Straight up Wolf Creek, or how Dave Jord and Carl drove 4500 kms just to meet girls.

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Well folks it's finally about time for a blog entry (musta had you worried that our chutes didn't open or something like that). As you can probably imagine, there isn't alot of internet access available from the back of a camper van, especially when you're about 300 kms from the nearest human. Lets keep this party moving though! After a crazy fun time spent in the party capital that is surfers paradise, the boys and pals finally manned up to jump 14000 feet from an airplane over the stunningly beautiful Byron Bay. Having worked up the courage to wake up at 5:00, and the strength to hold off drink for one night, the crew woke up and made their way towards the great plunge. After arriving at the airflield, strapping into their suits and going over the health and safety of the jump, they made their way into the planes and nervously waited and waited and waited as it climbed all the way up to 10000 feet only to be told that it was too windy and therefore we could not jump. Imagine what this did to our confidence. Luckily however the wind died down and they all took the plunge one by one and lived to tell the tale. And what better place to jump then over Byron Bay.

Byron Bay is the sort of hippie area of the Eastern Coast of Australia, no McDonalds, Subways, KFC's etc. just a ton of independentally owned shops and organic food, and one of the nicest beaches in Australia to boot. As you can imagine, not much was done in Byron, just alot of sleeping off the night before and wondering whether they were up for going anywhere else! They did however manage to book a trip to Nimbin, on the recommendation of Jord's cousin Kaylor, (which Aussies prefer to call Sin Bin, we still haven't figured out why though) and see how the real hardcore hippies of Australia managed to survive. Taking a tour with Jim's Adventure Tours (highly recommended, our guide was the biggest hippie we've ever met, those damn multinational corporations and Christians!) we got shown around the town, which ended up seeming very similar to our trip to Amsterdam but we still can't figure out why and had an early night in as the next day we would be making our way down to Sydney.

Sydney itself is an amazing city, very busy but very trendy and as beautiful and clean as it looks in all of the promotional photographs that you've seen. Only there for a couple of nights to pick up their camper van (more on Valerie later) the boys and their crew managed to see the sights that Sydney had to offer and even managed to grab a bite to eat and a couple of beers with Dave's old roommate Rick from the UK (who unbeknownest to Dave had moved in with his ex girlfriend, now girlfriend again from the UK, which Dave relayed back to the UK as soon as he found out). Anyways the boys then managed to pick up their baby, their girl, their everything. Valerie (the name of our camper van thanks to Carl). And take her directly to the beautiful Blue Mountains for the evening where they found out, among other things, that Valerie really really didn't like hills, Valerie really really didn't like going over 100kms/hr and Valerie really really didn't like having four people stay in her at the same time. Lets call the Blue Mountains the testing stage of the boys time with Valerie. Anyways the Blue Mountains is basically like the Grand Canyon, but green. A massive World Heritage Site that is a must to be visited if you're ever heading down to Oz. After a night in the Blue Mountains the next stop was the Aussie capital of Canberra, which to be honest with you, reminded the boys more of Hamilton or Winnipeg than a Capital City, so there isn't much to say about that.

The next stop of Melbourne however had much more to offer. Melbourne is a beautiful city and one of our favourites so far, a bit more artsy and cultural than Sydney but offering just as much in terms of entertainment. Arriving on Christmas Eve, the boys with Carl, Matt, and Lil Jmoe had a lovely Chinese dinner and actually spent some money on some decent booze and relaxed around the van. You might think that this is a bad way of spending christmas, but it isn't one that we will ever forget. Boxing Day however, was what the boys were waiting for as Dave booked everyone some tickets for the famous Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where 60000 crazy Aussies go to get drunk as a fart and worry about cricket afterwards. So not only did the boys get to see the Australian captain Ricky Ponting hit an incredible 100, they also got to try and see along with everyone else in the crowd how big they could make a stack of cups (and we're talking stacks that include thousands of beer cups including one or two of ours). It was a day of sport that we'll never forget.

Anyways after their trip down to Melbourne, New Years Eve in the Sydney Harbour was calling the boys back North. So after a relaxed drive up the coast on the Princes Highway with a night spent in a town called Eden (it was pretty close to perfect), the boys finally made a full circle and got into Sydney just in time for New Years. Starting the evening off with a little house party with some of Carls swedish friends in the harbour, the boys got down into the streets (among 1.5 million other people) just in time to see the best firework show they've ever seen in their lives. In the words of Trace Atkins it was 'kinda like noon in the dead of night', anytime a country quote is appropriate you have to use it. Anyways a festive evening it was and the boys rolled into the van just in time to wake up a couple hours later to pick up Matty's girlfriend from Canada. Worth it though, she had a hotel room booked and you have no idea how good those showers felt, she even let us use the hotel shampoo and soap! Anyways after a night spent with Matty and Julianne (his lady friend) the boys including Carl left the love birds to it and started their treacherous drive across the whole of Australia, nervous, excited but still confident in Valerie.

Google Maps estimates that if you wanted to drive from Sydney to Perth it would take you about two days of continuous driving. The boys managed to do it in four, miraculously, without any breakdowns, or running out of petrol etc. There must have been girls waiting for them on the other side. Anyways the drive itself was about as boring as one would expect, an average of 4 cars pass by a day, you see dead roos everywhere, and the road is straight (not hard to get lost though, in the words of our Aussie friend Brendan 'just keep the ocean on your left mate' and you're fine!), with one section going dead straight for 90 miles! Sounds like Saskatchewan eh? Anyways the boys finally made it in time to meet Dave's friends from university in the UK, Liz and Holly, who now make their living looking at dirt all day long in the gold mines of Western Australia, but get a great life out of it. Perth is a beautiful city, spread out, with plenty of water and the girls have been the best hosts the boys could ask for. Unfortunately though the girls have to do something called 'work' so they flew out of Perth for the mines today and the boys are now heading down to the Margaret River counting down the days until their Oz adventure ends, Carl leaves, and their Kiwi adventure just gets started. Time flies...

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