Red sky at night, the Sheppard's a happy man

Bats flying about behind us at dusk at another free Sydney concert. Free is good, you can't go wrong with something that hasn't cost anything in the first place

From left to right: Kate; Ryan; Spencer; a hobo that wouldn't leave us alone; and MEEE

Nick rides a boar in Sydney. As you do.

Ummm, I didn't take many photos over the last few days so this statue of a man with an umbrella gets in for no particular reason

Hey hey avid readers. Sitting comfortably? Good.

On Saturday when we woke up in order to check out of our hostel before 10am we were still drunk. After a lot of hard work at the usually simple task of getting dressed and getting all our stuff together, we dragged ourselves downstairs. We planned to just extend our stay at the hostel by a night- seeing as still being drunk at 9am is not a state to be walking about looking for a new hostel, and both of us were expecting a hangover to kick in anytime soon. But when we asked to extend our stay by a night, we were told we still had a night left. Even in our fragile state we knew that this was wrong but managed to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the lie, blaming the booze for making us think we had to check out on this day. We then proceeded to go back to bed for a good few hours.

The reason for such early-morning inebriation? The day before was Australia Day, the 26th January. With our public holiday drinking buddies, Una and Eugene, we enjoyed a fine night of celebrating whatever it is Australia day serves to celebrate. Probably the marriage of Kylie and Jason in Neighbours, back when the permed mullet was de rigeur.

Anyway, by choosing a poor vantage point for the Oz day fireworks we could only see small crappy ones being launched from nearby skyscraper rooftops. This we made up for by stroking the tops of passing jellyfish in the Yarra River. Nick was offered a couple of drinks to touch a condom floating by, but from somewhere he mustered the dignity to pass up such an opportunity. We then frequented a number of bars before being ushered out of our hostel's bar at about 3am, having put in a good shift of chatting utter balls to strangers of varying nationalities. Whenever I talk to Germans I have a strange compulsion to try and talk German myself, or rather prove how little I actually remember from GCSE lessons.

So now we are looking for a place to live and work in Melbourne for a couple of months. This is proving to be the trickiest part of our travels so far, i.e. we have not just been able to completely blag it. If I don't find somewhere in the next couple of days I think I'll just soak all my clothes with a bottle of rum and turn up on the doorstep of a free 'drying out' clinic looking destitute.