Australia had been on my bucket list for years but there were always many other countries ahead of it when it came to booking our long-haul holidays. In the end it was family ties that made us commit, and I’m glad they did because Oz turned out to be a real treat. In fact, it far exceeded my expectations.
It has its problems, as every country does, it’s far too hot and humid in the middle of summer and getting there is a pain in the arse but but I loved its vibrant cities, achingly glorious scenery, chilled lifestyle and tasty craft beers.
Our 3-week visit involved at least 12 months of planning, partly because I’d insisted on travelling with maximum luxury at minimal cost. In reality that meant business class because nothing on earth would get me flying all the way to Sydney in economy. Just to add to the complexity, our journey had to be on a One World carrier so that we could earn air miles. There was no way we could afford business class out of London so we opted for a trick I’d learned from various frequent flyer forums, and that is to fly out of another European city. Which is why we ended up departing Helsinki with Qatar Airways. Yes, we had to fly to the Finnish capital and book a hotel but that still saved us thousands of pounds on a Heathrow departure, and we got to see Helsinki in the run-up to Christmas.
The journey became an experience rather than a chore. Qatar’s aircraft, food and drink are generally superior to British Airways’. The service was eager if a little patchy compared to BA but Qatar’s seats were far more spacious and comfortable, especially on the A380 leg from Doha to Sydney. I slept well, enjoyed the movies and made use of the superjumbo’s on-board bar. The Champagne flowed… And crucially, we arrived in Australia more refreshed than we would’ve done otherwise. All that meant I had far fewer problems with jet lag than I’d been led to expect.
However, Australia’s towns and cities didn’t have to try too hard to keep us awake. I loved them. The vibe is chilled, the architecture stimulating, the street art exhilarating, the green spaces well maintained and the people friendly and helpful, even though we were visiting during one of the great sporting clashes between England and Oz, the Ashes.
As a history buff I was disappointed that so much from the early days of colonisation has been lost, but just about enough remains in places like The Rocks in Sydney or Port Arthur in Tasmania to give an impression of life in the age of transportation, a period that saw several of my own ancestors sentenced to spend their lives in the new colonies. What really surprised me was the number of buildings that had survived from the Art Deco era. From tower blocks in Sydney and Hobart to little shops in the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba, they oozed style and elegance. In Britain, most would’ve been flattened by Second World War bombs or greedy developers. Elsewhere graceful Victorian terraces, cottages and town houses, with their intricate ironwork and verandahs, had survived in considerable numbers and gave districts like East Melbourne such character.
Melbourne was the star of the show, with its European style and laid-back feel, vast parks and trendy coastal district of St Kilda. Hobart was the surprise, despite its sometimes ugly city centre. It’s rightly famous for its foodie scene and quality beers and felt manageable compared to the huge mainland state capitals we visited. Having said that, Sydney’s Port Jackson offers up one of the most beautiful of cityscapes anywhere.
Wherever we went there were plenty of quality restaurants and drinking places, ranging from venerable hotels to swanky bars, and I was amazed at the sheer number of craft beers and independent breweries. It was in Sydney that I swapped my long-standing love of lager for pale ale, a passion I took home with me to London.
But the cities do have problems. The traffic is awful, roads are like motorways even in the heart of the cities and the driver is undeniably king. Pedestrians are poorly served and in the sweltering, sweaty heat of an Australian summer, the pollution can be truly unpleasant.
I never quite got the Australian fixation with coffee and the endlessly tedious discussions about it in Melbourne in particular, and I was surprised by the sheer number of rules and regulations that locals must endure. Barely a foot of road goes by without a reminder of the speed limit, and beaches and open spaces have big noticeboards listing an endless number of things and activities forbidden on pain of death. It was like being in Hong Kong and is perhaps a hangover from an age when the Australian authorities expended most of their energies controlling armies of transported criminals.
More alarming was the number of homeless people on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney. It was worse than London, which is saying something. While the homeless were all too numerous, the indigenous people were notable by their absence. Were they so integrated into society that I didn’t spot them or were they out on the periphery in every sense of the word? Judging by Australia’s dismal record on its native peoples, I suspected the latter. Equally as strange were the signs in parks and other touristy spots expressing the respect that this council or that attraction felt for the traditional owners of the land. However, a few patronising signs aren’t going to do much to compensate for the horrors inflicted on the aboriginal people over the last two centuries of white rule. And what do those platitudes actually mean in practice? Are they there to salve consciences?
Aboriginal people were noticeably absent but so too was Australia’s famed and sometimes bizarre wildlife. Other than an echidna in the woods of Tasmania, we didn’t see much at all. The closest we came to it was driving over the flattened remains of wombats and wallabies on the roads of Tasmania or viewing captive examples in a zoo in Victoria. The upside was we largely avoided the torment of the country’s legion of deadly spiders and snakes.
Australia is a grand country and it’s easy to see why people choose to emigrate. In fact, we were sorely tempted to put in our applications after arriving home.
One way or another we’ll be back.