KI! 8th – 10th May

Very kindly John dropped me off at the bus stop in Glenelg. I’d booked my tour with a company called Groovy Grape (www.coralseaecojetsafari.com.au), think it was around $250 or something which included all food, ferry crossing, pick up, etc etc. Was a good way to do it. The tour guide was fine, a Kiwi guy who’d been doing it for years and seemed to know most of his stuff, and seemed to care about the keeping it Eco part of it and all that. Was a backpacker tour, so 4 other Scottish girls (Katy, Louise and Amy) were on it and a guy called Scott who normally worked in the office, think he was the son of the guy who owns the company just coming along to check out what the tour does. From Glenelg it was quite a treck, about two hours, and the tour guide, Simon, stopped us off at one of his favourite bakeries on the way…rather awkwardly I did my best to avoid the full on gluten on display as lovely as it all looked, particularly as I’d marked myself down as trying to avoid wheat on the tour…as Willow says, Bread, just say No! To keep it cheap the tour drives a bus to the ferry and then transports all the stuff on to a car the ferry company drives on to the ferry…then we pick up another car on the other side, a bit of a rigmarole, but still, saved around $100 on the ticket price apparently. Once on Kangaroo Island, in some lovely sunshine I might add, we went
along red unsealed roads to Prospect Hill…it was quite a treck up, several hundred wooden steps, the view was pretty impressive, almost worth it! Apparently Matthew Flinders climbed this hill in 1802 trying to get his bearings, it moiders about this at the top…I remember it saying something about likening him to backpackers…

Anyway, after that we drove through the Flinders National Park, stopping at one point to see where the fires in 2009 nearly burnt the whole Island, moving at 60mph across the Island apparently – the tour guide tride on the roads to get up that fast to demonstrate at one point, but due to the bendy unsealed roads couldn’t quite get there! Then, the wind took a turn and the fire burnt back across itself. Apparently around 9000 koalas get burnt in that fire…the population is doing OK though, there’s still 21000 of them…nearly 20999 on the evening as it was crawling along the road to get to the other side and we nearly squished it. Apparently at night when loads of the wildlife comes out, you’ve get a better chance of not hitting things if you keep up your speed…makes for an interesting swervy sort of journey! It was someone else who told me the keep up the speed thing, not the tour guide…Then after viewing the fire damage we went and prepared our lunch on one of the cool bbqs they have around in Australia – you just turn up and there’s gas and you cook your food and there’s picnic tables, you just bring the food and the stuff to prepare the food, I think it’s sooooo cool, they do it in parks and things, and it’s obviously quite a good community thing as well. We also drank rainwater there, apparently that’s fine…and it seemed to be as well...no after effects.
Then we went to, I don’t know where…I wish I’d had a map with me so I could get my bearings as the tour guide drove us around…but anyway, we saw lots of seals, and they were cool, we saw some fighting too which was kinda fun…it was very blustery and cold, so I’m glad I had scarves and hats and long trousers…the crazy Scottish girls were all wearing short shorts…they were under 30 though ;-) Here’s a map of the Island if you’re interested…www.flipflopflap.com.au/images/kimap.pdf. After sighting the seals we drove off to

‘The Remarkables. They were just rocks, but they looked cool…and I got some nice photos there as the sun started to head down…we then did a little walk near The Remarkables in the hope of catching a decent sunset, but there was too many clouds. At 6pm in the dark we headed off to our home for the night in the middle of the island. It was at the end of a very big field, a broken down little house with bunk beds…with bat poo all over them…so somewhat reluctantly I was reasonably keen to sleep in Swag bags outdoors as suggested…if people do this thing all the time, it must be OK, right?
As a cautionary measure I decided to leave my contact lenses in to sleep in, so I could at least wake up to see the Kangaroo punch me in the nose, or whatever…We cooked dinner and had a campfire with marshmallows and I drunk Bundaberg, yay! If you go visit in the height of the season here you can’t light fires, sometimes even light barbeques outside in case they initiate a bush fire! Oh yep, where we stayed, there were like hundreds of kangaroos and wallabies, it was pretty cool, and we had a possum who was very interested in what we were up to as well. Sleeping in the swag bag was pretty cool, we saw all the amazing stars with barely any light pollution and the milky way, incredibly! It got pretty dewy, so the only issue was that I couldn’t really move my head from the original spot as it’d get soaked!

On the Sunday morning, we were awoken bright and early by the tour guide with a hot chocolate and then pancakes (gluten free I might add!) what a fab breakfast…think it was 7am? This was part of the whole plan, but apparently also he’d had to move his swag bag away from our little gang due to my ‘purring’ all night…I had to teach him this phrase as it’s rude to suggest that girls do anything as vulgar as snoring.
In the early morning dewy sunshine we headed off to go sandboarding…not sure it was full on sandboarding really, but we had boards and lay on our tummys down a hill, it was pretty cool, once you could get the board moving and the impressive dunes were, well, impressive too! After that we headed off to a Sea Lion spot on the Island, you had to pay to enter (part of the package) and were guided by a Ranger (with the silly hat and everything! ).

Apparently the sea lions had been known to run up after tourists, so we were a bit cautious as we headed down to see them…two of the girls were too scared and stayed unreasonably far back. Those sea lions can move pretty fast though considering their daft legs. Apparently we were witnessing them just before the female sea lions birth day…female sea lions carry their foetus around for 18 months! Then they have nine days off and are impregnated again and have to take care of the new one and carry another around for 18 months…mental. Oh yep, in the morning on the bus as well we had to grind the van to a holt as a wedge tailed Eagle swooped in front of us (or a Wedgy as the tour guide called it!). In the early afternoon we went to a Eucalyptus distillery, a bit touristy, and they had a thing about Emu oil, apparently good for eczema…not noticed any significant effects so far…for lunch we went to a beach that the tour guide really liked, you had to work through rocks to get to it, was pretty cool, and nicely empty, so we lay in the sunshine for quite a while – this time of year sunblock doesn’t seem so necessary weirdly, quite odd considering when I arrived you’d burn in 5 minutes! Then we headed back and caught an amazing coloured sunset.

I stayed at the Sebel Playford in Adelaide that evening…quite a step up from a swag bag…still, both experiences were pretty good! I spent a couple of hours using their gym and pool (practicing my new stroke techniques and swiss ball exercises) which was lovely and relaxing – had the whole place to myself.

Happy Valley

So, Thursday the 6th of May was a busy day...you can't do all this stuff I keep on doing AND keep up to date with this blog!! ...there was silly amounts going on at work trying to meet various deadlines, then at the end of the day at 5.30 I had my swim stroke correction class, as I hadn’t done any practice during the week I hadn’t really progressed and kept nearly drowning myself…weird when I do know how to swim and have done since I was rather tiny…but these new techniques involve gliding through the water more rather than moving me arms about constantly, and that seems to make me drown. Yep, then Di picked me up and I went to Megan’s birthday dinner (Megan is the person who’s role I’m covering here) at a cool place called Chin Chin at Koto Moon: www.chinchins.com.au/main.html - really good food actually and not too expensive either. I had some tasty Nasi Goreng noodles. Then I had to leave the gathering a little early to go back and make a teleconference (Managing Editor Executive), good productive meeting and I’m glad I got back for it…but then after that I had to finish off packing for the next day…which meant not going to bed till late and then getting up at some silly hour in the morning to get a taxi to get me to the airport for a 9am flight.


I was met by my Oxford work’s Statistician with a sign that said ‘Jessica T’. Fun! He took me back to his house in the Happy Valley where I met his two extremely fluffy dogs called Chow Min and Caramel Lion, quite sweet they were. Then we went to Hardy’s winery at Chateau Reynella. Apparently the site of the oldest winery in South Wales…however, a few years ago, real estate became more important so they knocked down the old vines and sold of some of their land…buying up land in less prime locations to continue to produce wines I’m guessing…odd. I didn’t want to taste too many, being drunk in the late morning with our Statistician who was retiring who I’d not met before didn’t seem like a sensible plan. We bought our dinner in the form of a pasty from a sweet bakery: Old Reynella Town, 211 South Road, Old Reynella. Cute family business and Norm Crittenden who runs it was very sweet and friendly. After lunch we went to Clelland Wildlife Park. Saw some cute animals. You can buy a bag of food for the animals as you enter which gets you quite a bit more attention. I gotta stroke a Koala which was cool.

At one point it heard a noise it didn’t like and turned itself in to a statue just staring in the direction of the noise it wasn’t keen on. We also met some kangaroos and Wallabies and some cheeky ducks, including a very cheeky one who bit my finger trying to fight to get some of the food I had. I also liked the Wombats and the Tasmanian Devils. Nice little park anyway. In the evening I took our Statistician and his wife out for dinner as a thank you for having worked for the group for nearly 10 years, unpaid! We’re now seeking more Statistics help…let me know if you know anyone…The restaurant we went to was called Candles, again in the Happy Valley. It was allright, but very country feel and big food but not necessarily amazing tasty food.

Anzac day and beyond

In lieu of Anzac day, Monday the 26th of April was a public holiday. Michelle and I cycled to Brighton beach, about 10kms in the breezy sunshine, if we stopped too long we got cold which encouraged us to go faster! The beach here was a lot nicer than St Kilda’s beach, proper sand here. They have cute little painted beach huts, which is the tourist reason for coming here, but the beach itself is quite pleasant, worth remembering – despite the treck to get there…think you can get there by train/tram/walking too…Then in the evening Michelle and I went to Birdman eating on Gertrude street, had pretty nice tapas (e.g. scallops with apple sauce and pancetta, and chicken breast with Jerusalem artichoke puree and halloumi and carrot salad) and admired the weird décor of Barbie dolls with wings hanging on strings.

Started my belly dancing classes this week along with Di, was good fun, also went back to Di’s for dinner and met her husband and three adorable kids. A sweet evening. This week saw Igor Stravinsky and Coco Channel in the cinema, kinda nice film in terms of being very stylish, but a bit really about them just having sex everywhere whilst his wife and kids lived with them. Before going to the cinema I went to a nearby place called Ember lounge (www.emberlounge.com.au/index/home) to get some din. They said should be easy to get pizza in 40 mins, then they forgot about me. When I brought it up, in a bit of a moany British way, the chef managed to convince me he could cook my gluten free pizza in 3 minutes…which he did and it was a good pizza too…then they refunded me…and cheered me up by being very jolly about it all…will be going back! Had my first swimming stroke correction lesson – I’m an all right swimmer but I thought it might be fun to learn to perfect my stroke technique. The teacher suggested loads in half an hour…I’ve kinda gotta change my whole swimming style! Also had yoga class on my own the same day…my bottom was killing by the end of the day from all the swimming and yoga stretching! On my Friday off I spent the whole day planning my trip next weekend to Kangaroo Island near Adelaide where I will be going off to visit my Statistician for my Oxford job. In the evening I went to meet Michelle and some other work-related colleagues at Loop (www.looponline.com.au/bar.html) in the city. Was quite a dark venue, but very popular too and quite cool with cocktails. Met one work colleague I’d written to for several months but never met which was fun. Ended up also in Comme Kitchen (www.comme.com.au), big bright white high ceilinged venue, it did food as well. Had various Australian terminology explained to us including the term ‘Bogan’…went to a venue called New Gold mountain (www.newgoldmountain.org), quite green, then further on to the upstairs venue in the same building which was very red.

At the end of the evening Veronica, who I’d met properly first of all at Auckland, invited me back to hers in the outer part of the city, so taxid it back and her and I stayed up talking until very late in the morning. Then Saturday morning she had to be up at 9am and off to Doncaster shopping centre…I decided to come and have a look at the shopping centre too, very fancy place with a good food mall and comfy luxurious looking sofas throughout the place. Got a taxi home as navigating via buses seemed too complicated. That evening went with Michelle and Kate (who’d been witnessing several hundred/thousand people in the city dressed up as Zombies!) to an Ice Hockey game of Melbourne versus Sydney…was kinda fun

…then we went for food in a £12 buffet Chinese, it didn’t feel like the most hygienic of places, it was a bit odd…don’t remember the name, but would quite happily avoid! We also went to 24 moons which is quite a cool venue, down a dark alley somewhere in the city: www.24moons.com.au - then we tried to find two venues from the Lonely Planet guide, one of which no longer existed and the other which had been knocked down (‘Shit Town’ the latter was called!), walked in and walked out just to take a look at ‘Sister Bella’ and that seemed quite cool.

On Sunday Kate and I took a Met train out to Belgrave. Whilst waiting for Kate I witnessed these cool piano steps here I’m guessing due to the Jazz festival being on, they played as you walked up and down the steps! The train ride between the city and Belgrave was not too exciting. BUT then! We saw Puffing Billy steam train! An old style train which cost a monstrous $35 for an adult, but there didn’t appear to be much else to do so we gave it a go.

It was quite lovely chugging along at 15Ks an hour and back again staring up at the Eucalyptus trees or down in to the valley. Sometimes if you’re lucky apparently you may see snow about…none sighted. We saw moor hens with blue tummys though and a Kookaburra! When we got back to the city we met Michelle at Movida for tapas and moider, I liked the food, but it was a bit on the pricey side, but the venue was next to all the cool graffiti, loads and loads of it, and the artists got so carried away they even painted the bins! We then wandered up and down the river and introduced Michelle to the delights of Trampoline ice cream. We also came across another fancy music thing near Federation Square in honour of the Jazz festival, lots of lit up balls dancing to the music - quite mesmerising.  Dancing balls for Melbourne Jazz festival. Dancing balls: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnsjAhu-oAA

After that we went to meet Gabby at the Carlton Hotel (the one with the stuffed Ostrich and Giraffe) for beer where she was drinking with two of her friends. A bit of a late Sunday night for me, very nice weekend though, really enjoyed it.

Monday and Tuesday have been OK. Monday I learnt to do the Round House Kick at Kick Boxing, very cool although obviously I'm no pro yet! It's really proper exhausting that class and he made us do press ups on our knuckles too. For the first time in ages on Monday I cooked for myself, rather proud, despite it being a basic pasta sauce! Did the same on Tuesday...if I'm not careful I'll get myself a reputation for aaaaaaaaalways cooking at home. Tuesday had belly dancing which also was pretty labour intensive, got to play with a scarf and a cane as part of the various shifts she showed us! Not much excitement I shouldn't think for the rest of the week but next weekend Kangaroo Island and sand boarding!???

April 19th to Anzac day

I feel a little like I’m writing this so back-datedly that it’s just stating a load of random activities I did with no real purpose, if you see what I mean…difficult to put your heart and soul and all your enthusiasm in to something you did three weeks ago…but I’ll give it a go.

SOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo, gosh I’m still loving Melbourne, it’s so good, you should all move out here, NOW. I promise you you’ll love it too!

Had the morning off on the Monday to account for working on one of my Fridays recently. Went and put a picture to be framed in (my favourite) Westgarth: Northcote Picture Framing, for my Oxford job’s Statistician who I’m going to go visit in Adelaide in a few weeks. Also should mention, I think I did a little already, but Westgarth where I park up my bike is brill, it’s got the lovely cinema, but also has The Fruit pedallers selling hippy middle class healthy food http://fruitpedallersonline.com, as well as this they have Sacs which is an entirely gluten free shop so I’ve been buying some tasty lunch from there too sometimes. My boss went to Rome during the Volcanic Ash disruption for a meeting there…she was travelling the furthest and was the only one that made it there…so the meeting was cancelled and replaced by a teleconference. On the Tuesday this week sadly I had my last Pilates class, booo. I love the Pilates class it’s so good and all the crics and cracs in me body seem to disperse…boo, hoping she may set up another class on Thursdays and I’ll drop the good, but slightly weird and creepy yoga. The first week of the class was just Di and I from work who are going to these lunchtime classes (yoga and Pilates…soon to be belly dancing and Pilates hopefully…). The teacher showed us both how to do breathing lieing on the ground feeling our breath (for breath read breast) as it moves up and down through our body…was very odd having a display of that, less embarrassing doing it yourself, at least your eyes were encouraged to be closed too. The Wednesday of this week I went to the Podiatrist students again, and they said yes there was a large lump in my foot and recommended that surgery was probably the most effective way to get rid. So booked in to a Surgeon to discuss my options on the 13^th of May. 

In the eve I went to meet up with Jessica Fox. She’s one of my friend Miss Walmsley’s friends from school who lives out here, and has the surname I’ve always wanted…am going to figure out some way of doing an identity swop without her noticing as sadly she seems to like her surname (understandably I guess, it’s ace)…Anyway, we met at a Tears for Fears and Spandau Ballet concert at the Rod Laver Arena. I don’t know how many people were there to celebrate Jessica’s birthday, but there was several thousand, not sure they all knew it was her birthday as they forgot to sing, but still, that’s why they were there. Tears for Fears were cool, though I was late so sadly missed Mad World which I’m gutted about. Spandau Ballet were impressive performers, but I guess I’m not quite so excited about their music. Was lovely to meet Jessica and hopefully get another fun contact in the city. This Thursday, the 22^nd. My Step Mum, Sheena, had wanted to buy me a Christmas present of some activity or meal or something to do in Melbourne and she came across this cocktail tour: http://hiddenbarsofmelbourne.com.au/ it cost £35 a head which is not bad considering it included two cocktails and some food in one of the five bars. We met the tour by three brass men. 

Kate came along (Sheena got me two tickets so I could bring a friend!) and we were both reasonably sceptical, thinking we would get taken to bars that we’d been to before. But we hadn’t been to any of them…we also made some friends along the way, although the end of the night did involve us running away as it just seemed like the right time to do it…The bars we went to are as follows: Campari Red/Campari House – roof top bar with fancy painted stairwell all the way up and restaurant downstairs www.camparihouse.com.au/, fake grass and we had a ‘South side’: Mojito with gin pretty much. Then we went to Penny Blue, my favourite of the five I think, had loads of fancy beers and lovely cocktails and lush velvet surroundings: www.pennyblue.com.au/images.html. Then on to The Carlton Hotel which was very cool with a first floor bar with and stuffed Ostrich and Giraffe in it, very dark red…also there was the a roof top bar there: www.thecarlton.com.au/. Then on to Cabinet which was well hidden next to loads of bins, it’s funny how many nice looking places have bundles of bins outside them here. Cabinet we were given our second cocktail and a bit of food, this bar was quite small and really hidden away except for their balcony is out on to the street but lots of people would wonder how on earth to find the entrance due to it being out the back by the bins I reckon: www.cabinetbar.com.au/. The final bar was the Canary club - this was really cool, it had a DJ, a small dance floor, again fancy cocktails but upstairs it also had sofa bed style seating so you could lounge around – very cool! After that alcohol-fuelled, Kate and I accidentally came across the Gin Palace, a brief sign above the door down a dark alley had us querying what sort of venue it was, but it turned out to be another lovely velvet place with fancy cocktails and the like, a late crowd we came across there and we made a friend with guy called Nick who directed us to New Gurnica 

which Kate had been to before, where there was a DJ and the décor was very Alice in Wonderland…as I had the Friday off Kate and I decided that we should attempt staying up until the trams started running again…we danced a while and chatted a while…then went to get £2 pizza from the £2 pizza shop…then had a wander down the river, still with our new friend Nick and in to the Casino, which I wasn’t so keen on, so many slot machines, ugh . Then I got tired and decided that Kate and I were going home…only an hour until the trams started again…

Due to the late night I didn’t have a very productive day except at the end of it to find out that Danny’s burgers near me are actually rather good quality burgers! Saturday was a little better…still up late, but I went to pick up my framed picture and met Kate in ‘Traffic’ in Westgarth for an early afternoon breakfast…then we checked out a ‘Garage sale’ of a cool shop called Lupa…then walked in to town and went to the Black Cat, which I really like for some reason on Brunswick street, it’s a bit beaten looking and has old sofas in it, but it’s got a sort of cute homely I wanna make you my local sort of feel. www.melbournepubs.com/venue/908, Michelle then joined us and we all headed to a raw food café (Michelle and Kate had talked about this quite a lot before and I confess not to being very enthusiastic, but with the Thursday night hangover still looming I was still very happy to eat out rather than cook for myself, so I went with it. The place we went was called Yong Green Food on 

Brunswick street. It wasn’t the prettiest of places and we were crammed in a ridiculous table and they didn’t serve us for ages, then when they did it was one meal at a time, so we watched Kate eat her raw food nachos (they dry the crisps even rather than cooking them!) and it was actually really tasty, really, can you imagine!? Then Michelle and Kate watched me eat my Rawsagnia! It was lovely, I think it had thinly sliced courgettes on the top but also involved cashew butter or something like that, really tasty, seriously! Weird! Then we watched Michelle eat her food which I forget now, but I can highly recommend it anyway! They were actually quite apologetic about the slow service and I think knocked a little bit off the bill. Oooh the other thing was that I think I found the bridesmaid dress for Miss Walmsley’s wedding too, fun! That was with Kate’s help.

On Sunday the 25^th I got up after not sleeping very well with two hours sleep for Anzac day, meaning I had to leave the house at 5am. Michelle and I met up in the Botanical gardens and we listened to the very crowded ceremony. We were part of a minutes silence, which was quite incredible with that many people in the dark, and also heard the New Zealand and Australian national anthems. We then both decided that maybe we needed a rest before doing anything else. In the afternoon I met up with the lady Gabrielle and went for a few drinks in Cookie, and then some food too. We then wandered the streets a little and she showed me a cool street with some graffiti and I randomly bought a cool hat…which may get worn at Roland and Lucy’s wedding!