Special Report- From Gloomy Dulwich to Happening Bondi

It has taken us a while to find a proper place to set up shop in Sydney but finally we have found it. Good things come to those who wait I guess. Before I start discussing our new apartment in Bondi, I think I should pay a little tribute (maybe that’s not the right word) to our old stomping ground that was Dulwich Hill and all the crazy, weird, hilarious and dull characters that we came across during our month and a half tenure in Dulwich. It seems only fair that we give a little description of some of these characters:

Ø “Oasis”: There was a group of guys from Manchester who were obsessed with Oasis. We love Oasis but these guys are hardcore fans!! They would spend their nights drinking Goon (which as discussed earlier in one of our blogs, is really cheap wine that can be bought in a box) and singing Oasis songs at the top of their voices!!! They slept in every morning and looked like death when they arrived down at 2pm to make a “brew”!! They would make you fell hung-over just by looking at their faces in the morning! Most of them were Manchester City fans which made life interesting for us while watching some Uniteds games. On their last day in Dulwich, they gathered all their boxes of Goon and dressed themselves up as Gladiators using the boxes!! All in all they were good fun, although they did ruin a few of our nights sleep but at least now we know a few more words of Oasis songs than we did previously.

Ø “Janette Crossword”: We felt really sorry for this woman. She is roughly 60 and is living in a hostel full of youthful people who treat night like day….not my idea of retirement to be honest. The scary thing about it is that her stay in Dulwich looks like it may be permanent. It is like Ground hog day everyday for her. She gets up and does crosswords with out fail everyday and goes to bed. We felt really bad for her that on Christmas day all she had were her crosswords L .Who knows maybe someday her crossword skills will come to the forefront and she may get a lucky ticket out of Dulwich, here’s hoping…she probably won’t though.

Ø “Mr Tea Pot”: One of the stranger older guys we encountered in Dulwich was given the nickname, Mr Tea Pot by us. He wore what looked like one of those covers for tea pots over his head. He also wore the same cloths everyday and we never heard the guy talk…EVER!!! He ate all his meals and drank all his drinks out of a plastic Yoplait box which got great use by him. Who knows if this recession continues, we might all be eating and drinking out of Yoplait boxes!

Ø “The guy who did time”: Tom came up with this guys nickname and we taught it was a great one. He had that “I’ve been in prison before” or “I’m on parole” look. This guy was a dead ringer for Nicholas Cage. He seemed to get really angry about certain things every now and then, be it the bathroom being dirty or the noise at night time but he spent most of his days reading books outside while the sun went down. Either his parole was up or he got sent back to the slammer because neither head nor tail of him could be found when we left Dulwich.

Ø “Cocojambo”: This woman had Mike and Tom smitten. She was South American or Spanish and lived in Dulwich with her son. She was mad for her fruit and vegetables. I mean we have never seen so much fruit or vegetables in our lives!! She could have set up her own shop with them!!

Ø “Heroes Guy”: This guy’s nickname was created as a result of a dream Tom had in which they both discussed the NBC hit show Heroes. He was a big guy with shaggy hair who wore geeky glasses. He possessed the ability to speak multiple languages. Anytime you were in the kitchen you were almost guaranteed to hear him speak Spanish, French, Portuguese or Japanese to one of the other guests.

Ø “Mahone”: He was named after the legendary Prison Break character Alexander Mahone because he is the spit of him, in both his looks and his mannerisms. Coolness personified, this guy ran Dulwich Hill. He was the guy we looked up to everyday. He eventually lost his cool when he was provoked by one of our fellow “inmates”. He pushed him up against the prison wall and shoved his arm against his throat! After this we learned never to cross “The Boss”. Dulwich was, is and will forever be his yard!

Ø “Igor”: This guy was named after Igor, the deformed assistant of the Doctor who brings Frankenstein to life. Funnily enough Pixar are actually releasing a movie called ‘Igor’ soon and our man is very similar to the main character. I don’t think he is the voice behind the character though unfortunately! This guy loved to drink, sing with the Oasis boys at 5 in the morning and watch TV until all hours. He always looked hung over whenever we meet him He had his best Christmas Day ever in Sydney. In his words, ”it was fucking mental mate, on the train home form Bondi the train was fucking hopping! Best Christmas Day ever!” We could only guess how horrible his childhood Christmases were!

Ø The Staff – At Dully there was 2 cleaners who came in everyday and cleaned all the communal areas. A male and female combo, they were sound and got on with everyone in there even the Oasis lads who caused more than their fair amount of shit including getting sick in bathrooms and smearing toothpaste all over a wall in the TV room!! Don’t ask why, no one can understand their logic!! However in the last 2 weeks in Dully the 2 cleaners were let go or the gossip in the halls of Dully suggest a fight between them and management. The place was pretty shabby without them with Mohammed filling in for them. Now Moe was the fulltime management on site living in a small unit with his wife and kid out front. He was the man to go to if you had problems after hours when the office was closed, however don’t expect any great help. He was pretty useless and customer service skills were zilch!! The office was open 7-12 every day and staffed by a receptionist who took care of all rent and other problems. She was Moe’s boss. However she was useless aswell!! I would often have to figure out for her how much rent we owed her and when we paid her last etc… She was a nice woman with good intentions but lacking in admin skills.

So we departed the place that we dubbed “Dully” and we can now look back at this period with a little smile on our face. In a way it will probably help us appreciate our new home in Bondi even more ( that will be discussed in our new February blog). Who knows if we had waited there any longer we may have become institutionalised like “Mahone” or “Mr Tea pot”, who were not as fortunate as us to get out. There are some nice points about Dulwich though which include the park, golf course and the vending machine in the hostel that satisfied our need for junk food whenever we pleased. We can talk about the characters we met for years but all in all, its great to be out!

From All :)

January- Drugs, Family, Love - 40 and Kangaroo’s.

The job hunt was the main objective for us this month so we decided to put 110% into it and printed out a lot of CV’s and basically threw them in to any place that would hire our sorry asses! We went into all the big shopping stores as well as sending CV’s on the internet (we are not looking for serious jobs now so anything will do!!). After a long day of looking for work in Chatswood (which is pretty near Joe and Dani’s gaffe), I threw my CV into a chemist thinking that they probably were not looking for workers but to my surprise only a few minutes before I left in my CV another employer had handed in his notice, so I struck gold. I had an interview a couple of days later and the Manager was really nice. The following day I was hired. It is called “Chemist Warehouse” and there are a chain of them throughout Australia. It is Australia’s biggest chemist chain. My duties involve dealing with the invoices, helping customers etc… and I will also receive training to give me more knowledge about the products so that will be pretty cool knowing about all the drugs we have!! I have been there for nearly two weeks now and it’s nice and relaxed.. The first day on the job was very tough because it was 40 degrees outside and I was outside a lot of the time dealing with a supplier in the heat….and trust me its boiling just wearing shorts but with slacks and a shirt it is a killer!! One of my manager lives with a few Irish so her sayings include “I couldn’t be arsed” and “sound” so that has helped me settle down. Its a case of so far so good back in the working world with the aim being to save for more travelling.


Earlier in January we had a little reunion with our first cousin, Dr Martin Garry, Sharon, Emma, Georgie and Daniel. We all went for a lovely meal in Jacksons on George St along with Joe and Danielle and discussed old times in the lovely county of Clare to their excursions around Australia. They covered a lot of Oz in the time they were here and if we get half that covered we will be doing very well. The steak was excellent and with there being Garry’s around, needless to say a few drinks were had. It is always great to meet up with family and we all think that another Garry reunion in Clare should be planned but we will leave that up to Aunty Maureen J - GARY.

Hi everybody…. (queue readers answer) Hi Tom Burke!!! You may remember me from such articulate and breath taking blogs entries such as Mountain Madness, Jailhouse Rock and 3…2…1 BUNGI amongst other blog hits!! Enough of The Simpsons already I’m here to tell you about another dream that has come a reality. The week before the start of the Australian Open meant there was a warm-up tournament in Sydney, the Medibank International at the Olympic Park. It started on Sunday the 11th and I got up bright and early to get the train to Lidcombe and from there, the train to the Olympic park. The lads stayed in bed and didn’t really feel up to going on a train to a tennis match.

The Olympic park is more than just a tennis stadium its a purpose built village of sports facilities, completed for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, ranging from a golf course to a aqua centre, its very impressive. The tennis centre itself is excellent with a range of small courts, staff area and a wide selection of hospitality, food and beverage areas. The day was fantastic and you couldn’t but help get caught up in the enthusiasm and excitement around centre court. The ground pass for the day was free but after I realised Serena Williams was playing centre court I had to buy a ticket for the Ken Rosewell Arena. Unfortunately the fellas weren’t playing today. Serena was playing an Ozzy girl in the shape of Samantha Stosur, a very capable player herself. Serena is very athletic and a strong build of a woman, to put it politely. The atmosphere was electric in centre with the home crowd behind Samantha. I was granted 2 and half hours of excellent centre court tennis between two excellent players. Serena emerged victorious on the day but Samantha gave a great account of herself. Overall I saw 4 matches on centre court that day, not bad value for the equivalent of €13! I saw 4 of the top 20 woman’s players in the world and in Serena potentially one of the greatest of all time. I was delighted and a great day was had. To witness a pro tennis match live was a dream come true - TOM.

After a another routine morning in good old Dulwich Hill we were excited to receive a phone call from Danielle asking us if we wanted to go to the Sydney Wildlife World in Darling Harbour. We jumped on the offer as we haven’t done much touristy stuff around Sydney.

We met up with Danielle in the apartment in Wollstonecraft and Tom somehow managed to break one of their chairs. He was acting like a monkey we were about to see in the zoo. The zoo is the largest collection of Australian wildlife under one roof with over 130 different species of animal inside. The price turned out to be very reasonable. It was a measly $15 to get in which is half of what it usually costs. In one of the funniest moments of the day Danielle offered to pay for two people into the zoo. Conor being her brother thought he was getting the sibling discount but it was Tom’s birthday the next day so Danielle surprised him with an early birthday present! It was hilarious how fast the fake smile left Conor’s face!

Inside the first thing we encountered was a stick insect camouflaging itself against a plant. Next we got to see everything from spiders and reptiles to nocturnal possums and the largest cockroach in the world! We then moved on to looking at snakes each one more poisonous than the last and we even got to get up close and personal with one being shown off by a zoo keeper. We saw every different kind of rare bird in Australia before moving on to see the kangaroos. The donkey heads weren’t in the best of moods today and one even tried to strangle another much to our amusement!

Seeing the Koala’s was the last order of business and one of the most enjoyable. Each one of us would have loved to have taken a cuddly bear home as a pet but unfortunately they are not all so friendly and would probably ruin our apartments!
We left the park swarmed in butterflies and we all had a very enjoyable trip to the park.

– MONKEY MIKE