Al's Adventure: Part Seven

Meet Al

Hi folks, my name's Al. I've taken up residence on Alex's travel blog as I made the decision to spend my inheritance on travelling the world for a few months, and I'll document my exploits from time to time as I go. Sometimes I'll be travelling alone, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just crashing at somebody's flat (cough Alex and Lachy cough) - it's going to be interesting, as I'm not one to often leave my comfort zone. My journey starts with a tour of the US, followed by some time in Fiji, a few weeks in Australia, and ends with a brief stint in New Zealand. Let's do this.

Part Seven

Let's talk about Australia, as I do like visiting the colonies. Alex (whose blog this is) and Lachy (her fiancé/my brother from another mother) met me at the airport, holding a sign with my name on to make me feel special. We drove back to their kickass studio apartment in one of the hippest parts of Melbourne - that's right, I said hippest - where I was given a quick tour before bed.

So the situation was this: I'd hang in Melbourne with these guys for three weeks, and we'd nip out and do all sorts of activities. So I don't bore you all, I'll list the highlights of my stay.

1. We drove down to the coast to stay at Point Lonsdale (Bonus: we had his brother's dog Biv with us). We drove along the Great Ocean Road, threw stones for Biv on the beach, visited the ACTUAL lighthouse from Round the Twist, and made homemade pizzas before watching Doctor Who.

2. We took in some culture in Melbourne. I saw baby penguins being fed at the SeaLife centre, I saw the skin of the famous racing horse Phar Lap and went underneath an indoor forest at the Melbourne Museum, we saw Interstellar at the third largest cinema screen in the world, I went swimming at an open-air local pool, and ate a ton of food from quirky local restaurants (like Trippy Taco and Po Boy. Also Nandos. Although It hasn't reached the dizzying heights of quality like it has in Britain - they don't even do halloumi.)

3. We visited Healesville Animal Sanctuary so I could get my fill of Australian wildlife. Kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, dingos, echidnas, Tasmanian devils, possums, kookaburras, lyre birds, I done seen 'em all. They even have an animal hospital there to look after anything that gets injured in the bush fires. Speaking of which, this country has fire danger levels ranging from low to high to code red. Yep, code red. That's when the whole country just explodes. So yeah, it's taken me this long to realise that wombats and echidnas are two of the greatest animals on earth. Also, dingos are fluffy as hell.

4. We drove up to the Australian Alps (honestly. I'm not lying.) to stay on top of Mt Buller. This was one of the most picturesque places I saw, just endless gumtree-covered mountains stretching off into the distance - and they look blue due to the eucalyptus, little fact for ya there. There's a town of second, or third, homes on the summit, but because we went in the Australian a summer it was a complete ghost town. Very cool. On the peak there's a metal pyramid, where rangers keep an eye out for bush fires (of which you could tell there had been a fair few). While we were here, we took a walk in the humid forest below, following the river, and saw two poisonous snakes and the biggest spider any of us had ever seen. It's like Australia was putting on its best performance for me. We finished off with a balcony barbecue, a dip in the jacuzzi, [Alex note: only Lachy and Al were in the jacuzzi, with beer and nachos.] and the four of us (including Alex and Lachy's friend Tatiana) playing dungeons and dragons. Go team.

5. We went to Equitana, a big horse festival at the Melbourne showgrounds, where we saw all sorts of horseback events -including cutting, where the rider has to separate a cow from a herd and prevent it from rejoining said herd. At one point I found myself at the cowgirl riding school demonstration, and the woman on her horse said "Anyone else a D-cup?" Woahh, hello. Some people put their hands up. "Well I wear two bras, cos these bad boys will knock you out if you're not careful." Then I noticed I was surrounded by women, all murmuring in agreement. It sounds great, but then I realised I was a bit of an outsider - I don't even like horse riding, let alone have breasts.

6. A bit more "culture". We went laser-questing, bowling, served ice cream at a charity event, attended a 'psychadelic' 21st birthday party in fancy dress (two words: free bar), went to an open air cinema by the beach to watch David Bowie in Labyrinth, I saw penguins climbing on the rocks of St Kilda to feed their babies, and I ate vegetarian schnitzel. Oh yes. We also played a feck load of Mario Kart, I'm counting it as culture because I played it with Aussies.

7. One of the weirder things we did was attempt an Escape Room. The idea is you're locked in a room, and you have a time limit to solve the puzzles to escape. When the timer runs out you're just let out, so the only real worry is feeling stupid because you can't solve anything. The theme was called 'endless dream', and we were trapped in this little room full of clocks, locked boxes, a painting of a brain, and some tough-ass puzzles. We asked for like five hints, but we made it out in the end. There's thinking outside of the box and then there's THAT. Still, the five of us left as more cohesive, oiled machine of friendship or something.

8. We visited an old timey town called Sovereign Hill. Who knew Europeans settled in Australia much the same as they did in America, with wild west towns built around gold mining? We panned for gold, tried old-fashioned bowling (you have to set the pins yourself, not worth it mate), took a horse drawn carriage ride, wandered round a gold mine, mimed a shoot-out in the street, drank ginger beer at the saloon, and saw gold being smelted. Interesting fact, the gold bar they use is 19 years old and gets smelted and cooled 10 times a day. Madness. It were a grand day out, I even got one of the old fashioned police blokes to arrest me whilst he told me how sexy ankles were (in character, I hope).

9. Yoghurt, blueberry jam, buttermilk cookie pieces, and protein clusters - that was an ice cream flavour. If there's an ice cream metaphor for Melbourne, it's that. They were both amazing. So there we are. There was plenty of other stuff too, mainly food, drink, films and good times. Oh, and vlogging: I made three guest appearances on Alex and Lachy's book-themed Youtube blog where I pulled a load of book reviews out of my arse on camera. That sounds horrible, I just mean I made them up on the spot.


Saying goodbye to a country where I heard the phrases "far out" and "rad" used in conversation without a hint of irony, I set off to the airport with a taxi driver who asked whether the UK and the US are linked, and if you can drive between them. I had no words. I can't thank Lachy and Alex enough for having me so long, and for sacrificing their privacy for me. I only hope I acted as a catalyst for flipping great times to occur. Final stop: New Zealand.

The Victorian High Country

Over Christmas I spent about a week in the Victorian Alps with Lachy, framed on either side by a night spent in the skiing town of Mt Buller, and filled in the middle with trail riding through the mountains. I haven't got round to writing a blog post about that yet but safe to say it was one of the best adventures of my life.

Anyway, on Friday we drove up there again for a 'mental health weekend', since Lachy's about to start exam revision and I've been stressing about various things I probably don't need to stress about. We set off through Friday-evening-heading-out-of-the-city traffic which wasn't our best idea but soon enough we were driving on open highways, surrounded by grass and gum trees and grazing animals. It was a breath of fresh air. There are many things I love about living in the city (never having to order things off the internet because I can find them on my street, someone qualified to teach me anything I want to know within a short range of my home...) but sometimes that feeling of 'it never stops' can be exhausting.

Darkness fell as we drove past Mansfield and up to the mountain, and the headlights illuminated a kangaroo standing stock-still by the side of the road. It was the first wild kangaroo I'd seen that wasn't dead at the side of the highway, and I was transfixed. Ten minutes later Lachy braked when he spotted a wombat on the verge, and we reversed to get a better look at it. It stood there hyperventilating for a few seconds before sprinting back the way it had come.

The following morning we set off on our 'hike'. Since it was our mental health weekend, we didn't want to push ourselves particularly hard, so we aimed for the summit of Mt Buller. Since Buller is a very popular ski resort in Victoria there are slopes and buildings and ski lifts all the way to the top, but a path took us off around the side of the mountain so we could forget about civilisation for a little while.

As I write this, the next in a series of thunderstorms is passing over us in Melbourne. It has been roaring thunder and end-of-the-world rain all night long. Apparently, this is spring in Victoria. It was 22 degrees and gloriously sunny when we set off up Mt Buller; the chairlifts were stopped and the place was a ghost town. It was the same the last time I visited. When I finally do see the town packed with skiiers in winter it will be a real shock.

I have been becoming increasingly interested in birds, living in the city, since they're the only wildlife I really get to see on a regular basis. We saw a laughing kookaburra perched on a powerline on the drive up, and as we walked to the summit we heard the strange call of a pied currawong, and caught a raven in the process of cracking open an egg (a bird's or a snake's, we aren't sure).

Since we were so high before we'd even set off, the views from the summit were incredible. In the lower picture you can see the white of the trees that had been burned in a bushfire years before - I didn't get a decent picture of it, but there are white trees racing all the way up to the edge of the town of Mt Buller. It's frightening how close the flames must have come to destroying the town.

Mt Buller fire tower and summit

We walked along a bit of a ridge at the summit and Lachy called me over to look at something - a snowdrift. I scrambled down to it and made a snowball. It was 22 degrees - that's British summer! I was pouring sweat and yet here was a big ol' pile of snow, cold to the touch, the real deal.

In the evening we went 'possum hunting' - we took torches and walked out around the mountain a little way, searching the trees for the rare pygmy possum which survives in only a few locations in Australia (and most probably the world). Needless to say we didn't find any, but it was both frightening and exciting to feel like we were the only people on the mountain. (We weren't, quite.)

More adventures coming up soon!