Friday, December 25 2009, 13:00

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Saturday, December 26 2009, 10:00

The final days of 2009, part one

A rather belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. That's just how jam-packed the Christmas break has been, I've been rushed off my proverbials, and I'm only now floating listlessly in a bit of office doldrums, feasting on the mini Toblerones that came pouring forth from my stocking on the 25th. John finally got back from his roving reportage in the Danish capital (via a brief sojourn in steamy Bangkok) on Christmas Eve, preceded by just an hour by Luke, not so fresh from London via LA. But I'm still getting ahead of myself, as I am wont to do.

I was getting my festive fun in in spades in the run up to the big day, including what used to be my annual carol service. Thwarted in previous years, this year I made my way to St James' Church at the edge of Hyde Park, the oldest church in Australia, where we had previously been to listen to Handel's Messiah with Matt and Mark (who have lamentably departed this land of sunshine for the frozen wastes of the North, ie. Canada). This time I had a near-to-front seat for the traditional Festival of Carols and Nine Lessons, which was so much like being back at our Cathedral School carol service that I spent the whole evening enjoying the wave of nostalgia. And I had no idea I would be part of such an illustrious congregation - the PM's wife read one of the lessons, and so did the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (with considerably less ability). Feeling super-festive, I went home afterwards and readied myself for a bit of worship in one of Sydney's churches of gay - ARQ :)

Christmas Day was spent in total denial of our southern hemisphere location, aided and abetted by the glum weather of the day. With doors and windows shut, aircon reducing the temperature to something suitably cool, John and I turned the kitchen upside down making lunch with the timely aid of our helpful elves, Nicola, Erin, Mikey, Chris, and Luke. You may remember last year's turkey farce during which I attempted to yank the poor bird's neck out of its arse - there was none of that palaver this year. There was still deserved dry retching as I hacked the neck off and dumped it in the bin, but this year's fresh bird went into the oven stuffed with cranberry sauce and sausagemeat; probably the only comedy moment was when I reused the syringe that Chris had used for sluicing his wisdom teeth wounds with salt water to sluice our bird with its own juices. Nice.

All in all, Christmas went according to plan: we opened our gifts, drank copiously, stuffed ourselves outrageously, pausing before dessert for board games and more drinking. One way to find out what your friends think about you is to play Imaginiff - a board game in which you might be asked "Imagine if Graham were a famous singer, who would he be?"; and then you're given 4 choices and the players secretly choose which one they think sounds best with no conferring. Apparently I would be Julie Andrews. Marvellous.

Thursday, December 31 2009, 21:35

The final days of 2009, part two - outback style

Our little jaunt to the Northern Territory on Boxing Day started ominously, with the heart-stopping news that not only do Qantas now charge for wine and beer on their domestic flights, they don't carry gin and tonic at all! Luckily this didn't cast a pall over the entire trip... At the crack of dawn on our first day in Darwin, we were crammed into our tour bus along with four Dutch, two Swedes, and an entire family of cheerful Singaporeans, destined for an outback adventure in Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks.

The Northern Territory (and Darwin in particular) was the setting of Baz Luhrmann's recent film fantasy, Australia. We headed out there so that John could have a taste of the true sunburnt country - most of his experiences down under so far have been city breaks. My last taste of Kakadu was in 2003 with Matty P, and we wisely went in the cooler Dry season. John and I arrived in the sultry, moist Wet season, smack bang in summer. It was hot and humid, and the welcoming committee was entirely made up of thousands upon thousands of flies who valiantly crawled over every part of you in quest of moisture.

We stopped to look at the massive cathedral termite mounds in Litchfield Park on our way to Florence Falls, a beautiful double cascade nestled among red rocks and the silvery grey eucalypts in the north of the Park. Everyone on the bus was so roasting hot, that we all flung ourselves in the water and the more intrepid of us struck out for the base of the waterfalls to experience the thundering showers first hand. While John zipped through the limpid water, I proved once and for all that these muscles are purely decorative, and it was with great effort that I gasped and spluttered and narrowly avoided drowning before reaching the edge, which was a much overrated experience, I must say. I'll stick to genteel paddling in future. The last half of the day was spent in a precarious flatboat on the Alligator River, in a largely futile search for crocodiles (there are no alligators in Australia). We did finally manage to spot one at the end of our hour long cruise, but the shy thing dived for the river bed as soon as we drew close :(

Sleeping al fresco in the humid outback was never going to be pleasant, so we sensibly upgraded our accommodation to 'deluxe tents'. How deluxe can tents be? Well in this case, we had a double and a single bed instead of a 5cm thick 'mattresses' laid over wooden bunks; we had four times as much space as those in peasant class, and we also had fans and electricity, hurrah! Definitely worth an extra $50 a night.

In the morning, our bus took us to Ubirr Rock and the incredible rust and yellow aboriginal paintings that are hidden in the shadows. The view from the top of the rock over the lush floodplains was just as amazing as it was six years ago, although it was much hotter than last time. Despite it being the Wet season, we had glorious weather for the majority of the time, scorching sunshine that was only temporarily interrupted by rain when we were on the bus, or that night when a monstrous storm crashed immediately overhead like a pair of titanic kettledrums, lighting up the sky in all directions while deafening us in our (deluxe) tent.

On the way to Motorcar Falls the next day, we paused for a moment in the blistering heat to read a saltwater crocodiles 'enter at your own risk' sign before persevering on for forty-five fly-ridden minutes until we arrived at the powerful falls, plunging into deep and dark waters... which we also plunged into, regardless of crocodilian peril.

And that was it for the tour, if you don't count the return journey of several hours cramped in our bus with the decrepit aircon and the heated floor, and our fly-fest lunch stop! Back in civilisation, first priorities were to get properly clean, relax in our air-conditioned room, then chill out in the pool with a beer. Adventure Tours had teamed up with a Darwin pub to offer us a free meal, but, snobs that we are, we decided we'd rather pay and get some fancy schmancy grub after three days of home-cooked backpacker-style catering.

We started our only full day in Darwin with a visit to Crocosaurus Cove (love the name) where we finally saw some big salties in action. I say 'action', but one of the dozing crocs had to be beaten over the head with some dismembered chicken before it could be bothered to snap its mighty jaws at it. More exciting was the tank of juveniles leaping out of the water to snatch bits of meat from visitors dangling rods over them. We also saw a man part with $120 to be dunked in a Perspex/acrylic box into the croc enclosure and dangled temptingly in the water while the salty slept on obliviously.

After lunch, we arrived at Darwin's shining new waterfront precinct in time to see the alluring new wave lagoon closed as the first monsoon of the Wet season threatened to roll in from the sea. An hour later, after some productive shopping, the lagoon reopened and we spent a fun-filled hour being swept up and down in air-filled tubes, shrieking like children.

In the entire time we were traipsing about the national parks in unsheltered sunlight, I only managed to get a tiny bit of colour on the back of my neck, due to my sensible regime of slathering on sunscreen over every pallid square inch of myself. All this was undone in our last half hour, for we returned once more to the wave lagoon for one last splash before heading to the airport; confronted with the unhappy choice between fifteen minutes of applying sunblock and only fifteen minutes in the pool or a full thirty minutes of unprotected aquatic fun, I plumped for enough unfiltered UV to paint me dusky rose from head to waist. And so I spent the last fifteen minutes before boarding applying copious amounts of aloe vera gel instead.

All up, it was a fun break. On reflection, I think I'd spend a bit more on a tour in future and get a bit more luxury, but there's no detracting from the magnificent natural beauty of Litchfield National Park and Kakadu, which was just as stunning as I remembered. And I came out of it with under a dozen mosquito bites and an incipient tan to start the new year. Result!