In which Roz and Layla do science and hiking in Sydney

By Roz.

We arrived in Sydney in the late afternoon, and hopped in an Uber to the cool arty flat in Paddington, which we’d stayed in last year, and then booked, again for this trip. It was delightful to be back, though more disappointing to discover that the four flights of stairs (no elevator) hadn’t reduced in the intervening year… We did a speedy unpack, an even speedier trip to the supermarket and then had a super-speedy dinner before dashing to the lovely Cinema Chauvel nearby to see what proved to be a very surprisingly charming Spanish film called Kiki Loves to Love.  I say surprisingly charming, since it was focused on sex (and films about sex are not usually charming).  Having been thoroughly delighted, we then headed over the road for a post film snack (well, what else can you call a plate of delicious brussel sprouts and a cheese board?) at a lovely wine bar called 10 William Street.  We felt delighted to be back in Sydney and in our old favorite neighborhood. 

Next morning after breakfast (notable for me having made the mad error of buying lactose-free milk in the supermarket the night before, an error that convinced me that I love lactose; a similar error in the past gave me the same knowledge about gluten), we headed on an expedition to the Royal National Park (which had been vigorously recommended to us by a couple of fellow travellers on the Uluru trip).  This felt like a commitment – we got first a lengthy train and then a ferry.  But both were entirely straightforward, and we enjoyed pottering round the excellent holiday town of Cronulla whilst waiting for the ferry (and imagining our lives in the unlikely eventuality that we were we to live there). The Royal National Park proved to be an amazing place, with a beautiful hiking route along the sea.  It felt both epic (with the huge landscape and glorious endless sea) and human-scale (with a number of “sights”, like Wedding Cake Rock, which kind of looks like a wedding cake if you look from the right angle).  We stopped to have a picnic in a beautiful spot overlooking the ocean, and then spent much of the rest of the hike regretting that we don’t live in Sydney with its glorious hiking options.  So we hiked up hill and down dale, before reluctantly concluding that we should probably turn around and head back to the ferry.  

On the train home Layla napped, whilst I began to muse on my autumn – since I’ll be living alone whilst Layla is in Hong Kong – and whether I should be thinking about taking a holiday alone or simply devoting myself to our lovely dog, Kaseki.  When Layla awoke she was somewhat discombobulated by my torrent of thinking (“Maybe I should go to Bhutan?  Or Taiwan?  Or China? Or marry Kaseki?”) as we walked home to change for the evening. 

Our destination that evening was the Power House Museum, for an art and science event which was part of Sydney’s Science Festival.   On arrival we were plied with sparkling wine, cheese and hummus and we quickly decided that we were big fans of the museum.  We looked at the line up of speakers and then realized that the first speaker was one of the people Layla works with, which was a cheery coincidence.  We stayed for the first half, after which Layla and I both got emails which promised potentially cheery developments for the future, which distracted us so much that we left the museum and headed to a cocktail bar to raise a glass to the future. 

Next morning we woke early-ish and Layla headed out to visit the work colleague who she’d briefly seen the night before, whilst I headed to Berkeluow’s, the delightful bookstore and coffee shop near our flat for coffee, ahead of a yoga class, at the delightful yoga studio near by.  Did I mention that Sydney in general and our neighborhood in particular are delightful?! We then met for lunch and had a general potter around the bookshop, before going to the cinema again, this time to see the fantastic film “Madame”.  We’d seen a trailer for it when we went to the cinema before, and been tempted – and again, we were both suspicious that the film was too quirky for much of a hope of it coming to Tokyo cinemas.  It lived up to the promise of its trailer, and was charming and heartbreaking and interesting.  After which we continued our pottering round the neighborhood’s shops and bought me a work dress in an overly posh charity shop. 

We then headed home to beautify ahead of dinner at an excellent Mexican restaurant and then a parlour magic show.  There’s an irony here, since I’m always trying to persuade Layla (and indeed any visiting guest) that we should go to a magic show in Tokyo (and the answer is always no).  However, when Layla offered me the option in Sydney, I leapt at the opportunity without teasing her about her change of heart.  To be honest, the magician wasn’t quite as excellent as some I’ve seen (including in Washington) but he was good, and I was suitably amazed a lot of the time.  And the venue was fun – a member’s club that was all wood paneling and snooty staff.  There was a fantastic moment where it looked like I might need to take a call whilst there and use a proper old-fashioned telephone booth (since cellphones are not allowed in the rest of the venue).  It’s the first time I’ve been disappointed when a call didn’t happen…  Afterwards we went for a cocktail in the beautiful Golden Age Cinema bar, which is very art deco and nice, before walking home to Paddington. 

The next morning should have been our last and so I woke up with dread in my heart as is appropriate when a holiday is ending.  Soon the dread solidified when I received a cryptic email from Qantas saying that there was a problem with the flight (but without saying what it was).  We eventually established that lots of flights, including ours, were being massively delayed because of a storm in Sydney (only bemusing since the sky was blue, and though it seemed a bit windy it wasn’t that bad!).  We found we couldn’t stay in our lovely AirBnB apartment,  so I booked us a hotel in town in which we left our luggage at and then continued on with our plans.  Which were to go for a hike from Taronga Zoo to Balmoral Beach. 

This was our favourite hike when we were in Sydney last time and so we felt very cheery as we hopped on the ferry and gazed at the fantastic views of the Opera House and the Bridge.  Our cheer dissipated when we started on our hike and saw a sign saying that the trail was closed.  However, a discussion with a fellow passing hiker made us decide to ignore the sign, and so we pressed on – with me at least feeling like a criminal.  It was just as beautiful a hike as we remembered, and the convenient and delicious lunch kiosk was still there as an added bonus.  When we got to the end of the hike, I wasn’t quite ready to be done with hiking, so persuaded Layla we should continue on along the beach.  This was lovely for a while, until we got to a bit which is only passable at low-tide.  And whilst it wasn’t high-tide, exactly, I was unconvinced that continuing on at medium-tide was a great idea – all the more so since the path was one of no-return (since the water was getting higher by the minute).  Precisely a year ago today, we ended up in a sticky situation, sinking more than knee-deep into mud flats during a stroll near Mt Fuji in Japan… and I felt that it was time to learn a lesson and not always go for the silly option.  So we returned along the beaches and then hopped on a convenient bus. And I’m proud to say we were considerably less caked in mud than was the case during the Mt Fuji bus ride…

It should have been time for us to head to the airport but with our plane cancelled, it was time for a final night in Sydney. Back in our hotel room we de-sanded and put on warmer clothes ahead of our evening’s fun.  First was a quick dinner in an excellent Thai restaurant. (an experience which we made unnecessarily stressful by trying to phone our airline to confirm the details of our very, very delayed flight – we were kept on hold for an hour, during which I developed a rash enthusiasm for a beer to accompany dinner in the BYO restaurant… which entailed me walking miles to find a store selling beer while Layla remained indefinitely on the phone. A doomed enterprise: they never did answer. Dinner done, it was time for our evening entertainment.  We’d failed to get tickets for the sold-out show we had wanted to see at the Opera House, but were able to book a differently excellent talk back at the Power House Museum.  This was by an engineer turned comedian who is currently one of the 100 people who have been shortlisted for the opportunity to be sent on a one-way trip to Mars in 2031.  I’ve quite often heard from people who’ve done exciting space things, but I’ve not heard a talk from someone who wants to do something exciting.  The different angle was interesting and he was an engaging speaker.  I definitely have no desire to join him and go to Mars, right enough… Afterwards we walked back to our hotel, stopping in yet another delightful cocktail bar in a charming little lane for cheese and a cocktail, to mark our unanticipated final night in Sydney. 

On what we hoped really would be our final Sydney morning, we were up early and determined to make the most of the blue sky before the long dreary daytime flight (which we’d intended to avoid originally by booking a night time flight).  So we headed to the Botanic Gardens and had a beautiful wander for almost a couple of hours through delightful lawns and flowers and coffeeshops… and a lovely harbourside walk where people were having a wedding, before heading back to the hotel to check out and head to the airport.  And now we really are on the plane back to Tokyo.  But my heart has been left behind in beautiful Australia, home to endless delicious vegetarian options, fantastic cinema and spoken word events, cocktails and unparalled hiking. 

Books read while on holiday

Roz: Miss Pym Disposes (Josephine Tey); 7/10, Judas (Amos Oz); 7/10, A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute); 10/10, Tin Man (Sarah Winman); 10/10, The Man in the Brown Suit (Agatha Christie); 8/10, A Rising Man (Abir Mukherjee); 9/10… and painful progress on Roy's The Ministry of Happiness

Layla: How to Stop Time (Matt Haig); 3/5, The Unit (Ninni Holmqvist); 5/5; A Lovely Way to Burn (Louise Welsh); 3/5, A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute); 5/5, Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer); 3/5, The Rift (Nina Allan); 2/5, and started Tin Man (Sarah Winman).

In which Layla and Roz find out whether Alice Springs is a 'bonza town' as the book promised

By Layla

Having checked into our little motel, Roz and I stepped out onto the streets of Alice Springs to find out: was the book A Town Like Alice true? Was Alice really a ‘bonza town’? With both of us now re-reading the book which we’ve both loved for years, we were keen to find out.

The town is small and sweet and feels like a frontier town… and it was definitely not bustling on a Sunday night (though we were later to learn that Sunday is one of its most bustling nights!). We had food and drink at a cheery outdoor bar/restaurant called Monte’s (which had an inexplicable but jolly circus vibe), then walked down a dodgy road lined by homeless Aboriginal people, eventually reaching The Dust Bowl, the local bowling alley/karaoke venue. We bowled to the dulcet tones of some of the very worst singers in the history of karaoke (and one good one) before being kicked out at 8:30. According to Alice Springs, it was time for bed. (Side note from Roz: having been required to get up at 5am I was more than content with this.)

The next day, after breakfasting in our room and second-breakfasting in a cool little café called Epilogue (great yoghurt and fruit bowl!), we headed out on a 4km hike to Telegraph Hill, the raison d’etre for Alice Springs. It was the first telegraph station in the region, and part of a thrilling-sounding mission to link the whole of Australia to the UK, cutting communication times from months to hours. It must have felt like magic! The walk was hot and sunny and pretty, along a riverbed that only sees water a couple of times a year. And we were rewarded with an excellent café. It would have been rude not to have some banana bread before our tour of the telegraph station itself. Which was most interesting, and sad: the location was also used to house children with one Aboriginal parent and one white parent, known as the ‘stolen generation’ here.

After the tour we returned to the café for lunch, did a nice little hike through the outback, up Trig Hill, returned to the café for afternoon tea, and then, after essentially eating all the food in the café, returned home to our motel via another fantastic little hike. The scenery around Alice Springs is quite fabulous – they call it the ‘red centre’ of Australia and everywhere is red and dusty, but there’s a lot of vegetation, and some excitingly coloured birds and walking and biking trails everywhere. Such a treat!

But it was clearly time to try the biking aspect… so we hired mountain bikes and sneaked them into our motel room overnight. Our plan was to start early the next day to beat the heat.  (Side note from Roz: why does everyone want me to get up so early on holiday?) We had a lovely evening dining in a restaurant that was helpfully open (as opposed to most others on a Monday, it turned out!) and then at the delightful Alice Springs Cinema seeing The Big Sick which was charming and recommended (despite the unfortunate name…we later spent some time speculating on better names, our best of which was “Coma to Me”).

While we didn’t get up quite as early as planned (side note from Roz: hooray!), by 8:40am we’d had our breakfast, picked up lunchtime quiches, and were on the road. Our destination was Simpson’s Gap, named one of the best bike rides in Australia. Only problem was that it was 48km and I hadn’t been on a bike for ages. Ouch! But it was an amazing ride: beautiful outback scenery, perfect bike path through scrubby vegetation with not a car or another person for miles, and when we finally got to the end, a gap in the big red cliffs offered an unexpected blue water pool – and some rock wallabies for added excitement. We munched what was left of our quiches, and eyed the road home with some trepidation. But powered on by the quiche, and some extra water from a random and potentially dubious drinking water source along the route, and some beautiful scenery, I made it almost back to town before flagging extravagantly. At which point Roz spotted a café and saved the day with lemonade and ice cream. Hooray! That evening after I did a work call, we had delicious veggie burritos and returned to the lovely cinema to see Dunkirk (which I didn’t especially like but enjoyed seeing since it’s the film of the moment) before bedtime.

On our final morning in Alice Springs we walked down to the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens where we had breakfast drinks on a pretty patio, then did a short walk up a hill where we spotted wallabies, before heading back into town for some hipster halloumi sandwiches before it was time to catch our plane. Alice Springs was fantastic. But it’s goodbye to the heat: next stop Sydney!

In which Roz and Layla follow in the footsteps of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

by Roz

Next morning, we were up early for our flight to Uluru (Ayers Rock).  We’d havered about whether to go there or not – by the time we got around to arranging our plans, the hotels were all booked out, and the flights expensive.  But following pressure / encouragement on Facebook, we decided to go anyway and booked a glamping-ish tour. 

Arriving at the hotel where we were due to be picked up, I must confess I looked enviously at the people headed to their nice comfy rooms.  All the more so when I found that there was a supermarket on the grounds of the hotel complex that is better stocked with options than our local Tokyo supermarket.  It was the plethora of vegetarian sausages that nearly made me weep… However, we stocked up on supplies for the trip (unnecessarily) and ate the amazingly delicious airport lunch we’d picked up in Melbourne and awaited our tour guide.  He soon turned up – a large man, brandishing the bushy beard that seems to be ubiquitous for men in these parts – and we got on board our van and met the rest of our tour group as we drove to our first stop.

Usually first stops are not that much fun.  But this one was – a hike through a place called Kata Tjuta (previously known as the Olgas), which are a group of large domed rocks.  They are huge and red, and massively remote. In some ways, it felt like the landscape had been sculpted by giants – not least when we came across a huge cliff that looked like an elephant’s head.  This took up most of the afternoon and we were only persuaded to stop lingering by our tour guide promising us a sunset view of Uluru and some sparkling wine.  Well, that and that five-year old girl on our tour who put us both to shame, overtaking us with her speedy hiking…

It was a short ride to our second stop, to see Uluru at sunset.  Usually neither Layla nor I are that mad on sunrises / sunsets, but to be fair, the sun made the rock glow magnificently (and the sparkling wine and cheese was a very pleasant addition too).  More disconcertingly, we found one of our other tour group members was from Tokyo and both of us felt simultaneously compelled to be friendly and horrified by the thought of speaking Japanese…

After the sun had set, we headed to our camp for the night.  Disappointingly this proved not to have a four-poster bed (as regular readers of this blog will remember we had in the Jordanian desert) but was nonetheless perfectly adequate.  The two of us embarrassed ourselves horribly over our excitement at the vegetarian sausages, tofu and halloumi experience which was dinner, and had a lovely time. (Side note from Layla – Roz also embarrassed herself getting lost en route home from the bathrooms in dingo country, necessitating my going to rescue her in my pyjamas).

Next morning we were up at the horrible hour of 5am, ahead of an early departure to walk around the base of Uluru for sunrise.  (Layla and I really must get more enthusiastic about sunrises, or else stop booking this kind of tour!)  The walk itself was fantastic.  6 miles-ish, flat, pretty deserted and with Uluru looking amazing in the changing morning light.  We even agreed a 5am start was worth it… (Side note from Layla – it would have looked perfectly nice an hour later.)

After we’d made it round, and rewarded ourselves with a snack, we were then taken on a smaller hike with an Aboriginal tour guide, who taught us something of the history of the area and the stories that they read in the stones.  This was differently fantastic.  After this we headed back to camp for lunch (also vegetarian heaven) before getting on the bus for a disappointingly long time to our next campsite.  However, I consoled myself by listening to a book, whilst Layla read A Town Like Alice (by Nevil Shute) which had inspired part of this trip.  And it’s always fun to see her sniveling over a story of a female town-planning pioneer.

Dinner was – you guessed it – great again.  Same cook, same enthusiasm for treating vegetarians nicely.  Hooray.  Our guide then took us out for a walk into the bush for some star gazing.  I don’t think I’ve seen stars quite like this before.  It felt as though I’d walked into a planetarium and that I was looking at a fake version of what the sky ought to look like.  I’d love to tell you that I was so inspired by how beautiful the stars were (which I was) that I decided to grab a sleeping bag and sleep on the ground so I could look at the stars properly.  But I can’t.  I’m sorry, but I just like being in a bed too much…and I’m afeard of dingos.  We then sat around the campfire and roasted marshmallows before bed at the shockingly late hour of 9pm. 

The following morning was another early start, this time to facilitate a hike round the rim of the King’s Canyon.  The start of this trail was the inauspiciously named “Heart Attack Hill”.  Fortunately none of us were much the worse by the time we had climbed it, and after that it was an amazingly beautiful walk atop the red sandstone cliffs around the perimeter of the canyon.  I find it hard to describe how lovely it was – suffice to say that it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.  The scale was amazing, the colours spectacular – and it was almost empty.  We paused by a watering hole called the Garden of Eden and ate an apple, as is only appropriate.  And we regretted that (unlike many of the other participants in the tour) neither of us remembered Priscilla Queen of the Desert well enough to emulate the iconic scenic poses by the three protagonists hiking around the canyon in drag. 

At the end of this beautiful walk, we headed back to the car park and then began the long journey back to Alice Springs.  A journey that was enhanced by seeing my first ever kangaroo, pictures of our dog Kaseki sent through by his lovely temporary family whilst we are on holiday, my audio book, and our game of Scrabble.  We rolled into Alice Springs that evening in a very cheery mood, entirely ready to enjoy the “bonza” town that we’ve both read about in the lovely book A Town Like Alice. 

In which Layla and Roz revel in hipster coffee, vegetarian food, and fab shows in Melbourne

By Layla

Since I am about to go to Hong Kong without my lovely wife for three whole months, it is obviously essential to fit in a cool holiday first, to distract us from the imminent separation (and three months where I can’t take any holidays at all…). But where to go? With our Tokyo home sweltering in revolting humidity, we sought winter, and flew south. Destination: Australia.

Our home for the first four days of holiday was to be Melbourne, a city of such cool reputation that we’ve been meaning to visit for years. We booked a ridiculously stylish AirBnB apartment in the hipster locale of Fitzroy, and upon rolling off the overnight plane (and showering in the airport), settled down for a delicious breakfast at Addict, one of our most local hipster coffeeshops. And then we explored the area. A little more grungey than we’d hoped, Fitzroy was sprinkled with bars and restaurants and boutiques and bookshops – and slathered with hipster coffeeshops. We popped into the very cool LGBT bookshop Hares & Hyenas, and browsed in another one, as part of our stroll around the neighbourhood (and a dash home to don ALL the clothes we had packed – Melbourne is chilly in August!).

That afternoon we took a bus into the city centre and had lunch in a delightful café in the Victoria State Library, then we took a slightly rainy free walking tour of the city. We learned a little about its origins, peered at Ned Kelly’s jail, wandered the cool graffiti-lined lanes for which Melbourne is known, admired a million cafes and arcades, and then hopped on a tram home to glam up for the night we’d been looking forward to for ages: The Moth! I put my name in the hat to perform in this famed storytelling show but alas I wasn’t picked out. So Roz and I had to content ourselves with enjoying 10 stories in an exceptionally cool Brunswick venue, Howler, with some craft beer and delicious sweet potato falafel. (In fact our main enjoyment in Melbourne has been relishing the thrills of finding a delicious array of vegetarian food everywhere we glance, in stark contrast to the miserable food desert that is Tokyo.) At the end I got to briefly pop onto the stage. Much fun.

We glimpsed a bit of sun the next morning so headed off to explore the Royal Botanical Gardens, which were quite pleasant, and culminated in a fab little terrace café overlooking a pretty lake and offering an array of delicious vegetarian lunch options. My only sorrow was that I ate so much I couldn’t manage the delicious-looking scones on offer… After the gardens we walked across the Yarra River and into town. A brief tea stop, then onwards to an exhibition about women who write video games, and a little play, though the exhibition wasn’t very extensive and soon we were on our way again. But not before visiting yet another hipster coffeeshop. Obviously. When in Melbourne… The highlight of our day was upon us: Holey Moley minigolf. Obviously Roz and I both have a penchant for any minigolf, but Holey Moley was something special. Very hipstery (a Melbourne requirement, apparently), but also cool and arty, and witty and well thought out. We played the full 27 ridiculous and cool themed holes and I won by a single point. Roz was duly bitter, and we headed home to eat pasta and glam up for that evening’s big treat: Jerry Seinfeld!

We’d known he was in Melbourne and had tried to get tickets but the show had been sold out. Then, on Monday night, a few tickets were released and Roz, whose finger is always on the pulse, leapt for them before I could protest at the extravagance. And that was it – we were going to see Jerry! I grew up watching Seinfeld and getting to see the comedian himself was embarrassingly thrilling. We settled in with 5000 lucky audience members and he was funny and silly and charming and interesting and Roz had even bought me a Twirl chocolate bar. What a fantastic night. We tried to go to a bar on the way home but most were closed, so we ended up buying a bottle of local wine and taking it home to enjoy in our uber-stylish flat. What a fun day.

The reportedly best bit of inner city bush in Melbourne was just a mile or so from our flat, so when we woke up and saw the sun shining, we bundled up, acquired an avocado-and-hallumi-sandwich picnic, and headed out to the Yarra Bend Park boathouse to begin a little hike (I spied they sold scones, but I’d just had my breakfast and couldn’t think of a good justification – I started to fear I was cursed to never have scones). The walk was beautiful – along the riverbank, in beautiful trees and grass and prettiness for a few hours, and then, oh joy, we circled back to the boathouse and at last I got my scones. Hooray.

From the park we took the bus to our next port of call: lovely Cinema Nova in the Italian area of town. This is a fantastic arthouse multiplex and before we went to see The Viceroy’s House (about the last months of the UK in India) we went to Readings, named one of the world’s best bookshops, and an adjacent Gelateria, which I’m happy to proclaim served me one of the world’s best gelato… The film was good, the cinema was a charmingly decorated delight, and afterwards we walked home to brush our hair for another quintessential Melbourne experience: dinner in an impossibly hipster restaurant. We chose Transformer, which was all concrete and greenery in an old lighting factory, and served innovative vegetarian cuisine. Fabulous.

Our last full day in Melbourne involved quite a bit of pfaffing, with both me and Roz having to do work things. But we also managed a walk through pretty Fitzroy Gardens and into town for some pottering in the arcades, and the Melbourne International Film Festival, where we saw Newton – a film about the election process in a jungle in India. Clearly an educational India theme to our cinema going this week! Afterwards we went home for pasta and a little more work, before we polished off the evening with wine and cheese at a cute little wine bar called Liberty, just next door to our house.

And then on Friday morning we woke early, packed our bags, and headed to the airport. Our next destination: Uluru, aka Ayers Rock!