A Day At Sydney Zoo

It has poured every day since we got here, with the most rain that Sydney has seen for years (apparently a month's rain has fallen in a week). So, what better thing to do than go to the Zoo?

Taronga zoo overlooks Sydney harbour and on a clear day, probably the views are breathtaking. We were just grateful for a let-up of the downpour and made our way to the Koalas and Wallabies as a first stop. Koalas are not bears but marsupials - a surprise to us - and they sleep for 20 hours per day (nice life, huh?). They live on Eucalypt plants, which is very difficult to digest, hence they sleep so long, and sure enough the two Koalas they took us to have our picture taken with were well-asleep. They are beautiful little things and you just want to give them a big hug, but it seems they get no comfort from being petted and it just disturbs them.

The wallabies were, amazingly, wandering around in an open part of the zoo. We asked about this and the staff explained that they are reared by humans so are very used to being around people. We also later got a real treat - one small mother kangaroo had its baby (called a Joey) in its pouch and I filmed what looked like the Joey grooming the mother. It was absolutely mesmerising.


The Seal show was great fun - I haven't seen something like that since being a child! - and when the well-trained seals launched themselves out of the water, the kids were roaring with joy - me among them...

After being terrorised by small multi-coloured parrots at lunch (one of which was so ballsy it waltzed up and took a bite out of Nicki's carrot cake as she was trying to get a pic of it), we watched a baby elephant and its mother playing in the water. More menacingly, we also saw the crocodiles and were re-assured by the statistic that they are not as quick as the stereotype. I've always believed that they are faster than a human but they can 'only' reach speeds of 12-14km. So if you're ever pursued by a croc, run like hell and you'll be fine... Then we found the fantastic Small Penguins swimming around (if you've seen the animated movie, Surf's Up, you'll recognise these cute little things swishing around in the water).



Nicki was moved by the Gorillas and Chimpanzees, so human-like in their interactions with each other - it almost seemed two chimpanzees were kissing... My worst part of the visit was the spiders - it makes my skin crawl to see these great big things that roam around this country. It didn't help when we got back to the hotel and Nicki said "I think that was a Redback crawling underneath our window". Just great, I'd rather not know it was there. We did read that in a year, spiders eat the weight of the whole world's human population in moths, flies and other insects, so at least they are good for something...

It was a big surprise to enjoy the zoo and with the animals so free and easy with the people, it made for a completely different experience compared to our childhood memories. Plus, seeing Koalas, Kangaroos and huge spiders certainly gave it a unique feel.

Footnote - we heard a fantastic radio advert today on Aussie radio. "imagine if you started eating a meat pie and after two bites, you were full! Imagine if the same thing happened in bed too! To improve your in-bed performance and ensure you make the final hooter, call now on..." Informal is the name of the game here in Australia...

Sydney - First Impressions

It is a surreal thing to take a picture with the Sydney Opera House in the background. It's an icon I've seen hundreds of times in pictures and on TV, and I used it as a symbol of where I was headed in my farewell presentation at Canon. To be here after travelling round the world is a great feeling.

First impressions of Australia and Sydney are a bit mixed. Probably the “mixed” part came a lot from our choice of where we stayed for the first night, a backpacker hostel in the centre of the city. You paid for towels, took your sheets from reception to cover your battered pillow in your tiny room, went to the dirty showers and toilets with water (hopefully it was water...) all over the floor and slept with the airco thrumming away to keep the humid temperature under control. Not a great start...

The city itself has a nice vibe. It is more of a “real” city than we found anywhere in New Zealand, with older buildings and busy shopping areas rubbing shoulders with business and hotels, plus the whole Australian “no worries” attitude. People dress very casually despite the business going on (although seeing people in a suit is a real surprise – we are so often in traveller environments where shorts and sandals are the standard) and the conversations you have and overhear are peppered with “how ya goin, mate?”, “sweet as,”and the all-purpose “awesome”.

We headed for the harbour in The Rocks district where the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour bridge sit. It's amazing to be near these places so far away from home, the kind of things I thought I would never see. Later we headed to the park and were already introduced to some of the amazing birdlife they have here, as a few long-beaked birds wandered around the sleeping tourists and locals, pecking away at the bushes and grass. We spent a few minutes reading all about the spiders and snakes which are not uncommon in the countryside – I hope I never come face to face with a redback or huntsman spider – the one small and venomous, the other huge but mostly harmless (since watching “The Giant Spider Invasion” in my early teens, I admit to suffering from a bit of arachnophobia...)

We took the ferry across the harbour to Manly where Nicki's friends, Wayne and Nathalie live. All around the bays you see luxurious houses and plenty of yachts. I read this morning that one area close to the city is now the 9th most expensive in the world, and it's no surprise. The whole area is stunning – what a place to live.

Wayne and Nathalie had travelled for a year in a camper van and spent some months in Australia. They enjoyed it so much, they decided to come back here when they had the chance, and they live a two-minuet walk from an amazing beach with huge rollers bursting in (I loved the signs all over the beach saying “beach closed – dangerous surf”, ignored by the obsessive surfers we saw in the distance). We had barbecue on the balcony of their lovely apartment, and with a 7km journey to work plus the sun and sea, life seems good for both of them.

Equally, they have adapted to the less positive aspects of life here. They showed us a movie clip on their iPhone of a huge Huntsman spider – wider than the circumference of a pint glass – on their living room wall. As we went to bed, Nathalie noticed I had put my shoes outside (to protect Nicki from the smell...) and she said “I'll give you some newspaper for your shoes – you might get a shock tomorrow morning, you never know what might crawl into them”. As I stood on the balcony and stuffed the newspaper inside my smelly boots , cockroaches scuttled off into the grass, a standard annoyance here.

As we made our way back to the city, we met a woman from Los Angeles on the bus. She mentioned that her biggest worry about sleeping with the doors open is “waking up with a possum sitting at the end of the bed”. They are beautiful little things but the possum population has exploded and they are considered a pest here, apparently swarming over inhabited areas in search of food with no hesitation in going through people's kitchens if given half a chance.

Finding a place to stay has been a challenge as the city is booked to the gills, thanks to the Gay Mardi Gras starting this weekend. We spent an hour looking through every affordable hostel and hotel we could find and finally landed at a Formule 1 outside the city – positive luxury in comparison with our last place and a good base from which to launch this part of the journey.

From Canon to Canberra

I called my blog “Journey to Canberra”. After 71,150 km and a 15 month journey, I post this blog from Canberra, NSW, Australia.

15 months ago today, I decided to turn my personal life upside down, in response to my professional world being turned upside down for me.

Instead of moving to London, I chose to stay in Amsterdam. Instead of following my previous self-chosen role of being “Mr Canon” I decided to work together with the Works Council and fight. Instead of going for another Canon-like job, I chose to write a book, travel and set up my own business.

Those decisions were personal – I never decried anyone who chose to go to London or stick with Canon and each had to make their own decision to suit their life at that moment. For me, the events co-incided with a time when I wanted to stir myself up. A few days after that decision to change on 5th November 2008, no matter what the consequences, I began writing a blog. I called it http://www.canontocanberra.blogspot.com/ to reflect my wish to turn my life upside down, shake out the bits and pieces of it, re-arrange them and see what pattern emerged as a result.

Somewhere in the depths of my confused and hurt subconscious mind 15 months ago, I knew I had to make a physical as well as mental journey. My whole life, at times when I've needed to change, movement has been the key – whether it's running half-marathons, doing a job which involves constant travel or making a world tour. All the attitude and mind-shifts I ever made have been together with the body getting on the move too. So the urge to move and travel has been strong. The phrase “you can't steer a ship that isn't moving” has repeated again and again in my mind, and I needed to get going to be able to make a serious change.

I started in early April last year with a visit to Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee – and since then I've been to Spain, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, UK, USA again, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Easter Island, Tahiti and New Zealand.

And now Australia. Nicki and I arrived in Sydney two days ago and we head up the East Coast towards Brisbane and Cairns to cap off what has been an incredible trip so far. Canberra is 270km South of Sydney and we are heading North on Monday, plus everybody says “don't bother with Canberra – nothings special to see”. So no need to actually go there, right?

Wrong. I didn't call it Canon to Sydney. So I am taking the 5-hour train trip to complete the Journey to Canberra. It would seem like "unfinished business" not to.

(As I sit on the train at 7am, it reminds me of journeys I made in 2006, when working in Vienna and being head of the business in Hungary, Poland, Czech, and Slovakia. I regularly took 6am trains from Vienna to Prague or Budapest, frantically pumping the keyboard to catch up on emails and prepare for meetings and presentations in a desperate effort to manage the professional madness of being on the road 4 days per week. It is amazing to me that it is 3 years ago already. “Too funny for words, too close for comfort”...)

I am conscious of an incredibly priveleged life that enables such journeys to be made. The travelling has taught many lessons, but the biggest is the contrast between my own fortunes and those of others around the world as well as closer to home. It's been a huge advantage to have a platform of a stable society to grow up in – unworried by war or political constraints, such those growing up in Yugoslavia or the former “Eastern Bloc” faced. The benefit of being born in a part of the world where opportunity exists for most is inestimable – and in stark contrast to those I've seen in Peru and Albania. And growing up with caring parents who supported and encouraged education, ideas and wide thinking is of massive value. Any little achievements I ever made or will make are on the shoulders of this triple luck.

So my world, so safe and sure when I returned to Amsterdam in 2007, has literally turned upside down, as indeed have the lives of many of my friends, most of who were mostly working with Canon and living in Amsterdam. In the last year, so many of those friends have made hard decisions and big changes too. Babies have been born, companies have been set up, countries have been changed, new jobs have been started. It's a world in flux for all of us and we ride the changes and make them work for us – somehow, someway.

My plans for the future are becoming more firm every day – I'm so excited about what comes next. But today, I savour every moment of the end of the Journey to Canberra, and leave the journey back for another day.

Farewell to New Zealand – Welcome to Australia

We sit at Auckland airport, sad at leaving NZ but ready to enjoy OZ. The last few days have been a wet send off, with two absolutely washed out days in Gisborne. But it hasn't changed our feeling about this lovely country.

We've driven 5000 km around the country and seen it North and South, snow-capped peaks and dry flat plains, lush greenery and almost-desert valleys, seas and lakes, hostels and motels. We've walked and boated through hills and fjords, national park and forest. New Zealand has the mountains of Austria, the coastline and beaches of France, the green countryside of England and the orderliness of the Nordics – the most beautiful country either of us have ever seen. And now it's time to move on.

It's a strangely normal thing to get up in the morning, pack up and casually think “we're flying to Australia today”. If we were flying from home, it would have been the source of days or even weeks of preparation. Instead, we have no real plan other than a first night booked in a Sydney hostel and a second night arranged with a friend of Nicki's who came to Australia two years ago. The trip so far has taught us to be flexible and prepared for whatever may come and whatever seems like a good idea, rather than having a rigid plan and desperately trying to stick to it. So we'll get a few recommendations and find our way as we go.

Finally, at the airport we found a person in NZ we didn't like – or rather, he found us. I am always wary of people who start talking to you in public places for no apparent reason, and often it results in them boring the hell out of you. The definition of a bore, I was once told, is “someone who tells you something you already know, or something you never wanted to know in the first place”. In this case, a guy asked us where we are from and quickly moved on to his main purpose of talking. He ranted on about how we must have wasted our time going to the mountains in the South Island (they were utterly stunning!) and how he went to Newcastle in the UK and refused to see anything. He dropped heavy hints about “travelling with the Rugby team to South Africa” and we ignored the bait, knowing this would lead to more stuff we never wanted to know in the first place. Nicki is polite enough to give such people the time of day – I, on the other hand, have no ability to be nice and do my best to ignore them. Oh well, we'd met so many nice people here, it far outweighed this irritating bugger.

We realise how spoiled we are to be able to leave New Zealand for a month in Australia. At the same time, the world tour is flying by and we are very conscious that on Friday, it will be just 6 weeks until we fly home. In a way, we are making our way home as of now, since New Zealand is the furthest point of the trip – Australia is closer to home than NZ.

“Real Life” has of course continued back at home for everyone else and we are thinking about the big “what's the next step?” questions. Three days in Hong Kong and two weeks in Thailand follow on from the Australia leg of the trip and our return date is March 19th - neither of us want it to end, but of course that real-life return is beckoning. A friend of mine recently came back from a very relaxing holiday in a remote part of South Africa and found the return to the busy life at home a shock. He warned me to make a good “re-entry” plan, and we are gradually doing that already.

But for now, we look at the trip that awaits ahead. We land in Sydney tonight and stay for a few days, then we start heading up the East Coast towards Brisbane and onto Cairns, 2600km up the coast from Sydney. The rest we'll work out as we go along.

From South to North

Our experience of cities here in New Zealand has been very different to what we have found in the countryside. The towns are all very new and not much is happening in them, it seems. Maybe we are missing something but so far the impression is - new, functional, provides the basics, has some charm but no real history or substance.

Strangely, the capital (Wellington) is the 3rd largest city in the country - Auckland has 1.4M inhabitants, Christchurch 350K and Wellington a few thousand less. Still, we found the same in Auckland and came away untouched. This is such a contrast with the countryside, where we've been in awe most of the time. As I've said before, the countryside has so much more to offer than the urban life here.

For me, the word Christchurch has always had a special resonance. One of the first TV sports I remember watching was the Commonwealth Games, held in CHch (as the locals call it) in 1974 when I was 7. Later, in 1985, I applied to Oxford University to study Chinese at Christchurch college which, according to my Classics teacher Mr Watson-Wemyss, is the most distinguished. (I was accepted and yet turned down the much-sought after place, firmly believing that my success or otherwise should rely on my character rather than the University I went to...). Somehow I had hoped to have a memorable experience in CHch itself, but after cup of coffee, a wander round the shops and a few hours in the Internet cafe, Nicki and I looked at each other and said "let's hit the road".

Driving back up for the ferry to the North Island, we stayed at Kaikoura where we took a bed and breakfast room overlooking a beautiful bay and got frightened by a huge dog staying in the room opposite us. We also saw an angel on a spoon in the clouds (look carefully at the picture... we weren't on drugs, really...)

Then onto Picton the following morning, and on the ferry we met Peter again, the Belgian guy we had made friends with on the Milford Sound Ferry. He was suffering because he needed to find a place to stay in Wellington and everything was booked - due to an AC/DC concert that night! Every single place was booked and people were renting out their spare rooms to accommodate the 35,000 people coming (the ferry was full of Rock T-Shirts and leather). Once through to the other side, we drove Peter to a tiny village 40 km outside of the capital where he found a B&B in a back street.

The next destination has been Napier and Gisborne, where we have faced the first bad weather for weeks. We're conscious that the winter has been bitter back at home so no complaints to have an almost totally rained-out day today, the first we've had since Boston back in late October.

So the washing is being done, blogs are getting written, books being read and plans for the future being made. We've found some great ideas for future businesses and directions after we get back and realise it will be "back to the real world" before we know it, so we savour the time and the joy of the ride every day.

Two Footnotes.

Here is a New Zealand Wood Pidgeon, as captured by Nicki - beautiful, isn't it?

And we just read that the air-lift out of Macchu Picchu has been completed, after terrible floods have resulted in serious problems. Tourists were stranded at the nearest town, Aguas Calientes, and the the main site will be closed for weeks, while the trainline from Ag Cal to Cusco needs months of repairs. This is a disaster for the local people who rely massively on tourism for their income and livelihood (don't forget that the majority of the country live on less than $2 per day). To my shock, the BBC have posted a news clip in the main story on their website showing how excited a couple of tourists were to have a helicopter flight (1300 people have been airlifted out at huge cost to the Peruvian tourist board). The real story is the hardship those local people will face and how long it will take to bring a beautiful wonder of the world back to full accessibility - not the "excitement" of the disaster. We were so lucky to be able to see it in November.

The Waitaki Valley and Akaroa

After leaving Milford Sound, we headed through the countryside towards the East of the island, in the direction of Christchurch. The landscape continued to be beautiful, with clouds hugging the edges of the mountains, and at one stage the mountain peak shining in blue sky, with the rest veiled in mist.

Suddenly the scenery transformed into the huge and almost moon/desert looking Waitaki valley. Nicki took a couple of stunning pictures of the more barren hills and rougher fields, as we realised we have seen more variation of countryside in New Zealand than anywhere in the world. You drive through endless greenery and without concentrating you find yourself in what feels like a different country. It's an amazing experience.

That evening we stayed at a holiday park in a pretty little painted shed - big enough for a double bed and a little desk, communal showers and toilets nearby, 45 NZ Dollars (22GBP/24Euros). We don't know anywhere at home to stay for that price.

We wonder if we are ever going to meet a miserable and unfriendly person here. We just haven't found any - people have been happy, always saying hello, always asking about your travels, where you've come from, how you've enjoyed your time in New Zealand and giving recommendations for places to go. Bus drivers, petrol pump attendants and hotel owners have stunned us with their positive attitude.

The following day we headed on to Akaroa on the Banks peninsula. We stopped a few km away at a place called Duvauchelle, and we had noticed a number of French-sounding hotels and villages along the way. It turns out that the town was settled in the mid 1800's by a Frenchman who advertised free passage back in France to people who would come and take land to develop it. All through the beautiful little place by the water, you see places like "La Rochelle" motel and the "Bon-e-mail" Internet cafe. Strange to see this so far away from France!

On Monday we took the Skyline Walk, described in the leaflet as a trek requiring "moderate fitness". We've been caught out like this before - a New Zealand "moderate" is our idea of "high level of". The walk was quite uphill for a while, then really uphill, then bushy with grass at head-height uphill. Listening to Nicki's curses and noises, plus her moment of telling herself "just get through the bloody thing!" helped me get through too... She is always the pathfinder and never more so than now - it was hard! But after a few sweary moments when attacked by cacti near the summit, we were rewarded by stunning views of the bay when we reached the top, after 2 hours of solid slog. The rest of the journey was along and back down to the town along "The Stony Bay Road", a road with a lot of stones, and, well, a view of the bay...

There's a few days to go in New Zealand and we are now in Christchurch for a small fix of "busy"- the first time we've been to a city since Auckland - before we head back to the North Island for the last part of this leg of the trip.

An Overnight Cruise on Milford Sound

We ran 3 times, made two big walks and a long bikeride by the time we left Wanaka, the countryside was so beautiful and everything in New Zealand is focused on making it easy for people to enjoy it.

Simple things like toilets (with paper and sinks, such small mercies...) in any time and along walkways, plus free parking and clearly marked tracks to follow for walking and biking have made it a joy to be outside. Even the bike-seats were gentle on our rear ends.

We left Wanaka and spent a night in Queenstown, a busy backpacker town by a lake with mountains in the background. It seems to be the centre of adrenalin sports (bungy jumping, sky diving etc) and we've come to a theory about why these are so popular in New Zealand. Life is just calm and easy, with few bumps along the way. Nature is so incredible and great places to visit abound, so at a certain moment there is a need for more. That's when the adrenalin stuff comes up and people feel the urge to jump hundreds of metres out of a plain or attached to a long rubbery rope. It's not a 'normal' thing to do!

I have to say that places like Queenstown leave me a bit cold. They are created on the back of the backpacker tourism and as such are busy in the evenings. The surrounding area is generally absolutely beautiful, but the towns themselves are very new with little character. In this country, the interest in and value of Nature and the great outdoors far outweighs that of the cities and towns.

We drove the 4 hour stunning journey to take the Milford Sound ferry, a world-renowned tour. We had chosen the overnight cruise thanks to advice from friends who had said that the place is teeming with boats during the day. Milford Sound itself is actually a fjord, a huge inlet carved by a glacier leading out to the sea. It has very high mountains surrounding it, including a waterfall that is higher than Niagara Falls in Canada (we were surprised by this because it didn't look that big, but we were assured this was an optical illusion caused by the great height of the mountains surrounding it.)

We were extremely lucky - it was cloudy for the whole of the drive there, and then at the last minutes before boarding the sun came out. This gave the water an unbelievable blue and a great contrast with the mountains.

One nice story - apparently there is one point on the mountains which is 700 metres high and a woman daredevil jumped from the top with a parachute. TV stations were alerted and interest was high as it was the first time this had been attempted. She jumped it, the 'chute came out just in time and she survived - unfortunately the camera crew had hit a technical hitch at the wrong moment and didn't get the shot. They asked her to do it again (some nerve!) but she calmly suggested they get stuffed, and the jump has never been done before or since.

The evening on the boat was made perfect by spending time with Peter, Dirck and Marijn from Belgium. We swapped travelling stories and drank bottle after bottle of red wine until well after the stars came out. They knew a lot about the stars and explained that most of what we could see now was impossible normally - mainly because we are looking at a different part of the universe, as well as the fact that the lack of artificial light made many stars more clear. It was a perfect, clear night and we loved it all.

The morning was windy and crisp as we finished off the cruise and nursed our hangovers on the way over towards Akaroa.