I am going to get killed...

...by every Perth-lover, resident, adopted son or daughter.

But you can sometime tell this city is fricking remote from the rest of Australia and indeed the civilised world.

Sometimes in Sydney I'd be surprised by the Australian passion for everything the northern hemisphere has to offer - the clothes, music, history, food...

Magazines go on endlessly about British and US celebs, fashion shows, stores - except everything is topsy turvy here and we'd be baking in the sunshine while the darlings of Notting Hill and LA strutted their funky winter boots through the snow and slush and across pages of Aussie mags.

Music takes a while to filter down here and so on. But there was also a sense of pride in Aussie fashion, music, stores and above all, attitude.

There aren't many places in the world that bask in the sunshine so beautifully, that have such stunning beaches and yet have a cosmopolitan feel, such a good standard of living as Sydney and Melbourne.

Striding our way to our offices on level 22 of Darling Park in Sydney, Danielle and I would spot dozens of groomed and chic workers busily making their way to offices across the CBD, soy lattes and rasin toast in cupped in one hand and a briefcase in the other.

But Perth. Crikey. Cheap suits. Frumpy fashions. Ugly heels and bad followers of fashion. I'm hardly a style icon, and in backpacker mode I'm postively hideous, but it's not even SOME of these people - it's most.

Maybe it's the dire range of shops - the CBD is small, the alledgedly funkier suburbs
are spread far apart, maybe everyone fashionable doesn't walk my way to work. But there is no sense of life, of vibrance, of creativity here. Maybe it's the way I am looking at it - the lack of my kind of work and so on.

Maybe I'm in negative mode. Sorry Perthians - I think your 'city' is pretty, it's quite homely, but it's SO far away from anything bigger and brasher to escape to. For me, no amount of prettiness can score that away...

I am working now - I've just completed my third day as receptionist for a healthcare legal firm - basically a company with specialist doctores who do medicals for people making insurance and workers comp claims, that kind of thing. Quite a few fire brigade assesments too - always good for the eye.

It's the kind of job a school leaver could accomplish with aplomb. It's far from shops to browse at lunchtime (possibly a good thing), and has no natural light at the front desk. The people are nice but it's a small office. I curse that I cannot check my hotmail and will people to mail me on facebook instead...

I have training tomorrow night for a bar job - I'll be working 9pm to 4am on Friday and Saturday nights - crazy? perhaps. I need the moolla for the rest of my travels.

Elsewhere all is good. A fairly quiet weekend after a huge night on Friday. Very happily tipsy with some good dancing and so on at Black Betty's with Danielle, Lisa, Laura and so on. A good fun night.

Danielle and I cooked for our friends on Sunday night - a knock-out meal of chilli ovr nachos with cheese, sour cream and guacamole so the diet is going well ;) We've sort of joined their club and get genuine Thai food, homemade burgers, thick winter soups and shepherds pie in return. One night's hard labour for a week of good food can't be bad...

Right, time for bed. Not used to this working malarky. Rubbish!

And so... to Melbourne

So... Danielle and I wound our way down to Melbourne in a lesiurely, carefree way last week.

We took a Premier Motors bus to Ulladulla, just under five hours south of Sydney.

Arriving just after dark, we hauled our backpackers and breaking daypacks (me) down a steep hill and up another one to Travellers Rest backpackers. It was a cute little blue bungalow on the hill infront of the owners' home.

It was an old-fashioned little place with polished floors, pine bunk-beds crammed into the small rooms but with a large sitting room complete with ancient TV (I mean ancient - turn the dials to tune type thing) and all in all rather like your grandparents home.

The place holds 16 people - it would be jam-packed if full - but luckily there were only 6 of us the first night.

We grabbed a KFC from across the road (after a very hairy five minutes as I attempted to pass the huntsman spider on the outside stairs) , as we couldn't bear the walk back down the hill to the town, and chilled out for the evening.

The next morning we decided to explore the town and take a walk around the headlands to the beach. The hill our backpackers was on fed down to the harbour and the road ran straight up the other side of the steep-sided valley and was lined with shops and cafes. It is a small, retirement-age and slightly-worn place and not cheap at all. But after a coffee, we set off for our walk. We walked back past the small harbour, up the hill again and turned off into the north headland for a walk through the bush and to the viewpoints.

We were so engrossed in chatting and taking pictures, we even started the circular route again - well all bush looks the same to us!

Then we walked down into a little secluded and seaweed strewn bay which we had to ourselves. The sea was FREEZING so we paddled a little and then sunbathed until our tummies began to rumble. So we walked around the rocks to Mollymook beach - a huge golden arc of sand which reminded me a little of Palm Beach (Home and Away's Summer Bay).

Here the waves were large and we sat and had veggieburgers overlooking the sands. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with wandering through the streets nearby and the cemetery (check out the vaults - VAULTS!) and thinking that all the homes and wide streets reminded us of America.

It was all very Boston, Danielle thought, while I imagined it to look like New England with its wooden houses and tree-lined roads.

In the evening the backpackers filled up a little, with the owners shoving three other girls in our tiny room (despite the fact that there were other, empty rooms), so we escaped to the tiny, faded cinema for a bit of Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore cheesy wonderfullness in the form of Music and Lyrics. The songs have been stuck in my head ever since.

Our bus the next day did not leave until 2.20pm but we had strict (and I mean strict) instructions to leave the premises by 9.45am (although we could leave our bags in the spider-infested pit under the balcony). So Danielle and I decided to take the walk around the south headland.

This was a lot of fun as we spotted laurikeats and all kinds of fanastic wildlife in the bush. The path wove along the clifftops and we could look south along the coastline and down on beaches pounded by heavy surf. We watched some daring surfers paddling far out to sea and expertly riding waves which must have been at least 10ft above them.




We passed a lighthouse at the headland peak and continued our walk through the trees and along the cliffs. Until we reached a clearing and the end of the trail marked on a rubbish map given to us at the hostel. hmmm. D swore blind the guy had said we could go down onto the beach and along the cliffs back to the harbour.

By this time, our stomach's were rumbling and we'd had enough of bloody birds and bloody trees and ant holes and photos. Our heads were heavy with the heat, we were virtually out of water and the sun was beating down on us with full force. But we climbed down the steps to the beach and picked our way past crabs and stones and pebbles and seaweeds right around until there was a slight problem. A lot of cliff face. A lot of water. Not much rock. We attempted to see how far the narrow ledge went around but I didn't really fancy the papers back home reporting on the death of another 'two stupid Brit girls die in stupid accident' headline. The shame would have killed me.

So I persuaded Danielle it was the stupid idea that she knew deep down it was (this is a girl who thought it wise to climb over a cliff-side fence onto two inches of crumbling soil to pose behind a bush for a photo...) and we wearily climbed back around to the steps and tried not to pass out from heat as we ascended back into the cool forest. It was about a two minute walk back to the road we discovered. Bummer.

We treated ourselves to lunch at the boardwalk cafe as a przie for not dying on the rocks and then collected our stuff for the short trip to Narooma.

We arrived around 5pm and checked into to our next place - Lynch's Hotel. Our room was above the smoky pub and it was fantastic. We had to walk on a little covered balcony to our room - a glass-panelled double door led into a tiny room with a double bed, towels, little wash stand and sink and with the doors open, we could lie on the bed and see over the balcony to the north coast - waves smashing against the cliff.

Setting straight out, we tried to book a tour to see the penguins, seals and dolphins on Montague Island - but they were expensive and apparently the penguins are malting at the moment so we were unlikely to catch them. Disappointed, we booked a tour up the inslet for the following day.




We then wandered around the shore of the inslet as the sun sank in the sky and watched pelicans landing in the water, sat and revelled in the beauty of the scene before us - green mountains reflected in the water and the calmness of the atmosphere, before wandering up the steepest hill in the world to the hotel and watching sunset over the mountains on the balcony. After a gourmet pizza, we got into our pj's and hit the hay.

The next morning we stumbled to Woolies and bought fresh bread, cheese and salami and headed to the inlet to eat it on the grass. We lay, rested (what a wearying day) and watched children splashing about in the water, before taking our cruise on a little Waronga Princess boat.

The 100-year-old boat was filled with OAPs and a couple of kids and was captained by Charlie - a funny chap and the third Charlie in his family. He regaled us with tales of old-times in Narooma, history of the area ("This house here was built over 40 years ago!") and actually very interesting titbits. We heard about sharks he and his father had caught (proper big, scary sharks here) right in the inlet, the fish to be found and how they were caught, pointed out sea eagles and their nests and the rainforest parts and was generally rather amusing.



Then we stopped off for a walk through a bit of rainforest (not far - most people needed zimmerframes really) to see scary plants which stang lots, layers of shells the abo's used to throw down and all this was followed by a Devonshire Tea (served by a real Croc Dundee chap) on the banks of the inlet.

Then it was time to sample Sydney Rock Oysters which live in the inlet and which are supposedly some of the best in the world. I ate two.

Back on land, Danielle and I waited around and dozed (it had been a hard day) before getting fish and chips for supper. There was a hairy moment when D refused to eat her fish (there was a wobbling bottom lip I'm sure) but i managed to scrape the skin off it for her. Sometimes we mother each other. I say sometimes. We have to stop each other's strops a lot.

Then it was back up the hill to the "hotel" to watch lightening flash over the mountains and eventually to the bus stop at 10pm.

Uh oh... once on the bus to Melbourne I realised Oysters had NOT been a good idea. Luckily the immodium was on hand but it took a long time to locate...

Not much sleep was had on the bus so by the time we arrived in Melbourne (pronounce Melbun to avoid offending aussies - oh and CAN-berra not Can-bare-rah)at 7.30am, I was in full grouch mode and about to throw up.

After a worrying few minutes where I threatened to throw my toys out of the pram, we decided to get a taxi to Hotel Bakpack, one of the few we rang which would let us check in immediately.

It was a shit-hole to be frank. Big, immpersonal, though lots of things like free breakfast, tours, a job centre to keep people amused. Our room smelled. It was small and the beds were rickety. We showered in the dirty bathroom and then headed for sustenance.

The day was spent exploring. We walked up Lygon Street (Little Italy) and to Brunswick Street in Fitzroy for coffee. I loved this place. At first I thought "colourful"? More like a ghetto. The same way Barton Street in Glos or inner-city London suburbs could be described as colourful. More ghetto-like. But this gave way to funky flea shops and cafes with hundreds of people sat having breakfast in the sunshine (it was Sunday morning). Older buildings, all colourfully painted and with huge, artistic signs hanging off them and good strong coffee.

Then we caught the free city tram around the outskirts of the CBD and went around 1 1/2 times, found some sushi and then walked over the river. We jumped on a tram to St Kilda and walked down funky Fitzroy Street (cooler than school bars and cafes) to the beach. It wasn't Manly.

A thin scuzzy beach, horrid harbour dirty water. Seaside England air. Yuck yuck yuck.

Then a tram to South Melbourne and found Urban Central backpackers -still large but CLEAN and trendy. We booked in for the following night and then made our way back up to Little Italy for a slap-up pasta meal (well we deserved it for er making it safely to Melbourne - it was a free glass of wine with a meal too!). It was my first drink since leaving Manly and I felt extremely tipsy after.

The next day we moved our crap to Urban Central and then went shopping for a camera for Danielle (she lost hers at Sounds on Sunday in Jan). We also booked a car for two days for our trip to the Great Ocean Road on Tues and Weds.

That evening, we discovered there was a free BBQ at the hostel so filled up on that, met our roommates for the night - Jeannine and Dave - and made them join us for drinks in the hostel bar.

The following day was the Great Ocean Road drive... but that's a story for another day... pics to come too....

Canoes, editing and the best brownies ever...

Well I am currently recouping after celebrating Danielle's birthday on Wednesday (Feb 7).

It was a harcore day of fun and I hope we gave her an awesome 21st. The last few weeks, her sister and I had been emailing back and forth and planning her surprise arrival from New Zealand.

Jen arrived on Tuesday afternoon and I dragged Danielle off to the outside bar at Sydney Opera House under the pretext of buying her a cocktail. I was massively nervous trying to look for her sister while keeping up conversation and trying to prevent any kind of suspicion entering her mind.

Then thankfully I Jen striding towards us. I turned to Danielle as casually as possible and mid-sentence said: "That girl looks really familiar..." D did a double take and then burst into tears. After the hugs and questions, we drank bubbly in the sunshine sat next to the Opera House and with the harbour bridge in sight and filled Danielle in on plans for her birthday.

The next morning D woke up bright and early at 7.30am, despite her insistence she needed as much sleep as possible. So we headed for the Honolulu Grill, where Steve records one of his podcasts In Latte Veritas (click here for an episode of The Rules podcast - one of three featuring Yours Truly). During our slap-up breakfast and large coffees, I gave Danielle part 1 of her present - a magazine I had designed and printed for her.

I made up a 12 page magazine with stories and photographs from her friends and family - and I really enjoyed designing it despite the fact that time was really not on my side. D and I spend all our time together - at work, at home, going out... so it was pretty hard to make up excuses for being at work - especially on a Saturday.



Her friends and family wrote some of the most amazing things about her - which is a reflection of the fun-loving, happy person she is - but it also made me reflect that we don't realise what our nearest and dearest actually think of us until an occasion like this - or upon someone's death...

So when merry later on in the day, I resolved to tell people EXACTLY what I thought of them - cue many overemotional displays of hugging and love. Luckily, I didn't bump into anyone I disliked...

After breakfast, D opened her presents and she and Jen went for a massage. It was then time to hop on a bus to Spit for an hour of kayaking around Middle Harbour. It was absolutely stunning canoeing across this part of the harbour - Danielle and I sharing a two-man kayak, Jen speeding off in hers.

Our friends thought it rather hilarious that I had my mobile with me on the trip and that when they called (to sort out plans for the evening), I was sat in a canoe chatting to them.

Then it was delicious fish and chips from a shop next to the kayaking place before rushing home to get glammed up. We sped to catch a ferry to the city and Minus 5 bar.

The temperature of the bar is actually -15C so we had to get kitted up in huge jackets with furry hoods, gloves and Ugg boots. Inside, the bar is quite small with everything made of ice - chairs (covered in animal skins), tables, sculptures, chandeliers...

We spent quite a lot of time fondling them and getting our 'free' cocktail - a wonderfully alcoholic concoction involving peach schnapps and most probably vodka and mango juice. Jen seemed to be suffering from hypothermia as she kept telling us how hot she was and pulling her jacket off, while I shivered inside my hood and looked a lot like Kenny.

It was certainly an experience - the alcohol hits you pretty quickly at those temperatures. After we finished our drinks we attempted to eat out ice glasses and caused havoc trying to break them into chunks and smashing mine all over the floor to the disgust of the barmaid.

Minus 5 only allow you to stay in the bar for half an hour (employees can only work for two hours at a time in the cold zone), when a pager around your neck begins to beep and you have to leave. Good job really - I was freezing me wotsits off.

So we warmed up with some more cocktails downstairs in the Lenin bar with John and Steve - the barman accidentally making me the world's most alcoholic raspberry and champagne mojito. Tasty.



Then it was back to the ranch to properly beautify and meet our friends and supposedly make faijitas. We never got around to that and instead drank wine and champagne, lit a sparkler or two and D opened some more presents from our friends. Obviously it was then time to meet the crew at the hostel where we drank and danced and I told everyone how they touched everyone's lives in positive ways (eek!) and then on to the Steyne. Danielle even got up to sing Counting Crows at karaoke - with a little help from the rest of us.

Then at 2.30am we went for our swim in the sea (Danielle had even bought special pants for the occasion...). Jen decided to head for the worst rip on the beach and be oblivious to our shouts to come back into shallower water, whereupon a random naked aussie chick called Fiona decided to demonstrate how strong the current was by sitting me down in the sand at the water's edge as the waves washed in and out. There was half a beach in my underwear after that.

So this has been the main focus of my week - prepping D's magazine and events and keeping everyone informed. That and eating Thai food, fun afterwork drinks (where we told our bosses rather emphatically that we aren't paid enough - well we aren't!) followed by an RnB night out, dvds, an afternoon of drinking and catching up in the sun and work...

We finish up at Fairfax two weeks today (Friday) and next week will be training temps to take our place (ha ha ha!). Think they will genuinely miss us here - our stupidity and jokes rather than our actual work though...

Oh but how could I forget our 'criminal' fun recently...?!! Last week one of the lads mentionned a friend of his from the hostel would be kipping on the floor for a few days. "His name's Sonny, do you know him?" Nope never heard of him.

However, the following day, the whole of Manly was due to hear about him. On the front of the Manly Daily newspaper was a large article on how two British backpackers had been fleeced by a guy called Sonny after staying in his apartment. They said he'd taken all their money...

I was reading this on the ferry on the way to work and nudged Danielle - surely this couldn't be the same guy? But yes, of course, anyone knowing our little wheeler dealer Max would know this is EXACTLY the kind of person he would attract...

So when I got home after work I was not that surprised to find a group of lads sat watching dvds and for Max to announce that Sonny was a criminal and had I seen the Manly Daily?

Sonny was mortified and said he had been to see the police and straightened it out - something about a misunderstanding and borrowed money...

However all the girls felt uncomfortable with him staying - especially when many of the lads we knew said they wouldn't trust him. It erupted that night when he refused to leave the flat in case he was recognised, the lads left and we girls were stuck with the dilemma of staying in to make sure this unknown didn't make off with our 'valuables' or going out and having fun... we chose the latter of course but it pushed our Swedish lovelies over the edge - they moved out the following day.

But sad as we are, my life has been perked up immeasurably by the discovery of the world's best brownies. Downstairs at Darling Park there is a coffee shop. It sells moist, crumbly, nutty and wonderful wonderful brownies. I said I was travelling to widen the waistband... I am succeeding very very well, thanks for asking...