Australia Days

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I spent the first couple of days at my relitives house sleeping off the stress that was Bangkok! And writing EVERYTHING down in the blog, which reading back, is ridiculas but i think 5 days with no-one to winge to about little things meant that I took it out on the Blog. Thanks to those who stuck it out and read the Bangkok entry!

Melbourne in June/July is freezing compared to South East Asia, so arriving felt a bit like coming home because the weather was similar to when I left home back in April. I spent a couple of days sightseeing with my Cousins wife, Margaret who went bush walking with me and took me to feed the Rosella's and see artists. We went to Philip Island to a wildlife park and saw the Penguins come in from the sea and waddle up the beach to their burrows.
Maraget and Bill were in the midst of moving house so I moved down to see their daughter, Lindsay, my 3rd cousin, Lndsay and her family. We went down to Foster for the weekend and spent the days doing family things like going to the National parks and seeing the beaches, and more bush walking, general family holiday things.
On arriving back into Mornington with Lindsay, I thought it would be a good idea to walk from one end of the pininsula to another, in one day, on my own, with no detailed map. It was 26km but the guide book assured me that it was an easy walk, it would just take 8 hours. My finishing point would be Sorrento, which had a good youth hostel and things to do the next day. Off I set at 9am walking through the bush on the trail next to the coast. It was stunning scenery, and except for the hard core surfers in the sea and a few fishermen, most of the beaches I walked along were desserted. Incredibly, I did manage to keep on the right track for most of the walk, (only going wrong and getting lost twice!) But it did take longer than anticipated. At half 6 at night, it was going dark and I was cold, wet and tired. I was no longer walking along a picturesque beach, but had headed in land and was walking along a main road. With no public transport and the determination to get to the finishing point I had spent 8 and a half hours aiming for, I bit the bullet and stuck my thumb out for a lift. There's no good public transport in Australian Suburbia because everywhere is far away and most people have a car, so hitching is more accepted as a means of travel. Much less dangerous, I told myself. The third car that passed me stopped and I climbed in, out of the rain into a warm truck with a rather good looking young man in the drivers seat! He took me right to the door of the Youth Hostel! I couldn't belive my luck!
After a quiet night at the Youth Hostel, I spent the next day mooching around Sorrento, and took the ferry to a nearby island. It reminded me of the Scottish highlands! Being winter, everything was quiet, as most of the things to do revolve around the weather being hot and sunny! I enjoyed my day mooching and headed back to Mornington and a hot meal with my story of success!

The next destination was Darwin, the Northern Territory of Australia which has been labelled the wild west! The plane journey took 4 hours, which shows how far away Darwin is from Melbourne! Being back in Darwin was like being back in South East Asia weather wise, it was hot and sunny, (although its winter for them) and it didn't drop below 28C while I was up there. I was staying with Lindsay's brother, my other 3rd cousin, Ewan. He was a brill tour guide and took me all over the place! We went swimming at Berry Springs, a hot spring near where he lived. Swmming in Darwin requires a bit of alertness; there were Beware Crocodile signs everywhere, (Darwin was where Crocodile Dundee was filmed.) We went on the Leaping Lizards Boat trip to see some where we saw the crocadiles being fed. Something which isn't exactly a good idea because it encourages the Crocs to swim up to boats and there have been stories of fishmen in their smaller "tinnies" being suprised by a crocadile wanting a feed!
The next day we went fishing, (Ewan didn't tell me the until after that it was on the same river we had been seen the crocs fed on the day before) and caught 2 jewfish and a salmon and a crab! We had a good feast that night!!
We went into the town of Darwin the next day, which is small and sleepy, that was, until night time! It was definatly an experience going out with a 40year old cousin (who looks a little scary to say the least!) I didn't get any hassle from any drunk youths that night!
Then it was back to sleepy Noonamah, to get ready for a camping trip in Litchfield park, a national park with numerous swimming in waterfall pools oppertunities, with a bit of bush walking in bewteen.
I played my first ever round of golf with ewan and his golfing buddies, thoughly enjoying myself and not doind too badly by the end! My score was a little rough around the edges though, 87 for a 9 hole course!
All too soon it was time to head back to Victoria, for another night of luxury with my relitives!

As yet, I hadn't been into Melbourne city centre, which was the next and last "new" place in my travells!
It was the day before my birthday, and the day before Heather and Steph arrived! (My friends from school who have been travelling since January and were flying down from Sydney.)
After checking into the hostel we would stay at together, I went a-wandering round Melbourne to see what I could see! Melbourne was an easy place to find your way around and after Bangkok, I loved wandering round Melbourne, unhassled, with some bits of it feeling like I was back in Manchester!
That night I headed off to a Comedy Club which was meant to be the place-to-be for comedy, but turned out not to be that funny... it got a bit messy towards the end when the hecklers were beating the comedians! I left the comedy place at half 11 and since it was half an hour until my Australian birthday, I went in search of a drink and a dance! I got chatting to a group of boys who knew the cheap but good places to go and they sand happy birthday at 12 and got me a free birthday shot. A brill start to my birthday!
After a couple of hours sleep, I woke up and dashed down starirs in time to meet Heath and Steph checking into the hostel! It was the best birthday present ever!! After grabbing the free breakfast, we all went a-wandering round Melbourne, visting chocolate shops, federation square racing museum (well we stood outside that one) and china town. Then we headed back to the hostel for a round of Happy Birthday, ginger cake and custard! We had tickets to see the Aussi rules footy match at the Telstra Dome so off we went, and ate meat pies and drank beer and sat in the wrong area so every time we cheered St Kilda we were the only ones doing it and the Hawks fans around us started looking a bit dis-chuffed. Although at the start none of us knew anything about aussi-rules footy (it took us a good 10mins to realise they changed ends every quarter) by the end we had the hang of it! It was a great match and the underdogs, (St Kilda's) trounced the Hawks, a very exciting game overall!! After the game we met Sally who I travelled with in Vietnam and the lads i met the night before and headed out into Melbourne! Eugene's brother was a bouncer and got us into quite a big club for free and without queing, so we even got a bit of celebrity treatment!
The next day was free pancake sunday, so we got up in time for those! Steph moved out to stay with her relitives while Heath and I stayed in Melbourne. We went up to Victoria market, got an Ace lunch, and bought some necessary warm clothes, which happened to match, so we looked EXTRA cool walking around Melbourne. That night was Wicked!! We went to watch the broadway performance and flukely got really good tickets in the stalls, it was a Fab show! I could see why it was Heather's third time watching it! We went for a meal after at a Seafood restaurant which was posh enough to write pureed green peas insted of just mushy peas. By the end of that night it felt like the most talking I'd done in months!!
Monday we decided to head out to St Kilda's (in our extra cool matching outfits) and check out our winning team's town. Turns out there wasn't much to do in St Kilda's, we thought Neighbours set was around there, but it wasn't (and we embaressed ourselves asking, in our matching outfits!) so we went for lunch and were still sat there, chatting on, 3 hours later.
Monday night Sally rang and asked if we wanted to go hip hop dancing with her, so off we went and learnt a dance to Nelly's hot in heere which neither of us could rememeber 2 hours later!
After we'd got back and de-sweatified (honest we did) we went in search of jazz bars! This wasn't altogether unsuccessful, but it did result in walking round Melbourne for about 2 hours and not hearing a lot of jazz overall! But we did get to hear some, which was the main thing.
Steph arrived back the next morning so we met her and went to the docklands which was another area that favoured a long lunch above all else!
After a brill 3 days, we said our goodbyes as I headed back into the Suburbs and Heath and Steph headed for Sydney and then New Zealand.

I expect this will be my last blog entry of my travels as I'm going home on saturday night and am just going to be doing homey things up until then, so thanks to all who have been following the blog, you've kept me motivated enough to keep a good account of what i've done, a lot of which would have been forgotten and left unwritten had I not done this blog!

See you soon!!

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