'Roo balls and other stories

G'day everyone,
As expected I'm writing my very first blog on my very last day in Australia. In fact I'm so close to leaving I can practically smell runway tarmac and cabin food from the departure lounge. After writing is far safer than spontaneous duty free shopping for pink Ugg boots, when Im supposed to be going to be in India for the next four months. But as I keep telling people, the Australian leg of my trip has been all about readying myself for my spiritual journey in India. Preparations have included over three weeks of drinking champagne, sunbathing on Bondi beach, Champagne, seafood lunches, dinners, Champagne on boats, fireworks over the harbour, Champagne, swimming, coastal walks and Champagne. But it hasn't all been fun and games. I have also been learning a lot about Australian culture - for instance the Australian love of sports.
Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a barbeque in Byron Bay, along with three members of the Australian Olympic rowing team. Not only were they great guys but they had biceps the size of Christmas turkeys and we hung out all afternoon eating meat and drinking beers. After we finished eating, we persuaded the guys to take their tops off and have a 'pull up competition' on the porch and I discovered that I really quite like finding out about Australian sports – and also geography. I learned a lot about geography from a South African lady I met on New Year's Eve, who was also on the boat in Sydney Harbour watching the fireworks – let's call her 'Linda'. When i told Linda that I was going to India she was terribly helpful and gave me some very good travel advice. She said: 'Sarah if you go to India Do NOT go to Mecca, I had a friend who went on a pilgimage to Mecca, somewhere in India once and she WAS NEVER THE SAME AGAIN.'
I was confused, because I'm not very good on geography. 'But I didn't think Mecca was in India,' I said, 'I thought it was somewhere in the middle east like Saudi Arabia?' Thank goodness Linda was able to correct me. 'No sweetheart, Mecca is the holy place in India where the Hindus go, you know to worship – but make sure you DON'T go there, because you will get very sick and you might never be the same – like my friend. She went there and she HAS NEVER BEEN THE SAME.' Thank goodness for Linda, or I could have ended up in Mecca. Mecca, India. I have also learned a bit about Australian men from a girl who I met in Sydney. She has been in Australia for 11 years and has an Australian boyfriend who she calls 'the pig'. She told me a nice story about him which really encapsulates her relationship with her Aussie amour. Their relationship really hit rock bottom a couple of weeks ago, when (let's> call him 'Brett') turned up on her doorstep at 2am with a kebab in one hand and a beer in the other. The charming Brett came in and sat down, dribbling kebab all over her laptop keyboard and down the sides of her sofa and proclaimed, 'Darlin' once I've finished this kebab I'm going to fuck you'. And then fell asleep. You might get the impression that I haven't been terribly active during my trip to Australia, but you'd be wrong. I've got quite into extreme sports. A couple of days ago I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a leaving present from my colleagues at the Independent, which was incredible. It was seven in the morning and although it was grey you could see right across the city to the Blue Mountains – which, I am told, are blue because they are covered in gum trees, and the koalas eat the leaves and when they fart blue gas comes out which is why they look blue from a distance. That's what Denise the tour guide told me. Denise, my stout lesbian tour guide, told me lots of interesting facts about the bridge as we climbed up in our overalls, across steel girders and gang planks, like how many people died during the building of the bridge (18) and the stone used (blue granite) – but it wasn't all serious. She was also a bit of a comedian. At one point she asked us to look down and guess how many steel rivets were used in the making of the bridge. I couldn't possibly guess, and she said, 'well there were 3 million rivets used in the building of the Eiffel Tower, and 6 million rivets used in the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. That makes us twice as riveting!' She was a real joker. There is one area where I feel I really could have made more of an effort – Australian wildlife. I saw a couple of dogs, a possum, heard a symphony of cane toads and crickets, saw a few birds and one cockrach on our bedroom wall – but not a single kangaroo. I was pretty disappointed about that, until yesterday I had an unexpected stroke of luck. Stolling through the Rocks market in the oldest part of Sydney I came across a strange furry object, swinging from a rack of tourist paraphinalia. In amoungst the bottle openers and starfish pendents and sharks teeth necklaces, was a perfect pair of Kangaroo bollocks hanging on a silver key ring. Perfect, I thought. Nothing says Australia like a pair of 'roo balls.