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!

Al's Adventure: Part Four

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 Four

I've been here a month already. Four bloody weeks. It feels like only yesterday my friends were forcing a line of shots down me while I tried to say I had too much packing to do to get that drunk. Anyway, this week had a bit less train travel and a bit more city-hopping.

My first evening in Seattle was spent at the airport, learning that Jonny's luggage had probably been stolen. We were so keen to get to the pub that we pretty much brushed it off as 'one of those things' but, looking back, it's not that great. He had his best clothes in there, apparently, and now they're gone due to Seattle airport's publicly-accessible baggage carousels. The tossers.

So then, Pike Place Market. It's the big crazy market near the waterfront of Seattle - Stephen Fry went there in his documentary about the U.S., it's so famous - and our hostel happened to be over the road. You could buy all sorts there: peanut butter and jelly bagels, comic books, supposedly original TV scripts for shows like Doctor Who and Firefly, leather-bound journals (of which Jonny bought one), artwork, and a hell of a lot of fish. The fishmongers seemed to love their job, as every few minutes they shouted "we got another tip!" and cheered. We wandered over to the Space Needle, Seattle's most famous building, but decided not to pay the $22 to go up as it was pretty cloudy. Instead, we ate lunch in a renovated armoury and then wandered round the Pacific Science Centre - a cool museum containing things like robotic dinosaurs, laser shows, a butterfly house, and a colony of naked mole rats blindly climbing on top of each other.

After getting a beer buzz on at the Cheesecake Factory downtown, we had some free spaghetti at the hostel and then set out on a pub crawl. The second bar was full of transvestites, and I got hit on by a bloke called Ernesto whose brother is apparently running for mayor of Miami. Other highlights included an underground bar believed to be the last place Kurt Cobain was seen in public, which had a big projector showing videos of monkeys riding sheepdogs which were herding sheep; me and Jonny got to bust out our signature dance move in a dance club whilst incredibly drunk (it involves miming rope); and on the walk home, the hostel guide played music from his backpack, so we just danced home through the streets of Seattle like idiots to the Cha Cha Slide.

After seeing the quirkier parts of Seattle, including a giant troll under a bridge, and an underground tour of the old city, we caught the bus northward for a spontaneous trip to Vancouver (mainly because we couldn't find accommodation in Oregon for the weekend). It turns out this was a great decision. Vancouver is awesome, especially if you like your cities merged with forests, lakes and mountains. Arriving in the evening, we walked down by the harbour and into the first casino we saw - where we drank whisky and gambled some of Jonny's money away at the blackjack and roulette tables. On our way home, we dropped in to a noisy pub to sit at the bar, drink a pitcher of beer, and watch ice hockey like true Canadians. We got chatting to folk sat near us, and ended the night walking through the city centre rammed with thousands of hockey fans, while our new friend Melissa told us the best sights in the city to visit and shared some of the local plant life with us. Sorry Mum.

The next day we took a ferry and a bus to a big old gorge just next to the city (one of Vancouver's suburbs is actually built around it, it's amazing) and crossed a suspension bridge that just kept on swinging over the river. As the rain came in, we rented bikes and those really embarrassing waterproof ponchos and went cycling round the sea wall of Stanley Park - 7km of lighthouses, boats, forests and beaches. We stopped off at a restaurant for a drink and the concierge asked if he could take our coats, but I didn't want to hand over my poncho in such a fancy place so I just stuffed it in my bike helmet and sat by the fire. And so ended my brief stay in Canada.

Another bus ride later (and another scary trip through customs) and we reached Portland, Oregon, known for being a weird, kooky city. There's not much to say about this place that'll blow your minds, it's just full of young people with beards and moustaches, and parks filled with stretchy folks doing gymnastics during the day instead of working. Me and John, as he likes to introduce himself here, drank lots of local ales, ate lots of Cajun tatertots and wandered around the massive late night book shops Portland has. We even caught a book-reading by a semi-famous author whose book has become a big show in America (Resurrection, for those interested). After a failed attempt at renting a car with a girl named Maria we met at the hostel to visit a local national park, we proceeded to drink more beer and watch Gone Girl at the vintage cinema near our hostel. We must have done something right, because our waiter gave us free tickets and the cinema had alcohol and reclining chairs. The film, however, is totally messed up and weird, which didn't mellow us out as much. Still good, though.

The three of us decided to road trip it to California, so that's what comes next week, folks.

Al's Adventure: Part Three

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 Three

Let's start with the big stuff, three words: Stephen King's house. He lives in Bangor, Maine, and we sat in the car outside his house at night like the creepy stalkers we are. I also took part in an American pub quiz, which they just call 'trivia' here, and lost pretty badly due to our lack of knowledge of American high school sports teams; I got lost in the forest on the University of Maine's campus like a true tourist; I got questioned by a jogger while I sat on a bench, as she apparently likes to check on the mental health of young people on their own (in case I'm contemplating crazy gun stuff, I guess); I tried fried dough covered in syrup and powdered sugar -delicious; and I had margaritas with Jack and Jess before heading back to Boston. I can't thank them enough for their hospitality, and I'll miss their dogs.

Back in Boston I visited the New England Aquarium, where I may have insulted the staff by saying one of the turtles looked sad. "Nope, just old and tired. We DO look after them," was pretty much her response. My ferry trip to Salem to learn about witch burning was cancelled due to stormy seas, so I went out to Fort Warren instead. It's basically a fortress built on a Boston harbour island to defend against the British and such, but the technological advancements in military vehicles made the place pretty much obsolete as soon as it was built. My tour around the place was just me and old people, and the guide took us into this pitch black hall to 'have fun with the acoustics'. What followed was all of us singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' in the dark, and this old bloke broke out into some song from the 1920s and we all listened as it echoed creepily. Weird.

I'll tell you though, it was nice sitting on this island, admiring the view of Boston from afar.

That night, my good friend Jonny arrived at the airport to join me on the remaining leg of my USA journey. The flight company lost his luggage, so we headed to Urban Outfitters to buy him new clothes until his bag caught up with us. We had dinner in Quincy Market, and a beer in the bar from Cheers (where everybody knows your name) to cope with the loss.

The next day things really started to go tits up. We boarded our train to Chicago, knowing we were in for a 21 hour long journey. I'd been told the fields of Ohio and Indiana we're going to be dull, but THAT dull? Oh god. The bit of the journey I wanted to see - Niagara Falls - was in total darkness when we passed, so that wasn't cool. Anyway, this is the slowest train I have ever been on. We were meant to arrive in Chicago at 9:45 this morning, it's currently 18:10 and we're still not there. That's over eight hours late, due to frigging freight trains hogging the tracks. Our train is like a polite person, letting all the big freight trains go past; we've spent more time stationary than we have moving. If I didn't have Jonny with me I'd be a lot more insane right now. Although he keeps singing lines from Frozen, and the conductor is pretty much ready to quit his job. They've told us they'll put us up in a hotel in Chicago seeing as we missed our connection to Seattle a long time ago, so that could be good. I feel like I've dragged Jonny out here, only to get him stranded in the arse-end of Indiana. Ah well, we're staying positive. We even wrote a poem to battle through the boredom. An actual poem, don't ask why.

This wouldn't happen in Britain. I'm sorry for all the times I doubted you, National Rail.

Okay, here we are, two days later. We're on another train, out in the plains of North Dakota, waiting for freight trains again. Amtrak is just bad in general, it seems. Our night in Chicago was needed, after a total delay of 11 hours; the hotel was swanky (even though it was in the dreaded South side of town) and we ordered takeaway sandwiches to eat in the room like kings. We had one day to wander round the city, admiring the amazing city centre, the impressive architecture of the buildings, and ride the ferris wheel down on the pier. I was gutted that the floating interactive zombie haunted house was closed, as I would have definitely dragged Jonny onto it. Chicago seems like a cool city, and it's sad we couldn't spend more time there, as the waffles and pancakes we ate were fantastic.

The current train is full of characters: like the sweaty fat biker who walks past every few minutes to choke us on his BO, and the cowboy with his red neckerchief and leather boots who's lost his disposable camera, or the young Amish guys with bowl haircuts. If we become stranded, it'd make a hell of TV drama as we all struggle to cooperate and survive. Plenty of fatties here to cook and eat if things do turn to cannibalism, though. We're going to take a break from eating crisps and trail mix, by having overpriced dinner in the dining cart later on. Jonny hates poor people too, so here's hoping it gives us a break from the riffraff. Anyway, this wonderful train service doesn't offer wifi, even though the journey is 48 hours long, so I'll post this when I get to Seattle.

Next week, Washington and Oregon. Stay tuned.

Al's Adventure: Part Two

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 Two

It's been a busy second week. Travelling up from DC to New Haven, Connecticut, I had to walk through the centre of New York City. A pretty daunting task for a guy on his own with a big old backpack on a hot day. However, it also happened to be the day of the largest climate change march in history; thousands and thousands of eco-warriors stormed through the streets, demanding a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This, combined with the closure of the one subway line I needed to take, made my journey to Grand Central Station a tough one - but still, good on the folks marching. You could tell the rest of the city was thinking "why the hell are these smelly hippies clogging up the roads?" though.

I made it to New Haven eventually, a name that conjures up an idyllic New England town. However, when my friend Louisa picked me up from the station, I was told that this part of town has recently seen muggings at both knifepoint and gunpoint - oh boy! Clinging my belongings to me, we headed to the safer part of town, where I was treated with a proper sit down meal, the Great British Bakeoff, and wine. That's what I'm talking about.

Over the next few days I felt like a student of Yale as I followed Louisa to classes, employment seminars, and study sessions. As a neuroscience graduate, I was interested in going to her neuroeconomics lecture, led by a Nobel prize winner nonetheless. He put so much emphasis on all this neuroscience he claimed to barely understand, yet when it came to the economics stuff he just skipped past it. Strange. I enjoyed the neuroscience, but I don't think all the management students did. Nothin' wrong with some synapse talk at 8:30am, y'know?

A special highlight of my time in Yale was watching Netflix in the School of Law, while everybody else studied like suckers. They never guessed that I was an imposter, feeding off their internet, and claiming the free pizza offered at the end of an employment talk. I ended my time at Yale by being taken to Pepe's Pizza and the drinking raspberry beer at the campus bar - it's a cool place.

The next couple of days I found myself walking the streets of Bahstan, Massachusetts, and what a cool city it is. I learned all about the American Revolution, and JFK's term as president; I explored Harvard campus and got mistaken for a student by some tourists who wanted to photograph me; I walked around Quincy Market to see all the awesome different foods they have, as well as Boston waterfront; most importantly, I ate well. A food truck in the park sold the best veggie wraps I could have asked for, and I got to eat them in a square with a public piano - meaning people would play relaxing jazz music while you sat. Also, I ate Subway, which is always a win.

I spent one night in a fancy Boston apartment block, staying with my university academic dad's wife's brother (complicated, I know). We'd never met, but he informed the doorman to let me into his apartment. Yep, doorman. We ate some pizza, drank some beers, watched some TV, it was cool of the guy to host like that for a stranger from Britain. I finished my first stint in Boston at the opera house, watching the Lion King; I don't think I could have been sat further away, and hearing the American actors try and be British as Scar and Zazu was weird, but it was still pretty damn good.

I finished my week in Maine, in a town called Orono. My academic dad lives there with his wife, doing research and teaching at the university. It's a small town, full of trees and college kids, and they offer beer, pancakes, burgers, hot dogs, pizza -just great stuff that I came to this country for. It was here I went to my first American mall, truck stop and liquor store, all the highlights. These people have never seen a British passport before so they spend 10 minutes checking what countries you've been to when they ID you, because why not I guess.

If you get to go to the Acadia National Park, then do. It's on an island off Maine called Mount Desert Island (who knows.) and it's full of lakes, mountains and forests, meaning I was pretty lucky to visit during Autumn. Dotted around the island are little villages, one of which we visited so I could try Maine lobster. So yeah, I took a break from being vegetarian so I could see my dinner alive minutes before they killed it and I cracked it open and ate its flesh, but it WAS Maine lobster... Don't judge me.

Stay tuned for next time, when I ride a train across the entire country, coast to coast.

~

(I'm judging.
-Alex)

Al's Adventure: Part One

My good friend Al Morgan recently set off on his world travels, and we thought it'd be pretty neat if he became a guest blogger here to tell us all about his adventure. I'll let him introduce himself.

-Alex

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 One

So then, my first week. It's been pretty hectic. I left all my packing until last minute, and I even had my friend Callum take a photo of each unread page of my book the day before I flew so that I could read it on my iPad rather than bring the book with me (he offered, I'm not some slave driver). I met a guy named Hal on the plane, who made the whole 'flying into New York City on my own at night' process a little more bearable by being a decent guy who I could chat nervous ramblings to.

I arrived at the hostel at around midnight local time - so 5am frickin' me time - and got into my bunk, when the guy next to me who I'd introduced myself to offered me some food. How could I say no to late night dunkin donuts on my first night in New York? Me and Jay from South Korea proceeded to eat and chat in the cafe, and thus ended the first night of my world trip.

The following day the hostel ran a 12 hour 'grand tour', led by a local retiree named Jerry. I saw Brooklyn, crossed Brooklyn Bridge, visited Ground Zero, rode the Staten Island Ferry, saw China Town, Little Italy, Grand Central Station, and finally Times Square. It was a long day, I'll tell you that. And Jerry was insane, he sang 'Run Rabbit Run' three times in succession for no reason, and put on an Asian accent whenever he spoke to this one Turkish guy. Also, his motto was "when you looky looky, don't walky walky, or you'll hit something."

In the next few days I walked the length of Central Park twice (TWICE, it's massive!), went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre, had birthday drinks in Greenwich Village with a Brazilian bloke named Rodrigo, met my school friend Jenny for MORE birthday drinks, wandered around some museums etc., but the biggest highlight? Seeing Billy Joel live in the Madison Square Garden. Holy crap, why can't I do that every night? He was the tits, cracking jokes and getting the audience to vote-cheer for different songs. One highlight was him cracking out the electric guitar to play ACDC's Highway to Hell, while some bloke screamed the lyrics before dropping the mic and walking off.

I could talk about Billy for a while, but I won't. I then visited Washington, D.C. for a couple of days. It's a chilled, tidy city, full of free museums and huge monuments dedicated to everything and everyone ever in American history. The holocaust museum was a highlight, very moving. It was pretty damn crowded in there, and I saw a bored lady bust out a few moves to some onscreen Nazi parade music. I don't think she realised what she was getting jiggy to, but it was inappropriately entertaining for a few seconds. Next stop, the even norther-east US.

~

Al is in fact the best.
More coming soon.
-Alex

Melbourne: The First Month

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'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.

Monmouth Manufacturing (pre-furniture)

Lachy with a work by Kaffeine (the street artist)

Melbourne Life, Week One (and a bit)

My new life in the Southern Hemisphere had a bit of a rocky start when I touched down in Melbourne. After eating the much-anticipated avocado on toast and sleeping until a more reasonable hour (10am) I spent the whole of my first day vomiting into a sink, and then retching into a sink, and then trying desperately not to fall asleep while watching Friends and Seinfeld.

On day two I was keeping my food down (well, my popcorn and toast) but still not much was accomplished. I bought a crummy Nokia phone which I put my UK sim card in for emergencies, and stuck an Aussie sim in my older (but comparably better) phone. Lachy and I went to take a look at the flat we were going to be living in and gaped at the space we had no furniture to fill.

On Saturday we went to Ikea and bought a chair. That chair is currently sitting in the centre of a very empty-looking living area. We bought two desk chairs which we don't yet have a drill to assemble and a bedframe which it turns out doesn't fit Australian-sized mattresses, one of which we had already bought. We bought the basics, too, like plates and cutlery and salt and pepper.

Then it becomes sort of a blur of waiting for electricians and phone technicians who never arrived, waiting for post to prove my address and open a bank account, waiting for the mattress to be delivered... Celia came to visit (we went to school together, now she is also engaged to an Australasian and moving to Melbourne, yay team). Our mattress arrived and we started sleeping in the flat and it began to feel like we were actually living there. But only yesterday did it actually feel like we were properly living there, because we got internet, and were connected to the rest of the world again.

Job hunting is a pain, because it's sort of an urgent issue and so far unfruitful. Let's leave it at that. Over the weekend we bought some fresh veg and cheese at the Victoria Market and then spent an hour volunteering with Second Bite, collecting up perishable food from the stallholders who can no longer sell it to pass it on to people who need it. Fun was had all round. I also discovered the local library is around the corner. Books and internet and work spaces. I like it. The State Library is a more impressive version and fun if we're in the city, which is fortuitously only a tram ride away. As a matter of fact we're a short distance from lots of cool things, like my favourite restaurant, Vegie Bar, and a supermarket whose motto is 'eat your ethics'.

The other day on the tram Lachy and I sort of got trapped in this group of British travellers with dreadlocks and posh accents and it was a bit of an Inbetweeners 2 situation. They were talking about getting married to Aussies in order to get a visa and I wanted to laugh and shout at them because doing three months of farm work to get a second working holiday visa would be infinitely easier than trying to provide evidence of a phoney relationship and also marriage visas are expensive and they were just so dumb and I felt unusually hostile towards my countrymen. But we weren't actually in their conversation, just surrounded by it, so I kept zipped.

On a brighter note, this morning I set out at 6am to a nearby dance studio, which is in an attic, and did some barre fitness looking out over the rooftops of Fitzroy while the sun rose. It was a pretty damn cool way to start the day and I'm feeling hopeful. Melbourne is a very cool city and I think we are going to love living here.

Coming soon: pictures.