Well Hello from Melbourne!

So...where did I get up to...Friday 16th Jan I woke up at 3.45am sweating as usual, attmepting to pack my bloody backpack up. We got onto the street outside our hostel in Coogee and grabbed a taxi eventually to the airport. We were flying from Sydney to Adelaide with Jet star, a cheap domestic airline here in Aus, only cost us $90 each and the flight was 1 hour 45 mins. We bumped into the girls at the airport who (no offence!) looked and felt like sh#t after sleeping outside the airport for 5 hours! because their hostel was fully booked and they couldnt get any other accomodation. The flight was fine, and soon we were in sunny Adelaide! As we were at the bagge carousel waiting for our backpacks, ricky was carrying his day pack on his groin area, due to having "morning glory" which I found hysterical and kept laughing at it!! hahaha. We managed to work out what bus to get, and we were then walking up and down this main street looking for the number of our hostel.....which turned out to be in the back of a tour shop! which was really weird and very unhelpful when your looking for a sign saying"cannon st backpackers"! but the hostel was more decent than Coogee, and we got free breakfast (which we missed because we left so early for our great ocean road 3 day trip the next day!) but in the evening we got our free apple pie and cream, which was taaassty!! after we sorted ourselves out, we thought we'd have a walk round as we were only going to be there for a day and a night. WELL, we were not impressed with Adelaide! Ricky needed some vests after people back home saying he's a tramp only wearing the same green vest all the time lol, there were no shops, only tai restaurants! and the odd cafe, and a little market, which was full of tat - NAN! YOU WOULD HAVE LOVED IT!! hahah bless you. We ended up finding a grass area in the middle of a main road, with a pretty fountain and sum amusing bowling it pigeons. It was next to a big bike race marquee, I think Lance amstrong was there around that time. So...we sat on a bench for a few hours and burnt lol. I spoke to mum, said we are NOT impressed with Adelaide. We went to coles, bought some food and went back to the hostel. Ricky cooked up a feast for us.... which I named "SAUSAGE FEST" it was pasta with tomato sauce, red onion and cut up sausages!! which was the strangest combination I've ever eaten, but it was surprisingly tasty. The foreigners were looking at us like we were off another planet though - "what they hell are they eating??!" lol. We then had showers, when I washed about 7 of rickys dutty pants, because he had no idea how to use travel wash. We then were really adventurous and had an early night!

So saturday 17th we had to meet our oz experience tour bus and fellow group members outside the tour shop at 6.20am. Over the next 3 days we did so much! saw lots of small towns, went on hours of hiking up huge rocks/mountains, I was really proud of myself for doing it, considering I've never done anything like that before, I'm not really "outdoorsy" but I really enjoyed it, and it felt so good when you got to the top! ofcourse....sweating your knackers off!! Our tour guide was Kiwi (that was his name) he was ok, full of knowledge about history, areas, and people etc wherever we went. Each night we were put up in accomodation and fed, which was included in the tour. So here's what we did, I'll try to keep it short! we travelled down through adelaide hills, crossed the murray river, which is a big wine area, made our way to the grampians national park, where we did our first big hike at hollow mountain, and mckenzie falls, an amazing waterfall, with funnel web spiders houses everywhere in the rocks!! it was a bit of a killer on the olde legs! lots of stairs and rock climbing and trainers slipping and yelping! lol we ended the first day looking over the balconies and reeds loockout, we stayed over night in grampians accomodation, which was really nice! had our own room to walk round naked and dry my bum in peace!! :-D Day 2, we hiked to the pinnacle, and had great views of the national park. we then headed south to warrnambool, then finally reached the official great ocean road! wahoo! (on the way I had a little too much water to drink, I had pains in my bladder, and because I've had a kidney infection not long ago I thought it's no good I have to pee now! So Ricky had a work with Kiwi and he pulled the bus over, I had the walk of shame off the bus, and couldnt face going in a bush, so squatted behind the bus on a massive road, pulled them down and went! it was pretty funny. the views of the ocean were gaaawjus!, we saw the bay of islands, bay of martyrs,london bridge (which was a crap rock with an arch under it, london bridge my a-hole!) lock ard gorge, then we stayed for sunset over the 12 apostles, which was pretty, but not such an amazing sunset as I have seen in other countries. We stayed over night in a coastal town called princetown. Day 3 there was an optional helicopter ride over the twelve apostels, which we didnt do. Then we went to the otway fly tree top walk, There was loads of random fake (obviously!) dinosaurs amongst all the forest, and it did look very like jurassic park scenery. Then we headed up lots of steps to walk bridges above the tree tops, which fine, until I got to the helter skelter stairs to a viewing tower...which wobbled!! that was it, Ricky and the boys in the group were wobbling it, and I was holding on for dear life, my knees were shaking like mad and I was trying not to fall over, I seem to have a strange thing out here for movement on platforms! We stopped for lunch in apollo bay, before passing through to lorne and we stopped at a campsite and saw wild koalas all chilling out in the gum trees, with their koala chlamydia- bless them! lol. we then went to see bells beach, which is famous from the film point break with keanu reeves. It was a good beach, excellent waves, the surfers were waiting around to catch their "sweet waves duuude!" quite deep out into the ocean. Me, kiwi and a northern monkey paul were the only ones who got in for a dip. WELL....you had to wade through thick seaweed to get to a decent patch of water, and then I got completely taken out by a wave, the bikini bottoms came off, I had to find them, yank them back on, eventually made it back to the beach and laid on my towel to dry before getting back on the bus. So there I am laying there, when i felt a twitch in my pants, knelt up cupped my hand into my crotch area, scooped out a tonne of seaweed, and amongst it were all these, I can only describe them as see-through green tiny lobster/woodlouse type things, so I shouted "errr I've got crabs in my pants!!" then it was a joke for kiwi the rest of the trip, saying I had them before I got in the sea. lol it was funny though, but I was glad for a shower to rinse my bits off!! We then went to torquay, home of the surf labels quicksilver and rip curl, there were some cheap outlet stores...so you guessed it, Amy went shopping. Within 10 secs of ricky turning away i had an armful of stuff! went into the changing room, got a skirt a dress and a top for like 12 quid, not bad atall!! just got to fit it in my damn rucksack! eventually we were dropped off at our hostel in Melbourne - nomads industry.

monday 19th jan - MELBOURNE! ....We had a walk round Melbourne city centre that evening after showering. NOTHING was open, there was nobody about on the streets, Ricky was getting a face on and being a man on a mission because he was hungry, we walked for ages, we eventually found the most unfriendly mcdonalds ever and ricky had 3 meals to himself! I had 1 meal, and had some strange man staring at my chest and commenting on "some customer service here!! due to having a disagreement with mohammed a somalian bloke that worked there, which we found amsuing, he was like an older napolean dynamite! We found a backpackers bar called pug mahones, which we call pugsy malones! bumped into Phil and danny from my oz intro group! The next day we took a tram to st.kilda, which has a nice beach, it's quite a hippy area, has lots of cool shops (yes we ended up spending more money on clothes! and ricky finally got his gayboy vests, and was debating on a flat cap but i told him he looked like a right knobend! and he agreed) bumped into phil, danny dave keith and ian on the street, they were all debating if they like melbourne or not, and were having trouble finding accomodation and jobs. It's the tennis open here at the moment, so its hard to find accomodation, and if you do the prices are pretty high for a backpacker. We viewed a studio and a 1 bed apartment in st kilda while we were there.... absolute dive!! so we said no to those thankyou very much! We are now looking at double rooms in flat shares, it seems to be our cheapest option, compared to staying in hostels, we found a good one, quite fancied it, but they needed us to stay until april, and we cant guarantee that. So we will be on gumtree and lining up loads of rooms to go and view. We went to federation square to watch the tennis on the big screen they have there, then went for a walk down the yarra river, which eventually leads to the rod laver stadium where the open is being held, which I keep calling ron jeremy (porn star with the biggest willy lol) a bloke came up to ricky and gave him a ground pass to the tennis, so we went halves on one for me, and spent the day watching a few games, with really good seats. On australia day we have the seated tickets for the main arena, which is going to be so good, we are really excited about it. Ricky went out with the boys last night, I got on the tram to meet rachel and stu in fitzroy last night, and an aussie bloke staying in rach's room, we went out on brunswick street, and i really loved the area, it was so cool and laid back, had a good time. Got a wee bit tipsy on pitchers of beer, me and stu had to leave at midnight to get the last tram back to the city. Where I then got lost and couldnt find my hostel for a while, met loads of random weirdo's on my journey home, then couldnt rem what room i was in, so spoke to mum and jess on webcam for a bit, and had a short convo with matt, who couldnt make it out to aus sadly, it was good to hear from him.

So..here we are really! We have no accomodation tonight, so we are either sleeping on the beach in st kilda, or crashing on the girls couch! (which is at the hostel we are booked into from tomorrow anyway) called the nunnery in fitzroy. while we're there we need to sort our life out and find some proper accomodation. So that's it! loads of other weird stuff has happened and I cant damn remember it!! but thats enough to keep you entertained!

Hope everyone is well, hi to anybody reading this at work Val, thanks for my new years e-card, it was so sweet! hope you are all well. Love to my family and my friends xxxxxxxx speak soon Amy