Australia 1!

The next day – I say day I mean afternoon as we didn’t see a lot of the morning – Sam and Matt ate as much foder as possible while Pete suffered from the night before and spent most of the day in bed. Matt and Sam polished of over a Kg of lamb for dinner and then packed – ready to leave NZ the day after. After a short shuttle journey to the airport and a short delay on our original flight time we were on our way to Aussieland. We arrived to the expected quarantine point but were surprised how they let us stroll through without checking anything just because we had said we were bringing food in. We then ventured outside and were greeted by lots of rain – not good.

We arrived at our pre booked hostel (recommended by STA) to find that (even though we had booked about 6 months in advance) we were squeezed into a 2 person room meaning me and Matt would have to get cosy on a double bed – because we wouldn’t be doing that enough in 5 weeks that we were renting the camper, clearly… – after a day of travelling we couldn’t be arsed to change rooms so after discovering that there was no plugs, the mattresses were made of concrete and the showers were a hike away we decided to drown our sorrows by purchasing some unsafely cheap ”Chinese” which surprisingly made none of us ill. Before the Chinese however we mistakenly wondered to Wicked travel – a company offering packages for travel up the east coast – as they had what looked like some good deals on for that day. About 2 hours later the naggy sales women finally let us go after we had parted with $550 dollars of our hard earned cash for trips to islands etc as we travelled up the east coast. In the end I think we got a good deal but it was just the way the women sold it too us that really pissed me off – typical sales tactics inc the infamous good cop bad cop technique “Oh your bad for giving it too them for that price Zoey, I would not have given it to them for that”; full of bullshit. Anyway, rant over, back to the terrible Chinese. After we ate we enjoyed our first free sample of the infamous goon that we had heard so much about whilst we took part in a quiz at the hostel. Goon is basically an alcoholic drink which is mascara ding as wine but served from 4L+ boxes and made of, well, no one really knows.

The next day we woke to a sunny day and after checking out made a sort trip to Travellers Autobahn to pick up our camper van – passing several gorgeous car garages on the way. The van wasn’t ready at first so we went and got a smoothie/juice drink to pass the time. One of those that are made in front of you using a blender – heavenly. Pete ordered an apple juice and there the women must have blended about 12 apples into a 500ml container for it. When we returned we were given the decision of Excess Waiver or not. Basically when you hire the van it is insured but with an excess of about 1500 pounds if it is written off etc. You can however reduce this to 125 pounds if you pay a daily fee adding up to about 450 pounds for the length of our rental. After much discussion we felt the only way to reach a fair decision was the trusty rock paper scissors. Who ever wins gets to choose – we didn’t get the excess waiver. At time of writing this at has worked in our favour, fingers crossed well have no mishaps from now on in.

Sam drew the short straw and had to drive “the rig” first through the horrible busy roads of Sydney with its grose one ways systems and thousands of traffic lights and lanes that randomly end with no warning and toll roads that have no cashier because all the locals use Etags which means people like us a pretty buggered – I think this sets a nice picture. Anyway, we had a mare – driving 74km and passing through toll roads that led to places we didn’t even want to go – so we decided to purchase a city map. Which worked well and we found a nice spot by a sports park with WC’s and a BBQ where we stayed for to nights in the end whilst seeing Sydney. Fortunately man points were still intact as we did not ask anyone for directions. That evening we planned the drive for the next day – circling points of interest etc and having a rough idea of a route to make it as easy as possible when it cam to actually driving it. This worked quite well as we made it back from North Sydney over the Harbour bridge (tick) into circular quays where you can board a ferry to go to toronga zoo – our original plan. Unfortunately the weather was not as expected and hindered this plan – forcing some on the spot thinking over some noodles at lunch. We visited the opera house (the funny shaped building in all Australia pictures) while we were their which was pretty epic but photos were difficult because of the rain(tick). After this we decided to head into town in the direction of aquarium – we felt it was a decent substitute for the zoo and would involve being dry. On the way we got distracted for quite a while in an awesome apple store. An 3 story all glass building full of apple shininess – you imagine that Matt was struggling to contain himself. Anyway, we finally made it too the aquarium and finally made use of our useless ISIC cards to pay for the entry fee. This place turned out to be awesome. We saw Crocodiles, sharks, manta rays, sting rays, massive cod, huge crabs, eels and of course manatees amongst others. They had these cool tubes that you could walk down as if you were inside the pool that the sharks etc were swimming in which were pretty awesome. We left the aquarium to experience Sydney at night – the bridge etc lit up – which was pretty cool and it had stopped raining! On the way back to the rig we stopped at a sports store to purchase a footieball and Pete bought some running shoes to commence his get fit regime in Oz.

We headed back to our camp, a car park on the outskirts of Sydney, cooked up some dinner and turned in for the night ready to be nine years old again tomorrow and head to the Sydney Zoo.
We awoke the next day and headed to the Zoo for more childishness and again made use of our ISIC cards (they were finally coming good!). We meandered around the zoo seeing all the interesting animals (the ones that could kill a man – not the shitty ones that are basically rats) until <we saw the best thing in the Zoo that day. The lesbian. I say 'the' lesbian, because this..lady..was the dykiest dyke I have ever seen, so much so that we all thought she was a man before she looked up and made face to face contact. Sam even gave a brief Fruedian slip by saying 'Lets go back up and see the lesbians…I mean Zebras' which provided much entertainment for all. We headed back to the rig for a brief spot of lunch and got the real road trip under way.
Deciding we needed to make up a fair nit of driving that day to compensate for the time we had spent in Sydney, so we cained it up the coast to Port Macqurie where we made camp for the night by parking about 10m from the sea, which as waking up to a view goes, was pretty awesome. Not really being much there, we hit the road the next day and moved onto Coffs Harbour another smallish town along the east coast but according to our guidebook was worth visiting. We stayed in a proper campsite that night, making use of our fully functioning microwave (!) and having power for the first time in a few days. We decided that it would be a good time to wop out some of our duty free alcohol that we had purchased from SYD Airport and play our collective favourite drinking game – Ring of Fire. We opened our Mango Malibu and began to play, realising the small pleasures in life – just sitting around a table with good company and good times in general, reflecting on basically how awesome we are. After becoming slightly intoxicated (ahem) we remembered that the campsite had a bouncy 'pillow', like a bouncy castle submerged in the ground and that the addition of rain could have only made this much much more fun that it could have possibly already been. We headed over there and began to realise just what a great idea this was as the water was going everywhere and it turned into a game of who would fall over the first – and as I had been ganged up on in our game of ring of fire prior to this, it was me. Several times in fact. We put our clothes in the wash forgetting we had washing powder I n our drunkenness and hit the hay, on our way to Byron Bay the next day, our first proper stop along the coast.

We headed up to Byron the next afternoon which was just another uninteresting drive along the motorway until we stopped at another rest revive survive stop where we encountered many other campers and caravans doing the same thing. One man especially caught our attention, he was dressed as if he was just about to venture into the heart of Africa when in fact we were only 1000 km north of Sydney, needless to say he was a strange one. After eating some lunch we resumed the drive onto Byron bay, which if the information we had received was correct, was going to be awesome. We came off the motorway early to take the scenic route to Byron which passed through a place called Lennox head where we could view for miles from a cliff side car park. When we got to Byron we drove around for a while trying to find a suitable hiding place to stay that night – this proved quite difficult as they seemed to be quite tight on that sort of thing here. In the end after a trip to the lighthouse for another pretty awesome view out over the sea and long sandy beaches, we headed to the beach car park for a bit where we cooked our first BBQ which after a lot of effort to get it going (the cheapest charcoal and cheapest fire lighters are not always a good shout) it turned out to be a win. Although Matt felt unwell which meant me and Pete ended up having to eat half a cow and a whole pig in burgers in sausages. We finished off with some marshmallows which were questionable and got chatting to a German guy who was also staying in a van/car and had been around Byron for a few nights. He recommended the local supermarket car park as a place to stay for the night. Awesome we thought, right in the centre of the town – a lot easier than we thought it would be. It inevitably didn't end so well. As Pete would probably put it “answering a knock on the door at 530am to a big dyke and being told to move on was a definite loss of man points” According to Pete Caulfield on Lesbians, Dykes are more powerful than men. So we moved 5 mins down the road to a hostel car park and stayed there for the rest of the night. Quite funny looking back at this but not so much at the time!

The next day was fairly productive. I bought a surfboard and we all bought various rash vests/wet suits so we could piss about in the sea on the new board. The current was carnage – we later found out that only experienced guys were in the sea that day. You literally loose concentration for a minute and just drift. Anyhow, we enjoyed getting a good battering. A new experience for Matt and Pete who haven't been in real waves before. We felt it would be necessary to have a proper shower etc after larking about in the sea all day so checked into a camp site and after much discussion about the meatball dinner and pasta we were going to make, we settled for a cuppa soup and got to bed at a human hour. In the morning Matt and Pete went and hired a board each and we spent most of the day in the sea again. The current had eased off a bit but it was still pretty big surf and we were having quite a hard time getting the hang of it. Loved every second of it though. That evening we got round to making the much discussed meatballs which turned out to be awesome then went to check out a recommended bar in town called cheeky monkeys. All in all – pretty disappointed so we again retired to bed. We planned to move up the coast to a place called surfers paradise on the gold coast the following day which, after a while sorting some stuff out that wed left a while (like giving lots of money to wicked travel), we did. We were surprised when we got there at how big the place was and how commercialised it was. Lots of high rise buildings, lots of tacky looking shop s etc etc. Very much like a typical American city. We found a handy place right next to the beach where we managed to stay for two nights without getting moved on. The beach here was awesome – white sandy beaches like a lot of the other beaches we had been on in Australia but it stretched for miles; lined by tall executive looking buildings and posh apartments. The surf was smaller than Byron but neater and just rolled in in nice barrels. The whether while we were here was not bad the first day but the second day we woke to glorious sunshine. No clouds in the sky, the best since we had been in Oz. Had a good day here – Sam surfed in the morning while Pete and Matt wondered into town to sort a couple of things for further up the coast. Then we whopped the football out for a bit of cuppy which, although ridiculously hard work on sand, was a good laugh. After some lunch we decided we should have a change of scenery and move towards Brisbane – hopefully somewhere a bit more low key than surfers. Ended up driving over 100km after getting a bit lost and having a tour of paradise point (an obviously very raaa area where not owning a yacht was abnormal) and some of the more inland towns of the east coast. We ended up at a place called Victoria Point just 40km south of Brisbane which was basically a little crossing point to one of the tiny islands off of the mainland. This was a pretty awesome place – good views and scenery- and we were treated to a beautiful sunset in the evening after a great day for the weather. To finish off we had another BBQ with a large amount of cow and Pete had his first go at driving the rig. Failing quite badly I hasten to add. We woke again to glorious sunshine and after dosing about again for a while we headed up to Brisbane – arriving in plenty of time to look at a few hostels as we felt we needed some time in a proper bed. In the end found a newly built YHA just out of the centre wear we park our van for free – ideal! We checked into our room and sorted out various shit that had been building up after a few days in the van and had a glorious showers – you learn to appreciate the simple things. In our a room were a 3 other guys who, after much deliberation, turned out to be Irish. They came from a little village near Cork and spoke the most un-understandable English I have ever heard from someone who speaks it as their first language. We got chattin to them in the pub that night whilst eating 7 dollar steak/chicken breast and it turned out they were leaving in 2 days and had some stuff to get rid of – inc a car. Eventually we just took a few sleeping bags and bits n bobs off them but at one point were going to have an additional vehicle for just 60 dollars as they couldnt be arsed to sell it. Anyways, we had a couple of nights in Brisbane – a pretty nice city. Very much like Sydney but smaller and a little more chilled out.