Below is a temporary version of the diary from our "Big Trip". Photos and some design will be added later.

8^th July 2001 - Somewhere above Australia.

There is something inherently unnatural about sitting in an air-conditioned aluminium tube at 10,000 metres. It is even more unnatural to be sharing it with several hundred strangers. The flight from Sydney to Singapore is 8 hours. The equivalent of a day at the office, but at least at the office you get to walk outside. Open the door here to go for a walk and all the people and furniture in a 3-metre radius go with you.

I‘ve written ten lines and my hand is tired. I have the handwriting of someone who types all day, although I am yet to require the aid of the spell-checker. On second thoughts I‘ll leave that call to the proofreader.

We are sharing the flight with a contingent from the Australian Defence Force Academy who are on a battlefield study tour. There is a certain irony that we should be landing at an airport that shares its name with the notorious WWII Japanese prison camp. A couple of lecturers are accompanying the students. Two of these have just finished a 3-hour conversation directly behind me, talking of tanks, Bren gun carriers and the Tet offensive. A few of the AJ[1]s have started up a chorus of ‚Uptown Girl, not because it holds any significance, but because they are all listening to the same in-flight radio channel.

I wonder what it would take to get them singing Khe Sahn or a selection of Normie Rowe songs. I’m glad airport security confiscated my fragmentation grenade, otherwise I might not be responsible for my actions.

It’s a shame the video games are out of order in our section. They could have all sat for 8 hours playing Tomb Raider and claimed it as a credit in one of their subjects.

Mr Bren Gun has now bailed up one of the students who has had just enough VB to convince him the conversation is interesting, but not enough to give him the courage to tell the guy to fuck off.

We stayed last night at the Airport Hilton in a bland little box designed with an air-conditioning system set to dehydrate. So bad is the system that the swimming pool needs to be refilled daily... and it’s outside.

Hotels are such weird places. They seem to exhibit a lifestyle (and price structure) that exists nowhere outside their doors. A mixture of tourists, locals and business travellers thrown together in an environment of marble, brass and excessively bad taste in interior design.

People first enter the hotel looking trepidatious and slightly unnerved, but within an hour or so they are veterans and snidely snigger at the feeble attempts of the new comers to work the pool table.

One of the loneliest figures in this scenario must surely be the solo business traveller. One was sitting at the table next to us in the bar last night. We exchanged nervous smiles, both wondering whether we should make that final commitment to start a conversation. Of course there is always the fear that if we asked him to join us we would spend the next 3 hours listening to a treatise on the benefits of using rubber flanges in submersible motors and why his company’s flanges were superior to all others.

We thought discretion was the better part of valour, while he gave up waiting and went to examine the various artworks around the walls of the bar.

No sooner had he turned his back then Mrs Country Wedding Guest took his seat. Solo business traveller continued his art perusal. Mr Country Wedding Guest joined his wife and immediately began eating the corn chips foolishly left behind by solo traveller. We had to leave before the drama had played itself out, but judging by the small number of broken chairs in the bar next morning, things hadn’t gotten too ugly.

Two hours to go and the arrival of the hot towels indicate the next meal cometh.

8^th July - Singapore

We got off at Singapore Airport, which is much the same as any other. Singapore is a mix of many cultures and beliefs. You have to be careful not to make fun of any of the many make-believe friends that people have, or the poorly written B-grade novels ob which they base their lives.

Some of them believe that their make believe friend believes in the suppression and subservience of women and so they cover them in head to toe in cloth, so any only their eyes are showing. Either that, or their wives are too ugly to slow their faces in public. Mind you, judging from the faces of the men, they wouldn’t be able to set their sights too high.

We named these women “letter boxes” for the only visible part of their body was through the letter-sized slot at the top of their head. When we were going through immigration these women had to go off into another room with a woman so she could match their face to the passport photo in private. Still, “Live and Let Suppress” is my motto.

The Golden Landmark Hotel in Singapore is neither Golden, nor a particularly attractive landmark. It is bordered on one side by Arab Street, which oddly enough is also home to a rather large and beautiful mosque. As we left the hotel for our first stroll around town we could hear the faithful being called to prayer. Either that or the man standing next to the microphone had just had his dick slammed in the door.

We walked through the humid afternoon to the markets of Bugis Village where the senses were bombarded. It was crowded in the way that such markets should be, with people spruiking their wares and bopping along to a hypno-techno beat.

Every few metres a new smell filled my nostrils with question marks until I could associate it with a boiling pot, a strange fruit or another stick of the ubiquitous incense.

The evening meal was spent rather unadventurously in the hotel cafe where a table of loud ugly Australians stretched their culinary bravery to the limit by ordering Cheese Burgers and Sirloin Steak.

We cringed in the corner, adding ‘eh?’ to the end of every sentence and talking about ice hockey in the hope of passing as Canadians.

The kids of course steered clear of the local food and chose a simple western dish or so we thought. The cheeseburgers were unavailable (forcing the other Aussies to go as exotic as Spaghetti Bolognaise).

The toasted sandwiches were available in several flavours including Chicken, Ham, Chicken Ham, (presumable taken from an animal that is the progeny of a chicken and a pig) or Cheese for $8.

Lisa ordered the chicken and cheese only to be told that only one item could be selected. Presumable ordering two items would require more computing power than the cash register was capable of and lead to a severe drain on the national power grid.

If she did want chicken and cheese together she could order the club sandwich for $9 which came with chicken, cheese, egg and bacon. She of course ordered the club sandwich (hold the egg and bacon) thus achieving her goal of a chicken and cheese sandwich without jeopardising the future of any national utilities.

Judging from the performance here I would say that several years ago on April Fools Day, someone slipped the entire series of Fawlty Towers videos into the library of the Singapore School of Hotel Management labelled as training videos. Unfortunately the prank is yet to be discovered.

10^th July - Changi Airport, Singapore

The airport shares its named with a prisoner of war camp, but since we are catching a Lufthansa flight the officious and overbearing voice will have a German accent rather than a Japanese one.

The last two days have been a stark contrast.

It seems like Monday was `be kind to tourists` day, but Tuesday was `screw the foreign bastards for all you can`.

On Monday we caught a taxi to the zoo for Breakfast with the Orang-utans, which consisted of an all you can eat buffet of delicious local and western food, followed by a photo session with a female Orang-utan and her baby. Close to 100 people lined up to get their photo taken while all the time the Orang-utan had a kind of detached look. It was somewhere between regret at not having studied harder to enable it to go to university and a snide  “I wish you would all just fuck off” look.

Overall the Singapore zoo is excellent. The animals are all healthy and in enormous enclosures roughly resembling their native habitat. The walkthrough rainforest enclosure is incredible with a different insect or animal at every step. It’s not often that you would get a chance to swerve to miss a fruit bat and hit your head on a sleeping 2-toed sloth.

The shame is that they see the need to turn the feeding sessions into shows where the animals have to perform some act before being rewarded with their food.

There was something vaguely gladiatorial about the cheers of the crowd when the live fish were thrown into the polar bear pond. The crowd rose to their feet and cheered as the keeper encouraged Sheba to “ketch da feesh”. Throwing in a few Christians might have boosted the ratings a tad.

We spent the day sussing out a couple of IT and electronic shopping centres. There were five or six stories of shops selling all sorts of hardware and software at fairly reasonable prices.

The evening saw us return to the area near the zoo to visit the `Night Safari` across the road. It is much the same as the zoo except for nocturnal animals. You catch a tram around the park  ‘a la Jurassic Park. We had commentary from someone who sounded like a camp Richard Attenborough on speed. By the time we saw the 2^nd rhino for the night I thought he was going to orgasm. An uneventful taxi ride home put us in bed just before midnight.

This morning we rose early and made our way to Sentosa Island billed as “Singapore’s Favourite Resort Island”, possible because it is the only one.

We went via taxi. I sat in the front seat with two embroidered ribbons across the front dash saying  “God loves you” and “Jesus saves”. On the windscreen was a decal signifying membership of the Singapore Christian Taxi Driver Community. The cassette went through the full repertoire from Abide with Me to Amazing Grace. As I looked at the traffic around me I saw lots of religious iconography. To the left a delivery van had a statue of Buddha on the front dash. The cab on the right had a picture of a Hindi God hanging from the rear-vision mirror, while the sedan in front had a large Manchester United flag across the rear window. We soon arrived at the cable car tower.

It was here that the rip-off day began. We were offered the glass bottomed cable car with no apparent alternative only to find later that the alternative was 1/3 the price, with no real difference in the view.

The first visit on the island was to Fort Siloso. For $3 we had about 2 hours entertainment wondering around the fort and learning the history of its role in the defence of Singapore. Much of it was the same basic design as the forts around Sydney, but here it was possible to see the use to which the various shafts and passageways had been put. For me this was the highlight of the day.

Sue and the kids wondered off to “Fantasy Island” with its 32 (yes, count them!) waterslides. I chose to further my education at the Maritime Museum, but only managed to learn that it was closed on Tuesdays. My only alternative was to buy a beer or two and wait for the others.

We went next to  “Volcano Land” which even at half price ($6) was a huge disappointment. Billed as “The most active volcano in Asia” the description “Most active piece of red silk being blown by a fan” would have been closer to the mark. I wasn’t expecting a real volcano, but real fire wasn’t too much to ask for.

The map of the park showed 8 attractions. Amongst the 8 were “The Entrance”, “The Wishing Well”, “The Treasure Grove” (Souvenir shop), “Base Camp” (a tent containing pictures of a Volcano) and ”The Sacrificial Altar” (A stage where an amateurish fire eater performed to an unenthusiastic drum beat in front of an even less enthusiastic audience).

Singapore being the land with more superlatives than any other country in Asia meant it also had  “The largest sculptured Observation Tower in Asia”. The ten story high Merlion (half Mermaid half Lion) gave views over Sentosa and Singapore with observation platforms in the mouth and on the top of the head. Unfortunately the top half was lion and the bottom half was Mermaid, thus negating the opportunity to put windows in the mermaids breasts.

Being then thoroughly Sentosa’d out we caught the cable car back to the mainland. At the bottom of the cable car tower, taxi drivers spruiked for business. The first offered to take us back for $20, the second offered a private limousine for $15. We walked around the corner to the official taxi stand and caught a real cab, happily paying the $8 fare when we reached the hotel.

Next stop Rome via Frankfurt.

11^th July - Rome, Italy

Someone famous or maybe even not so famous once said “If you are tired of Rome, you are tired of life” or maybe it was Paris or Melbourne or West Wyalong.

Anyway, Rome is a complete assault on the senses.

Any city where a bottle of beer is cheaper than a bottle of Gatorade gets my vote every time.

A town where crossing the road is an activity only marginally less hazardous than rolling off Niagara Falls in a barrel and road rules are merely a suggestion.

A walk down Norton Street Leichhardt on any day will convince you that the Australians of Italian decent have inherited the same road sense. Had they managed to export the Holden Monaro back to Italy in exchange, there’s no telling what the roads might be like now.

We checked into a “Hotel” which the taxi driver hadn’t heard of (never a good sign) and which shared its lobby with another hotel in a non-descript building in a non-descript street.

The room was spacious and equipped with the basic necessities.

This being the primary jet-lag leg of the journey we were determined to stay up all day to slot right into the new time zone. So after a 90-minute power nap we ventured off into the cobbled streets of Rome.

Our street ended close to the Piazza Venezia with its huge monument to Emanuele II (I thought that was the sequel to a famous porn film) and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Even though it is a fairly modern structure the sheer scale of it and the intricacies of the marble carvings are astounding.

From here it was only a short walk to the Colosseum where a 20-minute queue in the blazing sun turned out to be well worth it.

An initial level of concern about the lack of interpretation of the site proved unfounded when we reached the second level to find numerous exhibits backed up by audio visual re-runs of old sword and sandal epics.

Being an 80,000-seat stadium with over 60 lifts under the infield for changing scenery, gladiators and wild animals, you get the feeling they must have had some wild gigs here. If Rome ever get the Olympics again they should hold it is this stadium.

I think something has been lost during the subsequent years. Although several hundred years before Christ the Romans had cities with running water and sewerage, the modern day Italians are struggling to be able to get a toilet to flush properly. (Third time lucky in our case)

A trip back to the hotel followed by pizza and pasta from the local take-away saw us ready to notch up a few more zzz’s in preparation for our two-day bus trip to the southern coast.

12 July - Sorrento, Italy

It is 9:30pm. The sun is down but the moon hasn’t come up yet, so I am yet to figure out whether Tina Arena’s song  “Sweet Sorrento Moon” is about this place or the one near Gosford. (I thought her parents had a holiday home at Umina).

Wafting through the windows that face a beautiful view of the mountains ending in abrupt cliffs over the Mediterranean comes the strains of a karaoke night at the local taverna.

“Ees-ant she loff-lee, Ees-ant she von da fool….”

We left Rome this morning on a half full tour bus. When we looked at the tour we had a choice or English or bi-lingual commentary. We threw caution to the wind and so now we are getting the commentary in English and Spanish. This is good because we get to hear everything twice and between the guides poor grasp of English and my horrendous grasp of Spanish we manage to work out what is being said.

The road out of Rome was fairly boring and there was nothing to catch the eye between there and Naples unless you had a fetish for bitumen and traffic cones.

Our first glimpse of Naples was rows of appallingly designed dirty apartment blocks and it just went downhill from there, both geographically and metaphorically.

It seems each occupant of each block has their own separate TV aerial on the roof making each block look like a CIA communications base.

The area around the castle and the port were fair enough, but clearly the rest of the town hadn’t been bombed enough during the last war.

Our next stop was Pompeii. Not the ruins as you might expect, but the cameo and coral jewellery factory.

Before today I had not known about the intricate three layered shells from which the cameos are carved or that an apprentice cameo carver takes 7 years to become a master. However, nothing I saw today convinced me that the end result doesn’t still look cheap and plastic.

(The karaoke has now switched to “That’s Amoré” which with its line “Back in old Napoli” could really be called a local folk song)

A three-course lunch including tinned pasta and runny mashed potato saw us ready to explore the archaeological depths of Pompeii.

The ruins of Pompeii were nothing short of amazing.

Although it didn’t look like the town had stopped functioning yesterday, it certainly didn’t look 2000 years old (not that I know what a 2000-year-old town should look like).

There were plaster casts made by filling the cavities in the volcanic ash left behind after the bodies had decomposed. In one case the skull could still be seen and the finger and toes bones were also pointing out.

One of the houses belonging to the Vitti brothers was in excellent condition. The friezes on the dining hall were still in place and a mural in the entrance hall showed a very well endowed God of Fertility. The public baths were also very well preserved and the heat of the day made it feel as if the steam had only just been turned off.

We left Pompeii for Sorento via an inlayed wood factory where a 90 second presentation on how the stuff was made was meant to disguise the fact that we had been brought to another shop. The road to Sorrento was narrow and winding and never meant to carry large modern coaches, which managed to pass each other with margins too small for the human eye to calculate.

A trip up a 1-½ bus wide lane saw us deposited at Hotel Cristina, a six-story building with large balconies and an expansive rooftop terrace.

The view from the room was magnificent looking straight across the Mediterranean Sea and taking in the massive shoreline cliffs diving down to the port. (But I think I may have mentioned that already).

A beer or two and off to bed.

13^th July - Rome, Italy

Today is Lisa’s birthday so her gifts were given to her early in the day. A filling breakfast of cold meats, cheese and pastries prepared us for the day ahead. We would attempt to see the famous Grotto Azzurra.

Signore Mario, a gregarious native of Sorento took over the guiding duties and led us aboard the ‘steamer’ for Capri.

Capri is a large lump of limestone sitting a few kilometres off the Sorento Peninsula. It rises to a high point of about 300m.

The effects of waves, wind and acid on the limestone has led to the formation of many caves (grotto) along the sides of the sea cliffs.

The most famous of these is the ‘Grotto Azzurra’ or ‘The Blue Grotto’.

This cave goes 50m into the cliff and is 18m wide. Light shining into the water from a neighbouring grotto reflects up into the cave giving the water a sparkling blue colour that has a somewhat eerie glow.

The cave was able to hold about 30 rowboats, which is the method of transport used for visiting the cave. The reason for this is that the entrance is only 2 metres wide and less than a metre high. To get in, you lie down in the rowboat, wait for the right wave and then the boatman pulls the boat through on a chain. For this reason, anything but a dead calm sea can close the grotto, which is what happened 20 minutes after our visit.

We returned to Capri for lunch and a chairlift to the top of Capri. The guide described the top as ‘Paradise’.

If Paradise is a concrete square overgrown with weeds and needing a good lick of paint, which overlooks a spectacular view, then his description is correct. Personally I’m catching the next chairlift to Hell, especially at $10 a ticket.

Due to our extraordinary luck at seeing the Blue Grotto (which if Mario was anything to go by, he had a direct hand in) and the speed with which we had seen it, we had some extra time left over.

Mario suggested we all band together and hire a private boat to check out some of the other grottos. This would cost $22 (some portion of which I’m sure went to our erstwhile guide). This turned out to be a good trip visiting a few more small caves along the coast and driving the boat straight through the middle of a large pillar standing out of the sea. Luckily the rock had a hole in the middle of it.

By the time we returned to the port the steamer was ready to go and we returned to Sorento. After a quick bus shuffle we were on our way back to Rome.

Our trip was delayed by a small fire on the side of the road. The two fire engines attending to it were blocking part of a lane resulting in a 5 km go-slow zone. Once past this, our journey was speedy.

We got back to the hotel just in time to bounce in and out of bed before the start of a 7 day bus tour around the north of Italy.

This will be interesting as it is the longest tour I have ever been on. As the bus starts to negotiate Roman traffic, it is time to stop writing and start observing.

14^th July - Florence, Italy

WE left Rome passing the numerous dull apartment blocks that constitute the suburbs around Rome.

Our first stop was Assisi, the home of St. Francis. The main thing to see here is the Basilica of St. Francis. It is really two churches built on top of each other. The lower one contains the tomb of St. Francis. This is a very sacred place for the Catholic faith and for this reason tour guides are forbidden to show tourists around, as it would degrade the spiritual atmosphere of the place. Instead the monks (read Catholic Approved Tour Guides) accompany (read give tours to) pilgrims (read tourists) assisted by the shining light of faith in God (read laser pointer).

The frescoes inside are quite awesome with the majority of them being done by Giotto.

St Francis is the patron saint of animals. I offered a quick prayer with a small favour attached, but the last I heard the cats were still alive.

Outside the Basilica were market stalls selling all sorts of different souvenirs of both a religious and secular nature. Those seeking salvation could buy plates bearing images of the Virgin Mary, while those seeking Nirvana could buy T-shirt depicting their album covers.

Another few hours on the bus travelling through long tunnels brought us to Sienna, a well-preserved medieval town for which the word parochial was invented. The town is divided into 17 districts represented by symbols such as the caterpillar the she-wolf and the tower. The districts are all fiercely competitive and proud, no more so than at the Palio horse race, which is held twice a year. Here mercenaries ride horses representing ten of the districts around the town square to win not much more than a lot of “up yours” value.

The origins of the race go back to the Middle Ages and so do the rivalries between the districts. Even the districts not competing in that years race will pay riders representing rival districts to ride badly and lose the race.

The Duomo is a gothic cathedral made from black and white marble laid in stripes, (these being the colours of the town). Inside are works by Michelangelo and Donatello (the other 2 ninja turtles didn’t get a look in). The heads of 172 Popes ring the ceiling. There haven’t actually been 172 Popes, but since there was room for that many heads, the good people of Sienna made a few up. I think Paul, Felix and Gregory were real Popes, but I’ll need to consult Vatican records regarding Gazza, Bazza, Rosco and Chook.

We wandered a little more around the town where every building was worth photographing and it would have been nice to stay a little longer, but in the distance Florence was calling.

We arrived in Florence around 7 and went en masse to a restaurant around the corner from the hotel. A yummy set menu was accompanied by 20-odd locals who were celebrating something (life perhaps?) at a few tables in the corner and supplementing the paid entertainment with a selection of favourite Italian tunes.

After putting our new-found language skills to work (vino bianco, per favore), we returned to the hotel to sleep.

Now it is time to see Florence.

15^th July - Florence, Italy

Being Sunday the shops were closed for business and the churches were open for business, but it wasn’t until the afternoon when the Masses had finished, that the masses were allowed in.

Therefore we saw the outside of the Cathedral and Santa Croce in the morning but had to return later in the afternoon to see the inside. The one building we did see the inside of was the expensive leather goods store were the tour terminated. Coincidence?

We walked the kids back to the hotel and returned to town via Ponte Vecchio. The only bridge in town to survive WWII is lined with gold and silversmiths offering some very beautiful and all very expensive jewellery.

From here we went to the Cathedral with an enormous dome painted with all sorts of biblical depictions. The top of the dome is 90m high and is totally awesome. Luckily they are not very strict about taking photos in here.

From here we carried on to the Uffizzi Gallery. After a 20-minute wait outside and a further 30 minutes inside we finally got in.

The building itself is a work of art with painted ceilings throughout. Hundreds of portraits lined the tops of the walls sitting on tops of the picture rails. This was art overload with Botticelli, Caravagio, Michelangelo and many others. They had so many sculptures and paintings they were overflowing into the lift lobby. Like all civilised places in this country the museum had a bar, but on this occasion we resisted.

We managed to get into Santa Croce just before it was time for the great unwashed to leave and the faithful to stay for mass. We managed to see the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo before being ushered out.

Despite being convicted of heresy, (for daring to suggest that the earth went around the sun), he was never excommunicated and so was allowed to be buried in the church. He was finally exonerated of his heresy in the 1990s when the Catholic Church had to concede that the Earth did indeed go around the sun, (although it took 30 years for the process to take place).

We returned to the hotel to get a bus to dinner at a sauna cleverly disguised as a restaurant. The sound technician had cleverly arranged the speakers so all the woofers were in one room and all the tweeters in the other, resulting in a sound quality that could only otherwise be achieved by listening with your head emersed in a bucket of cold porridge. We returned to the hotel via the local “parking” spot on a hill outside town, which resembled a municipal tip. The “if it’s rocking, don’t bother knocking” stickers seemed to lose their impact when placed on the back of a motor scooter.

To bed, to sleep, perchance to dream.

16^th July - Venice, Italy

I had always known that there was a St Anthony and I had a brief recollection that he was the “Patron Saint of Lost Things”. It was overwhelming to be in his basilica with his tomb.

I don’t know if people make pilgrimages here but there were people kneeling with their heads on his tomb and praying. Around the tomb were letters and photos left for this dead bloke to read and look at. There were several photos of car accidents with “Grazia Antonio” written on them. I don’t know if they were thanking St Anthony for saving them, thanking him for having a car accident, or thanking him for looking after the victim of the car accident in heaven.

Anyway it seems not all of Anthony is in the tomb, ironically a few pieces of him have been lost, while other bits appear in another room. In a room of relics was a glass jar containing “Apparato Vocale”. My limited knowledge of Italian led me to believe that these were St Anthony’s vocal chords; the guide later confirmed this. One wonders what St Anthony would have said about having his vocal chords removed, although the answer is, of course, nothing.

The sacristy in the Basilica was something special with the entire roof covered with paintings of cherubs. Given the church’s record in regards to paedophilia, I’m not sure it is healthy to have so many pictures of naked young boys in the priests dressing rooms.

There are two models of confessional in the Basilica, the usual ‘both inside’ style confessional and what seemed to be the budget confessional where only the priest sat inside and those confessing had to kneel outside. It seemed to be built to take 2 confessions at once, which is a good way to shorten the queues. This week’s special offer was 6 impure thoughts for 3 ‘Hail Marys’ but only 5 ‘Hail Marys’ for a dozen. I opted for 2 ‘Our Fathers’ to absolve my lust and avarice and got a gift certificate for 10 ‘Hail Marys’. (I know what you are thinking and I was scheduled to burn in hell a long time ago.)

The souvenir stalls outside the Basilica were something special with a wide range of religious paraphernalia. Candles ranged in price from $2 to $50 with the size growing with the price. The $50 candle was the type of thing a forensic pathologist would describe as a blunt instrument. There was a similar price and size range for statues of St Anthony, Jesus (with and without a cross) and his mum. The statues of the blessed virgin had the optional light-up halo. I didn’t know whether they were plug-in or battery operated. If the latter, I had no idea where the batteries would be inserted and whether she would still be entitled to be called a virgin afterwards.

Perhaps the most perplexing item at these stalls was an umbrella. Given that the umbrella is the most common article lost on public transport and that St Anthony is the patron saint of lost things, it must surely be impossible to leave a St Anthony’s umbrella on the bus.

The winner in the souvenir stakes was the portrait of Jesus that morphed into the Shroud of Turin image when viewed from different angles.

Having had a multiple crass attack and a suspected cynic stroke I boarded the bus for Venice.

The last part of the trip into Venice is over a 4 km bridge that crosses the Venice lagoon. We left the bus near the station and caught a boat to Piazza San Marco. On the way a huge bow wave swamped the front of the boat drenching the people near the front and leaving everyone else with wet pants. Not because the wave had hit them, but because they were pissing themselves laughing at the misfortune of the others.

We picked up our local guide who spoke English perfectly except for the habit of adding an ‘a’ to every word, “Anda herea wea havea da palacea ofa da Dolce”. We strolled through the palace at a leisurely pace, taking in all the ornate painted ceilings framed by gold leaf and wall paintings depicting the great battle victories of Venice (their losses are depicted on the walls of their enemies palaces).

We crossed the Bridge of Sighs into the old prisons with their thick stone walls and double rows of iron bars that looked dark and foreboding. This was followed by a whirlwind tour of the Basilica del San Marco that almost seemed to finish before it began.

It was then time for the Gondola ride, which is always billed as a “must-do “ activity in Venice. Like other “must-do” activities such as having a gin sling in Singapore or going up the Jungfrau in Switzerland, you pay way over the odds for what you get. We basically did a trip around the block, which took about 30 minutes, but this included 15 minutes lolling around in the centre of the Grand Canal being buffeted by the wake of powered craft.

Our Gondolier was a Moorish looking fellow (meaning that he looked like a Moor, not looked like I wanted to eat him), whose expressionless face looked like it had been carved from stone. We returned to the dock just in time to see the super-deluxe Venetian Gondola Experience depart which included a woman playing a piano accordion and a man standing at the bow serenading the passengers. (The only up side of such a trip would be the happy thought of being able to easily drown the piano accordion player).

For the American woman sharing our boat “this was the culmination of everything” and she wished “ this moment could last forever”. (Those last words were quoted verbatim and any infringement of the copyright of Barbara Cartland is purely accidental.)

We spent the moments waiting for the other passengers by watching the resident fashion victim of our trip Vogueing outside of the Versace shop while her new husband snapped his way through half a roll of film.

We returned to Piazza San Marco past street vendors selling fake Louis Vitton bags 10 meters down the road from the Louis Vitton shop. (I always think it must be hard to claim that baggage belongs to you when it has someone else’s name plastered over the outside. Our local Laundromat has a bag full of underpants waiting for a guy called Calvin to come and pick them up, but I digress.)

Our final visit for the day was to a glass gallery where we watched a glass blower take 5 minutes to make a jug that would later be selling for hundreds of dollars.

Crossing back over the Piazza San Marco it was obviously high tide as the drains were back filling and water was bubbling up into the square. With the combined effect of Venice sinking and the rising waters caused by global warming, it may not be too long before Venice is renamed Atlantis. Tomorrow is a free day in Venice and the rest will be most welcome.

17^th July - Venice, Italy

9:30, sleep in, bliss.

The kids didn’t want to go out so we were free to roam the streets of Venice on our own.

It was a relief not to have to look behind us every 30 seconds to check the kids and check ahead every 30 seconds to see where the man with the umbrella was.

We walked a circuit of the town crossing the Ponte Rialto and fighting our way through the hordes before finding ourselves in the quiet back streets and narrow lanes which would suddenly open into huge campos usually with a church attached. At one of these a Don Camillo type character emerged from the church to feed the “rats with wings”. I am not sure whether this contradicted or supported the passage in the bible about God providing for the birds in the fields.

Venice could generally do with a bit of a wash and a lick of paint. There is a lot of construction and restoration taking place, but also a large number of abandoned buildings. It seemed about 95% of the people we saw were tourists and the vast majority of shops catered to this trade.

18^th July - Milano, Italy

We are in a hotel room with the neon “Hotel” sign directly out of the window. Any moment now, Lauren Becall is going to walk through the door and ask me to help her solve a case.

Today was a great day for highway enthusiasts with our first stop being Verona for lunch. Verona has an amphitheatre dating from the 1^st century, which is still in use. It originally seated 20,000 but now only holds a few thousand. They are currently holding an opera in the arena and the scenery for it was being stored on the streets. Amongst other things were a number of battling knights that were about 6 metres tall and made quite a sight located outside the town hall.

Verona’s other great claim to fame is that it is the setting for Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. Shakespeare is a bit like Jeffrey Archer is that he takes existing stories and embellishes them a bit. By the time Shakespeare wrote the story, the two families had not existed for 300 years, however Juliet’s house (complete with balcony) still exists. The walls of the whole courtyard are covered with graffiti from visiting lovers that is several layers thick, including one ingeniously written in chewing gum.

The local souvenir shop had almost every imaginable item with Romeo and Juliet plastered all over it. Conspicuous by their absence are the Romeo and Juliet condoms, but I guess that will have to wait until the Pope brings out an encyclical that provides for Catholics fucking without producing more fucking Catholics.

We visited another bloody church with more people bowing in front of craven images and kissing the toes of statues before the highlight of Verona. That was finding the shop that sold 66cl bottles of beer for L2500 (when we had been paying twice that for a can half the size).

Then it was back on the bus to Lake Garda, the largest lake in Italy (52km long). We had a brief walk along the pebbly beach, which held only a few people, but enough flesh to convince scientists that a fresh water species of whale had evolved here.

We arrived in Milan in the late afternoon just in time to walk through La Galleria (a bit like QVB but with uglier and more expensive clothes, shoes and everything. The $400 cheese grater was my personal favourite) and into the cathedral.

The Milan Duomo is massive, like two football fields inside. It has more stained glass windows than I was able to count and had little prayer areas scattered around a bit like a multiplex cinema. Several of the confessionals were working at full steam and I was thinking of going and confessing all of my sex outside marriage sins just to make the guy feel jealous, but for once discretion overruled. There weren’t any relics here (we still haven’t found St John Thomas’ foreskin), but we did find one strange thing.

There was a sarcophagus with a 3D image of an Archbishop on the lid. The sides of the coffin were glass and inside was the fully clothed body of an archbishop. Only the face was exposed and it seemed to be covered in a silver substance. Maybe they silver-plated the old guy to keep him better.

We left the duomo being extra careful of pickpockets and returned to the hotel.

Milan is very reminiscent of Melbourne. It has wide leafy streets and trams. About 40% of the town was bombed during WWII so much of it is rebuilt in 50’s style.

I have seen just about enough churches for now and (with the exception of The Vatican) I am going to try and avoid them.

Tomorrow is San Marino, so we will be spending the night outside of Italy. Tomorrow is also Sue’s birthday and the tour guide and I have arranged a cake.

19^th July - San Marino

Another day on the road. A group decision was made to by-pass Bologna and therefore we got to San Marino at about 3 pm.

San Marino is an independent republic of about 60km². The main town of San Marino is a medieval fortress atop a high hill with very steep sides. The town has 3 main towers, the second of which contains a museum of ancient weapons. There are over 2000 shops in San Marino, many of them selling the same things. Since the country is tax free, it is very cheap to get alcohol here so it was necessary to buy a bottle of Laphroig.

Having a medieval history it is also possible to buy reproductions of medieval weaponry including swords, maces, morning stars, halberds and crossbows, all of which would probably be confiscated by customs on returning to Australia. Among the more modern illegal (in NSW) weapons are telescopic batons, butterfly knives and handcuffs. A crossbow would have been fun.

We celebrated Sue’s birthday on the terrace of the hotel looking down into the valley watching the sky turn from blue to orange to black. An apple flan with one candle was produced and everyone sang Happy Birthday.

20^th July - Rome, Italy

We are back in the hotel that plumbing forgot. The traffic noise coming through the window is somehow louder than when you are standing out in the street. On the footpath below the window a gypsy man is begging with a small girl with suitable dirty face and well-practised look of despair. They must be the afternoon shift. A woman and teenage girl do the morning shift, with the woman occupying the seat at the bus stop overnight.

The periodic wail of sirens adds to the general hubbub of the city. The ambulances here are very boxlike and have a large window on the kerbside. They look just like ice cream vans, prompting us to call “Gelato Emergency” whenever one goes by. They are racing to get home before the ice cream melts.

I should also mention one other thing and it regards the bathrooms. In each and every hotel there has been an emergency cord in the bathroom, so it must be a requirement of law. This is either because the majority of accidents in Italian hotels occur in the bathroom or the people drafting the building code had seen ‘Psycho’ one too many times. I pulled it once to see what would happen and the hotel immediately stopped moving.

Today when we left San Marino a strong cold wind was blowing and a storm was threatening. We fled south away from it.

 I think we lost the clouds at the Apennine Mountains where we took a 3.5 km tunnel through the mountains while the clouds had to try and go over them.

We stopped at Orvieto on the way to Rome, catching the funicular up the mountain where a …… (wait for it) Duomo was located. We were able to avoid the church fix for the day as it was closed. Instead we spend the time looking in the shops which all seemed to filled with “Artistic Ceramics”. The description was half correct; at least it looked like ceramic.

Like a “Big Brother” show on wheels our numbers had been dwindling as the tour progressed. Some people were on shorter tours or staying longer at certain towns. By today our numbers were down to 20 meaning that Piar no longer needed to use his characteristic umbrella to lead us around.

A short trip from there back to Rome saw us dropped unceremoniously at the hotel, with our driver of 7 days not even acknowledging my thanks. Oh well. Now it is time to rest for tomorrow we go to Il Papa’s house.

21^st July - Rome, Italy

Staunch Catholics and maybe some Christians might wish to skip the following passages and rejoin us in Switzerland.

This morning we technically left Italy by entering the Vatican City. It is an independent state with the Pope as its head of state, although he is really just the Governor General representing the King (or Queen) of Heaven.

We caught the bus from outside our hotel, which was free. (Well, you were supposed to dip a ticket into the machine, but we had no ticket and the machine was broken anyway) Following the old adage of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” we imitated the actions of the locals and made no effort to pay or find out how to pay.)

Once at the Vatican we headed for St Peters Basilica, which is the largest church in the world. I was expecting something really special, but was slightly disappointed. The biblical story of David and Goliath shows that biggest is not necessarily best and I am sure that this allegory was interpreted architecturally in the design of St Peters.

There were many statues inside, but they were all oversized and overdone. It seemed like some sort of Catholic Disneyland with scores of visiting priests standing in front of the Holy Door making funny faces while their friends wearing black coats and back to front white shirts, took pictures of them.

People inside were talking, wearing hats, giving tours, filming and taking photos, all of which seemed to detract from any feeling of it being a Holy place. The Duomo in Venice or Milan or Padua felt much more spiritual.

They did have a lot of stiffs in residence, most of them discretely placed in stone tombs but at least 3 were laid to rest inside glass sided coffins. The most popular attraction of these was Pope John 23 who, according to a passing American had been “re-excavated” to be placed here. The line up to view the body weaved its way through the Basilica. About half way along the queue was a wooden cut-out of a priest with his arm extended and a sign saying, “You must be this tall to go on this ride”.

A small wing of the Basilica contained a museum with a wide variety of religious artefacts, most of which included substantial amounts of gold and precious jewels. Some of the better exhibits were music books from the 1500s, massive tomes of parchment with each note lovingly drawn. Being a lover of old books, this was the closest to heaven I would ever get.

There were various kitchen utensils for distributing rice crackers and raspberry cordial, but most disturbing were the relics.

Now any bible reading, card carrying Christian will tell you that the body is merely a temporary vessel for the soul. Meaning, therefore, that the body of any saint is irrelevant to any good they may have done since all the piety and kindness is a product of the soul not the body. This then begs the question as to why bits of saints’ bodies should be religious relics.

In here we saw the foot bones (I think) of the ‘Spirit of the Spear’, the tooth of St Martial, the skull of St Luke, a small bone from St Blaise, parts of the skull of Saint Sebastian and a bone of Saint Venanzious.

But it wasn’t just the saints who got a look in. There was also some shrivelled piece of something indescribable from Cardinal Gregorio Barbarigo, which was a relic. I don’t know of any other profession where body parts of former practitioners are wrapped in gold and worshipped. In this were so, hordes of economists would be making a pilgrimage to Wall Street, kneeling in front of the forefinger of John Maynard Keyes (the one he used to point to his graphs) and making the sign of the dollar across their chests.

(If you think I should burn in hell for that comment, I’ve already told you to skip to Switzerland, however if you have gotten this far, that is the end of my Vatican bashing.

The souvenirs around the Vatican were surprisingly tasteful, if depictions of someone nailed to a cross with head and abdominal injuries can be tasteful.

I would have liked to have seen the Pope Soap-on-a-Rope so all around the world during communal bath sessions the Mother Superior could ask “Where’s the soap?” and the sisters could all reply “Yes, Doesn’t it!”.

Of course the shops took all the major credit cards including Vatican Express (don’t leave Rome without it). The Vatican has its own radio station, (Cross FM, its at John 3:16 on the FM dial), its own stamps and also its own coins. Since it has no roads I wonder if it has its own drivers license. If so I suppose it has boxes to tick for which organs you wish to donate and which organs you want kept as relics.

Anyway, we left the Vatican and rather than fighting the pickpockets on the bus we walked home via some other notable Roman landmarks.

The first stop was the Castel St Angelo. The castle is built on top of the Mausoleum of Hadrian (the guy who built the wall to separate the Scots from the scum to the south). There is a sloping spiral ramp within a small artificial hill, which leads to his burial site. The castle is above the tomb and a large wall and other fortifications surround the whole hill. As far as castle go, this one is excellent and well worth the L10,000 entrance fee.

The Piazza Navona is a large square (actually a rectangle) with three fountains built to do something with the water being delivered by the aqueduct. It was spacious, sunny and not too crowded and seemed to capture the essence of Rome without the excessive tourist trap feeling.

The next stop was the Pantheon, a large domed building we had seen from the Castel St Angelo. It looked vaguely religious, but the courtyard looked like accommodation for youth hostel rejects.

The Trevi fountain was in a tiny square in a nondescript back street. It was dirty, noisy, crowded and unattractive. It was as if the local shopkeepers had conspired to make a story to attract the tourists. It worked, but the fountains at Piazza Navona shit all over the Trevi with no compunction to throw money in. We left the hordes and headed for the hotel.

The last stop before the hotel was a deli-cum-general store with reasonable prices. We bought two bottles of wine, two boxes of Pringles, a box of grape juices and a large block of chocolate for much less than it cost to buy the kids lunch. One bottle of wine was the same price we had paid for a piece of cake at the Vatican. Almost too late we had found an affordable shop in Rome.

23^rd July - Rans, Switzerland

We are sitting on the back porch of Rob’s house in Rans. We have just returned from a walk in the woods. We started at the Reynerhus, which until recently was a pub until the owner died and the daughter decided to turn it back into a house. Since it is being renovated by mates of Rob, we were able to look through the place and remember having beer and rosti and lazing in the beer garden.

We returned through the forest and stopped for a barbeque of beef and horse over an open fire.

Despite the exercise involved we are in basic veg-out mode. Andrea and all the kids have cycled down to the local pool for a swim.

Yesterday was a travel day. Taxi from Rome to the airport, plane to Frankfurt, plane to Zurich Airport, train to Zurich, train to Sargans, train to Buchs, car to Rans.

Whew.

We are in the Rhine valley just across from Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. The mountains here are tall, steep and very pointed. They form an outline as is they have been painted on glass and held up within our field of vision.

The noise from traffic is minimal, but replaced instead by the dull clank of bells on the cattle and sheep of the surrounding paddocks and hills.

It is very relaxing, even if Rob is playing music that sounds like Philip Glass and Herb Alpert having a jam session whilst on acid.

The entries may be sparse for a while as we get out of the travel mode and into the holiday mode.

Whatever you have to say about the Swiss (for example, that they are like the Germans but without the sense of humour), they do manage to get their trains to run on time (but then again so did Mussolini). The trains are for the most part, clean and smooth to ride in. When we bought our tickets the ticket office printed out a personalised timetable of our journey indicating where and at what time we had to change trains.

There are some things about the country that seem odd to a foreigner like me. For example, only citizens can own land here so Rob’s house is in Andrea’s name. You are not allowed to wash the car or mow the lawn on Sunday, as this is the day for minimal work and minimal noise. Very few shops are open on Sundays. You cannot use a washing machine between 11:00am and 12:30pm. The washing machines are on a different circuit that goes off between these hours. The reason? This is the time when most Swiss are cooking the main meal of the day and hence using a lot of electricity. If they were allowed to use the washing machine at the same time, the country would need to import electricity, which is probably expensive and not in the national interest. Interesting eh?

26^th July - Rans, Switzerland

It is amazing what a Radox^TM bath can do for tired limbs and in my case extremely tired. The last few days have gone by in a bit of a rush.

The night of the 24^th was spent at a birthday party with one of Rob and Andrea’s friends. It was a fairly small affair with all the guests crowded onto the balcony surrounded by the number of dope plants that even the Dutch police would not regard as personal use. Attending the party was an itinerant carnival worker (is there any other type?) from New Zealand who had been on the road for 7 years. At one stage the party retired to the street where the aforementioned carnie broke 273 different councils by-laws by performing an un-authorised fire dance in the middle of a public road, in a built-up area, after the hour of 10pm, in a non government approved leotard.

The following day I slept off the resulting hangover and in the afternoon, Sue, Rob and myself caught several buses to Planken in Liechtenstein to start the Drieschwestern (3 sisters) walk.

Planken is at about 950m and we spent two long hours in a continual up hill walk to arrive at Gafadurahütte at 1428m. This is a pub with basic dormitory style accommodation. Although there is a road to it, you can only drive up the road if you a) live or work there or b) intend to kill a piece of wildlife so big you need to take it home with a motor vehicle.

We shared the outside terrace of the pub with a hoard of mad mountain bikers, who had taken 90 minutes to ride up, but would arrive at the bottom in about 10. The cyclists departed about an hour before sundown leaving only a hard full of hard-core walkers and us. Since we had a full day ahead of us we retired for the evening just as the sun disappeared behind the mountain at about 10pm.

The accommodation consisted of two double-decked platforms down either side of the dorm laid out with about 10 mattresses on each. It was potluck who you slept next to. The cows who had been blissfully grazing in distant paddocks all day, suddenly felt the need to bring themselves and their clanking bells closer to the hut at night.

Now, the occasional ‘tink’ I can handle, but the endless clanking made it hard to get to sleep. Especially with one particular cow whose bell rhythm was so constant and endless it was either recording the click track for a drummer or being rogered against the side of the hut.

I finally got to sleep, being woken again only by the German schoolboy talking in his sleep and a grumbling bladder that could only be satisfied by negotiating the world’s narrowest staircase and a long corridor in completed darkness. The morning sun was greeted by stirring bodies and an impromptu medley of tunes from the Liechtenstein Arse Choir. You could have cut the air with a knife and then distributed the blocks as cattle food.

We set out after breakfast with the intention of walking to Garflei. This involved climbing Dreischwestern (The Three Sisters), which towered 600m above the hut, traversing the ridge to Garsellakopf and descending through Fürstensteg. The latter consists of a small path clinging to the side of a mountain where a slip would see you plummet several hundred metres to a torn and bloody death. I had remembered this descent enough from the last time I had done the walk to rename it “Mount Shitmapantz”.

As the path toward Dreischwestern turned steeper and began to include ladders and paths that could only be walked on by clinging to a steel cable, I remembered the ascent could be almost as hairy as the descent, leading to the rechristening of this section as “Kleine Shitmapantz”.

The steep exposed path proved too much for Sue who had done nothing like this before. We altered the original plan and left the ridge on the Austrian side, looping back below Drieschwestern and back to Gafadura. From here it was a little over an hour of steep downhill to return to Planken where 3 buses took us back to Rans and the soothing Radox^TM bath.

28^th July - Rans, Switzerland

Yesterday was a bit of a bludge. Sue and the girls rose at 5am to get the six o’clock train to Jungfraujoch. Although it is a spectacular trip, the price is steeper than the railway gradient. Having been there on my last trip, I stayed home.

Rob and I worked around the house, played with the children and rode our bikes to the local dairy to collect some milk straight from the vat.

Today we ventured off to Feldkirk, which although it is only about 20 minutes down the road, is located in Austria. We caught 2 local buses (we had to change in Liechtenstein) and on the second one into Austria everyone on the bus had to produce their passport. It seems funny to need a passport to go to a place that is so close, especially after having passed through an entire country to get there.

The reason for going to Feldkirk was to see a street performer festival. It was Ok, but there were not as many acts as we might have hoped for and they were spread only over a few blocks. Of the three acts we did stop to watch (drawn by the big crowds), one was American and two were Australian. But then I suppose all the Austrian street performers were sunning themselves in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House.

Having established the tradition of having a beer each time I enter a country and having entered Austria several times on our mountain walk without a pub in sight, I took the opportunity to repay my debt. Thankfully the numbers and the words for “beer” and “please” are the same in Austrian-German as in Swiss-German.

29^th July - Luzern, Switzerland

Another incredibly pleasant train journey saw us deposited in Luzern just over two hours after leaving Buchs. A misunderstanding when purchasing the ticket meant I had been sold a half price ticket without an entitlement. When the conductor came through the train I had to fork out another 42 Francs.

Luzern is a beautiful city with a wide fast flowing river dividing the town. The river itself is fed by Lake Luzern and it is crossed by two covered bridges that date from the 1300s.

We decided to start our tour with the local history museum, partly to get a feel for the town, but mainly because it would not be open tomorrow.

What we learnt from the museum is that these people are extremely proud of Luzern and seem to identify more with the canton than with Switzerland as a country.

From here we carried on towards the city walls, ascending all three of the towers that are open to the public. The sides of the towers were covered with graffiti showing that fuckwits from all over the world have been here. (Including you Kylie Marsden of Melbourne!) By the time I reached the top of the third tower my legs were initiating divorce proceedings.

We headed down the hill to the Bourbaki Panorama. This is a round panoramic mural depicting the retreat of the French army during the Franco-German war of 1870-71. Although interesting, I was wondering why it was there, but it obviously has a greater significance to the Swiss (and particularly citizens of Luzern), than I could figure out.

Just up the hill from here is the Glacier Garden where the stone worn by glaciers is exposed and gigantic potholes have been gouged by the action of high-pressure water underneath the glacier. Apart from this there was also a glacier museum and the best mirror maze I have ever seen. Despite being a simple pattern it was very easy to get lost in and we fumbled around for a while before finally finding the exit. In the meantime we amused ourselves by watching a small Swiss child constantly walking into the walls.

We walked to the other side of town to find the youth hostel full, so we decided to opt for a hotel.

The heat of the room and the amount of traffic noise makes us think we are back in Rome.

Looking for dinner, Sue mentioned she had seen a Thai restaurant, so we sought it out. We sat at the tables outside a restaurant under a sign that said “Thai Garden”. The menu arrived and there was nothing Thai on it. The Thai restaurant was actually around the corner. We made our apologies and left. We didn’t stay at the Thai for much longer after seeing all the main courses were about $40 each. We paid for the water we had already ordered and left.

Luckily around the next corner was a take-away which had just added chicken kebab to the menu. Wanting to encourage the spread of kebabs around the world, we purchased our meal here.

When we were ordering the kebab the man asked a question with we assumed was “eat-in or take-away”, we pointed to the table and he nodded. We sat at the table watching him make the kebab. Now when it comes to hand made versus machine made food, I’m all for hand made and although technically a pair of tongs are a third class lever and therefore a machine, their use in this case would not have disqualified it from the desired category. So the chicken, lettuce, tomato, onion, anal hair, and finger nail clippings were all delicately placed into the hand ripped bun and smothered with a generous layer of what I hope was cocktail dressing.

The order was then tightly wrapped in alfoil ready to take-away as we now realised we must have ordered. We went and sat by the river to eat it.

Tomorrow we travel to Pilatus, using a boat, cog railway, cable car and bus. It should be fun.

31^st July - Rans, Switzerland

We are now back in sunny Rans. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the cows are clanking and the children are in school. Well, they are in the kitchen with their schoolbooks doing exercises in maths and English.

Yesterday was a day of constant movement.

We left the hotel early and walked to the ferry terminal to catch the 8:15 to Alpnachstad. The journey was just over an hour and pulled into many small villages that clung to a small strip of land between the lake and the towering mountains above. There were people swimming, water skiing, canoeing and generally taking advantage of what a large body of water has to offer on a warm sunny day.

We left the boat at Alpnachstad and joined the “The steepest railway in the world”. The track was at 48° and the train propelled itself using a ratcheted centre rail. Although the Scenic Railway at Katoomba is 52°, it averages only 45°, is pulled by a cable and is only a few hundred metres long. This railway by comparison is several kilometres and the journey takes 40 minutes. Incredibly enough we saw people walking up. Since the walk downhill takes 3 hours, I don’t think you would get much change out of a day going up.

The railway ends on top of Mount Pilatus, named after the dragon that is meant to live there. On top is a circular hotel that looks like the headquarters of an evil criminal mastermind. (I’m not sure if it was this one that was used for a Bond film, but if it was, they weren’t cashing in on it.)

The mountain had three peaks. Two have lookouts (one with a trig), while the third houses a large radar dish, two mysterious looking camouflaged domes and an array of aerials leading me to suspect that it belongs either to the military or a very enthusiastic HAM radio operator.

We hung around the top for a while watching the cloud rise up from the valley below and wrap us in a grey envelope.

There was some building going on up the top and a helicopter was shuttling buckets of concrete up from a point in the valley 1000m below. The pilot seemed to have done it so often that he could even find the mark through the fog. We were standing near the building and we could hear but not see the helicopter, then suddenly this machine would appear through the fog about 25 metres away.

We descended the other side of the mountain using a gondola. Not the type propelled through the water by a colourful Italian character singing a selection of Dean Martin songs, but the type that hangs from a wire and is propelled by a humourless Swiss gentleman who looks like a retired sea captain and grunts at random intervals during the journey.

The gondola plunged straight off the face of 100s of metres of cliff into a thick cloud, which would occasionally clear to show the ant-sized people walking up the hill. This took us halfway down the mountain where we changed to another cable car for the journey to Kriens. Once back on the valley floor, it was a 15-minute trolley bus ride back to Lucerne.

There was just one more thing to do before leaving Lucerne. This was the Verkehrshaus or Swiss Transport Museum. Now I know what you’re thinking, but this place was great. It was full of locomotives, trams, cars, boats, planes and spacecraft, with lots of buttons to press and levers to pull. The communications area was very interactive with an opportunity to run your own radio show or TV programme. We were there for over 3 ½ hours and that was rushing it. It really needed a whole day, but we had our own non-museum transport to catch.

We gathered bread, cheese and salami at the supermarket together with some drinks and chocolate meringue desert. We had a little picnic on the train amidst the jealous (or was it amused) looks of our fellow passengers.

We were home shortly before eight and the kids and Andrea had prepared a chocolate fondue, which to our surprise, is not a Swiss dish.

I was woken early this morning by Rob who wanted me to go on a walk. Being still buggered from walking all around Lucerne, I declined, so he got the shits and went to work.

Maths is now over and English is starting, to be followed by a geography lesson on Norway. Hmmm….

1^st August - Rans, Switzerland

Today is Fascist’s Day. (The name given by some of Rob’s friends to Swiss National Day).

This day is given over to being Swiss, so no loud noises or lawn mowing. It gives the locals an entire day to ensure all the clocks in the country are synchronised.

Yesterday was spent at Altenrhein or “The Old Rhein”. A corner of the Rhein was cut off by digging a new Rhein. Since the border was marked by the old river, there is a small pocket of Switzerland that is on the ‘wrong’ side of the Rhein. If you want to piss these people off, just tell them they are Austrians, (but only after ensuring your medical insurance is up to date).

What Rob described as being an afternoon quietly reading a book under a tree at a billabong on the Rhein, turned out to be an oversized swimming pool complex with thousands of people and insufficient shade. There were diving boards, water slides and visions of flesh that should not be seen outside the privacy of one’s home. It was something akin to a reunion of Project Jonahs benefactors and it was clear that many more should have been left to die on the beach.

There were large warning signs indicating, “At any time and without previous notice, these waters may contain Austrians”.

Our relief from the mayhem at the local bar was interrupted by a small girl who asked us if we were English and then went on in a Diana Spencer accent to say, “Is that Swiss beer you are drinking? Daddy can’t stand Swiss beer.”

I am a firm believer in the theory that to truly understand the locals, you must drink the same beer as them. The only exception to this rule is the United States, because firstly it doesn’t matter how much of their beer you drink you will never understand Americans and secondly (with the exception of Samuel Adams) their beer tastes shit.

We returned home briefly before a scrumptious meal in a Liechtenstein restaurant to thank Andrea and Rob for their hospitality.

Today we have been preparing for this evening’s Fascist Day celebration by cooking various articles for the party.

Best of all however, was the opportunity to buy fireworks (banned in NSW since my teenage years) and I look forward to engaging Rob with ball shooters at 20 paces and blowing up an innocent Swiss letterbox. More tomorrow.

2^nd August - Oslo, Norway

The Fascist Day party was great. The highlight of course was letting off the fireworks. Tom thumbs, skyrockets, ball shooters, (so called because you can shoot people in the balls with them) and the obligatory Catherine wheel.

We left the party just before midnight but failed in the attempt to leave before a hangover was secretly installed.

Today was spent travelling. Buchs to Zurich Airport, then Copenhagen and change planes for Oslo.

We found the cheapest hotel in Oslo, which is still fairly expensive, but partly offset by the fact that breakfast is included and from 1730 to 2230 you can make your own waffles in the lobby and top them with fruit, brown cheese (made from goats milk) or jam.

After our fill of waffles we went for a walk into town past the most amazing travel-book shop and the Royal Palace. The King wasn’t home but the guards were on duty. They would stand to attention for 5 minutes outside the sentry box and allow tourists to take photos of them while the tourists pulled funny faces. Unlike the guards outside Buckingham Palace, these guys could crack a smile and actually did look left and right rather than just straight ahead. After all, you can’t guard a palace effectively when you stare unfocused in a single direction.

Just to show that they had a sense of humour, every five minutes they would break their routine with a “silly walk“ that makes John Cleese’s look positively pedestrian.

3^rd August - Oslo, Norway

Today we spent the whole day on the Bygdøy Peninsula, a short ferry ride across Oslofjorden. Our day began with the Norsk Folkemuseum, which is an open-air museum a bit like Old Sydney Town, but with more herring and less public floggings. This is a shame, since the kids don’t like herring, but could sure do with a flogging.

Houses had been brought here from all over Norway showing a wide variety of architectural styles. The buildings also spanned about 700 years so a bit of technological innovation had had an influence on the designs.

Many of the buildings were being repaired and many of the crafts people who worked in the museum were only there on Sundays. Whether this is because they have real jobs during the week or simply wanted an excuse to skip church is not clear.

Just down the road is the Vikingskipmuseet, which houses three Viking ships in varying stages of decay, that were discovered in burial mounds throughout the country. Very important people were buried in a ship with a plentiful supply of goods for the after world. (Because forever is a very long time).

On another arm of the peninsula jutting out into Oslofjorden are three more nautically themed museums; they are the Norsk Sjøfartsmusuem (Norwegian Maritime Museum), the Frammusseet and the Kon Tiki Musseet.

It was getting late in the afternoon and after looking at the 150^th scale model of a Norwegian built vessel, the novelty was wearing thin. However it does show that if a small country puts its mind to it, it can have a world-class industry. I know of a number of Norwegian cruise liners, but I don’t know of any built in Australia.

The Frammusseet is dedicated solely to the Fram, a ship that was used by Amundsen on his journey to the South Pole, but also used on journeys to the North Pole. It is a stubby looking ship made with very thick timbers. It looked fairly spacious inside, but I imagine it would be fairly crowded once it was loaded with all the gear needed for a polar expedition.

The Kon-Tiki museum holds the Kon-Tiki, the raft used by Thor Heyerdahl to get from South America to Polynesia. It is also the home of RA II, the reed boat used to get from Morocco to Barbados. RA I sank just before it reached its destination. Thor did some other work with sailing ancient craft around but I’m not sure how scientific the approach was or whether the scientific community accepted his findings. It is something I must read up on some more.

After the obligatory whinge session by the kids, we return to the hotel to prepare for the journey to Bergen.

4^th August - Toward Myrdal, Norway

I am in a First Class seat in the train. We are not travelling First Class because we are rich or snobs, but simply because there were no Second Class seats available. First Class has its advantages and disadvantages. It has comfy seats, lot of legroom, free tea and coffee, and lots of Americans making inane comments.

“Oh look Harold, a window, and if you look through it you can see Norway!”

The train staff must be used to it and address them in an over-polite patronising tone bordering on condescension.

“A bottle of water? 21 kroner thank you Madam. Yes well done Madam, that is a 20 kroner piece. Now I only need 1 krone. Try the small ones with the hole. Very good Madam!”

The elderly woman behind us is the woman who played the dumb girlfriend in “I Love Lucy”. At least that’s whom she told the plastic surgeon she wanted to look like. The voice coach has done a good job as well. She had been complaining about the weight of her bags and asked the conductor how she would get her bags off the train in Bergen. “I would suggest the same way you got them on Madam” came the reply.

We are travelling through a rich mixture of verdant forest, golden pasturelands and sparkling rivers. The clouds are closing in and I feel we may end up in Bergen on one of the 270 days of the year that it rains. Oddly enough Bergen is the launching point for the world’s first umbrella vending machine. Remind me not to invest in the Alice Springs franchise.

I’ve just been to the toilet. While this is not normally a fact I would record in the diary, there was a sign on the hand dryer that said, “Clean the interior of the tool regular at the latest at decrease air capacity and ensuring overheating”. No, I didn’t understand it either.

4^th August - On a boat on a fjord, Norway

We left Lucy’s friend at Myrdal and joined the railway to Flåm. The railway descends 863.5 meters in 20 kms and goes through 20 tunnels along the way. The land here is extremely steep and I wouldn’t be surprised if the first person that suggested building a railway here was not dismissed as a lunatic. After 55 minutes the train terminates at Flåm on Aurlandsfjorden.

From here you have a choice of boats and we chose the one that takes us all the way to Bergen. The trip takes five hours, but the shorter boat trip, followed by a bus and a train to Bergen is only 10 minutes quicker.

We chose the longer boat trip as we thought it might be more scenic. We have now determined that one hour of majestic scenic fjordland beauty is much the same as the next.

When Sue and I visited Tasmania, she wanted to see all the waterfalls and I wanted to see the lighthouses. We eventually worked out close to even. However, after today, we shall have to see 27 lighthouses a day from now until Christmas 2005 before I catch up.

We have just passed the one-hour mark and the first $14 beer is finished. If we keep up that rate I will be bankrupt before we dock.

There are monitors throughout the boat displaying a moving map of where we are going. A Windows error has just appeared on screen confirming my worst fears that the boats autopilot was written by Microsoft. I am just donning my life jacket when an announcement comes over the PA in Japanese and all the Japanese are rushing to the exit. They are grabbing the magazines from behind seats and frantically looking through them. I try to let them know that it is the “Trygg Om Bord” card that has the life jacket instructions, but to no avail.

We are heading straight for the rocky shore and an icy death when the information screen reboots and the boat docks safely at Balestrand. The Japanese alight to join their bus and my heart rate returns to normal.

4^th August - Bergen, Norway

The Marken Guesthouse is really just a fancy name for a hostel. There are dorms with 4 beds in each, so we take up a whole dorm. Linen and towels are extra and the facilities (TV, kitchen, shower and toilets) are all shared. It’s 10pm and just starting to get dark.

The boat trip dragged on forever, which forced us to have a second beer.

There are two suspect things about Bergen. Firstly, it is billed as “Gateway to the Fjords”. When a town is the gateway to somewhere else, it generally means that it has nothing going for it. Secondly, it is billed as a “Shopping City”, and since tomorrow is Sunday, all the shops will be shut. We shall wait and see what happens.

Someone needs to look at what some of the names of places around here mean in English and reassess their marketing. Whilst naming your hotel after your favourite band might seem a good move, the choice of “Crowded House” might not have been the best. I am also not likely to take any children to the “Bratland Camping Ground”.

5^th August - Bergen, Norway

Being Sunday, most of the ordinary shops were closed except for the odd mixed business. Every sweater/troll/reindeer shop is open however, and it doesn’t take long to discover that almost every shop has the same supplier.

We started late in the day and indulged the children a little by hanging around in shops for a while. We ducked in and out of shops between rain showers and then explored Rosenkrantz Tower. This is a medieval tower that has seen several face lifts, one of which was the result of a German ammunition boat exploding in the harbour in WWII. Most of the rooms were empty, so it was just a case of exploring the tower and reading the brief explanation in each room.

We had been museumed out after Oslo, so we skipped all museums including the Leprosy Museum (the ONLY one in Norway) and the North Sea Traffic Museum.

The day ended with a funicular ride to the top of Mount Fløyen that overlooks the city. The children had an impromptu geography lesson trying to match the city map with the view in front of them. They were doing well until the arse of a fat German woman blocked their view. This then had them needlessly searching the map for two mountains and a deep narrow canyon.

The children are currently doing a school session in the common room and the indication is that the teacher may require alcoholic relief shortly.

6^th August - Between Bergen and Oslo, Norway

This is a seven-hour train journey and we are in 2^nd Class. The chairs and legroom are adequate and we are not surrounded by yanks. We must travel 2^nd Class more often.

8^th August - Oslo Airport, Norway

We are waiting for our plane having been delivered promptly and efficiently from Oslo station by the airport express. This is a shuttle service that runs every ten minutes in a train specially designed to take extra baggage. What can Sydney learn from this? Heaps!

Yesterday we visited the Norwegian Resistance Museum, which detailed the history of Norway and the Resistance Movement during the Nazi occupation of Norway. The museum is on the site used to hold Norwegian prisoners during this time, so the surroundings add a sombre tone to the already serious subject matter. It was like being in a war memorial, people were being very quiet and even the Americans were whispering. Having been to the war cemetery in Narvik on my previous visit to Norway, it was good to learn the rest of the story.

The Resistance Museum is in the Abershus Fortress complex, which includes Abershus Castle. This is a really good nooks and crannies, narrow staircase, deep dungeon style of castle, with parts of the walls dating from the 1200s. The main hall of the castle has a magnificent rose window at one end, triple gothic windows at the other and a high vaulted ceiling. A wallpaper-like pattern is painted on the walls down to about shoulder height, where it is replaced by drapery that has been painted on as well. It took a second look on entering to realise what it was. The castle is not really a museum as such. It is still a fully functioning building that is used for many government functions and dinners. The antique furniture is for sitting on and eating off and the 400-year-old tapestries on the walls are not stuck behind Perspex.

We met the children mid afternoon, (they had decided not to improve their education at the museum) and went shopping for 3 ½ hours, proving that dress shopping in Oslo is just as exciting as it is in Sydney.

On the way back, a chance scanning of a book in the bookshop led us to the decision to visit Vigelundsparken. We raced back to the hotel and then a further ten minutes walking brought us to the park.

The park houses about 200 sculptures of the artist Vigelund. All the sculptures are life size human figures in various poses. Some are standing, some are running, some are being thrown into the air. The highlight is a monolith that looks about 10 metres high, and consists of over 100 intertwined bodies. We were lucky to arrive at the park while the light was still good, even though the lowering sun was giving the life-size statues shadows the size of giants.

The plane is about to board and the airport is alive with activity. Airport staff are racing around the terminal on scooters, delivering goods etc. The delivery scooters are three-wheeled with large boxes or baskets on the front and they move silently and efficiently about the terminal on large pneumatic tyres.

10^th August - Stockholm, Sweden

I am sitting on the sofa with Robin and Maja watching Swedish children’s TV. We arrived here about lunchtime on Wednesday and have been on the move ever since. Helena has planned our visit with military precision, managing to find something to fill every minute of our visit.

No sooner had we arrived than we set off on a picnic to Ångby Camping Ground. This was next to a lake and although the locals were swimming it was spanner water by Australian standards.

From here we travelled to Drottningholm, which is the residence of the King and Queen. They were home, but not waving to us from the balcony. The guards were wearing hats that looked like they had been borrowed from the closing credits of Hogan’s Heroes. The palace was closed to the public, but some of the grounds were open. The grounds were beautiful landscaped gardens with hedges and fountains. It’s good to be the King.

Once we were thoroughly palace’d out, we returned home via a Putt-Putt Golf course. Not having played for years I had forgotten the rules. The maximum seven-putt rule was pointed out to me after I scored 24 on the second hole. Not to worry. I finished second in our group of four, but I don’t think Tiger Woods will be losing any sleep over the result.

As we were leaving, the car park and street outside was filling with motorbikes, as it is a traditional meeting place for bikers on Wednesday nights.

It shows the standard of Swedish motorcycling as these (mostly) men, slip into their leathers, strap on their boots and roar off on their Harleys to the Putt-Putt Course.

Yesterday another full program was planned, but the weather and the weariness of children changed it slightly.

On Thursday we went into Stockholm to Skansen. This is a cross between an open-air museum and a zoo. We went in with Helena, Anna, Markus and their kids and met Ulrika and Jakob in there. Markus’ mother and brother later joined us so we were very shortly a very big group.

The open-air museum had old houses relocated from all over Sweden, many of them inhabited by craftspeople such as glass blowers, potters, (not Harry) weavers and shoemakers.

In the animal section are the animals that are (or used to be) found in the Swedish forest; reindeer, moose, bear, otters, foxes, wolves and other animals I hadn’t heard of. It was great, and despite being in the middle of school holidays, was not too crowded.

Once again the weather closed in and we decided to postpone the visit to the fun park until the next day.

The morning of Friday was spent wandering the streets of Stockholm. We caught the train in with Anna and met Ulrika in there.

Since our Iceland trip had fallen through we needed to find a substitute and decided to visit an Iceland specialist. By the time we got there it was Friday afternoon and since we were leaving on Tuesday, she had to have everything ready by Monday morning. A tough ask, but I hope she is up to it. We find out on Monday. The travel agent did look a bit put out, and since she was speaking English to us and Ulrika had already spoken in Swedish, she decided to swear in German. But almost everyone knows the German for shit.

While all this was happening, Anna, Belinda and Lisa were shopping and we met with them later for lunch.

We headed off to the Vasamuseet, where the ship “Vasa” is stored. This mighty warship sank in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage in 1628 and remained on the bottom of the sea until 1961 when it was finally brought to the surface. Over 95% of the ship is original, with the other 5% done in a different colour so it stands out.

There are thousands of artefacts from the ship, a display of the Stockholm of 1628 and an exhibition of ship building methods of the time. It is one of the most fascinating museums I have seen. There are also films of how the ship sank and how it was recovered. Having had our education for the day, it was time for fun at Grönalund Tivoli.

This fun parks lies somewhere between Luna Park and Australia’s Wonderland, (though much closer to the Luna Park end). There were many things that span and went up and down and would have had me revisiting my dinner in an instant. I went on the Ferris wheel, a real white knuckle roller coaster and of course the dodgem cars.

The Swedes are obviously not aware of the reputation that Volvo drivers have in Australia. The dodgem cars were made to look like Volvos and so driving around trying to avoid being hit by mad drivers in Volvos was just like driving on an Australian highway. We later had our own Volvo dodging session as five adults and four children piled into the Nissan to get home

12^th August - Near Norrtälje, Sweden

We are in Helena’s summerhouse out in the forest near Norrtälje. We came up here yesterday, as it is only a 90-minute drive from Stockholm. We stopped briefly in Norrtälje, which is a quiet seaside town. The Russians invaded sometime in the 1700s and it seems nothing exciting has happened here since.

The town has a touch of Berrima about it, with a higher than average handicraft shop ratio. It also had two tattoo shops, one of which was called “The House of Pain”. As well as tattoos, they also did body piercing and had a dildo in the window displaying the various piercings available. All I can say is that Prince Albert guy was braver than me. Mind you, being married to Queen Victoria, he must have had a high pain threshold to begin with.

The reason for coming to the summerhouse was for the kräftskiva party. This is a strange Swedish tradition involving the excessive consumption of crayfish. The whole party is crayfish themed with bibs, hats, masks and tablecloths all bearing images of crayfish. We even had crayfish shaped lights hanging from the ceiling. The crayfish was supplemented with potatoes, herring, pork, and meatballs and of course a little bit of Swedish Vodka.

The party stuff has all been cleaned up and we are playing cards in the overcast day. More news as it comes to hand.

14^th August - Somewhere over Europe.

We are once again in an aeroplane. This time we are on our way to London, where we have to get to Stanstead for a near midnight flight to Iceland. We spent the night at Ulrika’s place, which is just near the airport, after a wonderful farewell dinner of chicken and rice washed down with champagne, wine and beer.

The rest of Sunday was spent doing a little finishing in the Swedish summer rain. This was before the drive back to Stockholm via the scenic route, as the freeway was crowded with all the other people coming home from a weekend at their summerhouses.

Monday was spent doing domestics. We went shopping in the morning getting a great pair of zip-off trousers before going into Stockholm to get the vouchers for our Iceland

trip and handing over the rights that would normally accrue to the first-born heir.

The entertainment for the day came when we arrived back at Vällingby. We exited the railway station to the sound of breaking glass as a dishevelled woman crossed our path mumbling and swearing to herself in Swedish. Wrapped around her waist was a tablecloth that she had recently acquired from a nearby café table, without first removing the ashtray and empty glasses.

She trundled over to a nearby fountain and sat down on the edge letting go of the tablecloth to reveal she was wearing only a black G-string. She then proceeded to wash her skirt in the fountain until being accosted by a security guard and a somewhat startled café owner demanding the return of his tablecloth.

As far as fashion goes, a black G-string goes with almost anything. A floral printed vinyl tablecloth is a possible exception to this rule.

14^th August - London, England

We have about ten hours between flights since we landed at Heathrow and are departing from Stanstead. We caught the tube to Liverpool Street station and checked in our bags, then trudged down to the Tower of London to sit and watch the boats go by. It is all so very familiar after having lived here for over a year and although some things have changed, it is still basically the London I remember.

I remember the first time I came to London and having grown up in such an Anglo-centric society, it was like coming home to a place I’d never been to. I was looking around going “Oh look, a London cab”, “Oh look, a double-decker bus”. Oh look a London copper” and looking at the street map thinking I was looking at a Monopoly board.

I’d always thought that was the ultimate cultural cringe in that the Monopoly games sold in Australia had London street names. Even when an Australian version was released it had street names from all the capital cities so it could be sold to the parochial Australian market.

I have a love-hate relationship with London. It has endless opportunity for entertainment with great theatres and shows, countless museums and large leafy parks. On the other hand it is dirty, noisy, crowded and has the kind of weather that helps explain why so much of the British Empire was located close to the equator. It is a vibrant energetic city, but it can also be depressing. So many of the locals seem to have an expression of weary resignation on their faces, in contrast to the smiles of the visitors who know they have somewhere else to go home to.

Looking at the Thames, the Tower Bridge and the skyline of the city brings back lots of memories and I realise that something is missing from the picture. I have been in London, the home of cask-conditioned ales and homely comfortable pubs for five hours and I am yet to have a beer. This situation will soon be remedied.

The remedy did not appear.

The pubs on the way back to the station were all crowded and didn’t look child-friendly. We ended up eating in a café, which had beer, but with two drawbacks. Firstly it was bottled and secondly, it was Italian. We have opted to catch an earlier train to the airport, so I hold out hope for an English beer on tap there.

15^th August - Somewhere off the coast of England

I am on board the cheapest flight available to Iceland. It arrives at 1:20 in the morning. It is with “Go” Airlines (no I hadn’t heard of them either) and it is the sort of airline that makes comments about pilots being glorified bus drivers seems relevant.

Stanstead airport is 45 minutes by train from Liverpool Street station, which is better than the last time I came when it didn’t have a station at all.

It is home to the cheap, small airlines and charter companies. The bread and butter of “Go” seems to be the flights to coastal resorts in Spain where Brits can go on holidays, eat British food, drink British beer and watch “Match of the Day“ in a climate more favourable than anywhere in Britain. Quite a few of the passengers had started the festivities early and would no doubt soon be enduring the experience of waking up in a strange country with a massive hangover.

If you are wondering if I got a drink, I did manage 2 ½ pints of Carling Black Label at the airport. Hardly a cask conditioned ale, but with a prohibitive price and a 0% blood-alcohol limit in Iceland, it may be my last for a few days.

The numerous small children on board who conspired to perform a mass cry at takeoff have now settled down and apart from the unceasing kicking of the person in the seat behind, all is well.

We should hit the guesthouse at around 2 AM and I intend to sleep till the afternoon.

15^th August - Keflavik, Iceland

I have just survived the “Baptism of Tiles”. This is where every floor tile in the bathroom conspires to alter your orientation from vertical to horizontal. Luckily the towel rack was not willing to be party to this and I survived.

We finally got to the guesthouse just as the suns light was showing over the horizon, which was 0230 local time. This equated to 0430 body time, as there is 2 hours time difference to Sweden.

We caught a taxi from the airport to the guesthouse, which was an unmarked building across the road from the Keflavik Hotel. There were no signs of life and we tried knocking. The answer came from a small boy who told us check-in was at the hotel. The hotel was all locked up but we managed to find a bell and summon the night clerk. She told us our booking was for the following night (because the agent had made an error), but found rooms for us anyway.

We slept till midday and had hot, refreshing but slightly sulphurous showers. The water here is reminiscent of Rotorua.

It is now time to explore Keflavik. (Keflavik is the town supporting Reykjavik International Airport. Reykjavik itself also has an airport, but it is only for domestic traffic)

Some time later.

Although I have not seen it labelled as such, Keflavik well and truly deserved the title “Gateway to Reykjavik”. There is nothing of note or interest here, which is good since I don’t feel guilty staying in the room and sleeping. The natural state of the ground here is small volcanic stones and pebbles, which means nothing much more than grass will grow. In some gardens are bushes up to 2 metres, but there is not a single tree to be seen.

From the hour or so walking around town, it seems the preferred mode of transport is the car, closely followed by the pram. The main hobby amongst the young women here would seem to be procreation. Given the long nights in winter and the quality of Icelandic television, this is hardly surprising.

Tomorrow morning we pick up the car and head off to explore the scenic wonders of Iceland.

16^th August - Skogar, Iceland

Being as it has been a while since I have had to drive on the right hand side of the road, I thought I’d ease myself into it and only did about 350km today.

We picked up the car at the airport, where they had expected us the day before, due to another error by the travel agent and also found it had been booked for one day more than we needed.

We returned to the hotel to check out and found that the voucher was only for one night, when it should have been for two, (checking in at 0230 counts as a night). We called the travel agent to find that she hadn’t even charged us for that hotel and had booked us an extra night at the end of the trip. The very late arrival and very early departure had confused her. She is doing us a new invoice and a refund should be coming our way.[2]

Our first stop was at the famed Blue Lagoon, which is actually an artificial lake that serves as the outlet pond of the nearby geothermal power station. The lagoon’s water is very milky due to the high mineral content. Although the air temperature was 11°, the water was 38° and very pleasant to swim in as long as you didn’t swallow any. We floated about and lazed in this huge bath-like atmosphere for over an hour before reluctantly having to leave.

One good thing they have here is a bracelet with a chip inside that gives you entry to the complex, opens and closes your locker and allows you to buy things at the kiosk. It is waterproof and saves you having to carry keys and money. The Lonely Planet had this placed listed in the top 10 worst places in Europe, but I thought it was great. Relaxing, peaceful, and not too crowded. (Although the car park was only ¼ full.)

Staying in the geothermal vein, we headed off to Geysir. “Which Geyser?” I hear you ask. Well it is “The” Geyser. This sprouting water jet is the one all the others are named after. Unfortunately, over the years the efforts to make it blow better by stuffing things down the hole, have resulted in the thing not working!. Fortunately, there is another geyser called “Skokkur” less than 50 metres away that is working. Although it only shoots 25-30 metres compared to Geyser’s former 70-80 metres, it is still spectacular. All around it are other small holes in the ground bubbling away at 100° and of course, the ever present smell of sulphur dioxide.

The nearby geo-thermal centre has a small yet informative display on geysers, volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers. The weird thing is when a volcanic eruption occurs under a glacier, you can get a flood of water preceding the flood of lava.

One such glacier is just up the road and feeds the river that flows over the Gullfoss or “Golden Waterfall”. The river is about 30m wide and suddenly drops 32 metres into a narrow canyon that looks as if the earth has just cracked apart. A phenomenal amount of water was going down the falls causing a fine mist to fill the air and coat the surrounding countryside. It was after 7pm when we left Gullfoss, so we made a bolt straight for Skoggar, arriving just in time for all the restaurant kitchens to be closed. We had sandwiches for dinner and discovered a new cocktail that can be made from Absolut Citron and Sprite. We have christened it the “Closed Kitchen”. I will not let Alex Beaumont in on the secret. And so to bed.

17^th August - Skoggar, Iceland

We are in an area of Iceland where hot springs bubble up all over the countryside and this hotel has no hot water in the showers. We should go lie in a nearby puddle instead.

17^th August - Höfn, Iceland

Leaving the disinterested hotel staff to carry on their morning uninterrupted by guests, we headed down the road to Skogafoss, the waterfall that gives the village its name. It was another massive wall of water hurling off a cliff, this time fed by the Myrdalsjökull (Glacier). We continued to Vik, described on the back of the map as where “buffeting waves crash violently onto a beach of black sand and towering fingers of dark rock glower from the foaming sea”. This was true, but the town itself made Mittagong look like Las Vegas.

We visited the headlands around the Dyrholoey lighthouse, which sits atop a tall cliff at the end of a narrow winding, steep edged road. All of the land around here is volcanic rock (hence the black beaches). Yes I said beaches.

Looking around here wasted the morning and so we decided to make the run straight for Höfn and maybe do some horse riding along the way. The only place we found was a private farm with multiple prams on the porch and no sign of life. It was threatening rain and despite a shitty pant attack from the kids, we carried on.

We saw a purple star “point of interest” on the map and since there were only 8 on the whole map of Iceland and the others included Geysir and the Blue Lagoon, we thought we would have a look at whatever it was.

As we approached the bridge at Jökulsärlon we caught a glimpse of icebergs and as we came over the bridge we could see an entire lagoon filled with icebergs breaking off the Vatnajökull. This is not only the biggest glacier in Iceland; it is the biggest in Europe and covers ¹/₁₂ of the country. There were trips into the lagoon in old army LARCs (like a duck), so we spent a cold 25 minutes cruising about the icebergs with a number of inflatable boats out front to find a safe path. Some of the bergs were massive and we were only seeing the 10% above water. The ice in the bergs is over 1000 years old.

We thawed out back in the car and made the final run to Höfn, where we booked into what should prove to be a very exciting trip, but more on that tomorrow.

18^th August - Eiđar, Iceland

This morning we set off for a bit of an adventure. We returned to one of the turnoffs onto Vatnajökull and waited for a “Super-Jeep” to take us up to the glacier. Now although the “Super Jeep” was fitted with balloon tyres for driving on snow, we didn’t go on the snow. We stoped at a hut at about 850m, up the steepest, narrowest, windiest road in all of Christendom, but the Land Cruiser we are driving could have shat it in.

Once at the hut we donned waterproof overalls, gumboots and motorbike helmets and set off across the glacier on snow scooters. We went out for an hour travelling at between 20 and 40km/h cruising around on ice that was about 50m thick. We stopped a couple of times to look around, but we were in the middle of a cloud with only about 60m visibility. It was hard to estimate distances with no reference points and completely white surroundings. I’m glad the guide had a GPS on his scooter.

It was 8° and pissing down for most of the time we were out, but the wind chill at 40km/h on the scooter made it feel much colder.

The aerodynamics of the scooter was much the same as on my old Suzuki road bike. This meant that all moisture that hit the front of the scooter was channelled directly around the fuel tank, over the front of the seat and directly into the crutch of the driver.

By the end of the trip an amount of water equivalent to 6.7 Sydney Harbours had flowed toward my groin. Even Moses could not turn such a tide, so the supposedly waterproof overalls had no chance. It left me with a stain on my trousers underneath that would have been de rigour in your average nursing home, but looked somewhat embarrassing on a person of my age and impeccable bladder control.

While Lisa and I were standing up over the bumps and spinning out the tail on the corners, Sue and Belinda were both quietly shitting themselves on their ski-doo having taken to heart the guide’s warnings about the dangers of rolling it. We returned to the hut, sopping wet, with the rain still pissing down and had to endure not only the drive back to our car, but also the 40km back to town where we could change under shelter into dry clothes.

We refuelled the car and set off for Eider some 240km distant. Although almost the entire trip was on highway No 1 (the highway that circumnavigates Iceland) it was only two lanes for most of the way. When it wasn’t two lanes, such as on most bridges, it was only one lane. For the most part the road was tarred, but several long stretches were gravel, which was not bad except for the climb up one mountain pass in the middle of a cloud. On the bright side, the 20m visibility prevented the passengers from seeing the 100m plunge off the sides of the Armco-free roadway.

This brought us to the northern part of Iceland, where a short drive to the hotel was punctuated only by a pause to book a rafting trip and the now obligatory argument about horse riding.

20^th August - Reykholt, Iceland

Reykholt is in the middle of Fuck-All. In fact if you climb a nearby hill, you can see all the way to the northern boundary of Fuck-All. The place is famous for the writing of sagas. The sagas were written here in the early 1200s, so the village has rested on its literary laurels for 800 years. According to all available information, nothing exciting has happened here since.

The sagas were written by Snorri Sturlussen, which brings a chuckle to the Swedes, since Snorri is a Swedish slang word for penis. Maybe writing was not his only claim to fame.

Last night was spent in Akureyri, which is the ‘capital’ of northern Iceland. The travel agent had told us we could do whale watching trips from here, but they were in fact 90km back in the direction from which we had come. Given our time constraints, a 180km return trip was out of the question. Since whale watching had been a request, the agent should have had us stay at Husavik instead.

We didn’t get away from Eiđar until early afternoon as we found some activities to occupy our time.

We went for a ride on Icelandic horses straight after breakfast. The horse rental was at a typical Icelandic farm with mother and daughter organising the ride. The mother’s command of English extended to “OK” and “Horse”, whereas the daughter benefiting from a modern education and a healthy diet of American TV was able to ask us if we would like fries with our burger.

The ride itself was fairly dull. The tracks were narrow and we were given no opportunity to trot or canter. The fastest we got was a tölt. A tölt is a gait that is peculiar to Icelandic horses. It is somewhere between a walk and a trot. It is faster than a walk, but nowhere near as bouncy as a trot. This means you can ride around for an hour and your bum only feels like its been in the saddle for 55 minutes.

From this adventure we drove straight to the white water rafting, run by the invitingly named Artic Rafting.

They supplied dry suits for the rafting, which meant we didn’t have to change out of our clothes. The rafting was run by Jim (an English ex-merchant seaman who had found his way to Iceland) and Gulli (rhymes with bully) who looked like an Icelandic Peter Garrett and was far more attractive with his rafting helmet on than off.

We were given the usual rafting commands brief and then the raft was lowered to the river, which lay in a deep narrow canyon.

We had to walk down a steep slope, the last part of which was rope-assisted. Sue had another panic attack and initially refused to go down until ably assisted by Gulli. I think she was having a Swiss Alp flashback.

The river itself was very tame (we had chosen the “family” river), to the extent that only one of the rapids was worthy of being named.

To add some fun, Gulli had us play some games in the boat. At one stage we all sat at the back of the boat with the nose high out of the water. Those on the right paddled forward, while those on the left paddled backwards, leaving us spinning very quickly on the tail of the boat. The final result was that the boat flipped.

The initial shock of the icy glacier melt water was quickly replaced by the shock of having Lisa land on my head. After about two minutes of floating downstream, Gulli had the boat righted and we all got back in.

The dry suit did a reasonable job of keeping me dry, although the bottom part of my jeans did get wet.

It was after 2pm before we were ready for the 250km trip to our next stop. This excluded the 70km return detour to see Dettifoss, the largest capacity waterfall in Europe, with an average of 193m³ of water per second flowing over it. The road out to Dettifoss was busy. Paradoxically, it was busier than the highway to which it was connected.

Two cars had run off the road and been abandoned at two different spots, one of which appeared to have collided with another car. The local Hertz office would have been busy that day.

Further along the highway we approached an area where the hills looked pale and bare like the hills around Queenstown in Tasmania. We saw steam rising from the ground and it turned out to be another geothermal area, although this time the clear water was replaced by thick dark mud. Some was boiling violently, while some was just going plop-plop. It was now after 7pm and the driving was getting tiring. The only other stop was at Godafoss, which is a small but beautiful waterfall. It is said that the local politician in the area threw his pagan statues into the waterfall after making the decision that Iceland should convert to Christianity in 1000AD.

We arrived in Akureyri tired and with tempers on edge, which was not helped by difficulties in finding the hotel.

This morning we slept in by necessity rather than design. After breakfast we decided to check out the local tourist office to find out what there was to see between Akureyri and Reykholt. The reply was short, simple and brutally honest, “Not much really”. It also proved to be astonishingly accurate.

The possible exception to this was a small turf covered church. The inside was about the size of a large hotel room. It had been built in the 1800s, but there has been a church on the site since the 1200s and some of the internal fittings dated from the 1600s.

We were let in by a lady who appeared from nowhere as we approached and disappeared just as quickly when we left.

Another uneventful drive brought us to Reykholt.

We have just finished dinner in the hotel where we paid a little over $50 for a Lindemans Cawarra (about $7.99 from Theos).

Sue asked the waitress to bring an ice bucket (for the wine), but the waitress thinking it was too uncouth to serve ice in a bucket, brought back a small bowl with 15 ice cubes in it. Needless to say, we didn’t put the wine bottle in it.

At least dinner tonight was more pleasant than last night.

Sue and I went to a nice restaurant with good food in Akureyri, but were seated beside a family of Poms, mum, dad and three sons. The sons all had a polished boarding school type accent, quite different from their father, and their dinner entertainment was quizzing each other. Things like; “What is the fifth largest living thing on earth?”, “What is the valency of oxygen?”, “Who is the under-secretary of state in Ethiopia?”, “How long would I be able to breath for, if the normally placid Australians at the next table shoved my head up my arse?”.

The quiz continued as they walked out, so I never did find out the middle name of Alfred Nobel’s second chambermaid.

This evening while waiting for dinner to come to the table, we tried to arrange a second surprise for the kids, dog-sledding on the nearby glacier.

We asked about it at reception and they had never heard of it. “Where did you get this brochure?” she asked. “In your lobby” we replied.

I rang the number on the brochure and got a recorded message to ring a second number. I rang the second number and was told I would have to ring the booking number. I rang the booking number and was told they were busy handling a booking on that line (the joys of call-waiting) and to ring a fourth number. I called the fourth number to be told I couldn’t go tomorrow. I think the dogsled owners make all their money from their shares in Telecom Iceland.

22 August - Reykjavik, Iceland

After waiting for five minutes for the hot water to come through in the shower at Reykholt, I decided that all the geothermal energy was being pumped into the nearby greenhouses. Luckily the shower at the other end of the building was working.

We left Reykholt to contemplate its Snorri and headed off Reykjavik via a back road.

The land around Reykholt was rather wet and waterfalls abounded. We stopped at Barnafoss where the water powers through a narrow canyon and into a small keyhole. The falls are named for two small children who drowned there after falling off the natural bridge over the river. The distraught mother had the bridge destroyed.

We continued on past Långkjöll where the dogsledding runs from. Shame we couldn’t have booked. At 630m, it was the highest point on the road and the cold wind blowing off the glacier cut like a knife.

On our decent we passed ten identical Land Rovers on a “tag-along” tour. The only thing missing was a rope leading from the tow bar of one to the bumper bar of the next. Seeing that I was glad that our tour had fallen through. It was like they had been instructed to pull off the road and stop whenever another vehicle approached, since that is what they all did as I came down the hill.

Some time later….

It is 1700. Our plane leaves at 0215 tomorrow and we don’t need to be at the airport for five hours. We are in the car park of a horse-riding place having been told that there are no trips available. The tourist office in Reykjavik told us we could just turn up, but not so. The kids are shitty at not having had a second horse ride, but such is life.

We went on a wave-spotting trip this morning. It was supposed to be a whale-spotting trip, but the whales weren’t co-operating. The brochures said they saw whales 98% of the time. Presumably the other 2% is when the Norwegians get there first. We saw a Norwegian registered vessel on our way back to port and even though it was a freighter, I’m sure the mere sight of the Norwegian flag was enough to send the whales packing.

Our drive out of Reykjavik, although during peak hour, benefited from the fact that tractors are not allowed on the highway from 4pm to 6 pm.

We are now planning our London leg and trying to keep ourselves amused knowing that we are going to be awake for a further 24 hours. Fun, fun, fun.

23^rd August - Russell Square, London

It is mid afternoon and we have all just awoken from a catch-up nap. Although we could sleep more, this will put our body clocks out of whack and that is the last thing we need.

We had hung around in the car park of the horse place for as long as possible writing postcards and planning our London visit. It was too late and we were too tired to do much more. We refuelled the car at Keflavik where the children HAPPILY volunteered to wash the car. It took them 40 minutes but we had heaps of time.

We got to the airport a mere 5 ½ hours before the plane was due to leave so we had lots of time to examine the architectural beauty and artistic splendour of the airport. The flight was uneventful, but landed us back in London in peak hour. The tube was so crowded we had to get separate trains.

24^th August - London, England

The guidebook says the Museum of the Moving Image was closed for renovations and would be open for summer 2001. The cashier at the theatre opposite the building site the used to be MOMI, said it wouldn’t be open for at least another year.

We had come here from the Tower of London, which is one of those “must-see” sights in London. Little has changed since the last time I was here, except that the Jewel House has been refurbished. They now screen close up pictures of the jewels while you are queuing so that when you get to the actual jewels you are not disappointed to whiz past them on a moving walkway.

The day has been brilliant sunshine and it is even a little bit hot.

Some time later…..

We are sitting in a park in Leicester Square surrounded by hundreds of other tourists. Somewhere nearby there is a fight going on and the crowds are steering clear of it. The children have been dispatched to a cinema to see “Shrek”. We are killing time waiting for our 9:00pm “flight” on the British Airways London Eye.

Following the non-opening of MOMI we decided to go to see the Millennium Dome. The guidebook said you couldn’t buy tickets on site but had to get them elsewhere.

We stopped at the information stand at Waterloo Station to ask where to get tickets. “You mean the Millennium Wheel” said the guy. “No, we mean the Millennium Dome”. He looked at us as if we were mad. “The Dome? The Dome? That hasn’t been open since Christmas, they’re going to pull it down!”

A nearby woman then joined in the conversation. Believing that everyone in the western world must know that that the Millennium Dome had closed, also insisted that we must be talking about the Millennium Wheel (aka London Eye) and started to tell us how to get there, while simultaneously arguing with the other man about the fate of the Dome site.

We left them to argue about it and walked off.

25^th August - London, England

The whole day was spent at the Science Museum. We told the kids it was the Science “Centre” as the mere mention of the word “museum” would have them curling their noses. We had been there for seven hours when we had to leave and there was still heaps to see.

All this looking at things is tiring stuff.

27^th August - Dublin, Ireland

The last time I was in Dublin I hired a car from the airport, drove to Trinity College and St James Gate (the Guinness Brewery) then got the hell out of there.

This time we are staying a night first. We have a 4 bed dorm in a hostel. The reception was attended by a goth in full goth gear and at least 30 piercings to any loose piece of skin attached to her head. Call me old fashioned, but that is probably not a good advertisement for the place.

The room itself has two double bunks (as expected) and a push button shower. You push the button and get 30 seconds of water at a pre-set temperature. The basin taps are likewise push button, but without the time delay. You hold the button and the water flows. Take your hand off and the water stops. This means you can only wash one hand at a time and makes it impossible for one-armed people to wash themselves.

Sue is upset about the accommodation and feels a bit ripped off. I tend to agree. To show our contempt for the management we have broken the “No drinking in the rooms” rule by breaking open the Jameson.

We had best go for a walk now before the gaol-like confines of the room drive Sue crazy. We shall hunt and gather for the children while we are out.

Yesterday we rose early to beat the crowds to the “London Dungeon”. The layout had changed since the last visit and now includes a short boat ride and an extra “Jack the Ripper” experience. This is probably designed to get more people through the door at a faster pace. Judging from the crowds outside this change was required.

We returned to Waterloo and made our way to Hampton Court Palace, which is one of the most beautiful Royal Palaces, with expansive gardens and a hedge maze. It became the home of Henry VIII after Cardinal Wolseley passed it on to him and was home to several Kings and Queens after that. There were thousands of people there and it felt a bit like a cattle yard in places. The palace was not well sign posted and I couldn’t help thinking that this was to force you to buy a guidebook or hire the audio tour.

28^th August - Galway, Ireland

We left the hostel from hell this morning and just managed to get a seat on the 9:00am bus to Galway. We arrived around 1:00pm, found a B&B and went into town to start preparing to find work.

Tomorrow we hit the recruitment agents and the estate agents. We will give ourselves three weeks to find work otherwise we will go elsewhere.

30^th August - Galway, Ireland

Yesterday turned out to be a very depressing day.

We went to two recruiting agents and both gave the same impression. Our chances of getting work here was somewhere between slim and non-existent.

We have just moved out of the B&B into a small townhouse. It only costs a tiny bit more but we save by being able to cook and our sanity is saved by not all being stuck in the same room.

The agencies also said our CVs at six pages (including title page) were too long. I will try to do an executive summary of one page and see if that is any better. Today we have some agencies to go to and we also intend to scour the web for hints of job prospects in Cork and Edinburgh. If these fail then our best bet is London (unfortunately).

The hard part now is doing something with the kids. We are no longer sightseeing (which they hated anyway), so they have to stay at home while we look for work. They are keen to go to school and disappointed that we probably won’t be staying in Ireland. We still have plenty of money but it will run out quickly if we don’t find work.

After a little more chilling out and settling in to this townhouse (about ½ an hour), we will hit the streets again.

The weather has been running parallel to our moods. The day we arrived in what we thought was our new home was bright and sunny, while yesterday was rainy and miserable. Today the weather is half and half and so are we.

1^st September - Galway, Ireland

Saturday. A day off.

The rest of Thursday was spent trudging the streets of Galway. We sent our CVs to another agency and walked around to another agency where the staff were singularly non-plussed about anything. We spent a little bit more time at the Internet Café and I made and sent off a shortened version of my CV. We did some shopping on the way home and had our first home-cooked meal for some time.

Friday morning we went off to another agency and although they were a little more upbeat, they still didn’t have any work for us.

Checking the Internet cafes again, we decided to look at London and Edinburgh. The jobs poured out of the screen. Sue saw a Peoplesoft position and I spotted a network admin contract. Sue heard back from the agent within ½ an hour and was sent the details of the position. I haven’t heard back.

It sure looks like the market is much healthier there than in Galway or Cork and we don’t want to go to Dublin.

We’ll see what happens.

All this preoccupation with finding work has put a bias into the commentary and some of the interesting snippets of life have been left out. The language is fun. The sing-song lilt of the Irish is catching and it is interesting the way they use “yourself” in place of “you” in many instances.

Galway has made it into the finals of the All-Ireland Hurling (I thought that was what you did after you had drunk too much) and so the streets are awash with flags in the team colours and banners of encouragement.

There have been some disturbing sights too. The other day an armoured car was delivering money to the bank. As well as the usual armed guards on board the van, there was also a separate Range Rover with additional guards who got out and spread only the street. These guys were in full camouflage gear with bulletproof vests and automatic rifles, topped off with a maroon beret. (Berets seldom make a positive fashion statement, but I didn’t feel it proper to point this out to an armed man). They had no badges indicating rank or what company or organisation they belonged to and no identification tags saying they had the right to walk around the streets armed to the teeth. Call me old fashioned, but being surrounded by half a dozen young men with high powered rifles leaves me feeling far from safe.

The supermarket was interesting if only for a single. In the cleaning products aisle of the supermarket was a sign saying, “In the interests of hygiene, customers are requested not to test products on the floor.” This brings two thoughts to mind. Firstly, they must have had a large enough number of people who were actually testing the products on the floor (something I would never have thought of), that it was thought necessary to erect a sign. But secondly, and more puzzling is how can the testing of cleaning products be regarded as “unhygienic”. After all, they are, by definition, designed to clean the floor.

5^th September 2001 - Galway, Ireland

Bugger me, if I’m not on another bus.

We are on our way to Dublin Airport to fly to London where the job prospects appear better. Ironically, one of the jobs Sue is going for is at the Royal Bank of Scotland and a fair portion of the contract will be carried out in Edinburgh. Everyone else on the bus seems to know each other and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all one family.

Last night we met with Chris and Julie Wharton doing a bit of a European tour after working in the US for four years.

Neither Sue nor I slept very well last night. It was possibly the butterflies in our stomachs. Sue was dreaming of job interviews.

Monday and Tuesday were spent with more time on the net for job searching and looking for accommodation.

On Sunday we did something touristy since we hadn’t seen much of the area. We went to Innismore, which is the largest of the Aran Islands. From Galway it was 45 minutes on the bus to the port and then 30 minutes on the ferry. The boat rocked around a bit once it left the shelter of the bay but I managed to keep my breakfast. We arrived at Innismore and ran the gauntlet of the tour operators on the jetty. A variety of vehicles in all states of roadworthiness were lining the road.

As passed each one, old gentlemen in varying degrees of crustiness would lean from the vehicle and ask “Bus tour to the cliffs?” through an assorted number of teeth.

We skipped these and the offers of a pony and trap tour (“Is it a tourist pony?”,” No, just a tourist trap.”) and opted for a bicycle each. There were only three of us as Lisa had felt sick and stayed home.

We headed off to a point about eight km away choosing to follow the main road down the centre of the island. This proved to be a mistake as the road was mostly uphill to start with and limbs unused to cycling quickly tired. We reached Dun Aonghasa and walked the final 300m from the bike park. The fort was over 3000 years old and positioned on the edge of an 85m cliff. The path to the fort was lined with a stone fence, which was only recently built but looked like the same age and method of construction as the fort. This 3000-year-old fort looked like it was built yesterday (and might have been a ruse to draw unsuspecting tourists to the arse end of a barren wind swept island.

Of course the Aran Islands are famous for jumpers. Those marvellously warm woollen clothes knitted by hand around a fire during the long winter nights to provide warmth and comfort to the farmers and fishers in this harsh environment.

But there was something wrong with the picture. Although every second house on the island seemed to be selling Aran jumpers, I didn’t see a single sheep. The fields were home to cattle, horses, donkeys and dogs, but nothing that could rapidly be turned into a jumper. I couldn’t help but think that someone was trying to pull the imported wool over our eyes.

The return trip on the bikes was via a gently undulating coast road and was achieved with little effort in about a third of the time taken to get there. There were many other ruins on the island but we didn’t have time to see them. Another day would have been better but it wasn’t possible.

8^th September 2001 - Greenwich, England

It is sunny, the birds are singing and all is well with the world. We are lying in the park at Greenwich having passed on the opportunity to pay £6 to straddle the prime meridian. This arbitrary line continues down into the park where you can happily cross from one hemisphere to another without the need to open your wallet.

It is now Saturday.

We arrived back in London on Wednesday and unsuccessfully tried to find some self-catering accommodation. By all accounts, it doesn’t exist in London. We tried the tourist office, which shut at 1800. Although it was only 1730, the closed sign (advertising the opening hours) was up but the man was still sitting behind the counter. Despite it being ½ an hour before closing time he had closed and the prick told us to come back at 0800 the next morning.

We rang back to the B&B we had stayed in before and got two rooms there.

Thursday was a day of preparation and consolidation. We went to town, got the mobile phones working, got an A-Z (street directory) and bought some work clothes. We also looked at a nice flat in Richmond just down the road from Mick Jagger’s house. It would do at a pinch, but we had some other properties to look at. We arranged to see another two properties on Friday afternoon and scoured the paper for a third to look at in the morning.

We rang a place in Hampstead that was a three bedroom flat above a camera shop. The landlord was the owner of the camera shop. He was a crusty old man who stooped over as he walked. He was like a cross between Yoda and one of the old men who turn out to be the villain in Scooby Doo cartoons. Although there was a street entrance, he didn’t have a key and instead lead us through a small door at the back of the shop past barrels of acid containing the decomposing remains of his previous victims.

We emerged in a small corridor crowded with a mattress and assorted rubbish and ascended the stairs to a series of rooms with filthy carpets, cracked walls and a variety of life forms, none of which were human.

We fled and headed off to a charming three-bedroom maisonette in Putney. It was reasonably priced but we realised with 4 weeks rent in advance and six weeks rent as a bond, we were in for some serious money. We expressed interest and left to look at a third property in Docklands.

This was a three-bedroom apartment right next to the Crossharbour Docklands Light Rail station.

The area was like Darling Harbour with lots of offices, shops and cafes and right opposite the London Arena. We decided to take it and commenced our negotiations. If all works out we can move in next week.

10^th September - Russell Square, England

We spent the day visiting schools for the kids to go to and discovered ALL the schools in the area are full and we have to lodge an appeal to get the kids in. (It is sometimes hard to believe the country once had an empire that spanned the globe.)

Much of yesterday was spent looking for jobs on the Internet and sending off CVs. I sent my CV to five agencies and three specific jobs and so far I have had one phone call. This is not looking good, but we live in hope.

In the afternoon we went to Hyde Park to investigate Speakers’ Corner. There were about 15 different speakers, with most of them talking about the benefits of Christianity. Most of these benefits seemed to be the avoidance of burning in hell for all eternity as punishment for not worshipping an all-loving God. There were a couple of Islamic speakers who were concentrating on the love of God and the need to obey him, but not so much of the burning in hell.

There were a couple of political speakers, including a boy of about 12 who seemed to be holding his own among the adults. However the kids were soon bored and we went home.

11^th September - Russell Square, England

The hotel is full of Americans who are glued to CNN following the two aeroplanes being flown into the World Trade Centre. As we watched further, a third plane flew into the Pentagon and a car bomb exploded outside the State Department. It is absolute chaos and devastation in the city of New York and as more news comes through, the more unbelievable it becomes.

I imagine most of the country is glued to the TV and so there will be little response from job agencies today. There is nothing to do but sit and wait.

15^th September - Kings Cross, England

Astute readers will have noticed that are no longer in Russell Square, but also not in our apartment in Docklands.

The week has been eventful.

The country was still in numbed shock on Wednesday, so I didn’t expect too many calls. I chased up one agent who had sent my CV to the client only to discover she was based in New York.

Bummer.

We went out to Bethnal Green to buy the children’s uniforms, which came to almost $1,000 since we are still spending dollars, not having earned any pounds. The area out there and near the school is grotty and run down. It is a low income, high unemployment area a bit like Redfern. It’s not really the place I’d like to be going to school.

Thursday morning saw us back at the Internet Café. I sent off applications to eight different jobs and heard back from no one. The estate agent rang back and said the flat would not be ready until Friday.

I chased up one agent who agreed to meet with me at 5:30pm. We had a long talk about jobs and the market. The market was slow and contract jobs were thin on the ground. Even though I was getting £15 an hour ten years ago, that would only translate to £20 an hour in the current market, even with an additional 10 years of experience I could only hope for £25 an hour. Although this translates to $75 an hour at the exchange rate, in real terms (buying power) it is only about $35, which is worse than being in Sydney. On top of that (the real clincher) is that Sue couldn’t get a work permit. Although a company could sponsor her work permit, no agency would see her without a work permit. The only way to get work would be to apply directly to companies and not many companies were advertising.

With no prospect of Sue getting work, and me not being able to do as well as I could at home we only had one option.

Go Home!

We came to this decision on Thursday night. This was luckily the night before we signed the lease and before the children started school, but unfortunately not before the children had written their names on the labels of their school clothes.

We cancelled the lease (losing the £100 deposit) and returned the school uniforms. However, since the labels were written on Sue only got a refund on the clothes that the shop made themselves.

We moved out of the hotel at Russell Square and into the Euston Travel Inn Capital, which saved us £50 a night but meant we were all in the one room again. We plan to stay in London for a few days to see the rest of the tourist sights and arrange our flights home.

Our ticket currently takes us to New York with United Airlines. Can you pick the two obvious drawbacks with the previous sentence?

We want to change the ticket to go straight to Toronto and avoid New York (we should also be able to change to Air Canada and thus avoid flying United.) We should be able to make these changes on Monday when the office opens. Depending on when we can get flight, we are going to see a few sights around England first.

Flights are now going to North America, but the flight are unlikely to be full. We are going to hire a car and drive around until we can get out of the country.

The room in the Travel Inn is clean and simple and has some interesting signs. Behind the hot tap in the bathroom is a sign saying ”Caution: Hot Water”. Behind the heated towel rack is a sign saying, “Caution Towel Rack may be hot”. I feel like adding a sign on the toilet saying “Warning, toilet may contain faeces after use” or a sign on the mirror saying “Caution: The ugly reflection you see in the mirror could be your own”.

We started doing some tourist things this morning.

Our first stop was Westminster Abbey. The cash register is right at the door, (£6 entry), which is about right for any religious institution. God loves the poor and so the church doesn’t mind making you a little poorer. The Abbey is a bit more Abbeyish than the last time I was there. I seem to remember the souvenir shop being right in the main part of the Abbey.

The Abbey is crowded with statues dedicated to past heads of government, soldiers, poets, generous donors to the church and any number of other hangers-on. If any more people are interred here they will have to start hanging them from the roof.

Keeping up with the religious theme we then went to St Paul’s, which I think is the 2^nd biggest church in the world. From the outside it needs a good tub, but inside the cleaning is well advanced. We climbed over 500 stairs to the top of the dome and looked out over the drab and colourless expanse of London. In the crypt of the cathedral we made a remarkable discovery. “The Crypt Café” located directly under the entrance to St Paul’s sells beer and cider. It was the first time I had ever had a beer in a Cathedral and yea verily it was good.

19^th September - Swindon, England

Swindon seems a nice place to pass through.

We are in the “Holiday Inn Express” hotel next to the motorway en route from the south of England to the north.

On Sunday 16^th we finished off our London sightseeing with some museums.

After walking past the British Museum for so many days we finally went inside. We did a “highlights” audio tour, which picked out about 25 items from the vast collection of stuff stolen from all over the world. Well not stolen of course, since you can’t expect all those spics, wops, wogs and dagos who built these antiquities to actually be able to look after them. So the British merely took them for safekeeping. The fact that they had to smash things into small pieces in order to get them home was irrelevant.

There were some very important items like mummies, the Rosetta Stone and some important Celtic and Norman artefacts.

The centre courtyard has been refurbished since I was there last and looks very good.

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum. This was another museum that you could spend an entire day exploring. There were fantastic displays of dinosaurs, the human body and creepy crawlies, and it was actually a place that the kids liked.

On Monday morning we rose early and went to the Star Alliance shop. We spent just over an hour changing our tickets and luckily were able to re-route around New York at no extra charge.

We then hired a car, got the hell out of London and sped off to Leeds Castle near Maidstone. It was fiendishly expensive and seemed a lot small than before, because it had been turned into a conference centre and many of the rooms were out of bounds. The maze in the garden was great fun and we needed some hints to get to the centre. From the centre a path led to a cave and eventually to the outside. We headed off and spent the night in Whitstable.

Tuesday morning we drove into Canterbury and looked at the Cathedral. It was another fine example of how easily the church can part people from their money. It was a magnificent building, but having the souvenir shop inside the Cathedral was a tad tacky.

From here we went to “The Canterbury Tales” visitor attraction, which was surprisingly better than I thought it would be. We walked around inside an old church looking at mannequins in static and moving displays while listening to a commentary from Geoffrey Chaucer himself.

We headed along the coast past Brighton, where I ate the worst battered sausage and chips in the world on a tacky fun pier that was well past its use-by date. There was no-one swimming in the cold ocean whose miniscule waves flung themselves hopelessly at the pebbly beach. Of course the fun pier and amusement arcades are necessary to attract visitors, since without them, there would be fuck-all to do at the seaside.

We headed off to Portsmouth, expecting to stay there the night but every hotel was full. Our luck at Southampton was no better since there was a boat show being held there.

We were forced to head north to Winchester where the third hotel we went to had a vacancy. Since we arrived late we got standby rates of £60 instead of £148.

This morning we got up early and drove to Salisbury. After finding out some tourist information, we headed off to Old Sarum. This was an Iron Age fort, which was the original site for Salisbury until it was moved in 1100s. This was a great sight after having read the book “Sarum” which follows the lives of five families from per-history through to modern times. The shop here had a great collection of swords but it might have been hard getting them past customs.

We headed from here to Stonehenge. You can see all of Stonehenge from outside the fence, but it is worth paying a bit of money to see it a bit closer up. The admission price includes an audio tour, which tells you a lot about the site. The visitors’ centre is across the road from Stonehenge and down a hill so it is out of the way. Nearby is an RAF base, so we had the sight of fighter jets and Hercules transporters low flying over a Stone Age monument. An artillery range was also active with the constant sound of exploding shells echoing across the plains.

Following the high admission price/free audio tour trend, we visited the Roman Baths at Bath. Once again a vast improvement on what I remembered, but a big drain on the wallet.

Having ticked a few more “must-sees” off the list, we headed northwest towards our next objective, and having made a series of frustrating phone calls in the morning, finally settled at the Holiday Inn in Swindon. It is across the road from Travel Inn (where we had planned to stay), so we went across the road to try and pre-book the next few nights. Unfortunately, the reservations computer was down and so our accommodational fate is in the lap of the gods.

21^st September - York, England

All the York Travel Inns were full and most of the hotels and B&Bs as well but we managed to find one just outside the town.

We left Swindon yesterday and headed for Oxford. On the way to Oxford we saw a sign pointing to “Uffington White Horse and Waylands Smithy”. The white horse was a stylised horse shape carved into the hillside and filled with chalk. It looked about 30m long. It was best viewed from far away, but we went right up to it. We walked about a kilometre across the paddocks through the bitter wind to find an English Heritage Warden dutifully weeding the horse.

We followed another sign to “Waylands Smithy”, which got its name because the Saxons thought that the god Wayland would shoe passing horses here. It was actually a barrow or burial mound that is over 5,000 years old and once contained 18 bodies. This important archaeological place is sitting in the middle of someone’s paddock about 1.5 km from the car park. It is protected from vandals by a long walk and poor signage.

22^nd September - York, England

Duck me if it isn’t the “Mallard”, the train that set the world speed record for a steam train at 126mph. Good thing it didn’t derail while it was doing it. This train is in the National Railway Museum, which purports to be the biggest railway museum in the world. It was so big that the majority of our day was spent there, followed by a quiet stroll around the city walls.

25^th September - Toronto, Canada

The day of the 23^rd was driving mostly down the M1 to Hemel Hempstead. It sounds like the name Bob Marley would give to his capital city. We arrived just after 2:00pm and went in search of a laundromat, before the clothes ran off there by themselves. We spent a little over two hours watching our clothes go round and round with periodic breaks to the pub.

The morning of the 24^th we rose early and drove to Heathrow. We were very early since we didn’t know how long it would take on the M25 to get there or how long the queues at the airport would be. The queue at the Air Canada check-in turned out to be 45 minutes long, but we managed to get bumped onto an earlier flight, which was only ¾ full.

It was our first flight since the New York attack and the plane was unusually quiet before take off. I think for a lot of people on the flight, it was the same situation. The flight was uneventful, no loud drunks and no crying babies.

We arrived in Toronto and caught a big Cadillac into town. You could have parked a mini in the boot.

The weather was raining and not looking promising and this persisted until morning. The weather report predicted rain until we leave so we headed for the Royal Ontario Museum.

While it has a good collection, it is presented in an old fashioned way and therefore doesn’t hold the interest the way it might. Toronto itself is a bit like Sydney, not quite so busy and with wider footpaths and lots of open spaces. The people seem reserved, very polite and friendly. On first impressions (or second if you count the crappy chaotic airport) I like it. Speaking of the airport, the queue through immigration took over 20 minutes. When I finally got to the counter I was given the 3^rd degree that stopped just short of asking what I’d had for breakfast and when was the last time I’d had sex. I have that effect on immigration officials.

Miraculously the sun has come out, so we are heading off to the CN Tower now to look over the city.

27^th September - Toronto, Canada

The cloud came back so our CN Tower experience was postponed.

Yesterday morning we headed uptown to Casa Loma and Spadina House. Both are very grand houses in a leafy quiet part of North Toronto.

Casa Loma is a massive castle with high towers, a swimming pool in the basement (with provision for a bowling alley and pistol range) and an organ that is two stories high. The owner went bankrupt before it could be finished and it is now looked after on behalf of the city by a local charity. There is even a 300m tunnel from the house to the stables and a secret passage from the study to the wine cellar.

Spadina House on the other hand is an elegant house that has passed through three generations and is still fitted out with the items the family had in it. It is not as big but also not as ostentatious as its neighbour and has a more homely feel about it.

We returned to the children who were left sick in the hotel room and headed out to dinner. After dinner, once it was dark we went to the CN tower. The tower seems top of the list in every guidebook and is the de facto symbol of the city, but it is really just an unattractive communications antenna. It costs a ridiculous amount of money to go up there and although the view is good, it is not worth the money. Even the “glass floor” section where you look 300m straight down to the tower base is a bit ho-hum.

I think the expense comes from the excessive number of staff they have, including the lift drivers. They carry out the task of pressing the destination button on the lift. With only a choice of the restaurant or the observation deck, the task is not too difficult.  They also give expert commentary over the 58 seconds it takes to reach the top. It goes something like this. “Welcome to the CN Tower, you are in the elevator. It will take us to the observation deck. When we arrive the doors will open and you can then alight from the elevator. Have a nice day”

28^th September - Toronto Airport, Canada

It is an hour before the plane leaves and we are in the gate lounge with all the others who came early to avoid security delays. Apart from the near strip search on entry during which even a small subway token was detected, the procedure was smooth and efficient.

We just checked our e-mail and Sue discovered she doesn’t have a job to go back to. They say it is budget driven, but I suspect otherwise.

Yesterday we did a hectic day trip to Niagara Falls. They are spectacular, but it was a bit of a letdown. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Thankfully it was not as tacky as it might have been, but then again, we were on the Canadian side on the falls.

We went on the “Maid of the Mist” tour, which takes you up close to the bottom of the falls. The boat was almost empty.

Next we went up the Skylon Tower for lunch in a revolving restaurant, which took over an hour to reach the table, despite being pre-ordered in the morning.

The next attraction was the “Journey Behind the Falls” which was a walk in a tunnel behind the falls with two portals out to the cliff edge. Unfortunately the safety barrier was about three metres from the edge and so it was like looking through a keyhole at a shower. I was so looking forward to it and so disappointed.

On the way back we stopped at (but didn’t go on) “The Spanish Aero Car”, which is a cableway out over a whirlpool in the Niagara River. If actually manages to make the Scenic Skyway in Katoomba look exciting. The whirlpool is not much now since ²/₃ of the water from the Niagara River is diverted to hydro electricity plants and comes back into the river further down stream.

The highlight for me was stopping at a winery on the way home, although once again disappointment, as there is a law that only allows them to let you taste four wines. I think they are a bit paranoid about alcohol in North America. They had prohibition in Canada at one stage, so that gives an indication of the similarity to the US in this regard.

The day is sunny for our flight to Vancouver. I hope it is the same on the other side of the country.

29^th September - Vancouver, Canada

I’ve been here for 24 hours and haven’t seen any of the X-files being filmed. The flight here was uneventful. I sat next to a woman who was living in Vancouver and she didn’t give the place a good rap regarding things to see.

We had planned to go whale watching this morning but the company rang up just after 7am and cancelled due to anticipated gale force winds.

Instead we went to Granville Island, a peninsula of land in False Creek that was once an industrial complex and is now an artistic and shopping community. Its saving grace was a microbrewery called “Granville Island Brewery” which had a range of traditional batch brewed lagers and ales. Their Gastown Amber Ale was particularly nice. While writing this, I am drinking a “Hermann’s Dark Lager”, which is from the Vancouver Island Brewery. It is also very nice, proving that Canadians can make good beer once you get away from the mass-produced crap that normally gets passed off as beer in these parts. We will try for whales tomorrow.

1^st October - Vancouver, Canada

So bend yer backs and row me lads and take me to me whale

Tonight we'll sing and dance, tomorrow night we'll sail

We'll sail into the harbour and no prouder men there'll be

And show them all we captured the monster from the sea

Di di di di di de di di.

Well that didn’t out as planned as once again high winds were predicted and the tour was cancelled.

Instead we spent the Sunday as a typical Vancouver person might, strolling around Stanley Park and taking in the sunshine and the harbour air. I like Vancouver, a lot, I guess because it reminds me so much of Sydney.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Gastown. It is billed as being the old part of town, a bit like “The Rocks” in Sydney. Instead it is a dull streetscape with tacky souvenir shops and an over-abundance of beggars. I would have been disappointed leaving Vancouver without going there, but having done so I’m disappointed I did.

As a tourist town Vancouver doesn’t rate high. The real attraction is the nature around the city. This takes effort to see and the journey is just as much fun as the destination. It is not a town that thrusts activity in the tourists face and it doesn’t need to. Vancouver has enough industry to survive without tourists. We are just bit-player.

Today we leave for the US of A. Home of the brave, land of the free, centre of the free world, bastion of democracy, 99 change hands.

Some time later in Los Angeles…..

We are at a cheap motel near the airport. We have had a feed from the franchise takeaway next door and booked a tour of Universal Studios tomorrow.

2^nd October - Los Angeles, USA

From the tacky glitz and conspicuous consumption of Hollywood and its balsa façade of “The American Dream” to the seemingly endless flat urban blandness of Latino slums, I don’t think I have acquired such an intense dislike for a town as quickly as L.A. I don’t know whether it is the town as such or because it is one of the main centres of the holier-than-thou, might is right, God is on other side, gun-toting, red neck arrogant chauvinism that calls itself “American Culture”. L.A. is the centre of US cultural imperialism, much the same way as New York is the centre of financial imperialism and Washington is the centre of good old-fashioned military imperialism. But destroying the Hollywood sign with an aircraft has been done before (I think in Independence Day) and is probably a waste of good Avgas.

Universal Studios was pretty good though. It is very similar to Warner Bros Movie World with a mix of show, rides and of course the back lot tour. Belinda was a pain in the arse all day saying she didn’t want to see the shows because they were boring and didn’t want to go on the ride for reasons known only to herself.

The attractions were a variety of theme park rides that had some tenuous link to a movie. The boat ride cum roller coaster had dinosaurs on the shores to link it to Jurassic Park. The bouncy simulator ride was in a time machine from Back to the Future, while the traditional fun park ghost ride had some sand and sarcophagi thrown in to link it to The Mummy. This last attraction harked back to the halcyon days of Luna Park and included people dressed up as mummies who would reach out for you as you went past.

The Terminator 2:3D show included a nice blend of 3D movie, live actors and in-theatre smoke, light and shake effects to combine into a very entertaining package.

The motel is cheap and a transport enthusiasts delights. We are a main road, under a flight path, beside the truck depot, next to the railway line.

I have never had the slightest desire to come to L.A. but I have a tremendous desire to leave it.

3^rd October - Anaheim, USA

We caught the shuttle to the airport and asked about hotels in Anaheim. We got a list and started ringing. We rang the central reservations for Radisson and asked for a hotel in Anaheim near Disneyland. We were given the choice of two, picked one and reserved it.

The bus driver hadn’t heard of the address and rang central reservations for us. The dickheads had booked us into a hotel near Disney World in Orlando Florida on the other side of the country. This was soon cleared up and we were able to transfer our reservation. It is hot, dry and flat here. No features, no sea breeze, and seemingly nothing natural. The theme parks are the big drawcard because there is nothing else here. But we did hear that it has been very quiet in Disneyland since the attack. Good for us, bad for them.

8^th October - Somewhere over the Pacific

My watch is already on Sydney time so the 7^th vanished somewhere around the International Date Line.

On the 4^th and 5^th we went to Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. Belinda was a real pain in the arse, not wanting to go on any rides or see any shows. We coaxed her onto a few, but she had this great fear of the unknown. Neither park was crowded and the longest we had to wait for a ride was about 15 minutes (for Splash Mountain). The Haunted House, the Matterhorn Bob Sleds and Alice in Wonderland were closed in Disneyland but everything was open in the California Adventure Park, including the “California Screamin’” roller coaster, which starts on a flat at the bottom of the first hill and shoots you forward with incredible acceleration. It does a loop around Mickey’s head and is quite a good ride.

The worst thing was “The Golden Dream” a piece of “follow your dream”, “California is the land of opportunity”, “anyone can make it here” dose of cinematic dross narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. It is also the home of permanent smog, road rage and the Rodney King riots, but these blemishes were conveniently overlooked.

The morning of the 6^th we had planned to hire a car and drive to Las Vegas and then on to the Grand Canyon. We rang ahead for a hotel to find that Vegas was fully booked to the fact that an ex-Fleetwood Mac member and one of the Jackson 17 were playing there. Being Saturday night didn’t help either. With kids moaning about long drives, accommodation difficulties and just plain travel weariness, we made the call to the airline instead of the rental company and brought our flight forward a few days.

We raced around the souvenir shops and got back to the hotel just in time to catch the airport shuttle driven by a guy who thought he was Eddie Murphy. This theatrical performance was probably meant to endear himself to us in order to solicit tips. My tip was “Don’t give up your day job. You are driving a coach not a stage, so keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.”

LAX was a shit fight. The staff were unfriendly and unhelpful and didn’t seem to know what was happening. Our bags were subjected to a random secondary X-ray search, which required us to remove all film from the bag. Then at the normal security point I was made to take off my belt and run it through the X-ray, all the while being watched over by some weekend warrior who was just itching to shoot someone before the day was out.

Calling in the National Guard (whose main job history tell us, is to stamp upon any legitimate anti-government protest) is supposed to make the travelling public feel secure. Not this boy. I’m glad to see the back of the US.

It probably might have been different if someone hadn’t trod on the toe of their national pride. Anyone who starts to believe their own publicity is due for a big fall sooner or later and it works for a nation just as it does for an individual. While the US has spent billions of dollars on military hardware, a handful of determined people have spent $10 each at a hardware store and blown a hole in the superpower myth.

These people need to stop thinking God is on their side and that “Good” will prevail, and start wondering why so many people hate them so much. In a great example of life imitating art, (if South Park can be called art), a rousing chorus of “Blame Canada” rose up from the south as a few suspected terrorists had been in Canada.

However I think it is a case of “We have seen the enemy and it is ourselves”.

If I were to read these words out loud on the plane I would probably be handcuffed to my seat for the rest of the trip as an envisaged threat to security of the aircraft. However, ironically the real victim in all this will be free speech and a crackdown in personal freedoms is sure to follow.

But I’m carrying on a bit here and with only two hours to go and half a page left in the diary, I will end these tyrannous thoughts here.

Epilogue 17^th November - Hillsdale, Australia

I am sitting in a dingy little office, where a stingy ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall.

We are in a flat in Hillsdale since the tenants are still in the house in South Coogee. This is the result of the real estate agent signing them to a six-month lease instead of a three-month lease as requested. We move back in on 7^th January.

I returned to find someone had racked up a huge bill on my mislaid mobile phone SIM and the account cut off for non-payment. I didn’t know it was being used because the redirection of our mail had failed and Australia Post was continuing to deliver the mail to Coogee.

I have managed to find work with a company in Seven Hills as a computer consultant and Sue (although not fully employed yet) is on the edge of getting one of several good jobs. We have credit card debts and no car, although Dad has been kind enough to lend us his for a while. Looking back on the trip as I have been typing up the diary, I can say overall I had a great time. It was a travelling experience but all a life experience. Sue and I have come back to Australia appreciating the country more and with different priorities in life to what we had before we went away.

If we weren’t convinced before, we now know that we live in the best place in the world

Top of Page

The Virtual Trig © copyright Anthony Jack 1998-2002  Last Updated Tuesday, 09 July 2002