Far From Grace

Bucks Weekend, Melbourne, Vic

After a 5 day countdown that now seems synonymous with finishing at any job, I had massively increased excitement levels due some awesome upcoming travel plans starting virtually the minute I finished work on Friday 27th November.

After stopping by my office to hand in my mobile phone, I met with Lauren who treate

d me to a beautiful Thai meal in

Haymarket. The two of us toasted to our finished jobs and what laid ahead of us in the coming months. I have to pay special mention to Chat Thai... busy as anything but worth the perseverance with reservations or a long wait.

6am Saturday morning I was heading

off for the first of 6 flights over the next month. I arrived in Melbourne at about 8.45 and was soon cabbing to the city centre to be re-united with, well, basically all the boys I’ve really come to know and call my friends in my time so far in Australia. It was Todds bucks

weekend and thus everyone had their party hats on ready for the carnage and fun about to unravel. Todd was of course, in the dark about it all. After pacting (whateve

r happens on bucks, stays on bucks) I will of course be recounting a very wholesome experience and will not mention what people did in toilets, who got physically removed from night clubs, nor who couldn’t handle any more booze on the follow up day.

We travelled out of Melbourne together and got cabs out to a Clay Pigeon shooting centre... here we were instructed on how to shoot shot guns at moving fluro orange targets before we were picked into teams school-boy style. 4 teams split and then moved around a course of 8 clay launchers. Our team, the Teenage mutant ninja turtles (dedicat

ed to the team captains love of a VB tinny), quite frankly, kicked arse and won the group stage no problemo :P Everyone had a go under pressure from a full crowd to shoot 2 clays launched at the same time - TMNT managed them all bar one ;)

After this... memory becomes hazy... but something of a random women who loved to remove clothing each time the buck made a s

hot... I’m not sure, actually, I think I’m just hallucinating in my thoughts there... there was no random women. No Cherries.

The gun club then became our first pub of the day, and with cheap beer, no one would complain. Todd was dressed as a homeless and challenged to sell some Big Issues at the follow on pub.

Jonesy, Kingsley, Jarrad and myself got to Transport before the rest, and duly carried on drinking activities... at this point, ‘just beer’ became Snakebites, Jagers, Scotch and needless to say I was pretty well on my way by the time everyone else showed up... they must’ve missed the memo, but most went home to get changed and look pretty. Soft :P

Transport became Lounge bar for some at something like 9 or 10pm, Wedge, Cam and myself moved on about

10 and wound up meeting everyone at the Croft Institute - I science lab themed bar down one of the Melbourne’s back streets... some crazy moves busted before retiring to Whopper meals with all the other drunkards at 3, 4 or 5am...

and sleep...

Next morning we headed to the South Bank on the river for Breakky. Some very dusty heads on most shoulders but big breakfasts seemed to do the trick in getting back on track. Into the casino, Lowen managed to win a bunch of cash while the rest of us struggled to remain standing upright... next up - 10 pin bowling!

I don’t recall a day where I was in a bowling alley, kids parties around me and I’m with 15 guys (by this point- spare a thought for fallen comrades) and smashing back jagers and beers... and I’m sure Todd won’t recall a day where he got bowled down the alley by his buddies.

I wish I could tell more, it seems so, err, responsible... hey hum.

I hopped on the return flight back to Sydney with some of the guys and contemplated what my head would feel like in the morning... on my first glorious day of unemployment!