Another goodbye

So finally my 14 month stint in Australia is up. This now annual torture of packing up my life, throwing half my shit away and saying au revoir to everyone I've come to love gets shitter every time, and leaving Aus was no exception.

It was a busy week or so beforehand leaving me totally unprepared. Upon getting back from Byron, Putin and I planned to go to the Peat's Ridge festival, as we had free tickets, our friends were playing and its a bit of a different new year's. We set off, bags packed, picnic cooked and festy hats firmly on and made it to Hornsby station, an hour's trip, to board the festival shuttle bus.

A while later I began to be suspicious about the lack of said bus.

Another little while later I could be seen sitting moodily by the side of the road eating the home-made nepalese daal, fuming over the information that the shuttle buses stop at 11.30 am, a good 3 hours ago. What's shuttley about that?

Being a good hour's drive away from the festival and carless we went home, getting picked up by our friend James. He snuck in Putin in the back of the van on a mattress and a litre of vodka in the engine.

After an interesting an fantastical first day, we spent NYE daytime trying not to melt in the 42-degree, humid, breeze-less heat. This mainly consisted of sitting in one of the tents drinking iced chai or standing angle deep in the murky river. After Putin almost boiled from the inside we decided it wasn't worth it, hitch hiked home and fell asleep at 11pm, and couldn't have been happier.

NYD brought a 17-hour drum & bass event which was sketchy in places, downright terrible in others but voerall fun thanks to the usual suspects, and brought itself up rapidly at the eveningtime with a great set from Camo & Krooked which narrowly took the crowd for best performance of the day away from Break.

Jan 2nd didn't slow down - a dubstep/d&b garden party featuring Nero (amazing), Sub Focus (great) and Chase & Status (good but ultimately left us feeling that there were past their best). The massively rammed crowd took on an amazing vibe as the rain came down and the feeling was pretty euphoric from everyone. Then Jan 3rd was my leaving party, an intimate BBQ that became a lets-take-the-soundsystem-down-to-the-park-and-have-10-DJs-play even which in turn turned into a oops-its-raining-everyone-back-to-James' house party. Having not sorted out anything I was fairly emotionally unengaged from the goodbyes and felt like I'd be seeing everyone in a couple of days.

Jan 4th then, and a day before flying, I had to pack up my whole life and deal with those boring things like bank accounts, phones, flights, organising and saying goodbye to my nearest and dearest. A few of the tight crew came around to say proper byes, and sitting amongst a mess of earrings, clothes, posters and all that other miscellanous but sentiment crap you gather over a year, it suddenly hit me, and it felt rubbish. Lou, David, Tom and Tim, I shall miss you guys so much, and of course the countless number of other amazing people who've made my life so wicked over the last year and a bit. It may be the right time to go but it doesn't get any easier.

I snuck out of the house at 3am, jumping into a cab and saying adios Australia, and goodnight.