping tour of Uluru starting today (Sunday). We spent the day driving and at Kings Canyon. Uluru is 450KM from Alice Springs so this is how it has to be....
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May 13, 2004 - Thursday
Lazy Desert Days
I'm not getting the Uluru photos sorted quickly but I have some excuses. Mainly I need to find a new venue for the work. My choices last night were either Room 17, filled with a new crop of noisy and...
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May 17, 2004 - Monday
Dutch Treat
Marjolijn has an entirely different way of documenting the Uluru trip than I. http://www.dutchie.nl.eu.org/australasia/australia/mulgas.html And who can say which is best? Actually her picture-heavy, breathless narrative beats my tired, obligatory rambling by miles....
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Uluru
Within artillery range of Uluru you click at a camera's shutter release like a retiree at the Vegas slots. I took 270 pictures in three days. The very much fewer and better ones I present to you here. There are...
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Marvellous Melbourne
I'm proud to report my brazen plan for the weekend's travels went off without a hitch. So now I'm in Melbourne and I find that a bit daunting. It's like I'm at the summit of my voyage. Of all the...
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May 18, 2004 - Tuesday
The Dream is Dead
All these months, in the back of my mind I toyed with the idea of taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad back to the west. That sort of madness is exactly what's called for. But I put off major investigation until now...
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May 20, 2004 - Thursday
Stateless
I'm finding it hard to get motivated to write anything here. Maybe it's because Australia just isn't strange enough. In Asia there was always some new oddity or near disaster that needed reporting. Melbourne's a great town but walking down...
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You're very pretty for a foreigner
Everyone travelling abroad can use a good, concise phrasebook....
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May 22, 2004 - Saturday
The S-Factor
Here's an idea for a new metric in this hurly-burly world of ours. The Starbucks Factor The Starbucks Factor is a measure of how many times, in a given locality, on a given route, you can pass additional franchises of...
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May 23, 2004 - Sunday
Can't Beat Melbourne
Australian rules football is the kind of extreme chaos that could only be accomplished with two evenly matched teams of scantily clad men, a ball that behaves like wet soap, and tens of thousands of fans who know exactly what...
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May 24, 2004 - Monday
The Grass is Greener
Can-berra, Can-berra, Can-berra. I want to go to Canberra! This mantra I sang in my mind, to the tune of Queen's "Bicycle", during the over-long over-night bus ride from Melbourne to Australia's renowned capital city. The proper pronunciation of Canberra...
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May 25, 2004 - Tuesday
One Horse Town
I've updated the whole site to use sensible URLs instead of serial numbers for entry filenames. Thus the permanent link to this entry is "http://travelogue.comeuppance.org/archives/2004/05/one_horse_town.html" instead of like "000473.html". I also mucked with the country and weekly archive URLs. This...
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May 26, 2004 - Wednesday
Collect all Five
Sydney looks like about ten times the city Melbourne is. But what's with the public transport? Buses, trains, trams, subways, and ... a monorail? Are they playing Bingo?...
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May 29, 2004 - Saturday
Crispy and Creamy
If you'd asked me two weeks ago, I would have guessed the Jungle Brothers were dead or in prison or at least retired. But no, they're touring Australia. And tonight they're just up George Street at the Metro Theatre, so...
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May 30, 2004 - Sunday
JB Gonna Sort You Out
The Jungle Brothers show was pretty good. I think Australians would dance to the noise the crosswalk signal makes if they weren't in a hurry. So they really got down for the fat old Jungle Brothers, who seemed so desperate...
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June 01, 2004 - Tuesday
The Wild Blue Yonder
Time to go climb up a bridge. If you don't hear from me again ... I suppose it means I'm still up there....
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June 03, 2004 - Thursday
Jungle Gym
I had a forty-minute wait for the ferry to Manly so I stopped into Starbucks (alas!) and instead of a flat-white coffee (Australia describes coffee by its color and ... erm shape: flat white is like a non-frothy latté I...
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June 04, 2004 - Friday
Do you think the Dude burned one on the way over?
After some phone calls and lunch I returned to the STA Travel office to see if the only man I've ever had to help spell "Ohio" had completed his assigned task. STA was pretty crowded so I figured I'd need...
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The Beginning of the End
Travel Man came through, although I nearly had to strike him to stop him from booking a Sydney - LA trip by accident. He must be in a rut. It's all set up now. Train to Byron Bay tomorrow morn,...
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June 06, 2004 - Sunday
To the Sea
Byron Bay is probably the Australian capital for two fun pasttimes: both not-wearing-shoes-while-walking-around-town and scratching-out-words-on-signs-to-make-them-funny-but-not-really are practiced with enthusiasm at this seaside nirvana. It's cloudy and rainy but apparently the water is 22 degrees Celcius sooo... hmm ... wow 76...
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June 08, 2004 - Tuesday
Sharkbait
What a beautiful day to be eaten by sharks ... ... I mean take surfing lessons! Yes, yes, that should be much better....
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Gnarly
What the deuce is this? No time! [begins paddling]...
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Surfin Safari
I want it known that I'm no big fan of the Back To The Future movies. But those times I did manage to stand up and groove around on the surfboard today, I think that's exactly how it would be...
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Snuggable
It was so much easier in Asia. Laundry was like $2 per kilo and they washed it by hand. For me. While I was ... doing anything but laundry. They did it on rocks in streams for all I know,...
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June 10, 2004 - Thursday
Bris-bane keeps away the Mohel
Brisbane's getting the Adelaide Treatment. A stay of less than a day and a visit to a tourist attraction involving alcohol. I probably should have planned for more time in Queensland. As it it is, I was going to get...
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Paul's Oriental Travelogue
Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto