Gary and Vince are here. Like, right this moment...

Back in Sydney and all is rather familiar – except the rain which greeted me on arrival of course, which managed to put even Melbourne’s legendarily inclement climate to shame. Getting in early in the morning, I checked into the Central YHA, which is well respected and has earned a good write up in the Lonely Planet guide. As ever though, it turns out to be another soul-less warehouse of travel-stained souls clogging up cramped dorms in nine floors worth of space. On top of which, the place was seriously overpriced and so the next day I bit the bullet and phoned the lovely Wattle House, where I had spent my last few nights in Sydney previously, the dorm here turned out to be cheaper than the YHA, and much more pleasant: a large room with three beds arranged in it – and no bunks at all.
The following morning, I get up early and catch the train to the airport so that Gary should arrive to see me leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb looking as though I own the place. Gary gets delayed in the customs queue and so I end up getting a crick in my neck and rather tired. He ultimately finds me lounging on one of the waiting room chairs, looking wide-eyed and uncomfortable. I usher him back to the homely charms of the Wattle House and try to impress him with the complimentary hot water bottles and fleece blankets.
Jetlag notwithstanding, I then drag him into town the wrong way and fail to look as though I’ve been here as long as I have and get completely lost in the back streets behind the fish market. It’s one of those quite pleasant getting-lost-in-the-back-streets type of routes which should be featured more prominently in the guidebooks, allowing as it did, for us to discover a number of curious looking buildings, some interesting looking moored boats and the back of the casino.
Sitting down for lunch of pie and chips on a bench near the wharf (accompanied by a guy with a steel drum performing a mean rendition of Yesterday) I receive a phone call from Clayton, who has the day off and whose flying lesson has been canceled due to high winds.
“Gary’s here.” I say.
“No shit?” Says Clayton, sounding genuinely surprised even though I am fairly sure I mentioned that Gary would be about in the email he told me he read.
Clayton’s car picks us up and in its own inimitable style (roaring of engine, screaming of breaks) we barrel across the iconic bridge, into the countryside and get lost again. The locations which we eventually decide to visit, Lake McQuarrie, the largest salt-water lake in the world and Palm Beach, the location of Home & Away’s Summer Bay, both prove rather difficult to find and despite their considerable fame, seem inadequately signposted and rather elusive. That it should be possible to hide a lake the size of the one we were looking for was perplexing to say in the least, but a more important and pressing question presented itself as we approached Palm Beach in the gathering darkness: How were we going to stop Gary from singing the theme tune from Home & Away, over and over and over again?