Epistle to the SMH

When we were “on the road” the cameras were clicking constantly and the digital photographs were proliferating, often by hundreds a day. We are going to have a monumental task on our hands when we return home as we currently have about 15,000 photographs to sort through and edit. However, now we have stopped travelling and have settled into the more mundane life of Sydney urbanites, the number of photos being taken each day has dwindled to a handful and would be even less if it were not for Anatalia. This is having a direct influence on the blog.

My starting point for every blog has been a review of the previous couple of days photographs and selecting a few around which a story can be told. With a dearth of photos the blog is in danger of grinding to a halt – not before time I hear you mutter! However, when stuck for an topic, one sometimes has to fallback on that old British standby and talk about the weather. As readers of this blog will be aware the weather on our circumnavigation of Australia has been patchy to say the least with considerably more rain than expected. Every week or so there have been false dawns as summer approached, the skies cleared, the sun shone and the mercury climbed the thermometer.

Christmas Day was a good example of this. With temperatures well into the 30’s, blue skies and constant sunshine it looked like summer was here – and here to stay. However, by Boxing Day, a change was in evidence and by yesterday, 27 December, rain was once again upon us and the television news was full of disasters - stories of floods and cut off communities competed with the news of Australia being skittled out by England for a mere 98 runs. As I sat on Johann’s deck looking towards where the skyscrapers would have been if they weren’t shrouded in rain clouds something snapped and I reached for pen and paper – I was going to complain to someone. I wrote to The Sydney Morning Herald to have a whinge about the weather.

The pen was metaphoric – I actually sent an e-mail and no one was more surprised than me when, later yesterday afternoon, I received an reply saying that my letter was to be published in Tuesday’s edition of the paper. Naturally I was up at dawn awaiting the paperboy, and there I was in print. If you can’t make my words of wisdom in the photograph the text follows

“In January my wife and I left Scotland, travelled to Sydney, bought a 4WD drive and tent then set out on a year long circumnavigation of Australia. At Uluru and The Olgas we were told we were extremely lucky to see these Australian icons as grey lumps of rock with water cascading down their flanks as most people only saw them smouldering red under a clear blue sky. Throughout the year our luck held as icon after icon refused to present as stereotype. Carnarvon Gorge, Airlie Beach, Kings Canyon, the Devils Marbles, the Douglas Daly, Ningaloo Reef, Lake Eyre, the Flinders, Canberra are just some of the places on which the sun refused to shine and the rain poured down.

Now we are back in Sydney visiting the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and guess what, our luck has continued to hold – it’s bucketing! My wife, ever the pragmatist, has just repeated what has become a well-worn mantra throughout our rain-sodden year “Well, at least it’s warm rain!”

Ah well, back to Edinburgh next month to several feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures. “


Bloody whinging Pom!