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Published: September 28th 2007
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Typically the day I left Sydney the weather was scorching hot and my walk to the bus stop was a hot one, wasn’t the happiest knowing I was flying to Melbourne which is always much colder than Sydney, bus to the airport and the 1.5 hour flight went without any hiccups and I landed at Avalon airport on the outskirts of the City of Melbourne, got myself on another bus and then got on one of the cool trams that run around Melbourne and checked myself into a big hostel called Urban Central. To be honest my first week or so in Melbourne were pretty much a non event, I came down with Flu and pretty much just felt awful and slept for about 3 days straight, as most people will agree its horrible being sick when your away from home, even worse when your in a dormitory with people coming and going all day and night, my first night out I met up with Neil Scott, the brother of my friend Lewis from home and I joined him and his workmates, was a brilliant night with everything put on their company credit card, even our entry to a strip club,
Quiz Time
Dave representing our team at singing for additional points, he was booed off stage. happy days! I also visited St Kilda a few times in the evening which is the beach area and main backpacker hang out of Melbourne and met a few Ozzie lads that I hang out with a few nights.
My sightseeing as such was kept to a minimum as I though I would wait for Dave and do it all together so my days were spent exploring really, visiting cool little markets and utilizing the free trams (well they weren’t free but I was sneaking on and off unnoticed), first impressions of Melbourne were really good, very different from Sydney but had a really nice feel to it, people were happy, the architecture was much more English and felt quite at home, Dave arrived on a Saturday morning which was perfect timing as was the first day of the new season and first game was Sunderland vs. Tottenham, what better than a few beers, catch up and watching Spurs pick up 3 points, well the first 2 went to plan, shame Spurs couldn’t live up to their end of the bargain!
We also signed up for Neighbours night, a night where you get to meet a selection of
GP and a GP
Doctor Karl Kennedy and I the “stars” and has some live music and quizzes and stuff, one of my drunkest nights EVER, we got to meet Libby Kennedy (apparently she is back in it) Dylan or something? and the Super Doctor Karl Kennedy who also sang with his band, Dave and I decided to save a little money and got on the wine, well a bottle of red and a bottle of white in the space of say 30 mins did the trick a little too well (as you can probably tell with me snogging someone dressed up as Bouncer the dog).
Neil kindly saved us the expense of the Ramsey street tour by driving us straight there, was a bit surreal to be honest as I really did grow up watching this programme, the actual name is Pin Oak Court and the road is tiny with real residents living there, although they do get heavenly compensated for the streams of backpackers gawping at their homes everyday, they must have been filming Christmas scenes as the decorations were all out, gutted not to meet Harold or Lou though!!
We spent a few more days in and around the city and met some cool
Doctor Doctor
Me and the Doc again people in the Hostel and shared some funny night with them, I eventually managed to get in touch with Sue and Jeff (the couple we had met in Vietnam) and they invited us to go and stay with them for a few nights about an hour and a half south of Melbourne, Jeff picked us up on his way home from work and as we were chatting asked us if we had been to see and Aussie Rules game yet and couldn’t believe we hadn’t, so turned the car around and took us straight to a top of the table clash, was really good, didn’t understand all of it but was fast and hard hitting so I enjoyed it, an old boy took it upon himself to explain every rule to us though and he really could have talked a glass eye to sleep!
That night Sue and Jeff took us out to dinner and we were joined by their daughter Linda (whom we also met in Vietnam) and a friend of hers, had a brilliant night and a load more drinks back at theirs, they had a beautiful house really in the sticks and a nice big roaring
Legend
Dr Karls in action open fire along with 3 hilarious dogs and they had also taken time off work to squire us about town which was brilliant of them so the next morning after having brekkie cooked up for us we set off to various spots around the peninsula, letting the dogs go for runs and visiting some beautiful beaches and look out points, that night we got something we haven’t had since the day we left, a ROAST!!!!!!!! It was amazing couldn’t have been happier and realized what I have been missing, a load more drinks and we were soon testing the electric fence with our hands, we wanted to see if we held hands and one person touched the fence whether or not the second person would get the shock, well they didn’t but I got an elbow shattering bolt (see Videos) quite amusing.
We mentioned to Jeff that we were yet to see Wild Koalas, Kangaroos and big spiders so he got us up bright and early and we set off on the big hunt, well he delivered on all 3, fist of all finding us masses of Roo’s which Dave and I tried stalking, unsuccessfully I might add, then
Me and Bouncer
Shame it wasnt the real one a wild Koala that just didn’t budge and inch and then we went peeling off bark and found a small but very angry little Huntsman spider that seemed intent on killing our bit of plastic (once again see Videos)
After 2 night and 2 great days, we said adios to Sue whilst Jeff kindly drove us back to the city, they really were great company and hopefully catching up again in England next year, we had a quiet last night at the cinema and I boarded a plane the next day back to Sydney and Dave followed by bus.
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