It has been pointed out to me - apparently by my blog itself, which has gained the ability to write and form sentences as well as having a personality - that I haven't written anything for a while, despite the fact that I've actually got some stuff going on which is worth writing about. I can't remember the last time either of those things happened, so let's get remedying them so I can at least have posted something else before 2007 ends.

Right. First things first, Australia. It was utterly amazing. There aren't enough superlatives in the world to describe the place and the stuff I did. It was a struggle to drag myself away from one incredible experience to go and take part in another. In fairness, this is probably partly because it was a very expensive trip - it was worked out that everything I did would have cost about £8000 for 10 days. That includes business-class flights, ridiculously nice meals and a host of crazy things which I never thought I'd get a chance to do. Luckily, I wasn't paying, hence my being able to do all these things.

My first destination was Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. It's a bit of a trek to get there - I reckon I spent 36 hours travelling from leaving my flat to arriving there - but it was well worth it, between the snorkelling on the reef (I saw a turtle), the huge, clean beaches which were practically deserted (apart from birds - there are 300 people on the island at a time, and 70,000 of our flying friends, all of them very noisy), the ability to just jump into the sea for a swim whenever I fancied - and in December, of course - and the sunset wine cruise on the reef, complete with the Glaswegian boat captain who tried to persuade me that a move to Australia was the best idea ever (and I'm now starting to agree with him, actually).

I got stranded on the island by a tropical storm the next morning. Nobody has any sympathy over this when I add that I was meant to be getting flown off by helicopter (that's how I got there). Strange, that. Anyway, eventually got taken off by boat over rather choppy seas, having run through the pouring rain to get there, about five hours late. That meant that I got basically no time to explore Brisbane, which was a shame. But I saw the main street, main square, a random anti-Aids concert outside the hotel and a very tasty Italian restaurant where I sat in the corner and wrote up the first half of my trip for the paper, accompanied by wine.

The other half was basically on Kangaroo Island, off Adelaide (south coast for those of you whose geography is worse than mine). It's a total wildlife haven, so we spotted koalas, rare birds, wallabies, scary snakes, loads of seals and of course, kangaroos (of which I had my picture taken with one, which was fab). I also got to go swimming with dolphins, which was the second-most incredible experience of my life - the most being the coral reef swim, I reckon. The trip back was quite impressive, too, as we were on a speedboat and belted across the waves. I very much wanted to do that again.

Our flight back to Adelaide was awesome, too. The island's airport has two gates - metal, they are, on to the runway itself. The check-in desk eschews all the usual security guff to say "hi, how are you, did you enjoy the island, oh don't worry about your bag being way over the weight limit". In fairness, they could afford to give me a few extra kilos, owing to there only being seven passengers on the plane. We were led out to it by the captain and the world's smiliest stewardess spent the entire flight (when she wasn't either doing the safety demonstration right in front of the group of us or serving the in-flight snack - a cup of water and a Mentos) chatting to us.

I liked Adelaide, too. Had a bit of time there, got to see the shops (didn't buy anything tho unfortunately), a couple of nice bars and an excellent restaurant which won a restaurant-creation reality TV show on one of the networks out there a couple of years ago and is just stupidly posh, to the extent that your entire dinner is explained to you when it's put down in front of you. I ate duck. Nice, too.

Return home was a bit of a nightmare. We were late leaving Melbourne (we had to fly back via there) and then we got held up in Singapore owing to some tube loading our plane with the wrong cargo, which was too heavy meaning we couldn't fly. We then missed our slot to fly over Afghanistan so we were 90mins late into London. That should still have given me time to make my Glasgow flight - got in at 7am, it wasn't until 8.40 - but then the marvellous Heathrow staff took 50 minutes to get my bag from the plane to the conveyor belt, and then the Heathrow Express proved much less than an express owing to a points failure. I got in at 8.15am. The gate was shut. Changing to the next flight would have been £195. I chose not to pay that and got the train the next day (for £38!) after a very enjoyable night with Iain and Suja bumming around Kensington and Earl's Court.

Right, so that's the very concise version - the full one should be in the paper and is about 3000 words, but doesn't include mentions of flights being missed and suchlike.

The pictures, for various reasons, aren't on this site. Instead, you can see them at www.bennettsweb.co.uk/oz/

Oh. And I only watched Neighbours twice while I was out there. Libby is back! Yay!

OK. Half-way done. The flat is tantalisingly close to being finished off. The decorators are now done (though they have to come back owing to one of my walls being rubbish and growing a crack every time I turn the fire on) and my last door is going in tomorrow. That just leaves a bit of finishing-off stuff in the kitchen and bathroom and getting new sockets put on and lights up, new curtains and so on. It's been a struggle to get here - especially in the week when the decorators were starting at 8am every day and I was at work until almost 1am - but I'm really pleased now it's so close to being finished off. I very much look forward to not taking advantage of it at all by getting up and then lying on the sofa watching telly all day.

Here be pics:

I can't do my zeitgeist this year because there's so much spam on the interwebs now that I can't distinguish what are proper links in the first place. D'oh. I'm still willing to bet that the phrase "curly dave's happy hour" would appear in it at least once, though.

Wow. 1200 words before I write this bit, that's impressive. Especially given that I'm writing this on my laptop in the coffee shop with a battery which has been threatening to die since I got there. I best not tempt fate any further, plus I have to buy dinner and do a few other things before I head into work (boo).

Plans for 2008:
- Move to Australia
- Move to Australia
- Erm, Move to Australia

We'll see.

Merry Christmas and to all a good night!