G'day and G'bye Australia

I am sitting in Brisbane airport preparing to depart for Christchurch (New Zealand). This is the end of the Austrlian part of my travels. I have my last 2 weeks traveling around in New Zealand before coming home. Highlights of the past few weeks have been Byron Bay, Fraser Island and Whitsundays. All of which involved amazing beaches, sunshine and lots of partying. I wont make you further jealous with any details but it was one of the highlights of the year away. Oh... time to board. Short message. Goodbye Australia

On the road again

I have been working and living in Melbourne for the past 7 months and the time has now come to start heading home. Me and Mail have planned 3 weeks traveling up eastern Australia and then 2 weeks in New Zealand. After that, its a leisurely 27 hr plane flight back to London then Glasgow. I will be in London on the 27th of May and Glasgow on the 30th.

The last few months have mostly been spent working with the occasional jaunt to public house. I went to see an AFL game. Who would have thought a game so brutal could turn out to be so boring? Fans of opposing teams were sitting together, whole families were there enjoying themselves, people were drinking responsibly, no one was swearing. This is not how competitive sport is meant to be!

Its the Melbourne comedy festival at the moment which attracts comedians who cant get a gig in their own countries. This afforded the opportunity to go an see Pauly Shore, America's 'most annoying' actor. We went to see him at a really small venue and he was surprisingly funny. He was around after to talk to people and try to flog his t-shirts. We got a photo and Mail managed to get a free t-shirt as the largest size they had was a woman's medium.

Anyway, i will be home soon and look forward to showing off my tan and telling my stories. See you in a few weeks!

2010 A time for travel... but not time travel

So the new year has come and gone and not much has changed in Melbourne. My new years was spent at a Toga party for the bells then a day long trance party on the 1st of Jan. It was a huge event called summadayze and as you may guess from the name it attracted a few illiterates and scum-bags... of which i wasn't one... the former anyway. The parts I can remember were thoroughly enjoyable. Lots of loud music and loud clothing.

It has been easy to keep busy here with the weather being so good. Me Ashely and Richard have played tennis, been to the beach, the local pool and still play in our futsal league every Monday (we are 2nd at the moment but soon to be top!). A few weekends ago we went surfing to a beach about an hour and a half away. It was going well, quiet, big waves, sun etc. Then there was a bit of an incident when i got sucked out to sea but managed to get back with a lot of frantic swimming. Ashley on the other hand went so far out he had to come back through an area with super big waves. He was thrown about for around10 minutes but eventually managed to crawl up the beach spitting out salt water and looking relieved. We havent been surfing since.

I will hopefully be organizing my return trip home soon. I was hoping to be able to visit some of the pacific islands as a final farewell to my 14 month long holiday but I don't think my funds will last out that long. So i will have to make do with the east coast of Australia and New Zealand. Its a tough life.

seasons greetings

Happy channuka and merry christmas from melbourne. Just a brief update for those who were starting to get worried.

Life here in Melbourne has been fairly quiet of late. I am working hard (...well, working at least) as a chef at a steak restaurant in town. I dont get as many hours as i would like so money is a bit tight but will hopefully get more hours after new year.

Im still managing to go out and enjoy the nightlife and do a fair bit of socialising. I started a team in a futsal (type of football) league in Albert Park. Its used as the F1 track so we play in hall 3 above the ferarri pit lane. A little weird driving up to it.

Weather is good so its shorts and t-shirt everyday and occasionaly sunbathing in the garden. Made all the better after i spoke to home today where it is -3.

anyway, i am still alive and doing well. I should be back home in May.

cheers

Settling down

I have been putting off writing the blog for a while. Its because i wanted to wait until I was in Melbourne and sorted out with a job and a routine. Unfortunately its taken me rather a while to achieve this. I live with a friend I went to high school with in Scotland but who is originally from Melbourne called Ashley. He has a 3 bedroom house so it was perfect for me and richard mail to move into. My room is at the back of the house and gets really cold at night, although I've been told it will be much worse in summer when my room will reach temperatures which exceed that of the sun.

I have been searching for a job since I got here without much success. I started looking for jobs in places where i would like to work. Cinemas, video shops and generally other easy jobs which dont involve too much thinking or enthusiasm. I got a call one day at 10:30am which woke me up. The person asked me to come in for an interview the following day. Being half asleep i forgot to ask which job it was in refrence too. So i got into a bit of a panick and needed to find some smart clothes for this interview. I asked a guy i know called Cal if i could borrow some plain black trousers. He said sure he would get them later. Eventually he did. The trousers he handed over were neither black nor plain. The were blue pinstripe with a huge hole down the side and back. On the upside though, they were the correct size. So I had to go to the interview wearing these trousers where, despite my best effort with safety pins, you could still see my bum. The job (which i got) was harassing businesses asking them for money for a charity. It didnt pay very well and wasnt what i was looking for. So I had to start again. About a week ago I got a job in a call centre making outbound calls. It had got to the point where i had to take anything that was offered to me.

Meanwhile, a guy i had met who ran a restaurant said he may be able to get me work as a chef. Which I would love. You get to cook, eat, chat, swear (if what I see on tv is right) and dont have to smile and be polite to customers. After getting the call centre job I called him and he said he would give me a job which starts in a couple of weeks. So I quit after my first full day at the call centre. I wasnt prepared to get abuse down the phone for the next 6 months. Funnily enough, 3 out of the 4 people that started that day quit. Seems like people think they are desparate, until they start working there.

So in a couple of weeks i should be fairly settled, with a house and a job. Its just coming into summer so im looking forward to trips to the beach and whatever else people do in sunny countries. I should be staying here for about 6 months, then another month travelling around the east coast of australia and then a final month in New Zealand and Fiji.

My new address is:

273 Bambra Rd, Caulfield South, Melbourne, 3162 Australia

The Outback

These are some pictures of the trip which show the journey from Broome to Alice Springs. The wide open road, road kill, wind, sandstorms, and Uluru (Ayers rock) in dry sun and thunder storms.

Hi all. I think my blogging has become slightly less frequent. Sorry to those who need it to help them through there working week. I am in Darwin, Northern Territories, Australia at the moment. I was supposed to be somewhere between Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Melbourne but due to a series of setbacks I have ended up sleeping in a 2 person camper van in the middle of a busy city with no air conditioning. Before that saga though I travelled through Western Australia from Perth to Broome.




It was an organised trip which me and Richard Mail took with a company called Western Exposure. It was on a bus travelling up the coast seeing beaches, gorges and other really impressive sights. Unfortunately i didn't bring those pictures with me to the Internet cafe otherwise i would have put them up. Some highlights were... running a snake over in the bus, then reversing back to watch it writhe about before it took its final breath and then some brave lad (not me) picked it up with a stick and threw it into the bushes. Gorge walking in big red canyons with green trees and blue skies above. Got some good pictures but at this time of year the water is surprisingly cold and the cliffs rather precarious... although cliffs are probably dangerous at all times of the year. Anyway, once this 10 day trip was over i arrived in Broome to pick up my rental camper van.



The plan was to do a car relocation (a very cheap way to rent vehicles) from Broome to Alice Springs then go from Alice Springs to Melbourne. However once i arrived at Britz they informed me and Mail that the car had been cancelled. After a couple of hours of argument and walking around in the overwhelming heat looking at different companies. We settled on a low budget camper van company to take us to Darwin. --From Darwin we pick up a decent camper van for very cheap but we have to drive it to Sydney... where we will need to find transport back to Melbourne. Complicated. Yes. Unnecessary. Probably.-- Anyway. We were in the budget 'wicked camper' car lot and asked for the cheapest, crappiest car that would make it to Darwin. The guy took us deep into the storage yard, which looked a little too much like a scrap yard for my liking, and we came across a blue painted monstrosity. The thing started up... just, with a lot of shuddering and shaking. It was dirty, smelly, rusty and hardly what one would call road worthy, however this was to be our home for the next 5 nights (the 5th night being tonight). Uneconomical does not begin to describe this thing. 4 gears, automatic, petrol. Not good, but on the up side the A/C doesnt work so at least that doesnt waste petrol. It does mean you need to drive with all the windows open at all times which is not good for fumes, dust or volume. So we drove this thing from Broome to Darwin where we are now.Its about 2500km (or... many many miles). The van has insects the size of my head, an ant infestation, at night the temperature is probably close to that of the sun, lights dont work, when the engine is turned off the car continues to shudder for a good 30 seconds and the cooking facilities are... well... not good. All that being said, it was a fun few days. We saw some national parks, a lot of flies and a lot of outback. Here are some picture from that trip.






Me surfing on the the blue monster... I hope the rental people don't see this.





I ran out of time and the pictures wouldnt upload. Only the first one. Will try to change this shortly.

Back in the first world

I haven't posted in a wee while. Sorry about that. Its difficult to get the time and find computers which work at a decent speed etc etc. My last post was 3 weeks ago so here is a summary of what i have done in those 3 weeks.

JAVA

I went to Jogjakarta which is a big city in central Java. It was very cultural, lots of museums and arty things to do. Obviously this meant i spent most of my time in a Belgian owned restaurant which sold freshly made chocolate. It was a great experience of Belgian culture... in Indonesia. Whilst i was there, known terrorist and the FBI number 3 most wanted man, Nordin Top was thought to have been killed in a shoot-out with police. This happened about 50 miles from where i was. As it turned out the person they actually killed was a florist... who was also a terrorist and involved in the Jakarta bombs.

After Jogja I went on travelling to a eco-tourism site. At the train station I was informed there would be no train today as 5 carriages de-railed the previous night. Not sure how many people died but not much was said about it. Apparently that sort of thing is very common. So I got the bus instead. It was a local bus and not air-conditioned. I think it was probably hotter than the sun. The eco-tourism site was in a nice spot with fairly decent facilities. The bathroom was outdoors, as in it had 3 walls and no roof. A little weird. I like nature as much as the next person but that was perhaps a little too close to nature.I was now in volcano country. Everywhere there were massive volcanoes, some active and some dormant. It was quite a spectacular place. Mt Bromo was a definite highlight. People go to Bromo for the sunrise over the volcano. They set up a grandstand and it was quite weird to see 300 Japanese people cheering as the sun came up at 5am. It felt very touristy but the views were great. (I tried to upload some pictures i took but it didn't work so here is one from the internet which is similar to my own). After Bromo i got another bus (with A/C this time thankfully) and got a boat over to Bali.

Rice Paddy

Mount Bromo (my excellent photography!)

Nice quiet beach for surfing

BALI

I started in north Bali and one of the highlights was snorkelling over a shipwreck. It was a weird experience. You could go down and touch it and see in some of the rooms. There were colourful fish everywhere. The ship was an American merchant ship which was wrecked during the 2nd world war and just left there.

I got to Ubud in central Bali where i was to meet Richard Mail, my friend who i will be travelling with from now on. The night i met him i felt quite ill. I had stomach cramps and generally felt run down. So the next 10 days were spent in bed watching DVD's and going on short walks where i was constantly calculating the distance to the nearest toilet. I did manage to get a little surfing done in this time and enjoy the sun by the pool. I think i lost some weight being ill and when i last looked in the mirror i looked like Christian Bale from 'The Machinist'... for those of you who arent very up on popular culture, that means i looked very skinny. Me and Mail flew to Perth in Western Australia 3 days ago.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

I arrived in Perth and was struck by how similar it was to Canada. Very clean, wide roads, nice friendly people. It was nice to be in the first world again and be able to get what you wanted and not have to worry about getting cholera or tetanus by just walking down the street. I have come to Fremantle which is a suburb of Perth to see one of my friends who i met on my travels 6 years ago. That was a little weird but went well. Im headed on a trip to Broome tomorrow and then getting a camper van through the desert to Alice Springs and then onto Melbourne (that is about 5000km!). Should be in Melbourne in 3 weeks where i will start looking for a job and a place to live. Still a little ill but I think I'm getting better, and will hopefully start putting on weight soon. Shouldn't be too hard here. Portions are of the American style, large and full of fat.

Waterfalls in Karijini National Park

Sunset in Broome

A run-over snake on its last legs... sort of