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Saying goodbye for now
Wednesday, 3 December
There were a lot of goodbyes over the last two weeks. I’ve said goodbye to my friends, my job and colleagues, my flatmates, landlord and my family. And whilst I know I’ll be back in the UK soon it’s been a tough couple of weeks, each set of goodbyes felt like a mini sucker punch to the stomach.
At times, it felt a little self-indulgent, but I really felt the love from my pals during a goodbye meal at Sugo82 in Netil Market, Hackney (pictured). A suitably intimate set-up where we were served homemade Italian food and tried to drink limoncello shots with no hands (see video).
A few days prior to this, I had some goodbye leaving drinks with my colleagues, some of whom I’d known for over five years. I felt very special when our nominated social sec (spot the guy in the hat) told me that he had reserved a private area in All Bar One - a cornerstone establishment of British after work drinking. Christmas tunes blaring on a Thursday evening at 5 pm and 2-for-1 cocktails until 8pm, what’s not to like? It felt like a suitable homage to all of the trashy after work drinks venues we’d frequented in the city.
However, despite being able to see as many of my close friends, family and colleagues as possible, there was still an overwhelming sense of denial that I was even going on this trip. Specifically, the fact that I’m flying to the other side of the world and not knowing exactly when I’ll be back or see everyone again.
I’ve always found the idea of processing (or not processing) emotions interesting, and how people process them differently. For me, unless I literally write something on my forehead and look in the mirror every day, these sorts of big life moments don’t hit me until the last minute and with that often comes a big tidal wave of emotion.
For me that moment arrived, oddly enough, when I was walking towards my gate in London Heathrow Airport and I looked up at a picture of an RAF man on the grimy walls of a connecting tunnel. He seemed to be waving goodbye at me and me alone. This is what really brought it on. There was something definitive, almost smug, in the way he was waving at me.
Suddenly, the months of thinking about my trip, or trying not to think about it, boiled down to a few steps as I handed over my passport and boarding pass. And before I knew it, I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for my boarding call.
Reflections on leaving London
Thursday, 4 December
Now that I am safely aboard my 8 am flight to Doha from LHR, my trip is starting to feel a little more real. And with just enough elbow room to operate my keyboard, I thought now would be the perfect time to reflect on my time in London which I am leaving behind (at least for a while!)
I’ve spent just under 9 years in London. It was always part of my plan. My parents met in London and loved their time living in shared houses from Maida Vale to Finchley and Ealing. Whenever they have the opportunity to visit my sisters and me in the capital they’re keen to take a trip down memory lane and revisit the stomping grounds of their youth.
I think you could quite easily make a case for London being the best city in the world. Occasionally I would make the most of this by visiting the museums, restaurants and walking among the 2,000+ years of history layered into its streets.
Yet most evenings were spent meeting friends in an East London pub that existed somewhere at the intersection of trendy-looking people, dark mahogany interiors, and cheap-ish Guinness.
This was normally followed by jumping on a lime bike a little inebriated (sorry mum) back to my flat where I’d be praying that I got home before my phone died, or that I’d swerve out of the way of a three-legged fox that had just scampered across the road. Or both. This was all part of the charm of course.
However, in recent years, I started to find that the more time I spent in London the more I felt myself turning to my flat as a place of refuge, burrowing away from the chaos and noise. And other than bumping into my neighbours in the lift, I never felt a real sense of community. I guess this partly explains the general exodus from London at the 30+ age mark - and that’s before we even get to how expensive it is.
My Hackney flat was in a new-build (pictured), but even the deep-insulated walls couldn’t keep out the sirens and guffawing uni students from across the road. And in the last year or so I found myself buying things to ‘keep London out’: black-out-blinds, noise-cancelling ear buds, a white noise machine and so on.
Perhaps this is a slightly privileged complaint as many people live in London all their lives but having grown up in fairly suburban areas of Nottingham and Manchester for most of my life, I felt myself yearning for a bit more quiet.
The word ‘London’ hints at another challenge too, ‘lon-eliness’. (Granted that was a little clumsy but the point stands) In a city of eight million people, where you often feel you’re living on top of each other, it can be surprisingly isolating. The city is so tight you feel like you know the people in the apartment building right across the street - but you don’t really.
Every day I would steal small glances into the kitchens and bedrooms, other people’s lives. TVs illuminate living room walls. Someone leaning on the kitchen counter waiting for the kettle to boil. Then all of a sudden the people you’ve been seeing every day are not there anymore. New people have moved in. There was something intensely lonely about that for me.
So, as I begin my journey to Australia, I am going to do my best to appreciate the new noises of Melbourne, a new city; meet some fun people and make a conscious effort not to look into people’s kitchens as much.
On my flight over to Australia, I wanted to strike up a conversation with whoever ended up sitting next to me, and find out where they were going, and why.
I was the first person to reach row 22 on my flight to Doha but I had been dealt the middle seat. So, I patiently waited to see which two unsuspecting passengers were going to join either side of me.
A middle-aged man who had a striking resemblance to Mike from Breaking Bad (pictured) but who was far less intimidating, and decidedly English, scooched past me to get to the window seat. When he was making his way down the aisle he made a passing joke to the person behind him about the fact that due to their cabin layout, Qatar Airways always made economy passengers walk through business class on their way to their seats. Essentially, the riffraff get a sneak peek into the high life of individual booths, TV sets and prosecco on arrival. There’s a funny awkwardness about it. The people in business class stare straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with the economy passengers walking past. After seeing ‘Mike’ openly mock the situation, I knew he would definitely be up for a good chat.
Before I spoke with Mike, however, another middle-aged man pulled up alongside me to sit in the aisle seat. He was a small-ish Pakistani man who was travelling with friends from London to Lahore to visit family. He was a little quieter and spent most of his time trying to use the Wi-Fi on the plane (there’s Wi-FI now?!) to watch the Ashes via a sport platform he’d downloaded on his phone.
Turns out he was a big cricket fan. We chatted a little about our time playing cricket when we were younger and how sad he was that his son isn’t interested in the sport at all. I was keen to tell him about my recent debut performance for Broken Wanderers (a local London-based team) where I got 62 runs, not out, but the chat was cut short due to a seatbelt announcement from the cockpit.
About ten minutes later he noticed that I was eyeing his phone in an attempt to watch the cricket. I think he felt sorry for me and said ‘Take it - honestly I think you’re more invested than I am’. I was surprised but thanked him and took it. Following this, when he saw that I was struggling to prop up the phone to watch it Mike on the other side of me gave me his headphone case (pictured). It might not look like much but these small gestures put me right at home. Maybe being in the middle isn’t so bad after all.
A conversation with Passenger 22J
Friday, 5 December
But back to Mike. I asked him where he was headed and he explained he was going to see his daughter. She had given up a teaching position at a local school in the UK to become a full-time nanny for a wealthy family. The family were Swiss billionaires and she travelled the world with them. He showed me pictures of a yacht they had just bought. He was keen to tell me about this situation but added that he often felt awkward and out of place whenever he got invited to an event or dinner at the family’s expense. I asked him if he was visiting anyone else and he told me that he was going to visit his birth mother.
The phrase ‘birth mother’ led me to ask a few more questions. Turns out Mike’s birth mother was a ‘ten pound pom’. This term was coined during a programme by the British Commonwealth from 1945-1972 where around one million Britons were encouraged to migrate to Australia. Mike told me that he’d paid £900 for his flight to Brisbane last month, whereas in 1960 his mum had spent £10 (hence ‘ten pound pom’).
But when he was born, his mother put him up for adoption and he was brought to the UK by his adopted parents. He was told about this when he was ten. Obviously an incredibly hard bit of news to try and grasp at such a young age. And then, when he turned forty, Mike made the decision to contact his birth mum. After learning his ‘real’ second name, he found a Yellow Pages book and saw that there were only six people registered with the same name. He rang all six until his mum answered. After some difficult conversations, he decided that he wanted to visit her where she was living in a borough not too far from Brisbane. During his visit he found out that he had two brothers. He met them in a pub where they told him, ‘There are parts of you that really remind me of Mum’. Whilst he was happy that he had two brothers, he was conflicted by the fact he was the only one given up for adoption.
The truly heartbreaking episode of Mike’s story came when he described how his adoptive mother felt about all of this back in the UK When he told her he was going to make the journey to Australia, she said, ‘You should go to her - she’s your real Mum, not me’. He spent a long time trying to convince her that this wasn’t true and that she was indeed his real mother. She was the one who fed, clothed, and put him through school (where he misbehaved a lot). It’s a uniquely painful situation. From what I can tell, Mike still carried a tremendous sense of guilt - guilt, even all these years later, that he had somehow betrayed his adopted parents.
First Impressions: Melbourne
Wednesday, 10 December
I’ve now spent the last five days exploring Melbourne in all its glory. It’s been exciting - at times I felt giddiness bubbling up inside me as I ventured down new streets - but also daunting, as often being in a new city can be. Thoughts pinballed around my head - will I meet some nice people? Do my clothes make me look English? How do the self-checkout tills work?!
One thing was for sure, however: having travelled to the other side of the world to the ‘sunburnt country’, I was not expecting to be met with rain at Melbourne Airport on my first day. Feeling more like Manchester than Melbourne, I suddenly felt the clothes I’d packed for this trip were hopelessly wrong. Turns out Melbourne weather is rather temperamental, even during the summer months. My rain jacket got some early action.
However, as the rain subsided, I jumped in an Uber from Terminal 2 to Ol’s house in Brunswick East, a quirky suburb in the north of the city. And as I pulled up to his house, it was as if the clouds themselves had decided to part and the sun poured down to celebrate this momentous reunion. Having not seen him in over a year, it was a bizarre feeling walking straight into his house as the door was left open and peeping round the corner to announce my arrival. It was great to see him again after so long and to see him happy in his new Aussie life. It was also great to see Maggie, a lovely girl that Ol is seeing out here. Maggie works at the Northcote Bakeshop (which you must try if you’re ever in Melbourne), and who, having learnt I can’t resist a sweet treat, presented me with a box of cookies with a sweet message inscribed (see pictured).
After dinner I headed to Collingwood to check into my hotel for the first night. On the way over, a couple of things struck me straight away. Firstly, how easy it was to gain entry to Ollie’s house - apparently the locals often leave doors and windows ajar and unlocked. There’s a real feeling of trust which was a shock to the system having been in London for so long. Secondly, in the suburbs, most of the houses are bungalows and the commercial buildings are no more than two storeys high. The streets are wide and telephone cables dangle across storefronts. As soon as you stray outside of Melbourne’s CBD it feels a lot less developed than a typical urban city. The only way I could comprehend it was to imagine a fusion between a city like London with a slightly less developed city in Indonesia.
Zoom in a little more and you start to notice how incredibly varied the architecture is. Every street is different, with a real hodgepodge of cute houses boasting Victorian verandas (pictured), wooden bungalows and punchy street art. The art murals, in particular, are widely celebrated and you’ll see one on every street corner, adding a splash of colour as you go.
One thing that definitely preceded its reputation was Melbourne’s pub culture, so I was eager to check it out. Having braved a gym class on Sunday, I met a guy who had just relocated to Melbourne. After working out that we were staying in the same neighbourhood, he suggested we grab a pint at Goldy’s tavern in Collingwood, a five-minute walk from where I was staying in Fitzroy. The pubs here take their hospitality very seriously and most of them will have a weekly agenda (see picture). They try to tempt locals with chicken parms on ‘Parma Nite’ or with ‘meat raffles’ - yes you read that right. But if you’re like me and you like organised fun, Melbourne pubs are definitely for you.
It’s like they’ve used London pubs as a template and made all the right tweaks. One thing I really like is that you can an either order a pint, a ‘schooner’, or a ‘middy’ (also known as a ‘pot’). Essentially, beer is served in three different sizes to avoid it getting warm. This attention to detail, alongside a free game of pool and a beer garden with dependable sun coverage, means there really is no competition. It also helps that people who work in hospitality, or ‘hospo’, are incredibly friendly. Everyone greets each other like they know each other. Rather than feeling like an annoyance, the whole interaction caters to conversation and possibility. This may be due to the fact that hospo jobs pay well out here, sometimes up to around $35-$40 per hour before tips.
Later that night, I met up with Ollie ahead of our first night out in Melbourne. He had arranged for us to go to Miscellania - a cool venue tucked away in the CBD. It had a great rooftop bar (pictured), where the light-speckled skyscrapers loomed above us. It was a great setting for us to not really pay attention to the music and catch-up on any drama/nonsense that we’d experienced over the last year.
I was worried that, after not seeing each other for a year, we’d have to build things back up, but as the photo clearly shows it didn’t take long for our usual dynamic of winding each other up to resume.
Later today we’ll be starting our road trip in our rented 2014 Volkswagen Golf - not exactly a road-ranging jeep made for conquest, but I’m sure it’ll be a trusty companion for the next nine days.
There and back again: A tale of two muppets
Sunday, 21 December
With the odometer clocking in at 1,015 km, our road trip down the Victorian coast came to an end yesterday, and we returned our Volkswagen Golf a little dustier and a little more worn to its rightful owner. Now back in Melbourne, having showered without flip flops on and having slept on a mattress that doesn’t deflate when I roll over, I’m in a much better place to sit down and unpack the last few days.
The first thing to say is I’m going to attempt to condense nine days into one short-ish blog and that would be unfair to the absolute pleasure that was experiencing it all with Ol. Just being in the car together for all those hours - spent in our little Golf - was arguably where we had the most fun. From playing each other new albums we’d recently heard, shouting at the Ashes scoreline on the radio to ridiculous ‘would you rather’ questions, it was a joy to be cooped in a car for that long together. And with only one minor scare on the way back to Melbourne where I took a corner too fast and went off the road (just for a second!).
It probably comes as no surprise that we arrived at our first campsite in Wilson’s Promontory, Australia’s largest coastal park, later than planned. After circling our campsite trying to find our spot to pitch our tent for about 45 minutes, we unloaded the car and began to assemble the tents in near-darkness, before celebrating with some rather sad but overly-buttered sandwiches in complete darkness (pictured). But thanks to one head torch between the two of us we made it work and managed a laugh too. On the right-hand side of the table you’ll see a ‘chicken in a bag’, an absolute staple in all Australian supermarkets, typically designed with men in mind who literally can’t wait to eat their food until they get home - aptly named a ‘bachelor’s handbag’. The Aussies really are great at naming things.
The next day, we decided to explore the coastline around Wilson’s Prom and just over the line of hedges that surrounded our campsite we were met with a truly stunning beach, which looked as impressive in the morning as it did in the evening when the sun went down (see pictures). The Aussies are completely spoiled for beaches over here and I’m sure this would be considered a very typical beach for them. White sand, blue sea and nobody for miles. Even the jellyfish in the sea didn’t put a dampener on things.
After spending two nights at Wilson’s Prom, we started to make our venture west towards Sorrento, where we would board a ferry to cross the bay and head out towards the Great Ocean Road. Before we reached Sorrento, however, we stayed a night in the Mornington Peninsula so we could visit the famous Peninsula Hot Springs (see picture). Drifting between the geothermal pools was a treat that felt surprisingly well-earned after three days of driving, pitching tents, and living off beef jerky and squeezy yoghurts. The visit also got off to a nice start as the receptionist forgot to charge us the $50 entrance fee after handing us our towels. Ollie thought this was due to our ‘English charm’, whereas I thought it was more likely due to the pressure of the large queue behind us. What do you think?
Following this stop-off, we drove over to Sorrento for what we had planned to be a full day. Sorrento is a sweet port town but it has been slightly overrun by bougie designer shops and posh hotels. After quickly coming to this conclusion over an unsurprisingly expensive pint at the Sorrento Hotel, we made the decision to jump on a ferry to cross the bay to Lorne that day. This included driving the wrong way down a one-way street to make sure we made the ferry departure. With a couple of hours to kill crossing Port Phillip Bay we turned to a pack of Stars Wars Top Trumps - you’re never too old for a game of top trumps. Ollie quietly dispatched me 2-1. There’s something more irritating about a winner who stays completely silent afterwards rather than rubbing it in your face - like the win was always in the script.
Now, I think this is where I have to come clean. After disembarking from the ferry, and after three days of camping in a tent, I put forward a strong case for staying in a motel for the night in Lorne. Wasn’t the point of this road trip to drive around and pitch your tent as you go I hear you ask? Well, yes, you’d be right - and don’t get me the wrong, there is something magical about waking up, unzipping your tent and stepping out into nature - but, on the other hand, one has to contend with sleeping diagonally on a thin mattress so your toes don’t poke out of your tent and suffering incredibly loud birdsong at 5am and that’s before we get to being hungover. So after some convincing, I directed Ol towards a cheap motel and a single queen-sized bed for two it was.
I pushed for the one motel in town that was attached to a lawn bowls club (naturally) which became the site of my first victory of the road trip, claiming my top trumps revenge by pipping Ollie in the last round (see video). Whereas Ol is more of a graceful winner, I like to hold post-match press conferences…
Exploring Lorne didn’t take long. Like most seaside towns on the Victorian coast, they largely consist of one tourist information centre giving advice about one local attraction (normally a waterfall). Perhaps this is me being cynical but we were really hoping for a decent pub by now. In Lorne’s defence, they were not short of great fish and chips shops, where we tried a local delicacy - a scallop pie. The jury was out on that one for both of us.
On Monday, we put the small seaside town of Lorne behind us as we started our venture West along the Great Ocean Road and it did not disappoint. The photo of the waves crashing against the roadside doesn’t do it justice. Over the course of the next two days we navigated the increasingly winding roads from Lorne to the Otway National Park to Port Campbell. Granted Ollie was holding onto the grab handle some of the time, but it felt like driving in a video game. It’s a bit of road where you have to just stop checking google maps or the music as every turn seemed to deliver a better view than the last.
We decided to set up shop at the Port Campbell Hotel for the final two days of the trip as it was a twenty-minute drive to the main attraction in those parts - the Twelve Apostles. The Twelve Apostles (pictured) are an incredible rock formation that rises out of the Southern Ocean. One can observe these from the skies via helicopter ride for a meagre $500 each or you can look at them from a cliff-edge, take a photo and go home knowing you’ll be able to pay for food for the next three months.
They were incredible to witness, something I had never seen before and it makes you wonder how many millions of years they took to form. However, they really should come with a warning - beware the heat and beware the flies! We did a fantastic job at exposing ourselves as the true tourists that we are by deciding to visit them at 1pm - the hottest part of the day. The roads were clear and the queues were short, but turns out that’s because the locals aren’t fools and everything shuts down for a couple of hours due to the heat and the flies. I’ll let a picture of my back and video of Ollie capture our overall sentiments. It’s also worth adding that there aren’t twelve apostles (rock formations) anymore - more like seven - as a handful have crumbled into the sea over time. I guess you can’t change the name every time one disintegrates.
The sunsets in Port Campbell deserve a quick mention. The sky would often turn deep red and orange, and the locals would meander down to the shoreline to try and capture the sun as it sunk into the sea, and everyone would go quiet for a bit. A friend told me that when you watch a sunset in Australia everyone back home in the UK is watching the sun rise on the other side of the world. I liked this idea too much to check whether or not it’s actually true.
Running with the theme of the trip of not being able to find many good pubs or clubs, we spent most of our time in the beer garden attached to our hotel. This was where we ate sub-par ‘chicken parms’ and had boozy conversations with the other guests. This included Elisa and Marius (not their real names) who were a couple from The Hague (see photo). By complete coincidence we were sat on the table next to them when stopping off at a restaurant in a town called Apollo Bay a few days before. I had nodded at them so Ollie would see what I see I was seeing - Marius getting increasingly frustrated that the other diners kept leaving the door slightly ajar, allowing the cold air to come in. It must have happened six times and Elisa just rolled her eyes at Marius’ frustration. I found the whole thing hilarious and approached them in the beer garden of the hotel to explain I had seen this. They couldn’t believe it and joined our table, explaining that they were celebrating Marius’ retirement with a big trip around Australia and parts of South East Asia. We were the same age as their kids but it didn’t stop us from talking about the secrets of a long marraige or from laughing at the contrasting experiences of our separate trips. They were incredibly lovely, and we’ve stayed in touch since.
Hot Christmas and a silly New Year
Saturday, 3 January
It’s been a little while since my last blog post - I’d like to apologise to my fans - essentially, the two people who asked me if this site was still working. My excuse is that I’ve been having a great time and the blog went on the back-burner.
Before I touch on the drunken merrymaking that dominated the Christmas Day to New Years Day period - ‘silly season’ as it’s affectionately known by the Aussies - I would like you to know that I did manage to squeeze some ‘culture’ in on Christmas Eve during my return to Melbourne. I tagged along with the Ol, Josh and Gabs (mum to the Ainley boys) to go to the Heide Museum of Modern Art, a sculpture park nestled in North East Melbourne that attempts to blend subversive contemporary art with heritage gardens. We unanimously agreed it did not come close to Yorkshire Sculpture park back in the UK. We strolled through the grounds and were not massively impressed with what we saw - we often couldn’t work out if an object was an art display or had just been left there and forgotten about. Thankfully, Josh was happy to play muse and really brought some of the sculptures to life (see pics). The highlight of this little excursion was Josh’s homemade reuben sandwich which we tucked into (from that colourful picnic bag) less than 20 minutes after arriving at the park. You know that situation where you bring a picnic to a park, beach or just on a general adventure, and everybody wants to eat the picnic as soon as you get there but everybody is too tentative to suggest starting it in case you come across as a bit of a heathen? Yeah, we had no problems there.
It was undoubtedly a strange feeling to wake up on Christmas day at 9 am to near silence apart from the buzz of my ceiling fan in my Airbnb in Richmond, East Melbourne. It left me reminiscing about being woken up to the usual wrap of knuckles on my bedroom door or calls of ‘Tom, get up!’ from downstairs back at my mum’s house in Nottingham. However, knowing full-well that I had imposed this ‘orphan Christmas’ upon myself, I mustered the energy to get out of bed and flick the fan off (I felt a tinge of guilt about keeping it on all night). I was very fortunate in that I had been invited to spend Christmas Day with the Ainleys over in Fitzroy, thanks to the generosity of Gabs and the fact that they weren’t sick of me yet (as far as I knew). The whole day really hit the mark of a ‘hot Aussie Christmas’ as it featured Hawaiian shirts, makeshift party hats and spicy margaritas (see pics). It was also great to be able to put on specifically ‘non-Christmasy’ music. Naturally, before bodies started to drop towards midnight, following the amazing roast dinner that Josh and Gabs had prepared and the strong margaritas Ol and I had mixed, I managed to get another game of Top Trumps in with Ol. This time it was the ‘Kings and Queens’ edition, and, safe to say, I can’t remember who won but I guess that’s rather convenient.
On Boxing day, the 4th test match of the 2025 Ashes series between England and Australia commenced in Melbourne at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (otherwise known as the MCG - the 11th biggest stadium in the world by the way). Thanks to Ol dutifully staying up until 3am on some day mid-June earlier this year, he had managed to secure tickets to Day 2 (27th) and Day 3 (28th) of this test. Unfortunately, by this stage in the series, England had already lost the Ashes as Australia had won all three of the previous tests in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide. England were playing for the moral victory.
Despite this, the importance of this 4th test should not be underestimated. England had not won a test on Australian soil in 15 years. A victory would end an 18-match, 5,468-day drought since their last win in Australia back in 2010.
It’s safe to say that in the five-week build-up to this fourth test at the MCG, I had become completely consumed in the cricket jargon - the run rates of England batters, the injuries to Australia’s bowling attack and whether the secret to Australian Travis Head’s batting form was his glorious moustache.
So, at 10.30 am on the 27th December, we strolled through the grounds and settled into our seats at the MCG and we were incredibly close to the action (see vid). We held our breath as England’s Gus Atkinson delivered the first ball of the day to Travis Head with England desperately needing quick wickets, as Australia had started the day (and the second innings) 46 runs ahead. After the first over (which normally takes 5-10 mins), Josh announced he was going to buy the first few schooners (beers) of the day. A little aggressive I thought but looking around the 95000 seat stadium, basking in the sun, listening to the murmuring crowd and with some (early) beers on the way, I started to understand why people get hooked on this sport. The sport is played at a leisurely pace, encouraging conversation, analysis and quick bets between the onlookers, but the momentum swings of the match keep you enthralled for the whole eight hours - yes, that’s right, eight hours, (sometimes on five continuous days if the wickets don’t fall quickly enough).
This time the wickets did fall quickly enough and the game was being played at a fierce pace. After some fine bowling by Captain Ben Stokes as well as Brydon Carse, propped up by England’s best batting performance of the series where their aggressive ‘bazball’ hitting actually came good, all four innings were complete by the end of day two and England had won with 178 runs and four wickets remaining. Twelve schooners deep, supported by one lunch time beverage with some of the UK crew who had travelled to Aus for Christmas (Becky, Aimee, Dom and Oli from left to right), and we couldn’t help but join in with ‘ole’s’ from the Barmy Army as Harry Brook and Jamie Smith, our final two batters, exited the field. In some ways we felt a little robbed because we only got one day of cricket but had paid for two. However, the much bigger losers were Cricket Australia who are reported to have lost $10 million due to refunds as well as lost sales in merchandise, food and drinks for days 3-5. It’s all about the little victories!
New Years Eve never really goes to plan does it? Or at least it misses the inevitably high expectations that we place upon it…I had booked tickets (well I thought I had) to NY@thebowl, a one-day music festival at Sidney Myer Music Bowl which is situated aloft a hill in the Royal Botanical Gardens. There were some amazing artists on the bill including Berlioz, Confidence Man, two of my favourite DJs in Prosumer and Alex Kassian, and Underworld, a pioneering electronic music duo (you’d recognise their track ‘Born Slippy’ if you’ve not heard of them). However, when I walked up to the gate it turns out there was an error with my ticket and I was swiftly denied entry.
I begrudgingly trudged back through Melbourne’s CBD to my flat in Carlton and scrambled for a plan B. A serious lowlight of my trip so far! Thankfully, Kate, a friend of a friend through Ol, who I had met a few weeks ago, was having dinner in Collingwood so I cheekily asked for an invite. I joined her and a friend for a set menu at an Italian restaurant called Orlo (not quite what I was expecting for NYE).
After a mediocre meal with good company (including a rather flirty gay waiter who was enjoying our vibe), we jumped into a taxi to Northcote Bridge to watch the fireworks. Granted we were a bit far away in Northcote, about 5km from the CBD, but even still Melbourne’s fireworks were a bit like party poppers in comparison to London’s display (see video). If you listen closely you can hear a slightly slurred outburst from me: ‘you can barely see ‘em!’. Feeling a little underwhelmed we headed to Northcote Theatre where we saw Bradley Zero, a good DJ who flipped flopped between underground house vibes and soulful mixes, he put some energy back into our evening for sure. At 3 am we all parted ways and I left feeling slightly less bruised after my ticket mix-up.
Sydney Part One: Celebrity sighting
Tuesday 6, January
Having realised that flying to Sydney for New Year’s Eve probably wasn’t the shrewdest move, I eventually bought a ticket for Saturday, 3 January, returning to Melbourne on the 13th. And whilst it only took me ninety minutes to touch down at Sydney Airport, it was fascinating to see how different the two cities were. On one hand, I was leaving behind Melbourne, a very liberal, laid-back city with rather fashionable creative types and independent stores on every corner. On the other, I was immediately struck by the familiar food chains in Sydney and the amount of locals clad in activewear. Admittedly, I was staying in Bondi (perhaps my first mistake) but it did feel a little ‘Clapham-on-sea’. No disrespect to Clapham, I had a lovely six months in a shared house just off Clapham Common, but there are only so many cockapoos and iced lattes I can look at.
I should add, however, that having spent a little time in Surry Hills and Paddington (the best suburbs in central Sydney, so I hear) I could absolutely feel the ‘pull’ from this city and understand why lots of tourists visit and lots of travellers relocate. Not only is everyone sun-kissed, but everyone seems to stroll the streets a little lighter as if the pressures of the world aren’t on their shoulders. From chatting to a few locals, they seem to have nailed the daily routine: they go to the gym before work, visit their favourite coffee place with a friend at lunch; then, before you know it, they’re closing their laptops at 4.30 pm and heading to the beach for a quick swim or surf. Did I mention it’s sunny from start to finish on this metaphorical day?
I should also admit that I enjoyed having a little swim in one of East Sydney’s many coastal pools. I chose the one on Bronte Beach (see pic), hoping to skip the crowds that take over the famous Bondi Beach. These pools are essentially well-kept saltwater infinity pools that allow you to swim and look out across the sea without having to worry about the rip tides, rocks, seaweed and stingy creatures lurking below the surface.
It turned out that there were more people from back home visiting Sydney for Christmas. I ended up going for a drink with Chloe (pictured) who was visiting her friend Darcy, both of whom I had met in various house parties and festivals growing up in Manchester.
Darcy has settled in Bondi and has lived there for five years now. It didn’t come as a huge surprise that Darcy now trains for Ironman events - Sydney’s hills cater for long bike rides, and being surrounded by water means you can practise for that gruelling 3km swim. I have to say this did not appeal to me one bit. But it was great fun to connect the dots between our mutual friends and find out what they’ve been up to after ten years on. I also reminded Darcy of a date that she had with Ol when we were back in school. Ol had picked her up from her house in his car (what a smooth guy!) and found himself under pressure to perform a parallel park outside the Met pub in Didsbury. It turned out inch-perfect - something he has mentioned enough times for it to become folklore in our friendship group. Unfortunately, Darcy didn’t recall this incredible feat.
Another friend of mine, this time from university in Newcastle, had relocated to Australia five years ago. Pad (pictured) elected for Sydney and hasn’t looked back since. Back at university, we often found ourselves in interesting situations, often due to Pad’s charm. This time, he invited me along to a video shoot for a friend’s social media account - Schoonerscorer. As chance would have it, fresh off my Ashes fandom, the shoot was with Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins. Before the shoot, we attempted to chat to him about cricket and Yorkshire (strangely enough his wife is from Harrogate, the town over to where Pad grew up). It was a real highlight of the trip.
I did find myself running short of things to say at one point though and asked him about his back injury (how lame am I?) We eventually plucked up the courage to ask for a photo. He had been bombarded all afternoon for photos - they say he’s the most important person in Australia after the Prime Minister. I decided to make a big song and dance and ask for one in a faux polite manner. He jokingly replied (or at least I hope he was joking) ‘nah f*** off mate!’ before quickly agreeing to take one.
Anyway, I did not have the Australian cricket captain telling me to ‘F*** off’ on my bingo card!
Shoal Bay: Sun, surf and slot machines
Saturday, 10 January
After a successful initial four days in Sydney, it was time for Ol and I to start our drive up the Central coast, past Newcastle and into Shoal Bay. Essentially Ol and I had planted ourselves right in the middle of a couples’ getaway with Becky and Dom, and Aimee and Ollie hoping for some quality time. Happy to ignore this, we jumped in our car and commenced our two-and-a -half-hour journey north from Sydney. Driving through Sydney is no joke. I wasn’t prepared for the complex road layouts, toll roads and confusing signage. I think my nervousness showed as I kept flicking the windscreen wipers on when trying to indicate left, which was all to Ol’s amusement of course.
Turns out Aimee and Ollie (right of me in the surf school pic) were also driving down from the Central Coast with a similar length drive. Naturally, we entered into a bit of a race, one car coming from the north and the other the south. Alas, our little Kia Picanto was no match for their Kia SUV. As we turned into the Airbnb garage there they were getting out of their car, smug faces to boot.
Now that the six of us were here (Becky and Dom included - left of me), I couldn’t help but get a little giddy - what were we doing all the way over here on this little peninsula on the other side of the world?
Having settled into the flat (where Ol and I squeezed into the bunk-bed room), there was some ambitious chatter about going on a hike around Tomaree Head Summit. But the 29-degree heat firmly put a dent in that plan and we decided to take a very short stroll over to one of the nearest coves.
We arrived at Zenith Beach (pictured) and it looked like what I imagine Brazil looks like. A huge stretch of soft sand surrounded by plush tropical hills. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves and felt confident enough to sneak a few plastic cups worth of rosé from a cooler bag (the Aussies are pretty strict about drinking on beaches, understandably). The water was incredibly clear and the best I have swum in so far.
The next day we jumped in the car to travel to Port Stephens for a surfing lesson. A little hungover from the night before we donned our surfing attire - the question is, is it possible to look cool in a surfing top? Walking down to the beach our instructor informed us that the conditions were perfect, perfect for a bunch of out-of-town beginners anyway. I have to say we all surfed well, consistently getting up on our foam boards and riding them to shore, although Aimee did need a little push from the instructor now and then (sorry Aimee). Unfortunately there is no evidence of us riding these waves as Ol, designated photographer due to his knee injury, ‘forgot’ to take any photos whilst we were in the sea!
After the surfing lesson, we grabbed some lunch at the beach cafe where we forced ourselves to watch Australia score the final few runs of the fifth and final Ashes Test at Sydney Cricket Ground to win the series. It was a painful watch and as soon as Cameron Green scored that final run we jumped up from our plastic cafe chairs and found a table outside, not a flicker of a smile between us. It was made worse by a couple of cheers from the Aussie locals inside the cafe too.
Outside, Ol and I cheered ourselves up by playing ‘Lady & the tramp’ for the last chip. Maybe it was the desire for the last chip, the need for some entertainment, or the ‘couples energy’ of the trip rubbing off on us. Either way, it was clear we had spent too much time together.
Later that evening we went for a meal at Atmos, a Greek restaurant that you’d expect to see in Mykonos, but also the only establishment that wasn’t a pizza or kebab shop in Shoal Bay. It did exceed expectations, however, and after a few drinks here, followed by a windy photo on the pier (see pic), we stumbled next door to Shoal Bay Country Club. Having visited this ‘club’ the previous night, the cheesy tunes and uncomfortable ‘locals-only’ vibe curtailed our evening fairly quickly. Before long, we were spending the last of our Aussie dollars ($20 to be exact) in the slot machines at the end of night, nothing spells the end of the night more than a brightly-lit casino. When we had lost all our money, we trudged back up the hill to our Airbnb, lamenting the fact we were all parting ways the next day.
Sydney Part Two: Some culture please
Monday, 12 January
On our return to Sydney from Shoal Bay, I was looking forward to spending a few more days in the Emerald City again before I flew back to Melbourne on the 13th; this was so I could try to ‘see the sights’ a little more. On the Sunday, I determinedly strode out of my Airbnb in Camperdown, West Sydney, and walked towards the underground garage where my trusty Kia Picanto was resting.
As I was walking, the heat of the day suddenly hit me in the face. It was the kind of heat where the air feels thick and it stings your nostrils. And it was only 10 am. Looking at my phone my weather app displayed 37 degrees with an alert of ‘fire weather’, which sounds altogether like a bad kind of weather. Naturally, this forced me to rethink my plan of having a leisurely stroll through the city where I’d check out the Opera House and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Funnily enough, on rainy days we all pile into cinemas and galleries, and in this kind of heat it goes full circle. It’s completely unbearable to be outside so we take refuge in these places, largely for the reliable air con. I decided to visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales and there was an exhibition on called ‘Dangerously Modern’. It told the stories of female artists in early 20th-century Australia such as Margaret Preston and Florence Fuller (whom I hold my hand up, I had never heard of).
Interestingly, settler-Australian women were the first in the world to gain full suffrage in 1902 (26 years before the UK). Yet, these women felt creatively repressed by society in cities like Sydney and Melbourne. They were expected to have a chaperone at private events and since they weren’t allowed to attend art school they had to pay for private lessons which were incredibly expensive.
As a result, many of these women boarded steamboats to more liberal European cities like London and Paris. The trips took six weeks in total. When they arrived they joined art studios, were inspired by European artists like Manet and Cezanne, and embedded themselves in society so much they started to form their own art colonies in smaller less-expensive towns; most notably Étaples, Northern France.
It was a great exhibition and my poorly taken snaps don’t do it justice. The paintings were modernist (apparently) but they also felt impressionistic in the way they captured light. The subjects were often women placed in domestic settings, either reading or dressing. This was the artists’ refuting societal expectations that women should be focusing on the housework. Whilst obviously global societies and communities continue to suffer systemic sexism, it’s bizarre to think that this is what progressive artistic communities were exploring when my grandparents were growing up. The very idea of a woman putting her feet up and reading and learning, rather than doing housework - how incredibly subversive!
I elected to do a guided tour. As you can see it was a worthwhile choice. The tour leader was very impassioned and proud of these Australian artists but, out of politeness, I would find myself at the back of the crowd. I quickly realised that this was totally the wrong way to enjoy art - someone explaining what they think of a painting whilst you have to get on your tiptoes to see it.
As we turned a corner, one woman in the group clamoured ‘Oh - I like this little girl!’ (see pic) in a thick Aussie accent. Firstly I thought, how brave of you to brazenly share such an uninteresting remark with the group.
Secondly, I thought the painting was kinda creepy, but maybe I was projecting my fear of a baby coming towards me with open arms. I almost wanted to take a step back. It reminded me of how personal and subjective art can be. The longer I stared at the little girl, it also reminded me of a particular scene from a film I’ve watched way too many times.
For those of you familiar with the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I couldn’t help but recall the scene at the Chicago Art Institute where Cameron, played by a young Alan Ruck, gets intensely lost in a child’s face (or lack of) in a painting of a crowd by a river. Serving as a mirror to his inner child it completely unnerves him.
The shot is also perfectly accompanied by a haunting instrumental of ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ by The Smiths. It’s one of my favourite ever movie scenes. It’s pretty hard to capture how art can move you but John Hughes does a pretty good job! You can watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBBOMLURSGA)
Blue Mountains: Overrated or bad planning?
Wednesday, 14 January
For my last day in Sydney I decided to go to the Blue Mountains. After hearing from a close friend (Mike) that it was a real highlight when he was studying in Australia, and that another friend (Georgie) had got a tattoo of one of the mountain ranges, I felt compelled to go. Admittedly, I was not feeling 100% on the morning of the trip as I had stayed out late the night before playing pool in a non-specific bar in the city. I also stayed a little longer than I should have because there was someone that caught my eye and I was hoping I’d be able to strike up a conversation with them at some point. I won’t go on…if you want to know you can ask!
To get deep into the mountains, and access the best hiking routes and views of the valleys below, it’s a slightly tedious two-and-a-half-hour drive on the motorway. It was an unpleasant drive, largely because I had to constantly put my foot to the floor so my little Kia didn’t frustrate the local Aussies trying to get to work behind me.
After about an hour, my eyelids were starting to droop despite the ‘long black’ coffee I had ordered from a motorway service station. I decided to curtail my journey at Springfield, a small town right on the threshold of the mountains.
I saw a sign for ‘Martin’s Lookout’, so I made my way down a windy gravel road and reached a dead end which could only have meant a lovely trek lay ahead, right? As you can see from the first photo, I was feeling optimistic, bag straps firmly on and ready to explore.
I found Martin’s Lookout (second picture) after about two and a half minutes and got a pretty amazing view (albeit a little overcast) that reached out over the eucalyptus forests that span the landscape. Apparently the eucalyptus oil gives it its blue haze. I just saw haze. I did, however, see a sign for ‘perch ponds’ which were only a 2.5km trek away down into the valley. This seemed reasonable, I thought, and I began my plunge into the thick forest.
The floor was a little wet following a thunderstorm the night before so I slipped and slid my way down this tight track, ducking branches either side of me. And unbeknownst to me at the time, spiders tend to remake their webs after a period of rainfall. I must have walked into fifty webs that criss-crossed the forest trees. I felt like Frodo in Shelob’s lair (apologies for the niche The Lord of the Rings reference). After several attempts to spit the webs from my mouth and ruffle them from my hair, I reached the bottom a little flustered and a little ego-bruised.
I looked up and I was surrounded by dense forest and a disappointingly small pond. I then looked around and it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t seen a single person on this trek. A wave of anxiety hit me - maybe I’d missed an announcement on the news? Maybe all the other Aussies and travellers had seen a bushfire warning, it had been 40 degrees the day before after all. Naturally, I did a little ‘Google’ on my phone and the initial AI summary read ‘high fire danger’ and ‘total fire bans’ across the region. My mind started racing.
After devouring a rather squished sandwich I had prepared the night before I broke into a hurried walk back up the mountain. I looked at my phone again to see which way I should go and my phone signal stated ‘SOS’. I longed for a hiking buddy who would have calmed me down at this point. In fact, I just needed to hear another voice, it was eerily quiet. I found the track again and put on my only podcast that I had downloaded on Spotify. Unfortunately, that meant I had the voice of Stephen Bartlett in my ears for the journey back. That’s how desperate I was.
What did help was that I had taken out all of the spider webs on the way down so I didn’t have to worry about those on the way back up. After a very sweaty two-hour return hike uphill I finally saw my Kia emerge through the thicket, never had I been happier to see a car.
Clearly the trick to a good hike is to have a well-planned route, not be hungover and to not be so distraught when you walk into a spider’s web. On another note, I could quite happily have gone to the lookout, taken in the view, taken a photo and then taken the car keys out of my pocket and driven home. No need to plunge myself into the valley below with all its crevices and lurky thingies.
I also realised that I had left my rain jacket on the rock I was sitting on when eating my sandwich. In fact, this made me reflect; now that I’m six weeks and halfway into my trip and, having stayed in 14 different rooms from Airbnbs and hotels to pretty grimy motels and Ol’s bedroom (not as grimy), I thought I would take a stock check of my items. Like my mum’s car keys which seem to remain persistently out of reach in the ether somewhere, I’ve always struggled to keep track of my belongings. It’s a bad habit. So far, I’ve managed to lose a few things along the way including: earbuds, goggles, swimming shorts, a towel, a pair of socks, a hotel room key, Ol’s house key. This won’t come as a surprise to many but yeah not bad for six weeks! But as Marie Kondo once said, ‘The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't’.
Interview: Oliver Ainley, another Brit in Australia
Wednesday, 21 January
Before you read this interview, I thought I would provide a little context to my subject matter for this blog. I’ve always wanted to be an interviewer of sorts, I like asking questions and trying to dig a little deeper into someone or something. And who better to try this with than Oliver aka Ollie aka Big Ol. This is for a couple of reasons - one I’m genuinely interested to understand why Ol upended his life in London and moved to Melbourne (which in part remains a mystery to me and maybe others too). Two - it meant I got to spend 45 minutes chatting nonsense with Ol who is just great company and it's something I will never get bored of.
For those of you who don’t know him, Ol is a 6’5 curly-haired man from South Manchester. He often gets likened to Matthew McConaughey - I don’t see it. In fact, a slightly tipsy woman at the Australian Open asked for a photo of him because of this ‘likeness’ (see pic). He is into music and films and likes to tell you about it too. He was the guy at house parties (when we were back at school) who would drink and dance (well ‘ish’) until 5am. Yet, miraculously, he would then get up at 7am to tidy away the beer bottles and wipe the cheap prosecco off the floor. A sign of good breeding I always thought.
He’s also got a lot of love to give, something I wasn’t used to in my male friendships. One example was when we lived together in our dilapidated Hackney house and I had headed home to Nottingham to see my family. When I came back to Hackney on the Sunday evening and dragged my suitcase up the stairs and into my bedroom, I spotted a postcard lying on my bed. It was from Ollie and all that was inscribed on the other side was a single message ‘missed you this weekend mate’. I still have that postcard. He’s been a close friend of mine since I moved to Manchester at 15 years old.
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Ollie: We are sitting in a beer garden at the London Tavern, in Richmond, Melbourne. There are TVs everywhere, all showing different sports: ice hockey, tennis, cricket, horse racing. It’s not exactly where I’d imagine we’d be doing this interview.
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Ollie: The week started off with a bang for sure. I had a flexible cystoscopy which is where a health professional puts a camera up your ‘you know what’ to have a look at your bladder which was one of the wildest experiences I’ve had for a long time.
Tom: I can’t believe we’ve not spoken about that yet! Do you want to talk about that now?
Ollie: Yeah can do. I arrived at 8am, but didn’t actually get into the room until about 10:30am. So I was sitting there for two and a half hours just thinking about it. When I finally went in, I wondered whether it would be a male or female doctor. It ended up being a female doctor, plus a female nurse and then there were three or four other female doctors just coming in and out. It felt like a real thoroughfare.
Tom: They didn’t warn you that multiple people might be watching? It reminds me of a Friends episode where Ross gets a mole checked by a doctor who needs a second opinion and it flashes forward to a whole room of doctors examining him with his pants down, feeling exposed.
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Ollie: I’m getting back into the swing of things after a month off work. When I came back from Sydney last week, I definitely had the blues from missing family and friends (who came over for Christmas) and I found myself wishing I could rewind and do it all over again. But now I’m back into a routine which has been good: gym, cooking at home, cinema, early nights during the week. There’s something really grounding about doing small, normal things again - knowing what day it is, having places I go regularly.
Tom: Structure helps?
Ollie: Massively. I feel more at ease when I know what my day and week will look like.
Tom: It’s been a big month, a lot of socialising and a lot of drinking too.
Ollie: Yeah, I’m backing off on the alcohol for sure. I’ve got a festival in early March, which I’ll probably drink at, but until then I want to do a dry period - maybe ‘Dry Feb’.
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Ollie: I’d wake up (always a good start) and go to my favourite coffee shop - Juanito’s in Brunswick East. The guy who owns it is a legend. Then I’d go to the gym, have a good workout, cycle home - probably all done by 10 or 11. Then I’d get changed into something sexy.
Tom: At 11am? Already?
Ollie: 11am is sexy time! Then I’d go to a day music event with friends, or to a pub, have some pints, bit of food. It’s nice and sunny on this day too obviously.
Tom: Who would be there?
Ollie: I’m in a Facebook chat from a music festival I went to last year. It includes about seven or eight people I’m really close with. I’d want them there, plus maybe a few others I’ve met on nights out. Around ten or eleven people total.
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Ollie: At first, yes. The first few weeks were great because I had to consciously put myself out there. Most people move countries with someone or meet people through a job they have lined up. I didn’t know anyone and only had a couple of loose connections. Angela, the sister of one of my London mates and another guy I met at a Japanese hostel, that was it.
I wanted to do something by myself and start again and be friends with people on my own terms. However, on the flip side, about three months in I got a bit anxious because I realised I’m someone who needs a few really close friends rather than lots of acquaintances. It felt a bit like freshers week at university where you’re not quite sure how much you click with people. So yeah I missed that depth to my friendships that I had back in the U.K. Of course it’s unrealistic to expect deep friendships after a month or two. But at the time, it really got to me.
Tom: How are you at putting yourself out there to establish these relationships?
Ollie: I think I’m pretty good at that. I understand how important it is to make the first step sometimes. My first Saturday night, I went to a music event alone and got chatting to a guy called Connor. He introduced me to his friends, invited me to a house party the next weekend. I don’t see them anymore, but it helped me feel like I’d got started.
But going back to that festival I mentioned earlier, that was the game-changer as I met people who I genuinely found funny and they found me funny(!). That weekend was huge, it made me feel part of something.
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Ollie: I went on a date with an Irish girl a while back who felt Australians were cold, but I don’t think so - I’ve found them all pretty friendly.
Tom: I definitely felt a welcoming vibe when I got to Melbourne - people are genuinely interested in you and where you’ve come from. Obviously there’s a lot of expats too, particularly from the UK and Ireland I’ve found. What’s the complexion of your friendship group?
Ollie: My group now is probably 55% Australian/New Zealand, 35% English, and 10% international.
Tom: That’s interesting because our friendship group back home is 100% English.
Ollie: This is the thing. When’s the last time you made a new friend back in the UK? In the UK, you might have a great night with someone and never see them again. It feels like people make an effort to continue the relationship here.
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Ollie: It wasn’t always going to be Australia but I did want to live and work abroad before turning 30. Initially I looked at Amsterdam and Berlin, but Europe became difficult post‑Brexit, so I looked further afield. I’d met someone in Japan who was from Melbourne and reached out to him online about whether I should move here - all he said was ‘it’s sick mate’ and that was enough for me. I bought a ticket the next week. The visa was easy and there’s no language barrier. Melbourne was the only Australian city I really considered. Now that I’m here, I’m even more sure it was the right choice.
Tom: What does Melbourne offer compared to a city like Sydney or Brisbane?
Ollie: It’s more liberal, left‑leaning and progressive than other Australian cities - and has a lot going on culturally. It’s a bit like how they call Austin the jewel in the Texas crown, Melbourne is similar - a progressive bubble. I do recognise that it’s a bit of an echo-chamber though and does not reflect wider Australia.
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Ollie: In all honesty, towards the end of my time in London I got really anxious walking around, especially where we lived. Everywhere felt loaded with memories of past connections or regret from serious and more fleeting relationships. I was walking through streets, pubs, even random corners where something had happened at some one point that I didn’t want to be reminded of. It sounds dramatic, but it genuinely wore me down over time.
Tom: What else was London not giving you?
Ollie: London’s also tough if you’re not well paid. I was constantly juggling creative work and odd jobs. I was either writing, painting or working as a Deliveroo driver. It’s fun, but it’s hard. I’d be very surprised if I ever move back to London to be honest.
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Ollie: I think I’m a better version of myself. Obviously I’m a bit older and wiser (well I think at least) but the whole experience of moving out here challenged me in a good way as I didn’t have the comfort blanket of leaning on other people due to timezones and being so far away. I have been forced to work a lot of problems out on my own.
I’ve also been working on my relationship with alcohol and it’s better than it was before. I’m not drinking as much at the moment and I’ve established a good habit with going to the gym which has really helped.
Tom: How has the move changed the way you view your relationships?
Ollie: If anything it’s just clarified who really matters in my life. My siblings and cousins especially - I miss them a lot. To be honest, in the long term, I don’t think I could live permanently this far away from them, especially if my brothers or sister were to have kids at some point down the line. I would need to be a part of that.
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Ollie: I’m definitely not on the move or passing through right now. I like routine, my coffee shop, my favourite club, my gym, and my friends. I’ll travel again in the future to New Zealand and Korea I’m sure but I don’t want to be constantly moving.
Tom: How do you envisage the next few years then?
Ollie: That said, I don’t see myself here (Melbourne) in ten years. Five? Maybe as long as things line up with work and I get sponsorship for a job I like.
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Ollie: It’s hard for me to answer this question. I’m very methodical, always have been. For instance, I’ll get my visa and flights sorted well in advance, and a house to stay in but I don’t actually think what it’s going to be like when I get there. My grandma asked me the day before I left “what do you think it’s going to be like?’” And I was like “I have absolutely no idea”.
Tom: It’s interesting because you seem to like to have control over some things and not others. But getting back to some advice…
Ollie: It sounds generic but be open‑minded and do things outside of your comfort zone. Especially socially. It doesn’t come super naturally to me but it’s good to know I can still make friends on the other side of the world where I didn’t really know anybody at first.
And try to live where you are and be present rather than constantly reporting back home. Obviously it’s really nice to hear from people back home but it can feel like you’re living two lives sometimes.
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Ollie: Get out of there. ASAP. Follow your gut. I think it was the right decision. The only thing I would prepare myself for is that my career stalled by the fact that I’m working in a pub and shop and one day a week at a radio station. I’ve applied for more creative jobs and it often starts with a really positive interaction and genuine interest but then we get to the ‘visa question' and I’m almost automatically taken out of the recruitment process. I feel like I’m hitting my head on this a lot unfortunately.
Tom: Wait, so staying for five years is dependent on your work visa then?
Ollie: That’s right but I could also get a partnership visa. My friend Maddie has offered to do this with me which sounds a bit weird but it's quite common here. Essentially we’d have to prove our relationship and provide evidence we’re in a serious relationship, photos etc. Maybe I should get cracking with that actually.
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Ollie: The other thing I’m conscious about is when you talk to people back home about how things are going you often tell people the highlights. But there have been challenges along the way from not enjoying work, drinking a bit too much, feeling a little lonely at times - or at least concerned about the amount of depth to some of my relationships out here and so on. The automatic response is to tell people it’s all good when it’s way more complicated than that. Life’s more complicated than that.
But look, it's been an amazing experience so far and I’m so glad I’ve come out here, met some amazing people and, in a way, started again on my own terms. I know I said I expect to be back in 5 years but honestly who knows how things will pan out.
Interview
Interview Snippets
When I listened back to this conversation (I won’t call it an interview that feels like a push), I wondered whether, on a sub-conscious level, this was just a ruse for me to try and have a deep conversation with Ol or at least find out what his big life plans are. When we’re together we quickly turn to stupid, humorous and inconsequential chats on subjects such as the best-dressed professional tennis players or the best flavour of beef jerky. However, as you can probably tell we took this discussion fairly seriously; I had written down questions and Ol took his time answering them. Maybe this format is what it takes for two men to have a serious conversation about their feelings.
Melbourne: Final impressions
Saturday 24, January
What do you think about Melbourne? Are you going to stay here? How does it compare to London? From uber drivers to friends of friends in pub gardens, these are the questions I was peppered with over the last month and a half. That may come across as ungrateful; I always appreciated people asking and having a chit-chat but I often disappointed them with my answer - I don’t know! If I had to fumble for one I’d say I’ve been gently pondering living here over the last couple of weeks but ultimately I think I’d miss my life back in the UK too much.
Yet, the real question underneath it all was a lot more pertinent - what’s important to me when it comes to lifestyle and what do I want from a city? I was chatting to friend of a friend of a friend in a glorious sun-trap of a pub called the Royal Oak Hotel in North Melbourne. Side note: I was often confused why pubs are called ‘hotels’ in Australia and apparently it’s because in order to obtain a liquor license in the 80s pubs were required to be functioning hotels and provide accommodation for the drunkards bent double over the bar.
Anyway, I was chatting to this interior architect and we were talking about the different periods of housing we’d like to live in - Victorian, Modern etc. In Melbourne, she explained, that for a house to be considered ‘heritage-listed’ (essentially where you can’t knock it down without getting challenged by the local authorities) the building only needs to be older than 100 years, dating back to the Victorian gold rush boom. You compare this to London and it’s a whole different kettle of fish. When we think of heritage listed housing we think of a Georgian house from the 1700s, well at least I do. And that’s before you get to the grade-listed housing. This sounds like a bit of a tangent, granted, but it represents what I was struggling to put my finger on. When you walk through Melbourne, if you close your eyes to the colonial-style buildings (second photo), you feel like the city was born yesterday rather than 2,000 years ago. Some London houses were built before Melbourne even existed, at least as a European settlement. Ultimately, I think I took this for granted living in London where you might turn a corner and come across a tudor castle or roman ruins. It’s exciting to feel like I’m a part of something much bigger.
What doesn’t lack depth in Melbourne is the people. Now, I need to preface this (of course) with the fact that I’ve been mixing with young-ish people in the pubs and cafes of North Melbourne, the fact I have been here for one month and whether or not one ever really ‘knows’ a city. I’ve met some lovely, fascinating people but what I’ve been inspired by the most is how many people have creative pursuits once you dig a little deeper. Many of them are exploring their interests in photography, writing music, painting and so on alongside working in cafes, pubs or corporate gigs. Some have plugged away at these pursuits long enough to make it the sole source of their income. This really challenged the way I thought about a typical 9-5.
Beyond this, I think the fact that I was able to find these things out about people is indicative of a general friendliness in the city. It made me think about how British people, often out of stubbornness or anxiety or both, walk with the heads down and refuse to ask for directions for example. On many occasions I’ve seen this strife, often between couples. Typically it’s a heterosexual male who wants to soldier on and try to find a spot to park the car or find a restaurant down an alleyway, despite his partner’s protests of ‘let’s just ask someone’. Admittedly, I struggled with this for the first two weeks. Yet, when I pushed past this and started to regularly initiate conversations I found that many locals (after hearing my accent) wanted to help me and wanted to have a chat. So I’ve learnt to always ask for directions. People like to help, are often interested and sometimes you walk away feeling like you’ve connected with someone.
I think this creativity and openness is reflected in the very design of the city. I loved how murals would take over the walls of fire departments and apartment blocks; they are imposing and often subversive yet normally condoned by local councils. The parks are incredibly floral and tropical and they exist in harmony with the city. Often the paths felt like they were gently guiding you to the city rather than creating a little enclave away from it. The parks are super clean too; visitors are respectful and quiet, so much so you can quite easily fall asleep on a grassy hilltop reading a book (which I did on New Year’s Day in Fitzroy Gardens - pictured). Not only did I feel relaxed in Melbourne, I enjoyed walking around a city where its residents seem to care for their environment - does that sound old and snooty of me? Maybe.
To poke this point a little further, and granted this is a bit of a weird thing to focus on but there is literally no litter in the streets! Dom, a friend who was one of the six of our road trip crew, mentioned how clean the streets are in Melbourne and then I really started to notice it. After walking around for a whole day the only bit of rubbish I saw was this can (pictured). In Australia more generally there’s a real respect for the land. There’s a deep irony here of course as it’s not actually a land that ‘belongs’ to the white settling population. It was stolen, a familiar tale in Commonwealth countries. In fact, what separates Australia from the rest of the Commonwealth countries is that it remains the only nation without a national treaty with its Indigenous people. So I talk about ‘respect’ with a healthy dose of salt, but I have to admire how everyday Aussies take care of the place they live in.
Finally, I have to give serious kudos for how Melbourne approaches sport. There’s a deeply ingrained cultural passion for sport which is propped up by the Victorian Government’s ambition for Melbourne to be the sporting capital of the world. I was lucky enough to watch England vs. Australia in the Ashes Cricket Tests at the colossal Melbourne Cricket Ground and later went to Day One at the Australian Open. The Open is a major tennis tournament which could give Wimbledon a run for its money; perhaps not in terms of prestige and tradition but in terms of infrastructure, investment and passionate atmosphere. Ol and I paid $50 and the calibre of players we got to see…from Norrie and Cobolli to Tiafoe was genuinely impressive and we weren’t stuck in the back of the stands either!
Ultimately, if Melbourne wasn’t so goddamn far away, its creativity, welcoming vibe, approach to work and appreciation for sport puts it right up there as one of the most attractive and liveable places I’ve ever been.
New Zealand: First impressions
Friday, 30 January
I hope my next few blogs will be a little more structured. I’m aiming to share the names of towns and favourite spots throughout which hopefully gives you (and me once I read this back) a sense of the path I took to explore this amazing country.
Firstly, let me get a little moan out of my system. My very first impression of New Zealand was before I had left Melbourne airport. I was already under the cosh as I had forgotten to apply for a visitor visa. I am not sure I can blame anyone for that but they do cost $127 (Aussie dollars that is). This is 4x as much as an Australian visa and it takes twice as long to process. At a time when I had started to become increasingly conscious of my dwindling budget I had put it to the back of my mind until the last minute. Thankfully, the visa arrived 5 hours before my flight was due to take off.
Feeling a little relieved (but only as relieved as one can be heading into an airport), I strode up to the check-in desk and threw my rucksack on to the conveyor belt. I was handed my passport back and was about to head to security when the airline agent called me back. He told me that I had to show him my booking for my return flight. Feeling a little bemused, I told him I hadn’t booked one because I hadn’t decided when was going to head back to the UK yet. He replied, sardonically, ‘you can try and get through security but they’ll probably just send you back here’. So, apparently, you have to book a flight out of NZ in order to get into NZ?! I’m not sure how I feel about this policy. It’s like they’re saying ‘Oh hey, yes, please come and enjoy our beautiful country, but only for a specific amount of time and just make sure that you clear out soon right?’ Well, fine, maybe I didn’t want to stay here anyway!
It’s also not a huge shock to me that 180 New Zealanders left their home country every single day last year, with Jacinda Adern becoming the latest high-profile New Zealander to do so this week after she bought a house in North Sydney.
The Māori population is particularly concentrated in the upper and central North Island but it still sits at less than 20% of the island’s total population, with European the majority at 63%. Despite this, during my first 24 hours in Auckland, it felt to me that Māori culture is pretty well integrated and respected in society. As it should be of course but how often do we see indigenous peoples having to fight to keep their culture alive: Native Americans, Aboriginals, Gaels to name a few. Instead, I noticed how people of all ethnicities here tend to use the Māori greeting of ‘Kia ora’ which translates to ‘be well’ or ‘be healthy’ and which sounds a lot more poetic than ‘How you goin’ mate’ which is what my ears were use to after six weeks in Australia.
Māori is spoken first on trains and buses when announcing stops, and it’s written at the top of road signs with the English translation below it. These are small things and the real picture is a lot more nuanced but as a tourist I couldn’t help but think it puts Australia to shame as a great example of how to try to recognise indigenous culture.
It’s like they’re saying ‘Oh hey, yes, please come and enjoy our beautiful country, but only for a specific amount of time and just make sure that you clear out soon right?’ Well, fine, maybe I didn’t want to stay here anyway!
On a different but related note, I learnt that the only citizens that can buy houses here are those from New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. As a foreign citizen from a different country you can only buy land/new-builds with special permission. It’s another example of NZ being particularly protective of its borders. This definitely worked during the Covid-19 pandemic with the state declaring one of the lowest health losses across the globe. Yet, I can’t help but feel these sorts of policies contribute to its poorly performing economy and slightly insular culture which I will talk about in a later blog.
A few days in Auckland
Tuesday, 2 February
I arrived at my first Airbnb in Auckland pretty late into Saturday evening. So late, in fact, it was too dark to find the lockbox and I ended up jumping a fence to get into the backyard. With mud and some sort of green mossy substance all down my front, I decided to retire to bed as soon as possible. I had chosen a small guesthouse in a suburb called Royal Oak in South Auckland. It often takes me a few days to work out which areas have the most ‘vibe’ in a city. I can firmly say I did not find it on my first try. Royal Oak is known for a particularly busy roundabout and a small and rather-tired looking shopping mall. Thankfully, I had booked tickets to Hobbiton for the Wednesday but this meant I was presented with three days in Royal Oak and Auckland which is about two and a half too many.
When I woke up on the Sunday, my first proper day in Auckland, it was a beautifully sunny day which felt like a good omen. But before I could take advantage of this, I thought I better get some life admin out the way. Specifically, a clothes wash was overdue so off to the launderette I went. One thing I will not miss from this trip is having to go to a launderette. This is because it usually entails a very bored employee explaining how these specific machines work before I set up shop for an hour waiting for my clothes to wash and dry in a dusty, dank room. When I had ticked that off my list, however, I took a stroll through Cornwall Park (first pic) and then nipped over to Mount Eden for sunset (second pic). One thing I really loved about Auckland was seeing its green hills rise up through the middle of the city. Mount Eden is the tallest of 53 dormant volcanoes in the area. Standing at 196m, it was once a fortified Māori settlement dating back to the 13th century. It has a huge crater (now with a viewing platform running around it) where Moari legend tells of a deity called Mataaho who lived there and who was the guardian of the secrets hidden in the earth.
I was once told that the best way to start a holiday is to get up high so you can get your bearings. Auckland’s Sky Tower offers that opportunity. Standing at 328 metres, it is the second tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere (28m taller than the Eiffel Tower for reference). It offers a 360-degree of the metropolis below. It’s a popular attraction for tourists but that might also be because there’s not much else to do. Despite being fully aware of my fear of heights, I decided to join the tourists on day two in Auckland. I bought my ticket and got in the lift that takes you up 45 floors to its observation deck. When I stepped out onto the deck I was immediately struck with a sense of vertigo. Rather embarrassingly, a couple of people had to side step around me as I reached for a railing just around the corner from the lift. I slowly inched my way round the circular ‘skydeck’, hugging tight to the inner wall. I squeezed the railing so hard my knuckles went white and I could feel myself starting to perspire. I managed to let go of the railing long enough to get a photo of a young girl fearlessly peering through the perspex window on the floor, completely unfazed and impervious to the fear that had so strongly gripped me. It left me wondering at what age I had developed this fear of heights. After ten minutes I decided I had had enough and took the lift back down to the ground floor where I worked out that it had cost me £2 a minute to be up there.
Regaining my composure, I wandered the streets in the CBD for a while, stopping in a coffee shop and Victoria Park, named after Queen Victoria of course and a reminder of the British Crown’s influence here. As I walked a few blocks I picked up on a peculiar vibe to the city. Looking around, I noticed that everyone seemed to be dressed down, almost out of respect; the cars were old or simple and it was quiet for a Saturday as people kept to themselves. I wondered what it was that had struck me. Later that evening, when I went out for a beer, I spoke to someone who offered up one explanation. She had just moved to Auckland and explained this concept in NZ called ‘tall poppy syndrome’. An interesting concept where a successful or arrogant individual is ‘cut down’ by societal pressure that encourages humility and conformity above all else.
On my way back from the city I was caught in torrential rain and was taught another lesson about New Zealand - it doesn’t matter what the weather looks like in the morning, always pack a raincoat. The main cities in NZ are subject to extremely temperamental weather as they are all exposed to a blustery and wet coastline. I was drenched to the bone wearing nothing but a white T-shirt and shorts, and stayed trapped under a cafe veranda for a good twenty minutes (see video).
I got up slowly the next day, not feeling particularly motivated after ticking off the biggest park, mountain and tourist attraction in the first two days. I was keen for a day that felt more on my terms and less about ticking things off a list. My Airbnb host suggested I go to Lido Cinema, a boutique picture house dating back to the 1920s that was only one suburb across from me. Since I didn’t have my rental car yet I jumped on the bus again and when I arrived I bought a ticket for Marty Supreme. I thought the film was good, yet it is a film about ping pong so you’ve kinda limited yourself there already Mr. Safdie. A core theme running through the film is how Marty (the protagonist played by Timothée Chalamet) has an unwavering determination to become the best player in the world underpinned by a willingness to sacrifice everything and everyone along the way. This resonated with me, in a way, as it dawned on me that I was in New Zealand alone, able to choose exactly what I wanted to do, where to go and when. The freedom to totally and unequivocally focus on myself was exciting. When the film had ended and night had fallen, I hopped on a lime scooter instead of the bus and took a detour through some suburban streets. I put my earphones in and let ‘Marilyn’, a song by Caribou, ring through my ears. I sang it all the way back to the house hardly feeling the drizzle of rain that began to patter on my face.
Hobbiton: A 30 year old's dream comes true
Wednesday, 3 February
The day for visiting Hobbiton had arrived. I picked up my little Ford Puma at 9am sharp and sped down State Highway 1. To say I was excited was an understatement. To get a little closer to the truth, you could say I was in NZ because of The Lord of the Rings films. I’ve watched them religiously and would fancy my chances at a LOTR pub quiz. In fact, I’d say a month hasn’t gone by in the last 15 years where I haven’t watched one of them. I just don’t get bored and I’m not sure why.
The amazing thing about Hobbiton is that it’s a live movie set built into a farm, so once you come off the motorway it’s a really idyllic drive winding through green pastures and rolling hills. I parked up and made my way over to the front office, where they told me I had an hour wait until my tour started. I think this was the first time I’d been early to anything. The tour itself is ninety minutes long and it takes a 15-minute bus ride to get to the set. Once my group was on the bus and the tour guide swiftly declared it was a ‘nerd-friendly’ zone, I couldn’t help but get a little emotional as the soundtrack began to play and she started to share a couple of stories about the set and how it came to be.
With a fantasy novel or film I find it’s sometimes good not to get behind the scenes in case it crushes the world you’ve created in your mind. But I have to say, as I stepped off the bus and took in the surroundings, it exceeded my already embarrassingly high expectations. The attention to detail was incredible, from the 30+ hobbit holes (homes) all with gardens and hobbit-sized scale props. In one of them, this included an entire newspaper called ‘The Shire Reckoning’ which had 7 pages of local news articles from this imaginary hobbit community.
Twenty years after the first film was made, they continue to maintain and re-build parts of the set, employing nearly 300 people, from gardeners and landscapers to bar staff in a functioning pub used in the film called The Green Dragon. So it really has become a world of its own and they know how much it means to the 3,000+ daily tourists who walk through the grounds.
On our walk around the hobbit houses, our tour guide stopped and asked whether anyone hadn’t seen the films. One lady put her hand up and slowly lowered her hand following the eye-rolling and tutting from the rest of us. I mean, why come if you’ve not seen the films, really?
The awkward thing about travelling alone is that you sometimes have to bite the bullet and ask people to take a photo of you. And sometimes you also have to ask if they can take a photo of you whilst you pretend to be a little hobbit writing a letter.
Towards the end of the tour I edged my way to the front of the crowd and thought I’d strike up a conversation with the tour guide. We discussed our favourite scenes in the films but I was disappointed to learn that she was unaware of the new film Hunt for Gollum which is being filmed later this year - amateur hour! Then, after a complimentary half-pint of ale from The Green Dragon, I was back on the bus which, naturally, dropped us at the gift shop. Managing to resist most of the merchandise (other than a small keyring), I returned to my car a little dazed but with a wry smile on my face that I wore all the way back to Auckland.
Making my way south, but first to Coromandel
Wednesday, 12 February
In order to make my way south, I headed north (naturally) to a region called Coromandel. This was a very intentional detour as it was a recommendation from James, a school friend who had explored New Zealand with his girlfriend Anna about a year prior to my trip. Now that I had picked up my campervan (first pic), I felt like my trip could really start and after driving about 100km I arrived in a small town called Thames. From that point onwards, I turned North and headed up the West Coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. I was not prepared for how joyous the scenery would be as I twisted up and down the mountain bordering Coromandel Forest Park. Every twenty minutes I pulled up on the side of the road and had to take a picture of the view that stretched over the hills and into the Hauraki coastline (see second pic).
My only minor concern was the campervan itself. Navigating the van down winding roads and along bumpy terrain reminded me of the night bus in the third Harry Potter film. Behind me the kitchen drawers were opening and closing, clothes were falling down and cutlery and plates were rattling.
Every now and then I would also be forced up a dirt road and would wince a little when stones and debris from the mountains would flick up against the van’s underbelly. I prayed that the van would stay in one piece and not get me stranded halfway up a mountain.
When it comes to campsites in NZ, you can book them on the day and they will only set you back 30–40 NZD per night. For this you’d get access to a power cable, water hose, kitchen and showers (where the quality of the showers often varied lets say). My first campsite was Tasman Holiday Park which was incredibly green and idyllic; I mean my camping spot backed onto a stream which was a home to a family of ducks, genuinely.
The site was also the perfect base for me to get across to New Chums Beach which I’d had my eye on. I have always been a beach person and could quite happily spend the day getting tanned and sandy. I’ve been to some amazing beaches, the best of them in Sardinia, but this beach (see 4th pic) would really give them a run for their money.
In order to access the beach it was a twenty-five minute trek over rocky terrain and through mangroves which made it all the more worth it when I finally got there. I feel like I’m perpetually chasing the moment in the film ‘The Beach’ which I watched in 2013. In the scene, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character emerges through some palm trees and falls to his knees on this perfect stretch of sand, overlooking this turquoise lagoon and a horizon of tropical limestone cliffs. In the film, the euphoric moment is accompanied by the song ‘Porcelain’ by Moby and I still think about it to this day.
But yes, this beach came close. The sand was hot and white and slightly burned my toes and the blue-green sea was so clear I could see right to the bottom where my burnt toes were cooled off. I nestled myself under the shade of a Nikau palm tree for a couple of hours and soaked it all in. On my way back I climbed an 80m rocky lookout to take the snap in the 4th photo. When I returned to my van I hung my towel out, grabbed a camping chair and made some lunch.
This was when a French man approached me. He was travelling with his family and talking sweetly to his daughter after she had just tripped over a rock in the car park. He seemed very interested in my trip, almost ardently so. I may have been wrong but I think there was a slight longing after seeing me so content (and maybe a little smug) after a long drive and a successful beach trip.
After packing up and jumping into the front seat, I made my journey to my next destination: Rotorua, which was 200km south. This was another big drive but what’s so great about NZ is that every 5km the scenery changes and every 30km you stumble across a little natural wonder. About halfway through the journey I spotted a couple of cars parked up on the side of the road under a sign saying ‘Owharoa Falls’. On a whim, I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to check it out. After a two minute walk down a mud path I came out to this stunning waterfall (see 5th pic) where I jumped in the pool and swam right under the waterfall, trying to soak it all in as the water cascaded down around me. Feeling revitalised, I got back in the van and carried on toward Rotorua.
