My Trip To Australia, New Zealand and Asia

Went ski-ing

Location: Sydney
Weather: Sunny but thundered and HAIL STONED last night

Spent a couple more entertaining days in Sydney staying in Sasa's 3 room flat/squat with about 10 Koreans, 5 Japanese and a Czech bloke. Caught the train to Canberra, bought a beanie(Australian term for burglar style hat) and a pair of gloves. Got up at 5am the next day to go ski-ing on a Levers coach tour - this included the transport, skis, boots, poles and a lift-pass. Got to the Snowy Mountains around 9:30am. Hired my skis, boots, poles, jacket and trousers. Then got on the ski-tube train which goes up to the ski-resort of Perisher Blue. Took a 2 hour group lesson and found out how difficult it is to actually ski!!! Good grief, talk about having no control or direction if you pick up speed and how exactly ARE you meant to stop???? Thank goodness I was not alone, it's always good when there's 10 equally useless people with you and at least I didn't fall over, like most of them did!
Anyways after practicing turning/slowing-down for a bit I decided to be clever and try the beginners slope, the first time I almost crashed through the safety barrier at 50mph, but somehow I skidded 90 degrees, kicking up snow everywhere and then flew through the exit area back to the start, this looked really cool as if I was some kind of pro skier, but I can only credit it on sheer survival instinct taking over - my brain obviously reckoned either crash & be severely injured or turn & live!!
So after a spot of luncheon and quite a few more goes at this beginners slope, I started being able to
turn and slow-down. AND I only fell over a couple of times. Now time was getting on and this slope was clearly not enough of a challenge - also you got to the top using a magic carpet since it was only about 100m's long and so I'd never properly used my lift-pass...
I looked at the main mountain above and saw the hundreds of people ski-ing down it and thought surely I can do that! NOW, catching the ski-lift to the top of the mountain was good fun and the view from the top was stunning. BUT it was then I realised it was a bit steeper than I had expected...oh dear...it was rather a long way down and angled at errm around say 90degrees!! so I took off down the area marked "slow". It was shortly after picking up speed faster than a McClaren F1 car that I considered that I may be in trouble and I should slow down. Don't quite know what happened, it's all a bit of a blank, but I did stop, albeit in a heap on the floor!
So I struggled up and through no choice slid downwards once again. This time I'm sure I would've overtaken Concorde - because I got quite a few looks as I almost killed myself for a second time! Basically my legs decided on going different directions and I reckon I rolled a few times, cos one of my skis actually fell off! Luckily the snow was quite deep, so I just laughed (despite being bruised and battered), picked up my skis and ended up walking down the mountain with some girl who'd had the same experience.
That night I ran into my friend Michelle I knew back in Melbourne and ended up getting wasted at some Irish pub. Catching the bus to Sydney after 3.5 hours sleep was a pleasure.

As I got to Sydney by 1pm and had a free daytripper ticket, I took a bus, train and ferry journey. Incidently, there was a freak hail stone storm that night. Yes in Sydney - Australia - the place where it's never supposed to rain. I was sitting on the outside decking of a ferry going to Circular Quay as it happened and by the time we landed the place looked like a Christmas cake. I'll post some photos.

By JamesReed on 06.09.04 @ 05:06 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Blue Mountains again and Sydney

Location: Sydney Library
Weather: Sunny

Left Orange and got the bus to Lithgow. I've visited Lithgow before with my friend Ben and there wasn't much there, EXCEPT the famous Zig Zag railway, which I missed last time, so I went on the Vintage Railcar ride and tour and then took the train to Katoomba. It was raining and cold, but I decided to gamble on the weather and stay in Katoomba at the excellent YHA for the night. Waking up late, due to reading some Sherlock Holmes book I found in the hostel, I looked out the window and it turned out to be quite a nice day. So leaving around 11:30am, I walked the 2kms odd to the Golden Staircase and began the walk to the 'Ruined Castle' around 1pm. The Ruined Castle is a rock formation in the middle of a huge forest and you have to walk through the forest, then scramble and rock-climb to get to the top. The view was spectacular. Well worth it. There was literally nobody about, except a few crows and magpies. More scrambling and clambering was needed to get past a landslide area on the way back. This whole walk is supposed to take 5-6 hours - 8km, but I completed the whole thing in about 3 hours, must admit I was really powering it along though. Just made it in time to catch the near-vertical train which runs back up the mountain, saving me the bother of about 5000 stairs. Then I walked to Echo Point to see how far I'd been. I was very surprised! The Ruined Castle was a lot further away than I expected. Got back to the hostel around 6pm then caught the 8pm train to Sydney, around 10:30pm I met up with my old roommate Sasa and went for a couple of beers. Not a bad day.

By JamesReed on 02.09.04 @ 08:00 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Down On The Farm

Location: Sydney Library
Weather: Sunny

After spending a quick night in Sydney. I caught the 8am train for the 5 hour trip north west to Orange to visit my old Wilton Grove tennis friend Russell. It was great to see him again. After a tour of Orange and a cruise for babes round town in the Beaute V8 Ute (you should see this vehicle) we went for a few beers with his friends. Russ lives on a farm, so the next day we collected fire wood. I got to drive a 4 wheeler and chop firewood with a chainsaw. I also attempted to use the axe on some of those logs as well, but wasn't too good at this, Russ assures me it's all technique, honest. And since it is a real farm, I had the fine experience of seeing Russ attend to a cow All Creatures Great & Small style! urrrkk!
Anyways, his dog Tip and cat Minstrel are very friendly as well and were a great help throughout the day.
Went bowling at night and played some pool in the room/bar that Russ himself has built onto the farmhouse. I was most impressed with this place...the Tequila from the bar was very good as well!
On the Sunday we went on a safari to Russ's family's other property which is about 30km down the road. A real wildeness with lots of bush, a creek running through it and kangaroos and rabbits about. Had to drive around in a 4WD. Russ lit up a campfire and cooked some chestnuts. Had a go on rifel and a shotgun, shooting a highly dangerous plastic bucket. Then went back to the farm and Russ cooked a most excellent roast dinner, the best food I've had since being here I reckon. Despite all this we didn't get time for a tennis match, maybe next time, eh.

By JamesReed on 02.09.04 @ 07:59 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Finally left Melbourne

Location: Sydney Library
Weather: Sunny

One of the few things near Melbourne I haven't seen are the Dandenongs. I'm not quite sure what the Dandenongs are supposed to entail, I thought they were some mountains, but others have said they are a big national park. So the other day I woke up at 12:50pm, went outside and saw the next train to Belgrave (AKA the Dandenongs) was at 1:12pm. So I decided to catch it. Got there after about an hour and it was fairly soon after I realised there was nothing much about - well done for doing no research whatsoever and having no maps or anything! also there were no signs, just a few shops and that was about it. After several hours of walking and searching randomly I located a road that led to a forest and a smallish waterfall. It was ok, but not particularly staggering.

The next day I decided something had to change, so I booked the train to Sydney. I really enjoyed Melbourne, but I had to move on, else I would end up living there for months...possibly years. My lifestyle was becomming that of a nocturnal rockstar - getting up late in the afternoon, not doing anything except chatting to people in the hostel and then just beering, karoke-ing and/or playing pool until daybreak. Also the hostel managers decided to 'renovate' the entire social area, so we've had to sit in the kitchen with no free pool table or comfortable seats the past 2 weeks, which isn't good.

My friends Pat and Grassy Knoll were also leaving so us three along with some others went to a Mexican restaurant for a farewell dinner which was very good. We then went back to our regular 24 hour bar 'The Joint' below the hostel. Around 6am people started going to bed and since my train was at 8:30am I just stayed up. The train finally left around 9.30am and I spent most of the 12 hour trip to Sydney trying to sleep. I think I passed out for a few hours because I didn't feel too bad once I got there.

And that's the end of an era, adios Melbourne!

By JamesReed on 02.09.04 @ 07:58 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Fame At Last - Starred on Rove

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Cold n'Wet

So there we were in the hostel kitchen about to cook dinner, when Rove Live comes on TV. Rove is a chat show hosted by Rove McManus, kind of the Aussie equivalent of Jonathan Ross, I suppose. His show is filmed in Melbourne and he suddenly says "The first 300 people to get down to Olympic Park tonight will get a free torch". So Pat, Dave, Damien, Jenny, Tomako and me literally drop everything and run the 2k's or so down the river to Olympic Park! We just made it there, must've been the last 10 people to get in! it is quite a popular show after all. On the way Dave had the
idea that perhaps we were going to make a shape or word with the torches and he was dead right. We were each given a quality Energiser torch and a top of the range safety hat! Pat was well happy about that, as he works on stage shows and needed a new one. The hat was needed because the 'organisers' were looking from above in a crane and directed us in letter shapes. After about 45 minutes of hanging about and it starting to rain, all the Olympic Park spotlights went out, we turned on our torches and did our thing...forming the words ROVE and then LIVE to mark the end of the show! Sadly because we were in Olympic Park and there weren't any TV's about we didn't actually see ourselves, but we're told we looked pretty good, honest! It was also quite amusing walking back to the hostel wearing out safety hats and torches and walking through the bar like we were some kind of maintenance crew!

By JamesReed on 02.09.04 @ 07:43 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]