Ways To Make Bells Exciting*

(hint: there aren't any unless you count the stupendously evil bell in Gyeong-ju, Korea where apparently a dead baby was thrown into the molten metal to stop the finished bell from cracking)

Said bell tower (Swan Bells, Perth City), an 8 million dollar project that most city residents detest / deem pointless was quite dull apart from the sixth floor look out point which gave us a lovely view of Perth. Other highlights included countless lists of 'important' folk that have rang the bell; how bells are made; how to maximise your bells sound; how to feed and properly care for your bell. The best part, however, was the wire mesh walk way that shuddered in the wind and managed to give Mike Canadian sized palpitations.

Australia has many fun things to do, and we have had quite a few adventures already. However, in our also frequent times of leisure, Foxtel, Rupert Murdoch's Australian love child, has been showing wall to wall episodes of the Simpsons, 24 hours a day for the entire duration of the Commonwealth Games. As someone recently informed me that Ireland doesn't actually have a team in the games (a real puzzler) I figured that the Simpsons was a worthy alternative.

I am currently staying in the hills with my Aunt Ann and Uncle Glen who I haven't seen in 11 years. Ann is an absolutely brilliant cook so we are savouring what she feeds us in order to remember them when we have to sell half a kidney to buy a tin of beetroot. It's also pretty cool to be able to see all the places that I would have been familiar with when I was a kiddums, and to actually remember things.

Oh - Mike did finally get to hold his beloved wombat, without any major incident. However, he also got a surprise repeat attacking from goats. And an emu. And a koala looked at him funny.

Hot Weather = Dolphins

It's a simple equation really - the hotter it gets, the more dolphins appear to be involved. As it is, it's 37 degrees celsius at the moment and I shall be swimming with these intelligent beasts in Rockingham next Wednesday which promises to be fun. Mike commented that perhaps there is only one rather disillusioned dolphin, called Rocky, who is swimming around in lacksadaisical little circles. Hopefully the experience won't quite be this painful.

In fact, our planned WA adventures are all aquatic, really - we are flying up to Exmouth to scuba dive and swim with whale sharks, for about five blissful days. Swimming with a whale shark is bound to be an unbeatable highlight. They are HUGE! Their mouths are the size of several small children.

And this Wednesday, we get to fulfil Mike's lifelong dream of holding a wombat. He shall perform this action at a nature park full of Australia's oddest, and probably grumpiest, animals. I know that koalas look cute but their fluffy ears conceal black, black hearts.

We visited Scarborough Beach this weekend, the beach of my childhood. I apparently used to pester my long suffering grandfather with the chant 'I want to go to the beach!' repeated ad nauseum. It was as beautiful as I hazily remembered, and to top off the day, a couple of drunken, underage Aussie kids got into a brawl which the entire beach deserted their towels to go and gawk at. We also had dinner cooked for us two days in a row - once by my aunt Irene and once by our housemate - the transition to cheap ass traveller in nearly complete. We are experts are getting concession bus prices.

Bonza!

I am sending you all a formal hello from Perth, WA. Not a G'day, because only Alf from Home and Away actually says that and the only reason that he gets away with it is because you can't help but to feel that if you ever took the subject up with him, he would pound you faster than a galah can squawk.

The weather is just immense - 30 degree heat, boundless sunshine, everyone wearing shorts - everything you would expect, really. Said conditions prevailed at a St Paddy's Day festival that Freeman and I attended in Fremantle today, including the shorts. Short shorts, in fact. And as we all know in Ireland, Irish people can't do shorts without looking both pale and uncomfortable. It was hilarious to see the a cart load of Irish folk, leaning on barrels full of hay, being towed along by four lovely Clydesdale horses with the strains of When Irish Eyes are Smiling playing benignly in the background. It's as McIrish as you could ever hope for, but fun nonetheless.

And I also got to witness some endemic white/Aboriginal racial hated today on a bus when an affronted Aboriginal girl hurled a small missile through a bus window (it whistled past my face) at a white woman whom she and her sisters had been shouting abuse at for fifteen minutes. When they left, the woman who had been hit, said loudly. 'They were Aboriginal. And they were abusing this lady for the whole bus trip!" Call me clueless, but I think that the crime was very much unrelated to the girls' race, and more to do with their general lack of manners. It was unnecessary to say this, and it made for an extremely uncomfortable journey, particularly with the assent in the white faces all around us.

Freeman has only gotten us lost once albeit memorably for about an hour and a half with our backpacks on and the sun blazing. I chuckle benignly now.

I can't wait to explore WA properly - it's just one simple cheap holiday booking away to swim with dolphins, there are loads of great dive options and I get to go back to my home town of Albany. Hip hip hurroo!

And if you ever needed any actual convincing to come to Australia, just remember that this is the birth place of Steve Irwin. STEVE IRWIN! He wrestles crocodiles, you know.

Losing My Brain To The System

It was always inevitable, really. As soon as paperwork materialises, the grey matter decides instantly to dematerialise. Often with shocking results; in this case, leaving organising a world wide trip to the last minute. I would love to blame everything, from the visa people getting it wrong about us requiring a chest x-ray (hint: we needed one, curse you dubious air and respiratory diseased Korea!) right up to the trawl of bureaucratic red tape which we are still trying to claw through. But all in all, it comes down to laziness and hilariously, we are leaving this Wednesday 8th March at 4 in the afternoon and I still feel as if I have just gotten home.

I'm sure that your sympathy will have been effectively garnered, considering that we are just about to embark on the holiday of a lifetime. I shall offer no more complaints.

For those of you who don't know, this is our itinerary:

1) Perth
2)Adelaide
3) Brisbane
4) overland to Sydney
5) Christchurch
6) overland to Auckland
7) Santiago
8) overland to Peru
9) overland to Rio De Janeiro
10) London / home

Just reading that sends a pleasurable, wholly undeserved thrill down my spine. I am incredibly privileged to be able to undertake a journey like this, and it's even more fun to be able to share it with Mike, and later Aoife and Cara, should the right wind take them into our world conquering paths. We are conquistadores! We will be learning sketchy Spanish! We will probably be getting bizarre seasonal jobs (such as sorting out dwarf pineapples)! And, most importantly, we will be putting our serious adult lives on hold for yet another year. Ah, unfairly prolonged youth.

As Mr Burns would say, Ahoy-hoy! The extra 'hoy' says it all, really.