Photo cred: @nicksc0tt
Category Archives: festivals
NYD
I’d be lying if I said I jumped out of bed this morning. The alarm went off and the familiar feeling when you’ve only just started to get to sleep and it’s time to get up hit me. I jumped in the shower and then tiptoed around the apartment trying to clean up but make as little noise as possible. Texted Zsuzsa “Wakey Wakey,” then headed downstairs for a ciggie.
There I was all chuffed with my ability to back it up at the ripe old age of 24 while the younger ‘kids’ were all still sleeping…until I caught my reflection. I looked 40. The snap back wasn’t fooling anyone and the sins I’d been committing in the final days of 2014 had caught up with my face.
Fuck it. I was too excited to care. Not just excited for today but excited about the whole year. In exactly one month today I’ll be on a plane headed for South America. Zsuzsa stumbles out of her room holding her naked breasts as I reenter the apartment. “I’m awake, I’m awake…I’m having a shower but I’m awake”
I’m awake too. Let’s do this.
Splendour on the Side of the Road
“This can only mean bad news…”
After copious amounts of time spent on the moshtix website and months of talking about it here we were….in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.
For those of you who have had the pleasure of driving to Bryon Bay from Melbourne, I hope you didn’t have the pleasure of driving through the snowy mountain region, and if you did you would know there was nothing pleasure-able about it. Roughly 2.5 hours into our trip our driver at the time decides that instead of stopping to get fuel at the main town that we just stopped in for dinner he would push on and fill up at the next town.
I don’t really know Cory that well but the fact that he has a stable job, awesome girlfriend and a mortgage, points me in the direction that he wasn’t really a risk taker. I stood corrected whilst Zag was in the front seat kicking up a fuss, I was in the backseat really enjoying myself.
“Let’s do this” and “Positive attitudes boys” I egged him on.
Two open petrol stations flew by in the main town and at the second one Cory even flipped on the indicator…if only we had known.
I couldn’t even tell you where we were exactly, but we had konked out. We were 2 hours in to a 22 hour drive and the back seat of the car, and all our weekend supplies, had now been mushed together into some kind of not-so-mobile pantry, as we waited for our friends to drive on to the next town and pick up a jerry can full of freedom. The phone rings well before they are due back and Zag’s words echo through the pantry “This can only mean bad news otherwise they wouldn’t be calling us so soon.”
“All the servo’s are shut, well they’re 24hour servos but there’s nobody there”
“Fuck”
“You idiot”
“Where the next petrol station?”
“Raid a few bins and fill up some empty bottles”
“Fill up your esky”
“How will we get it into the car if the petrol is in an esky?”
The ideas were a-flowin’
The conversation looped around and around as we googled all the service stations located in Orbost until finally our friends on the other line let loose a piece of information. The last one they checked was located across the road from a pub. For the first time on the trip this boy had a welcome piece of advice
“GO INTO THE PUB AND ASK!” I screamed from the backseat and slapped myself on the head. How had they not thought of this yet?
Whilst it didn’t suprise me as much as it suprised the other lads on this adventure, it turns out that the bloke who owns the pub also owned the petrol station across the road and the next thing you know ( aka 35 minutes of Zag, Cory and Tommy scaring themselves shitless in the car with Wolf creek stories whilst munchin’ on starbursts) here come our heroes with the massive jerry can full of fuel.
Later, discussing our snapchat re-dramatisation of the event we happened to run/bump/fly over the biggest wombat I’ve ever seen in my life and this was all before Zag took control of the wheel and lost his mind in road side-sign pun-central land. I’ll leave you with that for now but say that I had one of the best weekends/road trips I’ve had in my life.
TO BE CONTINUED….
Big Half American Day Out.
I was 15 the first time I went to Big Day Out. I remember catching the bus up from Traralgon all by myself.
The White Stripes were headlineing and the whole day blew my mind.
I went the following three years after that and always had such an amazing time. It was always a great summers day spent with good friends and good music.
Its been 4 years since I’ve been to one but I guess fate decided that it was time. About a month and a half ago I was having a particularly stressfull day in Perth. It was one of my last days off before I had to fly back to Melbourne and I was in such a mad rush doing everything I hadn’t even taking into consideration that I should be enjoying one of my last free days there. I stopped at a newsagent and bought a copy of Rollingstone then headed to the beach to relax for an hour or so and do some reading. One of the main articles was about how the creator of Big Day Out had to sell half his share in the business this year to an American company as the festival did so badly last year. Also to my surpise I found that I had won a ticket to any Big Day Out of my choosing. Score!
One month later, now back in Melbourne with a fresh job I had decided that I wouldn’t ask for the day off as it would be a bit cheeky having only been there for a week or so, I decided to give the ticket away to Meagz’s new boyfriend Marcus. Whilst I was keen to go I wasn’t overly devestated, it just wasn’t meant to be…or so I thought.
Today at work was busy, but just another day. I was working away in my section at work and have a nice group of Americans in with their young family. To me they just seemed like another table of tourists, little did I know that I was helping the brand new half-owners of Big Day Out decided which Tacos they wanted. On top of tipping generously, they slipped two tickets into my pocket upon leaving and that was that. Had to do a bit of negotiating at work but managed to also secure the day off also. Looks like I’m going!
