Day 179 - Newcastle

Brodi is a GOD!



So, leaving byron bay behind to the soundtrack of the new Nelly Furtado album (half good, half RUBBISH. where's the old nelly gone. she was perfectly good as she was), sam drove us south for 3 hours while I slept in the passenger seat to a little nondescript town called Coffs Harbour. I don't wanna offend anyone, but its a bit rubbish.

Right, it sells itself as the 'town with the big banana', which turns out to be about 12ft long, which clearly isn't big enough to boast about. rubbish. and there's nothing here. The only hostel in town wouldn't let us use their showers, so we drove around, trying to find a road to park on, but opted for a camp site to finish up. Very excitingly though, Sam and I bought a shed load of meat and used one of THESE for the first time...



Aussies are wicked, putting these BBQ stations EVERYWHERE that you'd want to cook a sausage. They're free (we spent ages trying to find the money slot) and are amazing. the only downside is the seagulls.



Anyway, campsites are rubbish. Usual story - can't sleep, no tv room to chill out in, lights out at sundown. I'm not cut out for camping. I'm noctural, like most of the nasty little critters that keep scarying the crap out of me when I'm bored and wandering around the park. But the morning came, and after Sam did some internet research for her freelancing job (she's writing articles for That's Life Australia magazine!) we hit the road towards Newcastle, home of Brodi, some 19-year-old dude I went out drinking with in Queenstown, New Zealand.

The drive there was as equally non-descript as Coffs Harbour. 6 hours, passing almost no coastline (we took a 30 minute detour to spot some coast, but we weren't that impressed), almost no topography and not a hint of culture. The best we got was stopping for some food and drivign away at top speed because some dude in a rocking chair was staring at us and the place was so 'out-back' we thought we were gonna be murdered.



But we arrived in Newcastle just after dark. Its proper industrial, like one massive ship-building, car-wrecking, metal-shaping factory city. The street lights aren't quite bright enough, and the traffic lights are pea-green coloured - different to everywhere else (in the whole world almost). After passing a rotting 50-something hooker and a gang of kids sauntering along the dingy streets, we pull up in the centre of town and call Brodi on his mobile. I'm nervous. Its not like we're best mates. We got drunk together. that's it!

But its cool. He gives us directions, we check a map at a petrol station, and start the 15 minute journey retracing our steps because he doesn't live in the town centre. gutted. and sure enough, my impeccible sense of direction leads us to Brodi's house.

Now, lets set the scene. We're going to meet a 19-year-old friend of ours, who's offered that we stay with him. He's just been travelling, and only just got home. what the hell were we expecting. OF COURSE HE LIVES WITH HIS PARENTS. We're sat in the pink campervan outside his house, dreading ringing the doorbell in case his mum asks who the hell we are, when out come brodi, welcomes us in, and within minutes I have a sausage on my plate, a cup of tea in my hand, and the usual auusie welcome we've come to expect everywhere.

And 2 hours later, we've flown into town in a cab to an indie bar, stocked out with good looking people, a shed load of piercings and tattoos, and even more fruit machines (they call them pokies here, as in poker machines), and we're drinking, laughing and getting on as if we're old mates who have never been apart. Brodi's surname is Hardman (i know!), so we spent ages trying to flex our guns as well as his. but we failed.







the next day, hangovers out in force, Brodi promised to show me how to BODYBOARD, so we suncreamed up, drove back into newcastle town and spied the best beach for bodyboarding. And before long, I had my flippers on, my wetsuit donned and was heading for the water with my bodyboard.



Now, I never realised that bodyboarding is a serious sport. I always, genuinely, thought it was for kids, and people who can't surf. But brodi does it seriously. and its a proper thing. people get paid LOADS to do this stuff in hawaii, and you can get proper bodyboarding magazines. So rather than feel like a little pussy for not having a surfbaord, I felt pretty special. And as I waded in (oh, tough with flippers on), and prepared myself for the relatively intimidating waves, brodi wished me luck and pointed me towards my starting point.

Ducking under the waves is tiring, and paddling out is hard work, but when you catch the wave - you fly! Its wicked. seriously. its. wicked. I rode about 4 waves before giving up because I ate a face-full of sand, but each one was special. The wave just takes you - there's almost no resistance, and you can't do ANYTHING wrong. You have to literally make yourself fall off the board to stop riding it. Its great. Although I was later described as a bus-driver for the way I held the board so rigidly. whatevs.



Brodi was up, and he bombed across the waves, through some tunnels, up on one knee, spinning on the tops of waves and jumping off the cusps. He's a pro. That much is obvious. And when he came to give the board back, the waves had grown a little and the intimidation factor got too much for me, so I bailed out. Next time.



We decided to spend the evening in the city, but none of us has much money, so we opted for a car park with a city viewpoint, and blared the music out and joked around until dana (brodi's friend) was called home by her mum (seriously - we're hanging out with kids).





Now, we were being pretty stupid. We have a campervan which seats 2 people. So dana and brodi are lying in the back on the bed. Sam's all stressed because its kinda illegal, but its fine. That is until the police pull us over. Yep, driving along at 11pm and I get flagged over by the police, who are stopping everyone. random breath tests. I'm crapping myself. Sam's goes white (despite all the fake tan which she's applying even though she has a real one) and dana and brodi lie as flat as they can. Its dark back there. but not really dark.

And with brodi's feet perched scarily close to my face, I wind down the window, have a quick chat with the copper (who smiles at sam and doesn't even attempt to look inside the van), count to six in front of the breathaliser, and the copper wishes us a safe journey. We're all still holding our breath 10 seconds up the road before exploding with relief. Seriously, I was driving - i would have been fined to hell, and probably had some nasty points transfered to my licence back home. We made it. It was one of those situations that you KNOW you shouldn't have got away with. But we did.

In the morning, Sam and I bummed around the house for most of the day, avoided a flash storm of horrendous proportions (we had to unplug everything for fear of setting fire to the house from the lightning) that lasted about 20 minutes before being clear blue skies again (I love that stuff), then jumped in the Buddy van and headed off south. Next stop - SYDNEY!

Day 177 - Byron Bay

Byron Bay is gorgeous. This is a fact.



Byron Bay, the most easterly point on the australia mainland, is pretty spectacular. THIS is what a headland should look like, not like Cape Tribulation, which was rubbish. Its big, and menacing, and imposing and has a lighthouse because its rocks kill people. Its great. And the beach goes on FOREVER. Urgh, its possibly the most beautiful beach scene I've seen yet. And trust me when I say I've seen loads.



BUT, there's a downside. You see, we've moved states now. Before, in Queensland, we were one hour behind the rest of australia (they don't have daylight saving there). But here, they do. So we thought the only difference would be the amount of daylight we get. Wrong. It seems in this state, you're not allowed to park on the side of a road and sleep in your van. if you do, the park ranger will come along and move you, or fine you. Great. Sop instead of using the van as we had hoped, to save on accomodation costs, we now have to drive 5 miles out of town and park at a campsite, for almost the same price as a hostel, but with more spiders and less cool people. Great.

But, that downer aside, I spent a couple of hours on the internet (I'm weeks behind on the blog), we got a good nights sleep and in the morning headed out to the headland for a wander. And its BEAUTIFUL.







The lighthouse is impressive, the beaches are massive, the waves are scary, the sheer number of surfers is shocking. and the beauty is breathtaking. I don't think sam was that bothered by it, but I ditched her to walk down to the sea level and just sat watching the waves crash by my feet, occassionally spraying me in a salty mist, for ages. You can see why its such a special place.



On the way up, I saw ANOTHER massive lizard. Its getting stupid now. this place is packed with them. its like Jurassic Park.



and with that, we walked along the beach for a couple of hours, soaking up the almost-overcast gloom of the bay and headed off towards Coff's Harbour - a place we knew NOTHING about, but were told it was cool.

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.

Day 174 - Noosa

So, all-round-nice-guy Roger (from Brisbane) said we could totally hang out with him mum if we wanted when we got to Noosa, so we booked a ticket there after Fraser Island and he arranged for her to meet us at the bus station.

So, this is a little weird right. She's his mum, so she's probably kinda old. And we've never met her. Its a little weird. BUT, its free rent for a night. So as we get off the bus, I spot her hanging around and before we know it we're all hugging, telling her what a dude her son is, thanking her for meeting us, and suddenly we're in her car getting a guided tour of Noosa.

Shes wicked. Young, lively, smiley. Shes great. The tour takes us past the beach, which looks great, past the national park (where koalas apparently hang out although we didn't see any), past a swanky golf club where we hop out for a glass of water in the swanky bar, and then finally past the multi-millionaire mansions that line Noosa's canals.



You see, this place has cash. loads of it. Its like Sandbanks near Bournemouth - massive mansions, nice beaches, sun always shines, that kinda stuff. And the town centre has all the boutiques and posh restaurants that backpackers fear the most. But its got an accessible feel to it too - I don't feel too scrubby to walk the streets, so it must be pretty accepting.

So anyway, Mrs Bishop drops us back at her posh pad overlooking the city, feeds us up with some vietnamese spring rolls (anyone who knows me knows that this would be a challenge for me. But, I ate the lot, especially since she commented 'we don't ask if you like something, you just eat it here') and sam and i don our swimmers and head the 5 minute walk down to the beach, where we swim in the shark-safe sea and tan under a burning hot sun.



And after a dip in the pool back at Mrs. Bishop's house, sam and I settle down for a quiet evening in to try and catch up on some sleep, while the Bishop is out running around town with the local running club. In the morning, we're whisked back into town, via the national park for a brisk walk with the Bish, to be dropped at the bus station. To both our surprise, she bursts into a teary goodbye, hugs me, hugs sam, and is walking away drying her eyes. I'm making old ladies cry within 24 hours of meeting them - now that's a gift.



Mrs Bishop - you're an angel. expect a postcard soon, and if you wanna come partying with us in sydney, i'll give you our address when we have one.

Day 171 - Fraser Island

Who in their right mind lets 8 kids borrow your jeep and drive across sand dunes UNGUIDED for 3 days? the idiots...



Fraser Island is an enigma. Its basically a massive island (probably about the size of the Isle of Wight or something), composed almost entirely of sand, with about 1 mile of paved roads and the rest just dirt tracks across the island. its home to some beautiful lakes, beautiful beaches stretching for 50 miles at a time, wild dingo populations, MASSIVE SPIDERS and a shed load of campsites. the deal is that people hire jeeps and drive their way around the island, camping at campsites or staying in the only hotel on the island. Most people go unguided, so you have free reign to do whatever you want.

So there we are, 5am briefing, watching videos about driving 4-wheel-drive vehicles, beach driving safety, advice on feral dingoes (which were responsible for butchering a 4-year-old kid a few years back) and where to set up camp without attracting the animals. An hour later, we're packing our van with camping supplies - tents, gas cookers, water bottles, groundsheets, sleeping bags and tent-poles. Then we're in the supermarket, buying food provisions for 3 days. and an hour later, we're on the ferry heading for the island.



The paths on the island are mental. They're not roads. They're like driving over a motorcyle dirt-track. its takes AGES to get anywhere, and the paths are full of so many lumps and bumps that you get thrown around the van until your body aches. but aftr an hour of driving, we made it our first stop on our recommended itinery - Lake Mackenzie. And man, what a lake.



Right, this lake is completely clear water. Like, strikingly clear. You can see for miles through it and its SO beautiful. We jumped stright in and spent the next 2 hours sunning ourselves and diving around. the lake is like a bog bowl, and you can see the sand drop off into the deep. its amazing. and to top it all, there's a shed load of fit, young people all hanging around, jumping around the waters edge, playing football and splashing each other. Its like being on an 18-30s holiday, without the dickheads and the high-rise flats.



Anyway, we're in a group of 8 people. They're all pretty cool. 3 germans (who talk german all the time), a scottish couple (that bicker a lot, but its almost endearing), an essex boy and Sam and I. There's 2 other jeeps of guys, all a bit younger than us, although they seem to want to do their own thing which is fine. Anyway, we end up at this campsite by a lake, set up the tents, cook up a massive BBQ and hit the sack at about 10pm after a number of burbon and cokes.





In the morning we had a shed load to get through on our only full day on the island. We started by driving to the beach, where we spotted a wild dingo plodding along. It was cute. although looks like it needs a good feed.



next stop was Eli Creek, which i loved. its a cute little river which you can jump into (its freezing) and float down towards the sea. After spending 20 minutes trying to get in because its so cold, eventually we all drifted down the 10 minute creek, passing eels and fish, and getting papped by the more reluctant group members at the bottom. Its nothing really special, but it was fun. By this point too, I was warming hugely to the germans - Thomas, in particular (below), managed to make me laugh ALL DAY LONG. he's a legend.









After floating along the creek for a while, we headed further north along the beach. Driving on the beach is pretty cool - much cooler than when we did it on the 90-mile-beach in New Zealand, probably because we're in a jeep and not a bus. But yeah, I loved it. I got to take the wheel for a while myself, although the jeep is massive and slides around on the sand like mad. Thought we were gonna tip over at one point, which was a bit scary for the passengers. Anyway, before long we hit the wreck of the Moheno. Which whilst being covered in tourists, still maintained its eerie charm.









Further up the coast is another favourite spot of mine. This time a massive headland where from the top you can see stingrays, turtles and dolphins. We missed the dolphins by about 2 minutes, but it was pretty special. I had to be dragged away by the others, cos we had to get on, but i could have stayed there all day.





And next came the Champagne Pools. The sea here is way too dodgy to swim in. sharks prowl the beaches, rip currents drag shed loads of tourists out to their deaths (remember, we're miles away from any paved roads, and any emergency assistance out here). But these pools are just at the right level that at a low tide, you can swim in the water safe from all the dangers, and there's loads of fish in the water too. I hopped in, goofed around for about 20 minutes, then we headed down the beach to find a place to camp for the night.



We found a sheltered place on the beach and sat up drinking and chatting with the two other jeeps until the early hours. A couple of dingoes came sniffing around the tents, which was a little scary, but far more scary were the other kiddies singing dolly parton and oasis songs after I'd gone to bed. Surely no one does that?

That night was pretty nasty. the wind was howling, rain drops the size of golf-balls were pelting our tent. it was almost blair-witch like. and to top it all, after going to the toilet in the night (you have to go in pairs for fear of dingo attacks while you're peeing), I get back and Tom has stolen my sleeping bag. Right, Its fine, I'll just pull it back in my direction. OH NO. he's hanging onto it for dear life. I try waking him - nothing. I pull harder. he pulls harder too. Its stressing me out. So yeah, no sleeping bag for me. We end up sharing it, which is weird, and I end up having the worst night's sleep ever. great.



The next day, we hit another lake, this time one formed by a massive sand dune which grew across its drainage route. That was pretty sweet. We saw a big lizard as well. Can't get enough of those bad boys over here.







And then we had to head back to the mainland. We managed to sneak one more stop into lake mackenzie on the way, which was sweet. but before we knew what was happening, we were on the ferry and taking our last group photo before we returned the van.



neither myself or sam slept well at all during the fraser island experience, and to make it worse, we come back, enjoy a massive all you can eat pizza experience with the other jeepsters, and then I spend all night sleeping in the lounge of the hostel on a sofa becuause our room is too damn hot. AND our bus down to Noosa is at 5:45am, so we're up again at 5am. I HATE TRAVELLING. All i want is one good night's sleep. Its been way too long...