A happy-go-lucky English rambler dude goes to New Zealand for a year. Here he interfaces with some of those he left behind and details his nefarious activities. Or summat.
Recently clicked on MP3s - 7th June 2005 The Lucksmiths - Warmer Corners
Jens Lekman - When i said i wanted to be your dog
The Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting
Teenage Fanclub - Man Made
Laura Veirs - Carbon Glacier
The Decemberists - Picaresque
The Eels - Blinking Lights
Oooh, it's late and i'm sleepy, but if i don't write anything now, then it'll no doubt be ages before i get round to it again, so i'll try and have a go, before heading off to curl up in my freezing cold, yes that's freezing cold, bedroom...
Melbourne really is a great city, and walking through the centre tonight, on the way to meet up with some chums for a Kill Bill Double bill at the Astor, i was vibe-ing off it in a big way (Vibe-ing! Did i really just write that? I promise to change it when i come up with a better word).
All the shops stay open late on Fridays in Australia, and as a result the city centre is alive, not only with people getting the hell out of work and going for a few drinks, but with shoppers, gangs of kids hanging around (goths were particularly well represented tonight), protestors signing people up to various petitions, no end of buskers - guitars, didges and, best of all, a man in a space suit playing a theremin on Swanston st, and amongst all of this, the rush hour traffic, trams and pedestrians all fighting it out for supremacy on the roads - HonkHonk! DingDing! ClackaClackaClacka! (Cars, Trams, and Crossing signals respectively). The one upside of the cold, dark winter nights is that the city centre back drop to all of these goings on, is turned into a massive light show - skyscrapers are usually coloured blue, with fetching red neon trim and even cranes on the new towers being built get lit up like Xmas trees too.
I've not really been up to anything of major consequence lately, unless i'm forgetting something, which is quite possible, but despite just cruising along in a little routine of work, Spanish lessons, perfecting my fudge brownie recipe, going for the odd run, the odd booze up and spending the odd day rolling around in hungover agony, moaning about my brain-ache, while watching the full four hours of a Tour de France dvd, er, i'm pretty happy. And to be honest i'm not entirely looking forward to my little routine coming to an end in a month's time, when my job ends, and i'll have to come up with a plan for what to do, and where to go next.
The current idea pencilled into my brain is to go for a two week bike ride through the desert, from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy, as you do, then come back to the UK for a few weeks, for C&C's wedding, and fly back out to Australia till my visa ends in February next year. But my ideas are fairly liquid at the best of times, so who knows really. E.g. I got chatting to Steve, from my Spanish classes the other day, and he said he's off to East Timor to do some voluntary work for a few weeks soon, which sounds like a great thing to do, although my only fear is whether or not East Timor is actually crying out for ASP driven websites and fudge brownies? (My current skill set)
Oh, well, i'll worry about that later, as now i need sleep, for on the morrow, Megan and I will be donning several layers of thermal underwear, and heading south to Phillip Island for a weekend of sun, sea, sand and penguins. And as Pingu would say, Maaaaack! Maaaaaack!
4:09 pm Thursday, June 09, 2005
Last Saturday morning I was sat on the sofa, aimlessly surfing the internet, much as I am now, when out of the blue came a phone call from my old Christchurch mate Kim, and what was going to be a pleasant, if run of the mill weekend, instantly became 10x more fun-er.
Kim is possibly the ultimate Australian - an expert surfer, fearless of snakes, mates with Steve Irwin (no really), laid back and positive at all times, he's about to purchase a Yute and is always up for a bit of a walkabout. So before I knew it, a road trip to the Mornington peninsula, south of Melbourne was organised, a rather swish Toyota Camry was hired at a bargain price, the ingredients for a barbecue were purchased and Kim, Ursula (His Mrs) and I were on the road, with Midnight Oil blaring on the stereo (Oh, ok it wasn't blaring, it was actually being played at moderate volume, for ease of conversation. But that doesn't sound quite as good does it?)
The first stop was for the lunchtime barbie, in one of the little coastal towns on the way south. Amazingly enough, it was only my second one on Australian soil, very slack of me, considering i've been here for four months now, and that free, electric, communal barbies like the one we used, are provided all over the place. Oddly, the Aussies don't seem to be purists about their barbies, with electric and gas ones more popular than the charcoal briquette style (according to my unextensive research on the subject) - I suppose they must subscribe to the Hank Hill, 'taste the meat - not the heat' school of thought.
Anyway, 2 chick pea burgers, 4 veggie sausages, 2 teriyaki chicken kebabs, an avocado and a bottle of ginger beer later, we were off again, on the way down through Rosebud, Sorrento and then Portsea, which sits right at the lip of Port Philip bay, an excellent spot to hike out to, and 'sit on the dock of the bay, watching all the ships coming in, and then going back out again'. Unsurprisingly, Parks Victoria, had already realised the potential of this spot, and hence charge a hefty fee to get in there, and hence we buggered off to the free and even nicer (i'm sure) beaches on the south coast of the peninsula.
The cool and blustery conditions made it seem more like a wander along a nice part of the Lincolnshire coast, than your average sun kissed Aussie beach, and our beach activities were similary English too. Rather than surfing and swimming, we went poking around in rock pools, played with sea weed and dug up some buried treasure (a golf ball and assorted bits of fishing tackle) that Kim buried there years earlier!
It's not the best area for swimming anyway, as Harold Holt, ex prime minister of Australia could testify, if he hadn't drowned there that is, whilst he was serving PM of Australia in 1967. (My friend Michael's local pool while growing up was (really) the Harold Holt memorial swimming pool - nice touch Australia! PS - That joke c/o Bill Bryson)
Barbeques, excellent company and relaxing wanders on gorgeous beaches would have been enough for the day, but the Mornington peninsula is packed full of little wineries, so a quick stop off to sample some regional booze was arranged. I presumed it would be a cheap way to get a quick slurp of several nice wines, and get pleasantly boozy for a snoozy sunset cruise-y back to town, in the back seat of a plush motor. Er, and it was, apart from the cheap part.
The tasting itself was a bargain at two dollars, with spitting buckets for connoseuirs / idiots, but the folk at Willow Creek winery know their stuff when it comes to wine, and most likely realise the fact that hapless fools with a few sniffs of booze in their heads, and a fifty dollars in their pockets can easily be persuaded to buy a bottle of the sumptuous 2002 Pinot Noir, not to mention the cheeky Muscat desert wine too. Which is predictably what happened to both Kim and myself. As they're the two most expensive wines i've ever purchased, i'm going to attempt to hang onto them for a while, but i suppose backpacking isn't the ideal time to start building up an extensive cellar of fine wines, so they could both end up getting battered the next time I have a bad day at work.
Speaking of which, I may well do tomorrow, if i don't get off to bed soon. So i'll leave you with some pics of beach based horseplay, and wish you well x
