Hullo All!

I'm headed to Oz the end of the month and would love to meet up with you if our schedules permit!

As this is my own personal vacation, with my husband, Sam, unlike when I'm travelling for business, I actually have some "free" time! (what a concept).

That said, it's never really TRULY a completely holiday -- I will be working as well (doing hotel site inspections as well as checking out some tours)while there, but at least I have some leeway.

My general schedule is:

October 27 - arrive in Sydney for 4 days.

October 31 - fly to Cairns - then I'm in the Cairns / Port Douglas / Palm Cove area until November 15th, doing various things - if you're interested in getting together, please email me and I can give you a more complete schedule (no sense boring people on the board)!

Regards,

Melodie

LOL, Melodie! Mark and I will be in Sydney until 26 October, and then we move over to Manly for a few days at the beach. We fly to the GBR on 1 November. I think we could be enticed back to Sydney to meet with some Fodorites down under. Do you still have my email address?

We leave tomorrow: SFO to LAX, then nonstop to Melbourne.

Can't believe that we live probably less than ten miles apart and may meet on the other side of the planet!

Melodie, I think Mucky lives in Wales (well, someone has to).

Personally, I'm still trying to come to terms with these repeated rebuffs to the national capital. I mean, really - Cairns is so yesterday. My counsellor agrees.

melodie, please agree to meet up with margo, only if she brings her mysterious harley riding aunt

AndrewDavid

Neil said, "Cairns is so yesterday." I WISH.
Yes I'm getting old but I remember when there where large figtrees lining all the streets in the town. Most shops in town were single storey with a flat or house above that had a verhanda which overlooked the street. These were lined with wrought iron balistrading painted white or dark green. One scandalous incomer had their's hot pink but then that was the late 60's. When apart from a few Poincianas most of the plants in the streets were native and it looked different from all the other tropical and subtropical cities around the world.
Now don't start me on Port Douglas where we used to camp in the Casuarinas where now the millionares lounge in their marble mansions!
TreeRoo

Love to come but as Neil says I am stuck in Autumnal Wales, however I am contemplating nipping to Greece or somewhere in the next few weeks. (One of the advantages of living in Wales.. ;-) )
So I sadly can't get there, good luck and please remind Margo she still owes me that drink from about 4 years ago and not to forget. I will be back..lol


Have fun

Muck

TreeRoo, I remember Cairns from 1965, and you're right - it was a different world up there and could have served as a set for a Somerset Maugham story. I arrived with a bunch of ne'er-do-well mates, found an abandoned house surrounded by coconut palms just across from Double Island. We camped there for a few weeks and drank gallons of cheap red from an Italian wine shop in town until our offensive behaviour was brought to the attention of the local constabulary by a public-spirited citizen. The gendarmes came out and, because one of our number owned a guitar, demanded to know if we were "beatniks". The jig was up and we pleaded guilty.

There was a pub on the Esplanade - the Great Northern? - known as the Barbary Coast, and one of the lads ended up in plaster after visiting it. This came about because he (a) didn't sing along with the local indigenous customers and was branded an unfriendly white bastard, (b) tried to rectify his mistake by singing along, was therefore branded a patronising white bastard and, quite rightly, beaten up. We lit out for Darwin in an old Bedford van, but that's another story.

AD

Funnily - my aunt will be cat-sitting at my place when Melodie's here - but I'll be in Mudgee for most of the time
Mind you - I'll be consuming red wine and other things, and/or playing tennis. I may not be too fit when I get back either!

and where is Mudgee, eh

A/D

Wasn't Mudgee Bishop in Neighbours?

;-)

Muck

Wasn't 'Naighbours' a TV show made (like Fosters beer) for the export market?

Have never watched "Neighbours", Muck, but last time I was in UK many locals, on finding I was Australian, were begging to hear info on episodes they thought I may have seen in advance.

Mudgee is, amongst other things, a wine growing area, north west of Sydney. This will make Margo very happy and she may find it difficult to find her way back to the big smoke. It's close to a town named Gulgong, featured on the original Australian $10 note.

Pat's correct - Mudgee is a wine growing area - cuppla hours NW of Sydney. We're talking about setting some sort of tasting record (or something!) But there is apparently a tennis court - so we may do something else (what, I wonder?)

Funny thing about Neighbours - the first time I went to Ireland, which is approaching 20 years ago, I booked a B&B in Drumcondra, Dublin. In those days, B&B's were family homes with a spare room (not like now in Ireland). The lady of the house ushered me in to the living room, where I could sit with her family as they watched Neighbours. I hadn't seen it then, and still haven't! They just could not comprehend this. Everywhere I went, people anted to talk about Neighbours.

Good heavens, margo, 260 km from Sydney to Mudgee in 2 hours? You daredevil, you.

I remember reading an article about how the residents of the Melbourne street depicted in "Neighbours" are visited by busloads of tourists daily, and the British tourists are amazed that hardly any Australians make the pilgrimage. I think the residents have some deal with the producers that compensates them for the nuisance, but that wasn't enough for one who had to put the garden hose on a couple he found going at it like little Pommy rabbits on his front lawn - must be some sort of weird variation on the Mile High Club.

Well guys I can tell you that Neighbours has been on our screens usually twice a day for about the last 20 years or so. Its the only link many brits have to your wonderful country and although we think the proogramme is cr@p it shows us a life where the sun always shines, despite the worst situations there is always a happy storyline.
It shows us a country where a whole town can get by with just one Dr, one pub, there is a hotel that no one stays in and the method for changing the set is to have an arson attack. Its a place where everyone either teaches or studies in the local school, all attend the same nightclub at the same time and the same 3 people run all the businesses.

One church marries and buries everyone and all the good looking stars go on to make hit singles.

I for my sins were one of the tourists who turned up at 'Ramsey st' in our hire car (thanks to directions from Marg and pressure from the kids).

We were inquisitive,and just popped in for a few photo's. It was a good laugh for us.
The damn program is still on today and we look and we say we have been there.


lol

Sad I know, but when the british alternative is the suicidal Eastenders (guaranteed to increase prescriptions for anti depression pills by a third everyday) Neighbours is almost pleasant.

By the way we really don't watch Neighbours anymore, far too busy these days but occasionally I catch a few seconds and am surprised to see it has hardly changed in 20 years.

Bit like me really...lol

;-)


Muck

Oh, I can only enjoy this thread from a US perspective...

You know, where we take Brit shows, change them around and then claim them as our own. (and then wonder why they don't do as well as the Over the Pond cousins).

I much prefer getting the REAL version and enjoying them, and have been for years. A perfect example right now is the very successful "Hustle", which is one of my favorite shows.

I'm sure it will only be a matter of tiem before we rip that off too, with limited success.

Melodie

Neil

I just know Mudgee is up there somewhere! I'm hoping I don't have to drive, but.....

I offered to drive a certain gentleman of my acquaintance. When he asked what I was gojng to drive him in, I replied my trusty Toyota Corolla, and he announced that he wasn't going anywhere in that piece of crap! Now, I ask you, is that nice? And now he's not going!

margo, as the owner of a 9-year-old Camry rest assured I'm suitably outraged on your behalf. Funny how these old Toyota "pieces of crap" just keep going, year after year after year, isn't it?

We rented a Ford Taurus, a Camry-sized 3-litre V6, in the US and drove it for over 5000 miles. It did the job, particularly on a nice flat, straight interstate, but although it had only a few thousand miles on the clock my old Camry (220,000 km and counting) outperforms it in almost all respects -crisper, unobtrusive gear changes, more responsive engine, more precise steering, better handling, etc., etc. In fact the Taurus felt considerably slacker than its Australian cousin, the Falcon, which itself is pretty old technology compared with Japanese makes. No wonder Americans (and Australians) are voting with their chequebooks - Toyota's US sales jumped by 25% in the last year, making it America's biggest car maker.

PS, the consensus seems to be about 3.5 hours for Sydney-Mudgee, but who's counting?

i'd say closer to 4 for sydney mudgee, but depends on when you travel. I have a friend who's a native mudgeeite and she was recalling an easter weekend story where they left sydney on the thursday afternoon ... 6 hours later they arrived in mudgee! let that be a lesson. I believe it's not unlike the traffic jam up the clyde to/from batemans bay for the australia day weekend.... did that one WAY too many times.

Mucky - is Home and Away as popular in UK as Neighbours? It was/maybe still is filmed around where I used to live in Sydney's north and I'd often see Pom tourists visiting their locations. Then the US "Baywatch" tried to use the area for a series, the residents of Avalon Beach absolutely revolted so that was quashed. Not before they let the Baywatch people pay to have the local surfclub building re-painted and tarted up.

Muck, we can get Eastenders and Coronation St on UKTV (pay TV) - 3 times a day!I just checked.