Sunny Melbourne!

Spent most of yesterday driving the flat coast behind the 150 km long "90 mile Beach" barrier island system east of Melbourne - OK, sedimentologically interesting but a pretty boring drive! All in a very cool breeze after yet another stormy night, Finally arrived Port Albert - recommended as a "quaint historic port and fishing village".... Quaint it may be, but of course yet again as soon I arrived (at low tide) the heavens opened and the rain lashed across the mudflats and mangroves. I gave up on the expected cultural experience of the coast walk to the old port and found the local camping site, then had a chilly damp night yet again....

Started today quite depressed and tired, not slept well in the bad weather: the rain had finally stopped, but the air was definitely COOL & DAMP. Decided to drive the last 220 km in to Melbourne and then plan further (including a couple of work meetings). First part of trip through lovely rolling countryside, weather (and my mood) improving all the time, so that by the time I reached Melbourne suburbs both were in great form. Then the fun of negotiating several thousand traffic-light junctions (or so it seemed!) before finally getting to a very pleasant trailer park - here I be, here I stay, no question of more city driving the next few days! Melbourne seems to have a great tram, train & bus network, so the camper can have a rest!

Rain, rain, glorious rain?

After a starry starry Saturday night, trying to understand the night sky here at 37 degrees south, yesterdays R & R Sunday started beautifully: a dip in the warm waters of Outfold Bay in clear blue sky, then general cleaning and laundry as the trailer park emptied dramatically - the end of the main Ozz summer holiday, everyone packing and going home to get ready for school start the coming days - reminiscing on my own end of summer hol feeling at the other end of the earth and calendar so many years ago!

A lazy lunch, dozing over the travel guide, trying to decide best plans for the coming week, then WHOOSH a violent wind gust from the sea sent everything everywhere and in minutes blue sky was gone gone.... By sundown a violent thunderstorm - quite an entertaining camper experience! Then the rain, which campowners had said they needed so desperately... By this morning the whole site inundated, still heavy rain squalls, but I decided to carry on "round the corner" and into Victoria, with the guaranteed promise of better weather (reliable source in Melbourne....).

The weather DID improve on the way and here 210 km onwards, mostly through hot and steamy forested inland, I arrived in Marlo, a lovely little village where the great Snowy River meets the Tasman Sea in a big sandy delta. This camp owner was envious when I told her of last night's storms - "Oh how we need some rain!" And sure enough, soon as I set out my chair under yet another wotsit tree (must learn some more Ozz botany!) the clouds gathered and opened..... Everybody happy apart from me -maybe I should just ask them to pay me to go somewhere that needs some rain?

Almost in heaven?

Well at least nicely parked under a wotsit tree, just about 10 km south (not east, if you remember your Steinbeck) of Eden, in the nicest trailer park yet, just metres from a beautiful South Pacific beach. Passed the "Garden of Eden Trailer Park" on the way, then the Eden Cemetery, perched just above the clear blue waters of Twofold Bay, but decided not quite ready for that yet, so on to here...

All this after over 200 km of more rolling and winding Princes Highway - which could be a gorgeous ride through rolling pastoral and forested land, mainly a little inland, but with occasional glimpses of the sea, estuaries, bays. Great for a passenger, especially if imagining what it must have been like before the white man came and messed things up... A continuous nightmare for this lonesome driver - 100 km/hr speed limit here, queues behind waiting for the next overtaking zone 2 km on, then a sudden almost ubend demanding a drop to 40, then back to 100, then a sudden 50km/hr zone thru yet another lovely historic village, with ped crossings, traffic lights and your local copcar just waiting to nab you for speeding! Then suddenly back to 100, up, down and around again, on and on.... Not at all like the endless straight highways through the north and west, not another vehicle or signs of humanity for 100s of km! All in all, this stretch could easily have taken up to a week to enjoy, so much nature, culture & history to experieence and absorb, while I just rushed on through.

But at least today it was all in sun and lovely blue sky and I could see the eastern beginnings of the Snowy Mountains - the southern end of the Great Dividing Range - now that the low clouds caused by Tropical Cyclone Iggy - which have ruined the trip so far - were no longer as low as my eyebrows.... (Iggy hasn't just messed up my last week of travel - so far there's extensive flooding north of Sydney and thru Queensland and I see that storms with up to 160 km/hr winds are forecast to hit the the NW coast - mmmmm that's what you've got to reckon with in this subtropical paradise?) Although folks at the last campsite reckoned this was the worst summer in 50 years, in Kyama before that I was told it was gorgeous until last week: climatic memories are short - just 2 years ago the crisis was long-lasting drought? Whatever, now I seem to be south of Iggy's evil influence and out in the sun!

No nice pics of my own yet I'm afraid, camera & new laptop config still not aligned, but a tourist shot of Narooma on the coast between Bateman's Bay and here, one of the many lovely small towns along the coast.

Sorry for silence - now watch this spot!

It's early Saturday the 21st January and the first time I've had decent net contact for a long time.... First the laptop, then I, got sick in Sydney. I got the laptop fixed, but started my trek down the eastern coast of New South Wales in filthy weather, with an even filthier cold and no net contact. I holed up and hunkered down in Kyama to recover from the cold - a lovely enough little place with spectacular surf beaches (and famous blowhole), but I sweated out the cold as the wind and rain lashed the campervan and the surf roared down on the beach. I was finally well enough to labour on southwards along the coastal highway on Wednesday - wondering why north and west Australia, with almost no traffic, has great roads, while here, where all the people are, has this terrible rollercoaster? (smells of Norwegian-like politics to me.....)

Then yesterday, here in Bateman's Bay, I finally found someone who could actually help with all my electronic problems - from now on, hopefully I'll have "roaming wifi" - hope springs eternal! And this morning, for the first time for over 10 days, there's a decent sunup and blue sky as I get ready to leave for another 150 km rock, roll and coast down to Eden(!) just north of the border with Victoria. Friends in Melbourne tell me that when I round the SE corner of Ozz the weather is sure to get better - more soon!

So here we was, back in Ozz,,,,

Just about to arrive in Bangkok, 20 hours after leaving home, eating "breakfast" at CET midnight, the feeling was "almost there". But no way, there was another 9 hour and 4 timezone trip onwards to Sydney - that's when I started to feel I might know what the "Antipodes" means...... But ever onwards, we then got blown down on the backend of a tropical storm, with tailwinds well over 100 mph at times, quite a bumpy ride and only a minute to say hello again to Timor, before we were over Ozz's northern coast and then over that vast interior of "nothingness", so much nature, geology, so few signs of human devastation, all seen from Thai Big Bird, 11 km up in the sky,,,,

Down on the ground, my first and (so far this trip) almost last meet with a "real" Australian at Immigration control - then a quick succession of originally and all truly pleasant Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Lithuanian, Indonesian/Chinese, Tunisian, Vietnamese, Burmese servicers..... What an exciting meltingpot and yes to multiculture in practise, no to everything else!

A laid-back jetlagged day today, getting practicalities organised, enjoying the tree-lined streets of Potts Point, with its Victoriana and "maybe the best in Ozz" fantastic bookstore.

The Royal Botanical Gardens tomorrow? We'll see - everyone here complaining about the terrible weather, far too bad to walk thru the gardens - it's "only" 20 degrees and a little showery, boohoohh.....Ø

Maybe just keep on with this site?

I seem to have gotten a few messages encouraging me to carry on - I thought it was a little inappropriate now I'm not in Australia, but OK, why not? I'll try to log my movements anyway, hope they're not too boring!

January to early February saw another hectic work period in Uganda, including fieldwork in the extreme west of the country along the eastern shores of Lake Albert, near the Uganda - Congo boundary. Exciting geology and the group I was working with and advising finally managed to get down to the basics and sort out the stratigraphic mess that the regional geology has gotten itself into..... This was my third working visit and we seemed to make great progress - not least thanks to Martin Pickford - an old Ugandan hand who worked on the regional geology and fossils for a total of 26 field months from 1986 to 1992..... He was amazed by the changes in the area - villages which have mushroomed in size, producing urban sprawl along the lake shores - all a result of refugees fleeing from the neighbouring Congo, settling down in Uganda and not willing to return home.... Incredible poverty, overfishing of the lake (don't blame the lack of fish on climate change!!!!) and overgrazing of the land..... All very depressing, especially in view of the incredible beauty of the Alert Rift Vally and its natural surrundings.

We had to cut the trip short as I received sad news about my brother Bill's death - although much older than me and not very well, it was still a shock - I who grew up the youngest in the family am now the only one left of parents and brothers...... A few days home and then a quick trip to England to attend burial of his ashes and a family reunion - a pleasant although sad occasion in bitterly cold but clear mid-February northern England.....

Then just a few days later we were off on our next adventure - a 3 week "multicultural" tour of Vietnam, Angkor Wat and then a final few days' relaxation on a Thai beach..... more about that tomorrow.......

not ozz now, Uganda

I got to reminiscing about the Ozz trip as I read the British "Times" travel section on the flight from Brussels to Entebbe a few days ago - an article headlined "The adventure of your lifetime" listed "ten mould-breaking choices for 2010", with - just wait for it - Number 2, "long drive - the "Savannah Way, a road trip par excellence" Ah Ah - been there, done it, but would love to do it again! Maybe with other variations and sideroads, but yes, it was a truly amazing experience! I realised that recently I've been subconsciously planning the next Australian roadtrip - can't quite decide between just "going with the flow", taking whichever route car or camper relocations take me, or seriously striking out northwards to Cape York from Cairns - maybe both? Me alone on the first bit, then with Ros on the second - the Cape York adventure seems just to wonderful (and demanding?) to do on my own.....

Meanwhile, here I am in Entebbe, soaking in the equatorial sun which has just peeked out from the morning rain clouds, looking down on Lake Victoria from the terrace of the Lake Victoria Hotel - a one-time "colonial masters" property, just down the hill from the then British Governor's, now President Museveni's mansion, the hotel now being restored and expanded by a Libyan consortium headed of course by my old friend Colonel Ghadaffi (or one of his sons or daughters), I should and will say no more....

I lost the urge to write for a while after the amazing Ozz trip, and the work pressure was too much on my last visit here to Uganda from late November to mid-December, then Christmas just involved more and more snow and minus God-knows how many degrees - it was fun digging out the cars at first, but.....

but now Lynnea has encouraged me to start again, so we'll see... it might get me writing some maybe controversial thoughts about postcolonial Africa though, but OK as long as I keep personal details out of it all??