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Published: March 28th 2008
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Right, The start of my australian adventure was a rather wet one in more ways than is obvious form the photos. We flew into Cairns after a stop over in Darwin (meaning we couldn't take advantage of the ridiculously cheap booze at the duty free in Singapore -not a good start Oz, not good at all). When we finally arrived in cairns we thought we were part of an australian iniitiative to give all visiting brits a taste of their history -in that we were treated live convicts. For the simple fact that we were brits, travelling to Oz with absolutely no intention of working and staying for 3 months we were subjected to the deep and probing force of the Cairns customs officials... welcome to the land down under.
Being interrogated by an australian official was a lot like how one might expect being questioned by the cops on
The Bill would be:
how long are you staying in Australia?
About 3 months, 88 days to be exact
You know you're only allowed to stay for 90 days on your visa?
Er, yeah... thats why we're leaving after 88
Hmm, planning on working while you're here?
No i'm not allowed to on my visa, it's only a holliday one
oh so you know that do you?
Well yeah... obviously...(want me to tell you any more of your job mate?)
Thats a long time to be away without working Mr Adams, how can you afford it?
I worked really hard and saved for a few months (in a better job than yours you prat)
Hmmm... i see you've been to thailand, go to the full moon party? try the mushroom shakes?
yes, yes and no (there's no need to look so dissappointed mate! what were you expecting? -yeah they were great, high as a kite. you wanna try? i've got some in my bag, next to the cocain, underneath the smack but before you get to the hyperdermic needles... @*$#ing hell!)
Well, we'll be keeping an eye on you... Mr Adams and Mr Stone
(holy shit, surely there's room for some originality? you don't have to resort to quoting the matrix!
So that was our introduction to Aussie officials, it doesn't get any better than that i'm afraid. Durring our stay we found out why the immigration guys were such prats
-the aussies have a TV show called Border control, think of Airport back home but with even less going on. We were lucky not to have too many problems on our journey down the East Coast, but we did encounter the police a couple of times; in airlie beach we were almost arrested for jaywalking but got away because the cops couldn't get their seatbelts undone (i'm not kidding, absolutely true) and in Byron bay we were almost arrested again, this time for turkey slaughter... but that, as you can imagine is a long story.
Back to cairns though where it rained pretty much every day for 2 weeks while we were there trying to buy a van. This is where we spent our Christmas, but we'd only been there 2 days and it hadn't rained in that time so it was a pretty cheery christmas. Although i missed seeing my family and of course christmas dinner -the only one we could find was in a nightclub, back to the scene of the crime because we'd been there untill 2am the night before (a more depressing combination you couldn't probably imagine, except of course for the two young, beautiful
german girls we were sitting opposite... not so bad after all!)
The next thing of note that we did in cairns was to go diving on the barrier reef -yes we counted in the new year with nemo -absolutely fantastic. This was one of the moast amazing experiences of the trip so far, we were diving at night with sharks, exploring the depths at 30m below! and learning how to take photos! (note how i said learning -i don't want any comments about how rubbish they are). We spent 3 days on the boat in total and went on 11 dives in that time. It really was the most incredible stuff, we found a turtle on the second night dive which was the size of a paddling pool! Moray eels and attacks by trigger fish also featured and to top it off the food was amazing, the boat 4 star comfortable and the staff great (even if they could only really hold a conversation about diving or fish). We were on a real high after our time on the boat and ironically it was my first "dry" new years since i was about 13 years old! Haha.
Having successfully become advanced divers (translate as "the shit") we set about the task of buying a van in ernest. This however was easier said thandone as there was asevere shortage of caravans that met our exactiung stantards (four wheels, rego and enough space for both of us to sleep in). After about another week of seeing shitheap after shitheap we found one which fit the bill, little did we know we'd loose a thousand pounds on it when we came to sell it -bitter, me? Never. Apart from the appauling loss at sale, he went on to have some fantastic times in the van, driving ourselves enabled us to see so much more and do even more -without it we'd never have been jackeroos, visited the smaller towns of experienced how it feels for two grown men to share a very narrow double bed -we did over 10,000 killometers in the old girl.
I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the next blog for more Oz pics, the bloody machine won't let me add more to this one
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