easter weekend

this weekend i feel like i rejoined the human race. i actually had a couple of days off from work and met up with imke and her new housemates. i woke up good friday disappointingly early (i.e. 9am) so spent the morning trying to find life near to where i'm living - but, no, it is just a light industrial wasteland. australia really goes to town on the old public holiday thing. all shops, cafes and even furniture warehouses were closed and i couldn't get a paper from anywhere. even the shop at the train station was closed. so i did my washing and watched a bit of a judy garland film on telly until it was time to meet imke and cedric. it's funny how, when you're backpacking, all your friends seem to be called petra or antoine, rather than good old emily or david.

we decided to head to brighton beach, having heard word on the backpacker grapevine a while ago that this was a nicer beach than st kilda. half an hour on a train and we were there and wandering along the beach with me moaning about how i wanted old friends with me rather than meeting new people all the time as it was so much more effort. this, perhaps, wasn't the most tactful thing to say to people i've just met but they seemed to take it well. we ended up sitting on the step of someone else's beach hut and chatted and chatted and it actually wasn't hard work at all. perhaps it helps that i met imke last year so she now counts as an old friend, in backpacking terms. and it was nice just to feel the sun on my face and not be at work. we wandered into brighton and had a coffee at an outside cafe and watched the world go by. very pleasant. and brighton is quite a pretty town with a main row of shops along the main street. it was like armley town street only much nicer. in fact, probably more like a northern market town kind of feel. i decided to forego the lemonheads concert that evening in favour of (shock) being with people and going back to imke's house and watching a dvd. it seemed ages since i've actually been amongst people - it's just me and my computer at the recruitment place and me and miss saigon at the theatre. imke's living in abbotsford and it's a much nicer area than i'm in. she has a park and everything.

didn't get up to much on saturday as i was back working again. surprise. but i did get chatting with hezra the security guard at the theatre and heard the most romantic love story of the decade. she was originally from fiji but emigrated to australia at 17 when her father married her off to a suitable boy that she didn't love. she was in love with a guy called joseph that she had grown up with but he was a christian and she muslim so her dad asked her to choose between them and she chose her dad. anyway, she was unhappily married for a couple of years and had a little boy but the marriage fell apart cos her husband knew that she loved someone else so he took up with another woman and she lived on her own with her little boy. her dad found out and wanted to take her back to fiji but she refused. anyway, turns out joseph also moved to australia and also married someone else but then he found out that she had got divorced. his own marriage was unhappy so eventually, after several years apart, they got together. joseph's wife apparently didn't really want the daughter they had together so hezra and joseph eventually got together and they brought the son and the daughter up as being in one family and it all ended happily. this was 27 years ago and they're still together now. what a cool story to listen to as you're waiting for miss saigon to end for the second time that day.

on easter sunday, i spent lunchtime on an outing to brunswick, 'the boho area of melbourne'. it's basically a big long street with lots of indy shops and fashionable retro places and, strangely, seemingly millions of churches of differing denominations. it also has a few nice cafes and i passed a relaxing hour reading my book while other people had their sunday brunch. this is what not working is all about for me. i was really intrigued by a couple outside the window from where i was sitting who were playing a game of travel scrabble. it looked pretty intense so i sneakily took a pic on my phone while pretending to be reading my messages. not sure who was winning. you can imagine this couple have been friends for decades and helped each other through various traumas in their lives, like when she left her alcoholic husband and he came out to his family and the bingo club. it certainly doesn't look like a two-minute-backpacker friendship. i don't think it looks like they're romantically attached either. i spent quite a lot of time trying to work it out over an iced coffee.

and then i went to work.

there was a party sunday night, though, round at imke's. i think i got rather giddy seeing as i was out amongst people and everything so drank rather a lot of cheap boxed wine that is collectively refered to as 'goon' round here. no-one here seems to think that the term is associated with insulting aborigines, as bridget says, but then no-one knows where the term has come from so i'm not sure. anyway, i do know that it gives you a really bad headache the next day. i think i ended up collapsing on imke's bed and waking as from a coma at about 6am. i blame the pint glass they gave me to drink my wine with. plus, my lack of self control. obviously.

so i struggled on the journey out to mornington peninsula. it was an hour train journey and then a two hour bus journey to portsea. we had a greasy fish and chips break before the bus journey, though imke being dutch and her french mate, gaetan, being the third person in the group, they just didn't get the whole social having-fish-and-chips-at-the-seaside thing so i had to have them on my own while they just watched. it was quite weird. but the grease did me a world of good.

we finally got to the seaside and we all partook in the obligatory ice cream - at least these continentals do that. and then we had a liberating change of clothes behind a tree into our bikinis and spent a couple of hours sunbathing in a 'home and away' manner. it reminded me of fiji, as i walked along by the sea, though this place was more populated, with families out for the easter holidays. another glimpse at the real world.

and then the fun started. i had read that there was an interesting rock formation called 'london bridge' nearby so took it upon myself to lead the group out. well, the sign did say it was only 2km. however, forty-five minutes later along some v scenic country roads and we were still nowhere near. and the last bus back was leaving from portsea in less than an hour. 'twas beginning to be the beginning of a trauma. we finally found the place and it was worth the walk, especially with the gorgeous warm sunset behind it and the rugged ocean compared to the lightly lapping waters of the bay on the other side of the peninsula where we had been sunbathing. but panic was beginning to rise when we realised how far we had to walk back and how little time we had. there was nothing for it but to hitch a lift. the only other time i have done this in my life was when we were offered lifts back at the fox glacier. and that didn't even involve sticking a thumb out. but i went for it this time with my mother's outraged face pictured in my head. the third car stopped. it was a tank of a knackered old land rover with a proper surfing aussie bloke behind the wheel. i had to assault the vehicle in order to get the door open. poor gaetan was in the back with the surfboards and the muck. we had a rare old chat about how he went surfing this morning but the surf wasn't on right now so he would try again tomorrow morning. the chap drove us to the bus stop with 20 minutes to spare. phew.

so these excursions have got me giddy about travelling again. to be honest, i was starting to lose the lustre, what with all this working. i sat down at the weekend and worked out where i still wanted to see and worked it into a timetable. i had to, given that i now have no time at all left in oz. so it looks like i'm going to be leaving melbourne in just short of three weeks and off i go again. i get to spend all the money i'm earning. yay!