Newcastle (NSW) - February 2008

The bus trip to Christchurch was long and tedious, leavened only by the kid throwing up next to me. At least she didn't throw up on me.The flight to Melbourne was, once again, ridiculously early - I had the taxi pick me up at 04:15. Hardly worth paying the hotel for the use of the room, once I'd wandered about to find dinner (Greek) and had a drink.

It was a fleeting visit to Melbourne: three hours later, I was boarding my $10 Tiger Air flight to Newcastle. It is an impressive city to fly into, what with the coastline north of Sydney (quite what we were doing out there, I have no clue), the rivers curving their way around Newcastle, its port and the way that Downtown Newcastle is on a narrow peninsular. To add to the general effect were the numerous areas of shallow flood and the general greenness of the place.(OMG, as I'm typing this, I'm playing something from the second record I ever bought, which I haven't heard for ages, not since my Radio Woodville days - I found The Best of the Motels on CD today, and "Total Control" is still doing it for me). Newcastle itself was not quite what I expected: yes, it had some great old buildings, some had been done up nicely but in between, there were lots of empty buildings, and lots of new buildings, which were not a patch on their older cousins. The main street has been turned into a Mall - I walked down it a number of times, at various times of the day, and it strikes me as a cold and forbidding place.

But overall, I liked my time in Newcastle. I got organised and went down to the Hawkesbury River by train, a place that has been in my imagination ever since The Oyster Farmer and The Secret River. Of course, trains are not the ideal mode of transport when it comes to rivers, so I only got to see a very small part of it. I went on a day long wine tour out in the lower Hunter Valley, which mysteriously turned into a beer tour when I noticed a micro-brewery. Since there were only three of us on the tour and we all enjoyed beer more than wine, the driver could be accommodating. It was a good day out, a good use of a wet day which might otherwise have confined me to the hostel.

Not that I would have minded terribly, as it is a very nice hostel - the common area, with its pool table and leather club chairs, makes me think it might have been a gentleman's club in its earlier life. I did some shopping, I explored the Newcastle library and art gallery, I found some good places to eat and drink coffee (on Darby Street), I read (Narayan), I saw some movies (I'm Not There and The Jane Austen Book Club) and I went to Maitland.

Maitland is more in line with my expectations of Newcastle - it has a "heritage" mall, lots of gracious old buildings and a general good feel to the place. I could have easily made this my base, had I not discovered it the day before I returned to Melbourne.
So I had a very nice Thai meal and caught the train back to Newcastle, then Tigered it back to Melbourne. There I just hung about for a few days, exploring a few more nooks and crannies, enjoying the place, staying at the North Melbourne YHA.

This trip has been marked by more interesting encounters with other people than is normally the case. First was the kid who didn't quite throw up on me. Then there was the couple in Newcastle airport (who had also found $10 fares so flew up just for the night): they gave me and another lost soul (the next bus was 90 minutes later) a ride into town.

In Maitland, I was walking past a pub, with its attendant group of smokers loitering outside, and heard what I am sure was a conversation about rats. One of the people said "there goes one now"; I had the uncomfortable sensation she was talking about me. I carry on walking, and then there's someone running after me - I look round in a fairly terrified fashion, and its some girl going "Happy Valentine", as she hands me a crumpled flower and a fag. When I say I don't smoke, she says "give it to someone you love" and is off, back to her group. Maybe they weren't talking about rats.

Then on a tram in Melbourne, there's this young guy, no shirt, fairly wasted, who gives me a big hug, quite prolonged really, all because I passed him his bag. But above all is Naomi: she came on the wine tour, so I had pretty much the whole day with her and her Welsh friend. Neither made much of an impression when they first got on the bus, but we'd stop and taste some wine and chat; then I found myself sureptitously looking at her as we drove and, despite knowing I'd never see her again, getting rather enchanted by her as the day progressed .

Launceston, Tasmania (1/9/07)

My last couple of days in Tasmania were fairly quiet. After Port Arthur, I drove up the East coast as far as a place called Sansea: I stopped there because I noticed it had several interesting looking restaurants. Looking further, I found one of the best backpackers I have ever stayed atOnly one thing was lackingYep, there was pretty much no-one about, apart from a group of three contractors who were using it as their base. Surprising really, as Swansea had a lot going for it in terms of a nice sea-side location, lots of accomodation providers and some decent restaurants. At least, I think this one was decent, it looked good from the outsideBut my fancy was taken by Bank - they were having a curry night, and very good it was too. The staff was fantastic - I left with a list of restaurants to eat at for the rest of my stay in Tasmania (never found a one of them!). I was sad to leave Swansea, but the only place I knew I wanted to go to before I left home was St Helens: what a waste of time! I had the YHA entirely to my self (the owner did come in and reveal he had married a woman from Dunedin and had spent quite a bit of time there himself). I went on a wild goose chase out into the countryside to find the restaurant my friends at Bank had sent me to, but never did. By the time I hit town again, just before 8 on a FRIDAY NIGHT, everything was closed, except for the pizza shop, who told me I was their last order and I'd have to take away. So I found some beer at the pub, took my pizza back to my lonely hostel and had a very quiet night indeed.

I made up for it the next night in Launceston. After a very pleasant Thai meal, I went to a gig by a duo from Brisbane called Chicks in Docs - exactly what they were.This photo came out badly, but I kind of like itAnd thus ended my first, but unlikely to be my last, visit to Tasmania.

Swansea, Tasmania (30,8,07)

Some time ago, in August in fact, I was in Tasmania. I took a lot of photos and a lot of them have showed up here, but I ran out of steam before finishing the task. Since I am about to go on another jaunt, I thought I'd at least get it finished before going.

I had been in Hobart, and had plans to have a look around the city in the morning. Somehow, sleep was very hard to come by; not because I was in a dorm or because there was a lot of noise about, but because my brain just would not settle. It decided to compose a book review, then construct arguments prosecutors could use to close down arguments trotted out by defence lawyers when their client has committed crimes high on P (where that came from, I have no idea). Around 6 I thought I’d get up and read, or watch TV and finally caught some sleep. Maybe that lack of sleep is why I left Hobart without taking the photos I wanted, and without coffee. I grabbed my bags, went out to the car I had to move before the parking meters were switched on and, without even thinking about it, just left town. I did have a pretty gruesome coffee at a McCafe but otherwise headed straight to Port Arthur.

I don’t know - maybe it was because the weather was so fantastic, or because the buildings were near ruins (they had walls but no roofs), or because the prison was actually built as a flour mill, or because I’m simply not sensitive but the old prison at Port Arthur struck me as quite benign, certainly a much nicer place than Fremantle jail.

From a distance, it looks positively palatial

This looks more like it - this is the inside of the punishment wing

And the normal wing does not look like prisoners had a whole lot of space (these are the vestigial internal walls)

Here is the psych ward

And, of course, you could have no prison organised on modern principles (as this one claimed to be) without a chapel, but that raised the problem of how to have men held in solitary confinement join together in prayer

All in all, the spot was a very pleasant one this is the Governor's residenceand this is where some ship's captain lived

I think one of the theories was that it was improving for men, even prisoners, to live and work in a nice environment, but if they did choose to leave, then there would be some sort of threat to suggest they think otherwise. Apparently there were lots of escape attempts, but no-one ever made it - Port Arthur is on a promontory, so one either had to swim for it or go up the road, which was guarded by some very fierce dogs, deliberately kept hungry.

It is sad that the prison has been allowed to fall in to ruins: this is claimed to be a deliberate choice made, for the sake of authenticity. But I've been to Fremantle, which is still fully intact, and man, that's a truly forbidding and spooky place.

Hobart, Tasmania (29/8/07)

I really shouldn’t have fallen for that Banjo’s girl yesterday. She made me a particularly bad coffee, yet I lined up at Banjo’s (a bakery chain) again this morning, this time compounding my error by having breakfast as well. It was bad (although the mushrooms proved quite resilient to the Banjo’s treatment, and were quite tasty.)

Another long day’s drive,
broken only by a stop at Zeehan
to check out the museum: Here I learned that I had made an error in my thinking about the Mt Linney rail: it closed in the 1960's, not 100 years ago. I thought it was odd for it to have closed way back then, as the line only became operative 110 years ago. But I left the museum with another point of confusion: why were so many of the boats serving Strahan in the late 19th century, despite being built in Scotland, given Maori names? No idea.

As part of the museum, I could look inside a building which had puzzled me when I first came through Zeehan, as I could not discern its function
It turns out it was the Gaiety Theatre and Hotel
Interestingly, there was a bit of a feature in the theatre about Eileen Joyce, an internationally renowned concert pianist who was said to have come from Zeehan. While that claim is true, the online biographies I have seen suggest she left when she was two and never really returned, except maybe to play the Gaiety.

The drive was not the best, wet and low visibility. Luckily there was little traffic, as the roads would be murder to try to pass on. The radio was full of two topics - equine flu and the pulp mill (not surprising, as the two Houses of the Tasmanian Parliament is starting its deliberation process today). They’re tipped to say yes, which I’m finding a bit hard, because I’m sure I read that a majority of Tasmanians are against it, something like 87%.

The thing that scares me the most is the random way in which the decision is being made, by people with no expertise in assessing this kind of project, by some with an avowed inclination to not listen to those with expertise, by some with a clear agenda to respond to some perceived need - for work, for keeping Tasmanians in Tasmania, for helping the timber industry. One guy, from some timber workers union, was so full of “if you don’t support us, its because you hate us/are ignorant” that I had to turn off and listen to music. Democracy, eh? And I was listening to this as I was driving past the consequences of earlier projects in Tasmania:
I did wonder why there was no environmental agency responsible for deciding this - in NZ, a resource consent (or rather, a multitude of them) would be needed - from the council (the decision of which would be amenable to appeal). It turns out that a similar process had originally been started in Tasmania, but that Gunns had decided the process was not for them, and refused to go through with it, throwing themselves at the mercy of the Parliamentarians.

In Hobart, I fell on my feet. I had no plans for a place to stay, so just parked the car and walked randomly. Two blocks into this random walk, I found the YHA. Choice made. No worries about finding good food here either - Elizabeth Street is strewn with eateries, as is the waterfront (which in my brief evening walk seems to be nicely developed). I went Greek, simply because I have so little familiarity with it, having eaten Greek food maybe twice (unless you count late 1980's Auckland foodcourt style Greek food). I’ve certainly never eaten barbecued octopus before. Very tasty, although I don't really buy the claim that this particular restaurant invented the technique of barbecuing octopus. Not yet confident enough with the camera to whip it out and take a photo as I dine.

Perth Trip

I came back from Perth with so many things stacked up that I had three all-nighters last week: while I joke about sleeping for 12 hours every second night, it is probably not so good for me.

My trip over there did not follow the most logical of paths: I left here on the Wednesday evening nearly two weeks ago, for Wellington, as I had a meeting there on the Thursday. My plan was to meet up with a friend and go for a drink but such was my ineptitude with texting (our agreed upon method for me letting her know I was in town) that it took me so long to communicate she thought I had stood her up and went home. So, left to my own devices, I tried out the Lido for dinner, and had a very curious arrangement of green peas, brocolli, chicken and slabs of pasta which they were passing off as a pasta primavera. Since the night was still young and fresh, I had a very nice wander along Oriental Parade, checking out the lights of the city and the rather pleasant looking apartment buildings which grace that part of the city.

I had my meeting, which went the way of most meetings, and flew down to Christchurch. Christchurch being Christchurch, by the time I got myself into my lodgings (the Living Space - a very nice place, albeit unfortunately located above several bars) my food choices were extremely limited. Apparently, 20 years ago, they had more all night eateries than London, but these days one is limited to the fast food joints after about 10:00, and even they close at around midnight, leaving one at the mercy of Starshops. The Japanese place that used to stay open very late is defunct.

Mind you, Perth was not much better. I got in at about midnight and made my straight to the YHA: asking the fellow on the desk where I might find a quiet drink and a bite to eat was not very productive, as he claimed to come from Northbridge (about 1 kilometre to the north east of the YHA) and not know the locality. Northbridge had food, certainly, but the place was ghastly - full of shouty drunk people, very loud boom boom music, pubs with drunk patrons and unwelcoming doorstaff. I did find a hotel bar in town for that drink you need when you've just arrived and want a quiet moment but, as for food, my choices were limited to a kebab shop inhabited by a couple having a domestic and McDonalds. I went for the Golden Arches, and retreated to my hostel.

The weekend was occupied by me wandering the inner city, taking the CAT to get my bearings, finding a few coffee shops, visiting Retro Betty's burger joint in Leederville and going to watch the Joe Strummer movie. That almost never happened: I went to use the men's room, but as I tried to leave, I was baffled - the exit was by way of a screen through a vestibule, but everything was painted bright red, and i had some boundary issues.

Sunday afternoon, I changed digs, to the hotel being paid for by work, and I had drinks organised by the conference I was attending. Last time I attended this particular conference, I actually fled the social events, as I did not feel at all comfortable, so I has been a little apprehensive about the social demands this conference would make of me. Luckily it was made more than bearable by having several of my current colleagues, several of my former colleagues and a few of their colleagues to support me: I have to confess that I enjoyed the conference, and look forward to the next one.

Post conference, things got busy. I had a rental car and fled towards the south coast, with Albany in mind. But Perth takes such a long time to escape, and I had compounded this by dropping colleagues in Freemantle and so I was something like 150 kilometres short of the coast when darkness overtook me. Thus, a random night in a random hotel in Kojonup. The plan had been to spend two nights in Albany and cruise around a bit, but this put paid to that. So, I had a wander around Albany and pressed on to the West, pausing for the night in Pemberton. Even though I did not get to stay anywhere long, the drive itself was very pleasant - last time I was there, I had gone out past Wave Rock to Esperance, through the wheat belt - boring! This time, I went through forestry, rolling farmland, grape growing areas - everything was green.

The Friday night, back in Perth, I was off to the Perth Concert Hall for a much anticipated Tori Amos gig - row C, seat 11, which put me just off centre, a fantastic seat. Unfortunately, the show failed to grab me: the first time I saw Tori, it was upstairs in a small space in a theatre in Auckland. It was just her and her piano and (since the lights were out, it seemed) me. She sang and she talked and it was magic. I saw her again, and it was much the same. this time round, she had a band with her, it was a very polished show, don't get me wrong, but there was no feeling of intimacy. She hardly addressed a word to the audience, and when she discharged the band and it was just her and the piano, it seemed all part of a tried and true formula (including the part where she plays two at once).

I had thought it was just me losing appreciation for live music, but I went to another show on Saturday night where I literally had the worst seat in the house (in the second to last row, against the wall) and I was blown away. I had shivers go up my spine three times, I felt tears in my eyes twice, and I fell in love with one of the singers (Vikki). This was the Waifs, a band from Western Australia, one which sings about such things as saving up pennies to buy a Valiant to go cruising in (one tear inducing song). Here's the story of how they got their name:

DONNA SIMPSON: I actually kept saying to, Josh and Vikki they were having this big argument in the van, and I kept saying, ‘I’m leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving, you know.’ They just didn’t hear me.
ANDREW DENTON: And it was around this time that you got the name ‘The Waifs’, wasn’t it? That was that was given to you, really.
DONNA SIMPSON: Yeah, we, we, things got really tough on the road, so we all decided to go home and Josh went to his family, and virtually walked into the house and his grandmother said “Oh look at my waif, my waif”. And then we went home to our family and our grandmother said “Oh here come the waifs”. And like…
VIKKI THORN: Yeah, here come my little waifs she said.
DONNA SIMPSON: My little waifs.
VIKKI THORN: Meaning I guess that we were a little dishevelled, dirty and homeless looking.
LAUGHTER
ANDREW DENTON: It could have been worse. They could have said you little shits.

Vikki was amazing - she had several harmonica solos and sang two songs solo, no instruments, nothing. In between their songs (or even in place of their songs, when the harmony failed to happen, they'd just chatter away to the audience, telling great stories. I has been a bit dubious about the guys in the seats beside me, as they'd talked most of the way through the support act, and then left the venue, but when the Waifs came on, not only did the respect the band by not talking, they pretty much had all the songs down word for word. My only regret: I had had a chance to see them twice, as they'd played Bunbury earlier in the week, and I didn't take it up.

Seeing them was a suitable way of ending my trip: not much more than an hour after they left the stage, I was in a plane and on my way home. Speaking of which, I'm going home now to have another listen of Sun Dirt Water.

Stanley (Tasmania) 26/08/07

I left George Town with no clear idea of where I’d be staying, just that I wanted to head out along the northwest part of Tasmania.

It took a fair while, as I’d meander around, going up side roads which promised anything interesting and generally finding not much to keep me. I did, however, stop for a while at Beaconsfield - the old gold mine has been turned into a museum:

Being a curious sort of chap, when a mysterious button said "push me", I did, and looked around for whatever effect that might produce. After a minute or so, I set some creaking machinery into action:

Inside the museum was a miner's hovel (it had a better, more vernacular word, but I've forgotten it:
Outside the museum, was a rather nicer version of where a miner had once lived:
There was also a collection of various vehicles and other artefacts of mining life, along with the artworks of the local water colours club:

Right alongside was the new gold mine which opened up just over a decade ago.

I also paid a visit to Devonport (which is where the Spirit of Tasmania ferry docks). I stayed maybe an hour, long enough to wander the streets, find the Rivers superstore and buy some shoes, find the cinema and see there was nothing of interest to me. Burnie, I was in and out, just stoppping long enough to establish there were no cheap accommodation options.

And so, towards dusk, I found myself on yet another side road, heading towards a place called Stanley, about which I knew nothing. When I first saw it, I was confused: is it an island?From this angle it is clear - there is a narrow spit of land curving into the sea, which then erupts into a big bluff. Stanley is strung along the landward side - but as you approach from Burnie, you can’t actually see the spit, just these houses clinging to a rock.

The town seems to be about 50% holiday cottages, guesthouses and B&B’s, yet it was pretty much deserted. I eschewed the camping grounds in favour of the Stanley Hotel, which has a nice big deck facing the inlet. Unlike my hotel in George Town, this one’s restaurant was bustling, with so many customers that what I wanted to eat had run out, and I had to settle for a very tasty roast beef dinner. As I ate the carrots provided, I was reminded of the numerous signs I had encountered for “feed carrots, $2 a tonne (or thereabouts, I might be exaggerating)”. Also unlike my George Town hotel, this one had a disco (it is a heritage town - they still have a disco) which, on a Monday night, attracted a surprisingly large crowd, one which seemed to take delight in congregating on the street and shouting at each other, right under my window.