Sunday, January 15, 2006

Dieseline

Adelaide, Capital of South Australia, population 1.1 Million. The only tourists that come here are lost ones and that, unfortunatly, includes me. Since the last update I have travelled to melbourne from Sydney. A rather uneventfull journey apart from the scenery which was pretty. Still no Kangaroos but plenty of fantastic birds with stunning pattarns that absolutely insist on flying directly into the van as we speed along at 110 KPH. Melbourne in itself is just another big city like any other, we did however prefer it to Sydney as the atmosphere and the people are much more relaxed and less stuck up. I lost $170 in the casino there on the first night and in keeping with this tradition I was very relaxed and calm about the whole thing. They still threw me out because apparently calmly force-feeding a deck of cards to the poker dealer is just as bad as doing it whilst snarling and shouting.

Our hostel completely rocked. It was only small (about 32 people max) but was totally relaxed, the manager Troy was completely happy to help you in any way and it allways felt like he was one of you rather than an overbearing big brother like figure, running the hostel with an iron fist. Unfortunatly the owner was that figure but thankfully she wasnt around much until something like $3 went missing and she went berserk and threatened to call the police. Most of our time in Melbourne was spent hanging around St Kilda ad going out to pubs and whatnot, we made a lot of lastig freinds and are now invited to Oktoberfest this year in germany! Everyone is German. We did visit Phillip Island to watch the local fairy penguins come out of the sea and up the beach into their underground homes which is an amazing sight, especcially when they chase around after the seagulls, ducking and diving this way and that until the sea comes up and washes them back in and the whole thing starts over again. I have decided that Fairy penguins are the god penguins and as soon as I get back I will start a religion that will worship and cherish them.

We left Melbourne for Adelaide 2 days ago with yet more german freinds and took the great ocean road detour to get there. This mostly involved sleeping as there really isnt much on the way except scenery and flat land, and the odd gas station selling "Dieseline" for much more than the usual price. At the border of South Australia we were forced to throw away all the fruit we had in the van. This is due to the Western half of Australia not having any fruit flies. Fruit flies can get into fruit and breed and the government is terrified that the tropical temperatures and high background magical energy would cause them to mutate into terrifying 70Ft tall flying, fire breathing killing machines. Which would probably cause comment from the local residents.

Upon our arrival in Adeliade we dropped off the Germans at their hostel and checked ourselves into a rather swanky place called the Blue Gollah, then went out for a few beers, where i plucked my leg hair and drank it (I made a bet with the germans and lost). It was worth it though as after i finished the beer i promptly took it to the counter and asked for a free one as there was clearly hair in the glass that i hadnt noticed before. Wish granted, One nil. Anyway now were just hanging around in this yuppie city until we can get a possie together and travel to Perth. Until next time!

- Walexei

Friday, January 06, 2006

Were off to see the Wizard.....

It's 2:25 AM and in three and a half hours I have to get up so I can continue loading a camper van with far far far too much crap and then drive to Melbourne with 3 German girls and of course Laura. Were finally at that place, were leaving Sydney, our journey begins. Oh and my iPod arrived today, it was off being repaired and they decided to send me a new one since the old one was so buggered. Little do they know that it was me who actually buggered it thanks to Xplay. Anyway they dispatched it on the 23rd of December with a promise of arrival within 2 business days. I got it this morning. Apparently it was shipped from China because it needed a special kind of finishing polish that you can only get there and is presumably made from diced cats.

I wouldnt be so cranky if I could console my self with the thought that at least I can sleep in the van on the way, unfortunatly I cant as this would be terminally bad news for the other passengers and by christ upsetting fritz is the last thing I can deal with right now.

Its been raining pretty hard the last couple of days which is kinda cool because it gives us all a chance to cool off from the ridiculous heat we had before. On new years day it was around 53 degrees centegrade in Sydney, which for those of you in the USA using the farenheight system, is about the temperature which causes your yankee brains to melt, since they are mostly playdough.

I guess from now on I'll probably be updating a little more as I'll actually be travelling and I'll have stuff worth writing about, oh and I start the video diary tomorrow too which if I ever get round to editing it and stuff back in England will become a DVD documentry of my adventures and hopefully will win several oscars.

I do apologise for the short and patchy nature of this update but I'm having trouble staying conscious, also the telephone is staring at me.....

- Walexei