Memories of Mars

The In-Laws have now left, onto their next adventure in Singapore – at least I assume that’s where they are now. I dropped them off at the airport so presumably they caught their flight to Perth and are not still sitting in the tiny departures lounge with only the airport’s one terrible cafe to sustain them with crisps and toasted sandwiches. They picked a hot time to visit which, considering The Father-In-Law is a staunch cold weather person who doesn’t cope well with any kind of heat (his favourite pastimes are climbing the snowy peaks of north England and Wales and cycling in any weather, which in England usually means rain and cold), could have been disastrous. Even The Mother-In-Law was taken aback by the fierce heat, which hits you like a brick wall when you leave the cool air-conditioned interior of the house or the car. Having said that, they seemed to enjoy themselves in outback North Western Australia. Of course, having the air-con turned up to refrigerator levels probably helped but they coped admirably when outside under the blazing Pilbara sun too. The Father-In-Law did at one point adopt a granddad pose on the beach by sitting on a deckchair with his hat pulled down low over his face, his shirt on and a towel wrapped over his legs but I suppose he was being sun-safe which, when you have delicate English skin that hardly sees the sun, is a good thing when suddenly faced with intense Aussie rays beating down on you.


It’s easy to forget how alien a place like this seems to newcomers, especially those from somewhere thousands of miles away both geographically and figuratively. The heat, the barrenness, the remoteness, the lack of greenery and rain. We at least had come from Thailand which was both hot, which helped us to acclimatise to the higher temperatures out here, and another world to the UK, which meant that we were used to living somewhere totally alien to us. It’s when people come to visit and you see the place through their eyes that you remember how different to home the Pilbara is. When viewed from above from the plane it looks like Mars, all reds and oranges, rocky, barren and unpopulated. It really is like living on another planet – the In-Laws will soon be coming to back down to Earth with a bang, back to England and reality, where Karratha really will feel like a rocket ride away.

Fly Away

We have been gone for six days and in that short time Karratha’s fly population has quadrupled. Take a picnic lunch down onto the beach, go for a walk, or wander around the town and there are flies buzzing all around you. They fly up your nostrils, in your ears, under your sunglasses and in your eyes; they land on your lips, your back, your head, your arms. They are everywhere. From where they have all suddenly appeared, I don’t know, but we are having to adapt. We are quickly perfecting the Australian wave, a sort of slightly more aggressive version of the Queen’s wave, as we try in vain to bat them away. In the end, exhausted from our fly-swatting efforts, we let the majority settle on us, only batting away the ones that try to enter us through our ears, nose and mouth. There’s no point getting angry, frustrated or upset, no point in swearing at them, shouting or getting yourself in a tizzy (Husband, take note). The flies are here to stay and we had better get used to them.

I think the beach is going to be the place to be in the summer. The cool breeze coming off the Indian Ocean tempers the searing heat of the sun, the water is a beautifully refreshing temperature and the flies don’t like either so, down at the water’s edge, they are relatively fly-free. Luckily, there are many beaches to choose from and, with the tourists having all gone back down south to escape the heat, they have never been emptier. We took The In-Laws to five of them and they gradually got used to the heat. They suffered to begin with but by the fifth beach they were even able to spend a few hours out in the sun – quite a feat considering they stayed in the shade and were ready to leave pretty soon after lunch at the first one. The Father-In –Law got used to the flies pretty quickly too, letting them rest on the top of his cap and on his back in droves. Perhaps he has found a new calling as a fly whisperer - that would certainly be a very profitable business in Australia!

Drinking & Driving

We are currently driving very fast. The Father-In-Law is breaking every speed limit to get us to the airport on time. We had to visit just one last winery this morning before leaving Margaret River (no, really, we did, it was completely necessary) and the journey back to the airport is taking slightly longer than expected. We’re all just praying that we don’t get stopped by the police as I’m not sure they would be completely understanding of our reason for speeding – “Sorry officer but we had to squeeze in a few tastings at a winery before we left Margaret River and as a result we’re running a bit late.”


I must just point out at this juncture that The Father-In-Law did not partake of the wine tasting and was therefore perfectly sober and legal to drive. To be fair, it was pretty early to be sipping wines and we did feel slightly like alcoholics as we drove onto the magnificent Vasse Felix estate (Margaret River’s first commercial winery) as soon as the cellar door opened at 10am. We were not, however, the first – there were already three elderly ladies propping up the counter who obviously needed something to get them going in the morning. Then again, if they’re anything like my English grandparents they’ll have already been up for four hours so it probably felt like lunchtime to them. They certainly weren’t holding back – they demanded a taste of every single wine on the 12-strong list and when told where the spittoon was located, they merely laughed and said, “Oh goodness no, we won’t be needing the spittoon but we may need bigger glasses!” When I grow up I want to be just like them.

So now I’m sitting in a speeding car feeling rather sleepy and mellow and not really caring whether we get to the airport in time or not. Perhaps I should have had a few glasses of wine before the journey to Margaret River a few days earlier. The Husband made a monumental error while map-reading, thinking we were 50km further north than we were, therefore turning off and managing to take a road back in the exact direction we had come from. It did mean that we got to see a bit of Mandurah, quite a lovely little coastal town, but it also meant that we had come 50km back on ourselves and, by the time we got back on to the road we were never supposed to have left, had wasted an entire hour. I didn’t think it was right when we turned off but The Husband will not be told he’s wrong, especially when it comes to anything to do with cars, driving and maps. Perhaps all car journeys undertaken with one’s husband should involve a stop at a winery beforehand.

Coast, Cave & Karri Trees

Margaret River isn’t only about wineries. I mean, it’s mostly about wineries, obviously, and if we were here for longer I would have done my damnedest to visit as many as possible. I can’t tell you how hard it is to pass signs announcing wonderful sounding wineries and not enter their hallowed grounds. Each time we sped past the rows of vineyards, manicured lawns and welcoming signs, I had to fight the urge to scream, “stop, turn in, turn in!” But, as I said, there is more to the Margaret River area than wine. There are hundreds of kilometres of pristine coastline to explore which, at this time of the year, is alive with pinks, purples, blues, yellows and reds as the wildflowers explode with colour. We drove to lookouts over waves crashing onto rocks and the shoreline, pounding the beach and anything in its way. The sea was treacherous, and it is clear how so many surfers catch their last waves in these waters. I certainly wouldn’t want to be out in it.


If the coast was full of drama, with an orchestra of sound bellowing about you, the Karri forest was quiet and almost mystical, the only sounds being the chirping of birds and an occasional rustle in the undergrowth. The tall, thin Karri trees reached up to the sky as shafts of sunlight gently floated through them. Wild lilies peppered the ground and the fresh smell of eucalyptus permeated the air. The caves were also quiet but this time echoing with the sound of tiny droplets of water falling from the straws on the roof. Stalactites and stalagmites made for jagged sculptures and the underground lake reflected its crooked teeth. Margaret River really is a spectacularly beautiful area and a couple of days don’t do it justice but we will be back. We’ve got a lot of wineries still left to visit and a lot more drinking to be done.

Winos

I am currently feeling very mellow. We have just returned from a mammoth seven hour wine tasting session and I am awaiting a cup of tea made for me by The Mother-In-Law. Yes, it’s almost the drinking hour of 6pm and all I am desperate for is a cup of tea. We have drunk a lot of wine. Six wineries and eight tastings at each makes for a lotta lotta wine. Not that I’m complaining, I do love my wine after all, but I am feeling quite sleepy now and am in need of something with which to perk me up. This has been our first full day in Margaret River and we made sure we did the most important thing on our list. Margaret River is known for its wineries and we were ready to visit a few of its 138+ wineries as a priority. It would have been rude not to really.


As each of us wanted to partake in the supping of wine, we booked onto a tour that transported us to several wineries, including one at which we stopped for lunch. We were picked up at 9.40am and were at our first winery, Stella Bella, by 10am. I don’t think I have ever drunk wine (apart from sparkling of course, which everyone knows can be drunk at any time of the day or night) that early before. But I bravely sipped my way through every bottle on offer and emerged into the sunshine slightly dazed but ready for the next winery. We visited two before our lunchtime stop, which was in stunning grounds, complete with rose gardens and the second tallest Australian flag in the country. The guy who owns the winery is from mining stock so he has a lot of money and the belief that bigger is always better. After a tasting and lunch we clambered back on the bus and visited three further wineries, plus a chocolate shop.

Despite the vast quantities of wine being drunk, we returned back to our apartment without too many injuries – The Father-In-Law bashed his head on the door of the bus (there’s always one – I’m just glad it wasn’t me as it normally is), The Mother-In-Law attempted to leave her seat without unfastening her seat belt, and we ran over a man-sized kangaroo. Other than those little incidents, our tasting our way round some of Margaret River’s finest wineries was a complete success. Now I just need a little snooze before I’m ready for our evening drinks!

Send In The Clowns

Cruising along in the cool interior of the air-conditioned car, en route to Margaret River, my poor skin is getting a respite. I was very foolish yesterday and committed that most heinous of Australian crimes – I did not re-apply my sun cream. I dutifully slathered it on at the beginning of the day, before sitting out at a pavement café in Fremantle, sipping a frothy cappuccino and basking in the feel of the warm sun on my face. It is a good 10°C cooler than Karratha down here in Perth, making it the perfect temperature in which to sit out and enjoy the sun rather than simply tolerate it.


Fast forward two hours and I am sitting on a beach, waiting for the others to finish their tour of Fremantle Prison. Having done it before with The Parents, I opted to lose myself in a second-hand bookshop and mooch around the weekend markets. When I was shopped out, I wandered down to the seafront, where we were due to meet for lunch, and sat on a pretty beach, whiling away the time by people-watching and daydreaming. By this point it was 1pm, the hottest part of the day and my earlier sun cream application was now hours behind me. But, with the cool sea breeze blowing across my bare skin, I didn’t feel the full force of the sun’s rays and happily forgot about my lack of SPF protection.

Happily, that is, until I met up with the others and The Husband pointed out that my shoulders and back were looking rather pink. They certainly felt a little warm but by this point they weren’t hurting. It wasn’t until the boat trip back up the Swan River, with the sun on my back, that they started to sting a bit. I draped my cardigan over my shoulders, sipped my wine and tried to ignore the stinging. Back at the hotel, I removed my big black sunglasses and looked in horror at my shiny red nose. Great, I look like a clown. Turning around with trepidation, I saw to my dismay that my back was also rather red, topped off with lovely white strap marks. I felt so silly. I am always the one to bark at The Husband to re-apply his sun cream at the beach. Perhaps that’s it – when you’re not out in the sun specifically to catch a few rays, it’s so easy to forget to keep protected. Let this be a lesson to all, including me, that it only takes a few minutes to burn if you haven’t slathered on your sun cream. I shall not forget again. In the meantime, the air-con is doing its work nicely.

Breakfast Beer At 20,000ft

I feel like a very hi-tech, 21st century, digital kind of girl. I am sitting in the departures lounge of Karratha Airport with my new Netbook perched on my knee, tapping away at the keyboard and feeling very smug. The smugness has arisen partly from the fact that I can now write and access the internet from anywhere (yes, I know I have been slow to catch on to this but it is very exciting now I am finally in the mobile digital age!) and partly from the fact that I seem to one of the only normal people here. Like on any flight to or from Karratha, most of the passengers are Fly-In Fly-Outs and half of them seem to already be intoxicated. It is 8.30am.

To understand how common this situation is, I must first explain a little about FIFIOs. These guys live in Perth or Melbourne or Brisbane and leave their families behind to fly out to Karratha for a few weeks at a time where they work solidly, earn a ton of money and then fly back home for a couple of weeks before starting the cycle all over again. It’s not like they are banned from drinking alcohol – most of the guys falling over and starting fights at that bastion of refined drinking, the Karratha Tavern, are FIFOs – but, like everyone working on mine or oil and gas sites, they are subject to random drug and alcohol testing every morning, which means they have to be really careful about what they drink the night before. Passing the test means a 0.0000 reading (there really do have to be that many zeros – The Husband just typed that in for me). There must be absolutely no trace of alcohol in your bloodstream – one beer too late at night could have serious repercussions. You’re sent home and are then inducted into the illustrious ‘Breakfast Club’ – tested every morning for a week which, as it can delay your start at work by up to two hours, does not make you particularly popular with the boss. Of course, many of the men have found a way around this with the ‘nine before nine rule’ – you can knock back nine beers as long as you drain the dregs of your last before 9pm. They are nothing if not resourceful.

Anyway, that was a bit of an aside, but my point is that these guys haven’t exactly been deprived of alcohol, it’s just that they are bound by strict rules which seems to make them want to rebel. As soon as they’re on R&R, they let loose, whether it’s 8 in the morning or 8 at night. They’re like the rowdy groups about to embark on a two week package holiday to Benidorm that you see in the bars at Gatwick, downing pints of lager with Jack Daniels chasers at 6am. Except the FIFIOs do it every four weeks or so. Qantas have even stopped serving spirits on its flights to and from Karratha because of the trouble they were getting from trollied FIFOs. From November, the airport bar will only serve alcohol from 11.30am for similar reasons. So here I am, amongst drunken men, some still in the fluorescent shirts they are required to wear when on site (which leads me to think that they’ve been drinking since they finished their shift last night), unshaven and wobbly. I think I might put my Netbook away now in case one of them throws up on it. I just hope I’m not sat next to one of them…

Beware Of The Wildlife

Flicking through the local paper the other day, my eye was caught by a photo that seemed to jump off the page at me. It was of a huge, fat olive python curled up on someone’s patio. The headline accompanying it read, ‘Beware Of The Wildlife’. In the city, the headline grabbing stories warn you to beware of murderers, rapists or muggers; in the outback you need to beware of giant snakes that that can fell you with one bite, their venom killing you within hours. Apparently, with the weather warming up, now is the time that the snakes start to emerge from their winter hibernation hideouts so residents need to take extra care. For me, this has meant shaking out shoes, shirts, skirts, gingerly lifting up the lid of the toilet in case one is laying in wait in the bowl ready to pounce (hey, if my little goanna can slither up into the sink and through the drain in the floor, a snake can somehow get into the toilet, I’m sure of it), stomping loudly around the garden so if there’s one hiding in the bushes or amongst the leaves so it knows to stay away. I’m sure they didn’t mean that you need to take quite that much care but I’m not taking any chances. I am determined to leave Australia without having experienced a dangerous encounter with a venomous snake.


Snakes weren’t the only wildlife the journalist was warning us to be wary of but it wasn’t a spider, crocodile, shark or jellyfish either. Apparently we need to keep alert for swooping magpies. Yes, alongside venomous snakes, swooping magpies are dangerous and volatile Pilbara residents that need to be kept at bay. If you unknowingly get too close to one of their nests, they will swoop on you from behind and above, often catching you completely unawares. They won’t always just fly around you, trying to scare you off though – sometimes they will actually attack you, pecking at your extremities and drawing blood. I read of one attack last year that left a six year old girl blind in one eye after a magpie pecked it with its long, sharp beak. I am scared of a lot of wildlife in Australia but I really thought the birds were harmless at least. It just goes to show that you’re not safe from anything out here. Trust nothing and always be on your guard. I feel like I should be in some action movie – one woman against every bird and beast in Karratha. Just another ordinary day in the Pilbara.

It's A Small World After All

Living in a remote outback town in Western Australian, there are times when you can feel very cut-off from the rest of the world. Then there are the times when it feels like the whole world is connected by a major event, that wherever you are, in whichever country, speaking whatever language, you are all concentrating on one thing. It happened on the day that Lady Diana died in 1997, it happened when the Twin Towers fell on that fateful day in 2001. And it is happening now, but thankfully for far more positive reasons. I am currently glued to the television, watching the rescue attempt of the 33 Chilean miners trapped the depth of two Eiffel Towers underground. They have been down there, in a space no bigger than the average living room, suffering from incredible heat and humidity, for over two months. Amazingly, they are all still alive and the hope is that every single one of them will be safely brought up to the surface over the next day and a half.


The first rescue worker has been lowered into the escape shaft and has just hit the bottom, the first person the miners have seen in almost ten weeks and the world is anxiously watching it all. There is a live feed from the bottom of the shaft so wherever you are in the world – outback Australia, a city in England, a village in Chile – you can see the amazing events unfolding. There are times when it feels like a big old world, with peoples and cultures that are so different, but at times like this the world feels a lot smaller – no matter how many thousands of miles away from each other, how differently we look and sound and think, there are some things that bind us all as one species. We are all praying that these miners are brought safely back up to the surface.

Too Posh To Push?

I heard an interesting statistic on the news this morning as I was eating my bowl of homemade muesli (yes, homemade, by me, domestic Goddess that I am). Apparently one out of three Australian women opt for a caesarean over natural childbirth, and the reasons for that can on occasion be alarming. Before I get attacked for having a go at those who have to have a caesarean for medical reasons, that is not the case at all. I completely understand that sometimes C-sections are necessary to ensure that both mum and baby are kept out of danger as far as possible - it’s the reasons that were given in a survey of women by a midwifery journal that surprised me. Some women are opting for surgery because they view traditional childbirth as ‘undignified and distasteful’ and because they ‘distrust the body’s ability to undertake labour and safely birth a baby’. So a natural process that has remained unchanged for millions of years has become a source of distrust? What’s going on here?? And this coming from a country whose women are supposed to be tough – the archetypal ‘Sheila’ can withstand anything, she can get her hands dirty on an outback farm, scratch a woman’s eyes out on the netball courts and save a man twice her size from drowning (I’ve seen Bondi Rescue, it happens all the time!). Who are these women who are too posh to push?


Now, I know what you will be thinking. You don’t have kids so you are really not one to talk. No, I don’t yet but I hope that when I do I will have the courage to go through the pain of labour and, I imagine, I will be too busy screaming for drugs and cutting off the circulation in The Husband’s arm to care about the mess of it all. Of course, if I need to have a caesarean for medical reasons I will, but otherwise I will be trusting my body to do what it is designed to. After all, a caesarean is major surgery, which can take up to eight weeks to fully recover – how exactly is that easier than labour? I truly feel for women who have to have C-sections and it is certainly not the easier option. It’s women with views like that who give a bad name to mums who have to have caesareans. Complications occur more often than you might think, which is why so many women died in childbirth before the advent of modern medicine and surgery. If you are lucky enough to be able to give birth to your baby naturally, why on earth wouldn’t you?

Goannas Behaving Badly

We have a resident goanna. In fact, we have two. There is a baby lizard who likes to pop up via the drain in the floor of our bathroom and a teenager who lives outside in the garden. The baby has scared me a few times as when he moves (I have no idea whether it’s a he or a she – how do you tell with lizards? – but its recklessly daredevil antics strike me as being very male characteristics), he resembles a snake speedily slithering along, his tiny legs hidden beneath his body. Although his favourite point of entry is the drain, through which he squeezes himself up ones of the grate holes, I caught him with his face poking up through the plug hole in the bathroom sink yesterday. Just his face. He was completely motionless and utterly unperturbed by the torrent of water crashing down onto him from the tap. How he managed to hold on throughout that ordeal I have no idea, but he seemed to simply be proving a point as, as soon as I turned the tap off, he disappeared. Definitely a boy. Oh, and he leaves tiny lizard poos in the bathroom (but unfortunately not in the toilet) and doesn’t clean up after himself. Like I said, definitely a boy.


The teenage goanna resembles a dinosaur more than a snake as whenever he is frightened or feels threatened he jumps up onto his hind legs and sprints off. It is the weirdest thing to watch, like bearing witness to some prehistoric activity. He wasn’t alone on Saturday but I couldn’t work out whether the other goanna was a love interest he was attempting to pounce on or an enemy that needed scaring off. He constantly chased after it, unable at first to catch it. When he finally did, I realised that it was probably a member of the opposite sex as my goanna jumped on the other, rolling about on the ground and then lay motionlessly entwined for at least a couple of minutes before separating and skulking off. “I’ll call you,” was probably the last thing he said to her. I’m rather ashamed of my goanna for his cowardly behaviour. I hope the baby goanna didn’t see it – that’s not the kind of behaviour that should be encouraged. Although, with his messiness and stubbornness, perhaps it is inevitable that he will end up that way. It must be a male thing.

In the Immortal Words of Katie Perry, You're Hot Then You're Cold

Why can’t shops ever succeed in maintaining an ambient temperature? Walk into a shopping centre during an English winter and suddenly you’re in a Swedish sauna. The central heating is jacked up so high that you are forced to immediately strip off coats, scarves, hats, even jumpers. So you end up walking around looking like you’ve already done a day’s worth of shopping but refused any carrier bags. An armful of outer garments renders effective shopping almost impossible (as, generally, hands are required) and also makes you look like the worst shoplifter in the world. The heat seems to increase the longer you are in the shop and before you’ve been there half an hour you’re down to your strap top (which was only supposed to be a vest but needs must) and so flushed you feel menopausal. Walking outside into 5°C is a relief but it still takes a few minutes of frigid air and arctic winds until you feel cool enough to start putting your layers back on.


The shops in Australia have the opposite problem. They are ice boxes. Just as a bit of central heating is necessary in English shops in the winter, the shops here obviously need to be air-conditioned to some degree. It’s hot out there and the air-con is a wonderful respite from the harsh glare of the Pilbara sun. For about ten minutes. Then you start to shiver, goose bumps pop up all over your body and you walk more quickly just to keep warm. You stay away from the refrigerators unless absolutely necessary – you do not, under any circumstances, want to linger over which cut of steak to buy. My finger nails actually turned blue today. It’s 37°C outside and I was suffering from the early stages of hypothermia. As I walked outside into the heat that just thirty minutes before was suffocating, I breathed an audible sigh of relief. How wonderful it was to be back in the warmth.

So why can’t they get this right? Apart from being uncomfortable for customers, it is so incredibly wasteful. How much energy must be consumed to chill a shop down to 10°C when it’s 27°C above that outside, or to heat a shop to 25°C when it’s 20°C below that outside? And who actually benefits? But nothing will change so the only thing I can do is to bring my woolly hat next time I head into the shops. Oh no, that’s right, I don’t own a woolly hat because I live in the Pilbara and it’s bloody hot!

A Topsy-Turvy World

Living in the Southern Hemisphere can be very confusing at times. It’s October but it’s getting hotter – adverts on the telly and in magazines are all for outdoor furniture, sandals and floaty cotton dresses, air-conditioning units, barbecues, and bikinis. As the months wear on and Christmas approaches, so does the summer. As I said, very confusing. October in England means long walks in forests turned gold, orange and red, crunching the leaves under our welly-shod feet. It’s the beginning of fires being lit in living rooms and pubs, of the smell of woodsmoke in the crisp air. Shorts, strappy dresses and flip-flops are put away until the following May and out come tights, woolly jumpers and boots. October in North-Western Australia means pool parties, barbecues lasting well into the warm nights, lying in the sea just to keep cool and sports only beginning as the sun starts to wane in the sky.


It also means flies. OK, I know I have mentioned them in a recent blog but get used to it as they will undoubtedly feature in many more to come as the summer really gets going. It is hard not to write about them as it is hard to avoid them and they are a constant presence if you want to ever leave the house. I went for a walk yesterday and spent half the time batting away the buzzing little creatures. It wasn’t that there were a lot of them, just that the flies in Australia are the most persistent I have ever come across in my life. One fly is all it takes to be a nuisance. They will fly into your ears, up your nostrils, under your sunglasses into your eyes, and land on your lips. No matter how many times you swat them away, they will not be beaten. Sometimes, the more you bat them away, the more determined they become – kind of like a little brother who knows he is winding you up and takes that as a challenge to see how far he can push you before you completely lose it. There is no point in losing it though, as it does you no good and usually makes you look completely barmy to passers-by. Summer flies are a fact of life here and you just have to get used to them. Either that or be known as ‘the crazy lady who mumbles and shouts to herself whilst waving her arms around’. Maybe I’ll buy one of those cork hats, or even better, one of those ones with the net that completely covers your face. On second thoughts, I think I’d rather be known as the crazy mumbling arm-waving lady.

Patriot Games

So the Commonwealth Games have finally begun with a bang – and, amazingly, not a bang from a roof or bridge collapsing, an air-conditioning unit falling from a wall in the athlete’s village or the terrifying sound of a terrorist’s bomb exploding. No, the bang emanated from dozens of Indian drummers, spectacular fireworks and Bollywood dancers treading the boards. It was an opening ceremony to be proud of and finally gave us all hope that the Games may not be a total failure after all.


I watched some of the coverage yesterday, largely of the swimming, and it suddenly struck me as odd that the Commonwealth Games is even still running. Unlike other major Games that are based on geography – the European Championships, the Pan-Pacific and the African Games, for example, to be eligible to participate in the Commonwealth Games you had to have been a British colonial outpost. You had to have had the humiliation of being ruled by a bunch of pompous Englishmen who thought your people were uncivilised barbarians who could only be bettered by learning British ways. It’s a very strange concept when you think about it. Most of these countries, including India who are hosting this year’s Games, would prefer to forget the period of time when they were a British colony. I wonder if the main aim of every county competing is to thrash the colonial oppressors, to take them down, humiliate them and take back the glory. I wonder about every country other than Australia, that is, as it is quite obvious that their only aim ever in life is to beat the Brits at everything there is possibly to beat us at. All they ever talk about is ‘thrashing the Poms’ – it is a strangely obsessive behaviour that will have even the most mild-mannered Aussie talking about a violent bloodbath with an evil glint in his eye.

Anyway, back to my original point – is the Commonwealth Games even relevant anymore? I think perhaps it depends on the sport and that has nothing to do with colonialism and everything to do with scheduling, as boring as that sounds. The Commonwealth Games always falls at the end of the athletics season – athletes are tired, sometimes injured and should be resting before the next season. Quite a few have pulled out this year because of that. It’s also not seen as a particularly important event by track and field athletes – Michael Johnson recently wrote in a newspaper article that in athletics, ‘a Commonwealth title barely registers any respect on a global stage.’ However, many countries use the Commonwealth Games as a barometer for the Olympics, two years later. This year British countries are certainly testing out the athletes who will go on to compete in London 2012 and identifying what needs to be improved in the training programmes.

Whatever anyone thinks of the Commonwealth Games, it seems strange to me that no-one comments on the fact that all these countries are competing because they are former British outposts. Still, any major sporting event is fun to watch and, with the Americans not competing, we’ll probably win more medals. That is, of course, if the Aussies don’t work themselves into a Brit-beating frenzy. Seeing as the British founded modern Australia, I really don’t see why they’re so intent on constantly crushing us. Perhaps it stems from the same complex that blights men who drive expensive sports cars...

Staying Cool In The Pool

It is hot. Exhaustingly, swoon-inducingly hot. It happened all of a sudden – one day it was hovering at around 28°C, the next it had shot up to 38°C and it hasn’t really fallen since then. This is it now – it’s only going to get hotter. Yes, hotter. It can reach 50°C at the height of the summer. But let me tell you, 38°C is hot enough – the morning of the 10°C temperature hike, we walked out of the house into what felt like a wall of heat. It hits you like a train and immediately saps you of energy. It really is frightening to think that it could get up to 12°C hotter than this. You just can’t do anything in that heat. I was in the garden for ten minutes this morning, hanging the washing out, and I stepped back into the cool interior of the house with a huge sigh of relief. I was dazed, confused and in need of a large glass of water. So what on earth do you do during a summer that hot in a place like Karratha where everything is outdoors. There are no museums, no galleries, no cinemas, no large and lovely shopping centres. And there are only so many times you can play Scrabble.


It is therefore very good news for us that we have friends who have just moved into a house with a pool. A cool, refreshing swimming pool is just what you need when it is too hot to do much else – lounging in the pool with an ice-cold drink, a good book, and some relaxing music playing is just the ticket on a blisteringly hot Sunday. And that is exactly what we did at the weekend. The pool was just the right temperature and it was so lovely that I really had to force myself out when it was looking like I might soon look forty years older if my skin wrinkled any further. Glass of pear cider in hand, I chatted away as meat sizzled on the Barbie and something very chilled was played on the ipod. Yes, I think I could quite happily while away a scorching summer in that manner. Perhaps I’ll be alright after all.

A Timely Debate

It’s amazing how heated some people get about the issue of Daylight Savings in this country. I mean, we’re only talking about the clocks going back or forward an hour twice a year, is it really that big a deal? It seems it is in Australia, a country where five states adopt Daylight Savings and three, including WA, do not. This means that a country which normally has three separate time zones fragments into five. The idea of Daylight Savings is to give people an extra hour’s sunlight in the warm summer months, which is quite a nice gesture really – I’m all for that. It’s no coincidence that those states that don’t have Daylight Savings – Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland – are all states with large rural areas and a lot of farmers. It’s generally the farmers that are against the idea as they still have to get up at the same time so it actually means extra darkness rather than extra light for them. Or something like that. The state that this debate rages most fiercely in is Queensland. The business end of Queensland in the South, an area that includes Brisbane, is desperate for Daylight Savings in order to keep to the same time as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, something they insist costs them millions of dollars, but rural northern Queensland are just as adamant that they do not want it. There has even been talk of splitting the state in half with one side participating in Daylight Savings and the other not. Ridiculous. They just love a good argument, those Aussies.


The majority of WA is pretty vehement that it does not want Daylight Savings under any circumstances – there have been four referendums on the matter since 1975, the last being in 2009, and it has been rejected every time. However, there are supporters and they are passionate about their cause, even setting up a Facebook page to support it entitled ‘Don’t let the Fun Police ruin life – give Perth back daylight saving’. According to one of its most dedicated supporters, “it’s not a time zone, it’s a state of mind.” Hmm, perhaps just a hint of Drama Queen behaviour there. However, whilst that statement might be a little over-dramatic I actually agree. Who doesn’t want an extra hour of sunlight to enjoy the day? Year-round it’s dark or nearly dark by the time The Husband gets home. We can’t pop down to the beach or go for a walk or enjoy a barbecue in the sunshine. Those damn farmers. Oh well, at least we won’t lose an hour’s sleep on Sunday morning.