The Wizard of Aus

Bernard Fanning, of Powderfinger fame, took the hottest 100 from left field... maybe even from downtown, for his song Wish You Well. It's a good song and all, I'm just surprised. Wolfmother had a record breaking six entries this year but their highest was at number 6. The Gorillaz got two songs higher than that. (bone of contention there. Do the Gorillaz deserve to die or just be shot off into space?) My predictions suck too. Wolfmother at 6, Kanye West at 13 and the highest System of a Down score was 27 (but then I'm not sure if their last album was released in 2005). As a predictioneer I'm not exactly the duck's nut, alas, it was my first hottest 100. It was nice to see that bloc party had four entries. A great band. My personal favourite however was the number 72 I'm So Post Modern by The Bedroom Philosopher. All in all it was a roller coaster of a countdown. I laughed, I cried, it became part of me!

The rest of my first Australia Day consisted of things to drink and things blowing up. The drinking thing was probably not the best idea because I found out what a $22 cocktail tastes like: to use an Aussie phrase, it tastes daggy. But, it was a Long Island Ice Tea so the idea of paying $44 for a round seemed reasonable at the time. We were the last in the bar and only left when the barman insisted on putting Mad Max 2 on the big screen. The fireworks were truly awesome, lots of those coloured star burst ones launched from a boat on a river (with tangerine trees and marmalade skies) and all blown up in time to Paul McCartney singing live and let die.

Best Australia Day ever. If anyone asks me about it in the future I'll tell them "I'm all for it!"

Happy Australia Day everyone. Welcome to Australia, the land of barbecues, funny animals and the country that stadium rock never forgot! Australia Day is a celebration of the landing of the first-fleet in Botany Bay, Sydney on this day 1788. It was a prison colony. It's also sometimes called Invasion Day by some nay-sayers (always saying nay). It's the national public holiday and like all good national holidays is in the middle of the summer. It involves beer, barbies and lamb chops (apparently).

One of the main features of Australia Day is Triple J's (the best radio station I've ever heard) Hottest 100 countdown (Wiki entry with previous years). The voting opens on January 1st and you can vote for any song realised in the year. Notable was a few years ago when U2 reached mid 30's without ever having had a play on Triple J. It's the largest music poll in the world, getting about half a million votes. Triple J begins playing from number 100 at 10 in the morning and just keeps going, for about 8 hours. This is a BIG deal. I for one think Wolfmother will get number 1... possibly System of a Down... possibly Kanye West. I'm not sure which I'm most excited about. I hope it's Kanye so Mike freaks out.

We had barbecued chook (Aussie for chicken) for lunch, have been listening to the hottest 100 and are breaking in nicely to a tray of Carlton Draught. Off to the pub later. Let's hope the fireworks display and the half a million people billed to turn up later is cool. More tomorrow!

It's Australia Day on thursday and Sam Kekovich tells it like it is. Download the ads below, you know it makes sense!

2005 Australia Day Ad (3.2 MB)
2006 Australia Day Ad (5.1 MB)

update: I agree with Andy's comment below, he is a legend. If you want more of Sam Kekovich click here (real player I'm afraid).

The votes are in. I'm officially the official most stupiderist person ever. When I woke up this morning the last thing I envisioned was being barefooted, needing really badly to go to the toilet, climbing up a brick wall to reach the eight foot over-hang that is our balcony all while using one of the neighbour's (who was at work and doesn't know anything about it. I hope!) garden furniture to boost myself up while hoping that our balcony railing would hold my weight. And yet, only three hours after I got out of bed, there I was.

It would become apparent at about this point to ask what the hell I was doing in that rather precarious position. I'll tell you what: being an idiot is what. On my way out to get the post, none of which was mine incidently, I locked the door behind me. This isn't as trivial as it sounds. To lock our front door you have to specifically press a catch on the inside or else it can be opened from the outside, just like any regular door.

Aussies can build barbeques that work on the moon and at the bottom of the sea but what they don't do is leave ladders laying around in case someone wanted to, say, see what Spiderman gets out of all the climbing or have locked themselves out of their apartment. Anyhow, I got in in the end but not without adding some new cuts and scrapes to my, already impressive, collection of mozzie and marsh fly bites.

I got back from Bremer Bay on Sunday. At a 1,200 km round trip it's quite far away and pretty isolated too, out in the bush, beside beaches that might get about a hundred visitors a year (everyones loss, the sand here is some of the finest in the world, white and powdery like snow). Where I was staying is actually national park so *technically* no one's allowed down there.

I'm going to do this post differently. I've set up a brand spanking new picture essay blog so that no one can look at it and I can stop updating it after a while!! After a suggestion by sheraciara I've made a photo essay of my time in Bremer Bay. The colour originals are in the usual place (or at least will be in the next day or two).

I did get a few nice pictures and now let me tell you about the (absolutly, 100% true) picture opportunities I missed; due to either not having my camera with me or in one case because the stupid camera stalled. First was the pod of Southern Right Whales that came down nearly onto the beach. Then within about five minutes of each other I missed the only kangaroo (not counting the dead ones at the side of the road) I've seen and the backbone of a whale half buried in a sand bank between a river and the sea. On the way home I missed a picture of the Emu that ran along just ahead of us, down a dirt track, for a minute and which we passed at 55 km/h (it was freakin' awesome and my fucking camera's to blame for missing it). And then the picture of the circling eagle out looking for dinner. "Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits!"

To make up for it I did get a picture of this particular brand of insect repellent.

pictureessay.blogspot.com

Probably my favourite moment of Chirstmas day was when all of my Native Guide's dad and uncles (and various other male party attendees) got together over the new barbie and discussed barbies. Remember the scene from American Psycho where they show off their new business cards to each other? It was exactly like that. You have to admit it, the Aussies really love their barbeques. Aussies even have barbeques at national elections and not only that but they can enjoy "any number of added attractions at their polling stations, from cake stalls to treasure hunts." or some people even "run fetes with attractions such as bouncy castles" TREASURE HUNTS. BOUNCY CASTLES. at elections? There can be no more proof that Aussies are nuts.

Aussie Christmas is really quite good. It was 27 degrees and there was all the meat you could possibly need. There was bacon (with breakfast: barbequed) there was turkey (barbequed), pork (barbequed), chicken (barbequed) and ham (barbequed). Unfortunatly you can't barbeque salad but other than that it was the greatest barbeque known to man. It may in fact be the best Christmas known to man too, bearing in mind that I started slugging Coronas by about eleven, outside in the sun, wearing shorts.

New Year was a different sort of thing. I went to a rather quiet birthday/new-year's party. It was very much almost the exact opposite of what I'm used to in the cold back-end of no where playing shit-head and trying to start fights with bouncers (groan). I do get the prize for being farthest away from home for this New Year (I think Scoops takes the ultimate prize because he was on the other side of the country for one New Year).

I think that's all I have to say on this topic! I hope everyone had a great Christmas/New Year.