Tag Archives: australia

The World Cup (of Cricket)

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Satellite TV, On a Black and White TV

Satellite TV, On a Black and White TV

One of the things we were excited about was being in India during the World Cup of Cricket. We arrived in Mumbai just a few days before the first match and were anticipating a huge outpouring of support for the national team from India’s billion plus people. Sadly, India went out of the cup in the first round, so there was really little more than a wimper on the street.

But there’s still Cricket on TV, lot’s of it! The World Cup goes on (much like the game itself) FOREVER! It’s a two month tournament! So there’s been plenty of opportunity for LeeAnne and I to learn a thing or two about the game, sadly we haven’t. I have learned that Australia are very good. South Africa is good. And people in Pakistan value their Cricket highly (the Pakistani’s coach was murdered after they were knocked out in the first round). Beyond that, not much.

Still there’s plenty of games and comentary on the TV. There’s also a surprising amount of Soccer on TV (thank God!). We had the chance to see a Liverpool game broadcast in Hindi, and we even caught highlights of DC United’s game against Chivas in the Champions Cup.

Australia Notes For Budget Travelers

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Sad Little Went Tent

Sad Little Went Tent

It should come as no surprise that Australia is not the cheapest of countries on our itinerary. That said, the country is well equipped for backpackers on a budget. Like New Zealand, if you watch your $ in the cities and self-cater (camp and cook yourself), you can stretch your dollars pretty far.

Here are a few things we learned:

  • Renting a car, even with the cost of gas, was cheaper than buying train and/or bus tickets for two people to various sites throughout the country. It also meant we had more freedom to see and do what we want. Though we didn’t have the bargain rental we had in NZ, we did pretty well. Between the rental and gas, which is cheaper than in NZ but still much more than the US, we spent about $800 and drove just under 5000 km. Without a car, it would have been impossible to really enjoy the Great Ocean Road as well as the quirky towns of the New South Wales Outback. That said, Australia is a HUGE place. We had to give up our hopes of making it to the middle (i.e. Uluru and Alice Springs). There was also the small detail about our car not being allowed to venture into that territory. Apparently it is not a good place to break down!
  • Like NZ, hostels in cities (mostly Sydney) were one of our largest expenses. Both times we visited Sydney, we stayed in newer hostels near the Central Train Station. The location was great and the hostels, particularly the Railway YHA, were new and quite nice. The first time we came through Sydney, we stuck it out in an 8 bed dorm room to save some cash. Yes, that’s 8 people and all their crap in a room about the size of my office at CCHD. The savings wasn’t worth it. We’re just too old for that crap! (I’ll spare you the details of what “crap” entailed.) Our hostel in Darwin was the only bargain, but that might have had something to do with the run down bathrooms, the 5:00am carpet cleaning outside our room and the monsoonal rains of the wet season.
  • In most cases, campgrounds were less costly than NZ. The down side of some were that the kitchens had limited equipment. Usually a fridge, a sink, a coin operated grill and some type of hot water maker (electric kettle or hot water tap). Since camp kitchens in NZ were so well equipped, we opted not to buy gas for our stove. This hurt a few times when there was no hot plate or stove, but we managed to be creative with couscous and grilled veggies. An up side of the campgrounds in Oz were that they were mostly inhabited by Australians rather than tourists like ourselves. We met some nice and interesting folks along the way. Like Fred & Shirley – who reminded me of one of those couples being interviewed in When Harry Met Sally – or the Vietnam Vet biker dude from Townsville who will be traveling to DC for Rolling Thunder in May with his local bike club and their sister club in Detroit.
  • Unlike NZ, we never had the sense that we were being gouged because it’s summer here and there are loads of tourists, though I suspect there are always tourists. One exception was Darwin, but that actually worked in our favor. Our room was just a little over half the price of a double room in Sydney – though as previously mentioned it was not as nice. I imagine in the Dry (our summer months) this city crawls with tourists and steeper prices. In general, we didn’t feel like everything was a tourist trap with a price tag down under. The Great Ocean Road and our tour of the wineries – two highlights – cost us only gas money!
  • If you’re looking for the extended holiday but are low on cash, Oz is another good place to look for work. Bulletin boards at hostels are full of postings and most major backpacker centers offer some sort of job placement service. One of our dorm mates in Sydney was working as a server at a restaurant on Darling Harbor making $15/hr plus tips. It seemed to adequately subsidize his drinking habit. Dave and I were briefly entertained by the demand for office/computer work in Alice Springs. How random! Every other place seemed to be agricultural work, but poor little Alice Springs way out in the middle of the country just need someone to sit in an office and do admin work.
  • Obviously getting robbed cost us, but we won’t hold that against Oz.

The Top End – Darwin

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Fanboat Lolo!

Fanboat Lolo!

We’re in our last stop in Australia before we head off to India. Darwin is the capitol of the Northern Territory, but it’s only a city of about 50,000 people and it has a very different feel from most of the other Australian cities that we’ve visited. First of all it tropical – by that I mean it’s both HOT and HUMID – the day we flew in it was 91 degrees, but with the humidity factored in it felt like 106. Sadly, this is a normal day in Darwin. Secondly, there are actually Aboriginal people in town. For whatever reason, they don’t avoid Darwin like they do the other capitol cities we’ve been too.

So, given Darwin’s location on the ocean and it’s extreme temperatures, we would be headed for the beach – wrong. No one is here at the Top End. One reason: Salt Water Crocodiles that can swim in the ocean, crap! Want another reason? Box Jellyfish – they can kill humans with a single sting. Double crap!

So what is there to do in Darwin? Well honestly, we weren’t expecting too much, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised. We’re here in “The Wet” (Their wet season runs most of the summer down here) and many things are closed for the season. But as I said before there’s an Aboriginal presence here and there are several art galleries in town that feature Aboriginal artists. There’s a free (and air conditioned) museum with a terrific exhibits on how people and nature have tried to destroy the city. It was bombarded by the Japanese in World War II, and it was almost completely wiped off the map after Cyclone Tracy hit it on Christmas Eve 1974 (The parallels with Hurricane Katrina are eerie). And there’s a casino with a million dollar pool – they spent a million dollars on the pool, it’s a VERY nice pool.

And that’s just stuff to do IN town. There are a number of national parks near the city that offer up close and person views of Salt Water Crocs and other wildlife. And of course Darwin is a main jumping off point for Uluru (Ayers Rock). Not too shabby, now if the city could just avoid being destroyed again.