The Jungle Giants' Tour Diary 2

Having had the better part of a week to regather ourselves from the first leg of tour, I was happy to see a smiling Keelan turn up to my house, marking the return to madness and excitement that is touring. This week, we were especially excited because there weren't thousands of kilometres of unfamiliar streets and highways to travel, flights to board or bags to pack; we were in our home state and ready to rumble.

The first of the two shows was at the Gold Coast at a venue called Elsewhere. Choosing the short straw, Keelan and I had the duty of heading to the Gold Coast early and picking up some hire gear. In the end, this worked in our favour because this gave us time to capitalise on the well-known commodity of the Gold Coast: Thai restaurants.

After cheerfully reuniting with the others and the support bands, we all helped out loading our gear into the venue up a long staircase of death. It was a many hands make light word situation and it wasn't long until all was setup and we were upstairs on the venue's makeshift green room balcony.

On the road.

Being not too far from home, we all went down to watch the support acts and boogied with friends of ours who'd decided to make the journey. This set the tone for a pretty fun gig.

Unfortunately, with a large proportion of nerves and excitement devoted to our home crowd show at The Zoo the following day, we were forced to leave as quickly as possible after the show for a decent night's rest.

The morning came and not soon enough, my desire for rest was overwhelmed by my excitement. I think this can be best summed up by our choice of car music on the way to the gig; there was no other option but to "spice up our lives" with the sunroof open (literally) and Spice Girls' Greatest Hits album blaring.

When we were done shamelessly belting out classics like Wannabe and Stop, we quickly got a coffee in the Valley before loading in, sound checking and heading for a Grill'd dinner. As we returned, there were already the makings of a vibe, and seeing not only people we recognised, but our loved ones definitely made it all sink in.

The clock wound down and various toilet trips were made before we emerged on stage. Smiles were definitely not scarce throughout the set, in fact, I don't remember a point where I couldn't see at least on stage; we were having a blast and didn't care who saw.

As we got off dripping with sweat and with knowledge of nothing to do the next day, we cantankerously went about our business for the rest of our night enjoying life potentially a little too much.