A-League of their own

Your author (bottom right, in blue and white Rovers kit)


The other week I went along to the first game in the pre-season campaign of Sydney's newest sporting franchise - Sydney FC. As a team, they've been around for a while, but the brand new domestic Australian football league - the A-League - starts this month. One of the Rovers fans in Sydney is a season ticket holder at Sydney FC (and at GBP60 they are considerably cheaper than season tickets of football teams in the UK), so I met up with him and the other hard-core Sydney FC fans.

The game was held at the Aussie Stadium, in front of about 9,000 people - which wasn't bad for a pre-season game against unknown opponents (the New Zealand Knights, anyone?). It was interesting watching a new football team start off - something that you never really get to see as most English teams were founded around 100 years ago. The small group of - let's face it - football nerds that I was with had chosen an area behind one of the goals to stand (yes, standing at football). It had been recently christened 'The Cove' for reasons I'm not too sure about, and was draped with banners for the team, until the fans were told by stadium security to take them down.

The game was enthusiastically dreadful, but Sydney wound out winning 3-1 and have been installed as favourites to win the new A-League. Predicatably they are seen as flash and overconfident (something Sydney is accused of a lot) - and this comes as no surprise when their star player is none other than ex-Rovers makeweight Dwight Yorke - the ultimate footballing playboy and father of a child with the model Jordan. I later read that Yorke was seen drinking in an Oxford Street bar a couple of hours after the match, so some things never change.

Nice and easy, Japanesy

Te o furenaide kudasai!

Last night was the first of the Level 1 Japanese language classes that I signed up for. I decided to learn some basic Japanese to help when I go there in two months, to give me and my 'chichi' a better chance of getting around. I tried to get on a course entitled 'Japanese for Travel' - which would have been ideal - but it was cancelled due to lack of numbers and I was shunted onto the Japanese Level 1 course instead. Still, this course is broader, and looks at some kanji and writing, so it's just as useful.

The course is run at the University of Wollongong (that being a small city to the South of Sydney), but based at their Sydney campus, right next to Central Station. There are about 15 of us in the group, the usual mix of younger travellers and serial mature students who sit at the front and ask questions. Our teacher is an affable motherly type called Nobuko-san, who has a fun way of getting us to repeat sayings - raising her hands and shouting 'Hai!!' (yes) like we're unruly schoolkids. Which I suppose in a way, we were. I was the only one wearing a tie, for a start.

We learned a few phrases of introduction, listened to a bafflingly fast tape (Nobuko-san gamely tried to work the CD player - what is it with teachers and electrical equipment?), and had a rapid-fire Q&A about Japan. During this I learned that the population of Tokyo is 30million (during the day - it goes down at night), Japan would fit 20 times into Australia (NSW is twice the size of Japan), and one of the basics of Shintoism is that every mountain has a God, every river has a God, etc. A Korean student in the front row found this perplexing. 'And that's the main religion in Japan?' he asked, incredulous.

By far the hardest thing for me was sentence structure - not because of the different way Japanese sentences are constructed, but because I realised I haven't a clue how English sentences are constructed. It took me five minutes just to remember what a verb was, and by the time she explained the Japanese equivalent of past form/present form I was hopelessy lost. Still, I'm not trying to become fluent, or to learn how to construct precise sentences. I just need to be able to communicate and ask for things, so we can get by. Next week, we're doing days of the week and telling the time. And we didn't get any homework!

The story so far...

The Harbour Bridge from Circular Quay railway station

Reading over these last few posts it struck me that this is the perfect time to fill you in on my plans, rather than more musings about delivery vans or bus stations. I've now been out here for just over nine months, which to be honest seems like ages - it's not gone by as quickly as I thought it might. I've got basically three months left until I have to return to the UK. So how am I going to spend it?

Firstly, I've got another month left working from my allotted three months - which I'll probably spend here in my current job (unless something unexpected and dramatic happens). So essentially I've got until the end of August to get money together for anything I plan to do before I fly North. Towards the middle of September I'm planning another short trip away - probably to the Outback. I was going to Melbourne for a week or so, but although it's supposed to be nice (and as previously mentioned I do like my cities), the Outback is something entirely unique, so I should make the effort to see it before it's too late.

I'd like to go somewhere remote, so was thinking about flying over to Perth and then going up the coast of Western Australia. That way I can have a base and still see some Outbacky stuff. Plus I've always wanted to visit Shark Bay - the only place in the world where you can see Stromatolites - footstool shaped colonies of coral-type animals so old they were claiming pensions and reminiscing about the good old days long before ancient reptiles even started thinking about flopping out of the seas onto the land.

After that I'll be off to Tokyo on the 25th of September, for two weeks of high-tech excitement and unidentifiable food. Thanks to my ticketing cock-up I'll be coming back two days earlier, but at least I'll be there for a couple of weeks. There then follows a crazy week starting the 10th October when I leave Tokyo, and arrive in the early hours of the 11th in Sydney. That will be my last day in Australia, as my next flight leaves early on the 12th for Seoul, South Korea. There I've got a free overnight stay in a hotel (thank you Korean Airlines), before flying onwards on the 13th, arriving in London on the 14th. So that's four cities and three continents in four days, including Asia twice. That's going to be some week...

A question of buses

Save Preston Bus Station!

If you come from Preston you inevitably know a thing or two about buses. Home to the longest bus station in Europe (I've waited so long to get that into this blog), I've been travelling about on their blue and white double deckers since it cost 30p to get into town. Apparently it's over one pound now - but you almost always give your (exact) money to a less-than-cheerful driver. Edinburgh too - the maroon buses there are the pride of the city as they drive from one side to the other and try to clog Princes Street as much as possible. Again, in my experience (something I should stress here) the drivers can be pretty grumpy. They do get shot from time to time, so maybe that's it. Or it could be the lack of length of their bus station, who knows.

But come to Sydney - and what a difference! Bus drivers that say hello when you get on, that say goodbye when you get off - I even had one ask me how my day had gone once. On more than one occasion the driver of a different bus has stopped and told me the one I'm waiting for is a few minutes behind him. Just the other week two came at once (they are buses, after all) and due to a mix-up one left a few people behind who wanted to get on. So the driver of my bus told them to get on ours, refused to take their money, then drove up behind the other bus at some traffic lights and ran across to tell him he'd missed some passengers. The other driver apologised and waited for the people to walk over to his bus. And you know what? Sydney doesn't even have a bus station! As my American readers would say - go figure.

Utes alive!

Is it a car? Or is it a van?

The humble white van is something you hardly see on Australian roads - instead workmen drive around in things that look like they were constructed on Scrapheap Challenge. As black cabs are to the UK, and yellow school buses are to the US - Utes are to Australia. You can't flag them down and get a ride though, so come to think of it that analogy was rubbish. You see a lot of them on the roads, at any rate. The basic ones are just a cab bolted to a chassis - called a 'Cab-Chassis' they are popular with workmen and builders (I'm told you can sometime see them in - ahem - Neighbours).

At the other end of the scale are the sporty turbo Utes - massive V8-powered beasts that are only used for testing the 100k speed limit. I don't think there's an equivalent of 'white van man' over here, but all the anti-speeding ads on TV feature men driving Utes coming to grief. Learner drivers (P-platers) are soon to be banned from driving powerful cars like Utes after a number of well-publicised accidents. The newest models have two rows of seats and four-wheel drive - so the move away from a tool-carrier to a family 4x4/SUV isn't far away. Speaking of which, in this country of the Outback and thousands of square kilometres of desert - which part of the country has the highest 4x4 ownership? Cremorne - a leafy suburb of North Sydney.

The Little Differences

Striped Orb-Web spider, roughly palm-sized

But Rich what's it really like living in Australia? is a question most of you must have muttered at some point after reading this blog - probably whilst waving your fist at the monitor. Well - apart from the (ahem) weather, there are plenty of small differences that the casual visitor will miss - but yours truly has noted. In the current period of working and no travelling, what better time to reveal some of these unique gems? *cough* filler posts *cough*

1. Spiders
How many times have I talked about spiders? Too many, for all you arachnaphobes, no doubt. Well that proves my point. Back home spiders are a nuisance at worst - they spin webs and go about their spidery business, but that's about it. Most of them are small, dull and brown - and although they fulfill a useful purpose, and without them we'd be knee-deep in flies blah blah - they just aren't that interesting.

So if you like your eight-legged insect overlords on the exciting side (and who doesn't?) then you have to come over here. Whether it's multi-coloured garden spiders, fat glistening orb web spiders, or massive slavering Huntsmen - arachnids here are worth writing about. A large spider in the UK would be...what, the size of your little finger? Large spiders in Australia are the size of your hand - believe me, I know. Check the archives for the post about my evening visitor. Yikes.

The world gave Australia rabbits and cats - Australia gave them back the white-tailed spider (well, New Zealand at least). If you even look at one of these guys funny, it'll go for you. When they bite you, it feels like a mosquito - but soon becomes agonising - essentially the part of you they bite dies, and has to be cut out (or off) to save you. The worst part is these things are small and love hiding indoors. Erm, I'll be checking under the bed tonight then...

Thinking about work

This long-necked turtle is far more stressed than I am

The other night I caught myself doing something no temp should ever do - I thought about work while I was at home. The sheer beauty of temping is that the job you do is so stress-free that as soon as you leave the office (or on some days even when you're still there) you flick an internal switch and log off. Of course when I'm in my office I'm concentrated and productive (ahem), but the instant I turn off the computer I can stop thinking about it. As such, I have the same levels of work stress as a pot plant - and with less watering. I think that's why office temping is the ideal job for working travellers like me, as it gives you decent money but practically no hassle.

The alternative a lot of people I've met go for is fruit picking - but a day in the sun picking apples or whatever is much harder than it sounds. For a start most of those places have quotas to fill, or you get paid by the box/bag/punnet etc. So you need to work hard to earn a decent amount. Plus they are usually located in out of the way places, and involve repetitive work. One girl I met in New Zealand described people turning up in the morning and jumping the fence in the afternoon to escape, such was the stress levels imposed by their bosses.

Maybe in recognition of this - and the fact that if it wasn't for travellers the seasonal picking industry would grind to a halt - the Australian Government recently announced a change in the visa regulations. The one-year working visa I'm on can be extended for another 12 months - but only if you complete three months of seasonal picking. The changes are due to come in at the start of November - two weeks after my visa expires - but even if they applied to me I'm not sure if I'd go for it. Admittedly it's 9 months of extended stay for 3 months of work, but 3 months is a lot of oranges/cabbages/whatever. Maybe if they broaden the regulations to include office temps I'd consider it - but somehow I doubt they'll be doing that any time soon...

The Olympic Spirit

An empty Sydney Olympic Stadium hosts a cricket match

If you saw the news the other day, you'll know that delegates from the IOC voted to award the 2012 Olympic games to London. Like a lot of British people, I think that's a great thing (although I'm sure there are plenty that don't). Staging an Olympic games puts strains on a city unlike any other one-off event, as was made clear in the run-up to the Athens games earlier last year. The issues of funding, taxes, congestion and security are all important while the games are happening - but what happens after all the athletes have left, and the medals, plaudits and drug bans handed out?

Sydney staged arguably the best Olympic games ever - it was certainly a vast improvement on the widely-criticised Atlanta event in 1996. The 2000 games were almost a coming of age for Sydney - people here still talk about them, and the positive effect they had on the image of the city. What legacy did it leave for Sydneysiders? Undoubtably it gave Australians and Australian sport a long-awaited moment in the spotlight, and their successes are remembered fondly by people who witnessed them. It also left the city with a huge complex of sporting venues and the problems of how to utilise them.

Sydney Olympic Park is the collection of stadia from the 2000 games, and even now it feels new when you walk around - it certainly has the shiniest station on the Cityrail network. It still hosts sporting events, to keep the venues paying off their contruction debts. I've been to basketball, football and cricket matches there, and have always been impressed by the facilities (if not the sporting performances). However, as far as I know the site is still losing money - it's difficult to encourage new events to come. Nobody wants to repeat the experience of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which produced debts of up to C$1 billion that were lumped onto the taxpayer. Certainly Londoners won't want this to happen to them. But maybe the financial debts are eased by the spectacle of the event - this was certainly the case with the 2000 games here. The Olympics live on in the minds of Sydneysiders, like the blue line that marked the route of the marathon which is still visible on the city streets. Hopefully the 2012 games will be as memorable.

The lungs of the city

The art-deco ANZAC Memorial glistens in the sunshine

I read somewhere once that parks are considered to be the lungs of a city. If that's true, then central Sydney's lungs would undoubtedly be Hyde Park, the long rectangular green space that flanks the business district (which would be the brain, I guess). Named after the more famous park in London, the Sydney version quickly became the focal point of the fledgling colony back from it's formation in the late 18th Century. There's no real comparison to London's Hyde Park though - it's far smaller, there's no zoo (although it does have a corner). Back in the old days of settlement it was used as a mustering ground for soldiers from the adjacent barracks - but it has also been used as a cricket pitch, an arena for prize fights, and was the first racecourse in the city - which explains the roughly oval/rectangular shape (or ovtangular as I like to call it).

These days it's used mostly as a place to have lunch, an open-air theatre for drunks or a place to sleep for backpackers if they can't find their way to Kings Cross (for which you can decide your own body part analogy). Divided into two parts by Park Street, much of the greenery is dominated by two rows of huge Fig trees, which to my untrained eyes resemble giant florets of broccoli. In the Northern half is the splendidly OTT Archibald Fountain, completed in 1932 and featuring a typical scene from some legend or other, complete with stags, naked men, and turtles that continually vomit streams of water. If you follow the fig-dominated path to the other half (looking both ways as you cross Park Street, of course), you arrive at the other major feature, the art deco ANZAC Memorial, also built in the 1930's and dedicated to the 120,000 ANZACS who fought in the Great War.

There are other things of interest in Hyde Park too - like a manicured garden and veranda, and statues of Prince Albert and Captain Cook. But the real fun is to be had walking around looking at the people and animals that live or pass through the park - every Friday for instance, numerous Asian wedding parties gather to get photographed with the picturesque backdrop - one evening I counted five groups (and managed to get in a few pictures without even trying). On another walk home I saw bats, cockroaches and rats scampering about. There are large black and white storks that use their foot-long bills to reach into litter bins and remove sandwich wrappers, and possums that occasionally trot from tree to tree looking like grey cats with shrunken heads (trust me on this).

Last word on the weather

Some typical weather this week in Sydney

I didn't need my alarm clock this morning, as I was already awake, lying there listening to the rain lash the windows of my room. At the risk of this blog becoming purely about the weather, over the last few days Sydney has been pounded by a succession of rainstorms. This is all good of course, as I was droning on about before - the catchment area was close to the emergency low levels.

This kind of weather reminds me of a typical British Autumn day - squally showers, strong gusty winds and outturned umbrellas. The trees down our road were given a fearful battering by the wind, sending the already excitable parakeet-things into even more frenzied squawking. In fact, it was so wet that today I actually wore my coat - for the first time since I arrived in Australia in October (not counting the drenchings I got in New Zealand). Mind you, that's nearly eight months, so it's not too bad when you think about it.

Anyway, that's it for talk about the weather - unless there's a freak tornado or we get three feet of snow or something - I think I've covered the topic enough. I know us Brits have that reputation of talking a lot about the weather, but I think even taking account for that I should move on. Tomorrow - tea and cricket!

Winter finally begins

A local happy with the recent weather

I wonder when my award ceremony is going to be? Only last week the city was in dire need of water, in a desperate situation according to the media. I write a short piece about it on here - and what happens? We get three days of rain. However, before I start hiring myself out to other parched communities - the rain here is still far from enough - "Over 10 millimetres of rain has fallen into the Warragamba catchment, but I don't expect that to have any impact unless there is a lot more rain." said a Sydney city water Spokeswoman. Well it had an impact on me as I was walking home on Friday night, I can tell you. Winter seems to have arrived at last, as the days are getting longer after the shortest day on June 21st. It's still comparable to a Scottish summer, but Sydneysiders are out in their coats and scarves, shivering in their offices. We even had the heater on in our flat last night. Still, at least the days are now getting longer, and we move towards the Spring warmth - and an end to these miserable low temperatures of 10C...

Extracting the effluent

Tinder dry canefields in Northern Queensland

Sydney is very much the harbour city, surrounded on all sides by water. On any given weekend thousands of people are on the waterways, taking advantage of the city's greatest resource. At the risk of sounding dramatic, all this water hides a dark secret - which I didn't know about until I started living here. Sydney is almost dying of thirst. Everybody knows Australia is home to some of the largest desert regions in the world, but the sheer scale of the problem is frightening. The NSW State Government is understandably starting to worry about where the water for this growing city (100 new residents arrive each week) is going to come from.

The water supply for Sydney has never been lower - the reservoir levels are at 39.1% of what they should be (as of last week). 35% is considered the emergency level and would trigger the kind of contingency plans that experts keep suggesting, and keep being scoffed at. The current favourite appears to be desalination - the building of a $2bn plant near Bondi could serve the entire East of the city (including me) with drinkable seawater. By 2006 13bn litres of water could be found by drilling groundwater. These are the kinds of schemes that are suggested, but have not yet been implemented.

Despite all the panicking, life for us Sydneysiders isn't that difficult. There are bans on sprinklers and hoses - but nothing more than the equivalent bans during a hot UK summer. I'm not sure we even have a garden hose, to be honest. But it's always on the news, people are talking about the lack of water being the biggest problem Australia will face over the next hundred years - something I take for granted living in damp, predictable Scotland. But then Scotland isn't part of the driest vegetated continent on Earth. 75% of Australia is classified as permanently arid, which is amazing - 3/4 of this country is practically uninhabitable. Many rivers here flow away from the sea, ending in large, useless evaporating pans or stagnant billabongs visited only by jolly swagmen.

The solution for Sydney may be close though. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the National Competition Council has ruled the city's sewers be opened to private companies who want to recycle effluent into useable water. Currently only 3.2% of Sydney's water is recycled - so with a bit of technology and some dirty manual work, the recycling option may be the one that makes Sydney sustainable again - time will tell.

Ku-ring-gai National Park

Cowan Creek - a tributary of the Hawkesbury River, in winter

One thing that I'm always conscious of is that I've not really gone to any bush yet. Proper Australian outback stuff just isn't within public transport range of Sydney. However, there are plenty of National Parks about an hour North of the city, so today I got the train to Berowra and walked through Ku-ring-Gai National Park. The name means 'belongs to the Aboriginies'- the Aboriginal people in SE Australia refer to themselves as 'kuri'. The National Park runs up to the edge of the Hawkesbury River, and the path I took wandered along the shoreline of the river.

The upper parts of the trail reminded me of a Scottish pine forest, but eventually things took on a more bush-like feel. On the way down I took a shortcut to miss out a long hairpin bend in the path, and met a group of elderly walkers coming up. One of them cheerfully admonished me for doing so - "These short cuts are for uptrackers, to make it easier for us" he said. So that was me told. After beating him to death, I carried on and eventually popped out of the bush at Waratah Bay, named after the official flower of NSW - not that I have any idea what it looks like. Here there was an estuary-style mudflat (always something that's been close to my heart) so I stopped for something to eat. After a minute or so, the mud started to come alive and dozens of small crabs appeared and began feeding. If you know me, you'll know I love that kind of thing, and I spent an enjoyable half-hour munching Doritos whilst watching the little guys at work.

The path followed the banks of the creek, in some places it actually was the bank. About three hours of pushing through ferns and bushes, and I found the small singpost that pointed out the track to Kuring Gai station. The day was another cracker - blue sky all the way, but in the forest it was dark and quiet. The odd passing speedboat and twittering birds made the only noise. I talked to a family of walkers who had seen a snake, but sadly I didn't spot one. The park is also home to Koalas and something called a Powerful Owl - but again I didn't see any (maybe just as well with the Owl). Mind you, it's not every day you get to have lunch with a colony of mudcrabs, is it?

At a loose end in Manly

I didn't see any bandicoots

This weekend Australians celebrate the Queen's birthday - and everyone is given a holiday on the Monday. Odd, considering as most younger Australians couldn't care less about the distant monarchy - and odder still because back home us Brits don't get a holiday for her birthday (loyal subjects indeed). As if the oddness couldn't get any higher, New Zealanders got their Queen's birthday holiday last week. Anyway, I toyed with the idea of going to work to make some sort of point about the old dear not giving days off to her immediate subjects, but I couldn't be bothered. Instead I had planned to go up North to Mount Kuring Gai and do a bit of bushwalking. You can imagine my consternation however when I arrived at Town Hall Station to find all trains going North cancelled because of track work, leaving me stuck in the city. The irony of a British bank holiday wasn't lost on me, I can tell you. At least it wasn't raining. So I decided right there on the spot to switch to my emergency Plan B - which in all contingencies is the same - go to Manly.

I love Manly - it's probably the only other part of the city I'd ever live in. I've been several times of course, so today I visited the only part I'd not yet explored - North Head. As you know if you read this blog often, the entrance to Sydney Harbour is guarded by two craggy lumps that curl into the Pacific like giant fists. Called North and South Head, they are both National Parks, and both give great views of the Ocean and back to the city (South Head was near where I was the other week in Vaucluse). So I had a walk around, looked back at the city for the umpteenth time - it was all very pleasant. I didn't see any bandicoots (I suppose they are nocturnal), but there were dozens of black and white birds flashing through the bushes - New Holland Honeyeaters according to the signs. It also said you could sometimes see migratory whales at this time of year - but once again my luck with whales was nil and I didn't see any. So I walked around in the winter sunshine before strolling back down to Manly wharf and the ferry to the city. Not a bad Plan B really - thanks Queeny!

Australian banks

I don't have a picture of a bank - but I do have one of a parakeet

I think I've already mentioned how badly you get treated by Australian banks. Well now I can give you an example. I opened my monthly statement this morning and was mildly surprised to see I'd been charged $78 for 'other transactions'. After further examination I realised I accrued these charges when in New Zealand - at $5 a pop every time I withdrew money from an ATM over there. Apparently the usual $1.50 'other ATM withdrawl fee' is bumped up to $5 when the other ATM is in another country. I had no idea of this of course, so managed to rack up almost $80 in fees in three weeks. That translates to GBP32, but it's more the principle than the actual money that annoys me.

Every bank statement comes with what they call a 'transaction summary', but what I call a 'charge sheet'. Every month I get 5 free ATM withdrawls, 2 free chances to use my debit card, and 2 free direct debits. Anything over that and I get charged 50c, 30c, and 30c respectively. Again, the fees aren't exactly epic in size, but when you consider I that I have a basic minimum of 6 direct debits every month (two rent deductions and four wages additions) essentially I get charged for getting paid. If you go to the counter in a bank for help, that's $2 - if you write someone a cheque, that's another $1. From the 1st of August the direct debit charge is increasing to 50c.

I know I'm ranting a bit here, but coming from the UK banks tend to leave you alone unless you go financially daft. Maybe in the rest of the world this is what banks are like. I've been in my branch enough times to have been ignored and even sneered at once by a Manager. But hey, I've got to keep my money somewhere - and if I store it inside my matress I'd probably lose my flat deposit (and then get charged by the bank)...

Watson's Bay to Rose Bay

If I had to choose one photo to sum up Sydney - this would be it

If you're on the South side of the harbour, and go as North-East as you can, eventually you'll come to Watson's Bay. This is one of the top weekend day trips for us Sydney folk, and when I went on Sunday the ferry was packed. I've been a few times before - but this time I wanted to walk South along a coastal trail winding along the harbourfront. After passing the daytrippers eating their fish and chips I got to Parsley Bay, a narrow cove surrounded by fancy houses. The suburb round here is Vaucluse - home to the older, richer Sydneysider - and the homes reflect that. Bristling with high fences, gates, guard dog signs and cameras pointing accusingly at the street. Of course I had a look through as many gates as possible and waved at all the cameras as I went past, weaving my way through the Mercedes parked halfway up the pavement.

As with the Manly-Spit Bridge walk on the Northern side, this walk wound its way from a succession of small coves and beaches - from Vaucluse Bay onwards. At Shark Bay the netting to keep those creatures away had been removed for 'cleaning', leaving an impotent-looking rope and a few brave swimmers. There hasn't been a fatal shark attack in the harbour for almost 40 years, but it happened just up the coast from Shark Bay. Onwards the path went, eventually coming out at Rose Bay - another affluent suburb - where I got the bus back to the city. It was a great day - I think I needed that to remind me how great Sydney is after my epic trip to New Zealand. It's reaffirmed my belief that Sydney is more than where I work, it's where I live too...

Working...part two

Your author hard at work in his office this morning

So this is me in my new office, hiring and firing. I've never had an office before, and it's quite exciting. I'm here replacing some unfortunate HR Manager who was recently diagnosed with cancer. There are three of us in the department, but only two rooms - so I've been put in the office of the sick bloke, and have it all to myself. The job consists of helping out the other HR Manager and the HR Assistant - so I'm essentially an Assistant HR Assistant. General phone stuff, sending out letters, that kind of thing. But all in the comfort of my own office (and a big one at that).

I was taken for a tour this morning - I'm working for a large pathology company, so there are all kinds of laboratories and white-coated boffins wandering around. Plastic bags of various fluids (and yes, solids too) arrive and are examined - thankfully not too close to where we are. It was impressive stuff though, lots of biochemical equipment and ranks of people staring down microscopes. Up in the HR department though it's just computers and phones. Still, it's a good place to work, the two others in HR are really nice. Bus journey's a long one though - no chance of me walking here, unfortunately...

Back in the temp cycle

Hyde Park, Sydney - part of my new walk to work

It's tough to come home after a good holiay, but I've found the perfect solution - go on holiday somewhere, and then take another holiday from that. When you get back from holiday 2 you're still on holiday 1 and the disappointment is eased somewhat. If only people knew about this. Anyway, so here I am back in Sydney - currently in the grip of an evil Autumn chill (high of 'only' 19C today, still t-shirt weather for me). Not much happened in the three weeks I was away, apart from one of my flatmates slipping a disc in her back on her bus to work, although she's since recovered.

Speaking of which, I finally managed to get through to my temping agency this afternoon, and they found me another job within two hours, which is pretty good. If you work long hours, temp agencies love you for the cash you make them - so when I turned up there fo a chat three of them were there to ask how I was getting on. I like to think it was because of my personality rather than my 50hr weeks, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, they almost immediately found me another job starting on Tuesday at the Australian Blood Tranfusion Service, which sounds mildly interesting (although it is a temp job, so it can't be that interesting). It's more money than the pensions place, but is a 45 minute bus ride from the centre of Sydney (North Ryde for Mr.106) - so I'll have to take a book, and avoid slipping any discs...

Three weeks are over

The awesome Franz-Josef glacier advances

Well, that's it - my three weeks over here in New Zealand are up. This afternoon I fly back to Sydney to carry on with my 'other' holiday though, so it's not all bad. Although I will be back on the temp ladder for another three months of work, but it's all to put towards the next of my journeys (to Japan in September). Until then hopefully I'll make it over to Melbourne for a week or so, but we'll see how things pan out. Certainly I'll not be able to go anywhere like NZ for a while. What an amazing country, it's been an incredible few weeks. A huge thanks to Jules and Mel in Christchurch, and Edd and Meesh in Wellington for letting me invade their living rooms for a few days. It really made all the difference to what I could do on the trip.

The highlights are easy to pick out - walking on a glacier is something I'll not forget in a hurry, as was the fjord cruise into Milford Sound. Getting within touching distance of all those rare birds in the deep south, and the various walks and views are staggering - I've managed to avoid going on and on about the Lord of the Rings (because there are plenty of people here who do), but the scenery in the film is very real, and it's everywhere you look. Anybody who likes doing things outdoors has to come here, it's stunning. I'll certainly be coming back, there are still large parts of the country to explore (like most of the North Island), and of course I need to go back to Taupo in summer and see if it improves. But I've got several other places to visit in the meantime...

The treasures of Te Papa

Your author and a giant fossilised Ammonite


Perfect museum weather today, so for my last day in Wellington I paid a visit to the city's largest attraction - Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum. The guidebook suggested a full day to explore, which was about right as I was in there for 5hrs and rushed a few sections. It had everything from geology to photography, with a hefty chunk of maori history too, of course. As usual it was the stuffed animals that got my attention, particularly the birds I'd been looking at on my travels down south. I even managed to identify a spider we saw in the house the other day (a black-headed jumping spider). As you can see, they had the largest fossil ammonite I've ever seen, and plenty of other interesting stuff. Anyobdy thinking of coming to Wellington - it's a must-see, simple as that. But then I've always been a museum geek.

Which brings me nicely onto Star Wars - tonight myself and Edd went to the Embassy Theatre to watch the final Star Wars film, Revenge of the Sith. The Embassy is a local legend, it was refitted for the World Premiere of the Lord of the Rings in 2003 and is massive, with leather chairs and 1920's decor and fittings. It's a long way from the Preston Odeon where I saw the first Star Wars film all those years ago. How apt that I saw the final part on the other side of the world. I can still remember being taken by my Dad to see the Return of the Jedi (and I'm fairly sure the other two, earlier, films on the same day). Like any impressionable 10yr-old I wanted to jump into the screen and be a part of it - I immediately set about collecting all the figures (still somewhere at home in a battered cardboard box). So what did I think of the new film? Well, considering how much I hated the two previous new films I really liked this one - it was a great way to end my trip. But more of that tomorrow...