A Very Sandy Christmas

In the UK, the cold and rain conspire to make Christmas weather a bit miserable, or to give it that little 'let's huddle in front of the fire sipping mulled wine' frisson, depending on how you look at it. This year, in Australia, it was sand that was a constant Christmas companion.

Our Christmas only really got going on Xmas day. Mid-December, we went to a Xmas Carol concert held down the road from our house, a local affair run by one of the Borough Councils. In the UK, you'd take 10 minutes getting your coats and scarfs and maybe even your wellies on before braving the chill, here we skipped down the road in our shorts and t-shirts. There was an ice cream van, and everyone was sat out in the evening sun sipping red wine. They'd put fairy lights in the palm trees. I have to say the singing wasn't really up to much based on the numbers, many people being content just to sit there and watch the show, like they were at the cinema. Father Christmas turned up at the end, after 3 shrill shouts from the army of kiddies. And this was where it did take a decidedly English turn, because Santa turned out to be from England. He hadn't quite mastered the Santa role, with a very poor beard and a general confusion about his role in the repartee with the guy with the microphone, not too sure what to make of the suburb of Bayswater (“It seems, urrm, very nice, and urm...”) and not really exhibiting the decisiveness needed to take charge of hordes of Xmas-addled kiddies wanting their lollies (“shall I start on the left?” he asked). The whole thing degenerated into a farce as the choir sang a disastrous version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas with half of them 3 lines back, then the MC closed the concert, then someone reminded him that the Best Costume prize that he had been bigging up all evening had yet to be awarded, for which Santa was then duly dragged away from the hordes to present, then there were a few lost children – with one parent seemingly not knowing what their child looked like and going to claim them only to realise it wasn't them at all, and we left with the MC having to close a concert he'd already closed and bumbling along wonderfully. It was clear they hadn't had time to practice the ending.

The choir sings to the heavens with their sunglasses on

The next day we went for the work Xmas do, held in the garden of one of the managers. As it was free booze and we haven't been able to drink too much because we wouldn't save any money, we entered determined to 'drink for England'. Unfortunately we were out of practice so I don't think the makers of Corona will be very worried about their stock running out. And we managed to get a bus and train back home at 10.30pm, to give Perth public transport some credit.

Jo falls asleep laughing at the work Xmas do

The Xmas activities were coming thick and fast and so the next day...we went to the cricket. We drove down to the WACA and watched the South Africans beat Australia in the first test of the current series, and we watched a bit of history, as it was the 2nd highest run chase in Test history. It was all glorious sunshine and good to see the Aussies get beat in their beloved sport, as they can get a bit carried away.

Brett Lee of Australia bowls to A.B. Villiers of South Africa at the WACA

On Christmas Eve morning, we played tennis. It isn't unusual for us to play tennis then, but it was unusual for us to play it in 28 degrees heat.

Xmas day arrived bright and sunny. We went down to Scarborough Beach and were lucky to catch the last half hour of the volunteer lifeguards shift, as the sea had a treacherous rip, but it was clear and relatively warm. 48 hours later there was a shark attack off a beach to the south of Perth and a man unfortunately lost his life.

The volunteer lifeguards of Scarborough Beach

In the middle of the afternoon on Xmas Day we sat down with our housemates and had a very nice Xmas dinner, complete with an Aussie putting a shrimp on the barbie, oysters and some German potato salad. That afternoon and evening we did indeed 'drink for England'. We did Secret Santa, Jo got a cookbook and I got a CD I really wanted because there was some mistake and Jo got me in the draw.

Sarah throws another shrimp on the barbie, hurrah

On Boxing Day we drove out to the Turquoise Coast, the coastal area around 200-250kms north of Perth, which should be named the Windy Coast on account of the constantly buffeting winds wherever we went. We stopped at Lancelin, hired some sand boards and went out to the huge white dunes nearby to try out sandboarding. I have to say I was fairly underwhelmed with it, the speediest it got was when we sat on the boards instead of standing. Unfortunately the sandboarders have to share the dunes with some quite frankly idiotic motorbike and quadbike riders whose idea of a good time seems to be how far up a dune they could ride in a straight line whilst making the most amount of noise possible and spraying up as much sand as possible. What should have been a lovely peaceful environment was ruined by the ear splitting noise of exhausts and groups of men gathered around with their bikes, cars and dogs, making the dunes seem more like some kind of refugee camp. It wasn't just limited to bikes, people in SUVs and vans seemed to have this unhealthy fascination with driving up a big hill of sand. What are these people trying to achieve, what kind of life skill is this they are trying to learn? Do they know something about the end of the world that involves the need to drive your car up a sand dune?

Jo picks up some rare speed on the sand

The big draw of the Turquoise Coast is the Pinnacles Desert. Pinnacles is 250km north of Perth on the coast and is a barren sandy area of around 400ha dotted with thousands and thousands of statue-like limestone rocks. Scientists can't explain precisely how they were created, the two main theories being that they are the calcified remains of trees that were buried in sand and then revealed when winds blew the sand away some 500,000 years ago, or that they are the remains of the plants that anchored the Pinnacles Desert dunes. It is an amazing sight, this army of yellow rocks stretching into the distance and the sea, and in the early morning the stones cast long shadows and you can hear a pin drop, it's so peaceful. As one of the top tourist attractions in Western Australia, it has a very spangly visitor centre, and well laid out walks.

On our drives round the Turqoise Coast, we had our first brushes with the kangaroos. We'd heard a lot about their propensity to bounce out in front of cars, to only drive from dawn until dusk, and we thought it would be a problem on the drive east in the new year. However, driving from Jurien Bay, where we had cooked on a barbie by the coast in a Force 5 gale, to Cervantes, near the Pinnacles, at about 7.30pm (dusk being 8.30), a medium sized kangaroo bounced out in front of us, from right to left, narrowly missing the left hand corner of the car. And then, the next morning, at around 7am (sunrise at 5.30am), we saw at least seven kangaroos standing by the sides of the road, one pair waiting for us to pass then bounding over the road behind the car, which by now I had slowed to a crawl, not knowing what they were going to do. So the principle of dusk until dawn seemed to be a bit skewed here, because we were driving after dawn and before dusk and encountering lots of kangaroos. Slightly worrying.

A kangaroo shows us a clean pair of heels

We meandered back home from Pinnacles, stopping off at Hangover Bay where a lovely beach was spoiled by people driving along it in their 4x4s, some not actually getting out to enjoy the beach, but, incredibly, turning round and driving back along it and out. And some of them looked like backpackers in hired SUVs, shame on them. It was at this point that Jo and I went through a long list of what we disapproved of, which I won't go through now, but suffice to say this was pretty high on the list. I for one rate highly the feeling of sand in my toes, but these buffoons seem so disconnected that their preferred experience is sand in the tyre grooves.

A family enjoy the beach from their 4x4. Maybe it's their version of a place by the beach.

Then we stopped in the delightfully named town of Gingin, which seemed very English with its green parklands and water wheel. Curiously, the only shop open in Gingin was the Liquor store, which makes me wonder where the Australians' priorities lie. You can't get any milk, or bread, or cheese, but you can get a 6 pack of beer. I suppose it is Xmas.

When we got back, we shook out half a beach-worth of sand from our hair, clothes and bags.

Perth on a shoestring

We start this blog on a festive note, with a picture of the Western Australian Christmas Tree, snapped at our recent visit to Kings Park Botanic Gardens:

I read in today's newspaper that Perth-ites get their Xmas trees from Britain, although I think this would look rather fetching with some tinsel and lights? Xmas celebrations have begun in our houseshare, we now have a plastic tree, but it is very difficult to get into the festive spirit when it's sunny and warm. Although, Western Australian has had a fair bit of rain, which has ruined the grain harvest, making our place of work very quiet. I've been getting into trouble at work with pronunciation of Australian place names. They pronounce their 'a's as 'ah's, so Avon as you and I and the rest of the sensible world pronounce it becomes Ah-von, Albany becomes Ah-lbany, and Malaga becomes Mah-laaaah-gah (with a stress on the lah). The grain depot we work at is pretty big, in fact it deals with 40% of the grain harvest in Australia, which I usefully found out whilst on hold to the IT support helpdesk. They have lots of big grain silos, and trucks drive in here from out in the country to drop off the grain that the farmers have grown. This grain gets put into the big silos and then is later sent on to the port where it is shipped out to whoever has bought the grain. It's quite a seat-of-the-pants business to be in, this company we work for has similar grain depots around Western Australia, and for the 9 months when the harvest isn't happening, they plan which areas of the state they think will have the most grain and plan the storage at their sites accordingly. At any time, bad weather can decimate the crop in an area, so the company no longer needs the storage there, but the crop may be better than expected somewhere else, so they have to move all the gear to that area, and that could be 1000kms or so. As it happens, the entire grain harvest has been hit by a very wet summer, so the harvest hasn't really got going properly yet, it's happening in fits and starts and with lots of trucks bringing in damaged grain.

Jo and I are two essential cogs in the 2008/09 grain harvest machine: I weigh the trucks and Jo empties them. The other cogs are an interesting bunch. Amongst others, there's Murray who used to drive trains and who has a nice line in put downs of the management, Michael who has a very cool camper van which he and his Dad converted from a passenger bus and who goes out prospecting for gold at the weekends, big Bruce whose other career is shearing sheep and brings in to work oranges for us all, even bigger Ben who is a very good Aussie Rules Football player one rung away from the top level who has the most enormous lunches thanks to his Mum, Stuart the very hard working youngster who drives a funny yellow car, Kate the cat who has nine lives and can make countless mistakes, lie, cheat and deceive without getting fired, David who drove buses and once blockaded his depot with one, Glen the manager who has worked here for 17 years even though he is only 32, and Sally who I once mistook completely and entirely and for quite some time for another girl. Then there's all the assorted truck drivers, a very diverse bunch whose names I can't remember and whose occasionally colourful comments I'd rather forget. Jo has seen cats and dogs in their cabs.

Jo comes home covered in grain dust – she tells me oats is particularly itchy. The grain gets everywhere: I wake up in the night to find small balls of canola (oilseed rape to the Brits) in the bed!

A truck gets emptied at the grain depot.

There are two shift patterns, days (6.30am til 3pm) and nights (3pm til 11.30pm), and we alternate every week, which is stupid as you can't get into any sort of groove. We don't like the day shift as you have to go to bed at 9pm to get any reasonable shut eye, and it also means we are doing the same hours as all of our housemates so we can't get any peace. Most Australian houses are massive bungalows, and ours is no exception, although the fact that there are 10 people in it, whilst making me feel better on my positive contribution to population density, means there is no peace and quiet. We have an eclectic mix of housemates, Ben the gentle kiwi giant who usefully works at an off licence and can frequently be found asleep on the sofa at 2am, Fabienne and Carolin from Germany who, also usefully, work at the gourmet salad bar in the mall and who on one of their only day trips out of Perth came back as red as beetroots from sunburn, Phil and Katie from southern Ireland whose accents I have just tuned into after 5 weeks and who have seemed to take a curiously large amount of smart clothing on their travels with them, making us look decidedly dowdy, Cecile from France who has just gone home, and Sarah and Andrew from Australia and Canada respectively.

Despite our very limited funds, we have made a good go of spending most of our weekends out and about doing something. Perth Zoo have proudly bought two tiger cubs into the world, so we went to see them, but they did a very good job of hiding from us. As did the numbat, the animal emblem of Western Australia, very endangered and by the zero sighting at the zoo you'd think they were already extinct. We weren't leaving without some kind of picture, so here's one from outside the numbat enclosure:

The elephants were great, here's one having a pedicure:

We also drove out to Dwellingup, about 70 kms south of Perth. On the way we noted the high number of ridiculous personalised number plates, things like 'black car' and 'old aunty'. It must be cheap to get these plates for such lack of thought to be put into naming them. We knew that Dwellingup was a nice area of forest and a famous walking track passes through, and were happy to discover the Lane Poole Forest Reserve, managed by the WA Department for Environment and Conservation, which had camping set amongst the forest and the Murray River, which we swam in in the morning – a bit chilly but nothing on English rivers! You wouldn't believe how noise-free this place was, it was like it was just me and Jo there in the forest. It also had some of those free-to-use gas fired barbecues that we'd seen in every park, beach, and just about anywhere else out in the open. We'd come prepared this time, so we trotted down to them with our snags (Australian for sausages) and beer, but unfortunately these were the only barbecues in WA with no ignition switch, and we didn't have any matches or a lighter. One other couple were unsuccessfully trying to light the gas with a mosquito coil which they'd lit from their car lighter. Luckily for everyone, a lady came by with some matches, and we gleefully got on with our cooking. The other couple were warming up some home made Thai Tom Yum soup, which I thought was a very good idea and will be trying soon, you can't have sausages all the time, can you! Can you?


Not quite MasterChef, but just as fun

Last weekend we rode to Kings Park, which is right next to the CBD. All the Aussies at work were aghast that we'd ridden, it was quite a steep hill up there but I can't understand why they were making such a fuss. Maybe they thought we had ridden all the way up the steep hill, when actually we pushed our bikes. And we pushed them down again too, not trusting our brakes. It's nice to find a place like Kings Park so close to the city centre, it had some great views of Perth.

There was also a guided tour of the Botanical Garden led by an expat Geordie called Dorothy with a wry sense of humour. On the odd occasion she would pick a flower or leaf off a tree, then whisper that she shouldn't really do it, which I thought odd, but then maybe she was trying to give us as good a tour as she could. She wasn't a huge fan of the guy belting out Nesson Dorma for the free concert, and I had to agree. I think he should have used a little imagination and sung some songs which mention trees or birds, how about 'Tie a yellow ribbon' or 'Blackbird' (Beatles)? But then, maybe he was singing what he was told. After the tour, we got on our bikes and rode around the park, stopping off at the DNA Tower:

Last week we went to see the film Australia at the cinema, at the end we were surprised to hear the Aussies in the audience all clapping! Very patriotic I thought, I couldn't imagine a British audience doing that for a British film (notwithstanding the fact they don't make British films anymore). But then, there was clapping at the end of an American film we went to see last weekend, so the patriotism jury is out on that one so far.

We have lots to look forward to – an Australian Christmas, driving from Perth to Sydney, the Australian Open tennis, seeing various parents and siblings, and, of course, our flights to New Zealand at the start of February. At the moment, despite the grasping Australian tax man, we've saved enough for about another month of travelling, the plan being to work until just after Xmas to earn us enough money to travel for 2 months. Unless we drink it all one weekend.