Once more unto the breach...

For most people, a wedding is a one time experience. Not for everyone though, plenty of religions seems to have the equivalent of the multiball option in regards to wives, whilst these days it's quite common for re-marriages to occur etc. And, in our situation, when your from two sides of a vast ocean, it really is necessary to have two ceremonies.

So after having our "proper"(according to the law) wedding in Sydney earlier this year, tomorrow is the next Big Day. There will definitely be no more weddings after this one- they're a lot of work!

The bride arrives

I made a little zine for the wedding guests

Champers anyone?

At both events we have been lucky enough to have some incredible garden spaces to use. In Sydney we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house, their gardens lay themselves out over a number of levels, which was a really perfect setup for the ceremony we had, meant we could change the focus point a couple of times throughout.

A good friend of mine, and a long time servant of Footbag in Australia, Ian Pritchard, just so happens to me a wedding videographer for his day job, so he had a bit of fun and took some photos on the day- what a great way to spend one of your only weekends off!

With this ring I give you my love

You may now kiss the bride

The happy couple

Cheers mates

José, a good friend of ours, who is from Brazil cooked up some amazing food.

Here's cheers

Another view of the garden. Grandma planted the Jacaranda when she was young.

A fierce battle for the bouquet

Then time for cake

Grandma and Grandpa- couldn't have happened without them

We were very fortunate with the weather the first time round- after some, very ironic, morning rain, the skies cleared up, and it was a perfect temperature, not too hot either- the next couple of weeks saw almost every day in the 40s, and the previous weeks in Sydney were full of rain, so we did well.

After "official proceedings", a bunch of our good friends joined us to take a water taxi into the city. Originally we had just planned to take a ferry, but in hindsight, it was definitely best to take the water taxi, meaning we had our own boat, I think the maximum capacity was 27. This was a great way to head into the city, as a whole bunch of us were staying at Sydney Harbour YHA.

When I first brought up the idea of staying in a hostel, I would say my Mum's reaction was one of horror. I worked for the last few years in the YHA in Canberra, and had the benefit, regularly used, of staying almost anywhere else within the (quite expansive) network for free. Plenty of the guests were fellow staff/mates from work, so they had some free rooms too... what I was not expecting though, was to have the best room in the house, and champagne and chocolate in the room- I don't know if you could expect that in a "honeymoon suite" in a flash hotel.

It was a great chance to have everyone together there, though you may say the night become a whole lot less formal as it went on.

Our honeymoon, we didn't want to make it a big, expensive trip at all, as we already had plenty of overseas trips booked for later in the year, so we made our way down to Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road.

I think it worked perfectly for what we were after, it was a chance to just take a laidback trip and see a few sights. Francisca had never been to Victoria at all, and I had not been all that far along the Great Ocean Road, so it was really a good chance to travel along there.

So now it's time to prepare again- the wedding is in Rancagua, it's about an hour and a bit away from Santiago. There has been a big turnout of family- sixteen in total, and my good friend Doug as well. Today the family are out touring down the coast, Doug and I will join them in a bus down south tomorrow. Not sure exactly what's going to be happening to come back, but there's a good chance our "romantic exit" from the wedding, it may also be in a bus with sixteen family.

What I do know is there will be a good spread on at the wedding, that in itself is doubtless. According to the last few days, I think the weather will be good, a little on the hot side, but there are going to be marquees set up. It will also be a good chance to meet some more of Francisca's family and friends that I have not met yet- we can share a mix of my hopeless Spanish (though it's getting better, slowly), and whatever English that they have.

We were incredibly happy with our first wedding, everything went exactly as it was planned, and I definitely hope tomorrow we will be saying the same.

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.

Francisca, Spit Bridge to Manly walk.

May write a bit more on this at a later stage.

Welcome Home

On Friday morning we got into town about 6:30 in the morning. We were lucky and got the emergency exit seat, so some room to stretch the leg. I noticed though there was more space in the first class area, they could have upgraded us to there, then we would have been really lucky!

An easy flight though, we had some storms as we left Bangkok, but we got flying and came into the airport on time. We are now going to spend a week in Sydney, staying with my Grandma, to keep things on "holiday mode". No point in going back to work immediately, I also saw on the weather yesterday, it was -5 in Canberra. That would be a bit too much of a shock to the system.

It was very cold when we arrived back in Sydney. Cold and freezing, holding nothing. We got the train, which is the biggest rip off in the world. Why pay $15 for the same train, that takes you to Campbelltown or wherever else. By the time we got in it was peak hour, so there's no space to sit down. What a deal.

It was nice to get back to Grandma's and get a good rest. It was my birthday on Friday so we caught up with some friends and got a mean steak at the Landsdowne. The next day we went to "Bastardfest" at the Sando in Newtown. We saw Ignite The Ibex, they were on first up. I put a link to a story I did about them in BMA last year.

They were good, with a pretty strong response for the 1pm timeslot. We went for a bit of a walk and caught up with our friends Viv and Bret. We will stay with them a while once we get back to Canberra. Hopefully by that time, the weather will have warmed up a bit.

We got some mexican for lunch, and had a dessert in a bookshop/cafe. By the time we got back to the Sando, Bane of Isildur were playing. They sounded alright. They were your typical warpaint wearing metal gurus.

My friend Paddy told me later on he had been sitting in the back room while these guys were getting their faces on, and old Kelly, the sometimes 4th guitar player of I Exist, sometimes Blunt Magazine guy, was playing some Grinspoon songs on the acouy. I said the best part would have been if while the blokes were putting their paint on they started singing along....since since, since since you went away, I hope you had a better day. Tried to call round the other day, instead I had a go kart. Go Kart.

I Exist were next up, playing on the smaller stage where we had seen Ignite The Ibex earlier on. I linked to an article I did with them in BMA a while ago too. They had a good showing as it's not so often they play at purely "metal" shows, even though they have a very metal sound. Although Extortion were also on the bill. This fest, Bastardfest was probably the closest thing in the last few years to the great Metal For The Brain events, which were always a real highlight of the year.

There was certainly a similar amount of sweaty long haired blokes, and I think the scent of all these packed like sardines into a room, was probably not good for my health. Remembering that I was in hospital just one week before, I was feeling not so great, so decided to give a miss to the rest of the evening. We had paid good money, but the main bands I wanted to see had already played, so why not just go home. Most of the other bands I had seen before anyhow.

So now we are here in Sydney. We have bought a weekly ticket, so we might as well stay around for a week. We had a nice walk today, through the gully behind Grandma's house, down to the Gore Creek reserve which eventually flows into the harbour. This was a good test for my ankle, and I think a success, so we would be able to do some more walks throughout the week.

more wanderings

After the travels I mentioned in my previous post, in reality I should have come home, worked hard on saving, reducing costs, planning the trips later this year.

But the road beckoned. Mum and Dad told me they had some guests, my auntie, uncle and cousin, so I popped down to Bega for just over a day.

The word was they were going to take a trip to Mumbulla Falls (pictured) in the morning, so I got up quite early, and I had hit the road by 6am. Midway along I got a call from Mum seeing if I had left yet, and I told her I'd be there in an hour.

Our access to the falls was blocked about 1km from the normal place, with a tree across the road. This was after a meandering cow had blocked our way further back on the track. Welcome to the country.

Once we got there, the water was crystal clear. I had been planning to probably not go in, but once we got there, the sun was up, the water looked good, and the slide had plenty of water running through it. I dipped my hand in the water, it was pretty sharp, but we'd come on an adventure, so I went in for a few jumps.

Although we had the whole place to ourselves, we didn't spend too long in the water, as it was freezing. The afternoon we spent watching my mum play in this wildlife park, Potaroo Palace, on the road to Merimbula. She was playing for quite some time, so I was checking the tweets once the Raiders game started. Things weren't looking good when we drove back into town.

However the Green Machine put on 24 points in 9 minutes, and the game was into golden point. Too bad they lost that, but that was a great 9 minutes. If you had that to the 22 minutes against the Cowboys before losing Dugan and Campo in the space of 8 minutes, you're getting towards a decent half of footy. What a disappointing season this year has been. Maybe next year...

We were talking about a sunrise beach mission the next morning, but the more we talked about it, the less appealing it became, so the next morning I hit the road back home. The day I left we got a new housemate back in, but apparently I missed a good night to miss, and by the time I was back, that feller was a distant memory already.

A few days later I was on the road again. I was actually meant to go to Malaysia last weekend, but plans had to be changed at the last minute. My flights to Malaysia were from Melbourne anyway, so I decided I'd head down there for the weekend.

On arrival at the airport, the jokers at Qantas laughed in my face and told me I booked my flight for the day before. One of a string of stuff ups recently, but I wasn't going to let that stop me, so I rushed into a taxi, got to the Jolimont for the 8:45 to Narrandera. A change and sometime in the middle of the night, we were off to Melbourne. With the sun just starting to think about coming up, I was there.

After a lunch at Crossways, one of those Hare Krishna joints, I wandered around the NGV. Although Victoria is not its own nation, there are not one but two National Gallery of Victoria. There was a cool Everfresh exhibition there. I also popped into Sticky to collect my Eurovision pack, featuring Capital Eyes #12. Whilst there I also picked up If Destroyed Still True #5 (I think).

I had a kick with Ryan Richardson, the inclement weather meant we had to go behind the gallery to The Cave. The students wandering the gallery seemed more impressed with the footbag then with the paintings....

After the kick I actually went for a swim. It was a cold day, but the pool was heated and I was hoping this would relax a few aches and pains. It didn't really work, but it was good in the pool, and there was no one else there.

I met up with Megan, a good friend of mine, from school. We went to a bar called Cabinet, I'd never been there before, but I quite liked it. Not too many people and they will come and take your order at the table.

I got to see another good friend later on that night, I guess Melbourne is just full of friends of mine from different eras. Friends from school, friends from when I lived in Sydney, friends from when I lived in Melbourne and friends from Canberra.

It was Michael, an old workmate of mine, it was his 21st. We went upstairs to the Noodle Kingdom, where we had shared a great 3am meal in the not too distant past.

Some of his other pals made him a cake. A one ring cake. It was very tasty.

From the Noodle Kingdom, filled with food and still with plenty of money in the wallet, we jumped on a tram for a couple of stops, and wandered to North Melbourne, another revisit, a place I mentioned in the last post, our dart playing place. It was a bit too crowded for playing darts, but they did still have the appeal of the $10 jug. Bargain.

It wasn't too late a night, so I was feeling reasonably fresh the next morning. We went for some bagels for breakfast. I had another kick planned and headed down to Fed Square to meet with Dan Ednie. Dan has been one of the best players in Australia over the past years, though he has been otherwise occupied and hasn't been kicking too much. We had been kicking for a while, and were joined by a familiar old face, Brendan Erskine. Brendan was one of the earliest footbag players in Australia, and he taught me a few tricks when I was first starting out in freestyle.

After our kick, we went for some lunch. A lot of places were closed, but the ever reliable Noodle Kingdom was open for action, one of the waiters actually recognised me from the day before. Lynton Stephens, another Aussie footbag legend actually called while we were playing and they arranged to go for dinner later on. I wasn't able to join in on that, as I had a flight to catch.

I didn't bother to repeat my walking feats of the last visit, so just jumped on the skybus and was at the airport not too much later. Not all that long after that, I was in Sydney. Francisca had come up to Sydney for the weekend, so I thought rather than fly back to Canberra, I could join her there.

We were both pretty tired so not much was on for the night time. After a big breakfast feast at Grandma's, we were meeting up with some more friends, this time it was Nathan and Brooke. We met them in Gladesville, but instead of waiting an hour for a bus, we just walked.

It was quite a pleasant journey actually, and it didn't really take that long. We went to the Bayview in Gladesville where we had plenty to eat, a big lunch.

To digest the lunch, we took a walk down to the ferry. We passed the Gladesville skatepark, which I never knew existed, and we watched some young kids go around on there. If that had have been around many moons ok (maybe when I lived in Sydney), I could imagine myself spending plenty of time there.

We caught the ferry into Darling Harbour, and something I noticed while walking was that things had changed. Once the home of getting incredibly ripped off, now every place is trying to outdo each other for deals and cheap prices. $10 steaks here, all day, $3 drinks, 2 for the price of 1. I'm not sure what brought this change about, but I like it!

We didn't stop to take in any of the deals, but went to the park just near Central Station for a quick kick with Dyalan Govender. We didn't have too long, as I had a bus to catch, but I got through my routine with two drops, twice which put me in good stead for the nationals.

From the kick it was straight on the Greyhound and back to the cold of Canberra.

Now, I should be getting back to what I mentioned in the first sentence. Instead, I'm about to pull in to Sydney...

Hardcore 2010

Now in it's 11th year, Hardcore 2010 is shaping up to again prove itself as Australia's premier hardcore music event. This year focusing on showcasing the best Australia has to offer the festival spans across July 2nd at the Manning Bar (18+) and July 3rd at the Factory Theatre (All Ages). Not wanting to keep anyone in suspense, this years line up is announced in full with the following bands playing.

July 2nd - Manning Bar 18+

Mindsnare

Toe To Toe

Extortion

Blkout

Relentless

Ill Brigade

July 3rd - Factory Theatre AA

Mindsnare

Extortion

50 Lions

Blkout

Dropsaw

Hand Of Mercy

I Exist

Ghost Town

Persist

Phantoms

So the lineup for Hardcore 2010 just got announced, and it looks like a lot of fun. I haven't been since 2006, I went the two years before that, and they were all a lot of fun. The recent ones haven't interested me that much. I like it how there's not some big international band, and that it's not in a massive venue either.

Also great that Canberra's own I EXIST will be playing. As well as that you have the great combination of Mindsnare/Toe To Toe. It's quite the lineup.

Australian Footbag Championships this week in Sydney

Phil Morrison (NZ) up against Andrew Grant (Canada) battle it out in the 2009 championship

The Australian Footbag Championships return to Sydney this weekend. Players will arrive tomorrow night, with the first event starting on Friday, Footbag Golf. The Golf course takes the players on a historic tour of The Rocks with picturesque views over the harbour. The official accomodation for this is the nearby Sydney Harbour YHA, which has kindly provided a discounted rate for the tournament.

Favourite for the tournament this year is Hobart's Jeremy O'Wheel, who won the Request Contest last year. This event involves hitting a specific two trick combo on request. The event came down to an exciting climax, with Jeremy just beating New Zealander Phil Morrison.

Lucky for some, Phil will not be returning to Australia this year. He showed his class last year, completely dominating all of the other events, with a flawless routine on the final day. Some of the other contenders this year will be Daniel Boyle, ranked 29th in the World in the Shred 30 event and Caroline Birch, Australian women's champion. Players are appearing from all over Australia to compete in the annual event, which has been running since 2001.

Saturday's events will be held at the Royal Easter Show. The players competed here last year, but 2010 will see Footbag move up to a bigger and better arena, with capacity for 1500 spectators.

Sunday the players will head to the rooftop of their accommodation, Sydney Harbour YHA. The backdrop for the routines and circle events will be the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

For more information on Footbag check out www.footbag.org or www.ausfootbag.org

Machine Head Marathon

Today I bought a ticket to Machine Head. They are my favourite band, ever. So I'm kinda excited to see them. However, they are not headlining which is not quite as exciting. And they are playing with Slipknot, which means there will be a lot of total fucking dicks there.

However, to celebrate, I am having myself a bit of a machine head marathon.





The first time I heard about Machine Head was sometime in the afternoon when Robb Flynn was doing an interview on Triple J. I was really interested in the stuff he was talking about, and they played Five at the end of that. I didn't really pay that much attention to them for a while after that, but one day my friend Henry wanted me to burn this Fear Factory CD. I don't know if it was planned or anything, but underneath the Fear Factory CD was a burnt copy of "Burn My Eyes". It was scratched as all fuck, but I ripped it onto my computer, and listened to it pretty regularly.

Around this same time someone lent me a copy of The Burning Red. I had listened to it a few times at other people's places, but never had a copy for myself. At the time I was a real nu-metal fiend, so it was right up my alley! So this was late high school, a couple of years later the album Through The Ashes of Empires came out. I think is what really rekindled my interest in the band, at the same time I bought their live album Hellalive. It was one of those days where I had this real urge to buy a bunch of CDs, which I don't get that often, as I'm pretty poor most of the time.

So anyway, this was probably late 2003, early 2004, which is when I moved from Sydney to Canberra. I was listening to a bunch of stuff, but Machine Head was always a feature, in mid 2004 I found out Machine Head were touring and got a ticket straight away. Actually come to think of it, I didn't get it for a week or so, as I had to save up a bit of money to be able to afford it.

At the show I lined up for a few hours beforehand, I met some people that I'm friends with now. I remember Switchblade opened, and they were pretty sweet, then Contrive, Andrew Haug from Triple J's band played, they were really boring, everyone was just hanging out so much for Machine Head.

Their set that night is my favourite I have seen by any band, ever. No band I have seen has come anywhere near that level for me. The setlist was spread across all the albums. I knew every word to every song, was right up the front and everyone around me was just as siked as I was. They finished with "Block", which was a great way to finish up.

This is what Robb Flynn wrote on his diary on the Machine Head website

It was literally some of the craziest shows we’ve ever played. Every single person up in front knew every fuckin’ word, screaming their heads off, HUGE circle pits from hell, crazy fuckers just losing their minds, Machine Head chants between every single song, and got to meet tons of cool people. Frankly, we love Australia, and cannot wait to get back.

So during the show I was holding hands with this girl, and somehow after the show I managed to be in the backstage area, as this girl and another friend of mine are massive forum fanatics on the Machine Head site, so they are like e-pals with the band. Anyway, in there I felt so nervous. It is really funny to look back on, I was fully shaking, I had no idea what to do, I was so shy.

It was only really after the show that it really hit me just how much I like Machine Head, just how impressive their live performance was, and mostly, just how long I had been interested in the band.

After that show I was always comparing other big shows to seeing Machine Head, and nothing really came close. That feeling of knowing every single word of every single song is not actually something I regularly have. A lot of other shows I've been to have been really awesome, but they didn't leave me with the same feeling that night did.

Last year Machine Head put out a new album, The Blackening. Eventually I bought it, although a lot of the magazines were giving it rave reviews, for some reason I didn't think I was going to be that excited by it. Whilst it is a good album, it is just something I don't listen to all that much. At the end of the year Machine Head toured again, and I was pretty excited. So this was 2007, the first time I saw them was 2004 (Unfortunately when they toured with Slayer in 2001 I was some poor kid from the country, I remember thinking that would be something I would really like to go). So in three years I hadn't seen anything top their performance at the Roundhouse.

My night at Festival Hall in Melbourne was so different. Whilst for the Sydney show in 2004, I had got their really early, and was so eager for a front row position, this time around I didn't get there until after doors open, as I was too busy drinking up. While the supports were much more high profile (Archenemy and Trivium), I was still so excited for Machine Head that I didn't really care for them. It was Halloween that night, so everyone was dressed up in this ridiculous outfits, it was pretty funny. The set was made up of a fair few of the new songs, which are quite long, but still plenty of old stuff, like "Davidian" and "Take My Scars".

The show was at Festival Hall, which in all reality is a horrible venue. Melbourne really struggles when it comes to large, but not too large venues. It has nothing like the Hordern Pavillion. The fact that Festival Hall has the "dancefloor" area setup sideways doesn't make too much sense. Anyway, during the show instead of my previous effort of waiting at the front, I occupied my time by drinking a lot of beer. I nearly got in a fight with some dude, I can't really remember why, but he pushed me or something so I threw my beer at him and walked off. During the set, instead of having to have the best position, I just looked for a position where I could have a good view, and did a bunch of crowdsurfs throughout the set. Looking back at that show and the one in 2004, it really shows that a lot of my values have really changed a lot. But that happens.

After the show, with the same friend as in Sydney as 2004, I got to go backstage. Really just by pretending that I should be there, which I probably shouldn't have been. There is a photo with me and Phil Demmel. As per usual, in all photos, I look stupid. However in this photo I do have a giant beard, which is raging. The photo was taken on a camera phone, which explains the shit quality.

Anyway, I mention this girl that I was holding hands and whatever with at the Sydney show. She was there backstage as well at Melbourne. After the Sydney show I talked to her online and I think she thought I was really weird so she barred me. At the show she's all like "OH HI DAN" like it was some big deal, and I was just like "hey, how's it going". I think she thought I was going to have some kind of freakout or some shit, but I just didn't care. I felt really empowered in that moment.

Instead of sitting there quivering and not being able to say anything, I had this great conversation about At The Gates with Robb, and how I was planning to go to the European festivals this year. As good as the conversation was, I never went...there's always next year.

Anyway, I don't know really why I wrote all this. I guess I wanted something to do instead of folding clothes or sorting out the mess that is my house. And I also felt like writing something down about why Machine Head in particular are my favourite band.

So far I in my marathon I am up to Blood of The Zodiac, the last track on The More Things Change. That CD I picked up in Brisbane, sometime in 2004 while I was up there. It's something I should probably listen to more, it's a great album, but it does share a lot of similarities to Burn My Eyes, which would be my favourite album, ever. So I listen to that one more.