Mssv

The woman sitting next to me on the plane was snoring. The roar of the engines drowned most of the noise out, but she was definitely snoring. It was the more common variety of snoring, with a regular rattling sound as air passed through her nose by her epiglottis, not one of the rare snorers [...]

Today was my last full day in Melbourne. In a vain attempt to try and buy some non-tacky souvenirs, we went to Victoria Market in the city. I did actually manage to buy two souvenirs that didn’t fall into the general category of ‘koalas and other Australian miscellaneia’ although it did take some time. To [...]

There was a lot of driving today to go and see the Penguin Parade at Phillips Island, about two hours south of Melbourne. This will hopefully explain all of the exposition on driving that I’ll make later.
On the way to the Penguin Parade, we stopped off at a little wildlife sanctuary to see some of [...]

I did an awful lot of walking today. Whenever I travel to a foreign city, I always end up walking practically everywhere, unless I’m going somewhere over an hour away. It’s not that I have anything against public transport, it’s just that it’s more immediately convenient for me to stroll around, and of course it [...]

Continuing my epic journey around the globe to Contact all Culture listees that are the furthest away from me (despite having not met most of the guys in London) I spent a fun day going around Melbourne with Claire.
First up was the ScienceWorks museum outside the city centre. I’ve made something of a hobby of [...]

Had a great day in Sydney today. Clear skies as usual, and in the morning I hopped on the Monorail for a quick ride around. It’s not wonderfully fast or smooth, but it’s worth a try if you’re here. Following that, I visited the top of Centrepoint Tower, which is about 250m tall and looks [...]

King Street is a long road, probably a couple of miles in length, that forms the heart of Newtown, a district south of central Sydney. The rather imaginatively named Newtown was the third town after Sydney and Paramatta to be founded in Australia, and now it’s been completely subsumed by Sydney.
I’m reminded of places like [...]

So I arrived in Sydney yesterday night. Sydney has from 2.5 to 4.5 million people, depending on who you ask, but its actual business and shopping core is not all that big; you could walk from one side to another in less than an hour. Even so, there’s a lot to see. In the morning, [...]

Yesterday we visited to the nearby Hunter Valley 11:30am, I thought, was perhaps a little early in the day to be wine-tasting, but since there was chocolate available as well, there were no complaints from me. Customs will only let me take back two bottles of wine to the UK, which is a shame. On [...]

Newcastle is about two hours drive north of Sydney, and has a distinctly Californian feel about it. Firstly, despite it being the middle of the winter, the temperature today hovered around 18C, which is quite respectable by UK standards; what’s more, there wasn’t a single cloud to be seen in the sky. Consequently, I was [...]