10 May 2007 - Days 111, 112, 113, 114 - Melbourne identity

Today i woke up with a sense of relief. Despite the fact i hadn't really spent all that much time in the van the knowledge that i wouldn't have to sleep in the damn thing again was quite overwhelming. This morning was a smooth drive into Melbourne and then a week or so there to finish up my trip of Australia. No breakfast this morning, we decided to just hit the road and get to Base Backpackers - our agreed upon hostel. Dave drove the way and apart from a brief stop in Geerong to grab a burger - yep a burger - before he reached the city. My extreme map reading skills meant we actually navigated our way around melbournes confusing lane system with relative ease and eventually found ourselves at Base by about midday. As we drove in i remember remarking to dave that the girl stood outside the hostel looked remarkably familar, remarkably like Claire Campbell, but it was one of those awkward ones because i wasn't sure if it was or not and i didn't wanna say "hey hows it going, how random" only to get a dodgy look and a "who the hell are u, wierdo" response so i said nothing and went on my merry way to check in (turns out, via facebook and bumping into her again, that it was her - random ey) Anyways after a complete nightmare trying to find somewhere to park the fucking van, we parked it in one place - a traffic guy seemed to indicate to us that it was ok but we needed to turn it round. I spent about ten mins trying to get that sorted out only for him to come back and say you need to be at least 5 metres away from the corner - 5 metres? whats that all about. Fucking C*nt. Oh well - anyways checked in to the hostel and just did crappy bollox for the rest of the day - had a wonder about and myself, dave and this german girl who apparently according to dave "was dead good at general knowledge" did a pub quiz together - she answered one question - about which car translates as the peoples car in german, a question i knew the answer to, and then sabotaged the rest of the quiz - i.e i would say the answer and she would put the seed of doubt in my mind! turns out for at least two questions my initial guess was correct - bloody germans. Went to bed after this, pretty early, about 11 because myself and dave had decided somewhat erratically to get up at 4:30 to watch Man Utd vs Ac Milan first leg, championsleague. Somehow, we did get up and watch it along with some other lads who evidently hadnt even bothered going to bed. plenty of banter to be had in the early hours i tell ya!

Today kinda overlapped with the day before because of the early start and at about 6:30 in the morning we saw Jo and Gemma from Adelaide checking into reception - they'd text me the day before to tell me they were coming - but it was time to get some more rest for the rest of the day. I think i woke up again at about 12 or something and then yeh, did nothing for the rest of the day - well not necessarily nothing, i think i went on the internet and most probably had a mcdonalds and a boost shake (healthy) before myself, Dave, gemma and jo met up down at the bar for a few cheeky drinks and a listen to the live music they had for us that evening. Again the plan, on mine and daves behalf, was to have a relatively early one and then get up to watch the football - this time chelsea and liverpool first leg and this almost happened. After a few cheeky drinks at the bar i was about to go to bed but i popped over to the reception to get some water or something and i recognised a familiar face - Liam, who i'd met in Fiji. After a two minute catch up, it was obvious he was just on his way out and after declining his and his group of friends offers of going out with them that night, peer pressure began to play its part. When you have five people you've never met all urging you on to go out its actually quite hard to say no. So yeh, went out with them all to a club called L'hotel i think. I was also swayed by the fact that it was indie music as well and after 3 and a half months of the same shit every day i was ready to hear some decent tunes. Two for one on the not so exquisite VB beer and some Oasis was enough for me. Spent a good time reliving the japes of beachcomber island with Liam - tommy tanks and doing the worm and then got to know some of the friends he was with. sometimes random nights are the best - not so in the case, but still was better than sleeping i reconed.

Yeh so this morning didn't get up for the football, despite the fact i really wanted to. I was also meant to wake dave up as well which i, in theory did, but only with 40 minutes to go. I then slept until 5 to ten because myself and dave were moving rooms (check out is at 10) - this was because we got a week deal in a room which meant we were only paying 22 dollars a night rather than 28 - happy times! Dave went up first whilst i checked on the football scores and then i went up to chuck all my stuff up there - i still had my didgeredoo as well which i needed to get around posting. I went in and was greeted by three girls from leeds who almost in unison said "alright greg" I've had situations like this before, if people know your name its because they've looked through your stuff or something. I remember one this girl looked at my passport in Queenstown and pretty much memorised my information before i'd even met her. I thought shit this was happening again, wierdo's! "er how do u know my name" turns out it was for the simple reason that dave had told them shit about me! nice one! reminds me of when i was on a train going to newquay with martin and i went to the toilet. I came back out and all these girls started asking me questions about my then girlfriend and coming out with facts about me. It freaked the shit out of me but turned out martin, ever the japer, had fed them with information to scare me - it worked. Anwyays back to the point, these girls were a good laugh and the banter was there from the start. Looked like we'd moved from a room where no one spoke to each other to one of communication which was good. Anyways, i had a killer hangover today and was completely shattered, but the plan today was for myself, dave, jo and gemma to go and have a gander at the sports grounds and have a wander about the city centre - it was about time we did something touristy. Anyways i was the only one who wanted to do a tour of the MCG, mental if u ask me, the rest of them wanted to do some gay tennis tour of the Rod Laver arena or something - it turns out they couldn't even see centre court because it was being set up for a Pink concert. Don't get me wrong, tennis is ok, but Wimbledons the place to see. As far as cricket and aussie rules goes the MCG is awesome - 90 odd thousand capactity. It was amazing to get the chance to see backstage and check out the history of cricket in australia and despite only being a relative newbie to cricket i did find the whole thing really interesting. If u didn't like cricket though u wouldn't like the MCG tour. It went on for a good couple of hours as well (it overran) and quite unreasonably, the girls got pissed off with me because of it. Their tour only lasted an hour and mine longer - they chose to do the shit one, deal with the consequences. Turns out they were pissed off cause they had to wait an hour - not my problem. Went for some food after this and then went on the golden mile walk of the city which was intended to give us a glimpse into the history of the place. Not that much to see if i'm honest though i must admit the feel of Melbourne was a good one. You know when you get a good buzz from a place and you feel comfortable there? well i had that in melbourne. I was kinda hoping i wouldn't if i was honest because a hell of a lot of people i'd met had said they loved melbourne and want to go back. I want to find my own place somewhere in the world, but yeh at the moment i'm being a sheep and going with Melbourne. The best bit of the golden mile was the Rialto tower with views of the city but certainly wasn't worth the money. The only interesting thing was that dave, somehow, managed to get talking to some complete tosspot who collected coins and who'd gone up the tower and gone to one of those coin pressing machines and squashed his 10 cent piece or something. Apparently he wanted to use the coins to make up one of those pirate cpin pouch things to play his fantasy geek role play games, people like him are a nuisance on society. Later on that day i met the other guys in our room, this attractive german girl and this guy from Bournemouth - Dave who was 31 and a complete legend. Anyways it turns out it was ladies night that evening down at the red eye bar and the girls got free champagne. We all went down and got completely and utterally ruined. Brilliant night out - i was so wrecked.

Basically had a day off work today. Spent the day doing fuck all but vegging in the room with dave and this lad Stu who was from leeds who was mates with the girls and apparently a gansta rapper and had stayed the night at the hostel (wasn't staying there) It was one of those days, very similar to uni, where everyones hungover and you can't be arsed to do anything except chat shit and find everything funny. Anyways the plan today was to go out again that night and despite a slow start down at the bar, myself and the two daves went out with a few other randoms from the hostel down the road to check out the clubs of st kilda. Before we'd even got to the first bar roadtrip dave dropped out due to lack of funds and the rest of us went to a bar called Traffic to find it was completely dead before going to cushion which was just full of up themselves people. after much dillema we all decided to head to a club inbetween st kilda and melbourne called Revolver.Basically it ended up with only me and dave going in. I think Three of us got one cab there and the other three another. We arrived there and there was a Kebab place there, myself, dave and this other guy stocked up but we left the other guy there cause he was wasted - every man for himself. We got chatting to a couple of girls from New Zealand in the que and i rememeber dave coming up to me and saying "Greg, lets chat these girls up here and get warmed up for some other girls later on" i was like "yeh ok whatever" and we basically spent the rest of the night with the two of them. I mad the schoolboy of mishearing mines name straight away which didn't go down well. After plenty of drinks and chatting we promised to go horseriding with them the next day (which we were obviously never going to do) and got home at about 5 via their place (dropping them off - thats all) It had been a wicked night and revolver was a seriously funky, kitsch sorta place that id recommend. Melbourne definately had a cool edge to it and was glad i'd met some cool people here so far.