Perth

Perth!

We have had a really good run in Perth! Western Australia is a strange place though. Geographically, Perth is the most isolated city in the world. It is the city, furthest away from the next nearest city, and sometimes that shows. We had a great time though! Last Sunday we had a day off, and took Mikey's power kite down to Cottesloe beach which was fun until we got kicked off, because apparently. even though there are no signs telling you, kiting isn't allowed on the beach. Oh well.

Tuesday was opening night at His Majesties. All went well. We decided it is going to be a hit in Perth, and would probably run for at least a week! We were right!

On a random wander Lucy and I found this random bell tower, where you can go and ring the bells and discover all about the bells. These bells have been taken from St. Martins in the Fields, London.

There is also a Da Vinci exhibition here at the moment, with models of all his machines inside. This amused me...

Australia wouldn't be Australia without barbecues and we had a good few this week. This is from the first one at our hotel...

And talking of food, I found a very nice vegetarian Indian restaurant called Annalakshmi, by the water. It is run by some Monks and you basically help yourself, and then pay however much you think you should. The food is very nice as well!

The highlight of the week however was Victor's kangaroo barbecue he through at his house. Victor was the in house sound tech here in Perth, and he throws amazing barbecues! He cooked some amazing food for just under 50 of us, and it all went down a treat!

So tomorrow I fly out to Alice Springs. Joe, Lucy and myself are renting a campervan and making the 300km journey from Alice Springs to Uluru and back again. On Friday we fly to Adelaide where we will rent another campervan and drive the Great Ocean Road all the way to Melbourne. Fun times! I shall update you on my return!

Cairns

Hello all!

It has been a long time coming, but I have finally got round to uploading Cairns pictures to the web! I had a great time up in tropical Australia, diving in the Great Barrier Reef and watching the sunrise from a hot air balloon. I got a few good shots, so here we go... First up, diving. It takes about an hour and a half on a very choppy little boat to get out to the Barrier Reef from Cairns... but it was definitely worth the wait! I was under water for around an hour and a half, and in that time I saw a baby shark, a stingray, two turtles, some Nemos (pictured below) and a big guy called Bruno (also pictured below). Bruno had a little feeder fish cleaning him as well, and of course we saw all sorts of other tropical fish, coral and other amazing things.

The following day I was up at... wait for it.... 3:20am! Hot air ballooning was an amazing experience I wont be forgetting in a hurry. I think these shots pretty much sum it up!

Minerva

Just a quick update to let you know that Brisbane went very well. We just finished our last show here, and we all fly over to Perth on Thursday. When I say all, I mean all these guys below. This was taken on one of our last days in Sydney.

So we only had a couple of days to ourselves here in Brisbane. On Thursday I took a ferry out to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where I met these guys... Some Koalas, Kangaroos and Wombats. 

Not too far from home....

Tomorrow morning I am flying up to Cairns for a bit of diving and maybe even a flight in a hot air balloon! Pictures will follow!

Blue Mountains and Brisbane

Hello all!

 

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. It has been a really busy couple of weeks. Nothing new there then! Right now as I wrote I am sitting in the hotel in Brisbane, but lets back track a little while…

 

Last weekend Lucy, Joe and myself decided to head up to the Blue Mountains on a sight seeing jolly. We had Monday off work, and we didn’t need to be in until around 4:30pm on Tuesday, so we rented a car and drove the two hour drive west of Sydney with a list of all the things we wanted to see and do whilst we were there. There are a series of view points over looking the valley, where we got some amazing views and lots of good photos! We stayed in a hostel over night and woke up at 5am the next morning to catch the sunrise over the Three Sisters, a famous Australian beauty spot. Later that day we drove across to the Jenolan Caves, which are vast underground caves you can take guided tours around. Joe saw a Kangaroo hopping around in a field and we all had a great time, even if we were exhausted by the time we finally drove up to the Opera House, and straight into work!

The rest of the week was fairly obliterated by matinees. Seeing as they like to do 8 shows a week, and we closed on the Saturday, they had two extra shows to schedule into the 5 performance days. Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday were all matinee days, whilst there was a photo call on Friday, so every day, bar Tuesday, was a long working day for me this week. Not much sight seeing could be done, except for on Friday after the photo call, when I decided to do a bit of whale watching and to check out the Wildlife World. Funny story regarding the whale watching… so we went out and saw three humpbacks which was all good. On the way back in, just as we are passing the Opera House, the boat looses all power to all its engines. So I am stranded on this thing, floating around near work, roughly 45 minutes before I was due in to sound check. Of course I send a text to a few of the guys saying ‘Your not going to believe this. Engines cut out. In harbor floating opposite the Opera House! Disastro!’ Minutes later there are a large group of onlookers outside the venue, a few of them with telephoto lenses, capturing the whole fiasco! We ended up being toed by another boat up to a Quay near the Aquarium, where I dashed into work to sound check, only half an hour later than planned. Needless to say, the whole building seemed to hear about my adventures, and any time I seemed to introduce myself to anyone I got ‘oohh so you’re the guy who was stranded out in the harbor!’ Genius!

 

So that was the fun of last week. Last night we played our last show in Sydney. So far we have performed to over 25,000 people here in Australia! That is quite a feat. To sell out the Opera House, pretty much every show for two weeks. The load out went smoothly and we were out by about 2:30am. This morning, the bus picked us up at 11:15 and by 2pm we were landed in Brisbane, where I am currently enjoying my first evening off in a week. This hotel is amazing! The first thing I did when I got here was go for a swim in the rooftop pool! I don’t think I need to say anymore! We load into QPAC tomorrow morning at 8am sharp. Opening night is Wednesday night, and we play here until Sunday. On Monday I am flying up to Cairns to go diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and next Friday we load into His Majesties Theatre in Perth.

 

Enjoy the photos! If you click on any of them, you should be able to see a bigger version. Sorry if they are not all in the right order, Blogger isn’t so hot on loading in pictures…