So What have you all been up to the last six months?

Oceania » Australia
May 14th 2010

Published: May 22nd 2010

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Pedronasty

Melbourne Southbank

Hi everyone, its been a while. I hope you’re all doing well. So here it is, I finally got round to doing a blog, it’ll even have some pictures. I guess I should tell you what I’ve been up to all these months, I’m sure you’ve all been too busy with your own exciting lives to think about me over here on the other side of the planet. Well here goes a brief catch up of the last six months.

I can’t remember where we left off so lets start with leaving India, well I flew out of Tricharuppalli(Trichy for short) to Kuala Lumpur which is good for shopping, good for food and has a very nice rainforest in the middle of the city but three days is enough if you’re ever heading there. While over there I tried Durian, for those of you who don’t know it it’s a fruit, kind of, it’s actually banned from public transport because of its rather strong smell and taste. The closest description I have read of it is as tasting like ‘onion flavoured custard’ which still in no way prepares you for the sensation of eating it. My advice, try it but

St Kilda Festival

have something close by to take away the taste!

From Kuala Lumpur I flew into the Gold Coast and from here I quickly moved down to Sydney, I say quickly it was actually by a twelve hour bus ride. The east coast can wait, I’ll get there eventually.

Ten years ago when my sister did the whole Oz thing she stayed in a hostel called Billabong gardens in a suburb of Sydney called Newtown, having visited her there I remember it being quite a cool place so thought I’d head straight there, great decision. Newtown is like all of the best things about the east end of London and Camden combined and all the bullshit left out, the shops are all cool, the pubs are great and the people are cool without being too cool, if you know what I mean. There are also loads of highly tattooed women so as anyone who knows me will know it kept me very entertained!

Sydney is a great place its pretty, it has all the advantages of a big city but without being as completely hectic as London, it has beaches all around it and its warm a lot

St Kilda Festival

of the time. I quickly decided I could quite easily live there, unfortunately I’d need to marry an Aussie bird, a possibilty, get citizenship, bloody expensive, or get a sponsorship where a company pays to have you work in the country for them, difficult but possible so I’m keeping my eyes open for jobs over here. I’ve already had one interview but didn’t get the job, I’ll keep you all posted but don’t go buying your tickets over here yet it doesn’t look like its that possible.

I tell you something, for me, however many times I see the Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House everytime takes my breath away, getting to Circular Quay and coming upon the Harbour in all its glory never gets tiring. The rest of the CBD (Central Business District) however is just another load of shops and pubs, it could be anywhere, such is the homogenising of our modern world. As for the rest of Sydney well it’s split into different areas kind of like London, theres Surry Hills which is like Clapham or Redfern where all the aboriginals of Sydney seem to live, it gets a bad name as being quite rough but

Melbourne by night!

I walked through there a few times and was never given anything to be concerned about. I suppose my experience of trouble areas is slightly more full on than Australias.

If there is one thing Sydney taught me, it’s never to judge a pub by its cover, For some reason a lot of the pubs look shit from the outside, or even on the inside as you walk in, but most have either amazing upstairs or back areas. One such Pub in Newtown the ‘Coopers’ looks horrid downstairs full of old drunks and a shitty little bar but upstairs has a roofless bar attended by some of the prettiest barmaids I have ever seen! Everytime we went down there, which was a lot they seemed to have employed some new attractive barmaid.

Sydney was great to me I met some really cool people a lot of which I am still in regular contact with, some I am even getting to meet now and again as I travel round. I even managed to meet an Essex girl, all the way over here in Oz, in fact she had been living literally across the river from me in London for

Beer

the last few years and it took coming to Australia to meet her.

So after weeks of looking I finally managed to get some work, building Marquees which is hard work but good fun and has took me to some interesting places, I worked at the SCG for the new year test against Pakistan, even managing to swindle some free tickets for the first day where Australia collapsed in exceptional style , Bennelong Lawn which has an amazing view from the Botanical Gardens over to the Harbour Bridge, I worked on the Tennis at the Olypmic park In Sydney, I went along to that event to and managed to see Leyton Hewitt and Serena Williams who is just a big and sexy in real life. So anyway it was a good job to get as when I moved down to Melbourne they offered me work on the Melbourne Grand Prix which Takes six to eight weeks to put in and about a month to pull out and then when I went down to Tasmania I did a couple of weeks down there for them too, unfortunately on my visa you can only work for one company for six months

Luna Park

Pretty scary entrance for a funfair

so from now it’s back to job hunting.

Anyway I won’t go on too much about Sydney suffice to say I didn’t manage to get a bike so when after new year everyone started to leave I knew it was time to move on and decided to go down to Melbourne and see if I could get a bike there.

So which is best Melbourne or Sydney? Talk to any Melburnian about it and the conversation goes a little like this...”So you’ve come from Sydney...shit isn’t it” I think they’re jealous of all the attention Sydney gets. The two places are very different, Sydney is a little more London to Melbournes Manchester. Melbourne is where its happening for music and art, you can’t move for pubs with live bands playing and art gallery openings. Melbournes equivalent of Newtown is the two closeby suburbs of Fitzroy and Collingwood which are absolutely rammed with cool shops, pubs and very beautiful women. I’d say on the whole Australia has more beautiful women than anywhere I’ve ever been and in Melbourne they are everywhere, it really has to be seen to be believed. Melbourne is a little more of a slow burner

Big Tents

This is what I've been doing for the last six months.

it took me a while until one day I decided that yes I could definately live there. Melbourne does have far friendly people than Sydney, they will literally just stop in the street to chat to you. There are also loads of ginger women so as anyone who knows me will know it kept me very entertained! My one bugbear with Melbourne would be the weather it certainly does see four seasons in one day, which is fine except I’m constantly under or over dressed.

And finally, finally I bought a bike and then I bought a tent and a cooker and a sleeping bag and so forth, my credit card company now truly love me but it does mean I can finally start the trip I came here to do. On the whole bike thing, it has been a complete ballache finding one but... I did get to have a go on lots of finery while I looked. I tried a BMW K1000(steady, heavy trustworthy, a little unexciting!), a Kawasaki ZZR1100(shit off a shovel), two GSX750F’s(almost ended up with one of these, would do the job but ultimately rather unexciting) and an Africa Twin which is my fantasy

The Daily Planet

It's a knocking shop by the way.

bike and I probably would have bought had I not had some suspicions about the head gasket. So I ended up with the TDM, the same as I had back home and I am slowly coming to love it. I do regret not trying lots of other shit while I was looking though it shoudl have tried that Suzuki Bandit 1250, the Honda hornet 600 and the Suzuki RF900R.

So what have I learned about Australia since being here, heres a rundown.

Heres a quick way to tell the difference between a Kiwi and an Aussie, at the end of a sentence if they say Eh then they’re Kiwi if they say but, for absolutely no reason, as in “I have to go home, but” then they’re Aussie.

They do all say “No Worries” but if your in Melbourne they say “No dramas”

Australias favourite brand of cheese is called Coon, not much else I can say about that.

They have a cask wine which is a cheap, think six quid for four litres, wine-like drink made using ingredients including grapes, egg and fish. So bad I haven’t even seen tramps drinking it. A backpacker

Coca Cola advert

"First trip out of the burns clinic...Enjoy a Coke!"

favourite it leaves you with one mean hangover. For some reason its been nicknamed Goon, which is now becomes its known moniker. This does however offer the opportunity of an Australian version of the the English favourite Cheese and wine evening, you can call it Coon and Goon. (Also after drinking while camping you can blow up the silver bag it comes in, classy eh, and use it as a ‘Goon Pillow’)

For a nation who pride themselves on drinking, alcohol is expensive over here, you also can’t buy it in supermarkets you have to go to bottle shops of which they have drive in’s. A six pack costs you ten quid. And so far I haven’t even seen a fosters. I think my favourite so far in Coopers Pale Ale great cold on a hot day after work.

Australia is at least ten or twenty years behind England. Make up your own mind if thats a good or bad thing. Their problems with immigration is only really just starting now, strange for a country with such a huge population of South East asians that have been here for years.

They tend to us slang in

Tuna

The aussies love it.

official situations. So if you have a car crash you have a smash. If you get beaten up you get bashed. And there anti-‘being an asshole’ laws here are called anti hoon laws.

I’ve arrived during a Red back plague by the way, the job I do means I see shit loads of them. I’ve also seen a fair few Huntsmen, the big ones(as wide as your hand) that cause loads of car crashes every year by dropping out of one of their favourite hiding places, the sun visor in your car! Anyway Redbacks, they look tiny and not that scary its only when you see peoples reactions to them that you worry! I also removed a white tail from a bed not so long ago, afterwards I was told I should have killed it, little did I know how dangerous they are, think flesh rotting bites, nasty!

Australians can do comedy. Wilfred is a truly genius show about a man and his girlfriends dog, who is a man in a dog suit. He can understand and talk to the dog but noone else can.