Ok...Melbourne (pronounced: Mel-Bun) :)

I feel like to need to mention the floods, there hasn't been a day gone by since I haven't heard news of the floods, currently the couchsurfing host I am staying with has just turned on the telly, and more floods, they have effected every end of the country. When will they end? Not sure, but I do put my heart out to the country because I think it has just about effected at least one friend or relly of all Aussies. It's really sad and I do plan to do some volunteer work at some point to help out.

The train from Sydney to Melbourne: lots of trees and grass.
That's about all I saw out the window for about 11 hours. Was shuffled about by the train managers a few times, so I had an endless variety of seat mates to keep me entertained. A lot of them seemed to be going to Wagga Wagga, which I thought was a bit of a funny name, try that aloud three times fast :) The last of my seat mates was a man who spoke about the racial predudice involving aboriginals, going both ways. He personally, as a white man, was once beat up by an entire family of aboriginals in the same area that I had happened to be living in, Redfern, while I was in Sydney. He spoke of the gangs that have been forming and the terrible violence, which seems to exist more in the cities than further inland. He, as well as another woman sitting ahead of me, told me that I shouldn't be wandering about the city after 9pm, epecially in the area that I was staying.
Once safely inside my hostel, after all these warnings I was feeling a bit paranoid, I spoke to a couple of people at the desk and they said that nothing of the sort is true. The area was plenty safe, as well as most of Melbourne, and I should not have any problems. I'm guess people from the suburbs just think city = danger. I'm not going to take any risks either way, but it was nice to get an inside perspective after the more negative outside ones.

Best place to get free internet: Mackers, aka McDonalds, I haven't heard one local call it McDonalds though. Best place to have random encounters with inebriated individuals: ding! ding! ding! Mackers on a Friday night. I just wanted to check on my emails, unsuspecting, Mackers-hating me decided to sit safely just outside on the front so that I didn't actually have to enter the greese-infested building, little did I know. The first person that I encountered was a lovely young homeless man on the search for the usual change, but in exchange for my 50 cents he wanted to give me a lesson on Aussie dollar bills, he explained and showed me all the different ways you can tell if the bills are fake or real. If you fold the ends to meet up any which way, they always match up, and on this particular bill (the 10), there is a poem in one of the tiniest prints you have ever seen by a famous Aussie poet, the name of which has slipped me.
My second encounter was even more tropical. I saw him out of the corner of my eye look straight at me and I busied my fingers typing even more furiously so as to look otherwise occupied, but apparently that just fueled his desire to plop himself RIGHT next to me, and I mean as close as he could without us actually touching. He was a middle-aged man in a suit and he was WASTed. He was somewhat coherent despite his state and we did have a disussion, I mean he did have a discussion, and I did my part in listening. He seemed like he needed to be listened to. He laughed, he cried, he walked off and came back (twice), he ate, and we danced (ballroom style). He thinks that people are too superficial these days, and that women are very insecure, that romance no longer exists, he was afraid that he'd done horrible things, he spoke of the trafficing of sex slaves from other countries and his grandparents being tortured in World War II, he spoke of how much sadness he had inside him, and finally he asked me why I trusted him.
I am a very trusting person, but I don't think naiively so. I wouldn't have listened if I had gotten a bad feeling. I told him 'no' I did not want to hold his hand, that was uncomfortable for me, and he listened. He seemed like he was just really sad and I hope that it helped him to get some of it out. Who knows? I know it helps me when some really listens to me and I'm feeling a bit blue. When he walked off for the third and final time, I went somewhere else to use the internet, I had filled my listening quota for the day, first on the train and then this.

Back to the hostel, 2 canadian roomies! From the Northwest Territories, I was a bit embarassed to say that I really have never heard anything about the N.T. except in 7th grade geography when I had to memorize all the provinces and territories, I had forgotten where exactly it was even. I feel like I need to do a Canada tour sometime to make up for it. We all watched Sweet Home Alabama, vegged and went to bed. Good night.

The next day, phew! I lost my pin, I had a mission, I wanted music. I met a lovely girl on gumtree (craigslist for Aussies for those that don't remember from prev. post), who said she'd sell me a ticket for the festival Big Day Out, which is currently sold out. But I needed cash obviously, and you need a pin number to get cash. The only banks open on a saturday were in the suberbs. 3 hours and 8 train stops later, I finally made it and received the small shiny and colorful ticket. I felt like Charlie from the Chocolate factory when he opened the chocolate bar! I hope the festival is good. For you musos here's the line up: http://www.bigdayout.com/lineup/index.php
Big day. Exhausted. Sat at the train station and people watched for a while to regain my energy, met a fellow musician and had a chat, homeless artest and another chat, then out on the town with the Canadians and my up and coming lovely couchsurfing host, Danni! We went to an area called St Kilda, which is full of bars and restaurants, picked up some booze at the bottlo, aka Liquor store, and sat on the beach listening to the tunes of a nearby band.
Afterwards went to a bar to dance the night away. I got separated from the girls to go take a rest and get a drink and met my new friend Harley. I sat down in the only seat available and I guess after all that listening I had been doing in the past couple days, I found I needed to do some talking and discovered my new friend Harley is a pretty good listener. I accidentally ended up at his house and met his dog, his mum, and his couch-dwelling uncle in one fell slightly-inebriated 3am swoop. They were all lovely though noisey, the dogs I mean. They don't like people that are standing up, but they do love you very much when your sitting down. Maybe a little too much because one of them started to hump me. Ahem!

The next day, Freda, Not Rita, made me pancakes the Southern Hemisphere way, lemon and sugar, reminiscent of my times in the N.Z. And we went off to pet kangaroos and grumpy koloa bears and spent the day on an island outside the city called Phillips Island. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Phillip+Island+Victoria,+Australia&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=17.35812,53.964844&ie=UTF8&geocode=FfFFtf0dAiyoCA&split=0&hq=&hnear=Phillip+Island+Victoria,+Australia&ll=-38.425622,145.220032&spn=0.266813,0.843201&z=10
Beautiful beach, perfect surf, lots of sun, a harrowing left handed drive :S (silly Harley decided he trusted me with his car and life) and the biggest calamari I'd ever seen and very delicious. Lovely day. All that sun and I passed out last night and got up bright and early to head to Danni's. We just done a walk about the neighborhood and we're awaiting the arrival of a second couchsurfing from Ohio. I look forward to meeting him.

Alls well in the world of Rose.