So, since Sydney we have been gradually getting up the East coast, passing and stopping in many places along the way, so here is the next load of news.
We went out on our last night in Sydney with a group of blokes who were in our hostel room. Went to a few bars and ended up in a nightclub / bar in Darling Harbour righ on the river front, was wicked. Ended up getting home rather late and banging about being noisy again, and realised in a few hours time we had to be up and out of there.
Once again, we rose at 5.30am and the Oz experience bus picked us up at 6am, heading straight to our first stop – Surf Camp. We slept nearly the entire journey (as usual), been more than unsociable with the new group of people we had on the bus. Finally we arrived late afternoon to our ‘Spot X’ surf camp, right on the beach front, and we were staying in little cabins, very sweet. After wandering around the place, and finally perking up enough to get to know our latest travel buddies, we were presented with a big 3 course dinner (all-inclusive), and sat round a massive table with a few other groups there and all the aussie surfer dude instructors. After dinner, we moved to the campfire and sat round drinking goon (cheap nasty aussie wine) out of a box, playing drinking games til silly o’clock once again – knowing full well we all had to be up v.early the next day for our 7am lesson. Oh well, we’re used to it now! So up we were woken at 6am! Have felt better, but believe me, the waves woke us up later on. Big cooked breakfast on the table for us and then quick rush to get our wetsuits and boards. Our cool instructor Darren led us down to the beach, and we laid our boards down to practise our skills there first before heading in to the sea. Once we were prepared, we strapped our foot to the board and dived in to the rather chopping morning sea (great weather though). Attempt after attempt we were know good, but luckily that was where our instructor came in handy. He would wait for the wave, hold on to the back of our boards while we laid front down, paddled as the wave approached us, then push us forward shouting at us to stand up, then still holding on to us as we surfed with the wave all the way to the beach. We looked the part, totally awesome surfer dudes, however, without the help, i’m afraid we were like new born babies trying to stand! Our lesson went on for a few hours and by the end of it we couldn’t take any more, the waves were getting stronger and our energy was lacking, so it was time to give up and realise a career in surfing wasn’t on the cards. So of we went, showered, bought the dvd (of course), and back on the bus up to our next stop – Byron Bay.
Still with the same group of people (who are wicked luckily!), we checked in to our next place, rather nicer apartment resort right by the beach. We had an apartment to the 8 of us, kitchen area etc, very swish compared to some dumps we’ve been in. We all decided to take a wander down to the beach and have a nose around this small town. Loved it, very holiday typey but not in a bad way, cute littleshops and a beach hotel on the front where we had a couple of drinks. Slow walk back to the apartment, picked up some food to cook back at our place and drank more beer and goon before heading out to a few bars, taking our cards with us and playing more than enough rounds of ring of fire with snakebite (feels just like uni life!)! after being thrown out by the manager for being too loud and drunk, we slowly stumbled back home, to cause more carnage wiith the loud groups next door!!
Next day we had booked a trip to Nimbin, Australia’s ‘weed’ capital, a very very funny place, full of hippies and colourful shops etc. We went with a tour company called ‘Jim’s alternative tours’, well that was about right! We had the lpeasure of having Jim take us himself, been doing it for 20 odd years, told us millions of stories. After spending a few hours around the town and now getting sick of sayinig ‘no thank you’ to marujuana cookie sellers, we got back on the bus where Jim took us to an old friend of his’ house – Paul. Paul is a very strange little man, lives on a 88 acre fruit and weed plantation, he’s been stoned for about 50 years, very happy little chappy, and really nice guy. He’s a total hippy! He took us on a brief walk through his land, to his little house by a pond, then through the fruit trees, givinig us all huge fresh grapefruits and oranges, and also macadamia nuts, was great!! But very strange!! All in al a good day, far too many sleepy people on the bus on the way home!! Back in Byron, us and our room mates were so knackered we got some take away pizzas, rented a couple of dvds and dozed off in our lounge!
Next day, up early, George and I had booked zorbing!! Brilliant! We were driven up to a hilltop farm, brought near to the ball, and we were first in. We were told to go in together cos it’d be faster and more fun, well, that it certainly was!! Both strapped in as much as we could be, we were all of a sudden rolling down the hill at very high speed!! I couldn’t stop laughing as all i could hear was George’s screaming, and as we were oppposite each other rollinig over, her face was a picture!! Was so much fun but kept thinking my neck was goinig to break everytime i bumped round on the ground!! Eventually we stoped at the foot of the hill on flat land, and the guy stops us so that i’m hanging down, and George is laying on her back on the ground – picture it. George had a panic attack. Great timing. She was screaming and nearly crying, shouting to the guy ‘get me out of her now, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, get me out of here i’m upside down i’m uppside down’, well hold on a minute, no she’s not. The man was shouting back at her ‘no you’re not upside down, look where you are, you’re mate is dangling above you, she’s upside down, now calm down so i can unstra you and you can get out’. Oh no, she was still screaming like a baby and waving her strapped in arms about and kicking her legs throwing a proper wobbly. Meanwhile i’m having my circulation nearly cut off hanging upside down strapped in very tight!! the man was stroking her arm saying ‘pleasse, be quiet and calm down, we can’t get your friend out untiil you get out, this is dangerous for her to be hanging like that for so long’. I was laughing but still in pain, stretching out to try and slap George to pull herself together!!! Finally, she stopped the panic and i could be realised once she’d got out. Bloody hell what an experience!! After catching our breath, we were dropped back to Byron where we met back up with our friends down at the beach sunbathed for a bit. One of them asked, ’so how was zorbing girls?’, George replies ‘oh i loved it, it was great!’ WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTT?!?!! I COULDN’T BELIEVE SHE JUST SAID THAT!!! what a joke!! hahaha, anyway, we had lunch, looked around the shops a bit and then our bus picked us up to take us up to Surfers Paradise. Checked in to a lovely resort overlooking the beach/sea. Had a look around the town with our group, a chinese meal and then went out to a casino and club for a few bevvies.
Woke up next day to really beautiful sunshine, and we saw Surfers Paradise in all its glory. Had big breakfast and laid on the beach soaking up the atmosphere. They descrbe this place as ‘If Paris Hilton were a place, she’d be this one’. It is totally high rise buildings next to beautiful white beach, sun, sea, sand, designer shops, exclusive clubs, restaurants, aussie surfer dudes and blonde tanned bikini babes strutting up and down the streets in high heels!! We liked it though, not a great deal to do, but to be there was wicked. So we only had the day to nose around then got picked up again to be transported only a couple of hours further up to Brisbane.
As we approached the city, we came over the Story Bridge and past Kangaroo Point, straight down in to our very central back packers hostel. Anyway, it was evening so the two of us just wandered in to town to get a feel for the place, very lively and happening, loved it. Then stumbled across a mall with a cinema and thought we’d have an easy night so went to see Batman The Dark Knight (finally) – wickd film, really really good, i recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet, totally not my type of filim but we both loved it!! Back to the hostel late, just got in to bed, and guess what – the fire alarm went off!! The entire hostel were out on the streets and there’s a bar underneath us so millions of drunk people sprawled out on to the streets harrassing the policemen and fire engines!! After some light rain to make it more fun being stood out in our pyjamas, we went back off to bed ready for an adventure tomorrow!
Up very early, picked up by crocs connection tours, to be taken to – Australia Zoo, Home of the Crocodile Hunter!!! Our driver Chris was so lovely, he is a friend of the Irwins and actually knew Steve very well. Was quite sad hearing lots of stories, and little did we know, but the day we had chosen to go to the zoo – 4th September – was the 2nd anniversary of his death, spooky or what, we had no idea. They didnt’ do anything special though, the family weren’t in the park though, they were mourning in private. Anyhoo, on the journey there, we were shown a dvd on the life of Steve Irwin and now what his kids do, little Bindi is taking over the empire, she’s amazing, only 9 but so so ambitious and passionate to follow on from her dad and keep his legend alive. We arrived at the zoo and were told to go straight to the ‘Crocoseum’ – how appropriate! Where they do the live animal shows, with elephants, crocs, birds and snakes, its where Steve used to do all his wild croc tricks, you would recognise from tv. Then we walked through the walk of memorial to Steve, so so sad, really, so many nice messages and tributes to him. We saw all the usual, tasmanian devils, elephants, tigers, wombats, dingoes, reptiles, emus, kangaroos, birds etc, patted a koala, and then………… we hugged one for a photo. My god they smell, we were given a male and apparently they have sweat glands which let out this odour to attract the females, well my god, if i ever smelt a male like that i’m run a mile!! anyway, he gripped on to us, and clawed our arms tight!! If you’ve seen our pics on facebook, i’m not actually smiling, i’m grittin my teeth in pain!! No, honestly, was great though! totally worth it, and probably will never do it again! When we got picked up we were given an additional tour round to the massive new 4 million dollar animal hospital, and shown all the land expansions for the future plans for the zoo – orangutans, monkeys on iislands and a boat trip down the river round the zoo with alligators in the water!!! Also were shown the family’s house, located right in the centre of the zoo, its where they spend alot of there time, other than that they own a couple of mansions by the coast!! All in all, was such a good, but very sad day.
Back to Brisbane and we strolled along the river bank, went up on a big ‘London Eye’ type ferris wheel by the water, and had dinner in a lovely restaurant.
Woke up the next day and had a bit of a lay in, took a walk around Brisbane, had lunch in a very posh Venice restaurant on the riverside, looking out to the Story Bridge (we’re not your’e average backpackers sometimes!!!) then strolled on back through the city before deciding to make a quick decision to go to the Castlemaine XXXX brewery right in the centre of town. Queensland’s favourite beer, has been for years and is well known for it. So we decided to do the tour, got taught about how the beer is made, what ingredients etc etc and walked around the entire brewery. You end up in the XXXX bar where you are given 4 free pints of the different XXXX beers, whatever ones you want to try. So we did, and as usual, the night got messy…….!
We ended up speaking to some guys who were also drinking in the bar, happened to actually be workers at the brewery, got chatting etc, asked us if we were going to the footy game across the road. We had no idea there wa even a game on, let alone the stadium was right infront of us. Turns out, the bar was full of men who were drinking before heading to the game at half 7. Anyway, as we were sat there with our disgusting stouts (Dad you’d have loved it), a lady walked around saying ‘does anybody want a couple of tickets to the game, free of charge??’. so yes, we piped up and took them! Awesome, we were going to the game, but didnt know who was playing or what game it even was of!! So the blokes we’d met took us and we were sitting with them too, was absolutely hilarious. Massive stadium called Lane Park, Suncorp Stadium, we were watrching the Brisbane Broncos vs. Newcastle. We were told to support the Broncos so out came some more beers and plenty of cheering. Football game here is just basically what a rugby league game is in UK. So the Broncos were winning, and they’re known as the horses, so everytime they score, they let a real horse out to run around the pitch! Its insane. There were cheerleaders in next to nothing luminous pink outfits dancing around the pitch. It was so so much fun, we got proper in to it learning all the slang and team banter, we were getting thrown around by our mates from seat to seat, such a good game too!! After the game we headed back to our hostel, bumped in to a lady holding a blanket close to her chest with a bottle of milk poking out, but it looked too small to be a baby in there – it was the smallest baby kangaroo we’ve ever seen!! It was the family’s! and they’d just taken it to see the game too!!! Crazy!
Back at the hostel we were very merry and decided to carry on the good evening, so we wandered far…… to the bar underneath us for a few more bevvies, which turned in to a raving night, lots of dancing, singing, drinking etc, and finally decided we’d had too much around 2am – probably best as we were travelling the next morning, early!!
Same situation as always, rustling up at 6am trying to grab all our stuff to get it together in our state – used to it now, to get on our bus – took us to Hervey Bay. Stopped at Rainbow Beach on the way, cute little village with different shades of sand, then drove through the original home place of ‘Mary Poppins’, finally to set down in Hervey Bay. Had a crazy driver who told us about this bar to go to later on for v.cheap drink and food, so we sorted our things and thought we’d just pop our heads in to socialise with the group – well, guess what, it ended up being a bit more than that!! Our whole group were there, people we’ve met before weeks ago, so we had to! Had the cards out again for games, jugs of snakebites and a drunken walk home nearly petrified our new lovely roommate!!!
Up early next day, we had booked a whale watching tour as Hervey Bay is the place to do it, more so than ever this time of year as the humpback whales are all in the migration right off the coast. Was amazing. We got on this big boat, loads of us, drove bout an hour at least out to sea and stopped when we saw a few, was pretty amazing, we thought that was going to be it, but we drove further and we ended up seeing so so many, plus loads of dolphins!! The whales would come so close to the boat and they were absolutely huge!! The additional excellent thing about this boat was that it had a platform at the back which lowered down to the actual sea level so we were practically touching then when they were playing around by us. They love human attention and we were told to wave our arms because they look for that, and call them too. They would wave back, flip over and come right out of the sea. Was one of the most unbelievable sights we’ve ever seen, we were just speechless at how amazing they are and how close we got to them, my god, seriously. After spending a few hours out there in complete ecstasy the boat headed back to shore. We spent the rest of the day having briefings and meeting our new group of friends for the next few days at Fraser Island. We were being taught all about how to handle the 4 wheel drive car and how to stay away from Dingoes etc. Was rather chilled evening and we were so excitede for the next couple of days!! (George next to write)
