Australia 2000, Part 1

How are you all? Fine I hope. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to send any of
the journal lately. There are just too many things to do in New Zealand!

On Sunday, I swam with Dusky dolphins in the morning and then drove coast to
coast through some breath-taking scenary; Yesterday, I hiked on the Franz Josef
Galcier, one of the fastest and biggest in the world, and Lake Matheson from
where enjoyed the view of views of Mt. Cook, the highest in Oceania/
Australasia; Today, I bungy jumped 134 metres from a gondola suspended over the
Nevis River gorge; Tomorrow, I will be driving to the fiords at Milford Sound. 

Man, it's gonna be hard getting in to the 9 to 5 routine again.... 


Anyway, here's the start of Australia...


SUNDAY 23 JULY 

And so Australia, the thought of which always used to bring images of hot and
sunny weather. But this was winter! And though the temperatures rarely dipped
below 15c, having just spent 5 days in the sweltering heat of Brunei it felt
very cold! We didn't have any warm clothing but our Perth friends gave us a
couple of bright red "Enjoy Coca-Cola" singing promotional jumpers. I was
careful in always wearing something over it, especially when Mustafa,. who
didn't seem to care, was wearing it at the same time!

Anyway, needlesss to say we had a good lie in - a very comfortable night in
very comfortable beds! After a late breakfast our friends dropped us off at a
central railway station. Some browsing (and little buying) at a local market we
headed for the port town of Freemantle. It's one of the first places that 
European explorers landed and used to be the country's busiest port. Had a good
walk around the town and the Indian Ocean shorline. It's a very pretty little
town with redish buildings that reminded me of Malaka.

There was a moored submarine by the coast that we were thinking of going in to.
But then we saw the entrance fee - AUS$10 !!! No way, J-man! For us Australia
was very expensive, particularly as we'd just spent 5 weeks in Indonesia. But
it's not cheap even compared to England. I used to hear so much rubbish about
how things in Oz cost half what they do in England. Not only that's not true, a
lot of things actually cost more there - bread and chocolate are two that come
to mind now.  

Needless to say we didn't go to the submarine. (It was booked out for the whole
day anyway.) We didn't even wanna pay the astronomical prices for lunch. (We
were gonna spend a few weeks in the country but didn't know how we'd survive.)
Eventually we found some reduced stuff at a supermarket!

We were late in returning to our friends' place. Had dinner after going paying
a visit to their daughter and son-in-law's house and then went to the house of
a guy who'd just spent five weeks travelling in Southern Africa to watch a
slideshow of his pictures. Some of the Namibian sand-dunes were fantastic! I'd
love to go there!

And that was the first day in Oz, which not surprisingly reminded me of
England. Having spent the previous 5 and a half months in the majority world,
the change was very noticiable. Everything seemed much more organised and
orderly but at the same time it felt sterile and lifeless (though that's
probably a little too harsh!)