CAMPSITE # 39 - And so the antics begins...

Finally, we were able to depart Trailer Trash town and hopefully never return again. Tom jumped up, wide awake, at 5:30am in the morning ready to go to the airport to collect Christian, who was flying in from Germany at 7:10am. We scooted out of our worst caravan park to date and hoped we'd never have to return.

I could tell, as we were driving along the 30minute drive to the airport, that Tom was insanely excited to see Christian for the first time in years. We lined up at the arrivals terminal eagerly waiting to see Christian walk through the double doors from customs. I think there's such a beautiful atmoshere in the arrival terminal, contrary to that of the departures, everyone was so happy and excited to see their loved ones. It was weird for me, having never met Christian but heard so many stories about ongoing antics from the past of Tom & Christian. We welcomed Christian with opened arms & a welcome to Australia pack consisting of a packet of Tim Tams, a pair of Havianna thongs, a Vegemite sandwich and a tallie of VB (which we thought to be fitting as we were in Victoria). I knew I instantly liked Christian. Anyone who cracks open his new beer as soon as he gets in the car after a 24hour flight at 7:30 in the morning gets my approval ;)



After the excitement of collecting Christian, we made tracks to check into the Elephant Backpackers in Melbourne's city centre and head off to St Kilda beach to spend the afternoon drinking on the beach under the sun. We were quickly joined by -
- Binks - who went to uni with both Tom & Christian and recently moved over to Australia to work as a Geologist
- Davies - who also went to uni with both of them and has been living in oz for the same amount of time as Tom and has been bugging him ever since ;)
- Dan - a friend of Davies' who has come to Oz to watch the Poms smash Ponting.
- Amy T - who, again, went to uni with them, studied Geology and came over here to work (can you see a bit of a trend happening at all?)

From left to right - Davies, Binks & Christian

Tom, Christian, Davies & Binks

Christian & Amy T

I don't think these two need introductions... do they?

And so the seven of us joined in on all of the usual events when seven 20-something-year-olds reunite after months apart. We went out for a meal, drank copious amounts of alcohol, rocked up at some bar that we certainly couldn't navigate our way back to after the fact and thoroughly enjoyed each others company. It was really lovely to have friends around once again. While we may have severely broken the budget on the odd occasion, we didn't seem to mind so much as it was all for a good cause and a hell of a lot of fun.

For the next two weeks, WE HAVE FRIENDS!! And so, similar to when I got my Uncle to write the blog where he proceeded to bag me out the entire time, I would like to reintroduce guest posting. Hopefully, I don't come of second best once again ;)  No doubt, it must getting a little tedious reading just my thoughts all of the time, so I figured it would be a nice change of events to read it from another persons perspective. No guarantees on the quality of their writing or their story telling techniques but we'll see how it goes :)