My farewell party (and last 24 hours) in Melbourne is something I will remember forever. I was so amazingly lucky to have so many people come together to create such an amazing farewell from my beloved home.
Earlier in the day we had all brunched, eaten cloudberry jam on ice cream, visited Swedish Christmas markets – when finally it was time to head home, pack my last few belongings into my bags and boxes, and get dressed to head over to the venue for my party. You can read about the earlier part of the day here.
I put on my party dress while Eric and Peter played Rockband, and Angela set up our wine and cheese lunch. After a glass of wine and a Daisy snuggle we all piled into the car to drive up to Brunswick to Habitat Lounge for the party.
We got to Habitat and parked up the street. We walked down to Brunswick St, and realised that my venue was straight across the road from Huxtaburger. It only took about two hours before we had all gone across and eaten a burger and a salted caramel milkshake. Nobody can keep us away from our burgers! Especially Huxtaburgers.
It was lovely with the light filtering through the big windows in the afternoon.
Beautiful Stina took photographs and videos all night.
She made three films of my last 24 hours – this is the second, that runs over the timeframe of my party.
Some of my friends with kids dropped past to say goodbye, and some work friends and people I met way back in film school dropped in, some bearing well-wishing talismans for my travels.
We sat around eating spring rolls, drinking salted caramel margaritas, and the friends I have made over the past seven years from all my workplaces, school, uni, film set… they all dropped in for a drink, laugh, chat or a dance.
Beautiful Emma, one of my oldest friends from primary school, flew down from Canberra to come and say goodbye.
Of course my usual crew was there from the start, and stayed all the way until the end. They all came back to my house afterwards and pretty much all slept there (except for Peter and Stina because they live over the road), and those who didn’t came back a few hours later for breakfast. I was so blessed to have this amazing group of people who just stayed with me constantly for my last weekend in Melbourne. I wasn’t alone for one second, which kept the sadness at bay but it was even more bittersweet. I was about to leave our little family, and their constant presence reminded me what I was going to miss the most.
I got a pile of lovely cards, messsages, photos, talismans, magical creatures, and jewellery to send me on my way.
But the best present I received (and could ever receive) was the amazing scrapbook of my last few months in Melbourne, packed full of photographs of our lives together over the past few months. Stina with her amazing design skills put it together in a beautiful, fabric bound book. It was from Eric, Juan, Jen, Stina, Peter, Edward and Angela. Then they all wrote me a page of messages, pictures, drawings and jokes from our lives together. But the page that made me cry the most was the final page:
Iulian got me to join him in doing a Terminator face. I wasn’t very good at it.
Some of my friends from Finishing School (an indie dance night we have been going to foreveeerrr) dropped in, and we did our typical over the top crazy posing.
Things got a little mad by the end of the night, but how could they not with all of us there!
Peter and Stina were pretty sad. I was too but I was just happy to be there with everyone!
Pouya and Shohre dropped in with a handcarved, beautiful leather luggage tag with my name on it as a farewell.
My friend Nick dropped in – we met in high school Drama class in Canberra and reunited years later on a rooftop in New York. We met up three times while we were in New York – and each time it was on a rooftop. Rooftop bar, rooftop lunch and our farewell was on the Empire State Building. But it was only a few months later he moved down to Melbourne, and we started the same teaching degree. We always catch up on the cutest dates – baking afternoons with scones, bike rides, picnics, dancing to cumbian music around an inflatable palm tree…
Nicks farewell was ten US dollars, on which he wrote ‘For your first soy latte in your new US chapter, Love + miss you, Nick’.
I love and miss you too!
Fraser was there, but our goodbye was fairly non-exciting – he will be visiting Husni and I in London as soon as I arrive, along with Eric and our friend Tegan.
Isn’t he so cute! He wasn’t too impressed.
My magician friend dropped in after a show to say goodbye – of course he just happened to have a deck of cards in his pocket for photographs.
A few other friends dropped past and we had a few drinks, tequila shots, and laughs.
Cheers to a great night, thanks for coming!
