Road to Australia

I'm watching the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby 'Road to...' series of movies on TV. I know, you're probably thinking "How can Danielle sit and watch old movies when she's in Australia?!" Or maybe you're just thinking about something funny the cat did the other day. But for those of you that ARE thinking the former, at least now that I put the question in your mind, I assure you I'm not a complete lard. One, these movies are clever, hilarious classics and two, it's almost 6 pm here and apparently on the weekends, nobody but me emerges from their rooms until much later.

I'm also a tad bit mopey because I realized back home it's Philly/NJ Warped Tour day. I can't believe it was two whole years ago that I last went. Things have changed so much since then, with both the bands I saw that day and myself. That was my first brush with being a writer/photographer and though my article and pictures never got used in the end, I gained so much from it. I know this blog is supposed to be about my time in Australia, but I would like to finally let some of my pictures from Warped '06 be seen. I feel bad just having them stay in my computer, like I'm hoarding them or something.


I still can't believe I've had the honour of being within feet of JOAN FREAKING JETT. She sounded as awesome in 2006 as she did in 1983 and the woman is 30 years my senior but still looks better in a bikini than I do.



I saw about 20 bands and took over 500 pictures that day, but way too big a number of those photos were of the boys in The Academy Is... Especially Tom Conrad, their former guitarist who's now in Empires and works as a photographer himself. I won't lie, I was a bit of a TAI fangirl, and I still listen to them occasionally. However, I prefer Empires now, they're a lot more mature in music and lyrics, plus their fanbase isn't mostly 13-year-olds.


Okay, so this photo is posed, I still love it though. I unfortunately missed The Sound's set, but Felix and Maja were just standing around their merch tent later that day and I talked to them for a bit. Mostly about the 'Snakes on a Plane theme' video, haha.


Geoff Rickly (lead singer of Thursday) is impossible to get a picture of, so I was proud I actually managed a few. Though, for every successful photo, I had about ten of him blurry or flashing his armpits, haha. Apparently, the next tour stop after this one, he was swinging the mic and it smashed his face. He continued singing despite a bloody nose, that's how hardcore he is.


I remember showing my Mom all my pictures and her saying something along the lines of, "Wow, lots of shirtless punk guys. I can see why you had such a good time." And Tom Gabel from Against Me! is definitely one of the reasons I'm fondly reminiscing my time at Warped. *sigh* Those were the days...