Day 175 - Surfers Paradise

Right, can you believe they actually named this place 'Surfers Paradise'? that's mental!



Anyway, before all that, we left Noosa and got the bus back to Brisbane (where all our bags were waiting for us at Roger's house). Between here and Sydney, we had decided to hire another Wicked van to transport us down in style, so heading across town to pick it up.

In case you missed the Wicked thing, its basically a van-hire company which spray paint its vans with crazy stuff, like cartoon characters, famous musicians or funny designs. In Cairns, anthony hired a van with an aboriginal design on it, but you see all sorts of weird ones over the country. its become quite a thing over here, and I think they've just opened an office in the UK as well, so look out for them there. But anyway, outside the depot sits a nice, sparkling van with the coca-cola logo on it, although on closer inspection it actually says 'Enjoy Cocaine'. Right, this is hardly appropriate. So in the office, we voiced a slight complaint, and instead got this...



That's right. Buddy Holly looking a lot like Chris Evans. Its a bit pink and rubbish, but at least it doesn't have drugs sprayed all over it.

Anyway, its Melbourne Cup day here, which is a total national holiday. Like the Grand National, but EVERYONE gets the day off work and dresses up in summery dresses and hats and suits and goes to the pub. Its nice. the place is buzzing and you can feel the country relaxing as summer draws closer.

So, we pick up the van, grab our bags from the Bish's house, and hit the road. First destination, Surfers Paradise (please note, ali in particular, that I have intentionally left the apostrophe off the 'surfers' part of this, because the idiots who named it left it off). Although its not got the best beaches, or the best surf, this is a town in the middle of theme-park-land, aka Gold Coast, Australia. Its massively built up, with swanky high-rise blocks everywhere. And since we have the van, we plan to spend our time sleeping in it to save on accomodation costs, so park up outside a fun hostel and pay just to use the toilets for the night.



The town is a proper party town, with club nights on everyday of the week, and our hostel is organising a trip out for all of us, so sam and I get dragged along, and within 3 drinks and some dancing to Nelly Furtado's new songs, we're partying hard. Its only about 10pm, but I'm surrounded by people gurning (it is Melbourne Cup day after all),so start chatting to those guys and making friend. The girl below on the right, didn't really like me. but the others did, so I spent the night dancing with them and drinking beer.



before long, sam had befriended a dreadlocked surfer, who was SO NICE (like everyone else) and took us out to another club down the road where I talked everyone into showing me their biceps. Sam's were my favourite. They're proper guns.





A drunken stumble home and a comfortable although ROASTING HOT night in the Buddy van later, I spent the day hungover by the pool and talking to strangers. I love this life. I don't have to do anything. its GREAT. New mate Joel (the dreaded surfer) rocks up and invites us to stay at his tonight (rather than sleeping in our roasting van), and before you know it we're in his flat, drinking rum, listening to music and chatting to his housemates. I love aussies.



The night ends up going on til 5am, including a very electrical storm and a leaking roof. Joel's housemates are wicked, but menacing. But we're welcomed into their flat like we're old friends - no questions asked. No trouble. its amazing. i hope i'm like these guys when I get back.



The next day, I go for a walk on the beach. Its huge, and goes on for miles. And from what the guys have told me, is INFESTED with sharks. They have shark nets to stop the tourists from running away, but these don't strictly work. They're only about 40% effective, since the sharks can swim round them, through the massive gaps at the sides and bottoms. The real effectiveness comes in the baiting. They plant shark bait at the middle of the nets, so the sharks are attracted to that. A shark takes the bait, and they pull the tourists out of the water. OR they wait until the sharks move to the bait closer to the shore, THEN they pull the tourists out the water. Its pretty scary stuff. They actually attract about 300 sharks a day to within 100m of the shoreline. That's INSANE. The problem is so bad that sharks are know to swim up the canals and eat little kids as they jump into the murky water from bridges, thinking its safe because its a canal. So yeah, if you wanna go swimming (or even worse, surfing) at Surfers Paradise, don't do it. Fact.

Byron Bay calls us, so we said goodbye the dudes from Surfers and head south in the Buddy for 3 hours. We're told Byron is a wicked hippy town, so we're pretty excited. I love hippies.