Almost home

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Today is my last full day in Sydney, and Im wasting it inside typing... No I have been out all morning and will be outside again soon and tonight I plan to have a feast. So for my last couple of days I thought it would be nice to stay in that famous hostel of theirs the Sydney Harbour YHA which I have to add is pretty damn nice, I even have an en-suite, posh hostel or what! Tonight I think I want to eat dinner on the roof overlooking the harbour, I'll have friends with me and I will stuff my face! I'll add an update tomorrow just to say a final goodbye to Australia, its been magical and weird and an adventure to tell everyone about, which is probably all I'll be doing when I get back, I'm sure I shall be sick of talking about it.

Thank you Australia, It's been Wild :D

Spear Fishing!

When I got to Sydney I was met by Bobby, who I knew from Tasmania. We got to Bobby’s and then he said, “Right so tomorrow were going to go spear fishing, did you need to do anything in town before that.” hmm spear fishing you say, well now that was an unexpected turn of events, what better way to round off my trip and forget about leaving Charlotte than a weekend of spearing fish in tropical waters. So after he revealed the plans for the weekend he announced we were also going to a comedy show that night, I invited Kate along and off we went to a club in North Melbourne. We had dinner there and played pool whilst we waited for it to begin and then went up to hear some rather different comedy from Eddie Ifft about all the things he really shouldn’t have done. The style of comedy I think was a bit much for a few members of the crowd and his constant insulting of various peoples and total honesty about the way he thinks seemed to hit a few prudish nerves but also generated plenty of laughs. He had an Aussie following him who was one of those people who you just can’t help but laugh at; he actually had one of the guys I was with screaming with laughter at one gag, I thought he might just pop.

So the next day we got ready to leave, I got a sleeping bag from Kate and then hung around with her for a little while before heading back to the house and waiting for Bobby to get back so we could leave. He brought a cute Chinese girl with him who I really couldn’t see being a part of the underwater rugby team that was the group we were meeting up there however I stood corrected. We got there after dark and it started raining, great start! After a cold wet night we awoke to find that ours was not the only tent that had leaked so we felt a bit better about the whole thing. We crammed in some brekky and then off to the beach. The first person to catch a fish was James, who I would also call the Machine; he is literally a walking mountain of muscle. We then gutted his fish and cut it into little strips and ate it with some lime juice, rather lovely it was. After that Bonnie, (Bobby’s cute little Chinese friend) let me use her spear, Jacky lent me his flippers and I had a go at hunting. I went out with the others and after about half an hour I found a fish that looked big enough to spear, which seemed to ignore me, so I speared it, then thought ‘Oh my god, I just speared it, wow.’

That night we had fish for dinner, a lot of fish. Everyone cooked their fish in their own way and so we were all walking around with plates trying each other’s food and having foodgasms over it all, I normally don’t eat fish but this was just too good, even the sashimi earlier was great, it was a feast of fish and I just pigged out on it. The next day the weather was better but we caught less, in fact lots of us caught nothing, but naturally James came out carrying about 6 massive fish, which he had found in a bay none of us had reached and on the way back he suggested we go to his for a feast. I have never enjoyed fish like that before, and coupled with the millet and veggies and yummy salad he made it was a meal like no other. I now know the reason I don’t like fish so much, it turns out that some of the fish we hadn’t eaten on the first day developed that nasty fishy smell that I’m used to all fish smelling like, however the stuff we ate that was caught that day smelled great and tasted even better. So really what I don’t like is rotten fish, and that’s what all you people back in England are eating, I just had the best fish in the world, caught by us and cooked straight away and it was wonderful!

Charlotte

Monday, May 3, 2010

My flight was back to Melbourne and there I went, to discover that I suddenly had an almost empty bank account. Now when I say almost empty I mean I got there at the start of April, and I had $1.33 in my account. Which after printing out 2 statements just to check if that could possibly be correct ended up as just $0.33, unfortunately not enough to buy dinner with. The reason I mention it being the start of April is that happened to be the long Easter weekend where nothing is open, it was Friday, nothing opened till Tuesday, meaning the bank wouldn’t talk to me about why my account was empty. It was by far my worst Easter, I got no chocolate, I had no family to hang out with, I had no money to spend on nonsense or food and everywhere were annoying people saying the apocalypse is coming trust Jesus. I got by through raiding the free food section and using my accommodation vouchers, and eventually on Tuesday I could access some western union money my dad sent over for me.

Now at this point my luck changed direction, I had held my faith that everything would be cool and I got a call from the brother of a friend in Tassie, who gave me directions to his place and said he might have some work if I wanted it. Now there wasn’t much I wanted more than to have some work considering my financial situation, the only thing I wanted more was a girlfriend. So I hung out with Kent and Jo at their house in the suburbs west of Melbourne, Kent got me a job working for a furniture shop in Fitzroy that used recycled wood, I worked with a guy who handled the de-nailing of the wood before it was sent to the factory to be turned into beds and tables and things. The work was pretty tough but it was cash in my hand and just what I needed at the time.

The other great thing that happened occurred at a Pirate Party on a boat, Kent had a friend who was doing the PA and so we went along to help out and get a free ticket that way, so on went the big shirt and eye patch, along with the fake earring and the silly hat and off we went. As soon as the party got going my eye caught that of a pretty girl wearing the same hat as me, so naturally that acted as an opening for conversation and me spending the entire night talking to her. We both agreed that we couldn’t wait to see each other again and so I got her no and 2 days later I rocked up at her place. I got to see her for about 3 weeks, and in 3 weeks I fell totally in love with her. Charlotte has a mad passion for baking, and we spent most of our time together eating different things and watching films, occasionally we agreed on something but that was rare, one night we actually managed to go out and eat the same thing at a Japanese restaurant which was a miracle but despite all the blatant incompatibility I really didn’t care. My last few weeks in Melbourne were ones of complete bliss and a memory that will stick with me for a bloody long time.

On our last day we did the great ocean road, I thought it would be a nice change if we went out for the day instead of sleeping in late and doing nothing all day long. After the day of fun it was back to hers to pack up my stuff and head back to the suburbs to get ready for my flight the next morning. I have said many times I didn’t want to leave places, and I had my reasons, sometimes I thought there was more to do or I just liked being there but I knew I had to move on, this is the only time I had to convince myself it was time to go, and even then I still wasn’t convinced. I came very close to saying screw England, this is my home and I’m not leaving, however somehow I let the momentum take me and the flight got booked, I did my best not to feel utterly lost when I left Charlotte, all the way wondering what was leading me.

Family Life

Ok here’s a summary of what happened next, as I don’t have time to tell it all. We went up Mount Wellington intending to do some walks then watch sunset and sunrise, we went up saw it and got bored, so we called Ryan and asked if he wanted to go to the beach, he invited us to lunch. At lunch we met the rest of the tribe and including Maria Jessie’s mum who invited us to stay with her in a woofing style deal. So Rosanna, Molly and I end up down in Cygnet staying in a house by the beach and becoming part of this massive family that seems to have conquered the town. I stayed there for a month, with the girls doing such jobs as cooking and cleaning and I taking on the more appropriate jobs of cleaning the gutters and pruning trees. All the while I felt more a part of the family and would end up doing all sorts of random stuff with them, we spent St. Patrick’s day in Hobart, Jess came out with us and we met friends of hers and ran around the town in green nonsense and ridiculous hats, fantastically fun. One day we took out the boat, the boat is a 2 person affair, so naturally when 5 of us climbed in and tried to row to the island nearby it failed rather spectacularly, in fact it was only moving when someone jumped out and pulled it along. The rest of the stay was similar such nonsensical things coupled with plenty of fun and I was very sad to leave in the end, but end it must and so it did.