Chapter 1. Meat flavoured party pies.
I read about an official music walking tour (and pub crawl) around the 'legendary' live music hub, St Kilda. With a map that I had tattooed in a key of stars and other scribblings we hopped on the tram. Starting with pints of bulmers and blue moon at a chain British pub, Elephant and Wheelbarrow. Then we headed to the George Hotel, now a collection of bars and pubs. Back in the 1970's and 80's, it was a major punk-rock venue. We shared a jug of Carlton beer in The White Room. Next (and probably my favourite) was St Killda Cellars. It may be a bottle 'o' (bottle shop) but it is also a bar and live music venue. I ordered a pint and noticed the sign behind the bar that said "PARTY PIES - ONLY $1" Cat grabbed a bottle of cider from the fridge and arriving at the bar she asked the half cut barman what flavour was the party pie? He replied "meat flavoured"
"Hey Russ. Guess who is playing Sydney Opera House when we are there?" Cat asked as I finally joined her, poolside in Bali. "Pixies!!" Sheeeeeeet! We're going. Tickets booked and as soon as I could say "where is my mind" we were sat in our seats waiting for our favourite band. Full of anticipation and drinking our pocket wine the band walked on stage. But not to a standing ovation? In fact when the opener had finished, still no one had stood up. Then the second song with the same response. I could see two girls downstairs stood at the side of their seats dancing. Screw this, we're off!
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| Tiny man in a tree |
Home and unpacked. Real life isn't all its cracked up to be.
Preparing for Glastonbury Festival is helping. I wrote the following three posts while travelling around Australia. Here is the first one.
Winter is in June and the water drains anti clockwise in a sink. Wolloomoollo? Who came up with these? Fannie bay? Booby island?? The street names are just as funny, Batman Avenue!! There are more deadly snakes here than the whole world combined. You can't walk into a supermarket and buy alcohol. You have to buy it at designated stores called Bootle-O's. They have drive through Bottles-O's. Seriously. Drive through?! The beaches and oceans are beautiful but off limits in half of them. If you are not stung to death by box jellyfish the crocodiles will eat a piece of you (crocs in the sea?) You can't take alcohol into a hostel in Darwin but you can take it into the Sydney opera house (hidden in your bag of course). You can pick up a very drinkable bottle of wine for $5 which is the same price as a 350ml bottle of domestic beer. When the country was becoming a country the people in charge could not decide on which city should be its capital. Deadlocked between the two only real contenders - Sydney or Melbourne. They grabbed a map and put a pin in the middle of the two and that's how the tiny farming town of Canberra became the capital of Australia.
We decided to go to Cairns & stay for 5 nights for 2 reasons - 1)The Great Barrier Reef 2) The weather. The weather was supposed to be nice in Cairns, in fact, they call it the sunshine state. I had a bit of a tantrum when we landed to grey skies & pouring rain.
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