kimbofo

The Heathrow injection

Ten years ago, as I was plotting and planning my backpacking adventure to the UK, several people warned me about the "Heathrow injection". This is a euphemism for getting fat based on a lifestyle of British beer and stodgy foods. (Ben Groundwater, writing on The Age travel blog, calls it the "Heathrow spread" and writes about the subject as if he is the first to ever discover it. I'm pleased to see some people have put him right in the comments.)

Given I was a little on the chubby side at the time, I didn't think I had much to worry about: I couldn't possibly get any fatter.

And I didn't.

At least for the next year or so.

In fact, I lost more than a stone over the first three months of my stay, mainly because I was hauling around a heavy backpack, up and down the country, to London and Scotland and back again. And because I was watching my pennies, I wasn't buying as much food as I might have liked.

It was only when I settled down in London, got myself a proper job and acquired a "man friend", that the weight piled on again. But for almost 18 months I was a rather slim size 10.

A steady diet of nightly pints -- mainly Guinness but I do have a penchant for English ale too -- meant my weight rose gradually to my current (healthy) size 14. Over the past eight or so years, it's fluctuated slightly, tipping size 16 at times, dipping down to size 12 at others. But on the whole I'm probably the same size I was when I left Australia all those years ago. (I figure this is my "natural" weight,  because even when I do vast amounts of cycling my size stays the same although my muscles become very toned and I lose a little bit of flab from around my waist.)

Do I believe in the Heathrow injection? I'm not sure. I don't think the British diet is any less healthy than an Australian one. But the cold, wet weather does make it very conducive to sitting in pubs drinking fattening beer -- and even when it's sunny there's nothing finer than an English beer garden! But I could probably say the same about Oz, couldn't I?

Excavation of Australian war grave

Last year archaeologists discovered a suspected mass grave of British and Australian soldiers killed in World War I. Now, almost a year on, they have located human remains in the grave which is believed to hold 400 bodies from the Battle of Fromelles.

From a news story on the BBC news website:

For Australia, Fromelles saw one of the single greatest losses of life in the whole of the war.

In total, 5,000 Australians were killed, injured or captured, with around 2,000 lives lost in the first 27 hours of fighting.

Alongside them, some 1,500 British soldiers were also killed.

A young Adolf Hitler, then a 27-year-old corporal in the Bavarian reserve infantry, is believed to have been involved in the operation.

And from another BBC news story:

[The battle] has been described as the "worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history".

To find out more, I suggest you watch this video.

Sorry

Yesterday Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a profound, historic and incredibly moving speech in Parliament.

The above clip is just a snapshot of his 28-minute apology to the Stolen Generation, those indigenous Australians taken away from their families as a result of Government policy. I've just watched the whole speech via The Age website and I've now got one of those sore, constricted throats you get when you try not to sob. It certainly made for powerful and rousing viewing.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to watch this speech live. I swear I can feel the optimistic upbeat mood of the nation all the way from the other side of the world. How refreshing to have a gutsy, honourable and genuinely human prime minister in charge of my homeland. It's almost enough to make me want to return to her shores.

• Full text of Kevin Rudd's speech

And from the blogs:

• Sarsaparilla
• Biglittlesister
• Pomgirl
• Between Bourke and Elizabeth
• Trevor Cook
  

After 11-and-a-half years Australia gets a new prime minister

Despite the fact I am no longer entitled to vote in Australian elections (because I have lived outside the country for more than three years), I'm chuffed to hear that Prime Minister John Howard has been ousted. Labour leader Ken Rudd won a landslide victory -- or a Ruddslide as some have dubbed it -- with a national swing of 5.7 per cent. Crack open the champagne bottles!

World Cup cricket final: Australia 281-4 bt Sri Lanka 215-8 by 53 runs

The Australian cricket team won the World Cup final last night -- twice. Or at least that's what it looked like when we watched it on the big screen in the pub without any sound. No commentary meant we had to try and guess what was going on -- and we couldn't. I thought maybe it was all the Guinness we'd consumed, because nothing seemed to make sense.

Apparently, with three overs left to go the match was called off because of bad light. The Sky Sports coverage we were watching showed the Australian team running around, patting each other on the back and celebrating their win -- their third World Cup final victory in a row. But then there were other scenes showing discussions between officials and it became obvious that things weren't quite as straightforward as they looked -- although we had no idea of the farce being played out before our eyes.

We now know that the officials were deciding that the remaining three overs had to be played before a winner could be declared even if that meant the balls had to be delivered in the dark! So the teams trotted back onto the field and when the Sri Lankan batsmen failed to make the required 70-odd runs to secure the match, the Australians were named the winners -- again.

The ironic thing is that after watching this farce on screen we were about to endure a farce of our own. I was keen to see the players being presented with their medals -- and that great moment when they got to lift the cup -- so I was very happy when the pub staff finally turned on the sound, although this meant we had to sit through an endless succession of dull and boring speeches. Then, just moments before the Australians were due to take the stage -- the moment I'd been waiting for all night having sustained myself with delicious Thai food and copious amounts of Guinness (it's a hard life) -- the sound was abruptly turned off and we were ushered out the door because the pub had closed!

The Aussies might have won the final two times last night, but I didn't even get to see them accept their prize! Thank god for You Tube.

Why I don't like Aussie backpackers

At last, someone's come out and said the unspeakable.

Australian backpackers are a pain in the arse.

This might sound grand coming from someone who landed on these foreign shores wearing a backpack and talking as strine as they come. ("You have such a country accent," a fellow Aussie backpacker once told me. "Did you grow up on a farm?" I should have made something up and told her I was raised by cows...)

But even during those first halting steps almost nine years ago when I tottered around London, appalled at the lack of decent coffee and bad customer service but excited by all the landmarks I recognised (Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and the Mall) and those amazing accents that made everyone sound posh and intelligent, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I didn't want to be lumbered with the label of "yet-another-bloody-backpacker-from-Australia". I made a point of avoiding Australian pubs, conscious of the fact I'd come half way round the world for a reason: if I wanted to drink in an Aussie pub I could have saved myself the cost of an expensive airfare and 24-hours travelling time.

Australia wins the Ashes 5-0

T thinks Australia should have played the last Test with their shoelaces tied together.

I think they should have only been allowed to use one arm.

Either way, they still would have won.

Marvellous Melbourne

Place: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Date: March 30, 2006.
Camera: Sony Cybershot DSC-W1.

I love this city, and she is so bewitching at night, with the lights from the skyscrapers and the bridges dancing on the surface of the Yarra River like coloured jewels.

But it wasn't always like this.

When I lived here she was like a gawky teenager trying to work out what to do when she grew up. Now she's a graceful, glittering and confident young woman going from strength to strength.

Every time I go back it's never long enough, but it's always wonderful to note the positive changes in her demeanour, to discover new aspects to her personality and to fall in love all over again.

What do they say? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. For me and Melbourne it was never a more apt saying.

Click to see more photographs in my Melbourne gallery.

Looking up

Place: Strahan, Tasmania.
Date: December 13, 2004.
Camera: Sony Cybershot DSC-W1.

Too many people walk around with their eyes to the ground. Me? I like to look upwards.  You never know what truly amazing sights you might see. 

A stroll through Strahan's People's Park

Place: Strahan, Tasmania.
Date: December 13, 2004.
Camera: Sony Cybershot DSC-W1.

Two years ago today we were mid-way through a self-drive tour of Tasmania. We spent two nights at Strahan, a remote town on the rugged -- and very beautiful -- west coast.

Here, on the shores of Macquarie Harbour -- a vast body of navy blue water that shimmered under the cloud-obscured sun -- it felt like we were perched on the edge of the earth: everything seemed so very isolated from the rest of the modern world.