Ivan Vargas AKA Big Bird AKA Ivan Milat AKA Milat Milat Mexican Cat
Mikky Josephson AKA Milky
Darth AKA Just Darth
Flynn Bundy AKA Huckleberry Flynn AKA Fylndrew Reynolds
Jack Ward AKA Jack Attack AKA Jaqui Moon
Donny Fraser AKA Rotten Foetus Explosions
Dale Cleaton AKA Robotman AKA MC Robot
The tour started in a Van (Nessy) that was almost instatly de-side-itated by sideswiping a parked car that was apparetly moving much faster sideways/forward/in the way than your average stationary parked car. Amazingly under new management Nessy was now apparently now able to travel around corners without crashing which it seemed not to be able to do before. Turning corners without crashing is very important in a tour van and luckily Nessy was able to manage it for the rest of the tour. So with Nessy still partially intact the tour started only several hours late on the long journey to Charleville (Charlie-ville according to the locals). Several hours late is actually quite early by skate tour standards.
Not surprisingly the journey was as boring as tea with somebody else's Nanna so the crew collectively decided that not being sober was much better than being (sober). Copius amounts of alcohol where henceforth consumed by everybody except whoever the hell was driving (I forget who, see start of sentence for why). The driver loved that fact that everbody was drunk so much that they decided to stop every half hour for the rest of the 8 hour trip to celebrate (and to keep the van free of urine-filled bottles).
Nessy arrived at Charlie-ville caravan park which was run by the most awesome people that every ran a caravan park. Nessy arrived at the caravan park to find Robotman who had flown in on a plane that seemed more like a WWI plane I had ever expected still existed. Robotman had already managed to consume about half a bottle of Canadian Club by the time Nessy brought the team so was suitably jolly and ready hit the Charlie-ville hot spots.
To everybody's surprise/horror small towns actually don't often have 'hot spots' so we all settled for the local RSL and $4.80 Johnny Walker Blacks and seafood that seemed at least 2 days from the sea, but so were we, so who were we to judge? It turns out 2 day old seafood tastes pretty good when deep fried and covered in bread, well played Charlie-ville RSL. The RSL wound up at the lofty hour of 10:00pm so with a suitable amount of juice left in everybody's tanks we journeyed back to the caravan park to show the locals how a bunch of skaters make merry. According to the locals if it rained that night, which it did, a lot, it wouldn't be too hot the next day.
Charleville demo was the next day so everybody got up super early and headed to the park. It was still super hot so everybody got creamed up to avoid burnt nipples. Nobody got to see the park before the demo but it turns out it's a super sick park designed perfectly for a team of hip and rail technicians.
Huckleberry Flynn busted out some killer moves including a flip FS board on the awkward full handrail height pop rail first try and BS flipped over the handrail. Milky delivered the milk by doing milky flips and spins over the hips all day and flip BS smith grinded the park rail. Jack Attack attacked the park rail with FS blunts, back tails and Sandbags BS and FS. Ivan Milat serial killed his was into crooked grinding the handrail and did every flip everywhere including a boned kickflip over the handrail in only 3 tries. Just Darth killed all the rails as always and spent half the demo trying a sick looking FS flip over the handrail even though nobody had ever even seen him do a FS flip on flat. After coming super close by rolling about 2 metres he gave it one more try and bent his knee sideways to finish his day.
The kiddies then got a swag of Drawing Boards goodies including some RDS gear from our good friends at Headfirst Distribution. Props to the kids that best the best damn worm dance any of us had ever seen and got hisself a free something something.
Back to the caravan park where Huckleberry Flynn was officially welcomed to the team with his MVP perfomance at the demo and we all celebrated with a massive BBQ. Jaqui Moon managed to start an awesome feed before getting bored and allowing the girls to get far closer the BBQ than any Y chromosomer should ever get. Robotman was forced to step in a set the gender balance back to awesome by fixing up the food and feeding everybody with awesome Bilo sausages. Jack Attack got distracted by a kitty that Milky named Cornelius for no good reason despite the fact that it probably already had a much crapper name like Mr Whiskers.
That night we got down and busy with Ivan Milat inspiring Jaqui Moon to write an awesome new boy band track about how much he enjoys Kuraby skatepark. Robotman polished off his second bottle of Canadian Club in 2 days despite drinking beer all day and entertained the whole group by re-envisioning the Kuraby song as a Gangsta rap that Vanilla Ice would be proud of. The other park patrons were so excited by our late night merry making that they tried to add lines to our song but their line of "Do you know the flaming time is!" was not included in the final rendition.
The next day was a 7 hour drive to Goondoowindi, Robotman used his special robot powers to seduce Nessy into going 150km/hr across some very empty outback roads. The girls did their thing and managed to fight over car parking to the point of hissy fit with everybody else not giving a shit. The girls managed to bond over Weezer while Nessy vibrated everbody else to a gentle sleep.
Driving in to Goondoowindi the sign said "The Friendliest Town in Australia" which turned out to be astoundingly accurate. If you ever have no reason to go anywhere in particular I highly recommend you find a reason to visit Goondoowindi. The park was kinda average with a few oldish banks and quarter pipes but the ground had been refinished which at least made it easy to hit everything with speed.
Everybody skated super hard with Donny, Jack Attack and Milky rocking the mic at different times. Huckleberry Flynn FS flipped the bank to flat first try and BS flipped it second try, Milky killed himlself to eventually BS 360 it. Donny did lemon partys everywhere while Jack Attack did snowboard airs on everything that had transition. Milat the Mexican Cat karate kicked a giant tre flip over the hip then boned a kickflip down the bank to flat first try. He then 360 flipped the bank to flat in a few trys before blasting a giant BS flip to fakie into the stratosphere over the quarter pipe hip with Flyndrew Finishing off the demo with some double flips.