Australia, 1st-4th October 2017 (Melbourne)

It's been over a decade since I last visited Australia. As I was already on holiday in Malaysia, I decided it was worth a hop over the sea to Melbourne to catch up with some friends (given that there are only two cities I'm keen to visit Down Under, both to meet up with online and offline friends). Apparently you now need a visa for Australia, which I totally didn't realise.

Fortunately, it was quick to do at the airport, though I am sure you can get it cheaper than 45 Singapore dollars elsewhere. Unfortunately, my flight with Scoot was euphemistically 're-timed' from 01:15 to 05:00, then another two and a half hours sat on the plane waiting for it to leave. I had a bit of slack in the way out, rather less on the way back, as my flight on to London was at 23:15. I was due at 16:50 into Singapore, but given the sudden and unexplained 're-timing', I spent a good chunk of my Melbourne trip fretting the plane to Singapore would suffer a similar fate. So, lesson learned, never fly with Scoot. :)

I went with the best reviews when looking for a hostel, which was United Backpackers. It's very central, directly across from Flinders St station. There's free WiFi, if only in the basement, plus it has two lockers under each bunk bed (bring a padlock). Working out the trains wasn't too tricky, though be aware there is a difference between the tram and train stations (quite a few places have both, it appears). The train is quicker, so I didn't try the tram. For either, you'll need a myki card, which is a non-refundable $6. If you're travelling within 2 hours, you'll want to top up $4.10 or so, any longer than that and it's $8.20. That will last you the whole day.

My plan for the first day was spoiled by the 7 hours Scoot delay, but my second day went according to plan. I headed on a morning train to Ballarat (about $28), to hang out with a blogger I've known online for years, Chris B. She was super hospitable, driving me to her horse stud from the station, giving me breakfast and even lending me some shoes! It was great to catch up with her and learn all about her horses, managing to squeeze in a brief bit of riding too. Next time, I must remember to bring long sleeves: contrary to what childhood soaps told me, Australia can get cold. :)

Chris also showed me some of Ballarat's history (it's a 19th century mining town), talked about her precision agriculture PhD and also her horse breeding. I'm not sure I fully understood, but she is a specialist that breeds gaited horses with a specific gene, determining whether they do a fast walk rather than canter. Chris is an excellent horse-riding instructor too. I'll try to remember for next time. The main points IIRC were turning your whole body and looking where you want to go, pulling on the inside rein. Squeeze to go, keep an upright posture and have your hips forward like you were passing guard with a pressure pass. To stop, bring your legs away from the horse's body and pull in, then give rein back. My first bit of instruction since pony club as a fourteen year old. ;)

A post shared by Can (Jun) (@slideyfoot) on Oct 5, 2017 at 12:26am PDT

After that, I returned to Flinders St (via Southern Cross, the main interchange for longer travel) and my hostel to get ready to train at Absolute MMA. Liv is another person I've known online for many years. She trains at Absolute, which is one of the premier Aussie BJJ schools. Liv was incredibly welcoming and even rolled with me, which was cool, given she's a world class black belt. It was also brilliant to catch up with Hannah (who has started her own BJJ clothing company, She Beast Apparel), who loved my colour combinations, big fan of the Bosch spats too. 😜

Tuesday kicked off with the National Gallery of Victoria International (not to be confused with NGV Australia, which is nearer Flinders). The building is very snazzy, entering through a wall of waterfall, through a huge hall with a spectacular stained glass ceiling, walking out onto a huge flower painting. In terms of my favourites (Flemish, Dutch and a few Spaniards), it isn't a huge collection, but of course I'm used to galleries in Brussels, Madrid, Amsterdam, London etc. Rather easier to build a Dutch/Flemish collection there than in Melbourne. 😉

Having said that, there are a respectable number of examples, plus a few bigwigs (like El Greco and Rembrandt). The top one in that collage below is from Jan Brueghel the Elder, which also had a good audio guide entry (from one of the NGV staff, I think?). Unfortunately the NGV audio guide is rather lacking in numbers (not many entries) and there is no indication by each relevant physical painting to show it's got an audio entry. Still, the NGV guide is new, so work in progress. Also, the free guided tours (on the hour) are excellent, making up for it. That makes me think I need to do more of the guided tours, something I often forget in art galleries. ;)

A post shared by Can (Jun) (@slideyfoot) on Oct 5, 2017 at 2:33am PDT

As ever I was on the look out for female artists. That's an area where the NGV performs comparatively well, especially considering the European collection I was looking at isn't all that big. Along with familiar names like Mary Beale (bottom left in the collage below) and Vigee Le Brun (top right), I encountered paintings by at least two other artists I don't think I've heard of before, such as Dutch painter Maria Margaretha La Fargue (1743-1813, bottom right) and Françoise Duparc (1726-1778, born in France but emigrated to Spain at 4yrs old).

A post shared by Can (Jun) (@slideyfoot) on Oct 5, 2017 at 9:41am PDT

All this is free, plus the paid entry exhibitions looked good too. I only had two hours, but could easily have spent much longer. For a start, I would have gone on all the gallery tours, I think they vary them up. A friend from Canada met me after that, Ruth, who I first met way back in 2002. She and her family have recently moved to Melbourne: it was very cool to catch up, as well as admire her awesome Peppa Pig crafting skills. ;)

My trip finished off with the highlight, training at Academy Jiu Jitsu with my ex-student, Erin. Not only was she extremely welcoming (like everybody has been in Australia), but so was the whole team. It's a lovely atmosphere, which really made me feel at home. Chilled out rolling with lots of laughter. Great class by Dylan too, who gave me excellent tips at open mat.

Thanks so much for the incredible hospitality, everybody I met in Australia: you are all amazing! 👍

RTW 04: New Zealand

New Zealand (Queenstown, Auckland) 27/05/04 – 05/06/04

It isn't hard to see why this is the place the people behind the Lord of the Rings films chose as their setting. It is like England, but with all the urban development brushed aside. If I was to live anywhere in the world other than the UK, then my top choices would be either here or Canada.

Most of our time was spent in Queenstown, which is best known for extreme sports, none of which we tried. Our experience was considerably more sedate, going for walks around the town, a day trip to Milford Sound and an organised Lord of the Rings tour. A significant chunk of it was somewhat tangential to the films, with places that sort of looked like bits of the film.

That included a few of the more sylvan sites (Lothlorien, Amon Hen, and the place where they run away from orcs), but only from a distance, as they were off-limits private land. We also saw Isengard, or more specifically, the background to Isengard. In the film, Isengard itself was a computer generated image slapped on in the studio. However, it was worth the money for the beautiful scenery, and informative guide.

As it turned out, we went on our own tour to a genuine Lord of the Rings location, just outside Queenstown, called Deer Park Heights. For some reason, a black dog followed us the whole way there. Deer Park Heights itself is an animal park, reminiscent of the petting zoos over in the UK, but wound around a large hill. Inside, you can see horses, sheep, kune kune pigs and ostriches. At the top of the hill, there is a random Korean prison (a leftover film set), and the aforementioned Lord of the Rings location.

In the distance, you can see the Remarkables, a mountain range. There is also a small body of water, which in the films is passed by the refugees from Rohan on their way to Helm's Deep. You can also see the rocky outcropping, where a worg jumps out to attack (unfortunately our camera ran out of battery at that point, so we didn't get a picture).

We also briefly had a look around Auckland, but mainly just a few bars, along with the Rangitoto volcanic island off the coast. It was in Auckland that strengthened my impression of New Zealand as more 'British' than Australia, in the same way that Canada feels more 'British' than the USA. That was partly the architecture, but also the people, who seemed less loud and in your face.

Muay Thai

The first thing I saw when I stepped off the bus in Queenstown was a poster proclaiming 'Return of the Kings - New Zealand K-1', which sounded rather promising for a martial arts fan like myself. It was to take place at an events centre a short bus ride away. There weren't any big names present (though there was an exhibition by some random Japanese bodybuilder, for some reason), but I was still looking forward to it. At least this time no large thais would be turning me away - though I did wonder if perhaps there would be a big Maori instead.

As it turned out, the K-1 title was a little misleading. It wasn't a K-1 tournament: there were just two K-1 fighters in it right at the end. First, Andrew Peck (who looks to have a decent record in K-1) then Hiriwa Te Rangi (not so easy to find anything about - one loss in MMA to Chris Haseman is all I found on him).

Anyway, onto my enthralling fight report. The night started off with a bunch of athletic looking girls and one bloke in tank tops and loose trousers standing in a line in the middle of the ring, which I presumed meant they would leap into awesome kung-fu action once the clock hit 7pm, which was the scheduled start time. It got to 7 and...they did a boring dance routine. One woman twirled a stick, raising my hopes slightly...then dropped it. And got out some bits of cloth to spin about.

After that rather poor opening, the fights got underway, and it wasn't a bad start. The taller guy flew straight at his opponent, laying him out three times in the first round, winning by TKO. The techniques were less crisp and a lot slower than I'd seen in Bangkok, but there was a considerable size difference, and I wasn't really expecting the skill level to be as high as it had been in Thailand. They also didn't seem quite so hardcore, with the second fight ending when one fighter gave up after apparently just being punched on the jaw - must have been something more serious (maybe a cut?), but from my cheap floor seat, looked pretty innocuous. Also, the ref actually called 'break', which I didn't see once in Thailand!

Plenty of Maoris were featured throughout, producing some of the best action of the night, as most of them were big, powerful, aggressive fighters. Also, there was a female fight, which was slightly marred by the unfortunately less than discerning crowd who outright laughed at points, but the fighters themselves put on a good show. The local girl in the blue corner was particularly impressive, with potent front kicks and total dominance of the clinch, proving a worthy winner on points.

On a more random note, there was a bizarre 'celebrity' fight, featuring four blokes, one dressed as Elvis, and tag team rules. However, it did appear that at least two of them knew how to fight, although any pretence of real competition disappeared in the third round when they all piled in, then started doing pro-wrestling style body slams and bouncing off the ropes either end. Even more bizarre was the aforementioned body-building demo by a Japanese guy - Hiro something - to the sound of 'The Final Countdown'.

Still, the ladies in the crowd seemed to like it, and he gave a few of them a close up demonstration. Although at this point, I wouldn't have cared if a boxing kangeroo got on stage, as I was annoyed at missing my $4 bus, meaning (so I thought) a $20 taxi. Turned out that I managed to get a $5 taxi, but didn't know that at the time.

There were also two title fights, firstly for the 'Super Middleweight South Island Championship', and then the main event, the two K-1 fighters going for the 'WMC (WMBC? Something like that) Super Heavyweight'. The smaller guys were infinitely better, with the advantage switching rapidly throughout the five round match, and both fighters receiving several standing counts.

The big guys failed to impress, though Te Rangi go in a beautiful spinning backfist and Peck responded with some nicely executed headkicks, but they spent most of the match sizing each other up and backing off. By the fifth round, they were literally lolling about on the ropes (especially Te Rangi), and neither seemed at all interested in the supposedly prestigious title they were fighting for.

Other interesting parts were a couple of guys who did the full muay thai thing, wai kru, head thingy, music etc, and a bloke who looked karate-like, throwing a load of spinning hooks etc against a much tougher looking thai boxer, but still winning (though to be fair his opponent was incredibly slow and seemed to only have one move, a knee).

< Australia ::: Chile >

RTW 04: Australia

Australia (Sydney, Blue Mountains) – 24/05/04 – 27/05/04

The memory that most sticks in my mind from Australia is arriving at the airport, realising that I had just whizzed through three continents in a couple of months, then getting the soil in my boots checked for foreign invaders. It was a bit of a shock to go from super-cheap Asian prices to costs that felt pretty similar to back home. In some ways, it was like going back home: my friend commented that the city looked just like Bristol, though given that she'd just been through the Middle East and Asia, her impressions of home may have got a little warped.

Strangely enough, I had my first ever pie in Australia, despite having lived in the UK for over two decades by that point. Better late than never. In readiness for South America, it also inspired a strange bit of Spanish instruction from my girlfriend (I can't remember if I requested this particular phrase, or if she suggested it). Hence why I found myself wandering around Sydney repeating 'quiero tener un pollo con una barbaridad dentro de mis nalgas por favor' over and over to myself in a loud voice with lots of emotional fist shaking to aid enunciation. I'm sure its a phrase that will come in really useful, as it allegedly (Google Translate disagrees) means 'I would like to have a chicken with an enormous thing inside my buttocks please'. No doubt I'll be saying it all the time...

We were only in Australia for three days, so there wasn't a lot of time to see the place. That meant that we went for the famous sights, with lots of posing in front of the Sydney Opera House, umpteen pictures of the bridge, and a ferry tour around the harbour. The only trip we did was a train journey over to the Blue Mountains, on a double decker train (something I've not seen before). Very cold, but suitably pretty.

I should probably go back at some point, although the fact that it seems most of the wildlife can kill me isn't hugely tempting. The far tamer fauna of our next stop, New Zealand, was rather more appealing.

< Laos ::: New Zealand >