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Hey travel fans.
So 10 minutes later I headed for the hippy markets up the street. There was some interesting stuff here, a lot of it crap, but I bought myself a stubby cooler with Freo written on it, throughout my travels I bought stubby coolers from every place I visited as it was a cheap was to bring back souvenirs which are actually useful! Next it was off to the Fremantle Prison which was surprisingly pretty good so I booked myself in for the guided tour. The tour started in the holding area where we were given our reasons for being sent to jail, mine was would you believe it was for being drunk and disorderly which is a total character assassination completely false on all accounts, either that or the guide has seen me dance!!! Then we moved into the garden area where the prisoners used to work to earn privileges and on into the cell blocks where you learned about rosters and crapping in a bucket! The tour continued on through the chapel, the court yard where the punishments took place such as the cat of 9 tails (a whip) which is where you get the saying "don't let the cat out of the bag". Finally we ended up at the last stop on the tour which is where some criminals were hanged, this room had a very spooky atmosphere to it! I finally decided I'd had too much excitement for one day so I headed back home. The next day Dingo was playing cricket so I went along to
watch, perched myself up against a tree and fell asleep missing most of the
game. On waking up I'd found that I'd gotten burned and because I was wearing
sunnies it was a case of looking like a raccoon for the night out on the town -
yeah great! Sunday rolled around so we went to the Sunday session at the cot pub
Apart from that it was a pretty quiet next few days spent
looking round, you were meant to pay $3 per trip into Perth on the train but
after 2 days of not having my ticket checked I decided not to bother being
tickets and play the innocent foreigner card if I got caught which I didn't so I
reckon I saved myself $30 in train fares. That night we went out for Emma's birthday and ended up at Scav's the only night club in town, I think it was just a sports hall that they put a DJ in every Saturday, but like with any small town everybody knew each other so I got to meet lots of people and do some crazy dancing like a robot from 1984 (Maz's favourite song at the minute by the Arctic Monkeys).
Corowa was a nice place but there's nothing to do there so on the days when Emma and Maz were working I either walked into town for an hour or sat in the air con watching telly as the sun is very strong down there and the temperature was in the high 30's. It's on the New South Wales side of the river about 60km west of Albury. Sanger Street is the main street through the town and it is where everything happens, there was the phrase 'to chuck a sanger' which meant to drive down it. The main activity in Corowa is wake boarding so the river is full of people on boats doing stunts and what not. On one day one of Emma's friends was doing a shoot for a magazine so we jumped in the boat and headed for the middle of the river to watch and take photo's. This was nice as the sun set right down the middle of the river offering amazing views.
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Our
first visit was London Court, which is a street in the middle of Perth designed
like medieval England and at the end was a clock which had 2 knights jousting
every half hour. Next it was a walk through the malls then back on the bus to
Kings Park which is to the west of the city. This place was awesome as it over
looked the city and the river and was kept cool by the Fremantle Doctor (this is
the wind that blows through Perth). The heat away from the tropics is very
different as it's a dry heat rather than a humid heat which means that you don't
feel so tired but it means that there's millions of flies that buzz near your
face looking for moisture which gets very annoying and me being the great insect
lover that I am made it apparent to everyone around with my arms flailing that
it was really p#*sing me off! Anyway back to the travels, we had lunch at Kings
Park and then walked around the park giving me lots of photo opportunities of
the city and other foreign stuff like weird trees and abbo cultural stuff, I
cant remember any of the names but it was interesting all the same! That night I
went to the net session with Dingo's cricket team and to be honest I still
haven't lost it as I managed to larrup the cricket balls and bowl straight. I
later found out I was in the dummy's net so maybe I wasn't doing as well as I
thought!
Wednesday
came, I said goodbye to Dingo and jumped on the Indian Pacific train journey
from Perth to Adelaide. We left at midday and by 11pm that night we reached the
Gold Mining town of Kalgoorlie still well inside WA. We were offered a tour of
the mine at night but I decided on the better option of going to the local pub
for a few night cap's with the person I was sat on the train with and on th
e
way back managed to find a kebab shop so I had my midnight lamb sandwich fell
asleep on the train and woke up in the Nullarbor. Now this was BOOORING
for the next 24 hours the view didn't change at all, just desert, desert and
more desert, we even went through tiny communities in middle of all this and you
think to yourself how can people live here? Part of this journey contained the
longest stretch of straight railway track in the world - 478km. That afternoon
we eventually crossed in South Australia and another couple of hours later we
arrived in a place called Cook - population of 4, yes 4! It was a deserted town
with an old school and empty houses, oh and the temperature was a mild 45
degrees and the only top I had on was my rugby top so as you can imagine it was
very hot, the wind was just as hot too! It didn't help that the air conditioning
on the train packed up too so there was just no escaping the heat! That night I
didn't get much sleep as I was in the cheap seats so it was pretty
uncomfortable, but at 7am we
arrived
in Adelaide and at 10am I was on my next train to Melbourne. We were meant to
arrive at 9pm that night but lightning hit a signal so we had to crawl to
Melbourne and eventually arrived at 1:30am. But I did get to see some wild
kangaroo's for the 1st time and also the most amazing sun set. That night I
stayed with Rick from uni and the next day was picked up by Maz outside the
Telstra Dome, you couldn't miss him driving down the road, horn blaring and him
waving. He picked me up then we drove the 3 hours north to Corowa, it was great
to see him again, it was just like being sat in the clubhouse at Debdale talking
away and messing around as if it'd been yesterday I last saw him and not 2 years
ago! He
reminded
me of that famous saying that I haven't heard for so long - 'poppin bantoon
number 92'. We eventually arrived in Corowa and bought a carton of rum & dry -
the taste of summer, and spent the afternoon catching up before heading to
Emma's birthday party. Emma came round that afternoon wearing a bright pink
outfit and pink hair as the theme for the party was to wear your birth colour.
It was awesome to see Emma too, again we just chatted about what's been
happening since we last saw each other, she was well informed about the goings
on back at North Notts and even knew stuff I didn't - info supplied by Caz I'm
guessing hehe! She also has her own salon beauty.com.
The
next day we went for a swim down the Murray River with Maz and his mate. First
we went to a camp site by the river and on the way back to town the dirt track
was cut off by water from when the river flooded. We both looked at each other
and agreed we should speed through it, so we got out, locked in the 4WD on Maz's
ute and sped straight to the puddle, half way through the ute had stopped but
the wheels were still moving - we'd gotten bogged in so we had to fetch his mate
to tow us out. Next we headed to the bridge on the river and after a few beers I
decided it'd be a good idea to jump off. Now they told me to make sure I hold my
breath and keep my feet straight, what they failed to tell me was to also keep
my arms in, so I hit the water as god knows what speed and wondered why my arms
were stinging and why I was being laughed at by everyone on the bank. Maz told
me the noise and the splash I made when I hit the water was enormous, so the
next 3 days I had sore red arms. But you look at the photo Maz took and you'll
see why I was called the Jesus of Corowa!
We
didn't really do much for Australia day, we just sat in the garden having a BBQ,
drinking beer and listening to the top 100 songs on the radio. That weekend Maz
and I went fishing and caught 2 red fin which we had for dinner that night. On
the Monday I went to Albury with Emma as she had hockey so we went to dinner,
had a swim then while they were doing fitness I caught up with Wilksy and again
chatted about what's been happening. The rest of the week was pretty quiet and
on the Thursday we all met up to say our goodbyes as I was flying back to Cairns
the following day. 
Emma
picked me up the next morning and took me to the train station in Albury which
is where I had to catch the train to Melbourne. On the way down to Melbourne the
train stopped off at a place called Seymour which I was told is where Allen used
to live. There was also a town called Mansfield near by which would have been
good to visit if it was on the way.
