The temperature here in Gosford for new year's day was 43 degrees! There's a big bush fire a few kilometres away at Woy Woy (some great place names in Australia) and the night sky's got a pink glow. Bush fires are actually a natural part of the ecosystem in Australia, clearing old growth and re-fertilising the soil - but Australia's feeling the effects of global warming, and so hotter summers will make them more common.
An even beegger issue here is lack of water - the dam here is at 22% capacity, and this is on the coast. As you go inland, water gets harder to find - so the great majority of Aussies live along a small east coast corner of this huge continent. And Australia's an affluent western nation that's living beyond its means - the infrastructure's overstretched, and the issues are starting to catch up with them.
The Central Coast region of New South Wales is an hour's drive north of Sydney. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it's mostly covered in forest, whereas the area around Melbourne is more farmland. Australian bush looks and smells so different from that in NZ, and I do get a kick out of seeing bats flying around at night, and rainbow lorikeets, galahs, cockatoos, and laughing kookaburras by day. There are dozens of great beaches (not so great when the stinging bluebottle jellyfish arrive), and when it's 43 degrees outside going to the beach is all most people here want to do.
A cliche I heard many times this year is that Melbourne's like Wellington and Sydney's like Auckland. Sydney consists of numerous bays with beaches, and it has a harbour bridge and a skytower (actually shorter than the one in Auckland). It's the business capital of Australia, whereas Melbourne wants to be the cultural centre (and is built around a single harbour like Wellington, though the huge flat sprawl is quite unlike Wellington's hills).
Sydney also comes across as less friendly than Melbourne, and the public transport system seems unnecessarily complex - you have to buy a ticket for each individual ride, whereas in Melbourne one ticket lets you use the whole network. And it's underground rail rather than trams in Sydney, so not much to see out the windows. Sydney's like London but with the compensation of beaches and warm weather?
We went to Newtown in Sydney, which is funnily enough the grungy part of town. I bought a Combat Wombat CD - Aussie hiphop's been a great musical discovery for me this (correction: last) year. It sounds nothing like the Maori/Polynesian strain in NZ, and is also thankfully free of American cliches. They've got their own thing happening, and it's great stuff.
Plenty more I could say about the fortnight in NSW - will get some of it down here. The new year's eve party I went to is a story in itself, and I gave the host a hongi. I've also been taping people and wildlife and shooting some video - hopefully it's a productive trip... two days to go then back to NZ and the North Island tour!
Friday 13th - Photospace Gallery, Wellington
Tuesday 17th - Missing Link, New Plymouth
Thursday 19th - the Wine Cellar, Auckland