The Supermercado Project

Canberra Trip Report -

We left Melbourne at the ungodly hour of 5.30, and by the time mystery fog had lifted and it was light we were already out of range of all the good radio stations, condeming us to local FM hell for the best part of the next six hours.

Towns passed included Harden (!), Howlong (!) and my personal favourite BARNAWARTHA which only sounds good if it's said in a comedy voice. We posed for pictures in front of the BARNAWARTHA (see, it's fun!) sign and then continued on.

By the time we got to Yass, the town with a jolly little Super Mario Brothers-esque castle as it's logo we were so fungry we'd settle for any old rubbery food they were selling. And we did. The Colonel would roll over in his grave if he saw what these people were doing to the KFC name. Surly staff, wrong orders, bizarrely prepared food - it was pretty much like any other fast food joint actually. Except we had to stand in line with a bunch of hillbillies for 15 minutes.

Onwards then to the national capital, and after an obligatory visit to, and photo opportunity at, a couple of pron stores we headed for the greatest shopping centre in the free world the Tuggeranong Hyperdome. Much like the Telstra Dome it's not really a dome, but this place is good so we'll work with them ok? Inside we discovered our old favourites like CPS and a few new surprises - chief amongst them the existence of Kingsley's Express, a fast food joint so shamelessly ripped off from McDonalds that the only thing it lacked with a suspicious clown called "Roland McDonald" harassing children outside.

We spent a foolish amount of money there then moved onto our motel, the cheapest and nastiest place in the whole city, the improbably named FORMULE 1 (Obviously the people who run Formula 1 had sent a few cease-and-desist letters).

Meanwhile we listened to Hawthorn choke a 51-point lead and destroy my easy money prediction in their game against Richmond. I hereby resign from the tipping caper as of now.

Then we ventured down (up? Who cares) to Canberra Stadium, the sort of place where they go to ridiculous lengths to assign everyone a seat and then they all go and sit wherever they damn well feel. This is how I ended up sitting with the world (in)famous Bulldogs Army. They spent the whole game hanging shit on three local idiots who decided to sit in the middle of them all ("We always sit here") and then complained when they were abused. I spent the second-half of the reserves game in the TAB watching Wests get porked by Newcastle.

Then Canterbury got rorted in the main-event match by the refs, just like our trip last year. Amul has a fat list of times Bill Harrigan has cheated the Dogs out of a win. His list expanded by one more on Saturday night. Sadly there was no riot to rival the post-match entertainment of last year.

Putting aside the sports related debacle we went to some seedy bar full of people younger and more attractive than I am. This caused me to become entirely depressed about everything and I went back to the seedy motel. To add extra entertainment I then suffered the world's greatest bout of insomnia and ended up walking to some service station 30 minutes away at 3:30am and talking to some guy in the carpark.

I did revisit the site of my great plummet down the casino steps earlier in the night, and I was almost tempted to do a photo recreation of the famous event but the bouncers looked like the evil bastards who physically removed me from the place that fateful night years ago so I thought I'd better not push it. Being roughed up by fat men probably hurts a lot more when you're sober.

We left at 9:30am Sunday morning, the only special moment of the trip came when Amul accidentally emptied his mobile phone into the bin of the Albury KFC (a far nicer place than the Yass shithole) and had to fish it out in front of a suitably amused employee of the Colonel. The horror of shonky FM stations manned from a shack in the bush was avoided by finding a station relaying the call of the Geelong/St. Kilda game.

Back at 6:30 and played a rather violent game of Indoor Soccer at 8. Oh, and Canberra's ABC Radio station is 666am - that always amuses me greatly.

Thanks to the wonders of digital photography passing me by the planned photo essay of the trip will have to wait until I waste the rest of the film in my camera. Could be next year at the rate I take photos.