Recap

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My intention when I first flew out to Australia was to blog my entire experience. A weekly or at least fortnightly post would do. Funny jokes, comments, people we have met, things I would otherwise forget if I didn't write them down. Plus, it would let people know I am still alive out here. I kept up with my blog for the first four weeks and wrote a wopping 4 entries. Then, I completely lost track of it and it was only this week, 3 months down the line that I remembered I was going to do it in the first place. This made me realise that it isn't going to be as consistent as I once thought.

The past 3 months we have met some awesome people. We befriended a couple of English lads called James (I shall call him James no.2 to avoid confusion), and Mike. James no.1's cousin Callum flew out to us from the UK. We got closer to the American girls Landon and Alexa, and made pals with Laura, a 20 year old Italian girl with an obsession for Justin Bieber. (Bieber aside, she's hilarious). It was the 8 of us on an adventure down south, doing our best to get out of our hostel where we had been for far too long. We were supposed to go to Southbound Musical Festival for a weekend in Busselton, but sadly there were bushfire in the area so it was cancelled. I left my job at the end of December, with the intention of finding farm work down south. Long story short we didn't find farm work, and I am back at the pizza restaurant. Riviting.

I have just gone through Instagram pictures and Facebook posts to give me reminders of how i have spent the past 90 days. So, in no particular order, here is a recap of my top 10 experiences since November. Drumroll please....

1) Stereosonic- Stereosonic is one of the biggest music festivals held in Perth. It is held at Claremont showground every year. I wasn't going to bother going because it was $180 a ticket, and I didn't fancy spending that much money as I have never been one for the festival scene. But, I found out the majority of Billabong were going, so I chose to stop being a boring old fart and buy me and James a ticket. To my surprise, I actually knew some of the acts playing. Major Lazor, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, Clean Bandit, the list goes on. Don't get me wrong I am not there biggest fans but at least I had heard of them. Besides the fact I was probably the only one at the place that wasn't high on something other than alcohol, I had a great time.

2) My birthday- the big 23. As my birthday lands over the Christmas period, the hostel were doing a festive raffle so I joined in and would you believe it I won a prize. It was a gift voucher for a place called Escape Hunt in Fremantle. I decided to use it on my birthday. Me, James no.1 and James no.2, Mike, Hannah and Callum all went. It was like a murder mystery where you are locked in a room and have to decide who done it. We got to dress up too, and if i say so myself, we looked smashing. After, we went out on the piss. Australia is too expensive to drink out, so a short pub crawl of 3 pubs was enough before we went back to the hostel and I got white girl wasted on goon. Winning.

3) Christmas Day and New Year- I wasn't going to go out on Christmas eve I said. But I did. So safe to say Christmas morning I was feeling as tender as a turkey (If turkeys are tender). There isn't much to say about Xmas day. Instead of the usual Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, we had a barbecue in the hostel. God I wanted Christmas dinner, but when I signed up for this trip I knew the sacrifices I had to make. We had punch, stocked up on liquor, and went to the beach. We stayed there till around sunset and came back. Daytime drinking meant I wasn't up late, I passed out around 10.30pm, no surprises there.
New years eve was a fun night too. We all got dressed up, the lads more than everyone else. New fro's, new outfits, all suited and booted. We went to connections and saw the new year in. Well I say saw, it is all a little fuzzy.

4) Lancelin - there is always that boring gap after Christmas where everyone is waiting for new year, so we decided to go on a road trip. We went to Lancelin, a little town around an hour or so north. We bought camping gear and set up our tents on the beach. We had a barbecue and watched the sunset, it was beautiful. We also watched the stars and ended up seeing the International Space Station. At first I thought it was James chatting shit, but we Google'd it and it turns out it was flying just above us. So he was right. We also went to the sand dunes here and spent a good 8 seconds going down the dunes on boards, and a good 10 minutes walking back up. That got tiring pretty fast.

5) Margaret River- when we originally drove down south to Margaret River it was to spend time there before Southbound festival, which as I previously mentioned got cancelled. Margaret River is a small town with hundreds of vineyards and wineries in the surrounding areas. So because it would be rude not to, we took it on ourselves to book a wine tour. The one we selected was called 'Margies wine tour'. It included transport to a variety of breweries, wineries and a dairy farm. The tour guide picked us up at 11am and let me tell you now he was a hoot. The one and only song he played us on the bus was 'I shot the sheriff ' by Bob Marley. Catchy, but annoying after the 7th or 8th time. The drinking commenced around 11.30 am and went on till around 4pm. We had tasters of beers, wines, and whatever else was on offer. They talked to us about chardonnays, sauvignons, semions (we could not stop laughing at this), dry wines, sweet wines, there was so much to take in when you're half cut. I was drunk by lunch. But the tour cost $95 and I was getting my moneys worth. In true tourist fashion we got the driver to drop us at the Settlers Tavern afterwards for a few more. Shockingly, aside from the drinking aspect Margaret River actually does have more to offer. We saw caves, beautiful beaches, snorkeled, had more barbeques and last but not least we visited SUNFLOWERS ANIMAL FARM. It had lambs and kids and pigs and horses and chickens and chicks and parrots and lamas and alpacas, which by the way was the inspiration for my blog title. It was so lovely to be able to feed the animals and know they wern't caged up like in a zoo. They seemed so free and happy and I would advise anyone to take a trip there. Plus the people are lovely, they let me feed a piglet it's milk ?.

6) Dunsborough, Busselton and Yallingup- all 3 of these towns are located between Margaret River and Perth. In Dunsborough we went paddle boarding, it was so tranquil and peaceful in the water. In Busselton we walked down the longest timber-piled jetty in the southern hemisphere. So yes that was long. We camped in a site called four seasons (I don't think it was THE four seasons as that would be a little out of our budget) between Dunsborough and Busselton. We didn't sing campfire songs like I would have liked, but we drank lots and ate chilli con carne that had been heated up on the car engine from a can. It's surprisingly tasty. If you're wondering why, we had lot of cans left over from what we had planned to take to the festival, waste not want not. I feel like this is also a good time to mention that it was on this camping trip that James no1 whilst drunk, decided to hide the car keys in a 'safe place'. Which, to him, means lock them in the boot of the car in a shoe, and have us all up at the crack of dawn worrying and searching all over the campsite. A nice woman lent us a coat hanger and luckily they managed to break into the car and retrieve them. That was a fun hungover couple of hours.
Yallingup was fun too. We snorkeled, went to the beach, caught rays, you know how it is.

7) We bought a car- YES! A working car. A KIA Sportage. I love her she is called barbie. And would you believe it I can actually drive her. Well, driving back to Perth the power steering decided to cut out on me on a roundabout at Bunbury. My first time driving on busy roads long distance EVER may I add. But aside from this, nobody died and she still works.?

8) Black Wall Reach- so this is the place we were told to go by a friend to go cliff diving in the Swan River. The first time I went I only jumped off the little one because I am a massive wuss. It was the second time we went I plucked up the courage to jump from the big one. It doesn't look that high but my god I felt like I was falling for hours. When I hit the water I don't know what happened but my entire head filled with water. I couldn't hear properly all night. I was in work struggling to hear what customers were saying. A couple of days later it was fine but my god it hurt. Not sure I will be jumping off anymore cliffs anytime soon. I am glad I did it though, and before James ?. Oh yeah, and our friend lost a bet so he had to jump in naked.

9) LEAVING BILLABONG- I will keep this brief. We have been stuck in the same hostel for almost 4 months now because we are flying back to England from Perth airport in March for two weeks so we haven't been able to venture off anywhere from the west coast. So when we decided to go find farm work down south and escape the drama filled building that is Billabong, you can imagine my excitement. You can also imagine my sadness when we couldn't find work and had to come back to Perth. I now work in the Billabong washing laundry for free rent.

10) Travellers Menu- I have been wanting to start up a new Instagram account for a while now and this week I had an idea. Backpacker food on a budget. So follow @travellersmenu on Instagram&Twitter for all things food, healthy, and affordable while travelling.
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Xxx

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