Wanneroo?
Perhaps these people think differently to us, it cannot be they are less crude, but the suburban name Wanneroo seemed to invite the addition of a further consonant, particularly when, on some highway road signs its name immediately precedes that of Innaloo. It may have been just a lack of Aussie imagination but we just couldn’t believe that some wag would not have defaced the signs, so it was something of a relief to discover, on Friday, a “t” carefully appended to the end of Wanneroo on one such sign. It may have been done to indulge our amusement, for the very next day The West Australian carried a photograph of a fast food store, The Red Rooster, with the “s” reported as having apparently been removed by a strong gust of wind.
In other Australian observations we have been bemused by the WA Police Minister, a chap called Rob Johnson who is described as being passionately in favour of hanging and flogging (including by the victims’ families) of those who infringe the laws. In a 2006 interview he told The Sunday Times that serious offenders should be given a lethal injection or the electric chair. Not confining himself to matters of criminal justice, earlier he had told the State Parliament that “it was narrow-minded to say that we shouldn’t be exploiting women. Look, it’s going to happen anyway,” he explained.
Not surprisingly he is commonly in the news, most recently over the confiscation of a Lamborghini belonging to a local doctor of Sri Lankan origin. The good doctor took his car in for servicing and the mechanic took it for an unauthorized spin, only to be clocked at 160kph, resulting in the car being impounded for a month under anti-hoon legislation. Defending the seizure and impoundment against seemingly logical arguments that the doctor was an innocent party in the matter, an unperturbed Minister told the media that the doctor was wealthy enough to hire another car to do his rounds and then added fuel to the fire by saying that the car had been turned into a deadly weapon by being driven at such high speeds and needed to be off the road.
Refreshingly, The West Australian summarised Johnson’s statement as being so mind-numbingly stupid that it almost called for “dumb animal” protection measures, then adding that it hardly matters because this animal (Johnson) appears to be half rhinoceros and half duck. The article continues that Johnson sails on blissfully unaffected, with at least half the population thinking he is the right man to be Police Minister. “Maybe it’s true that people get the politicians they deserve,” the article concluded.
Meanwhile, our other keen interest, Richard Pennicuik, the tree man of Thornlie, remains perched up the gum tree outside his house after being forced under the threat of a hefty fine by the local council to remove a platform he had built in its branches. After sixty-something days up the tree Pennicuik admits his protest is “sheer stupidity” but says that he still won’t be coming down. Sadly, it seems, there has been something of a backlash against his action. “I’ve been called a mongrel and a c—ksucker” and “people say things like they’ll strangle me if a branch falls down and hits someone,” he told Perth Now. “I’m becoming more and more disappointed in the human race.” The council is now threatening to prosecute if Pennicuik doesn’t come down soon.
As for us, Kaelene has been busy with Seath and Nicole finalising planning details for the new house, and it has been revealing. Developers sell these land and house packages, with the houses built to a standard formula, all of which seem to be an attractive deal particularly as they allow a number of variable or additional options. And that is where the rot sets in; the charge for any non-standard items is rocketed in and, of course, the building company won’t let in anyone but their own contactors. For example, it costs an additional $A130 per light for installing small ceiling downlights, with the purchaser additionally having to supply the fittings, and a house-lot of non-standard window blinds an further $3,000. For some inexplicable reason, the installation of larger kitchen tiles is more expensive that smaller ones even though it would appear they take less effort to lay, and then the cost of a small bar, about one metre in length, another $3000. $30,000 could be added to the cost of a house in less than the blink of an eye.
There was something we missed on Australia day and that was Vegemite wrestling. Described as time-honoured and one of the more unusual activities to mark the day, women in bikinis wrestled in the concentrated yeast extract at Dr Pong’s Pub in Sydney. It is curious thing that those people in Sydney somehow regard Western Australians as feral.

God bless Australia
Theirs may have been a forlorn hope, but it had to be admired, the Cessna-type airplane which circled the beaches of Perth towing Cancer Society banners variously with the messages, There’s nothing healthy about a tan and There’s no such thing as a healthy tan. There wasn’t a hope anyone would take the slightest bit of notice, even with the plane circling and swooping low over the shores to make a point, the temperatures were in the early forties and the beaches were packed with bathers, including us, who probably wouldn’t have even been shifted by the sighting of a school of sharks. One deeply tanned woman (and most of them seem to be English or European people judging by their accented conversations) in her sixties at least observed that she had to die of something.
While New Zealand seems to remain perpetually shrouded in bad weather, we have had a curious shift in mind-set. Anything less than 30 degrees and we reminisce about hot water bottles and thermal undergarments as though our throat have been cut. Perth has had a run of very hot days, two at least as high as 43 degrees, the skies are cloudless and blue and a brief shower which hardly wet the pavement the other day ended 62 days without rain. As the Cancer Society might say, this is a climate to die for.
We have been pleased to learn more about this glorious country this week. What is described as “larrikin” Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s loud Australian jacket is on display at the WA Maritime Museum, albeit having been dry-cleaned to remove beer stains, and, between them, Australians eat 380 million Tim Tam biscuits a year. According to the Sunday Times, the question of who put the dope in Schapelle Corby’s boogie bag remains one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries, along with the whereabouts of former Prime Minister Harold Holt, and Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc is Australia’s favourite wine.
Meanwhile, a former Australian Rules football player has been accused by animal rights activists of accepting blood money for a comical advertisement in which he appears lobbying the United Nations to declare Australia Day as an international public holiday, all the time encouraging Australian to eat more lamb. The spokesperson for the animal rights group has the unlikely Christian name of Fawn; maybe they would have preferred venison.
If nothing else, Australia Day provides a brief respite from work by falling in a Tuesday, its timing being described by a killjoy spokesperson for the Employers’ Federation as “unfortunate”. Newspaper and television reports estimate the number of sick days or sickies thrown on the Monday as expecting to jump by about one third to give those people a four day weekend. Last year, when Australia day fell on the Monday, absenteeism was 34 percent higher than usual on the Tuesday but we reckon those people would have been genuinely sick nursing frail, post celebration heads and bodies.
As for us, Marty, in very un-Australian fashion, turned up to work on Monday, but together we will make amends by heading downtown for the Skyshow celebrations with our Australia Day drinking hats, adorned in green and gold wigs and flag capes, fake tattoos and wearing Aussie flag thongs. The footwear that is.

A four letter word
Work. It may be one of the most indecent of four letter words and such it is that Marty has succumbed. Instead of buying a nice quiet little bar in Patong and drinking himself slowly but contentedly into an early grave something quite unfortunate has occurred. Tidy clothes have been brought, lunches made, and heigh ho, heigh ho it is off to work each day, to something called a Division Industrial Officer for the Western Australian branch of the National Tertiary Education Union. After a week it still seems impossible to know what it is all about, but in theory at least it is similar to Marty’s job in New Zealand - and after fifteen years he still didn’t know what that was all about. Meanwhile, the more fortunate Kaelene busies herself daily preparing the house for tenancy inspections and looking after Pokie the tame pug. She’s getting him into an exercise regime after a life of complete and utter idleness, where even a canter to the food bowl stretched him to the limit.
This diversion (work) is, hopefully, only temporary, there are lotteries drawn several times a week and while we might not have yet struck a jackpot, we have been regularly winning small prizes and so it is only a matter of time until the big one is ours. It is an omen.
What makes the new job more fleeting is that the position is for a limited term, replacing a staff member on leave and for that reason alone it is scheduled to come to an end by mid-year. It doesn’t seem quite fair that, while the skies are blue and temperatures in the mid-thirties each day, Marty has to be stuck indoors. At least he thinks not.
Nevertheless, one of the good things about working in the early half of the year is that is when most of the public holidays fall, the next being Australia Day on 26 January. And this is where a difference between New Zealand and Australia is clearly highlighted. With under a fortnight to go, the shops are full of Australia Day memorabilia; for the fashion conscious there are hats resplendent with beer can holders and straws for gravity feeding, caps with small umbrellas protruding out the top, bikinis and men’s underwear, capes and other ridiculous clothing, and for those that like the outdoors there are the decorated eskies, stubby coolers, chairs and sun umbrellas. What took our fancy were the contact lenses, the fake tattoos and then the toothpicks, every one adorned in the Australian national flag, and this is simply brilliant. Already, cars have flags flying from their windows, as often as not one from each window. There is none of this cringing about an ensign comprising the union jack and a handful of stars. The Aussies love it, Australia Day and nationhood being a really big deal, and it is expected the entire population of Perth will line the Swan River in the evening to watch fireworks and the added spectacle of teenagers fighting each other and the cops fighting them all.
Another fight is brewing, elsewhere in Perth where we continue to enjoy the adventures of one Richard Pennicuik, known as the tree man of Thornlie. He has been perched up a tree outside his house for more than 6 weeks now in an attempt to stop the local council from cutting it down. As the weeks have gone by Pennicuik has made himself quite a home, with a rope ladder into the higher branches for exercise, a platform for perching and even a toilet area. Pennicuik refuses to come down and has become quite defiant, saying he now likes living there and is prepared to stay for twenty years. All the time it has become an increasing public relations disaster for the council. Its spokesperson, an insipid looking twit, has served a notice on the tree-man saying he has broken the law by constructing his platform “without approval” and faces a $5,000 fine. If that’s not enough to spur Pennicuik on, he also admitted that, while the council wants to cut down the tree because it supposedly poses a danger, the actual tree has never been examined to determine whether this is actually the case. “We can’t be expected to inspect all the trees,” the twit said.
It is probably the same in New Zealand, but if anything has been learned from the recession, it is that nothing has changed. One of Australia’s biggest private companies, Griffin Coal, has just gone under with unsecured debts of as much as $A1 billion. Incredulously, Griffin’s owner, Ric Stowe is among his failed company’s creditors with other companies he owns submitting claims against Griffin, Not surprisingly, Stowe was unavailable to speak to television reporters as they tried to gain access to his opulent West Australia ranch.
Perhaps a highlight of the week, the local commissioner of police is playing at a fund raising concert for victims of recent bushfires with his band, The Filth.

Bearing it all
If we listed poor service in our summary of the highs and lows of 2009, we would have included the Merchant Tea and Coffee Company in Fremantle. It deserves a special mention; there are few places in the world where customers could wait fifty minutes for something as simple as tea, coffee and one shared bread flute, and then for the order be not quite right even after three attempts. Usually, for example, when milk is twice requested to accompany the tea, there would be a reasonable expectation that it would arrive, particularly before the tea is stewed quite beyond enjoyable drinking. Similarly, when an order for a flat white coffee is clarified and repeated, a customer could expect to receive a flat white and not a latte. But this was not the case.
It would be nice to be able to excuse such lame service, or the fact that other tables were piled high with the dirty dishes of customers who had long gone, on the café being busy but this was not so. It was simply hopeless and it was as well we were in good humour and in no particular hurry.
Fremantle itself is a charming little port town, and it is funny how geographical impressions can be so wrong. We both had in our minds that Freo, as us locals call it, was just north of Perth when, in fact, it is to the south. The scene of the great New Zealand victory in America’s Cup yacht racing, the town’s streets are lined with old wooden, verandahed buildings, most of which these days are trendy cafes and restaurants outside which people dine, drink and enjoy the warm days; that is as long as they can avoid the Doctor, the afternoon sea breeze which has, as previously mentioned, something of a sharp edge. There are too the fabulous craft and vegetable markets, including the souvenir stall which had the Steve Irwin-fighting-a-crocodile fridge magnet for sale until it became one of the treasures of our journey.
Meanwhile, the strangest thing has happened, so strange that we’ve been left in charge of Pokie, Nicole’s tame pug while she is away at work. We seem, inexplicably, to have a new found obsession, seeking out animals and being nice to them. Not content with letting cousin Fiona’s brightly coloured parrot clamber all over us (it wasn’t until we got home did we realize that we could have become the new Nauru given the amount of guano deposited on our clothes) and a trip to the Caversham Wildlife Park, most recently we set out with the Perth Zoo firmly in our sights. Right in the heart of the city this is an altogether different experience, a proper zoological gardens where not only do they have the usual array of weird and eccentric Australian animal and plant life but also a worthy selection of endangered species from elsewhere in the world. The African painted dogs chewed on fresh animal carcasses while large elephants lay on their sides being scrubbed in something as frothy as dishwashing liquid by handlers, the meercats did the usual meercat thing, running about and standing with that inquisitive look, the lions, tigers and white rhinoceros lazed in the afternoon sun, and the Galapagos giants moved as slowly as they ever do. The tortoises did what they did in Barbados, and if anyone argues that these creatures are not the most noisy, amorous ones on earth, we would beg to differ. But what took our fancy were the orangutans and the sun bears, or one sun bear in particular. Through a glassed window one appeared to treat Kaelene in quite an affectionate manner, while the orangutans looked simply appealing and human-like as they walked about on two legs..
It is, however, the Australian animals that have completely captivated us. Emus have the maddest eyes imaginable and their eyelids seem to work from the bottom up, quokkas are simply gorgeous little marsupials, the koalas were stoned as usual and the birdlife as colourful as can be. We have learned that wallabies and kangaroos are distinguishable only by size and that neither have an ounce of road sense, the only downside to all of our animal excursions is that we have still not sighted a platypus.
At present, Australia is home to dozens of world class tennis players as they prepare for the Australian Open, and it seems that they are all interviewed either holding koalas or at wildlife parks with these furry animals in the background. Observant locals noticed that when US tennis star Andy Roddick was interviewed on Channel Ten news the other night, it looked as if two koalas in the background were being particularly amorous. Once the initial amusement subsided, it was declared that the supposedly mating koalas were both female and revealed that at times, as they come into heat, female koalas are often “piled up” in warm embrace. We’ve noted previously that these little creatures succumb to the narcotic effects of the local vegetation, and doesn’t that just seem like fun?

The moon and back
There may be few worse things, but not many, than to have a flat car battery in the Australian desert and it happened to a young couple who happily for them caught our attention. Fortunately they had jumper leads and we had a car that worked; the wife was seven months pregnant so there would have been better places to have been marooned, and we felt good having done a good deed for the day restarting their car.
About three hours north of Perth, just south of Cervantes is a place called the Nambung National Park and, within it, contrasting deserts, one of pure white sand, another of yellow and then the gritty, dusty outback red. But it is not that which makes this park famous, the area is best known for the Pinnacles Desert, where hundreds of limestone pillars rise out of the sand like some moon landscape. These limestone pinnacles reach as high as 3.5 metres, many are like columns and pillars (and some phallic ones at that) while others are like big, jagged tombstones; and there are literally thousands of them. The scientific explanation is that they were formed from sea shells which were broken down into lime-rich sands which were blown into the desert forming dunes. Acidic rain then dissolved small amounts of the calcium carbonate which leached its way down through the dunes and formed a sort of cement in the lower levels, thereby creating a limestone rock. In turn, the winds eroded the soft sand leaving the hard pinnacles exposed.
That explanation done, we preferred the version from the aboriginal dreamtime which is to the effect that the pinnacles are the upward reaching fingers of children who, against their elders’ advice, strayed into the desert and sank in the soft sands. Those fingers, said to be grasping for help, are all that remain.
We didn’t sink though, we parked up in the sand among the pinnacles with the air conditioning on full blast watching a family of scruffy looking Emu forage in the few scrubby bushes while we foraged on grapes, cheese and crackers, avocado and prawns thoughtfully packed by cousin Fiona who came with us for the day.
Nearby, the town of Cervantes is a cray fishing port and Fiona’s lunch was intended as an entrée to a good hearty post-desert feed of fresh crays. Unfortunately for us the fishers were having a few days off over the New Year period and the only café in town wanted $A29 for a salad and half a crayfish, previously frozen. That wasn’t for us so we detoured to a place called Gingin only to find the one café in town also closed. Undeterred we decided to wait until we reached home and head down to the local Thai restaurant for some good ethnic food. That too was closed.
It may seem careless to break down in the desert, but if one thing is evident in Western Australia it is that cars are pretty indiscriminate about where they fail. There are always vehicles needing attention on the sides of the highways that intersect Perth, so frequent is it that we set about looking for an explanation and we aren’t yet sure we’ve found one. There is no warrant of fitness requirement here and our initial thought that this may be the explanation was set aside in the knowledge that few countries we have visited have any enforced roadworthiness standards. Nowhere else is there as many stranded vehicles, not even in Cairo. The high temperatures may be a contributing factor, but then again it is not as hot here as in the Middle East (although we learned that the central north-west of Australia is the hottest place on earth). The third possibility is that as a consequence of the sheer number of miles cars travel here in this big country, they regularly clock up 300,000 kilometers without too much need for maintenance whereas at home 100,000 is considered high mileage. The truth may be a combination of all factors but one thing is for sure; cars left unattended on the side of the road don’t last long before their windows are smashed and every removable item taken.

New Year’s honours
As one year on the road draws to an end, it is time to review some highlights and lowlights. With eighteen countries visited, twelve airlines to judge and more than twenty one airports under our belts we feel well qualified to hand out a few ratings for the best and worst of 2009.

Airlines
By a country mile, Emirates remains the world’s top airline and although we missed out on our scheduled ride on the new double-storied Airbus A380, their Boeings and Airbuses are well fitted out, have plenty of legroom, excellent service and up to 1,000 entertainment channels to choose from. We travelled four long haul and three short haul flights on Emirates and, without exception, all were good. The only drawback, and it applies to most airlines these days, is that they are very lean with the wine. Of the smaller or budget carriers, Bangkok Air, Air Asia and Air Berlin all deserve a mention for their world class service.
The Australian budget carrier, Jetstar easily surpassed all comers for our worst airline experience of all time. Not only was the plane cramped, the ventilation system on our nine hour flight between Sydney and Phuket was on the blink and the cabin was freezing. Their answer was to offer blankets for hire at $Aus8 a pop. Aside from that, passengers who booked through Qantas didn’t get the chance to pre-purchase food or entertainment systems. We travelled on a number of budget carriers, including those with terrible reputations, but Jetstar left them all for dead.

Airports
The most fabulous airport in the world has to be at Samui in Thailand with its open air departure and arrival lounges, a tree lined shopping boulevard, free internet access and free snacks and drinks for passengers. Arriving visitors are greeted by waiting staff to ensure that transfers to hotels are all in order and, for those who have no arrangements, taxis are on hand.
The most shameless airports are those which, for the payment of a fee, allow passengers to jump to the front of their security queue. The managers of London’s regional airports of Luton, Gatwick and Stanstead should hang their greedy heads in disgrace.

Event of the year
Seath and Nicole’s wedding on Merlin Beach at Phuket was a cracker. There could be few more spectacular venues and everything went without a hitch. Great people, excellent food and drink, beautiful weather and such a romantic setting as the sun sank in the evening sky and the dancing started. It seemed fitting to have Lou Reed’s Perfect Day belting out on the PA.

Concert

Despite a two hour traffic jam outside the venue and completely inadequate toilet and food facilities once inside, Leonard Cohen’s concert at Mercedes World, Weybridge just outside London, was a highlight of a lifetime. Cohen was in great form with all of his best songs, a superb backing band and the sublime Webb Sisters on backing vocals. What could be better, even if it did pour with rain throughout most of the (outdoor) show?
Other concert treats included Sir Paul McCartney turning up on stage at Hyde Park to play with Neil Young at the Hard Rock Calling concert (now they know how to organise a good gig), Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall and the eighty-something year old BB King at Wembley.
We shouldn’t forget the New Zealand band The Bats who we saw in London, Ro Dalziel’s play Lost in Thought at the Hen and Chickens Theatre in London and an Australian play, When the Rain Falls.

Unexpected highlights
We pinched ourselves at times to make sure it was real. The Mussandam Peninsula at the northern tip of Oman; we had never even heard of it but there we were in a dhow watching for dolphins and then swimming in what seemed one of the most remote places on earth. Oman itself would be one of the more interesting countries we visited, its capital Muscat a charming city comprising enclaves of white buildings and markets among barren, rocky outcrops.
Earlier there had been the Christmas markets in Germany where we stood outdoors while it snowed, drinking Gluywein, a spiced, mulled wine, and eating bratwurst sausages, and later travelling by rail across Germany, Holland and Belgium. The Rhine Valley with its castles was simply lovely, as were the towns of Mainz and Koblenz.
Back in the Middle East we defied the car rental company’s rules to go cross-country into the desert (successfully) in search of camel racing and later to Al Ain to the camel markets. There too were the monuments to excess, the Emirates Palace Hotel (where you can get your cappuccino served with gold flakes) in Abu Dhabi and Atlantis, a hotel at the tip of the Jumeriah Palm in Dubai.
In Barbados, we swam with turtles and snorkelled over sunken ships and drove the roughest roads imaginable to sea caves and sugar plantations.
Nowhere else have we seen such beautiful seas as in Croatia and Greece. The azure blue of the water is breathtaking, as are the rocky coastlines. Perhaps the only drawback the beaches are so rocky and slippery that swimming shoes were necessary. What did surprise us was the ancient Roman architecture of northern Croatia.
One place we never dreamed that we would visit was Hungary; we were persuaded to go by a new Hungarian friend and we weren’t disappointed, particularly notable were Memento Park and its memorabilia of the communist era, its spa towns, fields of sunflowers and, intriguingly, the liberating experience of the nudist beach at Lake Balaton (so good we found more in Croatia).
In Greece one night, intoxicated perhaps by the array of women at his bar at the Apollo, Dimitri the host turned up the music and began dancing. Not to be outdone by Mad George who was wooing the women, or at least attempting to, Dimitri brought out the crockery and, in traditional Greek fashion, the plate-smashing began. What a night, it seemed unreal as we walked home afterwards while bats danced in the light of the flickering streetlamps.
Quite surprisingly we found ourselves fascinated by animals (particularly as we are too irresponsible to own any). London Zoo and its Gorillas and Galapagos Giant turtles, the snakes, retiles and coloured birds of Asia, the green monkeys and (mating) tortoises of Barbados and the native animals of Australia; Quokkas, Tasmanian Devils, Parrots, Koalas, Wombats, Kookaburras and the fascinating flying foxes.
Perhaps though the crowning glory was the monkey show in Samui and while there was no cigarette-smoking, these little creatures were dressed to the nines (complete with makeup) and sang and danced. Utterly brilliant. All of that before the crocodile show in which handlers put their heads in the mouths of these nasty, bad tempered creatures.

Infatuation
Without a shadow of a doubt, Phuket quite took our hearts, so much so that, after our initial visit in April, we returned for a second month in mid-October and would stay there forever should the authorities and finances allow it. There is just so much to love; its irresistible people, their Buddhist way of life, the tourist attractions, great food, beaches, weather and then there are those oil massages - heaven on earth. But there is too an edginess about the place that adds to its colour; the scams and the hard core entertainment scene with its red-light bars, there is the constant hustle of street traders and markets with the brand name copy- products. Then there are the tuk tuk drivers and the food vendors, and Tiggy and our girls at the New Zealand bar. We know we cannot stay away and we won’t even try to resist.

Sensational sights and places
We pinched ourselves more: Stonehenge, Anne Frank’s House in Amsterdam, The Great Pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt, The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula, Croatia, the cemeteries on the Western Front of Europe for victims of the First World War, the Jewish Memorial in Berlin, the national mosque in Abu Dhabi, dozens of churches including the Gothic cathedral in Cologne, the little picture perfect villages of the Cotswolds, Lake Como and Bellagio in Italy, the fishermen on horseback on the beach at Oistdunquirke, Belguim,
Disappointments
Dublin was bland, just another city and an overrated one at that (even the Hard Rock Cafe was ordinary), and better planning on our part could have resulted in our seeing much more of the treasures of Egypt, in particular Luxor.
Rental car companies
Hertz in Budapest provided the friendliest, most helpful service, while Budget in Dublin was worst. The attendant made you feel like it was a privilege to hire their car rather than it being a commercial transaction with most of her time spent telling us what we couldn’t do and what we would be liable for if anything went wrong. It seemed like getting a flat tyre would be a hanging offence.
Best beach
As we have chased the sun this year, Miami Beach in Barbados with its clean white sands, gentle surf and warm water has emerged as our favourite. Our memories are of the locals with their glistening black skin exercising on the beach and swimming while we ate fish cakes and drank Bajan lemonade purchased from the beach vendor, and of buying overpriced fruit from one of the local vagrants who attached himself to us and our wallets.
Other notable beaches included Valalta in Croatia, Zykanthos in Greece, Patong in Thailand and, now, Warnbro in Western Australia.
Most miserable local authority
The Ealing Council of West London is undoubtedly the most miserable local authority ever after refusing to waive a £30 parking fine incurred by Marty following his eloquent written and photographic submission that the instructions on the parking meter were incorrect and that the time recording on the ticket dispenser was wrong.
Best travelling companion
Satellite navigation wins hands down, and without this technical aid we would not have even attempted our drive in such places as Hungary and Croatia. SatNav Ken, as he was then, gave us the confidence to hire a car in countries where we were unable to even read the road signs and to travel safely to destinations we had never even heard of. We are converts and have brought a new Tom Tom to guide us through the unknown streets and roads of Western Australia.
Restaurants
For seafood, the restaurants of Zykanthos in Greece and the Oistins fish fry in Barbados are stunning. Fresh from the ocean, whole fish are served in Greece, cooked to succulent perfection, while at Oistins the Friday night fry up is a real social gathering where local fish is washed down with rum punch. Favourites included the Baby Marlin and flying fish and, no, we didn’t eat the dolphin.
The most sociable restaurateur was Larry at the Shack in Samui where we went as guests of Jade for the garlic prawns and steak. Flashest perhaps was the Shangri-La in Abu Dhabi where the cheapest bubbles comes $NZ300 a bottle. We were hosted there twice, once by Jade and then by a friend of Martin Moodie’s and later we returned to celebrate Kaelene’s birthday. The nicest dish in Abu Dhabi may have been Shawarma which cost around $5, found at a local, back street restaurant which would not be frequented by those who took us to the Shangri-La.
Similarly, the local food in Thailand varies from the expensive to that at a little local place alongside the hotel we stayed at where a meal and two beers cost around $NZ8.
For the most stunning restaurant view, there was the place at the top of the hill, perched high, overlooking Lake Geneva where we went with Helen Kelly. While we savoured our cheese fondue, we could see from Geneva at one end to Montrose at the other.
Could do (much) better
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo houses the country’s most magnificent and priceless collection of treasures (we had thought most of Egypt had been plundered, but not so), but the place is dowdy and disorganised. It could be so much better.
Maddest place
If chaos is madness then Cairo is the one. Frenetic, twenty million people, every one it seems a taxi driver, each with a beaten up old eastern European car. There are, it seems, no road rules, but everything seems to work. This is a city where you can buy wine, but not an opener, and where donkeys share the roads with cars. It is not for the faint hearted.
Worst habit
Confession time. We have started to drink beer using stubby holders. Crikey, what will become of us?

Well, it has been a fabulous year, roll on 2010 . . . . .