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Published: January 24th 2006
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Hopping mad!
Just chilling out with one of the locals!? ;-) Hi everyone,
I guess it's time for another journal entry, which seem to come about so fast and furious at the moment. I'm sorry that I'm not doing one every week as promised but I'm always on the go at the moment and when i do get a few hours to catch up on emails i find the worst internet shops, which don't have USB connections for me to download my pics.
Anyway, let me tell you what I've been up to since the last time I wrote.
I left Byron Bay reluctantly on saturday 14th and decided to head over to Brisbane for a saturday night out in a big city as I figured that it would be the best way to judge what kind of city Brisbane was and I wasn't disappointed! I stayed at the YHA in Roma street, which is seriously quiet but easily reachable from the coach and train station that allowed me access to the whole city. Being saturday night I decided to go down to a sports bar called 'The Adrenalin Bar', which had the live match between Man City and Man Utd and what a bar! I've never seen a
Feeding Time!
One of the Zoo keepers feeds one of the Croc's! bar with so many great screens to watch the football on and at the same time they had a dance floor in the middle full of attractive young ladies (not pros by the way!) dancing the night away... yep, it felt seriously weird but at the same time wonderful! ;-)
The next morning I headed over to city street beach, which is a man made beach that was built on the river front but they used imported sand and fresh water, which has got to be seen to be believed but again an unbelievable experience.
So basically Brisbane is a great city to spend a few days and I've got to say that apart from the occasional drunken Aboriginal it's full of friendly locals who are happy to go out of their way to help you!
I moved on up the coast to a little place called Noosa on Monday, which is a cute but expensive little town that has got such a posh feel about it that it just feels like it belongs in the french Riviera not the east coast of Australia! However it has an amazing little beach and it's also a great place
Camping on Fraser Island!
Mixing it up with mother nature... the guys and girls that I had the 4x4 adventure with! to visit Steve Irwin's Australian Zoo from. I ended up going there with Koulla ( a girl I met on the bus from Brisbane ) and I got to see my first ever Koalla and Kangaroo plus we even got to see a live crocodile feeding show!
I headed further up the coast to Hervey Bay on the wednesday as it's the place to head off to Fraser Island from and I stayed at the Colonial hostel, which has got to be the best hostel ever in terms of facilities. These guys had double bed bunk beds, which is amazing especially when you've been use to sleeping in small single beds for so long now. They also had a huge swimming pool with a spa/Jacuzzi on the side... all this for $23 (ten pounds) per night! I ended up staying there for 3 nights and made some great friends who even offered me a job to help run the hostel, which was very funny as they didn't believe that i was simply on a sabbatical from work... they actually thought I had just finished uni!? Yep, that Nivia anti ageing cream is magic!
Between my 3 day stay
Fraser Island streams!
Walking through Fraser Island Fresh water streams! in Hervey Bay I also went over to Fraser Island on one of those 4x4 3 days, 2 nights self drive adventures, which again was stunning! I met some great people, although I reckon camping just isn't what I was designed for or at least not camping out in the wild with Dingos and snakes (yep, apparently Fraser Island has 3 or the deadliest snakes in the world!).
We did however have a great time and driving a 4x4 on sand is nothing short of ecstatic, especially when you hit the fresh water streams and the spray fills half the car with water! We also had an unbelievable experience on our second night on the island as we completely got lost and managed to stumble onto Aboriginal sacred ground, which definitely wasn't the camp site that we were looking for but instead we were confronted by an Aboriginal man (Jo) in his full war paint! After the initial shock for both us and him we greeted in the old tribal way of 'how are you mate!' and started telling him our funny story on how we came across his land! On that note he laughed and called us a
Aboriginal Jo!
Another local but this time in war paint! bunch of Gullahs before inviting us to stay on his land instead of trying to find the camp site, which was apparently still half an hours drive away. We reluctantly accepted as a few of the group had reservations or should I say fears that they would be eaten alive by the local dingos who were sniffing around but I reassured them that there was more chance of Jo (the Aboriginal) eating them than Dingos, which sparked off a few other concerns.... but there you go! But all turned out well and we had the most amazing night with Jo and his other Abo friend Mark who put on a tradition dance show for us and we in return sung them some Robbie Williams songs... not exactly a fair exchange but they got lucky this tinme! ;-)
Fraser Island is an amazing place and although the weather wasn't it's normal clear blue skies and sunshine, I still had a blast and fell in love with the fresh water lakes and clear white sand that you find in the middle of the Island. I even managed to catch a glimpse of my first shark just off Champagne pools, which is up on the north of the island!
So that's it guys and girls.... that's what I've been up to for the past week or so. I'm now heading up north again on a 13 hour coach ride to Airlie beach for my Whitsunday sailing adventure, which promises to be a whole world of fun! ;-)
Take care and keep those emails coming with all your news as a few of you have been slacking lately!
Love,
Paulo
x
p.s. I hear that there's been a lot of unprotected love making going on back at the office!? Roy, you'll need to order a few more of those SMP wheels! ;-)
Seriously, congratulations to all those girls back at the office who are expecting!
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