Australia (English)

I don't really know what I expected, but within a week, Australia has shown me the beauty, diversity and the good people of her land. Plus that the combination of the three also makes a whole lot of good food, wines and pale ales. They do makes some pilsners, but no, I've been too Belgianised to really give them credit. Sorry.

The story of my flight here will have to wait. I'm still too upset to 'be nice'. So...

The Great Ocean road is an experience no matter what age, sex, colour or creed you might be.
We (my good friends Adrian, probably the finest chef I know, and Rowan, who works in the heart- and ruthless world of advertising, but still comes across as a nice-ish person) set off from Glen Waverley in Melbourne on a crisp and beautiful Sunday morning. Before turning in at the fantastic fishing town of Robe some 12 hours and 1000 kilometres later, we'd been to Bells Bay (where the last scene in Breaking point were filmed), through cowboy country in Lavers Hill, seen the 12 Apostles, London Bridge and The Gorge, all by Port Campbell, swankered about the boutique- town of Lorne and not only turned down the surfing museum at Bells Bay, but also the shell museum (oh yes!) after lunch at Apollo Bay. We found a nice spot on the beach at Apollo Bay, opened the 'eski' (cooler box) and had a nice little lunch. Quickly joined by about 62 thousand seagulls. Ah well, I was gingerly told that if you 'feed' them Alka Seltzers, they blow up. We didn't do that, though. We're not that cruel. Or sufferers of heart-burn. Thankfully...

Unfortunately, the only kangaroos we saw the first day were road-kill. I'd never seen a roo, so it was pretty sad to see these creatures lying by the side of the road.
I've later learned that the kangaroos look at us humans as dogs. We're just like any other animal that crosses their way, as they don't really have any natural predators. So we are dogs to them. Which gives me a theory why they get run over by cars alot. They stay by the side of the road and can see a car coming in the distance. The kangaroo thinks to itself "I can make that. Easy" and then proceeds to hop along over the road. It leisurely looks over its shoulder towards the car and stops dead in its tracks. Puzzled, the roo thinks "Fuck me, there's a dog driving that car". And then gets run over.

McLaren Vale is one of the prettiest little towns I've been to, surrounded by fields apon fields of grapevines. All the wineries have 'cellar-doors', which basically is a wine- tasting if you're out to build up your wine cellar or a free piss-up if you're not. There's not only the notion of purple poo the next day, but they do some fantastic wines in the area also (and McClaren breweries make an awesome Vale Ale).
Dowie Doole has a Reserve Shiraz 2008 which is just heaven. Primo Estate has a Nebbiolo that blew us away. They have the fanciest cellar door too and brought out wines from the museum for us to taste. Primo also provided a little snack platter of home- made bread, self-produced olive oil and Parmesan cheese. The owners' daugther is married to a Norwegian, which can't be all bad either.
At Pertaringa the nice woman at their cellar door turned out to be Norwegian!!! I can tell you we turned a few heads when we started speaking IKEAn. "Fluu bee dupp i duu, de tuu te tuu. Muu blee te bluu ha pi nu beep beep beep!!". And we laughed and laughed....

One day I was in Robe, two days later, I'm IN a robe. McCracken Country Club by Victor Harbour was a magnificent place. Our room overlooking the golf course. We didn't get to play, though. We got caught up having jacuzzis and massages at the spa. Maybe next time, eh?

Being stopped by the police usually is a scary experience. Especially when you might have been driving a bit too fast. Then there's the police officer who has provided me with this conversation:
Officer: Do you have trees, cows or kangaroos in Victoria?
Driver: Eh....
Officer: No? Well, SLAADAAAWN (slow down).
Then he walked away. Good man, me thinks.

The township of Hamilton is.... eh.... Lets just say that the cockroaches and rats have already checked out and left. Our room had not been renovated since the 1960's. Beds are bed, fair dinkum, but clean the carpet, mate! The steak was ok, but the salad bar, well, you could fit all the veg in a teacup. Not a mug, a cup.They did do a brilliant vanilla milkshake- cum- breakfast at 06.45, though. That's right, I was up at 06.45, heading out of 'Dodge(y) city'. They also have redback spiders in their hotel toilets too, you see.
We decided that a proper brekkie was in place, so the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld was the next stop. I think they put us down as having spent the night in a tent. We did look a bit like we'd just rolled down the volcano at Mt. Rouse by Penshurst (by the way, there's redback spiders there too, neatly tucked in under the railings).
Eggs Benedict and Eggs Florentine was good, but the best thing was the expression on the face of the woman who tried to pick up the jug of milk just as I was, when we both were making our tea. She's not accustomed to other peoples low growls apparently. Well, she is now anyway...

They put these signs up by the road here. It shows an image of a koala. So you think, 'Hey, there's koalas in these trees here' and then you start to look out the window of the car. After an hour or two of not seeing a single shape that might be a koala, I've come to this conclution:
The road signs are put up simply to get peoples attention up into the trees and away from, albeit very small spots of, crap scenery in Australia. "There's a patch of boring scenery on one side coming up, right, let's put up a koala sign and some trees on the other side. That'll fool them". Well, it didn't fool me. There are so such things as koalas. Now, you might think "Wait a minute, I've seen koalas at the zoo. They do exist". No they don't!
Koalas are lonely dwarfs in furry suits that hug trees for a living.
Amy at the koala pen at the Healesville santuary held up a brave face when I said I knew 'their' secret, even if I couldn't see the zippers, but I could see past her nervous little smile and big teeth that she knew that I'd cracked the Australian koala/ dwarf conspiracy.

And that's Australia for you, really. Beautiful (and vast) scenery, nice people, deadly spiders, flattened kangaroos, red dogs that eat babies and dwarfs in suits.

Fair dinkum to them

Änglar, finns dom?

Änglar finns dom?Det er vel det mange har spurt seg i det siste etter at prinsesse Märtha Louise har stoppet det siste året av sin såkalte engleskole.
Hun ga jo fra seg tittelen sin når hun giftet seg med han derre deprimerte, gin-slukende porselens maleren, men det er kanskje litt dumt nå. For Deres kongelige HØYhet ville vel gjort underverker på en engleskole?

Nå vet ikke jeg om hun startet en skole for å lære om engler eller om å bli en engel.
I mitt hode går læren om engler ut på å se på gamle glansbilder, noe Jesus greier eller høre på Robbie Williams, mens læren om å bli en engel går mye på å kunne posere på en sky med en harpe, spille inn Philadelphia- ost reklame eller lære å dale ned i skjul. Eller rett og slett bare bli litt glansbilde lubben.

Astarte education, tilbyr 3- årig utdannelse. Til 12.000 i halvåret. Første året er det reading. Andre året er det healing og i tredje året er det berøring. Det betyr at jeg måtte ha brukt 60.000 kroner før jeg kunne begynne å ta på Märtha Louise!Og det er ikke sikkert jeg ville fått berørt Martha, det kunne vært hun andre. Elisabeth Samnøy. Som hun sier i sin egen profil på siden ”Jeg begynte som skipsmekaniker assistent, men fant fort ut at det ikke var min oppgave her i livet”. NAAAAAIIII!!??? Sier du det?

Margit Sandemo mener at vi alltid har to engler med oss, en på hver side, som hjelper oss gjennom dagen med alt mulig. Utenom støvtørking, oppvask og andre fysisk krevende elementer vi gjerne skulle hatt hjelp til.Hvis vi alle har 2 engler stående bak oss, tror jeg faktisk mine ligger ganske mye. Det er kanskje de to som holder meg våken om nettene med små krumspring? Eller kanskje jeg bare har lagt meg på de og de forsøker å komme seg løs?

Uansett, jeg har ikke pratet med noen engler.Jeg har heller aldri pratet med hest. Märtha har pratet med hest. Jeg har kanskje sagt til en hund ”Skal vi ut å gå tur? Skal vi gå tur?” men jeg mener at det ikke har vært mye av en samtale.
At hunden har logret ivrig med halen og bjeffet mot døra, har jeg tatt for god fisk i å bety ”Ja, takk. En tur høres riktig trivelig ut”. Jeg trenger ikke å betale 12.000 kroner i halvåret for å finne ut om det var noe mer.
Og hvorfor skal jeg prate med en hest? Jeg vet ikke engang hva jeg skulle spørre en hest om. Jeg er ikke noe særlig glad i småprat med mennesker, så hvorfor i huleste skal jeg kommunisere med en hest?
Jeg har aldri vært på fest der det har vært en hest. Jeg har vært på fest der det er noen som ser ut for en hest, men aldri vært på fest hos eller med hest, så jeg har aldri hatt behovet for å si noe til en hest. Hva skal en egentlig si? ”Kommer du hit ofte, eller?”. ”Det er litt kjedelig her, skal vi dra på en annen travbane?”. ”Er du i familie eller bare en venn av Slogumstjerna?”.

Hadde Martha Louise bare en eneste engel i nærheten av seg da hun møtte Ari Behn første gang, ville nok engelen pirket henne lett på skulderen og sagt: LØØØØØØØØØØØØØØØØØØØP!!!!!

Deres to unger, hvor den ene er navngitt Maud Angelica, ANGELICA, ble vel unnfanget da det startet med en reading (trolig ikke av hans skriblerier) som gikk over til healing, som ble til berøring og til slutt tung pusting og pesing. Og alt helt gratis.

Dette engle- prosjektet høres ut som om de har fått noe i seg som de ikke tålte. Kanskje de har vært og sniffet i medisinskapet til Mette Marit? For hun, som kjent, har jo aldri vært en engel….