Cultural capital, country's capital and back to The Gong

At around six o'clock in the evening on a Thursday, we arrived at an empty shell of a house with missing floorboards, dust sheets up everywhere and a half complete circuit board.Why were we in this house, you might ask - were we squatting? No. We had, in fact, been invited to stay here.

Cast your mind back to the last time I was in Melbourne. A kind lady called Sara cooked dinner for Charlie and I, and told me to give her a call if I was ever in Melbourne again. Well, I gave her a call, but unfortunately her spare room was full. She tried her sister's house, but that was full as well. As a last resort, she said that we could stay in her son's house, which was being renovated (hence missing floorboards, etc.). So we arrived and settled ourselves in on the sofa beds in the dusty lounge rooms - but it was like heaven compared to sleeping in the van!

The next day, I left the other two to their own business, as I was on a mission to buy some nice clothes (everything I'd taken with me had been practically ruined over the month we'd been on the road). While I did this I took the time to look at some more of the street art, and sample the city's "best coffee" (it wasn't all that). That evening, we took the tram down to St Kilda, which had been advertised to us as one of Melbourne's trendy streets with some nice bars, but in reality it was actually the place where all the prostitutes hang out (I didn't actually notice any, I was too busy trying $5 mystery cocktails and shisha pipes).

On Saturday, we went to visit Sara (it was the least we could do since she did find us somewhere to stay). She told me that she'd be with a client in her home office (she's a big-shot lawyer) so we could just walk in, make ourselves at home and help ourselves to anything in the kitchen. Her house was big and full of leather bound books - Matt and I were very jealous. After guiltily gobbling down some cereal, we didn't really know what to do apart from sit there playing with the dog in hushed tones until Sara was finished with her client, after which she almost force fed us and drowned us in cups of tea. After we'd been speaking for a while, Sara popped out of the room and returned with a key dangling from her finger and said "by the way, we have a beach house about an hour south from here if you want to stay there for a few days?!" We were all taken aback and didn't really know what to say. Being the polite, British idiots that we are, all we could do was repeatedly say thank you over and over again. Not only did she give us access to her beach house, but she then went out and bought bags and bags of food for us to eat while we were there.

The plan for the next few days was to drive down to Philip island to see the penguin parade, then stay at the beach house in Mount Eliza for a couple of nights. We ended up leaving too late to make it to the penguin parade, so went straight to the beach house with the intention to see the penguins the following night. We never made it due to poor weather, and we just spent two days at Mount Eliza mainly playing jigsaw puzzles (Amanda and I had a race to see who could finish one first, but I did the gentlemanly thing and let her win ;) ), eating, reading and watching movies.

On our return to Melbourne, we took Sara's dog Bonnie for a walk to the war memorial, which was closed by the time we got there, but to be honest I didn't mind so much because I've really missed walking dogs!! It was also a big novelty to have a dog that fetches sticks instead of just chewing them and growling when you try to get it back. After one final night at David's house, we set off for the capital of Australia - Canberra.

It's a long drive from Melbourne to Canberra - especially when you take the long route. We did pass a cafe on the way that served excellent tea and scones, though. I'd say it made it worth it. Luckily, petrol prices had dropped by 10c per litre since we last drove anywhere. Unluckily, every time we needed to buy more petrol we were away from all civilisation, so petrol costed about 10c per litre more than everywhere else in Australia, so we ended up paying normal prices. It's still cheaper than England though. At around 11pm, we arrived at Katy's house in Canberra (I lived with Katy last semester in Wollongong) and after a quick catch up we all passed out.

In the morning, Katy took us on a whistle stop tour of the city which involved seeing old parliament house, new parliament house, the aboriginal embassy, the war memorial, and the memorial fountain (from afar). It was all very pretty, but it was a very strange city. Most cities are built as people start to live there, but I got the feeling that Canberra was built before anyone moved there. A lot of people say that it was purpose built to be the capital, and you can see why. A lot of people also hate Julia Gillard (the Australian prime minister), but when we went to see her in parliament she seemed nice enough and quite charismatic. She does keep trying to enforce silly policies though (for example, a huge carbon tax, even though one of Australia's biggest exports is coal).

The next day, we went to Questacon, the Australian science museum (come on, we do biology, chemistry and physics - we couldn't resist) where we found out that Matt has the taste buds of a non-taster but the habits of a super-taster, I have the taste buds of a super-taster and the habits of a non-taster, and Amanda was patronised by a member of staff while she assembled a model of the human body ("Do you know what the gall bladder does? Erm.. yeah I think that's right...").

We were pretty keen to sample the night life in Canberra, but apparently because uni hadn't started yet, then it would have been rubbish. Maybe one day we'll be back, but for now, it was time to come back to Wollongong. I had a great three months travelling around and living out of a very small back pack. There were high points and low points, times when I was frustrated, but also moments that I never wanted to end. I met some amazingly generous, kind, interesting and funny people along the way, as well as a few weirdos, but I'd do it all again in an instant. Most of all, this summer has inspired me to try to be that person who takes in random travellers and treats them like royalty, as so many people have done for me. A huge thank you!

This will probably be the last blog for a while, until something interesting happens in my life.. for now it's just normal university life, so until next time, thanks for reading!

Sitting, watching, waiting

The van wouldn't start, and we couldn't get anywhere. We were beginning to think that it was going to be a huge waste of money, but at least we had somewhere to stay. We were still with Marion in Adelaide, spending our days aimlessly wondering around the city, reading, watching movies, checking our emails, going to the zoo (Australia's only zoo to have a panda exhibit) - anything to keep us occupied. She even introduced us to the art of bin diving. Bin diving is when people rummage through supermarket bins at the end of the day to get food that is past its sell-by date, but before its use-by date, which I think is a great idea considering the amount of waste produced by the large supermarket chains these days. We also played with Marion's dog (a jack russell called Weasel), who would just lie down and present his stomach for a scratch as soon as he saw any human.

We got a quote from a mechanic who, mysteriously, managed to start the van straight away, but told us that the radiator was bust. There were a few other minor problems with it, for example, the bolts on the drive shaft were worn, so it could fall off at any point and pole vault the entire van onto its side; or the fact that there was a bolt missing that should have been holding the alternator (attenuator according to Amanda) in place, and if it keeps hitting the engine then it would have exploded. We weren't too worried.

The next day we drove up to Jenny and Mark's house (Matt's relatives, who incidentally live up a huge hill, we had to stop half way up to let the engine cool down) for Australia day - a nationwide celebration of the day that the British invaded the country (aboriginal people actually call it invasion day). Marion was very against this holiday, and her views kind of rubbed off on me a bit - but not enough to stop me from going to Jen and Mark's barbecue. While we were there that evening, they kindly offered to let us stay until we got the van fixed. As nice as Marion was, she didn't have a son who could fix Reggie for free!

It took a whole day to replace the radiator. The gap to pull out the radiator was smaller than the width of the radiator itself, so the rest of the van had to be dismantled to get it out, and then reassembled after we'd sourced a new one and put it in. We could see why the old radiator wasn't working - if you touched it, it would crumble to pieces! We thought we should also put a bolt in to hold down the alternator. Exploding on the highway didn't sound like too much fun...

From here, it was another waiting game, because we needed to wait until Monday to hand in the change of ownership forms. In the meantime we kept ourselves busy by playing PS one games (mainly Rayman and Tekken 3), we went go karting one day, and Mark and Sam even play in a band, so we went to see them one evening. While we were staying with Jen, her brother and his wife (Dave and Alicia) were staying there too. Dave is honestly the most Northern person I have ever met. His accent is so broad that I could rarely understand him, and he had a whole vocabulary of word that I'd never heard of!

By 4pm on Monday 30th Jan 2012, after spending at least an hour trying to hand in the change of ownership forms, we were finally on the road again! I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone in Adelaide who made us feel so welcome, Marion, Jenny, Mark, Sam, Joel, Dave, Alicia, and all of the other people we met  during our stay. You were amazing, and I hope to one day see you all again, but for now, Melbourne was beckoning!

Spring Break! (part 4)

We woke up on the fifth day of our trip and it was finally time to visit Nimbin. Nimbin is a place about an hour inland from Byron Bay, and there's no two ways to say this... It's the marijuana capital of Australia. It is a place filled with hippies, happiness and hemp, and anyone who has done any travelling around New South Wales told us that we HAD to go there, so what choice did we have?

After a quick dip in the sea, we set off and within about an hour we'd arrived at our destination, and it was surreal to say the least. The buildings were old and rustic, built from wood, and painted with colourful patterns (kind of like it was the set of a western film, but the paintings were all aboriginally styled). Every man had a long, grey beard, and every woman had dreadlocks (I bet Torill felt right at home!). As we drove through the town's only shopping street everyone we saw just looked chilled out, lounging around and shunning their responsibilities. Basically, everybody looked high!

When we got out of the vans, it was more than a little bit weird. The first man we encountered approached us to sell us some weed. We were a little taken aback, since when was the last time someone came up to you on a main shopping street, with a police station 150m away, and offered to sell you drugs, without even lowering their voice?! Of course, we had to (when in Nimbin, do as Nimbin people do... sorry mum and dad!) so a couple of the boys went around the corner to do the deal, during which time at least three other people approached us to try and sell us some weed or some "cookies" if you get my drift. It was like when you go to a European beach resort and every other person tries to sell you something and give you some kind of cheap deal.

After this, we took the time to look around the shops and cafés. Everything that was sold in any of the shops was in some way related to marijuana! There was hemp clothing, hemp bags, hemp hats (basically anything that can be made from hemp), grinders, pipes, incense, bongs, fertiliser especially designed for growing weed, and keyrings, postcards and other memorabilia with cannabis leaves on them.

We also took a look around the Nimbin Museum. This was probably one of the coolest buildings I've ever been in. It was made up of seven rooms, each with a different theme, and each jam packed full of interesting objects and artefacts. There were painted VW camper vans, aboriginal paintings, a room like a cave, and a room with a TV where you could watch a documentary about the history of the town.

 

When we'd got to the end of the museum, Karina, Noor, Charlie and I turned around a corner and went into a bathroom that had been painted with bright colours and still had pots of flowers on the windowsill, etc. We were looking around going "ohhh this is nice!" and "I love it in here!" when suddenly we heard a voice from around the corner ... "That's just the toilet guys..." - it was the curator, who (quite rightly) laughed at us as we then shuffled out of the building...

At this point, we made our way out of town and to a camp site nearby which was, of course, called the Rainbow Retreat (what else would you call a camp site in a town full of hippies?!) which had a similar kind of look and feel as the main town, all of the buildings were painted with cool aboriginal designs. I felt like it was a very trusting kind of place... for example, there was a fridge full of beer and soda. If you wanted one, all you had to do was go to the fridge, put your money in the tub and take what you wanted, but there was no one there to make sure you paid and no cameras. I loved that kind of attitude and I wish the rest of the world was more like this.

The camp site was very close to a little river, so Hamish and Aristo went for a little dip, looked (unsuccessfully) for platypuses and lobsters before we all sat around in a circle and sampled Nimbin's speciality. The rest of the evening was spent sitting around, eating, laughing, star gazing (the stars were AMAZING because there was almost no light pollution), and generally admiring nature. There was a forest right next to where we'd parked the vans, and when we looked in we could see little flashing lights. This was a first encounter for the English and the Norwegians with fireflies. It was beautiful. We stood there in silence surrounded by these little flashing lights, trying to take it all in. 

Once we were finished being amazed by small insects, we went back to camp and listened to Nimbin's local radio station. Funniest thing ever! The presenter would play half a song, read out something she'd randomly searched on Google, then play out the rest of the song. The things she was reading could not have been more random - mostly animal news. When she got to the big cat news, she growled... then there was silence for a few seconds... then she just started laughing, and so did we. We were all tired from the week of partying, so all went to bed at about 9.30 and dreamed about all the different animals we'd heard about on NIM-FM that night...

The next day we walked back into town to appreciate the wonderfulness that is Nimbin one last time... There was street art all over the place, and motivational messages like "remember that you're a spirit on a journey," "life is a dream, please don't wake up to a frightening nightmare," and "love is for real."

It's fair to say that we all had a great time in Nimbin. For me, it was not only because of the weed, but because there was a real sense of community, something that I've never really felt before. I also loved the spirituality and mentality of the town. Sure, they don't obey the government laws about marijuana, but they have their own laws which basically just involve being polite and courteous to each other (they had a Nimbin street code, which you'll be able to see some of if you click on the picture of me next to the car bonnet). There was no litter on the streets, everyone was polite and thoughtful, and what most appealed to me was that no one was in a hurry. The pace of life was slow and relaxed, which is exactly what I needed after having so many deadlines set in such a short period of time.

Eventually we managed to get back into the vans and drove back to Byron Bay. We ate, relaxed a little, then had another night out in Cheeky Monkeys. We made sure it was a good one, because it was our last night there! Thanks for being patient with all these posts! Hope you enjoyed reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing 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

Spring Break! (part 2)

(This is a bit of a long one!!) After a very stressful first day, we woke up bright and early as the sun rose to expose the car park we'd spent the night sleeping in. Despite the setting, morale of the group was high, we all got up, had breakfast, took some pictures, had some laughs, and were on the road again by ten.

The day basically consisted of a lot of driving... We had a long way to go, and had to catch up on the lost hours from the day before so there's not much to write about here. We all had our radios in sync and were all singing along to classics such as "I want it that way" and "Moves like Jagger." We'd been told by our mate Woolies that we should check out the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, so when we got there at around 3pm it's fair to say that we were a little underwhelmed - it was just a big model banana that you could walk through with a restaurant and gift shop where you could buy many banana related products. There was also a banana plantation and a big slide, but you had to pay to go to them, so we didn't. Since we were there anyway, it would have been a shame not to buy some sort of banana paraphernalia, so a few of us bought banana splits and banana milkshakes and went back to the vans.

The ridiculousness of the banana theme park was soon out of our minds when we got back to the vans and discovered a leaking green liquid coming from Matt's van. After much deliberation, the leaking stopped and we decided that there was nothing to worry about (or at least nothing we could be bothered to worry about) and carried on. It was probably engine coolant, which is pretty bad... but we had no troubles for the rest of the journey so it can't have been that bad!

We drove more and more north, but soon discovered that a bridge further along the highway was closed due to a crash, so we called the other buys from our accommodation who were doing a similar road trip to see what they were doing. They told us to go to Jake's town (Jake is a close friend of Kooloobong, who used to live here, but doesn't any more, but is still around quite a lot anyway - he's the one that taught me to surf). We put the name of his town, Brooms Head, into the satnav and followed the directions it gave us. It directed us off the main highway and down some country roads, and I didn't mind as such, but people weren't very happy with the way that we were going, so we pulled over so we could discuss our next plan. We spent a few minutes bickering, some were saying "this isn't the right way" but of course Matt didn't know where he was, he was just doing what the GPS told him! Thankfully, a few minutes later Jake and the boys drove past, saw us and pulled over. We were now one big, happy family of fifteen and could make our way to Jake's place.

Obviously there was not enough room for fifteen of us in his house, so Jake showed us a camp site nearby where we parked our vans and settled for the night. We got there about an hour before the sun set, so we could really appreciate the area. The site and views were absolutely beautiful, kangaroos were hopping around casually, and the site had its own little beach. After two long days of stressful driving, a dip in a sea seemed like the best thing in the world to us, and so that's what we did. The water was so much warmer than it was down in Wollongong. Charlie even thought she saw a shark or a dolphin!

Shortly after the sun set, the rest of the boys joined us since they went shopping (and Eric bought a huge knife which he named "the gator" - good old peer pressure) and the partying soon began! The Norwegian girls had their first go at the goon bong, some were successful, some weren't so much, but we still had a great time even though there was a thunderstorm pouring down on us. All 15 of us somehow managed to squeeze into the boys' 5 man van and we spent the night drinking and merrymaking. A little later on though, Jake and Eric had a bit of a drunken argument, and Eric ended up kicking the door of a neighbouring van! Obviously the owner was not very pleased, and called the police. They arrived, but only told Eric to go to bed, and that they would come back to deal with it in the morning, so the night died down at this point and we all went to bed.

The next morning, Jake had gone, and I was awoken with a call from Jake telling me that his parents would cook some food for us if we got to his house, so we tidied up the mess we'd left in the pouring rain and got out of there as fast as we could before any other campers could get angry at us for keeping their children awake all night (woops!)

When we arrived at Jake's house, his parents were making pancakes, fruit salad, tea and coffee for us! They even let us use their shower! Almost all of the fruit in the fruit salad was home grown by Jake's family (made it extra tasty) and so were the coffee beans. I don't drink coffee so I can't tell you what it was like, but it sure smelt better than what I'm used to smelling :p

After we were all sufficiently stuffed and showered, we said a massive thank you for the generosity from Jake and his family and made our way to Byron Bay - at last! We had a look around the town, ate lunch (I had the most lush chicken burger), and found a camp site to park our vans. This site also had its own little beach so we went there until the sun set, and then headed back to the vans where we ate our tea and just chilled out together. We weren't going to drink that night, since we'd had such a hectic couple of days, but of course we ended up doing it in the end since it was Matt Barne's birthday! We started out at this place called the Beach Hotel, which played great music - a mix of eighties classics and modern dance tracks. This place closed at midnight though just as Matt's birthday ended, and Noor's birthday began! We bought Noor a couple of drinks (which he had to finish straight away since they were trying to get us out) and moved on to the next club - LaLa Land. It was crap. We went home less than half an hour after we got in. It was just too crowded and full of people who thought too much of themselves. After leaving here, we went back to our camp site and made our own party.

Our first day in Byron was great! The weather held out and everyone had a great night! There was more fun to follow - keep checking for more blog updates :) x

Spring Break! (part 1)

On the 23rd September 2011, one of our crazy plans actually came to life, and we left The Gong to get the train up to Sydney and collect our camper vans from Wicked Camping. We handed over the rest of the money and suddenly it was real - we were actually setting off on a road trip! So we left the depot, armed with five Norwegians, four Brits, three camper vans, two maps and a satnav - surely a recipe for success? We thought nothing could possibly go wrong, but we were sorely mistaken!

Everything was going great. I was leading the vans through Sydney towards the Harbour Bridge with a map hoping that we'd hit a petrol station on the way since they were all over the city and the vans had been given to us with pretty much empty tanks, but then Matt's car (who had the satnav) suddenly overtook. I didn't mind so much until they turned a corner at a traffic light which turned red before Amanda and I had a chance to follow him, but he didn't wait for us, and just sped off into the distance. Everyone started panicking, Everyone was calling everyone else and we tried to meet up again. I hate to use clichés, but Sydney is so huge and there are so many one-way roads that it was literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We decided that it would be best if mine and Amanda's cars pulled into a side road off one of the main streets in Sydney and wait for Matt to come and find us. Given that he had the GPS, we thought it would be easy and take no time at all, but more than an hour passed and they still hadn't managed to get to us. By this point the sun had set, people were getting angry, annoyed, bored and stressed, and tempers became frayed, so we just called them, told them to get onto the highway and meet us at the first service station that they see.

So Amanda and I drove around Sydney looking for a petrol station, and when we'd filled up we could finally hit the road and get onto the highway. We drove over the Harbour Bridge which was pretty cool, and after a good three hours of having our vans, we made it out of the city. We got in touch with the others and found out where they were, and aimed to get there, but first we stopped off at Woolworths (for the English reading, no it's not the confectionery emporium that went bankrupt a few years back, much to our disappointment, but one of the leading Australian supermarkets) to get some food and alcohol.

Soon after we'd stocked up on some essentials, we managed to reunite with the other van in a Baywatch-esque (but on a pavement instead of a beach, and outside a subway instead of a beach hut) slow motion run towards each other ending in hugs all around. We were massively behind schedule, so we just decided to drive as far north as possible and try to sleep in the vans at a rest stop. It got to about midnight and I just couldn't drive any more after only getting three hours sleep the night before (silly me leaving assignments until the last minute) so we got to the nearest rest stop, had a cup of tea and went to sleep!

What an eventful first day! We didn't take many pictures as we were too stressed but here's some snaps of us with two of the vans (click on them to expand) :)