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Right, so that 2-3 weeks that I planned to stay on the Hydroponic farm 'Let us Grow' in Duranbah, NSW didn't really work out as I ended up staying for 7! I didn't really want to spend that long in one place so early in the trip but I had a great time there!! There was a great group of people there when I was there, so it's very easy to get stuck there. When you spend all of your time working, living and eating with them (similair to when I was working in France) you become really good friends very quickly. Jake, Catherine, Alex, Katie, Heather, Michael, Kelly, Jess, Jeremy and Noe to name just a few! I'm glad I stayed though, I think I left at just the right time; and it turns out that oone of the girls (Katie) had a cousin that lived in Surfers paradise on the gold coast which was one of my next destinations so he was kind enough to let me stay there for a few days!
After the farm I went straight back to Byron Bay on the country link bus to spend another few night there, I think Byron has to be up there with my favourite places so far, I really fell in love with it when I was there (of course it helps if you're with really cool people as well!). I met alot of people at 'the Holiday Village', the hostel I was staying at, it's a great place! It's very social, run by cool people and alot of the people that were staying there were traveling with the same company I was (Oz Experience) so if you were to travel on the same day as them you would be guarenteed to be on the same bus as there is only one bus a day, which works out great!! So as I reluctently left Byron Bay so did many of our group of friends. We traveled onto the next stop which was Surfers Paradise on the gold coast, a very built up, busy place, with nice beaches. It's a very 'Marmite' (or vegemite if you're Australian) place, although I think it's one of the quickest growing places in Oz with the town struggling to build enough accommodation to house all the people tha tflood there every month! As I said earlier I was staying at the house of a friend of a friend in Surfers (actually a place just outside called Southport funnily enough), two guys called Gavin and Luke, two great generous guys who were a pleasure to live with. Always good to make contacts!! The group that I traveled to Surfers with were all staying in the centre of town so I went in to meet them for the first few days while they there. It was a great group. consiting of English, American and Scottish/Irish. We had a day trip up to the top of a mountain, through the rainforest, to a bird sanctuary and bridge walking! A really good day out, although not the kind of place to go if you don't like birds....seriously!!! You hire out a metal tray full of bird seed for $4 with a $10 deposit for the tray, then you basically go to the feeding area and let the all the little Budgie/Parrot like birds (very colourful) land all over you. I'm not joking, on your head, shoulders, arms, hands, legs and even you're camera when you're taking pictures (and they have very sharp claws!!) It was bags of fun though! I'll put some pphotos up so you can see for your selves. After a few crazy nights in surfers with the group they moved on to a city called Brisbane (really gonna miss those guys, hopefully I can meet up with them again!) and I stayed in Surfers for a few days! As it turned out most of the group that I was with on the farm came to surfers that weekend so It was great to see them! The great thing about traveling the East coast is that pretty much all the backpackers you meet are doing the same thing, so it's rather likely that you will bump into them up the coast! And of course with the amazing invention of facebook you can contact anyone anywhere in the world at the touch of a button. AMAZING, such a handy tool to have!!
I then travelled onto brisbane for a couple of nights which another big city, except built on a river not on the coast, it was only a flying visit for me, pretty much everyone that I spoke to about it said "there's nothing to do there", "only stay one night", "it's not a great place", you get the idea. This may or may not be true but I think again it's a very 'vegemite' place, possibly just not very backpacker friendly!? I can see it being cool if you were to live and work there though! So, I am now in a cool little surf town called Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast, which is almost like a little Byron Bay, another very chilled out place, I'm writing this from a coffee shop on the beach front on my lovely new little laptop/netbook (which has already turned out to be a great investment, I was so suprised when I saw how many people travel with them!) The hostel here is great, the kind of place where people spend months here, either working or just get caught up in the atmosphere, another very sociable place! Moving on to Noosa today, which is only 20 minutes down the road and then onto Rainbow beach to do Fraser Island!!!! So excited!! So hopefully on my next post i'll have been and have some amazing photos and I can talk about it from first hand experience!!
Still having the time of my life and loving meeting all the cool people and seeing all the great places!! Loving life right now!
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