Oops, I didged it again!

I'm meant to be trying to save money & look for jobs so I can possibly even make money.

Instead I bought a didgeridoo!

They say the neon lights shine bright (or the Broadway Hotel)

So I'm in Brisbane at the moment. I flew in 9 days ago, and so far, I could live here. I'm staying in a dilapidated, underpopulated hotel in the middle of an industrial estate, and opposite Brisbane's most famous brothel, eighty eight.

It's a fantastic (and enormously cheap) place to live, mostly populated (there's only 10 of us in the whole hotel) by Irish people. For the first time since we left, I'm finding myself getting back into a routine.

There's a real, almost tangible, sense of community about the hotel, yesterday we all pitched in and cooked a massive Sunday roast, then had a pool tournament, followed by thousands of cups of tea & Far and away on the telly. I can already tell I'm really going to miss this place when I move on. Brisbane itself is great too - they have cheap good food, a nice town centre, and even an enormous secondhand bookshop.

in fact, barring the cashier at the local convenience store, life is peachy. See, this guy is...well, he talks too much.

-Hi, can i get this milk, please, and...um..oh, i'll take these mints too.
He takes my groceries, and my money & holds everything hostage over his side of the desk.
-No problem.
I stand quietly, while he rings everything up. He pauses & looks up at me...
-So how was your day?
-um...grand...you know...
-no?
-Oh, it was...y'know...i had a good day.
-and what made it good?
-um...I guess i drank a lot of tea...
-oh yeah? you like tea?
(every fibre of my being wants to run at this point)
-yeah. So how was your day?
-Oh, good, i guess. I reorganised that shelf down there...see it?
I look at his shelf.
-um...that's lovely...yeah.
My groceries lie forgotten behind the register as he begins explaining the reorganisation.
-So you think i should do this side too?
-um...whatever you think best, I suppose.
-WEll, I'll try it and show you.
-great!

This isn't just a one off. Everytime i go into the shop, there's this really strange ten mintue conversation. Stupid friendly people!

For Sure!

The phrase "for sure" seems to have crept into my vocab recently, and I'm trying to figure out if it's an Aussie phrase.
Anyone know?

Darwin Sucks!

It's now Wednesday. I arrived in Darwin on Monday afternoon. By teatime on Monday I had seen all of Darwin "city" - it's probably not even as big as Longford and boasts such tourist attractions as oil storage tanks left over from World War 2 and fish that come in to shore to feed...
Yesterday I got a bike and cycled all day (why haven't saddles been redesigned yet??). I saw East Point Reserve - a nice spit of land to the north west of the city. I also saw another kangaroo (that makes one dead one and two live ones so far). My hostel is nice, but too quiet for me right now.
Today I'm full of plans to go to a crocodile park.
I hold my hands up - I'm probably a wee bit biased because I had a great time in Perth and am not really giving Darwin a real chance. However, it's not on my list of must-come-back-to places for sure.

Andy's next step, or Nothing of any great note.

I have to say, Laura, in answer to your post, I haven't really been up to much. I certainly haven't shared a dorm with a traumatisingly amorous german couple. Nor, indeed, has anything else happened.

at all.

no further questions.

Thank you.

On beautiful magnetic island at the moment. It's lovely, but the place we...uh, I'm staying in is pretty ropey & charges for pillows. But it is a fantastic place, lovely pool, nice people, great music (Springsteen at the moment). Been spending a lot of time hanging out on the balcony, playing guitar & having the craic. good times.

Flying out to Brisbane on saturday, from the tiny airport in Townsville. Apparently, Brisbane is the Digital Media Capital (tm) of Australia, so who knows, maybe I'll land a job doing all that stuff I spent ages learning to do. (of course much more likely, I'll roll on to sydney & lift boxes there)

Cooking Club

I've kind of hooked up with a group of newly-made friends in Perth. (I've been here so long I had to make some friends!)

Anyway, the group started out with Tom (Canadian), Bailey (Kiwi) and me. Bailey was the Mammy of the group, and ended up feeding Tom & I for a few evenings. Then Tom blew us all away with his cooking last week (I actually missed it & only tasted the cold leftovers - sorry Tom!), so it was obviously my turn next.

I haven't cooked since I left home. That's four months ago. Sam stirred the whole thing up by spreading rumours about me, saying I was a terrible cook. So the pressure built up big time!

On Monday however, I cooked. Everyone seemed to like it and no-one has died as a result of it, so I call it a success!

Now our group has grown to include eight people, and it looks like I won't have to cook again before I leave for Darwin! It's been great though - keep up the good work Tom, Bailey, Maris, Valerie, Robin, Brendan & Ceri!

Go on Andy...

...let the people at home know how you've been bumbling!

Otherwise I'll publish the mails you sent me about it!

What Laura did next..

Feck all!

I've been in Perth since December 29th and I'm turning into a bum!

I LOVE Australia, or Perth at least. The life is just familiar enough to feel at home, but different enough to be exciting. I feel like my home address is now Billabong Resort, Beaufort St., Perth, WA. I'm almost a citizen - I have the bank account and Aussie mobile number to prove it!

I've seen a good bit of Perth city centre, a little north of the city and a little south of the city. I'm here until next Monday (Jan. 23rd) and I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with new surroundings!

Perth is nice, small, friendly (though I haven't met many genuine Aussies...need to find out where they hang out). The slang is gas. I mean, who got "arvo" to catch on? Also, Sam & I were going over to visit a Perth person (what would you call them - a Perthonion, a Perthian??) we met earlier in our travels and when he asked me on the phone whether we "had our bathers" I nearly cracked up!

I've done the wine tour, been to barbies, seen a roo, got hooked on port.....it's all good.

Next is Darwin. Rain and serious humidity. I'll let ye know how it goes.

I come from a land down under...

etc. (song's been going through my head since we got here)

Ok, so since, as i mentioned, we're temporarily chasing our own visions of Australia, the blog's going to be slightly disjointed for a while. As things stand, Sammy and Laura are livin' it up in Perth, Sinead's raced on to Sydney, Melbourne & her loving family in New Zealand and I'm kicking it here in Cairns before rolling down the east coast to Brisbane & Sydney - where there will be work. (sigh)

So why not fill ye all in on what's gone on since Thailand?

So we finally left Koh Phangan, headed for Singapore'Death to Smugglers'Airport. We stayed the night in the departure lounge (it did, after all, win the coveted Golden Pillow Award on sleepinginairports.com) before catching the early flight to Perth & linking back up with Sam for a few days.

Laura & Sam took off up north for new years road trip. Alas, since Sinead and i had flights to catch, we couldn't go, but rang in the new years in style, swigging from a bottle of wine on a motorway overlooking fireworks over the Perth skyline.

Then myself and Sinead rolled on to Darwin. Where we had a great time, despite an incident involving a bike. (I rented one, went back to where i'd locked it - IT WAS GONE! I reported it to the police, the council & the hostel who rented it to me...before remembering i'd locked it in another part of town...)

We burned on to Alice Springs, hot as a hairdryer (read the post below, written in the depth of the oven-like heat.) Where we spent a pleasant day drinking cold beer, lounging in a pool, watching the sunset & not doing much else. (we had to prepare for the next day!!!)(and the tourist stuff in Alice Springs consists mainly of the flying doctors visitor centre, and that's about it)

A ONE DAY TRIP TO ULURU!!! (ayers rock!)
Five hours drive out of Alice springs, and five hours back, with some walking & looking at the rock, and a barbecue in between. Exellent day.

Then, a flight on to Cairns, home to the famous Cairns Historical Walk. (45 minutes of pure joy. 'This building was the first to use concrete in Cairns, and used to house a plumbing equipment shop. It was built in 1963') We had a few nice bottles of wine, swam in lagoons, ate free dinners and SNORKELLED THE GREAT BARRIER REEF! which was awesome!

Oh, and we met a nice couple who are doing much the same trip as us, only the otehr way around. So we had a lovely conversation trading tips about the various hemispheres.

Anyway, hope you are all well, sorry for the sporadic updates, will try to keep more regular from now on. (there's still some backlog to fill in)

Andy.

(one interesting point about the Time difference - i'm listening to Today FM at the moment, and expected to hear the usual sunday afternoon programming, instead i get Taxi driver nighttime music!)

Now - Pictures!




Sleeping in Singapore Airport











Coral bungalows on Koh Phangan- The swedish lads (Sebastian & Linus), the Galway girls (Sheila, Therese & Michelle) and ourselves.









Myself and Sinead and Uluru.

The desert...

we've temporarily gone our seperate ways, to reform in New Zealand, so expect some lapses in continuity.

At the moment, myself and Sinead are sitting in a hostel in Alice Springs. If you look at a map of australia, alice springs is right bang the hell in the middle of it. And, if you remember junior cert geography, Australia is mostly desert. So we're right smack bang in the middle of the desert. It was about 45 degrees today. Just to clarify, if you wash some clothes at this heat, they run.

We stepped off the plane, and it was like walking into a fan oven. Right now, it's too hot to keep my shirt buttoned. (for reasons thatwill hopefully never become obvious, it's somewhat embarassing to keep my shirt open)

Anyway, expect a better, fuller post, with less complaining about the heat when i find an airconditioned internet cafe.