Snowball Fights, Bus Cuddles & Unique Venues With Ben Wright Smith

The lead photo was taken by Jo Syme from Big Scary on this cool old camera she had. I think this on our way from Hobart to Launceston on the second day of the tour. It had been cold in Melbourne but we had no idea that it'd be snowing so much in Tassie. We hopped out of the bus and had a play around and it very quickly turned into a snowball fight. Here I'm in the background running for my life and Joe and Jack from 'Scott & Charlene's Wedding' are mid battle. 

 

This one was taken at 'Rad Bar' in Wollongong. This place has a great feel and shit load of cool pin ball machines upstairs. If you're in Wollongong you should pop by and check out some of the bands they have playing there. One of the best things about travelling around is seeing all my friends living around the country. We had a fair few jams on this run and had lots of friends jump up and play along the way. Here you have me and Mia Wray singing with Will Chittick and Alfi Dallaway up playing some guitars too. 

 

Here's everyone on our bus getting some sleep. With some pretty long bus rides we ended up having a bit of time to sleep during the day. By the after noon there was usually a card table set up at the back of the bus. 

 

This photo was taken by Gianna Mazzeo when we'd just arrived in Coober Pedy.  Here's me and Ali E checking out the desert looking a little dusty after I think about two weeks playing almost every night. I'd always wanted to get to Coober Pedy. As a kid I'd heard about the underground houses so was pretty stoked to be playing out there. The term 'underground music scene' in Coober Pedy is about as literal as it gets as we played in a cave underneath a hotel that night.

 

Here we all are up in Darwin by the swimming pool at our hotel. After this the group split up. A couple of the guys drove the bus back to Melbourne (I think it broke down about 50kms after they left us), a few of us jumped on a place and one of the group unexpectedly decided to stay in Darwin as she liked it so much.