The Land of the Long White Cloud

In an hour I will be setting off back to the UK. I am currently staying with friends in an apartment overlooking the beach. I contemplated doing a run or taking a walk on the beach in my last hour. But eventually settled on writing my final New Zealand blog post.

I recently learned that when the Maori settled New Zealand, they named it Aotearoa. This can apparently be translated into 'The Land of the Long White Cloud' and its easy to see why they chose this name.

As we were driving back towards Lake Takepo on our second to last day, we experienced the Long white cloud in all of its glory. Coupled with the fresh snow on the ground everywhere, it was majestic:

We took another couple of photos from the road:

Our last night we spent in Lake Takepo which is close to the site where the New Zealand Prime Minister's hiking party recently had to give unsuccessful CPR to one of her close friends in a remote mountain hut. There were film crews everywhere.

In the morning we drove up to the observatory on the hill overlooking the lake:

Two Days Two Sounds

Milford Sound

On our second full day we drove the five hours past some amazing scenery to Milford Sound. According to Wikipedia Rudyard Kipling named the Sound (although it is actually  Fjord and not a Sound) the 8th wonder of the world and it is easy to see why. The Maori used to visit the area for fishing in the cold winter months, and European settlers have always been attracted to the area. However it wasn't until the 40's that an easy route to the Sound could be built.

This is because Milford sound is pretty darn remote. Over two hours drive from the nearest petrol station, you have to be careful what to take (snow chain and fuel being essential). The drive takes you over some mountainous terrain and over a pass culminating in  a long tunnel that delves beneath the mountains. I spent some time reading about the construction of the road which was in itself no small feat and took many men, many years.

The beauty of our trip was that because it was midwinter (and around 0 degrees), there were barely any other tourists (as with the Routeburn track) as they were all up at the ski fields in Queenstown. But the scenery is perfect in any weather (provided you have the right clothes), in fact changes in weather made the scenery even more amazing and the trip even more exciting!

Here is a photo of a rainy clearing in the forest on one of our short walks (there will be more up on Flickr when I can get them to upload):

And the Sound itself when the clouds finally cleared:

Lucy chilling out:

But alas, we were unable to go on a boat trip out to the sound, just after taking this last photo, we were informed by the tourist office that the snows were closing in and the road would close at 5pm (40 minutes time) with the potential for being closed for s few days. We had to high tail it out of there.

Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound

We were so taken with the sound that we decided to drive as quickly as we could to Lake Manapouri (the gateway to Doubtful Sound) that afternoon. Lake Manapouri is in itself serene and beautiful. I took a nice shot in the morning:

To get to Doubtful Sound from here we had to take a 1 hour boat trip across the lake to the beginning of the Wilmot Pass (a very high pass created during the construction of the nearby Hydro Power station and not connected to any other roads!). And it snowed. And it snowed some more. And we were in a coach (albeit fitted with snow chains). And the road had some of the steepest roads in New Zealand:

From the other side of the pass, we caught another boat for a 3 hour trip around the Sound. We did see some seals, but couldn't see a lot due to the severity of the snowstorm. the captain said that he had never seen snow so far down in the Sound.

But it was beautiful to see and we were visiting the Sound as it is usually seen (it rains 2 out of 3 days there). I took this one of an extremely blue looking little boat against an extremely white background:

Another Slide Show - You Lucky People!

Lucy and I just got back from our whistle-stop tour of New Zealand, we spent most of our time down near Queenstown around which a large part of the Lord of the Rings was filmed (mostly the scenes that involved the Misty mountains and Gondor).

It is absolutely spectacular!

I would like to say that I managed to take some excellent photographs during the trip - but the truth is that the photographs took themselves - I was just pushing the button.

Every drive we went on, everywhere we stayed we saw scenery that we didn't think actually existed. New Zealand is now officially my favourite country ever.

And now for the slide show...

View of Mount Cook

On our first day we set off in our hire car from Christchurch to Glenorchy (1 hours drive north of Queenstown). After a couple of hours driving we passed lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki. the greenish stones in the lake give it a turquoise hue and the water is the clearest your will ever see. This picture is of Mount Cook as viewed from the opposite side of Lake Pukaki.

The Routeburn Track

On our first full day we drove from Glenorchy and hit the Routeburn track. The full trail was closed to us due to snow and avalance risk, but we did the first day. 

A rockfall at part of the track had removed some of the trees and enabled us to get a good view of the surrounding mountains.

More to follow...

The RouteBURN

I am in New Zealand at the moment. Did I tell anyone I was going to New Zealand? I can't remember, everything has been such a confused mess of activity over the last week or so.

Its Tuesday morning. We spent yesterday (our first full day) doing the first 8 hr leg of the Routeburn track (allgedly one of the top 10 walking tracks in the world). The scenery is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is literally like walking through middle earth!

I can't upload any pictures as yet, but here is link to some (entirely random) photos of the region.

Life For Sale

May of you probably read in the papers about this guy in Perth who put his entire life for sale on eBay. He split up with his wife and decided on a fresh start. He then proceeded to sell all of his earthly possessions in one lump sum. His house. His car. His jetski. Even a trial week at his job!

Thats just about how I feel now. I have spent the last couple of weeks putting almost everything I own up for sale on Gumtree. I can't believe how much tuff it is possible to amass in the space of only 9 months.

Its also pretty painful, complete strangers poring over your stuff, casting a critical eye over your sofa covers and haggling over your clothes airer. I really can't imagine how we are going to get rid of all of these things in the two weeks we have left here. 

Thought for the day - the more things you own, the more stressful your life!

Also here is a picture of the view from Cairns to complete my series...

Bagara

This one I will imaginatively entitle "Lucy with Sandcastle". Taken in a little town called Bagara near Bundaberg.

We didn't build the sandcastle, we just benefitted from somebody else's hard work.

The Whitsundays

Another day, another place. We went to the Whitsundays (I believe named after the prolific blogger Whit, who is fond of his Sundays) which were all beautiful silica sands and clear blue waters ... blah, blah.

No more of my desolate skylines today. While in the Whitsundays we spied this little fellah.

While he was no Komodo dragon, this little fellah did cause much amusement for some of my fellow tourists many of whom were sat huddled up on their seats.

Clairview

On one particularly mammoth stretch of the Bruce Highway we chose a random little group of houses to stop in and change over driving responsibilities. We were glad we did, for although there was nothing really in the small hamlet of Clairview, we rounded the corner to see some spectacular views of some mud flats at sunset. A perfect photography opportunity:

This one is my favourite:

I also like this one (mildly altered):

For some reason we couldn't help thinking of the film 'the Never Ending Story' (the cause of a lot of my childhood nightmares).

You will notice that many of my photographs has a dark and desolate theme to them! I am not sure whether this is because of my mood, or because it pretty much didn't stop raining for our entire time in Queensland!

Rainbow Beach

We have returned from our little travels and have seen quite a bit, but I will save the detail for future posts (I can hear the excitement from here).

This week will be the week of administration for me, before my return. However, I think I will find enough time each day to post up some of my exciting holiday snaps each day, you lucky, lucky people.

It will be great, just like that times you had over at your uncle John's where you spent hours looking at his slideshow of the family holiday in Skegness and listening to tales of bingo halls and donkey rides! 

Rainbow beach about 3.5 hours north of Brisbane was our first overnight stop in the 'Dwarf'. It rained mostly, but in between the rain (and before we had to get some helpful Tazmanians to haul us out of the sand with their 4x4) we managed to get a brief reprive and took a little run down the beach.

Rainbow beach is called so because of the interesting colours in the sand. I managed to get some good shots of clouds gathering and forming interesting reflections in the shallow waves.

It was pretty sweet waking up to this in the morning...

Ok So I Was Lying

I said I wasn't going to post this week on my trip to Queensland, but I have found myself sitting in an internet cafe in Hervey Bay waiting for Lucy to finish a job application form.

We picked up our camper van yesterday from Wicked Campers (which is the norm for backpackers in Oz - mainly because they are extremely cheap).

I was a little worried by the idea of using Wicked but unfortunately our other camper van that we wanted fell through. I was worried not because they were poor quality, or because they are expensive. Basically Wicked gains product differentiation by daubing graffitti, pictures and slogans all over their vans. Some of the pictures are pretty tanme, this morning we passed one with the cookie monster painted on, but some of them are a lot worse.

When you pick up a Wicked camper there is an extremely high chance when getting one, that yours will be fairly obscene. I have seen plenty of rude phrases and pictures of naked women etc, etc.

Anyway, we got lucky. I am looking outside a the van now and there is just a pitcure of the 7 dwarves from Snow white on the side ... oh no ... let me look a bit closer ... thats right the 7 dwarves are performing unmentionable sex acts with 7 sheep! All with very happy innocent smiles on their faces ... the perverts.

Actually thats not true - only five of the dwarves are perfoming unmentionable sex acts with sheep. One of the dwarves has obtained a little stool from somewhere and is perfoming unmentionable sex acts with a cow! And his little dwarf friend is helping to hold the cow. Nice.

We woke up this morning on Rainbow Beach which was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately I cant post any pictures as I dont have the correct cable.

We also got the van stuck in some sand and had to get it pulled out by a passing 4x4. But thats another story ...

In which Sam goes to his first sporting event since Huddersfield Town v Liverpool reserves in 1989

In Australia they have this thing called 'football'. Well we have that in the UK too but 'football' (sometimes fondly referred to as 'footie' means something different over here.

Football is a game played on a massive oval pitch with 18 players on each side. They kick the ball to one another out of their hands and others try to catch it. Then they have to kick the ball through some posts ... that pretty much it.

It appears to me that there are a couple of misconceptions relating to Aussie rules football:

The first one banded around by people in the UK is that it is very violent. 'There are no rules' and 'you can do what you like' being common points of views. This is incorrect as there are plenty of rules in Aussie rules football and it is barely more violent than what these crazy people call 'soccer'. The main issue with the game (it appears to me) is that the rules can be interpreted in about a million different ways by the 'umpire' (there are about 6 umpires so far as I can tell). This lead to a lot of berating of the ref (as with any sport)

The second is the myth that footie fans are rowdy. As a part of our 'trying to do as many Aussie thing as possible' campaign Lucy and I went last weekend to see the Collingwood Magpies take on the Sydney Swans. We were made to be Collingwood fans as the friend of ours who took us there is an avid supporter. Collingwood are notorious throughout Australia for having the most hated, violent, rowdy fans. 

We saw none of that. The supporters for each team were mixed in together (if you did that in a European Football match, there would be death somewhere) and the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. Most people hardly got up from their seats. Now thats my kind of live sport!

So for those of you who don't know what Aussie rules football is, here is a little taster:

(I was actually sat behind (one of) the sets of posts)

Winter In Paradise

When the inhabitants of England talk about Australia, it is as some kind of ever sunny, eternally hot eurphoric paradise inhabited by tanned 'clothing averse' blondes and racist, overweight country folk.

Certainly, during the summer time the sun beats down with a ferocity such as would never be experienced in Europe (something to do with missing Ozone), and the many beautiful white beaches are full of backpackers and locals, sunbathing, BBQing and surfing. Unfortunately during most of this period, I was at work, sitting in an air conditioned office on the 6th floor of a city centre office block at least 10 yards from the nearest window.

And then more recently Summer has turned into Winter (apparently it is the other way round in the Southern Hemisphere in case you were wondering). The days now are shorter than they ever were in England - it gets dark here at around 4.30pm.

I have begun to realise that it was not just the temperature that used to depress me during the ling British winter. It was the shortness of the days and the fact that I never got to see the daylight. I for one would definitely petition to work from around 5pm to 2am and have my days free.

And it is cold here...

Well that is actually as bit of a lie. It's not 'proper' cold here. It doesn't actually get much below 15 (celcius) as far as I can tell.

But the 'Sydneysiders' still wrap up in their hats and scarves and complain about the bitter cold. Their British roots cause them to talk about the weather incessantly. The schoolkids on the bus marvel at the sight of condensation on the bus windows and draw pictures and scrawl their names in the mornings.

And there is a reason why...

Basically most typical houses and units (flats / apartments) in Sydney (or at least every one that I have seen) are very badly designed. They have no insulation (which would help keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter) and no double glazing.

Heating is generally provided by little electric heaters (of the kind that were pretty much phased out of UK houses for their costliness), there are few gas heating systems (even though east coast gas is relatively cheap here). Or, as in the case of our unit, there is no heating at all, so you are forced to buy multiple little crappy electric heaters. Basically the units that I have seen are pretty much energy efficiency disaster areas.

Added to this Electricity here is generated almost entirely from coal, a fact that contributes to Australia being one of the highest emitters of CO2 (per head) in the world. And the units are freezing!

In Which You Die of Boredom

Those of you who know me well will understand that I am completely impatient with technology. Rather than learning how to use a software package by using help menus and the like, I would much rather ask somebody (much to the frustration of people at work). 

One example of this is that I couldn't figure out how to work WordPress through I want to move my blog over to it - so I asked my brother to do it for me (though I hope he knows I am with-holding payment until it is complete). I also only just started to use a feed reader (is that what they are called?) which may surprise all of you blogging purists.

The point of this gibbering is that it took me a total of 5 months between me buying my Mac and me opening up IMovie and beginning to use it. Then I discovered that it was a brilliant! Perfect for IT illiterate sods like me who can't use a computer. 

So I made this slide show of my Indonesia trip and opened up a YouTube account  (I only figured out how to embed videos a week or so ago) which is linked somewhere on the sidebar. I wouldn't recommend watching it all of the way through because It will probably bore you to tears, but I thought some folk might like it. Oh, and I apologies for the YouTube picture being cut off at the end - I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to get the whole picture on.

Next challenge, a podcast, though I have no idea what software to use. Any clues?

Completely randomly, The Artist also sent me this. I thought it was kind of funny.

Pommy Baiting

Australia is a very outdoors and very active city. As such they have a large number of National Sports including Rugby Union, Rugby League, Australian Rules Football (though nobody seems to know the rules to this), and Cricket (though nobody seems to know the rules for this either).

However by far the most popular sport in Australia appears to be 'Pommy Baiting'. Basically Pommy Baiting involves the ritual and systematic 'bagging' of the Limeys by the colonials (most of whom's parents or grandparents were british though they like to cover this up). 

Most Pommy Baiting revolves around our inability to take the sun. We are known to sit out there for hours and turn interesting shades of red. Other hot topics include sporting prowess (cricket, rugby, whatever the British or English may have lost at recently), and beer drinking ability.

The reason I am raking all of this up though, is that the Aussies are currently showing this pretty funny ad for Bundaberg Rum:

A classic display of Pommy Baiting.

Notes From the Big Country

The British call chips chips and crisps crisps. Sometimes we call fries fries (but only in McDonalds). In the states crisps are chips and chips are fries, which befuddles me somewhat. In Australia where they seem to pick up a bit of both proper and 'foreign' English they don't call chips fries and they don't call chips crisps. Crisps are chips and chips are also chips. You have no idea how much this has confused me.

Don't get me started on pants...