Australia's East coast, Byron Bay, Surfers and Brisbane

Hello everyone once again,

I hope you are all well, as I am currently having a fantastic time making my way up the East coast of Australia. Since leaving the Thomas family in Sydney I first stopped in Byron Bay. Here I met up with a group of guys I met in Sydney. Byron Bay was just brilliant, we drunk far too much goon (boxed white wine) and suffered a serious bout of memory loss and drunkeness! Several nights of this with drinking games in the hostel, making up songs such as "consume the goon" and making lots of friends was followed by days on the beach playing footie and surfing.
I tried once again to do a sky dive but unfortunately some low pressure started to move in and it got cancelled. I guess i'm just not ment to throw myself out of a plane!
On some of the other days we all went out for a snorkel and scuba dive at Julia rocks (an island off byron beach) here I saw about 17 raggy sharks and my 1st two turtels!!:-) After all that we felt we should do the cultural thing and visit Cape Byron with its light house and the most easterly point of Australia, so Stu, Matt and myself hired some bikes and off we went.

Byron was then followed by two days and a night in Surfers Paradise, unfortunately it rained constantly for the whole time we were there ( just like a typical british summer!). So when its raining we decided to do the only thing you can really do when its that wet, so we surfed and as the weather didn't pick up we kept surfing for pretty much the whole day until we had to jump on the late coach to Brisbane.

Once in Brisbane the weather cleared slightly, however the evenings became a massive contrast to the days weather, as we were experiencing a cyclone that brought with it massive lightning storms!
During the few days in Brisbane we were able to tour the city, city beach and botanical gardens as well as squeezing in a day at the Gabba cricket stadium for the first day of the first test between Australia and New Zealand. It was a great day with good banter and a day in which new Zealand finished on top!
Whilst in Brisbane I also managed to catch up with Max Giles (a friend from Nottingham & Bristol) as he now works here and it was great to catch up and see a friendly face.

So after all that I am now in Noosa, which is lovely, it has some nice surfing beaches and a big national park. I'm still with the guys and we've picked up one or two additions along the way but it all helps for the games of beach football and surfing buddies. I have just encountered my first real issue since travelling and it is a case of serious chaffage (in the groin!) due to about 5 hours surfing whilst wearing ill fitting boardies! (Definately not advisable), however we were surfing with dolphins in the bay so can't complain too much! I now have another few nights in Noosa before heading to Rainbow beach for a few days and on to Fraser Island for the famous driving safari which I've heard many good things about!

Well I trust all is well with you all and let me know any gossip from home,

Lots of love

Tom xx

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