Sunday 4th October 2009
Alice:
A hoy hoy blog followers. I don’t know where you are while you’re reading this but I can tell you where we are while writing it! We are in a place called Lakes Entrance in southern Victoria and from what we can tell by squinting through the rain it looks quite pretty in a grey kind of way!
Sorry for the long delay in blog posting! We have been running around like mad things all over Australia but are back to camping now and blog writing of an evening. It’s lucky for you that we have no social life usually or there’d be no blog at all!
So, if you cast your minds back to the last mega blog post you’ll remember that we were in Albany and it was our penultimate day of camping in Western Australia and that we had recently been on a rather long walk. It turns out that while only 2 of us set off on that walk, 3 of us returned; myself, Gareth and Vic the Tick.
Vic was discovered at around 2am after I tried to pull him off in my sleep (not recommended, squeezed ticks inject more toxins apparently). Vic held on fast and in my sleepy state I realized what had happened and woke Gareth up to ask him if it was, in fact, a tick (I couldn’t see him as he was out of my sight range, to put it politely). Gareth thought I was sleep talking and was pretty horrified to find out I wasn’t. While I decided that I’d leave Vic there till morning and try to go back to sleep instead of getting up and going to the car for tweezers, he lay awake with his eyes wide open apparently convinced that he was also covered in ticks and making a funny whimpering sound if I lay anywhere near him! 5 hours and many tick related dreams later I woke up and after checking Gareth from head to tow twice just in case, managed to convince him to help me pull Vic out of my @ss.
We drowned Vic in alcohol hand wash (not recommended either apparently as this makes them release more toxins too!) and pulled him out, Gareth did a good job and managed to not leave the head in which is a good thing. We then wrapped Vic up in a tissue (to show the hospital in case I started to act oddly) and the tent up in it’s bag and set off on our way back to Perth via Albany wind farm.
Monday 5th / Tuesday 6th October 2009
In Perth we stayed with Ang’s Dad, otherwise known as John, it was very kind of him to have us to stay so thank you John. Here’s a little picture of him for those of you who don’t know him!
He looked after us very well, on our first day he took us for an amazing breakfast by the Swan River then for lunch in Fremantle and a browse in some of the shops. We hadn’t had a chance to see much of Fremantle on our first visit to Perth and it’s a lovely place so glad we got to go back. John made sure we ate well and kept giving Gareth more food because he was ‘a growing boy’! Not sure how tall John wanted Gareth to be though? On our second day we awoke to find him cooking us a huge full breakfast which we were delighted with and after a short break to digest we went out for lunch at a great restaurant called Indiana on Cottesloe beach. John’s friend Keith joined us and Alice ate soft crab for the first time and really enjoyed it.
John had been so good to us that we were tempted to ask him if we could move in with him forever. However, we had booked flights so John took us to the airport where we said our good bye’s to Western Australia and headed for Melbourne Tullamarine!!
Wednesday 7th / Thursday 8th / Friday 9th October 2009
We arrived at Melbourne at 5.30am and headed for the house of our good friends Manou and Rich who had kindly invited us to stay with them. Gareth had played computer games for the whole flight instead of sleeping so decided to take his grumpiness out on the poor taxi driver who he suspected of over charging us! We arrived just in time to have a nice cup of tea with Manou before she headed off to work and we went to bed! We woke up at about 13.00 and went for a little wander round North Melbounre then when Manou came home we went out to the pub where we were joined by Rich and proceeded to get a little drunken!
Slept in very late the next day and woke up just in time to go and meet Manou for lunch in the city and have a tour of the offices of Photolibrary Melbourne!
I nearly got hit by a tram which locals quite rightly call the silent death! They just sneak up on you the crafty things and I only just stepped out of the way in time to avoid being tram pancake. Gareth wasn’t amused and neither would I have been had it been the other way round. We went back to Manou’s via Victoria markets (which were closing unfortunately) and had our first stint of little big planet on Rich’s PS3! It is a very awesome game.
To say thank you for letting us stay we made pizza for Manou and Rich and then proceeded to get a little drunken.
The next day (much to Manou’s horror!) we didn’t do any tourist things we just got up at midday again and played little big planet until 4 o clock! Well, we figured we deserved it seen as we’d been camping for a month and Gareth was showing some signs of computer game withdrawal! And, like I said before, it is an awesome game!
We then went to meet Manou from work and she showed us the sights of Melbourne including Federation square.
We ticked this off the list Ang!
We managed to squeeze in a few beers during our little tour because it’s thirsty work sight seeing and we ended up in a very nice bar where the waitress offered to make us any cocktail we wanted so Manou ended up with a lavender Martini, I had a whisky sour and Rich ordered a Mohito with a twist! When it came to Gareth’s turn he politely asked if they served ‘brown booze’! He ordered 2 brown booze’s to drink while we had our fancy cocktails and everyone was happy.
We then stumbled on to a Chinese restaurant for some dinner and trammed it home again.
Saturday 10th October 2009
Manou had a driving theory hazard test today which she passed (well done Manou) but she had a little trouble getting over the fact that she’d passed. We met her for a coffee in Crawley afterwards (I have got all grown up and now drink coffee like everyone else! Have developed quite a taste for it actually!!)
Gareth had to do a little stop in KFC on the way because of all the chilli’s he’d eaten in the Chinese! We then walked to Fitzroy for lunch, and met up with Rich and drove out to Phillip island to spot some penguins and have fish and chips and ice cream at the beach!!
It got off to a bad start when Manou was a bit upset to learn that penguins don’t grow very big and that her lifetime dream of hugging a `Manou sized pinguin’ waasn’t going to happen without a fair amount of genetic fiddling, or Manou shrinking!
But things started to look up when we headed out to the viewing platform and the little penguins started to pop up out of the sea and waddle up the beach towards us. It was pretty cold but well worth it because the penguins were so cute! Gareth tried some espionage photography from up his sleeve as you weren’t allowed to take pictures. See results! This is probably why he isn’t a spy.
So here's one ripped from the website to show you what they actually look like
Sunday 11th October 2009
Today was a big day because we were invited to our first Aussie BBQ, it was Manou’s first as well so the excitement level was pretty high. Spent the morning doing laundry and trimming Gareth so he’d be almost presentable!
Then Gareth and Rich bonded over computer games while Manou and Alice played housewife and made a lovely dark chocolate and pear cake!
It was definitely dark chocolate and definitely not burnt!
Which Gareth then tried to take the credit for…
And a potato salad. The BBQ was just as good if not better than expected thanks to Ed and Vanessa’s impeccable hosting skills and, of course, mine and Manou’s wonderful cake.
Gareth reading geek magazine at the height of the party
We then went back to Manou’s and found out the wonderful news that Esther is pregnant so Alice and Gareth will be auntie / uncles again in mid April, lets hope the baby can hold on just a bit longer than due date and steal Gareth’s 30th birthday thunder!! Gareth had had a few beers and responded to Est and Ade’s good news with some good news of his own and that was that he’d come 8th in pacific rift on the PS3. Personally I think Est and Ade's news is better but each to their own.
END OF BLOG
8 comments:
So much to comment on and so little time!
First - did you figure out Josh's anagram in the last post?
I can't tell which bit of the wombat is it's face and which is it's @ss! Also, Mah, getting bitten by a potentially lethal (apparently) tic? Nearly getting run over by a tram? That is not being careful in my book - no, being careful would be not nearly getting run over by a tram and not getting bitten by anything.
Manou - I also thought that penguins were man-sized, I know how it feels to discover the bitter truth.
xxxxx
Also, I appreciated the photograph of the tic.
xx
So did I but I'm glad you added a scale version; it looked as big as the wombat!! Hope you don't think I'm speaking out of turn but you do seem to be sharing your bed with some strange creatures on this trip hon. Don't forget I'm always around if you need some advice, just cross your eyes, stare into your coffee cup and incant .... "in the name of Frog the Frogfer, Frog the Hun, and Frog the Holy Toes." Just see if I don't appear! FFM xx
Vic was massive! I can't wait to meet him when you guys get back. I can't believe you waited until morning...
Ha ha Roz, the wombats head is on the left and at least I was careful enough not to have a tram stuck in my @ss coz that would have been very careless!
Mum I tried the incantation and all that happened was that I got kicked out of the internet cafe! but I was allowed to keep the coffee, thank god.
Didn't get Josh's anagram, what was it?
Mum?? She's in cloud cuckoo land not bog frog mother land. Honestly! Reason the incantation didn't work is, of course, because you can't stare with cross eyes. Should have said, cross your eyes and SQUINNY into your coffee cup. Silly me. Try giving it another go and send some photographic evidence. If that doesn't work I'll have to go back to Stare 1 ["1st Book of Stares" Froggirl et al. 16521/2 now with fully removed appendix]. xxx
Nan says this blogs a load of rubbish and pete agreed. They like Ali's bit but want to know whether gareth had any proper English teachers?!
p.s. Nan says thanks for the card. Anna wants to know if you want to go on the Poppy puppy sweep stake. A bit like guessing how many sweeties in the jar.
p.p.s Pete's the adjudicator so you don't stand a chance of winning.
Welcome to the blog Bitteswell flock! It's doubtful whether Gareth ever had any proper English teaching at all but is fluent in mandarin and tells you all to chi bii!
We think Poppy will produce 6 puppies and they'll all be really good at angering Staffies on cricket grounds.
Gareth says he wants a monkey on poppy having a pony, so if Pete can sort that out we'll join in.
Love to you all and Nan.
xx
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