So, I've been here in the great nation of Australia for coming up on four weeks now. This morning, my good friend Katharine asked how it was treating me. I was preparing to say 'amazing, but...' except that once I said 'amazing' I started listing the reasons for the amazing-ness and sort of got sidetracked and forgot the 'but'. I remember it now, so I'll go into that very quickly before moving onto the lighter topics...
I graduated from St Andrews a few months ago which not only means I finished my degree (yay) but rather more importantly, and often forgotten in the excitement of the lead-up, I moved away. Not just from the UK - I can deal with that (I'm not really sorry to be missing post-referendum tension) - but from the friends I'd been living with, day in, day out, for four years. It didn't really dawn on me that I was moving away from them until we were in the taxi on our way out of St Andrews, and it sucks not seeing their faces every day. I was also putting a lot of pressure on myself to find a job immediately, no matter what, but today I had an epiphany when Lachy told a friend that we were here at least three years - three years is a long time. How could I be feeling pressured about three and a half weeks of joblessness?
And on to the amazing parts. You (dear reader) may know that I am something of a country mouse. I studied the Latin text of the country mouse and the city mouse in year nine, and basically the country mouse got really freaked out by the city mouse's dogs and ran away home. Not a great dinner guest.
Yeah, there are a few dogs in Melbourne that freak me out. There are Bulldogs which are basically places I wouldn't want to walk after a certain time at night, which is new. But there are also some really cool dogs like Huskies or Great Danes, and by Huskies and Great Danes I mean the art scene and the apartment... (this is getting complicated). There are a few events every single night I wouldn't mind attending. The Melbourne Fringe is currently taking place. We went to an erotic art exhibition on Friday where people were rolling around naked on the floor throwing glitter over themselves. On Saturday we went to a workshop day at the Victorian College of the Arts about the business end of being a professional arts practitioner, which we left an hour early to attend a performance of a play by Lucy Prebble (The Effect: amazing). In the coming week we're going to the book launch of a street artist we love. It's like all the things I loved about university, but they're going on constantly, and people just organise these events independently and yeah. It's amazing.
I also love our apartment which is bare brick and exposed beams and polished concrete floors and very much like Monmouth Manufacturing is in my brain, if you've read The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (if you haven't, you should. MM is where an eccentric young explorer lives and plots to find a sleeping Welsh king). We have an OFFICE with a WHITEBOARD and a framed print from the comic Saga. How could anyone fail to be creative in an office like this? Also office chairs from Ikea with dodgy wheels that won't move unless you're sitting in them. And I have my framed autograph from Neil Gaimain instructing me 'Dream!' in typical Gaiman style. Plus we were looking after Lachy's brother's dog, who is a Kelpie, an Australian dog that looks like a dark Border Collie, and she made us feel very at home in our apartment.
I graduated from St Andrews a few months ago which not only means I finished my degree (yay) but rather more importantly, and often forgotten in the excitement of the lead-up, I moved away. Not just from the UK - I can deal with that (I'm not really sorry to be missing post-referendum tension) - but from the friends I'd been living with, day in, day out, for four years. It didn't really dawn on me that I was moving away from them until we were in the taxi on our way out of St Andrews, and it sucks not seeing their faces every day. I was also putting a lot of pressure on myself to find a job immediately, no matter what, but today I had an epiphany when Lachy told a friend that we were here at least three years - three years is a long time. How could I be feeling pressured about three and a half weeks of joblessness?
And on to the amazing parts. You (dear reader) may know that I am something of a country mouse. I studied the Latin text of the country mouse and the city mouse in year nine, and basically the country mouse got really freaked out by the city mouse's dogs and ran away home. Not a great dinner guest.
Yeah, there are a few dogs in Melbourne that freak me out. There are Bulldogs which are basically places I wouldn't want to walk after a certain time at night, which is new. But there are also some really cool dogs like Huskies or Great Danes, and by Huskies and Great Danes I mean the art scene and the apartment... (this is getting complicated). There are a few events every single night I wouldn't mind attending. The Melbourne Fringe is currently taking place. We went to an erotic art exhibition on Friday where people were rolling around naked on the floor throwing glitter over themselves. On Saturday we went to a workshop day at the Victorian College of the Arts about the business end of being a professional arts practitioner, which we left an hour early to attend a performance of a play by Lucy Prebble (The Effect: amazing). In the coming week we're going to the book launch of a street artist we love. It's like all the things I loved about university, but they're going on constantly, and people just organise these events independently and yeah. It's amazing.
I also love our apartment which is bare brick and exposed beams and polished concrete floors and very much like Monmouth Manufacturing is in my brain, if you've read The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (if you haven't, you should. MM is where an eccentric young explorer lives and plots to find a sleeping Welsh king). We have an OFFICE with a WHITEBOARD and a framed print from the comic Saga. How could anyone fail to be creative in an office like this? Also office chairs from Ikea with dodgy wheels that won't move unless you're sitting in them. And I have my framed autograph from Neil Gaimain instructing me 'Dream!' in typical Gaiman style. Plus we were looking after Lachy's brother's dog, who is a Kelpie, an Australian dog that looks like a dark Border Collie, and she made us feel very at home in our apartment.
I'm not sure when the next update will be since this is now my life and not so much my travels. But there's plenty of Australia I still have yet to see. I'll no longer be spamming Facebook with these posts, so if you haven't already, click follow by email over there (->) and be my friend. I'll leave you with these two photos. I haven't got my camera out yet! Okay? Okay.
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| Monmouth Manufacturing (pre-furniture) |
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| Lachy with a work by Kaffeine (the street artist) |
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