LONDON AND THE MED 2025

DAY 1 GETTING THERE

Our car showed up on time and we had a smooth run to the airport. Emirates have humans to check you in which is a nice touch. The Commonwealth seems to have let the current security checking contract to the very lowest of low bid contractor as there are now queuing races that run for miles and only two bag scanning carousels manned for normal passengers and these were operating with a skeleton staff that seem to mostly converse in Urdu.

They seem to have justified this minimum staffing with some very clunky technology . You have to stand in front of a bay where a tray is supposed to appear before you to put your carryon bags on to send thru the scanner. Only problem is that you need to stand in a very specific way before a tray appears and the trays would not appear for about 80% of the passengers . At the other end, despite large signs saying do not stack trays, people were stacking the trays to make space for their gear to come down the rollers out of the scanner. The automatic tray return feed could not handle stacked trays so it clogged and came to a halt which in turn led to more stacking of trays to clear the line.

Finally we made it thru and I breezed thru the automatic immigration passport reader. I have a photo on my passport that looks like it came off a badly printed wanted poster for a Bengali axe murderer but it recognised me instantly . Jeanette on the other hand got rejected by the automated machine which clearly could not believe someone with her birthdate could look so young.

We are trying Premium Economy on Emirates on this trip. Very impressive seats, lots of leg room, great food and service. One huge problem is the seats have a very large layback capacity and the guy in front of Jeanette reclined his to the max which made our space feel very cramped and also made it almost impossible for me to get out of the window seat.

Anyway after 14 very long hours we made it to Dubai where we picked up our next leg to London. Another 8 hours in a beautiful Airbus 380, this time with no seat recliners in front which made it much more pleasant. We were sitting in the second row of seats in the aircraft with the center of the aircraft at this area filled by a rather grand stair case leading up to the rarefied world of First and Business class on the top deck.

We were intrigued to find the bit under the staircase next to us had been turned into the cabin manger’s office.

We finally landed at Heathrow and Jeanette managed to breeze thru the automatic passport checker here. She had clearly aged a bit on the flight and now more closely resembled her passport photo.

After 30 hours from departing home, we arrived at our hotel, “The Hilton Paddington”. I was puzzled to see all the Great Western logos in the floors until I looked across the road and there was Brunel’s Paddington Station. This Hotel obviously had another owner in times past

The Irish Trip – Day 3

Today, I took a break to try and shake off the jet lag from our trip over. The indefatigable Jeanette however, hit the hop on hop off bus and went to explore Dublinia, an exhibition of the way of life in the times of the Vikings and the Middle Ages. She followed this up her very favourite travel activity namely church visiting and she checked out two cathedrals, St Patrick’s and Christ Church.

I wandered down to our hotel’s bar for a quiet lunch. At the table next to me were two priests having lunch and I couldn’t help but overhear some of their conversation. If you adjusted for the clerical references, it was just like the shop talk you would hear from two friends having a chat in an RAAF Officers mess back in my day.

One thing that amazed me is that here in Dublin, one of the world’s strongest Catholic countries, the two biggest Cathedrals that you encounter here are both Anglican.

After lunch I went for a wander in Merrion Square Park. A lovely large green oasis, it was full of people enjoying the sun.

I spotted a bird there which I had never seen before. I think is an Eurasian magpie. It is smaller than our magpies and in addition to its black and white colouring, its wings and tail had a blue or green colour depending on how the light hit it. Not my greatest shot I will admit but my subject was not all that cooperative.

Like Vincent Place in Albert Park , Merrion Square was surrounded by rows of what in their day would have been very impressive residences but today are mainly offices or consulates.Still very pretty.

A feature that struck me were the colourful doors. The locals tell a story that in the Victorian era, on the passing of Prince Albert, the Queen directed that all doors should be painted black in mourning. The Irish not liking to be told what to do, responded by painting their doors all the colours of the rainbow.

The Irish Trip – Day 2 The Brewery

We are staying at a lovely hotel that Jeanette found called The Davenport. It is near neighbours to Oscar Wilde’s home which is now a museum. A short walk across the road is a park with a statue of the famous author.

It was from outside this park we caught the hop on bus for a tour around Dublin to help orientate ourselves for further more detailed exploration.

On the edge of the city there is Phoenix Park which is the largest park in Europe. It is enclosed by over 10 miles of stone walls and was originally a Royal hunting reserve.

I was taken by the Wellington Monument there. You can get an idea of its size by the tiny people around its base. The metal panels around the sides were cast from melted down French canons taken at the Battle of Waterloo.

After the tour we had a walk around some Dublin’s streets looking for a place for lunch. We wound up in a nice pub called the Bailey. Plotting our next move, we decided to visit the Guinness Brewery so Jeanette got on line to book us in which we managed for the 2:45pm tour.

The Brewery is a vast complex. That’s Jeanette in the distance in front of the famous Brewery gates. The founder got a 9,000 year lease on the site from the church in the 18th century at a rental of 45 pounds a year.

They have converted their old production facility into a visitors centre. It is an amazing 7 storey building and you can see the old riveted steel construction.

The absolute highlight for me was on the fourth floor, hidden away in a corner away from the flashy Audio video displays was a surviving Guinness Steam Locomotive. Designed by the Brewery’s engineer Samuel Geoghegan when they couldn’t find a suitable loco in the market, they proved a success and 18 were made between 1882 and 1921 (17 of which were built locally at the Cork Foundry).

We finished our tour of the 7th floor and sampled a Guinness while looking out over the city.

The Irish Trip – Day 1 Getting There

We got picked up from home at 5pm and headed for the airport. This would be our first flight ever with Emirates and we were interested to compare with our other experiences.

We actually were checked in by humans which was great. The automatic passport checking booth failed to recognise Jeanette as it always does. The flight left about 15 minutes ahead of schedule which was another big tick. Our aircraft was an Airbus 380 which is our favourite type and it seemed very new. The cabin crew were friendly and helpful.

The downsides were the flight from Melbourne to Dubai is 14 hours which seemed to take forever. Despite a generous number of cabin staff, the meal service took an incredibly long time and the wine was strictly rationed at one glass of wine per person per flight and that was served with the second meal.

We finally made Dubai, had a two and a bit hour stop over then onto a Boeing 777 for the final 8 hour leg to Dublin. The Cabin crew were very nice but the aircraft was old and the seats were very small and cramped.

Finally made it into Dublin feeling incredibly secondhand. Immigration and Customs waved us through with a smile. We collected our bags, got them down to the ground level out into the Dublin air, across a busy road to where we could see taxis pulling up. But this was the drop off lane so back across the busy road, into the terminal, up to a higher level, across the road bridge then down to the pick up point.

We got a cab and headed for our hotel. We had timed our arrival on the day of the All Irish Football Grand Final between Galway in Maroon and Armagh in Orange. The streets and the pubs were packed to overflowing with supporters in their team colours slowly making their way to the grounds .

Our driver was not impressed as Dublin for the first time in many years had not made the Grand Final and he didn’t approve of all these farmers taking Dublin’s rightful place. He would occasionally wind down the window and yell some comment in Gaelic at the crowd. I am not sure what he said but every one seemed happy and just waved.

Given the narrow streets, the football crowds and a mob of pro Palestinian demonstrators, our progress was pretty glacial but we finally made it to our hotel. It had been 29 hours since we left home.

The receptionist, probably taking pity on our disheveled state, let us check in early (nearly 3 hours before the stated time) and we went to the room and collapsed.

The Ghan Expedition-Journey’s End

Our train travelled through the night and we awoke travelling through the South Australian wheat fields looking green and lush in the early morning sun. We arrived in Adelaide around 10:30am and had checked into our hotel by 11:00am. We were staying at the Mantra Hindmarsh Square, which I can thoroughly recommend for anyone considering a stay in Adelaide, which I would also recommend.

After dropping our bags, we went for a walk down the Rundle Mall. Jeanette and I were really amazed. It was midday Saturday, the mall was heaving with neatly dressed people, all the shops were open and doing a brisk trade. South Australia had only had a couple of weeks lockdown and the difference between here and Melbourne is really stark.

Little arcades ran off the mall and they were also doing brisk trade. We loved the Adelaide Arcade which was built in the 1880s and still retained its lovely Victorian feel. Each of the Arcade’s shops were originally built with two levels. The ground floor was for the retail activity and the top floor was for their workshops.

I loved the Adelaide street sculptures. There were none of the Yellow Peril and other pompous monstrosities that infest Melbourne; just subjects that appeal to the normal population.

That evening Jeanette and I had dinner at a restaurant she had been wanting to try. This was Eleven. We had a fabulous evening trying their degustation menu. Really excellent food, great service and a lovely environment. I reckon it’s up there in the top five restaurants I have ever attended.

The next day we caught the tram down to Glenelg. We felt that having reached the northern most point of our trip on the Darwin Pier looking out across the Arafura Sea, we should formally complete our North South Crossing of the Continent by getting to the sea again, so we walked to the end of the Glenelg Pier and gazed southward across the waters of the St Vincents Gulf.

It had been a great journey

The Ghan Expedition -Coober Pedy

Traveling overnight on the train we arrived at Manguri Station around 8am. When they were building the line there used to be a small settlement here but all that’s left now are a couple of concrete slabs. We caught our bus here to take us to Coober Pedy some 40 minutes drive away.

The name Cooper Pedy is a corruption of two aboriginal words that translate as white man who lives in a hole. The Opal fields run for around 35 kilometres either side of the town. The first sign of a building we struck was originally a service station on the old Sturt Highway in a place they call 8 Mile. There has been so much mining here in the past that the ground is so riddled with tunnels it is considered unstable and mining in this spot is now banned.

Spoil heaps – You can see the truck mounted blowers in the middle

The countryside as far as you can see is just miles and miles of spoil heaps from the underground tunnelling. A standard piece of mining kit is a truck mounted vacuum cleaner that sucks the spoil up from the mine and deposits it in heaps. Just imagine an ancient flat bed truck with a motor on the tray and a frame at the end supporting an object about the size of 44 gallon drum on an angle about 12 feet in the air with pipes running to and from it. They look very Heath Robinson.

We journeyed to the town where mining is also now prohibited but there is still apparently a bit of digging going on to install cellars or septic tanks which of course is perfectly legal. We visited the Serbian Orthodox Church which is underground. Very impressive.

We also saw an underground house. These structures are in the main built into the side of hills so you have a front door and front windows opening out at street level and the rest of the house is dug back into the hill. Each room has an air shaft dug up to the surface with a cap on top to keep out the rain so the hills behind these house fronts look like a sea of mushrooms.

We also had a wander around an old mine then went for lunch in a more modern underground mine where they had created large caverns to host dinners.

After lunch we headed out to the Breakaways National park. The early part of the park is known as the surface of the moon. It really is an apt description. There is nothing but dirt and small rocks spreading as far as you can see. NASA has used it for training astronauts.

Once through this area we came to a remarkable Australian construction “The Dog Proof Fence. This is a continuous fence running some 5300 Kms from South Australia thru New South Wales to the Darling Downs in Queensland. Portions of the fence are over 120 years old and it is buried as deep into the ground as it is above it. The parts of the fence that adjourn private property have to be maintained by that landowner but they are reimbursed their costs by the state governments and levies on other graziers.

Traveling further into the Breakaways we came across a spectacular range of ancient flat mesas. Climbing to the top of one, the views of the surrounding vast empty country that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions was truly awe inspiring.

We got back to the train just in time for dinner and shortly after the train pulled off into the night on our final leg to Adelaide.

The Ghan Expedition – Back on the Train

Around 8am, we got picked up from our hotel and conveyed to the railway station. We checked our bags in and around 9am the Adelaide bound Ghan pulled in.

We joined the train’s passengers for their actives in Alice for the day as our train was not scheduled to leave until around 10pm.

The first activity was a visit to the Alice Springs Desert Park. We first had an amazing display by kestrels, owls and a buzzard. The latter was, in my mind, the star of the show . They had a fake emu egg made out of plaster, the buzzard spotting it, landed, picked up a nearby stone and smashed it open.

Next attraction was the nocturnal house where you could see a rather angry King Brown snake, very cute spinafex mice, bandicoots and a bilby. My favourite though were the Thorny Devils. They really looked and moved like a miniature of a character in a Japanese monster movie.

After lunch in the park we were bused into Alice and left on our own to roam the streets till 20 past four. About an hour before pick up time, having walked every street twice, we decided to walk back to the station. Eventually we got to our assigned cabin, put on all our warmest clothes, then we were bused out to the Old Telegraph Station for yet another outdoor outback meal in the freezing cold. Still it wasn’t too bad as it was a very interesting site, and the food was good and the wine flowed freely and the stars were magnificent, but it was still so very cold.

The Ghan Expedition- Back to Alice

Up at 5:30am. Today just involved retracing our steps back to Alice. We stopped for a morning break at Curtain Springs Station then onto Emu Station for lunch and we were back to our hotel in Alice around 4pm.

Only variety that occurred was that we stopped on the side of the road just out of Curtain Springs, climbed the sand hill that edged the road and on the other side was the vast Armadeus Salt Lake. It was amazing. You could drive that road and never know it was there. Now the spooky thing about this is that both Jeanette and I photographed that lake and none of the photos came out. The best we have was from the top of the sandhill looking across to what the locals call ”Foolaru” and the maps “Mt Conner”.

We had the next day as a layover in Alice as our train to Adelaide was not due till the following day. We really needed this as we were both fairly beat by this time.

We had a great sleep in. I worked to try and catch up with the blog posts and Jeanette attacked the laundry. With this done we had a crack at removing the spot from my camera’s sensors which appears to have been successful.

Around midday we wandered down to Lasseters Casino. We had a very nice lunch here. The buildings were impressive as were the gardens but inside was rather tired and worn and it was very quiet.

The Ghan Expedition -The Olgas

Owing to the hotel’s kitchens not opening till 6:30am we got a half hours sleep in today. Our first trip was a walk around the back of Uluṟu . It gives you a view of the Rock that you don’t often see and the surface has some strange eroded features that I have never seen before in photos of the Rock that I have viewed.

Our peaceful walk was rudely interrupted by a swarm of people on Segways. I mean, really! We then headed on to the Uluṟu cultural centre where they do a really nice coffee. Next we drove on to the Olgas and we were having a sandwich lunch just in the car park when we were hailed by a work colleague, and his wife, whom I had not seen for nigh on 17 years. It really is a small world. The above photo was of a tiny desert plant growing on the edge of that carpark.

After lunch we walked into the Olgas by way of Walpa Gorge. The constitution of the Olgas is very different from Uluṟu. Its rocks are made up of what is described as an amalgam of smaller stones. The guide said it was like a plum pudding and close inspection confirms that this is a pretty accurate description. It was a pretty walk but I have to say the Olgas lack the mystical pull of Uluṟu.

Our evening’s entertainment was the Field of Lights. This was put in by an English installation artist back in 2014 and has proved so popular that it has been kept going. Now I have to confess that from afar I was a bit sniffy about this whole concept. I mean when you have the magnificence of an Outback sunset over Uluru how is a lot of coloured lights going to improve on that. Well having seen it, I have to admit that this was one of the exceedingly rare instances where I was wrong.

We stood, drinks in hand, on the top of a sandhill watching the sun set over Uluru then as the last vestiges of light faded away, the field below us started to glow with patches of different colours which intensified as it got darker. When it was totally dark we walked down the hill and wandered amongst the lights. It was a magnificent experience.

The Ghan Expedition – Uluru

Up again at 5am and on the road at our usual time. Our first stop today was at Curtain Springs Station, a cattle property of 1 million acres. We had a talk from an amazing lady, Lyndy, who with her husband owns this station. Her husband’s parents bought it in 1956 in a foreclosure sale. Her husband’s father and mother moved onto the station and immediately experienced a 9 year drought. Their arrival also coincided with the start of people traveling out to see the Rock and the track ran through the middle of their station so as an alternate source of income they started catering to tourists, firstly with fuel and food, and latterly with accommodation units and a caravan park. In the days before air conditioning, the mother used to be able to hear a car coming from 20 miles away and would be waiting for it in the middle of the road with a tray of scones.

We had lunch in a modified version of what had originally been the station homestead . It wasn’t till the 9 year drought broke that the family realised that their roof was not waterproof. The other amazing feature of this property is their cattle management. No mustering here. All the water points on the property are enclosed in stockyards with one way gates in and out. The cows teach their calves how to use the gates and when the station needs to collect the cattle they just shut the ‘out’ gate.

Back on the road, after a couple of hours we saw our first glimpses of Uluṟu as we crested some sand dunes. With the wet summer and some rains persisting into the normal dry season, the surrounding country was really at its prime. Lyndy had mentioned in her talk that she didn’t expect to see the country looking this good again in her lifetime.

It is quite amazing to see the Rock appear in the distance. It just looks unreal. We drove up to the parking area near one side and walked along it. It was quite an emotional sensation being alongside it. All the Rock’s waterholes were filled with clear water and there was even a small waterfall off it on one side.

My words cannot adequately describe Uluṟu and our pictures really don’t do it justice. The best I can do is to say that if you haven’t been there you really have to go, to see and feel the sensations it generates for yourself. It is a truly amazing place.

We checked into our hotel, Sails in the Desert. We had a beautiful room and the staff were great. At 5pm we were picked up for the ‘Sounds of Silence’ Dinner. We were wearing every piece of warm clothing we had.

We were dropped off near a sandhill which we climbed to the top, and had drinks and canapes while we watched the sun set. Very impressive.

We then wandered down the other side of the sandhill where they had tables set out and under a Milky Way like you have never seen, had a lovely buffet dinner after which a guy with a powerful laser pointer talked about the various constellations, pointing them out as he did.

Only downside was that it was absolutely freezing cold and we wound up in a tight ring of people surrounding a gas outdoor heater trying to get just a bit of warm.

All in all a very memorable day.