Trips To Australia
2006 - The Wombats
The first introduction many Wombats had to one another was a Parents Meeting at Cardiff High School the Thursday prior to departure. I’m sure most of the team would have looked at Lauren and I as a pair of forlorn “God Helps” stood before a crowd of expectant faces. We had very little to say compared to the other team leaders, and seemed to know very little when asked even the simplest questions by a parent. “Ask Linda” seemed to be our standard answer.
I am not certain that things improved much at Cardiff West Services on the day of departure. As more and more participants arrived Lauren and I kept casting timid glances at each other, knowing full well we should be going over and introducing ourselves, and yet preferring instead to take an active interest in the picnic table we were sitting at. On the bus we really got down to the introductions and breaking the ice, in fact by Reading Services, I knew no one’s names, not even my own and was not really sure if I had somehow got on the wrong bus. So to combat that, we played some icebreaker games. It was the hottest day of an already hot summer, but everyone joined in with the activities, getting to know every ones’ names, ages and home towns. We also played some more vigorous games which included passing water bottles over each others heads and crawling through their legs - in fact by the time we got to Heathrow there were several cases of cuts and bruises and grass stained jeans. This obviously was not the intention, but it cut the ice and gave us all something to talk about.
As soon as we were in the air most people fell asleep for a couple of hours. This was only interrupted by a brief stop in Dubai, so the next time that the group really got together was in Singapore where our big priority was FOOD. We found out something really important at this juncture - Singapore mid week closes at half past ten at night. Of course we were wide awake and raring to go - so it was straight to the pool, where a great deal of team bonding took place well into the night.
The Wombats only really had the morning to spend in Singers, and as it was raining, we decided that a trip on a covered boat around the harbour would be one way of seeing the sights and killing time without getting wet. After that we made our way to The Raffles Hotel for tea and cake. Raffles is one of those must see destinations in South East Asia, and we passed an hour in the company of some scrawny birds as we drank tea and ate delicious pastries. We then got horribly lost on the way back to the hotel - no sorry that should read that as a result of road works we could not find our way down to Fort Canning which would have been the quickest way back to the hotel. Instead we walked back the way we had come but it seemed a lot longer on the way back. This left only sufficient time to grab our bags and get on the bus to the airport.
If Singers had been humid and wet at the start of the monsoon season, Melbourne was like November in Wales. It was cold damp and surprisingly dark. But WOW, this was a new city on a new continent, and we were going to make the most of it. Even though we arrived in the early hours of the morning and were initially taken to completely the wrong part of town, we were all up and at breakfast by 08.00 for the start of the day and the visit to the hospital, where we met the first of a host of very friendly Australian women who wanted to show us around a part of the city they love. Merriday works on the cancer ward and was very excited to see us. She showed us around a lot of the hospital and eventually down to a chill out area for young people staying at the hospital.
After the hospital visit we walked through the park to the Melbourne Zoo, where we met a woman who’s family originates in Wales, where all of the Wombat participants came from. Some of us even knew her ancestral village. We were enthusiastically hiked around the zoo, and introduced to most of the animals, including Gorillas, Kangaroos, Lions, Platypus and Snakes. After such an energetic day you would think that we would all collapse into bed, but in fact the whole team went out for food and then to see Pirates of the Caribbean - during which all but one member of the party admits dozing off for a few minutes and some of us had a good sleep in the comfortable chairs of the cinema.
Of course we had a long lie in bed the next day - did we heck. We were all up and out of the hostel by 09.00 and off to the mountains to ride on the Puffing Billy express through the woods. We dressed up warmly, however hard we tried to blend in with the Aussies in their shorts, t-shirts and flip-flips it had to be remembered that this looked and felt like mid-winter back in Blighty. That evening I casually led the group into town through the coherent and well laid out city of Melbourne - actually I’m being generous. I hold the belief that the town planers of Melbourne were lunatics who held some grudge against me personally. The city is laid out on a grid pattern and no matter how hard I tried it always seemed as though I started on the wrong square. We always ended up in the right place, but getting their meant going through a constant ritual of passing the same sights at least twice. I can admit this now - because I’m sure that no one actually noticed - what’s that? You did…oh sorry guys.
No trip to Melbourne would be complete without a trip to Ramsey Street. On a wet Sunday morning we joined a coach trip to the famous street in Erins borough to see where Toady and Dr Carl, Paul Robinson and Lynne all live - only to find that in fact they don’t and it’s only a TV series. This appeared to be really devastating news to some of the team who believed that there is a five times a week docu-drama on the BBC set on a real street in Melbourne.
After all the fun of Melbourne we got down the serious side of our visit, the conservation work in the Grampian Mountains. We stayed at Halls Gap, a tiny holiday community which was in the throws of preparing for Christmas - Down Under. On the way there we stopped off with our Conservation team-leaders at a wild-life park to meet some Koalas, Wallabies and Kangaroos, Deer and a massive python. The next day we got down to some major conservation work, either chopping out Wattle and planting trees around a small lake. At first it seemed as though the weather was going to be against us and it would be a miserable week in the rain and cold. But as a team we all clubbed together to support each other and even celebrated Sioned’s eighteenth birthday; and with the help of Dylan a park ranger, I am sure that everyone enjoyed their time in the bush. The trip to Melbourne airport was undertaken through torrential rain, but even this did not seem to dampen spirits.
If there was a serious side to Melbourne, then Sydney was time to let our hair down - well perhaps not in my case - and party. The team rushed out to find Circular Quay and Darling Harbour, to shop and have a good time. We visited Bondi Beach at which even in the depths of an Australian winter some of us waded into the sea and swam - apparently in the wrong place, but hey we were Brits abroad and no one told us any differently.
All too quickly our trip to Oz was over. After one last final official engagement at the Sydney Jewish Museum, we picked up our cases and headed back to the UK. The team stayed together until Cardiff, were we said our goodbyes at the same service station where we’d met on two weeks previously. It felt like a lifetime, but in that time many friendships were forged which will be remembered for a very long time to come. A real big Thank You to all of the Wombats of 2006 from Lauren and myself.