Lawson's holiday

It really is back to reality tomorrow after what feels like six weeks of bumming around; two weeks in Dunsborough over Christmas, then a little bit of supervisor-free work before the onslaught of English visitors. Nick arrived two days after Amy returned to Melbourne and I've had a glorious week off giving him what I consider to be a pretty comprehensive coverage of the Perth area:

Wednesday 22nd
Met Laws in the city at lunchtime
Beers, pool and tennis coverage at the pub in Cottesloe

Thursday 23rd
Beach day on Cottesloe
Fish and Chips
Train to Fremantle
Cheap dinner at the Old Shanghai
Mini-tour of Freo's pubs, including Little Creatures

Friday 24th
England vs Australia: 4th one-day test at the WACA (we won!)
Felt dirty riding the free bus to the station with the scum of the earth

Saturday 25th
Rottnest Island: Cycling, snorkelling, sunbathing, ice cream
Takeaway pizza (slobs)

Sunday 26th
Breakfast at Cimbalino (new favourite place: incredible Eggs Benedict)
Australia Day shenanigans

Monday 27th
Tried not to die at the hands of the world's worst hangover
Dragged ourselves off the sofa to get lunch at Dome
Takeaway thai
Very very very early night

Tuesday 28th
More amazing breakfast
Anchorman 2 at the Moonlight Cinema, King's Park

Wednesday 29th
Beach day
Beers on the sofa in front of the first Eng vs Aus T20 (we lost)
Fancy dinner and a lot of red wine at Vans

Thursday 30th
More brekky (Eggs Florentine)
Train into the city
Cheers and gone Lawsy!

The moral of the story = I spent a lot of money and drank a lot of alcohol, but it was so nice to see a Cornish face and enjoy the sights. Turning my attention away from entertaining friends and towards work will be a great shock to the system after all this time cruising, but I've had an awesome December/January and feel like it was the break I needed to throw myself back into it.

Australia Day

Yet another reason to love living in Australia: There is a day every year that is specifically reserved for getting ridiculously drunk with your mates. None of the Australians I asked had a clue what Australia Day is all about (other than consuming copious amounts of beer), so here’s what Wikipedia had to say about it:

“Australia Day is the official national day of Australia Celebrated annually on 26 January, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the first fleet of British ships at Sydney Cove, NSW, and raising of the flag of Great Britain at that site by Governor Arthur Philip. In contemporary Australia, celebrations reflect the diverse society and landscape of the nation, and are marked by community and family events, reflections on Australian history, official community awards, and citizenship ceremonies welcoming new immigrants into the Australian community”

…which confused me slightly, as I can tell you for sure that little reflection on society, landscape or history occurred. I had Nick staying with me all the way from Cornwall, between his visits to Sydney and Melbourne, and we got invited to Andy’s old housemates’ place in Leederville for their yearly celebrations. Ryan and his girlfriend Rhianna picked us up from Cottesloe bottle shop, where we had purchased an ambitious 24-pack of Asahi Japanese 5% beer. We rocked up to Leederville to find the perfect set-up; shade, paddling pool, beer pong and a kick-ass speaker system. TripleJ, the main radio station over here, counts down the Hottest 100 on Australia Day and it provided the ideal soundtrack for the chaos that ensued. We dived straight for the beer pong, where you always seem to become best friends for life with the people you pair up with. All of Andy’s friends were just as I expected: Very easy going and fun with incredible boozing abilities. Nick and I made firm friends with Sam and Sean, a hilarious Geordie couple. I reckon we got through half the beer in the first hour or two, which probably explains why my realisation that something was missing resulted in me finding Nick passed out on the grass a hundred metres down the road from the house. Classic.

Sam and I

Pommy mates

Myself, Ryan and Andy

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur of half-drowning in the paddling pool, singing at the top of my lungs and bundling into the back of Rhianna’s car. How we walked up the hill from Cottesloe remains a mystery and the next day was the most unbearably hungover day I’ve had so far. Nice one Aussies, you’ve got it all figured out!

Big-time science

There are some rather exciting developments going on at work right now, that’s for sure! This morning, Lindy and I had our first meeting since she went on holiday at the beginning of December. When I say holiday, I mean six weeks of exploring Iceland and the Bahamas and road-tripping down America’s west coast; maybe I am in the right industry after all. I knew that she would be expecting me to have used the six weeks wisely and, frankly, was a little terrified that she would be less than impressed with my efforts. Though I met all the necessary deadlines, others on my team agreed that it’s difficult not to take things down a gear without supervision; “while the cat’s away” and all that. However, after updating Lindy on my progress and presenting some of data I collected before Christmas, I was pleasantly surprised with her reaction. As well as telling me that she was very pleased with the amount of work I’ve managed to churn out, she also mentioned that I now have plenty of data to write my report and anything else I get done will be a bonus to bulk it out with. There are a lot of interesting things to look forward to in the world of Team Fitzgerald:

• The calixarenes work I’ve done only needs a few graphs and a bit of statistical analysis doing before it’s ready to be put into a PowerPoint and sent to Lindy’s collaborator in Paris. If he thinks it’s relevant to the research he’s doing, it’ll be incorporated into one of his papers. Published author before I even graduate: Tick.

• Carole (English research assistant, lovely lady, all-round practical genius and currently the only person who knows how to do a lot of important tasks in the lab) is going on holiday in the middle of April and won’t return until I'm back in England. Members of the team doing ongoing research will need spinal cord slices, mixed retinal cells and samples of hippocampus and cerebellum, so guess who’s going to be trained up to perform all the surgeries? This is a dream come true for me and pretty much makes me a surgeon, right? Discounting the small matter of the animals in question being dead of course…

• As if all that wasn’t enough, here’s the big one: Because I’m missing the neuroscience conference in Adelaide next week (anyone below Honours level couldn’t apply for a grant and I don’t have the funds), Lindy wants to take me to the Australian Society of Medical Research (ASMR) conference in May so I get the opportunity to network and experience a big symposium. She wants me to present a poster of my research to everyone who’s anyone in the medical world, which is scary and exciting in equal measures. Oh, and did I mention it’s in Melbourne?

It’s safe to say that I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far and the opportunities that are opening up for me as a result. It’s days like this that make me believe that I could actually do this for real.

Invasion of the West Country girl

I’ve been treated like a guest quite a lot since arriving in Perth, so it feels great to know the place well enough to be a host for a while. On Wednesday, my friend Amy (known to all by her surname, Gardner) arrived in Perth from Melbourne for a five-day mini-holiday. I met Gards in my Freshers’ Week, where she was one of the Crew responsible for my halls; for those non-Bath people, Freshers’ Crew are volunteers in the year above you who are supposed to answer any questions and generally help you settle into the university in your first week, but everyone knows they do it to (a) party like a first year for two years running for free and (b) corrupt you to the best of their ability. Gardner definitely achieved this and I have vague memories of us bonding over drinking games (which I always seemed to lose) and peeing in the same Portaloo cubicle. That, folks, is how you make friends for life. She lives in Taunton, Somerset and her Shiteshirt-themed birthday party in the grounds of her house (complete with jukebox, camping and Slip ‘n’ Slide) was one of the best weekends I had last summer. She graduated from Bath back in June and is spending this year getting some PE teaching experience at a private school over in Melbourne. Australian kids are on summer holiday at the moment, which means the jammy cow gets three months off; over Christmas and New Year, she saw pretty much the whole of the east coast and “the middle”, leaving only WA to explore.

I finished work after lunch on Wednesday and headed into the city to meet her off her bus from the airport. We caught up over lunch at Taka’s, my favourite, dirt-cheap Japanese restaurant, and I gave her a little tour of the city centre. With us both being country girls, we’re definitely a little out of our comfort zone in big cities and it sounds like Melbourne is a lot bigger than Perth. We established early that being on holiday equals eating as much as possible, so we stopped by the best homemade Gelato (Honey malt and Rum and Raisin = to die for) before catching the train back to my place. She was pretty knackered from her flight, so we spent the afternoon crashed on the sofa in front of the Australian Open. Candice arrived in the evening (she was staying with us for a few days before picking up Chris’ Dad Shaun from the airport), armed with beers and KitKats, so we had a nice girly evening and got an early night.

I had to work on Thursday, so Amy spent the day exploring Fremantle, where her Dad apparently has his name enscribed somewhere after coming over from England on the boats years ago and had sent her on a mission to find it. We met up in the city for a very cheap sushi lunch and so I could examine all the nice things Amy had bought in Freo. From there, it was straight to the WACA for our first taste of live cricket: Perth Scorchers vs Adelaide Strikers in the T20 Big Bash. Unfortunately, we did discover one piece of very, very bad news: The WACA doesn’t sell cider. I know. For two West Country girls, this was an enormous blow and I’m unsure how I’ll survive an entire day there next week for the One Day International on beer alone; gross. We did our best to get over this, found our seats up in the stands and settled in for an exciting match. The Big Bash is such a party atmosphere; everyone was drunk, there was music playing and fire shot out of cannons whenever the scorchers scored a boundary. The Scorchers batted first and scored 203; T20 is so much more exciting because the batsmen don’t care about staying in and just spank it as much as they can. At half-time, we got probably the best chips I’ve ever had for dinner, then watched Adelaide try to chase us down. They were on 192 going into the last over, needing just 12 for the win, so it was incredibly tense, but they ended up needing a six off the last ball and just fell short, causing the crowd to go absolutely mental. The Scorchers will now face Sydney Sixers in the semi-final, also at the WACA, and I’m seriously considering going along after having such a great time!

All smiles (despite the lack of cider)

Mexican wave!

We hopped on a very crowded bus back into the city for the ciders we’d been deprived of all afternoon. Somehow, we wound up back at Carnegie’s, the Irish bar I got incredibly drunk at with James and Lauren before Christmas, which had a karaoke night on. We met a whole wealth of bizarre and mostly intoxicated people and had a laugh watching some of them murder various disco classics. At the station with time to kill, we FaceTimed some friends in Bath, who had their revision period brightened up by our antics. Feeling quite drunk and with my mind occupied by the thought of work the next day, we got the train home and collapsed in bed.

On Friday morning, I went to work to submit my literature review (I somehow finished the draft, yippee!) and brought my bike home before Amy was even awake. We spent the day on Cottesloe working on our tans, perving on lifeguards and eating brunch at gorgeous Italian café Il Lido, then went home to say goodbye to Candice and get ready for an afternoon in Midland. As the name suggests, Midland is far away from the sea and pretty nondescript, therefore “Midlandia” festival was in place to draw more people to the area. I’d seen the advert on Facebook and only really wanted to go because chilled-out guitar genius Dustin Tebbutt was playing, but it turned out to be pretty fun. After an hour on the train and another 30 minutes navigating the streets to the venue, we found Midlandia to be kitted out with turf, cute little deck chairs, plenty of local food and retail stalls and, most importantly, a bar that stocked Rekorderlig. We spent the afternoon cememted to our deck chairs, only rising for hydration, to purchase an amazing dinner of paella and ice cream or to explore the stalls. Once we’d endured the rubbish support acts (including some douchebag making “atmospheric dance music” on a loop pedal, which was completely out of place at a relaxed afternoon gig and large women wobbling their stuff in the name of burlesque), Dustin Tebbutt finally took to the stage and, as I expected, he was great. I thought he was much more famous in Australia and was surprised to see so few people there, considering it was a free gig, but that made it even better.

Paella

Check out Dustin Tebbutt here

It was 9:30 by this time, so we pretty much sleepwalked back to the station and tried our best to fall asleep on the train home despite the bunch of token old, drunk aboriginal people making trouble that you seem to encounter every time you ride public transport here. Nightmare. A girl came up to a horizontal Amy to wake her up in case she missed her stop and was very sweetly embarrassed when I told her she was with me and not passed out on her own; we got off at the right stop against all odds. We retired to bed for a big sleep before Amy’s last full day on Saturday.

Saturday morning brought a lie in, followed by a trip to the supermarket for supplies; to thank me for letting her stay, Amy cooked us the most incredible pancakes and we ate them with a cuppa in front of Sex and the City. This perfectly lazy morning was followed by another afternoon on the beach; it was a scorcher, around 36 degrees, and there’s nothing better than cooling off in the ocean and returning to your sunbathing spot to bake. It finally started to cool off at 5:30, so we went back home to get ready to go out.

We took the train to Fremantle because Amy thought she might have missed a few bits when she came on her own a few days ago, not that I needed an excuse to go there; it’s pretty much my favourite place ever. The whole town was buzzing and we browsed a few of the shops that were open late and soaked up the atmosphere at the Old Shanghai, this amazing Asian restaurant where you can eat from any of the numerous stalls for under ten bucks. It’s true that Australia is incredibly expensive, but if you know the right places it can be delicious and cheap to eat out! From the centre of town, we headed out to to the jetty for our Little Creatures fix. It’s official: Little Creatures Brewery is the best place on earth and anyone in the general vicinity of WA should go there. We ordered drinks, poured directly from the two-storey high vats that sit behind the bar, and slid into a comfy leather booth under the fairy lights. We’re both missing home a little and we reminisced about Bath times, which actually made me really content rather than pining for home. After Creatures, we stopped for a compulsory ice cream (we realised that we’d had cider and ice cream every day of Amy’s visit); pralines and cream for me and some kind of gorgeous-looking sundae for Gardner.

Happy Gards

After a short walk around the twinkling harbour, we strolled back to the station, stumbling upon a food market on the way and wishing we had an extra stomach to fill with the local fare on offer. That’s the thing I love about Freo: There’s always something going on. Unfortunately, Amy got me addicted to this game on her phone, causing us to get distracted and miss our train stop. We ended up in Swanbourne, where we had to wait half an hour for a train back; as I told the story of me missing my transfer stop and ending up in Warminster on my first journey back home from Bath in first year and Amy shared her falling-asleep-on-buses habit, we realised that this was pretty average behaviour for both of us.

It’s now lunchtime on Sunday and, as quickly as she appeared, Gardner has vanished from my life again. I accompanied her into the city to catch her return bus this morning, before returning home and undertaking a very exciting morning of laundry and cleaning ahead of next week’s house inspection. The cricket on TV made all of this slightly more bearable, partly because England are definitely getting their act together but more due to the fact that I will be at the next match. I have two days at work, including my first meeting with Lindy since she went on holiday six weeks ago, before Nick gets here from Sydney and I can play host all over again. Happy days!

Adventureworld

This Saturday, Tamasin and I had a total brainwave for our first EaRN girls' day out of 2014: What better way to (a) put work stress to the back of our minds and (b) combat the extreme heat than with a trip to the water park? I hadn't seen Tamasin for a whole month, as she'd finished her Honours and spent December working at the hospital and Christmas and New Year in Melbourne, so a catch up was well overdue. She's just found out she's been given a presentation slot at ANS (the Annual Neuroscience Symposium) at the end of January, which is a huge deal; 10,000 experts (academics and doctors) gather in Adelaide for five days of talks, presentations and posters on the newest breakthroughs in Neuroscience research. It's unfortunate that placement students can't apply for a free trip because the entire lab appears to be attending but, on the bright side, the office will be deserted and I doubt my services will be needed too much during that week. Anyway, her freak-out was making my literature review situation look calm and collected, so I suggested that we take a day out from preparing to use the discounted tickets I'd purchased on Groupon last month. Whenever I saw their advert on TV, I got the impression that Adventureworld wasn't exactly Alton Towers and more aimed at young kids, but figured it could still be fun.

Adventureworld is 15km (a 20-minute drive) from my place in Peppermint Grove

On Saturday morning, I woke up sweating. Even with two fans aimed at my bed, that's how hot it was. Tamasin picked me up in a car laden with parasols, cold drinks and ice packs and we headed south to Bibra Lake. The temperature gauge in the car said 41; English people are not built to deal with this business! Stepping out of the car into the stifling heat, we made quick work of getting through the gates and finding a spot in the shade, where we set up our little camp. Yes, there were hoards of annoying children on their school holidays terrorising the place, but we had a ball testing out the rides. There was one huge rollercoaster called Abyss, but all the rest were of a carnival size, although still great fun. My favourite moment was probably us sitting opposite two girls around the age of 13 on one of those twisty, roley poley jobs; one of them was absolutely terrified and screamed the entire time, much to our delight.

The saviour of the day was most definitely the water. As the temperature climbed to a stonking 44, being able to hop into a pool of cool water was heavenly. Water rides are some of my favourites and they had the best ones where you go down rapids in big rubber rings. The fact that we were parked up adjacent to a shallow pool in the shade also made for fantastic Slushie breaks.

We dined on a lovely spread of chips, dips, cheese, crackers and mint M&Ms, before reapplying the suncream and heading back out into the heat. A ride on the super-slow chair lift (just like being in Val Thorens) to the top of the park, where we stood in line for the generic tower ride that launches you into the sky at a ridiculous speed. It was so hot that removing your flip flops had to be done when you were already in your seat because the ground actually blistered your feet. We were again blessed with a very scared man sitting adjacent to us, who provided great entertainment during the countdown to the launch, which the attendant paid absolutely no attention to and just pressed the button when we weren’t expecting it.

Waiting for the dreaded countdown...

By 5pm, we were all sunned-out and ready to go home. We stopped at IGA on the way home for Magnums and I bid Tamasin goodbye with promises of motivational texts during our work-filled Sundays. It must have been only a matter of minutes post-shower before I was conked out on my bed with a slight case of sunburn, very sore feet and memories of a great day.

Back to reality

On Monday morning, the time came to wave goodbye to Dunsborough and the lovely McKiernans, having had a heavenly fortnight’s break from the city. After a tedious five-hour bus ride sitting next to yet another elderly woman reeking of perfume (although I can’t complain, she did give me a Lindt chocolate), I landed firmly back on Perth soil, exiting the coach into a wall of stifling 39-degree heat. I’d forgotten just how much of a difference being a few hundred kilometres closer to the equator makes and it felt like the journey across the city to Peppermint Grove minus the sea breeze I’d become accustomed to down south took all my energy not to pass out from the heat. Monday afternoon was incredibly exciting and involved the inevitable unpacking, washing clothes and food shopping that returning from holiday involves. Unfortunately I failed to find a Good Samaritan to scab a free lift home from Woolies with my groceries too! I got settled and had an early night before work resumed on Tuesday morning.

I was really dreading returning to the office and facing the music, but I’ve actually found that the break has done my motivation the world of good and it’s quite nice to get back into a routine. Firstly, my cycles to and from work are now greatly improved by Ryan moving five minutes down the road and finally getting his biked running. It’s a fixed-gear and there’s nothing more entertaining at 7am than hearing him puffing and cursing away behind me up all the hills. The first day back involved getting the very neglected Cell Culture lab back in operation, which included Andy, Ryan and myself making a trip to Zoology to fill up the liquid nitrogen; no matter how many times I have to use it, I will never tire of how cool that stuff is! It was lovely to catch up with everyone and hear about what they did over the break and, most importantly, I appear to have started my next mammoth task in the world of neuroscience with startling enthusiasm.

Lindy left for a six-week holiday cruising around Iceland at the beginning of December, leaving each of us in the Fitzgerald team with a list of jobs to be completed by the time she gets back next Friday. I did well with the practical side of my list and submitted all of it before the Christmas break, but was blissfully ignorant of the one item I was desperate to avoid at all costs: my literature review. I have mentioned part of my assessment for this year comes in the form of a report to be handed in when I return to Bath; Lindy has to give me an evaluation and I’ll also present a poster, but the report is the big one. The literature review forms the introduction of said report and is basically the background information on my area of research using findings from published scientific papers and journal articles in the field. I am not the biggest fan of writing passages that require so much referencing and, as a result, have left myself a grand total of six working days to write the whole thing. I know, silly me. However, it’s not all doom and gloom; I have made quite a solid start and, with the moral support of the PhD students who have all gone through this process, I have actually found myself enjoying writing something so scientific from scratch. Turns out I sort of know what I’m talking about, which is always a bonus! Let’s just pray that this roll I’m on continues.

Another silver lining to being back in Perth was being invited to the Billinghams after my first day back, which was the perfect way to wind down. We ate John’s famous curry, played Canasta and watched an episode of Inspector Linley; it felt just like living with them again and made me pine for South Perth a little! Even better than being provided with a hot meal was the news that Jamie has passed his final driving test; I know from experience that new drivers love getting out on the road and he’s basically offered me lifts anywhere I want to go, plus he can now meet me after work at the foreshore to go sailing.

As usual, there are plenty of upcoming events to look forward to. Tamasin and I are going to Adventureworld (Perth’s answer to Alton Towers) this weekend and their water park will be the perfect remedy to the 41-degree forecast. I have a sneaky feeling that the rest of January will fly by in a whirlwind of visiting English friends; Amy comes over from Melbourne next Wednesday for five days, then I only have two days home alone before Jew nose (I mean Nick) arrives for a ten-day stint. He’s been on the east coast for a few weeks already and I can’t wait to catch up on all the Tintagel gossip! We’re going to watch England vs Australia at the WACA, taking a daytrip to Rottnest, celebrating Australia Day with my friends from work to name but a few activities. During that time, two Biology friends from uni who are on placement in Sydney, Tom and Rob, will also be in Perth staying with Rob’s family, so I’ll get to catch up with them. During all this excitement, I mustn’t forget that, in just nine days’ time, I’ll be halfway through my placement (4 and a half months!) and on the home straight. Time is flying by!

Southbound

As time draws depressingly close to my departure, I got to spend two glorious days watching some of my favourite bands in the sunshine. The last time you heard from me, I was trying my best to sleep off my hangover before heading to Busselton; I wasn't feeling ideal and Jess looked like death warmed up when Candice, Chris, Oli and I picked her up from work, but we soon perked up at the thought of the impending festival fun. I absolutely adore music festivals but haven't really been to one since Boardmasters in Newquay a couple of years ago, so I was really looking forward to going to one with the added bonus of guaranteed sunshine as opposed to torrential rain. Southbound is the biggest festival in WA and was also celebrating its 10th year this year, so we were in for a treat. We remedied our hangovers immediately by heading for the bar for some ridiculously expensive alcohol, then found a spot in the crowd. The afternoon of Day 1 brought us Bonobo and The Cat Empire, who were both great and it wasn't long before we'd completely forgotten about our fragile states.

With time to spare before the acts we had our eye on for the evening, we explored the site amongst the hoards of drunk revellers. We had only started drinking to make ourselves feel better and weren't up for another heavy night, mindful of the bigger day on Saturday. There were all kinds of stalls and shops to look around and we bumped into Flo, the french chef from Pour House; Candice and Chris wanted to leave early, so Jess, Oli, Flo and I spent the rest of the day together. By the time it got dark, it became apparent that 75% of the people in the crowd were off their faces on booze or something more and I wasn't drunk enough for it not to bother me. All through Roots (R&B/Hip-Hop 5 piece from the 90s with a sousaphone and everything), these two northern idiots were trying to start their own little mosh pit and making everyone around them angry, so it was pretty hard to enjoy the music. We stayed for a little bit of Vampire Weekend before it was time for Terry to pick us up and I think we were asleep before we got through the door in preparation for a bigger day on Saturday.

Sure enough, Candice was over at 11am the next morning with bubbly and glitter, which could only mean we were in for a far livelier day. The boys were joining us later, so we had a brilliant girly afternoon listening to Tom Odell, a personal favourite of mine, and cuffing back ciders in the sun. Late afternoon brought another wait until the incredible London Grammar, who I have been waiting to see all year, so we headed to the Coconut Club to pass the time in the sandpit in front of their live DJ sets. This turned out to be the most fun we'd had so far; we were pretty merry by this point and found Oli there with German Sonia (yet another Pour House employee) and her international friends and we had such a good boogie with them, ending up staying there for hours.

Stoked to be back on the juice!

Coconut Club boogie

Germans dance funny

Too many beersies

Mia and her hideous squid earrings...

Looking good Jess

Glitter girl band!

After a quick bite to eat, finding Chris and Janek (who'd found a wristband on the ground outside and got in for free!) and stocking up on the cans, we dived into the crowd as London Grammar took to the stage. Oh. My. Goodness. It is without a doubt in my mind that I say Hannah Reid has the most incredible voice I have heard in my life and she's even more haunting live; I had goosebumps the whole time! Their songs are just perfect and I can't wait for them to release more stuff. As we left, Jess and I agreed we would have paid all that money just to see them, so seeing the other bands was an added bonus! Southbound was such a perfect way to end my time here and it's just made me all the more eager to get to Glastonbury soon for more glittery fun.

Margarita madness

After a month on the east coast and a six-week stay in Dunsborough, Thursday was Chloe and John's last night in Australia before jetting off to Bali for two weeks, then back home to Cornwall. Considering how chilled-out our New Year celebrations were (a few glasses of bubbly and giant Jenga at Candice and Chris' and heading to bed after watching the Sydney fireworks), we decided to give Chlo a proper send-off at the local mexican restaurant. The place has a reputation for being a bit tacky and the food isn't anything special, but they do $5 margaritas on a Thursday night, which is incredibly cheap for Australia, let alone Dunsborough, and you have to order food to get the cocktails. Unfortunately, we adopted the theory that cheap margaritas meant you had to make the most of it by having as many as your body could hold, which lead to rather messy consequences.

Jess and I rode into town and were the first to arrive; we were hugely thankful to Candice for booking a table because the place was absolutely packed and we got to jump the queue of grumping-looking tourists and slide straight into a booth. Next to arrive was Melissa, who's a lovely redhead American and girlfriend of Justin, one of the owners of the Pour House, the bar in town that Jess works at. She was at Clancy's the other night and we got on really well, so it was great to see her again. Candice and Chloe rocked up last, having had a little trouble riding all the way from Candice's (about 8km) on Sian's ancient bikes. We order chips and dips and the first of the margaritas were served; they were frozen lemon, a bit like a Slushy, and way too easy to drink. By the time our mains arrived (I had a slightly grim-looking chilli con carne), the nice chat had turned to gossip and general silliness with the increasing volume of tequila consumed. In our defence, Jess and I did attempt to step out of a round or two, mindful of the two days intense festivaling we now have ahead of us. However, Chlo was having none of it and kept playing the "it's my last night" card to guilt trip us into refills. By the time we left the restaurant, the place was deserted and the bar staff were laughing at us struggling to stand. According to the bill, we had 43 margaritas between five of us and, considering Melissa only had a couple, that's pretty impressive.

This point probably would have been the appropriate time to attempt a casuality-free bike ride home and get some sleep in preparation for the moshpits of Southbound. As you can probably guess, this did not happen and we found ourselves wobbling on two wheels down to the Pour House for a few more. There were a few customers around, but they soon filed out and Alastair and Justin closed up, giving us free reign of the roof garden. I have no idea how much time passed here, but I do know that I drank a lot of cider and made lots of new friends among the Pour House staff. Okay, so we had a moment of weakness and continued drinking after the restaurant, but surely we called it a night at this point? Sadly not. A band of highly inebriated bar staff took off on the sketchiest bike ride I've ever experienced out to a house near Yallingup, where some of the guys from the bar live, for a little after party. How no one killed themselves negotiating the boardwalk bridges I do not know, but somehow we escaped with our lives.

Bike ride of death

To cut a long story short, we participated in a lot of drinking table tennis, went to bed around 4am and rode home at 8 this morning. Jess has had to go to work for a few hours and I have until 3pm to get my act together (i.e. out of bed and into the shower), when we'll be driving to Busselton for two days of alcohol-fuelled, musical madness.

Why do we do it?!