Of fat birds and karaoke singing

Yes indeed, my friends. My trek up the east coast is underway, and already the fun and frolics have begun. Left Sydney on Saturday afternoon to fly to Brisbane. Our departure was delayed slightly due to us having to give a report to the police about an incident by the taxi rank outside. A big Aussie fucker - must have been about 7 foot tall - was intent on causing actual bodily harm to some poor airport lackey who had been foolish enough to tell him to move his car. Said lackey had the last laugh, though, as Andre the giant was looking rather sheepish outside his departure gate with 2 police in attendance, his plane having left long since.

Not much was seen of Brisbane. Having checked into our hostel we proceeded to a nearby hostelry and settled down to the first drinks of our travels. We were quickly joined by a rather sinister/simple Aussie bloke who was keen to share his repetoire of poor jokes and annoying banter with us. At one point he asked us all the following question: "Do you know what you three will never do?" Politely we all shook our heads and said "No, Shane (for that was his name), tell us. What will we never to do?" Shane then lifts up his right sleeve to reveal a tattoo which proclaimed "Cease to amaze." Strange indeed, but rest assured this is a stange young man we're talking about.

Happily, we got rid of Shane eventually by employing the tactic of ignoring him completely forcing him to move on to some other poor punters. We decided a change of venue was in order and made our way down to the city centre. On the way, though, we stumbled upon a karaoke pub and of course this couldn't be passed up so we stopped there for much longer than was sensible, waiting for my turn to come up. There were clearly some serial karaoke singers in attendance, but I can say with confidence that my rendition of "Take it easy" by the Eagles brought the house down. My little shuffle/dance in the middle was particularly well received. I had been tempted to sing Desperado, and those of you who were at my brother's wedding some years back will know that that also would have been something special. I decided, though, that Desperado should remain in the Marine Hotel in Sutton where I left it back in September 1996.

We moved on to a bar/nightclub called Rics, which was not at all like Casablanca but then I think that was called Ricks anyway. Some very tasty looking young ladies were good enough to talk to us upstairs, although somewhat off-puttingly they all seemed to have five-year-old kids. One of these ladies was a demented dancer - absolutely deranged - but she also looked rather liked Kylie Minogue so we'll let that go. Gilo looked like he was well on the way to pulling her until Pauli, straight out of left field, asked her angrily "Did you call my cousin a slut?" Wonderful! Gilo and Pauli (for those of you who don't know them) are cousins, which at least explains part of that comment. What the lady had actually said was "You're a bit of a smoothy, aren't you?" Anyway, Gilo was blown out of the water after that comment and the night ended shortly after.

The next day, feeling rather worse for wear I puked up a bottle of Sprite in the hostel just before we left. No diced carrots, in fact no food at all which was interesting. A pure Sprite puke. We got the bus down to Byron Bay which is where we shall remain for the next few days. I have spent far too much time typing this email already, so my tales of Byron (including the fat bird I alluded to in the subject line of this email) will have to wait till another time. Tomorrow perhaps. Until then, I will take my leave of you.