Adam's Amazing Travel Blog

Damnnn

2009-02-23T06:36:00.000-08:00

Its on the list. I have just discovered my notebook of travelling stuff!

God, last post was Townsville, I have soooo many stories adventures and funs to write up after that. I mean there was tropical Queensland, 1001 Beaches in Thailand, Cambodia and 3 trips through Khao San Road in Bangkok...

Soon. Hopefully. Travelling was fucking fantastic.

Mission Beach via Townsville

2008-07-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

Loved Mission beach - for the people and another place to do not much apart from relax.

Stayed in Townsville 4 a few hours before the greyhound just to glimpse it. Reminded me of a slightly better Rockhampton. Spent the time looking for a second hand bookshop and a copy of Lonely Planet Thailand. Found it a mile out of town, shut. Nxt door told me it was in the centre now... D'oh! Found it; or the shop it would be in, in a few weeks. No point in the adventure! Had a McEurope burger for lunch - bit like KFC.

Bus to Mission Beach. Arrived and talked to Kevin and Camilla from Byron and Surfer's Paradise and Airlie Beach, who were randomly getting my bus.

Niiiice hostel, 1st 2 nites only 25 bucks cuz of voucher. Saggy matresses but there's a fire and a drive thru 'liquor store' across st. Infront of fire, made good friends instantly. got fire names based on our experiences and strengths/weaknesses, I'm burnt foot , Dan is Talking Bull, Jussi is Big Flame, Chris the skydiver is Long Fall, there was also White face, Maggie - No Play (a guitar but no songs!), Andy who whitewtaer rafted that day - floating monkey.

Nxt day played badminton, read in the hammock and went to the beach which was cold and windy - was warmer in the sea! Little bit of body surfing! Keepy ups with beach ball for hours. Big fire that night! Collected a tonne of driftwood wi wheel barrow. Tried slide quitar with a beer bottle. Told to be quiet. I thought it was good...

Next day, same thing til lunch - read map with Andy and Dan, found "Muff Creek" - boyish laughs and innuendo for about an hour. Decided to go on a journey/adventure there. took $8 on bus, 2km walk and being bitten on one leg by sandflies. Saw a butch cassowary sign on the way, 2 dead marsupials. Creek its self just tiny, muddy and trickling. Muff Creek had crabs! etc...

Bingo that night!! Andy and I won $10, Ethel stole the big hamper tho... Good fun. Recognised some people from Sydney back at hostel, thought they were from Deeping for something - Sydney so long ago!!

got a free T-shirt for staying 3 nights and a free cap for booking white water rafting. Woo?! Rafting day - got up nice and early, picked up, E+B in van! Driven to tully river; had grades 1-4 rapids (5 is impossible). First rapids biggest!! Paul a guy in the raft freaking out when our raft flipped - good fun floating down rapids!! Nice and dangerous... BBQ lunch, saw a 1m eel in the shallows. Beautiful scenery, more jurrasic park. Sheer cliff and unspoilt dense rainforest for the whole 5hours of rafting. Big 4m rock to jump off, a few people flipping off it! Free photo after, cuz of voucher. Want to learn to Kayak now, and get strong enough to do rapids like that. Where in the UK though...

Watched 'Wolf Creek' - film about travellers who break down and get tortured. People up coast say it'll make you not want to travel, but its not that bad... its just a horror film, based on 'true' events. Made popcorn from real corn. Next day - swimming in the pool and chilling before the LAST EVER GREYHOUND!! Saw the big (5m) cassowary by bus stop. Wasn't moving much...

Off to Cairns!!

Magnetic Island, one of my fave places!

2008-07-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Townsville having passed 100s of kms of sugar cane fields. Ferry wi ollie to Magnetic Island - rough and ferry had a leaky roof - kids running through, screaming and being kids. Filled up with expensive groceries - $1.40 for 500g pasta!!! normally 80c/less. Waited 2 hrs for bus...

Arr at hostel via beautiful rugged landscape - all the island is granite boulders that look like they've jsut been piled up there for storage. Most of island wilderness - too steep and difficult to explore. Bungalow Bay; my hostel - modern wooden bar/reception , cool back to basic accom - wooden hut dorms wi ensuite! Dinner outside with possums coming up expectingly. Loads of green big ants (german girl squeezed some juice from its bum and said its nutritious and lemony...) and a gecko in my room. Nice real mattress!

Lazy day, getting used to local area. B+E came with Dana the Canadian to say hi. fed a tree of lorakeets wet bread; about 15 on me, screaming and pooing! Scratched me quite a bit. belly laughs.
Kookaburra feeding - slapping the meat on my arm to kill it!

visit B+E+D's hostel, Base. Barman squirted me, not funny and unprovoked. Stayed in spare bed in their room without paying :-0

Walked back the next day after a fry up brekkie - awesome 12km walk: Nelly Bay- inland loop (lizards, snakes, ulesseys butterflies and rainforest) with awesome lookouts. Became savannah on other side of mountain/hill. Arcadia - the forts, a WW2 gun emplacement, then home. 2 blisters :-) Others visited in their topless car they hired. More possums at dinner (carbonara).

Up early for PADI dive course!! Day of pool work/classroom theory. POol cold and DVD boring.. Completed all my 'skills' necessary - only me and Aarron the instructor (an ex martial arts instructor), so v quick progression. No ollie that nite for 1st time in ages - moved to E+Bs hostel cuz cheaper + I busy. Saw a possum with 1/2 face like terminator.

Medical passed - I'm 74kgs (76kgs when I bungee jumped :P) and 186cm. 1st open water dive, with Cecil the swiss and Aaron. Rough and murky (6m vis). Cool corals and fish. Strong swell + backwash - felt like on a boat when left water. More classwork; slightly tricky! Working out nitrogen in body and safe dive times.

Dived the Moltke wreck off of Alma Bay - V cool! Angel fish, clams, and loads of other fish I can't remember! Officially passed! No problemo. Good 'post dive' wet photo for certificate. checked account - half of what I thought not there! Checked web and the atm had shown a $ sign for a pound amount... bit scared. Free curry that night - real food! nice. Base again for Basils birthday, after not knowing where they were - thought in Magnums, 1st, where I found a Toad race! Lead by a very old, ozzie guy. No EBO+Dana, though. Eventually found them; got the last bus back not walk! A few rock wallabies bounced past while waiting for bus; like big kanagroo rats.

Leaving the next day for Mission Beach! 'Maggie' was v good cuz it was different to everywhere else and was V chilled out.

Airlie Beach and crusing the Whitsunday Islands

2008-07-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

Airlie Beach - crap beach at low tide - about 5m of sand and then rocks! Good night life though, a bit like Byron bay in it's setup - 1 strip with everything.

High tide - awesome views; blue clear waters, green hills either side. Magical!
Beaches Backpackers: Cool! TV in room, 1 channel... found cow and chicken in B+W. Aircon, thank god and ensuite! Wi free brekkie and washing machines that u can use the old cotton bud trick with.
Came there when over cast - next day bright blue skies.
In same room as E, B and O with 2 canadian girls (got annoying though - didn't get any jokes) and 2 dutch guys -bumped into them in Cairns loads.

Worst sleep walk ever!! Woke up at 4am in a corridor never been in before, totally confused JUST WEARING PANTS AND HOLDING MY SLEEPING SHEET. Tried all doors. Seemed to all be locked. One lead to the bar... it was empty, but I dont think i came that way...
Had to go thru bar - check the way - 2 people walking in street outside, bar empty, thank god. Quick time walk through the bar, into the open and up some stairs. met no one, cuz it was 4am, but would have been embarassing.
No key!! Course not, I'm just wearing pants, with no pockets! Hesitant knock at the door, hear footsteps inside. Britney the Canadian come out. Asks me why I 'ran out of the room'...

Woke up tired...

domestic day - washing, shopping with the boiz ( big plans to make good food cuz theres 4 of us!!)
Ollie and everyone dancing to Wake Me Up Before You Go, Wham in the room's balcony. Funny vid. New holiday song!

Cooked rice 4 first time ever - horrible and starchy.

Chilling out for day by the lagoon a decent sized pool with sand and space to make up for Airlie Beach's namesake beach.

Next day - Whitsunday sailing! Big coincidence: Paul from the Blue Mountains was checking in at the same time to same boat. AND his french canadian mateshad just come up with a fake name of Adam Smith to play with a mate...

Met roomies for the trip- Frank the french, niall and andy the irish and paul.

37 onboard the "Kora" - decent sized catamaran with some speakers all over board 4 music.
Getting out of airlie, passing some islands, very jurassic park, tropical blue waters.
Arrived at our resort island, south mole island. V 70's, slightly run down. Happy hour from 5pm! Only me, Niall and Paul there. After dinner, drinking games in the bar, beer fight, mad noise and bed at 10pm.

Up at 6.15am... POO! Big pile of diahorea on the room's floor... Andy comes in and tells Niall he did it. Nah, he says, but frank backs Andy up and Niall goes "Oh god...." Horrible!!!!! Frank says he saw him doing it - just half on his bed with pants by knees, pooing and peeing... No smell, til he tried wiping it up.

Didn't come sailing that day. Embarasement?Met him on dry land- was puking blood apparently, so thought he should go to a doctor, plus embarrased.

Leave for boat 8am. Loads of Lorakeets at jetty! really noisy and they drink beer and goon (wine) - Hence the name Goon Birds! Landing on people and making more noise in ears. Saw huge stingray and fish below jetty.

Sailed to Whitehaven Beach. Little dingy to get there. Walk to lookout - amazing swirling sands that extend from Hill Inlet; near pure white sand and blue fades in water. Amazing; real national geographic! Voted 3rd best beach. Sand 98% Silica - used for the Hubble Telescope's lenses.

Strange feeling sand! Like flour - perfection? Good for exfoliation. Strange bubbles coming out of sand underwater! V bright on beach. Walk with cam across 300m water stretch, only waist deep. Saw stingray pods, small sharks and baby mangroves! Cool weathered old tree/log + rocks.

Snorkelling on some fringing reef! Coral, fish and clams galore. Bit cold and not as bright as the pictures. Huge turtle under catamaran - just popped up, looked at us with dopey eyes and submerged! Magestic.

Back to south mole- new room in charity. Tennis, swimming pool and Jacuzzi!
Bar had broken speakers so moved to other bar in the "family" part - Karaoke, 2x price!! No thanks. E, B and O arrived from their boat - just sat on a jetty with them. Curlew looking at us spookily. jam session with some guitar guy at the rooms.

Up at 6.30, no smell! Visited another fringing reef - warmer and more fish - fed with bread - swarmed around us. Heading back to land - roasting in the V hot sun. checked into Koala's, gave me the furthest possible room. Incredibly small kitchen - for 145 rooms (around 500 people) -4 hobs, 2 fridges and about 1/2 a pot to cook in. Plus had to rent cutlery.

Drinks with boat people, playing mind games - Land of Ogg, Big red bus etc. Gets people annoyed!
Walked to Beaches BPers in the morning for free brekkie... He hehe, sneaky! Also pretended we were from the hostel and got a lift to the transport terminal 1 mile away. Beats walking.

Bye Airlie Beach!! Good party place.

NEVER go to ROCKHAMPTON!

2008-07-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

Arrived in rain, well outside of town - Taxi with ollie, Floris and a random. Checked into hostel via downstairs pub. 11.50, thought all in the dorm be asleep and that it be cramped and a bit crap at $20/night. Open room door quietly. Its a double bed with single on top!! Cool! Shotgunned (bagsied) bottom bunk asap. No linen provided, so used my SINGLE sleeping bag liner - basically sleepign in small single again...

Wandered around next morning. 1st place without anything to actually see. 'Mall'/Highstreet a series of discount shops. Everything shut at 3pm. People: Mulleted, cardigans, good at localism - got a couple of wierd looks and shouts to go home. Dang cowboys! Rockhampton famed for beef.
Spent afternoon sorting stuff/admin. Small cam tripod I bought snapped instantly. Went out for a steak with O + Floris. V nice - 600gm T bone! and a few beers, best thing in rocky. More local looks though. Found a big painted sign saying "Beautiful" nr centre. Bit ironic.

Up at 6.15 for bus to Airlie Beach...

Ah... Cool Bananas at 1770/Agnes Water

2008-07-02T22:59:00.001-07:00

Arrived in dark with Kal the german, hostel across road. Looked cool, big chill out common room with bean bags.
Fire pit! Free Tea!. Nice vibe and people. Beds very comfortable. Didnt have a key, but door was always unlocked anyway. Nothing went missing.
Day reading book (The Gathering) in hammock.
Meetign Gus, the hostel dog, an appropriately mellow dog whose full name is Disgusting :)
Wandered to beach and checked local area. Squeeky sand! Small surf.
Lea turning up from Townsville and suprising me!
Beers around the fire. Fire = the best way to meet new people.

Walked to 1770 proper with Lea. Small headlands and tiny beaches. Almost deserted - no backpackers!! Just a family with toy digger trucks. Lots of tiny crabs. Some drizzle... small mangroves. Came up with better name for my sarong: my MANRONG! Much better.
Couldnt b bothered to walk back in drizzle so we hitchhiked! Awesome!

Basil, Eric and Ollie arrive. Fish and Chip supper for $5!
Ping Pong tournament at local/only bar. out in 1st round a Trillion - 1 to Basil. B+E to semifinals.
Rain; slipped into railing trying to get ball, nearly broke foot- hurt to run for ages.
$2 cups of beer after. Strange bar. Looked half complete, had projector showing homemade surf vids, cool! Bye to Leah for last time - hitchhiking to Brisbane, naturally.

Beach again. Met a nice soft and collared stray dog. Hung around us for a few hrs. Didn't fetch frisbee. Saw a 'Disabled Lifesaver' sign... eh?
Scooteroo! $50 for 3 hrs, motorbike tour with a mexican hells angels type - 50cc choppers!! Mine jet black. Cooooooolest thing. saw loads of wild roos, standign like logs. They jump so easily; unnaturally... Got to 85kmph. 35 people in twilight trying to overtake each other :-O First motorised 2 wheel experience!
Back at Cool Bananas, met girl who was being flown to sydney for a Nintendo DS modelling shoot.
Free Pool @ Agnes Tavern + BOGOF on drinks. Tried Bundaberg Run for 1st time. not too nice, just tastes like white spirit.
Au revoir again to B+E.

Woke up to heavy rain. Met Floris, mad dutch roommate with excentric curly fringe. "Goood times!! Ho ho ho!" His saying.
Lots of film watching and Tea.
Greyhound to Rockhampton in rain wi ollie. V humid in transfer bus, nasty nasty!

1770 is like Byron Bay 20 yrs ago! Bet it gets 10x more popular! One of fave hostel.

Sand, dingoes and undercooked pasta on Fraser Island

2008-06-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

Fraser Island is one of the destinations that all backpackers doing the eastcoast do. Its something about a combination of a large section of the Lonely Planet guide book being devoted to it, relentless advetising all the way up the coast and the fact that it is a pretty amazing place. It's the largest sand island in the world, measuring some 70km long or something and being totally sand apart from a couple of rocky outcrops to the north.

Because of the sandy nature of the island, the only way to get around is in great big 4x4s!! And because the vast majority of the island is national park, the only way to see properly is to camp! The two together spell ADVENTURE.

I arrived at the departure town, Hervey Bay, mid afternoon after an unsatisfyingly long Greyhound trip about an hour long from Rainbow, I arrived at the transport terminal. I immediately knew this town wouldn't be the nicest place be in - for a town of only 30,000 people, the shopping area was massive, spelling out: 'big ol' tourist area' in 12ft neon letters. from my experience, places like this often have no regard for the backpacker or their experience, but more for the amount of credit our cards have on them. Hervey was only a leaping point for Fraser, so I wasn't really bothered.

Being gentlemen and our hostel not having a big enough bus, we waited 30 minutes for the courtesy bus to drop the ladies from the greyhound off first. While waiting, I started to talk to 2 guys, Kilian (aka Kal) and Brad, a German and a Canadian, who ended up being in the 4x4 I was assigned to! 2 in a 100 chance, eh! Kal and I also ended up being at the same places further up the coast, another example of the backpacker community on the east coast being relatively small.

Arriving at Koalas, which is a large hostel/tours company, we were told of the amazing BBQ that was available. All you can eat for $8! I was there. First, though, we were briefed on what would happen, and bundled into our groups of 11 that would fit into one 4x4 like some brilliant Ikea furniture. They all seemed like nice people.

BBQ engaged and a few sausages nicked for lunch the following day, we started getting to know each other over some jugs of cocktails.

6am! Up before the sun had a chance, nailed down some brekkie and started loading up the van. After a barely comprehendible route briefing from 'Koru', a broad Mauri (?), and being told that "all beans must be given to me.... Ah HAHAH A! Only yankin' yas! Nah, I love me beans!" *Polite laughter...*

Finally on the road, we drove the 10km to the ferry, looking forward to 3 days of being in the middle of nowhere!

Fast forward 1/2 hour and we were bouncing along haphazardly along some of Fraser Island's numerous sand tracks, featuring big ruts, roots, a few dingoes and massive slopes. Sitting in the back, this was something quite scary. Not being in control of a vehicle that has your life at stake is an interesting experience to say the least. To make it even worse - the back left seat had no seatbelt (pfff.... safety), so everytime we hit a big rut or bumped over a root, that person was garunteed some airtime off of their seat. Brad and myself ended up making use of this, aiming to get an 'Air Hi-5' at somepoint, though I don't think this ever really worked out due to the suprising nature of the bumps.

For the first leg of the journey, the people in the back were in a constant state of fear for the cutlery that was jangling around in the storage overhead. Over a few particularly vicious bumps, a few knives decided to find a way out of the box, narrowly missing their masters on the way to the truck's floor. Being held back by a few bungee cords, the whole storage compartment also took a liking to bulging out like a fat person's fatty belly after every jerk. The look on the faces of those at the back was pure magic, though we secured a sleeping bag infront of the store to keep it in place a little bit more after a stop.

The first sight of the day was the magical lake McKenzie. Think of tropical beach paradise. What do you see? It was probably a carbon copy of McKenzie, though there weren't the palms. The water was the bluest water I've ever seen. It was like some one had seen the colour of a swimming pool and copied it but given it a beautiful darkening fade as the lake reached depth. The sand complimented this - it was possibly the whitest sand I had seen to that date (only to be later superceded by Whitehaven Beach on the Whitsunday Islands). Last amazing thing: The water was water table water - so you could drink it! Getting out of the 'piss zone' to ensure purity, I gobbled up a mouthful, being a bit weirded out that it didn't make me gag like sea water does.

Craig, a semi cockney guy, and I tried swimming as far down as we could - the water was so clear, but the bottom was invisibly far away over a sand shelf. Diving down and swimming for a while, I pushed off the bottom, having not seen anything apart from sand and water and a deep deep blue. It was a wierd sensation, not making the top from just a push off the bottom! I had to swim upwards for a couple of seconds, having lost momentum. We learned that lake McKenzie is really deep. We celebrated by opening the first beer of the day.

After the awesomeness of Lake McKenzie, our hopes were raised considerably - was this sand island all so incredible? Visiting Lake Birrabeen, apparently: no. It was so deserted, and the brown-stained water over the lowering light was quite a sight, but it wasn't a snip!

We went on to try and find our camp site, but didn't want to stay at the place we were recommended, because of the sign that said "Silence after 9pm". So in the dark, we tried to find somewhere on the beach. The beach was a great big highway, except there were mounds every now and then, no road markings and the constant threat of the sea (and us loosing the bond if they find salt water on the engine...). After debating where the hell we should go, we found a place just behind the foredunes. By now it was pitch black, witout the usual ambient light from cities or other traffic, so it was interesting navigating our way there. We were already about 2 hours after the last time we should have been on the beach - the surf was chasing the three 4x4s which had began to que up to get to this sacred camp site. Paranoid about the damage of salt water, it became a mad dash inbetween wave breaks to burn it up the dune. Every van must have done it about 4/5 times unsuccessfully due to the soft, uncompacted sand being very unforgiving to our purpose. Even with people pushing, it was hard. Someone mentioned the fact that these 2 tonne vehicles could easily roll back onto its helpers, which was confidence instilling.

(Its taking me ages to write all this, so I'm gonna do stuff in note form, and save time/$$$! Might write in full later...)

Camped in little place over dune like a mini festival!
Steak, bread, cheese and beer dinner
New drinking games
Moon bright as sun, when clouds disappeared.
Craig going to sleep like a buddah infront of fire.
Started to rain.
Woke up with wet feet, and all clothes wet, nice.
Lots of nasty drizzle for following day - difficult to dry stuff.

Driving on the beach highway @ 80kmph.
Dodging an airplane which had just landed.
Drove into 'civilisation' called Eurong and bought real food and a cuppa
More drizzle
Drove to the wreck of the Maheno, a big ship that got washed up ages ago, cool and rusted
Drive to Indian Head - one of the 2 rocky parts of fraser.
Passed a fishing competition with about 50 4x4s - sort of ruined the 'wilderness' and away from help idea of Fraser
Difficult for van to get up, so we walked.
As soon as we got to the top of indian head, it started chucking it. Awesome views before and a sheer drop 200ft down.
Took a piss on Indian Head, ha ha

Waiting for rain to stop. Walked other side of the Head to Champagne pools
Called so because the surf flows over the rocks into some pools and looks like, er, Champagne.
Too cold for me to swim + I had no other dry stuff due to rain.
Clams/Muscles on all over rocks that spat out water 10cm high

Drive to another campsite on the beach
Pasta time! Impossible to boil water for 11 people on a gas ring = mushy mushy pasta that was cold.
Family guy on iPod in a tent

Drove to Lake Wabbi and got lost on way there.
Big puddle that Kal accelerated into - bug rut at bottom that could be seen! I get launched off seat (in the seat without seatbelt) and land hard, jarring my back - hurt like hell. had pain running for a week after, though pain subsided initially!
Plus the 4x4 had poor door seals, so muddy water splashed in the back and got me soaked.
Wabbi: green lake being encroached on by a big sand dune.
Set to disappear in 5 years!
big catfish in green water, birds of prey above
Running into waters down steep dune then rolly pollies!

Drive back to ferryport.
1.5hrs early :-/ missed out on a couple of places
Back on land - had to clean everything! As if it was ours and they were doing us a favour hiring it to us. Cups missing - paid $6 PER CUP!! As if.

Night at koalas - put in a mini apartment with rest of team, good idea.
Go out for a meal. Cheap irish restruant's kitchen shut. Go to italian. Had a small lasagne.
Trouble! Slow, stuttered service - Thea's pasta came with meat, very late. Manager said it was mushroom and she was lying! Service not good - manager blames us for coming in! Blah blah arguments, some people not being happy and not paying (I did, in full...), manager saying in the end- "Oh, F- you, then!" grabbing the cash we put down and storming off.
Downer on night! Couple of horse races in hostel then bed.

Chilling on Hervey Bay beach nxt day before greyhound to 1770! Beach very average but sheltered - odd not having big waves!

I can see a Rainbow (Beach)

2008-06-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

I had a few days before my prebooked Fraser Island adventure, so Ollie and myself boarded the ever faithfull Greyhound to Rainbow Beach, a veeery small town to the south of Fraser. Attracted by it's 'colourful' name, we rocked up at Pippies Beach House, a hostel which wasn't actually on the beach. It had a pool though.

What a nice little place! We were checked into room 3 - the Princess Room, which was decorated in a lovely pastel pink and lots of fairy/princess stickers! "How delightful", I exclaimed. However beautiful the room was, we only had one night at Rainbow, so we got exploring.

After a beast-wich for lunch (seafood for me), we set off to the namesake beach. It wasn't really the best beach ever, with a large pool of brown looking water behind the foredune, which halved the useable area. There were also 4x4s booming up and down the beach to get to a prime fishing spot at the head land 3km away, so we could never relax when walking on the beach for fear of the Chelsea Tractor's roo bars picking us up.

After a time of walking, we got to a large sand dune on top of a 10ft cliff. I'd read a little bit about a place called the Carlos Sandblow, and thought it was this. It was big, at about 50m high, but nothing amazing. Never the less, we took a nearby exit point to try and get to the top and run down, as boys should do. 30mins later, we thought we might not quite be on the trail for it, but we persisted. Coming across a sign for the Sandblow, the first dune was obviously not what we were looking for. another 1km through national park territory and past a funky looking 3 wheeled motorbike/skidoo thing, we came across the most amazing sight I'd seen probably all trip.

What faced us was about 500m of sand from where the trees ended and others started on the other side. This sand stretched from the right of this mountain to the cliffs by the beach on the left, though we couldn't see the beach. It looked like a small mountain had just been scooped out and uncovered some sand. It was the biggest expanse of sand I'd ever seen, all of it smoothed out into a Pringle shape.

Going to the left towards the sea, we discovered the reason for the local name of Rainbow - kicking the sand, a layer of chalk dust was uncovered. The cliffs below were distinctly banded in 3/4 different colours, cool, but no Hunstanton beach! Back to the Sandblow, we found some prime dune jumping sites, having expended our own weight in water climbing up the sand dune. A few sweeeet airs later and sand in the eyes, we went to the far right side of the dune, where the Sandblow was swallowing up vegetation at a rate of 3m+ a year. It was so silent, so we basked in the sun and windfree area for a goooood 30mins, probably thinking about what was for dinner later.

Walking back, we met a load of people who were going to the Sandblow for the sunset and the full moon. It would have been very cold, though, so we declined in out shorts and teeshirts.

That night we watched Transformers, which is still a brilliant film and met some people from our set of rooms.

The next morning, I did my thing (walking/exploring til I can't be bothered anymore) and saw the rainbow cliffs from the beach while Ollie sunbathed. Pretty uneventful apart from climbing a sand pile at the base of the cliffs and getting scared that I'd unstabilise them and find a big piece of sandstone bearing down on me. And I rediscovered Pink Floyds brilliance.

For only a short visit, Rainbow beach was a blast; a little nugget of enjoyment that not many other people visited, which is always a good thing when swapping travelling stories with people who've been doing EXACTLY the same thing as you.

"To Hervey Bay and Fraser Island, Oliver!" I exclaimed.

Noosa on the Sunshine coast

2008-06-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

Getting into Noosa on ye olde Greyhound (all of which have a number plate which says 'XXX DOG'!), Basil, Eric, Ollie and I made ourselves at home. Ollie and I got a nice 4 share dorm, which is always good.

Attending a meet and greet sort of affair, I started talking to a late-middle aged Texan guy who became some one to avoid over the proceeding days. I can't remember his name, it may have been Ted, it's almost irrelevant, but he turned out to be running away from the US because they were trying to draft him and his 'superior jet engine engineering skills'. Unfortunately he was the sort of guy who would keep talking, however many times you drop hints to end the conversation. After a sub-par introductory meet and making a new acquaintance in the common room, we set about seeing the town in dark.

It was a nice place, and evidently quite a prestigious area for the richer Ozzies - the high street was filled with haute cuisineries, expensive wine shops and boutiques of many shapes and sizes. We fitted in between Hugo Boss and a champagne shop at an Ice cream shop. Buy One Get One Free on some really nice 'screams helped us get into the feel of the place, for sure.

Back at the hostel, which was a beautiful listed early 1900s wooden building, we met some of E and B's dorm room mates that we ended up hanging out with a lot, who had some of the 14 beds in the 'Conference Centre' room, a separate out house supported over some awesome looking Jungle Book-like scenery. I saw a bush turkey trying to rest on a branch, which was quite funny, in the middle of this mini forest. They're big old animals which don't really have the gift of delicacy or agility, more suited to chicken (and turkey...) like behaviour.

We started making some food, when I was trapped by Texas; he was standing at the entrance to the hostel; I needed to go in past him to get to my room! Cornered on the ramp leading to the reception, we/he started talking about how we should all be microwaving clothes because chips are being put in our clothes to monitor us and our movements. And how we should always argue against what we're being asked to pay - 'why should we pay what they want?' We should be being charged $7 a night here, not $27. Its because of the taxes and all of the hostels ganging up on us, of course. He proceeded to tell me that the reason I wasn't totally buying his theories was that I was naive! And stupid!! I would someday realise what he was saying. I found that a little bit insulting, naturally, but he was still talking!! Ollie walked by me, smiling. And didn't rescue me from this fat American.

Eventually I managed to walk away, still saying 'yeah, sure' and 'oh, right' to everything he said, until I was out of sight. Score! Freedom! My pasta was mushy, though.

I was looking forward to a 3 day 2 night kayaking trip in the Noosa Everglades to the north I got free in Sydney for booking 2 things with them. Phoning up the company, I was informed that I'd have to wait 15 days to get on the trip! Stuff that! It might have been free, but they should really get some more Kayaks if there was this wait in the off season.

The following day we hit the beach. I think this was one of the first tropical-ish beaches I went to - clear waters, cool fish, tropical trees bordering the beach, magical green headlands sticking out to the south/east and bright sand that makes a funny squeaking sound when you scuff your feet. After a few false alarms of big rain drops and grey looking clouds, we started beaching properly. Going for a swim in the clearest waters so far, we started seeing fish swimming not 2 feet away from us! These were about 10/15 cm long and striped. Staying still in the shallows for long enough, these fish started swimming around us and brushing against our legs, as if it was fashionable. They had amassed to a shoal of at least 30 fish by the time we started trying to catch the slow moving (fast running) critters. I touched a couple, but they're instinctive and sensitive, so this was an effort.

Going out after chilling out in the (Harry Potter(?!)) Convention Centre, which had a piano, we walked the 15 minute walk to Noosa Heads, the paupers part of the Noosa area. Entering the first discotheque, a place attached to a hostel called Koalas, I almost got punched. Apparently I was standing in front of some girl's way, and her boy/friend didn't like that, so I get shoved aside by some unseen force. Turning to face the force, I found a cropped hair, gold necklace wearing guy who was saying something unhearable over the music. As if it was alright, he patted me on the shoulder and placed his other hand around my neck. Not forcefully, but the body language was pretty obvious. Wierdo. I'm not exactly the person to go 'What you want mate??', but there were loads of other people in the club of a similar demographic. By this time we'd realised it was a crap place and it was shutting up anyways. We went home, because that type of people would be at the next place, too, and none of us were really feeling it anyway.

The next day we went to Sunshine Beach, a town and beach a bus ride away, with Tommi, Andy and Izzie, Eric and Basil's roomies.

What a cool beach! Big old waves and water that got deep enough for nice waves only a 5 metres from the shore. Renting a couple of surfboards from the local surf shop, I tried surfing for the last time in Australia. It was largely unsuccessful aside from a couple of waves; trying to body surf the fairly large waves was creating more success. Knackered and with bruised shins and stories of pointed boards flying past heads, we returned the boards and relaxed on the beach which must have been 5 miles long and largely uninhabited. What to do?? We thought. Dig a hole! So we did, over a metre quarter deep and bean shaped, it was a good hole. I think we discovered oil.

Noosa National park was on the list of things to do. Ollie and myself made a day of the large nature reserve, and walked it the following day. It featured brilliant rocky little coves inaccessible by man, clearer waters than legally allowed and some amazing wildlife that just jumped out at you, in some cases. I saw a huge goana on one of the tracks - it was a 2 ft black and yellow lizard that looked like a croc without the scales. It jumped off the path, which made us see it, and just slowly walked back to the bush, gifting us a good look at him. We also saw a big turtle in one of the coves, just swimming about solo, looking for chow.

After walking for a few hours, we came across another big beach (just another soft sanded, warm watered one). After sitting down and relaxing for a few minutes, we saw a man in the mid distance walking the shore. I thought he must be wearing a beige set of shorts because... Coming closer, he turned out to be starkers. Yes, we'd stumbled across the only nudist beach for hundreds of kilometres either side of us.

"Crikey, Its gonna be a big day!" I said the following morning. Ollie and myself were off to the famous Australia Zoo, aka Steve Irwin's Zoo. It was blooming cold at 6.30am when we left - I think I was on the verge of illness, so I wrapped up in shorts, 2 t-shirts and a beenie. After boarding the huge shuttle bus to the zoo and watching a (frankly depressing) video about Stevo and what he's done, we arrived at the zoo, which is in the middle of blooming no where! Apparently there are ambitions to expand the zoo from its current 72ha to 1000ha. Wow, that's a lot of animals.

The current amount of animals was amazing for one day. After a pose with a bronze Irwin statue, we watched some cool otters chasing each other around and preempting their feeder/demonstrator's movements. They've escaped before, apparently, using team skills to make a branch-bridge to leap out of their enclosure at night and steal other animals' food, jumping back before dawn. The only way the zoo keepers found this out was the poo they left around. Clever, eh?

The highlight of the whole zoo is the "Crocoseum" a 5000 capacity arena with display space for birds, snakes and crocs in the middle. The keepers were getting the crowd excited. "Shout if you're from England!!!.... Canada!!!.... Australia!" after which one man shouted "....INDIA!!!" in a moment of quiet. Brilliant timing. After the birds screeched around at head height and the snakes did not much, the keepers coaxed a croc through the water and made it jump high in the air for the food he was dangling. Quite a good spectacle, to be sure.

Other highlights included some fat wombats that did nothing, and got picked up like big teddy bears by the keepers, seeing a leopard being taken for a walk, tiger cubs playing with the filter cover from their pool and feeding an elephant. Their trunks are strangely dry and muscular yet delicate.

There was a heavy emphasis on Steve and the Irwin family. A great wall of condolence and things devoted to steve was under the Crocoseum, which was sad. The amount of promo for the remaining family was weird, to the extent that their 10 year old daughter had a dance/exercise video out that had clips being played on the big screen in the Crocoseum. That kid's going to grow up messed up.

Noosa is a cool place that not everyone visits; its good to get away from backpackery places, and chillax after a big city. We ended up staying there for 6 nights or something at the end of which we were ready to move on, to the Fraser Coast! Land of sand, 4x4 trucks and baby-eating dingos.

Brissy Brissy Brisbane

2008-05-30T00:02:00.000-07:00

Its always quite cool heading into a Big City that you've heard and started thinking about from a thousand kilometres down the coast, you arrive and see the suburbs mounting up and getting more and more less randomly dotted and sparsely placed. It means you get to the centre to see the highrises and massive scaled buildings almost prepared! I remeber the same sort of thing happening when I got to Sydney and me being almost nervous of what there was, what I'd see and who I'd meet; the sheer scale of a big citymakes it quite an intimidating place to enter and get chucked into the middle.

Of course a quick look at the map familiarises yourself with the layout of such a place and disapates any feeling of being out of your depth, and you can start enjoying the place.

An old travelling face from Byron, Jack was there waiting for us - he was in the area and bored, aparently. After hitching a ride back to our hostel on the courtesy mini-bus, we ventured out and about, getting our bearings and what not, getting a general image of the place. Just wandering.

My remaining image of Brisbane is that of a small metropolitan Sydney combined with the aged buildings seen in London and some of the artiness of Melbourne. It seemed to be a place I could love, eventually.

Jack suggested we walk to 'the Beach'. Alright I thought, this could be a suprise, what with Brisbane being at least 20km from the sea, and the Brisbane River being similar to the Thames in look and size.

15 mins later and we were at a tiny man made beach which ran into a 20m kidney shaped swimming pool that it continuially surrounded. This was the beach for 1.8m people. Niiiiice. Never went in there for a dip, unsuprisingly.

Our hostel, 'Bunk' was the nicest big hostel I'd been in. everyone had a partition for a little bit of brivacy in bed as well as a light, shelf and plug socket. Every room, which housed 8 people, had a separate loo and shower, too. Every floor was diferently designed with a different theme - we we level 3 - Fire, which was dressed in reds and A level - standard paintings and art.

Downstairs was a bar that we got free entry into and cheap Jugs of beer ($8 for 1125ml - about 2 quid for a pint) which was an easy way to buy a round. Also had a pool table (free with the magic cotton bud coin slot jiggle...), heaters and a funky name - Birdee Num Nums. I think I only ever went here - everywhere else was charging actual money to get in. Being 'the' entertainment district, Fortitude Valley (strange, as it was on a hill), this was a bit disapointing.

Got my mobile phone back the next day from the Post Restante, finally. I'd been without it for at least a month, and I didn't miss it one bit. When I'd torn it out of the 4 layers of packaging (the number of places its had been chasing me through), and immediately felt it's wieght in my pocket - I'd survived without for a month, now it was weighing me down!! It did just what Facebook and Phoneboxes did, only faster and more expensive.

Lea ze German from Port Macquarie and Byron suggested this a good hostel (she was cleaning the kitchen at night for free accomodation), so we met up with her in the reception the next day to go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which our nice hostel kindly drove us to (but not back).

Pretty cool place, nice and 'hands on' - I managed to poke a koala (very soft yet muscular), taunt 3 pigs (Bacon bacon bacon!!), and harass kangaroos that really couldn't care about the whole thing. There was also a cow in a pen labelled "WARNING: These pigs may bite." Funny also becuse it was a dozy little Cow-let (bigger than a calf, yet smaller than a real cow) that wouldn't hurt anything.

Doing some budgetting later, I realised I reeaaaaally don't have to work in Oz! WOOO! So long as I keep on the homecooked pasta and keep beer to a near minimum I can still actually afford to do cool stuff and maybe go home with some money to keep for whatever Uni needs.

I had also come to the point where I had only 2 months left in Oz. Looking back its hard to see where all the time's gone, but think logically and I can see it's just cuz I've been doing so many cool things and having such a brilliant time. To do this trip has easily been the best decision of my life, and I bet I'll come back a right backpacker bore - "...Yeah, when I was trekking the mountains of the Great Dividing range west of Sydney..." - I need to remember that not everyone reeeeeally wants to hear everything I've done. Its all about the anecdotes, I suppose. They're interesting, mostly.

Back to reality, Oliver and me wanted to go to see an Ozzie Rules Footy match. Aparently they weren't in season, so we made do with a Rugby Union game (I think it's Union... it had scrums in it...???).

After getting a bus outside our hostel that handily dropped us about 100 metres from the Suncorp Stadium, we got our tickets and I thought I was over dressed in the only shirt I had. My excuse is that it was the only thing I had to wear, which was true, I've got about 2 weeks of clothes (5 t's?) and I was on day 12 of the cycle.

Wow, how much lights and big TVs and stuff do they need? It was quite a sight, having never been to a stadium for a sporting event, only for music, which is a different lighting set up and totally different vibe altogether.

After foolishly saying 'who are the All Blacks' a bit too loudly and being shusshhhhed by Ollie, the game kicked off. The first thing I noticed was the lack of comentary! HAving only seen these sort of large scale sport matches on TV, I expected a lofty voice to be there, but no! I had to figure out what the hell was going on all by my self with Ollie.

My team were winning throughout 70 of the 80 minuites - we'd Rock-Paper-Scissored for it, though I won, my team lost in the last 10 mins; 28 to 21 or something. One hilight of the match was a little guy on a small quadbike burning it inbetween the players everytime 'The Queensland Reds' scored against 'The Crusaders' from NZ. It was just so random and seemingly unrelated to the game; this green kid with a company name plastered to a flag on the back going around at 15mph. The Reds weren't green, so it was an odd colour choice.

I got into it by the end - I reckon I'd get it if I watched another match. It was cooool! Not bad seats for $33, either.

We walked it back to the hostel after the match because the public transport was rammed. Only took us 15mins 'n all.

We went around the usual sights with Matheus, our friendly yet wierd German room mate, who stood at 6'7" tall, making Ollie (6'4") and myself seem miniscule. He wasn't lanky either, and weighed 125kgs, aparently!! He was an odd guy - his weight came in useful in Sydney when he became a horse trainer - breaking in young horses and training them. He also had the job of collecting horse semen, too, which he said was very dangerous, when 'ze man iz in ze heet of ze mooment and he's waving it allll over ze place - you gahta get him off the girl and get his juices man!' Niiiice. He also had a full hunting lisence, about 10 guns and really liked shotguns. And he;d killed a 5ft, 150kg pig with his knife. Interesting guy, but didn't really understand subtletly - openly gawking at good looking ladies as they walked by, peeking through the seat back and all. Oh yeah, he was also coughing because he'd inhaled salt water at 30m on his Advanced Diving PADI course. The prescribed drugs caused him to sleep most of the day and wake up either on a high or massively stoned; you could put speakers by his sleeping head and he wouldn't have woken up.

On one of the last nights, we won a free meal for having the best name in a quiz that we lost. Rather we were the only ones to scream our team's name (McLovin - a reference to the film 'Super Bad' which I'd seen before, and also given that to Ollie on our Nimbin tour as a surname before I knew it was Parke). It was very unsatisfying, spliting a free meal 2 ways; it was a nice rice and beef curry while it lasted though.

Brisbane as a whole was a cool place, though it didn't really have much going for it from a tourist's point of view. Recon I could live there though, its a more chilled out place than other cities I'd been to.

After 2 stops in larger places, I was looking forward to the next stop of Noosa - a small town of only backpackers and millionnaires; an interesting combo!

Surfer's Paradise - Spain with Kangaroos on the Sunshine Coast

2008-05-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

I thought we arrived at Surfer's about an hour before we were at the bus depot. But apparently, it was another city that was just attached to Surfer's in one long, long line of coastal high rise development.

Sitting on Surfer's Paradise beach later on, I could see how far the development stretched - basically the length to the distant headland to the south and probably beyond (seeing the dark grey of the mini map in my Oz guide book) to a total of about 35km. It's quite weird, having come from an array of smaller locations where most of the headlands were reserved as national parks.

Even weirder, come 2.30pm, the sun started casting shadows on the beach, making it a little nippy. Which planner thought of putting the hostels and buildings a street away from the beach?? Silly silly.

Having said this, the beach was very cool; a squeaker underfoot with some decent looking waves at some points.

Oliver and I met up with a couple I'd met in Bellingen then Byron - Kevin and Camilla - who had been sold a bar crawl for that night for $15 each (RRP $60?!??!), which would get us into a load of places for free with a free drink at each place and food; sounded like good value!

Having recouped at the hostel (which had an en suite, oo la la. No real door, just what looked like 1/2 a stable door in the middle of the frame to divide the dorm and loo/shower), we headed out to the big lights of the Sunshine Coast capital 10 minutes down the road.

Meeting outside our first destination, a strip club called Showgirls, at 5pm, we started the crawl. But being 5pm - there wasn't really any vibe or any of the Showgirls the club was named after. Taking our free drink, mine a schooner of Carlton, we sat down and commented on how weird a place it is, considering everyone was stone cold sober.

An hour later and a handful of pizza, we moved on to loads (well, 5?) of other places, including a place called Bedroom that was meant to be famous and popular for international DJs to play at, a strictly R&B club (woo) and a bowling alley, where we were going to play a free game! Or we would have, if there were half the people and double the time. "Ah, mate, youse should have pushed in!" According to the organiser. Thanks.

A few clubs, Vodka Sunrises (mmmmn!) and familiar faces later, we went home, via a discount shop that was common all around Oz. The shop played a loop of a guy spouting stuff about how you'll never see prices this low again and stuff, and how they were closing down. All of this was done in a voice that sounded like a suppressed shout, giving him a near desperate edge. Bought a pink frisbee for $2.50, probably on account of recently loosing the Aerobie.

After watching a little bit of Little Britain on the 14" TV in our room, a lot of which isn't really funny anymore to my ears, we turned in.

The next day, after a scrumptious burnt egg on toast with cheese brekkie, with tea, we headed for the beach, body board in (my) hand. The beach was shadow free for 4/5 more hours, so we wanted to make good use of it!

New (very manly) sarong placed down, I scoped out the surf, which had disappeared overnight. Any surf that there was was just dumping on the shore anyway. Bored of just lying there like a corpse when it was too bright to read and I had too much energy, I decided on a walk - informing my comrade that I'd be back in 10. I spied on a map an inlet for boats and stuff a day or so before and spied the adjoining boulder wall in the distance to the north.

2 hours later, I arrived at my destination, having been too determined and proud to give up without getting there. After all, it must only be another 10 mins away, max? The problem of flat beaches is the lack of perspective... it was probably 4km, by the time I got there, without shoes or a T-shirt or money or a phone. Feet hurting, I made it out to the boulder groyne that jutted out into the sea by 100m (I thought it was probably 20m at base camp, hence thinking it was closer, perhaps?), had a look around, at the sea, and made it back.

Why not hitchhike?! I thought, it couldn't be that difficult, and I couldn't be bothered to walk an extra 4km back. Walking over gravel, asphalt and grit, I reached a car park for this area. Walking along what I thought was the main drag back to Surfer's, I started thumbing for a lift. 100m and about 15 cars, plenty of them near empty, later, I came to a fork in the road which veered away from the beach - walk on the softer sand or hold out for a lift with increasingly worn heels. To the beach, I confessed internally, was probably the best way - a half naked, incredibly muscular 6'1" strange guy probably isn't the first person anyone would want in their car.

Getting back with my heels hurting a wee bit, I sat down to Ollie asking where the hell I'd been, he was sick with worry and sent search parties out and everything.

We had a $10 steak that night; its always good to have a 'real' meal every now and then, even though, with extras, it came to $16.50. Still, a whole meal that costs 8 quid ain't bad.

Booking up my Greyhound for the following morning and accommodation in Brisbane, I sat down in front of the big-old rear projection TV (that undoubtedly was THE biggest thing, 5 years ago) to watch the last 5 minutes of Fight Club. Don't think I've ever seen it all! Should do. One for the list.

Surfer's Paradise had a good night life, nice restaurants and stuff, but high-rise, overdeveloped Spain isn't what I came to Oz for! Glad I'd discovered that myself, though.

Byron Bay, mini paradise and the Nimbin Mardi Grass

2008-05-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

On the journey to Byron, the driver pointed out a load of huge Ozzie icons, including a Big Prawn and a Big Banana. Its a strange phenomenon that the Ozzies love, huge kisch objects.

I met up on the Greyhound some people I'd already met in Newcastle, which was cool. I tried to get into the same place they were at, but there was no room at the inn (or YHA). So off to Holiday Village I went, the place where you had to rent your utensils for $6 and they didn't provide sheets -stubbornly I didn't want to pay the $2 cleaning charge, so I went cold for a few nights, piling on all of my warm clothing.

Arriving at 10pm and a few minutes before the whole place shut up for the night (nice and early to encourage you to go and spend money at the clubs around the area) and much too late to try and say hello to anyone that had been drinking, so I went for a week on the beach 500m away. Watching the small billowing waves 15m away in the dark, I could see how the waves can be compared to white horses - the whitening water racing left or right looked a little like a race horse!

The sand was strangely cold, and made a strange squeeking sound when you scuffed your feet along it. I later learned (or believed, it could just be a guess) that the temperature and sound was due to the purity of the sand. The following day I saw that it was truly white, pure and soft sand, and the Bay was one of the best beaches I've been to so far.

Further up the beach were a load of sand balls surrounding holes. Funnel webs!! I thought, getting excited. Poking around to agitate the beast, I soon discovered that it was just tiny little crabs! Looking exactly like the sandballs they made, these little critters were all over the hard sand areas.

I met up with the Port Macquarie crew (Jack, Katey and Lea) later on and played frisbee until it was too dark, which was cool. Being a popular kid around town by now, I met up with my Newcastle buddies at the YHA for a while after some fantastic pasta, tomato paste and 'Tasty' Cheese, and met Ollie, who'd I'd end up travelling with for a while. I thought he was half black and looked a little bit like John Tickle for Big Brother a few years ago, but aparently he just tans well. Oh yeah, don't drink wine with a drinking game then have a cup of tea. Not good. Milk curdles! Feeling a little bit ill, I went beddy bies at 10.30. Which meant I could get up nice and early the following day and do a full day of fun stuff! I tried surfing, borrowing a free surfboard, but the waves were veeeery small. Plus the board didn't have any wax where you need it, so upon trying to stand up, I often when flailing. I gave up in the end and just sunbathed.

The Bar across from my Hostel, called Cheeky Monkey's, had a wet T-Shirt competition, where normal girls became different people in order to win $300. One of the people I'd met in the YHA won. It was a wierd event! Only cost $1 to get in, so it was all good. After the event, the club night started, where punters had to dance on the tables, due to the lack of real dance floor! Again, a little bit strange!

Byron Bay is famous not only for being Byron Bay, but for being the most easterly point in Australia. I took a walk up to this and the lighthouse, which was deceptively far away
(no one tells you that there's another bay between byron headland and the lighthouse! Walking with Ollie, Jack and Luke, the latter 2 who from Oakham (and have heard of Market Deeping!), we all found it a challenge. Luke and myself also decided to have a nachos night, which was awesome and the heaviest meal my belly has had so far.

That night was full of card games, shouting, swearing and sweat - mostly created through a card game I'd picked up from the Canadians in Port Macquarie: Horse Racing! A game of betting, drinking, winning and loosing, we had about 15 people screaming for their Ace to win. I, as the commentator had my work cut out keeping the punters orderly.

Following this, a little bit of beer bottle Jenga was played and the infamous Ring of fire (Aka Kings) back in someones room once we'd been turfed out at Curfew time. Goood times.

The Following Day...

Up bright and early! Oliver and myself had a bus to catch to the Nimbin "Mardi Grass" Festival, a big old hippy event where we 'all' protest against the prohibition of marijuana. After getting on the "Happy Bus", we embarked on the 1.5 hour journey to the remote town with a population of 320, made famous for being Oz's weed capital. The manager of the tour bus, a pasty 30 something year old with dreds and a penchant for non-PC jokes did what he did best and made us laugh nervously and heartily before handing over to the driver who just shook his head and appologised.

We were stopped at a Police checkpoint and sniffer dogs came on the bus, cute as anything. Nothing was found, unsurprisingly, though I was slightly worried that they'd find my stash of Anti-histamines, paracetamol and adrenaline. I could see the stoners getting the most worried about a little golden lab I've ever seen anyone do.

Getting into Nimbin, which reminded me initially of a Devonshire village in 'the hills', we were dropped off and started wandering to see what was going on, too see if we could find a programme or something that a normal festival would publish. But alas! They hadn't bothered with that.

Infact, there wasn't much going on beyond street musicians, hippy stalls selling stuff that veery few people would buy (including Tie-dye tees, rasta hats and hemp cloth clothing), and a couple of competitions (Bong Throwing and Spliff Rolling competitions, anyone?). Not really being into the whole getting stoned thing, we just wandered for a while longer and passed a few more interesting characters. One guy, who must have been 40+, was trying to raise money for the local skatepark's repairs by doing handstands on 2 skateboards, which was very impressive to say the least. There were also women dressed in green Fairy outfits wandering around. Asking someone what the deal was with these chicks, I found out that they were indeed Green Faeries, who could sell you 'special' Cookies. Why these ladies weren't pulled off of the street by the relatively large police (or Poo-Lice, as the hippies say) presence, I don't know.

After a cuppa in a cafe overlooking some awesome views of the Mid-east coast hinterland, we wandered back to the town, to find a huge mass of people. Some guy on a campervan started megaphoning stuff about why weed should be legalised and how the cops are crap and how the world would be better with legal weed and stuff like that, which I found quite entertaining.

As if to proove how serious this was, there followed a procession of numerous 'combis' (after a guy in a green outfit walked with his dog down the middle of the road with a plaque saying something political) - the generic term for Campervans, I think. Trying to count them, the comentator soon got lost and decided on a random final number of combis. An encouraging reason to legalise marijuana!

Back to Byron the longway (someone got killed in a motor accident on the main route), we got back to normality and reflected on how annoying some of the 'hardcore' hippies can be - I mean they're trying to be all unique and back to nature, but they all wear the same thing and smoke; hows that good for the planet?! Geez I'm getting old and moaney.

Bed nice and early again, we had Zorbing to look forward to the following day!

Zorbing is a very new sport which is only available at 2 places in Oz - the one we (Me and Ollie) were going to do it at was the longer one, aparently, with "16 rolls".

Getting picked up an hour late due to the driver's co-worker being pissed from the night before, we drove to a big hill in 15 mins from Byron, to be greeted by a 12 foot clear plastic ball! Volunteering to go first, I strapped in on the inside of the ball. It reminded me of some of the slightly claustrophobic play parts in Big Sky, the kids adventure place, being all plastic and having tight entrances/exits. Being able to see the field ahead of me, I was looking forward to being shoved off of the platform and tumbling 200m or more down a big field! And I started moving! My instincts first told me that I was going to fall, but obviously I didn't, instead I saw light, dark, blue, green and experienced some wierd G-forces. Getting faster, I could feel a sort of force that felt like I could have stuck to the inside withotu the straps, it was quite cool and the feeling of Up/Down had disapeared, my sensed focusing more on the alternating and increasingly blurry green/blues. Feeling myself slowing, I realised I was on the flat at the bottom. hanging like a fly in a web of strapping, I was hanging for a second before the ball made its last movements and I came to rest. In the boggy bit full of deep brown muddy liquid. Unstrapping myself and hamster balling around while Mr Man came to pick me and the ball up, I was looking forward to the next err.... 'Zorb'.

But no! Aparently we only got one go each... Oh well. Watching everyone else go with varying degrees of screams, whoops and laughs, I got roped into the job of the guy that was passed out at home for some reason. Probably thought I'd get a courtesy Zorb, but there was no return for my generosity at all.

Back to Byron, I think we just chilled out on the beach or went for a body surf or something.

The next day we got up at 8am to try and see early morning mantarays, dolphins and fish shoals - but by the time we'd walked to the lookout some 1.5km away, we only saw dolphins in the distance. Still pretty cool, and I'll see much better sights at the Great Barrier reef. More beach that day, oh yeah, I saw the most awesomest sunset ever, backed by people with didgeridoos doing the didging very well even with some sort of underlying pulse going on! There were so many subtleties of colour on the clouds that my white balance on my camera couldn't cope with it. Something just for the memory, I think!

The next day me and Oliver, my new travel bro, travelled to Surfer's Paradise, which we'd heard many tales of high rise hell about. Well I wanted to make up my own mind! So I went there.

Bellingen, the place to chillax

2008-05-12T18:21:00.001-07:00

Bellingen was a small town of about 3000 people off of the main Eastern Coast drag - thus not many people go there. There was only one hostel, a YHA, and I'd only heard of this place through a receptionist in Newcastle! It turned out to be a total change from the more frenzied, activity focused places I'd been (and am going to).

Set into the hillside on the very outskirts of 'Bello', the first sign I got was of the common room/area, which was set over a view of rolling grassy hills, cows, a river and swooshing trees. The actual common room was cool, too - it had a ping pong table! Plus a cat called "Puss Puss", a guitar and cool people. Thats the best thing about smaller hostels - they're always so much more sociable!

That night I witnessed a few 1000 fruitbats fly out of their roosting trees. Quite a sight at sunset, though no pictures came out. The noise they make! Blimey, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were all in pain!

Went to a pub across the road from the hostel to see a covers band, 'Groove Robbers' (!!), play an array of very old skool music quite well, all with an impeccible gay 70's/80's rock icon's image. With the vast majority of the atendees there being above the 40 mark, it was interesting to see how rude they think they can be! Pushing to the front, spilling drinks (without even looking sorry) and generally being very un-British and uncouth; are the modern day rock lovers a more polite bunch? Hmmm...

The following day I woke up bright and early with no plans whatsoever, which is a refreshing thing to do. Decided over some brekkie (egg from the chooks in the garden n toast) to go tubing down the river and to the rope swing, some 3m above the river.

I don't think I've ever done a rope swing before, but seeing water below you that you don't know where the bottom is is quite a good buzz! One of the girls I was with nearly backed out too late and came within a foot of hitting the river bank again on the swing back. Turns out that the river must have been at least 3 metres deep, because none of us felt the bottom! Even when you torpedoed it down.

After getting thoroughly cold and wet, we hopped in some tractor tyre innertubes and started serenely floating down the river. But look out! Rapids ahead!! With various sticks and ominous looking objects poking out of the water or just below, 110% of my tubing skills were used.

Floating gently down the river after that is a brillant experience, though for somereason I was designated the least inflated tube (despite me being the heaviest) and the one with a passion for instability. After drying off and watching some local kids jump off a ramp into the river on a bike, Alex ze German, Leah the Essex girl and I retired for a cup of tea.

Wandering around the town during the afternoon, I decided that Bellingen was the place to grow up!! Its small, attractive and the sort of place that everyone knows everyone.

The last night was a strange one - there was only 3 paying customers in the Hostel - me, an Australian motorbike adventurer called Reuben and a Japanese guy called Moto who couldn't speak much english. A few times there was absolutely no understanding in anyway I said something, resulting in an awkward moment where we were just blankly staring at each other.

A mighty walk followed on the next day, up to the top of a hill that overlooks the town. Half way up the 45 degree incline, I heard tones of bongo - upon reaching the top was a bearded fellow looking out over the valley with the instrument. Nice and spirtitual or just fun! He was sitting on a great big 4x4, which sort of damaged the hippy back to nature idea.

After taking in the scene, I walked the longer, more gentle decline back to town, seeing huge 20m Eucalyptus trees that shot straight up to the canopy like a massive natural barcode.

Getting back, I embarked on the free shuttle bus to catch my Greyhound to the backpacker Mecca of Byron Bay...

Port Macquarie, a supposedly nice place.

2008-05-10T22:15:00.000-07:00

I say supposedly, becuase it was during my 4 night tenure here that it rained the hardest and fiercest! On the 2nd night I was woken up by the rain slamming its self against the roof of the hostel.

The hostel nigh on empty, too, with about 5 people there on one night. This did mean that I became good mates with some of those people, including one of the fruitiest characters I've met so far - Fred. This man had sold his house, divorced his wife and put normal life on hold so that he could travel around Austrlia 'Until I'm 65' - about 15 years of travel. He trained his son to fish and hunt and kill his own food, and we have exactly the same camera! He used to be called a 'wog', on account of his (at best mediterranian) tan at school in Malta and wasn't let into a post office in West Australia because he looked like an Iraqi. He told me how to get free pool (stick 2 5cent pieces together and whack them in the 2 dollar slot and youse saved Dollar 90!), so I showed him how to poke the washing machine system just right to save $3/$4 in return. There's way too many Fred stories to list here. Oh yeah, Fred taught me how to make pumpkin soup, which is well nice.

Another commendable character was Lea, the German who had hitch-hiked her way all up the east coast (about 2000km). After Port Macquarie, she managed to get a lift further up the coast on a Caramaran with a timber millionaire.

So on the second day, I decided I'd go on a mega walk, no matter what the weather. And of course it rained all day, though my ultra fashionable pac-a-mac kept me and my bag (which was stowed under the coat like the hunchback of Notre-Dame) bone dry. I could see the potential for this place being awesome on a dry day - there's loads of small beaches that you could easily find no one else on. Plus the surf was quite good, though I didn't really fancy going for a dip when I couldn't feel my hands.

By the time my photocopied map had disintegrated in the wet, I fancied some chow, so I hit up a fish n chip shop staffed by obese people. Sure enough, the chip portion size was copious!

Fuelled up and ready to rock, I started wandering out of town. Seeing a sign for a Koala Sanctuary, I decided I'd find a shortcut to it, for fun. Through branches, spiders, dog poo and backgardens I adventured, keeping a low profile so the enemy didn't spot me (and so that I didn't bump into head-height spiderwebs and have the paranoia of a great big hairy arachnid sneaking its way around me).

Finding the Sanctuary, I spent a while looking at the cold masupials with their various ailments. A lot of them had Clamydia; aparently most koalas have it! Some were blinded by bushfires, with patchy fur, which would have tugged on the heart strings of the hardiest man.

The following day was ANZAC day - where the whole of Oz has a public holiday, celebrating/commemorating their defeat against the Turks in WW2. Aparently it was bad British intel that sent them to the wrong place, so fleets of naval units were sunk before they even got close to the cliffs.

In modern days, ANZAC day is a good party and a chance to play (legally) the outlawed gambling game of '2 up'. I watched about 50 men get excited about 3 coins being thrown in the air and betting sometimes $100 on the totally random and equally chanced outcome. At the same pub there was a free BBQ, so we helped our selves to that happily, though a throat infection at the time made it painful to swallow any food or drink, let alone crusty bread rolls!

I spent the rest of the day/night in pubs trying to figure out what the difference between XXXX, Carlton, Victoria Bitter and Tooheys was with a guy called Jack from the south of England. Not much really, but people seem to have a strong aliegence to their drink for some reason. Jack and his girlfriend had been to Thailand recently, so it was good to get some tips on places to go and see.

The people always seem to make the place, especially if the weather or place is a bit crappy - Lea, Jack, Katey and Fred I met up with at another time, which is cool. If the weather was better, would I have made as good friends with them? Who knows... One person that did put a downer on things was the Hostel manger. Why was she always annoyed with everything? I never saw her smile! I managed to get from her that she'd moved out to oz from mid-north england, so I couldn't see what she was so sour faced about everything. To make things more wierd, she asked for $10 when I asked if she could post on my phone when it got to the hostel (behind me), though the price label only said $4...

Newcastle, Paula, Wine Tasting and stepping on Jelly fish

2008-05-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

It was when I arrived at Newcastle that I realised I'd lost my phone! D'oh! Fortunately some Saint had handed it in, and it would eventually find its way to me.

Newcastle, like its British namesake, is very industry based, and so loads of Ozzies I met advised me against it! It was quite a dead town, unfortunately, with most places shutting at 4pm daily, leaving the centre of the city dead apart from a few punks skateboarding.

I went for a wander the day after I arrived, on a massive beach which culminated in a huge lighthouse on a headland. Apparently there was a body boarding competition going on, which wasn't very good, because there were decent waves. The weather was still overcast and spitting intermittently, the wind making the seas choppier than a knife factory. Some brave fishermen were enduring the elements on some rocks that were frequently covered by water and spray, being backed by 2 pelicans that thought there was some dinner at stake.

After doing a little bit of rock pooling, I walked out to the sea wall via the large beach, where I discovered that stepping on dead jellyfish is not only safe (dead stingers), but similarly satisfying as popping bubble wrap! Pop!

After playing a game of Kings with some beefy, over wired Canadians and thoroughly impressing them with my capacity for cheap wine, we went to the only club in town, and I didn't spend a single Cent!! Brilliant, all I'd bought was a $5 Clean-skins bottle of wine at the hostel!

I got bored of that so I started wandering the town. 2 minutes out of the centre, and I didn't pass a single soul in 10 minutes. Its quite cool, being on your own, in decent-ish weather (not rain at least) and just wandering where you want to wander! I suggest that everyone does it sometime.

I'd arranged to meet up with an old School friend of Mum's Paula, the following day. Dutifully, mother nature was providing steady, soaking drizzle; the sort that makes you blink. Paula rolled up with her husband, Alf, in their 4x4 and we went on a little journey, showing me the areas around Newcastle. Taking me to my first ever winery for a tasting and then to Port Stephens where the rain had let off, leaving us high humidity on the climb to the a brilliant lookout.

Port Stephens is a tiny little town set in a sheltered bay. The surrounding geography is just like that in the TV series, 'Lost' - peaked temperate rainforests rolling steeply down to a huge crescent moon beach that extends for miles. I never got to go on any of the beaches, but they looked deserted enough to go skinny dipping safely!

After some proper fish n chips, we went back to their house for a cup of tea, where I was fascinated to hear about Alf's exotic array of pets as a kid - monkeys, snakes, spiders, chimps and more.

The following day I embarked on the least busy day tour I've ever been on. With only one other person on it and then the mullet-ridden bus driver ("call me Russ, mate, my real name's David, but thats another story"!), I thought the day could be a drag. Fortunately it turned out to be good fun and educational - visiting about 6 different wineries and trying to taste most of their wines, red, white and other, my mind was both stimulated and abused by the volume of alcohol consumed. I was drinking it slowly enough to stay sort of sober, but I started to get that heavy, tired feeling after our lunch. A word of warning! Never try a chilli liquor! Nearly sipping it, as we'd done with all other wines and liquors, we (me and Sam the American chick) were hastily told by our dealer to do it as a shot. Instantly I thought 'Oo, thats a little warm'! Then it started getting going, making my mouth see why it was called "Dragon's Breath".

Chasing with a white chocolate liquor (mmm, tasty) didn't really help, and my stomach was asking what the hell was going on, so we went for some sub-par chicken and chips for luncheon.

What I brought away from the tour was that I enjoy lighter red wines, as well as bubbly reds. I hate Chardonnay, and Port can be good! Just drink it within a week or something.

After watching Toy Story with some Brits I'd end up meeting again randomly in Byron Bay and discussing how old we felt now since they released the 10th anniversary edition of the film, I went to bed (top bunk, no ladder), and slept like a baby, my liver pickling up nicely.

Blue Mountains, Bloody Fog and Doritos

2008-04-22T23:53:00.000-07:00

Leaving the Palms was wierd - its like leaving school. You say you'll keep in touch, but how many people would you actively correspond with in a few years?? I did make some very good friends, though, including someone who might be doing England next year and I might meet up with.

Saying goodbye to the homeless people outside (response: "got $2?"), I headed for the Blue Mountains, my next stop, and renowned walking/scenery/backpacker thing to do.

I was wearing my jeans that day due to them being the largest thing to pack; I was greatful that I was wearing them when I arrived in a temperature in which I could see my own breath condensing before me... Checking a digital thermometer on a chemist (every country has these outside chemists except the UK, no??), it was 10.5C. Yay, I was back in Blighty. A cheeky bonus to the cool clime, the large weather system that was due to infect the whole of the South East coast was leaving an inpenetrable fog over all of the town, and most of the mountains, as I discovered the following day.

Walking around Katoomba, the hub of Blue Mountain Activity, I felt like I was in another time warp - people had mullets, perms and backwards baseball caps covering rat-tails on the back of their head. Young women were going around in Granny-made cardigans and I got a feel that no one liked the Gays that infested Sydney.

Being white, and pretty non-descript (is that an oxymoron?), I hobbled to my home for the next few days without being glared at too extensively, and did some shopping for some tucka. I reckon I can still live on around $25 a week for food... a 5 pack of instant noodles is 99c you see and inhumanely produced eggs are 6 for $1.40. Plus the communal food shelf is always worth a pillage - managed to wrangle a beer and half a bottle of wine on top of the spaghetti and tatar sauce.

Making chums with an Israeli, a hair metal dude, his mate and 2 Yanks called Paul and Matt, I set about watching some films on the Hostel's rear-projection TV. 'Moment' is a good watch if you're into a little bit of reverse-structure plot filmage.

The following day I set out with Paul to go walkies. Turns out that his career in Philladelphia (sp?) is to photograph Tama drumkits and Ibanez guitars and the musicians his employer sponsors. Interested me, anyway!

Again the weather was poop - the mist was still lingering with some malevolent force, though we thought we'd just see what we could see. Walking to the first few lookout points over the valley, the most we could see were a few trees 100m below; everywhere else was white. Bummed out, we took to looking for the spiders that created the 100s of webs on the cliff faces to our side, to no success.

We got to see a few quite cool cascades and waterfalls, which seemed to clear their local area, which was cool, reminding me of Jurrasic Park - mist, huge valleys and small rivers and streams, sans man eating beasts.

By the early afternoon, we'd reached a point that apparently looked right down the valley, and the info board prooved this with a gloating picture of what we should have been seeing. Suddenly big holes appeared in the mist; we could see the adjacent vertical cliff faces! Albeit for no longer than 15 seconds at a time. Being amazed by this luck and the beauty of those glimpses, we stayed for a while longer, frantically snapping away at every widening hole in the mist. I deleted all of those earlier pics, because within 15 minutes of being up there, the whole valley had cleared, like we were moses, the mist that river.

What a sight! I'd seen pictures before, but of course they did it no justice. Imagine the grandcanyon, then half it in size and add loads of unspoilt green trees. With the namesake blue haze above (which comes from the Eucalyptus oil vapout that fills the valley), of course.

Snapping away, we trekked a multitude of other kilometers, almost getting caught out taking a Number 1 once by some fast walking old people (we reckoned they ran to catch up with us).

We got to an area where there's a lot of famous 'icons' to see/do. Seeing a challenge, I forced Paul down the Great Steps (all 900 of them in total), which isn't one staircase like some Aztec temple, but a very narrow, windy and high set of normal steps. Passing the '3 Sisters' (wikipedia that or something for the aboriginal story about it and it's origins, if you're interested), 3 great peaks 300m above the valley floor, we trekked for another 2km to the 'steepest railway in the world' - and at 55 degrees to flat, who's going to argue? Going up and seeing the ground infront of you was quite cool, despite it being very easy to slip and probably fall to your death.

Good day in total, but not as good as the cuppa tea when I got back!

That night we played scrabble, having watched Jerry McGuire, which is fairly good as far as chickflicks go. Only Matt the Yank was drinking, for some reason. He got into the dorm an hour after we did, getting into bed and turning off his light. He started to eat the dorito pack that was next to him, which I thought was odd, but not outstounding. When he started to eat handfulls of the crisp with gaps of half a minuite between each and stiffled mumblings filling the gaps, I came to the assumption that this was a case of Sleep Eating! He came up to me in the morning and asked me if he'd seen where the rest of his doritos were...

Beaches and more rain

2008-04-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

Rain dosen't help anything apart from farmers, I'm sure. I tried to go to a beach called Manly beach a few days ago, only to be rained upon with an almighty force 30 mins after I'd got there. Followed by the wind, I became cold and thoroughly not in the mood for a swim or surf.

The only thing to do was look at over priced Ripcurl, Quicksilver and other surf clothing. Had to keep reminding myself that I can spend whatever's remaining in Thailand, the land of cheap ripoff fakes of a fair quality.

By far the best beach day I've had so far was on the famous Bondi Beach. Most people have heard of it, even in the UK, but I hadn't a clue where it was until I saw it on a Sydney map - its 2 train stops to the west of my hostel. Arriving at the misguidingly close "Bondi Junction", I walked 40 minuites down a network of roads to the beach.

Its a classic curving beach, about 1km long and wide enough for any David Hasselhoff/Pamela anderson to run down in slow-mo to save someone. The real beach rescue people are much less sexy, wearing red shorts and large polo tops finished with a red skull-cap type fixture. Don't envy their job - being put on the line daily for people who just don't read the warning signs and fall foul of their own stupidity. I was put in a similar position on another day, which I'll write about later.

Walking along the beach, I realised that I recognised this place, and not in a deja-vu kind of way. Working it out, I realised that I'd played a game - some Tony Hawk's game - where a level had been heavily influenced by Bondi's local buildings and layout, so much so that I predicted that there was a colourful pool by the sea at the opposite end... Sure enough, there was an open air swimming pool at the end!

Content with myself, I got about getting into the water for a swim, as I was getting right hot with an increasing humidity. Making a couple of girls who looked like they were serious about getting a tan look after my bag, I made for the wet stuff, jealous that I didn't have a surfboard for the perfect conditions.

Then I discovered body surfing! I'd heard rumours of its existence, but only then saw anyone doing it. These guys were carving along the breaking waves, one hand in front like a plow, and miraculously they were surfing, moving fast enough to avoid the crashing waves. Asking one of the guys who could actually do it, I just got told it "comes with practice", which isn't what you want to hear when you want to do it NOW.

After multiple waves pulling me down and putting me on rinse cycle, I managed to get a decent ride, magically floating down the steep face of a wave and away from the crashing bit! Good feeling, and I felt a little bit more smug when I saw some kids going "wow". Yup, I'm a role model.

Getting out of the now-nice-n-warm water, I read a book whilst the sun dried me and gave my unprotected back a little frying (It itches even 4 days later, but its so difficult to sunscreen one's back!) while I read and made for home, watching some skaters in a retro pool park do their thing and smoke and drink and swear like cool kids from 80s films.

That night was free beer night, so we did our bit. Check out the picture of the way they serve cocktails in that bar!

Couple of days later, and I'm back in the water, in very different conditions. Its overcast, nippy and the seas are angry about something. Perfect for going for a swim off rocks for the first time!! Guided/pushed by the hostel manager, Dan (and his dog, Bandit), I managed to get a little bit more body surfing in, with my newfound talent, avoiding the rocks hidden a foot under the water (and the big sharks I imagined there would probably be) and oncoming waves and surf that really didn't want me in the sea. I think at one point I got caught in the rip that was circling the small bay, pushing me about 20m further into open water than I thought I was. It was probably only 5m, but it seemed a far distance when your underused swimming muscles start tiring... Naturally I started thinking "what if I get caught again by the rip or I get too tired" stuff, but just powered on, towards the shore, relising I'd been silly to let myself get tired in the water - V dangerous!! Eventually slamming onto the seaweed ridden rocks (nice softish landing), I clambered out and away from the platform, slipping and sliding on the seaweed that had probably saved me from a nice cut. I got to the rock where we were chilling before, and realised my arms and legs were shaking! Obviously the thought of potentially drowning had sent out a job load of adnreneline. Or my muscles were just tired. Good stuff, good experience, but without local knowledge about currents and help about getting in and out, I probably would have come a cropper!

Leaving Sydney tomorrow, after 3 weeks. According to my calculations, I've only got about 3 and a bit months left til Thailand! Blimey time goes fast. Even better? I'm underspending!! Might treat myself to something British from the British sweet shop down the road.

Rain, 'You aweful tense shoulders', Timber and more men jumping off piers.

2008-04-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

The Harbour Bridge is massive. Its a massive structure that is much bigger than it looks, and is an upscaled version exactly of the Harbour Bridge in Newcastle in the UK. I had the option to pay $180 for a bridge climb, where you get up to a few hundred metres. Stuff that! I'll walk it for free, I thought! That decided, I embarked on my trip. Its must be 100m above the sea on the pedestrian walkway anyway, so the view of the surrounding areas is pretty good. It must have taken me a good 30 mins to walk across, its ma-hoosive! Once on the other side, I thought I might as well explore the local area and try and find a waterside pub for a beer or something, but there's absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever! Just houses and steep hills. Wandering around for another hour, I started looking for shops, but even that provided unrewarding! I could see more skyscrapers in the distance, but I couldn't be bothered to walk there and back, so I tried finding my way out of the intertwining streets back to the Bridge. With no idea of where I was, I almost resorted to smelling my way back to the bridge or choosing the street names I liked the sound of, but a helpful old lady gave me a long string of directions that I stopped trying to remember after the 1st few pointers.

Finally getting back over the seemingly endless bridge, I had a long deserved beer at The Rocks, which seemed to be a nicely gentrified and cutsie area. People I've talked to keep banging on about this area but I wasn't too impressed by it.

That night I had another extravagantly minimalist meal at Alan and Helen's apartment, which was brilliant. Got some awesome photos of Sydney by night from their appartment --->

The next day...

Paddy's market is the Ozzie equivalent of Camden Markets, except all under one roof. Its a mangled mess off belt shops, cheap tat shops and confusion due to a wierd layout. I think they have duplicate shops just to destroy your sense of bearing. I managed to get everything I wanted in the world at that time (a waterproof watch, lock, shorts and sushi) for baaargain prices, using the power of threatening to walk away to drop the price of the shorts by 50% to ten bucks. Victory!! Another minor victory was getting a free 1 minuite massage on my shoulders, which were apparently in need of 'much more work. Oooo, vey vey tense here sir. Only $15 for top of body.' Nah, tension helps me keep alert and ready to take on unseen enemies. Kung-fu kick!

Went to a random house party or a friend of Swedish Patrick, a train ride away. Not really a mad party, but I got talking to people that I'll never see again but were nice enough for me to think that that was a shame. Walked back via the city centre, saw another possum and celebrated by lining up for 15 mins in Maccy D's for two 30 cent Mr Whippies.

Flugtag! Does the name mean anything? The Redbull Flugtag does - my second chance of seeing grown men jump off a 6m pier came about on last Sunday, the 7th. With the endless money from Redbull coming into the event, this deal was a lot bigger than the Birdman Rally I've seen in Melbourne however long ago (seems way longer ago than it probably is), with bigger, better costumes and Flugtagcraft. One that sticks in my mind is a 3 metre Gallah (a parrot like bird whose squawks always sounds like an adult caught in a child's body crying or shouting "OOhhhh Noooo!!") who spectacularly nosedived, to be followed by 2 guys in separate bird-poo outfits. Plop, Plop!

We (5 Germans; Janna, Julien, Rennee, myself and 2 guys who I've already forgotten the names of. Is that bad?) got bored of that pretty soonish, on account of the luxury boats getting themselves better views infront of our own view. Plus there was no free Redbull!! Just free portable radios for the comentary on the event, which I could never find.

Check the picture of a tree filled with BLOOD SUCKING BATS! Flying foxes, actually, and the biggest thing they eat is bugs, though they're killing their roosting trees one by one due to the toxicity of their poop!

Being defeated in a multi-mile trek around sydney for a sushi house that opens on Sundays, we succumbed to Hungry Jack's and his Meal Deals - $4.95 got me a Cheezeburger, Chips, drink and a McFlurry-alike! Thats about 2 pounds 30p!

I spent that afternoon having brilliant fun with the timeless frisbee. Its now official that I'm the best at throwing a frisbee with my feet and catching it over my head, see victory photo to the right.

Its so easy to do nothing except play Xbox and make 27 cent noodles for snacks. Its an instantly rewarding format for living, but ultimately unfulfilling. Fortuantly I'm aware of the slackpacker's ways, (see the photo to the left - a typical sight at the hostel! As is TV watching, to the right) so I've fairly well steered away from that existence. Its a difficult thing to do when the skies decide to downpour every few hours. Its a strange pattern, but one that is predictable to travel from various covers to covers and see more of the Sydney and what it has to offer. But when I've exhausted most of the must see things, its annoying! Beach days are out, as are lazy park days and wandering round suburbs (and realising that there's nothing but houses and corner shops for miles) days.

For the past few days I've been lucky, therefore.

A fellow resident at "The Palms", Philipp (ein German), offered me some work with him. It has to have been the least time I've worked in a day for a maximum reward. Our gang of 4's job was to shift timber to building sites from where the delivery truck dumps it, which was usually about 4 metres (!).

Leaving at 12.44pm (12.30 on the time sheet, of course), we drove to Mar-something-or-other, a posh suburb of Sydney over the Harbour Bridge. Waiting for 30 mins for the delivery truck, we had started paid 'work' when we left. When it did arrive, we had to move about 40 pieces of floor timber into the garage a few metres up the drive. Technically we're not allowed to work on a construction site (you need safety qualifications blah blah...), so to the annoyance of the site manager, we couldn't move the timber any further.

That probably took about 30 mins, by which time we had been 'working' for about 2 hours. Waiting on the call for the next job, we sat in the freshly broken-out rays of sunshine and increasing humidity.

The next job was in an even posher part of the city. Talking to a labourer afterwards, the house we were working on would cost $2m to build, the original house and land costing a similar amount to buy in the first place. The nextdoor neighbours had a house covered tip to toe in orange streaked marble slabs. The second most expensive and rare type, of course.

Watching an irrate truck driver try to reverse a 5m flatbed truck up a steep driveway was quite funny. Being paid, we stood back and watched the somewhat lacking problem solving skills fail miserably; who'd have thought a couple of wooden palettes can't take the weight of a ladden truck?? We'd have to move the timber about 5 more metres than was necessary.

After 3 hours of solid timber moving and more splinters than I have time or energy to remove, we completed what was the only bit of hard work I'd done in a few months. We drove home over the Harbour Bridge, which was quite cool (Photo of Michael driving)

Now there's so much more that I'd like to say, but I'm busting for a number 1 and this web cafe dont have no loos!!

Work??

2008-03-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Bah! Budgetting is a pain, but one that seems necessary.

I decided last night, having been serenaded Italian pop songs by my 3 Italian roomies, I decided I would look for a job today. Unfortunately an ideal web job a friend was going to get me fell through, which would have been sweet... $14/hour cash in hand for sitting on the PC for 70% of the time and just logging people in and out, aparently.

Wandering around and looking at various hostel travel boards, there's not much similar going - a lot of jobs go via word of mouth.

So I'm currently undecided whether I should look for work in Sydney, where there's presumably some work somewhere and I just need to look for it or go outback for some hard yakka (work) in the fields or move north soonish to near Brisbane to where their harvest season's just started. I'm edging towards not being stuck in an office or shop, which I could easily do in the UK, and being in real outback Oz, even if it's back breaking, aka character developing!

Then... just to put a spanner in the works, the elaborate yet truthful and yielding budgetting says I have 107 days left of wonga. I'm in Oz for 109 days... so should I just chill for a few weeks?? I theoretically don't have to work, and the budget includes more than just eating budget pasta, tomato paste and cheeze along with "Chikin' Biskits" for snacks - I could do a bungee jump per week on the budget.

The consequense of that future of mine is that I would be scraping the barrell towards the end of my trip, should there be some unforseen expenses/unwise decisions to drink cocktails not $10 for 4 litre boxes of wine. Plus there's a multitude of cool stuffs in Cairns, at the end of my Oz leg of this trip (diving, bungee jumping, whitewater rafting etc :D), so I almost need to spend the least now, more later...

If I was to work, then, say for a month in an average job, I'd get ($17 x 40hrs x 4wks) x 0.7 tax = $1904. And a bit more of a relaxed time on the rest of my journey.

Right, I'm going to see an exhibition about monkey faces after some sushi, then I'll read a book in the sunlight, surrounded by these birds. Took this pic yesterday in Hyde Park, central Sydney. They're as common in the parks as pidgeons and seagulls.

Sydney, Capital of ROCK!

2008-03-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

I've had a brilliant past few days - Sydney is a bustling, exciting place to be in, with strange things happening all the time. Not bad-strange, but unique, funky strange.

For example, Virgin Mobile were giving away luxury Icecream from a pimped-out Icecream van, complete with alloy wheels, ice-cream/red paintjob and scantilly clad ice cream donors. On the same street, there was an aging homeless shoeshine who I'd seen on the TV a week or so before (presumably in a news lull). Had a chat with him about his new found fame, though couldn't offer me his services on account of my shoes being flipflops.

Everything here is a lot more compact and less organised than in Melbourne - blink and you'll miss a huge shopping arcade on your left or a cheap Sushi shop on the left. Still enjoying sushi - for $5 you can get a decent, healthy and nutritious lunch.

My hostel that I'm staying in is "interesting" to put it one way. On the first night, I was watching TV on a beanbag, coloured a slightly mottled and darker version of what it should have been, when I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. On closer inspection I couldn't see anything, but it happened again 5 mins later. I looked right to see a cockroach running up the wall, its antennae flailing like corn in the wind. I've now got used to these non-paying visitors and their flying, biting relatives, even when they crawl from under your toothpaste. or around the food storage areas.

Other interesting things in "The Palms" (technically wrong, as there's just 1 palm tree outside...): Wanna sit down on the toilet? Pic the seat off the floor at the side of the loo. My bunkbed is also made from bendy aluminium and has the ladder at the end, over another occupant's bedside table.

Its not really that bad, these things just make for an interesting blog. Theres free web, tea and Xbox; my room has an ensuite and ceiling fan. Woo!

A few nights ago I met up with some relatives of mine (Mum's cousin)- Alan and wife Helen. I went over for a super nice dinner of smoked salmon (which you could actually taste the smoke flavour in) and avocado, followed by a thick piece of lamb and sides. They were nice people, and seemed to enjoy good food and wines - I equired what the type of wine I was drinking was, in a vague attempt to become cultured and edumacated, to be told it was a 1999 Caberet Sauvignon. 9 year old stuff? That must be expensive! They've obviously done well, being situated in a 24th floor central Sydney apartment overlooking a public park and the sea to the North-East. And the phone they had I saw on Will & Grace the following night. Alan created some of the rules and regulations for the stock markets and Helen works as an unpaid academic/lecturer. Very interesting people who told me I have some similar mannerisms as Mum.

Contrasted against the Youth Hostel Association 'crowd', the poeple in my hostel are pretty similar to me, except 1/2 of them are German. One funny incident involded me picking up a riff that someone was playing a guitar. Eventually it led to a request session of songs not many people would know, and me being introduced to Brant Bjork, who sounds worth looking into. Oh yeah, I was singing a lot of the songs... Ouch.

Musically, the past few days have been brilliant - culminating in yesterdays physically demanding V Festival in Centennial Park in Sydney.

I stumbled across a flyer in a shop a few days before, and low and behold, Queens of the Stone Age and Smashing and Air are playing! All of whom I've had on my 'to see' list for a long time.
So I get up bright and early yesterday (10am), make a beefy sarnie with salami, cheeze and margarine, and get going to the Virgin Megastore which was vending them. Then, incredibly, I see one of my favourite drummers walking down the street towards me. I stop and say "Hey, are you Joey Castillo from Queens of the Stone Age??" to which he replies that he was! I think I just said typically uncool stuff like "Oh my god, I love your music, can I have a picture", and resulted in one of the roadies (who may have been a new keyboard player onstage later that day...) taking a picture of me and this drumming icon.

Needless to say, I walked away internally skipping and externally beaming with a smile a cheshire cat would be proud of.

After getting my ticket ($137.50 for the day... I winced but thought I need to splash out every now and then), I asked 4 different bus drivers and information point-type people how to get there. Of course I got 4 different ways, but I eventually got there, asking 1 final person which stop I should get off at.

After a brief heart attack at being told my UK Driving license wasn't sufficient ID to be let in (and just going to a different line to get let in perfectly fine), I wandered in, under the midday sun. No one of the information point people knew when any act was on yet, so I wandered around, collecting free Jagermeister temporary tatoos, Gnarls Barkley peak hats and orange flavoured mints from the "VIP" Virgin Mobile loos.

I ended up seeing about 5 bands/artists including the happy clappy Plug in City, Swedish pop-idol Robyn and indie-ers Hot Hot Heat. The next band suprised me - Modest Mouse are another band I'm going to CD-up on when I get home. Singing some very punk lyrics through the guitar pickup to the backing of 2 drummers, an accordian and double bass was quite an amazing spectacle and created some brilliant music. The following band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, had a middle age man jumping and spinning annoyingly infront of me for the 1 hour set, aparently this brit-pop style band had just reformed or something, so he was celebrating, sweat, balding head and all.

What came next was in a totally different league to everything else I'd seen all day - Queens of The Stone Age, the people I'd come to see. Incredibly hot, heavy and tiring, it felt like being in an inside arena due to the heat. A lot of people were being dragged out, staggering by friends, obviously dehydrated and not tip-top. Best thing they played was an extended jam version of a song that they lost the tapes of in the post - The Fun Machine Took a Sh*t And Died. THE live song. Definately going to see if some people have put this up on youtube in a fewdays...

After lots of inter-song innuendo (big beach balls floating around, it ain't hard), my back started to ache as the adreneline faded when they walked off (with no encore...).

I didn't quite know what to expect from the Smashing Pumpkins; afterall they were ageing rockers with only 1/2 the original lineup. The lead singer walked on to 50,000 screams in a shiny silver skirt, naturally. The music was almost totally new to my ears save a few songs, which were altered greatly and jammed. Its brilliant hearing new(ish) music!!

Got back, tired and hungry, after being slightly bemused that the train system uses trains with 2 floors and being annoyed that the cheap jelly I bought for emergency energy was powdered crystals, not proper 'raw' jelly.

Good times! Now onto looking for a job...

Canberrra, capital of drizzle.

2008-03-24T22:21:00.000-07:00

I think it was a mistake going to Canberra over the Easter Weekend. When I arrived here after an 11 hour night bus journey (which I thought could save me a night in a youth hostel), I arrived to a city centre with no one in it, apart from a few pigeons. I found a brekkie place and had a fry up for the first time in months, checking out what the guide book has to say about Canberra. Quite generic stuff, to be honest - Museums, Galleries and tours around the sights. I thought I'd try and get a tour around these sort of places, so I hopped on a tour bus. Got talking to a Slovakian guy called Lukas, who reminded me of the Comic Book guy from the Simpsons.

According to our white-haired tour guide, our first stop received the most visitors per year out of every attraction in Oz, the War Memorial. Slightly doubtful about that fact, considering it's up against things like the Opera House in Sydney and the likes. Granted, it was interesting, including a real B52 bomber and Japanese Midget submarine which blew up a lot of Australians, all in a great hall 6 floors below ground level, but war is always depressing!! I still can't see how it can be called an attraction...

The rest of the tour was interesting. For those who don't know, it was built from the ground up from 1909, officially becoming the capital in 1930 ish. The result is that the only 'industry' is administrative - everyone works as a civil servant. It also meant that the city has had great national parks established within a very short distance of the centre (which is positioned either side of the huge man made Lake Griffin), creating leafy green views at the end of a lot of roads in the city. This combined with the super wide and generous road networks and absence of the bustling you'd normally find in a city, Canberra seemed a little too clinical and unreal.

That night, after my $10 shopping spree in Aldi for nutritional items, I went out to find the city centre dead. This was a Saturday night, and there was only one place that had a number of people in it. Lukas and myself having a few in here, we ended up talking to some locals who were our sort of age and confirmed my suspicions that its not the best city to be young in!

Cherishing sleeping in a real bed that night, I got up the following day and decided I'd rent a bike and cycle around the lake. Getting the one with the meanest bell and a helmet with go faster slits (a legality in Canberra and the state it's in, ACT), I started around the lake.

Lucky me! Mother nature was threatening to rain, so I made for the National Museum of Australia. Discovered some quite intriguing things - in northern Oz, buffalo were considered a pest, and were hunted from the 60s by men in reinforced Toyota cars with great grabbers on the side, almost like a modern day lasso! Reminded me of Robot-Wars, but without Craig Charles.
It also took the white settlers 100 years to believe the Aborigines when they said platypuses laid eggs...

The whole cycle round the lake was wonderful. It must have been about 20miles altogether, so I got back just before sunset (its also illegal to cycle after sunset without lights), having cycled through forested areas, grassy lakeside parks, mud and hills that demanded gear 2 going up and 21 going down (a fun that we can't have in the Fens!)

If I thought of a youth hostel, before I came to Canberra, I'd think of back to basics living, dirty cutlery and thin mattresses. It surprised me, then, to find out the basement had a swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna, all included in the $30 (14 quid) price. To top it off, they had frequent film nights with free popcorn upstairs! There was still some dirty cutlery and plates, or none at all, on account of the group of 35 beefy rugby players who were in residence.

That night, a pair of Canadian cousins, Mark and Leea, who came to Canberra on the same bus met up with a guy they knew from home. Taking us out to a place called Black Mountain, the view over Canberra was amazing. The avenues and their linear blue lights shone through, creating odd patterns which led up to the New Parlaiment building (Which cost $1.1bn to make, has 24km of corridors and the biggest tapestry in the world in it, according to my very proper tour guide from the day before). Quite randomly but seemingly the right thing, there were a group of people up at this lookout already, who seemed to be having fun, so we joined in and had a chat. We tried getting into the Casino, for the sake of it, but soon left when the minimum bet on the tables was $15 and there was an absence of machines.

All in all, the people made my stay in Canberra enjoyable, despite one of our dorm 'buddies' being an excentric Moldovian 50 year old who talked at me (and Mark) about everything from YouTube to the clean shaven Republicans who want the Queen off the throne to my hair to his artist friend to his overbearing mother to liberating Tibet and beyond. Quite exhausting and it meant that my pasta overcooked...

Surfing and Goon in Torquay

2008-03-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

Torquay - the headquarters of Quicksilver, Ripcurl and other brands like that.

My hostel ended up being a great place, though its quite off putting walking into the common room/kitchen where every one's just watching TV, not talking and don't even look at you. Found myself trying to appear busy, as if that actually mattered!

Through the medium of card games, got talking to some people and the idea of no one talking to me disappeared! One of the only shames about this trip is that I've already met some really nice people who became good friends, only to have to say goodbye the following day or so.

Checked out some surfboards with some new found Brit acquaintances; they're so expensive!! $400 for a decent one and then some. And they seem to get damaged superquickly, too, because they're basically polystyrene with a glass composite on top. I opted to rent a threadbare, hole ridden wetsuit and foam board instead... Wow! I forgot how tiring surfing is - being battered by oncoming surf constantly makes it feel like you're making one step forward and two back. Poor condition, unfortunately, but it was good to get a few waves.

I've also discovered how bad I am at remembering names, so a Danish person I got talking to, I took to calling him 'Danish'. Other people are similarly bad; I got dubbed 'Pinochio' on account of my flailing arms while playing Hot Potato on Torquay beach. Good game, but the forfeit for loosing all 3 of your lives it having the ball kicked at you.

That night a mad Frenchman, called Dennis, with an Afro decided to teach me how to play the Mario Bros. theme tune on the harmonica. Brilliantly simple, and is guaranteed to make people around you smile and reminisce about hours wasted on Video Games. This then provoked another Frenchman and myself to create more Video game sounds, including favourites from Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64!

Surfing the following day, I walked down to the beach with Danish, where he proved to be the slowest walker of all time, which is one of the most frustrating things ever (see the Facebook group, "I secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of the head", to which I am a devout member). The surfing was the best I've had so far, not that I've had much to compare it with. I think there was only about 3 others surfing at the same time! Could have been because it started raining heavily and it was veeeery cold.

Later on, we trundled 100m down the road to the Quicksilver retail shop, where there was a special promotion event or something for their next season of clothing. Free beer and sweets and snacks and freebies and an acoustic guitarist ensued, with my concience telling me I really didn't need another T shirt or nice new hoody, thus my wallet was spared. Take that advertising promotions!

On the next day, we took a trip down to the famous Bells Beach, where the Rip Curl Pro event was happening. Seeing the worlds best surfers surfing 12ft waves is quite awe inspiring. I thought it was funny how all of the viewing attention shifted to Kelly Slater when he came out, to the extent that people were running into the shallow surf (it was getting cold, windy and overcast by this point) to get a picture of this international Surf name. I proved I was the better person by staying sat down and just craning my neck like a tortoise. Watching a fair few heats and deciding it was getting too cold and windy, Danish and myself walked (slowly) back to the bus stop, to be told the free hourly shuttle had left 3 minutes ago.

Eventually we got back to Torquay, and looked around the outlet stores, which were all fully priced and made me thankful for the existence of TKMaxx and H&M. Thus it was time to leave; I had the task of navigating my way back to Melbourne via public transport for my 9pm Greyhound bus. I left 5 hours to get there, thinking that the 4 stages of transport would mean a load of waiting, but no!! The state of Victoria's public transport system is actually good enough to synchronise their timetables.

The following night was an aweful nights sleep though...

The Great Ocean Road

2008-03-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

Seems a long time ago now, but I hesitate to spend more than 15 mins on the web when you're paying $7/hour for it... I've made the journey to the National Library in Canberra to just get free web, which was a pain, because even the inner city buses only run hourly.

Anywho, The Great Ocean Road was the first proper tour I've done, so I was quite anxious to get there on time. Leaving at 7.30am, I had to work out how the hell I could use JUST public transport to get to the city for my seriously suburban location. Fortunately, the Melbourne public transport system is A-Ok, and the first bus out would get me there on time.

At the bus stop I got talking to an old man about the weather (suprise) and how its actually been quite hot. He also informed me how St. Patrick's day had been moved by the Pope, which I dutifully believed, I mean why would a respected gentleman lie? I received a minibus full of laughs when I confidently informed my tour-chums of this alteration in their calendar later. Ozzies are probably the most sarcastic race on earth.

Getting the tram the wrong way in Melbourne, I arrived 10 mins late (I hate the idea of being late or making people wait, makes me tense and ajitated (sp?)), and we got on the road.

Talking to some of the people on the bus, I noticed how most of them had uprooted themselves totally from thier old existence, quiting their jobs and selling homes to fund their trip. A bit extreme, but it made me realise what a good decision to do this trip at this point in my life was; I can quite easily jump back into the norm (whatever that it) back at home without much changing, apart from my bank balance and my pasta making skills. It was also strange to see how many Brits there were on the tour, it was almost like doing a tour in the UK.

One of the non-brits, a West-Australian did get on my nerves a bit, though, and to this time (4.29pm 23/3/2008) he's the only person to do so. Constantly telling people not to go to Adelaide beacause "Its a hole" and not not taking pictures at places we stopped on the basis that he didn't want to be a tourist is just sad. Chill out and do whatever you want to, but don't try and infect us with it.

Anyway, we stopped at a huge sunken volcano called Tower Hill and checked out the emus and koalas. I realised why the koala is a national icon - it dosen't move, so tourists have a decent change of seeing something really Ozzie. For the same reason, koala and 'roo warning signs are promoted as iconic, too. Our tour guide, Todd, informed us of koala mating rituals, including the males' calling to ladies up trees, quite romeo/juliet stylie, only to go up and rape her if she didn't come of her own accord. Trees are bad escape routes, evidently. Koalas are miracles of evolution, or very lucky, as they only move 4 hours a day, sleeping the other 20, and eat from about 25 varieties of Eucalyptus trees of the 20,000 that exist. Eating these trees right out of leaves so they die and don't provide further food, they have no natural predators and have to introduce a resistance to the poisons in the Eucalypt leaves to babies by regurgitation......

fending off 1001 flies and a couple of emus eyeing up my 1ft Subway sarnie, we got back to the bus. I next got my first sign of surfing and some decent waves, which made me smile like a mad man, when we got to Logan's Beach.
(Gotta be quick now, library shuts in 15!!!) went here then: - Bay of Islands- Bay of Martyrs- The Grotto- London Bridge
Which showed some pretty awesome limestone structures and powerfull waves. Swam at one of these's beaches, which was wonderful for cooling down. 40 degrees is bloomin hot, for sure, and aircon only cools your skin, not your overheated internals.

Having a barbie at our accomodation and getting some stubbies in, we went to the 12 Appostles (Of which there has never been 12), and saw a boootiful sunset. 20mins later, a tiny blob/gaggle/swarm of penguins came home from shopping for food and darted into their cliff-face residencies.

Saw plenty on signs for Peterborough on our way around the hostel area, but never quite had the reaction skills to get out the camera in time...

following day, did a short trek round a rainforested area, where there were some ancient trees and 6m meter ferns. Considering they grow 1cm max every year, these were rather old.

Awesome scenery on the way back along the Great Ocean Road proper, which took 40 years or something silly to complete. A perculiar highlight of the tour was visiting THE "Round the Twist" lighthouse, which brought back surreal vague memories and an MP3 of the theme song.

The tour finished with me being dropped off in Torquay, the home of surfing, and sawpping or a few contact details. Awesome tour of that area, best done in 2 days, and now the Librarian's on me like the plague to get off the PC!

Jazz Bus

2008-03-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

One of the things that makes me smile is one of the bus drivers on the route to the train station. He greets everyone with a great big smile and a "Hey man, how you goin'?" which is always good. The best bit, though, is his constant playing of Jazz music, which I've never associated with a bus driver-type person! The speakers on the buses are unsuprisingly poor, so it sounds like a really old radio in the 50s or something.

Visited a suburb called St. Kilda on Wednesday(12th). Aparently it's the red light district of Melbourne, but I saw nothing to suggest that, though the whole place reminds me of Brighton except with 50ft palm trees. After another awesome Sushi lunch (and the discovery that some Wasabi is stronger than others) with Coke, I took a walk out onto the pier.

On account of the impending Melbourne F1 racing, Red Bull had hired a whole section of the pier for their promo, so I couldn't get the Icecream I really wanted, which was a shame. Beyond this, there was a rock harbour wall which curved round to create a sheltered small beach with a wooden walkway. One thing I noticed here was a group of around 5 old men standing around in speedos with pot bellies and extremely brown, wrinkly skin. It seemed like some sort of club to which only a certain demographic could join. I sat down on the walkway and listened to their banter, a few of which were too funny not to write down:

"There's only shark fins in there"/"Shark fins?"/"Yes, fins of a shark"
"I hear something"/"Whats that?"/"Bullsh*t coming out of your mouth"
"Look at his hide, its getting thicker with all these lies"
"Go, sing your song"
"If that girl comes with you again, we have to talk"

Strange old people. One of them, I noticed, had a popped out belly button that I thought only pregnant women get, which had stretched about an inch out in front of him.

Did a bit of sitting on the beach and reading, but got scared of sunburn after a while (Its really difficult to sunscreen up your back, for some reason!), quite rightly, when I realised I'd forgot to do my forearms; they're still red, a few days later. Fool! Poked some big (15cm) jellyfish with a shell, too.

It was 40 degrees a couple of days ago! Its difficult to just be outside in that sort of heat, the wind, despite it being light, felt like someone had a hairdryer on your face and body. I'm still confused how anyone could physically cool down without aircon or cooled water when blood temperature's 37 degrees or something. I think I just made sure I was inside as much as possible...

Met up with Tom Anderson yesterday, which was good. Another hot day (forest fires near Adelaide, their 11th consecutive day above 35 degrees) at 38, he found it alright as a temperature! At least it wasn't humid, that would be aweful. Might be meeting up with him between Sydney and Brisbane, and do some off the beaten track things, as he has car access.

It would be good to go into the outback - I want to do a few bushwalks, though maybe later in the year when these unseasonally big heats subside and Oz enters their "Winter".

Ok: plans for the next week: Monday/Tues doing a tour of the Great Ocean Road and surrounding area. Getting dropped off in Torquay late Tues, where I'll stay for 3 nights and surf some good incoming surf and maybe check out the Rip Curl Pro surfing championships at the same beach. Should be good! friday night, I'm getting a bus to Canberra, 10 hours away, Where I'm staying for 3 nights til Tues 25th! Then off to Sydney! I'm thinking of getting work pretty soon after getting to Sydney, but who knows... Not me, thats for sure.

Most tensest moment yet!

2008-03-13T03:37:00.000-07:00

Wow, I was nearly homeless there for a minute.

Time to leave my hosts - they're going to Sydney early Saturday. Checked all the Youth Hostels, probably twice, but they're ALL rammed to the ceiling - its the Melbourne F1 this weekend. Then asked my 2nd Cousins, but they're all busy busy and unable to take me; but suggested LastMinute and WotIf, some late deals sorta places. The cheapest available "bargain rate" was $300 a night, no crap. x3 nights I need before I next move on, is 450 quid.

gggNot on my nelly, so I even started looking for Emergency Accomodation, having thought about where the best place to sleep rough would be:- Not Flinder's street train station, there's no seats plus I'd get turfed out. I thought the airport may be good, I could pass myself off as someone who missed their flight... Desperate or what? but I was really thinking this, about 30 mins ago.

Nina fortunately obliged in taking me on for a few more nights. I feel bad doing it though, because I thought (and they thought) that I was getting out of their hair after probably outstaying my time!! So I'm extremely grateful now...

Meeting Tom tomorrow (Under the Clocks...), should be fun.

37 Degrees

2008-03-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

Is actually quite hot. Poor Adelaide has 40 degree heats, according to the TV! No thanks...

Experienced something new on Saturday, and distinctly Red-neck. I was invited by Mick, my host's son, to a "Burnout" event. Sounded fun, and I've played the video games of the same name, so I went along.

Arriving and parking outside the 'Thunderdome', I could hear far off sounds of straining engines and a vast plume of white smoke arising from an area that everyone else was walking to, obviously aware of what this event was all about. Paid up (about 8 quid) and followed Mick inside. In the trade area, where numerous marques and tents were set up, was a sight of 'Too Fast Too Furious' meets 'Grease' meets 'Dukes of Hazard'. Along side trade stands selling decals and tee-shirts (of mean looking snakes and dragons) were the shiniest, meanest mostest retro-tastic cars you've ever seen.

With engines which were too big (and too shiny) to be restrained by a (mere mortal's) bonnet and paint jobs that would make Picasso weep, these were definitely show and tell cars. What I liked about them (this is before they actually started up and went to 'work') was that they weren't modern day cars, in the most part - there were cars from as far back as the 50s turbo'd up and supercharged into the 22nd Century. There was one car modeled around very early cars, circa 1910, like this sort of thing, and reminded me of Dastardly and Mutley sort of cars. It was immediately obvious that these were the life and soul of many grown men (and a mean looking lady). Retirement perhaps wasn't such a rosy prospect now they had put that money into altering a machine that was designed to make a rocket-load of noise and spin around on the spot, as I later saw.

Walking onto a mound opposite where the action was happening, I was greeted by a loud yet dull explosion, to the cheers of the hundreds of spectators who were obviously a little bit more savvy about it all than me. One of the competing car's rear tyres had blown out, sending flailing strips of rubber into the mesh fencing and the massive white smoke plume that I had seen earlier. Not phased at all, the driver upped the revs further and applied the front wheel brakes, whatever they are, increasing smoke, noise and cheers. And sure enough; BOOM! and the other wheel had gone. Officialman lowered the official redflag and the car limped off, like when you sit on your leg for too long and can't feel it.

A multitude of cars did the same thing, spinning round in varying levels of noise, explosiveness and style along a short strip of raceway that can't have been wider than 10 metres and longer than 80, though no one clipped the sides once. One of Mick's friends was there competing (its anyone's guess as to how the 60 second display is judged), though his lack of disposable (or indisposable, which ever way you see it) income unlike many of the older guys there meant that there was never anyway he'd win, though he did put blue tyres on his Holden (Ozzie Vauxhall), which still had 10x more beans than your average 4 door saloon any day.

It was fun stuff to watch, akin to some form of Russian expressive dance (I am the sun, you are the sky) in hotrods. I'll try and upload a video I took at a later date, because I've already used up a sizeable chunk of my host's upload limit... Count yourselves lucky, pomes! The advantage of a small country is the infrastructure can be so much more advanced! God bless the unlimited bandwith package.

This is a very popular 'sport' in Oz, apparently, as is horse racing with carts - chariot racing! I haven't seen anything to do with this, but it conjures up very roman gladiatorial images! Strange how these sort of things take of in some countries but not others.

Talking of inter-country differences, I was talking to Mick about preconceptions of the other country, and he said "Don't you like cross a street and black people live there?" which made me laugh, as if there were racially separated legal districts in every town. I suppose it does sort of exist, but generally through immigration fluxes and cheap housing areas, I think... Hearing his impression of an English accent cracked me up, too, as it sounded more like mangled East-European. Interestingly, the crime rates in the cities has increased many many times over the past few years since immigration and asylum seeking policy was relaxed and a lot of people came to Australia, bringing different cultural values and norms with them. Unfortunately, this seems to encouage the social segregation of minorities such as the Sudanese and Korean, though the Japanese have been here for more than a generation, I think, so they're well integrated and thoroughly Australian now, to some extent. Pomes are still Pomes though!

Yesterday I took a trip into Melbourne again to see the Moomba Waterfest, celebrating stuff n things. More specifically I went for the Birdman Rally, which came over here in 1971 with some RAF dude. I'm sure they do it of Brighton Pier (one thats not burned down), but I've never seen it, so this was fun! Its quite simply people jumping off a pier in silly silly suits and trying to get the furthest. Of course you get the few guys who make an aerodynamically correct polystyrene/polythene wing and float for ages in the air (still quite a feat), but the competition is designed for fun and showing off. One that springs to mind was a guy who was brought in a big animal crate and then stepped out all alien like, providing some slapstick alien comedy at its best.

Along with this event was things like waterskiing and wakeboarding along the Yarra River, which was good to see along with some annoyingly natural kids on skateboards demonstrating in a skatepark (which was provided for free by the YMCA, and made me want to try skating again!) and some guys spray painting a mural along it's back wall.

Its good to see that some things in life are still free!

2008-03-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

If I haven't already told you...

2008-03-06T21:30:00.001-08:00

Here's the Mobile number I'll be using:

0423191021

Replace the 1st '0' with '0011' if you're calling from abroad to reach this Australian number.

Basically there's poor signal as soon as you leave a city's boundaries, so don't be surprised if you can't contact me. Its really only for essential comms, but its there. It only costs me 20c (10p) to text abroad, so if you feel like it, tell me whats going down.

Raining!

2008-03-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

Yes, that favourite topic of conversation! Its raining heavily enough to discourage me from leaving the house, so I'm probably just going to plan and research things for my impending future.

Got a few options:
Travel to Torquay, a a surfing town SW of Melbourne. Could do this via a tour operator, which would take me to see places off the beaten track that an average punter wouldn't see, at least not me on public main-route transports.
Then there's Philip Island, home to the 'Penguin Parade', where tiny penguins make a mad rush up a beach like clockwork a few minutes after sundown. I'd like to do this under my own steam instead of bundling around on a tour, so I can enjoy the island in my own time, but its a difficult island yo get around, it seems.
Then theres work issues! Got my tax File Number, which means I would get a reduced tax rate from 49.5% to a miniscule 29.5% (!!). Should I get a month or so of harvest work whilst there's plenty of work? I think there's a better season in New South Wales forthcoming, so once I get to Sydney, I'll think about this again.

Meeting up with Tom Anderson (a friend from school who's around in Oz) next week, so it'll be good to do some of this stuff with him.

Brilliant day yesterday - an exhibition had opened in Melbourne called 'Game On', where I found myself playing scores of video games from old school Pong to new school Halo3 LAN games (which I won, of course. Even though I haven't ever played it before :D). My little face lit up when I saw so many buttons and flashes and sounds! Looked at my watch and realised I'd spent 7 hours in there, forgetting about eating even. Got a Subway's and went back to play a little bit of Doom, Mario 64 and a Japanese Train Simulation Game.

Beaching

2008-03-05T02:20:00.000-08:00

Monday, and I boarded a tourist bus around Melbourne (for free, naturally! I wouldn't associate myself with actually paying for stuff) and saw the various landmarks from behind a UV protected window in an aircon aided bus. I think the bus driver was trying to be helpful when he spoke over the prerecorded info onboard, but only served to speak over it and make an unintelligible noise.

Jumped off at the Rememberence Shrine, a huge Mayan temple-like thing in the middle of wide gardens. It was a little bit depressing unsuprisingly (I don't know how they can make an attraction out of it, even if they do have exhibits and things), but I was told it was worth a look and it seemed to be a respectable thing to do. One thing that drew my interest was how Ozzie troops were sent to the fields in Europe with only shorts and a shirt - the Red Cross provided extra clothing and allies provided their weapons.

Back on board the tourist truck, I bathed in the air conditioning for a mile or so, before we reached the start of the loop and I searched for a a fabled food court for luncheon, on recommendation of an elderly lady who looked rather wise. 2 pieces of pizza and Fanta for $9, a semi-bargain! Interestingly, Oz Fanta tastes more like Orangina, a fizzy drink from my yoof (I remember drinking it in the local swimming pool (with the bestest flume and a deadly slipperly route down a ramp to the changing rooms) out of a pear-shaped glass bottle) in Laaaahdun town. Its a phenomenon we rarely have in the UK, food courts, but most foody places are within these buildings. Well it seemed busy, so some business plan must be working. Fed-up and completely happy, I trundled off to the NVG (National Victoria Gallery). One of the things that fascinated me here was the Mayan/Aztec sculptures. I think it was becuase I looked at this type of art/imagery and culture in year 10 for an art project, but viewed everything totally through a computer screen. I'm thinking of a tattoo using Aztec and Mayan styles, but I dunno yet, and I have to be 100% (Don't worry Mum('s), I won't rush into it).

Did (another) guided tour around parts of the immense gallery/museum and couldn't get the guides pronunciation of antiques out of my head - "Ant-eye-kyews". Well wierd. Also picked up that some Ozzies, generally from 'up north' say 'yous' instead of 'you' when addressing more than 1 person... Anyway, enough eloquence analysis.

Australian's also watch Simpsons heavily, which is good for the Eve'. Look out for 'Drawn Together', an adult cartoon that Oz and the US has, but I haven't seen it yet on UK Freeview. Also good for a warm eve' - VB! Victoria Bitter, a lager, which I have suprised myself in liking, and all people seem to stock it. Fosters is also considered old fashioned and outdated, too; the idea of it being a true Aussie drink is 95% marketing for the UK!

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Following day, a Chewsday, I visited the Queen Victoria Market, which is like Camden Market (ie cheap clothes and tourist tat) except, er, australian. And more teatowels. Had fun going around nearly identical stalls trying to get a $3 item down to $2.50 (About 2op off). Petty or what??? Good exercise for the wheelin' and dealin' muscles within though. Top tip: the ultimate threat is showing mild interest then total disinterest after a price has been given, even if you haven't offered your price.

Saw some big spiders, big (3m) squids in vinegar or something and other stuff in cases in the Melbourne Museum during the afternoon, which peeled a whole $6 from my greasy mitts. Good place for old and young, with buttons and games and videos. good exhibit about the disturbed mind and artisic visions it can provide - abstract, scary and odd pieces created by crazy people, along with an attempt at deciphering it's meaning.

Spent a lot of the afernoon under a big palm tree reading a book, HA! Bet its cold in the UK.
Did the same this afternoon (Wednesday 5th) on the loverly beach of Port Melbourne (Melbournians pronounce it 'Melbun').

Strange things happen! This morning I met up with Margot, (get ready) my mum's cousin's wife's sister, who took on my mum when she was on her gap year in Oz about a trillion/30 years ago. Apparently I also look just like your mother. Nice seeming someone who can tell tales on your own mum!

Finished today with a couple of beers with Nina's 2 sons, Brent and Mitch (2nd cousins), watching the 2 dogs running round like madmen and one getting a little bit of lipstick.

Brrrr

2008-03-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

Checked out more bits in Melbourne on Friday, there's just so many places that are interesting for whatever reason. Couple of art galleries, where I was stalked by a few security guards, on account of being a thuggish yoof. Fortunately I was able to shake them off by walking backwards. Seeing arty things again made me want to get drawing again, but absent minded doodles will have to do for now.

Went up one of the tallest skyscrappers in the CBD, the Rialto Tower, which was quite a sight at the top. It reminded me of how big Melbourne and other cities really are! Coming down the 55 story elevator, I was shunned into 'Rialtovision' - a short cinematic experience which was basically advertising melbourne through exciting imagery, orchestral sounds and sweeping titles despite all of the occupants of the room being in melbourne already.

Coming out, there were 5/6 great big fire trucks outside the building opposite with the building's occupants standing outside. With absolutely no smoke, crying women or urgency in anyone's eyes (apart from the flashing lights on the trucks), this was an unsatisfying spectactle! A 12ft high Super Mario figure seemed to be enjoying it though, from the Museum of Moving Images. Annoyingly though, that games specific exhibition mario was advertising was yet to open! Spent a good few hours watching videos past and present, clever and stupid from students of Victoria's various art universities and colleges. One that I remember well was a cell animated (individual frames drawn) love story between a tape player and a CD player. The tape player couldn't talk to the CD player, because he couldn't find the right words on tapes, went to a wise old gramophone. Together they made a mix tape of the right words from vinyls and the story ended happily ever after, with lots on suggestive headphone jacks being used.

I got the wrong bus on the way home, because I couldn't decipher properly the heavy Oz accent of the driver... hey ho, adventuring I go! Well, Nina and Keith rescued me.

Saturday, and it was actually starting to warm up properly! Got the shorts on without feeling like I had to use British determination. Went adventuring around a few Melbourne suburbs with Nina over a 4km bridge and had a Jaffa Cake flavoured Ice Cream at a shop called You Scream! in a nice relaxed Italianesque town called Williamstown. Being sunny, seaside and breezy, it reminded me of Cowes in the Isle of White (sp?). Drove round a section of the Melbourne Formula 1 racing track, which is used as a public road out of race season. Naturally I made racing car sounds as we cruised round at 25mph.

Phoned home today (Sunday 2 Mar) at 8am, which is 9pm Pome time, which was good. Totally forgot it was mother's day, though luckily it wasn't Mothers Day in the UK, so I wasn't technically a bad son.

Them we visited a wildlife sanctuary 80km away, saw a load of Ozzie animals, including the wierd hodgeheg relation, the Echinda which walks around like a fat tiny bear and the koala, which only moves an hour a day!! Good life. Fed and stroked a very soft and docile wallaby, which satisfied the child in me asking 'what does it feel like' and 'will it bite me if I poke it'?

Some beautiful scenery on the way and some monster vinyards next to huge cow ranches, though edging on too hot in direct light. Hope I acclimatise soon, before I start working and sweating buckets...

Trying to put pics up here, but its being wierd, so more pix later...

Melbourne

2008-02-28T02:01:00.000-08:00

"We haven't got a plan, so nothing can go wrong" - Spike Milligan on TV last night.

Visited Melbourne today, via train for $AU6.70 - approx 3 quid. What a bargain! All day train/tram/bus transport for mot much more than a simple return in the UK on a dilapidated Delaine bus.

There's quite a lot of graffiti in melbourne, and not all of it is that bubble tag spray stuff, theres some pretty good stuff that makes you (well, me) go 'wow' a bit. Its a very arty place, with a strange mix of 80s skyscraping monolithic corporate headquarters, 18th century town houses and super modern artistic buildings made totally from tesselating triangles. Its much more interesting to look at than 95% of UK cities.

I arrived to a downpour, making me feel right at home and reminding me of ill-fated school trips to London in rain. I hid in a small gallery across the River Yarra (which 'flows upside down' on account of it's muddy content) about an Australian music icon Nick Cave, I think. Never heard of the guy, but he seemed to be a typical 80s punk icon who probably would have killed himself through sex, drugs and rock n roll. Either way, his stuff sounded like early Joy Division stuff.

The rains accended, I set about exploring and getting lost in a grid system full of roads called by very similar names. Stumbled upon a Chinatown, as you do, and laughed heartily at the mistranslations on some of the the shop signs.

Bit more window licking and I headed for the Old Melbourne Gaol, where the infamous Ned Kelly was incarcerated and later hung - to death!!! A lot of reading signs in cells, but interesting stuff, none the less. All 134 people hung there had a cast of their heads created after death; their eerie faces looming at you through the cell doors. On closer inspection, most of them had collapsed windpipes. Nice.

Guided tour of an old prison, including 'immersive' experience with you going through the place as a prisoner, which has been left exactly as the day it was decommissioned in 1994, including inventive graffiti and brown stains on holding cell walls. Good stuff, but just talking to an assistant about ghost stories was more interesting.

Going back there tomorrow, I'll hopefully get some pix from the highest place in the city...

PS Its been bloody cold and windy, and I was wearing shorts. And thanks for the replies to these blogs, I hope they're not too long and winding and long, but I keep on thinking of things before I stop writing...

AM/PM

2008-02-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a long flight. Don't really know why I'm surprised, its sort of predictable. Watched some good telly vision including a generous dose of family guy, mr bean and that Louis Theroux (sp?) documentary about the mental Christan extremists from the US who hawk dead soldiers for fun, saying everyone's going to hell. Nice people. Attonement, Beowolf, Bourne Supremecy were all watched, too, and I fell to sleep to a live Wolfmother gig (not real live on the plane, that'd be silly). Good stuff! Felt weak after a diet of Oriental Vegetarian food, however, suplemented by Werther's Originals and 'Victiora Bitter' er, bitter.

Stopped off in Hong Kong, or as I call it, Honk Gong. Twas foggy however, so I only managed to glimpse some rather steep, spectacular hills under a thick mist veil on the way out. If I looked really hard, I probably could have seen a man in a conical woven hat waving at me. Sat next to a man who promply went to sleep with his hairy ears, waking only to have a go at the airstuard/ess who dared to offer him a meal. The cheek of it. Had to wake him up, after much tension, to go wee wee. I fared better though, leaving me open to 1/2 an hour of him telling me how the plane could take off with one engine which meant that the 2 engine 747s had a higher power to weight ratio than the 4 engine 747s and how he flew cargo 747s and how all pilots break the rules to get sleep with sleeping pills just like these *shows them to me*. Thanks.

The Oz outback was the only piece of land I really saw before darkness decended, (see pic that I can't figure out how to turn) its INCREDIBLY big, taking us about 4 hours to fly over it. It's incomprehendibly large to mere pommies, so hopefully I'll make it as far north as I would like.

Anyway, 24 hours after bidding the 'rents a lumpy throated good bye, I arrived in Melbourne airport, in Australia! 45 mins of queuing for immigration later (and accidentally ticking the >$AU10,000 Cash box...), I was greeted by my host, Nina.

Thank God (other deities are available) that ozzies drink REAL tea! Big worry, as in the US there was only crappy ice-tea and herbal stuff - Propertea was a specialist, quaint stuff. That sorted, I greeted the dog, called Lucy, like my mum, except an Alsatian (who I have taken to talking to with an Ozzie accent, as if she wouldn't understand me without) and provided a bottle of Jameson's Duty Free to my wonderful hosts; Nina is my mum's cousin and went travelling themselves around Oz when they were 17! Their house is just like one on Neighbours (in the same city, too); an open-plan bungalow with a nice place to chill outside. Before I went to sleep, I was greeted by a wee cockroach, who ran like one of those zombies from 28 Days Later under a cupboard, only to reappear to face the onslaught of a handy bug killing spray. Apparently it only paralysed the bastard, so I think its still twitching in the bin. Serves it right.

Deeeecent night sleep, though writing this my body clock is complaining somewhat.

Went exploring the 'hood in glorious sunshine, bluebird skies, not-too intimidating heats (23 degrees ish), shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops. Its pretty suburban, and full of 4-lane roads, similar to the US. Funny little clicking pedestrian crossings, which click like a dolphin when it is time to cross. Being stung for changing my remaining pounds (there's no pound sign on this anti-pome (read racist) keyboard), I bought a new simcard, which currently ain't working with my phone... Going to try and get it unlocked at some point. Why wouldn't an Oz Virgin Mobile sim work, whereas my UK Virgin Mobile one does?? Grrrrr...

Ozzies still have 'Safeway's supermarkets here, which is crazy. They also have different cartoons on Kellogs Rice Crispies. More observant observations later.

Going for some pizza later with Nina & her sons and Keith, should round off a good 1st day :D

Sorry for the length, but I need to protect against snakes.

Still Pre Departure

2008-02-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

Cheers boyos for a good send off tonight!
Nice combination of family and friends that you don't usually get.
Can people please pester Marcus to book a ticket to come and join my adventures, because he'll be stung in the bum if he leaves it late as I did.

As for the idea of coming out for the Thailand section of my travels, thats a brilliant idea! Open to all, I'm in Thailand from the 18th July to 12th August. Again, book now to avoid dissapointment (in the form of expensive air travel). STA Travel, Travel Bag and Trailfinders all offer very well priced tickets for under 26s and students.

Up at 5.30am tomorrow, getting a train to heathrow...

Pre departure

2008-02-24T06:08:00.000-08:00

Wow, shed loads of organisation in a week; of course I didn't do much before, thats just the way it is for everyone, right?? Visa, Tickets, Insurance, Bank Accounts, Contacts, Backups, Stuff to take, medications, setting up this blog, translations for Thailand (and Oz), references, budgetting, birth certificates and about 3 medium sized trees worth of paper, and I haven't even left yet!!

Getting slightly restless, too many things running round my head. There's also a load of "what ifs" in my psyche, too - what if I run out of money, what if I don't like it, what if people don't like me, what if I have a nut and explode (I'm allergic to some nuts), what if I can't find work.... Of course all of this is irrational thinking - I've made arrangements and plans to fall back on for most of these, and I'm being overly nervous, I just need to get there and get into it. Australia's hardly the back end of all civilisation (however, why aren't there any black people on Neighbours?), and the east coast of australia is THE backpacking route in Oz for simplicity and ease of travel. Apparently. And I'm staying with my mum's cousin and her husband first (1st cousin, once removed or something??), so there's someone to help me get grounded.

I'll miss everyone in Blighty (and my cats), and I hope you'll miss me, however you'll be missing a kick-ass adventure.

See you people in 6 months! I'll be uploading pix and wordz here when I can, so stay tuned..