Friendly Blokes and Frankston

Trip Start Aug 15, 2006
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5
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Trip End Feb 09, 2007


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Flag of Australia  ,
Thursday, August 24, 2006

After about 15 hours on a plane, flying thru the night, we arrived down under- the southern hemisphere. We then boarded a connecting flight in Sydney that took us to Melbourne. Upon arriving in downtown Melbourne, we quickly realized that not all of Australia was tropical...it was pretty cold and rainy outside. Oh well, we walked around for a few hours to find that Australians are probably the nicest people in the world. People just kept approaching us saying things like: "Hey mates, can I help you find your way?" and "G'day mates, you lost? Need help?" We grabbed a meal and stopped in at a hostel near the train station where the people at the front desk booked a rental car for us in Cairns and provided us with some great info on hostels and destinations up and down the east coast. It's prett cool how after almost every sentence the Ozzies say "cheers". The only problem is understanding what the hell everyone is saying...
Next on the agenda was locating Gibby. This was a journey. We had to hop a train to Frankston (the Compton of Australia) which took over an hour...upon arriving at the station in Frankston it was miserable outside -rainy and cold. We waited for a hour in the taxi line until fed up...I was looking at a city map completly puzzled when some old Australian dude comes over and says: "G'day mate, you're from Canada, are ya?" This guy goes on to say that he knows somebody in Canada and that he also knows Frankston pretty well because when he was a 'young bloke' he used to live there and so he would show us where to go by leading us to our destination. So we walked to Gibby's place with this old guy who was more than happy to tell us all about everything there is to know about Frankston, himself, and Australia...
When we got to gibby's cabin, he was pretty stoked to see us...we slipped into a few pints and had a great time with him and Ang and a few of his pals...until jet lag hit us pretty hard. A heavy, heavy shut down.
Awoke this morning feeling pretty good. Gibby asked me to come in and play some guitar for his 4th grade class. What a blast...all these little kids have these great accents...They call Gibby 'Mr. Gibson'...hahaha...I was also offered a job teaching music to some lady's grandkids...declined in favour of heading off to Queensland.
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