Tag Archive for 'australia'

come on over to my place;

Published on November 10, 2009 in photography, shopping and work & writing. 6 Comments Tags: australia, blackbird summer market, friends, getting crafty, glasgow, made in the shade, melbourne, photography, published, shameless nepotism, vintage.

Trying to catch up, slowly but surely, with bookmarks and photographs and little notes on bits of paper scattered over the sofa I jokingly refer to as my desk. The Made in the Shade Maisonette, which opened its doors in the newly renovated upper floor of De Courcy’s Arcade in the West End at the end of October, promises to be Glasgow’s permanent retail, gallery and social space dedicated to showcasing and promoting off-beat design, craft and vintage lifestyle in what the papers are now calling the city’s “answer to Covent Garden”. Roll your eyes if you will, but the shop is an adorable and friendly little space stocking everything from hand-bound notebooks to Tom Selleck embroidery. I might have spent more than I intended, although I’m afraid the ‘tache didn’t do it for me.

Since Carrie and Clare are my best Twitter friends I’ve got a piece on my visit and the opening published on Mookychick and many thanks to Kaite for setting me up with that one!

And since we don’t like to be called parochial around these parts I’d also like to direct you to the home on the web of Blackbird Summer Market, happening so far away it’s a whole other season. The first Blackbird will take place in Melbourne, Australia’s Worker’s Club, 51 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy on Saturday 5th December. The fabulous Sam and Courtney have been working flat out to put together an exciting all-day lineup of great bands, DJ sets, food and – of course – vintage fashion and handcrafted jewellery and products. Definitely not to be missed if you’re in that part of the world – the Glasgow contingent will be shivering and wishing you the best of luck, girls!

the australia chronicles: vol. 2;

Published on October 12, 2008 in a little more personal, books & literature, fitba and travellin'. 0 Comments Tags: australia, bill bryson, down under, friends, james, lyndsay, melbourne, qantas, scott mcdonald, singapore, steph, top gear, wedding.

In the early days a commercial flight [to Australia] from London involved, in addition to nerves of steel, forty-two refueling stops, up to five changes of aircraft and a train journey through Italy because Mussolini wouldn’t allow flights through Italian air space. It took twelve days. As well as the seasonal monsoons, the flights were subject to dust storms, mechanical failures, navigational confusion and occasional pot-shots from hostile or impish bedouins. Crashes were not infrequent.

Everything I know about Australia, I learned from Bill Bryson. His Down Under accompanied me throughout most of my week in the subcontinent; and I ultimately finished reading at about 2am the morning I was due to leave, supplanting his explorer’s narrative with pages from Wikipedia dialed up slowly on my mobile phone’s web browser. It would be foolish to feign intimacy with such a vast landmass after such a short visit – indeed, I’ve barely scratched the surface of central and southern Victoria and the closest I got to the more deadly inhabitants of the country which Bryson writes about with such gusto was when Lyndsay warned me off wandering around the grounds of her parents’ property “because of the snakes” (and me in my new polka-dotted red mules, too). Still, as my plane climbed into the sky and climbed, in its figurative sense, the onscreen map too as it made its way to Singapore, I followed the place names I’d read about with my finger and strained over the head of the man in the window seat to get a glimpse of the vastness of the outback below.

Singapore! Another new destination (I’d expected to return as I had arrived, via Hong Kong) was just what I needed to stop myself from feeling so bummed out about my leaving, and I was planning a casually nonchalant Facebook status update as we drew closer to the lights and the boats and the glow of pre-dawn in the harbour. I felt as if I was slipping into character in Pirates of the Caribbean only, you know, not. Due to our delayed takeoff the stopover was a short one, but it was long enough to pose for a cheesy photo and to track down a tacky souvenir fridge magnet for my mother. As well as fulfilling much-needed refueling and crew changeover functions, you’d go stir crazy without the stopovers: as it was, by the time I took my shoes off in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 both of my ankles were the size of small grapefruits. Qantas might have made the headlines for all the wrong reasons recently but I can’t speak highly enough of the staff, who supplied me with a Duty Free bag packed full of ice and called on me at the back of the plane every twenty minutes or so to make sure I wasn’t still panicking about falling victim to DVT.

This time last week was the beginning of Australian Summer Time, and as I realised I was about to lose an hour that wouldn’t be reckoned for at some nebulous point on the flight back home I made a point of getting my money’s worth by ranting about it to anyone who’d listen. I’d probably only have spent it sleeping however, and the chance to be a part of James and Lyndsay’s beautiful day would have been worth at least three. The sun came out, and the happy couple exchanged their vows in front of the lake. The setting was perfect, and tears I subtly shed were a precursor to what followed during the speeches!

On Sunday we had a barbecued breakfast outside, after which the couple opened their presents and I eventually succumbed to dozing off in front of the television. The odd mention of financial crisis aside the Australian news programmes are mostly insulated from the concerns of the rest of the world (as, Bill Bryson reminds me, the rest of the world’s seem to be from theirs) so I started awake when the sports report segued from “Aussie rules” to meanwhile, in Scotland, Socceroo Scott McDonald scored against Hamilton at Celtic Park…

We were to return to the countryside once again for a fantastic roast dinner and a chance to enjoy the second-ever episode of Top Gear Australia, but that evening I had to say an emotional goodbye to my Antipodean family as I’d be spending my last couple of days in Melbourne with James and Lyndsay. I’m a city girl at heart, so I was looking forward to shedding my “tourist” label while immersing myself in the hustle and bustle and getting lost on another transport system. It would have worked too, had I not been carrying around a plastic bag with a “KANGAROOS CROSSING” sign on it containing the presents I’d purchased in a tacky souvenir shop not a million miles away (in attitude if not location) from the ones on Princes Street stocked with boxes of shortbread and Kilt Towels.

In a dark, dirty bar with downstairs venue in St Kilda I met Steph, my first-ever internet friend I’d gotten talking to on an X-Files mailing list back when I was seventeen. James took a photo of us on the beach as the sun went down over palm trees, and I thought about how small the world is and how glad I am for that.

[PHOTO: Day 43.]

the australia chronicles: vol. 1;

Published on October 3, 2008 in a little more personal and travellin'. 5 Comments Tags: australia, hong kong, lyndsay, qantas, the hold steady.

I do have better things to do than sit online, but I’m taking advantage of a brief window in which the bride-to-be is resting to check in. How you goin’, as they say here in sunny Victoria, which when you think about it makes far more sense than how you doin’.

Only: it’s not that sunny here at the moment. The presence of a Glasgow girl has upset the country’s infrastructure a little and a shower of cool, fresh rain is currently battering off the green-and-white striped shades that cover the windows of my Twin’s lovely little bungalow. Ten thousand lonely Aussie farmers must love me at the moment. Which reminds me – I’ve become quite obsessed with an advert I caught on television last night urging said farmers to “bloody well phone” their mates if they hadn’t heard from them in a few weeks, the loneliness and drought of the outback potentially a little too much to bear. Straightforward, friendly and quintessentially Australian – although I haven’t seen it again since, and I might have hallucinated it. I woke up at 4am this morning, bright and breezy, and no amount of trying to persuade my brain that the reason it was dark outside was that I should be asleep made any difference.

After eleven and then eight hours respectively in seat 72F, stuck between Bill (an East Kilbride-born secondary school teacher from Melbourne, whose Australian accent seemed at odds with his Lisbon Lions t-shirt – we hit it off immediately) and by turns a glowering Chinese girl and a pretty, blonde beach babe, the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in another queue. However, my reunion with Lyndsay was delayed as five planes had landed in Melbourne at once and I was stuck in a queue that wound right around the baggage reclaim area. After accidentally attacking a customs official with a fallen suitcase I made it through, and fell into the arms of the shrieking, pretty girl in the red dress. At no stage has it felt like two years since we last spent time in each other’s company, certainly not while perched at opposite ends of the breakfast bar folding silver card into wedding decorations while her crazy little white dog Oscar demands feeding and cuddles. It hasn’t felt like meeting James, or the family, for the first time either. They already feel like a part of mine.

Despite my best efforts I dozed off a little in the back of the car as we drove up from Melbourne in the dark, muttering something about kangaroos. Now I’m aware that cities all over the world have more in common than not and I’m conscious not to indulge in national stereotypes, but I have been reliably informed that it’s rather unusual for kangaroos not to jump out in front of the car when you’re driving at night. Regardless, I am yet to see one so am unable to state equivocably whether said beasts are merely an urban myth there to lure in the tourists (although Lyns admitted to me later that they spotted a couple of dead ones by the side of the road as we drove and didn’t have the heart to wake me up).

The flight both was and wasn’t the incredible test of human endurance I had been expecting. Sitting in the confines of the one seat for the duration was a little taxing on my knees (although my hideously expensive flight socks did their job admirably) and, sandwiched between two strangers, I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping for more than about twenty minutes throughout. But with a personal entertainment console and a non-stop procession of food and snacks to keep me occupied, I barely had to rely on my books and iPod. As such I’m only about halfway through Bill Bryson’s Down Under, which my mother purchased for me before I left. I still consider myself something of an expert on weird place names and the hundreds of native species that could kill you with a bite. Apparently, here, I should pay more attention to the snakes than the spiders.

We got into Hong Kong around 7am, and there was plenty of time on the stopover to use a toilet without the ground rumbling beneath you and do a little shopping. The first thing I saw upon arrival in one of the most deliciously foreign places I’ve had the priveledge of visiting to date? An advert for RBS. Shattered as I was by this stage I could barely get my head around the exchange rate, but as the bezzer says it’s negligible when you’re tired and deserving. I bought an adoreable hand-painted teacup and saucer and a Mac lipgloss in shiny red, which only served to emphasise my tired skin and eyes like pink pin-pricks. All in, it cost me about $500 – roughly forty quid, before Stringer does his nut with me.

This morning we girls had some pre-wedding beauty treatments, and we’ll be heading out to the wedding venue – also known as Lyndsay’s parents’ house – in a bit for the rehearsal and probably a bit of a girly evening. This time tomorrow, my Twin will be a few hours away from wed. SO. EXCITING.

Two quick announcements before I sign off: firstly I’m so confused about dates and timezones at the moment but a massive HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHEER to my dear American friend on what I suspect is still the day itself in Seattle, and also a big GET WELL SOON to Tad from the Hold Steady – as selfish as it is of me to feel a little gleeful that a tour postponement means I get to see them in my city after all.

PS I’ve started uploading photos, if you like that sort of thing, thanks to James’ handy SD card-reading monitor.

PPS Bless you, Charlie Brooker. You should come work for my company – you can’t access your work email while on holiday. You know how I know that? Um, yeah.