I never used to dread winter, but I do now.  As the greyness descends and the days shorten I become increasingly ‘out of sorts’ as my husband, Dave generously spins it.  As each morning pillows new cloud under old, the blood in my veins slowly turns to lead until it feels as though even my soul has gone into stasis.  It’s a hibernation of sorts, but one without the benefits of extra sleep and reduced intake of fatty foods.

Julia Townsend of Goodacre and Townsend listens carefully as I trawl through my symptoms, ‘I’m hanging on by fingernails,’ I tell her, listing the colourful nightmares, the joylessness, the tendency to snarl at newborn kittens. I’m usually too proud, and certainly too tight, to seek help for a personal crisis but there is, I’m learning,  nothing so therapeutic as a self indulgent bout of whining poured into the ears of a professional. ‘I need light,’ I whisper, ‘ heat. I need warm air in my lungs, I need…

‘The Maldives.’ she says firmly. The Maldives… okay, well…I’ve been hearing a lot about the Maldives recently. A scattering of atoll lagoons off southern India, snips of land left over from the rising and sinking of a 60 million year old volcanic range. Geologically, if nothing else, they sound wildly romantic. ‘There’s not a lot to do but stare at the sun and with any number of resorts to choose from,’ Julia is saying, ‘this is the go-to place for those afflicted by SAD syndrome. ‘

But hold on just one minute… There are good reasons why Dave and I have not been away together for over a decade.   We are heroic arguers at the best of times, but our holiday list of “he wants, she wants” reads like the kind of mutually exclusive demands more commonly found clogging up the divorce courts. I can, for instance, spend an entire day poking dead fish in a market, while D gravitates towards the nearest hammock with a literary thriller.  He loves the sea; I’m loath to spend time in any environment where I’m considered food.  I like to skip up mountains; he’s prone to vertigo. I suffer from mild to maddening ADD while he shares several strands of DNA with the common sloth. As far as I’m concerned, unless there is competitive survival involved with the right to spear and pot roast fellow guests, the idea of being stranded for 9 days on a desert island is untenable and that’s without factoring in that troubling little word ‘resort:’ You’ve all seen them –  Those desperate mute couples at dinner, counting their Lipitor pills and praying for a table visit from the schmoozy GM.  The newlyweds ostentatiously swallowing each others tongues in the infinity pool; the bewildered CEO, stumbling around like a general deprived of his army while his wife lies under the blistering equatorial sun, gently rotisserie-ing her stomach rolls to the colour of HP sauce.

But even as my mouth is forming around a silent scream, Goodacre and Townsend’s jpegs are opening up on my desktop in glorious concertina. The pellucid blue waters, palm trees swaying against blood-orange sunsets.  Legions of smiley chefs grilling tuna… From somewhere close by, I hear the bronchial rasp of Dave’s cough. Outside,  the pavements are buckling under roadworks. Perhaps, I think, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.…

It’s Chinese New Year and Male airport is stacked high with Louis Vuitton luggage, property of a number of honeymooning couples from Beijing for whom undying love apparently requires the wearing of colour coordinated outfits. Admiring them through their jet lag, a loungeful of pasty faced sun seekers await distribution to their chosen resorts via speedboats and sea planes. Around one hundred of the eleven hundred or so Maldivian islands have been developed . Ours, Hadahaa, is a ninety minute layover, a further hour in the air, followed by a thirty minute boat journey. “ Oh, but it’s worth it,” the Park Hyatt rep tells us with undisguised pride, “the architecture! The beach! The reef! You won’t be sorry.”

I’m not sure what kind of resort the pre-eminent Park Hyatt chain implies but certainly not remote or tiny. Hadahaa is both.  A speck of an atoll located at the far southern point of the Maldives.  On arrival, we get a quick glimpse of a bar flanking a long serene pool and a wonderful upside down wooden fishing boat which serves as hang-out space before we are brought full circle to our Park Pool Villa, tucked discreetly into the vegetation. Recognized as one of Condé Nast Traveler’s Hot Hotels back in 2010, Hadahaa was originally designed by award winning SCDA architects of Singapore and its sleek modernism, juxtaposed against un-spoilt nature, fitted closely with the acquisitive Hyatt’s ethos of eco friendly minimalism.  Our villa is all cool polished floors and sliding timber screens.  Jungle side, a palatial changing room opens onto an outside terrazzo stone bath and shower. A balau deck and freshwater pool lead to shaded walkway through which, tantalizingly, a streak of horizon can be glimpsed.

We are introduced to Shifaz, our island oracle, who for reasons I can only attribute to stupidity, we address as Netflix for the first few days. Shifaz, who owns a five ft. long pet iguana, is prepared to tie himself in all manner of knots to meet our every need, but glancing around our room, crammed with bowls of spiky fruit, date champagne and personal I pad, I can’t imagine we’ll be needing much, though a little help setting up my new underwater camera wouldn’t go amiss.   And with that thought, we pad on down to the beach.

Oh my…. When consulted, 9/10 holiday brochures would prefer their beaches to look like this one; sand the consistency of cocaine; water as blue as Jimmy Cagney’s eyes. Can this be what all the earth’s oceans once looked like before man emptied 2,000 years of bobbing turds into them? In awe, we wait for the drone of plane and boat, for the skidoo-ing waterhogs, but there’s nothing, just stillness and the pull of that achingly bright sun.

I was weaned on Scottish beaches, flat packed, bone white, and along which you tramped, always in gumboots, usually through a gale, face needled by the rain and the harsh spit of airborne sand while an angry sea crashed against the shore with a sound that resembled a face slap. A Scottish sea is a Melvillian sea, full of whales and underwater monsters. Its beaches are wistful places and best contemplated alone, while raging at the universe or mourning the love affair that’s soured.  Cold beaches are misery beaches and I’ve spent some of my happiest moments on them.

Put me on a hot beach though and I’ve less idea what to do.  David promptly adopts a supine pose under an umbrella while I try my hand at sunbathing. It’s an itchy, sticky business, and lying down during the day, unless for a really good reason, doesn’t come easy to those of us cruelly hampered by a skittish nature. Nevertheless, with what can only be described as courage in the face of adversity, I persevere. It’s actually surprising how much you can accomplish while lying prone. Within two days, I’ve updated Sanskrit to include the noun ‘gin.’  I’ve co-erced resident hermit crabs into forming a worker’s union and named my knees.  I’m learning to love the feel of burnt feet, the crunch of sand in my mouth and let’s not forget that delicious feeling of drowsiness – the kind not induced by an overdependence on Xanax .

I had assumed that D and I would spend this; our very special time together vigorously debating US electoral reform but it doesn’t quite pan out that way. “ You know,” I say, lifting one sweating cheek off my paperback,” I think there might have been coconut in that warm seafood salad last night.’

‘Ray, ray, slip-sliding away,” he murmurs, gazing at the out-going tide.

“And perhaps a trace of cumin”. I add, yawning.

“Ants.” He trails a finger in the sand.  “Why so small and always in a hurry?

Very occasionally we put on something resembling clothes and drift over to the Hyatt’s zen pool and spa, where in preparation for being stroked, brushed and marinated in a variety of oils,  we are invited to drink sweet lemongrass tea and watch the fruit bats windsurfing between the coconut palms.

At sunset we potter along the coast to the Hyatt’s Island Grill where they serve not just the freshest fish I’ve ever tasted, but what must surely be the best king prawn ceviche in the whole wide world (kiwi, juniper berries, Lime!)

And it is here, under the stars, where D’s and my romance truly ignites as we hold hands over warm chili bread and ponder which of our fellow guests we’d sleep with in the event of the apocalypse.  I opt for the magnificent Pashtun Prince with the fleshy wife, while D has his eye on the languid Russian with toothy meerkat features.   As the days roll by, we sink deeper into a state of blissful catatonia. Who needs museums and ruins when there is such art and beauty in doing nothing ? Besides, for those interested in exploring an ancient civilization, one architected with temples and monuments and supporting a miraculously diverse population whose hierarchical order is maintained through aggression and more than a little posturing, well…. there is always the world under the sea.

And here is the real secret of Hadahaa. Vindication, should any be needed of that extra travel mile.  One of the largest and deepest atolls in the world, its house reef has the highest percentage of live coral in the Maldives and if you can’t imagine what that looks like, think of the complexity and beauty of Avatar’s kingdom of Pandora then submerge it underwater. The kingdom of Coral, as it turns out, is equally fascinating. Cousin of the jellyfish, reef-building corals shack up in a symbiotic love-in with algae, which live within their tissues and produce the oxygen coral needs to survive. Of course, healthy coral means the rest of the eco system can thrive. Where the reefs of some other resorts have been scraped away to allow for building, Hadahaa’s original owners were divers, and so fiercely protective of their island that the hotel’s foundations were laid by hand.  According to resident marine biologist, Miss Arabella Willing,  there is not another reef to match it.

If diving and snorkeling are unsurpassed at the Hyatt, then our next stop, Gili Lankanfushi surely holds the gold standard for swimming.   Set in an electric blue lagoon, Gili Lankanfushi’s immense and incomparable water villas come in the form of multiple tiered thatched bungalows built off long wooden jetties, offering a breezy walkway of rooms, landings and roof terraces above a timber deck cantilevered out over the sea.  Staying at Gili is a little like scoring the best seat at a private oceanarium show.

I’ve never before thought to contemplate the life of fish, but now it seems inordinately pleasant and well ordered.  I watch them dawn through dusk; the sting ray windmilling through the grey waters of first light; the needle-fish following like a hustle of lawyers en route to court.  Big honest-faced groupers take their kids to school, while a jock barracuda returns to his digs after a night out on the razz. And ever present are the black tipped sharks who bat their limpid brown eyes at you as they pass as if to say, not now, not yet…. but maybe one day soon….

The swimming is so tranquil, the fish spotting so absorbing, the food so exquisite, and our villa so beautiful , that once inside it,  we are overcome with a strong reluctance to leave.  Ever. This is a smart and deliberate ploy designed to keep the island deserted.  Sightings of the endangered Hawksbill turtle are more frequent than that of a fellow guest, although the latter species can occasionally be found feeding on popcorn in Gili’s inspired jungle cinema or engaged in a ferocious game of beach ping pong with one of the staff.

Part of the great charm of both Hyatt and Gili Lankanfushi are the conversations with the Maldivians who work there. ‘Is it true that it rains every day in England?’ They ask bemused.

‘Every day.’ We reply solemnly.

‘And you never feel warm?’

‘Never.’

In between our attempts to rationalize the British weather, we are regaled with snippets of the Maldivian life and the younger generation’s concerns for its future. At Gili, management and staff alike are pre-occupied with environmental issues, as indeed are many of the resorts.  The rigorously self sufficient Hyatt, for example, was the first property in the Maldives to be accredited by EarthCheck, a body which decrees that a resort must continually improve it’s environmental performance in order to maintain their certificate. Gili has built strong relations with neighboring islands, supporting schools, building play parks, purchasing incinerators and teaching locals how to keep the sea clean.

Should any of this stuff be a factor when choosing a resort?   Sure it should.   The Maldives are so close to our western culture’s idea of Paradise that even while  Dave and I are there, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that we are in the cosy, infinitely friendly grip of a Brave New World’s Soma Holiday. “One gramme for a weekend, Aldous Huxley wrote, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon…”

Sea levels are rising. If we are to be plunged into the abyss, then the Maldives, as earth’s lowest landmass, will be the first to go. Tourism and fishing are the island’s sole assets and money earned is already being put aside to buy land elsewhere should the Maldivians one day become climate refugees. Meanwhile sustainable tourism will make this near perfect world last as long as possible. I guess we can all do our bit to make sure that Huxley’s  gorgeous eastern hallucinations will not, in the future,  be the only Maldivian package available to us.

For travel, the wonderful Goodacre& Townsend ltd. can be contacted on 02074342255

To see more of Gili Lankanfushi and The Park Hyatt Maldives,  Hadahaa, go to:

www.maldvies.hadahaa.park.hyatt.com or contact

www.gili-lankanfushi.com

But,  as a writer, it’s required. Apparently.  I like to be as culturally progressive as the next person and it helps to stay edgy, to connect to readers. ‘ Just be inclusive’ I’m told,  ’be funny,  clever and witty, talk about politics, recommend your exorcist, write about your new poodle or just scan in a doodle, it’s so easy,  what’s the big deal, just be…. you know….you!‘  Yes, thank you newly-hired-to deal-with-e-books- publishing -PR-person.  Sound advice which under normal circumstances i would  ignore, but these are lean years for publishers and writers, or so we keep being told,  so it’s back to the virtual grindstone for me.

Sheer laziness aside,  i can’t  remember why i stopped blogging all those months ago. I got to the middle of Australia and as so often happens in that big country, promptly disappeared.  Before i left, I’m pretty sure  I covered Sydney and all the nasty toothy things in its harbour.  I wrote about my touching, albeit brief friendship with Charlize the ( as it turned out) dead funnel web spider.

http://www.bellapollen.com/bellas-blog/4-bare-walls-and-a-desk/

I dedicated more than a few column inches to the great coffee and superlative eggs benedict served up in bondi for breakfast each morning and I definitely handed in several searching and informative journalistic pieces on floods, the outback, kangaroos and the very lovely hotels they bounce around,   but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get as far as mentioning  Deb Balderstone of Soapbox industries, producer,  mother of four, most generous of women,  who single-handedly reduced my nervous breakdown to a manageable almost pocket size.  I forgot to write about spending an ENTIRE DAY eating lunch, lunch and more lunch with the fierce and clever Renaissance Brit,  Rachel Ward ,  actress, columnist,  screenwriter and director of  the tragic  ’Beautiful Kate’

A story about ‘forbidden’ love filmed in wilderness of  Flinders Range where, again,  as  already  extensively blogged –  I was fined $500 for the slowest  speeding crime ever  by a deviant cycloptic motherfucker of a cop.  Still, this was not Rachel’s fault, so if you haven’t already done so, rent, borrow or buy ‘Beautiful Kate , but see it one way or the other.   http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1209377/

Didn’t write about Nell Cambell either,  funniest woman in Sydney, possibly even the whole of Australia. Little Nell of Rocky Horror Show who i used to know from New York days when we were all young and wrestling in creamed corn in Studio 54 (or was that  only me…?) I think  Nell was busy running her own night club at the time, but i have no doubt she was  wrestling in creamed corn in the privacy of her own apartment…anyway, the point being that she’s as entertaining and bonkers as ever  and working  on  putting together a one woman show. Bring it on Nell and bring it to London soon as possible. 

Then, stupidly, i  forgot to post the second half of my Park Hyatt Hotel piece written for Globalista.

http://globalista.co.uk/feature/the-park-hyatt-by-bella-pollen/

so here it is now….

THE PARK HYATT, SYDNEY

Architecturally, the Sydney link in the Hyatt’s chain is an unusually graceful hotel for a city centre, a low level sandstone coloured building that banks and curves around the water’s edge. Closed for the better part of 2011 for a multi-million dollar overhaul, it has now re-opened as an understated minimalist triumph.  A far more sober affair than Melbourne, there’s not a flake of kitsch or gold leaf to be found.  The Hyatt is Japanese owned and here, in the light, Zen spaces of the common parts, it shows. Materials are textured without being naff ; colours muted but not dull. A collection of photographs, lithographs and sculptures, commissioned from Australian artists to reflect the cross cultural backdrop of the continent, hang on the walls, or are displayed on plinths in the lobby and these too give the space more the feel of  a contemporary art gallery than hotel.

In the end though, the Sydney Hyatt is all about location. The glass frontage of the entire ground floor – dining room through living room to bar has been designed to allow maximum ogling of Sydney’s most iconic landmarks – albeit not today.  The incessant rains have already delayed the grand opening by months and it’s raining still. The opera house is hidden under bulbous cloud, Sydney Harbor Bridge is shrouded in mist and a determined tropical storm beats down on the boardwalk of the Circular Quay. None of this matters though, because slap bang outside the window, and the awed focus of every guest drinking espressos and forking up mille feuille, is that vision of grey steel and aquatic power, the Queen Mary 2, world’s largest ocean liner, just docked and disgorging passengers in lines of waterproofed ants.

Eventually I decamp to my room, but not before stealing up to the new 4^th floor, which has added three palatial rooftop apartments for discerning rock stars and dictators. The hotel’s remaining 155 suites aren’t too shabby either. My city harbor King opens onto the waterfront and after making friends with my Smart Room Controller and the subsequent reveal that my toilet seat is perma- heated in anticipation of a visit from my butt, it’s time to retire to the private balcony and watch the world go by.  There are few more pleasant ways to spend an afternoon.  Locals walk dogs, tourists come and go. A pair of lovers neck strenuously on a bench and all set against the endlessly diverting backdrop of tugboats and ferries crisscrossing the harbor until quite suddenly, the cloud begins to lift. The bridge materializes like a Derren Brown trick and there, glinting and sparkling under a fierce sun, are the peaked overlapping helmets of the Sydney Opera House.

If these iconic landmarks aren’t enough for one day,  I find myself dinner-blind dating two other Australian idols. The charming possum loving Barry Humphries and his very funny but deeply bonkers friend, lawyer/writer Charles Waterstreet.  We meet a convenient splash along the boardwalk, in the multi award winning Quay, which turns out to be one of those fancy joints where the menu is so convoluted you wonder why it wasn’t originally published as a spy thriller.  Australian restaurants are big on their foodie back stories and I’ve become used to the waiter introducing a bewildered looking snapper to the table as “a well brought up chap, from a Queensland family of 500 brothers and sisters” etc., but one look at the Quay’s menu ,which from memory reads something like… Fragrant jasmine tea poached whitebait with shaved hand dived sea turtle sanctioned by egg yolk emulsions alongside pea blossoms perfumed with lightly oiled Korean virgins… and I know for a certainty I am destined to remain hungry.  Had it not been for the riveting company, I might have stayed in and room serviced super chef Andrew McKee’s signature dishes of Wagyu beef and Birkshire pork belly. Next time.

I hate to say it but the Park Hyatt Sydney is a really nice hotel, not just to sleep in, but also to eat, drink and hang out in. Now here is somewhere I could happily call my home away from home, though at minimum $800 a night, I’m unlikely to be moving in anytime soon. Even so, I can safely say that my love affair with the humble B&B is over.  I’ve had a taste of class and there’s no going back. And as I check out, I realize I don’t have to be sad. See, that’s the great thing about chains. They’re everywhere. So, Park Hyatt, Baku, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Tokyo, Saigon, Shanghai ….etc.  Here I come.

Okay,  so that’s the Park Haytt box ticked.   Next on the list of things I haven’t written about is my  stay at VCCA, the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts. This was a month long residency in September in the company of a smorgasbord of poets, writers, visual artists, performance artists and composers.  Located in Lynchburg, Southern Virginia, ‘cradled in 400 acres of rolling Blue Ridge farmland.  ( i got the word ‘ cradled’ off their website)  VCCA is basically the world’s most  luxurious minimum security prison where writers are sent to reform their ways, i.e. encouraged to put in some seriously hard time. The grounds are beautiful,  the cows are postcard pretty and the horses ( one of whom was rumoured to have won the Pulitzer Prize)  nicker winningly every time you pass by.  VCCA is passionate about their sons and daughters of the arts. They feed you, give you  a bedroom, a writing studio, and a surreal world of zero responsibility in which to operate. I bust out of my writer’s block,  started three projects, wrote like a fiend, drank copious amounts of gin after office hours –  I even  took up swimming – which i hate,  in the University lake whose waters were the colour of diet coke and hiding  all kinds of sinister creatures which from time to time blew little bubbles up to the surface just to show they meant business.

Here is my work wall at VCCA.  A Scene by scene for Summer of the Bear film Treatment. 

Is that it? I hear you asking.  Away for a month and you stuck 102 pieces of card onto cork? Well,  no, that’s not all, as it happens,  i wrote several brilliantly acerbic short non-fiction essays which i’m hoping will form the basis of a ‘ horribly fascinating’ or ‘ smart and gripping’ memoir.  I started a new novel about a Lonely Sleep Deprived Man Whose Wife Doesn’t Love Him.  Its working title is :

The Revulsion: a Slim Volume of Misery.

Here is VCCA’s website. http://www.vcca.com/main/about-vcca

and here is a big black snake we ran over on the way to the lake.

Ha! that’ll teach it not to look both ways.

And that’s it for the moment.  Back now to that other pastime which basically involves building sentences into  paragraphs and then  chapters, which, when collated, will,  with a bit of luck, one day, although not any day soon,  become something known as a  book,  a medium for story-telling, which by the time I finish,  may or may not have had its day.

The Gaslight Theatre, Durango, Colorado #Theatreshooting.The Dark Knight rises.

See above for the one sign I did NOT want to see at my local CO theatre today! pic.twitter.com/I1Yjflkv

If you think you can work out who wrote what, send in your thoughts and why. No-one’s got it right so far and it  makes for a pretty good guessing game!

Synopsis

In Bed With …is a unique, sometimes humorous, often wicked and totally sizzling collection of unashamedly sexy bedtime stories by bestselling, award-winning and well-known novelists – writing under their x-rated pseudonyms (a combination of the name of their first pet and their street). So who are Pom Pom Paradise and Minxy Malone? Tutty Monmouth or Sunset Proudfoot? Entertaining and erotic, In Bed With is a delicious collection of fiction provocateur. What are you waiting for? Slip under the covers with a good book. Satisfaction guaranteed.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Bed-With-Edwards-Jones-ebook/dp/B00846RWR6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340806092&sr=1-1.

Check out SLAVERY INC.,  a book about the international sex trade and human slavery. Already a huge success in Latin America, it’s about to be published by Portobello Books in this country .Written by Lydia Cacho, and translated by Beth Boburg, this book chronicles corruption and abuse at the highest possible level. This is Mexico we’re talking about, a country  whose political and criminal elite reserve their own brand of justice for those who pursue this kind investigative journalism. Cacho’s books is an extraordinarily brave piece of work.   Respect.

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro

It’s a barren landscape , equally seductive as it is sinister and the sheer size of it messes with your sense of scale and distance. What appears to be flat, walkable  land, as far as the eye can see,  turns out to be ground furrowed by steep gorges and dry creek beds.  As with all deserts, it exudes a  hypnotic pull that invites you to step into the unknown and keep going until every drop of life has been sucked out of you. This was aboriginal territory until the Europeans moved in around the mid 19c . Back then Arkaba was one of a number of sheep shearing stations,  but lack of water, transport and mind numbing loneliness  conspired to break the spirit of many  pastoralists and even the miners who came after them . Still, Arkaba has remained operational, one of a handful of survivors.

It’s late afternoon by the time I rumble down the narrow track of the drive.  The  landscape is softened by a pale pink heat haze which will soon turn into a blood red sunset.  As soon as I draw up,  Brendon, Arkaba’s uber courteous front of house man appears with a glass of chilled  juice and the offer of a tour.

This original old stone homestead property has been unpretentiously renovated into a five bedroomed lodge with leather-chaired library and a simple open plan kitchen/dining room where, Brendon informs me,  supper will be served as soon as the other guests return from their hiking/petroglyph viewing/hot air ballooning/bird twitching activities. I get a quick glimpse of my bedroom, a wooden floored suite decorated with  watercolours of parrots before he departs, foolishly leaving me on a verandah  next to a fridge full of wine, presumably to dull the pain of  three days without cell or wi-fi coverage.

Being a loner, or, just plain unfriendly, I am daunted by the prospect of a communal dinner, infinitely preferring to spend the evening in my room with supper on a tray and sulking about my speeding ticket,  but in the end,  I’m glad I don’t. The station’s fellow guests, two charming English couples soon appear  and after some mutual sniffing out, we all sit down to dinner hosted by Brendon –  whoah!  Not polite at all,  but an evil and entertaining subversive.

Resident chef, Richard,  a cross between a Tasmanian devil and Oliver Twist’s Mr. Bumble,  stands over us,  wooden spoon gripped  in over- sized paw, waiting for quiet in order to inform us of what’s on tonight’s menu. Having eaten nothing all day but three gas station chocolate ice-creams, it’s hard to concentrate on anything other than the orchestral maneovers of my stomach.  I vaguely catch something about kangaroo and  saltbush before a lot of quite strange looking food appears, all of it delicious.

Arkaba keeps safari hours, so it’s lights out at 9.30 and a  knock on the door at some ungodly hour the next morning.  I roll out of bed to dark skies and the chill of dawn. Normally  I can’t keep down breakfast before 10 a.m. but the smell of fresh baked bread is too much and merely a prelude to porridge, bacon, fruit salad and fresh squeezed juice.  Sometime during this feeding frenzy our guide appears and eventually  to the soporiphic chirp of birds,  we are settled into a  funkily kitted out jeep and plied with apples and  blankets.

I am growing increasingly grouchy.  For someone suffering from severe ADT , a day of snail’s pace driving in order to admire  far-away things through binoculars is not  my idea of adventure.  Moreover, having spent the last forty- eight hours in a car, my brain is close to atrophying. I’d  been looking forward to something  more along the lines of a full day’s hiking, a  compass accidentally smashed,   leading to some energetic  bushwacking , accompanied by the inevitable ‘which way’ arguments of the guests.   After thirty miles of stumbling around in blister inducing circles, there would be much enjoyable recrimination and blame as the bonds of politeness snap – signaling the onset of dangerous  dehydration,  which would , with any luck , lead to violence culminating in one of the guests ( preferably not me) stumbling backwards , tumbling into a gorge and  sustaining  oh dear!  a  serious head injury,  compounded by a bite from the snake onto which they were unfortunate enough to land  -  all of which would necessitate the use of morse code and/or  carrier parrot dispatched to the unlicensed pilot ( possibly drunk and played by Ed Harris in the movie)  of an overhead Cessna,  which would lead to a  thrilling rescue  and return to base camp just  in time for canapés and sundowners.

When it becomes clear that today’s clock is not to be set to my speed,  I come over all Randle McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, inciting the inmates of the Oregon state insane asylum to riot.

Our guide, Kat , however, turns out to be  no Nurse Ratchett.  A Scots adventuress with enviably good skin, she pays little attention to my petty insubordinations  which include  leaping out of the still moving vehicle and stalking off down the track while she’s in mid-flow.

The reason she can afford to ignore my childish displays of temper is because she  knows that knowledge is power. Kat is a  splendidly well informed geek whose  head is a veritable almanac  of flora, and fauna ,  the minutiae of bird behaviour and the  life and loves of  insects. No tiny green shoot is left un admired,  no animal dropping  unprodded and  this, contrary to expectation, turns out to be more therapeutic to the brain than any amount of electro shock therapy. Kat’s enthusiasm is infectious and so I abandon my disturbed patient behavior and start  paying attention instead .  We learn how to differentiate  wallahs from gallahs, identify the laugh of the kukabara  and build a nest that any wedge tailed eagle would be happy to call home.   If you’re a twitcher , this is quality ornithological porn and after four or five hours, we’ve barely covered a fraction of Kat’s internal data base. ‘ See this innocuous little brown pod?’ She pounces on what appears to be a grain of dirt.  ‘It’s called wattle.’ she holds it up admiringly, ‘ and these seeds inside were collected then ground by the aborigines to make flour and bread.’

‘Oh for a wattle bottle right now,’  I whisper pitifully and almost as soon as the words are out of my mouth,   a vehicle is spotted in the distance, rumbling towards us with a cargo of freshly baked muffins and hot tea.

Turns out there’s plenty of adventure to be had at Arkaba.    Those who talk the talk are invited to do the walk:   four days of hiking and sleeping out under the stars. Sadly, there’s no time this trip and stormy weather puts paid to my plan B of scrambling up one of the peaks, but no matter  – with 60,000 acres of land and only ten guests with the right to roam it, there’s no shortage of exploring .

In the afternoon we trip off to the wool shed, a beautiful stone and wood building, constructed from a mid-western American kit and still very much in use for shearing and the occasional local hooly. The rest of the time is spent admiring the gnarly river red gums which line the creek beds, identifying the carcasses of dead things …

or scaring the poor ridiculous emu into picking up their feather skirts and making their inelegant dash across the high ground .

Kangaroos are everywhere, watching us curiously from behind the scrub, fiddling absently with the joey in their pouches, or just boing-ing impudently past with their tongues stuck out.

Wildlife here is flourishing largely due to a policy of rigorous culling, or as Brendon and Kat somewhat gleefully call it, Arkaba’s ‘feral ops.’  Animals, not indigenous to Australia are unprotected which means that cats, foxes, goats,  and certain high maintenance guests  better be on their guard. This culling, whether shooting, trapping, poisoning or warren ripping  is a painstaking and not always pleasant task, Brendon and Kat claim,   but none of us miss the flash of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett in their eyes, a suspicion which increases when they suggest driving us an hour and half  deeper into the outback to sample the ahem…notoriously good meat pies of the Prairie Restaurant in Parachilna.

In the end,  Arkaba isn’t about the thread count of  sheets or the fluffiness of towels, even though it has all these things.   This is a lovely place, romantic, bleak , defiantly wild. With its constantly changing light and colours,  Flinders Ranges is one of those corners of the world –  and they’re getting fewer, which  still has the ability to creep into your soul and take up permanent residence there.

As I turn out of the drive and head south to Adelaide,  I spot a bird balancing on a tree.

“Oh look,”  I say to myself,  ”a variegated fairy wren on a harlequin emu bush.”

Nice!

NB . Any decent photos on this blog were taken by Philip Currie or Slawek Czuprynski, both of whom actually understood how to use their cameras.

Some say Australia’s unofficial national anthem “Waltzing Matilda”  is  a love song, others dismiss it as a bush ditty, whereas others still ( although I bet you these people are communists)  swear it’s a socialist hymn borne out of the 1894 jumbuck shearing strike when events turned nasty on a station called Dagworth in Queensland.

A mild sort of violence ensued with strikers firing their rifles and pistols in the air and setting fire to the homestead’s woolshed, killing dozens of sheep.

The homesteaders, along with troopers 1 , 2 and 3, gave chase to a, by then, less than jolly swagman, known as Frenchy Hoffmeister  who was resting up at the Combo billabong having, as everybody knows, stowed a nice fat jumbuck in what must have been almost preternaturally oversized tucker bag. Confused? Well, that’s Aussie slang for you.   On spotting the troopers, Frenchy  yelled,  ‘you’ll never take me alive’ before killing himself and promptly taking to haunting the billabong for ever more.

The lyrics to ‘Waltzing Matilda’ – which apparently means – travelling with your bag slung over your back –  were written by none other than my new crush and favorite poet,  Banjo Paterson,  yes indeedy, he of Legend of the Man from Snowy River fame and I’ve been singing them for the last hour out of the window of today’s renty vehicle.

Anybody who can remember all the verses to this song will have learnt them as a child on some interminable car journey or another. Anyone who doesn’t know the lyrics should be denied entry into Australia, a country which, incidentally, looks quite moderate sized when viewed on a globe,  but turns out to be really quite big.

I’ve been driving for what feels like a fortnight now and I’m still nowhere near my destination ,  a jumbuck shearing outback station known as Arkaba which I’m covering for Harper’s Bazaar. If my directions are to be believed, Arkaba is to be found somewhere in the wild and eerily beautiful Flinders Range, north, north and north some more from  Adelaide. But these directions shouldn’t be believed , firstly because I copied them off the internet myself – always fatal-  and secondly because claims of three eateries en route were most misleading . Two were shut,  the third turned out to be a tool shed.

If distances in India can be measured by the number of stray dogs you’re likely to run over en route. i.e Chennai to Pondicherry =  a three dead dog journey, Mumbai to Udaipur = 9, then distances in this part of Australia can be measured in dead towns.

And Adelaide to Arkaba = lots.

Broken Hill, Quorn, Stone Hut, Wilmington…

One after another,  I pass through them, their shops and town halls battened up, their  trucks rusted and  broken down. Occasionally,  there’s the odd  humanoid, if they can be described  as such, a single glazed looking local, standing for no discernible reason on the roadside, shielding his eyes from the sun,  the expression on his face consistent with that of a man who happened to be in the public toilets when a marauding gang of zombies killed and ate the rest of his townsfolk.

As it happens, this faintly unsettling, Twin Peaks veneer equals my kind of territory,  so I couldn’t be in a better mood, if wickedly hungry. The last thing I ate was half a  bacon sandwich  purchased from a petrol station next to last night’s motel.  I don’t normally choose to dine at petrol stations – I think we can all agree it’s asking for trouble – but I figured, wrongly as it happens,  that a bacon sandwich would be hard to ruin, even if the chef  was a repellent looking troglodyte, busy scything the scabs of her facial boils onto the grill with one dirty fingernail and watching gormlessly as they began to splutter and smoke.

Still, the petrol station looked positively Park Hyatt-like when compared to my motel room, with its school of Norman Bates  decoration.

A  hand-written sign above the en-suite shitter said : If it’s yellow, leave it, if it’s brown flush it down.  Good advice- at least it might have been had the previous occupant of this portal to hell known how to read. I wasn’t sure of the instructions for a charcoaled bacon butty,  so I flushed it twice to waste the motel’s water and promote early bankruptcy. After that, I showered with the curtain open to better enjoy the sweet chirp of cockroaches , then finally crawled into bed-

(This is my bed – is it not charming?)

…Ate my remaining sleeping pills for desert and dreamt I was raped by a ghost made entirely of iron filings. So now, as I  Waltz Matilda through yet another deserted town I’m hungry hungry and fantasising about  roast rack of jumbuck with rosemary potatoes,  when suddenly, a trooper leaps out from under the shade of a coolibah tree and zaps me.

Ten thousand hells, this is all I need.

He saunters up to my car in a  manner I imagine has been practiced numerous times in front of a mirror, probably naked. Then he shows me his big speed gun ( no , really, his actual speed gun, ) and the fun begins.

‘Did you know you were going this fast?’

I blink myopically at the red neon numerals.  66 . What a pleasant surprise.   I could have sworn I was doing 90.

‘Is 66 bad?’ I ask sweetly. I’m totally relaxed now.  The speed limit in Zombieville is 60. I’m a girl,  a tourist,  and  a blonde . That should give leeway of at least 15 mph.   I bet he’s only stopping me because he’s lonely – and  honestly – I’d suggest a drink at the local billabong if his eyes weren’t located so alarmingly close together.

“It’s very bad. You were speeding.”

“but not by much surely, officer?” I treat him to the full Marilyn Monroe pout and wait for his knees to buckle.

Much as I’m loathe to blow  my own trumpet,  I’m unbelievably talented at talking my way out of speeding fines. It’s one of the perks of writing fiction. I’m never stumped for a good lie, moreover I have very few qualms about wasting police time.  Over the years, I’ve sent patrol cars screeching after innocent truckers who I swear are guilty of road bullying , I’ve wept noisily at the untimely death of multiple members of my family,  I’ve claimed miscarriage, ebola and even managed to convince one nice  Colorado Sherriff  that my husband, some way behind in a second car, was a  vicious wife -beating  English redneck.  I got so caught up in this particular fantasy,   that by the time my husband drew up behind us,  my gasp of terror was so believable, my tears of fear so spontaneous, that the sheriff  let me go and promptly arrested poor Dave instead.

This Aussie trooper doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to be seriously outsmarted.

’50 mph’s the limit in this town.’ he’s  saying.

‘ why, in this seething metropolis?’ I watch a little tornado of dust whirl up the deserted road.  ’Isn’t it supposed to be 60?’

‘It’s a trick to catch foreigners.’ He smiles with true pride.

I embark on a comprehensive and groveling apology, but  secretly  I’m outraged. Picking on foreigners. How bloody French is that!

Trooper Stevens remains unmoved by my  fake show of penance,  demanding rental papers, license, insurance….

‘Oh come on,  please,  I really didn’t see the sign, I swear.’

“Ignorance is no excuse.” He intones.

‘I know that, of course I know that,  but sometimes  there are… you know… mitigating circumstances.’ I play artfully with the necklace between my breasts.

‘Such as?’

For some reason I feel this thing slipping away from me. ‘ I dunno …like….well..’  I pull myself together, ….’well as it happens,  I was desperately looking for the nearest hospital!’

It’s 470 miles east.  Want me to take you?’

‘ That is a very long away, ‘ I say thoughtfully.  ’Dangerously far away in fact’ I seek to distract him ‘ I mean….what if I’d been bitten by a snake or something?’

He fixes me with his cycloptic eye. “Have you been bitten by a snake?”

‘Well no but…  but what if I had?’

‘Have you even seen a snake?’

‘That’s not really the point. I’m talking hypothetically,  as in what if… say…I’d turned down my sun visor and a giant redback spider dropped into my lap and nipped me and the pain forced my foot onto the accelerator. That would be an excuse for speeding right?’

‘Anything else?’  He’s writing on his  pad now.

‘Dingo got my baby?’ I say weakly.

He rips off the ticket.

God how depressing.  What kind of world do we live in when you can’t talk your way out of a speeding fine? Oh well,  win some, lose some. Better to pay it and move on.  Besides –  it  can’t be all that much. I remember once embarking on an exhausting battle with a traffic warden on the sunbaked streets of a New Mexican town. As she timidly handed me the ticket I was thinking London rates.  I was thinking 80 quid and no way was I going to fork that out , so  I  began arguing, and went on arguing until the children passed out from dehydration and the warden’s shoes melted into the tarmac. Finally the poor woman broke down in tears.  ‘Oh please ma’am, please’ she begged. ‘ Just pay the 3 dollars, and we can all go home.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s a very big fine is it?’

He smirks.

‘Because, i’m just a lone itinerant worker, a struggling swagwoman,  trying to make my way in the world-’

The trooper hands me a ticket for $500.

I stare at it appalled. This is more than the Harpers’ fee for writing this piece!  This is practically more than the advance for my last book! This is…

‘….a joke right?’ I splutter. ‘How can it be so much?’

‘Well, now let’s see….’ He starts ticking off on his fingers.  ‘There’s the fine, of course, and on top of the fine, there are the damages.’

‘What damages? What are you talking about?’

‘Well…. say you’d hit someone.’

‘But I didn’t hit anyone!’

‘But what if you did….. you know……’ he says evilly, ‘ ……hypothetically.’

Cocksucker! I raise eyes full of hatred and stare at the chit in his hand.  Then I glance back towards the coolibah tree to see whether its branches are hiding  a squatter mounted on his thoroughbred or perhaps even  troopers 2 and 3.

Nothing. A lone tumbleweed blows across the road and Trooper Stevens is momentarily distracted.

‘You’ll never take me alive.’ I scream, then head-butting him for good measure, I  press my foot to the accelerator, and Waltz Matilda away into the dusty horizon.

W. H. SMITH, Notting Hill Gate, London

When I climb back into the car, careful to wipe the maggots off my boots first, Re-calculate Kate remains stubbornly mute. I can’t say I’m sorry. The route has been  straight and there’s not been much for her to contribute in the way of directions,  but,  instead of rising to the occasion and making small talk like any other well-brought up person,   she’s taken to sulking, every so often repeating the command to continue for another 40 miles but in a petulant voice  that implies I have deliberately chose an uncomplicated journey for the express purpose of  undermining her self-worth.   Road trips eh? You gotta be so careful who you take.   And it’s not like she’s paying for her half of the petrol either. Still,  I’m not bothered, I’ve got the radio for company and a large quantity of breakfast on the passenger seat  - as a starter – the Hyatt’s fruit plate carefully decanted into a clear showercap and for mains  - their exquisite trucker’s breakfast of egg, bacon, tomato , sausage, re-modelled into a precarious stacked sandwich worthy of New York’s finest Deli.  Who knows when and where I might eat again? Who knows if reclusive horse man  Mike Watson even eats at all,  bar the occasional sliver of saddle-dried biltong . This ride was only confirmed the day before I left Sydney and I’ve had no communication with the man since other than  a curt instruction to drive to Mansfield and meet him at the Post Office.  He shouldn’t be hard to spot – the lone ranger in a one-horse town.  I am expecting a grizzled offering,  a quintessential hard bitten, copper-bottomed  recalcitrant, whose wide leathery hands are warped by arthritic knuckles and possibly even missing a finger or two, the inevitable fallout from a life-time spent strenuously roping bull calves and possibly women , but this moderately appealing fantasy  is quickly dispelled by the sight of the real Mike Watson,  young, clean shaven and waiting patiently in the thriving tourist metropolis that is Mansfield.

Leaving Kate in the glove compartment to reflect on her childish behaviour, I jump into Mike’s truck and we drive through a damp forest of  peppermint gums, bark peeling down their trunks in great swathes, as though suffering from some kind of beautiful psoriasis.  The air is humid and thick with the smell of eucalyptus and the rivers are swollen by the storm. Mike is apologetic: our overnight camp must be postponed.

I’m a little disappointed but perk up no end when we come across the sheriff and his posse heading down the potholed road towards us . He and Mike exchange buddy buddy pleasantries. Turns out they’re searching for a  missing boy, a  14 year runaway from the local school. ‘ Look out for a mop of yellow hair!’ the sheriff calls before disappearing round a bend. Now,  though sorry for the boy naturally, I’m secretly delighted by this turn of events.

The  Man from Snowy River, which is what this ride is all about , was first a poem written by  the aforementioned Banjo Paterson, then a movie starring  Kirk Douglas, and is now the focal point of an entire museum . The poem relates the stirring tale of local stockman Jack Riley  and his heroic retrieval of a….er…  runaway colt.  Mike is passionate about the legend and keeps clips  of Kirk Douglas’s most death-defying riding sequences on his Ipod, which , he assures me, are ranked second only to those of Butch and Sundance for  horsemanship.  Snowy River may be a poem of dubious verse,  or so claimed the humble Banjo himself, but it’s clearly  testament to the kind of Aussie steel and determination which underpins this country and so how fortuitous then,  this unexpected call to arms,  this opportunity for the community to once again come together  in search of its latest escapee.  Timbertops is a local boarding school offering adolescents ‘an opportunity to develop personal skills and qualities beyond those possible in a traditional suburban day school.’  In other words, it’s a high-end boot camp where city kids are sent when they’ve spent too much time playing Assassin’s Creed.  And for some, exposure to the great grand outdoors proves too taxing. This poor curly mopped angel has apparently had the foresight to nick a sleeping bag,  still, it can’t be much fun being lost in the mountains in the cold and wet with every river fit to burst its banks, not to mention the possibility of some grotesquely poisonous creature attempting to share his bed.

So surely we should be leaping on our horses in order to join the search? Mike’s face darkens.

Clearly there is nothing he’d like more, but it seems the days of Jack Riley style heroics are long gone.  Health and Safety has clamped its pedantic  gums around the whole of  southern Australia and no-one is allowed to  look for a missing coat button, let alone a child , unless they’re accredited, laminated,  pedophile proofed and  have previously performed study visits on every potential ankle spraining rabbit hole in the county.  Bad luck on the kid then, left to weather his personal storm alone.

I keep forgetting that this is not the American West, where Search and Rescue is considered a neighbour’s duty of care as well as being damn good fun. Where, should I happen to mention to  Stewart down the road,  that we have a rodent problem,  chances are high he’ll be on my deck within the hour armed with a selection of unlicensed semi automatic weapons  with which to kill them.  With the exception of  Mike, who is simply too well mannered and affable to speak badly about anyone, ( he also obligingly drew me that picture of a wombat above)  the Health and Safety lament is one I am to hear again and again,  a collective groan from a tourist industry struggling to find a find a way to provide authentic experiences without falling foul of the draconian legislation imposed on them.

In this respect however,  Mike Watson succeeds brilliantly.  About to feature in Tatler’s top rides of the world ( I know this because I’m writing it) Mike’s beautifully bred horses pound through rivers, up hills and along narrow mountain paths all to the soundtrack of kanga boings and against the backdrop of  spectacular big sky country.

You can swag out under the stars or sleep in a bed, depending on your required level of luxury.   Mike prefers  his customers ‘tricky’  i.e people who want an experience that’s  ‘a little out there’  and who are not afraid to try something new and to that end  he’s conscripted his friend , keen historian  and crack baker Wendy into opening up an old family homestead replete with Victorian camphor lights, original patchwork bedspreads et al.

If you were lucky enough to have a great great aunt still alive and well and living in Australia, one who had staunchly held out against modernization of any kind, then this wonderful cabin  is where you would find her, sitting on her cracked leather sofa , a  dusty pile of Australian geographic by her side and on the walls,  a  majestic oil painting of her husband, Nathan, battling a forest fire  -

And if you think it sounds as if Wendy’s homestead experience is un-missable, which  it is,  that’s before I’ve told you about the food.  Home made lemon cordial,  lamb pie, fresh tomato chutney and warm chocolate biscuits all come out of an  archaic iron  stove and get served on a 12 ft long wooden table made out of a single piece of red wood.  Heaven. When I finally leave Mansfield for Melbourne, I’m stiffer, fatter and utterly charmed.

for more info contact mike direct

http://www.adventurevictoria.com.au/meet-our-team/michael-watson.html

or

Scott Dunn Travel

Email:  info@scottdunntravel.com

Phone: 020 8682 5060

Airplane Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style