Christmas down under

So, getting back into Australia was a little bit harder than I had anticipated. Customs and immigration in Australia are notoriously strict, so there were a couple of things that caused a slight delay after I got off the plane in Melbourne.

Firstly, Australian customs officers don't take kindly to passports that have been wet. Unfortunately, when I did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, since the weather was so bad, the rain seeped into my bag and got everything wet. Including my passport. This caused important things like stamps, ink, and the photo to become slightly less clear. The woman in New Zealand said that it was fine because the electronic chip could still be read, but did warn me that "Australia won't like that..." She was right.

When I got to customs, I was subject to a lengthy interview where I was required to tell the interviewer exactly where I would be at all times for the rest of the duration of my stay. Since I don't have much of a fully formed plan, I obviously couldn't tell her and managed to fumble my way though by saying I will be in Wollongong between February and July studying. She then asked what subject codes I would be taking and which lecturers would take my classes - as if she would know who they were anyway!

After eventually clearing customs, I was made to then go and wait in line to be checked out by immigration since I was wearing my hiking boots. I decided, to avoid hassle and save time, to not tell them about my week shovelling shit at the Gubb's place, and said that my boots were only dirty because I'd been hiking. I realise that this is naughty, but I was not in the mood to be rejected entry into a country.

A full two and a half hours after landing, I escaped from the airport and was on the bus into Melbourne. After settling down into the hostel room, Charlie came to meet me, and we explored the city's shops to try and find Flic a Christmas present (she was having us over for Christmas day after all!). This proved to be more difficult than we expected - especially when we'd literally just bought her a DVD box set of Misfits (a British TV show) when Charlie received a text saying "I just downloaded all of Misfits! It's so good!" ... At least we knew we'd made a good choice, even if it did then have to be returned!

That evening, the wonderfully generous Sara and her son Dave had me over for tea. Sara lives in Melbourne, but met Charlie's dad while travelling through Peru a long time ago, and so Charlie was staying with her. As well as showering Charlie with gifts and affection, when Charlie mentioned that she had a friend (me) in town, Sara invited me over to enjoy a roast chicken with the three of them. It was delicious, and definitely a welcome break from the pasta and tuna diet I'd been surviving on in New Zealand!

The next day, Charlie got the train to Albury to go to Flic's house, but I stayed in Melbourne for a day longer so that I would have a chance to take in the sights and soak up the atmosphere. I really did enjoy it. I don't know if it's like this all year round, or if it was just because it was Christmas time but there was a really creative atmosphere in the city, with street performers or artists on every street corner. Everywhere I looked, I saw interesting architecture or a statue, and on top of this, everyone seemed friendly and willing to help. At one point, I was obviously looking lost, staring blankly at a map when a business man stopped, asked me where I was going, and even walked me most of the way to where I wanted to go while we had a full on chat about my travels (in the UK, businessmen are notoriously grumpy and in a rush, so I was a little taken aback by his kindness)! I usually say that I would never like to live in the middle of a city, but I think this is the exception to my rule.

After two days, that went by incredibly quickly, I was on my way to Albury to spend Christmas with Flic and the rest of the Treloar family. As I predicted, Flic and Charlie were late picking me up from the station (it turns out that they took a wrong turn and got lost in the bush) so I decided to sit and read my book. It was so hot, that even this was making me break out in a sweat! Eventually they arrived and we were soon back at her house which, thank God, has air conditioning. We lazed by the pool and were later provided with enough food to feed Africa for at least three days! This became a recurring theme for the days running up to Christmas day.

On Christmas, we exchanged gifts, drank beer, and ate enough food to keep us full for a good while, and then some more after that. It was pretty similar to my normal Christmas traditions, with added "shrimps on the barbie" - although whenever we called them shrimps, Nick shouted at us and told us to call them prawns (technically correct). The weather on Christmas day itself was not great - it rained all day - but it could have been a lot worse - I could have been in Stockport!

The next day, Nick drove us all back to Wollongong where, since then, I have been frantically trying to find a fruit picking job. Tomorrow morning I will arrive in Adelaide, regardless of whether or not I have found a job yet, and we shall see what happens from there! My instincts are telling me that this is not a good plan, but I'm sure it will work itself out - it usually does!

Spring Break (part 5)

Sorry for putting this last instalment of the trip off for so long, had a few deadlines... At the end of the last blog, we'd just been out to Cheeky Monkeys for our last night in Byron Bay. We woke up on the Thursday and had heard that the weather was going to be rubbish, but that it would be great on the Friday. We made a unanimous decision to leave Byron on the Thursday and get to Hamish's house, spend Friday on the beach, and be back in Sydney by Saturday. We managed to tear ourselves away from Byron, bid it fair well, and were soon on the highway... but made a McDonald's stop less than 10 minutes into the journey.

The day was long, especially if you were a driver. It mostly consisted of long straight roads with nothing but fields and petrol stations dotted along the way, but a couple of hours in, things got tense. My van was in desperate need of petrol, so I pulled in to a filling station, hoping that the others would follow... they didn't. We saw the boys' and Amanda's van zoom off into the distance and leave us in their dust cloud. Luckily, Matt's van needed petrol as well and pulled in at the same petrol stop, so at least we weren't alone.

We called the others to let them know what had happened, and set off again. They must have gotten quite ahead of us because no matter how fast Matt and I drove, we couldn't catch up. We decided to take it a little easier (after all, those vans were definitely not designed to go any faster than about 5 kph) and stick to the speed limit. A few kilometres later we passed another petrol station and I saw 2 camper vans, but by the time I'd clocked who it was we were well past it! At this point, Matt and I started to have some fun and we decided to overtake each other every time we got to an overtaking lane, which seemed to pass the time fairly efficiently.

A little later on we decided to take a rest, and told Matt, but he missed the turn off, so now we were separated as well. We continued on, and the weather decided to take a turn for the worst. It started to rain, and the wind got very, VERY strong. Driving became hard, and I really did think the van was going to blow over at one point. On top of this, the sun was rapidly setting and plunging the roads into darkness. I'm never taking street lights for granted again. Meanwhile, we found that we had overtaken Matt while they were resting, so given the harsh weather conditions and the fact that Matt had the satnav, we decided to make sure we got back together and met up in the next Woolworths. We told Amanda and the boys what we were doing, and waited at the exit of the car park for them to catch up, and when they did we got back onto the road and were all together again! The weather had died down a bit by this point, so I wasn't so afraid of being responsible for the deaths of two Norwegians.

It was getting close to 9pm when we finally arrived at Hamish's house. It was great to be under a proper roof and for once, and it was fair to say that we needed a bit of a drink! We partied the night away...

The next day, as predicted by the weather forecast, was beautiful! We were down by the beach by 9am because we had to rush to tidy and get out of Hamish's house before his parents got back (it turns out they could tell we were there anyway...). We spent the day lazing around in the sun, eating barbecued food, playing ball games, and looking back on the amazing week we'd had. That night we went back to Ham's house and had one last party before we all got back to the Gong. That's what we thought at the time anyway...

The way a fridge should look!

On our ninth day we had to return our van back to the depot so we set off relatively early so that we'd be able to get them back on time. We waved them all goodbye as we handed over the keys. We were all so sad to have to go back to Wollongong, because that would mean that the trip was officially over, but then Hamish had a brainwave, and offered to let us all stay at his brother's house in Sydney. It was an offer we couldn't refuse since none of us were quite ready to go back home yet. We had one last party, wasted the girls' mascara on drawing facial hair on people, and I let Gus shave a downward pointing arrow into my chest hair. Silly me.

We stayed up until the early hours making the most of our last night (it had gone light by the time we went to bed), and just like that, it was all over. We returned home, sleep deprived and dirty after a week of not showering once. That night, once we were back home, we got the projector and had a slide show of all the pictures from the trip and enjoyed our last moments of spring break together.

Since then, it's just been back to boring uni, but there are only 2 weeks of lectures left, and after that 2 weeks of exams, and after that I'll be in New Zealand!! Really can't wait.. The Norwegians and some of the boys are going over now too, so it will be one big party all over again haha, I hope my liver's ready for it!

Spring Break! (part 3)

After our first, very successful night in Byron Bay, I woke up super early (as in 6am early) because I needed to go to the toilet, but when I got back I couldn't open the door of the van to get back into bed! I assumed that Karina and Noor had just locked me out and didn't want to be woken up (what actually happened is that I was trying so hard not to wake them up that I didn't pull hard enough on the door to open it haha), so I decided to take a stroll to the beach and take some pictures of the rising sun. Turns out I was a little too late for that, but got some nice ones anyway...

After about half an hour of sitting by myself on the beach watching people walk their dogs, I got bored and went back to the vans... Still thinking that I was locked out, I just went to sleep on the grass near the vans (was I still drunk or something?) and a little later, I woke up to Amanda walking past just laughing at me haha.

When everyone else was awake, we went down to the beach again, buried Aristo in the sand, and went back to the boys' camp. On the way back, we climbed up one of the banana trees and chopped off a bunch. They're currently back at Kooloobong with us ripening up! After this, we sat around in the sun while Hamish gave us all a little concert with his accordion (an underrated instrument if you ask me). We soon decided that we should have a barbecue for Noor's birthday, so we went into town and bought the supplies and used the barbecues in the camp site. For any of the English reading, a barbecue in Australia is NOT as good as a barbecue back home! They all use hot plates instead of charcoal. Sure, they have the sun here, but there's nothing like the taste of a burger that's had a little too much time on the coals, even if it is pouring it down with rain.

The large knife you can see Aristo using to chop tomatoes is Eric's 'Gator' ... It's so multifunctional!

After the sun set, we did yet more lazing around until the sun set, and then started drinking again! We went to a place called Cheeky Monkeys - probably one of the best clubs I've ever been to! The inside is decorated like a rainforest, with wooden beams and crawler plants all over the walls, and stuffed rainforest animal toys scattered here and there. Instead of a dance floor, there were a series of metal benches to dance on (something I'd never seen before) so it was great to just have such a different experience of a night club!

Then, as always, we headed back to the camp site and had some more fun until the early hours. Those pictures were an attempt (and a bad one at that) to show the decor of the club and the multi-level-ness of the dance tables haha. I would start writing about the fifth and sixth days here, but there is A LOT  to write about for those two days so I will save them for a separate blog! Keep posted x

Kooloo Paluzza

So at the moment at my accommodation there is a huge field outside my window, but as of tomorrow my view will be destroyed because they start building work to expand Kooloobong and more than double the capacity. This sucks, and everyone is massively annoyed by the plans. We will have to go elsewhere to sunbathe, there will be no more slip and slide, and they will be building through exams. In order to bid farewell to the hill in style, Eric, Matt and Gus organised a massive event on the field and called it Kooloo Paluzza

The boys got 2 kegs of beer and made about 45 burgers, and heaps of people turned up for fun times. We got out the slip and slide, had a mini paddling pool, water guns, played football, volleyball, and all enjoyed the sun and made the most of the field in the sun. The area by the pool got pretty muddy so I'm pretty sure I wrestled someone in it. We started drinking at about 11.30am and I don't remember anything past about 4pm! Apparently I was there for the barbecue (but I don't remember it) and I must have just gone straight to bed to pass out after that because I went missing, and it would explain why I woke up really confused at 3am... People managed to party on without me though but from what I've heard not many people made it past about 10pm, so I didn't miss too much!

Massive thank you to Eric, Matt and Gus for putting in so much effort and organising things so well, and RIP Kooloobong field!

In other news, Amanda, Charlie, Matt and I have joined forces with the Norwegians and are all going on a road trip during Spring break! We've hired camper vans from a site called Wicked Campers who are loaning us three camper vans and we will be driving up to Byron Bay, and then possibly up to the Gold Coast and Brisbane! We're all super excited for this, and we leave on Friday! Watch this space when we get back - I'll let you all know how it goes!