coming home

12 November 2006 1:15pm (NSW time)

Coming home.
Nothing has changed, and everything has changed.

The Rev is now a dance venue. They painted it grey, and now they only have djs.

Fat Boys have changed their menu, and now no longer have my favourite 2 items on there. however, they now do cheese platters, hence are partially absolved.

Zomba no longer exists - but there is quite a nice mural painted on the wall where it used to be.

Liv's old house has been overrun by bachelors - the bathroom shower now has no nozzle. Odd.

Urban Grind still make a damn good coffee.

Chris almost had a "same" stamp, but he's about to be a published author, so i'm afraid i'm going to have to stamp him "different"

The valley markets are still exactly the same (phew! think the world would end otherwise...)

indro is still chaos

so is the mall

but we're different. we hang out in the same places, but the combinations of people are different. oddly, after being away, it's more comfortable hanging out wherever.

if travelling shows you who your true friends are, we have a lot of true friends - but things are still strange. makes me wonder how long this amazing fairy land existence we've had can continue - will we suddenly all realise we're getting old and grow up (aargh! i certainly hope not!)

it feels so much like home - and it feels so fragile.

The trip home 2

4 November 2006 11:10am

We've just passed about half a dozen signs to a place called Terry Hie Hie.

We've been getting heaps of messages and phonecalls from people saying they're coming to our welcome home party. We're really going home!

The rules for the driving music for the trip:

* nothing sad
* nothing by the people we have just said goodbye to
* nothing sad
* primarily singalong songs
* nothing slow (so we don't sleep)
* nothing hypnotic
* nothing sad

Fortunately this means we're listening to such classics as "marvellous" by the 12th man, "be my baby" by the Teen Queens, and "ghost of a texas ladies man" by concrete blonde.

Ah, what a marvellous day.

12:20pm

well, we have our priorities straight. we've just made a 50 minute detour to visit our favourite organic winery (Wright Robinson) outside Glen Innes (on the road to armidale).

we bought a case of wine and 2 bottles of port. as a resule, the floor of the passenger seat is now entirely filled with wine, and i'm having to sit in come crazy yoga positions. luckily, i'm freakishly flexible, and this doesn't pose a problem. liz, however, is freakishly inflexible. she may have a problem.

when we do yoga classes, i twist my body into all the craziest postures and go "am i supposed to feel something?" while Liz just scowls at me, and says "bitch" - which i think is very un-yoga-like, and probably means she has, like, 8 or 9 years of bad karmic debt to work off. (in liz's defence, she can balance for hours on three toes, with her other foot in the air, whilst eating paw paw, and painting her fingernails - i fall over if i'm standing on 2 feet and a butterfly brushes past. we all have our strengths...

does anyone out there know how many bad karma points i get for boasting about my flexibility?

anyway, poor liz! when she's a passenger, she's really going to suffer. the things we do for good (and very cheap) wine and port!

Note - towards the afternoon, liz was volunteering to drive a lot... didn't bother liv, she sits in odd positions even when there's not wine on the floor, so everyone (except probably liz, who had to do most of the driving) was happy.

12:45pm - my personal favourite place name: Bald Nob (between glen innes and tenterfield) - closely seconded by Iron Nob (SA, near Port Pirie).

Seriously, I love this country!

The trip home 1

31 November 2006 8:20am

Australians really take pride in giving things amusing names. We've just passed over Gobbagombalin Bridge, Wagga Wagga.

I mean, really.

Sure, I'm positive there's some spiritual connection/important person/aboriginal word reason for these names, but they never stop amusing me.

A selection of the places we'll travel through today:

* Gidginbung
* Daroobalgie
* Eumungerie
* Gilgandra
* Edgeroi
* Coonabarabran

Unfortunately we'll just miss Tooraweenah and Cookamidgera.

I love Australia!

9:30am - we are now entering the Shire of Bland.

Yahoo.

1:00pm - Dead Bird Lead Creek (near Parkes Dish).

Speaking of Parkes Dish (which Liz has been unaccountably excited about all trip - and I mean since December...) we stopped at the cafe there, and not only did they have Byron Bay Organic Coffee and Byron Bay Cookie Co. cookies, but they were playing Kate Miller-Heidke on the stereo. I think that may have been the exact moment I realised we're really going home.

5pm - can you believe someone called a town Wee Waa?

Documenting the melbourne excesses (melbourne 3)

10th October 2006.

the melb trip so far:

19th Oct - called Kelly out of the blue and asked if we could stay overnight. Gareth cooked wicked dinner - aloo gobi and caesar salad. met groovy people, drank beer, liv slept on couch, liz slept in someone else's bed (they weren't in it, luckily for liz).

20th Oct - Met up with Mel K. went to Me gig - OH MY GOD! Kickarse. like, seriously. yeah. stayed at mel and renee's place. ate breakfast at hot poppy, dinner at vietnamese restaurant in brunswick, saw lots of friends.

21st Oct - liz hung out with rick, liv hung out with mel and luke. went out with crazy daz - did the grand prix circuit. coffee at hot poppy, dinner in hardware lant (italian). drinks at croft institute, eurotrash, pony, cherry, section 8

22 Oct 2006 - liz hung wiht rick, liv went to races in puckapunyal. liz - dinner at brasserie, southbank (total bill for table $570 - 4 people, 3 courses, 3 bottles of wine, i glass desert wine each.) also gin palace. liv - stayed in puckapunyal, and went to the Seymour races. champagne, nibbles, yummy food fern cooked. bet on horses and lost. i was seriously peeved - i was so sure "beautiful tiara" would win - i would have got $500.

23 Oct 2006 - liv went for country drive (lunch at cafe in Yea). liz hung wiht rick (yum cha, sushi). both met up with mel and luke. liv cooked brown rice slice for household. liz went to dom and paul's place and had dinner and wines.

24 Oct 2006 - op-shopping wiht marlene. koko black (sundaes - mmmmmmmmmn!). drink wiht mel A. decided to stay an extra few days to see mel perform in aria comp (first prize total $35000 - go mel!)

25 Oct 2006 - liv printed photos and went on fruitless search for cool cushions for mel and renee. liz helped luke and mel wiht setting up mel and renee's loft. dinner with ming at the townie (liv had veg shepherd's pie, liz - chips)

26 Oct 2006 - Liv caught up with ex-crs workmates for morning tea in Glenroy, then liv and liz went to mancuso day spa for facials and massages. liv had reaction to the stuff in facial (not happy). white lotus for dinner (vegan restaurant) - eggplant fritters, chicken sweetcorn soup, tamarind fish, mongolian beef. all vegan of course.

27 Oct 2006 - liv chilled out during the day. liz went to architecture thing at melb uni and had free champagne and nibbles with sarah bridges. liv cooked veg soup for house. damian's birthday - went to alia in north carlton. hung with me boys, mel, luke, etc. adopted mike and darko as our honorary toy boys for the evening. liz vomited in tool box (messy). liv luckily didn't step in it when she came home. whew!

28 Oct 2006 - Ange's baby shower. awesome food! took lots of silly photos. brought leftover food home for house. liz went to dom's place. watched late show dvds.

29 Oct 2006 - luke's birthday and liz and liv's anniversary. coffee at hot poppy. liz hung with rick for the morning. townie festival with me boys and rubicon staff. ate vegie burgers/ fish and chips and watched arias.
* please note - luke and darko are very scary when they play totem tennis while drunk. very very scary.

30 Oct 2006 - (today) breakfast with charles at hot poppy. going to ming's place this afternoon for tea party.

plans: the current version - tea with dom and paul tomorrow.
wed night - see mel A perform in aria comp at hamer hall with luke and mel
leave thurs morning for the next leg of the journey towards ocean shores/ glasshouse mountains/ brisbane.

no wonder we're exhausted!

melbourne 2

28 Oct 2006 9:28pm

these times are crazy for us.

we've been in melbourne 10 days so far. it's been a ball, and we've even decided to extend our stay. it's odd though too. we've seen so many people and everyone really does appear to be keen to see us. what's happened, of course, is that we have so many people to see and things to do we're exhausting ourselves again. i think we're really making up for lost time.

i think both of us will crash a bit when we finally get the time to stop. we're both leaving good friends and men we really care about behind us.

we'll be frantically busy at least for the next week, then i start work, and liz gets to chill for a week at her parents house. well, not really chill - she'll be looking after the nursery, but in comparison to melbourne, it will be chilling.

i think for me, at the moment, staying busy and not letting myself feel too much is probably a good thing. one thing is for sure - i'm going to need a holiday to get over this holiday. what an incredible two weeks it's been so far!

details to come when i'm less tired

Melbourne 1

23 Oct 2006 12:06pm

what a crazy few days!

liz and i have both been emotionally turbulent - seeing friends we love, going to see Luke and the Me boys play (BLEW MY MIND!!!), Liz seeing Rick, going out with lots of people, seeing my friend Fern with her beautiful pregnant belly (you are truly gorgeous darling), hanging wiht Mel and Renee and staying in a loft up a gigantic ladder (which still terrifies me), getting a tour of puckapunyal military base - i'm exhausted already!

right now i'm sitting in a beautiful cafe in Yea, drinking a too-hot coffee, and chilling for a while before going back to the chaos of melbourne. my head is still in the clouds, and i'm feeling quite ungrounded, so i'm just stopping for a few minutes.

i'm not sure where my head is. i'd write about it, but that would require putting it in words, and i'm not sure if i'm ready or able to do that yet.

the wind

wrong i was.

21 October 2006 3:20pm

my head is spinning around in a kaleidoscope of colour and sound.

it's possible that what i've been searching for all these years has been right in front of my face, and i've been too afraid to open my eyes.

i've been lying here for ages, book in hand, trying to work out where to start - what to say, how much, how little, how honest - how is he going to fee reading this, which i know he will, because i'm sure he's wondering what i've written about him.

my feeling haven't had time and space to settle yet. sometimes i feel really secure, comfortable and happy. i laugh and smile more than every, i sing with a skill i don't remember having, i'm beautiful, confident, sexy.

then i feel sad, loney, confused, irritated, terrified. at times i feel nothing at all. once in a blue moon i feel like he just wants to use me, and spit me out and that he doesn't give a shit, and that he could never possible like this body, and that he's just killing time. these things are of course just throwbacks to my old negative ways of thinking, and even i can see that none of it's true, but old habits are sometimes easy to take up again, even if it's just briefly.

i respect him. we are equals. there aren't that many people i don't look up to or down on (that bloody ego thing - yes, i'm still working on it) but we are equal.

having said all this, the way my head is, i'll have changed my mind completely about it all tomorrow.

this has been a long time coming, but i'm glad. however brief this may turn out to be.

adelaide

18 October 2006 around 7pm

yet again, i'm attempting to put mini video on the computer. yes, i know, i really should have learnt by now not to take so many videos, but it's just so damn tempting! it shows so much more accurately what life is really like than just flat static photos.

actually, this time, it was liz's video of Wala.

OOOh! it worked!

just because i'm a glutton for punishment, i've started another memory card, with more videos.

well, this trip to Adelaide has certainly been eventful. working out what and how much to write is not going to be easy, so i'll start with the superficial while we're waiting for our friends to arrive.

we went a couple of days ago to see the vietnam war memorial in Adelaide at the big parade ground in the city. Grandpa sponsored a plaque in Dad's name, so there's a plaque (well, a brick) there with his name on it, so we took pics to send to dad and grandpa. it's actually quite a beautiful memorial - much more modern than the others in the same ground, but the statues on top are beautiful.

then we bought bath bombs, and went back to the holiday house and had baths with candles and wine.

just for the record, holiday houses rock@ full kitchen, washing machine, bath, fireplaces in the bedrooms (they can't be used, but they look awesome.

hmmn.. i just spelt look with 3 o's (in my journal i mean, not here on the blog, silly, don't bother to look). i'm not really paying attention to what i'm writing - my mind is on other things.

right. i shall either write mindfully or not at all.

liz and i have written about so many things - people comment that it must be weird having so many people know so much about us - for the record it's not really - live in a small town for a while and you'll get used to having everyone know everything about you. that and we have nothing to hide.

anyway, one of the things we never really write about is the men in our lives. the astute readers will have noticed the appearance of a number of males in these posts, but we've never really written much about them.

so, yeah, anyway, that's where my head is. i'm thinking about a man. actually, if i'm honest, i've been thinking about a few of them recently, but today it's all about one. it's the old it never rains but it pours thing. a comfortable steady stream would be nice, but no - apparently the universe doesn't seem to want to work like that. oh well, at least they're all seriously hot!

i'll be less cryptic when we leave Adelaide, and i know where my head is. right now my head has floated off on a cloud, which is probably a good sign i should stop writing.

Around 10pm-ish

One of the things you can most bank on in life is the predictable unreliability of musicians. before we came to adelaide i knew this was going to be a time of blowing in the wind. no pressure, no commitments, just go where the universe takes you.

some days the wind blows from the ocean, and caresses your cheek.
some days it sings as it dances through the trees
it tosses the jacarandah in a cascade of blooms
creates fleetimg moments of beauty as it carries a cobweb through a series of pirhouettes. (i think that's incorrect spelling, but don't really care - how unlike me!)

then other days it cuts like a knife through the thickest skins.
drives stinging hot dust in your face.
picks up a farmhouse and tosses it wildly, with no reference whatsoever to either property aesthetics, or appropriate access to plumbing.

sometimes it just drifts unnoticed over a wasteland.

tonight i'm not sure which way the wind is blowing - i've got a feeling it may be going around in circles.

i'm waiting (eagerly) to be proven wrong.

Beautiful men

right. well, those of you who are regular readers (and we know you're out there!) will know that it's pretty rare that we hold back on this blog. the following entries have been harder for me to write here than any others, because they're somehow more real, and more raw. even 6 weeks later, it's still raw, but i'm putting this stuff here anyway. because otherwise the blog wouldn't be complete, and i'd feel like a fraud. strangely, after everything we've written here, i feel like these are the posts that could come back and bite me on the bum. there's no rational reason for that, but the crazy fear is still there. still, we said we'd do everything we could to face our fears on this trip, right?

the uncensored (ok, not really, it's a bit cryptic, so it's a little bit censored) version of the last couple of months is as follows:

15 Oct 2006 9:54pm

Many times in the past few years I've been aware of the smell of a beautiful man on my cheek. every hug, every kiss on the cheek, leaves their mark. even if they wear the same scent, they smell different. this one smells like nothing but himself.

tonight we switched roles. in the past when we've met, we've been at gatherings where we've only spoken my language. i've always held court, as i pretty much always do. tonight, liz and i were hosts, but he held court instead. i always thought we were quite unalike, but after this evening i'm not sure. maybe our similarities are equal to our differences.

i'm waiting to see how i feel at the end of the next 4 days.

another tea party - this time at paul and dom's place. awesome scones. liz wasn't invited, hence is taking pics through the window - the voyeur. you know you can be arrested for that, right liz? 

eating crepes with marlene. we had lots of shots of me pulling silly faces this day, but i thought we'd had enough pics of me pulling silly faces for the moment 

ok, just one more snowy shot - we bought him a little xmas outfit. soooo cute! 

this is totally one of my favourite shots of this year - taken in ming's lounge in a crazy mirror - nice work liz. very nice work 

SNOWY!!!!!! 

liz and snowy. i did warn you about the snowy shots, right? 

for no apparent reason i absolutely love this pic - one of my favourites. it was taken at ming's tea party (another excellent occasion)  

the incredible number of people we managed to fit in the lounge for the arias - this is a tiny section. by the end of the night, there was absolutely no free floor space. incredibly enough, mel's chocolate cake managed to feed everyone! 

damian - this time at luke's birthday do. north melbourne townie put a festival on in luke's birthday honour (even though luke's no longer an errol st local) and then we all went to watch the arias, which were also conveniently held in luke's honour 

the most awful photo of liv ever taken - which is why it clearly had to end up here. can't be putting up terrible photos of everyone else, and not us, right? the flash makes my legs look like they're upside down bottles! and what the hell is wrong with my face? 

can you pick which one's pregnant? 

ange's baby shower - ange, hope you're doing well, babe. you're a fantastic cook!  

mike (also one of the me boys) and liz at damian's birthday.  

darko's fan club. this was taken at damian's birthday - hanging out with the 'me' boys was a total highlight. and finally getting to see them play - unfortunately neither of us got any decent pics of them on stage, because the lighting was so poor. sorry boys.  

this is snowy, the gorgeous pup we stayed with. we also stayed with mel and renee, but most importantly, we got to hang with snowy. what a little cutie! prepare for lots of snowy pics. 

ok, it's about time to succumb to pressure, and put some of our melbourne pics here. we had a crazy 2 weeks in melbs, which was highlighted by going to see our beautiful friend mel adams in the herald sun aria comp - she got 3rd, yay mel! you had us both in tears, you were so amazing. opera singers rock.  

man, we have some catching up to do. i've been v slack with posting!

Sunday 15 Oct 2006 - just after 8am - Port Pirie

All the bags are packed. We're not at all sure how we manage to pack all this stuff in the car each time, but we always do. liz is having a shower, and i'm downloading the video we made yesterday - of us doing a "mainie" (just like lapping in ipswich, for those lucky enough to know what that is). I still don't understand the whole "lapping" thing, but we've done it.

I've also just downloaded pics of the amazing pendant my workmates gave me as a going away present so i'll pick the best one and post it here.

i think this video may take a looooooong time to download - liz has had her shower and it's only moved onto the 2% downloaded bit.

Note to self: stop taking bloody long videos.