That's when good neighbours become good friends

It's true. I don't think I've ever met a nicer bunch of people than the Australians. It's almost embarrassing.

Let me tell you about Brodi. So when we were in Queenstown, New Zealand, we met an Australian surfer dude called Brodi. He was in the TV room of the hostel and I think I must have said about 2 words to him as I was way too involved with watching LiLo in Just My Luck (shocking BTW. Shocking. Mcfly, my friends, I was embarrassed for you.) Duncan and Eve went out with Brodi and the Scots for a few beers that evening leaving Anna and I watching more movies and apart from another 2 or so words in the morning, that was the extent of my friendship with Brodi. It wasn't the extent of Eve's friendship with Brodi, but that's another story...

So whilst necking a few beers that night, Brodi had mentioned to Duncan that if we happened to be passing his hometown of Newcastle in Australia, we should look him up. So we did. After we left the hot surfers in Surfer's Paradise (I REALLY didn't want to go) we checked out Byron Bay (raining = rubbish) and Coff's Harbour (boring = rubbish) and the next place on the map before Sydney was Newcastle. So we just turned up at 9pm on Saturday and called Brodi. What followed was 2 days of non-stop hospitality.

For starters, Brodi lives with his parents. Of course he does. He's 19. This had never crossed our minds. But they welcomed us with open arms giving us beers and sausages as we stepped through the door followed by beds, hot showers and towels (it's the simple things when you're living out of a bag, believe me.) We then hit the town with Brodi and caused quite a stir. Seems that the people of Newcastle LOVE the English accent and by the end of the night we were surrounded by about 15 people all wanting to talk to us. My ego loved it.

In the morning we were woken up by Brodi's AMAZING mum, Joanne. She'd cooked us a heap of breakfast. Brodi took us around the town, taught Duncan how to bodyboard, took us out with his friend Dana in the evening and then left us at his house the next day as he was off to watch U2 in Sydney. He told us to stay at his house as long as we liked. And he meant it.











So we stayed for a while with Joanne who insisted that I use her phone to do an hour long interview for That's Life magazine. Then we left. As quickly as we'd arrived. A bit overwhelmed at how amazing everyone we seem to meet here is.

One of my all-time favourite Australian people (apart from Jason Donovan) is my Auntie Gwen. She'd always feed me Lamingtons she'd baked in the school holidays (so of course she was a hit with me), let me stay at her house when my parents were away and was just generally warm and lovely. So really this should be no surprise to me. But it has knocked us sideways a bit. Not really sure what we've done to deserve it, but it's all good with me. I love it here. Lovely people, stunning men and sun. Why oh why would you want to live anywhere else?