Australia - East Coast Part 1

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So we arrive in Sydney, casually wait for Rich Carter to kindly pick us up from the airport and take us to his place to stay. An hour and a half later we decided to get a hostel.

We gathered that King's Cross is the backpacker zone for cheap hostels, within 10 minutes of arriving and walking past multiple strip clubs, brothels, and being offered pills we find a lovely hostel named the Jolly Swagman. Being exhausted we checked in and ended up relaxing and watching the second half of "Predator" on some bean bags in the tv room, shortly later (at about 6pm?) some drunk idiot referred to us and our fellow german/spanish/french audience as "boring w*****s". This didn't matter as ironically we saw him passed out in the same position at about 11pm.

We woke up nice and early to get our free walking tour around the city of Sydney, this lasted a bit more than three hours and was extremely worth it, especially as our backpacker budget meant we didn't need to pay him if we didn't want to - however the guy lives off tips so we made sure we gave him something, afterall the tour had to be good otherwise he wouldn't make money! Obviously this included the opera house, harbor bridge, the botanical gardens and its native fruit bats as well as general history of Sydney and Australia. Think Aboriginals, boomerangs, rum....etc

Later on that day we met Tom's aunt, Rosemary, and got the train to Wahroonga where we were picked up by Tom's uncle Guy. The next day was an early start as we had to leave by 5:30 for our 9 hour car journey into Hay, west of Sydney and basically in the outback. We arrived at Tom's cousin Joanna's, where we met the boys Nicholas, George and Gordon, as well as Joanna's husband John and of course Tom's other cousin Nicole. We stayed for about four days, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Delicious food, unlimited tea refills, and good company - thank you very much Joanna and Co. we had a lovely time! We spent one day with John, where we spent the majority of it on his farm, and in his Ute (utility vehicle, basically a pimped up pick up truck with bull bars, spotlights etc). We went for a drive and saw Kangaroos and Emus....

Later on that evening we event had a drive in John's Kenworth road train, a massive 18 gear truck!

After returning to Sydney we had another early start where the very kind Uncle Guy drove us back to Kings Cross to get our bus at 6:10am. This is where the Oz Experience begins - our constant hop on/off travel coach which is taking us up the East coast from Sydney to Cairns in four weeks.

Our first stop was Spot X - a small, quiet erm..."spot" where we drunk some "goon" ( a beautiful budget drink, think 4 litres of wine for the price of $8 - Delish). That night we saw a wild Possum!

The next day we had our surfing lessons at 8am and this lasted about three hours. Perhaps the best hangover cure, and also pretty good fun! Both men of the sea, we had a good time surfin' it up! We had the option of buying some photos taken by the staff but this was....very expensive so unfortunately you're going to have to just picture us riding the waves yourselves.

We then moved on from Spot X to Byron Bay, of which we stayed three nights. Memories of Byron include the 24 hour bakery, where you can grab a delicious pie at any time for a good price, also the desperate walk to the lighthouse to see the sunset, which we didn't quite make in time so had to watch from halfway... and also the famous Cheeky Monkeys bar, where we could get a solid dinner such as steak and chips for a round $5! Being quite different from the average bar ( the dance floor is basically benches...bit of a drunk hazard?) it has a different form of entertainment every night. Our first night there involved body paint, where people could choose to get their countries flag painted on their body to be put into a chance of winning a free skydive. Of course after a few free beers kindly supplied by the Oz Experience, as well as the free beer we won in the mini games prior to this event, we both decided we wanted a sky dive!

Unfortunately, although reaching the finals, we just couldn't simply match up to....a topless woman. The things people are willing to do eh... What made it worse was she was a member of staff so kinda got the impression the competition was slightly rigged...Oh well no hard feelings, the sky dive was only 9000m we hope to be doing 14,000!

So after Byron Bay was Surfers Paradise, quite different in comparison, having sky scrapers, malls and general higher prices - which lead us to cook for the next three nights with our new compadre Chris and saved a lot of money doing so. Although bigger and busier there was less to do during the day besides well....surf and I suppose for those who had the money, shop (so that rules us out). In conclusion this was more of a chilled atmosphere, although on our second day we did visit a place named Dreamworld which is two parks, a theme park and a water park. We were lucky to get a previous persons pass, so after some practicing of forging a signature Will took on the role of Euan Stokes for the day. The park was surprisingly good, with a small zoo area where saw more kangaroo and emu... and also koala's, croc's, dingos, owls, tigers etc. The rides were quite decent, and seeing as it was not the best of days, weather-wise, we practically didn't have to queue for any of them! The water park was decent also, though cold this was bearable with a constant jog up the stairs to the slides. Our most favorite being "The Wedgie", a vertical drop where you start off standing in a one person capsule which basically has a disappearing floor with the push of a button from the lifeguard.

We've now just arrived in Hervey Bay, but we'll get to that in the next update.

hope you're enjoying the blogs fans, lots of love Will and Tom

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Comments

[Lucy Fowler-Tutt]

Hi Tom and Tom's friend! You guys heading over to Perth at any point? If so let me know because I have some mates there that could help you out :) Loving the blogs btw! xxx

[FowlerLawesDownUnder]

Lucy
Hello Lucy! We are afraid not, although we would love to. Cairns is our last stop in australia before we take off back home. We would love to come back one day and do our favourite points of the east coast, as well as melbourne, perth, darwin, and adelaide probably. Perhaps in the future! xxx