First day of winter in Australia

16 degrees!

View from Mt Coot-tha

Brisbane has fully recovered from the flooding it seems. From looking you'd never knew they had it

ABC breakfast show

I played a birthday breakfast house concert to Colleen and her family, that went out live on ABC Brisbane radio (100,000 listeners). They made a lovely breakfast and it was great fun with the kids. Thanks to Mary and Ann for fixing it up.
Listen at
http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2011/05/british-singer-performs-his-earliest-gig-ever-live-on-the-radio.html?site=brisbane&program=612_breakfast

Baking for vaccinations

The neighbours are having a garage sale and Maria baked cakes to sell to raise money for our vaccinations.

Bent wheel

Maria got hit by a car at night. It went through a red light. Scary stuff. Ambulance, police, fire brigade all came out. Plus two off duty doctors and two off-duty paramedics on the scene straight away. Thankfully she was ok and after a few hours in the hospital she was allowed out.

The city's not the same without you

Liberate Libya

Peace and Love

Brisbane to Darwin

The plan is to hitchhike to Darwin and then get a boat to Indonesia. Hitchhiking on a private plane, cargo ship or plain old lorry are all options. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Victory spoils

Dumpsterlicious

Maria's first dumpster-diving aventure. She was looking for cake.

Dumpster diving

We busked at the market in Brisbane and lots of the stall holders gave us a food at the end, then Malcolm who gave us a lift back wanted to go dumpster diving in three different supermarkets so we got a lot more stuff. In the end we got $20 from
Busking and collected about $200 in food.

Office

A whole room just for Internet

Brisbane

We're staying in Veronica's father's house while he's on holiday.. A beautiful old place near the West End, a cool area with awesome bars and shop. It's a dream having a house after so much tent time. He's an artisan with wood carving and built many things in the house himself.

Wildlife

Split

Alec ready for a new road.
Rory and I had a falling out for many different reasons - in the end a clash of personalities. So the album recording is off and I've left Byron with Maria to Brisbane. Poor Alec is left deciding what to do. It's a rough situation and I feel bad for him caught in the middle. He wrote many great songs together with Rory and it was a great band while it lasted. They can still go on to work together but I had to leave. The flames that burn the brightest, etc. It would have been great to have produced an album to capture and preserve all the experiences we had together, but making it would have been no fun. My plan now is to find work in Brisbane or Darwin for a month and arrange a boat to Indonesia with Maria. We have a special act together with her classical dancing style, which people have said is a bit Serge Gainsbourg-esque if you can picture it. I'm sure we'll pick up more musicians along the way and new chapters will be made. I learnt enormously from the last one. They were tremendous guys to travel with and with a bit of distance I'll look back on it with many fond memories.

Still stuck in paradise

Or Life's a beach. For another week at least. We got some recording arranged. Awesome

Yoga mad

32 turkeys work in the campground

Hotpot

Hello Mister

Byron beach

Arts Factory

Played a nice show to fellow campers Friday night

Hitchhiking

I'm not proud, but I did it

Still in Byron Bay

We're staying at the Arts Factory camp ground. Two of us have work so we can camp for free, otherwise it was getting expensive. Where does the time go. At the weekend we went to perform at Shannon market, which was a crafts market that ended with a drum festival. we were there at 6am as we got an early lift and then danced and played for about 12 hours. Then we couldn't get a lift back to Byron so stayed in a house nearby. It was pouring with rain next day as we hitched back. Maria and I got terrible food poisoning from some dodgy burritos and that was the rest of the day wiped out. We're still looking for somewhere to record and then we will move on, because sleeping in the tent has become a drag, as the nights are cold and wet. We're in a good spot though, with tons of other travellers who have advice about getting the boat to asia and where to play. Someone said that pubs in Darwin and the West coast pay up to $400 as they don't get many acts through, which would be great, as busking hear makes peanuts. We need money for Malaria jabs and other assorted things. Hopefully we record the album and get some sales from that. I've got my camera charged again and have steady wifi so will start putting on some performances of the songs from this tour. The upside of waiting is that the performances are polished now so hope you enjoy them.

Busking in Byron

With Maria and Alex. We won $50 performing at the big open mic at Buddah bar. And have a show lined up there tonight. No base yet though unfortunately. Rough camping. Would be nice to have somewhere to settle. Not enough CS hosts and tons if travellers equals little opportunity. Possibilities up in the hills but without a car it's a big ask. Only been in Byron Bay one day but already recognising people on the street and feeling at home.

The shortcut

All those nice places missed :(

Train

Hitching is crap. Paid for the train instead. All that busking change made the train people's day.

The boys

They suggested we hitch up to Byron Bay, record an album and plan continuing the tour into Asia. Hopping up the coast, busking day to day doesn't allow for any recording or research or much of anything else, so reluctantly I agreed to hitch. Maria from the New Zealand leg has also joined us as a dancer and she doesn't have a bike either so it's another reason to hitch together as a group.

Newcastle

We stayed with Michael and Chris (and the neighbourhood kid Caine) for a couple of nights in Newcastle, played a house concert and some markets.