Melbourne is a beautiful vibrant city. Equivalent to Sydney but this has a lot more ‘Arty’ feel to it. So lots and lots more weird people in it. Our hostel is modern clean and we have a very smelly room. It’s in the St Kilda area which is a sort of dodgy but up and coming arty bohemian area. Lots of poncy cafes, derelict buildings soon to be developed into LAFMDL (Luxury Apartments For Modern Day Living), and people with funny clothes and hair. Luckily our hostel has its own security with hookers flanking every street corner. The other day I was doing my laundry and peering through the window into an alley way I saw one of our professional guardsmen pulling her knickers up after presumably servicing a client. Hooray.
Lets soak some of this all up then is it? Went to an Art gallery where they had a Picasso display on. Didn’t go to see that (it cost money) but I did manage to make my own “art” from the display outside:
“Chuckle, chortle, guffaw, etc”
And did the obligatory sight seeing in the city afterwards:
“Captivating, etc”
Spent an evening catching up with one of the locals. A fine man I used to work with back home who has now come back to his home town. We reminisced over such wonderful things as Flight Club (throwing paper airplanes onto Fleet Street after the boss has gone home), IM art (using expensive backend design software to make pretty pictures) and PC Theatre (using voice technology software to write obscene comedy sketches). Had a lovely evening drinking full pints in traditional pubs. All was going well until I found an old prostitutes glove, and when I put it on it transformed me into an embodiment of evil:
'The glove has you now. There's nothing more we can do'
"GGaaaaaggggghhhhhh!!!!'
Went on to have a burger king where a fight broke out. When it had been split up, me and the evil glove went up to one of the guys in the fight and tried our best to antagonise him more “Go on, finish him off, you know you want to. Hit him again”. Andy wasn’t so drunk and dragged me away before me and the glove got into trouble ourselves. Then on the way home, me and the evil glove tried to drag Andy on an evil ‘danger walk’ across a busy intersection but failed miserably and ended up karking it onto the ground leaving poor Andy to drag us across the road before the speeding traffic splattered us. Lucky escape. Cheers Andy. Saved us both. And the glove of course. Upon seeing this a gang of disorderleys started to jeer us but we got back to the hostel before the evil glove could react. Woke up and burned the damn thing!
Sillyness aside, I had the important role of headline DJ for a funky bar in the city:
“Look mum! I’m famous!”
Although it was a Sunday night, we had a great turn out and I had free reign to play all the deep, dirty slamming house (or ‘that noisey shit that you play’ as most of you will recognize) that I wanted and by jove it went down a treat. One person actually got up and danced. Amazing I know.
“What do these buttons do? What does any of this mean? What the hell am I doing here?”
“Cmon everybody…..Gonna stay at the Y..M..C..A”
And I absolutely, categorically did NOT get paid cash in hand for the gig and anyone who says I did is a fucking liar. Had a great night, met some great people with equally un-orthodox facial hair and found a really nice venue. Big thanks to Uness and Ranato for that one. Wanted to have a big party after the gig but I had to be compus mentus for the morning for an important phone call. It would appear that the agent that got me my job in Sydney has take it upon himself to steal my last two weeks worth of pay and then go bankrupt. How sodding convenient. So I’m battling with him, as well as my estate agent from our flat in Sydney for taking money out of the bond for cleaning after we’d already paid to have it cleaned plus I also have ANOTHER agent back home who has also stolen money off me and done a runner. Hmmm, do you think I’m going to trust another lone IT recruiter snake again when I get back home blog fans? I simply love all my hard work and talents going to line the pockets of some wide boy that’s “Good on the phone”.
One last thing to do is the Great Ocean road so, ANOTHER rental car (Hyundai saloon, crappy acceleration) and a day or two on the road. I think calling it the Great Ocean Road is quite an exaggeration. I would call it the “The Disappointingly Goes Inland Too Much Road”. Although you do drive along the ocean for a fair while, you do spend a good deal of it driving through hills and woodland though which is all very nice as well. Its all rather scenic and nice like Tasmania. Andy managed some nice handbrake turns although one did scare us a bit as we full lost control for a while and were rather too close to the sea. But we survived. There are various things to stop and point at and take photos of but its all getting a bit boring these days. Stopped at the 12 Apostles (read 11 big rocks in the sea) for sunset except it was blowing a gale and raining. So gave up and checked into a shitty little hostel for the night. Picked the beds that were technically not in a room but in the kitchen. Was shattered from countless bad nights sleep and wasn’t drinking as I was expecting a phone call from my rat-agent that never called anyway so tried to get an early night but couldn’t sleep due to noisy Germans in the kitchen. Agh! Woke up at about 5am for some reason and the Swiss guy we drove down with suggested checking out sunrise at the 12 apostles. Why the hell not. It was bitterly cold but worth it as I got some corking photos. Check this out peasants:
‘Not bad eh?’
Then, er, we drove back to Melbourne. Not as amazing as everyone said (possibly because we’d had a far better drive in Tasmania) but not bad all the same.
And that’s it. Melbourne nailed. Would have loved to spend more time here actually as I’ve only really skimmed the surface here and there was an opportunity of more DJ gigs, but time is pressing and I’ve got me bigger fish to fry. I have today to empty my Australian bank account then sod off to New Zealand at 7am tomorrow. Woohoo!
Australia. All done. Finished. A fine, fine country. Met some wonderful people, local and backpacker alike, met some weird people and met some darn right horrible people. Seen beautiful things, experienced incredible things and generally had a bloody good crack. It’s fast approaching nearly a year since I’ve been away and I’ve been slowly starting to look forward to going back home and getting on with my life. Don’t get me wrong, the backpacker life style is great, easy (ish, well it beats working I guess), but I sometimes feel I’m not getting on with my life and just spending each day being a tourist (which I am really). But I’m not gonna wish my time away as this is a once in a life time experience and I’ll look back on these times fondly so I’m gonna use it as a time to stock up on lots of good memories. Some people go traveling and never stop, but for me I think I’ve got a bit too much ambition to be sitting around not getting on with things. I have a big feeling I’m going to be eating these words when I get back home and in an office and all I want to do is sit on a beach all day! We shall see.
Finally, I would like to say a massive thank you to Diana Mounter who I callously forgot to thank in my Sydney blog as she also showed us many a good time and good things to see in Sydney so thank you Di. If you’re ever in Sydney I can give you her number and she will service you well.
Right then. Onwards to the next stage. New Zealnd. I’ve got my Hobbit traps ready and I’m ready to hunt. RELEASE THE BALROG!!!
Get a dog up ya blog fans. (I don’t know what this means but I heard some ozzy say it and I like it. Hopefully it won’t be grossly offensive to Muslims, or something)
“Rock on”
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