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Published: March 12th 2009
Here we go again, road trip up the east coast officially begins! :-) We had to get up at 5am (!) to catch the bus up the coast, thankfully it was on time today and our driver Sconsey was insanely lively for 6am on a thursday morning. Little did we know, we had a 10 hour + journey ahead of us! omg! It was rather long, we were amused by 8 episodes of Bondi Rescue, which btw if none of you have watched, is a very cool program :-) We stopped off at a Koala Hospital on teh way up which was ace, i love koalas :-) Did you know that Chlamydia and Scoliosis are very common in koalas ad apart from RTAs, are some of the biggest reasons for premature deaths (i have to keep my brain active somehow!)
Then after MORE driving we eventually arrived at Spot X, the site of Surf camp, hosted by Mojo Surf. Its in a place called Arrawarra; it was pretty cool, our accommodation was literally portacabins with some bunk beds in it but we didnt spend very long in there so it was no bother. and there was a HUGE Spider in the bathroom! It was disgusting! my fear of spiders has become a lot moe irrational since rriving in oz, if you saw the spider, you would see why. It was a good thing we did arrive in the dark, i was wandering around carefree in the evening. The next day, i realised id been walking past like 8 very scary horrible looking spiders!
We arrived at like 7pm, had our dinner then we were off making friends :-) it was such a fun night, and totally epitomised everything that travelling should be. We jus sat down next to some people and started chattin; the oz experience buses are a great way to start talking to people. especially i you are suck with them for over 10 hours, but it was just a brilliant evening. Unfortunately that was the evening i spilled wine on my camera, not a good move; i have very wiggly pictures now :S Then we all went and sat around the camp fire, somebody was strumming on a guitar and the stars were INCREDIBLE! i jus sat there like grinning to myself, this is the life i though. I must have looked a bit odd smiling and muttering to myself but never mind!
Not enough hours sleep later we were awoken for some surifng at 6am! The sunrise was pretty cool and i certainly looked more awake than some of the older lot. (most people i have met have been like 23+, which is fine of oucrse when age doeesnt seem to matter when u travel, i was just quite surprised). A quick carb filled breakfast and we were off to have our briefing from Sugar, your typical (gorgeous) ozzie surfer :-) He gave us a run down of the rules of the sea and 'how to look cool' and we were off down the beach. Now i thought surfing would be the hard part, bu the boards are so big and heavy (to make it easy for the novices) that i could barely pick up the thing; so all the girls shared the load. Synchronizing walking at 7am was not very easy but we got there eventually. Half an hour later and lots of 'pop up!' Practise we were out into the water. Now, when the instructors held onto your board until you stood up, it was a piece of cake. Clearly i must have looked competent (!) because non of them came to help me! I had no issue catching a wave, but i never popped up until i was virtually on the beach and the wave had dissipated. I did get up a few times, cant imagine i was looking all that cool; i managed to swallow a fair amount of water but i survived, without getting knocked in the head by the board too many times :-)
After a quick shower and more spider dodging we were back on the road to Byron Bay! Got chatting to a scottish girl on the bus (us scots always find each other!) and it turned out that she knew some family friends of ours, the Taits! How crazy a small world is that!? We eventually in arrived in Byron Bay, and me being more organised than everybody else on the bus had already booked my accommodation (the oz exp can book it for you but its rammed everywhere on the coast atm so i didnt want to be sleeping on the floor somewhere) so i was staying in a different place to everybody else. It actually worked out very well tho, because i was doing my dive course for the next few days and i needed sleep!
Unfortunately, that evening just as i was heading to bed, i managed to drop my phone down the toilet! i was like OMG!!!! I have never EVER done that before, i was so annoyed, and then panicked when the screen went Blue and Orange! And i needed an alarm clock to wake me up at 7am the next morning, the alarm was on my phone! So i was having a total nightmare! I borrowed somebody else s alarm but that didnt even go off! thankfully i was awoken by the others in my room. My shuttle bus left at 7.10am, i woke up at 7.04am. i was like ARGH! Thankfully the bus was on oz time so i had a bit longer to get ready and i got there on time! Phew! My dive instructor was really nice, he went over all my equipment with me so that i got it all right! :-) then we were off to Julian Rocks (a v.good dive site) and we hit the water. Id had a bit of a cold so when i started descending my ears like exploded (not literally) and i totally panicked, thrashed around, got water in my goggles and so inflated by BCD and popped up to the surface! I got a big telling off for that as ur not meant to do that ( i wasnt v.deep. which is y i did it)but i then calmed down and tried again and it was ace! We saw sooo much! Saw dolphins on the way in, turtles, wobegong shaks, leopard sharks (i swore very loudly when i saw one, even if they have no teeth!), cuttlefish and loads of other things. It was just brill in the under water world :-) So we did 4 dives in two days, i was on my knees by the end of it! But i was a fully qualified PADI open water diver :-) yaaaaaaay.
Spent the last few days chilling out in Byron, its an awesome place, it has the highest unemployment rate in australia, mainly because everybody there is a pot head! But its a great place to chill out and i had an apartment that had a kitchen so i could cook! yaaaay! QUite a few of the people i had met in Sydney were in Byron as well so caught up with them. Went to the notorious cheeky monkeys bar, $2 spag bol, which was actually ok. Its clearly run by guys as all the bar people are girls, and all look swedish. They have one evening which is called babe nation. All the waitresses, and anybody else who is drunk enough, could have their chest painted with their nations flag! I walked out pretty quickly when i saw that!
After a few more days at the beach, and snakes at lizards at breakfast it was off to surfers paradise. Thats an interesting place to say the least; its all high rise holiday apartments, the whole place is geared up completely for tourists, which i guess is what we are. But we ahd a nice apartment to stay in, which i shared with some people i knew from Sydney/Byron. We had a bit of a hellish first night out, which somehow resulted in a friend getting arrested for walking across a road! It was completely ridiculous and being the only girl there it was all a bit horrific, but i have learned from the experience and wont get stuck in a new place with a bunch of drunken guys! :S
Things calmed down after that, we had day at the water park which was good fun; its expensive for what it is; most of the rides are pretty tame but some the rides got your tummy going!
Im now in Brisbane, staying with family friends with Willis', it is soo nice to have an actual bed (i have been on the top bunk everywhere i have been so far!), home cooked food, and free internet!
My last 4 weeks in oz r set to be pretty exciting, although cyclone Hamish has been battering the exact part of the coast where im headed next week-fraser island. Lets hope i get there in one piece! So iv got a 4x4 camping safari, sailing on the whitsundays and diving in cairns to look forward to! :-) Pictures will be up soon
xxx
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Domi
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Your my idol.
Seriously, i want to be you right now...and yes although we email and text...these blogs literally make me feel like you for a brief 5 mins then i look around and am stuck in my room doing english coursework. Im so happy for you. Its AMAZING and you totally deserve it!