The East Coast of Australia so far.

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After quite an enjoyable flight over the national date line into the future we arrived in Sydney, now 9 hours ahead of back home instead of 8 hours behind! Our hopes were high, we were doing really well with our budget making the saving we needed to finish the trip, we had massive smiles on our faces....then we checked out the prices in OZ.......... No dollar menu in McDonalds here I'm afraid, Starbucks didn't take off in Australia, sorry, it's $3.50 for a small bottle of water!!!!!!! S@#T !!!!! So we had to rethink the budget a little and put the smiles back on our faces.



We spent the first night in a Hostel in Sydney and wow, what a great hostel it was... that was sarcasm by the way. The one good thing about the hostel is that they had screwed up and double booked us into a dorm so we got a private room for the same price, score. Note to self... don't stay at the Australian Backpackers Sydney again! We had a wonder around, looked for somewhere to eat. What a hard job it is trying to find somewhere to eat in Sydney on a budget. The conclusion, we didn't eat. (Do you feel sorry for us yet?)



The next day, after Kerry's $4.00 cup of coffee in the train station and our very satisfying shared $7.00 foot long from subway (good old subway) we hopped on a 6 hour train to Port Mcquarie. The journey was really great, much better travelling by train, the landscape outside was not at all what we were expecting, very green! No kangaroos! At Port Mcquarie we were met by a couch surfing host who we didn't even know had accepted, excellent. Chris, originally from Bristol has lived in OZ for 30 years and lives about 7km outside of the center of Port Mcquarie in a beautiful home on the edge of a rain forest and a 5 minute walk to the beach. We spent our time in Port Mcquarie relaxing, walking along the beach and eating great food that Chris had prepared, Kerry even got some tips. Chris took us animal spotting and we got to see Koalas and Kangaroos and even Dolphins in the wild. We also visited the Kuala Hospital here and took a guided tour and met the residents. Some of the stories are so sad but the facts about Koalas were really interesting. Kuala means 'little water' in aborigine (native Australians) and that Kuala's aren't bears and don't drink water. They eat gum tree leaves which are made up of 60% water. They aren't aggressive animals at all as they just don't have the energy for it! ... Obviously as all they eat are leaves! There was an orphaned koala at the hospital called Elle who the volunteers’ liked to call their smartest Kuala yet. Elle loved the formula that was fed to the Kuala's to make them better so much that every time the hospital tried to get her back onto leaves she wouldn't eat and would get sick so would have to be given the formula again, smart girl. We also had a little run in with a very large spider while staying at Chris's, right on the ceiling of the bedroom that we were staying in, MASSIVE, it took us, well Matt, half an hour to get rid of it, so funny!



We took an overnight train and headed to Byron Bay next arriving at 6am, we got a quick coffee (not a cheap one) at the only cafe that was open and then walked the 6km to our host Keith's house in a suburb just outside of Byron Bay. When we arrived, Keith also had two other couch surfers staying with him, Catharina and Line (Leena) from Denmark who were so so nice and friendly. We all spent the day at the beach and Keith even give everyone a surf lesson before heading back and having a BBQ. We spent three nights at Keith's house hanging out with him and the girls, visiting different places like the most easterly point in Australia. We got on with Cathalina and Line so much that we checked into the same hostel in Brisbane for the days leading up to Christmas and are looking forward to meeting up with them again.



We had a good giggle at the bus station waiting to leave Byron Bay as there were a group of homeless, very drunk, very smelly bums there enjoying life as they know it. Two of them got into an argument over what we think were something to do with $2.50. We actually moved to the other end of the bus station as we thought they were going to start fighting. Matt of course found this hilarious.



We spent a couple of nights in Brisbane after Byron Bay, a night in a great hostel and a night with a host Asser, these two things were the only good things in Brisbane as it rained none stop while we were there. Asser was awesome, we only got to spend a few hours with him before heading to bed and then a little in the morning but during the little time spent together we never stopped talking and laughing. Asser cooked us dinner and then a traditional Egyptian breakfast before we left. He found are stories about spiders really funny and then almost fell of his chair laughing when Matt jumped when the air freshener went psst! (To be fair, we had been talking about paranormal activity).



We took another overnight train (1pm from Brisbane - arrival 6.30am) to Airlie Beach, which is home to the Whitsunday Islands, all 74 of them! We couldn't find a host in Airlie Beach so we checked in to Magnums Backpackers for 2 nights in a 10 bed dorm. The hostel was a good one, dorms were clean, kitchen had large fridges and loads of equipment, which was really great as for both of us to have a meal was really pricey! Good old spag bol - spagetti-$2, mince-$2.30 and sauce-$3 mmmmmmm. A funny thing about Airlie Beach was that it didn't actually have a beach there, it does have a massive manmade lagoon which was free to use (yey something FREE!).



We booked a boat trip from Airlie Beach to the Islands which cost us $229 each. We spent a day on a catamaran sailing around the Islands, we got to snorkel around a small reef, spend an hour on Whitehaven beach which was so beautiful, the sand was so light and your foot just sunk into it. Back on the boat we got tea, coffee and biscuits in the morning, followed by fruit, the bar opened at 11am serving beer and wine, we had BBQ and salads for lunch and then cheese and crackers in the afternoon, not to mention water and soft drinks........ALL INCLUDED IN THE PRICE. Matt loaded up on steaks for lunch. We even managed to smuggle a couple of beers off with us when leaving! We were dropped off on one of the Islands called long Island where we were spending two nights before getting the boat back to Airlie Beach, also included in the price. The resort was beautiful but very expensive. $17 for cocktails and $17+ for meals, good thing we took our own bread and a box of wine of course! The resort had a pool, tennis and basketball courts so we kept ourselves entertained.



Heading back to Airlie Beach we were getting picked up at 6.20am in the morning, so had a split decision on whether to waste $19 each staying in a hostel for the night or sleep in the outdoor bus stop.....we compromised and were cheeky paying for only one bed in the hostel and both sleeping in it, nobody seemed to mind so no harm done.....



We've decided to take back the comment that trains are great to travel on after the ride we had today! The, what can only be described as a beaver looking thing some would call a child, in the seat in front went back and forward with his chair, back and forward, back and forward......then as we tried watching a movie went up and down with the blinds, up and down, up and down and then he stood up in his seat, ran along the aisle, back and forward in his seat again! You ever heard of the English nanny that went to the US and shook a baby to death, Louise Woodwood I think? Well we both actually felt like shaking some manners into this kid as he was obviously not getting any from his mum who was sat right beside him and didn't say anything, we had to tell him to stop it ourselves! I now understand why some parents say they want to kill their kids! What do you think the odds would be for either of us getting a teaching job after serving time in prison for beating up a twelve year old on an Australian train? Quite slim I would say wouldn't you? Then a lady got on, you could have heard this lady at the front of the train (and we were sat at the back) talking about the party she was headed too, how f@#king great it was going be, how this skank was going to be there, f@#k, s#@t and any other foul words you can think of came out of her mouth and she was surrounded by kids, now I know I've just been talking about shaking one but I would never swear at one. So the cherry on the cake came when we got about half an hour away and it started to rain hard outside, great, Matt sighed, Kerry asked what's wrong, Matt replied, I was just thinking that the cow's don't have rain coats do they.......



Sending Love from Down Under



Matt and Kerry.

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Comments

[Flash Pelos]

The east coast
I find that reading your blogs really does give me a more in depth insight into the ups and downs of backpacking,also your photos are great but by far I love the way that you both are attaining new experiences and passing them on to us your audience.Keep well love you both DAD xxxxx