Today saw me hire a car. I figured that it would cost me A$35 for a taxi from downtown Perth back to the airport, plus I wanted to catch up with a ex-C&B buddy who has a ranch close what you and I refer to as “the bush”. His ranch was some 80km east of Perth and involved navigating the Great Eastern Highway, the Roe Highway and the Great Southern Highway…and back again. The trip back was a little fraught with split-timing in order to get the hire car re-fueled and back to the airport in time. Everything, it seems, is much more laid back than here in the UK, most places close up “early”, i.e. between 1600 and 1700. Even with the car hire return staying open “late” until 1730, I was still pushing my luck a little. So much so, the desk was empty and I was forced to use the late key drop facility. I hope that works.

[Update , it seems that it didn’t.  Alison, my wife, received a ‘phone call asking if I still had the car…pretty tricky given that I was in Dubai at the time of the ‘phone call.  And I’d called their local office to let them know what I was doing, so I won’t be expecting to be charged for a second day of hire.]

[Another update: wow! I only paid £23 for the car hire for the whole day…why does it cost so much to hire a car here in the UK? That said, the fuel cost me £25…petrol engine I guess, I’m just so used to diesel these days]

The 80km trip out to my buddy’s ranch was fairly painless, I made a couple of wrong turns that took me off track but only for a couple of minutes. Here in the UK our highways have slip roads on the left-hand side of the carriage way. Not so in Australia, they have a T-junction with traffic lights, which meant that I had to pull across the outside lane (lane 2, overtaking lane) into a slip near the central reservation just to turn right. I suppose it’s cheaper than building fly-overs and slip-unders. Anyway, since the Aussies drive on the same side as the Brits, my mind could focus on other things whilst I was driving…like watching out for kangaroos (roos) jumping out in front of me. Without the added protection of a “roo-bar”, my vehicle was particularly vulnerable. Luckily for me, I was fortunate enough not to hit a roo, never mind see a live one. My buddy whose ranch I was headed for was not so lucky. On Friday he hit a roo whilst on his way down to the Great Southern Highway. He thought the roo had “gotten away”, but this was not the case – during a tour of his homestead/land, see saw his vehicle’s indicator…I spotted the roo decomposing at the roadside. This was somewhat pleasing for two reasons. Firstly, this roo caused A$3500 worth of damage. Secondly, roos are seen as pests down under, they harass livestock and eat their feed. Anyway, my buddy was chuffed that “he got the bastard”. His day was made, glad I could have been of assistance!

It turns out that my buddy’s wife is from Gourock, small world. Even smaller world: I drove into York to buy a small “house gift”, the bloke who sold me the gift was born in Dunfermline, lived in Manchester and moved to Oz some 15 years earlier. He was a “good guy”, I described what I wanted…he sold me a picture frame priced at $24.95 for $15, and a furry toy for $5, wicked. Settler’s Gifts, left hand side of the main street in York after leaving the Great Southern Highway. Kudos my friend, what goes around comes around: I left him with the tale of José Mourinho’s cup medals and eBay. Oh how we laughed.

I’m not sure how my buddy does it. He and his wife run a moderate sized farm, sheep, cattle, crop. And he has a day job working for Currie & Brown, which is the aforementioned 80km back to Perth – that’s a 60+ minute drive. They collect all their own drinking/washing/cooking water via carefully designed corrugated roofs. 1mm of rain can collect some 200 liters of water. Today, we must have got way more than that. I was treated to a tour of the homestead in the ut [utility vehicle], a 2.8 diesel 4×4. Kangaroos were off the agenda pretty much…except the dead one that I spotted and noted in an earlier paragraph.

I did see two kangaroos: this model and a dead one

Technorati Tags: Australia, kangaroo, bargain, Mourinho, roadkill

WTF. Here I am at the airport, I’ve dropped the hire car off and everything is closed. Even the Departure Lounge. What’s that all about? It seems that the airport only “comes to life” two hours before a departure. Man, it’s a different way of life. Thankfully there is a cafe open, I’m sat here drinking A$6 bottles of Redback Beer, an original wheat beer, 4.7%. I’m sat landside, waiting, just waiting for the Departure Lounge to open.  Man it’s weird, surely places should be open and wanting to take folks money?

Anyway, after lurking around in the cafe for a couple of hours, the check-in desks open.  The travel agent seems to have booked me through to Glasgow using an odd route: Perth to Dubai, Singapore to Glasgow.  Way to go.  I kind of needed this issue sorted in Oz as whilst in Dubai, I had already tried to change my Dubai to Perth flight with little success (my Arabic isn’t good enough to sweet talk an Economy to Business Class upgrade for an earlier flight!)

I had the fortune to sit beside a Aussie traveling to England to work as a vet in Nunetan. Emily was a horsey type, and second to sitting next to the pilot was a good traveling companion. Whilst waiting to pass through the Dubai security channel, Emily noticed that another passenger, some 10 people ahead of us in the queue, had a sticker stuck on her backside. What do you do? Suddenly we’re in a foreign country, the “English multiple queues” scenario has kicked in (which happens to suit the locale)…so we let her get on with her business. Such is life, we can’t please all of the people all of the time. Emily purchased some cigarettes in Dubai Duty Free – these will be the last fags she buys as she plans to use her temporary emigration as an excuse to give them up.  Good onya. Eleven hours in the air passed fairly quickly, some music, some podcasts and a movie – I watched The Sentinel from end to end. As I’ve already hinted at in an earlier posting, the ICE facilities from Perth to Dubai on the Airbus 343-500 were not as advanced as those on the Boeing 777-300ER.

The seven hours flight time from Dubai to Glasgow was a pleasant experience. After take-off the couple sitting on the window and middle seats to my right moved forward one row, leaving me with three seats to myself.  This meant that I spread out, laptop in the middle seat, lunch and coffee on the aisle, beer and wine on the window.  After watching Failure To Launch “on demand”, and failing to stay wake for Firewall (twice), I spent much of this flight skimming the on demand audio CDs.  These included Metallica’s 1991 seminal works [Metallica Metallica, The Black Album] and “no. 1’s from 1980 onwards”.   Each of the “no.1” albums had a few short facts about the year in question – a few that I could remember, Euro = 1999, Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger = 1985.

I must be stressed.  My concentration levels are virtually nil: I spent a while flicking through the “no.1’s” just listening to a few seconds of tunes that I already had in my collection at home.  No focus.  That’s why I’ve fired the laptop up, to try and get some focus by writing this posting.  I really should do something about this: the first sign of stress is lack of concentration.  Heck, I’m a frequent flyer, I should not be stressed.  So what’s getting to me?  Perhaps because I failed to concentrate on the “to do” items that I set myself for the trip out to Oz: stick my head in my Spanish learning material”.  Ditto on the way back – there was a screaming baby a few rows behind me (where are those noise canceling headphones?  not that they would soften the sounds of a baby crying).

Like the route from Glasgow to Dubai, we passed over Iranian airspace.  I can’t help but think that it’s only a matter of time before something happens in this space, both physically and politically.  Probably sad but true.  Iraqi airspace was given a wide berth, I can’t think why, 37,000 is a long way for SAMs (surface to air missiles) to reach, surely?  And surely the Coalition pretty much control the Iraqi airspace? 

Just a regular day in the office…

I was left to fend for myself tonight – which was pretty good going given that I had been there since Friday night (having company for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I mean). After a lengthy wander around Perth, I settled on Bobby Dazzler’s – the true blue Australian beer pub, as recommended my my office buddy Jim.

Dinner was super value and the beer tasted good: a burger and a small glass of Cooper’s 5.8% ale. [If the other Jim is reading this posting, are you related to these Coopers?]

A threesome, him, him and her (from NZ, I can tell the difference!) came in and sat themselves down at the table next to me. They muttered for a few minutes over the menu and then left the establishment rather rapidly stating that the menu was “too expensive”. What rubbish. It was well-priced, well-served and well-cooked, an excellent meal. Since I was sat there on my own, I arrived with weaponry: a local newspaper. Man, life is so different over here. Fuel is about A$1.45 (£1 == A$2.48), that’s less than £0.60 per liter. This just goes to show that fuel prices are partly related to population density (not stupidity, although…perhaps): here’s in the UK we are probably reaching over-population and are certainly densely populating many areas of our landscape. In Oz, things are significantly more spread out.

Despite initial plans for a quick sandwich, as a group we ended up walking through the streets of Perth. Getting the team to decide on a suitable lunch venue proved difficult.  We actually ended up in a typical English-style pub – the Moon and Sixpence. I enjoyed a traditional Oz beer: Redback, on draught.

After a day at work, a day that included a brief walkabout during lunch, most of us ended up in the Fairlanes bowling alley. Oscar unfortunately did not join us…he got stuck in the hotel lift, for over 90 minutes.

Art and I “programming” the bowling computer

Despite a slightly bruised left knee, I managed four strikes, three of which were consecutive (a turkey) giving me a score of 159. The next highest score was 161, from Art. Speaking of Art, he brought along his family: wife Goshi and daughter Sabrina.

Dinner was held in south Perth, over the Swan river. The weather was not conducive to “walking it”. I enjoyed a medium to well-done sirloin steak, others enjoyed a variety of fish dishes. Beer: James Boag Premium (lager)

Penny, Richard and I stayed out for a beer. Only one – the bar was loud, it was raining and we had a river cruise planned for the next day. Noted that fuel is A$1.42 per liter, or £0.58…over here in the UK, we’re paying pennies off £1.00. Rip-off Britain again.  I learnt that Aussies “went spare” when the price went through a$1.00. Different cultures, different problems perhaps? No. I don’t think so, we should be striving for unification. We should borrow some more of the ideas from StarTrek and get our act together, removal of financial greed and geographical economies would benefit mankind so much.