When You Have A Good Friend

So here I sit in my mother's living room, surrounded as usual by her familiar things but in an unfamiliar house that I had never seen until last week. I've been back in the grand ole USA for 3 weeks now and am finally getting around to blogging, so I need to step back in time a little and go through all of the stuff that happened my last few weeks in Brissy, or at least the stuff I have photos of (insert wavy flashback effect here).

One of the really fun things about being in Brisbane has been going to Clair's hockey games. Her and Grace are awesome. Clair does this thing where she hangs out all quite like until no one's paying attention , then gets the ball and just burns people. Grace is a bit of a bad-ass on the field and has a habit of robbing other girls blind if they have the ball. Anyway, I took lots of photos at the games I went to, and of course got accused of being a stalker once or twice, but here's what I have to show for it:


This is Leah. She is a ninja and lots of fun, too.


Here's Kwella scoring a goal! Not a brilliant photo but it was the only one I got to see so I was glad I caught the moment. Here's the whole team with their fearless leader Max. If any of you hockey type people want to see more or use my shots for a team website or anything like that, let me know. I'm pretty sure I have at least one acceptable shot of each player.

Mother's day happened a few weeks ago, too and the family spent the day eating nice lunch, drinking wine, watching movies and playing with Molly. My dad sat by himself and watched TV. Such a sentimental guy.


Not to give you the impression that my life is one long party, but... wait, no I don't mind giving you that impression. There were lots of parties and nights out. Two that I have photos of were Iain's birthday and Labour Day (I think) when Cadie's friend Eric came up to visit. On Iain's birthday I was practicing my nightlife photography in case I get any work doing that sort of thing in Atlanta. Oh, and Grace took one of the few decent shots of me and Kwella together:


So the Sunday night before Labour Day was big all over Brisbane. The Caxton Seafood Festival was going on at Caxton St. and the whole place was overflowing with people. Packed in like sardines if you will. Ha. We were at the Normanby and it was overrun by 18-yo kids in 80s reject outfits drinking pink stuff. So hardcore. These kids are too young to remember that this sort of fashion sucked the first time 'round. So yeah, it took me 40 minutes to get an order of wedges (the cook looked like he was going to cry), Grace and Eric had a good time standing on line for the ATM, and Kewlla looked stunning.

Clair took this one. Good eye, baby.
Elmo's not really secretly pining for Cades - he knew I was taking a photo so he decided to rub some drama on it for me. You missed your calling as a perfume model, mate.

We ended up back at Narn's house, watched some TV (Clair and Grace can't live without Grey's Anatomy, of all things), got some KFC, refused to share our KFC with the dodgy kids siting outside, then went wandering around. We found a playground. There were many fruit bats. Me and Rob snuck into a huge construction site and ran around a bit. Then we sat in this weird bus stop thing and I took this photo:
That's enough revelry for now...

So ever since I decided not to go to India, I'd been planning to take Clair away for a couple of days so we could just hang out together and relax. Her schedule is generally insane and lots of stuff was going on with her, which I knew, but I figured it would all be worth it if we could have just a couple of days together. SO a couple of days before I got on the plizane I took her to Noosa, a resort town North of Brissy. It was nice. We went to the beach and kicked fish, we grilled steaks (my girl can rock a grill, yo), we went shopping for thongs (for our feet, not our bums) and fisherman pants, we ate noodles, we watched The Castle, stars and a bushfire in the distance. We drank free cocktails and laughed at the scuba divers in the hotel pool.

Dunno if you can see, but that's
a bushfire with the Southern Cross
up in the sky above it.













Here's a better shot of the Southern Cross as a cloud bank rolls in. The clouds are that color because of the light from the fire.
So then it was pretty much time to say goodbye. I took some better photos of my dad's house so people could see what it's like and so I could remember it:
The bit on the top right here is the room where I stayed, and the bit on the bottom left is the office. The commute was a bitch but someone's gotta do it.

Another iconic Aussie who hangs out at my dad's house, the Kookaburra.
Seeing as I'd already had a going-away party when I was pretending to go to India, I had a birthday party on my last weekend instead. Was a wonderful night, but made me even sadder to leave. I got a pavlova!
All of the good friends I've made through Clair were there; Cades, Elmo, Narn, Bess, Gav, Lee and Grace was there, too. Peter was hosting and Isaac and Steve-O made appearances. It was awesome to have all my Brisbane people hanging out together. Isaac introduced us to his frog Tiddelik, who he rescued from an old air-conditioner. The photo is more than a bit symbolic seeing as Kwella has me right in the palm of her hand.
I will, and already do, miss these people sorely. So goodbye to my beautiful family, my beautiful country, my beautiful friends, my beautiful girl. May the lights of the XXXX brewery shine ever brightly upon you, and one day guide me home.