Brisbane and the house of Stag

After going a little OTT in South East asia Australia was unfortunately going to have to be partially sacrificed to top up the funds. To do this i needed work. In my last blog i said i was about to head down from Cairns to Brisbane in the hope that a bigger city would provide more opportunities to work. I was met at the airport by Connor Stag (Staggy) who was one of the lads who helped Katie and i to welcome in the New Year in Bangkok. After getting lost in his own city on the way to the pub (he wanted to show me a truely Australian pub!!) we had our first schooner of Tooheys New before heading to his.

The first couple of days in Brisbane were spent treking around to different job agencies, 18 in total!! This did give me a good feel for the city though.

The first weekend there included a pretty heavy night out on the Saturday and a pretty slow Sunday to recover. The week that followed was again spent chasing work and generally just chilling out. Connor's house is actually about 30mins out of the city by bus so quite a bit of time was spent everyday getting back and forth.

Now living at Connor's house is quite good fun and the street where he lives is a busy little place with kids constantly getting in the way of cars and playing street hockey. Connor's family have three dogs, one of which (the golden retreaver) decided to make my mattress which was on the floor in the lounge his bed so this very quickly became a very hairy mattress!! The family also had another guest arrive in the form of a 19 year old kitty kat which shows no intention of keeling over any time soon. So generally the house was furry friendly.

The Masters

Then came the weekend, and what an important weekend it was, why? Because we were going to play golf!! As i eluded to in my last post i am an awsome golfer and i was eager to show off my skills to Connor and his mates. What Connor didn't tell me was that we were actually playing in a tournament!! I was told that i am apparently a 27 handicap (i thought i should be a 50!!) but apparently this is the highest it goes up to in the uk. Luckily we were playing a game where four of us play and we use the best person's shot (i can't remember the official name), but we had to use a certain number of everyones shots. Naturally i was incredible. I totally missed the ball off the first T but recovered by pretending i was having a practise swing (i think everyone believed me...). But naturally i could only get better, and i did by making a couple of putts that even Tiger would be proud of... generally though i was pretty crap and on one drive i managed to swing it right just a little too much and set the ball up across the road. Beer and steak followed to celebrate our monumental defeat at the hands of much more experienced (and older) golfers.

Testing the grey matter

Eventually i managed to get work and what great work it was!! I was part of a processing line in a bakery factory. My role was to put the trays onto the conveyor belt so that they could be filled with doughy goodness and turned into whatever by a machine, then later i would take these trays off!! The grey matter needed for this was err minimal and the highlight of my day was when i got to sweep the floor (this was exciting compared to the rest of the work). $18 an hour wasn't too bad though even if it did take me two hours per trip to get to and from work.

Arrival of the Canadian, Modern Art and Moving on

Mike (canadian guy who i chilled with in Cairns) decided to make an appearance. He was the last of the Canadians that we travelled through Laos with who had not headed home, unfortunately for him a lack of funds meant that he had to do the same. But we spent a couple of days wondering aimlessly around the city and checked out some contemporary art. As the family well knows i don't really care for modern art, to put it simply i just don't get it. Mum once tried to 'culture' us by taking us to the Tate Modern in London and this experiment didn't turn neither Miles, Simon or I into lovers of modern art, not even dad felt a burning desire to take a lawn mower to a box and describe it as 'an expression of anger'. But this time i went voluntarily and to my utter amazement i still didn't appreciate modern art. There were a couple of cool things such as a chinese guy filming himself waving the checkered flag around everytime the traffic lights turned green in London and randomly hitting golf balls around the city but mostly it wasn't too exciting. I guess modern art isn't my thing...

After a couple of weeks of mostly futile job hunting in Brisbane i thought it was time for a change of scene. I knew that Katie was busy trying out life as a surfer chick with Nick (her brother) who arrived in down under only a couple of days ago for a holiday. Karen (katie's mum) is also out in Aus for a holiday so at some point meeting up with the Robinson clan is a must. Anyway, i had imposed myself upon the Stags for long enough so booked a flight down to Sydney and then Melbourne. When checking in for Jetstar i was offered a free upgrade to an emergency exit seat so i got extra legroom (it isn't often you get free stuff on a budget airline!!), not exactly first class but not something to scoff at. So Sydney is currently where i'm at and my diggs is a place called 'Westend Backpackers' and i'm in a 32 person dorm which is actually quite good fun and even with that many people i'm still getting good nights sleep.

The next few days will probably be spent doing a couple of tours of the beaches here in Sydney and i have already seen most of the sights via a city tour led by an enthusiastic lad who does them for free making his money purely on the tips that people feel the tour was worth.

Next leg?

Anyway this post is already long enough and i'm almost out of internet time. After meeting the Robinson Clan the next stop on monday is Melbourne and from there New Zealand. Bring on the bungee jump and sky dive!!