Category Archives: Adventures

Tassie winter roadtrip

The weather wasn’t great for the start of our family campervan trip down the East coast, to the South of Tasmania. We’ve been to Tas plenty of times, yet the kids have never seen these areas. Our first stop for the kids to stretch their legs was Avoca – home to perhaps the worlds smallest police station. I’ll share the photo later, the office looked less than 3 metre square. The highlight for Myles and I was being able to warm our bums with the public restroom’s hand dryer. The rain had started, and the temperature was already cold.

On the next stretch of road we saw lots of colours, but they were mostly shades of grey.

People in charge of roads in Dubai should come to Tasmania to learn a thing or two about dealing with water on roads. Altho UAE only deals a week or so of rain each year, the roads flood terribly from a few mils, and it doesn’t disperse for weeks. Here in Tassie we’re experiencing >20 mils and there are seemingly swimming pools and swimming pools of water all over the land. Yet the road seems almost waterproof.

We stopped for pancakes at the famous Mount Elephant Pancake Barn. We risked the $2.20 surcharge for rowdy children they have up on the chalk board. Lady asked where we were headed as the police had called her to advise they were closing the road going back the way we had just gone through. Perhaps the Tassie roads aren’t magical afterall,

Went thru Elephant Pass Rainforest. When I saw a couple of kookaburras fly away I did my best imitation of their famous laughing call. It mustn’t have been good, Myles let me know there are no monkeys in the forest. Although I’m sure my impersonation could be improved, the fact is the boys may not really know about this iconic Australian bird. Lewis even struggles to say it properly, now when we ask what kind of bird it is, he calls it “kookabugger” – which is much funnier.

Day 2 we left for further down the coast.
We spent some time at a kids park at Coles Bay. It had swings and activities which I haven’t seen since 1981. Elle had been going there as a kid – probably since 1981 – and informed me they have all been there unchanged since then.

We went to the jetty where a dog did a wee on our tyre. I think it was showing off, it was so chilly I couldn’t imagine weeing anything but ice.

For a change we had lunch in a pub, the Iluka Tavern. We were one of 6 people in the entire establishment. Their chicken parmy was superb. Loved their sign on the way out, “We encourage people to drink in moderation, PARTICULARLY if you are driving”. Hopefully that kind of encouragement is enough.

We stayed the evening of 09th of August, 2011 in the Mayfield Beach Conservation Park. I mention the date cause it’s significant, it’s the night of the 2011 Australian Census. Although we’ve been living overseas for more than two years, we’ll coincidentally be counted and archived into Australian history. I think it’s sort of interesting that in 100 years, people can learn that we were staying in such a “dwelling” as this campervan at a tiny place on the East coast of Tassie. As a former forms designer I must say I was disappointed with the census form. Ours is completed and sealed, but I remember it didn’t cater for work location for people working overseas, nor did it allow for non-salary workers being on a holiday for Elle. And if I’m being really pedantic, their use of followup questions and not applicability was inconsistent and inefficient. And I’m no authority, but I hadn’t heard of Salvation Army as a religion before Regardless of such issues, we’re recorded though. And it was a bit if fun for Myles. He was quite proud when I told him I recorded the task he performs daily in his job is to talk about gross stuff.

We had the luxury at our camp to make a camp fire. As a Queensland boy, this is a very unexpected activity, it almost felt like something stuck in the days of my childhood. It may also be part of the reason why I struggled. Things were all resolved once we figured out it’s simpler to use almost an entire box of fire lighters rather than the few scraps of kindling we could muster.

The next morning when we woke it was surprising to see the cut up apple we left was untouched, yet Lewis’s spilt satay beef and basmati rice was devoured. I wonder if Mayfield’s possums have been run out of town at the hands of some Asian critters.

Today we saw a few nice natural sights. When walking through the bush at Archers Knob or Devils Kitchen, Lewis was helping Elle in the search for wombats in the little tracks just off the path into the bush. He had no luck – the boys inadvertently made enough noise to make sure of that. However as we were coming to the end of the path, he suggested to Elle that maybe we have a wombat in our van, then even more curiously added – and I quote – “maybe there’s a box of them”. So perhaps Lewis had something other than a wombat in mind.

After a while Lewis tired of nature, saying I don’t like these trees.

We stayed the night at the well-eqipped Port Arthur. The park has always been a popular place – maybe even more popular given the museums raised profile due to the atrocity in 1996.
The manger informed me in the summer the park gets up to 600 guests staying. Now in winter there’s only about 10-15 of us scattered around the campervan area. The manager only took over the place less than 12 months ago, and he said this has been the areas coldest recorded winter since 1968. He didn’t have to explain that to us it was freezing!

Place was scattered with potteroos, wallabies, and many friendly rosellas. The place was seemingly infested with small hopping animals. The manager said there’d be enough wallabies to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools – which provides an interesting visual. The kids liked the animals, although Lewis was selective with the potteroos. He only wanted to feed the ones he decided weren’t bad. He warmed to them all by the end, even sharing his Milo with one of them. This sadly ended with Lewis trying to be helpful by throwing the cup at the poor animal. Once he noticed they were interested in the cup, I had to intervene as Lewis thought it would be a good way to catch one.

All in all, a great trip. Now we just have to go through our few 1000 pix across four cameras. And there could be more tales to share.

Cricket @ 7he Sevens

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Cricket at 7he Sevens

Lewis very unimpressed with ex-English cricket captain, Mike Gatting

On the weekend we went out to 7he Sevens stadium to attend the annual charity cricket match between the famous Lord’s Taverners and our semi-professional Fly Emirates team.  It was billed as a large fund-raiser, with even buses organised from work to pick up people.  Sadly though, there was nobody really there except the players, their families, and a few tables of VIPs.  It made for an interesting day, given I had Lewis in tow.  And two year olds rarely comply with the etiquette of the posh cricket fraternity.  Having said that, Lewis running around the WAGs drinking their Pims hardly bothered anyone.

The weather was perfect, and the lack of people meant it was a very casual, almost intimate affair.  We decided to leave the pavilion and walk around the vacant field to give Lewis some variety.  We let Lewis spend quite some time rolling down “the hill” (haven’t seen one of those at a cricket field for some time).  Then we continued to walk around the other side where I managed to catch a well-hit six by one of the Fly Emirates batters.  The batsmen were desperately trying to catch up to the 240 run target.  It was to no avail.  On the way back around to the table, one of the English spectators complimented my catching ability. I mentioned it was luck more than anything, I had my eyes closed.  He made a good point.  It doesn’t really matter as long as I didn’t drop it – cause that would have been really embarassing.  Glad I didn’t think of that at the time. I would have dropped it under the pressure.

All in all a lovely day to be out in perfect Dubai weather to catch quite a lovely event – particularly given the Dubai heat will soon make watching cricket all day unimaginable.  We’ll be there again next year.

Dubai public transport “adventure”

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Wednesday night the boys and I decided to catch a metro after dinner to The Dubai Mall and watch the water fountain show. At 6:30pm, the decision was possibly a bit late, but the boys hadn’t been out of the apartment, and Mum wasn’t around so the boys felt like partying. In hindsight, it was a good idea to go, it was a bad idea to not drive like we did the night before.

I drove to Nakheel Harbour & Tower which is the closest metro station with car parking. It’s a bit counter-intuitive as it’s in the opposite way to our direction of travel, but there’s no closer station with a good park.

Finally, the ticket seller agreed Myles needs a card. It’s the smart card ticket for the metro. On every previous trip he didn’t need one, much to his disappointment. To say Myles was over the moon to finally get his card is an understatement.

There was something wrong with the metro on the way in. It stayed at a few of the stations way too long. We missed the 8pm show by the time we left home, driven to Nakheel, caught the metro, and got off, caught the bus to the mall. It’s amazing how long things can take, with just a few delays here and there. I couldn’t bear to turn the boys around without seeing the show, so we perservered.

I was glad we did perservere. The show was great. Lewis’s reaction was again gold – for the big water jets he’d shoot his arms up, and yell “Wow!”.

When the show finished Myles said he was hungry. I knew there was something I forgot in my bag 😐 We got some fries from fatburgers inside, and used the bathrooms, then it was time for the next water show so we got to see the 9pm one also. It’s amazing how the Dubai crowd gets bigger as the night gets more late. And it’s unsurprising why all the poor little kids are getting more and more rowdy.

The second show was better than the first, so very worthwhile to stick around – although the boys are now nearly 2 hours beyond their bedtime.

When the show finished about 10 minutes later we made our way through the dense crowd and got on the shuttle bus. It left within a couple of minutes, joy! But we knew our faith in public transport was displaced when we arrived at the Dubai Mall & Burj Khalifa station and saw the station doors shut and maybe 300 people standing outside. The odd taxi driving past was getting swarmed by a dozen or so frantic people.

We stood for 5 minutes before I made a chase game with the boys to keep them occupied. We saw the doors open, but only to let a police man come out and swing his baton at people trying to force their way in. I also saw some of the families being redirected to the other doors, so we followed. There were less people there, but the crowd was just as aggressive. The worker asked us to go yet another door to get in, which we did. By the time we reached that door the group was nearly 100 strong. The door was now open with a police man was yelling loudly in Arabic. Then I heard him say families only – so I started making my way through the mostly male crowd.

In Dubai there’s a belief that local Emiratis get preferential treatment by the police and many other agencies. That night the myth was busted. A group of local boys tried to squeeze past this policeman, and the policeman didn’t blink and swung his baton with such force to send them back and yelled some further Arabic words I imagined some pretty short translations to. Another guy trying to get through also got smashed in the face with the policeman yelling “where’s your family!”.

"Policeman with baton"

Myles picture of the policeman “ples” with baton – drawn on the Metro trip home

To avoid the same treatment, I displayed my boys like they were a premiership trophy I had just won. Myles told me afterwards apparently the intense policeman actually smiled at him as we made our way through, which was a nice touch.

Once we were on the train it was quite a relief, but the train didn’t move for some time. Finally it set off, and we were moving. A nice European guy insisted I take his seat as I was holding a sleeping Lewis at this point.

We passed my usual station of Dubai Internet City (DIC) to get to the car. I actually contemplated whether it would be quicker to get off and taxi home – and leave the car at the station. I decided against it. This became proof you should always go with your first instinct. One station later, the train was left stationary for 10 minutes. Then there was an announcement it’d be delayed by another 10 minutes. I decided to give up, and try my luck finding a taxi to get us straight home.

Many people had decided to ditch the train before me, so there was already a violent tussle on the street for taxis between those people. Instead we tried the shuttle bus which would get us back to DIC. The driver had very limited English, but it was clear he wasn’t moving for another 14 minutes. It had to be the best option. Both boys fell asleep on the way. Then we were able to cross the overpass and hail a taxi to get us back to our apartment about 5 minutes away.

I usually hate catching taxis with a passion, but it was like a lovely dream compared to the prior two metro rides and three bus rides.

When we walked into our building Myles eyes were barely open, and I was carrying Lewis who was nodding in and out of sleep.

My watch said 11:40pm as we reached the long hallway from the lift to our apartment. Although Lewis was terribly tried, he still quietly suggested “run”, referring to the normal race the three of us have to the front door. But he was happy enough with my suggestion for a cuddle.

The metro for the most part is great, but when it fails, the whole system fails. I (jokingly) suggested Myles should toss his new Nol card in the bin cause we’ll never trust catching a metro ever again. We’ll just limit our trips to times when we won’t be so inconvenienced by such delays.

The next morning we caught the metro to Nakheel Harbor & Tower to pick up our car. Against all odds the metro worked like clockwork, and my car was fine. I was half-expecting as the night before was so disastrous that my car would have been towed or something as the icing on the cake.

The Wiggles in Dubai – 12 June 2010

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The world’s most popular children entertainers, and possibly Australia’s greatest export visited Dubai over the weekend.  They had quite a whirlwind tour performing just three shows over our weekend. I took my two boys on Saturday to watch the final show in a packed Palladium –  just over the road from our place.

Unfortunately Murray – the red wiggle – was absent, due to a pressing family commitment, so we were introduced to a new red wiggle in Bobby – apparently Australia’s greatest surfer.  But otherwise all the characters were there.

I knew what to expect, Elle had gone to a previous show in Australia, and told me how the event goes at such a frenetic pace. But it must be seen to be believed, particularly when you know their ages.  It was interesting when they did their usual gag of Jeff falling asleep so the kids can scream “Wake Up Jeff!”. However while Jeff was standing there ‘asleep’, instead of telling kids the instructions on how to wake Jeff, Anthony mentioned Jeff ‘s tired because he’s getting old. He then proceeded to tell a story of what had happened earlier in the day.  Judging by Jeff’s giggles he knew what was coming. Apparently Jeff got news from Australia that he had received his Senior Citizen’s Card.  Apparently Jeff was dancing around the hotel room repeatedly singing “half price at the movies”. By the end of the story Jeff was visibly laughing, so Sam interjected telling kids that Jeff must be having a really funny dream. Once the kids had succeeded waking him up, Jeff jumped up and hung upside down from a bar, again singing “half price at the movies”.

The Wiggles are a real class act. Even a minor mistake was extremely smooth, and then highlighted to make an even more entertaining moment. It happened when Henry the Octopus couldn’t stand on the thight of a couple of wiggles and fell. Captain Feathersword couldn’t stop laughing, and explained it was just so funny – and they made the three do it again when the song had finished.

They are also expert at seamlessly introducing local influences to their show. Apparently they fell in love with our fruit dates – a traditional local treat – and were re-considering the lyrics of their song ‘Fruit Salad’ so it would become just “Dates”. And after doing “Incey Wincey Spider” quite a few times, Anthony cut it off abruptly and said, actually it doesn’t rain that much here – which received a lot of laughter.

It was good to see quite a mix of people attending. The Wiggles are  a real world wide phenomenon, and it was present in the crowd.  While it was mostly Western looking families, you could easily spot a few locals were present in their Konduras and Abayas.

I saw a couple of guys from the office at the end of the show, one of the guys apparently insisted on going it was just lucky that his wife and kids were interested in coming along also.

Dreamland – 04 June 2010

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Last weekend Myles and I went to Dreamland Aqua Park which is a waterpark in Umm Al Quwain – another emirate within the UAE. The trip from Dubai is around an hour, but the time went pretty quick as we saw lots of interesting or new things.

In fact Myles counted the interesting things on the way to the water park:

  1. Flamingos in Ras Al Khor sanctuary
  2. Very different traffic lights in Ajman – they had little clocks counted how many seconds the lights were remaining on Red or Green (they were also laid out horizontally instead of vertically)
  3. Six “tornadoes” (whirly winds)
  4. No pictures of HH Sheikh Mohammed (outside of Dubai it makes sense)
  5. A picture of a man that looked like Fazza (Dubai’s Royal Prince) but wasn’t (he was a different Ajman’s Royal Prince)
  6. Sharks in the water (sticks in the water)
  7. A big old abandoned plane used as an advertisement

Emirates employees get a generous discount at the park, but there was an even more generous coupon in the entertainer book which encouraged us to visit this particular water park over the other three.  We’ve been to Wild Wadi a couple times, and Elle and the boys had been to the a bit run down Wonderland.  The only one we now haven’t visited is Aquaventure which is in Atlantis – The Palm, so possibly the most well-known.

In a word, Dreamland was awesome. Myles had to be convinced that it was different to Dreamworld back on the Gold Coast in Australia. There are things to appeal to all ages. There is a good maze to have a relaxing float with babies, but we didn’t take Lewis on this occasion.  There are plenty of other rides for larger kids, and the obligatory number of scarier rides still for the adult-aged kids. There was also a bar or two if you wish for a break to whet your whistle.

I had to give Myles an impromptu Arabic lesson, more of a reminder, when I had to clarify that “yulla” is Arabic for hurry, or let’s go. Myles originally thought all the guys were unhappy because they wanted to go on the yellow slide, not because they were extremely impatient.

The only downside of the day, was the heat. We made the mistake of going barefoot from the change rooms and lockers. So throughout the day we had to run between the slides, and deviate our course to take in a bit of grass now and again til our scorched feet had reduced to a normal temperature.  Well, my feet at least. I put Myles on my shoulders most of the times.

One of the other downsides was the amount of body hair on display. I’m on the paranoid side of having body hair, and in the past have generally shaved down for triathlon events. But it was nothing, compared to the spectacle you’ll see at any water park in this region. It was interesting that you’d see what you thought was the hairiest guy at the park. But the guy would always be outdone by the new hairiest guy. You never really find the winner, you just get sick of noticing. Or you’ll spot the hairiest guy in the world, and there’s instantly no where else to go.

Myles enjoyed all of the rides he was allowed on.  There was still a few things he was not tall enough for. But we’ll certainly be back.

The trip also had second hidden agenda for the way home. Next to Dreamland is a place well-known to all expats, particularly from the West. It’s called Barracuda Beach Resort, but it’s really only famous for one thing, cheap alcohol.  But just as impressive, is the huge variety of stock they carry.  The first time I visited, I was like a kid in a candy store.  They have a fantastic Australian wine collection, with possibly more wines than a standard Australian bottle shop. And they have all the most popular Australian beers at fantastic prices. The XXXX cartons were AED 90, which equates to less than AUD $30 – must cheaper than in Australia! I’m sure anyone outside of Queensland would want to insert joke here about cat urine, but I’ll move on.

The trip home takes you through the emirate of Sharjah – which is a strictly dry emirate. So there’s always a bit of uncertainty whether we’re breaking the law or not. But the consensus is providing its within personal consumption levels, and you are licensed to drink within your own emirate, it should be fine.

We spent around 5-6 hours at Dreamland, but you could easily spend even more time.  Myles was so active the complete time we were there he was asleep within minutes of leaving Barracuda.  It was a fantastic day, and we’ll certainly be back again. Although Wild Wadi is less than 10 minutes from our house and Dreamland is at least an hour away, it has a larger layout, caters for adults a little better and is quite a bit cheaper.

Your Indian name is what?!

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Yesterday a number of Tecom families gathered downstairs on the Floor 1 terrace to celebrate Easter.  We had a well-received egg hunt for the kids – large and small, as well as a BBQ lunch and a few drinks with good company. Interestingly some of the kids didn’t go crazy with the chocolate. Lewis was the obvious exception, he had half his face, and pretty much his entire t-shirt covered in a mixture of chocolate and baby slobber.

It’s probably the first time my kids participated in such a big Easter egg hunt. And a few good lessons were learned.  Probably none more important than Myles learning no matter how full your basket of eggs becomes, NEVER put chocolate eggs in your pockets if the temperature is warm.

The kids enjoyed playing football, hide and seek, and chasing each other on bikes.  But once they grew a bit tired of these games, they seemed to go their own ways.  It was interesting to see Myles walking up and down the garden speaking some “foreign” language. I had to ask what he was doing, to which he replied he was being an Indian. He was equipped with a spear made from a frong from the garden, so I figured he was the American variety of Indian.

Trying to fit the theme I told him about traditional Indian names (without mentioning the standard two dogs joke).  We started with the animal, which he chose a Rhino. I was pleased, as it’s my favourite animal.  But I would soon regret the whole activity. As he’s just five I simply asked what is the Rhino doing, as it would be the first part of his name.  He responded it’s Pooing.  So “Pooing Rhino” it was for the afternoon.

Some friends set out to eat fish, in compliance with the tradition. It encouraged me to also get some prawns for the BBQ which was a very nice touch.  But the longer we stayed down there, the hungrier we were, and they conceded that fish was just not to cut it.  So they walked across to Carrefore and bought a full leg of lamb to throw on the BBQ.  It was delicious, even if a little heathen.

Zen and the art of whitebaiting

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ADDENDUM: Sadly, Bevis Dutton passed away on 30th March, 2026 after suffering multiple myeloma. R.I.P. "Fred".  This blog and it's surprising reach a world away was a point of pride for Fred, so it will continue on in his honour.

Before coming to Tasmania this trip, I had not been introduced to whitebait fishing, or even this type of fish.  First thing you learn is, fishing is more than just standing around with a rod drinking beer. It really is a sport.  Why else would it be broken into seasons  (Opening of the Whitebait season — IFS Portal  -27 October 2009 – http://www.ifs.tas.gov.au/ifs/opening-of-the-whitebait-season)?

This season, Fred (my father-in-law) had bought an illustrious whitebaiting license. From his daily Facebook status updates of whitebait trials and tribulations, it certainly seemed like an activity I must see.

Unfortunately or probably fortunately, it is an activity non-license holders can only see and not do. To manage the whitebait there are also a host of other restrictions placed upon the dedicated whitebaiter, covering things such as the size and design of the net, how far from the net they must stand, and what colour and fabric underwear is worn.

Fred with net
Fred with net

There are also numerous rules that have been learned over generations and passed down. Don’t cast a shadow on the water, don’t chase the fish, don’t change direction of the net.  We disproved all of these, and managed to bag a quota. A big deal, I learned.

Tasmanian whitebait
Two Tasmanian whitebait magnified about a billion times

It was interesting how much effort is required to catch even just a handful of  these tiny lovettia sealii – which judging by their size they must have the nutritional value of a good belch.

But it’s even more interesting to see the passion and appreciation the humble whitebaiters have for their “sport”. Despite the freezing conditions, and what seems to be huge frustration at the whitebait not doing what they should, these fisherman (and one fisherwoman) are always happy.  The beautiful surroundings have gotta help.

I saw a bumper sticker once that said a bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.  The sentiment surely applies to whitebaiting as well. On the first time we only managed to capture enough little fish for two patties. On the second we got a daily quota – which sort of translates to a jackpot for the gamblers.  But both days were equally enjoyable.

An Australian holiday – Oct 2009

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After eight months living abroad we finally took our first holiday. On October 17 We headed home to Australia for four full weeks.  Work had been quite hectic leading up to this. My manager is still unsure how I managed to get her approval for this amount of leave.  It was quite simple really, quietly mumble the request while she was distracted talking to someone else, and just take any of her body language as a positive response.

The flight from Dubai to Australia is a long one – wind-assisted and direct it’s still 14 hours.  I scored some big brownie points and let Elle take the business class seat, while I had the kids in economy. The plane was so full we had no choice, despite us deciding to forego our contractual business class seat to sit altogether.

On my own it was a little worrying to think of the large number of hours for a five year old and a baby to fly, but it really did go quite quickly. Myles and Lewis were an absolute dream. Lewis, our baby beefcake, is now 12kgs which means he’s too heavy to go in the bassinet to sleep, but not light enough to want him sitting on your lap for almost a whole day.  It started with some humour. Myles always took a lot of interest in the safety card of each aeroplane.  He’d study it for 10-15 minutes, each side, and ask lots of questions if there’s something he didn’t completely understand. Well, this time it was Lewis’s turn. To keep him occupied, I handed him a few different cards from the seat pocket, and Lewis started reading the safety card intently. Myles noticed this, and gave some classic 5 year old big brother advice, “Lewis, that’s a sad, sad, story”.

I managed to get a lovely neighbour from the UK named Pam who was very helpful when things got too busy. She didn’t have to do too much, but it was great at times such as when Myles decided to go to the toilet more often than normal. The novelty of the small toilets was too much for him.  He also suggested he needed to brush his teeth numerous times after they gave him a tiny toiletry set.

The cabin crew were really good to Myles, and they clearly enjoyed his company. This was despite Myles earlier showing no loyalty to our beautiful Emirates airline, and buying an Aer Lingus airport set. This is the second time he’s done this. When they flew to Dubai he came proudly displaying the same airport set with QANTAS insignia.

Elle did a stint in economy, which allowed me to at least get some business class tucker and watch a movie.

And before I knew it, we were in Brisbane to start our holiday.  My brother picked us up in our X-Trail, and we had a go at driving on the other side of the road again. Funnily, it’s harder to change back from left-side drive to right-side drive, than it was to originally change over. We had to modify our driving considerably from how we’ve learned to drive Dubai for fear of getting locked up by Queensland Police.

We got to my parent’s place where a huge Welcome home banner got our immediate attention.

We deliberately made very few concrete plans in case any of us suffered badly with the effects of jetlag. In the end there was nothing major,the kids adapted particularly well. Before we left, Lewis was napping four times a day, and eating at every other opportunity. The six hour time difference just means meal #3 lines up with maybe meal #1, which he has had no complaints about.

The only thing scheduled for our trip was my graduation ceremony on the 22nd of October at Monash University in Melbourne. This left us about a week of hanging around Burpengary to relax into holiday mode. Which did take a little while.  One thing that helped though was trying to complete a cryptic crossword for the first time. They really a nonsensical form of torture. Their baffling effect focuses all your thinking on just how unintelligent you are – a great way to forget the stresses of work.  Eventually I probably got a quarter of the clues, and that’s where it was left.

Myles (and Corey) with one of his bream

Myles (and Corey) with one of his bream

We were quite fortunate to have my brother take Myles & I out fishing in his boat on his day off.  The location was Scarborough, and with Corey living less than 2 minutes from the boat ramp I correctly assumed he had sufficient local knowledge to make it a successful trip.

Myles & I talked it up in the car about who was going to catch the most number of fish.  Obviously I supported his totally unrealistic goal to catch the most number of fish, but put little actual thought into it coming true.  It didn’t take long to learn that Myles was a superior fisherman to me, with is probably not too surprising.  But landing more fish than Corey – the keen angler – and LARGER fish as well was quite unexpected although a great result for any five year old.  The results were Ryan 1 fish, too small. Corey 3 fish, all too small. And Myles 5 fish, 4 of them HUGE enough to eat. Which we did that evening. Thanks Corey!

And after a day and night in Melbourne the travel plans were to spend two weeks in Tasmania, then one final week in Queenland before flying back to Dubai on the 12th of November, which is approaching at the speed of light.

Germany and the Berlin marathon – Sept 2009

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Late last month Elle and I took advantage of my parents coming to Dubai and jetted off to Germany for a long weekend on our own. Despite appearences, it wasn’t just for a dirty weekend, there was actually some purpose to the trip. I’ve set a goal to complete the “Big 5” marathons of the world, and decided that Berlin would be a good place to start.

The trip started off on a sour note, when we got bumped from our scheduled flight due to the extremely busy Eid long weekend rus of passengers.  For the uninitiated (like we were), the break of Ramadan means public holidays so a lot of people make the most of it and travel.

We managed to get on a flight later in the day, but had to change our plans as we missed our connecting flight from Munich to Berlin. We ended up arriving in Munich at around 9:00pm and then had to find a hotel for the night. We got completely confused by the train ticketing machine completely in German, so we decided our best bet would be to get a taxi to Munich to find a hotel. we probably should have done more research, as we discovered once we were in the taxi and on the road, that Munich city is actually quite a distance from the aiport and hotels are scattered all over the place.

The taxi driver tried to discourage us from trying the nearby hotels saying they would be fully booked due to the Oktoberfest.  His suggestion was that he drive us 55 Euros away, and then take us back to the airport in the morning – after another 55 Euros later.  But we insisted he stop at the Sheraton so I could see if they had room.  The lady at reception looked at me strangely and said, of course we have vacancies.

Something else surprised me at reception.  In Dubai pornography – anything close to it – is strictly illegal so you just don’t see it at all.  However, when I was standing at the hotel’s front desk, staring right at me was the cover model for Playboy completely topless!  I don’t think I’ve been overly interested in such images since I was 17, but having this strange sight was extremely distracting.  Quite a Europe welcome.  A similar thing greeted us in the rooms, where the TV had 1 movie channel and 4 adult channels.

The next morning we caught a flight to Berlin and managed to hit some random buttons on the ticket machine which spat out a ticket enabling us to catch a bus into the city. After asking a friendly policeman for directions, we eventually located our hotel.  We stayed in the Mercure de Charite.  With the terrible currency conversion between the UAE Dirham and the Euro it was disappointing to find that Charite didn’t mean we were staying in a shelter for the poor and destitute.  Actually we found the hotel through the marathon’s web site according to the distance to the start line – which was just perfect.

I had a few worries going into the marathon.  Most of my training has been through the summer period with frequent and mandatory water stops, so I wasn’t sure I had done sufficient distance training.  My concerns became reality at around the 25km mark when my legs started cramping terribly.  I was on track for a reasonable time until this point.  But with all the stops I saw all my goal times pass me by.  In the end I realised 4hrs was at risk so I really had to knuckle down.  Towards the end I felt terrible agony.  Everything was telling me to stop, except for the million+ spectators. In short it was an amazing experience.

Folllowing the race I was hobbling quite a bit.  I met up with Elle on the steps of the Reichstag where I had to sit for some time.   The Corona helped a little.  The walk from the finish line back to the hotel probably took 10 times longer than it did that morning. I slept extremely well that night.

We missed a day in  Berlin before the race due to the missed flight, so we decided to change our plans a little and try to see a few of the sights the next day then hit Munich and the Oktoberfest later in the day and night.  We did the Reichstag Dome tour, a look around Brandenburg.  Then we left the big smoke for the largest palace in Berlin at Charlottenburg. The whole area was beautiful, and something definitely worth seeing.

We caught the underground back to the airport and made our way to Munich.  By this stage we were seasoned veterans at buying tickets in Germany, but we didn’t need to.  A very friendly German guy gave us a tip that the tickets were priced so they were cheaper as a group of 3 or more – which he had the ticket for already. We got out of it for free, although we gave him 10 Euros anyway.  He was a lovely guy and kept us entertained the whole way.  We knew we were onto a good thing when he mentioned he works at the airport in IT and “it’s shit”.

Unfortunately my limping got worse, so we found our hotel and crashed.  Any thoughts of hitting Oktoberfest that evening were dashed by the allure of a nice warm bath.

We had plenty of time at the airport so I trialled all the local beers on display to try and compensate for missing Oktoberfest the night before.

The w’end flew by, and we arrived safe and sound in Dubai late on Tuesday night.

A Dubai fancy dress party – 05 June 2009

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All dressed up. Elle's a lady of the night, Myles as a ninja, and Lewis as Batman's off-sider, Robin

All dressed up. Elle's a lady of the night, Myles as a ninja, and Lewis as Batman's off-sider, Robin

This weekend we attended a fancy dress pool tournament party at a friend’s place. They had a wonderful villa with their own private backyard which is a bit of  a luxury in Dubai. They made the most of it and had two large dogs running around. It would be so much better environment than the majority of dogs in Dubai – including the ones we hear in our apartment complex.

It was tough to come up with something for me and my pool partner go to this party as.  We wanted to either bring something Australian, or locally. The final idea, after many options, was to do a delightful corny play on words and dress as “Sheikh, Rattle & Roll”.  We bought some local Kanduras (robe/dishdasha) for the sheikh part, we had baby’s rattles, and – running out of inspiration – we hung some bread rolls from the outfit.  The final piece was perhaps not the greatest idea, as we had the dog closely following us around for most of the time.  My head piece was probably normal sized, so it failed to fit my watermelon-like cranium. So unfortunately it fell quite a few times which gave the dog the split second opportunity on two occasions to quickly snaffle up the bread rolls I had.

We thought the dog was just following Paul & I for the bread rolls, but it turned out the dog was actually owned previously by a local guy who wore the same clothing. The story goes that the dog may have been mistreated as he is apparently not a big fan of the local dress. So it was perhaps our fault when the usually friendly hound nipped the chin of one of our fellow revelers, in an unprovoked attack. Or perhaps it was just the excitement of the evening.

The night was organised for a number of reasons. It all came clear when the cakes took over the pool table, where we were allegedly playing a keenly organised and Microsoft Excel powered tournament. Not a lot of competition there, one of the games was lost off the initial break — by none other than my wife, Elanor!  Perhaps she could have been more useful out on the street, she and my boss dressed as ladies of the night.  The party was for the one of the ex-PNG pilots who made Captain, as well as a host of birthdays which would prove difficult to celebrate together as most people avoid the Dubai summer.

A good night was had by all – even the “Man in skirt” who briefly masceraded as dog food.  Unfortunately we had to be one of the first to leave, as we probably had close to the youngest kids there. Lewis was asleep for a great deal, but the noise became too much. And when he finds that second wind, it’s difficult to put him back to sleep.  And also difficult to make him enjoy himself.  Mind you, this was 12:00 midnight when we left, early. The party consisted mostly of the local PNG community, who know how to party!  Just ask my Aunty in Cairns who has PNG folks next door.

The other good thing about PNG parties, is they know how to put on a feed! We were tasked with bringing Elle’s famous potato salad, but left it on the bench at home. I intended to return home alone to fetch it after we arrived, but the hosts insisted there was more than enough food, which there was.