My life 2000 | Hello from the Five Star Vagabond

Contemplating life beyond 2000

February 6, 2017 by David Herd

A personal photo collection, not a travel blog.

Contemplating life beyond 2000

Contemplating life beyond 2000 after just completing a huge around the world trip with Tony Murphy & John Martin aka Pothole. The fabulous trip began in November 1999 in Los Angeles then on to Miami, Mexico City, Bolivia, San Paulo, Rio di Janeiro, Salavador, Paris, Bangkok & finishing in Koh Samui.

Consequently I really expected 2000 to be a bit of a let down, after all how do you recover after a two month trip like that one?

The photo above was in Sydney for Pothole’s 50th birthday on February 1st. That’s our good mate Paul Slaughter with the glasses & the lovely Kathy who was Pothole’s girlfriend at the time. He was punching way above his weight as you can clearly see. 🙂

Sadly I was as well.

Punching above my weight also with an Italian princess I met & fell for in Koh Samui.

What a smile

Her name was Barbara Manelli, however to me she will always be “Gypsy”.

Consequently in March I headed to Florence to see if there was any future pursuing this gorgeous creature. I soon found out that a brief tropical island fling was soon forgotten back in Italy. 🙂

Italy to Australia via Bangkok

I figured there was only one way to fix a broken heart & that was a week in Bangkok on the way home. 🙂

Pothole & I with Ian Rich

We took my boat over to Main Beach to see Ian’s new condo.

View of Paradise waters from Ian’s condo the Grand Mariner.

My apologies for the low quality photos, I was using my 1st 1.2 mega pixel digital camera. 🙂

Melbas on the Park

The usual suspects, John Moon, Jim Bell aka “HO HO”, & John “Secrets” Sinclair.

John Sinclair aka Secrets at Main Beach.

Here is John with one of the gorgeous Main Beach waitresses.

The dreaded black list.

Over the years Secrets has always had a black list of people who have been guilty of some indiscretion of which he has not approved of. I have been on & off the list a few times over the years, now in February 2017 I am, with quite a few others, most certainly firmly back on the list. Consequently to commemorate this honour I designed a T shirt & Pothole has arranged to have them printed. 🙂

Melbas was our favourite bar.

Owned & run by Paul Allen a larger than life Gold Coast character, passed away far to young in 1013.

Celebrated my birthday at the Boardroom in Southport.

Always a few sexy girls at the Boardroom which was owned & run by Malcolm Pearce.

Always a lot of fun

As you can clearly see I was being totally dominated here. 🙂

Skye from Launceston

What a knockout, here we are having lunch at Melbas.

Let’s go back to Italy

A flashback to March when my pursuit of the beautiful Gypsy crashed & burned. No that’s not really true, after Samui it never really got off the ground. 🙂

San Gimignano

We did all the tourist things then I headed south to Rome to hook up with my friend Paul McNeil & Scooter Boy.

The Spanish Steps in Rome

I hired a car & the 3 of us had a great road trip through Naples, Sorrento, Positano all the way down to Reggio in Southern Italy, the biggest city and the most populated comune of Calabria.

Artist at work in Positano.

We covered a lot of territory including Isle of Capri, this quickly became my favourite part of Italy until 2010 when I discovered the Cinque Terre. 🙂

Xmas lunch

Tradition dictated we would gather at Melbas each year for a Xmas lunch, here we have Jim “Ho Ho” Bell, John “Secrets” Sinclair, David Herd & Tony Murphy.