ROAD TRIP VIA THE DEANO

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Road Trip Part 1

So today I was sitting at home thinking "wow a whole day off, nothing planned, what to do?" I know get in the new wheels and drive and just keep on driving. Ha! So I did, I ended up about 120 km's out of the city at New Norcia. Yeah freaky shit, but hey it was awesome to take the car out for a long drive instead of the shitty short trips I've been doing this past few weeks.

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First place I pass is an old stomping ground, Bassendean and the hotel my parents ran for a year, the coincidentally (or is it?) named Bassendean Hotel. Now that was an experience. It's changed a bit since then but mostly it's the same old beer barn.

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Numerous teenage confessions to follow

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We actually lived on the top floor of the hotel, downstairs was a motley collection of old men, biker gangs and locals. I kind of recall it being pretty rough down there, but we three kids rarely went down the stairs during opening hours. Scary world down there. I used to hang around the upstairs restaurant kitchen and annoy the cook. I guess that's a given when you consider I became a chef.

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But the best thing about living in a hotel at the age of 15 is that you're living in a hotel. My god, 15 and easy access to alcohol of all descriptions - confession time, esp now that my mum reads this blog ha! - I can't remember the amount of times I used to grab a bottle of something from one of the bars (usually awful stuff like creme de menthe or stones green ginger wine that no one would notice missing - or so I thought) and then slide down the top floor balcony and leg it to a party somewhere in the hood. Made me very popular with my school buddies.

That was my room, last door along the balcony (right)

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I can see my parents writing me the bill right now. Probably only 2 bottles of de menthe in total mum - honest ;)

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I was a bit torn when we left the place though because our bedrooms where the actual hotel rooms, so each of us had our own room, our own bathroom and I had the freedom of a balcony door that let me escape into the night whenever I wanted. God knows how they never caught me, no I wasn't doing bad things, mostly down the local burger bar playing pinball and eating burgers or around my buddies house who's parents cared not what their son was doing, so we mostly hung out on the top floor of his place watching TV and drinking crappy alcohol. But Bassendean was a rough neighbourhood back then and I had to dodge a few shitty situations from time to time, I even had one older/bigger guy who would just walk up and punch me whenever he saw me - real nice.

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The most fun I had though was hanging out in the bottleshop, I used to run and fill the orders for the guys who worked there, it was so cool bagging king brown beer bottles into the brown paper bags and running them out to the cars as they came through. Yep, pretty illegal for a 15 year old to serve anyone alcohol and my parents could have lost their trading licence if I was ever caught. But it was exciting each time a car came through with a different order, so easily pleased at 15 - good times.

The bottleshop and all of its drive thru goodness.

More road trip tales and piccies to come
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