We were a bit late taking our seats, and while John was queuing for drinks at the bar, I peeked over the rim of the seats and looked down into the massive arena which was packed with fans, all staring expectantly at the enormous stage at the far end. As the lights went down and the screens lit up, as the first notes of 'Fast Love' started to beat out of the gigongous speakers, the crowd leapt to their feet and started screaming. It was fabulous!

George played "I'm your man", "Father Figure", "Freedom", "Outside", "Faith" (watch our youtube video), "Careless Whisper", "Spinning That Wheel", "You Have Been Loved", "Amazing", "Too Funky" (watch our youtube video), "Flawless", and loads more. He was continually running back and forth across the front of the stage and yelling out to the lucky guys at the front, and pointing the mike out to us for the crowd to sing along - which they did, constantly. Which coincidentally and irrefutably proves to me that there is a significant portion of my long term memory reserved for the indelible preservation of 80s and 90s song lyrics.

George and Whitney are both 47 this year, and both have thickened about the waist a little. But whereas Whitney was unflatteringly attired in a tight number that revealed a significant roll (nay - a loaf) of flab, George's wardrobe team had him looking smart. Where Whitney was breathless after four songs, George was animated and running back and forth across the length of the stage, belting out old songs and new, and has actually been doing this tour on and off since 2006.

Another point of difference was the massive triptych of video screens hanging behind the stage, blazing a constant stream of bedazzling graphics to complement the music, whether it was Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington in the "Flawless" video, piles of shiny diamonds flying out of the screen, spiralling DNA-style double rainbow helixes, or a cheeky burlesque dancer wearing nothing but a decolletage of sparkly stones, a fan of ostrich feathers, and a dirty smirk. Poor Whitney only had one tolerable screen on her little stage, which wasn't on all the time, and even played the same video twice!

The crowd went predictably wild for "Outside", as George donned a police shirt and badge, and a giant helicopter zoomed over the disco city on the screens behind. George makes no apologies for his indiscretions and took a moment after getting the homos in the audience to give him a wave to warn us that the police in NSW aren't like European police - not sure if he meant we should steer clear of alfresco nookie...?

For the first encore, George and I sang an intimate duet of "Careless Whisper", along with the other 40,000 people in the stadium. It was a touching moment. For the second, he finished with a crowd-pleaser: "Freedom". As I left the arena this time, I felt like I'd seen a superstar.

And today we give George a bit of his own music back to him. I'm not sure how flattered he'll be to see 160 of us doing this amazingly camp dance routine to a megamix of his greatest hits in silky blue boxers meets LAPD cop outfits, but we'll just have to see. Tonight is night we've been practising for, the Mardi Gras parade... Here's a sneak preview on youtube.

In true diva style, Whitney kept us waiting for a while after Callea left the stage, but when she finally appeared, the arena came to life, everyone leapt to their feet, and Whitney belted out two numbers from her new album (which I haven't actually listened to yet, but I will now). I say 'belted', but it turns out she may have lip-synched them...

After that, it all went a bit downhill. Early on we could hear her voice was a bit crackly, and as the concert progressed the effort began to tell. She had to cough away from the microphone frequently, and repair to the back of the stage to have a drink. Breathless at times, visibly tired, she soldiered on and the crowd loved her for it.

Later, a video montage played on the big screens, sharing her greatest moments while 'One Moment in Time' was played over the top and Whitney got a breather off stage. As John pointed out, this wasn't the most favourable comparison, since we were all reminded of how powerful and beautiful her voice was. Formerly honey and gold, now it's more smoky and gravel, and on a one-way ticket to Eartha Kitt-ville.

Her older songs with their soaring vocals were now out of reach, and her backing singers belted out the melodies while Whitney punched out some powerful notes over the top, showing us she's still got an awesome strength to her voice even though it seems she can't reliably hold a note.

The audience were amazingly supportive, screaming, "I love you, Whitney", and bellowing their encouragement when the notes faltered. I was almost dreading "I will always love you", but she mustered a breathy version for us, skipping a verse to get to the end quicker (probably knackered by this point), and stopped for an incredible amount of time before attempting the climax. After what seemed like an enormous vocal equivalent of a run-up, she got it out, although the crooning 'ooooooooooooo' at the end was less successful (watch on youtube).

'Million dollar bill' was the start of the encore, and I saw immediately that this new song fits her now-reduced vocal talents perfectly. Having said that, halfway through she gave up the vocals to her backing singers and partied on through the rest of the track with her dancers!

So I'm not sure what to make of it... On the one hand, I've got enormous respect for her getting her life together and going on tour after the rocky road her life has been over the last decade; I was really gunning for her during the concert, willing her to hit all those tough notes, sad for her when she didn't make it, and also slightly uncomfortable and embarrassed for her. On the other hand, I don't understand why an international superstar like Whitney would tarnish her own brand by revealing just how far she has fallen; I also prefer to come out of a concert feeling elated and wowed, not feeling sorry for the artist I've paid $250 to see.

Anyway, I can't believe I've spent an entire blog analysing a Whitney Houston concert. I am so gay right now! But it's going to get worse before it gets better. I'm going to see George Michael tomorrow and Lady Gaga in a few weeks...

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!

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.

But even more exciting than that... 900 people from 148 countries submitted their articles to the Earth Journalism Awards this year, and John is one of the fifteen winners! Imagine getting an email at work one day and being told you are one of fifteen people in the whole world who are being rewarded for excellence in your job! There are no other winners from Australia, and even the UK with its much larger science journalism community has no winning entries. I'm not given to gushing (well, maybe only a little), but this is HUGE!

His reward is to be flown out to Copenhagen for two weeks in December to cover the climate change negotiations that will be attended by presidents and prime ministers, secretaries of state and ministers, and all their flunkies and hangers on. The world's media will be there and John will be in the thick of it, working hard, wearing the letters off his laptop, and certainly having no time to check out the local gay bars at weekends. No. Time. At. All.

So here's where I need to ask for your help... I may have already bugged you about this on facebook - in which case I'm sorry, but I'm going to keep bugging you until it works... There is a sixteenth prize - the public gets to vote on which of the fifteen winning articles gets the Global Public Award. You can read John's article on the awards website and vote at the foot of the page. If you're a facebook member, you get an additional vote; if you're a twitterphile, you get yet another vote! You can vote in all three ways at the foot of the article page.

Obviously, you ought to read all the other articles and decide which for yourself is the best, but I certainly don't insist on it ;) I don't even insist that you read John's - it's about ocean acidification and the Great Barrier Reef - but if you have the time, you'll agree that it's a great piece of writing.

John is currently in fourth place, so my last begging request (if you're still reading) is that you help me get the votes out. I'm not sure what kind of workplace you have, but would you consider emailing colleagues (and friends) to vote for him too? To make it super-easy, here's some text you can bung in an email and send to everyone you know ;)

My friend, John Pickrell, is one of only fifteen people in the world in the running to win the Earth Journalism Global Public Award for climate change journalism. The award is decided by public voting until Dec 9th, so it would be great if you could spare the time to vote for his article, Oceans of Acid, at the awards website. You can read his article here: http://awards.earthjournalism.org/finalist/oceans-acid-australia, and vote for it at the foot of the page. You can additionally vote using facebook and twitter (three votes in total), and the instructions are at the foot of the article too. Thanks!

The voting closes on December 9th, so I'm going to be checking the tallies several times a day until then. TOO MUCH EXCITEMENT! Thanks so much in advance!

Matt and Mark, our Canadian chums, are going to be heading back to the frozen wastes of Alberta before too long, so they're spending their last weeks down under sightseeing, here and in NZ. We joined them for a weekend down in Jervis Bay, a few hours' drive down the coast from Sydney. Our home for the weekend was nestled 13km inside Booderee National Park, which we finally arrived at, after a cautious drive through the darkened bush, stopping for bilbies, wallabies, and the occasional kangaroo...

The weather turned out to be much better than forecast, so our Saturday morning bushwalk through the national park was a gloriously hot stroll punctuated by an unexpected miracle at an ocean lookout; our brief stop was rewarded with a glimpse of a humpback whale breaching just off the coast. Even though it was a tiny, short splash, I've filled in the holes in my memory with all that footage I've seen over the years of this charismatic leviathan, courtesy of Sir David Attenborough. It was amazing. Sunday's whale-watching trip was looking even more exciting.

The local fauna was ready for us back at home. Outside our cosy cabin, an eastern grey kangaroo was hopping about. The cameras came out in a big rush, and Mark was on his belly in the grass with big lens extended. It wasn't the only thing extended, as our friendly roo appeared to be getting far too excited by merely cropping the grass for his evening meal...

On Sunday, we packed up and drove down to Huskisson to board our whale-watching boat for the next three hours. The effusive lady in the office had assured us that the boat had been following around a breaching mother and calf all morning, and the captain himself optimistically suspected that our sightings would run into double figures. If by this he meant 'two', he was right. After two and a half hours, we finally caught sight of a mother and calf, but they demurely remained beneath the waves for the most part, occasionally brazenly flashing us a cheeky bit of dorsal fin. Obviously this didn't faze the photographers on board, who snapped away as if Princess Di and Lord Lucan had appeared to walk hand in hand across the water. I was a bit disappointed until surprisingly, our pair of whales surfaced right next to the boat - they were enormous! It was hard not to be just as excited as the day before.

Hm. What other news? A quick round-up for you. I am no longer a total novice skier - I picked up some extra snow skills on our office trip to Thredbo in September. Speaking of work, I will be a permanent employee of Razorfish from Monday! No longer a contractor's life for me. And finally... I purchased this week a lovely gizmo to sit on the balcony and zap mosquitoes, so this summer we will be able to relax inside with the balcony doors flung wide in the warm summer air and listen to the gentle crackle of bitey bugs as they barbecue abruptly on my new toy. Hurrah!

The tranquillity evaporated as soon as I stepped off the train at Paddington, although Craig & Greg's gorgeous pad in Elephant & Castle was my oasis of calm throughout the week (although I had to walk though unlovely Elephant to get to it!). I'm going to take a leaf out of Craig's book (blog actually) and summarise eleven things that you ought to do in London.

1. Dine out at Metro in Clapham for Chris' birthday with former Sydneysiders and Sydneysiders-in-waiting (Luke, Chris H, Greg). And Mike. And Craig (ok, that didn't quite work). Follow it up with a brief visit to the Two Sewers and remember why you shunned Clapham when you lived in London.
2. Enjoy a Saturday stroll around lushly green Hyde Park with Tony, Debs, and Beth, before retiring to Carluccio's for lunch and then a Kensington pub for an afternoon beer.
3. Fortify the tum for a weekend of clubbing at Nando's overlooking Elephant's beautiful [read 'eyesore'] traffic circus with Craig.
4. Catch up with chums at your belated birthday party at Soho's Enclave bar before heading down to dirty Vauxhall for a reminder that, even in London, clubbing can be hit and miss. Rescue the party with a trip to Later @ Fire and finish off with the bad taste humour of the inimitable Dame Edna Experience at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
5. Explore the shopping paradise that is Westfield London in Shepherd's Bush, but sadly lacking any enthusiasm because you used it all up the day before, and emerge with only a few choice items.
6. Eat out. A lot. At Andrew & Andreas', at an Indian in Kennington with Craig & Greg, in Soho with Beth, in Balham with John and his mum, in Kensington again with John and his dad...
7. Go and be amazed by Matthew Bourne's amazing production of gothic fable, Dorian Gray, at Sadlers Wells - modern ballet with incredible (slightly confronting!) choreography, with Vicki, Lisa, Andrew & Andreas. Then eat out again, but this time in Clerkenwell at fabulous gastropub and former gin palace, the peasant.
8. Attend the gay event of the year - Paul & Ben's wedding in rambling gothic pile, the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building and push on past the reception to the Two Sewers again with Scott (will I never learn?).
9. Absorb some culture in the National Portrait Gallery at the gay icons exhibition with a gaggle of gays and girls, including schoolchum from wayback, Nikki. Repair to Rupert Street bar to mull over the profundity of the exhibition with pints of Strongbow.
10. Eat out (again!) at Stanza on Shaftesbury Avenue with Andreas, Lisa, and Vicki, before crossing London to Wayne & Dieter's joint birthday, and then party and party on and on and on and on at Juicy, Beyond, Later, Barcode, Horsemeat Disco, the RVT, and Horsemeat Disco again, with Beth, Adrian, Steve, Dan, Oliver, Marty, Ross, Neil, Craig, Greg, Jez, Richard, Dale, Christopher, and quite frankly a cast of thousands.. Have a deleriously happy time and collapse into bed until it's time to pull oneself together and pack.
11. Marvel at how time flies like an Airbus when you're having fun, stoically farewell my wonderful hosts, Greg, Craig, and Dylan the Dachshund, travel far too slowly to Heathrow with Ross and Neil, make check-in three minutes before it closes, and goggle at the impertinence of the BA woman who takes my luggage. Harrumph!

Orgullo Madrid (or Madrid Pride) shits all over London's efforts. With tummies tanked up with tapas, we squeezed our way back into the streets of Chueca, which were overflowing with chicos and chicas in a massive street party spilling out from every bar and club, people dancing and drinking and laughing and waving their litre cups full of beer or sangria or mojito. This went on every night of the weekend! But I'm no big drinker. One litre was enough for me, and my jetlag beckoned me home to bed.

Day One dawned hot and sunny, so we rolled our towels out on the wet grass around the municipal pool at Lago, which was shortly about to reveal itself as a secret gay mecca for hot men in tiny shreds of swimsuit. Relaxing in such congenial and attractive environs is definitely up there in my top ten; a glass of sangria in one hand and a book which I'm only periodically looking at in the other, and two eyes full of Mediterranean tan. Bliss. And I only sustained minor sunburn in unnoticeable places. Clearly a good result.

The Parade didn't start until 6pm, so I threaded my way alone through the crowd to find fellow Sydneysider on tour, Johnny, encamped on the Gran Via, but I didn't stay out for long. My siesta was calling, and the paraders were taking their own sweet time about it. I took a couple of snaps and returned to the comforting womb of our hotel room until night fell.

Pride's big party of the weekend was Infinita. 20,000 party people in Madrid's Telefonica Arena. Marred slightly by the immense DRAMA of just getting there though; the box office which should have been open for an hour and a half by the time we arrived took a further hour to open its windows for us to collect our tickets, and then our taxi driver (who didn't know the arena or its nearby metro station) deposited us at the edge of the Casa de Campo (Madrid's largest park) and we spent 40 minutes on an unplanned nature ramble trying to find the venue. Hmph. But once we were in and settled we had a fab time :)

Somehow, the others managed to gather the energy on Sunday to go sightseeing around the royal palace while I nurtured some more dreams in bed; I joined them for a bit of Mexican late lunch, but it was back to bed again for a pre-party siesta. Sunday's party was the much-talked about Supermartxe, held in a club on the riverside.

Not nearly as big as Infinita, but certainly very impressive, Supermartxe was RAMMED. It got busier and busier, and hotter and sweatier, and lamentably smokier until I had to abandon the main dance floor altogether and hide out in a smaller, better air-conditioned room. There were frequent shows which I mostly didn't see, but there were 'dancers' on stage constantly. Enormous brick shithouse types in spangly pants, glumly serious while posing in time to the music, and a constant source of amusement; I'm not sure if they were harvested from the gyms of Madrid or failures from So You Think You Can Dance España or a mix of the two. Unwitting parodies of themselves, they flexed and kicked and jiggled their muscles for hours while maintaining a mask of serene boredom, and were a stark contrast to the drag queens who were striking, vivacious, and sensational. The bar was jaw-droppingly expensive - €10 for a coke ($17!), getting to the toilets was like navigating the third circle of hell, there was broken glass everywhere, and the music was a bit on the dull size. Yet in spite of all this, I quite enjoyed myself and had LOTS of laughs with the guys, and even stayed until the end, because that's the kind of diehard I am.

Our last half day was spent trying to get some sightseeing done... We strolled down through the city to a little restaurant that ticked all of our "quaint" and "continental" boxes and ordered some cheap lunch, which turned out to be mildly unsatisfactory for most of us, but the sangria proved to be dependably slurpsome. Bolstered with vittles, we strolled around the park behind the palace before daringly dashing around the gargantuan palace itself in short order. Chris braved the wrath of various attendants by taking repeated forbidden photos in the lavish apartments, while I chickenly made do with some exterior snaps.

And that was it. Another dash, this time to the hotel to collect our stylish valises, and on to the airport and our Iberia flight to London...