Day 235 (Friday 6th) - A Cool Night Out
So after Dave returned from work, we went out for an explore of Melbourne nightlife. We started off at the Shanghai Dumpling house in Chinatown for dinner, with his friend Simon, who looked like he hadn't slept in a week, and was amusingly frantic. After dinner Dave took me to a selection of his favourite Melbourne bars. First was the croft institute, which I had in fact stumbled upon during my adventures a few days ago - it is down a graffiti covered alleyway behind a load of chinese restaurants, and has a downstairs bar that is reminiscent of a chemistry lab, while the upstairs resembles a school gymnasium - awesome. Next was a bar, the name of which escapes me, which had no signs outside or anything to tell you it was there, and inside was an incredibly plush, sexy little place, with open fires, sofas and velvet curtains galore. As I said to Dave, was I a lady I would have been utterly wooed. Next up was the Red Hummingbird, where I met the gorgeous Sarah, Megan and Beck (Pip's girlfriend). We talked at length about all sorts of nonsense, before getting a call from Pip saying that (1) he wasn't being let in as it was too late, and (2) he was feeling rubbish and wanted to go home. We met him and Pip, Dave, Beck and I went home via a bottle shop and chippie. Outside said chippie we witnessed a really nasty fight between a lot of shirtless men and a couple of screaming girls, which we decided (after some brief and ashamed discussion) that we would be unable to stop, so we fled the scene sharpish. It is worth mentioning, by the way, that whatever illness Pip was suffering from didn't prevent him from helping us dispatch a bottle of wine when we got home.
Day 236 (Saturday 7th) - To Anglesea
We awoke, predictably, later than intended, and began the process of preparing for our trip. This mainly involved mincing around drinking loads of tea, before eventually going to get Ellie, Dave's ex, at around 5 pm. We drove down to Anglesea via the video store and Safeway, then Dave prepared his signature dish - Pasta a la Clavarino, which involved loads of carrots, corn, peas, tuna, and was really good and filling, so good in fact that I ate about three times what I should have while we watched two of our three films - firstly Dazed And Confused, which I basically ordered Dave to watch, then Sunshine, which was great, if slightly implausible. After these we decided it was best to get some sleep, as last night was pretty exhausting and tomorrow night was promising to be so as well. Dave's house is awesome, his Dad designed and built it when Dave was really little, coming down on weekends to build more. The walls are made of hand-made mud bricks, there are three bedrooms and a massive lounge/kitchen/dining room area, with wicked views over the gold course, which has a huge population of wild Kangaroos all year round. All very impressive.
Day 237 (Sunday 8th) - A Day At The Beach
We were up in time for brunch, before hopping in the car to go for a surf, as promised. On the way to the surf beach Dave pointed out that we were passing the lighthouse from Around The Twist, one of my favourite kid's TV shows. Even though we were clad in wetsuits, we stopped for a look around and some photos of the iconic location, before heading down to the beach. The water was pretty cold, probably about 13 degrees I think, but the wetsuits did their job, and I had my first crack at riding a longboard (9' 1"). It was great, really stable and easy to paddle, pretty easy to hop up on, and generally less frantic than using a short board. I caught a few good ones, only stacked it badly a couple of times, and all in all had a wicked time in the Great Southern Ocean. Dave got out to get warm a long while before I did, then we headed back for some lunch and to sit in front of the fire. We watched our third film, a New Zealand comedy called Black Sheep, which was amusingly gory and ridiculous, before we ran out of energy completely. We were all napping, and had been for about 10 minutes, when the first wave of arrivals struck - Tipi and Bowen, two mates of Dave's who had been for a surf on the way down. They were closely followed by their girlfriends, Sarah and Megan, who I had met on Friday night, and also Dan and Sam, Pip's boss and workmate respectively. Ellie had to go, unfortunately, and soon after she left we were joined by Pip and Beck, the last to arrive. Dave cooked up some awesome Daal and rice, while Bowen prepared some BBQ lamb chops and sausages out on the barbie. All was fairly civilised for a while, however before too long a game of "Kings" (or Ring Of Fire, as it is also known) was instigated, using two decks of cards and no contributions cup. This game swiftly brought down the tone, due mainly to the 8 "make a rule" cards that were present, resulting in a ridiculous excess of rules, which noone could remember all of. Two good ones were: Every time someone says "Rob", Dave has to rub his nipple (he had twice referred to me as Rob, so we decided a punishment was necessary), and also every time someone says Judy, Megan had to do the same (no idea why, just to even things out I think). Anyway, in summary, everyone got fairly drunk, we went on late-night missions to the golf course to chase Kangaroos, Beck spewed all over the garden, and generally a great time was had by all. Oh, due to the "every time you swear you must remove an item of clothing" rule, at one point Dave and I ended up naked under a duvet on the sofa, but the less said about that the better.
Day 238 (Monday 9th) - More Of Anglesea, And Meeting Dr. Karl!
This morning was a little bit slow - it mainly consisted of 10 extremely hungover individuals trying to clean the house to a spotless standard, whilst producing toast and tea in vast quantities. Needless to say, the 8am surf of yesterday's conversations was swiftly forgotten. A highlight was the return of Ugly the Kangaroo, who bounced into the garden and stopped mere feet from me for a snack, while I stealthily crept up on him, unfortunately without my camera. I have given Dave the task of finding out why this enormous 'roo has three eartags, a ripped ear and a plastic collar. Having said goodbye to all Dave's mates - who were all very friendly, easy to get along with and pretty much all hilarious - we finished the cleaning and headed back to Melbourne, with far more stuff than we had arrived with. There were loads of beers and a fair amount of food left over, which we happily collected and took home. On the way Dave and I had a very involved and interesting chat about (among other things) nuclear power, house prices and rental, what you would do with $1,000,000, the joys of living the student lifestyle and so on. We got back and rented Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, which had been discussed during our "favourite scenes ever" conversation with Ellie. I got myself a bowl of Beck's leftover fish curry and rice (which must be breaking some hangover rule) and settled down to watch it - it was awesome, a really cool, funny and surprising film, due in large part to the slightly incongruous soundtrack provided by Burt Bacharach.
All afternoon I had been toying with the idea of going to Neighbours night at the pub down the road - this decision was made for me when I looked at the stars (I thought about using inverted commas there, but I reckon they are fully deserving of the title) who would be in attendance - Steve Parker, Connor O'Neill, the ubiquitous Dr. Karl Kennedy, and Rachel Kinski. I would possibly describe the last of these as the hottest girl on telly. In fact, when Dave asked me why I was so excited, I compared going and meeting her to going on a date with a girl you've wanted for years - that's honestly how I felt. So, imagine my mood when, having paid $40 to get in, attached myself to a random group of English people on the condition that I'd be awesome at the trivia quiz, I was informed that Rachel was no longer attending, and had been replaced by Janelle Timmins. In a word, gutted. Nonetheless, I had paid my money, so I stayed and swallowed my disappointment. There was a question and answer session (in which the blokes from the group I had latched onto heckled Steve loudly and got sworn at by Connor), followed by a meet and greet and the quiz. The stars came round to every table for photos and a chat. Janelle first, who was really friendly and a good laugh, and from whom I got a great Ben Bruce. Next was Steve, who recognised my friends the hecklers, and told them to at least pretend they liked him and get some photos taken - Ben Bruce photo from him too. Next up was Dr Karl himself, who gave me possibly the best Ben Bruce ever, as well as the best handshake ever, and various other awesome moments. Finally we had the (now rather huge) Connor come over, and give the hecklers some shit, in a very affable and slightly drunken Irish manner. Anyway, back to the quiz - after each round there was some kind of competition for on the spot prizes, including a dance-off, singing competition and two strangers being forced to make out in a slightly creepy way to win trips along the Great Ocean Road. The scores were announced just before the arrival of Alan Fletcher aka Dr. Karl's band - the winner was "A horse walks into a bar. Why the long face? says the barman. The horse replies, I've got AIDS" (not my choice, decided before my arrival), which was us! We won $250, spilt between 7 of us - we begrudged the hecklers this a wee bit, as they had answered no questions and Flick, Izzy and I had got all the others, but never mind. Having collected our $35 each (someone got an extra $5, the bastard) we rushed forward to catch Waiting Room, who were way better than I expected. There was a smattering of original material in there, but they opened with Best Of You by the Foo Fighters, followed by I Predict A Riot and Mr. Brightside, all of which got the crowd pretty excited. I had intended to leave around half 10, as Dave was supposedly waiting up to say goodbye, but I stayed until the end of Alan's set, which was incredible. As I sit here typing this, a full hour after leaving, my ears are ringing incredibly loudly and I can't stop grinning. As Dave predicted earlier, it was a truly awesome end to a wicked time in Victoria, and indeed Australia too. Now, it's 0034, and I have a taxi picking me up at 0345 to take me to the bus to the airport to fly to Sydney to fly to Christchurch, where I will arrive in approximately 12 hours. This is going to be awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment