Australians Like Wood

After a few weeks of not doing anything productive with our weekends we are back on track after last weekend and our road trip to the Great Ocean Road!!

SPECIAL CAR HIRE UNIT
Special Detective Layton takes to the streets of Melbourne on foot in order to get to the car hire place - she thinks leaving work an hour before the deadline will be plenty of time to pick up the car - wrong again Ethel...it's all about the bad directions this weekend and these directions were particularly bad. Special Detective Layton ends up at 449 Inkerman Street and needs to be at 87 Inkerman Street....28 minutes to go, CAN SHE MAKE IT?? Just!

The car is a white, three door Hyundai beauty with the indicator on the WRONG side of the car...hence the new way to indicate going round corners is by the speed of the windscreen wipers. Special Detective Layton heads to the hostel in search of some parking. Luckily the signs are not easy to interpret at all beacuse that's a quality all road signs should have. Fortunately there is a driving expert waiting in the wings in the form of Matt who comes up trumps with plenty of useful advice about where to park, how fast to go, what to do with the trams and even offers us his parking space for the evening. Sold.

Obviously that evening, Special Detective Laytong and Captain Campbell stayed in, had dinner and an early night in order to prepare for the exciting events of the weekend....(see Club Retro reference in last blog)

LEAVING MELBOURNE INVESTIGATION UNIT
Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell finally get away from the flat at about 11am and pick up the car, here's where the trouble begins. Knowing how bad the directions were to get to the car hire place - goodness knows why they thought the ladies directions on how to get to the Great Ocean Road (from now on it is to be known as THE GOR) would be any better - maybe it's because they looked so simple!? Basically it takes them an hour (that's right AN HOUR) to get out of the city...or to try and get onto the freeway (which by the way isn't actually free because they fine you if you haven't paid to be on it?!) Well, this is what happens when you have amy reading a map, gem driving and specific instructions from the car hire lady yet you are ignoring all this and trying to take a photo on timer before the lights change and this then means you don't see the ridiculously small sign for your freeway and you now need to find the next exit. A million illegal manouevers later, 3 times past our front door, once past my work, a scary encounter when we thought we were heading on to the 6 lane freeway in the wrong direction and taking the wrong exit at the very last roundabout out of the city and we were on our way to Geeeeeeeelong.

HAVE YOU EVER INVESTIGATION UNIT
Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell's first stop is the Split Point Lighthouse, this is the very lighthouse from Round the Twist! Have you ever...ever felt like this? Have strange things happened are you going round the twist?

APOLLO APOSTLE INVESTIGATION UNIT
Now hands up who'd have thought if there was a place named APOLLO Bay that the Twelve APOSTLES may be somewhere nearby? Special Detective Layton's hand is definitely up right now...unfortunately the slight mix up with the A-words meant that the plan to get up early and watch the sun rise over the Apostles was foiled since they were another hour and a half's drive away! Aye well, Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell found a magic place to stay in Apollo Bay called...'The Apollo Bay Backpackers', like it just stepped out of storybook. The mish-mash of furniture, cosy kitchen, dinky lounge and random decor made this place pretty special - upon entering Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell found a note saying make yourselves at home, be back soon...genius! And it soon became home for the evening.

We went out for some food and the waitress kindly told us that she doesn't see many people eat THAT much food :)

SERIOUS FLIGHT UNIT
Day two of the serious crime intent crash unit investigation and Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell are back on the road - via a rainforest walk and Cape Otway lighthouse (look out for the cows) they eventually arrive at the Twelve Apostles, rock formations in the sea which are slowly being eroded away - definitley would have looked stunning at sun rise! Still they did the best they could with the available light and its true what they say - it's difficult to take a bad picture of the twleve apostles.

In order to get the best possible view of the Apostles (in the absence of the sun rise!) Special Detective Layton and Captain Campbell decided to pay over the odds for a ten minute helicopter ride...turns out it was worth every cent!



Port Campbell was the next stop - well you can't not have a Campbell next to a Campbell sign can you! Other than the sign it wasn't overly exciting.

RETURN HOME INVESTIGATION UNIT
The return journey was pretty uneventful apart from the one designated stop at the Treetop Walk through the Rainforest...a little Ant-and-Dec-I'm-a-Celebrity-Get-Me-Out-of-Here-esque with walkways through the trees and tall lookout points to climb, spray that again please!?! Detective Layton and Captain Campbell experience such sights as THE BIG TREE and THE OLD TREE STUMP! Genius huh!

Australian radio is a little repetitive to say the least and Unfaithful by Rhianna soon became the GOR Trip theme tune. Not particularly appropriate to anything but you can't fight fate! Oh and if anyone is wondering why this blog sounds like (in mine and Amy's head) a television voice over introducing a (not-so) quality police drama - that's because we have adopted these comedy accents to make the quiet times in life a little bit more exciting :)

(you'll have to imagine the voices) "AMY WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER?" "I DONT KNOW GEM, WHAT DO WE HAVE IN THE FREEZER" "USING MY SPECIAL INVESTIGATION POWERS" (checking the freezer....) "NOTHING!"

CLUB SANDWICHES NOT SEALS

More recently we have been to the Picasso exhibition, maybe you have seen our photos? We found an excellent arts and crafts market and some highly weird street performers, one of whom thought it would be funny whilst he was tied up in chains on the floor clutching his crotch to tell a young girl she was his father!?!?!?!?!? HMMM!

More walking tours, BBQ's and as previously mentioned we are now professional tennis players!
Oh and we met James and Rachael again!! - it is official they are the nicest people in the world and the most fun to hang out with....thanks for dinner guys (sorry we were late!) keep in touch and we'll see you back home for some more quality time :) Safe trip! We went to their flat for dinner and in the process me and Ayms got more lost than we ever have done before...we were feeling lazy and decided the tram was the best way to go - so off we trot and find a tram that will drop us off on exactly on the road we need to be on. Everything was going to plan until we started paying attention to where we were actually going - and we were pretty sure we were headed in the wrong direction. So we get off and start wandering back up the road, here's where it gets confusing because some bright sparks decided that putting two George streets within a few blocks of each other was a good idea - not going to confuse people at all! We asked a guy in the petrol station who in hindsight needs to go to map-reading school (along with me and the lovely belle) and he sent us back the way we had come..."are you sure?" "yes"

At this point all instinct is telling us to be going in the OTHER direction - but surely the Melburnian knows what he's talking about - right?! Wrong! We get back on the tram and end up at the tram depot at Kew?!?!!? - the kindly tram worker folk advise us that we need to head right back into the city! D'oh. By now we are already over an hour late for dinner and when we did arrive (by taxi in the end) it took another twenty minutes for the motley crew to be reunited since james had gone out looking for us!! One roast dinner and several bottles of wine later me and Amy stumble home - in the right direction this time.

We also went to see an AFL game....Aussie Rules football where they bounce, kick, throw, juggle the ball, have four goal posts and dudes in lab coats who aren't playing but spend a fair amount of time running onto the pitch with refreshments. So it's more like Aussie 'no' Rules football and since the stadium can hold 100,000 people we were quite high up and following the ball was pretty difficult after a couple of beverages. On the way back we had the privelage of frequenting a topless bar with just the one topless barmaid and a lot of old pervy men...they were clearly confused as to why we were there.

We have been to the cinema to see Clerks II - highly recommended (especially if you like donkeys and prefer Star Wars to Lord of the Rings..."there's only one return, okay, and it ain't "of the King," it's "of the Jedi"") And Nico has caused us much entertainment this week with his lack of hearing...

AMY: Ant left the hostel
NICO: What? Ant made pasta for the whole hostel?

Que?!

Ooooh, and to all Club Retro fans of UEA, Norwich...you will be pleased to here there is a Club Retro equivalent all over Australia :) WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL!

Working Girls!

A quick update on the jobs....

GEM: I have two jobs at present, both of the admin variety. One is at the university and mostly involves serving the students (badly), filing, sticking up posters, making signs, archiving...the usual. I work with Vikki who is a self-titled bitch, Michelle who has the tidiest desk in the world yet she stays behind after work to tidy it!? and Rose who couldn't remember my name for the first week....I think I preferred it that way because now she can remember it she just keeps giving me more and more rubbish jobs. Oh..and then there's Val who was away for the first two weeks but is now back in force...loud voice and all! She's growing on me though :) All in all is pretty good fun and everyone is most friendly.

My other job is at the Royal Botanic Gardens which make up for anything that's wrong with the actual job, like the freezing cold office and my three new friends - the messy filing cabinets! Sometimes it's easier to search the entire network for a PC Duo type program so I don't have to get up and move away from the heater, sometimes I have to stop myself from taking nana naps by going for a walk! And since I met the director of the gardens I have forgotten what he looked like so have to be overly polite to any middle aged men I run into just in case it's him!!

AMY: Ok, my turn. I got myself a job as a receptionist 'Good morning, ERM, Amy speaking' :) I said Amy not emy or emma or debbie or any other name you think i might be called :) thats right the accent causing me a few problems but i'm now trying to help them out and speak
s-l-o-w-l-y!!! Stress free, alright money and time passes pretty quickly answering phones, and looking after the mail and faxes. Thats about all I do, oh yeah and drink tea!! Everybody is lovely and can't be doing so bad was only meant to be there 2 weeks, now there indefinitley. And they invited me to the Fancy Dress Staff Party. Free bar did you say?? And i can bring a friend?? I would love to come. All went well, even though gem did end up wearing one of the office partner's outfit by the end of the night - can't take her anywhere ;)

The week of Productivity

So after a few weeks of doing nothing we have one week of doing everything, me and Ayms spurred on by our lack of activity so far managed to get ourselves doctors, medicare cards, tax file numbers, bank accounts, phones (which become immediately annoying since agencies keep ringing with jobs for you!), jobs and an apartment!

We descended into normal life at an alarming rate after that but our weekends are spent still trying to see more of Melbourne and put off going back to work for as long as possible...thats right, it only took about three days to get that 'i dont wanna get out of bed' feeling!

The new apartment is a whole new world compared to the hostel - it's ace having our own room again and being able to unpack...on the other hand this does mean that we are less conscious about how much stuff we buy - so good luck with it all fitting back in the rucksacks when we move on! We now stay with Stefan and Charlie who are both very lovely and work all the hours they can as chefs....good you might say, apart from who actually wants to bring their work home with them ;) Another plus is that Nico - who makes the best salad dressing in the world and Dara now live right round the corner, so in the absence of having neighbours that we don't see - they do the job just grand.

We also have free use of the swimming pool and jacuzzi...oh and the gym but we gave up in that idea before we'd even got here. The swimming pool on the other hand is a work in progress....we have made it to the jacuzzi several times....contemplated the pool and the one day we did try and go for a swim, it was shut for refurbishment! Nico and Dara have tennis courts so we have replaced the 'we are going to run the marathan' dream with the 'wimbledon' dream!

Let the sightseeing begin...

Interesting things we have seen and done in Melbourne!

Federation Square
TV50 Exhibition where you get to watch Scott and Charlene get married over and over again, Sons and Daughters and Round the Twist....Have you ever?
Rialto Tower
Watching England lose
Acland Street
St Kilda tour
Brunswick Street
City Circle tram, this is free and goes round and round in a circle! We only stayed on for 1 lap.
Royal Botanical Gardens
Philip Island - via the vineyard for some wine tasting, the wildlife park where we fed the wallabies, saw black swans and koalas, fed kangaroos...well I had a tug of war with one of them over my bag of food, apparently I wasn't quick enough at getting some for him so he just ripped the bag so it fell all over the floor! Then to the penguin Parade which was more like watching ten penguins walking up a hill.
Looki-here ladies walking tours of Melbourne
Neighbours tour - driving round in the Neighbours van gets you enough attention as it is...but then people realise you have a tele on board and you are watching old school episodes! We visited the school which could have been any school in Australia topped off by the fact that it's a BYO sign deal! Pin Oak Street (Ramsay St) is a lot smaller than you'd imagine and all the streets around it look pretty similar - they picked this particular one because it has a massive car park behind it for all the equipment trucks and buses. They also have a security guard on the street at night time to guard against frisky backpackers who think it's funny to get a bit of action on Harold's lawn!
Immigration Museum
Neighbours night - which is a big cheese-fest centred around a quiz. Unfortunately we were on a table with a pen-hogger type so didn't get much of a look in when tit (think gem means it:)came to the quiz. We met Steph, Boyd and Toadie (is a legend) They played stupid games and cut the quiz short because Dr Karl was so eager to come out and play (with his band!)
In between times we kindof got lost in the world of the sofa and our lives flipped between Family Guy, Simpson's, Futurama, South Park and Whose Line is it Anyway?
We went to the Melbourne Museum to see Helen Daniel's kitchen which we are reliably informed was made out to have burnt down in a fire....no such luck! We have vowed to return on a rainy day to see what else the museum has to offer.
Williamstown - Melbournes original port, we ate some chish and fips and continued the looki ladies pancake tour of Australia.
Plus a few bars....where we are either by far the youngest or oldest people there and one where they have ridiculous coloured lights over the pool table so that me and Ayms think the yellow balls are actually the white ball! Bring it on!