The newest occupant of a female dorm in Adelaide has annoyed all her room mates by repeatedly telling them a story that wasn’t newsworthy in the first place.

Alex Atkins from Cardiff in Wales arrived at the backpackers this afternoon to discover that the hostel staff had assumed she was male, and had consequently put her in an all male dormitory. Luckily the hostel wasn’t fully booked, so within two minutes the mistake was rectified and Alex was allocated a place in a female dorm.

Caroline Gough who had only popped back to the room to quickly pick up a packet of Cheezels and a bottle of fizzy mango from her locker was the first to hear an in-depth account of Alex’s arrival at the hostel and how traumatised Alex felt when faced with the prospect of sharing a room with the boys.

“I couldn’t really identify with her predicament because I actually prefer sharing with guys,” said Caroline who always tries to book a mixed room rather than a female one. “I’ve been in a few female dorms where you can’t even charge your phone because the plug sockets are taken up with hair straighteners and hairdryers, and you can’t move without tripping over the giant suitcases that the girls have brought with them to house all their essential beauty products and many pairs of shoes. The atmosphere is usually better in a mixed room and you’re less likely to encounter people like Alex. Plus when else in my life am I ever going to get the chance to hang out with hot young Dutch guys?”

Caroline only managed to extract herself from listening to the monologue when another unsuspecting room mate entered the room and made the mistake of saying hello, which prompted Alex to begin her story again whilst Caroline slipped quietly out of the room. But later in the evening Caroline returned to the room to find not only was Alex still sharing her story with the room mates who hadn’t yet heard it, but she had now exaggerated the situation and was telling her latest listeners that she had in fact arrived the night before and had been forced to endure a night with the boys before transferring to the female dorm today.

Caroline said “She didn’t even seem to notice that she’d met me earlier and had already told me a much watered down version of the current story. If I liked confrontations I could easily have blown Alex’s story out of the water and told everyone that she only arrived today.

I’ve got no idea why this story is still getting airtime. It’s very worrying that someone who’s already been travelling for five months thinks that this is her most exciting story. Alex is one of the most unisex names in the world and the only newsworthy thing about this story is how this Alex has managed to make it to the grand old age of twenty-six without this sort of thing happening to her before.”

None of Alex’s room mates seemed particularly excited about her story. “One of our room mates doesn’t understand very much English,” said Caroline “So she kept smiling and nodding and saying ‘yes’ and ‘ah wonderful’ throughout the story which wasn’t the reaction that Alex was looking for.”

Alex created further drama after everyone had gone to bed when she woke up screaming that a spider had walked across her face. “The lights went on,” said Caroline “And everyone got out of bed to have a look for this spider, which I’m fairly sure didn’t even exist, but we all knew we were unlikely to get back to sleep until we had reassured her it was gone. Then she shrieked that we needed a man because males are better at disposing of spiders than females are. I couldn’t believe it. We’ve spent the whole day listening to various versions of how terrible it was that she got put in a male dorm, and then she wakes us all up telling us that only a man can help with her spider predicament.”

Caroline added “Tomorrow I’m going to see if I’m allowed to have Alex’s spot in the male dorm. I don’t know if I can handle another day and night in the life of Alex.”