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Published: October 20th 2009
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Kangaroo
Feeding in Port Macquarie Hello from Brisbane!
We finally finished our ten days in a campervan. I tried to update on the way, but somehow managed to delete the post before it was published - argh!
Had a brilliant time driving up the east coast. Sleeping was tight, but we managed ok - they really should use the word campervan loosely, it's really just a Hiace van with a mattress in the back! We went through Port Stephen's (Nelson Bay) and Port Macquarie (both FREEZING cold, it felt like we were camping on the east coast of England!) It got warmer in Yamba, a small but lovely town where we booked into a camp site (the other two nights we were in beach car parks, stealing showers from local campsites and having midnight wees in the bushes!)
Next on the list was Byron Bay which we all loved. It's such a fun place with great weather, great beaches, nice scenery and cool bars - we even tried surfing in Byron. We met three Canadian girls on the campsite which was a welcome break from each other as after two weeks of 24/7 being around each other, we were running out of things
Yamba
What a lovely sunset to say! Our funniest night was on Blair's birthday. We were drinking Goon for the first time (cask wine, £5 for 4.5 litres, gulp!) Blair got a bit over-excited and drank four pints in the space of probably ten minutes, the next thing we knew the Van wheels were covered in barf and Blair was in bed at 8pm! Siobhan carried on the party spirit with the Canadians and returned the following morning at 6am. Brilliant!
Our final stop was Surfer's Paradise, which was very commercialised and high rise in comparison to Byron's quaint town feel. The first night we stayed at the most difficult campground to navigate to - one way systems and part of the route being through a Nascar racing track (being built for a race through the city this coming weekend) The next night we ditched the van to sleep in real beds with Siobhan's friend Karen from V Australia, it was luxury! Had a brilliant couple of nights meeting all Karen's friends and catching up with some familiar faces from Virgin Blue/V Australia.
The drive up to Brisbane was good, although not for Blair. We took Karen to the airport and with Siobhan's
driving, he was hit with the cases a few times, especially on roundabouts. On arriving into Brisbane, Siobhan decided to park the van in a hotel car park (not our hotel mind) with the narrowest driveway which was on a hill which sadly had a shutter over the entrance at the bottom of the hill. I did at least a ten point turn to get us out and stalled the van three times on the hill back out! Half an hour later and we'd dropped the thing off, much to my relief to be honest!
I'm sat in the kitchen of our hostel, just had a fairly healthy Weetabix breakfast which is a lot better than my campervan breakfasts which on some days was a bowl of Chicken Noodles. We've been in the hostel for four nights so far and are booked in for at least another six. We've settled in well with our two German, one French and two English roommates. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for Siobhan, she's the only girl out of the eight of us! Ha ha. There's a huge bar downstairs so we now have a pattern of drinking games with boxes of Goon either in
Sleeping
Inside the van the room or on the roof. Then we head down to the bar under the hostel, which is like a student union bar. Haven't actually seen anymore of Brisbane yet as we can't bring ourselves to leave here! We're in the process of getting jobs as the campervan experience burned more money than we anticipated. Think we'll probably end up staying here in Brisbane for a month, just to enjoy the nice weather, then we have to decide whether we head up further north on the coast, or down to Melbourne.
Case
xx
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Terry
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I'm jealous!!!
Hi Casey - you look to be having a wonderful time out there, and the weather looks superb! Hayley, Waine and little Rudi are out there at the mo also - gone to a wedding in Sydney then holidaying for 3 weeks - but they got thunderstorms down there right now. I love the campervan - It's ace! I will have to get out there myself one day - Keep having a great time! Cheeeeers Uncle Terry x