Entravistas

I have done a bunch of interviews lately. Well maybe not so many, but a few.

I did one with Miguel Ortiz, he is a comic hero - not in the way that Superman and Batman are, but he has been drawing for more than 50 years.

Chile actually made some of the first comics and zines, which is something I did not know about at all until doing the interview!

I went last night to a Copa Libertadores match. I will write more about that another time. I did another interview yesterday as well.

Negative Guest List

I was just reading the Sticky blog and came across the sad news that the guy behind the zine "Negative Guest List" died, aged only 21.

That's terrible news to hear.

I didn't know the guy at all, but I have read quite a few issues of Negative Guest List, as well as Dirty Alleys Dirty Minds. It was good stuff. There are some real heartfelt tributes here from Mess and Noise.

In Australia I think the "zine community" has grown a lot, though not so many punk rock zines can be included in that growth. Particularly ones with as regular production.

Sad news to hear though. RIP and best wishes to his friends and family.

Capital Lies

So in the past few weeks I have been dwelling on our upcoming departure from Australia, and thinking of doing some kind of zine for the occasion. Of course, time is almost up, and I just have a blank page, and many more things to do, so there will be no farewell issue of the zine.

That's not to say there won't be any more issues though. I will probably do some more, from Chile, I haven't decided if I will keep the Capital Eyes thread running. I plan on making a zine about the adventures in South America of an Aussie Gringo, called Grassy Arse. (geddit...) I might even think about doing a podcast, but first things first, I'm going to get myself settled down over on the other side of the ocean.

We only have 3 days left in Sydney. Our time in Canberra finished earlier this week, we finally picked up one of those elusive $15 tickets on the bus. Got to see a lot of our friends, but of course you can't see everyone you plan on seeing.

Have already managed to catch up with quite a few friends, talk about the old days, etc and I have almost booked myself out for the next couple of days, so of course I will need to find some time to pack too. Busy times ahead in the next few days.

New zine idea

Well I haven't written anything about zines in this blog for some time and it's been even longer since I made a zine. At the start of the year I said I wanted to get to issue #15 of Capital Eyes before stepping out of the country.

We fly off in just a few weeks and the last one I did was #12 for the Sticky Target 168 thing. That was a while back. I have a few ideas floating around my head. I may do a little travel zine about our recent times in Asia, which ended with me in hospital. Not such a feel good story. Another idea I have, which some may say is cheating, is to make a collection of the interviews I've done with just Canberra bands over the last few years. This could be a pretty good way to bow out from the Canberra scene and tell a few good stories about those times.

Off the top of my head, these are some interviews I have done with Canberra bands- 4 Dead, I Exist, Templestowe, Yoko Oh No, Super Best Friends, Jerkstore, Slowburn. Considering that I have been doing this for a few years, it probably should be a bigger number, but there's not so much you can do about that. Let's see if I can get that done, I have had a pretty productive night tonight, so if I can continue that form over the next couple of weeks, we'll see what happens...

Speaking of zines, This Is Not Art (TiNA) is on this coming weekend. I met a girl last week who said hey you should go. I have to work and I don't really have any money, so it's not going to be an option at this stage. However, once we come back from Chile, that's something I could do.

Back to School

After taking a semester break, I am back in action in my uni course. Would you believe it I now just have 4 subjects remaining to become a Master. Two of them I am taking this semester, then the next two I think will be bigger projects. This semester my two subjects overlap a bit, but I'm not going to take the option of doing the same thing for both projects.

I have only just started them in the last few minutes, so there's only a welcome post on each one, but I have developed my ideas for each one.

First idea- which will be hosted at http://capitaleyes.tumblr.com is going to be a mix between a "best of" of the zine. I have been really lazy on the zine front this year, let's see if that changes once I go back to Australia for a little while, but it will give me a chance to wrap things up. It will also mix memories of different shows and other events and follow the main character (ie: me) to where he is today.

For the second one I thought I would just do a travel blog, but really, that's too easy, and would involve writing a bunch of things I have already done before. So what I have decided to do, is theme my blog piece around the YHA Australia network. http://yhaalltheway.tumblr.com for that one. It will be a mix of reviews of the hostels, and some fun stories about the main character, which is once again, me.

So those are a couple of notable things on the writing horizon and both projects I am looking forward to working on.

Thailand zine scene search

While sitting here getting some rest for my ankle, I started making some enquiries into the zine world of Thailand. I have only just started looking, but I came across a very interesting write up of a Terror show in Bangkok.

By the looks of it, Jagged Visions is a punk/hardcore zine from the Netherlands, and the main guy has a brother living in Bangkok. But anyway, some interesting points in there about the scene. I found a link to another website about Thai hardcore, but it hadn't been updated in a few months. The last link was to Relentless, from Sydney playing. They're not very good though.

I looked on Last FM and there is a death metal festival on in about a week from now. I don't think I could really handle from midday to midnight of death/black metal, it doesn't sound that much up my alley and I'd say we would be out of town.

I came across a couple of other travel zines about Thailand. I have the idea to do up a zine about our trip, but let's see. Anyhow, I will search for more on Thailand as the day goes on. Looks like Jonathan has arrived in town, possibly a couple of days ago. He wrote me a comment on facebook at 5am saying he had met some characters and gone out partying, good times. So maybe we will see him later in the afternoon...

Zines in Nepal

Not so sure if I will be able to make it out to this location, but good to see there is some zine scene here in Nepal.

I found this website

http://www.raikoris.webs.com/

Rai Ko Ris herstory/history:

Current:

Run an Infoshop since Dec. 2004 + now with a radical bookstore + publishing since Jan. 2010.

This may be one of the rare spots in Kathmandu holding feminist/queer/gay alternative literature + magazines, books + pamphlets on anarchism, d.i.y sustainable living, + socio-politico music magazines. Also available - our own zine Self Defense + the first translation of a text on anarchism from English to Nepali 'Anarchism ke ho?' (Originally from What is Anarchism compiled by Donald Rooum).

The Infoshop is located in a small village half an hour to 40 mins by public transport outside the city centre, north at the end of Kathmandu Valley in a place called Budhanilkanta (famous for the large reclining Vishnu statue + temple), + beside Shivapuri National Park. Thanks to the Ricecooker team in Malaysia, Irregular Rhythm Assylum in Japan, Francis of Love from Hate...the Philippines, Friesen Collective (Bremen, Germany), 1000 Fryd (Alborg, Denmark), Eef, Fort Van Sjakoo + ADM squat (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and the band Cutter (Barcelona, Spain) + all those who know for all their support.

We try to open it in accordance with the arbitrary electricity schedule, our life + kids. Please contact us at raikoris@wlink.com.np for latest schedule.

S.Rai + O.Bertin also have also had alter egos in the bands Tank Girl, Reggae/Ska-punk outfit Naya

Singapore, Day 2

So we woke up a bit late. Our dark cavern of a room only has a small window close to the roof so not really any idea of time. Below me the next bunk down (flimsy bunk), I think the bloke had a gay lover or something. (I think homosexuality as a matter of fact is one of many illegal acts in Singapore). Anyway, I don't care about that, and I'm not sure if it was something that I just dreamed, but anyway, having two people underneath made things a bit rocky up the top, and you know that double bed at the last place was sounding real good.

We do have air con in the room which we haven't had before in the trip. Anyway, enough about the hostel. It is called The Little Red Dot, which is what people refer to as Singapore, when looked at a world map.

We took a wander around the city, stopped at the National Museum of Singapore (free entry after 6pm). Something I was really impressed by was an exhibititon on the work of the cameraman Willie Phua who was from Singapore and filmed for 30 or so years for the ABC, capturing almost everything in Asian history in between.

It was mainly just wandering around, getting ourselves oriented, finding the train stations, getting lost again. We got ourselves very lost coming from the train station back to the hostel, what should have been about a 5 min walk ended up taking much, much longer than that.

We did walk past a stadium not far from here though...as we walked past (not sure what was on, I guess it was a soccer match, probably part of the S-League...but anyway, we're walking and you don't hear so much, and then the crowd ROARS as one, GOAL. (Roars like the Lion, Lion City/Singa Pura) or the Tiger (Beer or Air Company, the beer certainly has a better reputation...

Today we walked around more, went down Orchard Road for a while. Just before that I continued my plan of hitting 5 add tricks in front of famous locations. (Tomahawk, Istana Park).

Here's the list:

Blurry Whirl- Petronas Towers, KL

Stepping Ducking Osis- KL Bird Park

Matador- Jonker St, Melaka

Ripped Warrior- Melaka Shoreline

Tomahawk- Istana Park, Orchard Rd, Singapore

Still have a few more tricks up my sleeve, but not enough to last 60 or so days, let's see how we go with that!

Anyway, today we did more walking, plenty of it. We also caught a few trains, we got down to the Chinatown area after the shopping district. Talk about not my kind of scene oh yeah, one street with something like twenty shopping centres...No thanks.

In the Chinatown area I was looking for a certain bookshop (didn't really know the name or address aside from street name, but I read about it in a zine report from a year or so ago, but I couldn't find it. Did find another kind of gallery/stuff shop (a la itripiskip etc) (eg sellers of junk, sometimes including zines). Picked up "Pocket Rocket" it's basically a paper plane zine. Also grabbed the free Juice Magazine and was very surprised to find an article on Black Flag of all things...

So now we are back at the hostel, it's like 9pm, haven't eaten any dinner yet, might head to the Hawker centre, those non airconditioned combinations of discomfort and cheap cheap food... and maybe a couple of beers for the road, but I would like to wake up early too, so let's see how that all goes. I was reading a new book, a collection of things from Lester Bangs, and it dropped down the side of the bed, I wonder if it hit the guy below? Anyway, I wish my reading material was a bit more related to the areas we are going through. It would be good to be reading The Great Railway Bazaar, but I already read that so I can just think about that in my head. Too bad I didn't find that bookstore today.

We also visited the Museum of Asian Civilizations today, very good stuff. Impressive collection of different things, mainly focusing on South East Asia, but they also have some of the terracotta warriors from China. Doesn't seem quite as busy in the Little Red Dot today, but might get something to eat or something along those lines.

Back to KL tomorrow, hoping to get a bus at 8am so I can make it for a kick with the Malaysian Footbag crew, at 5pm at Maybank Bukit Bintang. After a quick browse of Hostelworld, seems we're just as well staying at the same place as last time, saves time looking for directions to begin with. So off on the bus tomorrow. Bye bye Singapore. Don't think I would really like to live here and probably wouldn't go out of my way to visit again....let's see how the beer goes down though...

National Library of Australia- zine blog

Those good people at the National Library of Australia have a started a blog to talk about the fringe world of publications, mainly the world of zines and comics etc.

Go and check it out.... https://blogs.nla.gov.au/the-eloquent-page/

Capital Eyes issue 13...

Well I think the next zine I do, as I aim to reach that elusive 15 I mentioned some time at the start of the year....maybe it was a new year resolution, maybe I was just talking rubbish, but I've decided I should try to get there, even if I take some sneaky ways.

(eg, Issue 12, being my contribution to Sticky's Target 168...)

Anyhow, I have contributed some writings to some street press, but I think I might use the interviews (rather than the stories I put in those publications) to put in my zine.

So the next issue will probably have content from I Exist, Ignite The Ibex, Shihad, Daysend and maybe a couple of others.

This is my contribution to Sticky's Target 168 Challenge

Sticky: Target 168

So I have just sent off an email to Sticky, I'm entering into their Eurovision themed Target 168. Whether this comes out as Capital Eyes #12 remains to be seen, but I am thinking that's a probably yes.

My interview with Bridget

So this month I don't have too much news from the Canberra region. There was a zine fair on, but I was unable to attend. My spies tell me there was not anywhere near as many people as at the same event last year.

What I have done instead is interview my good pal Bridget (Screwdriver Guilts, Trees Die Standing), who used to live in Canberra, but is now popping up all over the world...

What first got you started on the idea of making zines?

I honestly have no idea. I always liked cut & paste..

You're living in Austria at the moment....what's the zine scene like?

So far a bit bullshit. There's one infoshop here in Vienna, at the one squat (not a real squat), with a secret knock & stuff before you can get in. I'm gonna keep digging though, I'm optimistic.

And to follow on from that, is it difficult to make zines there- are paper, staplers, glue and photocopiers widely available?

The good news for Viennese zinesters is that there's a super-friendly anarchist printing place that will only charge you material costs, so at least this part of it's totally covered. Meanwhile, due to some stupid scene infighting junk the place is being effectively boycotted by most of the people in the city who could, should & would be using the place.

What's your personal favourites of the zines you have made so far?

I'm kinda keen on ish one of Trees Die Standing (which will totes be reprinted & in our favourite smelbs store before long). For those of you (most of you) who haven't read it, it's about the time I went to the Egypt-Gaza border last June. It's a long story. I interviewed a bunch of people coming out of Gaza, as well as some of the people involved in the tunnels/smuggling trade & learnt a lot about the Bedouin struggle in the Sinai. I also found out that the going price for a Grad missile launcher in Gaza is $50,000, while in Somalia it's only $6,000.

Your zines are mainly based on your personal experiences, without the adventure would there be no zine?

Um yeah, I think so. I hope so! My first few zines (Screwdriver Guilts #1 & 2) were an amalgamation of crap, mostly nothing to do with me. I interviewed some skater in Norway about when THE GOVERNMENT OUTLAWED SKATING FOR LIKE 15 YEARS WTF, & Quan Yeomans from Regurgitator, who can I just mention, is such a dude.

Trees Die Standing #2 is about your experiences in Palestine...what would you do differently if you were to go there again?

Yeah wow! Maybe everything or nothing? I'd probably try to shoplift more in Tel Aviv, & eat (even) more falafel.

What's next on the production line?

So many. I spent some time with the No Borders group in Calais, France last year where European activists are supporting the migrant struggle for freedom of movement... literally hundreds of migrants are stuck in this pissant town in northern France at any given time, trying to smuggle themselves on to a boat to Britain. Basically it's a losing game of trying to stop the cops from beating them up too much during raids, & just to be a friendly face to these people who have gone through such incredible, relentless bullshit. Anyway, as soon as I get time I want to write an “Arabic for Activists” zine especially for Calais, to combat the language barrier (a lot of people there were from Sudan, Iraq etc) & help activists be more effective. I wanna write a “Middle East Vegan” recipe zine, even if no-one reads them – this might have something to do with this fucking Palestinian cookbook I'm editing right now (I say “fucking” because the recipes are so vague it feels more like I'm writing a cookbook than editing). And I want to sit down & write my zine from Iraq/Kurdistan, which I hope to call “All My Friends Are Mountains” because, well, it's often been said that the Kurds have no friends but the mountains... & gosh I like mountains!

What sort of music is the background to these zines?

This is ridiculous but when I was cut/pasting my last zine together it was to the soundtrack of my boyfriend reading me Sherlock Holmes aloud.

Apart from zines, you do a fair bit of other writing, how does making zines fit into your writing game as a whole?

Zines are totes the writing equivalent of um, “me time” - when I get to write whatever, however I like, with no deadlines, word limits or target audiences. Wahey!

What are the best and worst zines you have ever read?

I don't think I've ever read a BAD zine, hey. I have a pretty low threshold for ranty socialist zines or wistful-teenage-girl-growing-up-in-the-Midwest perzines unless they're really well done, but whatevs. Well, actually, I did read a zine once called “Why Nonviolence Protects the State”, but it was actually a photocopy of the un-copyrighted book of the same name, & it was (for me) complete bullshit.

I read a really rad zine once called something like “Why Restaurants Should Be Abolished” which was pretty much what it said on the box, deconstructing the power-plays that define restaurant interactions between customers & staff. Good stuff for anyone who's ever worked hospitality!

Do you think you will find yourself back in Canberra anytime?

I'm coming back to Australia at the end of the year, mostly out of a growing desire to address the political situation & do some intense introspective junk re: being a product of colonialism & how to circumvent it. And Canberra's magnetic pull can only be staved off for so long. Actually zine-wise I'm really fucking excited!!! Australia's zine scene seems to be totally exploding! Kapow!

Anything else to add or anyone to thank?

Thanks Special Agent Dale Cooper, for being you!

Something different for Sticky monthly column

As I mentioned on the last post, for this month's Sticky contribution, I've decided to do something a little bit different. I didn't go to the zine fair at the beginning of the month, so I don't have too much news to report. Instead my good friend Bridget (Screwdriver Guilts, Trees Die Standing) also famed for making excellent hot chocolate and getting arrested in Palestine, we did interviews with each other about zines.

So for all my followers...

Here's an early look at the interviews

Here's the interview questions I answered for Bridget

Daniel Boyle- Capital Eyes

You're from Bega... did you get in to making zines there, or when you pulled up in the teaming metropolis of Canberra? How did it all start?

I didn't really know about zines when I lived in Bega. I used to however, when I was still fairly young, do a lot of the things you will find in zines. I would fill exercise books with my top 50 or 100 songs, and write my own album reviews and things like that. So these were really handwritten 1/1 zines when you think about it...

I lived in Sydney for a while and I picked up a few zines, I always picked up anything that was free or really cheap in some of the different music shops, but once I was in Canberra I helped do a zine with a couple of my friends, it was called Can I Scream (the name was from the Refused song New Noise, and it got a lot of criticism in the reviews)....we made it for free, we did three issues, I think we actually printed more than 500 of the first one. When we were doing that I was thinking, I would like to do my own zine, but it was a couple of years before I actually went and did that.

Your zines feature a lot of band interviews. How influential would you say zines are in Australian punk & hardcore these days (promoting, finding new bands, etc)?

Within Australia, particularly in the punk and hardcore scene, or all scenes I guess, people are getting their information online. It's instant and you can listen to the music straight away. For information about what's on immediately, I guess the street presses can be ok, although not everything is in there. The whole zine thing is a bit more fun, I guess.

Some people may read about a band and get into them from there, particularly this “bigger” zines like Pee Zine, which has been going for ages and is up to issue number 40 something, or Unbelievably Bad, though that doesn't seem to come out much anymore, those sort of zines have a good chance of giving you some ideas about new bands, whereas a lot of the smaller zines, I guess it's just a look at some punk rock dudes life with a few interviews of bands they like, which you may want to check out.

There are not that many punk/hardcore zines around, maybe one or two in each city, but I always love to pick up any zines when they're at shows.

Before I left Canberra you were the only other zine person I knew there. Now, it seems like the nation's (spew) capital has exploded in ZINE FEVER! Is this correct? How's the zinescape (yeah, zinescape) looking these days?

I'm not sure if these people were around already, or that it's just getting more organised. There seems to be a lot more zine fairs, there's one coming up at Gorman House next week, and zines were even featured in the National Gallery of Australia, now isn't that Art.

I think a lot of these people were already around previously, but basically you just had to know them if you wanted to get a zine, whereas there are more outlets to have your zines, Smiths Bookshop is selling a whole lot of zines now these days.

You're writing a zine blog now, right? How's it going? Have you ever given a zine a bad review?

I have a blog which I kind of use as a zine blog, I mainly use it to put up the old interviews from previous zines, or I put some of my other writing in there, mainly travel stories or comments about the Canberra Raiders season (currently going very badly) in there. I have been doing some zine reviews. I mainly write about ones that I like from these piles of zines sitting in my loungeroom so they are mainly good reviews, but not all zines are great!

Have you legally deposited your zines at the National Library (that is, donating one copy of each to the National Library for posterity)? My friend who works at the National Library says legally depositing your zines is not only important (for archiving media history etc) but COOL!

I think there are a couple of mine in the collection at the Library. Some of the ladies got a few of my issues at the last zine fair. I have been meaning to put a copy of the rest in there, but I'm trying to track down copies of all the previous issues somewhere around my house.

You went to Papua New Guinea, whoa! My dad, who btw is a badass, told me a story one time from when he was in PNG (he is a geologist/rock star. geddit? Haw!) & got robbed for everything he had on his back – including his undies - & had to walk back to Port Moresby naked.* Did anything like this happen to you?

I remember reading a story about your Dad in one of your zines, maybe it was a letter from him from China and it was mainly about pandas, he sounds like a good guy. We didn't have anything bad happen to us, we went on a surf trip which left out from Kavieng, which is in the north of PNG. Port Moresby airport seemed like a very sketchy place, but on the advice of the people who took us on the trip, we took a taxi to some rich guy hotel and ate lunch while we were waiting for the next plane. Not very “travel guru”, but better than being robbed. The trip itself was awesome, all the people we met in the islands were so friendly to us. For those playing at home I wrote about this trip in Issue #7 of Capital Eyes.

You're moving to Chile! Have you sussed out the zinescape there?

I'm looking forward to going to Chile. I don't really know too much about the Chilean zinescape actually. There is a girl that gives updates on the Sticky newsletter so I will have to get in touch with her before I go. I just got married this year and my wife is from Chile, so we will head over there for around two years. I guess I will make some zines about my experiences of being a gringo over there.

When the uninitiated ask you “what's a zine?”, what do you usually say?

I usually tell them it's a home made magazine, made by cutting and pasting and photocopied at your work or some other place cheap. Then they look at me and wonder why somebody would do such a thing.

I picked up this A4 folded thing at a gig the other night labelled “FANZINE” & it turned out to be some promotional crap about some crap sponsored by the EU. I felt a tinge of the same outrage that an African-American rapper maybe feels when their subculture is used to hawk mass-produced sweatshop corporate sportswear. What do you think? Do you think it's kinda cool that zines are considered so significant a medium as for their POWER to be harnessed by Big Money, or is it a contrived insult to our collective intelligence?

An interesting question really. Generally if a “zine” is made by some “big, powerful organisation”, it loses the touch of the zine world. It's all formally presented, the staples are nicely in place, the paper is suspiciously high quality. However, zines could be used as a massive promotional tool in any situation, and I guess it's up to the reader to interpret it as they will. In countries where the state runs all the TV, newspapers etc, making a home made “zine”, though it may not be called that, is a way of getting your message to people.

Every now and then, I have been giving a contribution to Sticky's monthly zine report where they have correspondents from all over the place. This month, I saw that my good pal Bridget (Trees Die Standing, Screwdriver Guilts) had done a contribution too, so that got me thinking of a new idea, that both Canberra Correspondents could interview each other, in something to impress the zine world, akin to typing Google into Google.

So we did that and you will be able to see that in the next monthly newsletter from Sticky.

...art...

The introduction to Issue #6, as you may be able to see, I am very bad at drawing, but I decided to put a little comic in the beginning of that issue, detailing an encounter I had with a security guard.

The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road is a famously well traveled road, but in the past I have barely touched upon it. The furthest I had been before was to Airey's Inlet, home to the TV show Round The Twist. So in essence, I hadn't actually been to what is considered the "real" Great Ocean Road. The arch welcoming you to the Great Ocean Road is at Eastern View, just before Lorne.

Our trip to the Great Ocean Road was for our honeymoon. As we are going to live overseas, there's no need to take a trip to a Pacific Island, as nice as it sounds. It turned out it was a good move to also not go somewhere like the Whitsundays, where we had been last year, as TC Yasi, a Category 5 cyclone came down on the coast of Queensland.

So the day after the wedding, we were flying down to Melbourne. We had a flight in the afternoon, so we spent the morning saying our goodbyes and thankyous, then Mum and Dad dropped us off at the airport. Before heading out to the Great Ocean Road, we had a couple of days in Melbourne.

Melbourne was quite busy that day, as it was the final of the Australian Open. We had a wander by the river, and ended up stopping by Rod Laver Arena, where a steady crowd was already building. In Federation Square, there must have been over a thousand people watching the free telecast on the big screen. We watched that for a while, then continued on our way.

We went to Mme Brussels for a drink, they serve cocktails in jugs. It's not really my scene, but Francisca loved the bar, and the idea of jugs of cocktails on a fairly warm evening was a pleasant idea.

The next day we spent just wandering our way through Melbourne. For breakfast we ended up at a sushi bar, that also sold big plates of breakfast, for a cheap price.

Not far away was Missing Link. I picked up a few zines, and had a look to see if anything caught my eye for the next weekend, once we were back from the Great Ocean Road. The day continued, we just wandered around, stopping in shops for books and zines. We ended up doing quite a bit of walking. After going around the city, we walked up to the markets, closed Monday. We continued to walk, and had a look around the cemetery in Carlton. I had never been in there before, despite going past a number of times.

From there we headed up to Brunswick Street and had a look around there. A couple of places I had wanted to go were under renovation, or closed, which was a bit of a disappointment.

At Readings in Carlton I had picked up a copy of Paul Theroux- Ghost Train To The Eastern Star, where he retraces the steps of his travels (or tries to) of The Great Railway Bazaar. He talks of feeling like a ghost, all these memories from a long time ago. Although it was nowhere near as long ago, I lived in Melbourne a few years back, and memories kept reappearing to me all the way through the trip.

That evening we caught up with my friend from school, Chris. He lives right in the city, and that's where I have normally stayed when visiting Melbourne. He also has a bird.

And a pool on the roof

We got some cans of beer, as I thought it would be frowned about to take glass up to the roof. We had some drinks by the poolside and I had a quick dip on the roof. Despite the warm weather and our proximity to the ocean, this was one of the few times I went swimming on the trip.

It was nearing dinner time, and I was hoping to get a cheap parma or something along those lines. We consulted the website, www.thehappiesthour.com.au and I'm not sure I would do that again after this experience.

After seeing a deal for "$8 parma and pot", we were making our way to The Golden Age, up the top end of King Street. Come to think of it, only $8 is suspiciously cheap for a good meal.

From the get go, it was a rather strange experience. There was one guy sitting at the bar, and nobody serving. Eventually a bloke came along, he said we would be still able to get the deal, even though it was close to closing time. There was something wrong with the taps for beer, so we could either have a bottle of VB, or a soft drink. We said that was ok, and had our VB and Francisca had a diet coke. She said it was one of the worst drinks she had ever tasted. It was a long way from the jug of cocktails the previous evening, I'll tell you that much!

The pub was closing, and it's next door to a hotel, so they decided we could eat our meal in the breakfast room of the hotel. So we had that served up to us, and honestly, it was pretty similar to a rock with some parma sauce on the top. Definitely not the best meal I have eaten. It came very quickly as well, so we guest they must have just been sitting in some sort of pie warmer contraption. Once finishing we thought of going for more beer, but the dinner had been a bit of a downer, so we headed our different directions.

The next morning we hired a car and got going out of Melbourne. Driving in Melbourne is not easy at the best of times, but I had some initial troubles, as the indicators and windscreen wipers were switched from their regular positions. Some other drivers just didn't bother to indicate though. A near miss had me wishing I had purchased that extra insurance option.

We wound our way down through the southern suburbs of Melbourne towards the Mornington Peninsula. Locally it is known simply as "The Peninsula", as if there are no other Peninsulas around. We had come this way in order to take the ferry from Sorrento to Queenscliff, something I had not done before.

We stopped at a couple of beaches, but nothing seemed enticing enough to go for a swim. We headed further south, towards Point Nepean, the end of the peninsula. We started the walk, which was about 8km in total, but stopped at a beach not far along the way. It was quite pleasant there, there were only a couple of other people on the beach.

The water had this great clear colour to it as well. Time was getting on, so we decided to head on towards the ferry. It cost the two of us and the car $70 to get across, which seemed a bit steep, but it wasn't like we were going to turn back and drive, so we paid up and got on board. It was a bit cold outside, so we sat inside most of the way.

On the way out, we were on another peninsula, the Bellarine, and on the other side of Port Phillip Bay. With nothing booked for the night, we were just going to make our way along and see where we got to.

We stopped in Torquay just for a bit of a rest and a look around. It wasn't a surf trip, so I didn't bother with the turn off to Bells Beach. We did stop at the previously mentioned lighthouse though.

From there on it was new territory for me, but it wasn't too far to go to get to Lorne. My Dad had recommended a place to stay in Lorne, Chatby Lane. It's a bit back from the coast, up the hill. They had rooms, so we stayed there. It was a nice change from shared bathrooms, having a spa in the room. We could sea the water from our balcony as well.

We headed down in to the town and ended up having a burger for dinner. Twelve dollars for a hamburger, no chips, no drinks. No nothing. You've got to be kidding me, mate. The worst part was the burger was not particularly hot.

We slept in a bit that morning, just relaxing as we didn't have too far to go that day. To kick things off we had a wander around the town.

Then went up to Erskine Falls. These falls are just over 10km from the town, and it was reasonably busy there when we went. All along the way there are these constant reminders of how powerful nature can be.

It was quite pleasant there, I think it is possible to follow the water right back down into the town, if you had a full day to spare.

Before leaving Lorne, we made a couple of other stops. We stopped at Teddy's Lookout, which gives a great overview of what was to come:

The road wrapping its way, right next to the ocean. Our final destination for the day was Apollo Bay, not too much further down the road, so we could stop wherever we felt like to do some exploring.

At Kennet River, we were told you could see koalas just away from the main road. It turned out a lot of other people got told that too, with buses regular pulling in to this dirt road. We followed the dirt road a bit further, and saw plenty more koalas just hanging out in the trees.

We got into Apollo Bay midway through the afternoon. We stayed at the YHA, which regularly features in the different tourism awards. It's a fairly new building and is extremely well designed.

After having a little walk around the down, we popped down to the beach. I had a quick swim. The water was a little cold, but quite refreshing. That night we cooked at the hostel, Francisca got talking to the other guy cooking in the kitchen, lo and behold, he was from Chile too.

We took a little walk around the wharf with him. There were plenty of boats around, but not so much activity on the wharves. Just a few fisherman, and a few others like us, just wandering around.

We had a couple of beers on the roof of the hostel with our new Chilean pal, we could see the water from there, a nice way to wind down the evening.

Not so nice was a big spider in our room. I acted as if I wasn't concerned, but Francisca didn't want to sleep in the room with the spider. I told her it was gone and went to sleep, but the spider plagued my dreams the rest of the night.

Next day we were off to travel what is probably the most famous section of the road. There were plenty of people around at each destination, but there was nowhere, aside from The Apostles, that seemed overly crowded. Each stop has been designed to keep a high volume of people going along the road, and the school holidays were over, so traffic wasn't too heavy. Had we had come a couple of weeks before, we would have found the roads cut due to landslides, so we had some luck with the weather. All the way along the Great Ocean Road we had perfectly sunny weather.

Before seeing the main attractions, I decided it was necessary to stop in Lavers Hill (population 208), a sleepy town similar to something like Whyndam or Tanja, one of those places with a school, a hall and a church. They also sold petrol at $1.50 a litre, an outrage, but we didn't want to end up stuck with no petrol.

As Rod Laver has found himself being an inspiration to Footbag players, I wanted to get something of me playing Footbag in the town, although the town was around long before the tennis champ. So I got a little video playing in front of the Lavers Hill Hall. Don't think anything much good came out of it, but I was glad to do it.

We carried on, stopping at each stop. The first view of these immense rock formation is from Gibson's Steps. You go down the steps to the beach, and walk in the steps where many have been before

The next stop is the stop for the Apostles, we actually skipped that, as we were going to come back. The sign in that direction (west) was actually a bit confusing. It said something like :

TWELVE APOSTLES

SCENIC FLIGHTS

NEXT RIGHT

So I thought the turn off must be a bit further on, as that must have been the turn for the scenic flights. As we went on I realised there was no more turns, so we stopped at the next, Loch Ard Gorge, which was recommended highly by the people who run the hostel.

There are many paths to walk to get different views of some very impressive rock features that have been formed after millions of years of the sea crashing against them.

One path let you look back towards some of The Apostles.

From here we went onwards to Port Campbell, where we stopped at a fish and chips shop. Once again it was pretty expensive, and I had a feeling the hamburger I had was previously frozen, but I'm not so sure about that. It was less than impressive, kind of like the town as a whole, after seeing these natural wonders, the scenic lookout didn't have much going for it.

There were a couple of guys on the boog just off the wharf. It seemed unclear whether there was actually a wave, but there was a small wave breaking just near the jetty. I have a feeling in a big swell this would be the place to be and you'd be able to ride in under the wharf.

You can continue along this road until Adelaide, or at least til Warnambool, but after a few more stops we decided it was time to go back. We were still based in Apollo Bay and we had come a long way already.

Our turning around point was The Grotto, a much calmer place than some of the others. The water there is not so rough. I could imagine plenty of people drowning along the way, in plenty of places there were pretty rough seas, with plenty of rips for unknowing people to be dragged away in. Opposed to that are the calm bays of places like Lorne and Apollo Bay where you wouldn't know you were just nearby to what is known as "The Shipwreck Coast".

Driving back, we just made on stop, the stop that everyone on the road makes, The Apostles. An essential stop along the road. Unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea, and that's the only place along the road where the crowd made me feel uncomfortable.

We tried to get some footage of me playing in front of the Apostles, but quite simply, it's impossible to get a clear shot with no crowd. Just at the end, in the visitors centre, I did get a nice run on film.

It's only showing my feet, so you can't see that the last trick is a spinning ducking osis, but a small crowd had gathered and they were very impressed.

From there it was back into Apollo Bay, on the long drive home. It wasn't really that far, but it had been a long day of going and seeing the sights, and this can become incredibly draining.

This is all I will write for the moment, but I will complete this over the weekend.

Trees Die Standing #2

This is not a review, as I haven't read the whole thing yet. This one just came in the mail yesterday, from my good friend Bridget. This her second edition of Trees Die Standing, it's massively thick (about 65 pages) and is a collection of thoughts, experiences and pictures from her time in Palestine.

This is much more personal (from what I've read so far) than her previous issue, very impressive stuff. Look out for a review further into the future.

Zine review- Don't Panic

This is the first of my plan to review all of the zines in my collection, which of course will grow as I'm writing the reviews, making it a never ending task. There is no particular order or reason to these reviews. Just something to do, and something to make me have a look at some of the zines I may have overlooked in a big pile of purchases.

Ok, so we have "Don't Panic" from that Zine Queen, Susy Pow (Bird In The Hand zine shop). I'm planning on also including in each review where I actually got the zine from. I'm not 100% sure on this one, but Susy was at the zine fair at Gorman House about 6 months ago, and I did trade her for something, which may have been this. I also managed to buy a lot more than I was planning to. If it wasn't from there, it would have come in the zineshop subscription offer. That was a cool deal, each month you got some new zines.

So anyway, this zine is really old. I'm going to go with c. 2002-3ish. According to zinewiki, I am totally wrong, it was made in 2008. It's an A5 size zine, a bit of random stuff all over the place. There's a bunch of Desert Island top 5s, not just from Susy, but some guys from bands as well. It's about 16 pages long, and a pretty good read, though on most pages the text is cut off and some of the sentences don't make any sense.

There's no panic here though. The price sticker on the back says $2.

Zine reviews

I aim this year to review all the zines in my collection. I have a bunch that are just sitting around, so I will talk a little about them in this very blog. This blog doesn't have enough action.

Capital Eyes #11 is not far off with interviews with Yoko Oh No (Canberra/QBN punks) and Elysian (Melbourne metal fiends). There may be something a bit more in there as well.

In other news we're going to put together a small zine as a souvenir from our wedding. For my uni work, I'm studying a course about writing history. I'm planning on doing something based around the Canberra hardcore scene, with Slowburn as the central band of the piece.