Life's A Beach

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After 12 days in Sydney it was somewhat of a relief to get out of a big city and start our journey up to Cairns. Our first of many stops was Coffs Harbour which is about an 8 hour drive north of Sydney and would hopefully provide us with better weather. We opted to take the night bus to Coffs to save a some money on accommodation, this turned out to be a bad idea…not only did we not get a wink of sleep the driver also decided to put the film karate kid on at 1am! This at least entertained Ryan for a couple of hours but hearing “wax on…wax off” whilst your trying to sleep is not my idea of fun.

We got into Coffs Harbour at 7am and crashed out for a few hours trying to get some much needed sleep. The hostel was more like a home and was one of the best we stayed at so far. It had free internet, swimming pool and was only 5 mins from the beach. You could also hire free surf and body boards from the hostel. The weather was much better here than Sydney so we made use of the free boards and hit the beach. Ryan, feeling overconfident that verged on stupidity, decided to take a surf board instead of a body board to a beach that is famed for its dangerous rips and big waves… and for the next few hours was tossed about like the proverbial sack of shit.

Byron Bay was our next stop on the bus and is a small town that a lot of Australians tend to go for their summer holidays. It had more of a Greek island kind of vibe with a main strip and lots of hostels, and our days here were mostly spent like they are if your in Greece or Spain… beach, bar and then bed. We really enjoyed our 3 nights here and could of stayed longer but we have now booked our trips for the Whitsundays and Fraser Island so have more of a schedule we have to try and keep too. Ryan also got stung by a jellyfish here which made me chuckle, probably why I liked the place so much.

We then crossed the Queensland border and hit Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast, with sprawling hotel blocks, skyscrapers and golden beaches you could see that this place was modelled on Miami. By now the weather was amazing and we had hardly saw a cloud for 7 or so days. Our first night we met up with some guys from Byron and bought some goon and headed to the beach for a few cheap drinks. As you need a pot of gold to have a night out in Australia due to the insane drink prices and small measurements, goon has become a big part of our lives and the taste is definitely growing on us. Our last night in Surfers we decided to have a bit of an Aussie BBQ and bought some kangaroo to grill up, turned out to be real quality meat and Ryan cooked it perfectly. (He asked me to put that bit in)

The last 10 or so days have been good for chilling out on beaches etc but we are now looking forward to heading further north and getting stuck in with the tours and activities we have booked. First up we are canoeing through the Noosa Everglades for 3 nights, hoping not to bump into any crocs on the way… we’ll let you know if we survive!

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