I have returned. It has only taken a week in NSW before I wrote this, but I’m here none the less. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a bed that’s way too small for me, underneath 4 blankets and sitting above an electric blanket cranked up at the highest setting. According to the internet on my phone, it’s 4°C outside. Fuck knows what temperature it is underneath the blankets here, but thank god it isn’t in the single digits. I’ll start explaining the reason why I’m laying where I am seeing as it’s pretty fresh in my mind. My Mum, sister and myself flew down to Parkes (it’s a small country town ~4 hours drive from Sydney) for my Aunt’s (Mum’s sister) 50th Birthday, and Jordan and I are just tagging along ’cause well, who doesn’t want to leave Darwin for a week for somewhere else. Originally, Mum wanted to fly down on Thursday night/Friday morning (one of those red eye flights), stay down here until Monday or Tuesday night and fly back to Darwin. Well, fuck that. I needed to go out Thursday night ’cause Ollie (one of the guys from the Warp Brothers, or D.O.N.S as he’s called now) was playing in Discovery, so I needed to stick around for that. Instead we waited until Friday night/Saturday morning until we flew out. It was kind of lucky we waited until Saturday morning to fly out, because Andy (our cousin) and my other Aunt were flying down secretly aswell and we were all taking the same flight. That was a good thing too, it meant Mum and I weren’t going to get horribly lost while in Sydney. I’m not on the internet, so I can’t really check whether I’ve told this story, but last time we flew down (again, another red eye flight, but my first time flying) we got kind of.. lost. We managed to check in and we were in the right terminal too (which was lucky), but instead of sitting at the right gate, we picked the gate that just said “Dubbo”. Surely there can’t be other flights to a little town like Dubbo, right? We’re sitting there, happily just waiting for our plane to be boarded. It got like 10 minutes after our ticket said we should have boarded when Mum’s like:

Mum: “Why haven’t we boarded yet, we are supposed to leave in 5 minutes”
Me: “Let me look at the ticket”
Me: *Looks* “Um. We are at the wrong gate”
Mum: “What.”
Me: “We need to ask those people *points at REX staff*”
Them: “Yeah, you need to be down the other end of the airport”
Us: “ ”

What then followed was three people from Darwin running down the terminal (complete with bags in tow) trying to find this other gate that we were supposed to be standing at. Apparently, they had been calling our names (not just like “last call for _____”, but “Mr Jarryd Page…GATE ___!”) and we were none the wiser. I blame the fact that they were showing some shitty movie on the plane. Works for me. Anyway. Shit, on the flight down it wasn’t any better. I forget how little room there is between my knees and the chair in front, especially when the cockhead decides he’s going to slam (no, not lean his chair back, slam it back) his chair into my knees. What followed after that, was me spending 2 hours trying to find the best place for my legs to be. Eventually I found a comfy place, just before they started serving breakfast (at 4:30am.) We got into Sydney fine, grabbed our bags and made our way over to the other terminal. Now, you have to remember, I’ve only ever really been in Darwin temperatures. Which, for the most part are in between 25-33°C. Here we are, a bunch of Darwin people flying down to a place where it’s the middle of winter. Bonus! I’m walking around in shorts and a shirt, and Mum and Jordan are in jeans and long-sleeved shirts. I found myself quickly putting on my jumper the moment I got off the plane though. As we were walking outside to the other terminal, I realised how cold 5°C really is. I could see my breath. Fucking win. I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was walking, instead I was breathing out and watching it fog up. It wasn’t long before we were checked in and sitting down (at the right gate this time) and waiting for out plane to arrive. I spent this time wisely though, on the internet leeching free wireless.

We got into Parkes no trouble. I think we spent most of the day surprising random relatives, you know, that boring crap that parents like to do while they are on holidays. I wasn’t too fussed, just incredibly tired. Apparently I got zero sleep, even though I had my eyes closed for most of the flight. Fuck knows what happened there. But I was starting to really feel tired when Mum kept stopping and chatting to people. Argh! Sleepy-head-nods are the hardest to get past. I eventually soldiered on and kept up the pace. That Saturday night was the night of the 50th so we spent most of the night at my cousin’s house. Now, you’d think, middle of winter, let’s have it inside, or let’s book a room somewhere.. inside? Right? No, wrong. I have no issues with standing outside, next to a fire in sub-zero temperatures, but I didn’t know anyone there. Did I mention that it was the coldest night they’ve had for a long time? Apparently it got down to 0°C. Fuck. That. I had 3 shirts on, a giant jumper, and jeans standing next to an open fire, and I was still cold. Hey, it was for a good cause. By the end of it though, I would have been up for like a day and a bit without any sleep and I was starting to really feel it. I couldn’t wait to go and sleep in a bed. Sunday comes by and nothing really eventful happens. I mean we piss-fart about and just waste time doing random stuff, nothing really to write home about.

Monday we did something productive though. We had to drive over to Dubbo because the aunty that flew down with us on Saturday morning missed her flight because It was pissing down with rain really hard in Sydney, so that delayed her connecting flight or something to the on in Sydney. Basically she was going to miss her flight back up to Darwin. The people at the airport were being righteous cunts and didn’t want to help her out, so she rung up their office somewhere and managed to score a flight via Dubbo. Anyway, we drove down to Dubbo and spent most of the day there again, doing random shit. Walking into shops, looking at stuff, and walking back out again. It’s weird walking around in shops here though, because most of the population are old people. I’m not talking like a couple of grannies here and there, but there aren’t any young, hot girls around at all. I mean christ, where the fuck are they all. Fair enough I’m in a country town, but I mean most of the girls that are walking are either incredibly young, or way too old. I don’t think I could live in a place like this either. It wouldn’t be the temperature that’d bother me, but there is seriously nothing to do here. I’d get bored way too quickly, and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I could see living a little closed to the city, but there just wouldn’t be anything exciting to do at all in this place.

That last paragraph was not one to be messed with. I’m in between sleeps writing this post. Right now, we’ve gone elsewhere to where we were before. Like I said earlier, we had flown down to Parkes and spent like 4 days there doing random crap. Now we’re on our way back to Darwin. Originally, we were going to do what we did when we flew down here; one constant flight. Well fuck that. If I’m going on a semi-holiday, I’m going to stop in Sydney for at least a day and do something relatively important while I’m there. Instead of flying straight back to Darwin, I forced an extra night in Sydney. Hooray! I get to do something in Sydney. Anyway, I digress. Oh, before I go into what we’re doing in Sydney, I spent our last day in Parkes driving around (considering I’d spent 90% of our time visiting people, I hadn’t been able to go out and get photos.) So I grabbed my Grandma’s car keys and said I was going for a drive around town. I first went out to the Dish hoping to get some photos, but when I went out there I had no idea where I was going. So whether where I went wasn’t the right place, or I just drove into where they were actually working. Ha, typical of me. When I drove around to where the Dish was there was this giant sign “VISITORS: REPORT TO ADMINISTRATION”, naturally being one to follow signs, I walked in and found no one behind the desk and like 5 blokes down a hallway having a meeting (all wearing hard hats.) Oh fuck, I’m so in the wrong place. I turned and walked out, drove down the road I just come and stood in the middle of the road while I got a photo. Meanwhile, at the start of the road there’s this sign saying no electrical equipment allowed, all that normal crap they say, and here I am in the middle of the road getting a photo. Halfway through getting a photo this ute started to make a bee line towards me. My time’s spent, I need to get out of here.. now. The rest of the day was rather uneventful, I mean we got onto the plane without any hassle and arrived in Sydney quickly. I think at one stage we were flying through a rain-cloud, so that was neat.

It’s good though, because my Uncle and Aunt live in Sydney, so we’ve got a place to stay while we are here. I mean it’s only for one night, but still, better than having to pay for accommodation, which wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have family here. I’ve got about 5 nieces I haven’t seen for god knows how long all grown up now, means we can see them aswell. No doubt I’ll get some photos of them before we leave tomorrow night. I’ll get back onto my other story now. Before we had left on our trip, I was planning out my day in Sydney with Zack and his Mum, got it all setup and planned out on Google maps, which meant I’d be able to check where we were meant to be. Basically it involved us getting a boat trip around the harbour, seeing the Opera House, walking through some shops, going to Center Point Tower and going back home again. Well, in the past 5 days, it’s apparently been raining really hard and it’s been shitty weather all week, which meant that Mum wasn’t going to go on one of the boat rides. Well that’s out of the question now, which is a pain in the ass, because that meant the circle trip I had planned out fell through. What’s more is that another Aunty of mine wants to see us, so we’re trying to make time in to see her and that. Mum, being the indecisive person that she is (in fact her whole family is like that; “What do you want to do?”, “I dunno, what do YOU want to do?”) couldn’t tell her exactly what we were going to be doing. Big fat pain in the ass but I think we’ve sorted out something final. Fuck knows whether it’ll go to plan, but I have to make sure I go to two places tomorrow: the Apple Store, and the Crumpler Store.. somewhere. I haven’t been on the net lately to check where things are, which is a bugger.

When we were driving to my Uncle’s house from the airport, I couldn’t get over how many cars there were, and how many different directions you could have gone. Call me a country-bumpkin, but by god there were so many lanes to choose from, and so many cars flying by (they weren’t going slow by any means.) I dunno whether I’d survive driving around here. Sure, you’d get used to where everything is, but I’d have to study shit on the internet before I’d really know what was going on. When Zack and I were planning my trip, it took me a good half hour before I realised the time schedules that the trains took, let alone the way that toll booths and that were setup. That’s the other thing, apparently it can cost you an arm and a leg to get to the airport (factoring in the toll-booths and parking tickets.) Fuck. That. It costs a max $6 to pick someone up at the airport in Darwin, and that’s knowing roughly that their plane will fly in at a certain time. I’ve decided though, I’m going to come back, and stay for like two weeks, or even just one here and another in Melbourne. I’m not talking like in two years or something retarded like that, but I mean in the next six months. No doubt I’ll write this now, and six months down the track I’ll still be saying the exact same thing. I can see myself having a lot more fun if I spend a little longer down here, especially if I don’t have to worry about rushing home to get back on a plane. It definitely would be nice, I think I’d have more fun not having to worry about my Mum or Sister either, or even worrying about having to see family (which would why it’d be nice to go to Melbourne.)

Our last morning in Sydney went off pretty well I think. I mean, we ended up sorting out things with my other Aunt, that she come to pick us up and take us to a Westfield in Hornsby and have breakfast/morning tea there and chat with her for a bit, and we’d leave our bags in my Uncle’s car so all he’d need to do was drive through the city and pick us up and drop us at the airport. Our eventual plan was actually really good, because that meant we would have been able to stay in the city for a little longer and not have to rush around. Anyway, after having morning tea with my Aunt and cousin, we got into a train and went straight to Town Hall (we even managed to sit in a car-thingy where a hobo eventually joined us!) From the station we walked outside and managed to get lost the moment we stepped out. It wasn’t long before we were adjusted and worked out which way we needed to start walking (the moment I saw the Queen Victoria Building.) We got in to the city around lunch time, and started from there. First we started walking through the Queen Victoria Building and just looking at things in shop windows (things don’t have prices tags generally are things to avoid), from there it was onto the Center Point tower. All these buildings that we walked into, I had no idea where we were going. All I knew was that they had an entry and I should walk in and have a look. What I didn’t realise, that most of these buildings that we were walking in had like 6 levels each, if not more. Needless to say we were going to have a lot of fun getting lost and finding ourselves again. After leaving the Center Point tower, we walked up through Pitt St Mall, diverted into the Strand Arcade and I had a look around the Crumpler store for a new camera bag. After the Strand, it was onto the only other place I wanted to visit; the Apple Store. I’ve seen pictures and that of the store on the internet, but until you walk inside and realise that the majority of the store is glass, it’s hard to understand that.. the majority of the store is made of glass. There were so many people inside aswell, not just a small handful, but there were people lining up inside the building waiting to be served. We wandered through there and I kept wandering over to a new Macbook Pro each floor we went to.

After the Apple Store, we puttered over to the Rocks and had lunch there. We spent a little bit wandering around there (truth be told, we got lost looking for a Subway.) By that time it was getting later on in the afternoon and I wanted to go past the Opera House before we left (cliche I know, but I had to go there at least once.) Stopped there, got some photos and by this time Jordan’s having a little waah because she wanted to buy a new phone. So instead of spending our leisurely time walking around the Opera House (and counting the windows), we had to beeline back to the Strand Arcade and go into a JB Hifi and buy her a phone. By now, we’ve only got maybe an hour and a bit left before my Uncle would drive by and pick us up, we found ourselves walking in random big shops (David Jones, Myers) and we getting horribly lost inside the shops. Seeing as I’ve never really looked in either of these shops, I couldn’t get past one thing; how shiny everything was. Oh, and I swear every chick that worked in their respective shoe/make-up/clothing department were all incredibly hot. I’m used to seeing slightly attractive chicks and tourists in Darwin, but some of the girls that I saw in Sydney took the cake. I need to move myself out of Darwin and into a place where 99% of the girls aren’t bogans. I’ll get there, eventually. I digress. It was about time we made our way to Bridge St (where my Uncle was going to pick us up.) We were walking for about 10 minutes before Mum’s like:

Mum: “Are we lost?”
Me: “Possibly. What street are we on?”
Mum: “Well, there’s Park St, and is that Town Hall?”
Me: “Crap.”

Apparently we had walked out of Myers and took a wrong turn, a wrong turn that resulted in us walking the opposite direction for about 10 minutes. We had managed to walk all the way back to where we started six hours beforehand. Quickly turning ourselves around, we got to where we were going with time to spare (luckily.) Our flight back was relatively uneventful, I spent most of my time piss-farting about on my laptop until the cunt in front of me decided he’d slam his chair right back into my legs and nearly knock my laptop over. I had been fighting with him for most of the flight, and the moment I move my feet so I could take my shoes off he takes advantage of it. Bastard.

I think that just about covers my holiday, nothing interesting has been happening in Darwin. I don’t think at least. I’ll just post random images at the end of my post. Let’s hope there’s not another four month gap between posts.