Dave Harding’s Blog

Not that I’m any expert in survival, but I thought I’d better make a list of supplies you need if you’re gonna travel. I’m getting around with a relatively tiny 50 litre rucksack, plus a small day-sack, and most other ‘packers have at least 70 litre sacks. I’m small though, which is my excuse.

Stuff you really need:
1. A torch. This is a critical bit of kit for getting into your hostel room when people are sleeping. You need it to find your washbag, taking out your contact lenses when drunk, camping, and when you misjudged the time it would take to do that walking trail and end up doing the last 5 KM in the dark. Keep it in your daysack.

2. A pillowcase: these make great laundry bags, and you definitely need one. They’re soundless, again good when everyone in your dorm is asleep. You won’t wake them up with a rustling carrier bag. Thanks Sarah, you were totally right about this.

3. A hoodie: essential and pretty obvious. Makes a nice pillow if nothing else.

4. A smaller day-rucksack: you WILL need a second sack for carrying around your hoodie, water, maps, camera and food. Don’t skimp on the size either, 25L absolute minimum. I’m still kicking myself for bringing my little one when I have a much better Berghaus one at home.

6. A lighter. I really need to buy one. Although a lot of hostels use electric hobs in the kitchens (awful!), some have gas and invariably the igniters are broken. Also useful when camping for obvious reasons.

7. A small medical kit. Include scissors, nail clippers, plasters, diarrhoea pills, aspirin, cold and flu stuff, and assorted stuff you’re a fan of. Tea tree oil is a very good idea because it heals ANYTHING, and mosquito repellant…well, important if you’re camping.

8. A pen and notebook. Always carry this in your daysack. Infinite uses.

9. An *unlocked* mobile. 3 UK is not the same as 3 Aus, your locked handset will not take an Australian PAYG SIM even on the same network. You can get your phone unlocked here for $40, at a shop in Sydney. A local phone is critical if you’re looking for work, and also important for booking hostels in advance. If you’ve got a handset which runs Google Maps, Bejeweled and Facebook, so much the better. Google Maps has saved my bacon more than once.

10. Earplugs! I nearly forgot - these are also essential. I can’t count the number of snorers I’ve shared dorms with. I forgot how loud people can snore without waking themselves up - they rattle the window panes! Also useful on the bus, plane and any places where people can be annoying. Conversations between Americans are often at earsplitting volumes are always conducted right outside dorm room doors. Carry earplugs in your daysack.

Assorted tips:

Keep your daysack clipped to your bed at night. Then you can reach your earplugs, phone+earphones (you need choons when other people are screwing), and to get to your bathroom supplies.

Be a member of VIP Hostels, the card is an all-purpose discount card which works in loads of places. Most aquariums and zoos have offered substantial discounts when asked. Sometimes the admission is anything up to $25 and I’ve blagged $10 off. Totally worth it.

Some hostels don’t provide plates, cups and cutlery unless you hire it. Either have your own or be prepared to stump up for a set. Some hostels even keep pots and pans behind the reception desk and you have to go and ask for each item you need. Very irritating, but they’d only get nicked if they didn’t.

Try to buy canned food with ring-pulls on the cans. Lots of hostels have bench-mounted can openers, but if they don’t, there won’t be a can opener for miles.

Another useful thing to have is a locking tupperware box for food spares. It’s tricky to cook for just one person, so you can store leftovers. A stock of elastic bands is also wicked handy for tying up your rice and pasta bags. Those feckers get everywhere.

Travel towels are okay. Mine folds up to nothing and takes up no space, it dries in no time and is very light. On the downside, you feel like you’re drying yourself with a tablecloth. Carrying a normal towel is much more luxurious but they’re not small and dry slowly. Discuss.

A compass is useful for British travellers. Nothing fancy, my souvenir compass (thanks Sarah!) has come in very handy. We Brits do get confused in grid cities, where NSEW directions are the only way to get around. I’m not the only pom who finds this - our methods of navigating our tangled, senseless cities (by landmark and waypoint) don’t work so well in places like Brisbane. You’re often going 180 degrees the wrong direction. Simplicity can be confusing. Perhaps I’m just an idiot?

If you’re a big drinker, you’ll love Australia and the whole backpacking scene. In this case, the above tips apply doubly. Everyone’s sick of the pisshead crashing into the dorm at 4am, turning on the lights, bawling into their mobile, falling over stuff on the floor and leaving the door open. Seriously, get lost. I’m going to stab the next one in the face.

Frenh people smoke in the kitchen.  Punch them.

Anyway that’s enough for now, I might write some more at a later date. If someone asks. Thanks for reading.

Yes I’m still in Perth and it’s still cold!  After four weeks of luxury, I’ve moved out of Chrissie’s house in the ‘burbs as she’s moving to the east coast to start a new life in government accountancy.  It’s been quiet and comfortable and I’m very grateful for being put up for free for nearly a month. So, it’s back to the hostel life!  I hit Woolworths* today and stocked up on food, and I’ll need to remember how to cook.  The job search is ongoing, but I hope to work the reception desk at the hostel in exchange for lodgings, so at least that’ll keep my outgoings down for a while.  I’ve had one shift’s work unloading shipping containers at a distribution warehouse, which has helped.

I’ve registered with ten agencies now, and applied for any number of jobs in the newspaper, but it seems Whinging Poms are not popular - especially on working holiday visas!  Employers tend to be skeptical about backpackers claiming they want six months’ work, as apparently most of them disappear after three weeks.  And of course, there’s the global recession to worry about, so most jobs go straight to True Blue Aussies.

Anyhoo, what can I tell you about Perth?  Well, as my roommate said, it’s the “city that sleeps”.  The main social districts are allegedly Northbridge and Subiaco, but I tell you what, the latter is totally overhyped.  Nothing but closed shoe shops, and the two bars I could find that were open only appeared to be open to people in suits.  NOT welcoming at all.  On the upside I did find a bar near the railway station entrance which had a live band on and sold Peroni, albeit at over $9 a pint.

Northbridge is much better, but even so there are more pubs in Worcester town centre than here in Perth.  There doesn’t seem to be a main drag of drinking joints, but they are at least within walking distance.  This is definitely more of a restaurant town.
Perth sleeps.  The majority of pubs are only open Thurs-Fri-Sat…not even Sunday.    Huge numbers of places are closed midweek which means you’re stuck indoors watching TV or reading.  The people here seem to be either construction labourers OR white collar accountants, or lawyers, but nothing else.  You either wear a hi-vis or a pinstripe suit.  I’ve not seen any girls wearing informal clothes except the backpackers, of which there are precious few during winter.

I envy you swines in the UK enjoying your heatwave.  It’s freakin’ COLD here!  My hostel room is at the shady end of the building too, so it’s especially nippy!  The upside is that the hostel is quiet at this time of year, so I don’t have to fight for pots and pans in the kitchen!

Tomorrow’s itinerary consists of getting up, getting some training on reception, then back to the job hunt.  Wish me luck!

*Woolworths in Australia is actually a Tesco-esque supermarket, and still in business!

But I aint complaining.  I’m a fair way down south so it gets pretty cold at night, but the climate is still predictable enough to let us plan for a barbecue.  Last night’s was good fun.  I’m staying here with a pommie friend, Christina, and her chap Mick in the suburb of Midland, on the far fringes of Perth.  They’ve made me very welcome and I have some great creature comforts here.   Perth city centre is about 20 minutes away by train, and the public transport is really excellent here.

Perth is a huge city by my standards, and very spread out.  In the state of West Australia there are 1.8 million people, 1.3 million of which live in Perth and it’s surrounding districts.  It sounds normal enough, but when you realise the UK and Germany will fit into WA several times over, it becomes clear that this neck of the woods is virtually uninhabited.  It’s huge.

Perth itself has some nice old buildings, including a mock-Londonesque shopping mall called London Gate.  It’s right in the centre of the CBD and pretty cute, but couldn’t possibly be a slice of London.  It’s been planned out for a start!  The local rag, the West Australian, is full of jobs so I’m hopeful I might find something in the next week or so.  I’ve applied for several jobs but my only lead has come from the agency Manpower, who looked after me very well for three years back home.
So far I’ve been to the AQWA Aquarium, Fremantle and it’s market and “Cappuchino strip”, King’s Park, and had a $9 pint in Subiaco, the glitzy district.  Luckily Halifax let me transfer a chunk of money into my Aussie bank account so I won’t starve for another week, at least.  We had a barbecue at Christina’s place last night, met a couple of cool people and ate loads of meat.

I still mean to visit Rottnest Island and stroke a Quokka.  I’ll take photos if I meet one!
Until next time…

Hi folks!  Well it’s about time I updated my blog.  I think the last post was from work-haven Mackay, which seems like a lifetime ago.

Since then I’ve moved north, clubbed in beautiful Airlie Beach and Cairns, driven 1900 miles to Darwin in a Transit motorhome, camped in Kakadu national park with some French peeps, and I’ve flown down south now to Perth.  It’s involved some serious driving and some great times.  Several nights in Cairns and Darwin have been spent with German crowds filling my travel journal with vulgar, but hilarious, German phrases.  I’ve been hanging out with travel buddy Philipp, an extremely decent guy from a town south of Berlin.   Also in Cairns I made friends with the adorable, pint-sized guitar hero Anja, who I’m convinced will shoot to fame once she gets home.  Mainly because she’s stunning.
I now have a shiny replacement camera thanks to JB HiFi Cairns, who shipped the replacement from the northeast corner of Australia down to the southwest corner in the space of 4 days!  Skydiving was fantastic, a great way to cheer myself up after a rotten time on Fraser Island, stuck camping with some vile characters.  Luckily the excellent NEXT Backpackers hostel in Hervey Bay (where camping tours to Fraser launch from) is run by a pleasant fella who fed me free beer in exchange for signing up for the dive with him.
Phillip and I also hired a car in Cairns, and drove up to Cape Tribulation and Port Douglas, before our epic/opportune trip across the outback to Darwin.  In Douglas I managed to hook up with my stepbrother Lloyd, who I found thanks to a series of convenient coincidences.  Port Douglas is utterly gorgeous, I’m very jealous that he secured work there!   

Anyhow, a bit about Australia. This is the land of barbecues and the V8 Supercars Championships, of tourism and backpacking, of surfing and skydiving.  I tried to make lists of stuff I love and hate:

Australia Rocks

People stop their cars to let you cross roads
Queensland gets 300 days of sunshine a year
HSV Clubsport 327, Ford Falcon XR8, lots of lovely ozzie cars!  Utes!
Public free to use barbecues.  Everywhere.
Lagoon Parks…with barbecues
Walking trails everywhere
No graffiti, clean streets!  Or council-sponsored graffiti to colour things up.
Brothels are legal.  
Koalas! Kangaroos!  Quaggas!  They’re real and hilarious.
Toohey’s Extra Dry, a beer as good as Julbrew.  Top Quality. And $9.50 a jugful at Melaleuca hostel in Darwin.
Canned drinks are bigger than our 330Ml
Roads are straight and wide, parking everywhere, usually free!  You can see for 2-3 miles so you know overtaking is safe.  We Brits can’t make straight roads to save our lives.
Internet cafe’s everywhere
Free zoos, free parks, boardwalks and fitness equipment on the streetside.
Termite mounds.  They get up to 7 metres tall.  Spectacular.
Aussie people: “G’day mate, how ya goin?”
They maximise on coastal beauty.  Every town has a coastal Esplanade (Promenade) with a long walking trail, and it’s usually where the lagoon park is, where the backpackers and locals come to picnic and swim.  In Cairns, there is even free live music.
Hostels are super popular, and cheap to stay in. 

Australia Sucks
Well, actually it doesn’t.  But I HAD to think of some downsides so as to make this less depressing for folks at home.

Chocolate is phenominally expensive: $2.50 for a Mars bar.  Ouch.
School uniforms are laugh-out-loud ridiculous
Mosquito bites.  I’m still scratching and bleeding a week after Kakadu :o( 
It’s full of 18-year-old backpackers getting shitfaced and keeping everyone awake. This is actually not a good thing, because there’s only so many drinking games you can play with idiots who can’t clean up after themselves or cook anything but noodles.

So far my favourite spot has been Airlie Beach.  It doesn’t actually have much of a beach, but has a stonking lagoon park, great sunsets, bbq’s everywhere.  I had a great time clubbing here with a German friend, Ronny.  We teamed up to chat up Dutch and Swedish girls (awesome fun even if we didn’t get anywhere) and danced our asses off in Mama Africa’s.  I didn’t have the money for the Whitsunday cruise-don’t yell at me-but did soak up some of the local beauty of the Whitsunday Pass from the lookouts in the Conway National Park, on a good walking trail.

I spent a week or so in Cairns, backpacker central on the east coast.  I stayed at shabby but extremely social hostel Asylum ($90 a WEEK!) and living here is cheap due to the free food peddled by the local bars:  Woolshed, Rhinobar and a couple more.  Another thing they do here in Oz is drinking games and quizzes in the pubs, where you can win free beers, or jugs or beer, or money, by depraving yourself in all sorts of ways.  This worked well in Darwin where my French, German and Israeli camping friends teamed up, and we won top prize, a $75 bar tab.
We got drunk.  Sometimes I wonder how I remember to get my contact lenses out.
Very drunk.

Anyway as I said I’m now in Perth, West Australia, where it’s colder but still pleasant.  I’m staying with Christina, one of Sarah’s travel friends, in the suburb of Midland.  The work situation is a lot more convincing here, the local newspaper jammed with offers.  Perth is a very big and spread out city but the trains and public transport is excellent, I’m looking forward to holing up here for six months.

Once the summer approaches and I have money in the bank, perhaps I can buy or lease-hire a monster car and drive the Great Ocean Road, and then on into New Zealand.
  Must save up for an Aussie car.  Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) and Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) are very Aussie brands and output some smashing looking pre-modded motors.

I did indeed hire a Holden Astra in Mackay with Angela and Ed, two UKers who appeared in Larrikin Lodge at Mackay.  We drove out in the morning, spent the whole day doing walking trails and swam at the bottom of a waterfall.  A pretty cool day out, with  great company, and even better when I went to see the new Star Trek with a crazy swedish guy, Anton, who drove like a loon :o).  Fantastic film!

I then hopped up to Airlie Beach and checked into the YHA.  Airlie is a smashing town, totally clean and tourist-centric, although there actually isn’t much of a beach!  Like a lot of coastal towns they have a beautiful public lagoon park, an a long esplanade (promenade, brits!) which I walked 8KM to nearby Cannonvale harbour.  Here I met up with Ronny and Stan who I shared a dorm with, and we went clubbing at Mama Africa’s and Magnums.  We make a good team, chatting up girls although we only made friends.  Ronny and Stan both need jobs in a hurry, and while I’m desperate not to, I’ve decided to attack my life savings to survive.  Perhaps I’ll find work in chilly Melbourne instead, as there’s nothing up north!

Ronny, Stan and myself also went walking in Conway National Park and State Forest, doing the treks to Swamp Bay and Coral Beach.  Both are stone and coral beaches, with ancient coral crunching and tinkling underfoot.  Not so good for sunbathing and snorkelling, but we did try.  We took photos of some crazy spiders and fungi; the plantlife seems to get ever more diverse in tropical north Queensland!

It was sad to leave those guys behind, but after some great nights out, I hopped the Premier bus up to Cairns.  I’m missing out on Mission Beach and the tiny fruit-pickers town of Bowen, but the season hasn’t kicked off yet so I’d be spending hostel fees for nothing.

Here in Cairns I’m staying at Asylum, a…errr…basic but very cheap hostel on Minnie St and Grafton St, a ten minute walk into town.  We get free food at 2-3 pubs in town, and tonight is Mad Monday: $10 for a t shirt, free internet for a week, free food, free shots, free beer and about 4 clubs.  Should be a bit crazy but the whole hostel is going!
Cairns also has a Lagoon park, which is pretty awesome.  I met up with Phillip (from Byron) and Johanna (Mackay) here in Cairns and spent yesterday playing frizbee, baking in the sun and swimming.  There’s also some live music in the park at weekends, and new friends Anja, Folkert and Philip all play guitar which has led to some cool nights here at the hostel and in the park.  Oh, and outside McDonalds last night!

Today’s plan is to get my camera replaced and hit the lagoon, and perhaps try some of this Ferrero Rocher ice cream!

Byron sounds like months ago now, I think I’ve got some updates to make! I’ve been staying at a homely hostel in Mackay, haivng registered with the work agencies and done some labouring for Moscow Circus and on a fishing trawler, unloading frozen prawns from the -30c boat freezer :o)
I’m not having a lot of luck finding 6 months of steady work though, and money is running out a lot faster than I’d imagined.
Mackay is a lot nicer than Rockhampton: not so spread out and the town centre is a little livelier, but I do find myself reading a lot at the hostel. There isn’t much to do in the daytime, but banter with Bob the jovial hostel owner, and drink beer.
I’ve been here a couple weeks and am starting to think I’d better secure work elsewhere and move on. That said Bob has been excellent and finds work for people. Hiring a car and driving out to Eungella national park is still top of the list of things to do here, and between three people this is the cheapest and best thing to do.
Back to the jobhunt…more soon!

I moved to the YHA hostel as promised, which was well nice.  I met some guys on the sun patio, who were sharing my dorm: Vaughan, Hiro and Sally.  We had a few beers, went to Cheeky Monkeys, ate $5 mexican food, I won a free drink on the pub quiz game thing, and watched people dance on the tables.  Scared off two english girls who sat down by me.  Epic fail!
All in all, a good night!  Next morning I hopped the 8:30 bus to Brisbane, successfully beat my way across town on the woefully-underpublicised train, and fetched my bank card from the post office in time to make the 2pm bus north up to Hervey.

The hostel in Hervey is beautiful, very clean, quiet and polished.  I’m having a good time drinking with the owner for free, and off on a skydive today.  Another post soon to tell youse about the 4×4 self-drive tour on Fraser Island..gotta go!

The Nimbin Tours bus dropped us off back in Byron Bay, a popular backpacker magnet.  Apparently there are more backpackers here per square foot than anywhere in Australia.   I can believe it, the Greyhound and Premier buses pour dozens of them onto the tarmac every hour.

We’d had a good ride back from Uki, the bus arrived spot on time and provided a great tour commentary all the way from when they first picked us up here in Byron.  $26 well spent, I think!
Byron isn’t a bustling city like Sydney, it’s a quirky little place with loads of great eateries, live music in the market park of which I have a video (www.groo.co.uk/travelvids) and at the Railway Inn, where we saw some great live jazz.  There is a popular walking route along the surfer-filled beaches up to the lighthouse.  Built in 1901 and still functional, it’s a pretty white building thrashed by wind.  There’s a further walking path back down to the beach, and we had a great stomp with a hokey pokey ice cream.

Back in town we socialised in the hostel kitchen, which has vintage arcade machines and hammocks outside!  I’m just now uploading some pics to facebook which show you another thing I quite like about Oz in general: tastefully painted traffic control boxes, railway signal boxes and suchlike.  A chap I met in Brisbane showed me some astounding photos of graffiti he’d taken in the suburbs and along railway lines; apparently local government subsidises it, and it leads to colourful welcomes for commuters and tourists.

Backpacker-owned camping vans are also often painted up, one here with a hungover-looking Ren and Stimpy on the side.  Australia’s pretty colourful!

I missed my bus today, damn hot chocolate.  I was heading up to Brisbane and connecting onwards to Hervey Bay.  So, one more night in Byron won’t hurt me, and I get to check out the mexican takeaway nearby.  I’ve  moved to the YHA hostel just across from the bus stop which is quite expensive at $33 a night, but at least you don’t have to pay extra for anything.  Otherwise I’ve stayed at Backpacker’s Inn on the Beach, which certainly was on the beach!  It was a good place to be, the vintage arcade machines won me over.

It’s a long haul to Hervey but I should have enough time in Brisbane to stock up on food and collect my bank card from the post office, although by now I expect they’ve returned it.  Agh!

ONWARDS!  Bwahahahahaaaa!

I was right, Brisbane sucked.  After a bunch of binge drinkers kept me up until 5am bawling at traffic and playing drinking games on the balcony outside my window, I demanded a refund and cut my stay short.

Note to travellers:  DO NOT STAY at the Base Backpackers called Palace, outside Central Station in Brisbane.  It’s a hellhole and the staff have the “we have your money, we don’t give a shit” attitude.  You even have to pay extra for cutlery.  A lot of hostels do that and I hate it.  I ended up screaming the dickheads off the roof myself, the spineless staff couldn’t do it.

Anyway, rant over.  I fleed Brisbane down to Coolangatta, a small twin-town a couple hours south.  I stayed two nights as it’s a fairly quiet place, and moved on to meet my hiking buddy from Wentworth Falls, Kristina, in Coffs Harbour.

Coffs is a good place, the weather turned good and we cooked awesome Kangaroo steaks on my hostel, the excellent YHA halfway across town.  We saw the Big Banana (but it was night time, raining and it was locked!), and walked around the botanical gardens in the rain.  Both of us got mobbed my leeches - yes, literally - and Tina squealed hilariously when I had to pluck them off her leg!  Too small to burn off with a lighter.  Thanks for the warning, Mr Groundskeeper!  It is a huge and impressive garden, on the other hand.

From Coffs Harbour we bussed down to Byron Bay and onto a connecting bus operated by Nimbin Tours, which took us out to the hippy town of Nimbin.
I was somewhat expecting Nimbin to stink of weed (given its reputation) and thusly be full of gringo parties getting wasted, but was pleasantly surprised with a gorgeous YHA with a nice pool, stunning sunshine, a hippy museum full of cut-up VW Camper Vans (best way for ‘em to be…in pieces) and some truely excellent philosophical graffiti.

We spent a night in Nimbin, a much better and cheaper option than a day trip I must say, and the tour bus took us along to the tiny one-street village of Uki, which was used for logging the camfur (or is it cedar) wood forests.  We stayed in a huge tent on a campsite miles from anywhere, but luckily the staff were kind enough to pick us up from the bus stop and take us back there.

Uki is a place from which to visit Mount Warning, a Bundjalung aboriginal sacred volcano used for the elder’s “Men’s Business” rituals.  The abos don’t like you to climb it, but that didn’t stop the tourist councils building a set of viewing platforms at the summit.

You do have to earn your keep though, in that you have to climb a sheer rock face aided only by a hanging chain, to get to the summit.  On a clear day it’s definitely worth it however, as you can see the mountain ranges surrounding which form the crater.  It’s a four-hour hike from the bottom.
We did cycle from the campsite to the base of the mountain, but this took us 3 hours despite being 5KM away.  Uphill.  Steep hills.  With a high-geared bike that was tough going, and by the time we got to the national park car park, we were pooped.  We stashed our bikes in a shed and started the hike, and it was pitch dark while we were still 2.2KM up the side of the mountain.  Good thing I brought my maglite along, and thanks to the glowworms, we found our way back.  Cycling down the steep hill with my torch in my mouth was treacherous and probably ranks as the #45 most dangerous thing I’ve ever done :o)

My neck still aches!

The hostel in Brisbane is so busy it could be a Police station.  The reception desk is rarely less than 3-layers deep.  Even the bar in the cellar is quieter despite the multi-kilowatt PA system.  I’ve booked a week there, $180, and realise I’ve actually spent my initial $1050 in less than a week.

Australia is expensive.  *EXTREMELY* expensive.  A Dairy Milk bar costs GBP1.50 here!

Brisbane itself is a clean, modern city, with bustling crowds and Hungry Jacks (Burger King) on every corner.  But try as I might, I can’t find a comedy club in the central business district.  In fact, for the first time, I’m finding myself wondering what the hell to do tonight, undoubtedly on my own since I’ve not been able to strike up a conversation with anyone.  The faceless bustle takes away the general interest people seem to have in other places.

Time to move north!