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Published: February 1st 2010
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We turned up at the YHA in Byron Bay excited to find out what our ‘semi-private’ room actually entailed. Firstly, we were greeted by the smell of sick; where somebody had definitely thrown up in the plant pot outside of the room the night before. We entered to find that semi -private means a sauna with a bed on an elevated platform in a room with 4 other boys. If that wasn’t fantastic enough, there was a meager fan put above us to deliberately churn up the interior temperature of 34 degrees until you couldn’t endure the room for longer than 5 minutes. Luckily the boys in our room turned out to be a lot of fun and we spent Christmas Eve playing drinking games with goon (cheap Australian wine.) The wine led to us being convinced to come out to a club with them, but being slightly more than half cut, we got lost along the way when I started talking to this Swedish girl and her boyfriend and declared them my best friends. Surprise, surprise we ended up spending the rest of the night in the bar with them.
The next morning I awoke with a very bad
headache and vague memories of agreeing to meet this boy and girl at 2pm the next day at the same bar. After a quick dip in the hostels pool ( - I know, fancy!) we spent the next morning umming and ahhing over whether it was worth the trek to the bar as the Swedes probably wouldn’t even remember our conversation and wouldn’t turn up. In the end we decided to go for it and as we rounded the corner, there they both were, sat on the pavement waiting for us. They told us that there were jellyfish warnings out for swimming in the sea today so we could go for a swim in a disused quarry with them if we wanted. Never having being ones to turn down a slightly creepy offer, we grabbed some beers, iPod, swim stuff and told the boys where we were going - just in case and jumped in the car. When we arrived, the quarry was really beautiful and peaceful. Philip said ‘hey, let’s go for swim’ before adding the slightly sinister ‘oh, this is kind of like the start of a horror film, isn’t it?’ at which point Tom and I replied
‘umm yeah, how about you go first.’ It turns out that Michael and Angelica were a really lovely couple and we spent Christmas morning swimming and sunbathing with them whilst we thought about you all at home, in the snow, with your presents and Christmas dinner.
After the swimming, all four of us took ourselves down to the beach with loads of BBQ food and set about cooking our very own Christmas dinner - which involved queuing for about an hour to use the public grease logged BBQ - but was fun all the same and the burgers were very good. After dinner and a quick call home, I took myself off for an early night - still suffering slightly from the night before whilst Tom went off with the boys for a party on the beach. It really was a lovely day, but it was very surreal and didn’t feel like Christmas in the slightest, being away from home and not doing any traditional Christmas day type things.
The next day Tom and I decided to go body boarding. We spent a couple of hours dragging ourselves out to sea to sit atop a couple waves before
being pushed back to shore about half a mile down from where we started. All of this fun (note my enthusiasm) was abruptly brought to a halt when a jellyfish floated by lacerating the back of my leg in the process. I stoically got out of the water, limped to my beach towel where it took a couple of minutes for my body to realise that the pain was actually the equivalent to a nettle sting. However it had left a big red whip mark round my leg, so I proudly told all those that I met that day how I had braved a jellyfish - and who knows what type - yes, it may well have been a Portuguese Man of War. In reality it was probably a tiny little Blue Bottle, but the story was too good. That evening was spent chilling out at Philip and Angelica’s house. We ordered the most delicious pizzas and spent the evening chatting and watching ‘Inglorious Basterds’ which is a fantastic film although relatively controversial.
The next day we set off to visit Penny and Bronwyn at Bronwyn’s apartment in Coolangatta. Her apartment was beautiful - a penthouse suite, with views
overlooking the beach and sea. After dumping our stuff here we drove over to Susan’s house (Tom’s other cousin) where we had a fantastic BBQ cooked by Susan’s boyfriend Charles - although it was only my second BBQ in Australia, which dashed another cliché I held dear to the heart. After lunch Bronwyn surprised everyone with her Christmas gift, as she is a pilot, she wanted to take everyone on a flight up the East Coast in her works private jet. Unfortunately when we awoke the next day the weather was miserable, so they decided to reschedule the flight for when the weather picked up. Instead we decided to go to Wet ‘n’ Wild, which I was ridiculously excited about, as I had last been to a water theme park when I was about 10 and had very fond memories. We spent the rest of the day slipping and sliding about on the numerous rides and the evening watching an awful Sandra Bullock film whilst floating in the wave pool. I thought it was AMAZING and am definitely prepared to campaign for a water park in the UK. After another couple of brilliant days with Tom’s family it was time
to catch a bus up to Hervey Bay where our Fraser Island trip was about to begin.
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grandma
non-member comment
hello
i to both of you christmas day did seem a bit unusual , we checked your visit to flores on the web and watched a vidio someone had put on it looked beautiful di d you go on the hiking trail at ruteng ? look forward to recieving your blogs love grandma @ granda xxx