still been having an awesome time since i got rid of tpo, was even thinking of extending my flight and travelling up to cairns, but it turns out singapore airlines employees are incompetent cretins and don't know how to change it, so that plans out the window. so anyway since sydney ive been travelling up the coast towards brisbane, stopping at newcastle, port macquarie, coffs harbour and currently in byron bay. went on a wine tasting tour in newcastle which was awesome, had this old aussie geezer driving me round all the vineyards in a minibus, telling me various anecdotes and ranting about how people who start bushfires should be burned, well funny. absolutely baroozled by about 2pm! found some bloke at the hostel who likes cat empire and sublime so was chatting to him for ages, also found a rare frenchman who keeps turning up everywhere, think ive bumped into him in every town so far.

port macquarie was pretty cool, decided to hire a bike one day and cycle round the coastline, it was only 5 bucks from the hostel but turned out to be the smallest gayest bike ever, no gears or working brakes so had to slow down by trying to pedal backwards and praying the chain didnt break! had loads of fun hurtling down hills trying not to die, probably looked pretty gay tho. didnt like most of the people at the hostel there, there was one prat who got up at 5am every morning and turned the light on, crashed around for ages and sprayed like half a can of deodourant on himself, was very tempted to slap him about the face. otherwise had a really good time there, and frenchie turned up on the second day so i kind of had someone to talk to, even if he couldnt really speak english!

coffs harbour though, best place ever. the hostel was called the plantation hotel, which was really cheap, gave me a double room to myself, had a pub/nightclub downstairs and lonely planet doesnt like it, ideal! also it turned out the night i arrived was the coffs races, which is like the biggest party night of the year. didnt really fit in with my plan of getting an early night! found some irish people almost straight away and had a pretty crazy night, ended up talking to a load of aussie stoners on the balcony till like 3am who were trying to persuade me to come to byron bay with them to jump the fence at a music festival and leave my bags in some blokes car. although this seemed like a very good idea at the time, the next morning i thought better of it! this music festival really screwed up my plans though, i only heard about it a few days before i was due to go to byron and it turned out the two clashed completely and there was literally no accomodation the weekend i wanted to go there. mare. wish i'd heard of it earlier and got tickets actually, the aussies i was talking to made it sound immense, and cat empire were playing. d'oh.

so instead of risking getting pummelled by bouncers trying to break in and losing all my bags, i decided to spend another couple of days in coffs and wait for it all to blow over. boring i know. as good as the plantation was, it was miles from the beach, so moved for the last couple of nights to a different hostel called aussietel. probably the best hostel ive ever been to (except possibly the one in krakow), met loads of cool people and had a massive bbq on the first night, then went out in the plantation club afterwards, awesome night. had kangaroo burgers as well, yesssss. tried to go white water rafting while i was there but the next trip wasnt till thursday, which was pretty unlucky, so just chilled out really, did some body boarding, surfing lessons were quite expensive so didnt bother with that in the end. so as i said im currently in byron, seems pretty cool but its absolutley packed, actually kinda glad im not staying here too long. found frenchie again and im sharing a room with some irish girl i met on the bus, so might meet up with them for a drink or something later, probably having a quiet night though pretty tired. then off to brisbane tomorrow, and getting home on thursday i think so will catch up with u all then. yaaaaay. OUT