(this happened on) Sunday 26th April 2009

The Gap Year Gang Continue To Find Australia’s Dullest Towns

Ayr was so exciting this was the only picture we took today

Long, long drive ahead of us so we all packed into the car and off we set for pastures new or in this case Ayr. More endless cane fields, many birds of prey and at last the 50 year old Burdekin Bridge a massive metal bridge over a huge expanse of water.  Ayr has a big snake but it is a rather lovely mosaic one. Ayr is a small town and as it’s a Sunday everything is closed. It’s a town of a similar size to our hometown in the UK, Tiverton, but like so much of Australia so far, so much less interesting.

We dropped Stefan off at Alva Beach so that he could go on a dive of the Yongala, which was a luxury steamship which sunk on it’s 99th voyage in 1911 with the loss of all lives (122) also a race horse and a prize bull. The dive is tomorrow, the dive place also provides accommodation at a very reasonable price of just AUS$27 for the night so as Stefan would be off very early in the morning and I would be the one who would have to get up and drive him to Alva Beach, I decided he should stay the night!

Dropping Stefan and his dive kit off, we then drove back to  Ayr to find a motel for us to stay in.

Sofia found us a pretty good place run by a friendly couple called Ray & Gay and with the promise of free internet connection in the room it was a done deal.

We made full use of the connection to try and get in touch with our nearest and dearest. Sofia was very tired as we had not really slept in the crappy little and uncomfortable bed that we had at Sarina, she crashed out on the bed and so I set out with Basty to get some food for us all, we chose a Red Rooster, I had a half chicken and chips, it was OK.

Once again I struggled with the shitty coverage of Formula 1 that I am getting used to in Australia, the morning sports news set out to tell us the qualifying results but beyond the first two places on the grid and Mark Webber (an Aussie) that was it, shitty Aussie sports coverage.

The promised coverage I had seen advertised for the race live did not materialize which left me trying to following the race via the computer updates from the BBC, of course in this age of internet they wont let you access the commentary  so it’s text only, why the F don’t they just broadcast it online, wankers such a load of bullshit, they say it’s because of broadcast rights, well what’s the bloody problem no body in Australia cares so let this poor Brit get his ‘home’ coverage.

Anyway an hour later than advertised the TV coverage started (delayed coverage yippee, not) so, I already knew what happened for the first hour, that only served to piss me off more. Once again the Aussie coverage was staggeringly bad, they have boringly long and pointless advertising breaks at all the wrong times, then we pick up coverage with witless and uninformed local commentary before they finally cut back into the BBC feed where sanity and an understanding of the sport once again reign.

Jenson Button spanked ass again today, awesome. When will that car be covered in sponsors badges? What the F is gong on, sure the market is bad but this is advertising on a world wide scale that is on a front running car that will get much TV and press coverage for the rest of the year., Now is the time to actually get a bargain on the advertising front, forget the crappy magazine advertising which demands many magazines in many markets to even reach a fraction of the F1  audience. And as for TV advertising have you guys never heard of Tivo (or similar machines), smart people never need to watch them any more!