scar culture – toni davidson. I picked this book up as one of many at three quid from fopp in London. Not quite sure why I did, something about it just caught my eye. When I finally got around to reading it, while travelling round Australia, I looked at the back cover and had no idea what it was about or why I’d brought it. I’m glad I did though. It’s a great read, combining a few apparently unrelated stories about abused children and a bizarre shrink. The first section, about a child called ‘click’ who visualises all of his abuse as photos (either real or in his head) was the best part to me but Davidson does a wonderful job of pulling everything together. Overall the book was reminiscent of Iain Banks and the Wasp Factory, although with less impact. Definately interested to see what comes next from this new author.
Category: Musings
Like wow, mate
Still currently holed up in Byron Bay, home of the Aussie east coast hippies. That’s not strictly true anymore as Oz is a big place and so many smaller hippy communes have sprung up all over. One of particular note is Nimbin, a small commune inland from Byron Bay that is Australia’s equivalent to Amsterdam – although with slightly fewer raucous English bachelor parties.
Byron has some of the best food I’ve had so far in Australia. A good mix of veggie fare and pizzas, with no Macdonalds in sight – the town voted not to allow them or KFC in, although a few smaller chains have arrived now. More importantly they have lots of pie (mmm, pie). I’m currently trying to get myself on a pie detox plan as I seem to have become slightly addicted to these wonderful pastry parcels in all their forms and this is not helping my surfer stylee six pack from developing.
Gnarly tube, mate
Just finished a wonderful week surfing with Surfaris. This involved driving up from Sydney to Byron Bay on a coach, camping at various places to find some good surf. In fact the surf wasn’t great, but good enough to get a lot better at standing up and to realise I have no upper body strength for paddling and so on!
More importantly met some really lovely people, saw some amazingly wonderful star filled skies and lots of wildlife (including scary MF spiders and a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch – I preferred the later). Now I’m hanging out in Byron Bay, a big hippy center just south of Brisbane. Reminds me a lot of the west coast of US – lots of surfer hippy folk and more dreads than you normally see in a year. Cool.
Kookaburra sitting
Touristy day again today – went off on a day trip to see dolphins at Jarvis Bay (pronounced ‘jer-vis’ by official declaration of an act of parliament). This trip involved getting up at 6.15am having been out dancing until 1am the night before at an Underworld gig – consequently my typing, like me, might be a bit wobbly. Anyways, the highlight of this trip was not the dolphins or kangaroos, but the birds that tried to steal our food whilst picnicing at the beach! This including a whole swarm of kookaburra birds who look like punk/grunge parrots – very cool. One literally tried ot grab some food out of my hand while I was looking the other way!
Otherwise it’s been a lot of beach/sun-bathing trips for me, especially over at Manly bay. Although I have learnt a few useful things – such as Brits stand out a mile by dipping biscuits in their tea (thanks to Nick, our tour guide for that), and also that if you look down over the bow of the ferry from Manly as it returns to Sydney you can see a really weird effect where the spray almost seems to freeze in slow motion. Wonderful stuff.
Ain’t life a beach
More beaches, and yet more beaches. From the, very touristy, Bondi Beach I progressed to Coogee – a slightly less visibly touristy beach which is in fact almost entirely populated with Brits. Had a good day down there with Sharon and Greg, managing not to get burnt thanks to my new sun hat, then stayed down for a few too many pints down the Coogee Hotel. Actually I saw ‘pints’ but I mean ‘schooners’ which are about two thirds of a pint each. This adds to the confusion of working out whether beer is cheaper than Britland but I think the answer to that is ‘yes’ in general!
The best beach however has to be Manley. This beach is best reached by a ferry ride from Sydney harbour which affords wonderful views back across the harbour including, of course, the opera house and the bridge. Manley is a long sandy expanse whose only flaw is that the currents can be quite strong so swimming is often restricted to a 10m safe zone patrolled by lifeguards. Luckily there is a wonderful little sheltered cove just along from the beach with minimal waves to get in the way of swimming.
Other than beaches I spent a few happy rolls of film on the opera house trying to find non-standard angles. This is fairly hard and I guess I’ll find out in a few days whether I managed anything interesting. I’ve actually uploaded some pictures from Hong Kong and Sydney to my photo site, and from that I’ve been finding that slide is working so much better than print film – although this is probably due to the variable quality of the labs being used. Ah well, I’ve still yet to find anywhere that beats Spectra in New York anyways so no surprise there.
The Botanical Gardens and parks have been my other major haunt for my time so far in Sydney. Yesterday it was an un-breezy 34 degrees so sitting in the shade of trees watching ibises (the plural of an ibis) dig in the ground with their strange curved beaks was pretty much the only thing that could be done. The botanical gardens are home to an amazing variety of flora and fauna – including a clipping from a pre-historic tree that only exists in Australia, and the amasing group of bats who live in the trees. Every night the bats, which have a wing span of about a metre in most cases, fly between the park and centennial square to feed. This mass exodus formed an amazing backdrop to the classical concert that was held in the gardens yesterday, especially as the bats were fighting a strong cross wind – definately an experience to remember. Almost as much an experience as ending up down the Arq club with Sharon and her friends and being wedged in amongst 200 topless be-muscled guys – good music, but not exactly my ideal choice of dancing companions. One guy did like my dancing though so that was nice…hmm.
Right – I’m off back down the beach to continue my slow (and preferably un-burnt) transition away from paleness.
Shampoo Planet – Douglas Coupland. The second of Coupland’s novels covers the teenagers who grew up in our information and brand soaked age, as opposed to Generation X which covered their older relatives. Coupland, as usual, has fashioned a highly readable and idiosyncratic story rich in modern brand trappings. His characters are intense, crazy and brand aware to extremes that sometimes make you wonder if such people do exist – however Coupland always makes you believe they do, somewhere. Good read.
Genome: The Autobiography of the Species in 23 Chapters – Matt Ridley. This amazing book, which I picked up at Fopp in London for three quid, is a must read. Well written and informative the author covers a lot of the current understanding of genetics in light of the Human Genome mapping project amongst other things. Obviously there is a lot to cover, so Ridley focusses on some of the more interesting aspects of genetic knowledge, both medical and social – every page contains some fact or other that will fascinate you and make you the delight of dinner parties everywhere. Maybe.
I (don’t) want my MTV
Just realised that I seem to have so much time in each day to fill with fun stuff at the moment. Why? Because I never turn a frikkin’ television on. Just goes to show how much time you waste with that I guess.
Today’s non-televisual distraction was mostly a visit to the famous Bondi Beach. Have to say, that although I did have a wonderful time sitting watching people job along (mostly the girls obviously) and the lifeguards do their training I was, overall, a bit disappointed. I kind of expected something more than what seemed like a sunnier, sandier version of Plymouth! I guess I’ve been lucky enough to go to some wonderful beaches around the world, especially in Culebra off Puerto Rico, so now other beaches can seem a bit of a let down. Ah well.
That aside – finally saw the famous opera house which was pretty cool. Also went to a great exhibition of Australian artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Plus wandered around way too much in my flip flops somy feet are killing me!
Way down under
So I’ve been in Australia for twelve hours now and still have yet to fall off the bottom of the planet. Amazing thing that gravity.
Staying at the Bakpack/CB hotel in Sydney for my first night ever south of the equator. Didn’t get much sleep on the way down from Hong Kong so feeling a bit wobbly. Sydney is so far reminding me of a mellow cross between middle America and England, with lots of sun. Bought myself a cheap, chipped mobile and caught up with Pablo for a few pints of local brew.
A lovely dinner in Pablo and Judith’s back garden included free entertainment with a small troupe of ring tailed possums playing in the trees. The spider situation was brought to a front burner however when one decided to pounce upon Judith’s back making her more than slightly distraught. Luckily it turned out not to be one of the more deadly ones. What is it about Australia and worrisome creatures?
Right… now I’m off to see which way the toilets swirl when flushed.
It’s evil, but I love it!
Just sitting watching Harry Potter II on dodgy DVD o’vision… For the measly sum of HK$150 (about 13 quid) in the Temple Street market I bought the first three star wars, harry potter II, die another day, lord of the rings 2 and a chinese movie. Out of these, only Did Another Day doesn’t work at all and Harry Potter is in fact a screening copy so it is perfect quality. Lovely.
Today I moved rooms again – this time staying with Sarah who’s out here on secondment for a bit. This is out in Kennedy Town which is an ex-pat haven on the far east of Hong Kong island. Lovely apartment with great views over the water – spent a happy few hours this morning just watching the boats go in and out. We also had to help Pascal, a friend of Sarah’s, get himself onto a plane to Tanzania as his ticket had been stolen on the way down from Shanghai!! After a lot of fuss and bother with the ticket office and a quick run to the airport express he made the plane OK to go see his wife and kid – phew!
Having dropped Pascal off I grabbed the number 6 bus across the island to Stanley market. This bus route has amazing views across both the city and the coast on the other side. We passed Repulse Bay and came to Stanley where on leaving the bus entered the market. Stanley Market is nothing special – hugely touristy and nowhere near as much fun as Temple Street market. Quickly wandered through and found a lovely quiet little beach where I sat and sunbathed for a bit watching people windsurf in the bay. This wonderful little beach is in stark comparison to the seafront on the north side of the market – a crassly commerical zone populated with chains and pseudo English/Australian/Italian pubs. A lot of people seemed to be enjoying it though, including a lot of young lads carefully posing their girlfriends in suitably scenic manners. Pretty sunset helped make up for the rest though.
The bus back was uneventful, with a brief stop off at Repulse Bay – a gorgeous expanse of sand and the end of the sunset. Back in town met up with Sarah and friends next to D’Aguilar street. D’Aguilar is Hong Kong’s touristy drinking spot – much like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, or any other touristy drinking spot worldwide – apart from the lack of beer smell that is. Hong Kong is very, very clean and almost entirely without extreme smells – except for occaisional fishyness.