she looks like my uncle

our first impression of canberra was that it was closed. our second impression was that we had arrived in the middle of a fucking nuclear winter. even after our 4.5 days there, we were still left with the vague feeling that the weather reports were wrong (sexed up for the politicians perhaps?) and that the city was in the process of being abandoned.
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but first thing's first: the best thing about visiting our nation's capital was seeing sarah! we spent a day with sarah, carla and sarah's dad eric wandering around the national gallery and the national portrait gallery (damn good galleries, people), and munching on the fattest pizza you'd ever have the nauseating pleasure of getting your teeth into, but needed a follow-up vanderwal hit, so jumped on a bus the following day to get out to the sticks where sarah lives for a night of munch and drink and nerdily indulgent trivial pursuit. it was wonderwall. so many of us have been thinking of sarah over the past months, and it was good to see and touch and hear her again after so long. i carry back all her love and hugs and kisses to the good people of melbourne. come and get 'em.
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incidentally, the bus terminal near sarah's place is to be avoided at all costs. classical music was being blasted over the speakers at a feverish pitch, the lighting was dim and unflattering, and at any given moment we were expecting the boys from a clockwork orange to round the corner and break our heads with a baseball bat.
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despite her generous offer, we didn't stay with sarah, but near the centre of town - in easy distance of all our objectives. our accommodation situation was both wonderful and wonderfully dodgy, and we bartered for it accordingly.
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so back to the stuff we saw. the new parliament house was stunning. it is a proud structure and i was overwhelmed with pride while in front of it, on top of it, and especially within it. while i do not consider myself patriotic - a term that rings for me of a willingness to kill for small ideas - i am very, very proud of being australian, and that pride gushed out in a staggered series of weeping episodes at various locations throughout the building.
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on a tour i was distressed to find that sessions of parliament open with the lord's prayer! can anyone believe it? i couldn't. i'm still quite upset about it. instead of the lord's prayer, i have devised a 'parliament dance', which i demonstrated in the house of representatives while we were there (check it out in the background). click below and tell me whether you would prefer to do the parliament dance or say the lord's prayer before work if you were an MP. which is in the public's greater interest?
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parliament sat on the monday that we were there, so we booked a couple of tickets and went and sat in with them. i wanted to see what was happening on the other end of my vote. we got to see kevin and julia and malcolm and peter and all their friends come to the microphone to spin their shit. we even saw the big costello good-bye, which was a small moment in history (i suppose). the irony is that the people who lead our country - grown men and women - seemingly have no respect for each other as they interject and guffaw while others are trying to speak, and yet the people who employ them (in this case just me, as g doesn't really pay taxes) had to sit like statues and indulge the rabble. i put my hoodie on because the aircon was blowing on the back of my head, and within a few seconds an aggressive guard appeared and ordered me to take it off. perhaps he was concerned that my daring grey knitted cardigan would be too much of a distraction for the PM. when i told him that i wouldn't take it off because my ears were too cold, he grunted "take off the hood" and looked at me with a threatening look in his eye, as if it were a national security issue. i thought to myself 'what the fuck is going on here?'
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the other cultural highlight of canberra was the war memorial. people had raved about it, but i was skeptical until we went there, especially because i have a vague distaste for celebration/commemoration/focus on the world wars, which i believe distracts from the fact that we still do not have peace in our time. sarah had described it as "the best museum i've ever been to, and i've been to a lot of museums", and now having been there, i can't say i disagree. here again i felt proud of being an australian, and even had a little cry when i was explaining to g what had happened at gallipoli. australian nationhood was born, g! the presentations were just so tasteful and well researched that you couldn't help being really engrossed.
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and that's about it. g and i are heading off the land of the rising sun in a few days for almost 6 weeks (how excitement!!!), so watch out for a massacred endangered whale caught for scientific research-sized blog entry at the end of that one. in the meantime, ではまた!
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Van Diemen's Land

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a map of tassie with our travel route in thick pink. there's the spirit of tassie in bass strait!

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the exams out of the way, it was time to show g around australia a bit more, and see it for myself too. where better to immerse ourselves in nature's beauty than the capital of consanguinity: our southern friend tasmania? have you ever caught the spirit of tasmania? it's like a massive floating pokies machine, filled with single hairy men driving trucks, and families whose conjoined pets simply cannot be left behind. the ship is enormous, so we thought it would be unaffected by any waves or currents - we were wrong. as soon as we left shallow port phillip bay, the boat started lurching from side to side, with loud smashing noises with every heave. i was convinced that i had forgotten to put the handbrake on and that the smashing noises were the car ploughing into the truck infront, with each subsequent smash the sound of the car ploughing into the volvo behind. i actually had to grip the sides of the bed to stop myself from moving (or was that the beer?). in any case, we didn't sleep a wink!

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g having a snooze in our cabin

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the following morning, car intact, we sped out of devonport to cradle mountain. just before entering the park, we stopped at an information board but passed out from fatigue in the front seats and woke up an hour later feeling right as rain. and just as well - it rained non-stop for the first 2.5 days. there were so many different types of rain on that island - i'm sure the tasmanian aboriginal languages contain as many words for rain as the inuit languages famously do for snow. for our walk around the gorgeous dove lake, we experienced 'it's drizzling down and you are wet but not cold for some reason despite gale-force winds and incidentally you can't see anything' rain. the rain gave the whole area added dimension, and was simply stunning.

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wet boys

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this is dove lake, with cradle mountain hidden in the mist behind

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that night we parked behind some gigantic sand dunes on the west coast and had a restless night with 'gravity is pulling the fat drops of water towards the ground, but somehow they are doing 90 degree turns and coming in through the 1mm crack in the window like heat-seeking missiles' rain. we scaled the dunes the following morning, but were caught in a fresh onslaught of water and wind, which whipped the sand up to paint-stripper speed and soaked us to our undies before we could even say 'i can't feel my legs'. when we had regained consciousness, we found that we had indeed been sandblasted, but the wrinkles remained.

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our camping/sleeping in the back of a car area

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the sandstorm hits

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the horror...the horror...30 years after the cessation of mining, the mountains around queenstown in the west of tassie are still barren and eroded - nature destroyed

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we crossed the state to my auntie and her partner's little holiday house on the shores of the huon river 50km south of hobart. a little heated bunker a few metres away from a wide river surrounded by mountains and vineyards - it was a paradise! we ended up staying three nights.

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the little brick cottage in the foreground was where we stayed - right on the banks of this gorgeous river!

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the first night (a friday) we tried to go out in hobart, but the only thing we could find was a cave-like drag club in which they refused to close the door despite the fact that it was snowing around town and everyone was dressed like they had just come off a ski-lift. the freeze lessened my appreciation for the crass dragqueens which made comments so offensive i thought i would end up with both of my eyes in the same socket. we fled.

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the following morning we returned to hole-bart - now surrounded by snow-capped peaks - for the salamanca markets. it's the only time in my life where i have experiened 'i can see with my own eyes that the only clouds in the sky are over that mountain in the distance there and yet for some reason we are still getting wet' rain. a tasmanian specialty perhaps. the highlight was a trip to the museum/art gallery where we saw patricia piccinini's exhibit 'evolution'. we'd seen some of here work somewhere else - was it at the bienalle last year? but this exhibit just blew our minds. don't miss patricia if she comes to you!

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here's g at salamanca market, with a close-up of the snow-covered hills around hobart!

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as if we were all moving along the same pink-tinged celestial orbit (or perhaps just tourist trail), the same cattle-call of cute boys at whom we had been perving at the salamanca markets all turned up to port arthur the following day for some kulcha.

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your boys in shackles. woof.

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the site was beautiful, the guides were passionate, and the intelligent introductory set-up was such that you were drawn in to follow the story of a single convict, helping you understand the site rather than be overwhelmed by it. australian history had never been so interesting! in particular the separate prison for naughty convicts was quite shocking, where prisoners were taken and subjected to complete sensory deprivation for days or even weeks on end in order to crush whatever was human out of them.

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the church crafted by children

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the penitentiary from across the harbour.

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g looking too cute among the ruins

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port arthur with a touch of abu ghraib...sexy convict men had to wear masks in jail in order to prevent any contact whatsoever with other human beings. guards wore slippers so that their footsteps would not be heard...

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i cannot mention port arthur without a word about that awful day in 1996 that we all remember when 35 people were murdered at or around the site. i think we all felt personally affected by it. it was quite emotional to go to the shell of the cafe where much of it occurred, which has now been converted into a powerful open-air memorial site.

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a few views

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we stopped at a few clifftops and sea-side-sights on the way back to holebart where we packed in some oysters before rushing home to watch eurovision! russia should have won again! what are your thoughts? i hated norway's entry until i realised that i had become addicted and now i've downloaded it and am playing it on repeat. i'm so in love with a fairytale!

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the second last day was the crowning highlight in our wonderful holiday. everything from the home made pies for breakfast to the oysters and beer we consumed while watching sunset from freycinet national park at night were winners :)

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we did the hike (the shit strapped out of my ankle) from coles bay to wineglass bay under a cloudless, ceramic blue sky, to find ourselves undisappointed by all the hype surrounding that famous white-sanded beach. the views were great, the water was crystal blue, and the animals were ridiculously tame. gerard had a love-in with a wallaby on the beach, but expressed disappointment that so many of his brothers were so lazily sleeping on the roads into and out of the park. what can you do?

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an animal indentured to pose in photographs with tourists.

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wineglass bay in the background

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your boys on a funky wooden bench high in the freycinet mountains :)

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after the aforementioned straight-out-of-a-romance-novel oysters and beer at sunset experience, we parked on the 'friendly beaches' for our final night in the apple isle. perfect everything. further wallabies even came to play the following morning.

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the friendly beaches - where initial interaction between aborigines and europeans was friendly. later, the europeans hunted down and murdered the aborigines as if they were animals.

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a friendly wallaby comes to visit at the friendly beaches

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sexy

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our final day took us through launceston which was a bit of a non-event, and though the nearby gorge was still as nice as was as the last time i visited with mum, the only real attraction was the somewhat dubiously rio-tinto sponsored science exhibit at the local museum, where i felt like a child in a candy store - or perhaps myself in a candy store, as i still love lollies. on the way there we passed the 150 year customs house and gerard pointed out that the french on their renovated crest over the main entrance was misspelt. i felt it to be a national disgrace, so we entered the building to inform the authorities. the staff there thanked us with the biggest fuck-you expressions on their faces you could imagine as we slid off our high horses and crawled back out the door. when we looked up the phrase on the internet later it turns out the sign was actually correct. damn french boyfriend can't even speak his own language.

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i almost disloated my shoulder ensuring the hand-brake was on for the trip home. we slept like babies as we sailed home to marvelous melbourne over smooth seas :)

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returning to melbs - dawn over port melbourne.
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see you next time in canberra!

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harden the fuck up

it's a saturday evening here in cremorne. i was pondering the course of the sciatic nerve over a cup of tea when the windows of our pad suddenly started vibrating, shortly followed by the bones of my skull. intense drums and electric guitar came screaming through the closed windows - uninvited, but not unwelcome. i made my way down the street about 4 or 5 doors down where a punk rock band had set up their gear in a little car park next to the house they were renting, front fence kicked in to make way for their massive speakers. they were making some loud and amazing sounds. the lead vocalist of 'harden the fuck up' told me they'd just scored a gig at the espy next thursday, and tonight was their pre-launch party, then invited me to drink whatever i wanted from their special punch. a few of us crowded in, jumping around a bit. two guys turned to me in the street and said "...man we're from adelaide and something like this would never happen...i love melbourne".

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so do i.

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what a blurrrrr of a summer. after coming back from laos, it was game-ON in terms of study for the freakn exams. check this shot out of me and my white-board with all the 375 boxes well and truly stroked in the lead up to the deed. i studied hard and loved it.

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but the summer. oh the heat! the heat! i wanted more, more. meanwhile, the frog leapt over to paris to become une grenouille gelée while the best days of summer sizzled by. i have distinct memories of myself riding g's bike around richmond at night with my shirt open and a warm wind on my skin, that summer hum in my ears and my heart. happiness is a summer evening. wasn't great on all accounts though - musashi boiled in his aquarium :(

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hence: introducing ni! the latest member of our dover street family. (le poisson stupid est mort, vive le poisson encore plus stupid)

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we took time out for our karaoke party, which i have to mention because we got some fun pics.
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here are g, david and bastion in full regalia.

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check out these three hot chicks and leggo-man on g's tits. hands off magda!

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BGS boys! busse looks like a stunned mullet - congratulations on the engagement! and i look fucking atrocious - i wish someone had told me to take off that wig a bit earlier ;)

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the photo below is one of my favourites because every person in it seems to have a completely different story. pat looks like he's on another planet but what's new?

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some crowd shots including paul of blog fame! and one of g howling like the wolf he is. woof.

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summer is also great because you can dance in the park with friends. happiness is dancing in the park with friends.

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but to be honest i felt like i missed summer completely because of all the study, and thank god i passed my exams because i'm not sure i would be psychologically strong enough to go through all that preparation again. we headed up to my old stomping/limping ground of brisvegas for the exam itself and stayed with lovely stephen :) here are a few pics of g+o as we're heading out the door to the exams themselves. i was pretty chilled out until we reached the exam venue where i started experiencing nausea and debilitatingly severe shortness of breath. incidentally, g thought it was cute that i was pre-arrest and clutching at my chest.

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here's a celebratory champagne and the proof in the pudding that i passed the three exams sat - candidate 23401 suckers!

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but brisbane is not to everyone's tastes, and g doesn't particularly want to set foot inside the city limits ever again in his life if he can help it. what can you do? i thought i was bad, but g is a melbophile extraordinaire.
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so we fled to the tropical north. we managed to stay in an amazing house overlooking the town of cairns and the ocean for next to nothing (thanks studdly29) and g cut loose with the great aussie art of barbecue (no pics unfortunately!). it was a meaty week.

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we joined the tourist train up the mountain through the jungle to kuranda

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and took the skytrain back down. very touristy, but still good :) the views of the jungle are straight down from the sky train. the geometric shape of the ferns was quite shocking. the cuteness of the frog was encore plus shocking.

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after getting off the skytrain, g hopped on a bus to get the car. i snuck back in to the visitor's centre for my 4th frosty fruit of the day, and got unsuspectedly paparazzied by g from behind the dark bus windows! happiness is frosty fruit: tropical flavour. i sucked so hard i bled.

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but the whole point of cairns is the great barrier reef. we didn't want some expensive hoo-ha, we just wanted to see the fishies, so off we went to the kangaroo explorer - the live-aboard boat equivalent of a production line in which bells ring for breakfast lunch dinner swim and everyone on the boat hates everyone else on the boat. we had our own little cabin. here's a pic of the boat and a little tour of our room ;)

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unfortunately we had no undewater camera, so the most exciting part of the holiday was undocumented! i had never been snorkelling on a tropical reef before, so i really had no idea what it would be like. i had heard stories of dead coral, barren reefs, and nasty, disappointing holidays, but this was AMAZING!!! to dive just below the surface and find hundreds of brightly coloured fish, coral, sharks, turtles, sea cucumbers and other animals just floating around was INTENSE! what were they all doing there? it seemed so strange to look out across a flat, almost featureless ocean, and then to look only several centimetres below the surface to find such a cacophony of colour and vitality. we even saw a couple of nemos! we were in rapture!

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we had to wear sexy swimming suits to prevent being stung by the box jellyfish/irukanji. check out us hotties below.

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but all good things must come to an end, and when we saw the ugly young german horse-couple taking a fourth helping of dinner and later eating food out of each other's mouths, we realised that enough was enough, and hopped on the boat back to cairns.

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after the excitement of the reef, our next adventure was a trip to the atherton tablelands, most of which occurred during a tropical storm. our first stop was granite gorge up neer mareeba, famous for its rock wallabies. the storm started while we were there and we ended up shedding our clothes for a swim in the wier, and hiking back to the car in our tighty whities to the delight of the busloads of japanese tourists waiting in the parking lot.

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there were some really awesome trees in that rainforest that needed to be seen to be believed. they appealed to something of a primal hunger in me to connect with nature. they were huge, and filled with the essence, and the ecstasy of existence. those big trees were life itself.

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it was still raining a bit when we hit the crater lakes - gorgeous round lakes surrounded by rainforest. it's difficult to see, but there were fish swimming about our ankles on the steps into the lake. check out the trail of bubbles as i set up the cam and dove into the lake for this time-exposed pic! swimming in those lakes was really peaceful. don't miss it if you head to cairns.

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back on the coast we headed up to port douglas (somewhat of a non-entity), and over to the lovely mossman gorge. the place quickly became crowded, but was nonetheless a gorgeous river for swimming surrounded by walls of rainforest. a great break from the midday heat.

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the area around port douglas sees the meeting of two world heritage listed national parks - the rainforest, which goes all the way to the great barrier reef containing ocean. despite being beautiful, the water was not to be swum in during the end of the wet season, as if death didn't come in the form of a box jellyfish or irukanji sting, one would certainly be sampled by a crocodile. and as we know they have been particularly hungry this season.

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and here's the little car that took us around!

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and then it was back to cairns. the best thing about cairns was the night-time flying animals spectacular, in which all of cairns' thousands of bats rise up out of the trees to fly off to the jungle for their night-time feeding sessions, and thousands of frightened birds spin through the streets in panicked flocks. check out the vid to see the death-flocks passing our car!
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meanwhile, it was standing room only in the surrounding trees as hundreds of rainbow lorikeets packed out the branches to watch events unfold. these pic were taken at night-time at a distance of about 10 metres, so please excuse the amazing zoom potential of g's new camera!

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.i don't want to end this post with a few dumb birds! (albeit incredibly beautiful) so let me finish by asking you this: how cute is this frog?!

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peace.