Although you may have thought a 12 hour coach ride with limited snacks and ridiculously freezing air con would have been a massive over night adventure.. you were wrong. It was long, uncomfortable, freezing cold( I can't stress enough how stupidly high the air con was!) and when the coach driver attempted to make it just that tiny bit more enjoyable by putting a DVD on, it got worse- a film called 'prom queen' started playing which I would highly reccomend NOT watching. Our only bit of joy was brought to us when we made a stop at a maccers (macdonald's for all you none aussie lingo people) and bought myself 20 chicken nuggets, a large milkshake, fries and a burger.. don't judge me. The rest of the journey was taken up by Amy and myself attempting to get into some kind of comfortable position and using all our clothing to keep ourselves warm.. baring in mind it was 40 degrees outside at this point.. at midnight.. we didn't bring much on board with us.

Finally arrived in Melbourne at about 5am and it was baking hot, love it. The coach drops us off right by all the tram lines and Amy assures me she knows where to go because she had previously been in the area before with her friend Ally. So we hopped on a tram with all of our bags and our huge rucksacks, half way through the journey Amy realises its the wrong tram! Typical. So, she starts babbiling away to the tram driver to find out where we need to go. Thankfully it wasn't too much of a drama, we hopped off, changed trams and eventually got to our new home for the next few weeks- habitat hostel. As it was only 6.30am our room wasn't ready for us, only suitable option seemed to fill up on the free brekkie the hostel offers (only between 6-8am, we clearly knew we would never again see the breakfast) and got them to play 'pineapple express' for us in the movie room which of course we had all to ourselves. Ended up nodding off towards the end of the film and awoke several hours later surrounded by guys watching sports.. I really hope I hadn't been snoring or doing any of that embarrising sleep stuff. Got myself up, found Amy who was in the common area and we got our room together. That evening we decided we HAD to go out on the town to celebrate being in a new city. Got a box of the usual 'goon' which was cheaper and tastier than it was in Sydney but half a box later it was shown to me that it goes to my head A LOT quicker than in Sydney and before we had even left our nice, new hostel..I had broken my achievement of 'not throwing up since I've been travelling' thing. I managed the entire kiwi bus and a rugby world cup final, but one night in Melbourne and I was a goner. Typically, I wasn't going to let a silly thing like being smashed get in my way, Lucas came over for more drinks and then the three of us headed to a bar fairly close by. Needless to say, I don't remember too many details of the night- lots of dancing and I think shots were involved.. Ended up coming home around 5am and of course this was too early for me, I did my typical refusal to go to bed and started suggesting we go on an adventure- Amy was having none of it, she was shattered and had put up with my drunken antics all night so she made me come inside with her while she ate some noodles and then I went wondering off with Lucas down to the beach- this isn't as random or as trashy as it sounds by the way.. Melbourne is famous for its pier in St.Kilda (the area we were in) because if you go to the end of it at the right time of morning- conviniently around 5/6am, you can spot the penguins coming in from their night at sea. It was amazing! Pitch black, walking down this pier which seemed to be about 5 miles long and all of a sudden we saw these teeny tiny little pigmy penguins waddeling by the rocks. So we stayed and just watched them for a while before deciding it was probably an appropriate time to go to bed, so I went my way and Lucas went his.

About a week after arriving in Melbourne, Charlotte & Roh joined us (smily face) which was awesome, they were staying in the same hostel as us and of course this concluded in more drunken goon nights. Me and Amy were drastically job hunting every day.. nearly every day and in between that going down to St Kilda beach soaking up the glorious Victoria sunshine. One of our beach adventures happened on a bit of a whim, the others just happened to have full bikini sets on under their clothes but I just had my top, which was fine when we were sunbathing because i rolled my skirt up enough for tan lines to be slightly eliminated.. however, it was that kind of heat where you NEED to go into the sea, like you will burn up, melt and die if you don't plunge yourself into water immediatly. So, I thought it would be fine to just dip in the water with my skirt on- taking it off wasn't an option as I had a thong on. I decided it was so hot that it didn't matter if my skirt got wet because it would dry off so quickly. However, soon as I got in deep enough that it started getting wet, I realised it was turning see through, thanks a lot H&M cheap material.. So now I was waist deep in the sea with a see through skirt on looking like a right knob. Charlotte & Amy were obviously pissing themselves laughing and after lots of begging, Amy very kindly got out the sea, grabbed her denim shorts and I did a sneaky underwater change.

Next memorable event happened within the next couple of days, I had had a job interview earlier in the day and because I hadn't gone out in about a week (this is a VERY long time in hostel world) we simply had to have a massive night with everyone and love life. I decided that to get suitably drunk, we had to play centurion. This is obviously a terrible idea in normal circumstances but in aussie backpacker world its even worse- goon is the only drink avalible. So, I had a drink of goon, every minute for 100 minutes.. by 16 minutes I remember feeling completely wasted. Somehow, I managed to get to 100. Not sure how I even managed to stand- probably wasn't really standing to be fair. From what I got told the next day, I spent the next hour with Jen's iphone listening to Ed Sheeran promoting my undying love for him. Anyway, it was like 1am and it seemed obvious we were not going out, I was in a world of my own but everyone was in a pretty similar state to myself so I told Lucas he could just crash in our room. BIG MISTAKE. The next morning/afternoon- none of us managed to wake up until about 2pm.. I was awoken by the hostel management who explained very nicely that they were kicking me out of the hostel because I had allowed someone who was not a guest of the hostel to stay and that of course puts all other guests at a safety risk- he isn't some kind of convicted murderer so not sure what kind of risk they meant but anyway... I literally got booted out. Had to pack up my shiz and hit the road. At the time, I found this quite amusing as I was still completely drunk and good old Char let me leave all my stuff in her room while we went looking for another hostel for me.. I got bored quickly, decided to find Amy and then the three of us went to an epic little pizza restaurant in St Kilda for lunch. Thankfully, after explaining my little event to Stingray, she told me I could crash with her.. she is literally a life saver and the plan was to all meet at the Victoria night markets so I just took my stuff with me there. This market was awesome, even in extreme hangover pain. It's huge and as we walked in we could see all these different performers and literally thousands of stalls. Had a walk round and within a few minutes decided food was a priority. So much choice, there is a food stall for literally every kind of food imaginable- it's epic. The girls got these HUGE pancakes which I still need to go back and get because they were just amazing! We spent a good few hours wondering around the markets, getting food, laying in hammocks and putting on stupid hats before Stingray very kindly took me home.

Main events after this included job hunting, going out on Chapel St and apartment hunting with Amy.

Had an interview for a marketing company, got through first stage and when I went to go for my second interview I was sitting in the waiting area and bloody Lauren walks out! I knew she was arriving in Melbourne today after being in Fiji for 3 weeks with Kate but she had just said she would ring once sorted. Massive shocker! Ended up both going on an 'observation day' together and both getting the job..very strange. Celebrated that night by making home made scotch eggs with Sting- we decided the night before that we desperatly missed scotch eggs and worked out that it was literally impossible to buy them anywhere in Australia, obviously the only option is to made your own. Sounds like they would be horrible but they were actually really bloody nice.

The next day was a training day at work, followed by me and Lauren going to meet Roh at the Rod Laver arena for the AUSTRALIAN OPEN! I've never been a huge tennis fan but just because it was there and was so big and blue and being advertised everywhere, something deep inside of me decided I had to go and if I didn't I'd regret it very much. So I had forked out $40 for the ticket the day before and now here we are. Very glad I did, was a great experience. At first we sat in the beer garden section watching the match on screen, drinking our ciders and eating overpriced snacks. Then we went for a wonder round and there were loads of stalls giving out free stuff including a loreal gift set and chocolates. We had met some people that Roh knew at this point at the boys decided to play a little tennis game which was on and won we a free banner which I really wanted for some unknown reason! Then we got us a lovely spot and watched the match! Then the Thursday was a big celebration..AUSTRALIA DAY! Australia day is a big public holiday where basically everyone runs around loving the fact they're an Aussie or like us..just that we're in Aussie and not freezing our t*** off at home. We started off the day by all meeting up along the river and going to find this day festival thing that Sting had found for us, after getting lost (of course) we finally found it and it was actually really lovely, bright sunshine in a crowded park with lots of food and entertainment stalls- a mini farm, which Charlotte & I thought was amazing and spent about half an hour looking at goats. Drank us quite a few recordiligs and were soaking up the lovely sunshine.. Roh decided it was too hot and suggested the idea of jumping in the fountain.. seemed like fun, so me Char and Roh took off our shoes and went for a dip in St Kilda Rd fountain- and took lots of pictures too of course. By the time we re-joined the group they were sitting with a bunch of lads who turned out to be jerks but we all spotted a woman passed out in the middle of all the stalls.. only thing we could do in this situation was pick a designated photographer and all go and pose behind her while she slept away. After we got a shot, one of the girls tapped her so she awoke to a bunch of randoms running away from her. Bless. There was a tennis match on so just before it started we headed over to Fed Sq and got a good spot to watch it on the big screen, with lots of snacks and more cider. Night ended with a lovely firework display and me looking after the drunks (I wasn't one this time!)

Next day was another half day of training at work and was followed by going to the local bar for drinks with everyone at about 5pm- all the guys were buying me and Lauren drinks and she ended up very drink, I caught up to her after a while and we ended up sitting with Wes and Tyler in the garden area talking rubbish for hours. The next night we also ended up meeting the guys and going on a crazy car chase but thats a whole different story..

So, job was ok. Long hours and pretty demeaning work but when we had signed up they promised us a set amount a week which was more than enough to live off plus commision, after 2 weeks of being there they decided that it was just commision based.. a few cracks appear. Then I went on a road trip with Wayne, Jacinta, Liam & Tyler which took us out in the middle of nowhere- got to see my first kangeroos which I was amazed by! The first night we all had to stay in a motel in the same room, had a massive pillow fight and played card games and the second night we went to a pub which closed at 9pm- we really were in the middle of NO WHERE! Anyway, while on the trip Tyler pointed out he had been there for a month and not been paid yet and Liam quit.. Huge, massive cracks now showed up. I spent the next week 'being ill' and job hunting and very luckily I managed to get a job very quickly woohooo. Also, in this time we had to say goodbye to Charlotte :( as she was off on her Asian adventures and me and Amy moved into our apartment :D:D we had somehow managed to blag an immense, modern river side apartment 5 minutes from the citygood old valentines day- we had the girls round for a big barbie and me and Amy had made a big selection of cupcakes and cookies and Roh had bought us some immense cupcakes from 'the cupcake bakery' (best cupcakes ever.. just realised I've said cupcakes A LOT in the last sentance..cupcake cuuupcake. Anyway, had us a lovely valentines watching chick flicks and having a few glasses of wine-- I promise I haven't turned into some kind of alcoholic!