Onward To Avalon!

Something that should be shouted from atop a mighty steed, don't you think? Or have I been watching Ivanhoe to much again...?

So. This is it. Our last lot of digs. The last week of our month long Hong Kong and Oz Odyssey. I'd like to come out with the standard line and say "it's flown by" and in a way that could be true, but the feeling I'm left with - approaching Christmas as we are - is how long we've been away and how far from home we are. Not in a homesick way, you understand - Chirst no - I mean, the sun keeps shining, the food is great, the people a delight etc., etc., and I'd much rather be here than freezing my arse off in Blighty. But now that we're onto the final stretch it's given us pause for thought and reflection, and it has - thus far - been a bloody great trip and one that will stay fondly in our memories for many, many years to come.

Anyway, less of this pondersome meloncholia, we've still got a quarter of our honeymoon to get through yet; let us not fritter it away in such a fashion. We're in Avalon, a bohemian little seaside town an hour or so north of Sydney, renting a wonderful house just a minute's stroll from a beautiful, golden, sandy beach. And this is where we'll be celebrating Christmas too; the trimmings are on the tree, courtesy of our landlord. I don't imagine it took him too long, the tree being all of 10 inches high, but it's the thought that counts and the tree - along with the tinsel around our front door - have added a strangley festive air to proceedings. Well, it is about 80 degrees outside, there were a pair of kookaburras on the lawn this evening and we're thinking of having a barbeque tomorrow (what, with it being Christmas Eve) so it's all a little confusing a present. Mind you - you certainly won't be hearing any complaints from me.

Our flight up from Melbourne was a blessedly short one, and nowhere near as god-damned awful as our journey down from Cairns. Melbourne airport, when not being shutdown by thunderstorms, is actually rather a neat and efficient place, and we were checked in, bags dropped and enjoying a doughnut and a coffee airside without so much of a hiccough (yes, that's how you spell it). The doughnut must get a special mention, incidentally, for it was purchased from the King of Doughnut Purveyors - Krispy Kreme. Oh yes. Seldom will a finer doughnut pass your lips, unless it's one of those proper ring types that are deep fried at the seaside, then put in a paper bag which instantly goes translucent from the fat, before receiving a diabetic's-death-sentence in sugar. If Homer were here, I think I know what he'd say (that's Simpson, by the way, not the Greek poet who was, apparently, much more partial to a waffle).

Tizer eshewed the offer of a doughnut, instead opting for a sausage roll. Now, this is something I was only vaguely aware of before we came to Oz, but apparently the Antipodean idea of a sausage roll varies slighty from our own. The variety we came across were all from a company called 'Four'n'Twenty' (something of an Australian institution, apparently), and they came warmed, in a little plastic wrapper. Now, doubtless, they have in common with the British sausage roll a pretty high proportion of mulched up pigs' eyeballs and testicles in them, but beyond that they're a different beast all together. They seem to mix sausage meat with minced beef (or possibly lamb) and herbs and spices to achieve something altogether more palatable. Hell, they're actually quite nice. In fact they tasted rather like a Cornish Pasty to me, but without the lumps. Tizer certainly approved, but then she'll eat almost anything as long as it's warm and used to have a face and four legs.

We boarded our flight with a surprising lack of hassle considering our previous experience with Qantas Economy so far on this trip. We'd been allocated seats about two-thirds of the way down the plane this time, and I was rather glad this was our last flight with Qantas, as I'm pretty sure we'd have ended up being allocated seats in the rear toilets before too long. This was to be - thank whatever deity you like - a quick flight; just a one hour hop back up to Sydney. The main bonus as far as I was concerned was that it meant that we didn't have to endure another 'meal service', just a 'snack' apparently, so I was rather glad for this small mercy.

The crew - all male, all over 40, all sporting shortly cropped grey hair - made Graham Norton look like the kind of tatooed bruiser who'd beat you up for looking at his pint a bit funny. Apparently, there are some mean and nasty people out there who claim that Qantas is an acronym for something other than Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service, and these guys certainly lived up to it.

As I say, there was - mercifully - only a snack service on this flight, so once the crew had doled out some sad looking sarnies, a choccie biccie and a searingly hot coffee which, by now - some 12 hours later - is probably still too hot to approach without wearing an asbestos suit, they came round with a selection of fruit.

"Orange? Banana, madam? Would you care for an apple, sir? You know what they say - it'll keep the doctor away. Mind you, if you had my doctor you wouldn't want him to stray too far." Cue theatrical wink.

"John! John!! This gentleman asked for a vegetarian sandwich. Have we got any loaded? No? Sorry sir, they haven't loaded a vegetarian option. What's that John love? Oh, we have now, have we? Sorry about that sir, you just can't get the staff nowadays, one vegetarian sandwich coming right up". Then, whispered: "It's his age you know, such a shame...". Cue theatrical wink.

I loved 'em. They really made the flight much more entertaining. Certainly better than the piss-poor in flight 'movie' which seemed to comprise of one long, interminable Qantas advert.

Disembarking at Sydney airport was delightfully smooth and uneventful. We even managed to collect our luggage without being accused of master-minding a major drug-smuggling cartel, which was an improvement on our last visit. We picked our car up from Hertz - a beast of a thing, a Ford Explorer, I think - which has without doubt done nothing for our carbon footprint, darn it. Never mind, I'll plant a shrub when we get home.

The drive up to Avalon was great - we got to go over the Harbour Bridge, which I was pleased as punch about. We then meandered up the coast, in brilliant summer sunshine, past beachside towns filled, predominently, by surfer-types and their surfer-type-friends. All terribly Australian. And, realising we were no longer hotel guests and would soon have a kitchen again for the first time in three weeks, we stopped off at a supermarket to stock up on provisions.

Although it was a relatively humble shop in a little town (amusingly called Dee Why), it just went to prove that Melbourne's Victoria Market wasn't a one off when it came to fresh food. More huge 'caps', gorgeous leafy salads, fat, ripe tomatoes, fresh ginger, bak choi, and all of it - I mean all of it - Australian grown. Makes you sick doesn't it? Especially when you consider that Tesco at home sell mange-tout from Kenya, spring onions from Egypt and leeks - LEEKS for crying out loud! - from Spain! I swear, if Britain ever became the victim of some kind of world-wide import embargo we'd all starve to death in a month.

Having stocked up on oodles of lovely, fresh local produce we drove the last half hour up to Avalon and the bungalow (or 'Beach Retreat' as the landlord calls it) that we'll be calling home for the next week. It's a wonderful property, it really is. It has three bedrooms and a massive central living and dining area with - get this - a pool table! It's also got a pretty decent kitchen for a rented property. We have our own private garden, a little veranda complete with 'barbie' and deck chairs, and a climbing frame for Tizer to try and injure herself on. All part of living the Australian Dream...

There is, however, one part of living the Australian Dream that has caught us (or at least Mrs. V) at little unawares. The bugs. Or, to be specific, the cockroaches. Apparently it was unseasonably wet last week, which has caused the roaches to up-sticks and move into somewhere a little drier then their usual abode, namely Avalon Beach Retreat. I'm not keen on cockroaches, but Mrs. V really, truly, cannot abide them. They're not small ones, either. A good two inches long, some of 'em, and mighty fast they are too.

Then there was the surprise that awaited us upon our return tonight. After enjoying a thoroughly tasty pizza and a bottle of local red in a litte Italian place in the town, we took a gentle stroll back to our Retreat. We unlocked and opened the door, stepped inside and turned the lights on. This startled a couple of roaches which went scuttling across the floor before I quickly despatched them with the aid of my already trusty, long handled broom. Then we noticed something else lurking beneath the dining table. Something bigger and rounder than a roach. Something about the size a of large bloke's hand. Something with eight, thick, hairy legs.

"Oh my god," cried Mrs. V, her voice a frantic, hoarse whisper, "It's a spider!". Now, if there's one thing that my dear lady wife hates more than cockroaches, it's spiders, and this was one huge f**king spider. And whereas they don't normally bother me all that much at home, I was aware that this particular, monstrous arachnid probably deserved just a little more respect than the poor, scared creatures that scuttle across our lounge floor from time-to-time.

Thankfully, our landlord has been kind enough to leave a selection of books for guests (one can hardly call a handful of paperbacks and a few guidebooks a library) and one of these books just happens to be on Australian spiders. Admittedly, as literature goes it seems to be aimed at the under 12s market, but when you're living in a country where certain arachnids are capable of killing you within 10 minutes from a single bite - and this bugger looked like he could probably gnaw your leg off to boot - beggars certainly can't afford to be choosers, so it seemed prudent to check out whether or not we had a potential killer on our hands.

Our eight-legged friend, it transpired, was a Huntsman spider - one of the biggest spiders in Oz. Poisonous? Yes; deadly? Apparently not. It would only bite 'if threatened' and whilst it would hurt like buggery, you'd be pretty unlucky if it it killed you. This made me feel slightly better, but not by much. So, approaching him with long-handled broom in hand and hoping that the reassuring smile on my face would convince him that I didn't pose any kind of threat, I tentatively gave him a gentle prod toward the open door. Unfortunately, rather than heading outside with friendly tip of his hat and a cheery 'Ta-ta' as I'd hoped, he scuttled up the leg of one of the benches which sit either side of the dining table and glowered at me.

Spurred on by the sound of my brave wife whimpering some 30 feet away at the opposite end of the house and encouraged by her helpful advice of "Get it out!" I gave it another nudge with the broom. This time it decided enough was enough and made a dash for the open utility room door, the floor of which was - regrettably - strewn with three weeks worth of dirty laundry awaiting the refreshing delights of the washing machine. And it was into this pile of clothes that he disappeared.

There was nothing else for it; I started tentatively lifting shirts, socks and items of underwear with all the extreme caution and trepidation you would expect of a man looking for a poisonous spider the size of a side plate in pile of dirty clothes. And there he was! I gently picked up a T-shirt about two-thirds of the way down and found him quietly sitting on top of a beach towel. A plan quickly formulated in my mind, and hoping beyond hope that my nerve would hold I delicately gathered the edges of the towel around the spider, creating something that looked rather like a giant fluffy wanton (with venomous arachnid filling).

Holding my fluffy wanton at arms length  and heeding my good lady wife's sterling advice of "Don't drop it!", I tiptoed out of the utility room, across the living room and stepped out onto the lawn. Inverting the towel, I let it fall open and the spider plopped gently onto the grass. Emboldened by the whole experience I even instructed Mrs. V to fetch the camera so I could take a photo, which she duly did, no doubt mightily impressed and a little light-headed after witnessing her man's astounding spider taming prowess. I managed to get a half decent photo of our friendly neighbourhood spider before we watched him scamper off over the grass into the humid night, the theme from 'Born Free' playing gently in my mind.

After which we necked an awfully good bottle of Shiraz, played a game or two of pool and brained a couple of errant cockroaches before retiring to bed (or, in my case, to Mac).

Tomorrow, dear reader, is Christmas Eve and we're going shopping for a turkey (and maybe some bug spray)!

 

Flying South

It was time to say 'ta-ta' to Thala and set off airport-wards for our flight down to Melbourne and, as per for the forecast, cooler climes. A shame really, I think we were getting rather used to the heat, the cane toads (massive, they are, and they were everywhere around the hotel), the beautiful lorikeets, the endless Coral Sea vistas and the laid-back tropical atmosphere.

We'd spent our last full day in Port Douglas firmly ensconced at the hotel. A rest day is what we'd promised ourselves and a rest day is what we had. A late start, a light breakfast, then some quality time by the pool which we had entirely to ourselves for most of the day. Mrs V and I took it in turns to take Tizer in the pool, interspersed by catching up on a book, sipping on a cool beer and generally wondering why we hadn't booked to stay here for another week.

We also discovered, later that afternoon, that Thala has wireless (and free) internet access. I bring this up now as our one travelling companion I haven't had rise to mention much of yet is my trusty MacBook Pro, who I like to call Mac. And before you say anything, it took me all of 5 minutes to come up with that name.

Mac has been an essential piece of kit so far on this trip, allowing me to email hotels, check-in for flights, keep up (almost) with this blog and - thanks to its groovy little integral webcam - say 'hi' to Ma and Pa back home. As all of this has been dependent on wireless internet access, we've been quite fortunate so far as the hotels in Hong Kong and Sydney both had oodles of it, all for nowt. Thala, on the other hand, had a PC for guest use in the reception but nothing at all of the wireless variety - at least not according to the bumpf in the room. So, for the past four or five days we'd been pretty much incommunicado.

This particular lazy afternoon by the pool, I decided to boot old Mac up just to let him know he hadn't been forgotten when - hey presto! Bars and bars of lovely, free, wireless internet! Wish I'd known a bit sooner, mind. Then again, perhaps it was good to 'get-away-from-it-all' for a few days. Either way, we celebrated by giving Mum and Dad a tinkle. It was half 5ish in Queensland, so half 7ish in the morn back home. It being a Wednesday, my parents would probably be up and about, which they were. Tizer, as ever, was delighted to see them and tried to give the screen a hug, and I gave them a roaming, internet tour of Thala, such as the wireless connection would let me. One of the waitresses even came over to say 'Hello' in a delightfully thick Aussie accent which can only have added to the whole feel of the piece, so to speak.

We dined in the hotel that night, with a blissfully sleeping daughter by our side. Beautiful food, surroundings, wine - really couldn't fault it. We even managed a couple of after-dinner G & Ts and a chat with a pleasant English couple who'd got married at Thala the week before. Then to bed, ready for an early start the following day.

I was genuinely sad to be leaving Thala; it felt as if we'd just got into the pace of things in time to leave, which is always a shame. But the nature of our trip meant that it was time to move on, and another delightful Qantas Economy flight lay ahead of us. Oh happy day. Over three hours of it this time, which I really wasn't looking forward to. We'd tried to upgrade the night before, but we'd got such cheapy tickets that it was going to cost somewhere in the region of 900 quid, and even a inveterate Business Class Snob like me couldn't bring himself to hack that up for a relatively short flight.

But first, having driven south toward Cairns once again, we had to drop the hire-car off. And it looked like rain. Now, I know from experience that different countries and even different car hire firms have different rules when dropping your car off. For Avis, at Cairns airport, the system seems to involve a woman in very comfortable shoes ("What is a protective dyke? Is it a woman in comfortable shoes saying 'Don't go near there'!") accosting you as soon as you step out of the car. She looked to me as if she'd been living in the outback for the previous three weeks or so - wide brimmed ranger's hat, multi-pocketed shorts for keeping knives in, wrap-around mirror shades, and she rather looked like she could do with a shave. Probably smoked roll-ups and had a sexually non-descript friend call Val. Anyway, without a 'Hi', 'Hello' or 'How are ya?' she pointed accusingly at a scratch on the rear bumper of the car and told us, abruptly, "That wasn't there when you picked it up".

"Well of course it was", I replied, hoping it was true, whilst attempting to man-handle a two year old, a push-chair, three cases and hand luggage from the car in tropical heat, at the same time as trying to spy a luggage trolley. And all the while watching the ever blackening sky which appeared hell bent on providing us with an utter soaking at any time.

"Paperwork" she/he barked.

"I'm sorry?" I enquired.

"The paperwork you were given when you picked up the car".

"Yes. Fine. OK. Can we just get our luggage sorted out?” I replied, feeling my proverbial rag starting to slip through my fingers.

"Ah, yeah. Rain", she said, as the heavens opened. She strode manfully to the dry refuge of her shack, no doubt the interior walls of which were adorned with pictures of monster trucks and K D Lang, whilst we got piss-wet through. Too late, we decided to shelter back in the car, as it really was coming down now as if someone had turned a hose on. Wet and hot. Well, to misquote the great 'Good Morning Vietnam' one more time, 'That's nice if you're with a lady, but ain't no good if you're in the jungle'. And it's not that great if you're stuck in a rental car, with your luggage getting drenched outside, a threatening lesbian rolling cigarettes in her hut mere metres away and a flight to catch in less than an hour.

The rain stopped, as they say, as quickly as it began, and we stepped - pretty much soaked - back out of the car to finish putting our luggage onto the trolley. Our hairy legged tormentor ventured out of her hut and was once more coming back to harangue us. We'd found the paperwork- which was, by now, in danger of turning into papier-mâché - and thrust it at her, explaining that it clearly showed (thank god!) that the scratch on the bumper was there when we collected the car. Reluctantly, and with the kind of bad grace you'd expect from a six year old boy who's been told to stop tying fireworks to the cat's tail, she printed us a receipt and was on her way.

Matters weren't helped by the unwelcome sight of a long queue for check-in snaking towards us as we squelched into the terminal. And we only had about 15 minutes before our flight closed. If anything, the time spent in the queue allowed us to dry off quite nicely (you're never wet for long in the tropics) and once we checked-in we were informed that there was no rush anyway as our flight was delayed by an hour and a half.

The departure hall was the kind of hell that first made me start saving my pocket money very hard indeed so that I could avoid it completely and use the Executive Lounge instead. Screaming kids, bored looking teenagers plugged into their iPods, adults in ill fitting track suits stuffing their faces with overpriced airport sandwiches showing scant regard for the very real possiblilty of contracting bochelism prior to boarding their upcoming flight.

A recovering alcoholic in a Santa suit was milling around giving sticky sweets to the children. Generously assuming he was employed in some way by the airport, I allowed a rather dumb-struck Tizer to accept one, but then confiscated it as soon as Old Soak Santa had stumbled away. Tizer wasn’t all that bothered either, which says something.

I'd barely had time to spill a cup of steaming hot coffee over my foot and eat half a stale muffin before our flight was mercifully called. But then, of course, this was Qantas Economy, so it wasn't going to be a great deal better once we were on the plane. And it wasn't.

Our seats were about mid-way down the plane and - as Qantas don't employ anything as common-sense as a priority boarding system for those travelling with small children - we squeezed our way uncomfortably through the cabin carrying three lots of hand luggage and a wriggling toddler. Not an easy task. We managed to prise ourselves into our seats and settled in for the long haul. I know, three hours and a half hours isn't really long haul, but in economy it certainly feels like it. I hate to keep banging on about this, but it was pretty awful.

Tizer was well behaved throughout, but then she usually is, bless 'er. We stuck a DVD on the portable player for her and she was happy enough with that. The food was terrible; almost inedible, to be honest. It was some sort of curry. One of the cabin crew was billing it as a vegetable jalfrezi, whilst another was introducing it as a chicken korma and I can assure you - not a word of a lie - they were exactly the same meal. It had a label on the foil lid that said 'Curry' so, at the very least, you've got to give the crew 10 out of 10 for imagination. I dipped at the sauce with a piece of bread, then hungrily devoured the chocolate biscuit that came with it instead.

We landed at a very soggy looking Melbourne, more-or-less on time, to be told that we were exceptionally lucky to be doing so. A thunder storm had passed through earlier that afternoon and had completely closed the airport, shutting most of the electrics down. They'd been re-directing flights to Sydney, apparently, and had only re-opened just in time for us to land.

We decamped from the plane, relishing the sensation of blood flowing back to our feet again, and headed for baggage retrieval. We'd booked a car to collect us a couple of days before and were glad to see the driver waiting for us with our names on his little sign. Then we waited for the baggage conveyor to start. The airport may have re-opened but, clearly, no one had told the bright and industrious gentlemen who work in baggage handling. It was almost an hour before all of our luggage came off, and by the time we headed for our waiting car I worked out we'd been on the move for nearly 7 hours.

We were shattered, and matters weren't helped by the sight of the car that awaited us. What we'd booked was an 'executive' SUV so that we'd have lots of room for our luggage. What we got was an off-white stretch limo with beige velour seats, the likes of which you might expect to see in a bad 70s porn movie. The real down side was that whilst there was plenty of room to do whatever it is people do in these dreadful stretched monstrosities, there wasn't all that much space for things like suitcases or push-chairs. The driver - who went by the name of Dieter, looked about 75 years old and may or may not have been a Nazi war criminal - manfully managed to get the push-chair wedged into the front seat. He also completed a task equal to anything they ever set on the Krypton Factor by somehow fitting our luggage into the boot, but only after five or six aborted attempts and what looked to me like a minor stroke.

An hour later and we were pulling outside the Westin Melbourne; Dieter leapt from the car with the sprightliness of a man half his age and transferred all of our luggage to one of those hotel trolley things (I'm sure there's a more concise term for them, but that's the best I can come up with for now). We tipped him accordingly, of course. It wasn't his fault we'd had to show up at one of Melbourne's finest hotels in a Porn Limo.

The Westin, from where I'm now typing this blog, is a very pleasant hotel. I'm in the bar (of course) enjoying a Peroni and waiting for Mrs V to settle Tizer with the babysitter we've booked for this eve. We've got a smashing room, a 'Westin Studio', which is a great size and has a massive bathroom. One thing I have noticed is the overuse of 'Westin' on this property. The studio is a 'Westin' as is the bed. The bathroom is no normal bathroom, oh no. It's a Westin Spa Bathroom. We have Westin Towels in there, along with two Westin Robes. You can order a Westin Burger from room service. Tizer, on arrival at the hotel, received a Westin Kids Club Pack. Still, as I say, it's a very nice hotel.

Melbourne's a lovely city too. Bloody cold, mind. It was about 16 digress today and it peed it down most of the afternoon. Quite a shock to the system after the sultry climes of Port Douglas. There's a lot of charm to the place though, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere in Northern Europe rather than a city of such a southerly latitude. Trams pass up and down the tree-lined avenues past Victorian facades and street side coffee shops. There are up-market restaurants and fancy looking fashion stores all over the place and it feels strangely like 'home', an image that's probably helped by the clouds, rain and rather chilly breeze that led us to quit our day's sight-seeing early today and take refuge in the hotel bar.

One thing that must be mentioned, however, are the flies. They are - to put none too fine a point upon it - bloody annoying. If anything, that's the bonus of the rain, as they only seem to come out when it stops. But, chirst, they are persistent little buggers and they don't take no for an answer, seemingly hell-bent on landing actually inside your mouth. Wave your hands around your head as much as you like, it won't put them off. They say you get used to them after a while, but Mrs V seems a long way from that...

We started our day with some very sad news. We'd spied a little coffee place in the square in front of the hotel so grabbed a table there for a spot of breakfast. Then we got a text from home informing us that Bill, a good friend and neighbour of ours, had died. We knew he'd been very poorly, but he was a rather private gentleman and I don't think many people, us included, realised just how ill he was. We've been neighbours for 13 years and it was a heck of a blow finding out so far from home.

He was only in his early 60s, a former army-man who served with the Coldstream Guards (they're the ones in the bearskins outside Buckingham Palace). He and his wife moved to our village around the same time I bought our current house. We used to go round to each others gaffs after the pub on a weekend to play a particularly bastardised game of poker to which only Bill seemed to know the rules, a fact that was usually reflected by the way in which he'd taken most of our money off us by the time we staggered homeward in the early hours. He'll be sadly missed, the old bugger.

Nonetheless, we're on the other side of the planet and, short of sending a couple of conciliatory text messages, there's little more we can do. We took Tizer's photo with the very jolly Santa in the square, then walked the few blocks down to the 55 storey Rialto Tower, which has an observation deck offering what I imagine are pretty stunning views when it's not raining.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a sitter tonight, so we're heading out to a little Italian place we've found a couple of blocks away. Piles of fresh pasta and a couple of bottles of red are the order of the day, I think. And we'll be raising a glass or three in memory of Bill. "Pame!" Bill, as you (and the Greeks) used to say...

Some Like It Hot

Time to move on. Like The Littlest Hobo, every stop we make, we make a new friend, but can't stay for long, just turn around and we're gone again. Except he was, essentially, just a stray dog and we is people. Mind you, it's times like these that you appreciate his nomadic lifestlye and, to an extent, his ability to wash his balls with his tongue. But I digress.

Mrs V had done her usual, sterling job of packing our numerous, voluminous cases and after one last breakfast up in the Club Lounge it was time to meet our taxi to the airport (which, incidentally, was about a third of the price of the car that picked us up from there earlier in the week). We'd really enjoyed Sydney; the Intercontinental was a very pleasant hotel and the city itself had a good feel to it. But it was time to head north, to Cairns and the heat and humidity of the tropics!

The domestic terminal at Sydney Airport was refreshingly quiet, check-in and security were a breeze and we were at the gate, sipping coffee, with only 40 minutes or so to kill. However, my relaxed exterior belied the internal disquiet I was experiencing at the prospect of being transported to our destination in Cattle Class.

It was going to be a two and half hour flight up to Cairns and I felt I could just about handle that long in economy. Even a Business Class junky like me couldn't justify the price of an upgrade on this one - it was working out something like eight times more than an economy ticket, which is plain crazy (or should that be plane crazy - geddit?) , especially when you see what Qantas domestic Business Class is actually like. We were in the first row of Cattle Class, so got a good vantage point to see what delights the ambrosia sipping, quail's egg scoffing types get up front (cripes, listen to me, it's like I fly economy all the time - up the workers, down with the bourgeoisie!).

Excuse my while I pause here to enlighten you with interesting Oz fact No. 2 (No. 1 was the one about the echinda laying eggs. Remember?). Qantas - note the lack of a 'U' after the 'Q'? - is an acronym for Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service. There you go, that's another one for the pub quiz.

Anyhoo, Qantas Business Class takes up the first three rows of a standard 737 with four seats across rather than six in Cattle. Passengers got a glass of sparkling stuff when they boarded, free headphones (oh, the luxury!), a decent enough looking lunch - kind of Premium Economy style, for those of you who know what that means - and complimentary wine throughout. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have been up there then where we were, but I didn't see much that to justify the astronomical cost of the upgrade, which was reassuring in its own little way.

Qantas crew are a queer bunch, by the way (in more ways than one, might I suggest). Generally pleasant, but much older than, say, Virgin crew. Often the way on domestic routes I think. Lunch (the first economy in-flight meal I've had in the best part of a decade) was some kind of lamb stew and couscous concoction which was vaguely palatable and filled a gap. Can't remember what Mrs V had, but I do remember she hated it.

Anyway, I got my Mac out - once the aging and vaguely camp steward finally cleared my greasy little metal tray from in front of me - and started a bit of this 'ere post. Then in no time at all we were coming in to land in Cairns. It all looked terribly tropical and rainforested out of the window, which is probably just a well, this was tropical Queensland after all. We landed, the doors opened and we got that wonderful warm 'n' wet smell so redolent of these climes. I love it; I'm a loud shirt, shorts and flip-flops kind of guy and a temperature set somewhere in the high 80s, predominantly sunny with the occasional downpour to keep the palm trees green is just ideal for me.

We picked up our luggage, got temprorarily lost on the way to collect the hire car, but were soon on the road (Mrs V driving, me map-reading - do you think I'd let a woman loose with a map?) and heading north through some stunning countryside. We were driving up the Cook Highway, lined by trees full of bright red and yellow blossoms, with the blue coral sea being revealed intermittantly to our right and lush, forest covered mountains rising to our left. Our destination was the Thala Beach Lodge, a hotel a few miles south of Port Douglas, which is a little town based around a marina from where various trips to the Great Barrier Reef depart. The hotel is slap bang in the middle of rainforest, with wooden bungalows on stilts scattered up the hillside.

We arrived, stepped from the air-conditioned car and realised that every pore on our bodies was instantly and profusely leaking. Boy, it was hot, not that you'll hear me complain; all I have to do is imagine people back home scraping ice from their windscreens and suddenly everything seems just fine. A very nice chap called Daryl transfered our luggage onto a groovy little golf cart and whisked us off through the forest to our bungalow. He even came back ten minutes later with a bottle of champagne after learning it was our honeymoon.

The bungalow is great; bags of space with a huge balcony looking out over the treetops to the sea. Mrs V's being a bit iffy with the bugs, however, which can't be helped, phobias being what they are. We've got some bloody huge green ants on the balcony which - so Daryl informs us - can give you a nasty bite, but other than them, the mossies (for which we're dowsing ourselves liberally in repellent) and the truly massive cane toads, I'm not too sure what she's stressing about. Oh, and Tizer's decided that she doesn't like sleeping anymore, which meant she sat and winged at us all the way through dinner last night - and this was at nearly 10 o' clock when she'd normally be well away in her buggy. It's pretty much out of character for her and I can only assume that it's the travelling and heat that's got to a her a bit. She'll adjust, or we'll give her away to gypsies. One or the other.