Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel – haruki murakami. An organisation that encrypts information by using people’s own brains? A professor and his plump, pink wearing daughter in a sound removed underground lab? The main hero is mid-30s, divorced and a bit of a loner with a habit of random sexual encounters with librarians? It could only be a Murakami book. This story reads a lot like Iain M Banks, although it transpires that Murakami wrote this long before the Internet was popular and before Banks got his act together to write quality sci-fi prose. With that background it makes the book even more impressive, with a very contemporary air. As usual, the ending is less than conclusive though, leaving you wanting much much more!
delusions of grandma – carrie fisher. Having read a few of Fisher’s books this one came as no real surprise. The story basically follows Fisher’s own pregnancy with some fictional elements woven around it. Her characters drip wit, especially the main character – ie, herself, and many lines are extremely funny. Ended up feeling a bit like the plot was grafted onto the funny one-liners though. Good holiday read.
Coastin’
Now down in the sunny town of Lorne, on the south coast of Victoria. One of the great things about Victoria is that its residents are Victorians, but none of them seem to be wearing bustles or starched collars – pretty much the opposite down here (which is much more entertaining in general). I’ve been driving around with Stephen and we’ve just gotten back from Ballarat, as mentioned in Oscar and Lucinda and home to much gold mining related tourism – the town’s a bit dull, but the tourist-tastic goldmine town recreation was pretty amusing.
Duct tape and cover
Just been getting lots of mails from people in New York and London about what’s happening up north. New York is currently snowed in under a major blizzard, as well as taping up their windows in case of terrorist gas attack. London is just cold and grey and reeling under Ken’s lovely congestion charge. Sigh. And as for the other major, English speaking white dominated country about to start world war three (ie, Australia) – it’s hot and sunny and noone seems to have a care in the world, especially as a large number of the local peace protests seem to involve heaploads of nudity – bless. Should try some of that myself to get rid of these unsightly tanlines…
I’m about to head off from Sydney, having enjoyed a splendid $5 steak meal at the Forrester hotel last night, with Melbourne being my next destination. Plan to do the coast road for a bit then hang out in Melbourne before I head over to New Zealand. The trip is going way too fast and, to be honest, I really don’t feel like heading back to the aforementioned cold armageddon stylings of the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile I checked out some of Tracey Emin’s latest ‘work’ at the Art Gallery of NSW – complete shite. Now I’m sorry if I offended a whole pile of art experts here who understand where she comes from with what she does, but it really is un-inspiring unless you aspire to produce bollox. On the other hand a retrospective of David Moore, an Aussie photographer, was wonderful – as was a collection of aboriginal art.
Snags and Green Wall
Just got back to the Arts Factory hostel in Byron Bay after a second Surfari trip. This time I left from Byron Bay rather than Sydney, which meant that I got an extra day down at Plombers Point. I’d been a bit disorganised before this trip and had actually driven down to Coffs Harbour (3 hours south of Byron Bay) to visit an old friend who lived there. This meant I had to get up at 3.30am and drive back up to Byron, drop off the hire car, then catch the Surfari bus at 8pm back down past Coffs Harbour (about 8 hours after I’d left it). Ah well. Did mean I got to see some beautiful early morning scenary – mist covered fields and surfers out for sunrise breaks.
This Surfari trip was completely different from the first one. This was due to a combination of knowing more about how things worked and the weather being absolutely amazing – good, solid waves for learning and for some amazing demonstrations of surfing prowess from the instructors. My surfing has now progessed from occasional standing on white water to some spectacular wipeouts on waves that seemed to tower above me as I tried to get on them. I’m hoping Sheep (aka Steve Shearer) managed to get some good video footage that I’ll see tonight at the finish party. Sheep is an extremely cool guy – very in to his yoga and surfing, as are all the instructors (Jack, Kurt, Rosco and Raine) – thanks to all of you for another great trip! Who knows, maybe I’ll do another yet before I leave Oz. On which note I now need to go and work out what’s next on the agenda…
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.
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.