Res Publica

Chilli Fingers

I know, it sounds like a spicy snack. It's actually what you end up with after you've picked a couple of chillis off the bush in the back garden, discarded the seeds and sliced up the chilli and added it to the coconut milk you were poaching some basa fillets in.

Just after tea I stuck my finger in my eye and gave it a good rub. I shan't do that again for a while. Bugger, it hurt like hell.

Elliott Heads

Yesterday, The Handbrake and I went for a walk at Elliott Heads, a short distance (18kms) southeast of Bundy. There's a well maintained concrete path which runs along the cliff-top, ideal for walking, and some great views as well. Here's a shot of the main bathing beach just north of where the Elliott River meets the sea. They've dragged all the basalt boulders off the beach into two big rows, one at each end, otherwise this would just be a big spread of basalt like most of the coast hereabouts.

The long weekends inevitably bring out the wallies in society and yesterday was no exception. The beach was fairly quiet except for some young lads who were using a kite powered (big) skate-board and having a lot of fun, despite the fact that it meant that nobody else could use about 80% of the beach  for fear of getting mowed down - selfish pratts.

In times past the residents obviously used to toss their garden refuse over the cliff-top with the result that there are all sorts of domesticated species growing along the footpath now - cannas, money trees, mother-in law's tongues, agaves. The council has planted numerous she-oaks (Casuarina equisitifolia) which were host to numerous rainbow lorikeets who were tearing the distinctive seed cones apart. I was unaware until I did a bit of research that the casuarina is so called because of the similarity of the narrow elongate leaves to the plumage of the cassowary. The she-oak is an unusual tree with a lot of folk-lore attached to them. I was unable to find out why it is called the she-oak - any ideas ? It obviously looks nothing like an oak. There were more than a few in Nouméa as well.

Bus Nonsense

A few of the companies I've worked for have had those small Toyota Coaster buses for carting crews around from camp to mine or off to the airport. Previously you could drive these with a full load of passengers with an MR truck licence, so long as you weren't charging a fare or operating on a commercial basis.

Someone in Government has now decided this isn't good enough. Now you have to have a medical and get a police clearance. I said to the lad at Main Roads, "I've got an ASIO and state clearance to purchase and handle explosives from the local fertilizer store, is that good enough."  "No", was the reply, you need a new one....

More bureaucracy from the State Government, just what we need.

Expenses

They get a bit fussy with expense claims at work and won't refund expenses unless you have a 'proper tax invoice'. Judging from the ones I get from the occasional taxi the only thing that defines them as such is that they have 'Tax Invoice' written on them. Otherwise it's the same as any other receipt. Before Xmas I bought a camera and memory card from Harvey Norman in Brisbane. Thinking they'd given me two receipts I threw one away only to find out later on that I'd actually thrown the receipt for the memory card away. I photocopied my credit card receipt and the front of the box but they steadfastly refused to pay on the grounds it wasn't a proper tax invoice. 

In a moment of mindless optimism I thought I'd ring Harvey Norman and see if I could get a duplicate invoice ($35 isn't much but it is worth getting back). I couldn't believe my ears when I was put through to an assistant in the computer department who printed one out and faxed it to me. From picking up the phone to getting the fax couldn't have been more than 2 minutes.

Full marks to Harvey Norman. They have restored my faith in Australian retail service.

On top of that we won the lotto while we were away in Noumea ($32) and my Virgin Blue flight to Townsville was on time on Wednesday. It would have been a wonderful start to the New Year if I hadn't invested in the stockmarket.

Nouméa Pix

I've put a few photos of our recent trip in a new album - Nouméa, over there on the left hand side somewhere. One of our lasting term memories of Nouméa will be the amount of graffiti around the place. In one or two places it was impossible to keep it out of the photos.

Not Cheap

Nouméa Pas Cher - the name of a relatively cheap shop in the city centre although on a more general level it's a fairly deceptive statement - Nouméa is an expensive place to pass the time. I gather the residents don't pay income tax hence all taxation revenue is levied on a consumption type basis (which I always thought was a good idea - if we all did it). Our monetary conversion rule of thumb was to drop the last two 0s off the French Pacific Franc price and then multiply by 1.5 to get the A$ equivalent. On that basis, things roughly cost 150% (or more) of what they'd cost here in Oz.

If you insist on eating at the better restaurants and staying in upmarket accommodation you're going to be in for an expensive time. We kept costs down by using public transport and doing as much self-catering as was sensible in a hotel room; picking up a fresh baguette from the local boulangerie and making sandwiches for lunch or bread and jam for breakfast.

It's also strange to think that you can fly to Port Vila in Vanuatu (and fly right over the top of New Caledonia) a lot more cheaply than you can get to Nouméa. On that score we cheated - I used frequent flyer points and booked about 8 months ago, about time I got some benefit from all the sodding planes I have to catch to get to and from work.

A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

I'm not used to seeing coconuts hanging off trees. Some local councils in Queensland are so terrified of law-suits that they have them pruned on a regular basis despite a huge lack of evidence to support the contention that they're dangerous. The city council at Nouméa obviously doesn't give a rats about them, here's a fine bunch pictured in the Place des Cocotiers in the centre of the city.

We only ventured onto the beach a few times on our holiday and on one such very windy occasion we finally got our beach towels under control only to look straight up at rather unnerving masses of coconuts. A quick and dirty risk analysis and the lack of travel insurance promptly caused us to retire to the hotel pool surrounds. However, a couple of days later we went for a stroll along some back streets after tea and witnessed a coconut fall from a height of about 10 metres straight onto the roof of a nearby minibus where it made a hell of a noise (and presumably a fair dent). There was no wind, it simply became a victim to the force of gravity. Dangerous or not, I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to cop that one on the noggin.

A Little R & R

That's our place, the low, white-roofed hotel out there on the point in the middle distance, Le Surf Hotel (don't the French have their own word for surf ?) on the narrow neck of land known as 'Rocher a la Voile' - no, I still can't get accents with the lap-top key-pad. The bay in the near distance is known as Anse Vata and is arguably the No. 1 swimming beach in Noumea, a gently sloping sandy bottom with wonderfully clean, warm water. The French and the Kanaks both seem to take sun-worshipping and beach life quite seriously but slip, slop, slap doesn't seem to get much of a look in with the lighter skinned section of the local community and The Handbrake and I are among the few people wandering around with hats on. In between the hats, the camera and relatively pasty complexions, we're readily identifiable as tourists although the fact that we've been misidentified as Kiwis a couple of times has been of some concern.

We've been here for the best part of a week already. It has been ridiculously hot (think Townsville or Cairns at their best (worst ?)) with attendant very high humidity. Most afternoons a brisk sou'wester seems to come in and the kite-surfers and sail-boarders take to the water and the breeze cools the place off a bit.

Noumea is a subtle mix of the local Kanak and imported (or superimposed, if you prefer) French cultures so there's plenty of South Pacific colour set against a 'civilising' backdrop of Gallic bureaucracy, haute-couture, and French cuisine. The baguettes and French pastries are marvellous, the wines (mostly French) good value. It's all very laid back and relaxing, just what we needed  to start the year off. The photo was taken from the top of Ouen Toro, a fairly substantial hill at the east end of the bay.

Sandunes

Let's hope it's a more grammatically satisfying year than the one just finished, although with this effort, spotted today out at Bargara, I'm not encouraged. Not to mention the 'breakfast, lunch and diner' notice we saw at one of the local cafés. Surprisingly "sandunes' scores 31,000 hits compared to 2,740,000 hits for "sand dunes" so there's hope yet. After a brief stroll along the front, dodging a few squalls, we made a dash for a table at one of our favourite lunch spots where we copped a hiding from the old public holiday surcharge routine, $25 for two coffees and a piece of apple pie each. Nice though the apple pie was, in between the surcharge and the obvious lack of local spelling abilities, my spirit of optimism for the New Year is already seriously strained.