Sydney to Brisbane:

We arrived in Sydney absolutely exhausted after our 44 hour journey to be greeted by extortionate prices and McDonalds galore. We think it is fair to say that this rung true for the duration of our stay in Australia with many nights travelling from city to city spent sitting in a far corner of Mcdonalds using the free wi-fi while being unable to afford to actually buy anything. Our first experience of the overpriced nature of oz however came as soon as we left the airport. The taxi to our hostel in Sydney charged us % cents per milli second much to Georgias outrage. We tried to barter in good Thailand spirit with our classic offer of "10 baht?" (approx 20p) but surprisingly to no avail.
We stayed in Wake Up hostel in Sydney which gets its name from the tannoy announcements that are blasted into the rooms at all hours - "Wake up, Wake up walkinh tour at 11am" and so on and so on. While informative you can imagine our reaction to the unneccessary early morning broadcasts! We only had a short time in Sydney so did some sightseeing at the opera house and the harbour bridge which fascinated Georgia- mostly due to its appearance in the Mary-Kate and Ashley film 'Our lips are sealed'. We have never seen her so enthusiastic, insisting we walk along the bridge and back while she exclaimed - "I wonder where it was that MK and Ash saw the diamond being stolen?!" On our last day we surprisingly ran into Dan Wood and Harrison in the hostel where Nat shouted "oh my god!!" from shock receiving some funny looks from the other people in the kitchen! We also went to Coogee beach where the waves were so big they almost ripped our bikinis off. Not ideal.
We had some fun nights out in sydney, the funniest ending up in an inbred irish bar with the worst live band in history and a bizarre man who started dancing with Nat and Steph and licking their tops.
In true organised style, it wasn't until the morning that we were due to pick up our campervan that we decided to read the small print on our contract. To our dismay we discovered that an additional $2500 bond had to be taken from our credit card which was money we simply did not have. Luckily fgor us help came in the form of Sizar, part time tour office worker full time knight in shining armour, who kindly rang our campervan company posing as our 'good friend' explaining that we 'did not understand the rules of the road' (despite them being the same as the UK) in order to cancel our van. After providing us with a cheaper camper and advising us on the best ways to get 'action' in said camper, he sent us on our way. Now this was where the real fun started.
Upon collecting our 4x10 foot luxury home for the next month, we set off on our first adventure.. reuniting Georgia with her bank card from the unlikely source Roger Ringwood a.k.a Pink Panther enthusiast. This is where the success stories of 'Big Ron' (as we ironically christened the van) came to an end and a series of unfortunate events began to unravel.
In an attempt to create storage and deter theives, we thought it an ingenius idea to use our microwave as a safe. However, with the restricted living conditions combined with our lack of common sense to turn the microwave off; accidents happened. Passports were melted, blackberrys were frazzled and this is not where the disasters ended. Other casualties included a soy sauce explosion which claimed the life of Robyns phone and Georgias ipod mysteriously found drowned in a mug of water. More personal disasters came in the form of Steph throwing up over the bed in a particularly bad goon hangover and our top bunk collapsing leaving Robyn braless and stranded hanging for dear life from the top bunk. Not only did we fail to assist her, we instinctively reached straight for our cameras. Surprisingly those shots are not fit for Facebook.
Our favourite stop off from Sydney to Brisbane was Byron Bay, where we met 3 Norwegians who later became our East coast travelling companions. We had a great goon-fuelled (boxed wine made of 'fish products and eggs' which is all we could afford to drink in oz! Amy is having major vodka withdrawals) night out at Cheeky Monkeys where drunken events included falling off tables, Harrison being kicked out twice and Steph attempting to get a 6ft 3 Norwegian on her shoulders.
I'm sure you are all wondering how the driving and navigating aspect of our trip went considering we decided against getting a sat nav due to lack of funds. However, this does not explain why it failed to cross our minds to buy a map of the east coast. Instead we relied soley upon a ridiculously zoomed out atlas of Australia which was about as useful as a globe key ring. Consequently we spent many wasted hours and gallons of petrol driving around cities looking for the highway, all the while enraging other drivers with our erratic and reckless driving.
En route to our half way point of Brisbane we stopped off in many towns such as Port Macquarie- OAP haven and Australias answer to Jersey Shore - Surfers Paradise, where Georgia had an unfortunate run in with a boogie board, rendering her temporarily paralysed.
Brisbane brought us a hilarious night mixing with the local inbreds, our favourite being Chris who insisted on changing the lyrics of every song to serenade us. Most memorable being "You's girls are on fireeee" and "England Motherf***ers". And things were yet to get stranger...