The Mystery Underliner Srikes Again

Whilst traveling, it is the law to read as much as possible. I've actually read more books since I've been in Australia than I probably have done in the last five years. Books are the perfect companion to take with you on beach days or lazing around in your backpackers days.

With my rediscovered love of reading and the story line of Piper and Cassius bonding over literature all those months ago,  it seemed like an obvious choice to dive into the book that brought them together in the first place. The Girls written by Emma Cline was the book that Piper first picked up from the Erinsborough book exchange and found somebody had been underlining (with highlighter!) poignant passages that spoke to her on a deep and meaningful level, only to discover later that it had been Cassius, the gardener who just popped up out of nowhere and eventually turned everyone's life upside down. 

So off I trundled to invest in the book and a highlighter of my own and was really enthusiastic to get stuck into it and find hidden messages within the pages. However I was massively disappointed with the book and it was a real struggle to get through it all. I just found it a very boring read and it promised so much and didn't deliver to my satisfaction at the end. As for finding passages that Cassius might have highlighted, I found that even more of a challenge but I tried my very best to follow suit.

Once I had finally finished reading The Girls, I decided the only thing to do with it was find a suitable public book exchange to leave it for somebody else to hopefully get more enjoyment out of it than I did and to ponder over why all those random passages had been underlined.

After a bit of research I discovered there is a wonderful website called Street Library which encourages book exchanges exactly like the one in Erinsborough and has a very handy map of all the known book exchange boxes in Australia...and there just happened to be one just a few streets away from where I was staying in Sydney!  Honestly, I got far more excited about contributing to this gorgeous book box than the part where I actually read the book.

So thus concludes my little dabbling into forcing my life to imitate Neighbours (normally it happens organically without any additional input from me). My advice to you is to not to bother reading The Girls because it will only disappoint and whatever you do, do not deface books because you will spoil the enjoyment for future readers (I felt utterly disgusted at myself every time I put highlighter to paper). On the other hand, do contribute to and support community led book exchanges and public libraries wherever you are in the world because books are wonderful things and free literature should be cherished and encouraged at all costs.


Please note: This blog post is dedicated to the one and only Cassius Grady Roche, the man who breezed into Ramsay Street with his glorious muscles on display for all the horny housewives of Erinsborough to oggle over, only to be snatched away from us so cruelly just for [deservedly] killing his father...and lets face it, he was probably going to die anyway after being twatted over the head with a gnome by another one of his bastard sons. Cassius, our very own mystery underliner...you've brought literature, substandard horticulture and eye candy into our lives, it has been an absolute pleasure watching you on screen and we will never forget you!

Fine, I'll go to Palm Beach if I Must!

Spring is well on its way over in Sydney and every day that I'm able to wear my thongs (I'm not only learning the lingo over here but I'm also using it in day to day life) without my toes freezing off, I plan a trip to one of the many many beaches the New South Wales coastline has to offer.

I'm a sucker for a good beach day and I'm one of those crazy Brits that loves to run into the ocean as soon as the outside temperature gets past 20 degrees...which incidentally has been a regular occurrence throughout the "winter" here so I've already explored a lot of the coastline.

With this in mind, it was inevitable that at some point I would eventually swallow my pride and head on up to Palm Beach which is where The Other Soap is filmed. However, you'll be pleased to know that I dressed for the occasion and wore my Scott and Charlene for this outing as a very subtle protest.

Dancing on the beach in my Scott and Charlene t-shirt

Palm beach is actually a suburb about 40 km north of Sydney on a beautiful peninsular so I had to take a ferry (they are part of the public transport network here which is pretty damn cool) and then quite a lengthy bus journey up the coast afterwards to reach it but it was so worth it!

There are several different beaches dotted around the place and I made my way to all of them. As someone who hasn't watched Home and Away since it got axed from ITV (I know I know, I am the worst kind of hypocrite) I wasn't entirely sure what to look out for in terms of filming locations but I amused myself by being a rebel and writing rude things in the sand...

My dirty protest!

Beautiful views over looking one of the beaches

Because I'm such a huge fan of the show I originally thought the building pictured below might be Alf's Bait Shop...until I actually reached Alf's Bait Shop and realised how foolish I had been to think that!

I originally thought this might have been Alf's Bait Shop...

...until I found this sign further on...

...and then got to this television-ready building and felt like quite the fool!

After that I climbed up to the lighthouse which I assume must featured on the show. The panoramic views from up there are absolutely breathtaking and I really wish I had a better camera to do them justice.

One lighthouse

looking back onto the peninsula

So much ocean! 

After my decent I went to the beach on the eastern side of the peninsula which I think is where most of the beach scenes are filmed. The sand on that side is really red and sticky (it's an absolute bugger to wash off) as opposed to the western beaches where the sad is white and your feet sink ankle deep with every step you take.

This is the most Summer Bay shot I could possibly hope for

More filming locations...

...with more opportunities to take photos of me standing outside them wearing inappropriate clothing! 

All in all, despite the obvious massive flaw to this beautiful place, I utterly adored exploring Palm Beach (as a fan of beaches and ocean scenery, not as a fan of the rival soap) and I'm very glad I got over myself and made the effort to go.

The one thing that impressed me more than anything was the fact that you could actually buy quite an extensive range of Summer Bay related merchandise from inside Alf's Bait Shop, which then made me sad there is no Neighbours equivalent other than the very feeble attempt at merchandise Bunyip Tours has to offer...get onto it Erinsborough Council, we need official merchandise god damn it!

Shipping Container Exhibition (and other exciting things at the National Maritime Museum)

Darling Harbour is fast becoming one of my favourite places in Sydney. By far the most exciting part of the area is the Maritime Museum full of walk-on ships, submarines and I kid you not...a free shipping container exhibition comprised of six different themed shipping containers exploring the history of how containerisation changed the world...needless to say, I am now heavily clued up on the history of transporting goods on a global scale!

I can just picture Finn and Bea walking around here before they moved to Erinsborough with Finn coming up with his dastardly plan to get revenge on everybody on Ramsay Street and lock them all in that shipping container in the middle of the bush!

It turns out my Uncle Malcom is the founding father of the shipping container and is indirectly responsible for imprisoning of Susan, Elly and Bea!

Did someone say "pineapples"?

Not only are there shipping containers galore at the Maritime Museum, you can also have a guided tour around a replica of the Endeavour (the ship that Captain Cook sailed sailed away in on his Aussie adventures) AND far more excitingly...a cargo ship called the James Craig, which originally was called the Clan MacLeod.

I definitely think this would have been a much better boat for Hamish and Louise [McLeod] to steal than the broken piece of junk belonging to his ex lover's ex husband! Just think about it, there'd be no engine to restore, he wouldn't have had to come up with a ridiculous and convoluted plot to get his bastard son on side just for it to all backfire and ultimately piss him off so much that he decided to twat him over the head with a gnome AND Louise would have a bell WITH HER NAME ON!!! 

The James Craig, formerly the Clan MacLeod...moored up right next to the [Lou] Carpentaria!

Ding ding, all aboard the Nurse McLeod!

However the actual most exciting thing in the whole museum wasn't remotely Neighbours related at all* (it may come as a shock to you but I do also have other interests) in the form of a temporary exhibition all about James Cameron's love of the ocean which included many props from Titanic! It was very very difficult to walk out of that place without buying my very own Heart of the Ocean in the museum shop but somehow my will power did not let me down which is a relief because the decent quality ones (ie the non plastic ones) were extremely expensive for something I would have eventually felt an overwhelming urge to fling into the ocean at some point in my life.

* I say it has nothing to do with Neighbours but I do know Toadie is quite partial to a bit of Titanic 

Dessine moi comme une de tes filles Françaises! (excuse my terrible Google translation)

Yes, that is the real Heart of the Ocean and other items from Rose's dressing table

There are obviously lots of other exciting things at the museum, both inside the main building and all around the harbour (which is utterly stunning) and I highly recommend checking it out if you're ever in the area. Go to their website for more info.

English Lessons

I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but I seem to have become the resident English teacher at my hostel, being one of very few native English speakers currently staying there. It started off with my lovely Chinese friends asking me to test them on random words they had written in an exercise book, but now it includes day trips to the beach and other such fun activities with a wide variety of people from all over the world.

The other day I made them all watch The Lion King with the subtitles on and I was so proud to see them all busy tapping away on their phones looking up translations to words they didn't previously know the meaning of.

At the end of last week I finally figured out how to switch the monitor in the common room from PC  mode to TV mode, mainly because I was fed up of streaming Neighbours online, which was a huge personal achievement for me as I'm really not very technologically minded. After the Lion King success story at the weekend, I decided to up my game as an English teacher and figured what better way to teach the English language AND a bit about Australian culture at the same time than to sit my students down infront of the show that has made my own transition into Australian society pretty seamless.

So 15 minutes before Neighbours started on Monday I started fiddling around with the back of the TV (as we don't seem to have a working remote) and successfully managed to switch on the subtitles just in time for the main event, which means my weekday lessons will all start at 6:30pm from now on. Because of my new pedagogical approach to consuming Neighbours, I now completely appreciate the THREE ad breaks the Aussies have to endure whilst watching the 20 minute show. As a result of the bite sized portions of Neighbours over here, it means we can have regular Q&A sessions throughout the programme without disturbing my own viewing pleasure...because it turns out trying to explain the backstory behind the whole Dee/Andrea/Toadie/Sonya/Hugo mess to people who haven't been learning English all that long is incredibly difficult! 

My new improved curriculum looks like this!

I have also developed a new found understanding for Elly because after a good hour or so of correcting and explaining the complexities of English grammar yesterday evening, I definitely needed several glasses of wine to get me through the rest of the night!