We also snorkelled at Hanauma Bay and wandered around downtown Honolulu. We had a great time, but we were counting the days until we were back home!

Hawaii pictures are posted here.

To start with the obvious, the Red Centre is indeed red. The big famous rock, the desert dirt, the sand dunes, and even the kangaroos are all red.

But there's also more green than I thought there would be. When you're driving through the outback, you're surrounded by flat plains covered in different kinds of desert scrub and trees. The sky is huge and bright blue, and you can even spot the odd camel! (They were brought to Australia as work animals in the 19th century).

After Alice, we headed out to visit the main attraction in the area: Uluru (Aboriginal name) or Ayer's Rock. Australians often describe Uluru as "iconic", and no matter where you are in Australia you do end up seeing a lot of pictures of it. But no matter how many pictures you've seen, it's still an absolutely incredible sight. It helps to drive for five hours through flat terrain to get there, so that you can appreciate how crazy it is for an enormous rock to be sitting there in the middle of nowhere. It's a very sacred site for the Anangu (the local Aboriginals), and when you're there you can see why. We did all of the usual Uluru touristy things: walk around the base (4 hours!), watch the sunrise and sunset, and visit the Cultural Centre explaining its significance to the Aboriginal people and how they are administering the site jointly with Parks Australia. The one thing we didn't do was climb to the top of Uluru; the Aboriginal traditional owners ask visitors to respect the sacredness of Uluru by not climbing.

We also visited another crazy rock formation in the same park, called Kata Tjuta or the Olgas. If it weren't so near to Uluru, this site would probably be equally famous. It's just as tall and red as Uluru, but it's made up of 36 "domes" instead of just one big rock. We went on an incredible four hour hike through the area - not only are the rocks amazing, but there are lots of beautiful plants and birds there as well.

When you're visiting the Uluru-Kata Tjuta park, you pretty much have to stay at the Ayer's Rock Resort, the only sizeable accomodation option for hundreds of kilometres around. Since it has to cater to all tourists' needs, it has everything from a couple 5-star hotels, to a motel, a hostel, and a campground (where we stayed). The restaurants are equally diverse; we mostly cooked our own food at the campsite, but we did visit the "Outback Pioneer Barbeque." Here tourists can barbeque their own food Aussie-style. Of course we had to try the Outback Combo: emu, kangaroo, and crocodile. It's a good thing it was fun because the food tasted terrible! I think croc is never good, but our bad barbequing was probably responsible for the taste of the emu and kangaroo. It shows how many tourists visit the area that the Resort has heaps of shops, including Aboriginal art shops, souvenir shops, a grocery store, a post office, and a bank.

On our way back to Alice, we stopped in at Simpson's Gap. As Lonely Planet pointed out, it's pretty amazing for a big chasm to be carved out by a river that's nearly always dry. We also saw more rock wallabies hopping up and down the sides of the canyon, and even saw some of them wrestling - pretty cute! If you want to hear Anatole rant and rave at great length, ask him about people who pass the time visiting a beautiful spot full of endangered species by screaming and yelling at each other.

Overall, it was one of our best trips and we are definitely hoping to go back to the outback next time we're in Australia!

Pictures of our outback trip are here: Red Centre, Uluru (Ayer's Rock), and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas).

For my birthday, Miriam surprised me with a trip to a lovely B&B in the Blue Mountains, a national park and world heritage area just two hours from Sydney -- by commuter train! We had officially given up on squeezing the Blue Mountains into our trip because of all the packing we had to do, but Miriam had been secretly plotting and managed to twist the proverbial rubber arm of yours truly to cut the packing short.

The Blue Mountains get their name from the oily blue mist given off by the forests of eucalyptus that carpet their slopes. And they were pretty blue -- very cool.

Photo Credit: Guest Photographer

So without further ado, here's what's new at koalatree:

• Mossman Gorge [photos], Daintree Rainforest, Queensland: After meeting up with Miriam's parents and exploring the Great Barrier Reef, we all spent a few days in and around Queensland rainforests. Although we didn't have Uncle Brian with us, Mossman Gorge was still pretty great.

• Canberra [photos], Australian Capital Territory (ACT): We lived in Canberra for about two months. You'll be able to tell from the small number of photos that (a) we were very busy and did a lot of work while in Canberra and (b) when we weren't that busy, we fled to Sydney as quickly as possible. Canberra's not quite as bad as it's reputation, but ... maybe it was the fact that the cafes all closed at, like, 3pm; maybe it was the fact that the transit system made OC Transpo look like the Paris Metro; or maybe it was that sinking feeling that would set in around four or five in the afternoon every Saturday when you were hit with the full meaning of this:

  Canberra rates as the safest city in Australia, with about one person murdered each year per 300,000 inhabitants. Some may say that person is the lucky one.
  

  -- Sydney Morning Herald (4/3/97)

  No matter what the case, Canberra is no Sydney or Melbourne. It is no Washington D.C., either, despite the original city planner's best efforts. What can you do?! It does have some nice museums, though, and there are kangaroos nearby ...

• Namadgi National Park [photos]: This is a national park just south of Canberra. We visited with Miriam's parents. Namadgi had the highest "k/km²" (kangaroos per square kilometre) of any place we visited. Hence "the big lens" and the "crouching and sneaking" about.

Thanks to Miriam's dad for the photos of me stalking - with only the best intentions, of course - kangaroos.

On a happier note, I learned a new "ee" word: furphy = a false report or rumour. I read it in the Melbourne paper The Age, as in, "In politics there are the real reasons parties win elections, and there are furphies." Read about John Furphy and the origins of the word here.

Well, the good news is that with an Australian federal election coming up in a couple of days, the pressure has been on to save Tassie's forests.

Here's hoping that when we next visit Australia, the Styx Valley forest will still be there...

Without further ado, the fake abbreviation is:

FOSSIE'S!

See the thing is, no one in Australia actually drinks Foster's, so I guess that's why they haven't bothered shortening the word. Now VB, on the other hand, is another matter entirely ...

WARNING: DON'T READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING GOING ON UNCLE BRIAN'S TOUR. IT COULD SPOIL SOME SURPRISES. JUST GO. TRUST ME. (Have I filled my bus load yet? :)

Uncle Brian's tour was advertised as "Fun, Falls, and Forests". It's pretty easy to explain what he meant by "falls and forests". Uncle Brian and Gus drove us around to five different beautiful spots. There were tropical rainforests, volcanic lakes, spectacular waterfalls, and a natural waterslide down some slippery rocks. At the first four sites we went swimming, and at the fifth site we spotted the elusive platypus swimming in a river.

Uncle Brian and Gus did an excellent job showing us around some beautiful natural spots. But what they really did spectacularly well was to show us a very very good time (that's the "fun" bit of the tour). It's not so easy to entertain a busload of 22 people of different ages from different countries for 13 hours, but Uncle Brian and Gus had it down pat.

Here are some examples of fun we had:

1. As we drove around Queensland, we waved to every single person that we passed on the streets. They all waved back. They'd seen Uncle Brian and friends before, five days a week for 12 years. As we passed through one town, an elderly woman ws waiting for us on her lawn. She pulled out 3 enormous stuffed caterpillars (bigger than her!) and a long ribbon on a stick to wave at us.

2. Uncle Brian had puzzles and chocolate for us to help pass the time on the longer stretches of driving. He also organized a few "get to know you" games.

3. At beautiful Milla Milla falls, Uncle Brian showed us how to re-enact the Timotei Shampoo commercial that was filmed there. Does this picture make you want to buy shampoo?

4. "Gus FM", our lovely bus's tunes, just made us want to dance. In unison. Like, to "YMCA", say.

By the end of our day, everyone was in an extremely good mood (or driving on the "bright side of the road", as Gus would say). We also felt like we had just made 22 new friends. Up at the front of Gus, Uncle Brian kept his doll Elmo (who he would wave out the window at other buses that passed by). Elmo was given to Uncle Brian by a six-year old girl who, at the end of the tour, told him that it was Elmo's best day of his life. She wanted Elmo to have that much fun every day, so she left him with Uncle Brian. After 13 hours with Uncle Brian and Gus, we could see why.

More photos here.

Thanks Uncle Brian and Gus for a fantastic day! Whooshka!

• Food and shopping:  Australians eat a lot of meat and a lot of pies. Not to go on and on about the pies, but our microwave had one of those auto-program buttons for pies. When you pressed it, the display would ask "How many pies?". This probably caused us more amusement than it should have.

  Anyway, we found tofu was harder to come by (and there was less selection), and good veggie burgers could generally only be had from specialty shops. The beet is ubiquitous in Australia, particularly on sandwiches. If you want veggies on your sandwich, you ask for "salads," which typically includes the aforementioned beets! You can't buy frozen juice from concentrate anywhere we went, and if you want milk, get ready to learn a whole new nomenclature (as you have to do if moving between Canada and the U.S.). "Skinny milk" -- skim milk -- is the hardest to come by.

  Speaking of nomenclature, you'll have to bring a cheat sheet with you if you want to order beer in an Australian pub. Most of the States have different names for the sizes, as well as some different sizes. Some of the names I remember are "jug", "schooner", "middie", "pot", and I think "enormous vat" (o.k., maybe not the last one.) Thankfully Starbucks still has the same three clearly-named sizes for their drinks: tall, venti, and "our marketers were on crack when they named our drink sizes."

  Oh, and don't go looking for cheddar cheese. Ask for "tasty cheese" instead. For a sharper version, get "extra tasty" -- and don't stop to ask why anybody would buy plain old tasty cheese when extra tasty is on the market!

  Finally, you'll want to ask for "tomato sauce" -- not ketchup -- to go with your "chips" (not french fries). If you want the kind of chips that come in a bag, you're looking for "crisps."

• Birds:  I'm not normally much of a bird-watcher, but the birds in Australia are quite something. This was especially true in Canberra, where cockatoos and rosellas (small, colourful parrot-like birds) frequented our backyard. I was also quite fond of the magpies and crows, which were plentiful in Melbourne as well. I find that early morning experiences can be quite vivid in forming impressions about a place, and I often awoke to the sound of the magpies warbling. In the evening, the crows would close out the day with their sorrowful sqwaks, which I am happy to imitate -- quite accurately, if I do say so myself -- on demand.

• Brands:  No Crest toothpaste and no Tide detergent. What's this world coming to? Proctor and Gamble doesn't have the presence in Australia that it has in North America, Europe, and elsewhere, it would seem, so why not give Macleans toothpaste and Ocean Surf detergent a try? Missing your Oreo cookies? Try Arnott's Tim Tams instead (the Aussie cookie favourite), or sample a wide selection of breakfast and snack foods from Uncle Tobys [sic?]. If you're looking for Burger King, the logo and food will be familiar but the name -- "Hungry Jack's" -- won't be. Better to go for the Aussie alternative though -- home BBQs are extremely popular.

• T.V.:  Australia has Neighbours, a U.K.-style soap opera that runs in the early evening. The closest Canadian parallel might be Degrassi Junior High, except Neighbours is more of an all-ages show (in terms of both content and audience). Miriam fell in love with Neighbours and is very sad not to be able to watch it in Canada.

  Meanwhile, don't get me started on the Australian versions of popular U.S. shows like American Idol and Big Brother. Australian Idol made me shed tears for the future of the Australian recording industry, and Australian Big Brother may be the most agonizing half hour of television in the world. Worse yet, Big Brother seemed to air constantly, under different banners like "Big Brother: Uncut", "Big Brother: Behind the Camera", "Big Brother: Eviction", and "Big Brother: Wild Dingos Take Pity on Australia and Devour the Cast and Crew." The producers should have had, in theory, hours and hours of tape with which to create a half an hour of good material each day, yet the final result had all the intrigue of watching a pile of lint mature.

  And then there's Australian television advertising, which is completely incomprehensible (our Canberra housemate Dom could be heard uttering "this is such shit" at least once a night in response to a baffling ad.) Couple the advertising with some bizarre business names -- who names an airline after a flightless bird () or their Internet ISP after an extinct bird (Dodo Internet)? -- and you're in for some good laughs.

• Didjeridoo:  No self-respecting musician in Australia appears without a didjeridoo -- mostly, it would seem, to satisfy the tourists. The possible exception to this is the Opera House in Sydney, where we did not see a single didjeridoo. Speaking of the Opera House, there is a funny joke about it that goes like this: Australia has the best opera house in the world -- the outside is in Sydney and the inside is in Melbourne. Apparently they skimped a little bit when it came to the acoustics at the visually stunning Sydney Opera House, while Melbourne's is allegedly an aural but not visual treat.

• Electricity:  Power sockets have on-off switches in Australia, as well as in New Zealand and Fiji. The downside was that I occasionally forgot to turn on the power for whatever I had plugged in. On the plus side, you could leave devices that you would normally unplug plugged in, simply flipping the switch off to prevent over-heating, standby electricity drawing, or whatever else it is you were worried about.

• Road Safety:  Australian governments are really big on road safety, it would seem. What Canadian governments have done with cigarette pack warnings, the Australian Federal and State governments have done with highway road safety billboards. Graphic ads are accompanied by vigilant speed limit enforcement (including cameras) and side-of-highway powernap areas. The thing that stuck most in my mind was the campaign with the grim but compelling tagline "You bloody idiot." This would accompany a changing first line (e.g. "Just a little bit over?" with reference to the speed limit) and a correspondingly graphic accident depiction. Without being patronizing in a way that it would be tempting to ignore, the campaign jarringly but successfully picked apart some of the ways that dangerous driving practices are often downplayed.

• One Flush or Two?:  Forget clockwise or counterclockwise, the toilets flush completely differently in Australia (and Fiji and New Zealand)! There are two buttons, one for a half or mini flush and one for a full or regular flush.

• Real estate:  The lack of a sublet culture really made it difficult for us to find a place in Melbourne and Canberra. The term "sublet" is pretty rarely used, and the practice itself is even rarer, with most landlords demanding a 6- or 12-month minimum contract, with no subletting. Inspections are also part of the bargain, with landlords conducting an official inspection about one month after you start living somewhere, to make sure you're not wrecking the joint from the get-go.

  Also, most real estate is auctioned off. We discovered this in large part because the place we stayed at in Melbourne went up for sale while we lived there. There's a period of time during which people can go and look at the place, and then there's an auction -- typically a live auction, with oral bidding, held at or right outside the property. At least that's how it was on Neighbours. :)

• Hemisphereferentialism:  So I made up the word, but Australia is really into its hemisphere. References to Australian events and objects in a hemispheric context are widespread, particularly since they often confer supremacy on Australia. The Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne is the "largest market in the Southern Hemisphere." Melbourne's St. Kilda Festival is the "largest single-day festival in the Southern Hemisphere." And so on.

  While I'm on the subject of the Southern Hemisphere, and on a more serious note, Australia's regional context is of course totally different from that of any other place I've ever lived, including nearby-ish Japan. Australia and New Zealand of course have a tight relationship that in many ways resembles that between the U.S. and Canada, but Australia also has close ties to a number of neighbours that are very different from it, from larger countries like Indonesia and the Philipines to small Pacific island nations like Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Micronesia, and New Caledonia. These ties range from government relations (on issues ranging from security to climate change) to student exchanges (many young Australians travelling outside their country for the first time visit a Pacific destination, where the traditional Canadian student pilgrimage is to Europe). It wasn't always like this, of course, as Australia was famous at one point for being more British than Britain itself. And you can't ignore the impacts of the current government's increasing ties with the U.S. (especially vis-a-vis security and trade). Still, Australia is clearly forging deeper bonds in its region.

• The Environment:  While this blog might have you convinced otherwise, we actually spent the majority of our time in Australia working. We didn't want to bore you with it in this medium, but feel free to ask us about it if you're curious! The Australian environmental scene is pretty different from the Canadian one. Whether it's the huge focus on water issues on account of the dryness of the continent; the difference between the Australian and U.S. non-Kyoto-ratifying positions; the incredible havoc wreaked on the landscape by invasive species (and the further invasive species used in a failed attempt to control them); or the strong conservation theme in much of Australia's (and New Zealand's) environmental work, we actually managed to learn a thing or two while we were here. :)

Oh, and as for the water ... it kind of drains downwards, assisted by the ever-ubiquitous force of gravity.

Actually, it's even better than that. It's fantastic. It's unbelievable. It boggles, and also does some other pretty cool things for which there are no words, the mind. It's ... reef-tacular.

It's hard to say what's better about the reef: the fish or the coral itself. Both are otherworldly, painted with a pallette of colours that would make the most experienced Photoshop user dizzy. Call me a geek, but the one thought running through my mind as it tried desperately to grasp with what it was seeing was this: no designer could come up with something this stunning. You could sit down the most talented, creative person with a blank slate and an infinite supply of pizza and ask them to come up with the most visually arresting thing they could think of, and whatever they came up with just wouldn't be able to hold a waterproof candle to the reef.

We were lucky enough to have two reef encounters out on the Agincourt Ribbon Reefs (the Great Barrier Reef is really a reef system). The Agincourt reefs are part of the "outer reef," which is closest to the mainland in the more northerly parts of Queensland (both our trips therefore left from Port Douglas, not Cairns). Our tour operator was Quicksilver, allegedly the only company that can reach the outer reef in a day trip using its fast catamarans. The first time Miriam and I went alone, and I tried my first ever scuba dive -- very cool! The second time we went with Miriam's parents who were visiting.

Some of the highlights included various types of parrotfish (which nibble audibly on the coral; see also here, here and here) and the Moorish Idol (my personal favourite fish), giant clams, and the brain and staghorn coral. We also spotted some bigger fish, including barracuda and a whitetip reef shark. And yes, we saw a "Nemo". Several, in fact. They really were sheltering in the anemone. And there's nothing like having your magical underwater experience appropriated by a terrible blockbuster movie.

Exploring the ribbon reefs was fun -- an endless series of nooks and crannies to survey and the ability to move fluidly in almost any direction. While many of the individual fish and types of coral were fascinating, the really phenomenal thing about the reef is the overall diversity and quantity of fish. When you're in a good patch of coral, you can't turn in any direction without seeing an icthyological feast for the eyes. At one point near the end of our second reef trip, Miriam and I were swimming away from the ribbon reef towards the boat when we stopped to communicate and clear our masks above water. When we went back under, we had been surrounded -- in 360 degrees -- by a massive school of tiny fish that formed a shimmering, whirling pinwheel around us.

It was a fitting end to our time at the reef, where you get dizzy just trying to figure out which way to look.

More photos from the Great Barrier Reef.
More photos from Queensland (coming soon!).

Forestry Tasmania, a government corporation with solid political backing in both of the major Australian parties, has slated a large "coupe" for logging. The coupe is Coupe SX13C, and this is the coupe that we visited.

The Wilderness Society, originally the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, made its name fighting and winning one of the first colossal environmental battles in Tasmania over the proposed damming of the Franklin River in the early 1980s. The Franklin River is now part of Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and the Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area. Now the Wilderness Society, along with Greenpeace and a host of other organizations, environmentalists, and other supporters, is trying to save Tasmanian old-growth forests that have no national park or world heritage protection: The Styx and, further north, the Tarkine rainforest.

As part of its bid to save The Styx, the Wilderness Society published a booklet that helps you self-tour the forest. It's really quite a clever little booklet. You drive to the beginning of the logging road that runs through The Styx and surrounding forest, zero your trip odometer, and then stop along the road as you reach points of interest marked in the booklet.

The self-drive tour was itself amazing, although driving down the logging road was a little bit harrowing. The self-drive isn't illegal, and the workers we encountered along the way were quite friendly, but you never knew when a huge logging truck was going to come at you around the corner! We got to see areas that had already been clear cut, as well as some of the tallest trees still standing (including what is possibly the world's tallest hardwood). We also had lunch at the Wilderness Society's idyllic picnic spot.

           

For the record, the Wilderness Society is not against logging. Neither are we, of course. But there are some serious problems with Forestry Tasmania's plans for the state's old-growth forests.

• First, most of the old growth trees logged in Tasmania are turned into woodchips and exported. You don't need old growth wood to make woodchips. And for all the forestry industry's fear-mongering about job losses if environmentalists have their way, woodchip production does not create a lot of jobs (nor very high quality jobs). The environmental groups fighting the logging plan argue that woodchip demand can be fulfilled through plantations and have employment plans for laid-off loggers, through a mix that includes tourism and higher-value forestry-related jobs.
  
  
  
• Tasmanian forest clear-cutting is a particularly brutal form of clear-cutting. After all the trees are cut down, the clear-cut area is burned to a crisp. Then a whole lot of carrots are laid out in the area. So Peter Possum and Walter Wallaby and all of their little friends come out and very gratefully eat the carrots. Then a whole lot of carrots laced with 1080 poison[*] are laid out in the area. So Peter Possum and Walter Wallaby and all of their little friends come out and very gratefully eat the carrots and die a slow and agonizing death. This is so that Peter Possum and Walter Wallaby, the greedy buggers, don't eat the new plantation trees while they're young.
  
  
• Forestry Tasmania claims that it is protecting the tallest trees from logging. Trees over 85m tall will be spared, and a "Big Tree Reserve" has been established. Unfortunately, there are very few trees over the arbitrary 85m limit. Moreover, an 85m tree standing on its own doesn't, for all its effort, make much of an ecosystem. The "Big Tree Reserve", which we visited, is laughably tiny. It might make for a nice 20-minute walk for tourists, but it won't help conserve biodiversity and it certainly won't provide for the next generation of tall trees, as Forestry Tasmania suggests.

It was very interesting to contrast Forestry Tasmania's Big Tree Reserve with the potential National Park trails, marked with ribbons by the Wilderness Society. The trails took us deep into the forest. It was moody and breathtakingly beautiful. It's very easy to see it becoming a National Park, and a popular one at that. By contrast, the Big Tree Reserve seemed somehow lifeless. Forestry Tasmania's informational plaques came across as transparent propaganda, and the reserve's major attractions (including the tallest harwood) featured -- as though to drive home the senseless madness of cutting down these trees -- gratuitously artistic wood seating spaces.

           

Near the Big Tree Reserve, a small group of environmental activists have set up a base camp. In a bit of fitting irony, the lack of protection for the park's trees also seems to mean that Forestry Tasmania can do little to evict the activists until they actually get around to using their logging permits (that or they don't want the publicity before the upcoming Australian federal election.) The activists -- some from Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society, others "freelancers" -- used to live in one of the tall trees. They had lived there for a couple of years, in remarkably tree-friendly fashion, garnering international media attention for the plight of the forests. They had also decorated another tree -- the Christmas Tree -- with beach balls and thousands of "fairly lights". When Forestry Tasmania had the gall to complain that the lights would bother the possums, the activists brought up the clear-cutting and the 1080 poison. Not surprisingly, Forestry Tasmania dropped the issue. In any case, we spoke with a couple of the activists living permanently in the tent camp in the forest. They had only recently come down from the tree, ostensibly to give the tree a break (skeptics allege they were getting sick of spending cold Tasmanian winters up in an 80m tall tree.) The activists pointed us towards their "reception" (as in a hotel reception), a station near the tree they had occupied with even more information about Coupe SX13C.

It's easy to say that such issues are never simple, and indeed you could spend an inordinate amount of time understanding all the political nuances and economic minutiae of the forestry debate. But sometimes you just have to look at something incomprehensibly beautiful and special and demand its protection. There's got to be a better way.

[*] 1080 compound is registered for very limited use in the U.S. and in Canada but is used more extensively in Australia and New Zealand (including for conservation purposes -- i.e. to eliminate invasive species.) It is controversial even where it is legal. Some references in addition to the U.S./Canada links above:

• Tasmanian Conservation Trust (1080 Watch)
• Browsing Damage Management Group ("an Agricultural Research and Advisory Committee constituted under terms of reference of the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research" -- includes Forestry Tasmania and others)
• New Zealand Department of Conservation ("the Use of 1080 for pest control" discussion document and other links)
• Fluoride Action Network Pesticide Project
• Planet Ark

We also managed to take procrastination to a wholly remarkable new level. We booked our Hawaii accommodation after the day we were due to arrive in Hawaii. On July 16, we booked a hostel for July 15. We're thinking about opening a travel agency that specializes in such time-bending travel needs.

In any case, first we have to get back home. We'll be touching down in Ottawa tomorrow (July 20). But don't worry! With a backlog of 1000s of pictures and countless stories, we'll continue to update our travel blog for the next few weeks until we catch up and bring our Down Under work and holiday adventure to an end.

What do you have to look forward to? Keep checking back for ...

• Trees worth saving in Tasmania
• Life of (Uncle) Brian
• Pretty fishies at the Great Barrier Reef
• More kangaroos than you could shake a stick at
• The Blue Mountains (they're really blue!)
• Dispatches from the Alice Springs Telegraph Station and the Red Centre
• Some general thoughts about Australia
• Our trip home via The Aloha State

As always, thanks for reading. We'll see some of you soon! :)

Oh yeah ... one more thing. I am a packing GENIUS. ;)

Pictures to follow soon (both from this trip, and catching up on the older pictures that haven't actually been posted yet.)

Soccer fans take over streets

CELEBRATIONS by Greek soccer fans were causing chaos in Sydney and Melbourne this morning after Greece defeated the Czech Republic in the semi-final of Euro 2004.

]]> Rowdy fans had blocked parts of Enmore Road in the inner Sydney suburb of Enmore, as well as a section of Norton Street in nearby Leichhardt.

Waving flags, dancing and chanting in celebration, thousands of Greek supporters poured into the streets after watching Greece defeat the Czech Republic 1-0 in extra time.

In Melbourne, hundreds of Greeks joined celebrations in Lonsdale Street, a Greek haunt in the city centre, where hundreds of fans cried, screamed, burned flares and let off fireworks.

Police blocked off Lonsdale Street between Russell and Swanston streets and fire crews were on stand-by nearby.

However, the celebrations so far have been without incident. [...]

And from another article ...

The 2500 people who poured out of the club at the end of the game had been in good spirits, she said.

They welcomed police who arrived on the scene in blue and white cars, the Greek colours, as extra patriotic support.

Meanwhile, back at the source of Australia's massive Greek population (this from Melbourne's The Age) ...

Complete strangers fell into each other's arms, car horns reverberated on the streets and fireworks crossed the Athens sky as Greece's soccer team exceeded its wildest expectations today and qualified for the final of Euro 2004.

[...]

"There's no sleep until the final is over on Sunday," Poulios said before jumping into his car to go to Athens central Omonoia square, the city's traditional place of celebration.

[...]

In a first for Greece, municipalities across the country had put up giant screens in central squares, some of them even on beaches, so people could watch the match taking place in Oporto.

The game threw all schedules into disarray. Some cinemas simply dumped Hollywood blockbusters and showed the football instead.

Ukrainian Eurovision song contest winner Ruslana, who is currently on tour in Greece, moved her show in the western city of Ioannina 90 minutes ahead of schedule in order not to overlap with the match.

And a village in southern Greece even postponed for a day its traditional festival of celebration for its patron-saint.