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Gudday guys, hows everyone doing?? Thought I'd make the first entry for Australia, as Ive already done loads of stuff, so its probably going to be a pretty long post, bare with me!
When I got to Sydney I met up with Ste (from newzealand) and Sandra (also from newzealand) and we hit the bars and spent a few days shopping and chilling out. Sydney is pretty cool, but its full of bloody English people!
One day though we were going into a park heading towards the Sydney Opera House (or pointy white thing as a spanish girl said to me) as we heard a load of people scream, just as we looked round, a girl got hit by a bus on the other side of the road right in front of us, it was pretty messed up, a very surreal experience, especially as she stood straight up and walked over to get her shoes out from under the bus. Damn it was weird, she got up but then sat on the bus so she must have just been in shock I guess.
Other than that we took in as much of the touristy stuff as possible, The Sydney Opera
Nimbin Museum
Not a good advert for the long term effects of smoking weed. House, bridge, darling harbour (where we saw a sea gull swallow best part of a whole sausage), all of them were great, its so nice to be in a hot country after 2 months of New Zealand, which to be fair was still warmer than home! Plenty of pictures to come for all this stuff.
Next we set off on our surf week, I managed to get Ste to change his flights, come to sydney and spend a week doing this, and I got Ciara (Irish girl from our stray bus) to come too. It was a really fun week, getting pummelled by 5 foot waves for the first couple of days, then moving on to smaller waves towards the end of the week. Its really hard to get the hang of, but once you stand up it gets a lot easier. I recomend rash vests, the board wax is not kind to the skin, especially the nips! It was a really cool, camping out by the beach, surfing and cooking bbq's kind of week, and we got to go to one of the Ripcurl board shapers factories and see them hand cutting boards at the end of the
Arts Factory
This place is cool, maybe too cool... week which was pretty cool.
I kept on surfing for the next week, staying with our surf instructor in his "hostel" just near Byron, but not near enough! and after about 4 days we realised he wasn't actually planning to take us back at any time, as he wanted our money at his hostel. He did pretty much everthing he could think of to get us to stay, including dissapearing when he said he would take us back, and we eventually had to hitch a lift with his friend in a fishing van at 9pm to get back to Byron. His friend was nice enough, but wasnt much better, first he said he was going to run out of fuel, and we'd be stuck in town for another night, or out in the bush, and then he stopped to pick up some Bourbon and Coke for the drive back... seriously a weird few days getting out of that one, capped off by a man with a beard, standing in his pajamas on the corner of the motor way, clutching a cat. I wish I had my camera in my hand for that one.
Then we were back in
Arts Factory
These guys are everywhere, look at his silly face. Byron again, and we went straight out to Cheecky Monkeys, possibly the worst bar on the planet, it really reminded me of the shit bars from Faliraki, but regardless its where everyone is, so we ended up there two nights running. And I checked out The Arts Factory hostel, which is a cool place to people watch (which you will do a lot of here, as nobody talks to each other) but there are loads of interesting people around, and the biggest collection of surfboards I've ever seen, I wish I was good enough to use half of them! I stayed there a while, and then moved to a beach hostel so I'm right by the sea.
There is a town nearby that a few of you already know called Nimbin, this weekend was Mardi Grass (emphasis on the GRASS) so we headed down. Its a strange town, stuck firmly in the 60's, with a "Fuck the police, lets take loads of drugs" attitude. I was only there one night, and missed the actual Mardi Grass so I could get my bus back to Sydney, but one night was enough!
I've left Ste in Nimbin, and all the
Surfaris
This is some of my group from surfaris, left to right, Ciara, Angela, Celine, Rachael, Ste, Henry others I met on the surf tour are gone now, so I'm travelling alone again, hopefully I'll get into another group soon, cos its pretty boring when nobody in your room wakes up or speaks english!
Ill get a bunch of photos up soon, as the internet in Byron is usually free. Im on the Oz Experience bus this week some time too, so that should be fun, more surfing and back to sunny Byron for a few more days, then on to the great barrier reef, and hopefully if I have any money left, I can make it to the Whitsundays and some diving, but I think I'm too skint for that now!
Speak to you all soon!
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Liz
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All sounds amazing Ian, you lucky thing. nothing has changed here so stay out as long as possible!