Bendigo

Why is Victoria like a doughnut? Because there's a hole in the middle!
(A Ballarat joke, making fun of Bendigo)

Why is Bendigo a hole?
(A dysfunctional Ballarat joke, unintentionally making fun of Ballarat)

Well, yesterday afternoon we (me, Nomes, Damo and Nigel) headed out to Bendigo for Ali's birthday party.
When we got to Bendigo we started off trying to just find the way to Ali's parents' place by luck, but that didn't really work, so I ended up calling Ali and getting directions from his dad several times. After several u-turns we made it there. Think it was about 5 or 6pm when we got there. Had a barbecue and salads for tea, and then headed out into the bush to have a fire.
It took about half and hour to get to this quarry where the fire was. Took this 15-second exposure of Damo:

It's a bit blurry, but I still like it. Took one of Ali and Kate as well, but it's too blurry:

Ben had his poi, so Ray and Ben did some fire twirling, and later Ben set up this poly-pipe canon that one of his friends made him. You had to spray hairspray in the bottom end, screw a lid on, and then use an stove-lighter to ignite it through a little hole in the pipe. After a lot of disappointing attempts we managed to shoot some tennis balls a fair way, and lastly we shot a tomato straight into the air. It made a very loud noise, and was never seen again.
At about midnight or something, Damo said he wanted to go back to the house, and me, Nome and Nige decided to go back too. On the way to the quarry we'd used torches made from branches with strips of old blanket wired around the end, but they'd all been taken by people who'd left earlier. So I decided to take off one of my sockks and tie it around a stick for a torch. Ben poured kerosene on it, and I lit it off the fire, and we headed off. We were going to go back exactly the same way we'd come, which started off with us heading up a pretty steep hill. Ali's sister, Stef, said we should go a different way that wasn't as steep, and then get straight back on the track, so we tried that, and ended up not being able to find our way back onto the track. We decided to head in the direction we reckoned Bendigo was, based on stuff like the noise ofo cars and dogs, and lights from the city, which we could see from the top of hills. After about ten minutes of walking the sock-torch went out, and we realised that we could actually see better without it.
After about half an hour of walking we arrived at the back of some houses, presumably part of the housing estate where Ali's parents lived. However, there didn't seem to be any way of getting past the houses and down into the street without jumping someone's back fence, into their backyard. So we decided to turn left, and go along this track that followed the back fences of the houses, hoping there'd eventually be a path down to the street.
Well, we got to the last house in the street, where the housing estate ended. Unfortunately we couldn't just go around the outside of the last house, because it was really steep, and the forest was really thick there, so I decided to see if I could just jump the back fence and get down to the street though the backyard, seeing as this house just had a really old, short wire fence. Made it down to the street, and headed back up to the others. Halfway back I heard this little metallic 'ding' noise, and thought, Oh [excrement]! They've got a dog! But I couldn't hear anything moving, and there were no more little metallic 'ding' noises.
So we all got down to the street, and walked along it until we found some street names we recognised from when we were trying to find Ali's parents' place the first time. So we got home at about one o'clock, I think.
I don't think I slept at all last night because all night Nigel was either using a chainsaw or snoring, I'm not sure which. We got back here at about twelve, I think.