Food, food, food... cold cold cold!

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Yo!

After a relaxing morning on Tuesday we finally got our act together and went off to the Koala Sanctuary - which was AMAZING!
We watched - from afar - a snake show, which was basically a long talk baout why you shouldn't be afraid of snakes and why people shouldn't kill them... im not entirely convinced... however, next thing I knew Sophie was suggesting we go and confront our fears by touching a snake. It took me a long time to realise she wasnt joking, and I have to say I felt no better for having done it and the experience wasn't enjoyable in the slightest! Albeit the snake wasn't slimy, but the feel of it was not pleasant! Sophie got far closer to it than I did, enough to actually be in the same picture as it - I on the other hand, barely touched it with my little finger and made sure I was well away from its head!!!
Next we had our photo's taken holding a koala! It was like holding a really hairy baby, which slightly smelt and had VERY long claws! I instantly fell in love with them and want to try and steal one and send one home!
The rest of the park was just as enjoyable: we saw kangaroo's with joeys in their pouches, wallabes, various birds and piglets, our favourites!!!
That evening we chilled out watching T.V. and had a final dinner with Lynette and family.

Wednesday we finally left Brisbane! After stuffing our faces with fruit - as we wouldnt be able to afford it any longer, we hopped in the car and Lynette drove us to the bus station. We queued in the Greyhound bus queue to book our passes (which is a cheaper way of getting around Australia), however booking our passes meant we held up the entire queue for 25minutes, and we felt very embaressed and refused to acknowledge the many backpacker eyes staring at the back of our heads!
The bus was pretty boring and they showed a weird film about iceskating - which no-one really watched, however, the bus was pretty empty which meant we could have 2 seats each and spread out! Yay! When we arrived in Byron Bay, we were told it was a 7minutes walk to 'The Art's Factory' the hostel we were satying at, although I feel the woman who told us this must have got confused and meant 7 miles instead!
'The Arts Factory' has a very hippy feel to it, and people without dreadlocks are definately the minority! The people are really friendly, although meal times can be chaotic when your trying to cook in a kitchen surrounded by about 30 other people! We are staying in our own little TeePee type tent (we would have preferred to be in the comunal dorm TeePee but there wasnt space), which reminds me of the war as you have to cross a bridge to get to it and they are all hidden by bushes and trees. Also inside is very basic, with just a double bed and this weird light that is in one corner and about 1/3 of a metre off the floor! But we dont spend much time in there, so its all good... but space is limited!
The showers have cockroaches, moths and mozzies but I guess that is to be expected. We went out for our last meal, as from now on we are cooking all our meals ourselves, I ate really slowly to try and make it last! That afternoon we went to 'Woolworths' to buy ANOTHER food bag and replace all the food we lost, so annoying! We ended up ecconomising even more and nearly everything we bought was 'HomeBrand', and from tasting most of it you can tell!
Laden with bags we returned to The Arts Factory to chill out for a bit and eat our HomeBrand chocolate covered raisins, which made us feel so sick we made a vow to give up chocolate!
We headed to the communal kitchen later to cook in the chaos. We attempted to cook risotto, which did not go well! We cooked far too much and it had no taste at all, except for oil. It was not an enjoyable experience and kind of put us off cooking in general. What made things worse was that we had so much left over we now have to have it for tomorrows dinner as well! Joy.
We miss home cooking so much and are sick of living on a budget! All there is to do in Australia is go from cafe to cafe... however all we can afford to do is walk past each cafe with envious looks on our faces!
After dinner we went to the bar and watched 'Cockatoo Paul' sing and play various instruments... his music is er... interesting! There was also a Jazz band, whihc we got dragged to watch by a really drunk guy, however they turned out to be pretty good!

On Thursday, after showering we ate our megre breakfast of HomeBrand museli, which tastes like hay! Needless to say neither of us felt full that morning! We then headed to the beach, which was beautiful, however very crowded and the weather wasn't particularly nice! I feel we had both adjusted to how warm (boiling hot!) it was in South East Asia and therefore we both find Australia colder than most now! We lay there for as long as we could, plowing through books and watching the surfers, but we finally caved and walked back, past all the fish and chip restaurants, oozing delicious smells and headed back for our late afternoon lunch. Saying that, lunch was probably the best meal we've had so far that we have cooked ourselves, we had left over chicken and salad with bread and pesto and some plastic cheese, but this meal... unlike the rest, had taste! Tonight we are having left overs from last night and tomorrows lunch will be exactly the same as todays... we no longer dream of anything but food!
Late afternoon we went for a walk, attempting to walk to the lighthouse. It was very breezy, and we were nearly there when we decided to turn onto the beach and admire the view of the lighthouse before walking back along the sandy shore. We had a drink in the bar for happy hour and had to sit inside as it wa sooo cold!
Even though we attempted to make our dinner taste slightly less like oil by adding herbs and cheese, it still wasnt enjoyable, and it seemed that every other person in the kitchen was cooking something we wanted, even if we didnt particularly like it!
We returned to the bar for the end of the Trivia Quiz and, of course, to see 'Cockatoo Paul' play again! It's a good job he plays in the bar as you need a drink to listen to him, but I fear that some really drunk people may have bought his CD and regretted it in the morning!(Cockatoo Paul is the same guy that does the Bush walk - which consisits of walking around the campsight looking at the different plants and seeing the difference between those you can eat and those you could use in medicine... understandably we didnt go along!)
Fist day of giving up chocolate over!!!

Friday: we had to check out by 10, so after a quick shower and packing my bag, including my wet washing which hadnt dried from the previous day, we checked out and dumped our bags in the common room before having more 'hay' museli for breakfast! The weather we nice so we decided to take a walk down to the beach, however half way there it started to rain and continued to drizzle for the rest of the day! The beach was a nono so we caved and went to a cafe for juice and a scone each! After sitting in the cafe for as long as is humanly possible we then queued to use the internet before returning for lunch.
There is a cinema attached to The Arts Factory, so we decided to go late afternoon as the weather was so dreary. The only film showing was called 'Semi-Pro' whihc was a lighthearted comedy about basketball. It wasnt a film we would have chosen to watch however it cheered us up and filled the otherwise boring afternoon! The seats in the cinema were the most exciting bit as the cinema was filled with large sofas instead of chairs!
After pigging out of popcorn and crisps we went for one final walk along the beach, before returning to the bar for happy hour - and to warm ourselves up! We then cooked dinner - our meal are getting progressively better - and then jumped in The Art's Factory Bus which took us into town to catch our Greyhound overnight bus.
Neither of us really slept that night and the bus kept making pointless stops, each lasting 45minutes, so by this time you were fully awake again! I got so bored at one point in the night that I counted the number of snores the fat man behind Sophie made... I think I got to 342 before dying of boredom!

On saturday I woke with a very stiff neck and a numb bum! It was 5am and the bus was stopping yet again for another 45minute stop. From this time onwards I either dozed or read until we got off the bus at 9am. Although the stops were annoying and neither of us slept well this journey was one of the better night buses!
At the train station we found there was a bus rail replacement service for part of our trip to Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains. After another bus ride, we then got a train, arriving in a mountainous area, full of cafes and vintage clothing stores and charity shops! Having no money... this is my worst nightmare!
We tried three backpacker hostels before finally finding one, but this wasnt before we had walked up and down numerous hills with our bags and our heavy food bag! During this we also stopped off at the supermarket for lunch provisions... I have no idea why we ever thought that was a good idea!
The hostel is full of a huge group of raving christians, who are a massive youth group and all sport name tags and stickers with slogans such as "shout if you love Jesus"! Also in our room is a woman whom every other person in the hostel (including the staff) calls 'Crazy Jane'. Just our luck to get stuck with her! She has so much stuff in the room, we assumed she lived here... and we later found out that she does!
After beans on toast for lunch we walked to Ecco Point, with spectacular views, and a nice sunset. We then returned to our hostel to sit by the fire and drink coffee (yes, it really is that cold...!)
During this time we also text a friend of a friend of Lynette (who we stayed with at the beginning of last week) 'Barb and Keith', we we have never met or seen, but they live in Melbourne and have agreed to put us up for 3 nights! Hopefully this should keep costs down... and perhaps prevent us from feeling so bad when we enter a cafe!
We then watched friends before cooking 'rice bolognaise' (we cannot afford both rice and pasta and we have to use up the rice we bought. Who knew rice lasted so long!?) During dinner we watched 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' then used the internet, before returning to our room to crash out, hoping that crazy Jane wasn't going to keep us awake!

On sunday we got woken VERY early by the other two member's of our room (not 'Crazy Jane'!) discussing what time they were going to meet to go swimming! They slammed doors, talked very loudly and the woman sleeping underneath me shook the bed so much, my clothes fell off onto the floor! We showered and then had breakfast before heading out for our walk, 'Crazy Jane' was still asleep... we assume she went out last night, although we don't know who with as she has no friends!
We walked back to Ecco Point then took the scenic route aka 'the mud bath route' to the Katoomba Falls. It was so muddy and both of us were wearing Birkenstocks... so inevitably our feet and shoes got very muddy as well! The walk took us about two hours, and it was up and down hills, so we feel like we've done a lot of exercise! Katoomba is hilly in general. Fact.
We were greeted by a downpour of rain at the end of our walk, which meant we walked half way to town before we took cover under a bus stop shelter with an old couple. The rain stopped (eventually) before the bus came, so we attempted to walk up the nearly vertical hill to town. This was very hard work and we were embarressed to be closely followed by the old couple who didn't seem to batter an eyelid or be out of breath from the steep mountain!
In town we had tea in a cafe, and sat staring enviously at the specials board! To make ourselves feel better we had carrot cake in another cafe - it's no Joma. We then went to Coles for dinner and tomorrows lunch provisions, before heading back to our hostel in the freezing cold!!
The two other women checked out of our room today, which means that its just us and 'Crazy Jane'! Arghhh!
We read by the fire and had a cup of coffee to warm oursleves up, before using the internet. We then had the same dinner as last night... needs must! After watching a bit of T.V. we went back to the room where 'Crazy Jane' made me watch a film with her, then started packing at 2am turning on all the lights. Needless to say we wont be swapping facebook details with her!

COLD HAS STRUCK!
(The temperature is 3degrees and there are warnings of snow! I guess its time to put away the flipflops!)

Today is absolutely freezing! I had to wear socks during the night and a jumper, Soph even got out her sleeping bag! After packing up and dumping our stuff in the luggage room we had breakfast (a slice of toast - i feel so full... NOT!) The many vintage shops and book stores were enough to drag us out into the cold and we spent many enjoyable hours running from shop to shop, avoiding the cold. We ended up buying hats and jumpers and i even bought another scarf! I think I have a shopping addiction, however my punishment is that I have to carry all this around for another 6 weeks!
We also had scones and tea in an old fashioned cafe, sitting by the fire!
We then had a lunch of pumkin soup and bread, which we desperately needed as it was so cold! Hands are actually like ice!

Tonight we are getting an overnight bus to Melbourne...

Although I really like Australia, I really miss travelling in Asia!

Love to all, xxxx

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