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Published: June 11th 2006
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Harbouring Ambitions
Heres the harbour. Just felt obliged to use this phrase somewhere, for the record i don't harbour any great ambitions at the mo. Yalreet. We've been in Coffs Harbour since 1st June. We've been staying at a hostel called Aussitel and it is possibly the best hostel we've stayed in so far (only Cool Bananas in 1770 comes close). The staff here have made us feel very welcome and as with most smaller hostels there is a family home from home feel to the place.
Our initial ideas for Coffs was to chill out a bit before we hit the big city of Sydney, and though we have had a lot of chill out time our days have been pretty action packed. On our first full day here we took out two canoes (free of charge) and went for a bit of a row row row your boat gently down the stream- Me and Will were in a boat together and had a few teething problems travelling in a straight line, i'd like to say we got the hang of it but we didn't. Was knackered by the end of our "gentle" boat trip.
That night it was Punch night at the hostel so we all got pretty merry and headed into town. It was a good group of people at the
hostel who we went out with: we got on best with the two girls Charlie and Lindsay who had been working at the hostel for a couple of weeks and two lads from Middlesboro, Mark and Paul. We went to the Coffs Harbour Hotel where they done those Slush Puppies with vodka in them like they do at Club XS in Carlisle- wasn't as many scalleys here though! Jonny inevitably went out wearing his snake bite smile and Will was looking pretty fly for a white guy on the dancefloor, especially when there was a dance off in the middle of the dancefloor during Run DMC. The night was finfished off in true England style with a kebab.
We managed to get up bright and breezy at 9am the next morning to watch the Wallabies (Australian Rugby Union team) train at the local stadium, apparently Coff's Harbour is their favourite training base. We've got tickets to watch England V Australia in Sydney on June 11th so we were on a bit of a scouting mission. I only recognised George Greagan and Matt Rogers and to be honest most of the players were dropping the ball all the time, i'm
Scouting Mision
The Wallabies in training sure they'll have shaped up by the time they play England though. Me and Jonny had a wander upto the lookout point by the harbour hoping to spot some whales but didn't have much luck.
The next day me and Chris went to do some Sea Kayaking and Surf Rafting. Surf Rafting is basically just like White Water Rafting only you catch Waves instead of rapids. Aswell as me and Chris there was Lindsay and Charlie, the Boro boys and a Canadian guy at the hostel called Brennan. Sea Kayaking was pretty good and we were gonna have a bit of a tour until people started feeling sea sick: Chris decided to lean over the kayak thinking he was gonna be sick only to suceed in tipping us over way out to sea! We finally got back on the kayak only to Capsize again, this time for putting too much weight on the other side of the vessel. After composing ourself we headed back to shore to try and catch some waves. We managed to ride one of the waves from way out all the way back to the sand- it was so awesome, we were going pretty fast
Lets play cards
We loved a game of cards in Coffs. Just look at Jonny's enthusiastic face for evidence! and kept having to lean back to stay on top of the wave and stop us from nosediving, you could say we are sea kayaking legends.
We done a bit of Surf Rafting afterwards, there were 6 of us in one rubber raft. Our guide kept trying to tip us over all the time as the waves came towards us, they were huge! Brennan proceeded to pull Lindsay right off the raft, it was such a comical fall- it was like Del Boy going through the bar in that classic Only Fools and Horses scene.
On the 5th we headed to the beach to play some Volleyball, i decided to give it a miss to start with cos my foot was still hurting a bit from the footie in Byron- i done some boogie boarding instead but didn't catch many waves. I decided to join in the game after all and my foot survive unscathed, although i did split my swimmng shorts stretching for the ball once though much to everyone's amusement. That night i headed to a quiz night at a bar in town- it was absolutely hard as nails and we didn't come anywhere near winning. In the bar they had this machine which you could blow a straw into and it breathalised you- I only measure a 0.9 cos i hadn't drank that much, whilst Boro Boy Paul weighed in at 2.0, Will took the plaudits with a 2.3?! Jonny refused to take part in this exercise, probably something to do with the fact that he was off his rocker and would have struggled to blow into the straw in the first place.
The next day we went surf rafting again: this time it was free of charge though because a TV crew was in town and wanted to film us. The show is a weekly program called Sydney Weekender in which the presenter goes to various places in New South Wales and hilights the things there are to do there. The presenter is a former Aussie cricketer called Mike Whitney, he apparently got Ian Botham out in Bothams Ashes back in 1981 i think, i'd never heard of him though. The show they were filming happened to be his 500th so it was quite a big deal.
The rafting was even better than the first time, this time Will and Jonny were involved aswell. There was the inevitable Sprigens banter of trying to soak everyone, using his paddle to splash everyone. The instructor in our boat soon got wise to his ways though and proceeded to grab him by his life jacket and pull him into the sea about 3 times- Sprigens had met his match. When we done White Watre Rafting in Cairns Will took great pleasure in reprimanding me for my "unsafe paddle practices", ie not holding my paddle with two hands. Imagine my suprise then when he clocked me square in the nose with his flailing oar, he was quite literally sticking his oar in where it wasn't wanted! Fortunately i didn't draw blood and Wilson was very apologetic, duly noting that it was bound to be him that whacked someone after all the stick he's given me.
Lindsay from the hostel had everyone in stitches again with her inability to stay on the raft- the Camerman, who was sitting on the front of the raft, kept getting the camera in her face as she took tumble after tumble.
Towards the end of the rafting a couple of Dolphins came up right next to our raft and were jumping out of the water- they hung around for quite a while. The ambience of this beautiful scene of watching these magnificent creatures was somewhat quashed when Chris said if we'd be having them on the barnecue tonight?! Jonny was horrified pulling a face comparable to Holtby's face when the barman rings for last orders-"Thats the worst thing you'v ever said" Jonny told Bully, for those of you that don't know Bully, believe me it isn't the worst thing he's said-think Jack Dee humour.
We were treated to a free lunch at the end and Mike Whitney was talking cricket with us, seemed like he was such a stereotypical Aussie "bloke". He was regaling us with tales about Shane Warne on a night out- about how he gets hassled by women 24/7 and stuff.
We got a nightbus to Sydney on Tuesday and arrived in Syders early on Wednesday. Bully's decided to stay in Coffs for a couple more nights but should be joining us in Syders in time for the England game on Saturday. On Wednesday we were joined by our other mate Dan, fresh from finishing his Uni exams. Oh and by the way World Cup Fever has well and truly struck- i cannot wait!
Mike
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Catherine
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World Cup Fever
Enjoy Mike, I know your bound to be hyper by now, even I had the tele rigged up on the patio so I could watch the first England game while sitting in the sunshine, been an absolute scorcher this past week or so here. Glad to know your still enjoying every minute, jealous of you seeing the dolphins it something I've always wanted to see. Hows the foot doing Rooney??? Love MamX