End of the road

Last wishes - walk in Kings Park and a bbq - fullfilled ....... thank you dinner for Jan and Brian at Fratelli's overlooking the sunset filled coast......sooner than seems possible I'm in the air seated next to a mum with two small children. Clearly sleep was going to be limited and if you can't beat them, join them. I have never sung 'the wheels on the bus go round and round' complete with actions on a plane before.

Then here comes Jo running down Brixton Hill,  arms open for a hug and Selam waiting at school and Nana is the right way up at last.

No woman is an island

For my last fling I’ve booked a cabin on Rottnest for five days.  It’s an island 45 minutes by ferry from Perth and it’s in the bone marrow of the city. No more than 15kms long, famed for bikes only – no cars here  - and for quokas. It was named for the latter by the Dutch who were the first of many Europeans not to comprehend that the place was populated before them and so to colonise it. Like mistaking Aborigines for not being people, they mistook the quokas for big rats and called the island ‘rat nest’. Quokas are small marsupials, running and hopping and carrying little joeys in pouches just like big sister kangaroo and wallaby.  Think very big brown cat with long tail that can run on two legs or four depending who is chasing it.

Anyway, everyone I’ve met in Perth has Rottnest in their blood.  Blotto on Rotto is the way that kids celebrate leaving school and the nostalgia about the place is probably about lots of firsts – first stay away from home in a state where kids don’t leave home to go to Uni, first romance/sex, first dose of nostalgia about school trips of yore….

It is beautiful – think white sandy beaches, turquoise sea and great coral reef for the snorklers.  I love it but I also think it’s weird. As I’ve cycled, swum and walked it I’ve conceived an idea that Rottnest is a one island industry comprising lots of small businesses all beavering (quokaring?) away at marketing us ‘our’ Rottnest.  It’s badged as ‘special’ and marketed by ‘I heart my Rotto’. There’s a ‘mall’ not indoor and nicely done but with Dome (coffee) and Subway franchises amongst a range of other retail opportunities - ‘wellbeing’ and clothes amongst them (temptation resisted).  Then, in a place to which nature gave everything you need to have fun,  there’s a family play park, an aqua park for little ones (inflatables in the sea), tennis courts, cinema hut, mini golf course, two or three pubs/restaurants, tourist train and round island bus, all making a buck or ten.  So, although I like it a lot, it’s not quite what I’d expected from the romanticised build up. 

The effect for me is a strange feel to Rotto: ‘the Prisoner’ and Stepford wives spring to mind but neither quite nails it or spoils it. The ‘settlement’ is uniformly yellow – a deeper tone than the surrounding sand but not as deep as my tan (hah!).  And there’s something spooky about the way it’s organised. Walking back into the settlement after last bus time I’m passed by and stared at from convoys of electric vehicles heading off on missions to make the place perfect for tomorrow. Seeing a man using a garden blower to get the sand off the concrete floor of a beach shelter was especially strange. I found myself thinking, as a small plane buzzed me out while I was out walking later than the norm, that RIA (Rottnest Island Authority) is only one letter different from the CIA. It was then that I knew that I’d been here on my own for too long. School friends Jan and Squidge are coming over tomorrow to share the cabin for my last couple of days. Probably just as well.

Postscript – I think the RIA have been reading this and I am under attack!!!!! Passing time before meeting Jan and Squidge, I cycled to Little Paraqueet Bay  - no brightly coloured parrot-alikes but swallows diving and swooping and, in human terms I have the place all to myself. Except for the invisible jelly fish that got me when I struck out for a swim. The RIA must be a pretty powerful force to render jelly fish invisible (or maybe it was a stingray firing from a distance).  Anyway it stung. I danced up and down in the ocean for a bit making sure that it had go me from outside my costume and was not contained within.  So here I am, waiting for my friends on the ferry with a large red welt across my belly and another lower down. Let’s just say that cycling back was not much fun.  Bastards are clearly out to get me.

Snakescript - aiding a sense of paranoia are the sign boards repeated throughout the island starting with the word ‘danger’ and ending in ‘venomous snake’. I have never had so much call for the word ‘venomous as I have here.  Signs were right though – cycling round a bend with Jan and Squidge behind me there was a whopper – a yard long, 2 inches thick at the business end, black as he ace of spades  and venomous as all hell. We saw its smaller cousin from the safety as a bus the next day.  These buggers are a protected species so the bus had to avoid running it over. We were very careful walking on metalled roads and did not venture onto tracks. Strikes me that riddling the place with venomous (that word again) snakes is an excellent way of protecting whatever secrets are held on Rottnest.  Send for St Patrick I say.

Working girl

Five weeks at University of Western Australia gone in a flash. Cycling around lovely river front (around because, in Perth the Swan River makes like a lake or the sea when the wind is up  or a swimming pool in certain jelly fish free spots.) On some days I walk to work through Kings Park looking down on my cycle ride views, seeing birdlife and hoping snakes won’t be out early in the morning. They weren’t.

Arriving at UWA’s gorgeous campus, flat white at Neds. Into the office to collect my blue clipboard, recording device and the interview forms for the day. The blue clipboard is how my interviewees recognise me. Off to the fabulous university club, where I have temporary membership and an account that I don’t have to pay. More coffee – I’ll sign for that please.

Asking people about their careers and lives is great – they love to talk and I’ve been told some things that, in some cases, no-one else at UWA knows. That’s a sad reflection on some of what goes on but I hear lots of good stuff too.  Then I have to type the stuff up – much less fun. Anyway, by the end of my stint I was giving other people direction around the campus. And I’ve met some great people who I hope will fetch up in Oxford sometime soon.

Finished my report with half a day to spare, grabbed the bike and did one of Perth’s most stunning  rides – 20kms around the Swan and Canning rivers. Resisted  swimming until I got to the beach at Freemantle. Swim, salt and pepper squid watching the sunset then back to Perth on the train.

Shit – forgot I was supposed to be packing my stuff to move out of my flat tomorrow.

A new pet

It's early morning and I am as yet without shoes or eye aids when, out of the corner of my eye I saw something black, about 6 inches long and no thicker than a pencil slither away into the laundry cupboard.

With stout shoes on and contact lenses in I bravely investigated and found my visitor curled up with the dustpan and broom. This time when he slithered away I spotted too tiny front feet and, importantly, there was no hissing.

Checking in with colleaagues in the office I learnt that this was most likely a skink - not it's proper name I suspect; that they are (a) harmless (b) helpful in that they eat mosquitos (c) creatures of habit so that when they take up residence they tend to stay. I have looked for Slinky as I named  him every morning since but he has gone - could be that he fled to a more congenial home when I turned on the washing machine he was hiding undr.

Best days out

These are from my second, longer stay in Perth (note refusal to use the word  ‘final’)).

Days out to country towns and beauty spots with Jan and Brian.  They are fond of antiquey shops and I’m happy to follow.  Lots of interesting stuff but, aside from being not able to carry it, a lot of it is very familiar in a nostalgic sort of way and I really don’t want to buy something brought all this way on a slow boat and take it back on a plane. I’d like a bit of junky Australian kitsch and have seen a koala salt shaker. Alas the pepper pot wasn’t with it.

Cycling the sunset coast home after a day on the beach – even if it did result in a re-invasion of the chest infection. Sundays while I’m working generally spent alone with bike, a beach and a book – chill out but with sunshine.

Saturdays not out with Jan and Brian exploring a different area of Perth – Leederville, Subicaco and others known for cafés and nice little shop for bowsings. On café’s, I’ve caught the habit of coffee being something you drink out rather than make at home. Skinny flat white all the way – a good one lasts all day – no need for top ups. On nice little shops, I have bought too many tops but have warned friends to put me under citizen’s arrest I they see me eyeing a pair of shoes – only one suitcase.

Fish and chips watching the sunset at Cottesloe wih Jen and Jode – and a bottle of wine.

Divided by a common…..

I seem to have lost the dictionary section of this blog. No matter, I have been collecting Aussie-isms:
For budgie smuggler see below (h oho).  Also spotted – a women’s magazine for Western Australia called ‘Sheila’. I am anxiously scanning the shelves for the brother mag – ‘Bruce’ but no luck yet.

I was reading the board outside the Indiana Tea Rooms in Cottesloe (so different from our own dear Cutteslowe) and famous in a Heath Ledgerish sort of way. Seeing if I could possibly afford anything they offered and noticed they were proudly announcing a new chef – Ben Cremates. No doubt pronounced differently but put me off – couldn’t afford it anyway.

Spot the difference

Andy, my host in Ballarat and a Brit who escaped long ago but returns a as visitor asked me on my last evening there about cultural differences  I’d observed between Australia and Britain., I had to think long  and hard because it really is like one of those spot the difference picture puzzles – the similarities strike first and it’s only when you concentrate that you begin to spot the differences.  Here’s a few:

Housing – although there are apartments in the city centres, most (white) people, seemingly regardless of social and financial status, aspire to live detached from neighbours on their own plot of land.  Sometimes there’s only a matter of a couple of feet between properties and fences are high and solid to provide privacy. Houses are all single storey, sprawling across the whole of the plot so that there is often little space between building and perimeter fencing.  Depending on the size of the plot, there might be a narrow flower border, some shady trees and plants in pots. Also possibly a small swimming pool or Jacuzzi tub.  But by and large, paving is it. I’ve met some people who are returning paving to garden and if you could grow avocados and melons why wouldn’t you.  Building materials differ too, with corrugated metal roofs on even on the houses of the well-off and extended well beyond the walls to provide shade. Older Victorian and Edwardian era houses often have beautiful metal ‘lacework’ forming part of balconies and porches and overhangs.  Fence material is usually another sort of corrugated metal, solid and square in section and I think sometimes called ‘siding’.  As well as being high enough to keep the neighbours at bay, I’m told that it is often sunk low enough and kept solid enough to keep the snakes out. Snakes might otherwise wander (slither?) in because all this desire for one’s own plot has resulted in big sprawling suburbs encroaching on brushland and therefore snakey’s home.  Suburban sprawl = high car usage = issues about carbon ,,,need I go on?

Anti-social behaviour – exists of course but for one thing you are much less likely to see people stuffing their faces anywhere and everywhere and leaving the resulting litter behind.  For example a quiet cinema without constant chomping and rustling was bliss.  Starving after a long Sunday bike ride I’d bought a pastry to eat on the train home (bikes are made welcome on trains).  The train was packed with young people coming back from the beach and I was the only person eating anything. Made me keep my pastry hidden in its paper bag as best I could while stuffing my face with it. There doesn’t seem to be any rules against it – just not done. Ditto sharing your music on the beach and failing to give up your seat to someone who needs it more. ( I’m 60 and allowed to be an old fart. )

Media – there’s  Kerry Packer of 20/20 cricketing fame as well as the Murdoch dynasty reducing the newspaper and other media business to drivel.  That said, I haven’t really explored newspapers apart from buying whichever one has a telly guide. Hmm if you think Brit TV is crap you’d sing its praises after a few weeks here.  Mainly foreign imports of popular ‘shows’ and spin offs like the inevitable quizzes. On the plus side a few well-worn British comedies are doing the rounds so I saw an episode of ‘Yes Prime Minister’ that I can’t remember seeing   before (the one about rescuing the dog on Salisbury plain).  Internet access is a generation behind the UK. If you think about the issues around universal fast broadband in the UK, then multiply them to how on earth you can expand broadband to tiny communities on this vast continent.  (Nice quote from an Aboriginal artist comes to mind: ‘you call it the desert, we call it where we used to live’.) But even in cities wifi in cafes and hotels is not the norm.  Where it’s good it’s very, very good – so at the University of Western Australia they’ve recognised that students (and me) spend a lot of time working outdoors so the Unifi wifi system is everywhere, four walls or not. It’s a lot less common to be able to book on the internet e.g. trip to Rottnest (more later) when I’ve been able to find out all about the ferry company on their website but have had to phone to make a booking.  My favourite media, books, are incredibly expensive new and about the same price as new in the UK in second hand shops. Today, cycling home, I came across, almost too literally, a man walking on the shared path who ignored my bell and nearly caused an accident not because his ears were full of i-pod,, but because he was reading  on his kindle. I don’t think the weather at home would be conducive to that. Enough media already!

If my ‘differences’ seem a little weighted in favour of the UK, please factor in the obvious positive differences  on the Aussie side – weather and the beaches to go with them; outdoor life well catered for –especially  cycle path heaven in Perth, swimming pool nirvana in Sydney.  Despite stereotype macho culture, more women in high places interviewed as CEOs and  politicians for example. Don’t know how much longer some of the leading women politicians will last though or how many are waiting in the wings with all those burly, budgie-smuggling men (think about male swimwear then move swiftly on).