Ethan Luck

Brisbane
On Sept. 8th, we flew 4 hours to LA and 13 1/2 hours to Brisbane, Australia! Although the flight over there was long, it was completely worth it! We got to Brisbane pretty early in the morning on the 10th, skipping the 9th because of the time zone, and I immediately started walked around downtown. Brisbane is a cool town! I hit up plenty of cafes, record shops and dining establishments.  I picked up the new Living End record on Vinyl as well!

Melbourne
After a great, but cut short show in Brisbane, we flew to my favorite city in Australia…Melbourne!  This city is amazing!  We stayed at the Hotel Windsor downtown and were in walking distance of so much cool stuff!  Like every city I go to, I hit up more cafes and record shops.  It’s typical of me, but its what I love about being in a touring band.  One place that stood out in Melbourne was a cool little cafe called Nook.  The first thing I liked about it was free wifi.  Sounds lame, but being able to call my Wife through Skype for free is amazing.  The coffee and food here was great as well.  John Warne and I hit it up quite a bit in the mornings.  Another place we hit up was Healesville Animal Sanctuary.  It was about a hour drive from Melbourne and was amazing to see so many species of Australian wildlife.  There were even these pelicans you could walk up to.  We did so and one pelican didn’t like that so much and decided to come after all of us!  We went to a great restaurant  after and had some ridiculous food.  I don’t think there was anything I ate over there that was bad…well, except Vegemite.  I still don’t understand why so many people like it down there.  Oh well.

One surprise, while in Melbourne, was that The Bronx were playing a show!  I hit up their drummer and Schneck and I got to see the show.  I got to know their drummer last summer on Warped Tour.  One last thing that stood out to me in Melbourne was the concierge at the hotel, Russell.  He was the most informative person I met on the whole trip.  He knew everything about Melbourne…Anything.  He would greet us every morning and I ended up chatting with him for about 30 minuets one morning.  We ended up taking a photo together and trading hats.

Perth
After Melbourne, we headed all the way across Australia to Perth!  Although I had been to Australia before, I had never been to Perth.  What a great place.  I have an old friend there, James, I used to hang out with in Orange County and I have not seen him is about 5 years!  James is a scooter rider, like myself and Warne, so he set up a day for the two if us to go riding all over the greater Perth area!  This was easily the most fun day in Australia we had.  We rode way outside the city to Serpentine Falls.  It was a beautiful place and we actually got to see Kangaroos in the wild!  They came right up to up, like, a foot away!  That night, James threw a BBQ with a ton of his friends and we had the best time getting to know some rad Aussies.

Another reason Perth was great was because of so many great people we met through the show.  They showed us around town and let us in on the best places around town, one of those being a great area called Fremantle.  We took an awesome ferry ride over there.  I will never forget my time in Perth.  Thank you to all of you who Aussies who gave us an amazing experience there!

Sydney
Out last stop was Sydney.  Unfortunately, we were only able to spend about a day and a half in this great city.  The hotel we stayed at had the most ridiculous view of the Sydney Harbor!  I didn’t want to leave!  While we were there, we got to do the Bridge Climb.  There is a bridge you can climb there that goes over the harbor.  When you climb, you are strapped in and you actually walk on the top of the bridge to the highest point in the middle, which is about 450ft. up!  I don’t do well with heights but decided I had to do this.  It was so worth it and I would be willing to bet there is no better view in Sydney.

One of the last highlights was while we were packing the vans to go the airport.  Who walks out of the front of our hotel?  Hulk Hogan!  I wish I could have met him, but he just jumped in a car to leave.  Still, it was pretty cool to see the Hulkster!  I watched him growing up, not to mention he was in Rocky III.  Good times.

So, thank you to the great people of Australia!  Thank you for showing us an amazing time.  I will never forget our time there.  Hopefully we’ll be back over before you know it!  Cheers!!