Lire l’original en français
To reassure everybody who was worried, here’s an update to the “Stick in the Face” file. The pain has gone, I’m no longer dizzy and unfortunately, all the beautiful colours adorning my face have withdrawn. Everything is much better. Furthermore, it appears that this strategically placed hit in the face has succeeded where years of visits to chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists and the like had failed: for a week now, and I’ve no longer had a pain in the neck! A 7-year-old chronic pain apparently flew away, with the help of only one magical stick blow. At least, I would have gained that.
We have really left the Australian Bush for a week now. It took us 17 days to travel across the 3000 km separating Townsville from Melbourne. An average of 250 km per day for almost two weeks, and we took the liberty to stretch the last 100 km over a 5-day period to visit the Mornington touristic peninsula before we came to town.
To celebrate this expedition (and because people won’t stop harassing us to see our faces more often), we have decided to film our journey during these 3 weeks. A few days ago, in order to hype our production, you were enticed to watch the trailer (which, in fact, was material we had produced, but didn’t seem to find its way into the final cut) of our last short feature. Today, we are pleased to present you the final product, which is sensibly erratic. The goal wasn’t to tell a tale, but to give an idea of the constantly moving landscape and of the way of life for people travelling 250 km per day, every day. I hope you’ll like it, even if though it has a way different style from the trailer.
So we finally arrived at our final place of destination. At least, ONE destination. We have found a superb hostess to harbour us for our first month in the area. A little work in exchange for 3 extremely delicious meals and a marvellous housing in the most expensive town in all of Victoria. Many wonderful exchanges of knowledge, things learned every day and a very Japanese house where to spend our first days in Melbourne. You’ll hear more about it when we have stayed here a little longer.
Our first impression of Melbourne? A very trendy, super cultural, very musical and vibrating town. Hyper specialisation is what ensures survival for merchants. OK, you’ll say we’ve come a long way... We are still in the state of mind where a Video Club may and MUST sell microwaves and crock-pots in order to survive. In here, you can find shops entirely devoted to Russian dolls collectors, others sell more than a hundred different types of shoe shine and nothing else. So I’m pleased to tell you we no longer need to go to the post office to buy condensed milk.
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Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
My semi-permanent Egyptian makeup
Lire la traduction Française
After having driven over 2,500 km in Australia’s barren bush land for the past 10 days, we finally made it out alive and found some trace of civilization, about 300 km away from Melbourne. There, we expected to see many familiar things. Shopping centres with trendy boutiques, restaurants that serve other things than sausage sizzle, traffic lights… One thing I was NOT expecting though, was to get hit in the face with a stick, swung by a crazy teen in a fit of rage.
It seemed like an ordinary Sunday afternoon at the park: families were having a picnic, some youth we’re practicing new moves in the skatepark, the sun was shining and everyone was having a splendid time; the kind of moment that would have made the perfect picture postcard if you only added the words “Shepparton, Milk Capital of Victoria” on the bottom. At least, it would have, until this group of punk-ass teens came rolling in on their little scooters.
For what we’ve heard from the other kids afterwards, these guys are always there, terrorizing anyone and everyone at any given time. On that day, it seemed it was just a “wrong place, wrong time” kind of deal. Insult were thrown, then rocks, and the split second I looked away to see if Steph was OK, a 2 foot long, 3 inch wide stick was swung and broken on my face.
It was a sunny day though, and Shepparton is a really nice looking city. There are dozens of painted cows everywhere, made by talented local artists. Many friendly people stroll about or ride their bikes. Two of them (who happened to both be named Matt – which helps to be remembered while your head is throbbing and your vision is still blurry) stopped by to give us a hand.
(One of the) Matt had a cell phone and kindly called the police while the other gave me some water from his bottle, which was nice of him, seeing how he was in the middle of some bicycle training exercise and would surely need it.
Victoria Police officers were quick to arrive and seemed excited as they drove their cars on the lawns of the park giving chase to the thugs on their mini scooters. Arrests were made and testimonies were taken and Stephanie jokingly took pictures of my swollen face while I ate a complimentary donut.
These things happen I guess… We meet hundreds of people every day on this cross-country journey, almost all of them are really nice, and most of them won’t even think about smashing sticks on your face. Take Peter and Diane, for example, who we met in Kumbia. They are contented on riding their motor home across Australia, in search of freshwater fish and taking blurry pictures of them through the water. There’s also Bruce, Paul and Eric, an old group of friends who every year, travel 1,500 km in an old campervan that Bruce made, pulled by a 1949 Chevy pickup truck just to go see an old car show and get away from their wives for a week in South Queensland.
Travels are adventures. Most are good, some are bad and a few are... Meh.. I think Shepparton gets filed in the “Meh” pile.
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
After having driven over 2,500 km in Australia’s barren bush land for the past 10 days, we finally made it out alive and found some trace of civilization, about 300 km away from Melbourne. There, we expected to see many familiar things. Shopping centres with trendy boutiques, restaurants that serve other things than sausage sizzle, traffic lights… One thing I was NOT expecting though, was to get hit in the face with a stick, swung by a crazy teen in a fit of rage.
It seemed like an ordinary Sunday afternoon at the park: families were having a picnic, some youth we’re practicing new moves in the skatepark, the sun was shining and everyone was having a splendid time; the kind of moment that would have made the perfect picture postcard if you only added the words “Shepparton, Milk Capital of Victoria” on the bottom. At least, it would have, until this group of punk-ass teens came rolling in on their little scooters.
For what we’ve heard from the other kids afterwards, these guys are always there, terrorizing anyone and everyone at any given time. On that day, it seemed it was just a “wrong place, wrong time” kind of deal. Insult were thrown, then rocks, and the split second I looked away to see if Steph was OK, a 2 foot long, 3 inch wide stick was swung and broken on my face.
It was a sunny day though, and Shepparton is a really nice looking city. There are dozens of painted cows everywhere, made by talented local artists. Many friendly people stroll about or ride their bikes. Two of them (who happened to both be named Matt – which helps to be remembered while your head is throbbing and your vision is still blurry) stopped by to give us a hand.
(One of the) Matt had a cell phone and kindly called the police while the other gave me some water from his bottle, which was nice of him, seeing how he was in the middle of some bicycle training exercise and would surely need it.
Victoria Police officers were quick to arrive and seemed excited as they drove their cars on the lawns of the park giving chase to the thugs on their mini scooters. Arrests were made and testimonies were taken and Stephanie jokingly took pictures of my swollen face while I ate a complimentary donut.
These things happen I guess… We meet hundreds of people every day on this cross-country journey, almost all of them are really nice, and most of them won’t even think about smashing sticks on your face. Take Peter and Diane, for example, who we met in Kumbia. They are contented on riding their motor home across Australia, in search of freshwater fish and taking blurry pictures of them through the water. There’s also Bruce, Paul and Eric, an old group of friends who every year, travel 1,500 km in an old campervan that Bruce made, pulled by a 1949 Chevy pickup truck just to go see an old car show and get away from their wives for a week in South Queensland.
Travels are adventures. Most are good, some are bad and a few are... Meh.. I think Shepparton gets filed in the “Meh” pile.
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
Monday, March 15, 2010
Bush Mechanic
Lire l'original en Français
When you travel through the Australian Bush, you must be prepared to improvise. Access to services or basic materials is rather constrained. Sure, there are villages every 100 km (maximum distance a horse-drawn buggy used to cover in a day), but most of the time, it’s only one street with 2 or 3 dilapidated houses. If you’re lucky, you’ll also find a trash can. But just one.
Having travelled through almost the entire East coast of Australia, it was about time to give Shocker an oil change. When asking small local garages, it turned out to be around $ 120 for such a job. $ 120 for a 40 minutes lube job. And we’re substantially talking about unscrewing a bolt and a filter and WAITING 40 minutes… So I took this affront as a challenge. It’s not because we’re in the Bush that we can’t be resourceful.
A few years ago, on local television, there was a show called « Bush Mechanics ». It followed Aboriginal mechanics’ ups and downs in the most isolated parts of the continent. More often than not, when they needed to work on the underside of the car, they would call 10 of their neighbours and basically flip the car sideways. Once done with the repair, they flipped the car back to its original position and hoped it would start again. A little extreme, but it gives you ideas…
So we decided to find the necessary tools to do the oil change ourselves. Even if each of these tools were 100 km apart, the spanner, the gizmo to unscrew the filter and the oil pan were all justifiable buys in a pattern of travelling, since they don’t take too much space in the car. However, the ramps to lift the car front were not. And since the spanner I finally was able to put my hands on was almost 2 feet long, I really needed a way to jack the car so I could work under.
Everybody gave us suggestions. Park the car on top of a creek, one wheel on each side. Maybe, but I didn’t feel like working lying down in water. Dig a big hole and park the car over it. Good too, but a shovel takes as much space as a set of ramps. It’s also quite astonishing to realize how difficult it is in such a flat country to find natural holes. The winning course of action was a lucky one.
When we arrived in Dululu, we parked the car for the night in a rest area hidden from the road and intrusive eyes (In Queensland, it’s illegal to change car oil in nature). We found the perfect natural ramp. Two huge flat pyramid shaped rocks. Just what we needed to jack the car and give me necessary leeway to operate my tools. 40 minutes later, it was all done. We even found an old Polish guy in Dululu, who was more than happy to salvage our waste oil. Another Bush story ending well. And for once, we didn’t have to flip the car over.
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
When you travel through the Australian Bush, you must be prepared to improvise. Access to services or basic materials is rather constrained. Sure, there are villages every 100 km (maximum distance a horse-drawn buggy used to cover in a day), but most of the time, it’s only one street with 2 or 3 dilapidated houses. If you’re lucky, you’ll also find a trash can. But just one.
Having travelled through almost the entire East coast of Australia, it was about time to give Shocker an oil change. When asking small local garages, it turned out to be around $ 120 for such a job. $ 120 for a 40 minutes lube job. And we’re substantially talking about unscrewing a bolt and a filter and WAITING 40 minutes… So I took this affront as a challenge. It’s not because we’re in the Bush that we can’t be resourceful.
A few years ago, on local television, there was a show called « Bush Mechanics ». It followed Aboriginal mechanics’ ups and downs in the most isolated parts of the continent. More often than not, when they needed to work on the underside of the car, they would call 10 of their neighbours and basically flip the car sideways. Once done with the repair, they flipped the car back to its original position and hoped it would start again. A little extreme, but it gives you ideas…
So we decided to find the necessary tools to do the oil change ourselves. Even if each of these tools were 100 km apart, the spanner, the gizmo to unscrew the filter and the oil pan were all justifiable buys in a pattern of travelling, since they don’t take too much space in the car. However, the ramps to lift the car front were not. And since the spanner I finally was able to put my hands on was almost 2 feet long, I really needed a way to jack the car so I could work under.
Everybody gave us suggestions. Park the car on top of a creek, one wheel on each side. Maybe, but I didn’t feel like working lying down in water. Dig a big hole and park the car over it. Good too, but a shovel takes as much space as a set of ramps. It’s also quite astonishing to realize how difficult it is in such a flat country to find natural holes. The winning course of action was a lucky one.
When we arrived in Dululu, we parked the car for the night in a rest area hidden from the road and intrusive eyes (In Queensland, it’s illegal to change car oil in nature). We found the perfect natural ramp. Two huge flat pyramid shaped rocks. Just what we needed to jack the car and give me necessary leeway to operate my tools. 40 minutes later, it was all done. We even found an old Polish guy in Dululu, who was more than happy to salvage our waste oil. Another Bush story ending well. And for once, we didn’t have to flip the car over.
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
Monday, March 8, 2010
Koalas sleep a LOT
Lire la traduction Française
Magnetic Island is so-called because way back then, when Captain Cook passed the 10 km wide little speck of land, his compass started to play funny games. He thought at once that the isle itself possessed some strange and magical magnetic fields and so named it. As it happens, his compass must have been a cheap one, because nowhere on the island can you find strange vortexes of magnetism… Oh well…
So we spent an entire week on this small rock. They have very few things there, only one market with overpriced food, only one gas station with overpriced petrol, only one pub with overpriced beer (that tastes pretty bad). One thing they do have though is a LOT of wildlife, enough that they built an animal sanctuary where I worked at for 7 days.
They call it a sanctuary, but it’s more like a small petting zoo for the Australian fauna. You get to take a picture of you holding a koala, a picture of you holding a salt water crocodile, a picture of you holding a wombat… You get the idea. When we talked to the ranger before coming to the island, he had hyped it up to being a really huge park where we could help save injured animals and really make a difference with the local wildlife. As it turns out, I was just cleaning up Koala poop and trying not to get slapped in the face by a young crocodile’s tail while it was trashing around, really not happy with being picked up and passed around for the 3rd time that day, knowing that some dumb kid will, without fail, poke it in the eye.
There was one thing that stood out from that week though. The aboriginals have this belief that everybody has a Dreaming, a spiritual animal with which they have an unusual connection. It that is true, then surely, my dreaming is the cockatoo. There were two different ones at the sanctuary. Shadow, a red-tailed black cockatoo and Captain, a sulfur-crested white cockatoo. Shadow systematically bites everyone who tries to touch him. Captain, will get pet by women, but will not let any males, young or old get close to him. The head ranger even tried to wear a wig one day and see if he could fool him. No such luck.
As it happens, to everyone’s surprise, I could, without hesitation, pet both these birds. None of the rangers had seen anything like it before. I just came up to them and got to stroke their feathers and even massage them a bit. Weird.
So here are quick facts I’ve learn during my week there:
-Cockatoos can live up to 80 years.
-Male salt water crocodiles can get as big as 6 meters and eat people. They can go in fresh water as well. They can also be found 2 000 km out into the ocean.
-Blue-tongued lizards can drop off their tails when in danger. It takes a full year to grow a new one and they can’t drop that new one until it’s fully grown.
-Koalas are not born with the bacteria that enables them to eat the toxin in eucalyptus leaves, their only source of food. They have to eat koala poop for the first 2 months of their lives to gain it.
-Baby wombats are REALLY cute
-Snakes don’t have any ears. Screaming like a little girl won’t make them go away. So stop it.
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
Magnetic Island is so-called because way back then, when Captain Cook passed the 10 km wide little speck of land, his compass started to play funny games. He thought at once that the isle itself possessed some strange and magical magnetic fields and so named it. As it happens, his compass must have been a cheap one, because nowhere on the island can you find strange vortexes of magnetism… Oh well…
So we spent an entire week on this small rock. They have very few things there, only one market with overpriced food, only one gas station with overpriced petrol, only one pub with overpriced beer (that tastes pretty bad). One thing they do have though is a LOT of wildlife, enough that they built an animal sanctuary where I worked at for 7 days.
They call it a sanctuary, but it’s more like a small petting zoo for the Australian fauna. You get to take a picture of you holding a koala, a picture of you holding a salt water crocodile, a picture of you holding a wombat… You get the idea. When we talked to the ranger before coming to the island, he had hyped it up to being a really huge park where we could help save injured animals and really make a difference with the local wildlife. As it turns out, I was just cleaning up Koala poop and trying not to get slapped in the face by a young crocodile’s tail while it was trashing around, really not happy with being picked up and passed around for the 3rd time that day, knowing that some dumb kid will, without fail, poke it in the eye.
There was one thing that stood out from that week though. The aboriginals have this belief that everybody has a Dreaming, a spiritual animal with which they have an unusual connection. It that is true, then surely, my dreaming is the cockatoo. There were two different ones at the sanctuary. Shadow, a red-tailed black cockatoo and Captain, a sulfur-crested white cockatoo. Shadow systematically bites everyone who tries to touch him. Captain, will get pet by women, but will not let any males, young or old get close to him. The head ranger even tried to wear a wig one day and see if he could fool him. No such luck.
As it happens, to everyone’s surprise, I could, without hesitation, pet both these birds. None of the rangers had seen anything like it before. I just came up to them and got to stroke their feathers and even massage them a bit. Weird.
So here are quick facts I’ve learn during my week there:
-Cockatoos can live up to 80 years.
-Male salt water crocodiles can get as big as 6 meters and eat people. They can go in fresh water as well. They can also be found 2 000 km out into the ocean.
-Blue-tongued lizards can drop off their tails when in danger. It takes a full year to grow a new one and they can’t drop that new one until it’s fully grown.
-Koalas are not born with the bacteria that enables them to eat the toxin in eucalyptus leaves, their only source of food. They have to eat koala poop for the first 2 months of their lives to gain it.
-Baby wombats are REALLY cute
-Snakes don’t have any ears. Screaming like a little girl won’t make them go away. So stop it.
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Bowenwood
Lire l’original en Français
A few weeks before we left, wanting to surround ourselves with the austral culture, we went to the public library to get panoply of Australian works. Books about Aboriginal culture, instrumental album of the sounds of didgeridoo, children’s tales featuring an awkward possum and of course, the classic Crocodile Dundee, just to name a few. All of them relevant. However, the movie, “Australia”, starring Wolverine and the ever lovely Nicole Kidman (rrrrwoinw!) stuck out on top for its stunning images and mesmerizing story (and for its complete absence of reference to Vegemite).
Imagine our astonishment when, on our way up North, we encountered the village of Bowen, main shooting location of the feature film “Australia”, eighteen months ago. According to the many leaflets from the Bowen Tourist Information Center (home of the Giant Mango), what was before a quaint small village became over night, an Australian movie metropolis for six weeks during winter of 2008, after the arrival of mega American movie stars. So much so that the municipal council decided to print “BOWENWOOD” in giant letters on the village water reservoir, to ensure Bowen with the title of Movie Mecca and to convince other mega productions to come and shoot in the glorious city where everything is possible.
Eighteen months later, Stephanie and I walk through the streets under pouring rain, looking in vain for a youth hostel to accommodate us. One would believe who’s preventing us from finding a dry bed for the night are all these Hollywood stars occupying every single room in town, but unfortunately it’s not the case. Rather, a series of planks barricading windows and “Closed” signs are the culprits for our prolonged stay in the rain.
You see, Bowen didn’t get the return on investment it expected form the “Australia” adventure. Of course, each star took every possible promo picture, made the Front page of local papers when they choose to patron a restaurant instead of another, posing with the owner, holding a steak in hand, but once the cameras stopped rolling, everything left in Bowen was a series of billboards at the marina and lots of red sand Hollywood forgot to pick up afterwards, still littering the place almost two years later.
Having finally found a hostel to accommodate us (which seems to have opened its doors only for us that night), we slept in a room smelling of humidity. On a small 15-inch TV, we are watching Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood in great shape even though he is 79 years-old) and Strictly Ballroom because, after all, we have to promote Australian cinema. During 4 hours, we are transported somewhere else. Movies have the ability to bring the spectator to a completely different reality. It’s easy to see how Bowen’s residents could be fooled to believe their story too could have a happy ending. But it only happens in Bowenwood. I mean, Hollywood…
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
A few weeks before we left, wanting to surround ourselves with the austral culture, we went to the public library to get panoply of Australian works. Books about Aboriginal culture, instrumental album of the sounds of didgeridoo, children’s tales featuring an awkward possum and of course, the classic Crocodile Dundee, just to name a few. All of them relevant. However, the movie, “Australia”, starring Wolverine and the ever lovely Nicole Kidman (rrrrwoinw!) stuck out on top for its stunning images and mesmerizing story (and for its complete absence of reference to Vegemite).
Imagine our astonishment when, on our way up North, we encountered the village of Bowen, main shooting location of the feature film “Australia”, eighteen months ago. According to the many leaflets from the Bowen Tourist Information Center (home of the Giant Mango), what was before a quaint small village became over night, an Australian movie metropolis for six weeks during winter of 2008, after the arrival of mega American movie stars. So much so that the municipal council decided to print “BOWENWOOD” in giant letters on the village water reservoir, to ensure Bowen with the title of Movie Mecca and to convince other mega productions to come and shoot in the glorious city where everything is possible.
Eighteen months later, Stephanie and I walk through the streets under pouring rain, looking in vain for a youth hostel to accommodate us. One would believe who’s preventing us from finding a dry bed for the night are all these Hollywood stars occupying every single room in town, but unfortunately it’s not the case. Rather, a series of planks barricading windows and “Closed” signs are the culprits for our prolonged stay in the rain.
You see, Bowen didn’t get the return on investment it expected form the “Australia” adventure. Of course, each star took every possible promo picture, made the Front page of local papers when they choose to patron a restaurant instead of another, posing with the owner, holding a steak in hand, but once the cameras stopped rolling, everything left in Bowen was a series of billboards at the marina and lots of red sand Hollywood forgot to pick up afterwards, still littering the place almost two years later.
Having finally found a hostel to accommodate us (which seems to have opened its doors only for us that night), we slept in a room smelling of humidity. On a small 15-inch TV, we are watching Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood in great shape even though he is 79 years-old) and Strictly Ballroom because, after all, we have to promote Australian cinema. During 4 hours, we are transported somewhere else. Movies have the ability to bring the spectator to a completely different reality. It’s easy to see how Bowen’s residents could be fooled to believe their story too could have a happy ending. But it only happens in Bowenwood. I mean, Hollywood…
See HER view
See His and Hers Pictures
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