By Andy Harris

Picture me sitting in a hippy café indulging in my second pint of milkshake (although it’s blueberry flavour this time, not strawberry) with my array of electrical gismos connected and powered up courtesy of the mad café owner It’s the 1^st time in a while that I’ve had time to collect my thoughts and put fingers to keyboard. Well that’s a lie really I’ve just not been bothered up until now. Here goes!
Nissan Bluebird classic cragging automobile Since my arrival on the other side of the planet I am no longer in awe of the water going down the plughole the other way, although my recent purchase of a rather lovely 1985 Nissan Bluebird GX with automatic transmission, bought and insured fully comp for 600 quid. Although the photo doesn’t quite capture it it’s gold with a hint of bronze nicely colour matched to my rich tan. It cruises along at a steady 60mph consuming relatively little fuel, but when you plant your right foot it comes alive courtesy of kickdown and a 60hp motor. Automotive Excellence! automobile
I’ve been checking out the scenery and rock at the local cliffs of the Grampian and Mount Arrapiles which are simply stunning. Acres and acres of perfect orange sandstone that have adorned more front covers of Rock magazine than is just. A little word about the approaches to these areas. Arrapiles is a gut wrenching 2-5 minute walk from the car and The Grampians an Olympic marathontastic 20-30 minutes. What did they think when they built this place, that my legs could support my bodyweight or something.
Here’s some rock and views for those that way inclined.

All the bouldering in this area of the Grampians is brilliant. There isn’t a huge amount of it at the moment but what is here is as good as anything I’ve seen. Most of the stuff is steep and requires arms and shoulders akin to those of certain holywood action heroes as opposed to steely fingers. On the subject of steep stuff I’d just like to point a certain fact ignored by most magazine articles. And that certain subject is of FAGGOTRY of the highest order. For those of you non-english speakers or non-climbers this is the term given to the technique of using cunning and weakness to get you up a particular climb rather than climbing using the most inefficient front-on style requiring twice as much energy to get up the same bit of rock. Which by definition is the real way to climb, I think. Oh no I’ve got it all wrong, this is why the French can climb so well. I never though I say it but I’m a born again faggot!
And on the subject of Australians ladies a certain Mr Coutts and Mr Gilham have expressed an interest in the standard of ladies on the other side of the globe. Well I could rant on and on but my relatives are also going to read it so here’s some photos of "typical" ozzie chicks I bumped into in a magazine, sorry, I mean the local pub.

As you can see they’re pretty attractive although I’m not sure what the one on the end was doing holding a melon on top of her head. Answers on a post card please. Speaking of attractive persons I photographed this lovely who recently fell asleep in my car.
Gorgeous!
I think all this sushi is getting to me.
Sayonara
Andy