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Published: March 3rd 2007
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The Arts Factory
Great hostel in Byron Bay It has been a while since i have managed to get on the Blogging scene. In fact I have been fairly busy since meeting up with Macca and the two Robbo's! As such, I am afraid that this 'Catch-up' blog is likely to be a long session as i attempt to cram in all the details of my trip up the East Coast of Auz into one dam blog. Mind you for those of you at work yearning for an excuse to stop for a bit this may not be such a bad thing...i'm looking at you here brother...
So the trip begins with a journey south from Logan, just outside of Brisbane. I headed down to Byron Bay to catch up with Macca, Robbo and Ben. Intending to stay here for just 3 nights we quickly got absorbed into the Byron Bay lifestyle. Our hostel, The Arts Factory provided a very chilled out, hippy style atmosphere and every night was a piss-up. Most nights result in a trip to Cheese-central at a night club called Cheeky Monkeys. Every traveller in these parts knows of this place and many spend around two thirds of their nights in there (inspite of
5* Accomodation
For some reason, this tent/oven cost more than the normal rooms!! it being a cheesy, shithole!)
After a night in Cheekies we dicided a relaxing trip to the famous Lighthouse lighten the mood. The views from here are amazing and the walk/hike up is a laugh as well. Overlooking the coast, we saw Dolphins surfing and Turtles swimming past. This inspired me and Rob to go kayaking with Dolphins the next day. Sounds better than it was because i only saw one dolphin and that was spoiled by a girl that i was kayaking with puking her guts up in front of me!
A couple of days later Rob and I hired a car and headed for the famous Nimbin, supposed Hippy capital of Australia. This trip however is a massive dissapointment as Nimbin in fact turns out to be nothing but an over-hyped tourist attraction with barely a hippy in sight. However, as we decide to leave, we see a Hippy, yes a genuine Hippy get ran over by a motorbike. The irony of a hippy being hit by an air polluting monster finally made the trip worthwhile and put me in a better mood for the return trip. Before heading home, we made use of the car
and visited the much talked about Minyon Falls to take in some scenery. This however was a bit of a bust as the waterfall was lacking water...its a fairly essential ingredient for a waterfall so i was a bit dissapointed. Despite the lack of water this is a beautiful area and would be very cool
in full flow.
So after 10 days in Byron Bay bliss, we have seen the Lighthouse, been dissapointed by Nimbin and drank copious amounts of shit wine (Goon - fish,egg and milk!) and danced on tables in Cheeky Monkeys! This is without doubt my favourite place so far and if it wasn't for the multi-million dollar land prices, i'd seriously consider moving here.
Following this we went up to Surfers Paradise in an attempt to chill out for a couple of days. However we soon discovered that 'chilling out' is just not possible in Surfers on a friday night. As such, we only stayed here for a couple of nights where we frequnted all the local haunts but unfortunately did not get into Hollywood Showgirls, which looked like an interesting place!
After this we went to Brisbane where i visited the Gabba
Diving Board
Pretty high! to watch England beat New Zealand. Great game and even better banter with the Auzzies in the crowd. Would love to meet them all again to have a chat about the cricket... Colly is my king!
Rob and myself left Macca here and moved on to a place called Caloundra a couple of hours north of Brisbane. This a a fairly quite town with only one bar and it was a real mission to get hold of any booze at all. However i did end the night sitting in a hot tub with a crate of beer so it wasn't that bad!
Follwoing this, we went to Mooloolaba and then Maroochydore. Mooloolaba was brilliant. Beautiful place and very relaxed. Also house prices are crazy. I could get a 4 bedroom house on the waterfront with a pool for about the same price as a 2 bed council house in Swindon!! (well i couldnt but someone that isn't blowing thier money on a big holiday could!)
Next stop Noosa. This is a cool place. I spent alot of time beating macca at table tennis, kayaking down the river, meeting a load of people that we'd already met up
the coast so far and enjoying last of the good weather! Since then we hit Hervey Bay in the middle of the Rainy season and ha rained since!
From Hervey Bay we got the ferry over to Fraser Island and enjoyed a 4x4 adventure trip. This was awesome as we had 11 people in a big 4x4 and basically ragged the shit out of it for three days. We were lucky and got a great group of people as well. A few girls that were a good laugh, bunch of lads that loved the booze...couldnt get better. However it did also include drinking Goon for breakfast but we quickly got into the swing of it! The driving was fun and one of the girls, Gemma, actually got us about a foot off of the ground when cruising down the beach at 80kpm! In fact the only drawback to the trip was that we had to get very very pissed in order to get to sleep on the sand...if you call that a drawback that is.
After this we actually did need a rest so we moved on to a town called 1770 for a couple of nights. The
hostel, Cool Banana's was pretty sweet and we let our bodies relax a bit. I also did a Night-time Scuba dive here which was amazing. I did however manage to get lost from the group though which was a bit of an experience especially as my only form of light was a shitty torch that only lit up about a meter in front of me. Despite this, it was a good dive and was strange to see fish asleep on the seabed.
Following this, we took an overnight bus up to Airley Beach in preparation for our trip to the Whitsundays. In summary a good trip has been had by all.
Im not sure if i wrote this much on my Dissertation! Got myself a little bit of finger cramp so i'll leave it here.
If anybody wants to see more photo's i have put them up on my Facebook website so you can access them with the following link:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=501863987
However you may need to sign up to the sight and then select me as a "friend"...I will be posting all my photo's on here from now on so it may be worth it
The Lighthouse
Took a while but finally got there
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Chris
non-member comment
For fuc** sake. your having way too much fun, why did i decide to get a job!!