East Coast Australia

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Ok so i decided to put all of australia together for the moment until ive time to flesh out the details and separate out the sections with photos etc! Anyway....So we arrived in Melbourne!
MELBOURNE
We arrived there to cold and wind and were permanently freezing for the following week!! Really enjoyed the city thou, reminded me of Galway....some sort of charm about it that you can't quite put your finger on. We stayed in a fab hostel called Urban Central which was really clean and nice and met a great group of people. We headed out over the weekend and met my friend from home Anthony who lives there now one night and my cousin from Sweden who also lives there now with an aussie another night. Sunday evening we headed to an AFL game with some of the ones from the hostel which was good fun, the game is quite like GAA so we caught on quickly enough! Whilst there we also went to a neighbours night where we met 2 of the cast, Tody and Carmela....i dont watch it so it didn't mean much to me but we went in a big group from the hostel and had a great night! During the days we saw the sights of the city and even got ourselves a free view of the city by using the toilets on the 35th floor of a fancy hotel, they've a massive window!!! ..... the lonely planet told us to do it ... and we believe in the bible! We also spent a day on the Great Ocean Road which was a tiring day, its very beautiful but i was well sick of clicking the camera by the end of it!! We also saw some Koalas that day in the wild along with some birds that eat seed from your hand! Oh! and we saw the lighthouse from the tv show "around the twist".....remember "have you ever, ever thought like this, how strange things happen, are you going round the twist".....(sorry cant do the tune via blog!). Another day Anthony brought us along th coast a bit to St Kilda, the beach area of Melb and we admired quickly because of the cold but enjoyed walking around the area in the little town. Once we'd seen all we could we got the bus to Sydney.....

SYDNEY
We arrived at the weekend so we spent those few days sampling the nightlife, some irish girls we met in Laos live here now and so we joined them for one of their birthday celebrations, and another english girl we met in Vietnam is here also so headed out with her another night. Then sunday night is the big irish night here so had to go to all the irish bars for that and sure met half of the irish population and so many people from Newmarket that i practically thought i was in the local at home!! gas!! We also went down to the harbour by night and admired the spectacular view! We then got to see it even more stunningly by day when we took the ferry out into the harbour, its amazing to see both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in the flesh (so to speak)....we went to visit Manly Beach which was really nice, not much surf that day though so good job we didn't have suits etc! Further north where its warmer defintely. The weather is much nicer here, no jackets required for most of the day so thats great after the chill of Melb. We also visited the beach set of Home and Away...got ridiculously excited about being outside the surf club! Oh dear!! They weren't filming that day though so we didn't meet any cast....bummer! Sydney is a really nice city, i can see why so many travellers settle there, the harbour is amazing and the city is so cosmopolitian and then theres such beautiful beaches only a stones throw away. My sister Elaine and her friend Ciara joined us in Sydney and so we became a foursome for a hilarious 4week road trip up the east coast that ensued.....

EAST COAST ROAD TRIP

Stop 1!
We started our road trip in Sydney, leaving there in our little Toyota corolla "Skippy" and heading north to our first stop....Spot X, a secret surf spot where we did 2lessons and stayed two nights, really enjoyed that as the waves were good and we improved a lot and it was nice sitting around the campfire at night. We slept in the coldest room imaginable and ate our meals at a big table with all the other surfers and sat around the campfire by night drinking goon with them. It was well enjoyable and we were only sorry we hadn't more time to spend there. We actually missed as well the fact that some mornings the surfers are joined by a pod of dolphins that surf the waves with them...i would have loved that! Doing the driving was hard work but we were so glad to have our car, we were always paranoid about knocking down Kangaroos tho (hence the name on the car) and poor Ciara often got the dusk shift in the car which was peak time for such danger!

Stop 2!
From there we headed to Bryon Bay where we had planned on doing more surfing, the waves weren't that good though but we made a good attempt at it with 3 of the guys from our dorm room, 2 from Cork and a German guy (i think?!!). We went out to a lighthouse as well and saw some whales and dolphins which i loved, was so excited, like a little kid! We spent a good few of the nights here in a pub called Cheeky Monkeys and danced the night away on the tables there....dont worry though they encourage it!! When the cork lads in our dorm room moved on the day before us they got replaced with a group of the most ignorant Irish guys we've met so far and so after having a bit of a stand off with them in front of the bathroom at 4am (they were being rude and loud and waking the whole dorm and we were shhhing them which they didn't take kindly to and so we got cursed at....!by god did it get my back up!!!) we hightailed it after the lads up the coast.....

Stop 3!
......to surfers paradise, didn't actually surf here as only had two nights and one day, we spent that day with the cork lads at a crazy theme park with really scary rides, tower of terror etc! It was a great day except when we had the lunch in some "happy land" or something like that where they play the same crazy music over and over and over and poor Ross nearly lost the plot completely waiting for us to eat our sandwiches!! The girls headed out that night but i gave it a skip.

Stop 4!
From there it was a bypass of Brisbane up to Noosa where we went to Steve Irwins zoo, saw a scary croc show and held Koalas and fed Kangaroos! Great fun! We thought the Zoo was good but that Singapore Night safari was a better experience. The croc show was good though...from the safety of our seats!! Noosa itself was pretty quiet, we stayed in a rotten hostel and didn't head out or anything, it was only for one night and the weather was pretty miserable that evening so we weren't bothered.

Stop 5!
After that it was up to Hervey Bay where we overnighted before heading to Fraser Island for 3days and 2nights. We rose early the first morning and met our group, 9 in our group in one 4x4. We were all given jobs then, some had to do the shopping which was Jacinta and I....this was like a more stressful version of Supermarket sweep with no prizes. We collected everyones money, made a list, took a trolley each and then pegged it around the supermarket with 30mins to buy enough food for 9 people for 3 days! It was funny....afterwards! Not at the time!!! stressful at the time!!! Other people got the jobs of packing the jeep, or buying peoples drink or watching the safety video etc. So once all that was done and it was still the early hour of 9am we headed to the ferry and crossed over onto the island and off we went driving in the sand. We spent the 3 days driving around to different beautiful places and we stayed both nights at a place called Base Camp where we put up our tents and cooked a BBQ and the likes, great fun, met some really nice people. There were 3 other jeeps on the same trip as us so there was a great crowd of us. We'd have a great time sitting at the tables after dinner playing drinking games....i dont think ill ever forget Jack and his game Viking...."get your f**king oars out!"....and of course the enthuasiastic "what the f**k" game that ciara loved so much....except for one freudian slip.....!! not as bad a poor Rida's slip of the tongue tho!! (sorry folks i can't elaborate on that...suffice to say that the culperits know what was said!). After all that fun the lights usually went out at 9pm and so we'd head to the beach for a while before hitting the sack.....twas nice to get some sea air....althought i think Ciara used to be badly affected by the ol sea air!! Twas some buzz driving the 4x4 as well, mostly Elaine drove but i did a good bit too. Poor Gordon had a very embarrassing attempt, being the only guy he mortified himself by being not able to drive manual and cutting out every min for the 10mins he tried it for!! We all nearly lost our lives (and jacinta nearly lost her coffee!) on the last day when Rida drove and had all our hearts in our mouths with her driving!! we also saw some whales off the coast and a dingo when we were driving one day. We couldnt swim in the sea as its a tiger shark bredding ground but we didnt see any of them, stuck to the lakes all the same tho!! Back to Hervery bay for the night then and we had a few drinks with the crowd we'd met out there, one of the guys had a guitar and so we had a wee sing song and i even played a song for them. Poor Christy Moore gets sung all over the place!!

Stop 6!
The following day we had a mental 14hour drive to Airlie Beach where we overnighted before our boat trip. This was a pretty stressful drive as our radio was crap in Skippy and the CD we'd bought was in danger of being smashed on the road if we had to listen to it another time!!! So ciara became an engineer for a while and fashioned some speakers for her i-pod earphones from a used coffee cup and so we had a reasonable sound quality for a good while. We also had no accommodation booked and so when we arrived in Airlie beach at 2am everywhere was full or closed and we eventually found a hotel where the owner got out of his bed cursing women and gave us a room for the night!! We moved to our booked hostel the next morning, we then spent the day sunbathing and wandering around the town. That night we were woken up to some girl screaming out on the street outside our hostel and then some expletives by Ciara who'd sat up and saw what the screaming was about, there was a car on fire outside our hostel, and i woke and pulled the curtains back in time for us to see the whole car explode and a big fireball rise into the sky! We sat and watched the brigade come and put it out and wondered what happened. We found out the next day it was a backpackers car and they'd all their stuff in it so i felt immensely sorry for them. Anyway that day we headed out then on the Whitsunday islands for 3days and 2nights on a catarmaran, a huge tri-man type (think thats what its called!!) .... it took 12 of us to put up the main sail! we snorkled the great barrier reef and saw some amazing fishies, huge!! and some of them are pure cheeky, not a bit scared of ya, swimming up to your face etc! we also saw a mommy and baby whale one morning, the skipper said the baby was probably only a few hours old! cool eh! We'd a great group on the boat and discovered that the Irish are not the best drinkers in the world....the Peurto Ricans beat us hands down!! We spent the first night teaching them our games from Fraser (Danni and Kasper from the camping trip actually ended up on our boat so that was cool) and the second night we weren't fit for anything only bed! Back to Airlie Beach then where we overnighted again and had a farewell night with our crew which was great fun!

Stop 7!
So after that we drove to Cairns, we were supposed to dive the reef but the weather was a bit crap the few days before we arrived and it meant the visibility would have been rubbish so we mainly sunbathed and recovered from the mental few weeks we've had. Here we also met Eoghan, one of Ciara's friends from home, who actually turned out to be the same Eoghan we'd met in Koh Tao a few months back so that was pretty freaky!! One of the days we headed out to AJ Hacketts and Elaine and Ciara did a bungee jump. Me and Jacinta said no way but then after a while we thought we were brave enough so said we'd come back the next day...of course we chickened out when it came to it!! We had plenty of nights out here in Caaaiiirrrrns as well since it was the end of the trip and sampled all that Cairns had to offer! So after our farewell night (where we parted company with Ciara and Skippy......skippy had gone earlier in the day but Ciara stuck around til 4am!!....) we hopped on the plane down to Brisbane where we met our neighbour from home Rory who showed us around the city in the few hours we had to kill until our flight to Christchurch, New Zealand, now a threesome again.....

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