East Coast Adventures

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I'm in Newcastle, Get Me Out of Here...
- On our way from Sydney to Byron Bay we decided to pit stop for a day in Newcastle... Worst mistake ever!
- In what appeared to be a ghost town there was literally no one around, nothing to see or do and no restaurants or cafes to speak of!
- Our Sunday consisted of:
* Traipsing round in the drizzle with heavy backpacks finding refuge in the local supermarket to purchase and eat our picnic... We made it last!

Byron Bay
Renowned for housing Australia's best beaches Byron was swarming with backpackers all year round completely outnumbering the locals.


With a relaxed, hippy atmosphere and the option to go "get happy" in Nimbin you can't help but love the sound of the locals jamming on their guitars without a care in the world with their main mode of transport being cracking out some funky skills on their skateboards! If this town was any more laid back it would be backwards!

Wanting to not feel out of place, we decided to get out and ride the waves!! The pictures may make us look like pros (we hope) but in reality Rach really is just posing with her surfboard and after being completely shown up by 5 year olds downgraded to a body board pretty quickly!



After mastering the art of standing up Tom was at a lose end of what to do next, there is definite progress to be made from flopping backwards off the board!


Byron bay is home to arguably the best chicken burger going. We have come up with a short poem in its honour:

BeloPorto, BeloPorto,
Have you tried it!? I think you ought'o,
Easily the best burger in Byron bay,
Without fail, I had one everyday!

- After gate crashing a birthday drinks, party we had our initiation to the drinking game flip cup ... We will be calling this game to the table when we're home!

- When asked the most popular thing to do in Byron, the Lighthouse Walk came up top trumps. We hiked up past the the most easterly point of mainland Australia and celebrated at the top!



- We checked out Byron's hottest nightclub, Cheeky monkeys. Luckily for Tom, it was babe nation, meaning majority of the girls were walking around with their nationality painted across their chest. We were easily the most successful couple in the place; when first boy and first girl were called up onto stage, no one was getting in our way! We managed to bag ourselves not only a free bottle of champagne, but a Fraser Island and Whitsundays trip and a camper van voucher!! We were easily the most envied 'His and Hers' ... I mean we should really have given the rest a chance.... Nat!!



Surfers Paradise

There was no evidence of either surfers or paradise during our stay, cheers cyclone Oswald! Nothing in Australia is done half-heartedly, and the weather is no exception; 46ºC in Sydney, and a cyclone a week later in Surfers Paradise.



The severe weather warnings kept us inside for the majority of our stay. Going against advice, we ventured out on Australia day and saw the chaos for ourselves:
- cars shaking in the wind
- trees blocking the road
- signs hanging upside down
- guttering and roofing coming off
- water flooding the streets

Apart from the weather, Australia day lived up to all expectations:
- BBQ
- Beers
- Game of Cricket
- Aussie flags everywhere
- Spontaneous night boat trip (Cheers DK)



The hype of the Australian tennis open and Murray mania managed to reach us through the cyclone. Sitting on a sofa and enjoying a few home comforts made us resent returning to our creaky hostel bunk beds, rather than a cosy nights sleep in our own bed.

Brisbane - Flood warnings

We reached Brisbane just as the cyclone was passing, although the weather still reminded us of a "summer's day" in the UK...wet and miserable, some might say a bit dreich. To brighten the mood, we decided to treat ourselves to our first meal out, opting for our favoured Thai cuisine. The food lived up to our high expectations although we almost choked on seeing the bill which was at least 4x the price of Thailand.

We decided we might as well splash out even more and go to the cinema...although we didn't really realise how much we would be splashing out, $17 for a ticket almost floored us. If Ryan Gosling hadn't been in the film Rach would have outright refused to spend so much!

The following day we woke up to sunshine...a sight we hadn't seen for a while so decided to tour Brisbane on bicycles. We should have brought our arm bands, with the river reaching its peak and almost flooding the cycle paths alongside we might have been better off swimming.



Our last day in Brisbane was spent meeting some Aussie locals with a real laid back lifestyle...

Some facts we learnt about koalas:
- Koalas are not actually bears, they are marsupials as baby koalas live in their mothers pouch for the first couple of months.
- They only eat eucalyptus leaves and poo about 200 pellets a day.
- There are two main species of koalas.
- Chlamydia is a serious threat to the koala community as currently there is no cure
- With their long claws they are noy quite as cuddly as they look.


The other residents had a bit more life about them, a bit of a spring in their step. However, they should not be taken lightly as an adult male kangaroo is jacked and can easily break a humans jaw with one punch! All the more reason to keep on their good side and feed them some lunch.

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