Kookaburra Gay Your Life Must Be

I hope you all had as good a time as I did whilst I was in Australia, because I can confidently say that I had the time of my life. The experience was such that I can't even begin to do it justice with a mere blog entry. Australia has earned a place in my heart as a potential holiday destination and home of the future.

The large town in which my relatives live, and consequently in which I stayed, is located on the Central Coast of New South Wales and is called Gosford. My aunt Jenny hailed it as "having the feeling of a country town while having all the good parts of a city." It is a one-and-a-half-hour, wonderfully scenic drive away from Sydney so in effect it literally is a country town. The frequent train trips to Sydney were not tedious at all as one was treated to views of sprawling eucalypt forests and dramatic cuttings in the sandstone, mindblowing in their scale. Evidence of the bush fires that occurred in the area on New Year's Day was impossible to miss, with charcoal black trees being visible as far as the eye could see at certain points along the transport corridors. Jenny pointed out to me the places where fire had narrowly missed some houses, literally skirting people's front yards, only to continue on to the next house and consume it.

It would appear that I overestimated the havoc that the heat of the Australian summer would wreak on my body. Despite the fact that the temperature was often hovering in the late twenties to mid-thirties, the dry heat was never at any point as oppressive as a high-humidity Auckland day. I did not sweat at all during my time in Australia. Instead, I, along with others, tended to get "sticky"; I often found myself sticking to my seat. When the breeze blew, it was just as hot on one's skin as the sun, due to the fact that it had passed over the desert on its way to where we were. It stung to stand in direct sunlight -- one could feel it eating away at one's skin -- and the heat was so intense that it made my eyes water. It felt like standing in front of a massive hairdryer. At one stage, when I was visiting my uncle Greg's father Charlie in Maitland in the Hunter Valley, I was in forty degree heat. Menacing though all this may sound, its effects still don't compare to New Zealand's humidity. Shortly after returning I was reminded again of how uncomfortable and physically draining it is to have sweat dripping off of oneself.


Something I noticed about Australia was that the authorities are generally a lot more sensible in their managing of civic issues. They have in play a lot of good ideas that are blatantly obvious, but at the same time I have never thought about. In an effort to reduce road fatalities during the holiday periods, any driving offense will attract double demerit points. Speed limits around schools are strictly enforced -- whereas in New Zealand it is down to the driver's discretion to adjust their speed to suit the conditions, in Australia the signposted speed limit around schools is forty kilometres per hour. Any speed limit is not allowed to be exceeded by more than a few kilometres per hour, so if someone were to drive at sixty in a fifty zone in Australia, they could be prosecuted, whereas in New Zealand such behaviour is legally acceptable. While I was over there, a mother was ticketed for double-parking outside her childrens' school when she was dropping them off; she abused the police and was arrested and put in handcuffs. The police's actions in this case indicate to me that the Australian authorities have a genuine concern for the safety of children on the roads around schools.

In addition to the aforementioned enforcements of road safety, just before many side roads there is an additional lane on the left-hand side that drivers can use to get out of the traffic flow and slow down before making the left-hand turn. Median strips are also much more intelligently designed, with clearly defined bays in which cars can stop in preparation to cross, or merge into, the flow of traffic. It all makes so much more sense than the New Zealand system. To top it all off, middle Australia seems to be making a solid effort to preserve the environment -- even moreso than New Zealand -- with Gosford City Council having possession of their very own recycling plant. Many public rubbish bins were accompanied by a recycling bin directly beside them.

The activities I took part in whilst in Australia were varied, but the most important thing was that every day I did something. Everything is so much bigger there and takes a far longer time to take in. Erina Fair shopping centre, about a fifteen minute drive away from Gosford, was impossibly huge, encompassing countless carparks, a massive multi-level mall, a comparably massive, airy, open-plan outdoor area, an ice skating rink, a movie theatre, and a record store called JB Hi-Fi that really is what Real Groovy should be. The beaches in the area, whose sand ranged from red to truly white in colour, were a definite spectacle, along with the flights of pelicans located around The Entrance.

The Australian Reptile Park in Somersby near Gosford was among the definite highlights of my holiday, with Eric the crocodile putting on a great show for Jenny, my cousin Damian and I despite seeming not too keen on having yet another dead chicken for lunch. The deadly Sydney funnel web spiders brought out for the spider talk were shockingly big. One of them, a ten year old female, had allegedly grown unnaturally large due to her being so well looked after by the park staff. Although we did not go to the Tasmanian devil feeding ritual, the creature's stygian screams were easily audible throughout the park. During the reptile show, it was illustrated to us how much more aggressive crocodiles are than alligators by a curator who prodded the respective animals with his boot. My favourite animal was the albino eastern diamondback rattlesnake -- one of the most sinisterly beautiful living things I have ever seen. Its pale pigment meant that its scales were very easy to see, along with its powerful muscles flexing as it hauled itself along the floor of its enclosure.

Sydney is a great city, though its formidable scale tends to be somewhat wearying and after many visits I am of the opinion that I need the rest from it that I am being made to take. Nonetheless, I was humbled to see the Sydney Opera House again, having not been there in more than ten years. Darling Harbour had also been improved upon significantly since my last visit -- not that it wasn't great before. Jenny, Damian and I walked all the way across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, also climbing up inside one of the gargantuan stone pylons at the city end of the bridge for the sake of getting the fantastic view that was to be had from the top. We could have stood up there for hours because there was so much to look at, however we were restricted for time due to the fact that we had to catch a fairly early train if we wished to make it back to Gosford for dinner. We spent a considerable amount of time in Paddy's markets ("You haven't been to market 'til you've been to Paddy's") and at The Rocks, the original site of European settlement in Australia, which has now been transformed into a posh waterfront hang-out that, for some reason, I found vaguely reminiscient of Parnell in Auckland.

Of course, the Big Day Out took place in Sydney at the Olympic Park at Homebush Bay, and was the focal event of my Australian visit. Cousin Alannah introduced me to her thoroughly good-natured and welcoming group of friends and I travelled with them to the Big Day Out. Having never been to a Big Day Out before, it was an overwhelmingly exciting experience, amplified by the idea that I was in Australia. For me, the standout acts were most certainly Franz Ferdinand and The Mars Volta. Australian punk rockers The Living End were also a definite highlight, along with Wolfmother hailing from the same country. The former offered one of the more energetic acts of the day and probably succeeded more than any other at getting the crowd going. I was standing more-or-less at the front of the crowd for the duration of Franz Ferdinand and they got me really excited. Everyone around me was smiling all the way through it. I was to have Do You Want To and Take Me Out repeating in my head for the next few days. The Mars Volta played much later, but I found their celestial jamming to be just right for how I was feeling by that stage. I had not heard much of their material before and I was set on formulating an opinion based on first experiencing their music at a live show. They triumphantly failed to disappoint. I felt more at home amongst the progheads in front of the green stage during The Mars Volta's set than anywhere else at the Big Day Out, and a few days later I keenly grabbed their latest studio album Frances The Mute for a bargain fifteen Australian dollars. The Mars Volta rightfully won me over.

I exponentially appreciated Greg taking the day off work on the Sunday before last for the sake of taking Jenny, Damian and I to the Blue Mountains. I went there during my last visit but was too young to be able to remember it. Jenny and Damian had, surprisingly enough, never been there before, and Greg not since he was a toddler. Effectively it was a new experience for all of us. Again, the scale of Australia never ceased to impress me. The Blue Mountains were like the Waitakere Ranges on twenty times the scale. One difference that I did notice about the Australian bush was that a lot less bird calls seem to come from it. Occassionally some exotic species would vocalise lavishly, but for the most part all that was to be heard was the wind, and sometimes the excited chatter of crowds of tourists on a ten minute photo stop. Then there was, of course, the blood-sucking horseflies that I had to constantly fend off whilst we were on a short bush walk. We visited the Zig-Zag Railway, not far from Bathurst, where we rode the steam train that zig-zagged down the walls of the impossibly steep gully to the valley below. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day out and one that I felt really put me in tune with what the Australian environment is like in comparison to that of New Zealand. I've always been fascinated by it, so I was glad to finally experience it in person at an age at which I could appreciate it.

Since arriving home I've been fighting to resist the return to my usual time-wasting routine. Sadly, two days after I arrived I had already begun failing to do so, having messed around all morning and consequently not been able to get ready in time to be able to go to the Kai Iwi Lakes with Alison and Jessi. Whilst I was in Australia, I was living how I have always known I should be living. A combination of how much the return plane ticket cost and the limited time I was able to spend over there encouraged me to make the most of every day. For those two great weeks I was living every day as if it were my last, and living in the moment as opposed to endlessly stewing about what was around the bend. That's how I was meant to live; however the fact that doing things costs money means that it is not possible to keep up that kind of lifestyle for extended periods, so one has to live it in small bits. That lifestyle -- that outlook -- is only all the more tantalising now that I have experienced a small taste of it. I am now homesick for Australia.