KOALA-TY TIME IN 'STRAYA.

HEY AUSSIE BABES, WE'VE ARRIVED. We're in Fitzroy in Melbourne (or 'Melbz' to... no one) aka Shoreditch-in-the-sun. Obviously I mean the new Shoreditch that my middle-class routes and rents approve of, not the grimy Shoreditch of ten years ago, i.e you can't swing a breaded cat without hitting a hipster in flatforms and a ying-yang tee, cheers Tumblr. Despite the fact that Australian hipsters have stolen all of our music - hey Alt-J stop touring Australia, you got people who wanna see you back home ya know? - we're loving it, mainy because girls are allowed (in the unwritten 'Who is a Nobhead?' rules that follow us all everywhere and at all times) to wear caps here and aren't made to feel like wiggas or emos or chavs (widely accepted subcatagories of the prementioned 'Nobhead'). However I don't think we'll be taking our new Rip n Dip collection back to England. You kidz just aren't ready yet. Sexists. (Also because I have a niggling feeling that the reason people love to take our photos on nights out isn't to put them on their street style blogs but to put on Vice's Dos and Don'ts under a massive DO NOT, with the caption 'Don't Act Like A Rude Boy When Daddy's Got A Yacht may have been written about girls like you before the economic recession hit Europe, but now you just look like twats in a caps whilst Daddy's in jail for tax evasion and is trying desperately not to drop the White Company soap you sent him').

So much for tripping over sexy Aussies everywhere we go and spending our days swaggering along the beach in a line of tanned 'n' taught bikini clad babes (with us hiding our boozey paunches behind their pert arses), the people staying at our hostel could best be described as, um, characters. A well-meaning stripper, remniscent of Charlise Theron (in Monster) - ignore the rash, IGNORE THE RASH, and boil every plate/pan/cup/fork before use - has offered to put in a good word for us where she works. Alas it would appear, after paying for her podium, she makes minus money every night unless, she proudly tells us, she farts throughout her 'performance', in which case she is stinking rich (sorry, couldn't resist). She has made what she refers to as an 'Anti-police' film which involves her wearing a pig mask and peeling everything but the mask off. I would love to post it, and feel like I am doing all your wank-banks a diservice by not, but unfortunately YouTube have removed it, I'm guessing not on the grounds of it being unlawful but because of the impotence epidemic it would cause. Instead of waking with the larks as back in dear old Blighty, here we wake up with Flem; a boy who goes to work at 7am every day, having spent an hour loudly clearing his sinuses in the sink outside our room. He then trims his hair, hopefully that of his face, into the sink, making a sticky little nest for us to Clinique our faces out of later on. We need to find a house.

Sadly it is with these people we spent Christmas. Christmas Eve is spent at our five-times-a-week haunt Revolver, a club that is handily open 24 hourly from Thursday through Sunday, probs a dangerous idea given that someone was once found dead after two days in there, but fun nonetheless. Espesh after this exchange:

'I want to make my ex jealous'
'Well I want your Christmas jumper' (for it truly was a magnificent affair; thick and woolly and covered in snowmen)
'I'll give it to you if you kiss me'
'Done.'

Practically a nativity for the post-noughties (well what would you call this decade; the tenties?) generation; Christmas spirit summed up in a parable of loyalty, chastity, generosity and not realising someone has braces until after you've faux-passionately snogged 'em. Upon our return to the hostel a stoke of culinary genius had us eating - check this out -Mcdonald's chips and McNuggets dunked in KFC gravy. Later just as I was nodding off into a gravy-cocktail induced coma, I felt something on my feet. Fearing the stripper had come for a private performance of Santa Baby I jerked awake. 'FUCKIN' GO TO SLEEP, SANTA'S HERE' snapped the worse for wear BFF wearing her Christmas hat. 'CLOSE YOUR EYES, YOU WON'T GET YOUR FUCKIN' PRESENTS'. All is calm, all is bright...

I AIN'T SAYIN' SHE A GOLD DIGGER

Christmas day was lovely, spent BBQing food and our bods in the sun at Ciabattz's uncle's playing with her baby cousin. Totes inappropz us being around both child and adult age groups after our adventures in Asia; still insisting we're the former and refusing to admit that at 24 we might actually be the latter, it was difficult to tone down our chat. Espesh with the child around which there's to be no mention of McD's or Santa; she went straight for my Maccies phone case - a girl after my own heart. Her anti-corporation parents were horrified that her first word, and here I tell no word of a lie, was Apple. That's reasonable enough you think, but note the capital A; she was looking at the Mac icon when she said it. When Ciabattz's uncle put on Kraftwerk she went mental in exactly the same way that is very familiar to any of us who've ever been to Creamfields or Global. She was... um... ecstatic... to say the least. The evening was spent sipping mulled wine (out of a disinfected mug) dreaming of my Christmas in front of the fire at home with the fam, guzzling champagne and buried under prezzies galore. Alas I am travelling the world. #Firstworldproblems.

New Year's Eve arrives, getting over the fact that we shoulda been in Sydney but had spanked every penny in Thailand and were now stuck, we went to a party in a nearby park, DJ in the bandstand, people dancing about everywhere; what to wear? I went for a ballgown (bought with me on my mother's suggestion of useful packing for Asia 'Just throw it on over a bikini after the beach sweetheart, and you're good to go' - I have no idea where she thought I was staying for 3 pounds a night) and neon orange beanie in an 'Amanda Bynes getting pulled over for driving erratically, fresh after being refused entry to Elton's Oscars afterparty, and the police finding her stash in her car' type look. It being NYE it's difficult to recall whether this went down well, and where my beanie went. The last place I remember it (and me) being is on the end of my new giant and very fancy stick I'd found and was using as a Firebolt 2013; the finest broom money can buy to you muggles (ok I added the '2013' cos it sounds rad). I was, in one of my classier moments, waggling my Firebolt at boy I wanted to kiss... Happy new year babies; start the year as you mean to go on an' all that. These Aussie boys clearly didn't want to spend 2013 with Amanda in her community service outfit. Oh well, as my mother would say reassuringly, but less and less convincingly, 'THEIR LOSS'*.

*If we were in the playground, and perhaps deep down we all are (deep), this is where I'd ram my tongue through my bottom lip as forcefully as I could whilst making that hugely satisfyng but horribly obnoxious 'DUHHHH' grunt. Come. At. Me. Boys.