A week in Paris

I've been in Paris for a week now, and I have to say that I love this city!

I know there have been one or two people in history before me who have expressed similar sentiments, but it's all very new for me!

I've been staying in the Latin Quarter, which is an old student area. My hostel is on a cobblestone street with a market at the bottom of the hill. As I've discovered, pretty much any part of Paris that looks 'quintessentially Parisian' is usually full of tourists, but it is still very pretty!

My first full day in Paris I did the classic thing - went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was bloody cold and windy, but the view was pretty amazing! I think it also helped me to get a bit of orientation for the city.


After that I decided to head to Notre Dame. It's kind of amazing to be at places you've only ever seen photos of. I haven't climbed the towers yet - I was a bit surprised at just how long the lines for everything in Paris (and I'm assuming most of Europe) are. So I will save that for another day.

My second day here I went to the Louvre for a bloody long time! It was pretty amazing, but I probably would have enjoyed it if I did it over two shorter days rather than one big one. But hey, who wants to pay €9.50 twice?

Did I mention there were lots of people? I think there's a painting there somewhere...



The next day (I think - it's already a bit of a blur) I went to le Arc de Triomphe. This might be controversial, but I think I liked the view better from there than I did from the Eiffel Tower. Maybe because you could see the tower itself?

On my brother's advice (nay, insistence) I've also been to Sainte Chappelle. It was built as a private chapel for the King, and to house what's supposed to be Jesus's crown of thorns (it's now in Notre Dame). But it has these elaborate stain glass windows that tell different biblical stories. They are so elaborate and complex it is amazing to think that some poor sod made them all.

Next to Sainte Chappelle, in fact actually part of the same complex, is the Concierge, which was a royal castle back in the day, but was used as a tribunal and prison during the Revolution. Marie Antoinette was imprisoned there, but a lot of the building has been changed around since then. 

Possibly my favourite day so far was yesterday. I went to Montmarte, which is the district where the Moulin Rouge is. I went to Sacré-Cœur, which is a beautiful church on top of a hill. From the top of the steps you can see an amazing view out over Paris. And to me, it's a prettier church than Notre Dame.

I sat on the steps out the front of the church listening to this dude play a harp (he played Ave Maria, followed by Let It Be!) for a long time, and just taking in the view.

Montmarte was an area which attracted lots of artists in the middle of last century, and there's a museum there of Salvador Dali's work. Now, I don't claim to understand a lot about surrealism. There were lots of melting clocks. Yes I know, I know, it's about the unrelenting nature of time etcetera. I say suck it up Salvador, it's how the world works. But seriously, it was pretty amazing. I like some of his stuff better than others of course, but it is very interesting to see these sorts of things in person rather than in a textbook.

I've also just spent a fair bit of time wandering around and trying to get to know the city a bit, and dropping into a café for a glass of wine or a coffee. It is just amazing that this city could have been built.

So far I am having an amazing time! I think I'm getting used to the cold (I bought a nice coat at a flea market, which helps a lot!), and I'm starting to be able to navigate some parts of Paris without having to look at my map every two seconds!

I'm largely enjoying travelling alone so far. It was a bit overwhelming on one morning in particular, but I have to remind myself to be sociable when I'm at the hostel and make friends, otherwise it doesn't really happen. That can be hard when I'm cold and tired, but it's worth it.

On the morning of my birthday I stood up at breakfast and announced to the room that my name is Steven, I'm Australia and it was my birthday. I ended up going out with Germans and Mexicans to sing karaoke! I did my best to educate them in Australian musical culture, vis-à-vis vis Midnight Oil.

My French is appalling, but getting better. I met up with a friend of my sister and brother-in-law who lives here, and she helped me with a few pronunciations!

As for my plans from here, I have a friend from England who I met in Ngukurr in the Northern Territory of all places coming over next weekend! So I'll stay here until then, then think about heading somewhere. Not sure where yet, I'm looking at either Normandy or Dijon.

I feel like I've done a lot more than what I've written here, but that's enough for now!

Abu Dhabi and Al Ain

Right now I'm sitting in the kitchen of my hostel in Paris, eating a lunch I've cooked myself which I'm particularly proud of, but I'll tell you about that another day. 

When I booked my ticket to Paris from Sydney the cheapest airline was Etihad, and so I decided to spend a few days in Abu Dhabi on my way over. It was a pretty good decision!

For the first time I tried a webstie called airbnb.com - it's great for travelling. Kind of like couch surfing but you have to pay. I stayed with this lovely French couple (providence perhaps?) Edouard et Sophie, who were both lovely. They were very generous with their knowledge and time, and offered to give me lifts to various places.

I landed in Abu Dhabi very early in the morning local time, about 5am. After clearing all the checkpoints, I got to Edouard et Sophie's flat about 6.45am. They were very patient about the early start! Their flat was on the 40th floor, and my room, which was very luxurious, also had an excellent view over Abu Dhabi. 

Not bad eh?

So I arrived early in the morning, had a coffee with Edouard et Sophie, caught up on some sleep and then went for a wander in Abu Dhabi.

Now, anyone looking for traditional Arabian culture probably should not go to the United Arab Emirates. Edouard told me to Emiratis make up only 18 per cent of the country's population. If you want French food, Italian food, Lebanese food, the UAE is a great place to go! I did manage to find one place which made Saudi food, but it was hard to find.

Anyway, I spent my first day wandering around pretty much what you can see in the above photo (there are a lot more sky scrapers behind the perspective of that photo).

That evening I went to the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It's named after Sheik Zayed, who is called the father of the UAE. Pretty much half the country is named after him. It's the only mosque open to the public in the country, and you can take a tour around it. Construction began only in 1996, so it's pretty modern. It is kind of amazing. It has 82 two domes, is made largely of imported marble, the gold on top of the domes and minarets is all 24 caret, has a capacity of 40,000 for prayer time and is just huge!

Inside the main prayer hall (under the biggest dome) is a chandelier that weighs 12 tonnes. They claim to have the largest carpet in the world in their main prayer hall. It boggles the mind how much it all must have cost.

I hung around the mosque until sunset, wandering around and taking photos. The evening prayers started, and hearing the music that calls people to prayer was very interesting. 

The next day I decided to go to Al Ain, on my brother Kris's advice. It's about two hours from Abu Dhabi by bus, and was actually where the leaders of the Abu Dhabi emirate came from before Abu Dhabi city was developed. So to me it felt a lot more authentic. 

Now here's a fun fact. Most of the attraction in Al Ain are shut on Mondays. Guess which day of the week I was there? The city has a lot of old forts with museums in them, but I was unable to go into any of them. Still, it was interesting to wander around and have a look at the outside.

Al Ain is where it is because there's an oasis there. It's actually still used as to farm dates. They have a traditional method of irrigation which is basically flood irrigation as far as I can work out. The water flows from wells through these channels, the side of which can be opened (or unblocked really). It wasn't particularly hot on the day I visited, early 30s I would say, but even then it was clear what a relief it was to enter the oasis and be shaded and cool.

I managed to find a really good Middle Eastern lunch at a street-side cafe, and then decided to head to Jabeel Hafeet, the mountain which you can see from pretty much anywhere in Al Ain. It is a really, really weird landscape. It kind of looks like a Star Trek producers dream - one can imagine Captain Kirk fighting a giant lizard there without any problems. It's just rocky outcrops coming from nowhere in the desert. 

I hired a taxi to take me to the top. Unfortunately you can't climb right to the top, but this is the view from a lookout showing the summit. On the other side of the mountain is Oman (I think). 

After that it was back to Abu Dhabi for a lovely dinner with Edouard et Sophie. They cooked Australian beef, and I bought a bottle of South Australian wine to share. Had to have an early night though, as my flight to Paris left at 8.45am the next morning. 

There were a few dramas at the airport, but I might save that for a later post. I've now spent four days in Paris and am loving it. I'm staying at a hostel in the Latin Quarter, and have already done a few touristy things. But more on that later.

Driving south

Right now I'm at my sister and brother-in-law's house waiting to go to the airport to fly to Paris! 

Well, actually, I'm spending two nights in Abu Dhabi, then onward to France. This has of course meant I've packed up my life in the Northern Territory, and delivered a load of junk to my parents' shed.

I was able to find a guy who wanted to get his twin cab Hilux from Darwin to Sydney, but didn't want to drive. So I offered to do it for him! I hadn't been to Uluru, so I wanted to do that, and it also meant I could visit my grandparents in Cobram, Victoria, with only a bit of a detour. It also meant I could stay with my colleague and friend Caddie in Alice Springs.

All up it was a touch over 5,000 kilometres. I had my dog Bruce with me, and he behaved very, very well!

After two nights in Alice with Caddie I went to Uluru - which was amazing! This is a photo taken at sunrise. I also went and had a glass of red wine while watching the sunset, but I reckon the sunrise photos are better. You can also see Kata Tjuta to the left. Amazing.

After watching the sunrise I raced up to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). The sun was up, but the colours were still amazing. I did part of the Valley of the Winds walk, and would have liked to stay longer, but I still had a long way to drive that day.

I had never been south of Alice Springs for work, so it was great to see that part of the NT, and the South Australian outback. This photo was taken driving south of Coober Pedy. It was a beautiful sunset. The outback was so, so different to the country around Katherine, but beautiful in its own, desolate way.

One of the best bits of the drive was rolling my swag out at a rest stop about 60 kilometres north of Woomera. The stars were amazing and just the sense of isolation was pretty unique. 

After that I drove to Cobram, which was a bloody big day, but it meant I could have two nights there and spend time with my grandparents and my extended family. Given I'm about to head to Europe for an indefinite period of time I'm very glad I made that effort.

So anyway, just a quick update - the first one for about two years! I'm planning to blog here from time to time, but I make no promises about regularity!

I'd better go make sure I don't miss my flight...

Wave Hill, Kalkaringi and Victoria River Downs

In May I went out into the Victoria River District for the first time. I had wanted to go for ages, but I went out this time because a bunch of old school drovers were riding from Camooweal to Kununurra down the old stock routes. You can hear the stories I did here.

VRD is about 400 kilometres from Katherine, the last hundred or so are on a very rocky gravel road. Now, I've never blown a tire, and I didn't really know what it felt like until I was on this road. It took me a while to realise what had happened, to the tire's detriment.

Through good luck, I've never had to change a tire. I've always known how, Dad made sure he taught me when I was learning to drive, and I also had to do it as part of the 4WD course when I started at the ABC. So I jacked the car up, took the nuts off, and tried to pull the tire off. It wouldn't budge. I kept trying and trying, and I could feel the car wobbling on the jack I was pulling so hard. I tried lifting it up a bit, but nothing.

I thought maybe there was some other trick, because it's a pretty new and flashy car. But the manual didn't say anything. I was about 40 kilometres from anywhere, and hadn't passed a car for quite a while. But eventually a road train came along and stopped. The driver got out and I explained my problem to him. He walked over to the car, kicked the tire, and it loosened off and was easy to pull off. He left me with this sage advice: "Nine out of 10 of 'em need a good kick".

VRD is one of the oldest stations in the world, and the homestead is about 100 years old. Back in its heyday they had over 100 employees, not including the aboriginal workers, who they didn't think to count. It had an Australian Inland Mission hospital set up by John Flynn, its own post office, a school, butchers, blacksmiths and at one stage had it's own postcode. It's an amazing old station. Nowadays the stock camp has about eight people in it. There's also a helimustering company based there, but I think all up there are only 45 people there now.

After leaving VRD and having morning tea with the old drovers 10 kilometres down the stock route, I headed to Wave Hill Station. Wave Hill is famous because this is where Vincent Lingiari walked off in 1966 and started a national push for land rights. The homestead isn't the original homestead, it had to move in the 70s because they ran out of water. Of course Vesteys don't own it anymore, and the managers there are great people, and have really funny kids!

I did this great story about two of their girls fattening up pigs to eat for Christmas. They were very funny!

The next day I went to the old homestead site, which is where the walk off happened. There's not much there, just a few old buildings and foundations. This was pretty much one of the only structures left. Now I have no idea what this building was, but it looks like it might have been a living area given the table and chairs outside. You could bet the bank that it wouldn't have been a white fella living area if it was.

From I've read the living conditions that Gurindji people were terrible, rough shacks with dirt floors. This building would certainly seem to fit that description, and the louvred windows make me think it's a living area, not a shed of some sort. So I can't definitely say that this is where the Gurindji people were living, but it's the only building left, so maybe there's a reason?
I then headed into Kalkaringi, which is the aboriginal community that was set up when Lingiari walked off. Well, I think he went to where Kalkaringi is now, and then to Daguragu, which is about 8 kilometres away. They're both communities now. There's a memorial at Daguragu which is where Gough Whitlam poured earth to Lingiari's hands, and handed him deeds to his land.

Behind the monument is an example of the humpies that the Gurindji lived in for eight years. I don't know if this is actually one of them or whether it's a recreation, but it's pretty rough living either way.

I'm really enjoying getting out to some of these areas, and this trip was really great. Some of the old cattle stations are amazing and have such rich histories. And I like that I get paid to get out and about and visit these places!

Darwin trip

I've been up to Darwin a few times now, and it's a really cool little city.

I had a mate, Limmy, who was doing a four-month stint up here as a physio. To farewell him we had a bit of a lads weekend in Darwin.

We drove up on Friday after work, but there will be no photos of our activities here. Needless to say it was a good night.

It was, however, very difficult to get up in time to make the 7am fishing charter we had booked. The only saving grace was that we knew they were going to have bacon and egg rolls for us on arrival... gold. It was a half day trip, just around Darwin harbour.

It was a slow start, and the other fellas were pulling them up in dribs and drabs while I looked on forlornly. But soon, it was on.

Now much to Limmy's disgust, I caught the biggest fish of the day. It was a beautiful snapper. But Limmy, being a little bit petty, decided to crop the photo. Okay, so it's not a monster or anything, but catching anything is fun.

I caught five I think in all, and the other fellas caught a fair few too. We were staying at a backpackers right in town which had a barbecue, and decided to cook up the fillets for tea. So while all the other backpackers were eating tinned soup and sausages, we cooked up fresh fish marinated in chilli and garlic, asian greens stir fried on the barbecue, which actually worked really well, and chips.

It was awesome.

One the way back we decided to go via Litchfield National Park, which is maybe 80 kilometres off the highway back to Katherine.

We went to Florence Falls, which is the closest attraction. You have to walk down a heap of steps to get there, but this is the view from the lookout at the top.

It was a beautiful spot to swim, and we managed to climb up under the waterfall. There was also a great ledge to jump off into the pool. Apparently that's a bit of a boy thing to do, but it's always so much fun!

We stopped quickly at the magnetic termite mounds on the way out. This photo doesn't show it too clearly, but they're only perhaps 10 or 20 centimetres thick, and they all line up almost exactly north to south. If you think about it, it's pretty freaky that termites know how to do that. But apparently it's about the direction of the wind in the valley that the termites live in, and this is the most aerodynamic way to build them. Pretty clever.
So all in all, a pretty darn good weekend.

Daly Waters

As I mentioned, I've been trying to do a few more trips lately.

One I did on ANZAC Day was down to a little town called Daly Waters, population eight.

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The historic pub was holding a B&S, and being a rural reporter, it was important for me to cover this. Plus, I figure if I have to work on a public holiday I may as well have a bit of fun!

But Daly Waters is also home to one of Australia's biggest World War II airfields, which was also Australia's first international airport! There are heaps and heaps of WWII airfields around Katherine, I think the strategy was that if one was bombed or taken, there were others to fill the gaps. But Daly Waters was a big one.

I did a story on a whole heaps of old beer bottles that are near the base. Our old diggers didn't mind a drink, as it turns out.

The runway is a bit run down now, as you can see. I'm sure you can imagine that I drove responsibly and hesitantly drove the car down there.

Amazingly the runway is still in use with light aircraft, but I suppose you could land a Cessna is a lot of interesting places.

Daly Waters became the first international airport in Australia because Qantas used it as a refuelling stop on its route to Singapore, and it was also used in a big air race from London to Sydney in 1926. This is the original Qantas hangar, it now has a bit of a museum inside which is pretty interesting, if a little information dense.

Apparently the wife of the publican would come down with tea for the passengers, as they had to stop for about half an hour. The creek is between the pub and the airport though, so she used to have to take a high rope kind of thing to get across!

Assorted waterholes

Okay, I'm a bad blogger. It's been a long, long time since I've posted anything.

But a lot has been going on in that time. I'm trying to make the most of the dry season both for work and play. The wet officially begins in November, but could be earlier, and once that happens I won't be able to get to a lot of places. So I'm trying to do a lot of trips for work and a bit of hiking and camping. More on that in later posts... and there will be later posts!

For now, here are a few photos I took way back at Easter. This is Edith Falls, which is about 40 kilometres north of Katherine. I had a really great picnic here, and it's a great spot to swim. Although the local Jaowyn people won't swim here, as they believe it's the resting place of a creation creature.

Apparently if pregnant women swim here they have babies that have problems with their breathing and bones. I have it on good authority that one baby that was conceived in this pool (let's not think about that) was born with cystic fibrosis... which affects lungs and bones.

This photo is Southern Rockhole, near the Gorge. It is magic. It's about a four kilometre walk to get there, but so, so worth it. You can swim in this pool, or up above. There's a pretty standard warning that while rangers do a pretty thorough check for salt water crocs and have really good procedures in place, they can't guarantee that they're in certain places.

This is one of those places. But they'd have to get over a hell of a lot of rocks which they don't like to do, and no one has ever had any trouble.

Plus it's a really great place to swim.
The dry season is progressing, and Southern Rockhole has now stopped flowing. Edith Falls is still going though, so still some great places to swim.

I'm constantly amazed at how beautiful the swimming spots are up here.

More soon, I promise.