Blogging Pubbitch

Fraser Island is a freak of nature. It’s just about the only place on earth that has rainforest growing out of sand, which is a neat trick when you think about it, especially given my own success in keeping cacti alive in optimally arid conditions. It’s also the world’s biggest sand island, though with all the vegetation growing out of it, you’d be hard pressed to figure that out just by looking.

It’s home to some of the purest bred dingos on the planet, and, incidentally, the optimum attack weight for a pure bred dingo is about 15 kilos. This is a fact that comes to mind when you accidentally bump into one on the beach. What also springs to mind at about the same time is the question, “what does a 15 kilo dingo actually look like?” I kept on thinking of bags of sugar, because that’s what I was told a kilo looked like when I was young. I’m pretty sure that the beast that was looking at us in a mildly curious manner was bigger than 15 bags of sugar, but then it’s always hard to tell. I mean, a humpback whale doesn’t necessarily look like it weighs the same as 4 elephants when it’s leaping out of the water like some sort of overgrown dolphin supping on too much sugar and too many e-numbers, but, you know what, it does.

Also, when a ranger helpfully tells you that the water in Lake McKenzie (which is beautiful, and is very blue indeed) is “25 degrees, like you have a bath”, he’s either talking in Kelvin or just likes really cold baths. He's probably over-excited by the lasses in bikinis, if you ask me. No wonder he needs a nice cold bath.

Finally, Kodak use more silver than anyone else in the world. You learn something new every day.

Fish don't talk much. They open and close their mouths a lot, and sometimes a smaller fish will swim inside, have a look around and eat something from between the teeth, but it's very unusual to hear them say anything. I've just spent a lot of time with the fishes, not in a "he’s sleeping with the fishes wearing concrete boots" Mafia-style, but in a "doing my Advanced Open Water PADI course"-style, so I consider myself to be something of an authority. I suppose that it's possible that fish that don't live on the Outer Great Barrier Reef are far chattier but as the past owner of a couple of goldfish, I don’t think so.

What fish do very well, though, is buoyancy control. This is something I am most jealous of, because my buoyancy control needs more work. I know this because rather than floating gracefully in the water, hovering like some sort of sub-aquatic helicopter, I was floating under water like the sort of helicopter that gets featured in the news along with frequent use of the word "disaster". To be honest, by the end of the tenth dive in two and a half days, I was getting a lot better at the whole thing, though I was completely shattered.

There’s something restful about hanging suspended upside down in the water, surrounded by a profusion of fish, turning in any direction with the flick of a fin. "Turning in any direction with the flick of a fin" is probably something that most of us would want to be able to do if we were to find ourselves floating upside-down, but for now we’ll pretend that it's somewhere we actually want to be. Better yet, there’s the beauty of clambering out of the ocean, shivering into the warmth of tropical sunlight.

It was great fun. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Better yet, Holly and I both managed to pass our Advanced Open Water, so we're now all set to do a recreational dive almost anywhere. This is going to be great!

I've had a bit of time to digest the six days we spent afloat in the Whitsundays, and here are my erudite and carefully considered opinions:

1. It's the people that make the trip as fun as it is. We were lucky enough to have good friends there.
2. Seasickness tablets. Pack them. Take them.
3. 25 knots of wind and 3 metre swell make for an interesting trip. See (2) above.
4. It turns out that in order to get the most from a sailing trip, all you need is a motor.
5. Be thankful you’ve got a working toilet. Some people aren’t so lucky. Darren.
6. Holly is obsessed with sea-life, especially dolphins. They don’t seem to be quite so obsessed with her, but still like to come up and say "hello" sometimes.
7. Yachties like to have a plethora of names for each rope. This makes it easier to get confused when working at speed under the direction of someone who uses different names for the same thing than you.
8. Don’t care too much about how things are right now. Remember, dry land is always one radio call and a quick seaplane flight away.
9. Get used to helpful comments such as, "it’s not normally like this" and "it looks lovely when the sun’s out, the ocean’s a little flatter and the bottom of the boat isn’t quite some filthy"

Those who know me occasionally like to comment about how calm and serene I am in any given stressful situation, if only to avoid using words like "very calm" or "extraordinarily serene" Take, as a random but I think curiously pertinent example, air travel. Now, it's common knowledge that every plane in every airport is in danger of being blown out of the sky by shoe-bombing nutters, and as such security has been enhanced to such a degree that the mere act of wearing shoes will set off alarms and a vigorous series of questions (as happened to us only this morning) Because of this, it's considered prudent to arrive at least an hour before a flight so that the people responsible for security can make sure that you're not going to file your nails or put anything into a ring binder (though, remember, it's fine to have several litres of highly flammable alcohol stored in containers which can be converted into a handing stabbing implement by the simple expedient of smashing it against something solid, such as the list of things that you're no longer allowed to take onto an aircraft)

This might explain why when we arrive at an airport with about half an hour until take-off I'm generally chewing my way through the seatbelt and Holly's poking around in her mysteriously Tardis-like bag for something the use of which I'm not entirely certain of. As I try and gently encourage us towards a speedy check-in through the simple expedient of running around like a contestant on the Crystal Maze trying to solve a particularly taxing problem to do with weights, little balls made of rubber and a dozen pencils, Holly will breezily be assuring me that, contrary to the blatantly obvious truth, "we have loads of time," The worst thing is that, generally, we do have "loads of time" but only if this is defined as "the plane hasn't left yet because the last stragglers are still being herded on"

Oh well, at least we've managed to get to where we want to be. And we've had a chance to wander around the departure lounge at Brisbane, which has, I can assure you with confidence, the most expensive sandwiches on the planet. Now, I'm fully aware of the advantages to the seller of a captive market, but, really, this is taking the piss. For the price of an egg and salad sandwich in Brisbane airport, it's possible to buy a small Caribbean island, complete with idyllic palm trees, beautiful beaches, and (this is the important bit) more sandwiches than it would be possible to shake a fair sized stick at.

Well, it seems as if I'm obsessing about sandwiches. At least the coffee is merely exorbitantly priced....

Holly and I have now been on the road for about a week and a half. We've been down the Great Ocean Road (cold, fewer apostles than last year) after visiting Melbourne (cold, enjoyed AFL more than I thought that I would) and have now made it to Adelaide (warmer, friends live there. Yay!) We also visited the Barrosa wine region (lovely tastings. Try the Rockford winery if you're ever heading this way)

Will post something a little longer when I have a Net connection, but rest assured that we're enjoying seeing the world.

Must cease writing this as if it were a telegram STOP

The reason why I now have the time to blog for a bit is that I'm currently home allowing plumbers into the house so that they can look at the roof, which after the light showers that we've been having recently, has decided to leak in numerous places. Originally it only leaked in one place, but like some sort of aqueous hydra once we had that sorted out another two leaks sprung to take its place.

Ho hum.

Quite why plumbers are looking at the roof is a curiousity of Aussie culture that I've not yet managed to get to grips with.

Ever since we moved into the place we’re staying at in Newtown, the drains have smelt just a little suspicious, as if serious trouble is just around the corner; coming, but not here yet. Our landlady’s just about to leave the country, so obviously the trouble which has been (and I use this word advisedly) brewing has finally decided to surface.

It all started when our otherwise only slightly stinky toilet started to drain exceptionally slowly. Being sane and reasonable people, the first thing we did was use a plunger to try and shift the blockage, whatever it might be. No go. Next up we had the pleasure of trying a toilet snake. While standing over an increasingly noxious toilet armed with what is effectively a metal rope that proves remarkably recalcitrant about doing its job might strike some people as the epitome of “fun”, I can assure you that it’s not.

Despite our best efforts, the toilet remained as resolutely blocked as we had to be. Never mind. These things happen, and it’s something that a plumber is trained to deal with. Several “quick” phone calls later, we had someone come over in the morning. I had to go to work, and Holly was left to deal with the plumbers, but apparently the conversations held involved the threat of high tech equipment charged at exorbitant rates per hour, much sucking of air over teeth and exactly one shower of shit.

The high tech equipment used turned out to be a high pressure water hose. Now, when I think of a “high pressure” hose, I have an image of your common or garden hose with the tap on full and a finger over the end. Apparently, the industrial version of this has enough pressure to cut through the root systems of plants, so perhaps my mental model is wonky (for a start, how’s the plumber meant to get his hand round the bend in the toilet?) Placing this into the drain outside the bathroom had no effect. Placing the same high pressure hose down our toilet finally managed to shift what appears to have been approximately 18 months’ worth of slowly festering poo, but not in the intended direction. Our drain was so effectively blocked that the wave of crapulance, powered by a jet of water so powerful as to cut flesh from bone, rebounded off the obstruction to burst once more joyously into the air via the only route available to it --- our toilet. If you’ve ever seen the bit in Free Willy where the enormous whale decides to leap over the head of the young hero then you may well have the sort of mental image that only needs a little tweaking in order to get an idea of the scale of the disaster.

According to the vivid images that Holly painted for me, augmented only slightly by the equally vivid smell emanating from our bathroom, it would seem that we were visited by a Golgothan Shit Demon Spattered up as high as the window (a good couple of metres up) were the marks of extended blockage, and the terracotta tiles on the floor did their best to absorb as much of the flavour as possible. A flavour that they appear to enjoy far more than either citrus or tea tree oil unless persuaded repeatedly otherwise.

As a matter or record, the obstruction in the drain turned out to be a fist-sized bundle of roots, and it’s likely that there’s far more down there, so that part of the reason why there’s major work needed on the drains that can only be done by digging an enormous hole in the garden. Although the toilet still smells a bit, it empties now, and we’ve bought ourselves enough time to end our occupation of the house without a similar incident. We hope.

After a small delay, Holly has now got her business visa, and I've got a brand spanking new de-facto visa. This is great news, because it means that we can stay here a longer than the year that our working holiday visas allowed, and the working restrictions are far looser (especially for me)

Thank you to the friends and family that went out of their way in order to get statutory declarations to us as quickly as you did. It means a lot that you all made such an effort.