Back To The Beach

Australia is definitely somewhere you can get away with describing as unique; from the animals, to the sports, to the geography. One thing I certainly wasn’t expecting when I decided to come here was to get a day off work, on a Tuesday because of a horse race.

As somebody who is working to save in order to travel further, being told not to come to work was less than ideal. On the other hand, waking up to clear blue skies and knowing that you’ve got nothing that you have to do with the day is fairly excellent.

The discussion in the office on Monday had followed one train of thought; the beach. Now, you well know that I’d hit the beaches on the weekend so knew what to expect and so I was pretty keen on the plan. Hanging out with some of the guys from the office seemed like a reasonable idea.

I met up with my Ryan Gosling look-a-like pal, Rob, and we jumped on the tram down to St. Kilda. I didn’t mention this previously when I made it down this far, but St. Kilda kinda smells like sewage so it’s not really up there as a place I’d want to spend the day chilling, so Rob and I walked a little further along the front to Elwood.

I wonder how many photos you might see like this over the coming weeks? I’ll give you a rough estimate: loads! Nothing like clear blue skies and white sands to ensure everyone thinks I’m insufferable. After we’d been chilling for a while, Big James from the office headed down with a couple of his friends and in true Big James fashion arrived with a couple of bottles of wine. This eventually encouraged Rob and I to hit the local bottle shop and pick up some beers. How about another one of those “my life’s pretty sensational right now.” photos? Of course!

On a side note, I’ve been getting around the bars and bottle shops trying all the Australian pale ales I can get my hands on. I’ve found that Australia has a similar reputation to America when it comes to the beer. Nobody outside of Australia really seems to know what gets drunk. Victoria has a few of it’s own brews; VB, Carlton and Coopers which are all pretty reasonable but it’s the craft ales that I’m getting stuck in to. I’ve yet to explore some of Melbourne’s local brew-houses. Anyway, back to the beach.

We must have spent the best part of the afternoon chilling in the sun. It was one of those days where there was just enough wind for you to forget to apply sun cream at regular intervals and if, like me, you’re the whitest guy you know can expect to turn a lovely shade of pink by the end of it all. As the sun began to set we picked up our stuff and wandered back towards St. Kilda with views to find a bar and continue with the drinking.