Around the world stretching a pound

Poundstretcher advertisement promised that, for virtually the price of a

Sydney return, as long as my wife and I kept going in one direction then

we could stop off anywhere. Could it be that simple?

We planned a route over 33 days: Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand,

Fiji, California. The contract was duly signed and money changed hands.

The fates then cruelly intervened with almost every destination being

affected by riot, strike, military takeover, and even earthquake.

NOVEMBER 1: Arrive Hong Kong after a very smooth flight from London.

On arrival a beaming Chinese man insists that we wear badges identifying

us as members of his party. ''The trouble is,'' he insists, ''that

without them I cannot tell you apart.''

NOVEMBER 2: The US Seventh Feet is in town and the waterborne activity

across the harbour towards Kowloon is unbelievable. A tour of the island

takes us to Victoria Peak to gaze down on a skyline that pays testimony

to unremitting capitalism. Above them all soars the ''confidence

building,'' the new Bank of China tower.

NOVEMBER 3: We cross on the Star Ferry to Kowloon and find out what is

meant by talk of the teeming millions of Asia. There are almost seven

million people and they seem intent on claiming the same bit of pavement

we are on.

We meet consular people (none British) who talk disparagingly of

Britain's handling of its Hong Kong situation. To maintain stability a

few civil servants and important people are being offered full British

passports. Behind the scenes countries like Canada, Australia, the

United States and even Third World outfits like Dominica and Haiti are

wooing the brighter entrepreneurial Chinese.

Witness a strange phenomenon on cruise of harbour -- 350 Japanese

leave the ship in single file. Imagine that on the Waverley!

NOVEMBER 4: We have a meeting with two eminent Glasgow restaurateurs,

Gerry Wan and Dominic Woo, who take us to a back-street diner where we

are introduced to the arcane mysteries of steamboat cooking. You cook

your own in boiling spiced water. The stomach heaves as skewered

crayfish show signs of life. The Chinese, one learns, will eat that part

of any earthly creature that faces heavenwards.

NOVEMBER 5: A supposed restful Sunday trip to Stanley Market. The US

Seventh Fleet are there ahead of us and the narrow alleyways are

swarming with the free-spending Americans. The Deepwater Golf Course

costs #60,000 for membership and has a 15-year waiting list. Suspect the

first sight of a Peoples' Liberation Army uniform on the streets of the

colony could reduce the list somewhat.

NOVEMBER 6: To Australia. We arrive at a deserted Perth airport and

friends take us to their house in the bush 50 miles off. That night we

watch as grey kangaroos emerge from the gum forests to graze in the

fields. We go to Pinjarra peninsula and have a beer surrounded by

gape-mouthed pelicans. Rouken Glen it is not.

NOVEMBER 7: Taken into the city and left to browse. A stroll takes us

onto the palm-lined banks of the Swan River. The skyline is dominated by

the Bond-Co tower, chisel topped but, given the financial plight of its

owner, could be likened to a broken column.

NOVEMBER 8: The coast of Fremantle and see the damage that can be

wrought by unrestricted industrial development. A magnificent beach

strip is ruined by huge production plants equivalent to about 15 of the

one-time planned Hunterston development for Ayrshire.

NOVEMBER 9: Perth airport at 4am to catch the Sydney flight. Our

King's Cross Hotel is in the heart of Sydney's Soho, surrounded by porno

cinemas, bookshops and strip clubs. The pavements are lined with ladies

of the night, one wearing a wedding gown.

We pay our first visit to the Opera House, with the floodlit harbour

bridge as a backdrop. A tourist board computerised display shows videos

of Australian attractions at the press of a button. A gleaming mono-rail

connects to the massive Darling Harbour. The street furniture is

space-age stuff and makes one wonder what Glasgow will offer for the

City of Culture year.

NOVEMBER 10: We are at the De-Luxe coach terminal at 6.30am for the

all-day journey to Brisbane. We discover the horror of the Pacific

Highway. The A74 is superb compared to this Australian nightmare that

has claimed an unbelievable 600 lives in just five years, two bus

tragedies either side of our holiday.

NOVEMBER 11: Enjoy the luxury of the Brisbane Albert Park Flag Hotel

with its breathtaking views over this most splendid of all Australian

cities. At the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary, where they breed the symbol of

the country, we learn it is now Japanese owned.

We marvel at the superb shopping malls and the pedestrianised streets.

The tawdriness of Buchanan Street haunts us. Six years earlier I walked

this same area with then Glasgow Lord Provost Dr Michael Kelly and his

wife Zita.

We had enthused over the floodlighting of old colonial buildings and

the way the city ''sold'' itself to tourists. It was the packaging of

this city that led directly to his Glasgow's Miles Better campaign. Now,

post EXPO, Brisbane is simply dazzling.

NOVEMBER 12: The bus station again and nine hours later we arrive in

Gladstone, a town of 27,000, to find it deserted in a way that would

bring joy to any Sabbatarian. Parrots flit along the roof-tops and frogs

call from parks.

NOVEMBER 13: The Reef Adventurer catamaran speeds us to Heron Island.

A mere blip in the ocean, this southernmost tip of the Great Barrier

Reef has pure white sands. The trees seem to have nesting Noddies on

every branch. The resort is P&O owned with a maximum of 250 guests in

lodges which, delight of delight, have no televisions or phones, only a

gently turning overhead fan. The meals are served with shipboard

efficiency and include reef fish, lobster tail and scallops.

NOVEMBER 14: We explore the island, which takes 20 minutes along

deserted beaches. There is a male nudist braving fearful sunburn. On the

reef we see weird creatures but a semi-submersible reveals the true

wonders of the reef -- a multi-hued, iridescent world. That night we

watch huge green turtles flounder from the ocean. They struggle up the

beach to the dunes where they dig huge trenches for egg-laying. To see

it on television is one thing. In real life on a still, warm night is

fully to appreciate these wonders of nature.

NOVEMBER 15: A last wistful swim in the tepid seawater, a Shipwreck

cocktail and we leave this idyllic spot. The bar of the Gladstone Grand

Hotel provides succulent T-bone steaks, with full salad and four nicely

chilled beers for under #9 for two.

NOVEMBER 16: We retrace our steps through the hamlet of Goodnight

Scrub (honest) and recross the River Boyne on our way south!

NOVEMBER 17: Another dawn start and we opt for the alternative inland

route of the Pacific Highway. The origins of the people who built up the

New South Wales towns are easy to identify -- Aberdeen, Scone and

Glencoe drift by.

NOVEMBER 18: Back in glorious Sydney, bathed in sunshine in late

spring and we take to the water again with the harbour explorer cruise.

We are tempted to terminate it in Watson's Bay, a delightful suburb

overlooking the rugged, cliff-strewn passage out to the Pacific. Lunch

at world-famous Doyle's on the wharf then we take the ''taxi'' service

back to the Rocks area, where the first Australian settlers landed. It

is a complex of craft shops but in trouble, squeezed by the developing

Darling Harbour nearby. However, financial succour may be at hand from

the Japanese, who else? A monstrous A#1000m 600-bedroom Japanese hotel

is being built right in the heart of this historic area. Like opening a

suchi-shop at the Borestone.

Australia is a country that

has swallowed Thatcherism, hook,line and sinker and is experiencing

the British problems of high bank and mortgage rates, soaring land

prices and increased pay demands. A Canadian environmentalist, Dr David

Suziki, has provoked a storm of comment by writing: ''When profit is

your priority it subsumes all kinds of other things; lying, cheating,

stealing, deceit, avarice, cost-cutting, corner cutting.''

NOVEMBER 19: On this day 30,000 motorists are breathalysed and 364

fail, including one hapless person THREE times in five hours before

being arrested. Two handcuffed youths break free from police at the

Sydney courthouse and outpace the pursuing constables only to race round

a corner and go either side of a lamp-post. They are found lying

semi-conscious.

NOVEMBER 20: A river cruise with 200 old people from a Returned

Services' League club. For four hours we sail the Georges River, which

should have been a place of protected great natural beauty. Being

Australia, where money rules, homes encroach to the river's edge in

places. In one particularly spectacular ravine electricity cables slash

the skyline.

An Australian comic on radio suggests that Australia should be sold

off now to the Japanese. ''Let's make a profit,'' he argues, ''after all

they'll have it anyway in 10 years.''

NOVEMBER 21: To New Zealand. Another flight to Auckland to stay with

friends. We arrive in the middle of a furore over Cabinet Ministers

appearing in television ads endorsing products.

NOVEMBER 22: A bus into Queen Street to see how the city has changed

for the better in the six years since I last visited. The Commonwealth

Games locus has splendid new motorways and the skyline many fine new

buildings.

I make inquiries about the Fiji visa situation. The local tourist

office flip when I show a passport defining my employment as journalist.

I am warned I could be turned away at Nadi airport.

We visit Kelly Tarlton's undersea world. The late explorer and

visionary took a former sewage works and converted it into a stunning

oceanarium. Instead of people walking through examining the fish, a

perspex tube takes one into the world of the reef fish and sharks. They

examine you. No wonder it is being replicated worldwide.

NOVEMBER 23: In tropical rainstorms we drive to Rotorua, a town

founded in the last century by a man from Dollar. We book into the

Golden Glow Motel and the local newspaper tells us that after 17 minutes

of the first live television broadcast of the British Parliament a Tory

MP was seen to pick his nose. They have a terrific sense of news values.

NOVEMBER 24: The sun returns and we visit the thermal reserve at

Whakarewarewa and the Maori arts and crafts institute. It is a living

community and the better for it. As we walk through the Pohutu geyser

blows and puts on a wonderful display. We see the weird kiwis, the

bubbling mud and the Ngoraratuatara, the pools of boiling water where

the locals cook their meals.

NOVEMBER 25: It appears that New Zealand also goes the Thatcher way

with a sell-off of State assets, including forests, Telecom, airports,

electricity and the NZ postal service. This debate fails to obscure the

Maori demand that the Pakeha (whites) honour the Treaty of Waitangi

signed by the Crown in 1840 since they start legal moves to block such

sales. Have the Scots any such rights, one wonders?

NOVEMBER 26: To Fiji and we arrive visa-less at Nadi airport at 4am

and as we stand in line a disembodied voice tells ''Mr and Mrs Clark

report to immigration.'' Turn right, we are told brusquely by customs,

but turn left and a gentle lady from the tourist office sticks us in a

taxi. By 8am we are on the wharf at the sugar-town of Lautoka and board

the schooner Tui Tai and set off for the Mamamucas Islands.

The sea is smooth as glass. We visit idyllic 15-acre Treasure Island,

a tropical paradise with individual air-conditioned bures (cottages) and

managed by a delightful lady, Akonisi Dreunimisimisi, whose husband was

a direct descendant of the Kakabau chieftain who ceded the Fiji islands

to the British in 1874.

With us for lunch was Alastair Mair from Bathgate, a former Teacher's

executive and now a New Zealander and adviser to the local rum

distillery. He cautioned against the Japanese buying into malt

production in Scotland. ''Their greed for profit comes before all

else,'' he warns.

NOVEMBER 27: We visit the 50-acre Garden of the Valley of the Sleeping

Giant. A magnificent orchid garden built to house the collection of

Hollywood star, Raymond Burr (Perry Mason).

NOVEMBER 28: We learn that the island is in the grip of a major

outbreak of Dengue fever that has claimed 13 lives. It is mosquito borne

and, like other tourists, we have both been badly bitten. There is

spraying and the Fijian Times (the first paper printed in the world each

day because of the date line) gives a list of symptoms. I am really

cheered at having to watch for ''loss of consciousness.''

NOVEMBER 29: Pacific Harbour. The cultural centre re-creates life as

it was when these were the dreaded cannibal islands. There are constant

gory reminders -- tales of ships being launched over prisoners' crushed

bodies. The dead chief's wife being given the choice of a crushed skull

or being burned alive to join him in the spirit world. That's a choice?

''But no longer my friends,'' says our guide,''we are all Christians

now.'' We breathe out.

NOVEMBER 30/30. A difficult couple of day. We spend one of the day

lazing in blazing sunshine by the pool and at night there is a lovo

feast (cooking from an underground oven). It is a splendid Thursday One.

We go for a 11pm flight and have Thursday Two crossing the international

date line. On arrival at Los Angeles board a minibus to Anaheim.

DECEMBER l: How strange to become accustomed to the idea of Christmas

in the sun. I remember almost being brained by a decorative bell dropped

by a Vietnamese in Brisbane. Here it is Christmas trees heaped for sale

against palm trees.

Disneyworld was a bit frayed at the edges after the summer season but

still marvellous value for money. My wife, convinced the world is

afloat, groaned audibly as she climbed into the yellow submarine. Later

we sit dazed on a bench. It's time to head home.

DECEMBER 2: To LAX and the journey takes us forward in time.

DECEMBER 3: London is dreich. At Glasgow the pilot tells us we are

about to touch down. The clouds are still streaming by the window. The

wheels hit tarmac and we realise it is freezing fog. The Dengue-bearing

mosquito bites itch. Wait till my doctor hears about this.