Erinsborough and its environs

Sorry for the delays in the updates but have been fairly busy over the past few days. As you can see from the new 'Where is John Now!?' feature on the left hand side I am currently in Canberra. Main reason being that I need a crapload of visas and stuff for the other countries I am visiting later on, so for the past couple of days I've been running around the residences of various ambassadors to sort out the aforementioned documents.

Anywho, before I got here I was in Melbourne. It was a pretty OK place (apart from the constant pestering that both myself and my friend Jodi got from various random destitutes, vagrants and degenerates).

Having said that, its not all bad. There's quite a bit to do there, there's a good art museum that shaded the previously mentioned Adelaide art museum in terms of quality (I am getting a bit cultured with all this art gallery mallarkey in my old age!). There was a pretty good museum and the shopping and nightlife were good too.

However the pinnacle, the apex, the absolute highlight for me was a trip to Ramsey Street, Erinsborough! Superb! It was totally awesome to see all the houses that I have been watching on Neighbours for the past years and reliving the lives of the various inhabitants of said houses with our tour guide. The size of Ramsey street was really surprising, so much smaller than it looks on TV. And on the way back to Melbourne on our bus we even got to watch a DVD of the Scott and Charlene wedding - so emotional, so beautiful, a tear rolled down my face on more than one occasion.

Don't know whether this is common knowledge, but there are to be a whole host of the Old Skool Neighbours stars appearing on the show in the near future. The highlights for me will be the reappearance of Doug and Gaby Willis, Dani Stark, Mal Kennedy, Annalise (oh yes!), Lucy Robinson, Flick Scully (oh yes, again!), Libby and the absolute cream of the crop: Joe Mangel! Can't wait to see that!

Hope everyone is OK wherever you are, look after yourselves and stay tuned for the net exciting update.

PS. In response to the previous Adelaide Pun Competition, the winner (and only entrant, shame on you all!) was my friend Fran. Who came up with numerous puns including 'Dig straight down with a spade to Adelaide', 'Gonna get laid in Adelaide' and 'More vegemite than marmalade in Adelaide'. Absolute genius Fran, good work, congratulations!

Adelaide

Unfortunately, I can't think of any form of a witty pun or play on words to incorporate Adelaide, so as a result you are stuck with a very mundane, non-cryptic yet still informative post title. The closest I could come up with was Adelaide having a similar sounding name to 'lemonade' but it is no use, I am beat. If anyone else should like to wrack their brain and think of something amusing, then I would love to hear it. E-mail me at the usual address, the winning entry will receive recognition on my blog for their genius.

Anywho, that said, whats the craic. Well, I am in Adelaide at the moment and have been for the past four days or so. I came here directly from Alice Springs on a not so pleasant 21 hour bus ride. Don't get me wrong, 21 hours is not bad in itself, in the past I have accomplished rides of similar durations, (including a monster 36 hourer) rather what made this particular trip so unpleasant was the sleep deprivation that I was suffering from at the end of it. Brevity is the key here so I will say only this: having a fat, incessantly snoring man sitting next to you on a bus through the night for 10 hours does not ensure a good nights sleep. And anyone that knows me, knows that; a John without good sleep is not a Happy John.

Alas! I digress. Adelaide is what were about here. My impressions of this place are highly favourable. This place is great for just wandering around. The beach is just a short tram ride away and there is great duck feeding and chilling out spots down by the riverside. There is a good museum with alot of aboriginal artifacts, and there is a superlative art gallery with everything in from The Dutch Masters, the renaissance through Warhol right up to modern art (including, and I jest you not: a lifesize replica of a rhinoceros cast in fibreglass, spray-painted fluorescent yellow and mounted with its hooves on the wall). Theres good shopping, great coffee shops for refreshments, the Adelaide Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Quality architecture and picturesque buildings abound and all within a very concentrated area of the city centre.

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Adelaide and would recommend a visit here to all, its a top place indeedy.

Now that my work for the Adelaide Tourism Board is complete, I am off to Melbourne, and I'll speak to you shortly.

Snakes Alive!

Here is a photo taken of me during a night out with some people I met in Alice Springs. You can see I am trying not to look totally freaked out (although the quantity of alcohol that I had consumed by the time this photo was taken certainly surpressed my fears at the time!) holding an immense snake of variety unknown. Let the record also show that the snake was surprisingly heavy, alot greater than I imagined!



PS. Theres now a photo of me at Uluru below too

Rock On!

So, from Darwin I travelled to Perth in Western Australia. Not a great deal of excitement there, but don't get me wrong: Perth was a nice city. Very cosmopolitan I thought, and great to just wander around looking at the place, or walking along its waterfront and park areas.

After spending a couple of days in Perth, I travelled to Alice Springs for what something I have been seriously looking forward to - visiting Uluru - a.k.a. Ayres Rock.

Although Alice Springs, as a town was designed as a base to which you could explore Uluru and its environs, the designers made one crucial error: Alice Springs is bloody miles away from Uluru! A good 4 to 5 hour drive, so figuring this, I decided on a 2 day/1 night tour that spend the night close-ish (well, closer than Alice Springs anyway!) to the main aforementioned attraction.

The first day was a 6am start to get to the first stopping point - Kings Canyon. This was a very pretty area with stunning vistas across the vast outback. There I partook in a three hour walk over 6kms to the apex of the canyons walls and down the other side again. There were incredible rock formations, sheer cliffs and an oasis running through the canyon floor (known as The Garden of Eden - as its name suggests it was idyllic), all in all beautiful.

It was supposed to be a fairly dangerous place what with the extreme heat, steep climbs and cliffs, and the constant, relentless and inexorable annoyance of the flies buzzing around my face - many a tourist has perished in these parts. Our guide told us the tale of an ill-fated young French girl, too occupied with looking at her surroundings through her camcorder to notice the presence of a 100 metre drop in the landscape and was henceforth killed on impact with the hard, hard rock below.

From Kings Canyon I was left at my lodgings for the night and after a tasty repast, retired shattered. The following day was to be the main event, the top of the bill, the cream of the cr...well you get the idea.

I travelled first to The Olgas (now known by their aboriginal name: Kata Tjuta). This was totally incredible to see. After a brief walk, we travelled to Uluru itself.

The site (yet another UNESCO World Heritage site!) was renamed Uluru from Ayres Rock when it was handed back to the aboriginal people. Walking around Uluru was amazing, I had no idea until then of all the various tales that go with the various parts of the rock. Like in one place there was a makeshift classroom, with drawings on the wall from the various elders, in another place the aboriginal women would place themselves if they failed to get pregnant so that the spiritual powers could work their magic (although if their bloke was a jaffa, theres nowt doing I shouldn't think!). Just so many stories and history it was amazing.

After a couple or walks at various sites we retired to a nearby location to watch the sunset over champagne and barbecue sausages. This was amazing, the complete and utter change in colours of Uluru as the sun was setting was amazing. Within the space of literally ten minutes, the rock would have changed from a fierce red to a purple hue, just beautiful.

The sights of both Kata Tjuta and Uluru as you see them driving up towards them were just incredible. The sheer immense size of these sites was awe inspiring simply because of the way they stood out from the land that surrounded them. The colour of these rocks was just amazing with the deep reds contrasting to the deep blues of the sky. Beautiful.

Here I am at Uluru:



On the way back to Alice Springs I saw the stars. Some of the best stars you could ever wish to see. Living where I do back home, you never really get to see the stars properly as the light glare from surrounding conurbations of Durham and Newcastle renders the sky impotent at exposing its prize jewels. In the outback, with the nearest large population 500kms away, you can see everything, distant galaxies glowing in the night sky, constellations within constellations that you didn't know even existed (take the Orion constellation, you wouldn't believe how many other stars there are within it that you never get to see) just incredible.

All in all, superb. Seeing these things of such cultural importance and awe-inspiring grandeur was totally incredible. An absolute must see!

Kakadu or Kakadon't

So, from Cairns (which, although I haven't touched on the subject: I loved; a really nice place) I made the short flight to Darwin. The main reason being that going here would allow me to see Kakadu National Park which is supposed to be well worth the visit and another UNESCO World Heritage site to cross off the checklist!

Darwin itself was a bit of a hole to be perfectly frank with you, so I'm quite glad I only stayed there a couple of days. There is bugger all to see there, and aside from a mildly pleasant walk along the Esplanade, there was even less to do! Although, my hostel did have a massive pool, and I beat my personal best for reading a book (in a total of about 10 hours I had read Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure which was excellent by the way if anyone is thinking of reading it, even if you are a Dave Gorman fan like me or not!) so the time spent there wasn't entirely futile.

That said, as I mentioned previously, my main reason for going to Darwin was to see Kakadu. Although it was a hefty drive from Darwin I saw some amazing Aboriginal rock art, some of which had been there for up to 70 years!! Ok, so 70 years is not really that impressive, but it was still amazing to see.

And as Aboriginal man Brian Baruwei said:

'If you respect the land, then you will feel the land.
Your experience will be one that you
cannot get anywhere else in the world.'

And you can't say fairer than that really can you!? Although I treat this with slight scepticism as his first name is inexplicicably: Brian! Extraordinary! (Nothing against Brian's mind you; my uncle and a best mate bear this name also, but for an aboribinal man whose people have lived there for an estimated 40,000 years I expected slightly more originality!)

Anywho, following these rock art sites we went on a Yellow River cruise to see the various forms of florae and faunae in the area. This was pretty good, saw a massive croc which was cool, and loads of bats and stuff and about a billion and three mosquitos.

Seeing thousands and thousands of bats in the trees next to the river was cool, and as our tour guide said:

"The sound of 10,000 bats chirping really is a sight to see"

and here was me thinking it would more likely that the sound of bats or the sound of anything come to think of it would be a "sound to hear", rather than a "sight to see", but what do I know!

Tip: for anyone going to Kakadu (or indeed Darwin if you are that way inclined) take plenty of mozzie repellent, or failing that a bee-keepers hat or haz-mat suit!

On the way back to Darwin our tour guide told us the unfortunate story of a star crossed girl who, just a week after avoiding the terrorist bombings in Bali, was promptly eaten by a crocodile while swimming in a billabong in Kakadu. Talk about Providence - when your numbers up I guess theres no getting away from it.

In review, don't bother with Darwin, its nowt spesh. and as for Kakadu, this was Ok. The rock art sites, which were awesome, certainly made up for an otherwise average national park.