Back to reality

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Well the time has come for us to leave Melbourne. We have been here for approximately 4 months and I have really come to like Melbourne. Apart from the spasmodic weather Melbourne is a great city to live in. Unfortunately as a backpacker it is not so easy. If I lived here permanently with a grown up job and didn't have to save most of my spare money on travelling I would LOVE it. There are so many bars, restaurants, festivals, live music and events.

Christmas was interesting in Melbourne. Given that we didn’t know that many people and the ones we do know were not likely to invite us to their families for a big roast turkey dinner (they have BBQ, how screwed up is that? you can't put BBQ in sandwiches for weeks afterwards). We live with 2 Colombian couples who very kindly asked us to celebrate with them. They celebrate on Christmas Eve so we have a meal then at midnight exchange presents. We discovered that the tradition is their country is not a fat pensioner in a red suit who squeezes down your chimney and delivers presents but baby Jesus. So I am not saying our tradition makes much sense but baby Jesus? Really? Anyway it was rather cute all the same. The next part of the tradition is to get insanely drunk. This involved beer, wine, ginger wine, tequila, whiskey, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam. At approximately 2am I can see James deteriorating, I attempt to tell him to slow down but I turn away for 2 seconds and he has broken a chair and has passed out on the floor. It then takes 4 of us to get him into bed. One tradition is the same in every country, torture the passed out drunk. So his belly was slapped and someone wrote "I'm a bitch" in lipstick on his back. I was still feeling okay so I go back out to drink with the others, 10 minutes later I check on him and I am not kidding you there is 2 square feet of vomit on the carpet. You have never smelt anything like this. I then spent an hour trying to clean it whilst stopping myself from adding to it. In order to erase the memory I drink a lot and then pass out on the bathroom floor at about 7am, may I add that I at least made it to the bathroom. The room still smells of vomit even now....

Christmas day was a write off. That is all you need to know.

I bought James sky diving and he bought me a Yarra wine valley tour for Christmas. We did the wine tour a couple of weeks ago. The wine tour was awesome, 4 different vineyards where me and James get to pretend to be wine connoisseurs. Swirling wine, lifting it to the light and swishing it around our mouths. This of course got more and more amusing as the day went on. Then we get fed and some more wine. Then cheese and more wine.

James went skydiving yesterday, he is alive. I can't really comment on much more. He said it was really good. I of course watched from the bottom with my camera. No chance of me jumping out of a plane I am not a crazy person.

We leave to collect our van from Townsville on Saturday and then heading to see Mrs Charlish in Julia Creek. I am going to be receiving the real outback experience; the town only has 300 people in it. Now there will be 302. After that it is time to hunt out some farm work (sorry station work for all the Aussies), we have to cram in 88 days before the end of June. Paid work would be ideal but we may end up doing wwoofing. Manual labour in northern Queensland in summer will be erm... interesting.

My life style will have completely changed when I next write.

Muchos Lovos x x

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