Australia

 As you will have noticed I have been less than assiduous in keeping you informed of our whereabouts. There is a good reason for this. In fact, this reminds me of when I went to see New Model Army at The Cooperage in Plymouth. They were touring their album Eight which was their first album for five years or so. Now that was a mosh-pit of tumultuous energy and I emerged with some interesting bruises. Halfway through their blazing set their singer, the philsopher and bard Justin Sullivan, said to the crowd 'you've probably been wondering why I have taken five years to make this record'. Before he could continue someone next to me in the front row yelled out 'Cos you're a fucking slacker'. Justin just laughed and said 'guilty as charged' before going on to explain the delay. I too say 'guilty as charged' and will explain. In South America we were always in a room so it was easy to get the computer out and write something. Camping in a car means that there is not much room and the computer isn't always charged. More importantly, the weather was generally good so we were usually up at 5.30am and didn't get back from the sunset until after the last glow of sunset, usually 10pm or so. Thats my excuse, but mostly its because I am a @*!ing slacker.
So, how was Australia? In a word, fantastic. I loved every minute of it (well, almost - watching the car overheat miles from anywhere was not a loved moment). Obviously I can't go into all the details, you'll have to wait until my autobiography comes out for that, so I will give a general outline and a few highlights.
We started off in the Blue Mountains a hundred km west of Sydney. They were gorgeous, more Blue Valleys than Blue Mountains. They consist of a level plateau with deep valleys and canyons cut into them. The villages are built on the plateau which leads to the unusual situation that many village streets end in sheer cliffs with views over the forest below. The walks in these forests are lovely, with the paths clinging to ledges and descending steeply through trees and rocks and when it is foggy they take on an eerie magic. The main viewpoint is Echo Point which is overrun by tourists in the day but, as usual, if you walk more than two minutes from the car park then you are alone. The star of the Blue Mountains was not the landscape or the villages but a parrot. Well, a cockatoo really. Seeing parrots in the wild never lost its charm, and this particular one ambled over, hopped onto our table and said 'hello'. I said to Helene 'that parrot just said hello'. She doubted my story but it turned to her, gave a little bow and said 'hello'. A well cool parrot and in defiance of all the rules, we fed it. We shouldn't have, but it said 'hello'.
From there we headed down the coast past a never ending selection of beaches, coves and headlands. This is the summer vacation spot for Sydney so every place was full of holidaymakers. Lucky then that we were dossing in the car.
We headed inland to Canberra, the sterile and uninteresting capital. When Aus became a country they needed a capital. Sydney though it should be the capital as it was bigger, Melbourne because it was richer. They couldn't agree so they decided to build a new town between the two. The result is a planned town and I didn't like it at all. There is no variety in the architecture, its all exactly the same everywhere you look. There is no town centre really, its all a bit like driving through a park with occasional buildings glimpsed. The density of glimpsed buildings increases until you get to a big bridge and see a built up area in front and you realise that you are downtown. Its built round a series of concentric circles and it all looks identical, everywhere. The only exception to the overall ghastliness were the museums and the war memorial. These were very well done but not really enough to warrant the trip. The other highlight of Canberra was not a place but an attitude. I wanted to shoot the parliament at night and we arrived there at about 10pm The policeman on guard (note the singular) told us we could wander at will and we could park our car in the car-park under the parliament. Get that? The car park under the Australian parliament. Does the name Guy Fawkes mean anything to you? It was so refreshing after the in-yer-face paranoiac security in London to see that the Aussies are OK with a public car park under parliament.
From Canberra we headed back to the coast where we found some really lovely places. The Wilson Promontory was fantastic, with some lovely beaches with really interesting rocks for the breakers to crash against. We had been told that overnight camping was not allowed but as I wanted to shoot the sunrise on Squeaky Beach we decided to have a go. Unfortunately they meant it and a Parks Victoria van arrived and the ranger cordially invited us to get lost. I was disappointed but as we drove the 30km out of the park we were recompensed with seeing kangaroos, wallabies, wombats and possums all over the place. At Phillips Island we got to see Koalas in the wild, well semi-wild as it was a conservation park but they were in their trees. Even cuter, if possible, were the penguins that come out of the sea at sunset. Their nests are on the grassy sand dunes and they come out of the sea and waddle up the beach to feed their babies. Totally a cool thing to see, they really don't seem bothered by people at all so you can get to within a couple of feet of them. As with the koalas it takes a lot to overcome the urge to pick them up.
West of Melbourne is the Great Ocean Road which features some of the best coastal scenery I have ever seen, and that includes Cornwall. The highlight are the Twelve Apostles, a series of giant sea stacks just off the coast. They are lovely, and the best spot there was Gibbson's Beach which is a lovely sweep of perfect sand with turquoise sea and these sea stacks that are blazing orange in the strong sun. I could easily have spent a couple of days on that beach, and that's not something I say often.
From the 12 Apostles we headed north through the Grampians on our way to Bendigo. In Peru we spent a couple of weeks with Kate who was a fellow spanish student. She was lodged with the same family as us. We got on really well and she said that we could go and stay with her parents in Bendigo. So we did. Our stopover on the way to Bendigo was in the Grampians and we were having our picnic in the car park. We got into conversation with another couple there, an Aussie guy with an American girl. Somewhere in the chat they said 'why don't you come over'. So we did. These were two great days. Bendigo was a gorgeous gold-rush town full of lovely buildings, a great cathedral and a beautiful wooden church. Our hosts were so good to us and it was a bonus to us to spend Australia Day having a barbie and a beer watching the parrots on the lawn. Our car-park hosts also were fantastic, it was a shame that we had just the one night and day to spend there. They live in the Dandenong forest which is gorgeous eucalyptus forest where we got to hand feed the parrots.
Our final stop was Melbourne and it was love at first sight. We stayed with a servas family for a couple of nights and we were so well looked after. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but Servas is great. They had a superbly articulate son who was just about to start secondary school. Their Friday night ritual was fish and chips so thats what we had, fish & chips and chardonnay in the sultry evening warmth with a kind family we had only just met. Long live Servas. As I said I adored Melbourne. It is such a lively city with allsorts of activities going on. The bit I loved the most was the architecture, a surprise on every corner with the modern and the ornate all squeezed in together. We walked miles, taking pictures all along and even got to see Andy Murray lose to the tennis machine that is Federer on a giant outdoor screen in the town square. In summary a fab month ended by one of the loveliest cities I have ever been in. Its now on to Hong Kong which I am looking forward to greatly.