roganjosh

I jumped out of a perfectly good plane at 12,000ft this morning. Hell of a way to start the day! When I say jumped what actually happened is that I got strapped on to a guy who knew what he was doing (and had a parachute) and then he jumped out of the plane. The first couple of seconds of freefall were pretty baffling but after that it was just an enormous amount of fun! Once the parachute had opened and everything calmed down a bit there was absolutely no sensation of falling, just a gentle drop till I skidded back on to terra firma on my arse. Woo!

After that I jumped back on the bus to Whakapapa where we went tobogganing on an active volcano. Everything over here is extreme! Off to Wellington next, where I think I’ll chill out for a day or two.

You can do some crazy things in New Zealand. I’m travelling around on a Stray bus at the minute and they’ve been stopping off in some cool places. I spent the night in Raglan a couple of days ago which is the big surf beach on the north island, so obviously I had to hire a board and get out there! All the pros surf on a small piece of land surrounded by rocks, but thankfully there’s a nice long sandy beach for people who only have a vague grasp of what they’re doing. After being beaten up by the sea several dozen times I did actually manage to stand up on the board, which surprised me so much I fell off! Still, definite improvement - I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it all in California.

After that the Stray bus took me to the Waitomo caves where I saw lots of glow-worms on a sedate boat ride through the caves. I only did that to pass the time before going to the Shearing Shed at 12:45 to watch an angora rabbit being sheared! They strap the bunny into a kind of rotisserie device and then give it a US army haircut. They seem much happier once they’ve been defurred though, they’re just big ungainly balls of fluff beforehand. Anyway, it’s the only place in the world you can see a rabbit being sheared, so a must-see as far as I’m concerned!

I hopped off the bus in Rotorua so I’ve been here a couple of nights now. Rotorua lake is surrounded by geothermal activity, so the whole town smells of eggs. I’m still recovering from my cold though, so I can smell nothing - nice timing really. I went white water rafting yesterday down the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world - a six metre drop! It was enormous fun, even when our raft capsized coming off the fall. Today I went zorbing, which is jumping inside an inflatable ball and then rolling down a hill. They threw some water in too so the whole experience was like being inside a washing machine. I’d been looking forward to trying this the whole trip and it wasn’t a disappointment! Fun, in a very stupid way. I did a swoop too - which is being winched up about 100ft and then dropped into a huge arcing swing. After that I got thrown around a water course in a jet boat. Like I say, you can do some crazy things over here!

I’m in New Zealand - I can’t travel further now without getting closer to home! I’ve spent my first day here buying cough syrup and a waterproof coat, but actually the weather in Auckland is beautiful. I hear it’s a bit wetter down on the south island though, and I’m off on a bus tour from tomorrow.

My last couple of days in Sydney were pretty touristy. I visited Manly beach and was tempted to hire a surf board, but I’m struck down with man-flu at the moment so didn’t want to get wet. On the ferry back I got a great view of the harbour bridge and the opera house, and took a moment to take exactly the same picture as everyone else on the boat. The opera house is stunning though - shame I’m not an opera fan… A couple of people I met were going to do the harbour bridge climb, but at AUD$180 I wasn’t too keen myself. I also visited the national maritime museum where I got to have a wander around on board the replica of the Endeavour, and then in the evening watched a film called Jindabyne just because I’d stayed in that town a few days earlier.

For my last full day in Australia I took a train out to the blue mountains, and rode a london bus around Katoomba. My English and German companions and I then drank wine at the echo point lookout and ate some fudge, much as the early explorers of the region must have done.

And that was that, a month in Australia - far too little time to really see the place, but I had some fun. At least New Zealand’s a little bit smaller!

So I’ve been travelling around like a crazy person since the last update. Melbourne was a lot of fun, it’s a great city - a bit like all the best bits of european cities stuck together and put somewhere sunny. I ended up in a great hostel and met a lot of Brits and Irish girls, which meant going out to Irish bars a lot. It also meant going to the Neighbours quiz on most of our’s last night in the city, and getting my picture taken with Toadfish! I’ve not seen Neighbours in years though so I didn’t recognise anyone else from the cast, and we didn’t win the quiz. ho hum. Obviously that was an exciting night but it was easily eclipsed by going to Melbourne zoo and seeing a DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS! I’d always thought they’d be really slow and ponderous but in real life the little guy was swimming around like a maniac. Actually his continuous circling did start to make me wonder if he had gone a bit funny in the head, but maybe that’s just what platypuses do? who knows, they’re crasy!

So from Melbourne I needed to get up to Sydney. I guess the most obvious thing to do would have been to jump on a plane and get there in an hour or so, but instead I choose to do a 4 day tour around the coast. Saw some beautiful countryside on the way, travelling to the most southerly point on the mainland - Wilson’s Promontory - then up past Lake Entrance to the Australian Alps! I was throwing snowballs in Australia! who’d have thunk? Lots of wineries and pubs on the trip, and even better - kookaburras! I was maybe more excited to see them than the platypus, but it’s too close to call. oh, wombats too, they’re great.

Just made it in to Sydney now, and I’m off out with the people from the tour in a bit. Just a couple of days left for me in Australia now, and then I head off to the really cold place - New Zealand!

And in other exciting news I’ve sold a picture on artbyinch! There are some people with taste in the world!

I visited Inside Australia the other day, an installation of 51 statues by Anthony Gormley (of Angel of the North fame) set up in a salt lake about 190 kms from Kalgoorlie, which is in turn a seven hour train journey from Perth. Kalgoorlie is a gold mining town, and everyone there is either working in the mines or looking for work in the mines. There weren’t a lot of backpackers travelling through anyway.

The only way to get out to Lake Ballard, other than on an organised tour once a week, is to drive there. The first part of the trip up to the town of Menzies is on a nice sealed road through the bush, but after that it’s a 50km trip on a gravel road - I was assured that a medium sized hire car would be fine for the journey though, so I hired my Hyundai Accord - not realising that I could have hired a Ute instead! cursing my lack of stereotypical Australian transport I had an early night ready for the adventure.

I started the day by going down to Hannan’s Hotel to get some breakfast. I walked in to find a bar full of miners and a barmaid wearing a negligee. I thought about asking her if she’d just got up, but wasn’t sure that being a smart arsed english guy in a room full of mine workers was a good idea. Being a rough and tumble frontier town many of the bars in town are ’skimpies’, which basically means the barmaids aren’t going to be wearing much. I hadn’t expected the same service to be extended at breakfast, but I ordered my beans on toast regardless and kept a low profile.

Fully fed I picked up my car, bought a 4 litre bottle of water in case I got lost or broke down, and started out for Menzies. The 51 statues I was heading for are all based on laser scans of the inhabitants of Menzies, but after being scanned all the dimensions were gaussed and blurred till they resemble stick men and women. Originally there were going to be 100 statues but they ran out of money. I’m quite impressed they could actually find 100 people that live in such a small town, the main street consisted of the shire office, a hotel, a shop and the petrol station. It took me about an hour to get there on a road that consisted of a long straight drive to the horizon followed by another, and another, and another… It was a beautiful day though, and I passed mile after mile of red earth, eucalypti and dead kangaroos. At one point I thought I saw a dog on the road in the far distance but it turned out to be an eagle eating a kangaroo carcas. It didn’t fly off when I drove past it, and looked like it could do me and the car serious damage if it had a mind to.

After Menzies I turned left onto the gravel road and spent 45 minutes trying to keep my car heading roughly forwards. Some parts of the road were level and smooth, but mostly it was either covered in ballbearing like gravel or so bumpy I thought the little hyundai was going to be shaken apart. I saw about two other cars on the journey, or possibly the same one going somewhere and coming back - either way it was reassuring to know that even after all this travelling I wasn’t completely alone. The only other life around was more dangerous looking eagles and pink cockatoos.

Finally I saw a sign for Lake Ballard and pulled into the car park, not terribly surprised to be the only car parked there. I followed the path down towards the lake being bothered by persistent aussie flies, and reached a large flat expanse of orange earth that muddily sucked at my shoes as I walked across it. despite being slightly damp the lake itself was dried out and as far as I could see to the hills in the distance was flat, except for a huge hill right in front of me. Dotted around, very far apart were the sculptures. Roughly human sized they were stick thin, and in the bright sunshine looked like black silhouettes on the landscape. Part of the process of creating them seemed to have left all the female statues with elongated mushrooms for breasts, and frankly it’s hard not to snigger at that.

So I tramped through the sticky ground looking at the statues and started to think they were all pretty samey. From a distance it looked like some of the statues were stood in some water so I headed out towards them to see if they were any different. The water turned out to just be a mirage from the heat haze, but getting closer I realised that the orange earth I was walking across was just the edge of the lake, and that I was heading towards a mile of salt flats. The first statues was standing on a distinct orange-white dividing line and reaching it I walked onto a crunchy layer of salt crystals which sounded like snow underfoot. Now that I was this far out the scale of the place was just awesome. I kept walking towards the furthest statues only to realise that there was another one even further in the distance. After a while I was standing in the middle of an arctic landscape, and my only company was some distant skeletal figures - and in that setting you really did start to notice the differences between each one, especially after you’d spent ten minutes crunching your way across to him or her. I loved it, it was just huge and vast and impressive in a very australian way, but still personally based on a couple of dozen people from a little village on the edge of nowhere.

After all that excitement I drove up to snake hill to have my lunch, and then started the long drive back to Kalgoorlie. It had been a lot of effort to get out to see a couple of statues and a dried up lake, but it was completely worth it. Go and see them!

I’m in Melbourne now, which funnily enough has a couple more versions of the statues that are much, much easier to reach (they’re in the national gallery). It’s not the same though. Not without the dead kangaroos.