Week 4 - Following on from our last update we headed out that night with Michael, Lyndsay's dads boss's son to the Casino. With us having no money to actually gamble the highlight was the roast dinner we had, and watching Skip walk about with a plastic tumbler full of coins like one of the old gambling bag ladies!!!! Well that's if you don't include being accosted by a stag-night and asked to provide lipstick kisses on various parts of their anatomies and our to hand over our underwear. You'll be glad to hear we do draw the line at some things!!!!!! On a mission to get seriously drunk we headed to Lama Bar in Subiaco for a few. Unfortunately, it was mission impossible as the roast dinner was soaking up all the alcohol. Feeling energetic the next day we opted for a visit to Cohuna Koala Park to see some Australian wildlife. We were greeted with koalas, kangaroos, wallaby's etc etc (can't remember all the other animals!), but I'm sure the 700 photographs we took should fill you in! We managed to stroke a baby koala, very cute and very soft, only 10 weeks old and called Jarra. That was tame though compared to actually standing in an enclosure touching and feeding kangaroos. Lyndsay and Emma got into the swing of things but Lynne definitely did not like the sensation of them eating out her hand, screams and scattered food sums it up! The kangaroos were less than impressed. We did get slightly worried when a crowd of them made a b-line from one end of the enclosure to where we were standing. Nothing like a group of kangaroos bouncing in your direction to make the sweat run down your back and your pants turn brown!!!!! An early night followed due to work the next day, ugh! Lets just say the cushty 5 hour a day job we boasted about wasn't all it was cracked up to be. We were met by our supervisor Rick (spelt with a silent 'P'!) who, unaware we had no training on the holiday package tried to put us out on the phones straight away! We stood our ground and managed a few hours studying the product and shadowing other telemarketers before being thrust on the phones to start our hard-selling, cold calling pitch. Lyndsay was a natural, made top sales each day and had people asking for copies of her sales pitch, years of being a blagger! Lynne was useless, no easier way to say it hahahahaha......... After 3 days of making no sales she was not a happy camper. Relief was to come the next day in the form of the Education Department. Lyndsay received a call from an agency on the way into work that morning for a 3 day assignment but she didn't want to give up a permanent job for 3 days, Lynne however, at the end of her tether jumped at the chance. She will NEVER complain about the civil service again!!!!!! Hold her to that one when she's back, bored at her desk again! Lyndsay received another phone call that afternoon for an assignment with an IT consultancy firm starting the next day for an ongoing assignment. She accepted the offer and thus, started her new career for the next year as an office temp. Woo hoo, all that sitting around, emailing Lynne and looking on the internet is definitely what Lyndsay was meant to do! Hahahhahahah! Week 5 - On the Wednesday night we headed over to Tommo and Andy's new love shack to watch our Thailand DVD's of the Full Moon Party and New Year. A bad idea as we got all nostalgic and really wanted to be back in Thailand again - I think we will be hard pushed to ever beat our time there.... However, a good weekend was had spending our hard-earned telemarketing cash! (Even though they ripped off Lyndsay and tried not to pay her for any sales she had done - needless to say she hounded them till they paid up!) It didn't take long to disappear as you can well imagine. On the Friday evening we headed to the outdoor cinema at Kings Park. It was very pleasant, we drank some wine, Emma's friend Kirst had whipped us up a picnic feast and we watched the 'Motorcycle Diaries'. The fact the film was subtitled and we didn't have a good enough view to catch the words and Lyndsay had to nudge Lynne for snoring (new habit she's developed!) didn't put a dampner on it!!! We've decided to start doing more grown up things like this when we return to London........once we get over our love of partying hard - NEVER! The next day was overcast so we spent the day chilling and preparing for our 1st Aussie bar-b-que and pool party at Mikey's that evening! A great night was had by all and we ate loads and drank even more. Lyndsay ended up in the pool fully clothed at one point (not self-inflicted we might add). Lynne managed to scream "I'll lose my contact lenses" to avoid that situation! Oh, she has all the best excuses - I'm surprised she didn't say it was because she's left-handed! There was a lot of dancing, including the gay gordons with Mikey and Andy, the Aussies loved our Scottish Country Dancing! True to style it was after 6am when we finally headed to bed and that was after a walk around the local park to watch the sunset (don't ask!) Sunday we took over Mikey's house - mucked around in the pool for a bit, ate KFC, watched DVD's, pretty much our usual London Sunday - minus the pool bit, of course. Thank you Miguel and Mikey for the food, the company and the run of your house (not that you had much choice in the matter!) The following week Lyndsay got into the whole "working 9 - 5" thing (looking like Dolly Parton too!) whilst Lynne slowly went mad! Her assignment with the Education Dept finished on the Monday and with the sun not shining very often and having no money she spent endless days trying to amuse herself at home! Thursday was the bearer of good news though - Lynne registered with Bell Recruitment and was appointed an assignment with the Water Corporation HR Dept for the following week. Feeling frazzled, with the need to celebrate and withdrawal symptoms, we phoned poor Rodders at work and made him go to a bar on the way home for some wine for us!! Not as bad as it sounds, honest! We have no car and the nearest shop is at least a 20mins walk away. Don't know why we're trying to justify our love of booze to you guys - I think you know us too well by now! Week 6 - The 3 of us had tickets for Good Vibrations on the Sunday so had a fairly quiet Friday and Saturday. Friday we headed to the Claremont for our free champers, a chinese carry-out later and we were tucked up in bed by 11. Saturday Emma was out sailing while we caught some rays on the beach. We had Emma's car at our disposal so made a trip to Andy's that night to check out his pad. Very nice pool may we add. Good Vibrations was amazing, no need to worry about rain, mud puddles and bottles of buckfast at this outdoor event! It was held at Bellevue amphitheatre, an outdoor park with a natural amphitheatre built with grass and wood for the main stage. Unfortunately we have no photos we didn't want to risk losing the camera. Yes, we did plan for it to get quite messy. We spent a few hours sunning ourselves, drinking and listening to the chilled warm-up bands at the amphitheatre before hitting the dance tent. A few hours dancing followed before we made our way back to the amphitheatre for The Cuban Brothers (hilarious), Arrested Development, Mylo and Scissor Sisters. All the acts put on a great show, we danced our asses off. Mylo won our hearts with their Scottish accents and mentions of Old Firm games, which we believe the better team won?!?!?. I'm sure we were about the only people in the audience who understood them hahahahaha.......... Scissor Sisters stole the show, a totally brilliant live act. Camp as t*ts, just the way we like it. We did receive a few strange looks when we started cheering and shouting to their nod of approval for Scotland! A very exhausted threesome spent the week busy at work and catching up on sleep. Skip has now become an honourary champagne backpacker - she's gonna find it tough to go back to real life!!!! The Peaston clan in Perth did break up the week with another lovely meal at their restaurant. Again just too much food and wine. Can't wait for the next invite hahahahaha........ Week 7 - Lyndsay's 28th birthday loomed on the Friday. She received some lovely cards and presents and had a great celebratory weekend. The Friday night started with a few bottles of wine in the house, some champagne at the Claremont where we met up with Tommo and his new mates Pat and Alicia (who have both just moved to Perth from Brisbane and Sydney). The group got bigger in Subiaco when Mikey, Andy and Emma (another one!) joined us. We had a few cocktails in the Subiaco Hotel before hitting the Sapphire Club. More drinks and shots followed before we decided to head to Club Bayview (Lyndsay finding the view a little fuzzy by this point) where Tommo had set up a bar tab. Poor Mikey was feeling ill so headed home at this point. We had one drink in Bayview before deciding it was too empty for our liking. The girls, now up for a big night hitched a lift with Andy to Geisha, in Northbridge where we partied until the wee hours of the morning. It was almost 8am when we finally staggered into bed. A birthday to remember - minus the age! God knows how she managed it but Emma got up a few hours later to go sailing and Lyndsay had a hairdressers appointment, a quick stop behind a building to deposit her liquid stomach contents didn't deter her hahahahahaha..........Yes, she's still a classy lady, and she just wants to add that this was at 10.30, only 2 hours after having got home - God knows how Emma kept her stomach in tow being on a boat?!?!?! Lynne was the lucky one and spent the day in bed sleeping and reading. A very chilled night followed with takeaway pizza and cheesy TV movies. Sunday we were up bright and early and we dropped Emma off at a 40th birthday party while we headed to the Cott for a Sunday session with Rodders, Pat and his girlfriend. We drank our 1st bottle of wine in half an hour so the fact we were catwalking with our stilettos on for Rodders when we got home will be no big surprise!! He did make an excellent photographer though! It was a good day - we had a nice lunch, loads of wine and vodka and were bumped off for Aussie girls! We'd spotted a pair of hotties early on and finally plucked up the courage to strike up conversation with them. We thought the "can you settle a bet for us? Are you British or Australian" line was a good 'un but obviously they didn't hahahahahaha......... They were British, both from Guildford and had arrived in Perth that weekend. We did chat to them for a while and were beginning to think we were in with a chance when they politely excused themselves to go for a wander. 5 mins later they're standing at the bar with younger, slimmer Aussie girls!!! Can't even pull our own kind anymore! We laughed it off with the 'at least we gave it a try, we'll never see them again attitude'. Forgetting we were in Perth and not London though, who do we bump into in the city the next day looking and feeling like s**t after a heavy weekend and a day at work?!?! Yup, the 2 boys from Guilford. Thankfully they were sitting in Burger King (oops sorry fellow Aussies, we mean Hungry Jacks!) and they only caught a glimpse of us as we hurried past with our heads down hahahahaha.......... Again, another week was spent working with a midweek trip to the Fremantle food markets for dinner. Week 8 - It was a public holiday on Monday so we headed off straight from work on the Friday evening for a weekend at Emma's family's' farm / vineyard in Manjimup (down south). We arrived at the farm 4 hours later for Emma to discover the front door key her mum gave her didn't work!!!!! As our mums know, they would've been cursed something rotten, but no not our Skippy - she stayed calm and decided to put a brick through the window instead! After some gentle persuasion form Lyndsay that this may not be the best option, she decided to break in instead! Worked a treat though - see what these Aussies get taught in school!!!! Totally gorgeous homely house and we thought we were gonna be like the alcoholic version of the Waltons, but after a good night's kip and we saw the vista in the morning it was more like Little House on the Prairie! Wide, open lush countryside for as far as the eye could see. We got a little nostalgic for the Scottish countryside for a second or two! Refreshed we headed into the town to get supplies and had a little snigger at how 'hicksville' it was! Whilst shopping Em got a text to say that a couple of her sailing buddies were going to pop in for 'afternoon tea'. Needless to say there was no tea going to be drunk! After a big breakfast, cooked by resident chef - Lyndsay, washed down with none other than wine (well it would've been rude not too!) we settled on the couch for a little snooze. Murph and Gilmour (yes the Aussies like to use surnames only!) arrived about 4ish and we went to meet them at the local watering hole. Wow, what an experience! It was like something out of a movie as soon as we walked in everybody turned to stare, stopped talking and it even seemed like the music came to an abrupt halt. Needless to say the drinks were skulled very quickly and we made a sharp exit. Back at the ranch let the drinking commence. We made a few laps of the vineyard on the quad bike before settling down to wine, pasta and games. Lyndsay made enough food for an army (pity there was none in sight!) and we were still eating it a few days later. Once tipsy Skip thought it would be a great idea to play "dramatic charades". Much hilarity ensued, especially with Lyndsay's 5 word clue!!!!!!!!!!! Giving up on the games we just settled for drinking more and listening to music. All of the country air must have got to us as we're afraid to report that we were both in bed by 10:30pm! Another feast of a breakfast and we all headed out to Pemberton for the afternoon. Unfortunately having Lofty the dog with us meant we couldn't amble on the country trail so instead (lucky for us) we visited the most gorgeous winery and then headed to the local for lunch. All feeling a bit worse for wear we ate and then headed back to the farm. It was just the 3 girlies for the last night so we settled down on the couches for a movie and guess what more wine! After tidying up the house the next day we set off home about 10:30am. A nice, scenic drive with Lyndsay being DJ on her wheels of steel. We stopped off at Fremantle for more food and a look round the market, where Skip and Lyndsay bought some fabulous shades. Thats us pretty much up to date. The last few days we've been working, trying to eat healthy (hahahaha) and having a bit of a detox. That will end tomorrow night when we hit the Claremont for our usual bottle of champers. Going to the Surf Masters at Margaret River next weekend so I'm sure there will be some perving tales to tell.......