Sunday
Good meal deal dinner last night - Turkey burger with bacon and sausage and Hellmans mayonnaise.
Did nothing today as obv Nik is on leg rest, but in the PM we made it across the road to The Barracks, which is a nice enough little shopping/dining area, where we got some food from the supermarket, including fruit and salad which was a revolution. We laid in bed eating our picnic and watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Not a bad Sunday, though little to report.
However, Nik's friend still hasn't shown up with the bank stuff so we are still stuck for booking our next leg. Bit frustrating but at least Nik has chance to rest his leg.
Monday
Today we went on the long trek down to Medicare to try and sort out claiming back for the doctors expenses and prescriptions. Nik did a heroic effort getting there on the crutches (full blisters on hands and everything) but then when we went to the toilet before going in, the floor was wet and Nik's crutches buckled and he fell down L This means the knee is definitely no better! Also, what sucked at Medicare, was that we had to spend about $180 on all the stuff for the knee, and what did we get back - thirty five measly dollars!!! Hopefully travel insurance might get us some of it back. Grr.
We had a trundle back to the hostel, Nik was like a young Rocky Balboa, but instead of running up the steps, he was negotiating a hill on crutches and breaking a full sweat. Although the crutches are difficult, they are giving Nik extra hench chest and arm muscles, though it's still pretty impossible to go anywhere which is a shame and we might go crazy soon.
Spent the afternoon investigating options for the next leg of the trip and again being let down by Nik's friend failing to turn up - so it looks like we might not be going to Melbourne tomorrow after all, we'll have to see.
Tuesday
Had a mammoth day on the internet sorting everything out, so we now have flights booked for tomorrow and are going to Melbourne by hook or by crook. Enjoyed a bargain yoghurt breakfast after Hannah's morning trip to Coles for snacks.
Finding a hostel for Melbourne was challenging as we needed to guarantee it was somewhere on the ground floor so that Nik wouldn't have to do stairs, but eventually we sorted a place out.
So there you have it, not very interesting. Mainly we just stayed in and repeatedly heard the stupid Irish people that stand outside our room talking til 1am, and also the girl that goes round telling everyone her brother got a job on a cruise ship as if he had just been awarded a medal for being a war hero. Still leg rest is needed before the backpacking en route to Melbourne. In big news, for the first time, Hannah managed to do her bag up all by herself - this is distinct progress and wasn't even due to throwing stuff away.
Hopefully from tomorrow our exploits will get more interesting!
Wednesday
Up bright and early to sort out remaining bits and head to the airport. Got a taxi there to minimise the struggle, but there was still lots of bag lugging at the airport. Nik got special treatment at the airport security - by which we mean that he got fully searched up round the knee and the man pulled his shoes off and took his crutches away too. Then Hannah got special treatment and got scanned for drug residue and explosives - action packed! Nik did actually get proper special treatment though and we were allowed on the plane first, well second after a "wheelchair man" (the airport lady's words - not ours!!).
Flight was BORING with super grumpy staff. Hannah went to sleep and Nik ate a whole giant bag of nuts.
Got into Avalon airport near Melbourne, which is a pretty comedy place. Nik was offered that they take him down in a special lift (which Hannah was well up for) but he took the stairs off the plane - denied. Took the bus to Melbourne and then found a train - avec backpacks = not so easy! Also the ticket machine kept not letting us buy tickets which was stressful, as despite all those years in London, we both seem to have forgotten how to use a sophisticated public transport network. However, we finally managed to get the train to Prahran which is where we are staying. We managed to get lost on the way to the hostel as we forgot to write down any form of directions or address, but didn't mind as it was a very cool area and a man in a vintage record shop helped us find the way.
Arrived at Lords Lodge, the hostel we are staying at and instantly LOVED it. The guy who owns it gave us the warmest welcome and offered to drive us to the supermarket or post office if needed due to Nik's gammy leg. They also have a free DVD library which is genius. AND best of all, they have a hostel cat who is amazing. For the money too, our room is brilliant, it is a shed in the garden out the back of the house, that inside is like a little chalet with a tv and dvd player and a DUVET - oh the luxury! It is such a nice feel in this place, even though there are a lot of long term residents (lots of them students) - within the first hour so many people had said hello - such a nice change, even compared to City Backpackers in Brisbane, which was one of the friendlier places we've been. It's also really quirky here. Some of the staff live in a caravan out the back, they have regular free food and booze, there are random signs and posters and just general stuff everywhere. They also have a tea bag tree, which is a tree that when you're done with your tea bag, you hang it on the tree by the string. Sounds naff but looks pretty damn cool!
Our first act, after a cup of tea and a play with the cat, was laundry - in 20 minutes ALL our clothes were clean, which was much needed as Hannah was having to wear her bikini as underwear and Nik's jeans had changed colour. In the evening, we took a slow stroll to Coles to get some grub for dinner and walked through Prahran which is a fab little area - lots of quirky shops, independent stores and nice bar/restaurants. We also enjoyed our dinner of a big plate of wheat free pasta with vegetables - the holy grail - after which we curled up under the duvet with a cup of tea and watched Sherlock Holmes. A lovely day, and already action packed compared to the last week!
Thursday
Got up at a reasonable hour and had breakfast in bed which felt luxurious. We adventured off to get the tram and managed to not get lost and get off at the right stop. We started in Federation Square and then got the free tourist shuttle bus around the city to get a good idea of where everything is, where we might want to go, and how far away from each other things are, as you can never tell that from the maps. Saw some good sights, and it was a total score for a freebie.
It was some sort of German day today in Federation Square, so there were lots of kids wearing visors that siad 'Deutsch ist cool' and there was German rap stars singing a song about world peace - well that's what they said it was about, it could be anything! We also enjoyed the Federation Square toilets, which may sound naff, but they had screens in the hand drier and the urinal congratulated Nik on saving water in the mens.
Had a brief bite to eat at Lord of the Fries. This was based on Matt and Claire Gasside's recommendation that they were the best chips in the world. Confirmed, they were pretty damn good. We opted for South African Sweet and Spicy sauce FYI.
Our next move involved trying to find places that sold cameras, as we cant go round seeing all these sights and taking no photographs and as our other one does not work at all, is fairly urgent. We looked everywhere and finally found the small strip with all the electronics shops, although en route saw some other excellent shops which if we were clothes shopping would be hard to resist. Also, lots of very friendly Aussies gave us suggestions on where to look including one girl who came up to Nik and said 'Are you the King of Cool?' - the ladies love a gangster limp! After much umming and aaahing, we got camera-ed up. We decided that we would get a proper camera, as a) Nik has had camera envy since seeing Tobi's camera in Gili b) we were going to get one in Hong Kong anyway c) we will now have even better photos of all the cool stuff we are going to see and d) it is going to be our Christmas present to ourselves. So, we are now the proud owners of a Canon EOS 1000D with two lenses (a big SLR type number). We also bought a cheapo 'handbag' camera, some sanyo digital thing, for the equivalent of about £50 so that we can take that everywhere as a just in case camera (inc on boozy nights out etc). In reality, this means that Nik will commandeer the big camera, and Hannah will have to use the little one. Hmmm.
Refuelled with an excellent cupcake each - Nik chose banana, Hannah chose molten chocolate - before going to the Australian Centre of Moving Image for the Tim Burton exhibition. Was a great exhibition with loads of artwork, video and costumes from films he has directed including Edwards Scissorhands' outfit and Catwoman's cat suit. It also appears that Ricky Gervais' flanimals is entirely derivative of Tim Burton's works about monsters in the early 80s. Tut tut.
Trundled back to the hostel, managing to get off at the wrong tram stop - oops - as it all looks different in the dark, but had some dinner before Nik retired to charge up the new toy. He is even reading the manual as I type this!