Arriving in Sydney could have gone smoother. Well to be honest the arrival was fine... it was trying to sort accomodation that was the nightmare.
I found my hostel easy enough and (foolishly) thought the hard part was over. Combine an erroneous booking, an unhelpful receptionist and only two hours sleep and you have a recipe for something going wrong. So I finally managed to get a room in the right place but something seemed wrong when I found that all the rooms were full... where was Jenny going to sleep? I slept for a while until I received a text from Jenny informing me that she was worried that since she had a got a replacement passport her visa might not be valid. Wanted to ensure her that things would be ok I tried to call but had no credit so started on my adventure to try and get an Aussie phone card for my phone. This resulted in some harrassed running around and yielding few results... I was slightly annoyed. Jenny arrived earlier than I had thought (due to time difference, doh!). We found the hostel had been overbooked and she was in a room in the hostel rather than the share house. In our frustration Jenny decided it was time I seen the opera house. So we trekked out down to the harbour to see the huge architectural... um... thing. We stayed for a while then headed back to the hostel.
The next day we decided that since we weren't getting our rooms proper until we got back from Melbourne meant that we might as well go to Melbourne for as soon as possible and sort it when we got back. The plan was put into motion: We booked our accomodation and bus that day. In the evening we took a walk accross the harbour bridge to view Sydney's nightscape.
The next day we caught our bus and endured the 14 hour bus journey up to Melbourne. We broke up the journey with ipod and Psp related shenanigans.
Melbourne was a nice city and we stayed in St. Kilda. We met up with Kat on the day of the gig and I also met up with my friend I made in Queenstown, Jess, of awesome status.
Now I have to say that I have been looking forward to seeing the Cat Empire for a long time. Possible since I first heard "Days Like These" back in Aberdeen around 4 years ago. My travel agent in Wanaka had even said that they "go off on one" on stage which only served to pique my interest. I WAS NOT DISAPOINTED! This will go down in history as my best gig ever. I'm serious when I say these guys are the reason music was invented. I can't and won't describe how good they were as that wouldn't cover their awesomeness. My only advice to all is to go to a Cat Empire gig. You will never regret it.
