Turtles and Voodoo Dolls

It's Sept 14th, I am typing this from Rupert's place in Maida Vale, North West London where I am crashing for a month. I am still working in London, still plotting, planning and saving. Although quite what for, I don't yet know. I have an idea, but it's not the same idea I had a few months ago. Things have changed. I guess people change. And that's just the way it is.

Anyway, I have some free time this evening, not much on TV, Ru and his girlfriend Hannah are in Berlin, so after eating a Tesco's Curry For One and drinking 3 cans of cheap lager I have decided to have another bash at writing up my Travel Blog.

Rufus Wainwright 'Want One' is currently on the stereo. It's doing a fine job.

It's a funny thing to look back through an old travel diary of notes and write up my thoughts and feelings from 7 months previous. In many ways it seems so long ago. But in the spirit of perseverance, let's crack on...

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18 - 21 Feb 2009

Cassie arrived the morning of Wed 18 Feb for what was intended to be my last 4 days in Oz. We splashed out on our own four walls within a slightly swankier (well, swanky-ish, at least by backpacker standards) hostel in St.Kilda called Cooee.

Excellent area St.Kilda. Essentially it seems to be one main drag called Acland St (not a million miles away from Brunswick St in spirit, but shorter and quainter) packed full of decent bars, restaurants and awesome little shops of both book and cake.



There's also a very old school rickety theme park called Luna Park which mainly contains beautiful old wooden rollercoasters that would have no doubt been considered thrilling in 1973. Totally badass entrance too...

On 19 Feb we visited Brunswick St and the graffiti in Hoosiers Lane, before moving on to dumplings at Cammy's in Chinatown. The evening held the joys of Aussie band (and major C.Burge favourite) Jackson Jackson at the Prince of Wales venue. Genuinely brilliant gig, and I wasn't expecting it to be. Jackson Jackson is the side project of Harry Angus, the trumpet player and co-vocalist in Aussie band The Cat Empire, a band whom at this point had yet to truly tickle my English ears. This was in no small part due to Harry's screechy annoying twang that peppers the early Cat Empire records I'd been played by my enthusiastic new Aussie chums. I'd defy any Englishman worth his salt to listen to The Car Song and not want to kill somebody.

HOWEVER - and it is a big HOWEVER - Jackson Jackson were (and are) superb! Harry's voice seemed to have mutated into an operatic Australian version of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Shocker. Truly brilliant. An admirable beard he has too. Not so sure about the skimpy black vest though. Sorry, singlet.

After that, the bars in Chapel St were paid a visit, and I was overjoyed to discover a proper old fashioned 60's/70's black-and-white photobooth in full working order outside one of the pubs. You wouldn't believe how hard these things are to find in the UK! To my knowledge there are none left in London anywhere, although I'd love to be proved wrong about that fact (the new replacement digital ones suck arse). We had to have a go, and the 3 shots we got were brilliant. You can't have them though, they're not for the likes of you. You can have this and these instead...











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Fri 20 Feb - spent a pretty much near perfect day knocking about a windy St Kilda beach and pier. There was a black swan on the sand. And then there was an elephant in the room. I was to leave the next day.





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Sat 21 Feb - 8am rise. Silence in the taxi to the airport. A long and astonishingly difficult goodbye.

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