We won!!!!!!

Woooohoooo!!!!!

In what some are calling an upset, Happy Feet won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature!!! This is just another one of the proud moments in my life since being associated with Happy Feet. I'm so happy for George and everyone that put so much work into this movie! I hope that this will make the whole experience worth it for some. For me, it was worth it a long time ago! It was an amazing experience and this is just more icing on the cake!

Congrats to everyone! I'm betting that they are partying HUGE in Sydney right now!!

Happy Feet - Oscar Nominee!!!

Wooohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This morning the Academy Awards were announced and while I'm really happy that Leo got nominated for Blood Diamond and hopefully Scorsese will finally win for the amazing The Departed, I was most excited that the film I worked on in Australia, Happy Feet was nominated in the Best Animated Film category!

Congratulations to George, Daniel and everyone that worked on this and put in the time and effort to make it what it is!

Surfers Paradise and the end of Oz

OK, so I'm shit at updating this thing. I know it's been almost three months (!!!) since I left Australia and if I was any good at the blogging thing I'd be current and tell you about the squash game I had this week or snowboarding with Hopkins last week... but I'm not so you can read about those events in another 4 or 5 months! :P

ANYWAYS... So I left my good friends from work in Byron and went back up the coast to Surfers Paradise for a weekend of auto racing, the Indy 300. I've been going to Champcars races in Vancouver since I was 9 so this was a rather big deal for me. The first time seeing them live and NOT at that horrible False Creek circuit. The Indy weekend is said to be the 3 biggest "party weekend" in Australia behind New Years and the Melbourne Cup (horse racing), and it definately didn't disappoint! I met up my fellow Canadian friend Krysta (see previous posts: ie Noosa) and her Swedish :) and Farrow Island roommates and we killed it every night! Well, except the night Krysta ditched us to go to the Ralph (Aus version of Maxim) Party with some highroller VIP she met. I'm just jealous. That party appearantly had heaps of celebs! Another thing Indy weekend is famous for is girls flashing their tits from balconies in the skyscrapers. It's the funniest thing! I'm sitting there in the stands watching the cars go by and wondering why these old guys around me have binoculars... I mean the cars are RIGHT THERE!!! Then all of a sudden somethigns grabbed there attention and they whip the binocs up to their eyes and point em to the heavens. I look over and sure enough there's two naked chicks way up in an apartment building. And then another balcony.. and another... all I gotta say is, I need a better zoom on my camera! Oh, and the racing was good too!

Me and Tess (one Swede)

Krysta and Petra(the other swede)... man, Krysta's gonna kill me for posting this!!!! But how could I not!

The Swedes and ze German (can't remember his name)

There's a naked girl somewhere there... trust me

Mini cars that run on motorbike engines.. super fun to watch.. there was like 60 of them!

Champcar!

Surfers Paradise, as seen from Q1, the world's largest residential building and 20th tallest building overall.

After the weekend I went and spent a night with friends of my parents in their beautiful and watched the bats come out and search for berry trees. It was unreal, like it was straight out of the Lost Boys or something!

I flew back to Sydney and spent the last few days there saying goodbye to my mates and getting my shit sorted out. I also came back to the 3 week period where Sydney is infested with flies. TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE stuff. Almost ruined my whole memory of the place! I spent the last night catching up with my ex-girlfriend Marcelle (haha, I told you that I would eventually mention you in my blog babe!) and at 12:30pm on Monday October 30th, 2006 my plane took off and my Australian experience was over... for now!!!!! I shall return!!!!!

Finally! Brisbane and Byron Bay

Well, after much procrastination, here is the rest of my Oz adventure! I think I'm finally dealing with the depression of it being over.

After leaving Noosa I stopped off in Brisbane for a day on my way to Byron Bay. The main reason was to meet up with an old friend from back in Van, Cousin Andy. Not my cousin, but on of my best mates' cousin. I got there midday and walked around the botanical gardens. Andy and I were supposed to meet up that evening but he finished working way later than planned and I was exhuasted so we met up the next day for breakfast before I left. I gotta say I happy to get out of Brizzie, as it's a pretty boring big city and that wasn't the point of my adventure.

Byron Bay. Byron is the surfing/hippie central quiet town of New South Wales. I met up with 5 of my best mates from Oz there and we rented a SWEEEEET pad for the week! It was so good to see familiar faces again! Especially Rosie who none of us had seen in a few months. For 5 days we surfed, ate like kings (in some of the most expensive and best restaurants NSW has to offer), and drank like fish! Including regular stops at the Beach Hotel and The Balcony Bar. Not too mention one of the highlights: Dancing on the tabletops with Amanda! Couldn't ask for more!!!! Oh and stories of me standing on our balcony shirtless, smoking a cuban cigar and calling out to "Ladies" are greatly underexagerated! ;) Sucked balls leaving those guys but I was headed to excitement! Surfers Paradise and the Indy 300!

Goodbye Oz!

Well my friends, this is it! My time left in Australia can be counted in hours not days or months. To be honest, as excited as I am to see my friends and family back home, I don't want to leave just yet. Today has been a big bag of emotions for me: mostly sad and mad even. But I look back on my time here and I'm filled with warmth and happiness. I've accomplished and seen so much both professionally and, more importantly, personally. I've made some great friends that, despite being temperarily thousands of miles away, I'm sure I will keep in contact and see again in the future. A couple of years ago one of my best friends, Danny, proclaimed that summer was "The Summer of Danny", well this has been "The Year of Steve". Or The King, or Sking, or Cousin Phil, or whatever you know me as. I'll end this post like many of you know I like to do, by qouting a song. Find Yourself by Brad Paisley:

When you find yourself
In some far off place
And it causes you to rethink some things
You start to sense that slowly
You're becoming someone else
And then you find yourself

When you make new friends in a brand new town
And you start to think about settlin' down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell
And you find yourself
Yeah that's when you find yourself

Where you go through life
So sure of where you’re headin'
And you wind up lost and it's
The best thing that could have happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

Thank you OZ and everyone in it!!! Good on ya, mate!!!!


ps. Oh and I'll finish recapping my trip back in Vancouver.

Noosa!

The King is back! Sorry it's been so long since a good update but as Gibbo says "Backpackers spend half their trips doing stuff and the other on the internet telling people about the stuff they did" so I decided to cut out the later and make the most of my last few weeks of Oz. I'm having a hard time swallowing the fact that I'm leaving in 2 days!

Anyways, back to Noosa! Noosa is this resort town that seems to cater to the "money-people". Beautiful, quiet town where you can't find a house under $1.5 MILLION. I kind of liken it to Miami with all these mansions on the river, except it doesn't have the high skyscrapers on the beach. That's because it's one of the few places in Oz that has a law against highrises. Oh, and the restaurants are high-class! A perfect vacation spot for my parents. But wait, it's still a great place for us young troublemakers! A big, beautiful beach, waves to surf and the hostel I stayed at, Koalas, was one of the hotspot bars in the town.

So I arrive at the hostel and straight away I meet these two Vancouverites I met on my last day of Fraser Island, one being one of the hottest girls I've seen while backpacking (figures she'd be from Vancouver ;) haha). But they're quick to bed as they have to be up super early to catch their bus out of town so I head to the bar and met another fellow BCer, Krysta from Nelson. After seeing a grand total of 0 Canadians so far, Noosa is filled with them! Next day I decide to hit the waves! after teaching Krysta the basics, It's just me and the waves! It felt so good to be back in the water... until I bailed on a wave and the fins board raked across my stomach and the board smashed into my hipbone. Came away with a nice bruise and a small scar. SWEET, I have a surfing scar!!!! Not too big or anything but just enough so that in years to come I will be reminded that I was cool enough to surf in Australia. Went back to the hostel after a nice dinner on the beach and partied with Krysta, who while being a bit crazy and "unique" became a good friend and a nice piece of home, a couple of boys from White Rock BC, and a couple of Finnish kids from the room. That's pretty much what happened all 4 days I was in Noosa: roll off top-bunk with huge hangover, go have a surf, eat like a king, and party till the wee hours!

Krysta and I

Dade County Down South (aka Miami)

The Beach

Back in Sydney!

Well, my travels in Oz are almost over! I've finished my tour and am now going to spend my last few days enjoying my "home" of Sydney. I've had some great times since my last blog and I'll probably update them tomorrow when I can find a place to put up pics.