Australian Life

Hmmm....so my last blog ended with a promise to not leave it so long until my next update...oopsie my bad!!! But again it was mostly because of the routine of work, home, dinner, bed that was my life up until the end of April. Again this blog isn’t in any particular order....it’s a mish mash of stories and things!

Some quite fun things did happen tough. The first big event after New Years was Australia Day. This is celebrated on the 26^th of January each year. We decided to head out and see what we could find...we didn’t have to go far. There was a big fair set up in Hyde Park and lots going on up at the Rocks too. There was a boat display in the harbour too and street performers everywhere. When we had walked for hours and taken in a lot of stuff we decided to head home...and stumbled across what I can only describe as the world’s biggest classic car display!!! We walked though it for about an hour and a half...and at this point I had reached my limit for looking at classic cars! At first I was looking at them all and then after awhile I would look as I kept walking. After the 1.5 hour point I was waiting for Joe to take a picture and a guy walked past saying “ok I think I’ve reached saturation point” which worried me slightly as I thought we were coming to the end of it!! About another hour later going at a much quicker pace we did actually reach the end of the display! There must have been thousands of cars there, and all of them were in perfect condition too!

 Chinese New Year was really cool also. There were loads of different events on, culminating in the Twilight parade on the Sunday evening. The parade didn’t start till 8 when it had started to get dark so everyone in the parade had little fairy lights all over them. It was really nice and there was people dancing and playing music and all kinds of things.  Crowds starting gathering quite early so they had different types of entertainment on like a BMX bike display and graffiti artists and break dancers...totally random things but something to look at while we waited!!

The next big event was Paddy’s Day! Luckily Paddy’s Day fell on a Saturday so I knew I wouldn’t be working. But for some odd reason Sydney always has the parade on the Sunday before or after Paddy’s Day...thought this was slightly odd but I was just glad that they did do something!! It was tradition in work to have drinks on a Friday evening for the last hour of work...this normally consisted of beer or wine but on this particular Friday they had ordered in cans of Guinness too. Geoff (the boss) was going around with the cans offering them to everyone...funnily enough very few Irish people actually accepted one...when we were asked why the response was that “Guinness is disgusting”!! No one believed us and still took a can and after about 3 sips went back to their usual tipple!! On the Saturday then myself and Joe got ourselves up to go and see what fun we could find in the city. Courtesy of a Christmas pressie of the Irish jersey and Triona’s Paddy’s Day survival post with flashing badges and earrings in it (for me, not for Joe) we  were well identifiable as Paddy’s Day revellers!!! So we left the apartment and started walking towards town. I started to get really worried as for the first 10 minutes we didn’t see an iota of green anywhere and I was starting to think we’d be celebrating on our own. But then we hit George Street...and walked into leprechaun land!!! There were people everywhere in green hats and big tall Guinness hats, Irish flags draped over everyone and everything and hundreds of people dressed as leprechauns!! And so I was happy! We stopped in one pub on George Street and had our first drink taking it all in. Then we decided to head towards Darling Harbour. The Harbour was actually pretty dead but it looked like they were building up to a night time party as all the staff in all the bars were wearing green so I think we just arrived a bit too early. So after a drink there we left and headed towards PJ O’Brien’s...and Irish bar. I have been here a few times as it is where me and the girls from work used to head for our Friday pub lunch. So we decided if we could find a party it would be there....and we weren’t wrong. However when we went to walk in the normal door the bouncer said that was the “out” door and to go down to the next door...a peek in the door told us the placed was rammed...and then we looked at the “in” door...and there was actually a queue of 100+ people waiting to get in!! I immediately refused to queue to get into a pub on Paddy’s Day so we looked around and across the road was another put...there was a good crowd in there and it looked like it was full of people who like us said “screw that” and looked for the nearest hostillery!! So we popped into that bar and had a couple of drinks there before deciding to head back towards home. As we walked towards home we bumped into a group of about 8 lads who all had the tall Guinness hats on them. I had been wanting one all day but refused to buy a Guinness just to get a hat! These lads though saw me coming in my green get up and started cheering saying “Yay Paddy’s Day”. Of course then they copped my Irish accent and got very excited that they had actually met and Irish person on Paddy’s Day (though one of them did get slightly confused and when I said I was from Dublin, though I said Canada...to which all his mates gave him a few digs!) Anyway one of them had their Guinness hat and decided he wanted to give it to the Irish person on Paddy’s Day. I told him if he put it on my head he wouldn’t get it back and he said he didn’t care...so I acquired myself a Guinness hat!! Further down the road we stopped to look at something in the window of a shop and these two Irish lads stopped to talk to us. They were heading off to another bar but wanted to get rid of the stuff they had acquired such as a sparkly green bowler hat and a green Guinness t-shirt. So they offloaded their stuff onto us and went on their merry little way!! So just as at home it was a totally random day, meeting strange people and feeling like you’ve known them forever!! We decided then to stop in the Darlo (our local) for one last drink before going home to cook dinner. So in we popped and spread some Irish cheer! They were promoting a new drink (Bulmer’s Blackcurrant...yum!!!) and were giving free samples. Of course as an Irish person on our national day it would have been rude of me to refuse a free drink so I had one. Then they had 2 glasses left over after going to the rest of the pub (it's not that busy of a watering hole!!!) so they came back over and gave them to us!! After finishing our free drinks (and the ones we paid for too!!) we decided it was time to call it quits...BUT decided we needed a drink for dinner. so we went into the bottle shop to get ourselves some Bulmer’s Blackcurrant (their promotion worked!!!) and got a couple bottles of that and also discovered what was to become my new regular drink....Dirty Granny (a very yummy cider!!) so off we headed home had a Dirty Granny and some food and that was my first Paddy’s Day away from home!!

We got up the next day and got ourselves organised to head to the parade.  The website said it was the 2^nd biggest Paddy’s day parade in the world...hmmm. It said it started at 12 so we left the apartment at 12 to make the 10 minute walk to where we were going to watch it (at the end of the parade)...and arrived as the first float was coming around the corner!! So it was quite the small parade really! Mostly it was made up of local GAA teams that had been set up by the Irish who are over here with a couple of other floats for the Irish bars and Irish Dancing clubs in between, and of course the customary bag pipe bands and marching bands. My favourite I think was the Mr Tayto part where people were campaigning for him to be Taoiseach I think!! When the parade was over there was then a festival in the park so we wandered into that and my little heart skipped a beat!! Over on the other side of the park I spotted...THE TAYTO TENT!!! I grabbed Joe and darted across before the crowds grew...and got myself a delicious bag of Tayto!!! I tell ya they truly are the best crisps in the world!! So once I had a little taste of home we wandered around the park and found a stage with this music on it, dancers all over the place and a tent or two with real Irish sausages being cooked in them!!! After a couple of hours of soaking up the sun and people watching we decided to head home after a busy weekend...but not before a stop off again at the Tayto Tent for a couple bags for a rainy day and also some Club Orange!! So all in all Paddy’s Day was a success! At first I thought it was going to be a big disappointment but as always Sydney delivered...though I did have a couple of moments where a tear came to my eye because I was missing home! But I will be back next year to make up for lost time...so that’s a head up to whoever I am with next Paddy’s Day!!!

Had a lovely day out then a couple weeks after Paddy’s Day with Sarah and Steph, two girls from work. We headed down to the Rocks for a few drinks in the sun. It was our first time properly down at the Rocks...and we wondered why we had waited so long to get down there!!! It’s a gorgeous part of Sydney. It’s been well preserved and there is no high rises in it or anything, just quaint old buildings and a big street market at the weekend. Sarah’s 2 friends Darren and Donna were there and Steph brought her friend Craig. The 7 of us had a great day. We started off in the Australian...and after me and Joe introduced everyone to Bulmer’s Blackcurrant, managed to drink the bar out of their supply of it!!! After a few hours there...and when the heat of the sun got too much even with some sunscreen that Darren went on the hunt for we headed off to the Orient. In the Orient we ended up in a really nice beer garden/courtyard and we spent the rest of the day in the lovely shade. It was great to be out and about and discovering somewhere new.

The weekend after that we went up to Newcastle to visit Kay. This is the lady that we had met when Joe’s parents were over. After a stressful couple of weeks in February for Joe she invited us up to get out of the city....and it was great!! We got the train up and Kay and her son Paul picked us up at the train station. Then we drove a little further north to Port Stephens...and we fell in love with it!! Kay has a holiday apartment up there and it is a 30 second walk from the apartment to the beach of Dutchman’s Bay. We went and dropped our stuff off in the apartment and then Paul and Kay took us on a little tour of Port Stephens. Paul put the top down on the convertible and we saw it in style! The weather was amazing and the whole area of Port Stephens is stunning. There are white beaches the whole was around the bay and some gorgeous lookouts with breathtaking views. After exploring a bit we went and got takeaway fish and chips and headed back to the apartment. We sat and chatted for awhile and then Kay and Paul headed home. Me and Joe went for a walk down on the beach then at sunset and it was gorgeous. The colours in the sky and the beach were fab; totally fell in love with the place. The next morning Kay and John (her husband) came out to the apartment and we had a nice Aussie BBQ by the beach and then went to explore the bay a little further. It was a really great weekend and so good to get out of the city. On our first day there when we were driving from Newcastle to Port Stephens we were driving by green fields with cattle in them and I got so excited! Didn’t realise how much I missed driving in the country!!!

The weekend after that was Easter so I had a nice long weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday off. So on the Friday we got the ferry out to Watsons Bay and yet again we discovered another stunning part of Sydney!!!! Watsons Bay is the southern tip to the entrance to the whole of Sydney Harbour. The ferry was eye opening as it was quick to see where millionaires’ row is!! All the houses looked out over the bay with the whole side of the house made of glass and had little boats moored outside them! Though one friendly ferry passenger told me and Joe and the boats are pretty much there for show and the only time they are moved is on New Year’s Eve where they go into the middle of the Harbour for the fireworks!! When we got to Watsons Bay we went for a walk up to a lookout point called the Gap. The force of the waves of the Pacific was unreal, crashing against the cliff walls. We then went and got ourselves some fish and chips and sat in a park by the sea while we tucked in before going for another walk up to Macquarie’s Lighthouse which apparently is the oldest lighthouse in Sydney. It was really white and looked lovely against a completely blue sky that didn’t even have a cloud in it! After spending most of the day discovering Watsons Bay we decided to head home and by pure fluke we perfectly timed a ferry to be going back towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the sun was setting behind it and a huge full moon was rising behind us. It was breathtakingly beautiful and made me realise once again just how lucky I am to be experiencing all of this!!!

The next day we headed to Darling Harbour for the Sydney Hoopla Festival which was a street performance festival. There were loads of free street shows and then we could buy tickets to some other shows. The tickets cost all of $5 so we got tickets to 2 different shows, one called The League of Sideshow Superstars and the other called Ring of Fire. Both shows were brilliant. We saw lots of hoola hooping and straight jacket escaping as well as a guy who picked up a car battery by attaching chains to his nipple rings, while being electrocuted!!!! That one was kinda squirmy to watch!! Then in the second show there was a bit of audience participation. One girl had her act based around Barbie and she picked a guy in his 20s who did actually look like Ken to come and help her. Oh my God I have never seen someone look so awkward in my whole life!! He wanted to be anywhere else rather than standing in front of about 100 people doing the hoola hoop! I think his awkwardness made the whole thing a bit funnier though, but my heart did go out to him! It was a really cool day though and something totally different. In Sydney there are always street performers of some sort at different spots around the city, some of them really good and some of them not so good but it was nice to see the best of the best from all over the world and to really enjoy it.

On Easter Sunday we took it easy as the weather wasn’t the best so we had a lazy day and cooked ourselves a nice Easter Sunday dinner, complete with roast potatoes, stuffed rashers and gravy!! Amazing the things you can pull together in the world’s tiniest oven!!! So after a day off from our adventures we jumped straight back in and on Easter Monday we went to the Royal Easter Show. The show is held every year and it is basically a big country fair. They have competitions for the best cow, goose, pigeon, chicken, dog...every kind of animal that you would possibly find on a farm...and every species too!! Then there was a petting farm where we could get up close to all kinds of baby animals like lambs and kids and little puppies too!! There was far too much cuteness in that room!!! There were also plenty of wood chopping competitions, which were pretty cool to watch as I’d never seen it before. These guys had to chop little steps into a 20 foot pole and get themselves up to the top of it and then chop the top 2 foot of it off while the stood on a little pole sticking out of the side of it!! Not sure the quite describes it but if you’ve seen my FB pics you get the idea!! Then we headed to the big stadium where we arrived just on time to see a competition between lots of old fashioned horse drawn carriages and then there was a rodeo! Now me and Joe have become big fans of bull riding as it is on the TV every Sunday morning (before Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman and 7^th Heaven.....don’t tell me you don’t remember what I’m talking about people!!!) So when we heard there was a rodeo we weren’t sure that it would actually be bull riding...but it was!!! And not only that but it was kids between 12 and 18 doing it!!! They were wrangling cattle and all kinds of crazy stuff! But it was really good fun to watch and no one got injured so I didn’t have to feel guilty that I enjoyed it!!! We had another little wood chopping display then followed by the Stockman’s Horseshow. This was pretty impressive as it was 40 or 50 horses and the riders all doing a kind of choreographed type thing. There were a couple of moments where I was waiting for some of them to crash but it was all perfectly timed and very impressive! Then there was a BMX display which was all going great until one guy stuffed a landing and he went off fierce quick and we didn’t see him for the rest of the show...though they assured us that he was fine! And it was all finished off by fireworks! It was a really good show to go to and we were so glad we went across to it...and even gladder that we waited till the Monday as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky for the whole day! So all in all it was a pretty good Easter. Again not the most conventional of yearly events going by my past experience but it was jam packed and fun filled...and an Easter parcel from home supplied some chocolate too!!!

The next event after that was Anzac Day, which meant another day off work...yay!!! Last year I spent Anzac day freezing my ass off for a night camping out in Gallipoli which is where the battle took place that Anzac remembers each year. This year I spent the night before Anzac Day toasty in my bed!! But somehow I managed to end up out of bed at 4am to keep Joe company while he cheered on Chelsea in one of the Champions League semis!! We watched the parade then later in the day but all in all it was a quiet day and far less eventful than last year’s Gallipoli adventures!!!

After that then it was a countdown to my last day in work and the arrival of Mam and Dad the following day!! I was really looking forward to finishing up work and being officially unemployed again. When people in work asked me if I was sad to leave my answer was always no purely because the parents were arriving the next day. Part of me wonders if Mam and Dad weren’t coming the next day if I would have felt any different or more upset to be leaving somewhere where I had just spent 6 months and the honest answer is I don’t think so! I will miss some of the people I worked with but having arguments with people day in day out over the same stupid stuff definitely gets old after awhile! Though I always loved it when I won an argument with someone who was being unnecessarily rude or who thinks they are more important. I had one very rude woman one day tell me her husband was a director of a worldwide bank and that he wasn’t a stupid man and if he was told something on the phone he would have remembered it...thanks to the wonders of call tracing I was able to provide her with proof that her husband obviously wasn’t nearly as smart as she thought because he had been told on 3 occasions in the phone call!!! Loved ringing her back and telling her and I could hear her deflate as I told her! Little victories like that made it possible to stick out most of the rude people on the phone, they all seem to think that it was me personally who had done something to them...though one day a lady said she didn’t want to get annoyed at me as I was obviously working while on my holidays to help me with my travels and she wasn’t going to take her frustrations out on me and wanted to speak with a manager who works with the company full time....I liked that lady!!! Anyway as you can see there definitely weren’t tears when I left and it was with a very jovial heart that I walked out of there on my final day!!!

And then the next day arrived! Mam and Dad were due in at 8.30 on the Saturday morning so it was bright and early that we headed to the airport. Of course when they appeared around the corner there were tears and very squeezy hugs and then lots of chatter as I was filled in on all the news back home! We took it fairly easy on the first day, but we did make it to Darling Harbour that       evening for some fireworks which was a nice welcome for Dad and Mam. On Sunday we brought them down to Circular Key to get their first look at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House...I think they found it just as stunning as everyone else who sees it...and it was on that day that me and Mam decided we were going to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb!!! After we had explored a little we headed back to our local, the Darlo and decided to show Mam and Dad where we hang out for a quite drink. We arrived there at about 5 for “A” quite drink...and left at midnight!!! Joe and Dad started playing pool and Joe seemed to think my pool skills were a reflection of Dads...he was wrong! Dad proved himself to be quite the pool player and of course nothing would satisfy Joe but to stay there until he beat Dad at least once....it did eventually happen but took quite a few games...and a number of jugs of beer, which suited them both down to the ground! While all this was going on me and Mam sat and chatted and I introduced Mam to Dirty Granny!!

During their first week here we went out to Bondi and walked down to Bronte Beach...we were trying to make it to Coogee but Bronte was as far as we made it before deciding to head back and we cooked a nice dinner in our apartment that night. I spent the next day with Mam and Dad over in Manly. Manly is on the Northern Shores and is beautiful. We went for a lovely walk along the sea front and had a nice lunch before perfectly timing a return for sunset over the harbour. Me and Mam also did our Bridge Climb and it was amazing. In total we were there for three and a half hours. This included an hour of getting kitted out in very sexy onesies and tying down everything to us!!! I took the phrase “speccy four eyes” to a whole new level by asking for two glasses strings so that I could bring both my sun glasses and my glasses glasses! Then we had to have a practice of climbing up and down the ladders we were going to be climbing before we finally got to step out on the bridge. It was amazing!! We walked along the gangplank underneath for awhile. Rhys, our guide, explained to us that they were repainting the bridge. They do this every few years but there was a new type of paint they were using that meant they had to strip back all the other paint to properly protect the bridge. While doing this though they discovered that the first few layers of paint were lead based which meant they had to use a special treatment and basically sandblast every inch of the bridge to get back to the original metal for the new paint to work! They estimated the whole job to take a certain amount of time (can't remember exactly what it was now) but because of the problem they encountered it took the estimated time to do only about 100feet of it! So it’ll take a long time to do it but will totally be worth it because we got to see the before and after and it looks like a completely new bridge! Once we walked along the flat for a little we then got to climb the first set of ladders and start walking up the arch of the bridge. It was stunning to be up there and to see the whole Harbour. Its stretches so far and has the bluest water with all these little inlets. Rhys told us lots of facts about the different things we could see, including pointing out the Prime Minister residence for when she is in Sydney and lots of other very expensive (and stunning) properties along the water front. As we reached the top of the bridge I just couldn’t stop looking around me. No matter which way I looked it was breath taking. We spent a good half hour or so standing at the summit, having our pictures taken and chatting with the other climbers in our group. There was no rushing, it didn’t feel like we were being marched to the top and back down again, we got plenty of time to take it all in and truly appreciate what we were seeing. I loved every minute of it and will always remember it as being one of the biggest highlights of my whole trip.

I also got a lovely surprise from Mam. I had asked her to bring me a few things from home and when I went to the hotel with her to collect them she also handed me my pretty bag that I used for going out at home, then from another drawer she produced a pair of my heels, another press had accessories and tan in it and then from the wardrobe came one of my favourite dresses!! I was so excited and gave Mam the biggest hug! So we planned then to have a fancy night out on the Friday and go to the Hard Rock Cafe and have a nice dinner and some drinks. And with everything Mam brought me and part of Triona’s Christmas pressie (a beauty bag with pretty make up, eyelashes and nails) I was all ready to go...all I had to do was remember how I used to do it all!! We had a great night and a lovely meal, and I was very impressed that it only took me about an hour or so to put it all together and look semi respectable!!! The day after our lovely meal was the day we were leaving Sydney on our road trip. It was a very odd morning as it was the day me and Joe were moving out of our apartment. I knew it would be odd as I had the same feelings when I left Berlin, I was excited about what was next but pretty upset to be leaving somewhere that I called home. Mam and Dad picked up the rental car and came to the flat to put all our stuff in it....we had a lot more crap than we thought and everything just got bundled in! There was a teary moment or two while we said bye to our little flat but then we shook that off and got excited about what was next.

It took us awhile to find our way out of Sydney and get on the open road, but we eventually left the city behind and were on the road to Melbourne. Melbourne is about a 12-15 hour drive from Sydney if you take the highway...we were taking the coast road so it took us 5 days to get there! It was so much fun; we stayed somewhere different every night. Our first night was nearly a disaster when we picked a place to stay only to finally arrive there after a very long day of driving and to discover that there was nothing there!! So we had to backtrack slightly and find our way back to Huskinssons for the night. We arrived in the dark so weren’t quite sure what it was like but me and Mam went for a walk in the morning and discovered that it was a beautiful little town. After some breakfast we hit the road again and decided that rather than a repeat of the night before we were going to drive until about 3 each day and stop wherever we were at that time , find somewhere to stay and have some time to relax and explore each place.

That plan ended up working pretty well for us. We were able to plan where we wanted to get to, fit in a coffee break and some sightseeing stops along the way and still have time to chill out in the evenings. We became quite the fans of Keno (a Rapido type game for those of you in the betting business back home!!) and would give it a go every evening. It was a bit of fun but we never had a real lot of luck on it!! We managed to have accommodation sorted in most places by the time we arrived with the help of our mobile internet...and Mam and Dad even gave a backpacker’s hostel a go! Ok so it wasn’t dorm rooms and it wasn’t packed to the rafters but they were quite proud the next day to say they ate their breakfast in the hostel common room!

When we stayed in Wagga Wagga one night on our way back to Sydney we found a restaurant called “Hog’s Breath Cafe” which I though looked like fun so in we went. The food was pretty good but the best part was dessert. Me and Joe decided to share a Rocky Road...I have a picture of it on Facebook, I’m sure most of you have seen it by now....we didn’t fully finish it but we sure as hell gave it a good go!!

We also managed to find an island full of koalas too!! When we got to the island we drove around a bit and then stopped off in a woodland area to have a look. The four of us wandered around for ages with our noses stuck in the air trying to spot one to no avail. Eventually Dad caught sight of one and there was great excitement. Of course once we had seen one and knew what to look for we suddenly saw they all over the place! It was nice to see them in their natural habitat...but the ones in the wild don’t look as cute as some of the ones you see in pictures!!

While on our road trip I also got to try my hand at driving for the first time since I left home! The car we rented was automatic so that was a bit odd but after a couple of days Dad said it was my turn. We were on a fairly quiet stretch of road so I popped in the driver’s seat, buckled myself in and set off. About 1km down the road there was a sharp turn in the road and when I turned around it, it was to discover that I was about to drive up a very steep, very corkscrew-y road!!! I was not happy and a profanity or two may have been uttered while everyone else tried not to laugh at my bad luck! Thankfully I survived that ordeal and it certainly reminded me of how to drive!! Driving again was great! I forgot how much I enjoyed it and how nice it was to just be able to go where I want! I didn’t do a whole lot of driving as Mam and Dad did most of it while me and Joe navigated and booked hotel rooms for the night ahead. It was quite the organised random road trip in the end!!

One of my favourite places we stopped in for a couple of hours was a placed called TIlba Tilba. I felt like I suddenly drove into Little House on the Prairie!! The houses and buildings were so quaint and old fashioned...and my favourite part about it was the old fashioned sweet shop we found! It also had a little hippie shop in it where we spent a while poking around. The funniest thing about this was as we walked in the lady who was working there said she had to pop out to the Post Office but would be back in a few minutes and to have a look around. So while we stood there slightly shocked that this lady walked out of her shop with 4 people standing in it and didn’t bat an eyelid she, popped off, did her Post Office business, came back and had a nice little chat with us!

Another random thing on our road trip was Dad getting breathalysed! We were driving in the middle of a very empty road (like most of them!!) where we had barely encountered another vehicle when we rounded a corner and there was a massive police road block! There was about 30 police, 5 or 6 cars and a Random Breath Testing truck. We pulled up and Dad wound down the window. He said hi to the officer (nearly calling him “Guard”!!) and the policeman explained what was going on. He asked to see Dads licence and then obviously copped the accent, realised it wasn’t Aussie and asked if Dads license was Australian. When Dad said no the officer just smiled and said don’t worry about it. He then got Dad to blow in the little tube checked the reading and we were sent on our way! We all laughed about it because as Dad said he was all the way on the other side of the world, and got breath tested for the first time!!

We arrived in Melbourne after our 5 days on the road and then had to find our way into another city! Melbourne has a lot of bloody one way streets and a lot of VERY narrow alleys that cars and trucks are supposed to go down. Our hotel was on one such street and once we found it me and Joe jumped out while the car was still in a slight bit of motion to find out as quickly as we could where we were supposed to park without losing Mam and Dad to more one way streets trying to find their way back to us!! Luckily Mam was able to pull in just up the road and we were all able to get back in the car, go to the car park and then come back to the hotel. I actually really liked Melbourne even though we didn’t spend long there. We found a lovely pedestrianized area with lots of cafes and restaurants with narrow alleys to explore.  That evening we were meeting Niamh a friend of Mam’s who used to work in Otis but had moved to Australia a couple of months before. Once we met her we of course all headed to the pub for a drink or two....and about 6 hours later we finally all left when Niamh had to catch her last tram home! We had a great night with lots of laughs and stories. On the way home we all realised we hadn’t had dinner and being after midnight there wasn’t a lot of choice of where to eat....so we turned to trusty Micky D’s!! Once we got our food we went back to the hotel and found the laundry room which had a microwave in it to heat up the food as it was a longer walk than any of us remembered getting back home! It was at this stage that I realised I really needed to pee and ended up dancing around the laundry room to try and distract myself...and it worked cause Dad joined in with me and we jumped around like a pair of eejits till the microwave pinged!!

From Melbourne we took the quick road back towards Sydney and headed to the Blue Mountains. After all the early mornings and packing every day we decided to find somewhere to go and stay for a few days and have a bit of relaxation time. We picked the Blue Mountains because it was close to Sydney so when it was time to head back to the city we wouldn’t have too long of a drive. It was my third time up in the Blue Mountains but it was nice to actually stay for a few days and explore. We stayed in Katoomba which is where Echo Point is with the famous Three Sisters formation. This was the first time that I actually walked to them rather than just looking at them from the viewpoint. It was pretty cool to actually stand on them but it was steep steps up and down to them!! After that we paid a little visit to Scenic World where we took a cable car across the valley. Then we took the Vernacular Railway which was not what any of us expected. It had very odd seats as when we sat in it, we were nearly lying down. The next thing we took off as Indiana Jones music played and went on a near vertical drop down a dark hole!! Everyone got a bit of a shock but we all loved it! When we got to the bottom of the railway we had a little walk through the rain forest and then got the cable car back to the top before the Sky Cable car back to the other side of the valley and a long uphill walk home in the cold!!! We stopped somewhere for some nice warm food and relaxed for the rest of the day.

The next day myself, Dad and Mam went for a visit to the Jenolan Caves. It was a couple hours drive to the caves on a very hairy road. Poor Mam was having a fit in the passenger seat cause when she looked out the window she was looking down a on a very vertical drop!! Was funny to me and Dad until the mountain twisted and turned and suddenly the vertical drop was on our side!! When we arrived at the cave they had a very grand entrance...we literally drove through a cave...how a bus makes it through the gap every day I have no idea!! Once we parked and explored a little we picked the tour we wanted to go on and off we went. The caves were fabulous. The rocks all had an orangey tint to them and spectacular crystals all over the place. The tour lasted just over an hour and then we wandered a little more to some of the other caves before hopping back in the car. We had fluky perfect timing again and saw a beautiful sunset across the mountains as we drove back to Katoomba.  We had a nice relaxing night with a tasty dinner and low and behold we found a pub that stayed open past 9pm that evening...and of course it was an Irish pub!! We had an entertaining evening as the toilets flooded so we then had to start running around the corner to their sister pub to use the loo. That closed at 9...so the bar staff then opened the club upstairs and we started using that! It was like our very own VIP club!!  So we had a lovely evening to round off a great road trip that allowed us to take in a chunk of Australia.

We headed back to Sydney the next day. Mam and Dad went back to their hotel and myself and Joe moved into a hostel. It was so weird being back in Sydney and not having our little apartment to go to. It was a fairly relaxed last couple of days with Mam and Dad. There was a bit more wandering around the city and having dinner and drinks and then the day of their flight home came. Of course there were tears and that horrible feeling of having to say bye for God knows how long again. Mam and Dad got home without any big dramas, although their luggage did arrive a couple of days after they did!

The next challenge for me and Joe was to figure out what to do next! We wanted to get working again but out of the city so we started looking for jobs in out of the way places. We searched for about a week and applied for many, many jobs but the Gods of luck were not on our side. Then at the end of a week of searching we got ourselves a job in Mildura, Victoria orange picking. So we got ourselves all packed up and flew to Melbourne and then up to Mildura. We got off the plane in Mildura and were greeted by actual tumbleweed!! We stood there in a bit of shock before someone walked up and asked if we were Orla and Joe...a plane full of people and this fella couple pick out the backpackers at a quick glance!! He brought us to our hostel which was to be our new home. First impressions...all I thought was that the job had better be worth it! The hostel had a decent kitchen and a TV room but the dorm room was a bit on the dingy side. We were sharing our room with 2 English girls. We arrived on the Friday and were due to start work on the Tuesday but Kate and Amy, our roommates, filled us in on how things worked at the hostel! They had been there for almost a month and had about 7 days work in total. Quickly me and Joe became a bit suspicious about the whole situation....and our suspicions were right when Monday came around and we were told the work wouldn’t start Tuesday, that it might be the end of the week.  We weren’t happy campers but had no option but to wait it out and see what happened. Living in the hostel was a bit of a nightmare too. There was about 100 backpackers there all waiting to start work and with nothing to do all most people did was drink from one end of the day to the next, which got old very quickly when there is people banging on the dorm room window at 7am after a night out. We grew sick of it very quickly and with work constantly starting in the next few days me and Joe hit the internet once again to see if we could get ourselves out of the situation we were in. After a couple of days of looking I stumbled upon an advertisement for roadhouse staff in Wauchope, Northern Territory. The ad was brief and to the point “1 or 2 bar staff needed to start immediately, Call Bruce”. So I gave Bruce a call!! We chatted for awhile and then he said he’d give me a call back shortly....longest 20 minutes of my life! But when he did call he said they would love for us to come down. In the dorm room I was on the top bunk...I nearly threw myself off it in excitement!!! Me and Joe literally jumped around the room before composing ourselves and starting to figure out how to get to Wauchope and how soon we could get there. We got the job on Saturday and were there on Monday! We packed our bags on the Saturday and left the dismal hostel and stayed in a nice hotel for our last night in civilisation! We flew out of Mildura, found ourselves in Melbourne airport once again and then had another flight up to Alice Springs. Then it was a 7 hour wait in Alice before we got our 5 hour bus to Wauchope which is 400km north of Alice Springs. When the bus dropped us off just after midnight we were greeted by Nathan, an Australian who worked at the hotel. We were then introduced to Marco the Peruvian chef, Riki a Finnish backpacker and Jean, another Australian. And then Nathan said words that I will never forget “Congratulations, you have just brought the official population of Wauchope to 8”!! We dumped our bags in our new room and had a drink at the bar. After an hour in Wauchope I had a much better feeling about it than I got in over a week in Mildura!

We were straight into work the next day with me starting off in the kitchen and Joe starting a week in the bar. Working in the kitchen reminded me a lot of when I worked in Peamount as the kitchen had the same set up so that put my nerves at ease. Before I knew it the first week was over and I was having great fun. Wauchope literally consists of the hotel property. There is the pub/dining room/beer garden area. Then we have the caravan park out the back where the rooms also are and then there is the backyard which is where the staff quarters are. Being in the middle of nowhere is kinda fun though, there is always people passing through. Also 40km down the road is a place called Ali Curung which is an aborigine community. There are always government workers out at the community and building contractors for fixing up the houses in the community so we have a lot of regular customers who are with us for a couple of nights every week. Then there are the caravaners to keep us busy too. We are 10km from the Devils Marbles which is a big tourist attraction in the Northern Territory. Because we are so close many people stay with us and travel to them rather than staying at the Marbles as there is always a huge amount of caravans camped out there. Our other main customer groups are people coming in for petrol or some food while they are on the road and also aborigines. Ali Curung is a dry community and the Elders of the community have given the roadhouse guidelines to sell alcohol by so that they can try limit the effects of drink on the community. At first I found it a bit weird but after a few weeks here and seeing exactly how much they drink I can understand why the Elders have limitations.  The other thing that took some getting used to is the Banned Drinking Register! No matter who you are, what you do, or how old you are if you want to buy takeaway alcohol in the Northern Territory, you must provide an ID that gets scanned through a computer. The computer than either flashes a green screen to say yes you can sell this person alcohol, or a big red no sale. In the time that I have been here I have only seen the no sale screen three times, which is pretty good. I always try to figure out how a system like that would go down at home and somehow I just don’t think it would work!! But it’s the way they do things here, most people are used to it but you get the odd group of tourists who get slightly offended when you ask for ID until you explain why you need it.

Considering we are so isolated here time goes by pretty quick. Working every day has its advantages I guess because I am always busy and have something to do. And even if one or the other of us is off if it gets busy in the bar, or you just walk through we always generally end up helping out and serving the odd customer or two. Since myself and Joe have been here there has been a good few new staff pass through. The first people that arrived after Jean left lasted all of 3 days before being told to pack their bags. Then we had an English girl who lasted 3 weeks....there is more to that story for a private conversation rather than a blog entry!!! But after all the comings and goings we got Kris, a German girl who fit in really well and has lasted a whole month so far!!! While getting to know Kris we discovered that she actually lived in the same building as Joe and I in Sydney at the same time we lived there!! Very odd...but just goes to prove that it’s hard to get to know neighbours when living in an apartment building!!! 

One of the not so fun things that happens in Wauchope and surrounds is car crashes. Wauchope is surrounded by Singleton the closest station to the hotel. I never knew how big the station was until one evening we were talking to Will (the son of the guy who owns the station) and Luke (an English backpacker who was working on the station to get his 2^nd year visa). They had been putting out bushfires on the station for most of the day and I asked how much land was affected by the fire. Will replied that there was about 100,000 acres affected (no that is not a typo). Naturally this led me to ask how big the station was and the reply to that was that it was 900,000 acres!! Obviously with a station this size it is hard to contain all the animals and when the locals cut holes through the fences so they can drive on “bush highways” rather than go on the roads and get pulled over it makes it all the more difficult. Add to that the fact that it is pitch black here at night and the cattle roam and yes, you have a recipe for disaster. Of course it doesn’t help that some people are stupid enough to drive at night. Pretty much everyone says don’t drive after sundown but there is a few very special people who think they are invincible and unfortunately they find the opposite when their car slams into a large animal and loses the battle. Since my time in Wauchope has begun the only casualties of these accidents have been the animals and luckily no person has been severely injured. There was a fatality one night soon after we arrived though. Two brothers had been driving most of the day and taking turns driving and sleeping so that they could get where they were going. Not long before they passed by us they switched drivers but the guy who took over hadn’t quite woken up yet and started falling asleep, swerved off the road and while trying to correct himself overcorrected and flipped the car. The only reason the two of them didn’t pass away was because the passenger wasn’t wearing his seat belt and got thrown from the car. It was pretty sad to hear it and because I had only just arrived at Wauchope made me determined that I would not drive on Northern Territory roads at night....which didn’t quite happen (more on that later)!! I think the stupidest thing about all this though is that people don’t listen. We had two English guys rock in one night at about 10.30 and ask for coffee. While they waited we all started chatting. They told us they had already driven 1,000km that day and had another 600 or so to go until they got to where they were going. We all started telling them to be very careful and basically told them it was a stupid idea and they should stop until the sun came up again and get some sleep. We told them our stories about cattle wandering on the roads, people falling asleep and still they were determined to keep on going. And to top it all off the last thing they did before they left was buy some cigarettes cause they guy who was driving had “started to doze off” just before they stopped in Wauchope. We didn’t hear any stories in the following days so I can only presume they were lucky enough to not encounter any cattle along the way but I still thought it was pretty stupid to have 5 people talking about all these accidents and say we would never drive in the dark and they hopped back in the car not a bother on them!! But I guess these roads are down to luck and they had it that night.

And so to my story of driving at night! As I said I had always said there was no way I would drive at night, it’s too dark and too dangerous and I just wasn’t comfortable with it. But getting over my fears started when Joe got ill. One day he wasn’t feeling great and asked Bruce if he could take the day off. This was fine and later that evening he had started to feel a bit better. But then that night he spent the whole night being very sick and as soon as the pub was open I went in and asked Bruce and Kerstin where the nearest hospital was. Tennant Creek was the nearest which is 113km north of Wauchope. So I hurriedly packed Joe a little bag and hopped in the car. When we arrived at the hospital they put Joe on a drip, gave him some medicine and a few hours later told him he had gastroenteritis and that he would be ok in the next day or two and sent him home. After the medicine and fluids Joe was feeling better so we hopped back in the car and came home. The rest of the day he did fine and I went and did my closing shift. When I came back to the room at midnight I found Joe once again really ill so had no choice but to get back in the car and drive at night to get him to the hospital. The car is fitted with a kangaroo/bull bar whichever you prefer to call it and has extra spotlights on it which lit up a whole lot more than normal heads! All of this helped with my nerves but certainly didn’t get rid of them! Thankfully all the cattle were wandering elsewhere that night and we made it back up to Tennant Creek without incident. I won’t go into too much detail about Joe’s hospital experience over the next two to three weeks; all I will say is that if you ever find yourself sick in the Australian Northern Territory the best thing you can do for your health is to get to anywhere else in Australia. There is a saying in the NT “If in pain, get a plane”...never a truer word has been spoken after my experience with the health “professionals” I encountered over the three week period. In the end the doctors had to admit it wasn’t gastro, as much as they insisted on it for the first week and a bit. They seemed determined for me to fall ill as they would constantly ask me “how are you feeling, do you have any symptoms”. To which my reply in my head) was always “ I am fine, the other 5 people we live with are all fine, stop calling it a contagious disease and get it into your thick heads that what he has is not gastro!!!” They never did find out what it was in the end, it seemed to work its own way out of his system and thankfully he is back to normal...just a slight bit skinnier than he was before hand!!

When Joe was well again I took a couple of days off work and went down to Alice Springs. It was a bit of an odd experience due to that fact that there was always a large number of people, cars and shops around!!! Living in Wauchope is kind of like being institutionalised and I kind of forget that there is still a whole world of cities and large populations out there!! As I got closer to Alice the day I drove down I felt slightly panicked when I encountered my first set of traffic lights and had to remind myself what all the pretty colours meant!! The first thing I did when I got to Alice was buy a fresh bread roll, ham, cheese and coleslaw, make my way to my hotel and enjoyed a very yummy roll that I didn’t realise I missed until I had it again!! I stayed in Lassiters Hotel and Casino, which was a beautiful hotel but I had to be given a map to find my way to my room. When I did make it there, it was only to discover that my key didn’t work. So I walked all the way back to reception where I was informed with much apology that the receptionist had written down the wrong room number. So she sent me on my merry way again. Once again I was back outside my room again (this time the right door with the right room number) but alas...they key did not work!!! So once again I plodded my way back to reception with my hotel buzz very rapidly wearing away. The receptionist once again check they key, couldn’t see why it was working until another girl looked over her shoulder and pointed out that the right room number had been written down but the wrong room number programmed into my key!! She handed me back my key cards with a big smile, a bigger apology...and a little stack of complementary drinks vouchers! Thankfully it was third time lucky and I eventually made it into my room! I unpacked, made my yummy roll and sat back and relaxed fully for the first time in two months!! That evening I did nothing more than found myself a Chinese takeaway, a bottle of wine and a movie on TV and I was very content!! The next day I got up after a nice lie in and went and got my hair prettified with a much needed hair cut. Then it was time to do some shopping and then back to the hotel for another yummy roll. Then at 5 o’clock Jean picked me up to bring me to feed tiny wallabies!! Now I have seen a few wallabies since I have been in Australia but these ones were ity bitty and so cute!! And two of them had little joeys poking their heads out which made them even cuter!! Once we had fulfilled our cuteness factor we headed to Jeans to dig into some pizza, wine and get ourselves ready to go out. I put on makeup for the first time in months and Jean gave me some pretty heels to wear for the night....which I surprisingly survived in!! Then we headed out and started off the night with a bottle of wine and tequila shots!! Alysha and Leish (two teachers from Ali Curung) then joined us. More shots followed as well as more drinks and then a need to go dancing! So we left Monty’s and headed to the Casino, which was a nice happy coincidence for me as it meant I was home already!!! We drank some more, danced a lot...and I fell over!!! In my head it was quite a dignified fall but when I think about it I think it may have been more along the lines of Bambi trying to learn how to walk and failing miserably and falling to the ground! It made it abundantly clear to me though why Irish bouncers never allow a drink on a dance floor and why as soon as a drink is spilled someone appears out of nowhere with a mop! The floor was bloody slippy and with every flourish of an arm or shake of an ass somewhere on the dance floor, someone’s drink was being seriously depleted without a drop of it being consumed!!

The next day through the powers of Facebook, all four of us knew we all felt as bad as each other so we had sympathy in our hangovers! I ventured out to go to the Botanical Gardens (which didn’t last long as there was some hippy festival on) and then went to do everyone’s shopping. I had a rather long list by the time I left Wauchope for what everyone wanted there, the list ranging from painting canvases and 10 packets of corn chips, to tobacco and hair mousse! Once I had ticked everything off it was McDonald’s time and it was so nice to get McDonalds on a hangover day!! I brought it back to the hotel, curled up and tucked in and then had myself a lovely nap before me and Jean went to Anzac Hill to watch sunset. Then it was an early night for both of us!! On the last day of my mini holiday I went in to panic mode that I was going back to the Outback and decided a few more purchases wouldn’t hurt....just as well I had a big car with plenty of boot space!! Then it was time to hit the road once more and go back to reality for another couple of months!! It was really great to get the break even if it was only for a couple of days.  Despite the fact that we are in a very wide open space it was kinda like cabin fever was setting in so it was nice to be reminded that there is life outside of Wauchope!

Since I have been back from my little trip it is back to working and planning what comes next. We only have about a month left here before we pack our trusty bags again and head off to see what New Zealand has to offer us, then it will be back to Australia for a couple of weeks to experience the east coast before completing the round the world journey by travelling back though America. It may have taken ever so slightly longer than 80 days but at least I can tick “travel around the world” off my bucket list!!!

And so it is the end of another blog for awhile! Since I have been in Australia I have only managed to do two blogs which is in stark contrast to the many, many blogs I did while I was travelling. But stationary life is a little less exciting than entering a new country every week or so, so I guess that’s part of the reason! Hopefully once I am back on the road and experiencing new places once again I will get my arse in gear and get back to regular blogs! My travels will start once again around mid to late September...so a date for my return should be confirmed in the not too distant future...YAY!!!