We took an hour long train journey south down to the Gold Coast to the famous resort of Surfers Paradise... guess what its famous for?! So you would have thought we would have tried surfing here but the waves were strangely calm, so much so that no lessons were taking place! We checked into our apartment... yes an apartment which looked like something out of an Ikea catalogue and was spanking new - still with a fresh paint smell. We shared the apartment with 1 other guy - a US marine whose arms were bigger than Dave's head! As the weather was quite nice, there was not much else to do except hit our first real australian beach and we weren't let down. As it was saturday night we took part in a massive bar crawl with all the hostels in the resort. During the evening we met up with the marine again (late on and a few drinks in) and he challenged Dave to a drinking race of a pint of lager with a shot of absinthe dropped in... guess who won?! The weather increasingly turned bad so we made our way south... down to Byron Bay!