42˚ South

Greetings from 42˚ south and the beautiful and rugged island of Tasmania.

I made the short fifty minute hop from Melbourne on Wednesday and arrived in the town of Launceston, second biggest town on the island after the state capital, Hobart.

Launceston, or ‘Lonnie’ as the locals refer to it, is an interesting place. After checking in at the imaginatively named Launceston Backpackers (suggested slogan ‘it’s twenty bucks a night for a reason’), I immediately took myself off for a walk around as it was getting on for six in the evening and I was hungry. The town itself is really just a collection of faceless streets and shopping arcades that you might find anywhere in Australia. ‘Seaport’, happily, is a different proposition however. Located on the seafront as the name suggests, it’s a quaint little area of town with parks, a yacht club and a scattering of seafood restaurants. It was at one of the restaurants that I now presented myself, looking far too shabby for its standards but not caring.

The Waterfront immediately gets a big thumbs up for its scallops Mornay which tasted like they had been landed just that very morning, for the simple reason that they probably had. Now being in Tassy (more local terminology), I decided to sample some of the wines that you won’t find on many lists outside of the island. Come this far south of the equator and you’re in serious Riesling and Pinot Noir territory, and Tasmania’s burgeoning wine industry does both with serious aplomb. I permitted myself a racy glass of the Josef Chromy ‘Zdar’ Riesling 2006 – a steely little citrus and Granny Smith number with real stony minerality at four years old. Complemented by the backdrop of Lonnie harbour and the gateway to Cataract Gorge on the far side, this was a place I could have happily sat for hours. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas and was closing in fast. I opted to quit while I was ahead, thanked the waitress and made my exit, just arriving back at the hostel as the heavens opened.

After trying to discern without success exactly what it was that had died in my room the previous night, I resolved to get an early night and get out and about first thing in the morning.  My Japanese roommates kindly assisted me in this regard, but their drunken wake-up call at half-past three was a bit earlier than I had actually had in mind.

Thankfully, at eight the next morning I got a call from Alison, food and beverage manager at Cradle Mountain Chateau saying she was in town and would I like a lift up the mountain. I was offered a job there while I was in Melbourne last week which I accepted and it’s here that you find me now, after having worked the last few days in the hotel’s a la carte restaurant Grey Gums (yes, you’re right – that is a crap name for a restaurant). It’s a good restaurant however, with a wine-list of over eighty percent Tasmanian wines and a small but dedicated staff. The hotel itself is very remote – in the centre of Cradle Mountain National Park, it’s a two-hour round trip to Launceston or Devonport and there is absolutely no mobile phone reception.

Since arriving, it’s been non-stop work (hello catering industry my old friend) but good fun in its own way, and Australia certainly looks after its hospitality staff. Once again, the surrounding country is fantastic – more rugged than beautiful – Tasmania has just shaken off the shackles of wintertime and many of the trees have no leaves and look almost as if they have recently been set alight. This high up on Cradle Mountain, fog coats the trees and hillsides every morning and it rains almost as much as it does back home. Summer is on its way however…

Interestingly for a ‘pommy’ like myself, we have a few non-fee paying residents that forage in the hotel grounds – namely Wallabies, Possums and Tasmanian Devils  – the possums are the ones to look out for. ‘Petey’ lives by the bins and ‘Little-black’ lives on the porch of the staff house, although I’m yet to be introduced. Possums are apparently particularly adept at getting inside wheelie bins and we’ve all been told  when taking out the rubbish to give the bin a swift kick in case there’s anything lurking inside - Possums like high places and when confronted with the choice between remaining in the bin or climbing all over the nearest human being, they reputedly opt for the latter more often than not - I have been warned. I’ve also been told that come summertime a few more ‘locals’ will appear on the paths and boardwalks, but these will be of the cold-blooded, sun-seeking variety and I’d rather not think about that if it’s all the same to you.

Working the restaurant this week has been its usual baptism of fire. A case of getting stuck in, rolling one’s sleeves up and other clichés. The job is one I’m very familiar with but up until yesterday I found myself relying on Glen, the restaurant manager, to solve a few things – ‘Where are the decanters? Where are the corkscrews? What time do we close? Where does the venison come from? Where can table two get hold of a bottle of the pinot they’re drinking?’

I’m now up to speed and it’s a bloody good thing – last night, Glen and I served 56 diners between us. Hard work, but the hours sail by and at the end of the night, a diner invited me to try his bottle of Yalumba’s 2006 ‘The Menzies’ Cabernet – the one wine I had had my eye on since arriving. You can get it in the UK but expect to pay around £25 to £30. A typically blockbusting, ‘you’ll enjoy this sir, one glass and you’ll be absolutely shitfaced’ sort of Cabernet with heady aromas of cassis, menthol and something quite medicinal. The palate delivered in much the same way with more juicy, ripe blackcurrants, a streak of eucalyptus, vanilla and just a hint of some earthy notes developing. Powerful and with a very long finish it will last for several years to come.

If you see a bottle, buy it for a special occasion and have it alongside a rare fillet steak or loin of venison as my guest did last night.

Excuse me now, it’s my day off but there’s just been a knock on my door…

Adelaide to Melbourne

And here I am at the end of an eventful week that began in Adelaide and has ended in Melbourne. You find me stealing free internet (if that’s possible?...) in Federation Square in central Melbourne.

On Sunday, I ignored several people’s warnings and jumped on a plane to Adelaide to look for a job. I should have listened – there’s nothing there. Well, that’s not strictly true I suppose. Let’s see – there’s the Adelaide Oval (but there was no cricket on so that doesn’t count), a couple of mildly diverting Australiana museums to do with the history of South Australia, a pleasant riverbank upon which to stroll and, if you’re a wine geek like me, there is the National Wine Centre.

Now let’s make this perfectly clear - The National Wine Centre in Adelaide is very well done, but even I only managed to spend two hours there and if you’re not quite as into Vinis Vitifera as I am, you’d probably struggle to fill an hour - Hardly worth getting on a plane for. They have one of the original (now 150 year old) vines to be brought to Australia, interactive face-to-face exchanges with winemakers such as the legendary Wolf Blass of the eponymous winery, regular tasting sessions, a huge collection of wine labels from all over the country, and finally, their own vineyard (although it seemed that you had to be Julia Gillard to get outside and see it, and I just didn’t cut the mustard with officious receptionist). After a token ‘I’m not going to buy anything because it’s all over-priced and you know it’ browse through the shop, I made my exit and headed back to the city.

Walking now through the main shopping district, I have to say that Adelaide city centre reminded me a bit of an over-sized Stockport – full of pedestrianised streets and indoor shopping centres with shops like Starbucks and Lush (complete with its signature organic soap stench – yes, it’s the same the world over). Now it’s bad enough that there’s one Stockport, never mind a bigger version on the other side of the world.

On returning to the YHA, I found I had gained two roommates.

EXHIBIT A – English man in his fifties, talking to himself/at anyone who came within earshot. Had spread the entire contents of his suitcase out on his bed and was in possession of a quite frankly world-class collection of used carrier bags.

EXHIBIT B – ‘Dave’, a 28 year-old Aussie chef, whom I instantly group into the category of ‘drifter’ rather than ‘backpacker’. I cook dinner with him but make sure he tastes the food before I do.

During the night Exhibit A returns to the room and switches the light on. It’s 2am. Exhibit B immediately leaps of the top bunk, narrowly missing my head and starts effing and blinding at Exhibit B. Cue much shouting and fighting over the light switch. I remain under my sheets and pretend to be asleep. I would be more likely to get some sleep during a napalm strike.

Feeling refreshed from my four and a half hours sleep, I return to the city the next morning and find more of the same. There aren’t any jobs and the place is beginning to depress me. I finally heed several pieces of advice given to me earlier in the week, book a flight to Melbourne for first thing in the morning and return to the YHA to spend the rest of the day watching movies and counting the hours until my flight.

As the sun rises over Adelaide on Tuesday morning I’m already at the airport. A plate of scrambled eggs, one Cappuccino, two espressos and a one hour flight later, I arrive in Melbourne and the state of Victoria.

Dumping my bags at the YHA, I waste no time and head straight out into the city, armed with several CVs and an air of determination. Result – the Southbank on the Yarra River is full to bursting with chic bars and trendy eateries – this is more like it. I hand out CVs to every single one and by the end of the day have five possible jobs lined up.

The following three days are spent working trial shifts at different establishments along the Southbank. First up is Pure South. They offer me the job and I tell them I’ll think about it - they’re a decent bunch of guys who know what they’re doing and it’s a nice restaurant. The owner Peter, however, could charitably be described as ‘a prick’ (sorry, Gran…) and I tell him I’ll get back to him. Next is The Meat and Wine Co. This one was a waste of time. Specialising in ridiculously-sized cuts of meat with your choice of chips, french-fries or thin-cut potato wedges, they’re really just an over-priced McDonalds with a highly un-original wine list and staffed entirely by kids.

Friday night is to be spent on trial at The Waiting Room, a bar for high-rollers at the Crown Casino. With a wine list of over 3,000 bottles topping out with the 1947 Domaine La Romanee Conti (yours for $70,000) and their head sommelier having recently been awarded the much-coveted title of National Sommelier of the Year, this seems like a pretty exciting option and I turn up half an hour early.

Then the phone rings. It’s a job offer with Cradle Mountain Chateau in Tasmania. It’s a good offer and I reason that I’ll probably never get the chance to go to Tasmania again so I accept, thank Will at The Waiting Room for the consideration and as it’s only four o’clock I head back into the city for a proper look around.

Melbourne is a very agreeable place and I’m glad to be spending the weekend here before Tasmania. Similar in size to Sydney, it has that exciting ‘big city’ feel to it. To me at least, the place feels European, with its chicly attired Victorians, bustling café culture and eclectic artsy crowd. The bars and restaurants spill out on to the pavements just as they do in Paris and Rome, there are several squares and sets of imposing steps where tourists and office-workers alike take their lunch, and several of the bridges put me in mind of the Thames – think Putney and London bridge. The city also has trams upon which there are plenty of languages spoken other than English, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a cloud. Put all of this together and the city has a very cosmopolitan ambience.

And this morning I was hoping to spend a productive day watching cricket at the MCG, but ironically enough, it’s raining.

So I wrote this instead.

Ripping on the south coast...

So here I am, back in Sydney after a week of ‘ripping’, ‘getting smashed’ and other Surfing terminology too numerous to mention or recall.

Monday morning saw myself and a couple of recent acquaintances standing outside Sydney Central YHA in the drizzle waiting for a bus to take us two hours south of Sydney to a town called Gerroa for a week (well, four days) of ‘Surf Camp’. There were around thirty of us, all with varying degrees of incompetence when it came to staying on your feet on an eight-foot piece of floating fibreglass. Personally, I had never so much as set foot on a surfboard before in my life and was standing there wondering what I had let myself in for.

On arriving at camp, we were split into groups of five or six and given a room for the duration. Room 6 comprised myself, Chris (a fellow Englishman), Robin (German), Rico (Finnish) and Jordan (a stereotypically brooding Frenchman who insisted that the weather at this time of year was better in France).

We were then introduced to our instructors – five guys who fitted the bill of ‘Surf Coach’ to a T, ‘Shane-o’ in particular was tall, muscular, had wavy sun-bleached blonde surf hair and a contagious penchant for describing things as ‘sick’. He was the head coach.

Wetsuits (or ‘wetties’) were distributed immediately and everyone got changed and headed straight down to the beach. The patch of sand in question is known as ‘Seven Mile Beach’ (for obvious reasons) and is reputed to be one of the best beaches in Australia for a beginner learning to surf. Its suitability for the novice is apparently due to the fact that the land does not fall away abruptly - rather it slopes gently, allowing waves to form a long way from landfall and persist (or occasionally ‘reform’) until very near to the shoreline. This lazy, languid rolling of the surf results in waves that are not only easier to ‘catch’ but also easier to stay on.

God it was beautiful. Describing a graceful arc around the south New South Wales coast, Seven Mile Beach is as flat as it is long and the horizon is leant an impressionistic air due to the continuous spray rising from the surf. The vivid blues and greens of the Pacific, intensified here and there by the virginal white of the surf, shimmer with the light of the sun and lap sleepily at the pristine sand. Trees full of black cockatoos provide the background and the headland disappears into the distance, impossibly far but invitingly near. There is not another soul to be seen and only the occasional set of footprints betrays a recent visitor.

The first lesson begins with body boarding – essentially the first part of surfing where the surfer lies on the board on their front, spots a good wave, paddles furiously in order to generate speed to catch it and finally ‘pushes up’ with their hands and finishes in a sort of ‘beached seal’ sort of position.

After half an hour or so of this we were brought back to the beach to learn how to stand up on a wave. Gulp. After pushing up on your board, you stand up by using a specific series of leg movements. Back foot first, then front foot, crouch for two seconds and then finally stand, remaining slightly crouched and with arms out. If you have never surfed before but are considering it – trust me when I tell you that any other combination of movements or methods will result in you getting ‘smashed’ – the surfers’ endearingly literal description of being thrown from your board at the critical moment and engulfed in the wave you have just disrespected. It will turn you upside down and hit you repeatedly with your board, it will fill your nose with saltwater, it will make your friends laugh at you and after all this, it will dump you unceremoniously and headfirst into the sand.

Surfing looks easy on television. It isn’t. After the first two days I had only managed to stand up twice and was getting thoroughly fed-up with the whole business - the problem being that if you get smashed, the wave still takes you a long way towards the beach. You then spend the next few minutes paddling back out to get into position again and beginners probably catch fifteen or twenty waves each time before finally standing up on one.

Then Shane-o grabbed me and gave me the camera board – a board with a waterproof video camera mounted on the front end which records you and is then played back in front of everyone at dinner for coaching purposes.

‘Okay, here goes. Get this one right’ I’m thinking as I’m lying there.

‘PADDLE PADDLE PADDLE BRO!!!’ cries Shane as a wave looms large behind me.

I start paddling for all I’m worth and in an instant the wave is on top of me - all of a sudden the coaching kicks in.

‘Paddle three more times. Push up. Count - 1, 2. Back foot. Front foot. Crouch. Stand. Arms out. Shuffle.’

‘Turn bro, turn!’ comes the shout from Shane.

I rotate my torso forty-five degrees as we’ve been taught, looking where I want to go the whole time. I’m surfing across the wave and riding it for real – in a flash I’ve reached the beach.

‘WOO!! That was totally sick bro!’ yells Shane, ‘you were totally ripping!’ It’s probably smaller than any wave he’s ridden in the past five years, but it’s the first one I’ve ever really caught and I can’t hide my delight.

After this the surfing becomes about nothing other than turning on the wave – standing up is the minimum to hope for now and by the end of Thursday I am a complete convert. Everything is ‘sick’ and I start calling everyone ‘bro’ or ‘dude’. All I can think about now is where I can live so I can keep surfing.

If you are ever presented with the opportunity, try Surfing. Yes, the water’s cold to begin with, yes, it’s difficult and yes, it comes with a lot of stereotypes. But wetsuits are a great invention, practice makes perfect, and at the end of a hard day’s paddling, stereotypes cease to exist when confronted with individuality and friends were made quickly over six packs of Toohey’s, the barbecue and a mutual lack of talent on the water.

Will I be surfing again? You bet. Nothing beats that rush you get when you catch a wave just right and I’ll be searching for it for a long time to come. I started the week hoping for a mildly diverting week messing around in the sunshine and came away with a passion.

You little ripper!

On top of the world down under!

So the day is only a few hours old and already it's delivered in a big way. I've just come from a meeting with Kevin Mitchell, Chief Winemaker and proprietor of Kilikanoon Wines in the Clare Valley, just north of Adelaide - have a look - http://www.kilikanoon.com.au/.

Having been in contact for a few weeks before I arrived down under, today was the first chance we got to meet face to face - I was hoping he would come through with some work for the upcoming 2011 vintage -anything really, picking grapes, cleaning the cellar, making cups of tea and the like. Anyway, to cut a long story short I'll be working in the winery as one of his four assistants for a few months come the new year.

'Will I be picking grapes and so on?', I asked.
'Nah, we'll leave that to the guys in the vineyard', was the reply. 'You'll be racking, checking the ferment, tasting, keeping notes on the new wines, things like that'.
'Can I do a few days of grape-picking if I want to?'
'Sure, if you really want to, but you'll have your hands full at the winery - it's a seven day week, maybe with one day off a fortnight so we generally leave that to the guys in the vineyard'.
I was slightly taken aback and it was all I could do not to start grinning the Pyatt cheeky grin.
'Brilliant, count me in', I replied, with as much nonchalance as I could muster.

And he paid for breakfast - what a nice guy.

So back to matters at hand, and to another thing that delivers in a big way - Sydney - let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first.

The Harbour Bridge - everything that has been said about it is an understatement as it would be impossible to hyperbolise about its grandeur and majesty. The size really stopped me in my tracks - visible above and between buildings from about two-thirds of the way down George St, it dominates the harbour in a serious fashion. With two huge Australian flags on top and with not very much of Australia to its east, this bridge would not be more of a gateway to the country if it said in huge letters, 'G'DAY COBBER, THIS IS BLOODY AUSTRALIA'.

The opera house both complements and contrasts with the bridge. Infinitely smaller, it more than makes up for its lack of size with elegance and flair of design, a permanent armada of sailing boats at the harbour's edge acting as a nod to the country's maritime history.

Yesterday I donned the running shoes and headed out around the streets to see the rest of the city in the best way I know. Hyde Park was quiet and understated, with immaculately kept lawns, a gently flowing fountain and the elegant, orange-hued serenity of St Mary's Cathedral providing the backdrop.

Continuing on towards the water front, I headed through the Botanical Gardens, ran past the various exotic flora, down to the harbour and back up to the hostel - grateful for once that it takes a very long time in Sydney for pedestrians to cross any major thoroughfare - It seems that a) summertime is trying to arrive early and b) I'm perhaps not as fit as I'd like to think.

Right where's the nearest bar?...

3 days in...

Let’s see…

Wines tasted? Zero.

Beers drunk? A few.

Vodkas drunk? A few too many.

Hours of sleep? Still not enough.

Famous bridges visited? None.

So after recovering from my Jetlag on Monday, I was feeling reasonably with it on Tuesday morning for orientation at the Work and Travel Company. Enter Chris, a guy from York who I met at the office.

‘You fancy a couple of beers tonight Ally?’

He didn’t mean a ‘couple’ of beers, he meant a few rounds of vodka with some Germans, followed by several beers and vodkas at the local cattle market known as ‘The Gaff’.

And so it was that on Wednesday morning I woke up what you might call ‘a bit of a thick head’ after having got to bed around 4am, thus eradicating the benefits of Monday’s sleep-fest.

After staggering to Breakfast and drinking my bodyweight in water I rewarded myself with a few more hours of slumber and woke again around lunchtime, convincing myself that it was the time difference that was messing with my head rather than the recent and wilful destruction of brain cells.

Right, I thought, time to try and achieve something with the day by updating my profile online. I duly spent the next hour entering my entire life history and checking and re-checking before saving it on the agency website.

Or so I thought. Just before pressing ‘save’, my computer decided that it didn’t trust the internet connection I had been using all week and made the frankly rash decision to shut it down and all work was lost.

After retrieving my laptop from the pavement two storeys below, I went through the whole process again, this time saving every five minutes. Success!

Tedious work completed I had a brief conversation with my Grandfather via Skype (I know, I know…) and then with Brett, a friend of a friend who works freelance for a few wineries in New Zealand and is sorting out some work in the new year. Cue funny looks all round as Brett and me try to have a conversation and I realise the connection isn’t working properly and to all intents and purposes, I’m just talking to myself.

Resolve to get up early tomorrow, go and see the harbour bridge and learn how to use Skype, not necessarily in that order.

Happy Birthday Gran, by the way.

Good night in the afternoon.

It’s raining in Sydney and around 65 degrees. I did not sign up for this. Neither did Cathay Pacific print on my boarding pass ‘WARNING: SMALL CHILDREN ARE LIABLE TO SCREAM AND KICK THE BACK OF YOUR SEAT DURING TRANSIT’. They should have.

Arriving in Sydney was pretty straightforward – the immigration guy wasn’t really interested in my papers – ‘ah jeez, put that away mate, it’s all on me screen’. Point taken, and he was cheery enough for a man who spends his day nodding at people. Next task was to present myself in front of the agreed meeting point with the Work and Travel Co., the agency which I suppose is acting as my ‘fixer’ -

‘Meet us between exits A/B and C/D’ said the email. ‘You’ll easily spot us, we’ll be holding a sign with our logo on it’.

Okay, exit B…..exit A…oh crap, turn around with much flailing of the upper extremities, exit A…exit B….exit C….right, this must be the meeting point. No-one to be seen holding a sign. After ten minutes of being British and not asking anyone for help, advice, information or indeed enlightenment of any kind, I sauntered over casually to a guy who at least looked like he wasn’t in a similar kind of limbo and enquired if he was a rep. of some sort. He was, of course, the WTC rep. and yes, he had a sign. He had a sign which he had considerately positioned at the bottom of a whole pile of similar signs. How silly of me, I reasoned, not to have performed at least a cursory shuffle of his cards as I stood there idly, relaxing in the afterglow of my soothing nine hour night flight from Hong Kong.

Now though, as I write, sitting in the library-cum-computer room-cum-café of the Sydney Central YHA, I am relaxed and happy. Armed with the knowledge that my room will be available in six, no, sorry, five minutes, I can look forward to the imminent arrival of fourteen or fifteen hours sleep and the distinct possibility that the room may have stopped swaying when I awake.

And with that, I bid you good night.

Kicking my heels in Hong Kong airport...

Well, Hi.

Here I am after three days of noodles, green tea and generally being laughed at (along the lines of 'hey, check out this idiot over here clearly trying to use chopsticks for the first time') and sitting in Hong Kong airport waiting for my flight to Sydney.

That said, Hong Kong is awesome - truly fantastic - and three days is no time at all to explore all it has to offer. The light show across the bay at night simply has to be seen to believed and the same can be said for the view from atop the highest point on the island, known locally simply as 'The Peak' - a staggering vista of skyscrapers stretching as far as the eye can see, looking for all the world like God's own Jenga set balanced precariously on the hillsides all around.

As a European, restaurants were picked more on the basis of which ones printed their menus in English as well as Cantonese, and of the food particularly mouth-watering were the Dim Sum  peppered pork balls and noodles and 'dumplings with barbecued pork' - a stodgy Golf Ball of a mess that made no sense at all until paired with the accompanying barbecued meat.

If you're a Londoner or have ever spent any significant time in London and you think Oxford Street gets busy, then think again. The Kowloon streets at night make central London look like some remote Scottish Island serviced only by a supply ship/ferry once a week. With street hawkers acosting you at every turn, curious as to whether you would appreciate a new timepiece or tailored suit, (despite the fact that I quite clearly had a watch already around my wrist and patently did not have the requisite funds for a tailored suit) takeaway eateries of all types, musicians, crowds spilling out of the over-burdened Metro and double-decker London style buses lurching round every other corner. Add to this a humidity of the like I've never felt before and you have a potent mix. A heady, intoxicating brew like strong coffee cut with crack and lighter fluid.

Tsingtao wasn't bad either.

I'll be back.