After the few days off we’d had in NSW, everyone is keen to get to the next state/territory in Australia and play the next show. We sleep in and grab some food from Woolworths before leaving for Canberra. 

We make it to my friends place (Ivan and Jared - they are in a few good bands check out Reigner (mosh), Snakepit (melodic hardcore) & Knives To The Throne (deathcore)) and chill out for an hour or so then head to the venue. The place was called The Maram and it was a great venue. Awesome stage, awesome sound, awesome lighting, big bar area, pool tables right up the back etc. Unfortunately whoever had booked this show (I think the guy from the venue) hadn’t done the best job choosing the supports. The opening act were a garage rock band with a female singer (she was pretty hot at least), the next act were, I dunno like early 2000’s post hardcore and sucked pretty bad, their singer had a good voice though but occasionally he’d do this really brutal death metal scream that didn’t suit the music at all. It was weird. Next Jet Market were up and I, at least, enjoyed watching them play through a sick PA and with 2 guys operating a hectic light show that was totally unnecessary. The last band were pretty good at what they did but their sound was really out dated (think Atreyu from 2005) and I just wanted to get out of there ASAP. We sold a couple of shirts and junk and got paid $20 from the door, which was a total insult, but whatever. The opening band really liked JM and gave us their $20, the other locals didn’t, but then again they weren’t punx and clearly think they have a chance at making it to the big time and would really need that $20 to, you know, help pay for their super awesome recordings they’re planing on doing. 

My mate Blake was at the show and he’s a sick cunt who gave us some weed. So we went back to Ivan and Jared’s place and blazed up before falling asleep. They had a spare bedroom where Rob could sleep isolated too which was awesome to have a snore free night.

I woke the guys up fairly early the next morning and we jumped in the car to head for Melbourne. I don’t remember anything to memorable from the drive apart from getting into Melbourne city just in time for peak hour traffic and some crazy rain. Just what you want after a 9 hour drive. We were playing at a really cool venue called The Espy (it’s on an esplanade). This place is a giant pub with a huge stage in a back room that massive acts play, a small stage in the main pub area where acoustic acts and bands play and then a tiny basement room where hardcore bands and bands with smaller audiences must play. This is where the show was and it was Jet Market’s favourite show of the tour. All of the bands on the bill were well suited and they got a good response from the crowd. We met some punish of a girl at this show. She was nice, but really annoying. 

After the show we went back to Dan from Mindsets house, cooked some pasta, smoked some spliff and went to bed. The next day we wandered around Melbourne city doing nothing in particular before heading to the final show of the tour at some pub in Geelong. By this point some of the guys were starting to get sick of each other. Alex was sick of waiting for Rob and the others taking forever to make group decisions and I think the others were probably sick of Alex being the ‘mum’ of the group a little bit. I was definitely sick of driving by this point. So we were all excited to play this last show.

We get there and the venue is pretty cool, there’s posters on the walls of old punk shows there with some big bands so i’m thinking there must be a little punk community out here and the show might be decent. Boy was I wrong. This show was booked last minute as no one could find anything good to get them on or any promoters wanting to book them or with space available on the shows they were already doing. The opening band were like U2 or something and weren’t actually too bad, but they were all massive goof balls. The singer wore all white and a tie, had massive dread locks and weird props on stage. Jet Market played next to a bunch of people who didn’t care at all. Except for one really drunk girl who got on stage and started playing the air guitar. Next were a bunch of guys dressed as pirates who were like a really bad version of, I dunno COG maybe? but they sucked. hard. We had to wait for the singer of the pirate band to get the money from the door before we could leave. Kill me. After they played old mate black beard had a smoke then started counting money and junk. Whilst this was happening the next band got on stage dressed in black and wearing corpse paint. But they sounded like Nirvana. Cool dudes.

We got like $50 or something from the show. Probably spent $40 on petrol to get there and back. It was a total bummer but Giac got wasted on the rider as no one else was drinking (really wasted) and was jumping around in the van and singing Nirvana songs on the way home, before passing out which was hilarious. We get back to Dan’s house all disappointed with the show and ready for some sleep on his couches, but he was throwing a party so the lounge room was being used. Rob, Alex and Argo slept in the van whilst Giac and I stayed up waiting for the drunk people in the lounge to fall asleep. They lingered on for hours until there were just 2 drunk girls left and we’d had enough of waiting and started getting in our pajamas making it very obvious that we wanted to sleep. They got the hint and left. It’s now 5:00am and I’m using my bag of dirty clothes for a pillow and a sheet I found with pictures of motorcycles on it for warmth as all of Dan’s friends had taken the mattresses and linen. It sucked but we were all broke so it was better then paying for accommodation at least.

We woke up maybe around 11:00am the next morning, and had showers. Feeling like shit we hit the road back to Canberra. I was so exhausted the entire drive. After only stopping once for a big rest in some country town (this is when I spent maybe an hour to type a previous diary entry) we made it to Canberra and I was exhausted, truly sick of driving and missing my girlfriend a lot. Rob, Ivan (who’s house we were staying at again) and his girlfriend Oli, went to the super market to get some stuff to make a traditional Italian pasta, I can’t remember the name for it but in English it translated to “beach pasta”. It had olives, onions, tomatoes and capers in the sauce. It was salty and oily and truly delicious. I skyped with Mackenzie for a while then stayed up talking shit with Ivan and Jared before heading to sleep.

The next morning we all slept in, then went to check out the Australian War Memorial which was really cool. We had to rush through it though as we needed to find a bag shop so the guys could replace their merchandise bag before flying to Tokyo as theirs had broken. By the time we did all this we were about an hour behind schedule and I was stressing hard that I would miss my flight home. I rushed everyone into the van and sped the fuck out of Canberra headed for the Sydney airport. I fanged it the entire way there, only stopping once for fuel, and then again to fill up the hire van before returning to Europcar. We got to the international airport, quickly cleaned the van, returned the van and I dumped a bunch of cash we’d made from some shows onto my credit card, said the quickest goodbye ever and ran to the train station to get to the domestic airport. I arrived with 15 mins til take off, got through the security and they could tell I was stressing / looked nervous so they did an explosive test thingy and told me to calm down. fuck up dick heads. I ran to my gate and then the plane was delayed 20 mins for take off. Phew. 

My head explodes on the plane due to my bad sinus and the air pressures and I’d forgotten my medication to prevent it. I land with a huge headache excited to see Mackenzie and she’s with some dude she knew who just happened to be at the airport as well. I asked her how she knew him and she’s like… ‘ermmm, he’s a friend of mine who I always run into at random places… and we had sex once’. SICK!

Whatever. All in all the Jet Market dudes are great guys and I have 4 great new friends, the shows were small but they didn’t loose out on too much money, I drove over 4000 kilometers in 9 days or something, ate a lot of pasta and got to catch up with heaps of friends from around Australia and the ‘I miss you sex’ me and Mackenzie had was amazing. 

Since I’ve been back I’ve never been so broke and I have a mountain of overdue bills to pay. Luckily I got a job which I start in a week or something. I also recently did some tour managing for a big old school metal thrash band from Germany called Destruction who I will write something about soon.