Travel Blog: Ipswich Edition

My journey back to the UK was totally and absolutely unremarkable, aside from the second leg (13h Kuala Lumpor to LDN) where the plane was much newer therefore the seats were larger, there were better tv screens and I GOT A WHOLE ROW OF 3 SEATS TO MYSELF!! BEST.FLIGHT.EVER.
I was greeted at arrivals by one of my bestest friends ever and then immediately rammed in the leg by some cow with like 4 suitcases on a trolley, the bitch. Anyway we essentially just went to the nearest pub with food and I had my first (of many to come in the next two weeks) pint of Aspalls Suffolk Cyder.

It is a very weird feeling to be back in your home town after being away on the other side of the planet for 15 months. Especially if you are staying by yourself in house that you have never lived in and is essentially empty of all but the basic furniture. (hello, back pain from sleeping on the floor, how are you?)

I basically spent the next two weeks doing a drinking tour of Ipswich and the surrounding areas, guest starring some of my best friends, and making some new ones. No need to stop travelling habits even after going home, right? I also spent a fair amount of time taking advantage of the free limitless internet at the empty house (? I don't know why either) and my brothers Netflix subscription. Boo yah, thats my ideal holiday right there.

I also had a rad day trip to Thorpe Park with two of my favorite people, before going to a Nicole Atkins gig in LANDAN.

It was a nice two weeks. I think?

I dunno I was verrverr drunk for a lot of it.

Going back home after being away for so long has EXACTLY THE SAME feeling of finding your old favorite clothes that have been stored in the garage, but they smell weird, don't fit properly, and you're pretty sure there's some mold there. Also they don't look as good on you as you used to think.

I'm not sure if this says more about my attitude or my taste in clothes. You be the judge.

I am the god of HELLFIRE

I was going to my next post about moving to Belgium and all the fun that has been (in a nutshell; there's lots of paperwork I don't understand, different version of the NHS depending on what political party you support, lots of visits to different offices, and a joyful amount of beer), but instead I wanted to talk about the most amazing thing I have seen this week.

So... being away from the UK for a while means I've missed a lot of quirky British things that you forget no-one else cares about; for example,, our whimsical celebration of historical attempted domestic terrorism... Guy Fawkes Night. This takes place on the 5th of November every year, where we burn bonfires to celebrate the fact that the plot was foiled and the houses of parliament didn't go boom. Obviously this is only really a thing in the UK.

But fear not! My strange yearning to stand near a bonfire on an autumn night was satisfied right here in Belgium, where a nearby village had their annual "Lets set fire to all of the green waste we have been putting on this one huge pile all year! And lets get the kids involved!" Festival. I don't know if that is what it was called, that was an educated guess, based on my current understanding of Flemish*.

Basically, that is what happened. The pile was honestly the size of two houses, and not only was it lit by some serious looking dads with a flame thrower, but also a WHOLE PARADE of children aged 5 to 15 who walked from the middle of the village (one street away) all holding FLAMING TORCHES. ON FIRE. Like a young, well behaved, middle ages mob. There were no ambulances nearby, or fire engines, or any kind of safety system in place. There was however a bar and a bbq... This is where all the adults were hanging out while the kids all went to the other side of the bonfire, out of sight, so they could all literally play with fire unsupervised.


A lovely evening indeed. We didn't stick around long enough to see any kids set each other on fire unfortunately, but it was only a matter of time.
 I wish wish wish I had some pictures to show y'all but I was too busy being politely horrified and trying not to get set alight


*Almost zero understanding, unless someone is swearing at me or ordering beer.

Aaaaaall by myseeeelf

Monday 13th October
So I left Jason ("they call me sticky fingers") H at Raglan (incidentally, we stayed at an awesome YHA, Solscape where we slept in an old train carriage) so he could stay and surf while I took my solo trip up to the Coromandel Peninsula, where I wrongly assumed all the cool stuff would be close to each other. I spent a LOT of time driving, but there were also lots of nice walks along the way. I was primarily going to see Cathedral Cove and the Hot Water Beach, both of which were awesome sauce. The journey is much better described in pictures, as I have run out of synonyms for 'really nice'.

Karanghake Gorge. Suspension bridge!

What lies beneath the suspension bridge

Opoutere Beach.

View of Tairua (or somewhere near there) on the Mt Pahu walk

It was a steep walk. I did take a selfie, but there was sunburn and sweat.

Cathedral Cove!

Sandstoney type rock thing on the beach near Cathedral Cove

Sand and rocks. ooooo...

Rent a shovel for $5 and dig your very own hot pool!

Needless to say, I didn't dig.
I just watched with amusement as the cold sea rolled
in and destroyed the carefully built walls around
other peoples hot pools 

A beach?

A hilariously placed old man. I don't know why this made me laugh.

 After seeing all I had time to see around Coromandel, I stayed the night at a YHA somewhere. Can't remember where. (You are welcome)

Tuesday 14th Oct

Driving towards Auckland, along a super pretty coast. I had a mission today. I had a ski bag to purchase, and a particular beach that was very important to visit before needing to be at the airport for 4pm to return my rental car. I did stop to take a couple of pictures on the drive though.

Looking across to water towards Auckland.

Too pretty. I just can't.

The ski bag thing went fine, I managed to make my way through Auckland without getting lost, having an accident, or going insane, and I eventually made my way to Te Henga, also known as Bethells Beach. In the area is also Lake Wainamu, where there is an enormous black sand dune. This area, and some beaches nearby was where many scenes from Xena: Warrior Princess were shot, and so it was super high on my list of things to see in New Zealand. I'm not even ashamed. It was awesome.

Actually quite a long walk. I wont lie, I wished I had a horse. And a sword.

Someone totally fell down this on tv once

LOOK HOW HAPPY I AM!

Bethells Beach

Um.

 So my last excursion and touristy thing to do on my 15 month trip was running around on a beach pretending to be Xena. So worth it. I then had to wait at the airport for a good few hours before my 11 hr flight to Kuala Lumpur, so that gave me plenty of time to shake the sand out of my shoes and socks

...and to establish early dominance on the few power sources.

And that was that I guess.

Back to Ipswich. Joy.

hobbitses!

11th October
Went to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland! The area around here is full of hot springs, and scalding water shooting out of the earth, so there are a number of places like this. The one we went to was pretty special due to the sheer size of it, and varied terrain. Hard to describe, good thing I took a lot of pictures.

Get a load of that rotten egg smell. Yum.

The Lady Knox geyser was interesting in that every day, a dude chucks a load of washing powder into it to set it off. Something about surface tension, I forgot the explaination. Science!

Pow!

So after paying cash money to see all the amazing earth farts, we went for a walk in the park next to our hostel, and lo and behold, find a whole load more holes in the crust of the earth, belching out stinking hot air and bubbling mud and sulfer. Its a weird park, easy to lose a football. Also, a thermal foot pool, with lots of asians in it... ("its wonder-pool!" "Five dollar!").
After all the walking, we soaked our weary legs (J was fine, I had a blister) at the Polynesian Baths, which was capital a Awesome.

12th October
Started off the day with another walk to poke the furious earth then we decided to hit some baseballs at an homest to god americal style batting cage which we found by accident next to the museum. Ive ALWAYS wanted to have a go on one of those, ever since seeing A League Of Their Own, and I'm happy to report it was just as amazing as I had dreamed.

After that brief foray into american sports we got back on track and headed into the museum, where after finding out the admission cost was $20 we promptly headed straight back out again. Although we did meet an awesome old lady who'd lived in Rotorua for 50 years and was telling us a load of stories so it was totally worth wondering in.

Next stop, Hobbiton, YEAH!

The Matamata visitor centre. Im sensing a theme...

Tiny house

SPOILER ALERT!! Fake tree.

Non hobbit behind the bar of the green dragon inn. 

So that was nice.

After hobbiton we drove to Raglan. It was then that I realised I had inherited my mothers driving habits, namely that of supreme confidence behind the wheel followed by awful etiquette and a highly nervous disposition when in the front passenger seat. Sorry, Big J.

trolls! yachts! rain! drinking!

Thursday 9th October

A day of touristing! After a healthy breakfast involving maple syrup I headed to the Te Papa museum,  which was full of cool stuff, and it was free! Yay! After i'd had enough of that I walked along the waterfront, got some second rate sushi for lunch then headed across the city to visit the Weta Cave, home of one of the best special effects workshops in the world. There wasnt too much to see but it was cool anyway. I liked the trolls standing outside the front door.

Grrr. Arrrg.

After that I spent some time catching up with lovely Rory (fellow liftie) at a number of awesome bars in wellington city centre (rouge and vagabond, goldings, bangalore, the library). I also reunited with my travel buddy! To my immense relief I actually recognised him. Phew!

10th October
Big J and I started our 5 hour drive to Taupo in style (windows down, system up). The drive was gorgeous; nice landscapes, very different to south island. We found some hot springs to sit in, then after that took the cheapest boat charter ever (The Barbary... $35 each and we had a gorgeous yacht to ourselves! And a beer! Thanks Sarah!) to see some carvings on a cliff that a load of stoned hippies did in the 70's. The trip started off sunny, but then we saw the clouds and rain roll in, which made for an eventful journey. My favorite part was when we were leaning over far enough that the deck was cutting through the water instead of just the hull.

Oh! Hai!

After that we carried on up the road to Rotorua, via Maccas. (Jason just wanted a McDonald's pie).
Fyi, Rotorua SMELLS BAD

rrrrrrrrroadtrip!

So im actually nearly at the end of my mini road trip, but dont worry, I was taking notes this whole time! Lets rewind to...

Monday 6th October
The plan was to pick up the car at 10, fill it with all my stuff, blast out of Queenstown by 10.30. In real life, I managed to faff around enough that I didnt leave QT till about 12. And in true sam bennett style, I managed to leave my shower gel behind, much like I did in multiple locations all the way through Australia and New Zealand.
It was a long drive to Christchurch,  but the scenery was bloody amazing. Again.

Lake Tekapo

I stayed the night with a lovely fellow liftie who opened his parents home to me most generously.  Thanks, Reece,  you are the best, and your mum makes a smashing quiche.

Tuesday 7th October

Roads! Hills! Snow!

Northbound to Blenheim to reunite with family. It was really nice to see my aunt and uncle again, and I also got given an eyetest, which is my familys way of showing affection I think?
Saying goodbye to them the next day was genuinely difficult to do, and it just made me want to come back and do it all again next year.

Wednesday 8th October
In theory, this was the day I was supposed to meet up with Jason, my new travel buddy (who got the job by drinking lots of alcohol with me the week before,  and owning a trustworthy face) but while he was hiking in Abel Tasman he managed to leave his bag in a hut in the middle of nowhere so he was delayed by a day. So I ferried across to the north by myself, and immediately took a wrong turn coming off the ferry. Eventually found my way to a YHA hostel and sorted my life out. This took some time, as I am not as organised as Barbara; who at this point was, unhelpfully, on the other side of the planet.

Looks like we made it

So its over. One season as a Lift Operator in one of the best ski resorts in New Zealand. It has gone past shockingly fast, is all I can say. Seems like last week I was at the interview and now its all done! Its been fantastic though; Ive learnt how to ski, how to snowboard, how to throw children around and how stupid members of the public can be. Its been a steep learning curve.

I go home with not only new skills and new friends, but also a load of shit that I can't bear to part with.... primarily a pair of skis and a rather fetching shell suit, as well as a number of excellent hats. Its been a successful season.

Its now time for another road trip! I have a car rented for a 9 day journey from Queenstown to Auckland, so I may well be updating a little more in the next few days.

Its been nearly two months?? oops

Good news! Im still alive, and im still fine.

The last few weeks have mostly consisted of working, occasionally drinking, trying my best to ski, and a whole lot of sleeping.

Im loving the work - not only do I get to ski pretty often, im afforded constant entertainment in the form of watching people fail to get on a chair lift. Other benefits to working on the mountain include massive guns from shovelling snow, and the new bonus of getting id'd in bars a lot less due to my face now looking its age. Yay.

For those who doubt my skiing ability (as if my idea that playing hockey for 10 years would make skiing a breeze was somehow misguided) I can report that im doing FINE, THANK YOU, DAD. I have yet to attend a lesson, but ive been paying close attention to people who look like they know what theyre doing (as it turns out, they usually don't). Im happy to report that I can safely get down the hill on intermediate runs. Lets not mention the lack of grace, style, or anything remotely resembling skill. Im pretty sure im ready to hit the terrain park and teach myself to do backflips. Learn by doing, right?

So im living in Sherwood Manor Hotel, which sounds a lot better than it is. My two room holiday apartment is shared with three boys and is actually pretty good for $98 a week each. While it seems like a lot of beds shoved into a space much too small for 4 people, its actually decent, and always warm, no extra bills on top and 10gb wifi per month free. Two rooms and a kitchenette is much easier to clean than a whole house. The thing I currently like most about  the manor is that there is a sauna, which is the BEST thing after a day of throwing kids into chairs and tumbling headfirst into drifts of snow.

Ill start putting pictures up on the blog when im at work (ive been taking full advantage of the free unlimited staff wifi) as the veiws from work are bloody amaze, and sometimes the only thing that keeps me from losing it on days where im cold, wet, sore, and extremely snotty kids are throwing snowballs at me. Living the dream!

I can't think of anything else to update, ive got no funny stories that are family appropriate. (Hi gran!)

Job job job jobjobjobjob

I got a job as a Ski Lift Operator at a huge ski resort in Queenstown! Huzzah!

(For anyone who was interested in the application process; I applied in early April ish, sent applications to about 7 different places, 2 of which said flat out no, 2 offered me an interview and I didn't hear from the rest. The first interview was for a road attendant at a place on the north island which I couldn't get to and the second one was in Queenstown which I had to take a two day coach trip for a half day interview process. Got it though, so very very relieved and super stoked for the season.)

Last July, I set out on a journey which was intended to be a year of travelling around Australia, possibly with another year added on. Still in Australia. So when I was packing, hot and sunny was what I had in mind.
Now that plans have changed I find the majority of my clothes to be somewhat fucking useless.
I own: 2 pairs of jeans; 1 pair of skinny jeans (probably can be classed as jeggings, actually. ugh, I don't know who I am any more); about 8 singlets, 2 shirts, 2 UCS hoodies (still representin', yo), 3 shorts, bikini, 1 wooly jumper, some pajamas. I'm pretty sure I can probably wear 90% of my clothes and still have BARE ARMS.

So with any luck our final paycheck from the door knocking job will come through on the 9th and provide me with a means to buy myself some goddamn layers; (and on that note, friends, never sign a contract that allows your employer to withhold pay for 90 after your final day of work, especially if it a commission based job and the pay system is sketchy as fuck.) So if anyone wants to get me an early birthday present in the form of snow boots, thermal layers or ski goggles, they'll be gratefully received...

But enough of the moaning, I'm so bloody excited! Snow! Woo!

NZ Tour Part Two

Long overdue post, but I have a great excuse... I WAS BUSY SECURING AN AWESOME JOB. More on that later.

So where were we?

Ah yes. Queenstown.

This is like the party central place for the South Island now that there is nothing left of Christchurch. So its full of obnoxious young travellers much like us, and actually tourists of  many other ages cultures and walks of life. There's a fair bit to do, whether your passion is long walks around pretty lakes, throwing yourself off high things or burgers.
We spent a couple of days here and had some fun, then on Sun 11th left to go on to Milford Sound. There's just one road to and from Milford so we drove up the day before our boat trip, stayed the night at Lake Gunn and cooked outside in the dark, before getting up at 7 the next morning to get to Milford to catch our Cruise.

It was bloody gorgeous, by the way. It rained so there were hundreds of waterfalls and beautiful scenery. The highlight of the trip was, of course, the free tea and coffee on the boat. Jolly good. Milford Sound is not in fact a sound. Its a Fiord. Something to do with glaciers? Depth maybe? I dunno I was too busy taking stupid pictures of me and Barbara to listen to closely to what the boat driver was saying.

The road to Milford and back was a bit of a nightmare, made worse by the one lane bridges and multiple busses and coaches, as well as the rain, hairpin turns, and creepy tunnels. Glad we got out alive.

As we had an early boat trip we left Milford in good time to be able to drive for a good stretch to get to a small town just outside of Dunedin (so we went from the west coast straight across to the east coast, missing out most of the bottom of NZ. It was a long drive, but the views were bloody amazing). That night we stayed at a super weird campsite which had showers that were so hot they had to be set to 'cold' to be able to use them.

Tuesday 13 May

Walked around Dunedin for a bit like proper tourists we even went to two churches. TWO! They were lovely. We then walked up (and down) the worlds steepest residential street (Baldwin St) and then ran out of things to do in Dunedin. So we went to Shag Point to look for penguins and the sign saying Shag Point so we could take stupid pictures. We found neither.

Briefly stopped off at Moeraki to look at the spherical boulders which were pretty cool.

Stopped for the night at Oamaru, and all through the night we heard a noise that sounded like an eagle mating with a goat, and it turns out that was the penguins. We didn't see them as it was dark and our torch was totally rubbish.

Wednesday 14 May

Walked around Oamaru. They have a Victorian precinct, which was kind of cute even though it was mostly deserted, and a steam punk museum, which we didn't want to pay $10 to go in.

Once we finished there we headed back inland again, as we wanted to go to Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo, so after stopping the night at Twizel (pronounces Twy-zel not Twizzle) we went straight to the lookouts and had a look around the lakes, which were awesome, and had super nice views.

After a night spent freezing our butts off we decided that enough was enough, we didn't want to hang around Christchurch to much anyway, so we just kept driving until we got back to Blenheim again, which from Twizel was about 580Km. Worth it, for the bed and electric blanket.

Thus ended our South Island tour. All in all, pretty spectacular.

NZ!

Well hello! I'm currently sitting in a weird internet cafe in Queenstown, I finally have the chance to use an actual keyboard (which is well used by gamer types and therefore, gross) so let the tedious blogging commence. You are WELCOME, Mum.
(I mau have some spelling errors with place names, my bad)


Tues, 29 April
In prep for a few weeks of driving around the South island of NZ, Barbara has organised all the stuff we need in to boxes. She loves a box, does Barbara.We have packed the car with an air mattress (which basically takes up all the room except for the front seats) some clothes, some pots, and a bag for food and utensils. Pretty basic, but we can hopefully cope for a few weeks.
So the first leg was Blenheim to Nelson, staying at the Maitai Valley Camp Site, where we discovered that its normal for camp sites in NZ to charge for showers. $2 for 5 mins. This means whenever we now stay at a place that doesn't do this, I spend like an hour in there just to make up for it. Our first night on the air mattress was fine, we can do this, it just takes a bit of organising.

Wednesday, 30 April
Drove out through Richmond and Motueka straight up to Takaka (massive hill) to Pupu Springs. (Click here to see why we drove so far out of the way for it.) Barbara displayed her usual flare at map reading and so we ended up in the middle of a cow field at one point, but we made it there eventually. In other news, 4WD in sometimes really quite handy. We stayed the night at Hangdog Camp, which was real basic, but had a toilet in a tree, so that makes up for it. And $10 each per night. Sweet as.

Thursday, 1 May
Went to Harwoods Hole, ended up driving through a Lord of the Rings filming location (Chetwood Forest) to get there, which was pretty cool. Harwoods Hole itself was bloody enormous, it has no kind of handrails anywhere around it and I wont lie, when my foot slipped down a wet rock and almost caused me to slide into the abyss I nearly wet my pants a little bit. If anyone ever plans on going there, good footwear is essential. Also maybe some rope. But definitely bring a camera cos it looks awesome, and the walk to get there is proper beautiful.
We stayed the night at Quinney's Bush camp, I chose it mostly due to the name, but turned out to be one of the best places we stayed the whole time. I learnt that eels eat dog food. Who knew?

Friday 2 May
Buller Gorge! We walked across NZ's longest swing bridge and looked around and nearly got lost, and tok some pictures etc. Continued the drive to Westport (which turned out to be much smaller than expected, much like all the other towns we have been through), then visited Cape Foulwind to see a seal colony, just chilling out on the rocks. Stayed the night at a camp site in Charleston.

Saturday 3 May
Down to Punakaki to look at the Pancake Rocks and blowholes, which were super cool and blowy. Had an overpriced lunch before heading down the coast to Greymouth where we spent a lovely afternoon drinking beer at Monteiths's Brewery before going back north to the Rapahoe Beach Motor Camp to drink more beer on the beach, watch the sun set and make friends with some weird middle aged ladies and a smelly dog. It was super nice. And that campsite was super weird, there was a huge lounge room full of old sofas and chairs and tables and in one corner of that room were the 2 shower cubicles. What.

Sunday 4 May
Bonecarving in Barrytown! We went a little way back up the road the way we came to a tiny shack where we spent the majority of the day carving up bones and having a nice time with the lovely Karen and Dana of off the Skeleton Crew Carving Studio. I made a thing.
After that we drove back down south to Hokitika and stayed the night at Lake Mahinapua. ($6 each, bargain).

Monday 5 May
Drove to Franz Josef Glacier.

Rain.

Tuesday 6 May
More rain.

Wednesday 7 May
Still bloody raining. Glacier trip cancelled. Went to Hot Pools instead. Made some friends.

Thursday 8 May
GOT ON THE GLACIER! BLOODY AMAZING! Helecopter ride was brief but cool, got some awesome pictures, managed not to fall over and generally had an ace morning. Our guide (Frodo) was super cute. The Franz Josef glacier is actually shrinking a whole load, it probably doesn't help that so many people are stomping all over it and hacking steps into it, but apparently its mostly rain that melts it. And heat I guess. I also licked it, I wont lie. Sorry.

So as soon as we got off the glacier we continued driving to Haast, where we stayed at a campsite that had a tv room which had actual deer heads on the wall. Brilliant.

Friday 9 May
Drove through the recently reopened Haast Pass. There had been some slips which caused a load of rocks to fall on the road and a waterfall to get redirected onto it but they mostly cleared that up so we had an awesome drive with lots of pretty veiws. The sun was out too so it was super nice. Got to Queenstown! Yay!

On the road again

After a pretty chilled couple of weeks spent relaxing and catching up with family, we are now ready to head out again. We are lucky enough to have been lent a car (4WD woo!) and some other supplies (including a nice warm coat) and we've loaded up with the essentials for the next month. South Island here we come!

Once again, our planning process has been pretty appalling, but we tend to do better on the fly anyway. We get on much better when we're not stressing about getting to places on time. We've outlined about a months worth of driving, and hopefully our budget will hold until then... I'm thinking that noodles will be a big part of our diet for the next 33 days.

But holy shit, we're in New Zealand! And there's a tonne of stuff to see! Excited!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changeeees

I've  never been a fan of Autumn. As a child born in South Africa and raised in England I decided that my natural birth right was to live in a place that is always hot, despite being fully British and incredibly white.

Australia did not seem to have an Autumn, and even in places where it sort of did (South) we missed it. We first hit Adelaide when it was cold (July, UGH), and just decided to immediately drive 5000km away to where it was warm, and that sort of weather followed us for the entire 8 months we spent in the country. Not staying in one place for very long meant that we didn't really sense a change in the seasons apart from when we were in Melbourne and it went from unbearably hot (42) to just hot (35), and then to our shock we had to start wearing long sleeves. In the far north there is a wet season, that we mercifully missed, and we also managed to miss cyclone season.
As a Brit, this kind of climate is most noticeable when you talk about the weather, which of course is our national past time. In the UK, talking about the weather is a huge deal, and it can go from a simple meteorological observation to a full on metaphor for your entire miserable existence. A chat about weather is the default setting for any British person in any social situation. You may be the most awkward human in existence, but if you are truly British you can have an entire conversation about the weather (and also drink tea or at least pretend to like it.) Australia does not do this. A weather conversation here (depending on the season) generally goes along the lines of "Hot enough for ya, Pom?" or "There's a cyclone coming. Bring it on, c***s!"

New Zealand, on the other hand, does have autumn, and a glorious one at that. It made me remember that this is actually a pretty nice time of year (when its not raining) and the smells of wet grass, rotting vegetation and wood fires were actually something I had missed. Its also made me realise that I am woefully underprepared to dress warmly, as most of the clothes I now own are the bogan uniform of shorts, singlets and thongs (that's flip flops to you, poms). We've had to resupply our wardrobe courtesy of some charity shops so I've not got some mighty fine old man jumpers and a nice fleecy hat that only looks a little bit stupid. Can't wait for winter.

Full circle

Back in the UK, for a little while I used to live in a super cool bungalow in a small village called Martlesham Heath. Previous occupants of that house included my brother, my aunt, my parents and my grandparents. It was a house that was well utilised by my whole family (in fact it is now the home of my other brother and his family. I hope they are enjoying my lime green kitchen paint job). I only lived there for about 5 years, but have been going there my whole life to visit the various occupants, so essentially it was another house in which I grew up. It even still has a wooden board nailed to the wall where me and my cousins marked our heights every time we were over there (for the record, I'm pretty sure my mother is shrinking).
I've always cherished the memories I have from those times we went there, as its where I learned to ride a bike (that in itself was hilarious. My brother managed to hit nearly every tree on the green. All 6 of them)  and spend countless hours riding around the green and in the small birch wood next to it. We would go there with our bikes all the time, and when my grandparents or my aunt Sally (who all usually lived in Zimbabwe) were staying there, they would walk out with us and watch as my brothers and I cycled up and down the small hills feeling like daredevils and showing off. Of course, when I went back years later I realised either the hills and jumps were far, far smaller than I remember or some health and safety people went through and filled them all in. I'm pretty sure it was the latter.

So now I find myself in New Zealand, staying with my aunt Sally, hiring a bike and pedalling up and down the mountain bike tracks. I feel like a child again, and it reminded me of those days again so damn much. I could almost see my Gran standing there, watching us like a hawk while Grandpa stood next to her, with his hands behind his back and probably holding on to a plastic bag which he would use to collect any rubbish he found on the way to keep the place tidy. He died a couple of years ago, but those memories are how I will always see him, and every time I get on a mountain bike and cycle around the woods it feels like he's still there, watching us, and picking us up when we fell.

Unfortunately my grandfathers benevolent gaze from heaven failed to stop me from making the ultimate schoolboy error of looking behind me while I crossed a cattle grid bridge so of course I still fell off in an impressive display of slow motion inevitable doom. My front wheel went left, back wheel went right, legs went down and face went perilously close to the handrail.

Don't worry Mum, I'm FINE.

OH GOD AUSTRALIA ILL MISS YOU

Our time in Australia is coming to a rapid close! God its gone quickly. My lack of posts recently has been due to moving from living in a garden with shockingly good wifi to another friends house in down the road in an actual bed (my body doesn't even know what do with this) where there is no internet as they have just moved house. Also, we have been frantically trying to gather ourselves for the next stage in the adventure, so we sold the van (to the French, ugh) booked flight tickets, packed our stuff up, got rid of a load of stuff, quit my excellent cycle delivery job, tried to sort out bank accounts, got a working holiday visa and all that shit.

 I am the worst at organisation - don't let my CV fool you - so its been a bit of a stressful time. I still need to figure out how to blag my way into NZ without a plane ticket home booked yet but I'm banking on my winning personality and persuasion skills gained from the door to door sales job to get me through. What could possibly go wrong?

So what I'm currently doing right now in Coburg Library is applying for jobs in NZ for during the ski season. I had the sudden urge to be a ski lift operator and I will not rest until my newly discovered ambition has been realised. So its cover letter and resume polishing time, inbetween the blogging, flight check-in, bus booking and, of course, facebooking.

I have been doing a bit of reflecting on the last 9 months of my life. Its been a wild ride, and while a lot of it was exactly as I expected it would be (lots of driving, long roads, beautiful scenery, arsehole french backpackers), a lot of things have really surprised me and things happened that I never would have anticipated. First and foremostly, some the people we have met from this country have been absolute fucking legends, right from the start. The people we've stayed with and who've opened their homes to us (sometimes before they even met us) hold a super special place in my heart, and I would love to give every single one of them a hug and a kiss with tongues. Hopefully this will happen when some of them come see us in Europe... Elysia and Tamiya, JP and Kiara, Perri and her awesome mum, The Hillbilly Goats, The boys in the Rocktagon (Sam, Jordan, Benny and Dan), and theres a load more people that just opened their doors to us and gave us beer, and who were generally lovely.
We've also made a few mental backpacker friends (less of these, as we spent most of our travelling time in a van by ourselves like a couple of loners), most of which I would run upto in the street and kiss on the face (Richard, Austin and the Lakeland Massive, Kristin and the Fraiser Island Massive (not including sweden), Danny and Chrissy, the door knockers Grace/Lenny/Joe/Beth/Travis/Tarzan), and some I would also slap on the face for good measure (Courtney ;) ).
And of course, the Australians - there are too many new friends to list here, but this country is full of some real quality people, and I had no idea I'd meet so many genuinely kind, genuinely awesome people while I was here. I hope they stay friends with me on facebook, because I will stalk them till the end of days.
Of course, having said that, there are some real arseholes here too. But to be fair, you get them in Europe too. (Bonjour!)

I think one of the best things that has come out of this whole experience is me gaining a bit of confidence in myself. Its taken a bit of time (my learning curve is less steep than most) but I have more faith in myself to achieve what I want to do with my life, and even if I don't quite have the target in sight yet, I know I'll get there in the end.

So onward and upward... New Zealand here we come.

hello?

My nifty, cheap, and ultimately fairly flimsy wireless keyboard has died on me, thus causing the simple task of typing to turn into a rage inducing anger catalyst which makes me want to throw this tiny sumsung tablet through a window.

In other news, I am no longer a door knocker (something I have much more to say about and shall do so when I get my hands on a borrowed laptop) and I have completely rearranged my theoretical travel plans for the next two years.

Our current status update is: waiting to sell the van so we can get to NZ asap and escape our glass cage of emotion. It is raining today.

I would write something hilarious and insightful, but I swear to god if I have to correct one more shitty typo from using this tablet ill fucink smash th7sgmgoddamn

Door knocking for dummies

As anyone who has seen my recent facebook statuses is already aware, Barbara and I are now fully and legitimately employed as door to door energy sales associates. We got the job a couple of weeks ago pretty easily (replied to a gumtree ad, rocked up to the office for a super informal interveiw and then two days of training) and then we were suddenly thrust into the deep end with a week long roadtrip to a country town to do our thang. I did alright and Barbara did amazingly, due to her excellent ability to talk incessantly until you have to take action to make her stop; for instance; changing your energy retailer. I put this down to a lifetime of trying to be heard over the rest of her family.

We've both learnt quite a lot about human beings and sales in this job, not all of it great, but at least the product we are selling is actually pretty good and I don't have to lie about it to get people to sign up. To be honest, I've heard people full on lying about what they're selling in order to get the sale (even if the person definitely wont pass the credit check), which in my mind is pretty shitty, and I really can't do that. (Which is weird, because when I was young I was a prolific liar. Now I find it really hard even if I gain money for it)

So here is how door to door sales works, for anyone who has not had the pleasure. Every day we are given about 150-300 doors to knock on. Between 10-40% of these will have 'Do not knock' stickers on them, and over 50% will not be home until after 2ish, depending on the area. Today I knocked on about 100 doors, and spoke to probably 30 people, all of whom said variations of "no". Sometimes we end up talking to the same person for an hour, sometimes its 5 minutes. Occasionally we get shouted at, but then people might offer us beer. Its a job of many possibilities.

Today, I had zero sales. Sometimes it happens. On Monday I was just walking down a road and a guy just basically walked up to me asking me to sign him up. This rarely happens. You end up just cherry picking houses that look like the people living there will be friendly and listen to your spiel and end up saying yes, but actually any house could be a sale regardless of how shitty their front lawn is or how many broken beer bottles are outside their house. Some of the people we work with are hideously judgmental, but you end up getting into that mindset when your whole paycheck depends on your confidence, personality and ability to build rapport and relate to people.

In the end its just a job, hopefully I can handle it long enough to save enough money to get to New Zealand and travel a bit more. I have been having fun though, got some great stories already that should probably never go on this blog.

Tamworth!

I suppose its time to update this thing!

I know its been a while (sorry, mum), I'm really bad at this whole writing semi regularly thing. I suppose its time to update this thing! To be fair, its difficult to muster up the energy to blog when the temperature is between 35 and 41. And we were far too busy during tamworth festival, which I shall now tell you about.

I did actually attempt to keep a day by day record of what occured that week but I abandoned that after day 1. So as you already know, the reason we were there was due to our quite unintended stalking of the Hillbilly Goats, who took us under their wings and let us sell CDs and merch for them for the week. We stayed with them in their glorious rented house which had air conditioning and helped them with not only carrying all their stuff from gig to gig (they have a whole lot of stuff) but also promoting them by handing out cards to the thousands of grey nomads that decend into Tamworth to get their Country Music fix. A typical day during the week would consist of two shows, usually 3hrs each and usually in a pub, sometimes on the outside public stages. The audience was all seated, and often strangely stern looking, although even if they looked like they hated it, they still sat there for the full three hours.

The goats themselves are some of the nicest people we've met, despite their clear need for some form of psychiactric intervention. Also, Wild Bill the man from from the bush who rocks up to be their roadie sometimes is the nicest man with no teeth that we've ever met.

I never listen to country music, but the week opened my eyes and taught me many things. Firstly, the majority of country songs are about wimmin', murderin', or trains. Secondly, the hats are no joke. Everyone loves a hat, people here will happily join a queue that stretches round the block to get a $2 Toyota branded hat. Thirdly, if you ever want to make a living making music, country is where its at because old people always buy the CD.

One of the bands we were introduced to turned into our new best friends and current housemates (2 of them anyway) Catfish Voodoo! An exceptionally talented Chicago Blues Band who all rock fancy pants 3 piece suits and are very good at what they do, which is namely rocking everyones socks off. We danced a lot with them and had lots of fun and will continue to do so as we currently reside in their back garden in Melbourne. Hurray! I will probably write a bit more about them later on, as there are many stories to be told (like how Benny hid a tupperware pot full of his own hair under Jordans bed for the last couple of years in retaliation for some  argument they had about tupperware. He still tops it up every time he cuts his hair, I saw it with my own eyes. The worst bit is that Jordan knows about it and hes fine with it being there. All the time. A small pot of ginger hair just festering under his bed.)

Anyway, i'll update again soon, Mum, don't worry, I'm still on it.


Right thats it. Its taken me like 2 weeks to write this due to laziness and the heat, its now 11pm and still stupidly hot all I have been doing today is sweating in a darkened room next to a large fan. its no way to live.

Hunter Valley! Home of wine!

We're in the Hunter Valley, it has been an embarrassingly long time simce i last blogged and i have no excuse because we've not even been working for the last week or so, just sat around next to the pool with our new friends and worked on our tans. (I am now proudly sporting a rather fetching shorts tan, much to Babara's dismay and disgust.) Fortunately, we havent reallybeen doing all that much so there isn't too much to catch up on.

So lets rewind back to new years,which we spent in Sydney!

We basically spent the whole new years eve in a large queue so we could watch the fireworks and see the bridge and opera house. It was free, if you dont count the cost of 5 HOURS OF OUR LIFE IN A QUEUE; we broke the monotony by accidentally causing a small stampede which caused the last third of the queued masses to bunch together and gave some chancers the opportunity to skip ahead miles, while everyone else politely and quietly complained to each other. (Thats how you could tell there were no Australians there. No fist fights.) Once we finally made it to the park we sat on a patch of grass for another 8 hours and drank our smuggled in alcohol. To say it was packed would be an understatement, we were literally sitting on someone elses picnic blanket.
Eventually, the fieworks happened, lots of bangs and pretty lights, then we went home. Pretty much like any firework display ever. But it was lovely?

The next day we found ourselves at a party with lots of sexy people, we had an awesome time and it was actually a really nice way to almost say goodbye to Sydney. We even managed to pose sensibly when a camera was directed at us! Shocker!

After we recovered from all the hangovers, we went to the Blue Mountains for a few days before starting the grape picking. Unfortunately, we forgot it was holidays and didnt realise how many other tourists would be there. We still had fun and spent plenty of time taking stupid pictures and gazing out at the blue-tinted abyss.

Since then we've been picking some grapes. Not many, as we have not been getting as many hours as expected but its better than nothing. There are also a disturbing number of highly venemous creatures in the vines which does not make for a relaxing work environment.

And now we are about to go to Tamworth! 11 days of Hillbilly Goats, country music and probably a fair amount of lunatics. I'm stoked!