Aussie Aussie Aussie!

---

G'day! It's a rainy day here in Cairns and as there is very little to do here when it's not sunny I thought I'd spend some time updating the old blog. This is probably going to be the penultimate entry. Sad times I know.

I arrived in Sydney a few weeks ago now, and had a few days on my own before meeting up with the lads in Melbourne. Sydney was really nice. Had great weather the whole time I was there which helped. Spent some time walking around the city seeing the sights, opera house, harbour bridge etc. The opera house is cream..not white. I was disappointed. I got on a boat and went out to a couple of Sydney's beaches, Manly and Bondi which were both great. An aussie guy on the boat told me not to bother with Bondi as it's just where all the pasty pommies hang out. I did have to point out to him that that is exactly what I am. I felt that I fit in perfectly.

After a couple of days in Sydney I got on a 15 hour night bus to Melbourne (took my back to the travels in South America, except the buses in South America are infinitely more comfortable). Melbourne was great, probably prefered it to Sydney actually. I met up with the lads again after we had split up in Fiji. We had been apart for about 2 weeks so obviously there were some big tears when we were reunited. Mostly from Benson. I was just impressed that they had managed to survive without me.
The Melbourne Comedy festival was on when we were there which meant there was a great atmosphere in the city. It's a lot like the Edinburgh festival in terms of the comics who are performing, but there are less freaks wandering about thankfully. We went to see Reginald D. Hunter on our first night, and he was pretty hilarious. He did a show in Edinburgh a couple of years ago called 'Pride, Predjudice and Niggers'. Anyone who has the balls to pull that off has to be pretty funny. There were a lot of jokes about Josef Fritzl. That's all I'm saying.
Undoubtedly the greatest thing about Melbourne is that it is the home of the world famous Neighbours Night. We took ourselves along to a pub in St Kilda for the chance to meet the 'stars', including my old mate Alan Fletcher, a.k.a Karl Kennedy. For those of you who don't know, and I assume that applies to noone, I interviewed Karl a few years ago for Leeds Student Radio. It's safe to say I was excited about the night. Benson HATES Neighbours so he was even more excited. It was a funny old night in the end. Weirdly Karl didn't remember me...and didn't appreciate being called Karl. I told him that I had met him a long time ago in Leeds, and said that it was the greatest night of my life. I said it WAY too sarcastically and he seemed to get the hump and walk off. The rest of the night was spent watching his god awful band. After that experience I pretty much went straight to the airport to catch a 4am flight to Adelaide. They let me on the flight despite the fact that I was a little tipsy.
I was only in Adelaide for a couple of days but it was a nice City, and I met up with a girl I used to work with at the Punchbowl which was cool. We fed Kangaroos which was awsome. I was a little wary of them as I have heard that they can disembowl people, but I managed to survive. After that it was back to Sydney and time to start making our way up the east coast.

Our first stop on the east coast was Coff's Harbour, but it was closed, so we got the hell out of there pretty quickly and stopped in Byron Bay. Byron was a really cool little town absolutely full of backpackers. While we were there we took a day trip out the a little hippy village called Nimbin where weed has been unofficially legalised. It was the annual Mardi Grass festival while we were there which is basically a massive pot smoking festival. There is even a weed olympics (I assume drugs testing has been abandoned). Yeah so that was a freakin weird little place anyway. After Byron Bay we had an overnight stop at Spot X surf camp which saw the terrible combination of a heavy night of drinking Goon (wine from a bag) and a 6.00 wake up call to go surfing. It turns out I was actually pretty amazing at surfing. The guy was like, no professionals. I said I'm not a professional...

The next significant stop was Rainbow Beach, where we rented a 4x4 and got a boat over to Fraser Island. Fraser was definitely one of the highlights of Australia. There were 10 of us in the 4x4 and we were lucky enough to be with a good group of people who all got along well. We spent the days driving around the island stopping at the beaches and lakes. At night we camped, drank more goon and chased some Dingos. I a go at driving which was pretty fun, if a little nerve-racking. I managed to not kill anyone which was a relief, and we even got the 4x4 back to the rental company in tact, although the exhaust was falling of as we pulled in to the car park.

After Fraser Island we headed into the outback to a cattle ranch called Kroombit. Kroombit was really awsome! We spent the afternoon herding goats on horseback. I told the people there that I had never been on a horse before, but for some reason they decided to give me the biggest arsehole of a horse. They even made me wear a coloured vest so that other riders knew not to come near me! I had absolutely no control over this horse, it kicked the other horses, it bit the goats and it generally scared the crap out of me. It was a lot more fun than it sounds though. After that ordeal we went clay pigeon shooting which was cool. I had my own shotgun that I've been carrying since Rio so I saved a bit of money on rental. I managed to shoot 3 out of 5 discs which I was pleased with. Benson managed a respectable 2, but Martin disgraced himself by being the only person to fail to hit any. The night was spent learning to crack a whip and riding a mechanical bull. Watching people try to stay on the bull was pretty hilarious, especially after people had had a few drinks. It was difficult to be fair. We left the outback the next morning and made our way back to civilisation. The next stop was Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsundays. From Airlie we went on a 3 day sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands aboard the Atlantic Clipper. This was another highlight of the east coast. It was a really good boat and the staff on board were great. We stopped at some amazing beaches, where the sand was 98percent silica, whatever that means. Surely thats more than Jordan... that joke doesn't get any funnier. We also went snorkelling on the Great Barrier reef which was pretty cool. After a couple of nights on the boat and a few run ins with Somali pirates we made our way back to terra firma.

The next stop was Magnetic Island. More than half of the Island's 5,184 hectares is National Park, with Mt.Cook in the centre rising to 497 metres. Huge granite boulders are softened by tall Hoop pines, eucalypt forest and small patches of rainforest. You can lose yourself for a day, a week, or forever on Magnetic Island. The island provides the perfect setting for a unique escape. I'm finding it difficult to describe these places so I copied that off the official Magnetic Island website. I would generally agree with most of the sentiments though. Apart from the bit about spending forever there. 4 days sufficed. We rented a little car to explore the island, went on a walk, saw a Koala, played golf badly. All in all it was good times.

And that basically brings us to Cairns where I am right now. It's a good place. I have actually spent more time in Cairns than I have spent in any other place throughout the 6 month trip, including the week I spent on Vorovoro. That's a bit ridiculous, but never mind. I'm off to Singapore tomorrow, and from there we're heading off around S.E Asia which I'm really excited about, despite the fact that mozzies in Cambodia have just started to build up immunity to Malaria tablet. Perfect timing. Back home in 5 weeks and im looking forward to seeing everyone.
That's a pretty long blog really....and it's stopped raining. Bye!!

---