As I walked to this cafe it was just enough rain to make we question if my shirt was sticking to me because of the sweat or the falling water.

As I write this I’m not sure when I’m going to be able to send it. It’s Sunday morning at the moment and the power has been off for some hours, meaning that I have no way to get online. But that may also be a good thing, it means that I have an excuse not to check the work related sites that I usually check each day. I am going to take the morning off and I have the added advantage of the majority of the volunteers having gone kayaking. Short of major disaster my phone should not ring and those that know me will be aware of my opinion of a ringing phone.

So, now that we can sit and chat, what should I tell you about this job.

It’s a good job and I enjoy it, something I’ve wanted to be able to say for many years but haven’t really been able to. It’s not a hard job, I’ve certainly had harder and as long as I keep on top of things it all flows along quite smoothly. It’s just a matter of being prepared for the unexpected and being able to make those instant changes and decisions. Any job where you have to deal with people is going to involve the need for flexibility.

On this project we teach English to novice Buddhist monks and to members of the local community. Apart from the Monk School we teach in a number of private schools in town, about eight different places at last count. When I say private school please don’t get the impression that they are moneyed places with privileged students getting extra education. Private  simply means that they are not Government schools. The students do pay to attend but the majority are working a couple of jobs in order to be able to do it.

In these schools we assist a local Laos teacher. The amount of assistance we are depends on the teacher and how comfortable they are with us in the classroom. There are a few teachers that we have been working with for a number of years and they know how to use a volunteer while other teachers may only use us to read passages and to check pronunciation. Part of my scheduling duties are to try and pair up the less confident volunteers with the appropriate teacher and the more confident in a class where they can make full use of that confidence.

The first contact I have with a new volunteer is when their name appears in the system. At that point I have to  make sure that we are going to meet them at the airport and that they have a room and that we have all their relevant details.

The next contact I have is when I pick them up at the airport. Volunteers are here for a minimum of two weeks so every fortnight I spend a day going to and fro from the airport. I kind of like this part of the job, I’ve always enjoyed hanging out at airports. Mr Phong, our preferred local driver, and I sit outside the arrival area with all of the other drivers from various hotels and wait. I usually look around at everyone else holding nicely printed signs with the passengers names on them and then look at my hastily scribbled scrap of paper with momentary embarrassment. I’ve never had anyone complain though and at least I’m easy to spot in the crowd.

It’s kind of a game trying to spot the volunteer. I have their name, nationality and age as a guide so the aim is to spot them before they spot my sign. Sometimes it’s easy, the overfull backpack and look of confusion can be a giveaway, but other times it’s not so easy. I had a fashion model turn up once, immaculate in white and towing designer luggage.

The trip into town is when I try to impart the basic knowledge they are going to need. How involved I get depends on how many days they have taken to get here and whether they have arrived in the morning or at night. Usually the minimum I stress is the need to drink as much water as possible as constantly as possible along with the instruction to never flush the toilet paper.

Depending on the time of day it may just be a matter of getting them in to their room and letting them sleep or I may be able to take them on their first orientation tour of the town.

But I’ll leave that for my next missive.

This is going to be a pretty short message just to get everyone up to speed on where I am and what I’m doing. At the moment it is pouring with rain and I have some time to kill between tasks so I’ll use it to write.

I am in Laos. I have actually been here for about 6 weeks now but have been working hard and haven’t really had that much free time. Yes, when I say working I mean I have a job and everything and it is busy, rewarding and fulfilling, things i have not been able to say about too many jobs I’ve had in the past.

You may remember that a while ago I did a trip that included volunteering in different parts of the world. One of those parts was Laos where I helped to teach English to Buddhist monks. A little while ago I had one of those “life is going nowhere” moments and applied for a job as a staff member on the project. If anything tells you that you are meant to do something then it is often that the timing is perfect and the job came up just as I was looking for it. Karma, right?

My role here is primarily administrative. I take care of a great deal of the paperwork, I pick up new volunteers at the airport, give them their orientation, make sure they know where to go, work on rostering them at the various schools where we teach, and generally answer all their questions. I am living in the same guesthouse as the volunteers and am on call to answer all those questions 24 hours a day. I am finding myself having to be Father/Mother/Doctor/Tour guide/Psychologist/ all-round entertainer.

The administrative stuff is not a problem but what do you do when you find out, after the fact, that a volunteer is allergic to elephants?

I have committed to being here for a year, after that I’ll just have to see what happens.

As a second staff member comes online I should have time to write about life here. I’ve already prostrated myself in front of a Buddhist Abbot, played soccer in the Football Stadium, found out you can be allergic to elephants and simply watched movies as part of the job.

I bought a handy dandy little device that plugs into my camera and I can then set to take a single shot at set intervals. After a few hours I end up with a few thousand individual photos which I then stitch together to make a movie. Simple right?

The real art is not the technicalities but finding something that will be truly amazing when viewed in this way. Now I just have to find those things.

I only wish I had been able to do it on a few of my trips. Can you imagine the sun rising over the Himalayas or setting over the pyramids?

I drove about 6000km on my trip to Hobart and it took me from about halfway up the east coast of the country to the bottom, a seemingly tiny distance on the map. But it was the equivalent of travelling from New York to Los Angeles and then halfway back again. Or from London to the middle of Iran.

This is a big place.

View Larger Map

I left my hotel (the Rydges Lakeside, possibly the worst hotel I have had the misfortune to stay at) at 8.30 and headed out for my planned day in the nations capital.

The only redeeming feature my hotel had was it’s location. The night before I had pored over a map torn from a tourist brochure and, using my fingers as makeshift callipers, I had figured that I could easily walk to and between the 4 attractions I wanted to visit. All well and good on paper but I had not taken into account how old and unfit I was.

My first port of call was Parliament House. If you are going to come to Canberra then it really is a must see. Luckily all the politicians were out of town kissing hands and shaking babies in preparation for the upcoming election so I figure that I would have the place to myself. It turned out to be a little difficult to get to on foot, there was a few mad dashes across heavily trafficked roads and up a couple of embankments, but it also included an extremely pleasant walk along the banks of the lake. 

As you undoubtedly know the lake was named after Walter Burley Griffin, the American who designed the city and didn’t manage to live long enough to see the lake completed. He would have been proud to have had his name on it if he’d been walking with me. It looked stunning with a mist rising off the water but I fear I may have been one of few who were enjoying it as everyone else seemed to be in a hurry to move their heavily clad selves into warm buildings.

My first impression of the Parliament Building was one of neglect. As I was walking I made my way up the large open grassy space in front of the building and I couldn’t help thinking that I’d seen better lawns at a gophers convention. It certainly wasn’t the immaculately maintained frontage that you would expect of somewhere like the White House but I imagine that all the visiting world leaders don’t spend a great deal of time wandering around outside and probably use a completely different entry, if they come here at all.

Once inside it all struck me at first as being slightly underwhelming. Apart form an initial metal detector there certainly wasn’t the amount of security one would picture in a situation like this. In fact I found myself free to wander pretty much anywhere I pleased and after mailing a couple of post cards at the Post Office on the second floor I set out to do exactly that.

It lacked the splendour of a palace and the sense of self importance that the White House has and, as I walked around, I started to appreciate it more. There was a feeling of Australian unpretentiousness, and I liked it. There wasn’t even anyone waiting to take the free tour, unlike the hours long queue I saw in Washington. Even on my way out of the building I stopped for a casual chat with one of the security guards and we simply talked about the weather and what it was like to live in Canberra. He had a genuine pride and fondness in the place that was heart warming to see.

From Parliament House I walked across one of the bridges across the lake and then around the lakeshore until I could look directly up Anzac Parade to the War Memorial, my second destination.

Anzac Parade is a work in progress. A wide avenue that sweeps down the hill from the War Memorial to end at the lake, it has smaller memorials lining it’s edge to the various conflicts Australia has fought in. Some, like the Vietnam memorial, are extremely well done and evocative while other open areas have signs telling of what is yet to come. At the lake end of the Parade is a monument from New Zealand, the other part of Anzac, that is meant to show Aus and NZ as two handles on the same basket.

I hiked up the Parade to the Memorial itself and was again struck by the relative lack of people. Any other capital city in the world would have had hordes of tourists visiting national monuments of this type but here it was very quiet. But somehow that quiet fits a place like a war memorial. It meant I could walk slowly along the walls inscribed with so many names in silence. The touching part about this display was the number of poppies that had been tucked into gaps between the slabs. 

The museum portion of the Memorial is extremely well done. Even though the WW2 portion was closed for renovations there was more than enough still available to keep me occupied. It is a nice combination of static displays of artefacts, video and interactive displays and dioramas that are amazing in both detail and the way they manage to capture a a moment in time. It is another unpretentious building that seems fittingly sombre on approach but manages to hide a wealth of riches, revealed once you get inside.

From the Memorial I headed towards the National Film and Sound Archive. The brochure I had torn my map from had a full page advertisement for a display there that was devoted to the pioneers of Australian animation. Being more than a little interested in animation and having a few artefacts from early Australian animation myself I was keen to see it. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment with the display consisting of only a few pictures on a wall and a small set from the “Dot and the Kangaroo” films of Yoram Gross.

From the Film and Sound Archives I headed to the National Museum. this is built on the previous site of a hospital and developed a tragic history when a young girl was killed by flying debris when the planned demolition went wrong. Families were watching the “implosion” from the other side of the lake when it exploded instead. The security guard I had been chatting to still remembered the event and the name of the 12 year old girl who died.

The Museum itself was okay. I probably expected more from something styling itself as the National Museum but in reality it is not as if they had managed to commandeer every artefact and display from every other museum in the country. In fairness it has only been open 9 years and is probably finding its feet but it really didn’t strike me as being any better (or worse) than any other museum you might find in any state capital. That being said, i did have an enjoyable time wandering around and what they have is done very well.

My day had started out very planned. Being a government town everything works to a 9 – 5 schedule and I had only 8 hours to try and fit my 4 destinations in. Thanks to my fleeting visit visit to the Film and Sound Archive i managed it without feeling like I had glossed over too much but I still feel like there is much more to be seen, both in the places I had already visited and in all those I hadn’t. I want to go back again soon.

It feels good to get that off my chest.

I will admit that I am one of those people who never really considered coming here after hearing for years all the disparaging comments people have made about it. But its a really nice place. Of course I have had the perfect day to see it at it’s best with there not being a cloud in the sky but since most of the places that interest me are inside anyway I don’t think a little rain would have been a problem. I will definitely be coming back to see all of the sights.

This is going to be a super short post because I was out at 8am and have been walking ever since. About 20km according to my handheld gps and that doesn’t include walking around inside places. So here is just a brief rundown. I’ll post a longer version when i get home, complete with photos.

Went to Parliament House…understated and interesting.

Went to the War Memorial…easy to see why this is one of the countries great tourist attractions.

Went to the Film and Sound Archive to see a display on Australian animation…disappointing.

Went to the National Museum…impressive and would like to have had more time.

Now I am footsore and tired but that’s a good thing. It means that I can now have a leisurely shower before I put my feet up and fall asleep in front of the TV. I need a good nights sleep because I have a 16 hour drive ahead of me tomorrow to get back home.

Keep your eye on twitter ( http://twitter.com/ptrekker ) as I tweet from the road.

Yes, that’s right, I’m not back on the Gold Coast yet, I am, in fact, in Canberra.

To say that I am a little tired at the moment would be an understatement so I will have to give you the highlights of the last couple of days rather than poetic descriptions of the countryside I’ve passed through.

I woke up early on Tuesday morning, they start loading the ferry 2.5 hours before it sails, which meant 6.30am. I was there a few minutes after that and queued up with a number of other vehicles waiting for the gates to open. Once they were we filed through the security check, which meant getting out into the cold and opening the bonnet and boot for inspection. From there we all queued up again and waited…and waited…and waited. We were still waiting on the wharf when the sailing time came and went which was causing a little frustration but eventually we formed up and were directed to our parking spots.

this was a day sailing, unlike the night one i had on the way down. Rather than paying extra for a cabin or recliner I just had a “day pass”, which meant access to the ship but no assigned seating. Luckily I managed to find a nice seat with a little table to spread my stuff on and a view outside. Then it was just a matter of killing time. The thrill of being on a ship at sea is a little lost on me so I just read magazines I had hoarded in preparation and watched which people headed to the toilets when we hit open water and the boat began to move a little. I’ve been in seas that have literally thrown me out of my bunk so it didn’t really phase me.

We were an hour late sailing which meant we were an hour late docking in Melbourne. Due to my normal run of luck I was among the last allowed off (first on, last off?) and it was dark and raining as I hit the streets.This is where Bambi was going to earn her money.

The plan was to head off and try and put a bit of black stuff between me and Melbourne straight away. On the ferry I had decided that I might like to have a look at Canberra, never having been there and keen to add another capital city to my list. Looking at a map I figured that I would try to get to somewhere around Sale and then find a nice looking truck stop and get a few hours sleep in the car before carrying on.

I somehow managed to lose a bit of time by getting lost in Melbourne. And when I say that I got lost I mean that I got lost and Bambi knew exactly where she was and where to go. I made a wrong turn, against her instructions, and then had to find my way back to the right road. Did you know that because of the trams you make right turns from the left hand side of the road in some places in this crazy Victorian city?

I did find a nice “power nap” area just short of Sale that had a toilet, was lit up and already had a truckie asleep there. I wrapped up in my North Face jacket, crawled into the back seat and was asleep pretty fast. I’d been awake a little over 17 hours so I actually slept well, in fact I slept until 5am.

From there I just followed Bambi’s instructions and got to Canberra safely.

The drive was good, a nice mixture of terrain with a stop for a full English breakfast in a little roadside cafe in Cabbage Tree Creek. The road took me from a heavy bush setting for breakfast to a fleeting glimpse of the ocean at Lakes Entrance and stark and wind blown hilltops at over 1100 metres closer to Canberra.

Tonight is set aside for sleeping and tomorrow I hit the streets to see if this town does its title of Capital justice.

I am now sitting in a motel that has seen better days but was (relatively) cheap and is close to the ferry terminal. The result may not be so picturesque but I had an awful lot of fun getting here.

To be perfectly honest there is little that I can say that I didn’t say yesterday. I followed Bambi’s suggestion of a scenic drive and made my way from Strahan to Devonport by way of Cradle Mountain. A decent coffee and a steak sandwich at a little place in Tullah and I spent the rest of the drive just waiting to see what would be around the next corner.

Come to Tasmania and just drive you won’t regret it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then I’ll just post a few photos and leave it at that.

I started the day by looking out my window at the sort of weather that you picture when you think of Tasmania. It was wild, wet and very woolly. Even getting my bags into the grey ghost, which was parked in the street directly in front of my room, was an exercise is speed and precision. Holding the door open in the face of a gale and then managing to get my pack in the front seat and my bag in the back without getting too wet was an adventure. I bought a pie from the only establishment open in town and sat on the waterfront watching the rain shoot sideways across the bay.

I figured that it was going to be an interesting drive to Strahan.

As it turned out it was extremely interesting.

I followed all of Bambi’s instructions and headed back towards Burnie, eventually making a turn at Wynyard and heading inland. From here on the joy of the journey took over.

The scenery changed, seemingly at every corner, from bush that reminded me of New Zealand so much I almost had a tear in my eye, to green rolling hills and farm houses, to scrubby windswept hilltops and sweeping views over lakes. It was a magical drive and even the weather seemed to change from driving rain to bursts of brilliant sunshine at the drop of a hat.

I stopped to take photos of scenery and to walk little bush tracks that were signposted on the side of the road. I can count the number of cars I saw on two hands and no one else seemed to be in any more of a hurry than I was, and I wasn’t. The grey ghost glided gracefully over gradients and through glades to my glee. I also had a lot of time to think.

If I haven’t said it before then I’ll say it now, it was a great drive and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Eventually the road ran out and I found myself in Strahan. I wonder what I can say about Strahan that isn’t coloured by the weather. As far as tourism goes I can only say that it is a summer town. All of the suggested things to do on the sheet in my motel room are water based or require warmer conditions than are here now. As was the case in Stanley so many places that would be swarming with tourists at any other time are now shut. I drove around for a while and then walked up and down the main street, interacting with the friendly locals who were standing outside the local hotel, seemingly oblivious to the weather.

This would be a great place to visit in summer but for me today it’s turning into a place to rinse out some smalls and get some sleep at the end of a day of driving I won’t forget in a hurry. I can only hope that tomorrows scenery on the way back to Devonport is half as good.

It started out okay, I found the house where my Grandmother had been born in 1916. It stood on a corner, looking a little old and nondescript and now inhabited by a doctors surgery. I took a few photos for my mother and then continued on to the Museum, wanting to be there at opening time.

I should have known that it was not going to be good from the moment I found the cost of parking. From there they seemed to have a problem getting the doors to open and I was in a little group that found ourselves stuck outside. Someone inside had to wave their arms frantically at the sensor to get the doors open.

Finally inside I made my way up to the History Centre and this is where I ran into a brick wall. The gentleman did know of the phones and had heard of Biggs (I think) but they were no longer on display. He did offer that his colleague would be in shortly and possibly, maybe there was a chance I could see a photo of them. Given that I had just shown him a photo of them when I was describing what I was looking for made the gesture a little hollow. My lack of enthusiasm from the day before for the Museum as a museum was just reinforced as I made my way out to my car. It’s found it’s way onto my list of places not to see in Launceston.

It was time to leave Launceston and also time to leave the ancestral trail I’d been following. My next port of call was Stanley, way up in the top left hand corner of the island on a spit of land that looks on the map as if it is a wannabe  island  slowly pulling itself free of the mainland.

The drive was exactly the thing I had come all this way to do. I followed the highway from Launceston to Devonport for the most part but would impulsively pull onto side roads just to visit small towns. There are a number of them; in fact most of the towns marked on the map as seeming to be on the highway are on side roads. Usually just one or two kilometres out of your way but so worth the effort. The towns may start to run together into an amalgam of sandstone and timber but the scenery between them is some of the greatest rural beauty you will find in this country.

As long as you like the English pastoral type of beauty that is because you will find yourself driving along narrow country roads with hedgerows flanking both sides that suddenly open out onto green rolling hills with small ponds and lakes. It was a fine day so the sky was a brilliant blue, the grass a brilliant green and the ponds a shimmering silver. Small farmhouses sat back off the roads, up long gravel driveways, their chimneys usually complete with tendrils of smoke and promising a kitchen replete with smells of baking bread.

Okay, I may be waxing overly lyrical but it was a nice drive and did much to improve my mood.

I skirted around Devonport and made my way across the north coast, through Penguin, Burnie (a much bigger town than I imagined) and Wynyard. The weather was good for the most part as the road alternated between views of the ocean before dipping back inland and farm scenes.

Bambi brought me safely to the Bayview Guesthouse, my home for the next couple of nights and I carried my bag up to the front door. Only to find something that could truly only happen in a small country town. Taped to the door was a note from my hosts explaining that they had had to go out, where my room was (outside access) and that it was open, with the key on a table inside. They wished me a goodnight.

I found my room and immediately knew that I was going to be pretty comfortable. I had planned these last couple of days here to be ones of leisure and the armchairs in front of the large window giving me a view across the bay was just what I was after. I made myself a cup of tea and settled in.

This morning I checked in with Denis, another Queenslander (although technically he’s a pom) who’s escaped down here. We chatted for a while about why he had moved to the other end of the country but he ultimately failed to convince me that cold is better. I got a real example of the cold when I set off for a walk around town, clutching a walking guide kindly prepared by Denis.

Stanley is a fishing town. It’s hard not to notice that. From my window I can see boats pulled up onto a slipway and just a little down the road is Hursey Seafoods, a wholesale and retail fish shop selling the catch from the Hursey fishing boats, a few of which are undoubtedly those I can  see pulled up on the Hursey slipways. It’s a Hursey town. The crowning glory of the Hursey Seafoods building is the big crayfish so I have at least managed to tick off another of those “big” things.

Following Denis’ guide I first walked around to the Fisherman’s Dock. Probably a hive of activity in Summer the dock seemed a little forlorn this morning but it did give me good view up at the “Nut”. The Nut is a Gibraltar like rock outcropping that protects the bay from the open ocean. It is also the source of a good story that i am going to shamelessly quote from the guide.

“The bluff face of the Nut looms above you at this point. In 1892 an attempt was made to blast rock from the vertical face, to be used to reinforce the breakwater. The day of the detonation drew a crowd who were disappointed to see nothing but a cloud of dust and smoke spurt from the drillings where literally tons of dynamite had been set. It was another twelve years before the rock finally fractured enough to shear off. Fortunately the fall occurred before work in the early morning, and no lives were lost.”

Pretty cool, huh?

The rest of the town didn’t take long to walk around, mostly due to the fact that everything is closed for the winter. The Post Office (which is also a B&B) and the bank/newsagent/general store were open but the places that rely on the summer tourist trade were taking advantage of the lull to do renovations or take holidays.

The town itself didn’t really remind me of Australia. It had an American Cape Cod feel to it. The houses are predominately timber and stand facing the water and winds with a defiance that says “I’ve been here for well over a century and I have a lot longer to go”. They may appear to be a little weather beaten, and they are, but it’s that  toughness that gives them so much character. I spent quite a while walking the streets, gleaning facts about the buildings from the guide and as I went I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bearded and salt encrusted man in a bright yellow raincoat or cable knit jumper walk past me.

About the only thing I didn’t do was climb to the top of the Nut itself but that was purely because of my perfectly rational fear of heights. I’m sure that the view would have been spectacular.

I’m back in my room now, cup of tea close to hand and view of the water before me. I’ll probably wander down to Hursey’s this evening for some fresh seafood before getting a good nights sleep. Tomorrow I plan to hit the west coast.