Still in Adelaide

27th January - 13th March 2013

Still in Adelaide, still without a job. I've worked out why the people in Adelaide don't leave. That's because they can't. They come here and fail to get a job and end up stuck here. Me and Charlie are at least working for free accommodation doing various cleaning duties so at least I'm not spending much. Getting pretty sick of it now really though. Feels like I've wasted so much time just sat here doing nothing. We're all fed up. This is not how we imagined it would be. We don't have any money so we take enjoyment where we can which meant endless games on this...

Socceroos! wtf!?

I only lost once by the way. Hollie moved into the hostel in February which gave us a bit more excitement with us cooking some meals between three to share the cost. She was staying at her cousins but felt guilty about not paying. Hollie cooked a curry and I know this will come as a shock to most people but I ate it! And I actually liked it!

Pancake day snuck up on us. We didn't realise till I saw it on facebook but we managed to get involved. Only boring premix stuff but it tasted just about as good.

Pancake day!

The Adelaide Fringe started on the 15th February and the city exploded into life. The week leading up to the opening night people piled into the city. It felt like being back in Sydney just walking to the shop there must have been four times as many people on the street. Strange people too. Like all arty and hippy types.

Exactly

We went down to the 'Unearthly Garden of Delights' on the first day to see what its all about. This is where all the main bits are. There must be about 10 big tents and temporary rooms set up in the park each with 5 or 6 shows a night. There's also a bandstand where, for an hour each day, you can see small preview shows. This is where we went on a few different nights. Adelaide Fringe is second only to Edinburgh Fringe so there were some acts I'd actually heard of from being on Radio 1.

Frisky and Manish

Frisky and Manish are awesome. They a weird mock pop comedy thing where they basically take the piss out of pop and pop culture. I also saw Abandoman who does awesome freestyle rap. In his preview show he asked the audience to hold up the oddest thing they had on them and he walked around fitting them into his rap. Barry Morgan and His World of Organs was too there but I didn't get to see him. He plays an organ in a comedic fashion.

In the garden

BBQ anyone?

Odd seating

They set up a stage for me too. Its a duo act and you know which one I am!

Deja vu!

Recognise this guy?! Avid readers of my blog my well remember this guy from when he was performing in Cairns. I managed to get his finale piece on video this time. There was a bit of screaming.

The first night of the festival there was to be a street parade. Now after seeing a bit of the parade on Australia Day my expectations were extremely low but as the sun set I could tell this was going to be different. There was thousands of people lining the parade route. Opposite us was a huge rigging of speakers and lights so with it being at night it looked awesome. To make it even more dramatic there was a thunderstorm to the north of us that threw out some lightning every minute. Thankfully it stayed north and nobody got wet.

Dramatic sky for the parade

I took this opportunity to have myself a few bevies. I think I enjoyed the music of the parade more than the actuall parade but it was still very good with fireworks display at the end.

Awesome picture if I do say so myself!

Hollie and Charlie had managed to bag themselves a farm job as there was clearly nothing coming up in Adelaide so we used this as an excuse to have an enormous, and long overdue, piss up. A swift one on balcony and then goon and vodka in our room.

Manly pint drinking

Drinkies!

Successfully ruined what would have been a good picture

I think its safe to say that by the time we went out we were quite drunk. Well I certainly was anyway! Like a fly on shit I flew over to the bucking bull that was in the club we went to and signed myself up. My effort was truly horrific. I lasted all of 3 seconds. That's no exaggeration either, it was actually 3 seconds. There's a video of it but it will not be appearing on here any time soon. Charlie's attempt however did make the cut.

Can you see the shame on my face

Concentrating!

Charlie left on the last day of February which put a damper on things. He missed a huge drama that night too. As me, Hollie and Mel were on our way out for some food we found a guy lying on the stairs down to the entrance of the hostel with a small crowd around him. We were directed away from the situation which rapidly became more serious when they realised he wasn't breathing. I was asked to help stop people going out the main entrance and directed them to the fire exit if they wanted to leave. I was doing this for at least an hour whilst the ambulance crew worked on him. I heard they had to shock him a few times. He was eventually taken to hospital where, unfortunately, he died two days later. It was a pretty grim evening. Hollie left a couple of days later leaving just Ben and I in the hostel with Mel still at her cousins.

Just when I thought any chance of fun was over for Adelaide, two girls moved into our room. Marine from France and Hanna from Finland. They were fun and still had that optimism that we had when we first arrived. They dragged me out one night to Woolshed and it was a really fun night. I was determined to give a better effort on the bull this time and it was much better. I must have trebled my original time to 9 seconds!!

Marine and Hanna

Finally I started to get some work in. I got a call from Pinnacle (the agency for hospitality staff I applied for) and they offered me work. I worked in Her Majesty's Theatre on Friday where it was full of old people. I struggled at first as I'm not familiar with the wine and everyone was ordering them. It was only 4 hours work but $25 an hour so good money money (£17 to you pommies). Monday was the Adelaide Cup at the racecourse and just happened to be the hottest day of March. So for 8 hours I was outside sweating my tits off in near 40C degrees.

The racecourse

The party

I had booked a flight for the 13th of March to Melbourne and I couldn't wait to leave but then I started earning money which is just bloody typical. Working for accommodation has saved me a lot of money. I haven't earned much but chances are if we were all in work then most of our money would have been spent going out anyway so whilst I haven't gained anything from my time in Adelaide I haven't really lost anything and it was nice to spend some time with friends before going off on my own again.

6 months gone already!