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I'm Melissa; pretend journalist and currently real-life accountant wannabe. I used to be a kid in highschool, but I've since kicked the habit. At 18 years of age I'm just moving through life, enjoying my free-time and earning lots of money whilst still living with my parents. Continued on page 2...
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The Queensland Experience
June 15, 2005 | Filed under: Daily Grind

“If I could find a souvenir, just to prove the world was here - here it is, a red balloon.. I think of you and let it go.. Goldfinger - 99 Red Balloons”

I’ve just had the best time while I was in Queensland this past week. Kev and I went up by Countrylink (I’ll be expanding on that further on in the post, don’t you worry), spending a couple nights in a motel while we were in Ipswich (Willowbank) for the drag racing winternationals, and at Granny and Grandpa’s Russell Island retreat the rest of the time. It was so exciting, I may even post some pictures in near the future. Only maybe though - don’t hold your breath, it’s not healthy.

Unfortunately Bob Shephard’s car blew up during the first round of the eliminations, so our home team didn’t get to race in the finals - but I can claim that I was there when a national record was broken! The Lamattina carrot car did a quarter mile (400m) in 4.72 seconds :D Ahh the excitement… Then there was also the F1-11 jet that did a few laps of the quarter mile courtesy of the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force). Overall it gets a rating of “very entertaining;” the boring parts where the junior dragsters were racing made up for by the top fuels. We also got to see Brett Stevens shave off his long white pony tail for $100,000 - a donation to a children’s cancer charity (I think). Well, that’s partially a lie because by the time we’d gotten back up into the grandstand we’d missed it - though that’s okay, we were in the vicinity. That counts enough to me.

Well.. seeing as it’s been posted elsewhere on the internet, I figure I should probably tell my own version of the story. While we were on Russell Island, Kev was giving me driving lessons again and I.. well.. let’s just say I managed to make a complete arse out of myself and it’s still embarassing to mention. Though I didn’t tell you that - we’ll pretend I have no shame. But yeah, whenever it was my turn to start driving, Kev would usually leave the car idling and I’d go around and get in the driver’s side. Or at least that’s what I’d been used to. Well, not this time, my friends. I got in - very caught up in the excitement of being able to drive (it’s still a novelty to me) - and I started my usual routine of pushing in the clutch, putting the car into first gear, taking off the handbrake and waiting until the clutch reached its pull spot while I was releasing it and pressing down on the accelerator. Well, I just started slowly rolling - no sound, it seemed the car was dead. I’m there thinking, “What the hell is this? What’s wrong with the car?” I ask Kev what he’s done to it. The bastard starts cracking up and laughing his head off at me. :P Disturbed, I interrogate him again and demand an explanation of what he’s done.. then he dangles the car keys in front of me.

I am a dickhead.

Apart from that there were a few minor incidents of me turning left when I was told to turn right… Going around a corner in 3rd gear… Killing the engine going up a hill because I was too afraid to floor the accelerator… you know, normal stuff. *shrug* I haven’t killed anyone or anything yet.

Now.. to that demon known as Countrylink. When you’re on a train for 12+ hours, you generally like to be comfortable. Nah uh, ain’t going to happen with this train. So the trip up was pretty painful - but we got through it. The trip back we had to catch a bus for the first 3 hours, then switch back to the train. The bus was beautiful; less leg room although far more comfortable seats, and the added entertainment of appalling G rated movies. The train.. I swear, we must’ve been in the single mothers’ association carriage. There were something like 5 youngish females (mid twenties) with a child 2 years old or younger. They were screaming for a large portion of the journey home. And anyone who knows me knows that’s enough to drive me crazy…

If that wasn’t enough, there was some bitch of a woman sitting behind us as well. We were listening to one of the iPods together, talking quietly to ourselves for a couple hours, and she had a bitch at us for waking up her son. Huh? Since when was talking on a train illegal? I’m not going to sit in silence for 12 hours just so your little brat can get some shut eye, even though he’s partly the reason noone else can. That was just the beginning, though. Then later on when I went to recline the seat - something which you can do on the train, because it’s a built in function of the seats - she kicked it back up at us, and proceeded to hurl obscenities. Great company, no? The other thing that really irked me about her was that when she got impatient with her kid she’d be swearing at him too.. Ugh..

Lesson learned:
1. Fly to Queensland;
2. In the event that flying to Queensland is too expensive, take the bus.


Composed by Melissa at 10:31pm · 5 Wrote in

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