YP's Take White Night

Steve and I had our first day of school last week - we both got called in for our first Australian supply teaching job. And so, at 6.30 am we stood on the curb, waiting for the bus and had a friend snap this pic of us, just like Mum used to do on all of the “first days” that came before this one. Only this time, we weren’t kindergarteners who dressed themselves in all of their favourite colours and who had bows in their hair and sticky remnants from breakfast smeared on their cheeks. Oh no, this time – we were prepared.

With briefcases shouldered, we looked every bit of the Young Professionals (YP’s) we were aiming to be. Every detail, down to the eco-friendly travel mug, was in place as we hopped on the public transit to play teacher for the day.  It ended up being a smashing success and I feel as if our teaching career in Australia is starting to gain momentum. We have high hopes that it begins snowballing into a frenzy so we can afford to do all of the wonderfully touristy stuff we want to do down here – and of course, buy all you guys at home lots of souvenirs!

After reintroducing ourselves to the working world again, the weekend delivered some time for the -tions!  (Namely: celebration, relaxation and restoration). Melbourne had planned White Night – a festival of sorts that ran from 7pm – 7am. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that it’s in the family of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, among other cities worldwide that host a similar fête.

It was a party of mass proportions. Think; house party with no walls and everyone in the world is invited. Streets in the CBD were cordoned off, bands were playing out under the stars, light and art were bouncing off everything. Public buildings, like the Art Gallery, were open for public roaming, and many participants enjoyed some adult beverages waaaaay past last call.  In a massive oversight, both Steve and I forgot to bring the camera downtown, so you’ll have to do with these pixelly thumbnails from my cell phone and your own imagination to fill in the gaps.

 

We returned home at 7am, just as the sky was leaking daytime and crawled into bed. At noon we woke up and ordered pizza for breakfast – the life of a real YP.

Chocolate Wasted

You would think that after eating copious amounts of chocolate, I wouldn’t be sitting here craving it so much that I’m dipping a spoon into an old container of icing and eating it straight-up. Than you wouldn’t know me.

Valentines day is synonymous with the brown stuff – and simultaneously could be the reason I can’t get enough of it. Perhaps being born on the choc-o-licious holiday has entitled me to being downright obsessed. Which is why Steve and I decided to partake in a chocolate tour for my birthday; a chocolate-crawl, if you will. Melbourne, being a city with some of the best chocolatiers, has many fine destinations to choose from. Steve, the researchasaurus, found no less than 9 worthy shops to fill our bellies with handcrafted, cocoa’ey goodness.

We made it to exactly 3 before we were on a sugar high that reduced us to light headed, stumbling zombies shuffling down the street, holding our stomachs. Allow me to explain.

 Monsieur Truffle was in the Collingwood neighbourhood; with its hipster décor and homemade wrapping, they only sold their truffles in the smallest denomination of 6 to a box.  So we picked up a 6-pack of Passion Fruit flavour and puckered up for cocoa kisses.

 

Second came Max Brenner. OOoh Max Brenner, you devil you. Steve and I dined on crepes stuffed with bananas, chocolate praline sauce and ice cream. Devine.

 

Third at bat was Koko Black and their chocolate-caramel mouse slice with a crunchy base and unsweetened cream on the side. Spiraling.

It was at this point that our toes weren’t touching the sidewalk as we navigated our way to number 4. I’m sure you’ve all experienced the symptoms of the chocolate overdose – belly rolls, the glazed over eyes, incoherent attempts at conversation.  We thought maybe lunch with some nutritional sustenance was a more astute option than finding #4. Slowly, we came back to life over burritos and margaritas and made a shrewder decision. We knew full well that 3 chocolate shops didn’t count as a complete tour, but we also knew that ingesting any more bonbons might turn us off sweets for good. Seems like we had failed, right?

Wrong. You can’t outtreat-the-sweeteater. I would find a way. And we did. We stopped off at Chokolait and Ganache Chocolates and got confectionary-doggy bags – which we ate at the outdoor theatre in the Botanical Gardens watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

 

 

The whole overly indulgent day was only lacking one thing – my dear family and friends.  All the chocolate treasure in the world could never replace the love and hugs I missed out on from them this year.

…So it’s a goddamn good thing there’s snail mail!!!! <3 

Getting Our Feet Wet

We all like Saturdays. In fact, most of us love Saturdays. How could you not? It’s the first time in 5 days that you can sleep in, slurp your coffee over a slowly handcrafted breakfast, and decide what you want to do with your free-ass self for the next 48 hours. The only people who don’t like Saturdays are those high school or university students that basically keep the service industry running, and have to roll their fermented sleep-leeched bodies into the places that you have decided to spend your weekend. My Saturday started off much like a student, and ended up more like an adventurer.

I woke up early to head down to my part-time retail job (which, I’m too hesitant to name, blurbing on the internet, since I signed a legally binding document regarding public slander) and spent the day greeting lazy passersby and discussing the many different kinds of cotton combinations that make the perfect T-Shirt. It could have been torture – but it wasn’t. I had a secret. I had a little seed of joy inside of me that was sprouting by the minute, knowing full well that by 4 o ‘clock I would be on the open road with my fiancé and two good friends finally exploring Australia beyond the borders of Melbourne! Hark!

Steve, Johnny and Rebecca picked me up in a peanut sized rental car that had “BUDGET RENTALS, RENT BY THE HOUR” spammed across every surface – but it was perfect. It was going to be the ‘Little Engine that Could’ that swept us out to Apollo Bay, Great Ocean Road (GOR), and beyond!  The game plan: drive to Apollo Bay and stay overnight in a backpackers, continue on Sunday down GOR to sightsee, and then backtrack it to Melby early enough to make the St. Kilda Festival.

Driving down the winding roads edged on the sides of cliffs, hugging the ocean instantly brought back remnants of New Zealand memories. We stopped a couple times; once, to frolic on a beautiful beach as the sun started to sink, and again – impromptu, but imperative since we spotted wild kangaroos munching away in a farmer’s field. We made it to Apollo Bay after dark, had a quick feed of fish n’ chips and headed to our pre-affirmed late check in at the backpackers.

Uh Oh – only John, the caretaker, seemed to have forgotten about the late-check in, and was in a perpetually grumpy state upon our arrival. When we asked where the nearest bottle shop was, he grunted “There’s no booze where you’re going,” and walked ahead to show us our room. Sideways glances and suppressed giggles turned ominous as it started to drizzle and John stopped outside the outdated room to read us the riot act – it felt like we were in trouble already. Trying to lighten the mood, Steve cheerily joked about the booze-rule, “That’s the silliest rule I’ve ever heard!” John bristled like a pitbull and barked “Them’s the rules boy, and if you don’t like ‘em, you can leave!”

We decided then, that it would be a good idea to conceal the 4L box of wine we brought as we transferred it from the car to the room.

Drinking a litre of cheap wine each on a mattress fort really took off the edge from the creepy vibes we got upon arrival. We stayed up eating leftover chips and laughing until the goon was dry.

Sunday rolled in and we got a good crack on the day, blazing a trail up GOR. Everyone was keeping their eyes peeled, since it’s a well-known fact that wild koalas can be seen up in the trees lining the road. Steve had just finished saying, “Apparently, once you find one koala, you’re an expert and you can spot them all the time!” when, ironically, he spotted one! We pulled over and backtracked to see the little guy.  We all felt like David Attenborough should have been narrating as we approached the tree and stared dreamily up at the fuzzy bundle that was latched onto the branches.  It was a rather quiet, distinctive moment that we all soaked in – our first koala.

Pressing on, we visited the spectacular 12 Apostles – pillars of rock and land that remain apart from the coastline, projecting from the sea.  It reminded me a lot of the Punakaiki/Pancake Rocks in NZ – quite a tourist attraction, but well worth it.  I started thinking – what is it about bits of rock, land and ocean that people get passionate about? The swelling force of the waves, the sheer sizes of the formations, the layers of the earth, flaking off the edge of a country like a piecrust. The beauty and the unimaginable forces that make us marvel and remind us how small and powerless we really are. Humbling.

12 Apostoles

It turns out that the 12 Apostoles weren’t even the most impressive part of the exploring. The Loch Ard George was a bit of a descent, but at the bottom, the silky golden sand spanned to a tumultuous turquoise ocean, which was kept at bay by two massive cliff faces, creating a small entrance to the gorge. (Elora Gorge doesn’t hold a freekin’ candle to this place!) It was every bit of the cliché ‘breathtaking’ that you could imagine. 

Loch Ard Gorge

That feeling continued at Thunder cave – a roaring, surging in-and-out of sea to land.  After a few more stops, each equally as remarkable as the other, we hopped back into the Budget to head towards home.

Thunder Cave

We had one last mission: drive down Cape Otway and play “I Spy” with wild koalas. It turned out that Steve’s previous advice was true – he spotted nearly 10 koalas! One of which was a Mum and baby cradled way up high. It was such fun spotting the languid fuzz-balls and peering into their relaxed lives for a moment in the late afternoon sunshine.

Can you spot the koala?

 My favourite encounter was with a large, grumpy guy that we found in a crooked old gum tree quite near to the ground.  We all took turns tentatively climbing a few feet into the tree (while still keeping a safe distance) to share a breath with the koala. He even ended up putting on a bit of a show for us and posing in what I thought, was a rather Lady Gaga like manner. It was simply fascinating.  

See the resemblance?

 

In fact, the whole 24 hours had been so amazing that we didn’t even make it back into the city in time for the St. Kilda Festival, but we didn’t mind one bit. I did my penance by helping with the drive back, taking ease on the meandering corners and settling back into a Southern Hemisphere state of mind. Steve and I had been a little concerned that maybe Australia wouldn’t hold as much wonder for us that NZ had – but in just one day, we learned that there is a whole lot to uncover.

We slept well Sunday night.

Australian for a Day

Greetings from the Southern Hemisphere! If you read back into the meager history of posts, you’ll see that my sister and her roommate so graciously set up this blog for me in order to keep my friends, fam, and potential followers updated on mine and Steven’s life in Melbourne.  Knowing that we were going to be living 16, 253 kilometers from home and lacking all of the beautiful people that enrich our daily lives puts a little more than a damper on all of the sunshine and adventuring we’re planning on doing. I had the idea for the blog, with little to no time to develop it, so crazy thanks to Riley and Rebecca for shaping it up for me! I’m a blogging virgin, so these first few may be a little rocky, y’all bear with me now. I’ll try not to make out like my text messages and give capitals, spelling, and grammar a good go.

I’ll aim to bring you our true-to-life stories as they unfold over the next 12 months. Possibly peppered with hyperbole, now and then, just to make everyone a little jealous, in hopes that you pinch your pennies and manage to come visit.

To spare you the un-glamorous details of setting up life abroad, I’ll blast through the first couple of weeks and chalk up a general guideline: food poisoning from kangaroo meatballs, blisters from hitting the city streets in search of a dwelling, a few 40 degree days in which I felt like I was sucking on the end of our Dyson (yes, we have a Dyson), no exotic animals, lots of funny city smells, and a bank account with diarrhea. So far, so good… can we come home now??

Just kidding. Along with all of those downs came so many ups. Walking through a city for the very first time, you have fresh eyes. A viewpoint on that space that you will never have again when looking on it a second time. When you go through your everyday life, you know what to expect to see, and you start missing all of the little cracks in the sidewalk, the pieces of street art, the funny signs. Taking a breath of fresh Melbournian air and enjoying the simple qualities of life was enough to justify all of the miniscule trials we had to deal with to get here.

Along with a new lot on life, Steve and I got amongst it right away and treated ourselves to tickets to the Australian Open. Of the 3 matches we got to see, we witnessed Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Victoria Vazarenka play (who is dating Red Foo from LMFAO and we can now say we sat in the same room as the party-rocking star…thank god we weren’t sitting behind him, don’t think I could see over the ‘fro). Didn’t know Steve and I were into tennis, you say? We dabbled in it at home, but we’ve gotten really involved in the tournament down here – even to the point of sitting on the edge of the couch and yelling at the TV – I know, I didn’t think I had it in me either.

Steve’s 27^th birthday passed, as I’m sure some of you know all too well  - harassed via skype in the wee hours of the morning and in pure-Lobo style, were peer pressured into having a shot with us when you’d barely woken up.  This just makes you the best friends ever, we’ve made note of it. We had the best dinner of our LIVES (to date) at a Spanish style restaurant called Movida, down a famous graffiti alleyway. The feed was courtesy of Warmels - he picked up the tab as a gift for our engagement (shit, we’ve got a lot going on, don’t we? Do try to keep up, will you?) Some of the menu items included; chili peppers, where 1 in every 10 were hot, so we had a culinary Russian roulette going on, Wagyu beef and a 63 degree egg, lamb’s neck, and octopus. I’m not doing any of these dishes justice, but I won’t bother to bore you with references to their seasonings, tenderness, or originality – I will simply leave you with a succulent picture to whet your imaginations…

As for friends, Steve and I reconnected with our friend Johnny, a kiwi bloke whom we met during our NZ adventures and who was savvy enough to score an awesome girlfriend, Rebecca. The four of us have been a neat little crew so far and I’m sure they will be featured in future posts and roadie escapades. Considering they have a beat up old box van they have named “the van of joy,’ I think we’ll be getting on quite well! We took the van of joy  (VOJ) to Brighton beach today, to see the famous colourful beach houses and shake off our hangovers. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.  Allow me to explain the hangovers…

Australia Day. Much like Canada day, only with funnier accents and more beach action. Our squad fired it up at 11am, with nary an Australian in sight. Steve, Johnny, Rebecca, her visiting kiwi friend Olivia and I shucked out the cards and began the drinking games after plastering ourselves with face tattoos and patriotic flags, as you do. More kiwis joined our festivities, and I believe it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that we had a bonafied Australian join the team (cue, Leyla, neighbor we met in the hot tub some nights ago, who came by for a drink). With her under our wing, we felt justified enough to stagger to the nearby Belgian Beer Gardens, a mere 5 minutes away from our complex. Many ciders and several bowls of chips later, our starry eyed lot schlepped back to the place for a real Aussie BBQ. I’m talkin’, nothing short of prawns on the Barbie, with chili and lime sauce, salad with Avos (they’re big on the avo’s here), lamb saucies and, well, garlic bread (which is pretty much multi-national, am I right?).

Fuelled up, with a new lease on life, we decided it would be a good idea to have another 6 beers and break a few glasses before finally venturing back out to rub shoulders with the people of Oz. Admittedly, it almost didn’t happen, Olivia and I had to prod the men off of the couches and onto the trams. We successfully managed to get half of the partygoers down to St. Kilda beach area, where, by some stroke of glorious fate, we ended up at the illest live music show I’ve ever witnessed. The quality of the dj and performers was such that after being in the bar for 5 minutes, it was only when we approached the stage that we realized the beats were live and not being played off of pre-recorded tracks. Cow bells, violins, and real-live bouts of the saxophone from the band “Jacket Off,” ignited our dancing shoes until, alas, we could groove no more and began the weary journey to the nearest Macca’s for a good feed.

Here is a sampling of Jacket Off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgV5d6oFo0E

All said and done, I think we passed as honorary Australians for the day, and have set an impressive precedent for the year to come.