Jen and my friends are nice - the rest of 2016 can do one.

And after all the structured travel, Melbourne was just for dicking around. We saw a lot of Jen's friends there - Shiona took us to a noodles and a horrific hipster bar* on the 19th, and Helen to a mad scientist 'themed' cocktail bar** on the 20th. In both cases they provided what I remembered as an authentic Melbourne experience - our guide got ( Read more... )

The next three and a half days share a certain structure: get up a bit late and check out and get in the car and go to the next place via taking photos of very large things, and go to bed early, with spare time to Do One Thing somewhere in there. It was still lovely as a framework to hang out with Jen ( Read more... )

And then up on the Friday, check out and off to pick up the car. The dates had gotten a little confused back when everything was getting booked, so instead of a nice leisurely trip down and stay overnight, we were travelling the same day as the wedding. And by travelling I mean that I was in charge of driver support (sweets, tutting at the GPS), ( Read more... )

On the Tuesday we didn't do much except go out to Manly Beach. Well, we went to see Big Things first - Jen had found a few online maps detailing the various aspects of Oz's love of the large, so we saw the Big Bullets that she'd spotted on her way back from her pizza the night before. Anyway, saw those and some Big Matchsticks (not hard to find ( Read more... )

The first day didn't start great - I'd caught the very start of some form of head cold on the plane and that combined with the jetlag to make me pretty punchdrunk ( Read more... )

Day 0 started properly on Day -2, last Wednesday, when Jen mailed me to say "So it turns out that you need a visa to go to Australia, they're easy to get on their Immigration website". I duly filled in my details and got my receipt of application ( Read more... )

Hiya folks ( Read more... )

Some things for the next 17 minutes ( Read more... )

My washer/dryer has been off its food for a while - the fabric softener hasn't been lessening with each load. The tray that is the only easily-removable part of the machine has bent a little, and there's a knack for getting it back in, so I've spent some time foostering at that, wondering if the bend is creating a seal (or breaking one?) that is ( Read more... )