We move onto chapter 2 of our travels by heading to Sydney direct from Bangkok, a relatively quick flight (9 hours) made quicker by the excellent choice on inflight entertainment with movies such as Up, the Hangover and good will hunting- which was my personal favourite. Anyway we arrived in Sydney and after a 50 dollar taxi ride (which was a shock to the system after the ridiculously cheap pricing in Thailand) we arrived at the Wake Up hostel in Sydney. I slept for 26 hours after arrival. Ultimately we soon discovered that Sydney was to be a bit of a let down, perhaps this was because we were not on tour anymore and we were doing things for ourselves I am not sure however we found little to entertain ourselves with and to make maters worse our room mates were t*** ! We did get to see some attractions of Sydney though. We kicked off with a guided tour of the opera house which was real impressive, followed by jet boating around Sydney harbor, getting soaked in the process and in the afternoon we visited the wildlife center and the aquarium were jeffery met his new polish friends* refer back to sydney photos ha ha. So after quickly deciding that Sydney was not for us we booked the beginning of our trip around the east coast as soon as we could and were ready to go the following morning.

First stop on the east coast was spot x or surf camp, we hopped on the minibus and were set for our 9 hour journey with our driver Muppet man who believed that everything was crazy and that everyone was on drugs, I kid you not. Surf camp was a real chilled out place and the surfing itself was an experience, although it took me a while to get to grips with standing on the board, I was soon catching some narly waves and putting the rest of the group to shame with my awesome skills, in seriousness though I caught 4 waves max, staying on for around 4 seconds at best but it definitely gave you a slight sense of achievement even if you were on for a couple of seconds.

Byron Bay followed and this so far has been my favourite destination. During the day we would pretty much chill on the beach and break up the rest of the day through naps and a bit of internet. At night we would kick of with a bbq were I would demolish anything insight going up for thirds on a regular basis, we would then drink at the hostel for a while were we learnt a couple of new drinking games involving chicken noises of sorts ( Its coming back to Northern Ireland) and we would cap it off by going to cheeky monkeys were you danced on the tables to such classics as summer of 69 (jumping up and down like idiots apparently is not just something we do) and getting jiggy with it, but to name a few. So in all just nice chilled out place to spend a few days before we were to start our activities that would follow over the next week.

Fraiser Island was supposed to be the big one, we hadn't met one person who had a bad world to say about it. By the way this is the biggest sand island in the world and basically we get put into a group of 10 or so and its self drive so we get to drive around the island for a couple of days. Unfortunately I wasn't able to drive as you had to be 21 but as I am yet to master the treacherous roads of Northern Ireland perhaps it was best that I wasn't let behind the wheel of a vehicle were I would hold the lives of 10 others in my hands. In general it was a bumpy ride (no fault of the drivers) and when Jeffery got his first chance to shine he didn't disappoint, driving us smoothly along a straight bit of beach and generally getting the seal of approval from some of the backseat drivers in the car, me included....................However his second drive! Lets just say he wasn't driving along an innocuous stretch of beach anymore, jeffery was soon driving in deeper sand and to his credit had the right idea in driving quicker however in the process he scared just about everybody in the truck half to death with one guy in the back shouting your not Collin McCray! It literally felt like he was driving at 100mph around roads that were meant to be crawled around. His time was soon up but to be fair his 3rd and final drive was good so maybe the pressure just got to him on the second (maybe) . I found that in general the island didn't have that much to offer in terms of a 2 night stay, we visited 2 breathtaking lakes and at lake McKenzie especially the water was crystal clear, I had never seen anything like it in my life. But that was it, I found we basically drove around in sand all day and to make things worse we had a food situation when the eggs cracked in the journey and mixed with the bacon and somehow we got fairy liquid into some of the bread, so there we were rationing food for dinner. Also half our group was made up of Dutch b****es who thought that the boys did nothing and granted I didn't really but they were equally as lazy only they moaned and got on like spoiled b****es, therefore they created the divide in the group and provided the b****ing material for the 2 days. The whole camping thing just was not for me though and I along with a few others in the group were definitely glad to be off the island, im still glad I did it and again we did see some great sights but I think 1 day definitely would have been sufficient. It could have been worse though, one of the groups after us had problems when their engine blew up, each one of them had to pay $500 each!

Kroombit was our overnight stop before we went to Airlie Beach for Whitsundays. A cattle ranch as advertised however it felt more like a petting zoo when we got their, you didn't quite pick up that country twine of a cowboy rather the whine of a northern Irish girl (from Moneyreagh coincidentally) and a couple of English backpackers. The guy who ran the show was a “cowboy” called Andrew who was actually from Australia! Our first activity to get the testosterone running was herding cattle on a horse, only it wasn't really as it was rather mustering goats on a horse the size of a pony wearing a helmet as you may have seen on facebook, as Ian Magowan commented “giddy up” It was my first time on a horse though and it was quite enjoyable, I can tell jeffery also enjoyed it getting to show off his herding skills with the groans of hone hone and here zook (paddy knows what I mean) Now I know what your thinking – how can anything top this! Well it didn't, our next thing on the tick list was lassoing and after a bit of practice we were attempting to lasso a goat, grab it and then brand it, and as you probably already guessed this ended up in a shambles! Pretty much our last activity at the ranch was mechanical bull riding or as the french say le bucking bronco, this was after jeffery whipped himself in the arm after attempting to use a whip funnily enough. Although I did not attempt it myself after backing out when the disclaimer sheet was being passed around, jeffery made up for it by winning with grand total of 16 bucks, their were a couple of close calls though with 2 15's and I admit we did resort to cheap tactics when I started using the flash on the camera to put others off. Jeffery's prize was a free drink which he capitalized (dam us spelling and grammar) on by immediately ordering another coca cola! He also won a free party tour in Cairns.

This is the final destiantion in this email were we find ourselves at Airlie Beach doing Whitsundays which involves us on a sailing boat for 3 days and 2 nights. I don't exactly know why they call it Airlie Beach because its beach is s*** but hey. This was another chilled out little town and this time most of the day was spent playing pool or relaxing by the class lagoon. Our boat for the journey was the British Defender and a fine ship she was too for sailing. The guy taking us through the tour was a christian bale lookalike and the captain was the spit of John Locke (from lost) but apart from the celeb lookalikes on board we were joined mostly by Germans who filled up the majority of the boat with only 2 other people from the UK, we have come to find though that the Germans are the bulk of backpackers who are traveling Australia. It was very relaxing to just lay on the edge of the boat looking out to sea with the sun slapping down on us, made me appreciate it all the more to think of people back home in the floods we were hearing about and just those working in general. I got my first experience of snorkeling and in the Great Barrier Reef no less! Equipped with our masks and stinger suits (October- may is jellyfish season) we jumped in and witnessed some incredible coral reef and a wide variety of marine fish, the experience was pretty awesome however could have been better, had my mask worked properly as the water kept creeping into my goggles. We have seen some pretty class beaches along the way during our travels so far kho tao and Byron Bay but to name a couple, however none come close to Whithaven Beach ranked number 6 in the world among beaches, I will never be able to look at Crawfordsburn or Terella the same again! The food was also a massive plus, we were eating properly 3 times a day! So a good time was had by all and in many ways I was a bit disappointed it had to end so soon as we really had a blast. The conclusion of this trip was the night out at the end of this were we went to a club in Airlie and got smashed on jager bombs, tikella and vodka sprites (which has now officially replaced vodka and coke), Norway led the way on the dance floor and it was soon time for............... you guessed it, the press up! The night ended with me jeffery and a couple of others sitting outside Micky D's, were we got talking to an Irish girl, I soon got some water thrown over me for shouting Thierry Henry Thierry Henry! ha ha.

Thats me up to date so far, peace!

Things we have learnt in Australia so far -

the monkey on the co co pops box is completely differnet!
Your not allowed to pee in your wet suit
Steph is a w**** for sleeping with Dan when she is Libbys best friend!