ALI AND NATI STRIKE GOLD!

8pm Thu 7 Feb: Having just returned from two days swinging a metal detector and pick through the bush near Bendigo, Australia, I am proud to open this long-overdue blog with a bombshell journalism headline: ALI AND NATI STRIKE GOLD!
It's true...the novice mining duo (pictured above; Max, I doff my cap to you for stealing your photo idea) have hit it rich, striking something missed by hundreds of thousands of miners during the 1850s goldrush.
But...and why is there always a 'but'?....we're not retiring yet, and plans to purchase that small Caribbean island are still on hold.
Why?
Well, we DID find gold, but it was 100 specks (value $2), phenomenally-patiently panned from a creek by Nati at superb recreated goldrush town Sovereign Hill (www.sovereignhill.com.au) in Ballarat.
We did trawl the bush, following up a 'red-hot' prospecting tip (maybe of the wild goose variety), but, after two days attempting to decipher unintelligible screeching noises from our hoover-esque kit, digging numerous large holes and earning a handful of blisters...the highlights of our haul were: a bullet, nails and a whole lotta rusty metal.
So...here we are in Sydney, staying not in the Ritz penthouse but a down-to-earth Coogee hostel, but still a damn sight better than the monstrous Favela Backpackers from Melbourne last weekend.
Before that hovel, stayed in a joint familiar to a couple of poss blog readers - 'Mad' Max Feltham and Adam 'Turkish Delight' Chakmak - the establishment being Coffee Palace in Melbourne's yuppie-backpacker-hippie-rollerblader-beach-clubbing-prostitute mish-mash St Kilda.
St K is a crazy place.
Take the time I was making a vitally-important phone call and a tramp, having shuffled into smelling distance, lost control of his trousers and they dropped, like a flag shooting down a flagpole, to his ankles, revealing all.
Or, still on the trousers theme actually, as I left St K's version of Clapham funky house Mecca Inigo the other Sunday night, a guy on the tram stripped to his Y-fronts, delivering a quite brilliant impromptu rap about...trams.
Despite the strangeness, I love Melbourne and gotta say it or Sydney are deffo my fave cities in el mundo. Any opinions?
Super-cool Coogee is my new No 1 Sydney suburb - and Melb is awesome - whether jogging round Albert Park (Aussie GP there March 16); rollerblading down Port Phillip promenade (just the one head-over-heelsers...so that's why they give you elbow pads); dipping in the 2006 Commonwealth Games pool (I now call Nati 'Nemo'); shopping on Chapel St, in Fitzroy and the CBD (ok, Nati forced me to write that bit); or, this being Melbourne, gatecrashing a couple of world-beating clubbing events.
No 1: Sat daytime fluro rave to hard dance (for the uneducated/ignorant, read: harder than really hard house - this is fast…you should have seen my dance moves!).
No 2, without a doubt one of my top three clubbing nights EVER, was a hard trance (read: devastating hands-in-the-air trance-hard house) blitz served up by no-nonsense German duo The Hitmen. My brain must have produced record quantities of endomorphins in three hours of absolute euphoria.
Oz is awesome and the combo of upbeat people & fun-lovin', sporty lifestyle has got me thinking of living and working here again one day.
A few stories...people reckoned we had Buckley's chance - but we hitched back O'Bourke - Hicksville, actually - one arvo in some cobbers' utes.
Saw a load of roos and koalas but no salties (thankfully), cooled down in a billabong; drank a few slabs of tinnies - no goon though; wore thongs; met a few flamin' galahs; and Nati cracked the sh*ts when I called her a Sheila. Fair dinkum!...
And if you can translate any of that nonsense, you're a true Aussie.
Met some bonzer locals when hitching Sydney to Melbourne and around...like dyed-in-the-wool trucker Wes, whose broken air con in 41C heat led to a throat-numbing three-hour shouting conversation...during which we stunned him by revealing England has a winter when it's summer Down Under - and that Norway is amazingly even colder and actually quite close to the North Pole.
Then there was Steve, the drunk cricket club groundsman, who became the (uninvited but entertaining nevertheless) third party in Nati and my supposedly-romantic, veranda cheese-and-wine evening.
On a more genteel note, had a lovely time with Rosa, a fun Melbourne lady we met on the Nile three months ago - staying at her great hol home, sipping whisky, being whisked around the sights and having a vast amount of food forced on us. Thanks, Rosa!
Quick bang-bang of some other ace Oz moments: free Plump DJs rave in Sydney's equivalent of Trafalgar Square; NYE Harbour Bridge fireworks and Hed Kandi clubbing; Yarrawonga's spooky, colossal dammed lake with tens of thousands of dead, grey gum trees poking out; gorgeous yellow grass & green gum trees in the Victorian bush - especially cycling/wobbling sampling Rutherglen wineries' fortified reds and ports; Williamstown (port of the boats variety), beautiful tall ships and some right salty old sea dogs on Australia Day; Bollywood dancing with 2,000 people in Melbourne; the viewtastic Great Ocean Road (despite main 12th Apostle collapsing since my prev visit), and; unintentionally having a beer in the hotel where bushranger Ned Kelly was locked up after his armour-plated police shoot-out.
Before Oz, had fun Xmas in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, in cabin on beach. Xmas Eve Full Moon Party was great but what a mess everyone else seemed to be in!
Good and bad news since my last FMP in 2004. My fave funky house club had become a tacky impersonation Seven Eleven convenience store, but revamped Paradise Bungalows rocked with psy-trance...and found another top f house club, wicked if you stood in front of the two non-broken speakers.
Singapore inbetween Xmas and NY also v cool – unbelievable veggie and beef curries in Little India, before Qantas flight to Oz during which Nati broke world record for number of in-flight movies watched in a single flight.
Fly to Cairns tomorrow for three weeks camper-vaning to Brisbane, seeing Ed Randell from uni and family friends en route.
Thanks again from Nati and I for all the emails - great to hear news from home - and congrats to the people who deserve them...I'd better not reveal your big secrets here!
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All the best from both of us, hope you're well and look forward to hearing from you soon and seeing you back in the UK in the summer.
Now its time for a Tooheys!
Ali & Nati