(Original title: Cornelius Fudge)

I am trying to think of a good story to tell you about myself while my flight has been delayed, cancelled, delayed and delayed again at Hobart Airport. I don’t really know if I have a good one that is in its entirety from the same day, but I’ll tell you about when I moved to Melbourne and how awesome my friends are. This was actually written over two separate airports on two different continents, so I’m hoping it’s not too disjointed.

My friends and I all met through the Hanson fan club back in 2004. We got together as a group of awesome people (“the squishies” we nicknamed ourselves from the line in Finding Nemo “I shall name him squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my squishy” – which is completely dumb and funny and ridiculous all at once) and met for the first time during the acoustic tour of Melbourne and Sydney in November of 2004.

The fact that Hanson were doing TWO full acoustic shows was enormously exciting. We always had the liveliest threads on the Hanson-dot-net forums, and made plans to meet up in Melbourne, the first of the two shows. We all organised where we were staying – the Greenhouse Backpackers on Flinders Lane, just around the corner from the Hifi Lounge – and flew in the day before the show to all sit on the cold concrete of the Swanson Street sidewalk and wait for the doors to open the next day because we all HAD to be first in line for the show to get front row.

I remember Nyssa and Zoe because they were each wearing a blue and an orange shoe, and Nyssa was wearing a hat. I dubbed her “hat girl” in my head, and for so long afterwards that’s how I remembered who she was. She always had something on her head. It was rad. I’ve never known anyone to look so good in headwear, and aside from some headscarves and hats on my own head, I still don’t.

Jane with 3 or 7 e’s and Becc with two c’s were just so cool.

Then there were the more insane people, none of whom I am friends with anymore because they are legit batshit insane for many reasons (including but not limited for some of them to, trying to lure Taylor Hanson’s then toddler to the front gates of their house in Tulsa, Oklahoma for god-knows-what reason).

Laura, I later learned, was the loudmouth in the line behind us who rocked up and screamed “I’VE GOT A FAKE ID!” And whom I turned to Bella on multiple occasions and said that I was going to either punch her in the face if she said it one more time, or dob her into the guards on the way in. Neither of which I did because I am all talk and no action. I don’t remember what brought us together, but it happened and we were thick as thieves.

Amy and her sister Merri I met later, I’m going to say outside the Perth Arena on their tour in 2006. I lived with Merri for a short time before I got together with Dan and she invented a “tax debt” and had to move back in with her sister because she was jealous of me being in a relationship and she wasn’t. Amy however, is one of the kindest, most selfless and amazing people I know, and I love her dearly. I wish I could be her sister instead and her not have a shit sister.

Anyway. In 2005, my friends and I were having way too much fun on the Hanson-dot-net forums that Jane and Bec announced they were moving to Melbourne because Canberra’s music scene was dead, and Aimi decided she was going to consider moving over as well. I figured, hey I have a cousin and an Aunty and an uncle in Melbourne, maybe I can see if they would let me stay with them for a while. They agreed, so It was all systems go, and I would move over in January of 2006.

Nyssa, Jane, Becc and Laura all discovered that a band called Foreshore were going to play a show in Adelaide the same weekend that I was looking to move, so hey, why don’t they road trip and take me back with them? AWESOME IDEA. They all piled into Laura’s red Magna Gunter and made the drive over (Jane and Laura’s story of that morning getting ready to drive to Adelaide is hilarious, please tell it in the comments). Laura stayed at my parents’ place with me, Becc, Jane and Nyssa all stayed at another friends’ place, and Laura and I would pick them up on the Sunday morning on our way through to the freeway.

Well.

Gunter hadn’t been serviced. Gunter’s battery was shot. Gunter stalled at the traffic lights and needed a jump-start in the middle of a three lane road before we even hit the highway. Thankfully, Laura’s mullet had the brains to put a set of jumper leads in the boot before she left Melbourne.

So after a jumpstart from two guys in the ute behind us, who were surprised that a car with a bunch of girls would have a set of leads in the boot for times such as these, we were off again.

This road trip was everything you’d wish a road trip would be. Singing along to someone’s iPod, stopping for smoke breaks and bathrooms all the time, eating way too much junk food, and taking one or two selfies. We didn’t know then that selfies were going to be such a thing, or we may have taken more of them.

My first Melbourne Moment happened a few days later. We’d all met up at ZAN (Zoe and Nyssa’s unit in Brunswick) to pre-drink for a night at the Ding Dong to see a band play. I think it was the Hovercrafts, or the Wellingtons, or the Skybombers. (Can someone who didn’t drink six vodka Cruisers please enlighten me with the finer details?)

Anyway, at ZAN, I knocked back my weapon of choice – red vodka Cruisers – and had some gin for the first time which made me break out in a rash, and had my first Passion Snap (a cocktail inspired by Taylor Hanson’s enthusiastic finger-snapping at shows, consisting of the cheapest bubbly wine, Passiona, and a dash of red cordial), and then some tequila sunrises because Becc had tequila and wanted to drink it. It was a hot summer evening, I was pretty damn drunk, we walked to the tram stop while finishing a drink or two. I think I walked into a pole, and announced to Nyssa’s friend Nick that I was definitely one Cruiser over my limit and we boarded the next 55 tram to the city.

There’s a couple of things about this night that I do remember – the heat, the way we all managed to make the people around us move away from us on the tram because we were being noisy and swinging from the handrails, and the fact that I was absolutely right about being over my drink limit. We got to the Ding Dong, and I was not feeling so good. I try not to drink alcohol when it’s hot out. There was a backless lounge just next to the stairs where I promptly announced I just needed to lay down for a bit and then I’ll be okay.

Narrator: she was not, indeed, okay.

I got up and sat on the floor of the toilet stall to the left, and sort of slumped against the wall. Laura had noticed I’d gone missing, and she asked if I was okay. She came into the stall, and then I started spewing. She held my hair back for me, and told me not to lean back against the door because someone had scrawled all over it in red lipstick, which was also by now all over my back and shoulders from where I had already leaned and not noticed. She took me back to her place in Kensington, and this is why I don’t know who played that night – it’s because I never actually saw them. She put me to bed on her couch and the next morning we went to get KFC from down the road because grease fixes everything.

I repaid her favour a few months later when, in spectacular Laura-fashion, she had pre-gamed solidly and while standing at a bar next to Ravi, proceeded to ask me which one Ravi was, while holding onto the bar and a wall and somehow a drummer named Scott from the band that Ravi also played in all at the same time. She found her way into a stall at Pony’s bathrooms, a stall smaller than Harry Potter’s ensuite bathroom in his cupboard under the stairs, and somehow I ended up in there with her, holding her hair back while she spewed. And then somehow, in the smallest bathroom stall I have ever been in ever, Scott Skybomber ended up in there with us both, doing a hecking concern over Laura. I took her back to her place and put her to bed with a half of loaf of bread, and after she slept for 20 minutes she wanted to go back out again.

I have many stories of Laura being drunk and me being the mum and taking care of her – like in Bendigo after we went to The Pub and I was DD and swung through the KFC drive thru on the way home to the farm and she shouted at the person who took my money “no, not goodnight – give me my chicken bitch!”, and ended up with pieces of chicken in her bed the next day with no idea how they’d gotten there. The greatest voicemail ever was sent to Jane that day, with Laura rambling about something while I drove her home, and ending with a scream as she dropped her phone and hung up at the same time.

If I could go back and relive any time during my life, it would be my early 20’s, hands down. I would drink, I would dance, I would sing, I would take more risks, I would travel, I would save money, I would be so happy. Even with all the kind of shitty things that happened to me, from being homeless twice to losing my jobs, not knowing what I wanted to do or who I even was, the uncertainty and everything, the one constant thing I had was some solid, golden friendships. Some have grown stronger over the years, some have moved away, some have moved on, but those people who helped me find my feet in Melbourne will always have a special place in my heart. Even if I never said it and you never knew, you had such a profound impact on me, and you helped me grow into the person I am right now.

Please tell me stories either about me and my wrongdoings, or about your friends or yourselves. I want to hear nice stories as we come out of the shitty holiday season.