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JULY BLOG: A year older yet no wiser, the Odyssey birthday weekend was spent in magnificent Queenstown, the jewel of the South Island's towns for more than the fact that over 200 bars are jammed into an area approximately the size of Kelso town square.

The Odyssey came close to meeting a sorry end in snowswept and black ice shrouded Lindis Pass en route, as the brave yet terminal Honda Civic navigated round fallen boulders in sub zero temperatures and the dead of night at a miserable 30 Kilmometres per hour.

Of Q-Town's (kiwis are fond of abbreviating everything) two hundred pubs, Guinness is only available in four (Pog Mahones, The Lone Star, Morrisons and another whose name escapes me due to the obscene quantities of the aformentionned beverage consumed in the first three). Of the two hundred pubs, folk music is on offer in none, although fans of Drum n' Base will not be disappointed. Blaring out of an ungodly large number of establishments was a noise akin to a space ship full of out of time hippie drummers falling through the earth's stratosphere, while inbibed locals and tourists alike performed a strange dance involving much mosh-like hunching as if replicating diagrams of Darwin's Theory of Evolution taught in Standard Grade Biology.

Compensating for the lack of folk was the mighty "Fergburger", which has sustained the Odyssey and many another traveller (including Garden Session's Frank Burkitt) on a number of previous occassions. The Fergburger Burger Bar rocketed to fame as its canny owner cottoned onto the fact (long known to every owner of a Scottish fish and chip shop) that most money can be made in fast food if the establishment is kept open long enough for people to get drunk and want fed to sop up the booze. Whether it is lack of bussiness saavy, laziness or just the general laid back approach of many kiwis to life, no other fast food venue in the country seems to have grasped this integral part of running a fast food venue, and seem happy to close at 5pm, leaving loads of reeking kiwis the unpleasnt task of finding their ways home without the bolstering properties of a pile of greaze.

For this reason the Fergburger is packed to the gunnels come the grand closing time of 3am, and has become a hub of social activity on the Queenstown party scene. Additionally, the Fergburgers are magnificently large, making patrons feel like hobbits at MacDonalds. I am keen to convey to Frank that I bettered my previous tally of 4 burgers by half a burger on this particlar trip, also managing the monumental "Big Al" in the process which features not only a pound of NZ beef but bacon, beetroot and two fried eggs. The only other sustenance over the course of the weekend came from the black stuff.

So there you have it, there might be no folk to report but the Odyssey can source some good sustenance fit for any folkie trencherman or woman.

Catch you later down the folkie trail, Tom

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