South Bank

...and then I got homesick so I flew back to London and caught a show on the South Bank...

This is Twilight Zone stuff, you guys...

Drizzly Brizzly

So, as my grandparents have suspected all along, I am a member of The Rainmakers of Luton and have managed to bring the rain all the way to Brisbane (a town just south of The Sunshine Coast).  With all the weirdly Londonesque architecture, though, this weather just made me feel even more at home and so, as excited about learning as ever, I bought a hat and a brolly, and set out with my Greeter - a wonderful woman named Jude who gives up her time to share her city with tourists - and began a 7 hour walk around the city.  This is essentially like being adopted for the day by a surrogate gramdmother, and Judith was so awesome they named a restaurant after her: 

Now Brisbane really is a lovely city. It's compact and interesting and filled with little pockets of fascinating things if you know where to look, like Judith does.  Let's have a photographic tour because, let's be honest, sometimes I write too much on my blogs and you get bored if there aren't any pictures...

So one thing that Brisbane does quite well is urban art, which is scattered all over the city:

It also has lots of cool 'old' architecture dating all the way back to 1875. Wow. That is old, guys.  There are some interesting churches and lots and lots of coffee places:

I learnt heaps and heaps, and walked miles, and bumped into people that Judith knew from her childhood, like this artist, who was happily minding his own business supervising his exhibition and got talking to Judith. Turns out he's married to a woman who grew up with and went to school with Judith in Aire. It was like introducing Heather and other Welsh people: they ended up realising they were practically related. Small world!  Anyway, I took a picture and said 'what a coincidence!':

Now nobody took my passport and I didn't fall into a river, so that's about it for this blog post. I suppose I'm due a bit of calm sightseeing after my victory against Australian Immigration, and it was nice to meet the friendliest woman on the entire continent to balance out the karma or falling victim to the meanest. 

Internet is temperamental over here, so apologies for the seeming influx of posts so quickly. I'm making the most of free Internet when I can. 

Next post should feature me cradling a koala like a surrogate baby...

Gove

WOW!  I fell asleep on the plane and woke up in 'The Rescuers Down Under'. 

Everyone had gotten off the plane apart from an old, movement impaired lady and a similarly static, but way more impressively wizened old aborigine guy, and I was very confused. For a moment, I thought maybe Immigration Lady #2 had caught up with me and ordered a forced landing in the outback, but after I'd asked the air steward twice, and he'd realised that both I, and his country's way of doing things was a little backwards, and that to have both behemoths of idiocy meet at 7:45am would end in tears, he gently explained that we were at Gove, that I would have to 'hop off' the plane, and then 'hop back on again'. Quite random. 

Thankfully, however, in Gove, NT, they have the good sense to qualify that the town is named after a pilot, rather than an apparently useless Education Secretary, just in case there was going to be confusion.

Is there even a town here?  I don't know. 

Darwinian Learning!

Whoops, as promised, here are all the interesting historical plaques I read in Darwin.  Now you can learn all about it!

 

This guy sounds AWESOME!

Also, this is me at Darwin airport, through any sort of controls using my driving license as ID and not being deported. You can't see them, but I'm flashing Australian immigration some very big vs right now. Ha!

Darwin

So Darwin has been fun in a strange kind of way. Some of the scenery has been beautiful:

And I clearly would have gotten along well with the pioneers who named these places in the late 1800s: 

Jokers.

The colour coding has weirded me out:

Purple means Worcestershire sauce...

 

Somewhat sadly, though, I have discovered that I am no longer a backpacker. Grubby and intrepid worldly traveller, yes. Backpacker, no. On transferring from the posh hotel that Frenchie's company pays for to the hostel that I could afford, my first thoughts were the following:

1. It is awfully loud; I wonder if there's a quiet area?

2. Everyone is covered in tattoos. How uncouth. 

3. String vests are under garments. Where are these young men's shirts? (Frenchie always wears a shirt, and very occasionally a polo shirt, as the Kennedys are his fashion icons)

4. Everyone smells of beer. 

So, I said goodbye to my hedonistic youth, bough a spinach and ricotta quiche from the delicatessen counter and some organic forest fruit smoothie and bunked down to watch 'The Godfather' on Minipad, happy in the knowledge that the transformation into my mother was now complete. 

There really are worse people you could become.

Happily though, Courtney accessed her secret librarian Bat Cave and through the powers of magnetism harnessed through the barcode scanners across the world, guided me towards this building:

 

... where there was free wifi, nice ladies to help me and plug sockets and very quiet spaces. This all resulted in a first draft of 21,000 words, which is a real problem because I haven't finished and already I need to cut 3,000 words.

Of course, I'm not a complete loser. On one of my long romantic walks on the beach, I stumbled - bemused and suspicious - across this:

Despising cultural stereotyping in all its forms, I floated around exploring this carnivalesque atmosphere, bought a key ring and found a warden in a uniform to explain to me what this typically Aussie shameless promotion of alcohol and thug behaviour with children present was all about. She explained that when Hurricane Tracey had devastated the town in the '80s, there had been litter, including cans strewn everywhere, so to make the clean up process more fun, they had built and raced rafts made out of the debris and the tradition had stuck and now it's an annual charity event!  How wonderful!  The paper said they raised over $45,000 for poor kids or something. 

And you've got to admire the engineering expertise that has gone into some of these vessels:

Very happy to see Frenchie's little face again, as well as the promise of new clothes and free shampoo from posh hotels. Only 2 days now until I potentially get deported...

Stranded

So, being stuck in Darwin isn't all that bad now that Option B is almost achieved.  The weather is beautiful, and despite life being horribly expensive, there are lots of free things to do as well that don't include crocodiles, mining or drinking. Once I've completed my 'photo album of interesting historical plaques', I'll introduce you to a few friends I've made whilst wandering around as a solitary, curious traveller. Until then, here are some pretty and fun photos:

Frenchie has left for a few days to be my DHL service and bring back all my clothes and toiletries, so I'm on 'sad' vigil until he returns.  Both Jetstar and Quantas have told me that I can get on a domestic flight with just my driving license - thanks to Father for getting this posted over in time - but I'll believe this when I see it.  If I'm not deported when I try and get on a plane next Tuesday, then I have officially won against the world's largest island.  

Not even a land mass.  Pah!

Welcome to Australia

So, Australia turned out to be somewhat of a hiatus as it appears to be the country of No Fun At All. Frenchie had warned me that Australian immigration officers rivalled American, and might even win in a poker face competition, even when confronted with kookie British charm and hilarious jokes about bringing fruit and veg into the country. 

When we approached the immigration desk, the lady asked me to take my passport out of its cover, which is never a good sign, because my passport does not look good naked, at least to authorities: 

 Many, if not all countries I have visited have appreciated the artistic vision involved in this creation, which has taken me eight years to mould with loving hands, and have happily stamped my passport and allowed me entry into their country. Australia did not. 

The lady passed it to another lady, they had a chat and then Lady #1 smugly told me she wouldn't be stamping my passport today, thanked Frenchie like he was Teacher's Pet and told him he could go through. Me, she referred me to Lady #2 who was holding on to my passport in a way I've only ever seen an Israeli girl on military service doing. You know the way they wave it gently out of your reach and watch you to see your reaction to their authority?

Lady #2: I can't validate this document because it's been tampered with. 

Me: okay. 

Lady #2: have you ever had any problems with this before?

Me: just once. In Israel. 

Lady #2: I'm going to talk to my colleague about what I can do for you. 

Me: thank you. 

Frenchie looks stressed. I keep repeating to myself in a calm, floaty voice that I am not a terrorist and that remaining calm, polite and cooperative will surely resolve the issue. 

Lady #2 hangs out in her little room talking about how she can take out all her pent up aggression of not being loved enough as a child on me for about 3 minutes. I make soothing noises and pat Frenchie's knee. He hisses in French words I shall never repeat to you.  

Lady #2 returns. 

Lady #2: this document is no longer valid. I can let you in this time, and you won't be prevented from leaving, but you won't be admitted back into the country on this document. 

Lady #2 takes her job so seriously that she refuses to even use the word 'passport' as this is clearly not what this piece of defaced paper is to her. 

Frenchie: sorry, but we have a whole trip planned and we need to enter the country again on Monday. 

Lady #2: then I suggest you get in touch with the consulate in Canberra and get an emergency travel document. 

Me: okay.  Thank you. 

This morning I wandered if this woman was a noble upholder of her national laws, or simply a heinous bitch. After spending 5:30-6:30am trawling the Internet trying to figure out the consequences of her decision, I'm inclined to go with the latter. Now, all ye who dream of an international lifestyle, please consider whether this sounds like a process that sounds fun to you:

Option A:

Return to Singapore on allotted flight. Make appointment with consulate as ETD can only be applied for in person. Visit embassy and apply for ETD with risk of being denied. Pay £95 and have passport automatically cancelled, which means applying for a new passport through Hong Kong whilst on holiday, which takes 4 weeks, and thus risk not getting back to Saigon in time for Heather and Emyr's visit and possibly the start of term. Also pay £174 for a new passport.

If ETD denied, cancel four week holiday, which includes internal flights already booked, hotels and camper vans. Waste two of Frenchie's precious five weeks of holiday. Despise Australia and Lady #2 forever. 

Option B

Stay in Darwin, stubbornly refusing to allow Australia to deny me entrance by simply not reentering à la Aung Sung Syu Chi (spelling?) and win a moral victory. 

Questions arise, such as a) can I fly internally on my drivers licence since my passport is apparently INVALID? b) is anywhere affordable to stay in Australia without Frenchie's company paying for it? c) is there a flight available to get me to Brisbane next week that doesn't go through Perth/Sydney/Kuala Lumpar and is less than $1200 AUS? d) can I bear to be apart from Frenchie for seven days considering the reason I insisted on accompanying him on this impromptu trip in the first place was because I would have missed his face intolerably if he had been gone for two days when I wasn't expecting it? e) am I ever going to hand in a first draft of my dissertation that actually includes valid theories, readings or references from books from a recognised educational establishment?

Tricky.  I haven't consulted with Frenchie yet as he is out in the field wrestling crocodiles/uncooperative  colleagues (they're French, what would you expect), but as a solutions-focused person whose feminist icons include Burmese activists whose names I can't spell, and who regularly looks at large scale institutions/issues like educational disadvantage, casual sexism and Frenchie's inability to pronounce a short 'i' sound and thinks, 'yeah, I can take you.  Show me what you've got', I'm sure you know that I'm leaning towards Option B so I can flash some vs at what is essentially the biggest island in the world (not even a landmass, pah!) and end this saga saying 'vene vini vici' as if I know what it means, like Del Boy assuring you that everything is 'mange tout, Rodney, mange tout!'

Everything, by the way, will be mange tout eventually as long as everyone comes out of this alive, which is my grandfather's definition of success. 

In the meantime, lets laugh at their money to make ourselves feel better.

It's like the Queen visited thirty years ago when she could be bothered and someone drew a quick sketch of her, and since then, nobody at the mint has bothered to download the ageing app to make her look more like an 80-something year old so everyone's just waiting until she comes back again, or dies, and then they can put Charles on their note instead, ten years into his reign. The $1 is bigger than the $2, and the 20 cents is overcompensating for being worth hardly anything because it's unreasonably MASSIVE. 

Okay, I feel better now. Take that Australia.