Wednesday 8th April 2009 - spent some time with Todd who was our driver/guide on the Great Ocean Road tour for the past couple of days, he took me sightseeing around Adelaides suburbs and to the beach with his spoodle dog Flin, then he dropped me at the Ghan train station to make my epic 25 hour train ride to Alice Springs. Luckily Todd gave me a pillow and book to take which ended up as complete lifesavers. I was sat next to a 80 year old man who luckily got off at the only other stop 4 hours into the journey, so I had the 2 seats to myself for the other 20 hours. Obviously getting the cheapest backpacker seats available meant they were reclining and no beds, and the buffet cart was overpriced and the food was crap, everything had cheese and plane food is better, and the scenery was not even that impressive, but hey, I've been on the Ghan!! I managed to lay squashed across the 2 seats and get a couple of hours sleep on and off. They provided 1 shower for the entire carriage I was in, so most of us opted out of taking a scanky shower and decided to wait til we got to our accommodation, plus they had 1 female and 1 male toilet between tons of us. I bet the money loaded passengers in the 'Premier' section had a whale of a time!! Got to Alice Springs on Thursday 9th at 2pm and got picked up and taken to 'Alice Lodge' hostel where I'm staying. Its quite cute and chilled out with a pool (its really hot!!) and its like the hostels in Northern Queensland. I met up with Paul from Adelaide and his Aussie mate Melody he met in America, and we went for dinner in Bojangles in town. I had the mixed grill which consisted off crocodile, kangaroo, buffallo, emu and camel, and it was gorgeous!! We then had a few drinks and it was a proper outback Aussie saloon, very American (never been to USA but can imagine), and they even had a smoking section inside!! Me and Paul were so impressed and sat at a table drinking and smoking happily, it felt so surreal to be fagging it in a pub, it was fab!! Him and Melody had to be up early to go on a tour, but Paul's like me and kept having another after another, we were having too much fun. Its a shame he's gone now because it felt like we'd been mates for years. I love it when you meet and click with certain people and it feels like you have known them for 20 years, and that happened with both Todd and Paul, and now we've all b*****ed off in different directions. Oh well, thats travelling for you.

Friday 10th - started my cleaning work at the hostel to pay for accommodation, and its such a breeze, 1.5 hours of cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, bargain! Then took a walk up to Anzac hill to get views across this outback town. Its good friday so everywheres shut today, but I'll be kicking back and relaxing here for a while.

Thursday 16th - well not too much has happened here in the outback, apart from the fact I am being driven to the brink of total insanity by the b****** desert flies that constantly bombard your face, and the mutated giant marching ants that are EVERYWHERE!. Paul came back from his tour on Monday and we hit the bars and sank more jaegerbombs, giving me the hangover from hell, then he pissed off the next morning to do another tour where I won't see him again now. Sob. Sightseeing wise I have visited the Royal Flying Doctors Services, which is all about how they get medical help to the people in the outback (remember the programme Flying Doctors when we were kids???). People out in the middle of nowhere are equipped with medical boxes and charts of the anatomy, they can phone up the doctor a million miles away, describe the symptoms and the doctor will prescribe medication over the phone according to the anatomy chart. The bottles are only labelled with letters, so people do not medicate themselves without knowing what the hell they are taking, so the doctor will say "take 2 of mediaction B twice a day" - sweet. Then went to the National Pioneers Womens Hall of fame, which is all about what the women did in the setting up days of townships in the outback, and how much they have come on. Also went to the Old telegraph Station after a dusty trek up the Todd River which is always dry, and this shows how the first telegraph cables were put in and the isolation these first settlers lived in, so people could actually communicate from the outback to the rest of the world in less than 6 months. Its so interesting so see how these people survived in the middle of nowhere with hardly any supplies, and being so isolated from everywhere else in the world. Then saw the 'Residency'. which is a period dwelling of the first government building in Alice. There are hardly any normal paths here, apart from the shopping centre, most of the paths are red dust dirt tracks, which is a pain in the arse when wearing flip flops as you constantly kick stones out from your shoes, and your feet are turned red/brown with dust, and your busy flapping your arms about wildly and screaming abuse because of the god damn flies! What is their purpose in life???? Seriously! They regroup and hatch plans of military style attack, and the same one will flap in your face and buzz in your ear for about 30 minutes when trekking back from town. I HATE them so much with a burning passion. Anyway, had a job interview at the Lasseters Hotel/Casino, it was for waitressing, but after seeing I have 6 years bar experience, they offered me the bar job the next day. I start monday. Obviously wooed them with my sparkling personality and dazzling sense of humour! Ha ha ha ha h!!!!!!

Saturday 18th April - what I love about the Aussies here is that instead of saying "Hows it going?", they say "Hows it goern?". Goern. What a fantastic word. They are very friendly here and like to tell you their life stories and the life stories of their entire families. There is never any sense of rush, they can talk for hours and hours, so there is no point in being in a hurry for anything because you will never get there in time. This evening one of the Irish guys that works reception (there are 2, the Irish guy PJ runs it with his Polish wife), but its the other one who's name I can't remember, and after being here for a week I think it would appear rude to ask him again, but anyway, he's about 7 foot tall, long ginger hair and ginger beard, but a really sound bloke, he cracked open his bottles of cider and asked me to join him when he knocked off his shift, so we sat drinking cider, smoking cigarettes and putting the world to rights. We were also taking the piss out of Pj. Now this morning when I was cleaning the kitchen, I put the sign outside in the middle of the door to not go in as floors are wet. I then went about the bathrooms, then had a shower when I'd finished. As I came out in my towel PJ stormed up to me and ordered me to mop the kitchen floor again as people had gone in when it was still wet and got mud all over the floor. He then said the sign wasn't infront of the door, so how were people supposed to know. (DOH - I do the same routine every morning!!) I insisted the sign was infront of the door quite clearly (which it bloody well was!), and informed him that someone must have moved it beacuse they are vultures round here with no patience and I'm constantly being bugged when cleaning with whining voices saying "can I just put this in the fridge?", "can I just get some water?", e.t.c, and its like NO, F**K OFF IM CLEANING! So I said to PJ that short of bolting the doors or sticking electric wire around the kitchen theres not much I can do as I do not have eyes in the back of my head to shoo them all away. Well - surprise surprise, this morning I was sacked from my cleaning job by PJ. He told me it would be 'Better" if one of the other girls did it, and shock horror, there was now no more room in the Inn so I would have to move. I just stared him in the eye and said that was fine by me, got straight on the phone and arranged another hostel which is so much closer to my new job anyway. Now yesterday when I remopped I was stomping around cursing him extremely loudly, and there are loads of Taiwanese girls who wanted my job, so no doubt the fact I called the Irish p****every name under the sun got back to his attention. The other Irish guy was warning everyone I had a temper and if they mseed up the kitchen I'd rip their f**king heads off, to which I shouted in reply - TOO DAMN RIGHT. Its a shame, I'll miss the ginger hippy guy, he's cool, but PJ is a knob. Total knob. Well I'm sure the Taiwanese girls will be happy now. They applied for my job at the hotel a week before I did, and I got the interview the same day and accepted the next, so they were sooooo pissed off. Well they can all stick the cleaning mops up their arses.

Thursday 23rd April - started my job on Monday at the Casino, and last night was my 3rd shift. I worked 12 hours, from 5pm until 5am this morning and I am b*****ed. It got so busy and I was on til close, and it took 2 hours to clean up the bar. I have blisters on my little toes, and no skin left on the backs of my ankles. I have cheap crappy $10 shoes as there is no point investing in a decent comfortable pair as I will not be in the job long enough, but MY GOD, my feet are going to fall off, and I can barely walk or use my legs today. Its HELL ON EARTH and I hate the job with a passion - come back G's Wine Bar, all is forgiven. Everything is so proper and anal being a casino with rules and regulations about everything. If you work more than 6 hours then you get 30 minutes meal break where there is food in the canteen (your allowed 1 free meal), but my break was at 11.30pm, so no food for me, just a packaged pie to be blasted in the microwave (yum). At the end of the night the supervisor has a check list to make sure you have cleaned everything perfectly, if not you do it again. The other local barstaff are lovely, although I do find it hard to understand the Aussie accent, you wouldn't believe we speak the same language, and the Aussies have about 50 million types of beer, which is really hard to get used to, whats wrong with the standard Carling????????? Theres 'light' this, and 'low carb' that, "mid this' and 'premium' that - b******s is what I say. Have 5 types of lager and be done with it for christs sake. The clientele are nice enough and are fascinated that I am English, but there are some proper red necks here as well, which are the guys in their 20's - total losers. Its my day off today, then I'm workng Friday and Saturday 12 hour shifts again, finishing at gone 6am apparantly - woopee, can't wait!! I was lying in bed with my feet throbbing and on fire, and serious cramp all down my legs. It feels like when I was a kid and used to have really bad growing pains in my legs and I would sit in bed at night and cry with the pain (bit wrong really considering all that pain only made me get to 5 foot 4 inches - something not quite right there!!!), and my mum used to come and soothe me with hot water bottles and leg massages. Well now it feels as bad as that, but theres no mum, no hot water bottles and no leg massages - and that sucks. I'm using muscles I did not know existed and I can't face the thought of another 3-4 weeks of this!!! I just want to cry. I moved into the hostels longterm accommodation house yesterday just across the road which is $6 cheaper a day, and we have a pool in the garden too (not that I'll use it as its filthy). I never did the whole student uni living thing, so I can imagine what its like as the place is a bit of a tip, but the others are really nice. I'm in a 4 bed room but its just me at the moment which is utter BLISS, but no idea how long that will last before Im bombarded with others, which again sucks because of the hours I work. I got my head in bed at 6am this morning, and the rest of the house got up at 9am, so no rest for me!! Oh the joys. Anyway, its these moments which make it all so much fun (ahem). I do absolutely HATE the job, but I just keep thinking how much I need the money, but I really don't think I will manage 4 weeks, maybe 3 at a push, but I felt physically sick last night from exhaustion and I could barely walk, but luckily shared a taxi with one of the barmen who lives just down the road, and he payed for it, I don't think I could have managed another 2 steps. Help.

Monday 3rd May - Well its 7am Monday morning and I got home from work at 4am. Why am I still up? I made the mistake of drinking a can of 'mother' which is cheap Red Bull at 3am whilst clearing the bar up, and now my body is exhausted and ready to drop, but my mind is like a spaghetti junction with a million and one thoughts racing around, and I was lying in bed wide awake, so thought Id pop the 50 metres over the road to the hostel to grab some 'free' morning toast and a cup of tea, to chill and fill you all in on my exciting life here in Alice Springs - and plus I'm hoping for a miracle that the ground may open up and swallow my disgustingly repulsive, snorting, grunting, snoring, lip smacking, jaw chomping, talking in her sleep German room mate - although thats highly unlikely. Damn. I was told travelling made you more tolerant, I think its doing the exact opposite to me. Its amazing how many disgusting, vile people there are in this world, and most of them are backpackers (myself excluded of course, I am truly amazing as you all know!). Okay, so I have been in my bar job for 2 weeks now, and its been an experience. Basically you spend your life there. Weekdays I start at 6pm, bar shuts at 1am, and after cleaning and shutting down, you get out at about 3.30am. Weekends you start at 6pm, bar shuts at 4am, you get out about 6amish. These are looooong shifts. My feet and legs have adapted (although throbbing right now in furious argument against that comment). The work sucks, but the barstaff are fantastic. I work with a load of Aussies and Kiwis, and they are such a great bunch, we all have such a laugh together, and I am the token 'pommie' behind the bar. Every day Im greeted with "Awight Guv'nr!", and they ask me to say certain words so they can try and imitate the English accent, and its a mutual piss taking session out of accents every shift, but its all in jest. The customers love it. I constantly get "Ooh, are you a pom? Where are you from?", so I will say, and their all like "Wow, I just LOOOOVE your accent" - and they honestly do. I am like a circus attraction, and they can't get enough of the accent. Its bizarre. It doesn't work both ways, their accent really grates on me its so whiny. Also, they don't have pint glasses, their glasses are slightly smaller called 'schooners' and the half glass of that is a 'pot', and their bottles are 'stubbies', so when I ask if they want it in a bottle, they all imitate the way I say bottle (their impersonation of an English accent is horrendous), but its their entertainment of the night. Bless them. My supervisor is a 21 year old still wet behind the ears called Daniel, but he is actually really funny and we just rip the piss out of each other and tear each other to shreds every shift, and he tells me all about his psycho ex-girlfriend called Holly who also works there. Now, I did burst into hysterical laughter at this (anyone who went to Banbury college with me in 1996 will know EXACTLY what Im talking about when it comes to psycho exgirlfriend b****es from HELL called Holly), but there I am having conversations about his lack of sex life with psycho b**** with my 21 year old supervisor. Awesome. Truly. I will miss everyone there as its so nice to be working with the locals and getting away from being surrounded by Dutch and German backpackers. Its such a breath of fresh air, shame the town is boring as hell and the job sucks so badly. Damn it, I truly am wide awake and will be working in 11 hours time. We had the busiest shift on Saturday as it was the bars 1st birthday, plus they had the Cup Ball (its horse racing time here in Alice), and I think its the busiest night I've ever had working in a bar, and I worked in bars for 6 years. Also, there is an Asian/Indian guy who is a pot washer cleaner in the kitchen and he brings empty glasses into our back bar kitchen on a weekend. He always calls me 'girly' after everything, e.g "can you move that tray girly?", so I put up with it for about 3 shifts, then due to my serious lack of patience I thought that was enough, so I very politely and calmly said to him "Can you please stop calling me 'girly' as I actually find it quite condescending". Well, he threw the tray down, stormed out the kitchen and shouted "f*** you!" to me, at which I was taken aback and started laughing as I thought it was a perfectly reasonable request. w***er probably doesn't even know what the word condescending means, most likely had to go home and 'Google' it. Later on he came back in when I was doing glasses and I just as calmly and politely said "And by the way, please do not tell me to go f*** myself as thats actually really quite rude" - at which he stormed out in silence. He could never look at me after that, he put his head down and diverted his eyes, until about a week later. I was just leaving the building, and to my back he said "Goddnight 'girly'". I burst out laughing and told him what a loser he is. What a total spineless twat. If you don't have the b******s to say something to my face, don't say it at all. He needs to grow a backbone and not wait until he's 50 metres away or when my back is turned to say something. Its like seriously, how old are you??????? The one thing I do like is when I first started they all asked me if I had a shortened version of my name, to which the reply was NO. NO NO NO NO No- I do NOT have a shortened version of my name, so they all call me Anouska. At long last, I feel like a person again, no 'Nush' flying around. For a whole entire year I can get away from that damn name 'Nush' which pisses me right off (which a lot of you know), and its Bliss, Heaven, Wonderful, Fantastic to be known as me again. Awesome. (HINT HINT - to all of you that call me Nush - I hate it.) Right, Im going to sink another cuppa and try and rest. Its never going to happen. Mental note - do NOT drink a stimulant beverage when needing to sleep. That really was not the best idea Ive had. I feel like I've sunk a load of narcotics.

Thursday 7th May - I handed in my notice yesterday and it felt so good. Craig the manager of Food and Beverage told me he was going to offer me a full time permanent position - oh well, tough! Ha ha. News travels so fast in that place that within 5 minutes everyone knew I was leaving, so they were all organising leaving drinks for Sunday as my last shift is Saturday (thank christ). On Tuesday there was a few of us who had the night off as we had to go in for a 3 hour training session, so we had some drinks afterwards. Now I don't think I was bad, slightly tipsy maybe (I blame Anthony for buying me a bottle of champagne), but one of the security guys called Josh who is 19, obese and resmbles Miss Piggy without the long hair, decided to tell the others I was with that they had to get me out within 10 minutes or he would kick me out. I was in the toilet when this happened, so he couldn't even tell me to my face (what is it with spineless people in this world?? Just tell me to my face!!!), so we were all planning to go into town, but I said screw it I was going home, as I felt a bit tired by this point anyway. Now Josh took my drink when I had had 2 sips, so my assistant manager Daniel gave me a refund, and one of the other barmen Darren took me home. The next day everyone was ripping the piss out of me for getting cut off. Everyone said I was fine though, I was just slightly tipsy but just enjoying myself and being happy, and Josh was just being a w***er. Darren said apart from the fact that I couldn't remember where I lived and made him drive up and down the road 3 times before recognising my house, I was fine. He said he had a right go at Josh and said he was a p****because I work my arse off all week doing 11/12 hour shifts, the one night I have off I was having a few drinks with my workmates, having a ggod time, and the w***er cuts me off. He told Miss piggy that we should all look out for each other being staff and he was bang out of order. Josh apparantly said I was lucky he didn't make it official, and the other guys Michael and Daniel told him to 'F**k off', and that he had issues because he had his arse kicked in a fight the other night so he has a bruised ego. Anthony on the other hand said I was totally w***ered with my eyes rolling in the back of my head. Whatever. I can't believe I was cut off in my own workplace - I think its hilarious. Later on I was waiting outside for a taxi after my shift and I was chatting and joking around with the other security guys, and Josh was stood there with a face on him like a slapped arse. I don't know, some people. Last shift on Saturday though, then next Tuesday I'm out of here!!! Can't bloody wait.

It wasn't until a while later whilst watching the film 'Priscilla Queen of the Dessert' on t.v in a guesthouse that the realisation came. The end bit where they go to perform at the casino in Alice Springs - which was the whole reason for their entire trip - that Casino was Lasseters Casino. Oh yeah baby, my residence of work. Claim to Fame!!!