East Coast adventure, Sydney to Cairns

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The following blogs are about a 4 week trip we did earlier this year going from Sydney to Cairns... It involved going by Grey Hound bus from Sydney to Brisbane, with the option of hiring a car once we arrived in Brisbane, as there are only the 2 of us traveling, it is far cheaper to go by the bus rather than hiring cars as we have done on previous trips... besides the Grey Hound experience is like no other, you will have to experience it to know what it is all about... You can't say you have tough it out and backpacked in Australia until you have tried the Grey Hound bus.

I have visited Sydney on few past occasions, the beach there are particularly good, such as Manly and Bondi... especially for surfing, but this time around, I only stayed in Sydney for a day, basically to get things organised for the East Coast trip with the friend I am traveling with. Arrived in Sydney from Melbourne flying Jetstar, sometimes around 3pm, a taxi ride from the airport to city center was out of the question for me and my backpacker budget... so took a train from the subway underneath the airport terminals into city center, it was a 15 minute train ride into central station (Sydney city center)... cost about $15... reasonable price.

Then met with my friend and began a 2 hour hunt around the city to book cheap tours, particularly for Fraser island and Whitsundays... rather get these booked in Sydney (obviously with open dated tickets), so that way we don't have to worry about it later... We booked our trips through The BASE, a backpacker accommodation chain that also acts as an agent for tours along the coast... negotiated a really good deal... 3 day 2 night Fraser island trip with 2 extra nights accommodations on Rainbow beach and a 3 day 2 night Whitsundays Cruise all for under $600... was really happy with that... then the question was whether to stay in Sydney for the night or leave the next day, decided to stay the night.

Really wanted to stay in BASE, but they were all booked out. In Sydney, there are few suburbs with lots of backpacker hostels, city center, Haymarket, Manly, Bondi or Kings Cross. Manly and Bondi are too far away, especially we are leaving the next day, Kings Cross is close to city, but has a reputation for being a rough area, so found a backpacker hostel in the city center called MAZE, as is case with most backpackers in Sydney, it is rather expensive, you are expected to pay over $30 per night for a shared dorm. The MAZE wasn't particularly good, huge hostel, lots of rooms and are quiet dirty... but I had a fun dorm, there was an Irish, a Walsh and a Scottish, where is the English?

Next day, the Grey Hound bus didn't schedule to leave from Central station bus terminal until 7pm, so went to the tennis with Danielle, a friend I met on the previous trip, who was staying in Sydney for few weeks and then caught up with Tanja's friends in the park... we did some tourist thing, such as going to the Opera house and Harbour bridge...

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