Walking Through Tokyo*

31 March 2010
Another beautifully sunny day but still rather cold and as it wasn’t Monday or the Emperor’s Birthday the Tokyo National Museum was open and we spent the morning there. The museum has a collection of about 110,000 pieces and is able to only display a small proportion of these at any one time so it generally has themed displays. Hardly surprisingly the current theme is “Cherry Blossom” and many of the painted screens, manuscripts and illustrated books had cherry blossoms portrayed in them. The explanations in English were very good. Inevitably it was the ceramics that attracted us from the Jamon-period pottery from before the fourth century BC through classical tea-ware to Edo period highly decorated porcelain. Pub quiz detail coming up: The Jomon era in Japan lasted from 10,000BC to 300BC and was the first civilisation in the world to make and kiln-fire pottery; in fact the name ‘Jamon’ means “cord patterns” and refers to the impression made by twisted cord on the pattern of the clay – a decorative technique still used today by some Japanese potters such as Shimaoka Tatsuzo and some UK craft potters. The museum also had some astounding ceramic pieces of Sue stoneware, made using a super heated kiln technique. Other pieces which stood out were the inevitable teabowls (only one from a Living National Treasure) and a piece of 17th century Oribe ware from the Mino kilns which displayed a bold technique of combining two different clays in a flat plate which has a radical design that made it appear so fresh and modern – superb.

We also greatly enjoyed the huge sweep of Japanese art including scrolls and screens, colourful Buddhist mandalas as well as exquisitely serene statues of the Buddha, through amazingly intricate laquerware as well as Samurai armour and weapons and one of the highlights for G was in the calligraphy gallery – a letter written by Matsuo Basho, the 17th century Haiku poetry master.

A most enjoyable morning, mad e better by the lack of other people in the gallery – they had probably gone to the Blockbuster exhibitions in other parts of town – art from Villa Borghese and the paintings of Frank Brangwyn. The next ‘Blockbusters’ are exhibitions of work by Lucie Rie and ceramic vessels for the tea ceremony and we’ll miss them both!
In the afternoon we made a huge trek across the city to visit a classical Japanese garden Shinjuku Gyoen. To get there we had to walk through several busy traffic-choked Tokyo streets – an unusual activity as most pedestrian walkways are either beneath or above ground. As we have mentioned earlier the city is packed full of excellent places to eat (Tokyo has more Michelin stars than anywhere else in the world), many of them inexpensive, so we were amazed to see a huge queue outside the Krispy Kreme Donuts store! Anyway we got to the park and of course the sun had disappeared behind a blanket of thick grey cloud and the half of Japan that hadn’t been in the park on Monday were here today to see the cherry blossom. We enjoyed our walk around the gardens, which are surrounded by soaring skyscrapers, and saw several ladies wearing kimonos for their afternoon walk in the park. G is working on a haiku that includes cherry blossom, kimonos and skyscrapers...

On our way back we found an amazing Department Store selling a vast range of goods – we were rather overwhelmed but did manage to buy a new suitcase – after 96 days of travel we have acquired so many bits and pieces that the luggage we bought with us will not hold them all!
Tomorrow we take another bullet train journey and go to stay in Kyoto.

This year's spring goddess is a merciless flirt
This article was in the Asahi Shimbun on March 30 and we’d like to share it with you
In romantic relationships, it is said that when you are kept waiting by another person, you develop stronger feelings for that person. Apparently, this year's spring goddess is playing with our emotions. Just as the Japan Meteorological Agency announced that the cherry blossoms were blooming in Tokyo, a wintry chill set in. Soon after the buds began to open, they tightened once more. Spring has yet to arrive in earnest.
Tuesday was Feb. 15 in the lunar calendar. It was also the anniversary of the death of Saigyo (1118-1190), a poet of the late Heian Period (794-1185) who loved cherry blossoms. "I pray that I would die/ Under the cherry blossoms in spring/ In February when the moon is full" is one of his famous poems. Under the modern calendar, it seems strange to think of cherry blossoms blooming in February, but, according to the lunar calendar, we are under February's full moon.
Just as he had prayed, Saigyo met his death in February in the lunar calendar. Although he died on the 16th, one day after the full moon, the great poet is remembered on the 15th. "When flowers are blooming/ Remember Saigyo" is a haiku by Genyoshi Kadokawa (1917-1975), the founder of Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co.
I once interviewed the publisher's son, Haruki Kadokawa, who is also a haiku poet. He told me how he was fascinated by Mount Yoshinoyama in Nara Prefecture, which is famous for its cherry blossoms and where Saigyo once lived. Kadokawa described the mountain where 30,000 cherry trees bloom as "a mystical place where majesty, glamour and awe blend together." He also said, "Cherry blossoms connote the universe."
Cherry blossoms bloom and fall. The Japanese language is rich in phrases that describe the transition: matsu hana (waiting flowers), hatsu-hana (first flowers) and hana no kumo (clouds of flowers), to name a few. Hana-fubuki (flower blizzard) likens the scattering of petals in the wind to a blizzard. Hana ikada (flower raft) describes the petals floating in water. The sight of nagori no hana (vestigial flowers) and osozakura (late-blooming cherry blossoms) makes us feel melancholic at the passing of spring. There must be many more. I doubt there is another plant whose transition is expressed in so many ways.
According to the weather forecasts, the spring warmth will likely return Wednesday and will be followed by days of pitiless rain. "I had a dream/ Of spring wind scattering flowers/ When I awoke/ I had an uneasy feeling" is another poem by Saigyo. Even after nearly a millennium, our longing for spring's cherry blossoms has not left us.

Gregg and Chris Take Vow Of Silence...

30 March 2010
... actually we don’t but we are doing so much don’t have time to keep up the blog.








Today took our first ride on a bullet train, left exactly on time whooshed through Tokyo suburbs (which stretch for miles), we saw Mount Fuji in the distance because today was sunny and bright (still v. Cold), whooshed through countryside with rich black earth where grapes are grown (Chateau Nippon anyone?) and whooshed on to our destination where we arrived exactly on time. Amazing journey, smooth ride, very fast (average 200kph), no mobile phones allowed, reclining seats, impressive. Then caught local train – quaint but still quite fast and it too stuck exactly to its timetable – and it had heated seats – arriving at our destination of Nikko on the minute it was due to arrive. Nikko is 128k north of Tokyo and is a pilgrim town where the World-Heritage Toshogu shrine complex is located on a huge hillside which is still covered in snow (think the Assisi of Zen Buddhism). The place attracts thousands of Japanese every day who visit the shrine and mausoleum of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who died in 1617, and the surrounding Buddhist temples and classical Japanese garden. The whole place took thousands of craftsmen only twenty years to build – there are at least 60 buildings and 500 steps in the complex – and is beautifully/gaudily carved and decorated and successfully conveys the immense power and wealth of the Tokugawa dynasty.
Once again we ate at the monastery (always safe as we know there will never be any meat, fish or eggs – nor alcohol!) and had the local speciality of yuba-ryori – milky thin strips of tofu made into rolls and sliced (think Swiss roll) and cooked in vegetable broth and served with noodles and vegetables – stop turning up your noses it was actually delicious and for pudding we had amazake – a warm drink made from fermented rice. G will be adding all of these to his dinner party repertoire on our return, anyone like an invite?
We won’t bore you with details of all the shrines and temples but visiting them all took all day, involved lots of walking and climbing steps, taking off and putting back on of shoes (fortunately back in sandals – well we didn’t know there’d still be snow up there) and seeing a glimpse of Japan’s past that somehow is very much part of its present. (Yes Barry there were groups of teenagers in weird costumes even here.)




At the end of the day we were quite knackered so caught a taxi back down to Nikko train station ( a quaint half-timbered building) and experienced the usual politeness and courteousness as well as the ‘no-tipping’ culture – not only would the driver not keep the change he rounded it UP and gave it back to us. Whooshed back on the bullet train and for dinner – more noodles, more tofu, more vegetables but cooked and tasting differently, this time with beer to drink.

Cherry Blossom*

29 March 2009
Today, for the first time in three months, we were cold, really cold; even when the sun came out briefly in the early afternoon the temperature never reached above five degrees c. At one point the sky became the colour of one about to snow.
We started the day at Tokyo Railway station getting our Japanese Rail Pass sorted and arranging our train journeys for later in the holiday, once all that was sorted we decided we should head for one of the museums where it would be warm – even warmer than your average Japanese toilet seat. But it was not to be – all museums are closed on a Monday, so we braved the weather and headed for the Imperial Palace, the geographical and spiritual heart of Tokyo, which can only be glimpsed behind its massive stone ramparts but its setting is very beautiful – surrounded by a reflecting moat and a large number of elegantly manicured pine trees. There is part of the Imperial Palace grounds that has been turned into a pleasant park (so the guide book says – we’ll just have to believe it because even that is closed on Mondays). But we did see our first cherry blossom as well as camellias and wintersweet – a welcome sight against the grey skies.


We made our way over to Ueno, using the train and our JR passes, to visit Ueno K¬oen, once a huge temple complex built on a hill now a vast park. Despite the cold the park was thronged with people because it is THE place to go in Tokyo cherry blossom time. The amount of blossom is staggering – a whole avenue of very ancient trees in full flower and the tradition is to bring food and picnic beneath them – and that is exactly what hundreds of people were doing, wrapped in warm clothes against the cold, eating, drinking and having a very good time. For those who hadn’t bought their own food there were stalls cooking and selling a whole array of foodstuffs – none of which we recognized but ended up eating something we can only describe as spicy bubble and squeak made into a pancake/omelette and served with a ginger and soy sauce, very tasty but difficult to eat with chopsticks.
In Japanese culture cherry blossom is an omen of good fortune and is also an emblem of love and affection, it also represents the coming of spring. Cherry blossoms are an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life – the transience of the blossoms, the extreme beauty and quick death, has often been associated with mortality and for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic, and have been utilized often in Japanese art. The flower is also represented on all manner of consumer goods including kimono, stationery, tableware and on the 100Yen coin.
As we said Ueno Koen was once a temple complex and there are still a few temples dotted around the park. The first one we visited was Kiyomizu Kannon-do, a beautiful red lacquered building dating from 1631 (very rare in Tokyo as almost everything was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake and fire). The temple is dedicated to Senju Kannon (the thousand armed Kannon) whose image is locked away inside the shrine. A little further on we came to a small stone-built temple dedicated to someone whose statue stands at the foot of the path leading to the temple. The aged stone statue was dressed with a red cloth hat and cape. Another temple/shrine was in the hollow of a hill and a series of orange gates which led to a few different shrines, each with statues of a dog like creature dressed in red and white bibs. More walking beneath the clouds and among the crowds bought us to the shrine of Tokugawa Ieyasu – Toshu-gu built in 1651. The path leading to the shrine is lined with hundreds of stone and bronze lanterns and the entrance gate is a riot of polychrome carving. All of the temples were totally incomprehensible to us being a mixture of Buddhist sects and Shinto religions (evidently it is quite acceptable to be both Shinto and Buddhist or Shinto and Christian) and had prayer boards tied up outside as well as paper prayers tied on to wire frames, long pieces of multi-coloured ribbon also signify prayers on behalf of deceased people. All had a gong, drum or bell which was sounded by the faithful as part of their prayers – which each person ended with a loud clap of the hands. On the hill there is also a huge bronze bell with an enormous piece of wood which is struck against it three times a day – this tradition has gone on for centuries. One of the most moving shrines, which we were able to understand, was the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace altar. This has a flame burning which was originally taken from the flames of the atomic bomb total destruction of Hiroshima by a young man who had gone their searching for the body of his uncle. He didn’t find him and instead bought home this flame and kept it burning in his home as a sign of vengeance against the USA. Over the years his vengeance subsided and the flame became a symbol for peace and reconciliation – it now stands as a witness of that terrible event and people are asked to pray/hope for the end of atomic weapons. It was a very moving and emotional place visited by people of all races and religions – although we didn’t notice any Iranians…

Like many huge cities that we have visited on our journey, the streets of Tokyo, unlike those back in the UK, are clean and litter free – it makes such a pleasant change and even though there seems to be far more street cleaners around there is just a general feeling of cleanliness. One reason for this may be the lack of pigeons – those disgusting creatures that foul buildings all over London seem to be virtually absent in many of the other major cities we have visited and the streets, buildings and statues are so much cleaner for it. Another thing we didn’t notice about Japan until we had been here a few hours – probably because it is so natural to us – is that they drive on the left hand side of the road, just like at home, in New Zealand, in Australia and in Hong Kong. The other thing which rapidly becomes obvious is how charming and polite everyone is and gestures are friendly and welcoming – it’s hard to reconcile this with the weird undercurrents that we know exist in Japanese society but that, fortunately, we have not come across. When being served in a restaurant (or even at a fast-food stall) the level of service goes way way beyond anything back home – but tipping is frowned upon . the one down side to the city is that half the population seems to be suffering from colds and is coughing and sneezing all over the place while the other half is wearing face masks as they travel around the city.
Our original apprehension about Tokyo has started to fade and we have managed to find our way around the city, we have eaten well – a number of people had warned us about the horrendous cost of food but in a city where almost everyone lives in small apartments, where there is little or no room to cook, there is a huge variety of restaurants in every price bracket from the upmarket Japanese restaurant we ate in last night costing several thousand yen to the take-away we had at lunch time costing only 500yen (about £3.60). However, whether we will ever actually feel totally at ease is another matter.
Sounding through clouds of flowers
Is it the bell in Ueno
Or Asakusa
Haiku by Matsuo Basho

Move To Japan*

28 March 2010
Two notes about the Salisbury: A great place to stay at a great price by Hong Kong standards; there was certainly a large number of M’s, we supposed quite a few C’s but Y’s were certainly in the minority, as for how much A was going on we shall not comment.
Smoggy haze returned to Hong Kong; a quick trip to Kowloon station where we were able to check-in for our flight, leave our luggage (which went to the airport without us – mild panic but everything was OK) and get on the train for a very fast journey to the airport.
Not a bad flight (vegetarian food: tick), G&C disaster watch (stronger than normal jet-stream winds: tick – took an hour off the flight), landed at Narita (hassle-free immigration and customs: tick) found our way to transfer desk (good bi-lingual signage: tick) smooth journey into Tokyo (kept informed about where we were and alternative route being taken because of traffic jams: tick) arrived at hotel (courteously met and bowed at several times: tick). G&C Disaster watchers forgot to tell us that Tokyo is experiencing very cold weather – sandals were not appropriate footwear. Taken to our 31st floor room which is very pleasant – small but perfectly formed (as friend Mike would say) with views of Hamarikyu Gardens. Inevitably after a long journey from the airport we needed the loo; now we consider ourselves to be fairly knowledgeable and experienced travellers but we couldn’t find out how to flush the toilet after use! We were OK with the heated seat (had to turn down the temperature though) and found the shower (a long metal arm extends and sprayed sensitive parts of the anatomy with warm water) and the bidet and the air-drier but not the flush... we did eventually find it but not before having a number of new experiences to recount!
A Japanese dinner of nine different courses – all very small (G got very worried when first course of only two tempura broad beans arrived) but all incredibly tasty and all beautifully arranged – the ceramics and the decorations were as beautiful as the food on them. We even had sake and were bought a basket containing a variety of sake cups from which to choose – it was like a small display of Japanese ceramic techniques. However we can’t help feeling that it is all just too unfamiliar and we’re not sure how we will get on.

Hong Kong Blues*

27 March 2009
And Reds and Greens and Blacks – in fact most colours seemed to be represented in Hong Kong this weekend as it is the All Nations’ Rugby Sevens (or something like that and England had a spectacular win last night says the South China Morning Post) so the city is full of men with odd shaped balls. Needless to say we avoided that and carried on with our normal perambulations. Despite having an excellent public transport system of ferries, subway trains, trams, buses and the world’s longest outdoor undercover escalator there is still a phenomenal amount of walking and step & hill climbing and by late afternoon G’s knees were beginning to seriously complain.
We had started the day with a ferry over to HK Island, a tram ride and a walk through Hong Kong Park – deliberately designed to look anything but natural with Fountain Plaza, Tai Chi Garden, a huge concrete Viewing Tower and a vast walk through aviary. At this point we’re not sure what we’ve done the most of on this trip: weird temples, sky trains or walk through aviaries – and here is another walk-through aviary and yes, we walked through it but not without first having climbed up several flights of stairs to reach it. It is home to hundreds of birds in a huge and convincing re-creation of a tropical forest habitat – in fact so convincing that G got bitten by a mosquito, it wasn’t until afterwards that we read the warning about Dengue Fever!!



A little further on in the Park we went to Flagstaff House, the oldest colonial building in the city (1846) which now houses the Museum of Tea Ware where, inevitably, there is a fantastic collection of tea bowls and tea pots (this is China not Japan)as well as fascinating videos about the development of tea making and tea drinking (including why Tenmouku glaze was developed for green-tea bowls) as well as the methods and flavours used by the numerous different ethnic groups in China – anyone fancy their afternoon tea with salt and yak butter whisked into it in the Outer Mongolian fashion? The highlight though was an exhibition of Yixing purple clay teapots, some of them dating from the 9th century. These delightful little teapots are still made today and there is a whole tea making ritual associated with them – they are only ever washed with water, never soap or detergent, so that after years of use they develop a tea ‘patina’ and add flavour to the tea being made in them. There is a story that one pot that had been in use for several generations only needing water adding to it in order to brew a delicious tasting tea. At the end of the tour around the museum (no photos allowed so you have been spared more pictures of ceramics) there was a gift shop selling these precious objects – you know the rest (well, we’d already bought the tea; it would have been silly not to get a tea pot). Next door was a delightful Tea House serving vegetarian dim sum (note to Brenda: whenever we say ‘vegetarian’ dim sum or ‘vegetarian’ meals here in HK we mean ‘vegan’ – wonderful and amazing) and it had a tea menu which was longer than most wine lists; Chris had DongDing Oolong and Gregg had 15 year old Pu Erh with chrysanthemum flowers.
In the evening we went to the famous Temple Street Market which makes Walthamstow Market look classy! And as an antidote to all this Chinese food we went to a Sino-Italian restaurant which did a very passable Tiramisu (of course not as good as Gregg’s). As a nod to Earth Hour part of the Light Show was turned off! Tomorrow we head to Japan.

Back To The Monastery*

26 March 2010

In the afternoon we took a longer trip on the MTR all the way out to Lantau Island – more than half of which is designated country parkland – where we caught the Ngong Ping Skyrail (these are beginning to become something of a feature on this part of the trip). The Skyrail runs for nearly 6km over the Tung Chung Bay (we could see eagles below us) and over the top of the 934m high Nei Lak Shan peak to the Ngong Ping plateau. Once there we went straight to the Po Lin Buddhist monastery where we had the HK$100 ‘De Luxe’ vegetarian lunch – the main reason for our visit but there was one other but you will have to wait while we tell you about the food. Unlike last night’s dinner there was no imitation meat instead it was just excellent vegetarian food; lunch was made up of mixed mushroom soup with glass noodles; deep fried spring rolls; bean curd sheets with lemon sauce; fresh lily bulbs with asparagus and other vegetables; black mushrooms with bok choi and steamed rice as well as copious amounts of green tea. This was followed by puddings of chrysanthemum cake, red bean paste dumpling and lotus bean cakes. Yes it was a lot of food, yes we did eat it all, yes we did use chopsticks (as we have for every meal) and no, the YMCA does not have bathroom scales. The reason we needed all that food, we kidded ourselves, was to climb the 400 steps up to the Tian Tan Buddha statue.

At 23metres it is the world’s largest outdoor free-standing statue and it’s pretty impressive and yet quite serene. We also made a brief visit to the monastery where the monks were chanting in a most hypnotic manner beneath the main temple containing more golden statues of the Buddha along with fruit, masses of flowers and clouds and the inevitable clouds of incense – some of the incense sticks were about a metre in length and as thick as a Buddhist monk’s arm.

Hong Kong Garden*

26 March 2010
Another hugely enjoyable day. In the morning we caught the MTR (the subway) using our Octopus Cards and went to visit the Nan Lian Garden. In the middle of high rise apartment blocks and motorway overpasses lies 35,000 square metres of tranquillity. A Tang Dynasty style garden which features characteristic timber structures, reflecting ponds, waterfalls, various naturally sculpted rocks and lots of old and valuable trees – including a bonsai garden where seats are provided for meditation. The whole garden has been artfully arranged to imitate nature and it does so very successfully but the background of skyscrapers never let us forget the artifice. The garden has been designed in the traditional Taoist manner so that the path through the garden should be taken in only one direction so that new splendours and vistas unfold with each step. At the rear of the garden is the huge Chi Lin Nunnery, a Tang-style wooden complex built in 1998 without the use of a single screw or nail. It is set amid serene lily ponds and has in the ‘cloisters’ (don’t know what else to call them) rocks that have been sculpted by nature and then polished, each with a meditative Buddhist Sutra. There are enormous statues of the Buddha and other Buddhist saints who have achieved enlightenment – sadly the nuns are of one of the Buddhist sects that have made the Buddha into a god and worship him as such. Nevertheless the whole complex shows the harmony of humans with nature and is a visually, architecturally and emotionally uplifting place. G even got a CD of the nuns chanting.

After that we visited the Sik Sik Yuen Tai Sin Temple. To the people of Hong Kong this is one of the most popular temples to visit because, allegedly, Wong Tai Sin is able to ‘make every wish come true upon request’. The temple is home to three religions which seem to co-exist happily together: Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. The place is a sensory whirl of colourful pillars, bright yellow roofs and green and blue latticework, golden dragons, flowers and huge amounts of incense. The place is hugely atmospheric and a sense of happiness and joy pervades the whole complex. The mix of classes, ages and races was astounding with some performing prayerful devotions (usually involving incense), others diving the future with ‘chim’ – bamboo sticks that are shaken out of a box on to the ground and then used for fortune telling. Behind the main temple are the ‘Good Wish Gardens’ complete with colourful pavilions (including an hexagonal one called the ‘Unicorn Hall’, zigzag bridges and ponds with turtles – we even saw one woman who had bought along small turtles to put in the pond as part of her offering.

Hong Kong*

25 March 2010
It would be so easy to be completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Hong Kong but we managed not to be and instead immersed ourselves in its sights, sounds, smells, tastes and experiences but there are so many of them we cannot possibly tell you about them all. On opening the curtains in the morning we were amazed to see two huge sea eagles hunting their prey over the harbour. On a surprisingly cool and overcast day we took a ferry across the harbour, a tram along Des Voeux Road Central, lifts to the observation decks on the 55th floor of the Two International Finance Centre and the 43rd floor of the Bank of China Tower and looked out over acres of high-rise buildings including Jardine House, which was HK’s first skyscraper and has 1750 port-hole windows which makes it known locally as the house of a thousand arse-holes!


We ate dim sum for lunch at the Luk Yu Tea House (described by our guide-book as a “museum piece in more ways than one with most of the staff having been there since the Ming dynasty” – it was wonderfully old-fashioned but one of the Ming dynasty waiters took us under his wing and helped us (just as well otherwise we would have starved – the menu was a piece of paper covered in Chinese characters on which diners tick the items they want) the food was good, the tea was good.
We walked through Wing Lok Street, a street lined with speciality shops selling only ginseng and bird’s nests – both essential items for longevity, energy and a good complexion; on to Des Voeux Road West, a street specialising in dried seafood (much of it, thankfully, unidentifiable); then along Ko Shing Street, a street full of shops selling Chinese herbal medicine shops. Fascinating, bewildering, intriguing and at times repulsive – as well as the bird nests, dried lizards, shark fins, deer horn, tail and penises were just a few of the items on sale.

We wandered through the Sheung Wan district and among the high rise and densely populated streets we came across the Man Mo Temple, a building with three sanctuaries where gods are venerated and prayers are sent heavenward by the faithful burning a vast quantities of incense – some in the form of huge incense cones hung from the ceiling – many of which will burn for a month. Elsewhere people offered plates of fruit and other foodstuffs to the Taoist gods of literature (Man) and war (Mo) – Man with his calligraphy brush and Mo with his sword. There were also statues of Pau Kung, the god of justice and one of Shing Wong, the god of the city in front of which people murmured prayers and waved huge bunches of incense. We wandered on and came to another temple, this one was equally strange, here the people just sat very quietly and looked up, with very sad eyes to a huge statue of their god – a man wearing just a loin cloth who was fixed to a huge wooden structure by nails through his hands and feet, this temple was called the cathedral of St John (who seemed to be some sort of bird-god as he was in the form of an eagle) this building was and was constructed in a strange style called ‘gothic’ which harks back to 13th century Europe but was not actually built until 1849.

We also shopped (there are millions of places to do this in Hong Kong) and among other things bought some wonderful mountain grown oolong tea and some 12 year old Pu Erh tea, even though they were both considerably cheaper than that we buy at home from the wonderful East Teas in Borough Market (knew we’d manage to get a plug in for you Alex) we could not afford the 26 year-old green Pu Erh. It’s also a great places for small knick-knacks from small (and large) arts and crafts shops – inevitably the shops you see all over the world are here but there are two which are distinctly British – M&S and Harvey Nic!


At eight o’clock on the dot the Guinness World Record “Symphony Of Lights” began. From our lounge window we were able to watch the light show which happens every evening and covers numerous buildings on Hong Kong island creating a spectacular show of changing coloured lights and light patters, laser beams and searchlights performing in time to music (if you are indoors – as we were – just tune the radio to FM 103.4 MHz. How fiendishly clever, Holmes).
After the light show we went to dinner; we had planned to go to a restaurant on the 28th floor of a skyscraper around the corner (guidebook recommended), when we arrived there we were amazed that every floor from about the sixth was a different restaurant and on our way to the 28th we found one that was Szechuan Buddhist vegetarian so went there instead. Like all Buddhist vegetarian restaurants its meals imitate meat dishes and as we took the easy way out and chose a set meal we had vegetarian fish (flat white flaky tofu), vegetarian chicken (creamy colour chunks of tofu), vegetarian pork (chewy pieces of tofu), vegetarian beef (dark strongly flavoured mushrooms – makes a change from tofu) and vegetarian ham (pink strips of unidentifiable origin but tasting of peanuts) all with heaps of (mostly identifiable) vegetables – the huge bowl of snow pea shoots was wonderful.
Exhausted and not quite overwhelmed, back in our room we sat with a glass of wine and looked out of the window at the comings and goings across the harbour and the lights of the skyscrapers opposite. What fortunate people we are.

YMCA*

24 March 2010
We left Cairns on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. Cathay Pacific have just been voted worst airline 2010 by G&C – perhaps that’s a bit unfair as no airline will ever be worse than Ryan Air but being as we boycott them, they don’t really count. Everyone had been pre-allocated seats so the 6ft 3ins blokes were sitting in knees-around-their-necks seats and the petite-ladies had the extra legroom seats and there was going to be no changing. There was no vegetarian meal available for us (this was a seven hour flight) when we asked why, they tried to palm us off with the reason that our travel agent must have forgotten to order them – strange and unbelievable seeing that the ever-wonderful Trailfinders had remembered to order them for every other flight. However it sort of came right and we got a couple of Business Class vegetarian pasta meals and a plate of fruit at later-in-the-flight snack time as well as a promise that they would get it right on the flight to Tokyo. They also slightly redeemed themselves (for G at least) by having some very good music available on the entertainment system – including some music by a French jazz group which has Seb Rochford on drums (he’s easily pleased – bless). On the plane we read a newspaper about Hong Pong which was suffering some of the worst pollution ever known – it seems that a storm had blown in lots of sand from the Gobi desert which had got stuck because of low pressure and was trapping all the pollution in over the islands. Evidently pollution is measured on a scale of zero to 500 and this measured 500 – but the newspaper was optimistic that it would have gone by the time we arrived because a monsoon was just off the coast!
We arrived earlier than scheduled in Hong Kong – the airport is a state-of-the-art impossible-to-fault building with superb signage and huge open spaces (Sydney airport please take note). A plush limo-coach drove us to Kowloon taking us along some beautifully engineered roads and across the graceful Tsing Ma Bridge – the world’s longest road and rail suspension bridge at 2.2km and past hundreds of high-rise buildings all twinkling with lights. We arrived at to our hotel and we were taken up to our 15th floor suite overlooking Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island. Our Hotel? The Salisbury – also known as The Hong Kong YMCA. For those who know the story, please forgive us repeating it, but it goes something like this. When we were booking our r-t-w trip, we couldn’t get a direct flight from Cairns to Japan so rather than going back to Sydney or Brisbane we decided to come via Hong Kong. Hong Kong hotels are expensive but C wanted a view of the harbour and HK Island and decided it had to be the Peninsula Hotel but at about £500 per night for a standard room even she thought it a bit steep. So a little research revealed a hotel next door with exactly the same view for a quarter of the price – and in a suite...hence The Salisbury aka the Hong Kong YMCA. And a surprisingly luxurious suite it is too (but think Habitat rather than Heal’s) with outstanding views across the harbour because the monsoon wind has blown away the pollution. What fortunate people we are.

Baby Elephant Walk*

Following on from the blog about the baby elephant recently born at Sydney Zoo, our friend Phil has now sent us this picture he took following his more recent visit.



All together now.....Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Tales Of Brave Ulysses*

19 - 22 March 2010
The first part of our journey to get to Bloomfield Lodge in the rainforest was by small aircraft. Knowing our good fortune on this journey would you take a flight in a small aircraft with us? No? Wise decision! All pre-take-off checks completed we zoomed along the runway at Cairns and reached the end without taking off. “Sorry guys, there seems to be a problem with one of the gauges; we’re gonna have to go back and get an engineer to look at it” came the pilot announcement – well actually he just leaned over his shoulder and said it; this was a very small aeroplane. Back in the lounge, from where we could see the aircraft, we watched as a couple of guys lifted the ‘bonnet’ and sprayed some WD40 around, a quick test zoom along the runway and we were back on board and airborne.
We forgot to say that Cyclone Ului was, by now, approaching land, albeit much further south but we were getting the strong winds so the plane was buffeted quite a lot as we flew up the coast. The view of the rainforest on one side and the Great Barrier Reef on the other was truly spectacular. The aircraft was fitted with a Garmin sat nav (it seemed a bit more sophisticated than the one we have in the car back home) and as we came into land it kept flashing a warning: “TERRAIN AHEAD”. Indeed terrain was ahead in the form of a large mountain and we were flying straight towards it but we turned in plenty of time and landed on a very bumpy grass airstrip. No customs, no immigration, just a very nice guy named Gary from the Lodge to load our bags into the 4WD and take us for a short drive along a dirt road to the jetty where we boarded the boat to take us down the Daintree River to the sea and on to the jetty of the Lodge.

The Lodge is situated in the fringes of the Daintree Rainforest near the sea. The forest is now a National Park and the Lodge is one of only a handful of properties in the 1200 square kilometre area. There has been rainforest vegetation in this area for at least 200million years (making it 20 times older than the Amazon rainforest) and to date over 3000 plant species have been identified with over 700 of them endemic to the region. The forest also supports two thirds of Australia’s bat and butterfly species, plus nearly a third of the country’s frog, reptile and marsupial species including such rarities as tree kangaroos – we didn’t see one but on one of our walks we did see their claw marks on a tree where they had regularly climbed up. Of course what makes the rainforest so prolific in plant and animal life is rain – and the area gets an impressive annual average of four metres rainfall – that’s wet! Knowing our good fortune with the weather on this journey and the fact that we are on the edge of a cyclone would you come to the rainforest with us? No? Bad decision! Cyclone Ului has ‘sucked’ all of the weather systems from here about into its low pressure centre and left us with hot sun, it is still very humid – about 90% humidity beneath the rainforest canopy but there is always a cooling sea breeze which makes it more than bearable. On a couple of nights we had torrential rain which only added to the attraction. The Lodge is in the rainforest and a five minute walk in one direction took us well beneath its dense canopy and a five minute walk in the opposite direction took us on to the beach.
We were told that the Lodge started life as the Holiday Lodge for The Federated Painters and Dockers Union – a criminal organisation masquerading as a Trade Union. The Lodge was financed by the proceeds of organised crime on a grand scale. It seems that the government of the time was well aware of the organisation having “criminal roots in Sydney and at one point the Lodge was raided by Queensland police because what is now the lawn leading down to the jetty was a huge cannabis plantation but the whole affair was covered up for years. Now the Lodge is owned by a guy who has made it into the “beautifully remote”, “exclusive” and “luxury” holiday destination that it is today. On our first evening when we were fishing off the jetty, Chris confided in Gary that she had been worried about the place being too “posh”, Gary retorted that “we soon knock the posh out of people – the minute I met you two I knew you’d fit in”. A great compliment indeed –indeed we did in fit in with the warm welcoming relaxed atmosphere. It is everything it says it is in the brochure – plus some. We don’t think we have ever stayed anywhere which has given us such a totally satisfying experience. So much so that Chris wanted this blog entry to be titled “If Paradise Is Half As Nice” but this song goes on in an unsuitable vein so Gregg chose something, inevitably, much more obscure.

So what did we do with ourselves for four days in “beautifully remote” Daintree?
Eating: the food was the best we have eaten in Australia with fresh fruit, salads and vegetables in abundance, as well as fish and seafood (some of it caught from the jetty) all of it imaginatively and superbly prepared and individually tailored to each person’s dietary requirements. All meals are taken communally in the dining area so present an opportunity to meet new people as guests are arriving and leaving each day – on one day we had the place to ourselves for a whole morning until two new people arrived at lunchtime, the most was 12 (it can accommodate a maximum of 36 people).
Fishing: we tried our hand at fishing from the jetty. On the first occasion G caught a large shovel-nosed ray which was so strong it broke his line, then C caught a large mud-crab (taste much nicer than they sound) but it dropped off the line but then she caught a white-tipped reef shark. Gary had told us that sharks normally break the line and go free and as the Lodge only uses degradable hooks and lines it would be OK; but this one didn’t break the line so we had to dial 9 from the phone thoughtfully provided and call for Gary’s help who netted it, released it from the hook, let G take a photograph of him, C and shark, and then threw it back where it promptly swan off safely.
Listening: to the sounds of the rainforest which is never silent, likewise the sea.
Looking: at the birds and butterflies, at the trees, plants and flowers, at the ever changing light over the mountains, at the frogs, lizards and snakes, at the myriad stars on crystal-clear pitch-black nights - the constellations are sort of upside down though! Many of the butterflies and moths are huge and have the most beautiful colours – one of the best has to be the Ulysses which has brilliant blue upper wings and dark spotted under wings which appear to ‘flash’ on and off as it flies with its wings opening and closing. They fly from the ground to the top of the rainforest canopy and back again. Reptiles seen included a couple of tree snakes, although one was on the boat jetty rather than in a tree, a red eyed tree frog, several cane toads (they really are disgusting) and an Amethystine Python, which is Australia’s largest snake and can grow up to 8.5 metres long, however this was only a baby one at one metre long, which Gary found outside the dining area and brought it into show us.





Reading: we have had chance to read books other than travel guides as the Lodge has an extensive library. One book on Aboriginal Art contains a quote from Margaret Pearson (an Australian post-impressionist) that although the mystic properties of Aboriginal art is important, “mythology and religious symbolism do not matter to the artist, only to the anthropologist” which struck a chord.
Relaxing: something we have not done very much of on this holiday as we keep moving from place to place but the Lodge is very conducive for doing nothing – although after this peace Hong Kong and then Tokyo may be overwhelming.
Riverboating: we went for a trip up the Bloomfield River with a very knowledgeable guide named Jamie who pointed out numerous things of interest – the main ones being the Estuarine Crocodiles basking in the warmth on the edge of the river – we didn’t see any really big ones though, the largest one we spotted was only about three metres long! There is one which is that can be seen that is 6 metres long.
Swimming: the Lodge has a beautiful deep pool in which we swam every day.
Walking: we undertook a walk deep into the forest, again with Jamie, and saw some wonderful flora and fauna (including wild pigs – one of which growled at us before running off); one part of the walk took us to the top of the ridge which was a very steep climb, so-much-so that we had to use ropes to haul ourselves up the last 500m. (Note: C quite glad that there is no rainforest in UK as Barry and Gregg can get lost in Epping Forest – sorry, Barry and Gregg can take detours in Epping Forest – so what would happen to them in jungle is anyone’s guess). We also walked to the beach on a number of occasions where we beach-combed and G, inevitably, built driftwood sculptures.


23 March 2010
Cyclone Ului hit land on Sunday along way south of where we were but last night its tail brought torrential rain to Bloomfield, so much so that G woke up C to say a hurricane had arrived. She wasn’t at all impressed and told him it was just raining and to go back to sleep.
This morning we were told we had 44mm of rain overnight and that the airplane that was due to take us back to Cairns could not land on the grass airstrip we used when we arrived and instead we had to be driven to Cooktown, an hour’s drive north on dirt tracks by 4WD. Aren’t you glad you came with us? The drive was very interesting and enjoyable as we went through more of the rainforest but also across the Black Mountain, two huge mounds of black granite boulders near the road, the result of ancient volcanic activity.
We arrived back in Cairns after a very turbulent flight and returned to our hotel to re-pack for tomorrow’s flight to Hong Kong.

Cairns

18 March 2010
A quiet day spent in and around Cairns doing a little bit of shopping; we found a shop selling clothing and other stuff which carried designs by an Australian artist named Ken Done – his quirky drawings appealed particularly to Gregg who bought no fewer than three T shirts, but as the shop was closing down and everything had 70% off it didn’t break the bank. Of course Chris bought a T shirt too but hers was far more of a fashion item than his. We also went along to a commercial art gallery selling Aboriginal art and bought a painting – we have been admiring Aboriginal art since our visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney but have never found one to buy that we really really liked as many of them seemed to come with an awful lot of mythical baggage and symbolism but today we found some paintings that, whilst still having symbolic meanings, had strong abstract tendencies, so we bought one!


In the afternoon we went along to one of Cairns two cultural venues – the Centre for Contemporary Art (CoCa) which had two shows one was paintings by north Queensland CoCa-member artists and the other was a film called ‘Them’ by Artur Zmijewski a Polish visual artist, filmmaker and photographer. ‘Them’ reads like a parody of an art crit-session. It documents a series of art workshops Zmijewski held with members of four Polish extremist groups. First he met with them separately, and had them paint a picture that portrayed their beliefs. Then he bought them together to ‘correct’ one another’s paintings. Conflict erupted as the Catholics and neo-nationalists united against the left-wingers and the Jewish youths. It started quite mildly with the left-wingers cutting open the church doors of the painting by the Catholics to show nothing inside. Then they started painting over, cutting and eventually burning each others’ paintings, clashing over the body politics of the Polish nation. Despite their radical differences, those on the far right and those on the far left behaved similarly, speaking on behalf of the social whole while ignoring the other. The part G found most chilling though was when the Catholics and right wing nationalist united in their sheer hatred of gays and Jews – and it is that same right wing Polish political party that the UK Conservative party has aligned itself to in the European Parliament. It does not bode well for the UK if Tory Dave gets elected later this year.

We leave Cairns early tomorrow morning to head for the Daintree Forest, a 1200 square kilometre area of tropical rainforest that is the oldest in the world – more than twenty times older than the Amazon. We are certainly not ‘roughing it’ though as we are staying at Bloomfield Lodge which has no internet or mobile phone connection so a few days of blog silence will ensue, however if you are interested a look at http://www.bloomfieldlodge.com.au/ will reveal the little bit of indulgent luxury for Christine’s special birthday.

Come Sail Your Ships Around Me*

17 March 2010
We drove 60km north to Port Douglas and despite the cyclone warning took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef. On the drive up Captain Cook Highway we passed a few huge mangrove swamps and some dramatic coastal scenery where the rainforest comes down straight to the sea (more about the rainforest later). Port Douglas is described in the guide book as a “resort town with a relaxed outlook and an upmarket appeal for minor celebrities” – not sure that Chris and Terry come into that category but it was where they stayed last week. We were only here to board a boat to take us to the outer reef – we had been advised to visit the outer reef because the coral is pristine and has not been degraded. We chose to go with a highly professional company called Poseidon and they took us out about 70km from the coast in a large, comfortable and very fast catamaran to the Agincourt Ribbon Reef. There was a strong wind of about 25 to 30 knots and a tidal swell of 1m to 1.5m we were unsure if us novice snorkelers would be able to even get in the water let alone see any of the reef. The crew were incredibly helpful and kitted us out with snorkels, masks (including one with prescription lenses for G), flippers (including size 12s for G) and something they called “stinger suits” to prevent us getting stung by the numerous jelly fish around this time of year. A stinger suit is in fact a one-piece, skin-tight, lycra body suit with a hood which is very difficult to put on, even more difficult to take off and very unflattering whilst on because it shows up all the lumps and bumps which after three months of hotel living and dining out are all in the wrong places! Chris would only be photographed wearing hers whilst in the water.
Forgetting fashion we dived into the beautifully warm water and headed for the first reef. We both thought we are strong swimmers but out in the ocean with that swell we realised that perhaps we aren’t. Nevertheless we made it to the reef and were amazed by the variety and colours of the marine life. Gregg kept having problems with his face mask and had to head back to the boat but not before having seen some giant clams and beautiful parrot fish. The face mask problem was caused by his moustache allowing water into the mask – this was remedied for snorkelling sessions two and three by an even greater liberal application of petroleum jelly to his moustache than on the first trip. Meantime while he was sorting this out Chris ventured further around the reef and saw a large number of sea anemones, parrotfish, butterflyfish and many more, the names of which have not been retained despite a very interesting talk by a marine biologist as we sailed between reefs. Chris loved it so much she was almost the last person back on the boat.
The second session on a different part of the reef revealed a whole new world of fluorescent corals as well as hard corals looking like huge plate fungi but it was the huge variety of sealife on this reef that was amazing with shoals of small electric blue fish swimming around us. The clown fish were very skittish and come in a variety of colours. There were also a few large green turtles at this site which were magnificent – we have seen them in aquaria but never swimming free in the sea like this. It was all so amazingly beautiful – we decided to give the photography a rest because we weren’t sure about how we’d get on with (an expensive to hire) underwater camera on our first ocean snorkelling trip, instead we have numerous vivid memories and you’ll have to look on Wikipedia! We saw: angelfish, bullfish (always in pairs) triggerfish, goatfish, sea stars and even a couple of non-aggressive sharks.
We did a third snorkelling trip on a different reef and, once again, Chris was almost last back on board having found her own crew member to give her a guided tour of the reef! We shall not go on any longer about how wonderful it all was for danger of T commenting something like “very nice narrative but come on guys we’ve all seen Finding Nemo”.
Swimming in such deep water (on the edge of the reefs it can be quite scary to look down into the ocean depths) and with such big waves was very tiring and on the trip home we just sat on the upper deck and watched the huge waves send gallons of water spraying over the boat. On the return we were told how well we did snorkelling for the first time in such rough seas. Chris should feel rightly proud of herself considering how long she was in the water at each ‘dive’ because we were constantly swimming against the current (a thoughtful safety trick by the crew on mooring the boat at each site meant that if anyone got too tired to swim the current would just carry them back to the boat).

In the evening back in Cairns St. Patrick Day celebrations were in full swing (evidently over 40% of Australians claim Irish ancestry) with two quite incongruous sights – a shop called ‘Singapore Charlie’s’ selling a huge variety of St. Patrick merchandise and a couple of Aboriginal people wearing green wigs. So we bucked the trend and went to a very nice Italian restaurant which makes its own (very good) pasta, we also had a bottle South Australian wine made from Sangiovese and Barbera grapes – we didn’t know they even grew these varieties so we read the label which had a lot of information about the planting of the vines and the cellaring etc and finished by saying “we make a bloody good drink”. Indeed they do.

Different Trains*

16 March 2010
Unpretentious Cairns was always only going to be a base from where we did other stuff and we were not expecting much but it has a good buzz: a tropical climate (no sign of the cyclone), the lovely trees and flowers that go with that climate, the sea and the Great Barrier Reef on one side and the rain-forest covered mountains of the Great Dividing Range on the other, numerous chattering birds – and even more chattering fruit bats (there is one tree-lined street where we refused to walk because it is impossible not to get shit upon). It has a very nice laid-back feel to it similar to many of the northern Californian seaside places we used to visit – this morning we even had breakfast in Fusion Organic Wholefood Café and Juice Bar and very good it was too.
We then set off on one of our planned trips – we travelled on the Scenic Railway to Karunda and we can tell you it’s much better than the Chingford to Liverpool Street line.

It is a lovingly maintained vintage railway, built in the late 19th century as a supply route for miners in the gold fields (and later in the tin mines) of Herberton. It winds its way through the rainforest, over deep gorges, past some spectacular waterfalls, over the Barron River and along the side of some very steep mountains sometimes going through the mountain – there are no fewer than fifteen tunnels. The ride is about 37km and it rises over 450metres – some going for a steam train in the 1890s (all the rolling stock was imported from the UK), sadly today the carriages are pulled by two huge diesel engines.
Karunda is a stereotypical tourist village with much hyped souvenir markets – cane toad purses, kangaroo scrotums made into bottle openers and a huge array of natural cosmetics – allegedly emu oil can cure almost anything but there is also a really good didgeridoo shop selling some examples of the real thing (most are copies made in China) and a guy playing them and making good music, at this point we should add that any comments from Barry about Rolf Harris will NOT be published. There were a few nature parks and we ventured into two of them – the first was Birdworld which is lovely walk-through aviary with lots of exotic and native birds including a couple of cassowaries and a large macaw which took a liking to Gregg by landing on his back, refusing to get off and tearing a hole in his shirt with its claws.

The second was far less traumatic – it was Koala Gardens with a number of the eponymous cuties (more photographs of the little beauts) plus wallabies, wombats and kangaroos.

For our return journey we used the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway – a truly wonderful ride in a cable car over the rainforest canopy and got aerial views of the huge trees with epiphytes including huge elkhorn and basket ferns, as well as orchids. As we travelled we could hear the birds and insects below us and get the occasional glimpse of iridescent butterflies.

The cable car runs in two sections and covers the 7.5km back to a place called Smithfield near to Cairns; it is an astonishing feat of engineering skill, especially when we learned that it was also an amazing piece of eco-friendly construction with the huge towers being lowered into place by helicopters to minimise damage to the delicate rainforest floor.
We had a really wonderful day, it has been warm, sunny and quite humid but there is a constant breeze (OK, wind) from the sea to cool us. The evening was rounded off with dinner at a microbrewery restaurant which had some really good beer (for the antipodes). The one thing that struck us though was the large number of young women wearing to-the-floor dresses – Gregg was reminded of Judith Durham and had a bad night’s sleep.

The Ghosts Who Write History*

We’re back! Glad a couple of you noticed our absence – technical difficulties and expensive internet connections have delayed postings but they should now all appear. Photographs have also been added to the two Uluru postings.

15 March 2010
Another night of torrential rain, we checked the guidebook and it does say 250mm per annum and not 250m per annum. Didn’t even bother getting up to try and the sunrise illumination of Uluru and as for Olga she was sleeping beneath a heavenly cloud. However we did decide to do the walk around the base of Uluru before we had to catch our flight to Cairns.












The sky was grey ribbed cloud and there was a strong wind which tended to keep the flies away enough for us not to have to wear the face nets and instead whip them around in the air in front of our faces and on to our shoulders in the manner of Joshua Kenyatta. We had already done part of this walk the other day and knew that it was easy going so we’d have plenty of time to complete the 10.5km before going to the airport. What we hadn’t banked on was floods, yes floods, in the desert around the base of the bloody huge pink rock (thanks for putting it into perspective, Tracey).

And of course we were wearing our much admired and trusty Keen sandals (a small advertising fee greatly accepted) as we have been doing for about 99% of our journey. Despite their ‘waterproof’ tag the water does somehow manage to find its way in through the huge holes.

Inevitably we got not only wet feet but red muddy feet too; despite this and frequent stops to drink water (it was still warm) and take photographs we managed the whole 10.5km in just over two hours. We were pleased with that and felt we deserved lunch and a pint but it was of course only 10.30.
As we walked around the Rock there are areas that are fenced off and not only is access forbidden but so is photography because the areas are ‘sacred’. It is supposedly ‘sacred’ because Aboriginal peoples have ‘Dreamtime’ myths associated with the areas usually about giant lizards, huge snakes or massive moles which “explain” how Uluru came into existence or how the caves were formed. These are patently untrue, the rock that makes up Uluru was formed about 900 million years ago and between 400 and 300 million years ago the rocks were folded and forced upwards by the Alice Springs Orogeny, it is probable that Uluru is in fact a visible tip of a huge rock slab that extends 6km below the ground. All of this is fact, the stories about lizards, snakes, moles, emus, dingoes creating the place are fanciful legends created by a people that had no science. Yet, and this is the point of all this, The Australian Government not only allows the perpetuation of these legends but threatens anyone who photographs these places with a $10,000 fine. This, like so much that has been done in the “interests” of Aboriginal peoples seems symbolic and of little benefit – much like the official national apology which, we understand, was seen as an insult by some of the present generation of non-Aboriginal people who were not responsible for past mistakes. Such gesture politics does nothing to address the problems in Aboriginal communities such as alcoholism, appalling health and lack of access to education, disproportionate unemployment and over representation in the criminal justice system. We thought successive Australian Governments were more enlightened and wouldn’t help perpetuate these religious myths. However one thing that puzzles us and perhaps our Australian readers can enlighten us – why isn’t Australia a Republic? Whenever a Canadian, Kiwi or Aussie says “she’s our queen too” to us, Christine always retorts “well you can have her then!”

We got off the high horse and on to the aeroplane – we love the way Quantas staff at check-in desks confide in passengers by telling us about silly decisions the company makes – it seems most of them are looking for new jobs. However once on board they are totally professional and do an excellent job of caring for passengers. So we arrived in Cairns, checked-in at our hotel (only a Holiday Inn this time –but on the sixth floor with lovely views over Trinity Bay and...