Don't Panic!

Driving in Oz is a pretty straightforward affair because it is so similar to the UK – there a couple of quirks that one needs to be aware of but more about them later (Oh Goodie!). The thing that I found hardest to get used to was the indicators – the wipers and indicators are on the other side if you’re used to European cars. Older people will remember that when cars were made in the UK back in the Sixties, indicators were on the right, and wipers were activated by a dashboard switch and were invariably powered from a vacuum tank linked to the carburettor. This system delivered variable speed wipers in a somewhat variable fashion – as you drove uphill the wipers slowed and often stopped altogether but when you reached the brow and hurtled uncontrollably down the other side on your four inch cross ply tyres, the wipers smashed from side to side like a fiddler’s elbow – but I digress. It’s relatively easy to retrain your brain to use the right hand stalk for indicating except when you need to draw on instinctive reactions. Driving towards a junction your navigator hits the dashboard and shouts “go that way”. “Which way would ‘that’ way be” you politely enquire as the traffic converges on the junction from various angles. “Left”, no right, no left” – the junction looms and in the panic you find yourself with the wipers smashing from side to side like the afore mentioned fiddler’s elbow.

We returned the car without damage and were complimented on how clean we had kept the windscreen.  

Oh No – It’s Aussie Speak

I have been using a local SIM in my mobile supplied by a company called JUST – it works very well and saves the roaming fees and is highly recommended, apart from one somewhat disconcerting feature. The other day I received an alert to tell me that I had voicemail messages; not aware that I had missed any calls I checked anyway. I was very surprised when the voice automation system informed that I had “nine new messages”. No matter how I tried I could not get through the menu system to find these messages, so I redialled to see if my general prodding of buttons had done anything – no still I had “nine new messages”. So I had another go and then it dawned on me that I had fallen prey to the Aussie diphthong – “You have noiy new messages”!

F1 or F pointless?

Some may be shocked to learn that there are still a few things I don’t understand. Excluding women, which only gay men really understand, there are some ‘sports and pastimes’ that I just do not get. Being extraordinarily Rumpsfeldian about this, there are those that I don’t understand but could if I tried and there are those which I don’t understand and never could no matter how hard I tried. In the first category I include Aussie Rules football and baseball, but the second category includes such pointless pastimes as basketball and F1 motor racing. To air my peeve about basketball first; as far as I can tell the game consists of tall black folks running from one end of a court to another and tossing a ball through a hoop. The other side then does exactly the same but in the opposite direction and this continues until the time runs out and one side has scored a hoop more than the other – typically 68-69. Now I do not doubt for a moment that great skill is involved in throwing hoops but the reason it seems pointless to me, is that both teams always seem to be good at it never missing a hoop and so the game is won or lost depending on the on the timing of the clock! But today I want to talk about F1 – which is big in Melbourne at the moment. Now as far as I can tell this pointless pastime seems to be about tearing round a track very fast, making a very loud whining noise and stinking the place out with petrol fumes and burning rubber. It would not be pointless, and bear in mind our hotel is host to about 100 Ferrari grease monkeys wandering about the place in their red overalls so I observe first hand; if the result was ever in any doubt. The first day was spent tearing around as a practice, the second day was spent tearing around to see who starts at the front, the third day will, I predict, be spent with all the cars following each other in the exact order they started unless one of them breaks down. So the whole pointless exercise seems to be predicated on the reliability of the car and there must be better ways of improving vehicle reliability that F1. As a nearby spectator (they also seem to dress in red overalls) you blink and you miss your team car and so just enjoy the lingering taste of petrol exhaust and rubber, and as a distant holidaymaker in Melbourne, one can’t avoid the scream of the massed engines ripping through the world's precious resources.
Pointless? – I should say so! 

Oh how manly you are!

We took the ferry to Manly and learned that not only does it have a fine brew pub (the 4 Pines) but that Manly was so named by Capt. Arthur Phillip. It is reported that ‘he was passing a group of unarmed aboriginal men wading in the water to greet Phillip's small boats. Impressed with their stature and bearing, Phillip is recorded describing them as 'manly', and the name stuck’. Now my dear wife believes this literally referred to their strong physique; me, I think it probably referred to their ‘didgeridoos’ dragging in the surf given that they would have been bollock-naked at the time – but I’m just an old cynic. 

Think bike! - I have and I don’t like it

The question for today - are cyclists inconsiderate road users the whole world over? Based on my experience in the UK and Australia there is a prima-facie case for believing so. Over here they clearly believe they have the right of way on roads, pavements, pedestrian crossings and of course the walking half of the cycleway (having been run off it by a cyclist near Manly Yacht Club). Red traffic signals matter not a jot to the cyclist, neither does a one-way system.

The patterns of behaviour are uncannily similar to the UK - I recall seeing a cyclist gesticulating madly and shouting at a car driving the wrong way down the street in Luss (a small village on the shore of Loch Lomond). He got so angry and nearly fell of his bike he was waving so vigorously. The irony, seemly completely lost him, was that all the time he was cycling the wrong way down the street himself - clearly cyclists have a unique interpretation of the rules of the road and pavement.

Are Texans deliberately obtuse or what?

We spent a day in the Blue Mountains – well I say ‘Blue’ because that’s what I’m told they look like in a certain light but actually I have absolutely no idea what colour they might be as it pissed hard all day. But to move on – we had a couple of Texans on the tour and they were quizzing the guide – a man of tremendous resource and patience as it turns out - about cricket. Now, at the best of times explaining cricket to a non-fan is something of a forlorn hope but trying to explain it to a large Texan is nigh impossible. Our Steve was up for the task it seemed; enthusiastically talking about boundary ropes, fours and sixes, running between wickets, and the difference between being ‘in’ and ‘out’ while out Texan nodded vigorously . After about five minutes of Steve’s faultless detailed explanation the Texan said “So I guess the bat is just an extension of the guys arm”. Steve smiled and politely said “sort of” and changed the subject.

I like to think the Texan was just trying to wind-up poor old Steve – the alternative is too troubling to consider.

No barracking at the Sydney Opera House

The tour of Sydney Opera House was splendid but for such an icon of the Arts, I was surprised by the sloppy use of English displayed on the signage at the Cloakroom.

The tour requires visitors to lodge larger backpacks in the Cloakroom – all very reasonable; one doesn’t want to stumble about the place bumping into gap year students with packs the size of Yorkshire replete with billycans and that ‘must have’ didgeridoo. However, rather than the signage saying something like ‘please deposit/lodge/place’ or at a push ‘check in’ large bags, it says “cloak bags larger than A4”. Now call me pernickety but this not only requires a visitor to have a passing acquaintance with metric paper sizes but also be in possession of technology that I last understood to only be available to the Klingons and the Romulons – not members of the Federation. I was tempted to place the now famous Tatonka pack under my cloak to see if my literal interpretation was acceptable – but not having a cloak and having a wife who told me to behave, I didn’t.

The following day it was suggested that the term ‘barracking’ came from the army garrison in Australia who originally played at the Sydney ground and were known as the ‘barrackers’ (so used to shout a bit) – a noun migrating to a verb. So maybe in a decade we’ll all be ‘cloaking’ our packs and coats (or even our cloaks). 

Crunchy with a long aftertaste

‘When in the rain forest do as the rain foresters do’ – or something similar.

When we were in Queensland following a trail through the forest our helpful guide showed us the various flora and fauna and generally did the Ray Mears bush life thing. Predictably we found a dead tree with an abundant family of Witchetty Grubs underneath the bark. Our bushman guide offered each of us the tasty morsel - so why was I the only one to accept it? Anyway I popped it in quickly, that was best thing to do I thought because its wee cute face was melting my heart and if I’d left it a moment longer I could not have bitten on it. The taste was woody with nutty overtones, the texture was juicy with an interesting crunch when I reached the mouth parts. The totally unexpected experience was the long, somewhat unpleasant aftertaste similar to that you get with John Smith’s Extra Smooth.

I consider it best tried roasted with a medium-oaked Chardonnay or maybe a John Smith’s!

So how’s my audition for the SMWS tasting panel doing?

Never let a man grab the microphone

A cautionary warning about the dangers of letting a man loose with a ‘talkie walkie’ was amply demonstrated by our Airport Shuttle bus drive in Perth. Now to fully appreciate this conversation you have to hear the voice of Boycie from ‘Only Fools and Horses’ with an Aussie twang – you have our man!

“This is Peter to Rita, Peter to Rita; come in Rita”

An incomprehensible squelch of white noise and the distant voice of a woman could be heard from the other end.

“This is Peter, Rita; I copy that Rita. Rita this is Peter, we have a ‘no’-show, repeat ‘no-show’ at Sullivan’s Hotel, over”

Another torrent of hissing and the hint of a woman’s voice with an ‘Aussie Questioning
Intonation’ was heard ..

“This is Peter to Rita, I copy that Rita, I will proceed without further delay. Peter over and out”

I will never again complain when a near relative grabs the Karaoke microphone and starts singing Frank Sinatra songs – well not as much anyway! 

Aussie Crappuccino

When we stopped for our mid-morning black coffees driving up from Margaret River we were given two white coffees. On querying the error we were informed that we should have ordered ‘two flat white coffees without milk’ – I like their thinking! 

When is $9.99 really $10.00?

I have never really believed that offering a product at £9.99 rather than £10.00 causes people to make the decision to purchase. My rationale for this belief is rooted in my own expectation - whenever I buy a product at £9.99 I pay with a £10.00 note and I am not suddenly disappointed when I only get a penny change. The idea presumably is to fool the dim-witted into thinking that the item is really just over £9.00 – which could be called a ‘cheaper than it is’ formula.  

Now in Australia they have a more advanced ‘cheaper than it is’ formula. Apparently both 1¢ and 2¢ coins have been out of circulation for years but many items are still priced using the ‘cheaper than it is’ formula. We bought a bottle of wine priced at $7.99 and dutifully waited for our 1¢ change, only to be faced by a curious checkout guy who thought we’d had a mild seizure as we had not moved once he gave us our wine. We were eventually told that all items priced this way are rounded up, so this bizarre system means that the ‘cheaper than it is’ formula expects purchasers to suspend the rounding up reaction when viewing the item but re-instate it when they buy. Alice through the looking glass wouldn’t have believed it either.  

One advantage of being old and white

I have discovered a benefit of being old and white – coming into Australia from Hong Kong all the ethnic Chinese were summarily ushered into the Customs Area to have their bags searched. Being old and white, we were asked if we had any fruit or snacks (I was tempted to ask for an orange and a pre-veggie Mars bar but thought that as I didn't look particularly emaciated he was just being hospitable). We were waved through the Green channel 'without let or hinderence'.

Please forgive Billy

Our bus tour guide in Honk Kong used her limited English with interesting variants. It took me a while to realize that the ‘Typhoon Shelters’ of which she spoke were not some variant of Anderson Shelter to house fleeing locals from the storm but harbours – quite logical really. What was not so understandable were her continual references to Hong Kong as a 'conolly'. Now the Big Yin has been responsible for many things not least of which was making my Sister-in-law wet her knickers laughing, but the opium wars and the subjugation of the Chinese are an accusation too far.

Beware of the Dog

A tour of Hong Kong Island included a visit to a jewellery factory (no pressure to buy but 20% off if you buy today). One of the items being offered very enthusiastically was Chinese Zodiac Pendants – find you own Chinese birth year on the chart and select the corresponding pendant. The couple from Australia were looking at them and the woman, who was neither a natural beauty nor in the first flush of youth, was undecided. Her husband without irony told her that the pendant for the year of the dog looked great on her – I remain undecided as to whether he was just very evil or very stupid.

BABAS Shock

Those members of the British Airways Breakfast Appreciation Society (BABAS) will be shocked to learn of the changes that have been made to this ancient institution. Each month I receive an email from BA which purports to inform me about significant changes they are making to the airline but at no time did I receive any notification about this change to the BA breakfast.
Controversially, the fried half tomato and hash brown have been substituted with what can best be described as a tomato peseta. Overall the impact is not critical, the sausage continues to delight and the mystery BA jus that defies forensic examination and blends the whole dish together still thrills. A word of caution though, once initiatives like changing the institution of the BA breakfast are allowed to pass without challenge, who can anticipate where they will lead. We all remember the impact on the flavour of Mars bars when they were made veggie friendly – so fellow BABAS be aware and be on your guard!