The temperature in Melbourne has been thankfully much cooler than Perth.
I’ve been here for a week as a tourist. As it turns out, there was a comedy club two minutes walk from my hotel. I was planning on turning up on the new material night to see if I could do a spot. Then I decided to go for a curry instead. This pretty much sums up where my head is at with comedy at the moment.
I did the classic tourist things of the zoo and botanic gardens. I also went to the beach at St Kilda’s and went in the sea for slightly longer than Rottnest, but not by much.
I did think about going on the Neighbours tour, having watched it for almost 20 years. During my late teens and early 20s, it was an ambition of mine to live in Australia and write episodes of Neighbours for a living. The show was a huge part of my time at uni, with it sometimes taking priority over lectures. Sadly, once it moved to Channel 5, I stopped watching and the dream died.
This week was also the 20th anniversary of my school production of Return to the Forbidden Planet.
I was happy to let this anniversary pass me by, only to randomly walk into a gift shop in a Melbourne mall and for the song Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap to start playing. Although the lyrics to the song are unquestionably dodgy and these days would likely result in Mr Puckett and his union receiving a visit from the police as a precaution, the song is synonymous with Return to the Forbidden Planet. For some reason, it is that one song above all the others in it that transports me back to my fondest time at secondary school as I had never heard it before I did RTTFP. When the unremarkable quiet boy in the corner somehow ended up getting the lead role in a school production, mainly by being one of about four or five boys willing to act.
I’m now on the bus heading to Sydney next for more touristy things. I’m already looking forward to visiting the aquarium, paying close attention to the cephalopods.
In other news, I have now officially dropped out of Dunedin Fringe. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a replacement venue sorted in time. It’s a shame, but I’m going to make the most of the extra time I have in NZ. I also have another plan to make up for some of the other lost earnings with something journalistic, but it hasn’t been commissioned just yet.